Ferris Beach (12 page)

By the time we had done every old practical joke in the book,
popped popcorn, and
not
gotten scared when we heard Dean and Ronald outside scratching on the window screens, Mr. Rhodes had called to say that Misty had a brother. Buddy Jefferson Rhodes, seven pounds and two ounces. We went outside and stood in the carport until Ronald and Dean saw us and came over from near the parking side of the cemetery.

“It’s a girl!” Misty shouted and danced around, her arms lifted as she twirled, now wearing a heavy flannel gown and thick chenille robe. I was still in my clothes as I sat on the step and watched her leaping over the oil spot in her quilted bedroom shoes, her hair pulled back with a pink hairband. The excitement of the baby, combined with sitting up until the wee hours, had made her no longer care what Ronald thought about her appearance. “Her name is Cassandra Melissa Clarissa Patricia Inez lona Rhodes and she weighed”—Misty slung her arms around Dean’s neck and squeezed—“fifteen pounds and four ounces.”

“Wow.” Ronald stood there staring and shaking his head. “You don’t believe that, do you?” Misty asked, her blue eyes wide and clear as she stepped right in front of the boy and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth. “Well, if you believe that I have a sister with that name and weight, then you should believe that I did not kiss you just now.” Ronald was standing there moving his head up and down as if he was having to think back through everything she had just said. Misty had said he liked to smoke pot, and it seemed maybe that was part of his problem. I was watching them and didn’t even notice Dean standing right beside me until I felt his hand on my waist.

“You have a baby brother,” I said without looking up. “Buddy Jefferson Rhodes.”

“Thanks,” he said, and reached inside to flip off the yellow light. I heard Misty blurt, “What,” and then stop, maybe deciding that she wanted to be in the dark with Ronald. Again, Dean found my hand and held it while we watched Misty dancing circles around Ronald. He was laughing and just trying to keep up
with where she was. “Now, what’s the baby’s name?” he asked again. I hoped Misty would not venture out into the street where Mrs. Poole or my mother might look out and see her dancing in her long pink bathrobe, which did
not
go with her hair.

I could feel Dean leaning in closer to me, and I knew that if I turned my head to the side he would kiss me. It was just that easy and yet, it was like my neck went rigid, like I could not bend. I reminded myself of my mother when she did not give in to those obnoxious peck peck pecks my father gave her. I let my hand go completely limp, maybe the worst thing you could do to a fifteen-year-old boy who had gotten up the nerve to make a move, especially if you are a thirteen-year-old girl who has never been approached by anyone who might even kind of like you.

I thought of Angela, her head leaned against the chain of the swing, her eyes distant and dreamy without a care in the world. I imagined her riding away, her friend at the wheel, his cap pulled low, the windshield coated in the thick salty dampness as they sang along with the radio, wind rushing past open windows.

Dean tried to pull me into him, but I froze and stayed that way until he went inside and slammed the door. It was after three in the morning, the moon at an angle I rarely saw. I pulled the pink plastic petal from my pocket and held it in my open palm. It would remind me of the street so empty and quiet, how I crouched there in the darkness of the cemetery, the sudden fear that came over me like a chill; it would remind me of Dean holding my hand and pressing my foot, of Misty deliriously dancing about in her bathrobe. It would remind me of the birth of Buddy Jefferson Rhodes, and it would remind me of Angela waiting in the porch swing, how maybe her heart quickened as she saw me from a distance, how she stood as I made my way down the sidewalk and then up the steps, how she reached out her arms and hugged me to her.

It was New Year’s Day when Angela called, her voice frantic when I lifted the receiver. “Fred?” she called. “Fred, is that you?” I could hear noise in the background, music and voices, as I held my hand over the mouthpiece and called for my father. He was stretched out on the sofa watching football, the volume of the set turned completely down so that he could hear his album of wildlife sounds. One minute he was at a bowl game, the next he was in a jungle with loud bird sounds, like chekaw chekaw. My mother sat at the end of the sofa, with my father’s feet propped on her lap as she worked on a needlepoint piece that she would soon sew into yet another pillow to decorate the wicker settee on the sunporch. She had quite a collection, all Victorian floral designs on a black background. When my father got up to answer the phone, she stopped her work to watch and listen, motioned for me to turn down the long-winded blast of an elephant and the rapid chatter of a band of monkeys.

