All for a Song (30 page)

“Of course not,” Roland spoke for her.

“What’s the kid’s name?”

“Donny.” She spoke up before Roland got the chance. “Donny Dunbar.”

“Donny Dunbar, eh?” Bendemann rocked back on his heels and spoke to the vaulted ceiling. “Got a nice ring to it. You sure he doesn’t want to be on the screen? If he looks anything like you, he’s got to be one handsome fellow.”

She supposed she should have felt flattered. Instead, she imagined what little there was of her dress was losing the battle between her skin and Bendemann’s lascivious gaze. Still, she knew Roland would expect her to smile, and she did, just slightly, hoping her disgust might somehow pass for an attempt at being coy.

“Not that I know of, Mr. Bendemann.” She stretched her words into an exaggerated, honey-sweet drawl. “But all the girls back home in Heron’s Nest sure loved him.”

“Heron’s Nest.” He looked once again at Roland. “Is she for real?”

“As real as they get,” Roland said, and she warmed at the pride in his voice. “Like the way people used to be, before the war took us all to hell and back.”

The trio fell into silence—a sober island in the midst of so much festivity.

“My brother fought in the war,” Dorothy Lynn said, soft enough that the older man had to lean down to hear. Real
tears pooled in her eyes. “He’s never come home. I just want to see him again, to tell him about my—” Something beyond Roland’s subtle jab kept her from saying
wedding
, and she didn’t dare mention her father in this place. Not that she believed the ghost of him would come barreling out of heaven to strike her down, but she’d taken enough foolish chances for one day. In the end, it didn’t matter what she was going to say, because H. C. Bendemann had once more snatched her away from Roland’s side, though this time in a slightly more paternal embrace.

“Well, then,” he said, raising the hand that still held his cocktail to summon someone from across the room, “what’s the use of having sway in this place if you can’t use it to help a sweet kid like you?”

He downed the rest of his drink and handed the empty glass to a passing waiter, instructing Dorothy Lynn to hand hers to Roland, which she did unquestioningly. From the crowd at large had emerged a man in a cheap tweed jacket and rumpled hat, wearing a large camera on a thick strap around his neck.

“You and the lady, sir?” he asked, chomping a piece of chewing gum in the corner of his mouth.

“Indeed,” Bendemann said, immediately releasing any fatherly tension from his embrace. “On three.”

The photographer counted, and on “Three!” a flash exploded, adding to the cloud of cigarette smoke in the room.

“In the dailies tomorrow,” Bendemann said, artfully slipping the photographer a folded bill. At least, that’s what Dorothy Lynn assumed he was giving him, as the light from the flash lingered in the corners of her sight. “
Movie Weekly
and
Variety
next week. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” He reached into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out a notebook and a stub of pencil. “Caption?” he said,
before placing the notebook along the side of his mouth. “Or are we wanting to remain anonymous?”

“My name, of course, and Miss—it is
Miss
, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Roland said. “Miss Dorothy Lynn Dunbar,” and he spelled it, keeping a careful eye over the photographer’s shoulder.

“That should get some attention,” Bendemann said, taking a new, filled glass from the same waiter who had carted his empty one away just a minute before.

“Indeed it should.” Roland handed Dorothy Lynn her drink, and she numbly participated as the three touched their glasses together. “You’re a powerful man.”

“We’ll see how powerful I am once my wife sees that picture.
Oy, gevalt!
You’ll explain to her, won’t you? God forbid she kick me to the street.” He took a long, appreciative swallow of his drink before shaking Roland’s hand and giving Dorothy Lynn a kiss on her cheek. Then he disappeared into the crowd.

“Can we go home now?” Dorothy Lynn asked, wiping the lingering alcohol from her face with the back of her hand.

Roland deposited their glasses on the tray of a passing waiter and picked up two others filled with champagne. “One drink.”

She refused to even touch the glass.

“One drink,” he insisted, “and one dance—not with me, but with some young sheik worthy of your company—and then straight home. Come on, my sweet rose. Enjoy your night in the snow.”

Tiny, enticing bubbles frolicked above the rim. She’d asked Brent if they could have a bottle of champagne at their wedding, just as Darlene and Roy had. Enough for all the guests to join in a single toast. He’d said she was out of her mind. Prohibition aside, it was a fool who got drunk with wine. And now . . .

“It’s too late,” she said.

“It’s not even eleven o’clock.”

Distracted by Roland’s misunderstanding, she reached for the glass. “Ma always said it was cheating to stay out past midnight. It keeps your feet in both days.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Our days are numbered by the Lord. If we live two at a time, we’re getting more than our share.”

“If that’s the case, baby,” he said, touching his glass to hers, “then we’re staying out ’til dawn.”

It tickled and burned at one time, leaving her unsure of both its delight and its danger. Roland, however, had no misgivings—no sooner were their glasses empty than two more arrived, and by the third, everything around the room was deliciously fuzzy.

Once, when Roland was off getting drinks, a woman in a dress made entirely of sheer gauze and strategic ribbons came up to her, leaned close, and in a booze-laden voice asked, “Who’s your daddy?”

“Pastor Dunbar,” Dorothy Lynn said, surprised at how thick the words were when she wasn’t simply flipping out a joke. “But he’s dead.”

Ribbons rolled her eyes. “Not your
father
. Your
daddy
.” She inclined her head toward Roland, who had a familiar champagne glass in one hand and one of the far more dangerous-looking dark liquid in the other.

Before he arrived, Dorothy Lynn cupped her hands around her mouth and bent straight to Ribbons’s ear. “That’s Roland Lundi. I think he may have ruined my life.”

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

ECCLESIASTES 1:14

BREATH OF ANGELS

2:07 P.M.

They call this the “celebration room,” even though most days it is indistinguishable from any other. The carpet is the same industrial mauve weave as is found throughout the facility, and the tables are the same sturdy dining sets that furnish the dining hall downstairs. One thing it does have is a generous window and sliding glass door opening to a narrow, walled-in patio in case a family’s celebration is given to moving outside.

Lynnie sits outside the celebration room, having dutifully taken a nap after her tour of the grounds courtesy of Charlotte Hill. Had her caretakers known the extent of her fitfulness during the prescribed nap, however, they might not have credited her with compliance. A body as old as hers did not expend its energy on tossing and turning, but her mind had never ceased its questioning as she lay, eyes closed against the gray light of the drawn drapes.

Now, freshly primped and propped in her wheelchair, she waits, staring at the black sign with white plastic letters wedged in its creases.

RESERVED

October 14

2–3 p.m.

The clock on the wall indicates that her party should have started more than five minutes ago, and she wonders if, behind the large double door, last-minute preparations are under way. Balloons, maybe—those large, floating, colorful, silver-backed ones—or bright paper streamers looped from one industrial ceiling tile to the next. She strains to listen for music, or even conversation, but hears nothing.

She longs, suddenly, for Charlotte, who—in her mind, at least—would have an answer for all of this. But Charlotte, chastised for keeping Lynnie out too long, had turned the wheelchair over to the capable hands of Kaleena and disappeared among the covered walkways. She might have whispered a promise to return, but that could be nothing more than a trick of an old woman’s mind that has lived with too many wishes.

With a gnarled hand she plucks at the pilling on the sleeve of her favorite blue sweater. Kaleena had asked if she wouldn’t rather wear something slightly more festive? Pink, maybe, or the white cardigan with the golden thread and soft fur running along the buttons? But this is warm and familiar, though she can’t help but think how it diminishes with every tiny, discarded ball of thread. Long ago, someone—or some machine, more likely—knit this sweater one stitch at a time, and here it binds itself in tiny balls to be pinched off by useless fingers and tossed onto the floor next to a wheelchair parked outside an empty celebration room. And to think, it’s not half as old as Lynnie herself.

These are the thoughts that plague her as she waits. And waits. In her youth this might have become a song, and her feet, snug against the soft soles of her slippers, twitch against the imagined cool forest floor where she’d escape to write it. Her mind grows drowsy looking for a rhyme.

Sweater . . . Better?

Silly.

As always, she hears them long before she sees them. What used to be overlapping, clattering footsteps have become purposeful, careful sounds of nonskid soles assisted by rhythmic, tapping canes. They’re arguing about gas prices, of all things, and the financial insanity of driving two extra blocks to save a nickel, at best. They’ve not even rounded the corner yet, and already she is exhausted.

“Aunt Dottie!”

She’s not sure if it is RJ or Darren who first shouts out the greeting. The difference in age that so defined them as boys disappeared shortly after high school. Today, as both enjoy rare, hearty health for men in their nineties, a stranger would be hard-pressed to know which was older. Indeed, Lynnie hardly knows which is which. It’s not until one of them bends to kiss her and she notices the scar on his bald, spotted pate—the testament of a collision between his head and a can of peas—that identifies him as Darren, the oft-wounded younger brother.

RJ patiently waits his turn before planting a dry kiss on her other cheek.

“Happy birthday, Aunt Dottie.” He twists his hat in his hands and looks around. “Nobody else here?”

“Does it look like anyone else is here?” Darren asks, forever seeking argument.

“I thought they might already be inside the room.”

“Then why would she be outside?”

“Maybe they got here before she did.”

“Then why would they close the door?”

Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

When they were little boys, Lynnie wouldn’t have dared shout them down in such a way, for fear of incurring their mother’s wrath. Now, in their old age, they’ve reverted to the same childish behavior, and she is again powerless to make them stop. She furrows her brow and looks from one to the other, but they are too entrenched in their argument to notice her displeasure. The round-faced clock ticks down another minute of her designated birthday party time, and the possibility that she’ll spend every moment of it trapped in this hallway listening to two old men bicker is starting to seem very real when the sound of squeaking shoes and short, panting breath comes up from behind.

“Daddy! Uncle RJ! We can hear you clear down the hallway.”

It’s Penny, Darren’s oldest daughter, looking so much like her grandmother it takes Lynnie’s breath away. True, she’s fatter than Darlene would have ever allowed herself to be, but they share an identical chin and nose and slightly lifted left eye.

Penny is all business this afternoon, hefting a bakery cake box, a canvas grocery bag, and an assortment of gift bags, each with its own tufted tissue paper spilling from the top.

“Is anybody else here?”

“Does it look like anyone else is here?” her father repeats.