His back was to us as he stood there twisting the phone cord. “Who was it?” my mother asked, and stretched her legs out on the coffee table, an unusual pose for her, a
vacation
pose. There were about three times during the year, New Year’s Day being one of them, when my mother declared she was on vacation and was not going to do anything except cook, which she did not consider work, but hobby. It was on these rare days that she announced she’d like to have a drink, more specifically a beer, and then proceeded to have one; now she sat watching my father, a can of Schlitz neatly bound in a Christmas napkin lifted to her mouth. I shrugged but she kept looking at me, waiting for more.

“It was real loud,” I said, “like maybe there was a party or something, or maybe it was a pay phone.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, dramatic things always seem to happen around the holidays.”

“Like what?” I was tired of the cryptic messages that she so often delivered; messages that seemed not meant for me but instead simply her thoughts escaping.

“Like what? Well, let’s see.” She took another sip and leaned her head back against the couch. “Well, someone could do something dramatic like run away and get married, or maybe drink too much and drive into a parked car.” She laughed sarcastically, eyes on my father as he stepped back into the room, his face flushed as he nervously raked the fingers of his right hand through his hair. I was still standing by the stereo, which was now emitting only faint growls and chatters, as I waited to hear more, the answers to the riddles.

“If only Theresa Poole could see you now,” he said and laughed, though it was easy to see through his attempt at lightening the mood. “She’d at least suggest that you have some sherry or perhaps a bit of port.” He crooked his finger, another attempt at being funny but it was clear that he was falling flat.

“And what if she could see me?” Mama asked, and drained the can. I knew as well as she did that Mrs. Poole was out of
town and there was no chance that she’d
drop by
as she so often did. It occurred to me then that
that
was the system to timing my mother’s beer and needlepoint vacations; she took a vacation when Mrs. Poole was out of town. “So, who was on the phone?”

“Angela.” He said her name while staring out the window, watching the bare limbs of a tree moving back and forth, two squirrels collecting twigs to jungle sounds. “She’s in a bit of trouble.”

“Told you.” Mama looked at me and nodded, then raised her eyes to his sudden look of surprise. “Yes, that’s right. I was telling Katie how the holidays always have a really dramatic effect on some people. You know, it’s the suicide season; wreck your car, run away and get married.”

“And all those are one and the same?” He sat down beside her, his arm reaching behind her head, finger stroking her cheek. “Suicide and marriage?”

“She tried to kill herself?” I asked, having not yet had time to absorb the fact that apparantly she
had
gotten married, that she
had
run into a parked car.

“Of course not,” my father said; for the first time I’d ever seen, there was a huge ink spot on the pocket of his crisp white shirt. “And she barely bumped her car that time, Cleva.”

“It was
our
car,” she said and then turned to me, her elbow propped such that it looked as if she were toasting with that Christmas-wrapped Schlitz can, like some kind of Statue of Liberty parody. “And she thinks far too much of herself to ever commit suicide.”

“And thank God for that,” he said, motioning for me to lift the needle which had reached the end of the safari sounds. “Just turn it off,” he said when he saw me flip over the album to read what was on the other side, “Swamp Sounds.” “She wants to move out. She has no place to go.”

“And so you said, ‘Why don’t you stay here with us for awhile.’ Right?” She put the can on the table beside her and stood up,
smoothed back her hair and began straightening the room. Mauve and violet wool threads lay in a jumble where she had been sitting. “Happy New Year.”

“I told her I’d ask you.” He stood and grabbed her by the wrists, waited for her to look at him. I kept waiting for one of them to ask me to leave, to send me on some scavenger hunt of an errand, but they didn’t. “Look, the guy has threatened her.” He lowered his voice, leaned in until their foreheads were touching. “Physically threatened her.”

“What guy? Her husband?” Again, I pictured the man on Ferris Beach. A bright summer day, but he was dressed in long pants and a long-sleeved blue shirt, hat pulled low on his forehead, a flash of silver like a chain or a belt buckle.

“Yes, her husband,” my father said quietly. “I think this marriage is over. It was a big mistake and Angela knows that now.”

“Why didn’t anybody ever tell me . . .” Before I could finish my thought, my mother was going on and on in an exaggerated way.
Why and who ever would’ve thought that this marriage, this union crafted in heaven and founded on the floor of a bar and grill and/or bowling alley would come to an end?

“Can I bring her home?” He spoke in a slow deliberate voice. “Just until she can find something else.” He lifted her chin and they locked stares; I was holding my breath, “Swamp Sounds” still in my hands. When she nodded, gave into his embraces, I reached for the paper sleeve and put the album away. “It’ll be okay this time, honey,” he said and then was gone, reaching under the sofa for his shoes, grabbing his coat from the hall closet. “I don’t know when we’ll get here,” he yelled. “I’ll call you if it looks like it’s going to be real late.” We both stood quietly, listening to the distant sound of his engine turning over. She watched the silent football game on TV for a few seconds. “You better punt,” she said, and then waited, nodding as she saw her advice put into action.

“When did Angela drive our car?” I finally asked, the silence
unbearably awkward. I began straightening pillows and magazines to avoid looking at her.

“Off sides.” She pointed to the screen and then sighed and turned it off; under normal circumstances, I would have marveled at her knowledge of football. “When she was a teenager. We were still living in South Carolina.”

“Was I born?” I asked, and she shook her head. “Is that when she was living with you?”

“Yes.” She went and lifted her needlepoint, sat back down in her corner of the sofa, the imprint of my father’s head still on the pillow at the other end. “It was right before you were born. We didn’t need that kind of worry.”
We
didn’t, the two of them, the three of them? I imagined my mother standing on an unfamiliar sidewalk as she examined the dented car, Angela in tears, her long hair swept up in a high ponytail.

“There’s a lot that you don’t know, Katie,” she began. “We took Angela in even before your grandmother died and I treated her like she was my daughter, which wasn’t easy given that she was a teenager and I had never had a child.” She paused, lips pressed together as she shook her head. “I wasn’t exactly
old,
you know. Thirty-five may
sound
old to you, but it’s not at all.” She sat there, wisps of hair slipping from her bun. “It hurt me when she left so abruptly. All that time I had spent helping her, sewing her clothes and cooking her meals and paying her way to the movies or wherever she needed to go; I had just finished writing to junior colleges in hopes that she could get in somewhere and then she was just gone, a three-line note pinned to her pillow.” She paused, as if trying to picture the words. “‘Thank you for what you have done for me. But I have got to leave right now. I’ll tell you more later.’” She spoke the words mechanically. “I mean that’s all she said.”

“Was I born then?”

“Yes,” she nodded, her poised needle threaded in violet. “You were born two weeks before she left. So finally when I really
needed
her, she was gone.”

“Why?”

She shrugged, breathed out. “Fred had already taken his job here, and we were all set to move. She said that she didn’t want to leave South Carolina, so she went to Dillon and got married.”

“She’s been married all this time?” I sat in my father’s corner of the sofa and propped my feet on the coffee table, where there was a mixed stack of his
National Geographies
and her
Better Homes and Gardens.
I thought of Mo Rhodes in Hardee’s the night Buddy was born.
I
always assumed she was married,
she had said.

“Oh, no.” My mother shook her head, stared at the empty TV screen. “That lasted a very brief while.” She pulled out a strand of black wool and held it up to the light to thread the needle. “This is the
second
husband she’s leaving today.”

I was too stunned to ask anything else for awhile, and so just sat and also stared into the blank green screen. The blue sky was already darkening, and I realized that I had not gone over to Misty’s house as I had promised that I’d do.
I
remember that day,
Angela had said about my birthday. What if it was all true, everything that I had imagined, Madame X or Stella Dallas. I needed to tell Misty, to add these new facts to all that I had outlined for her on Christmas Day as we sat on a high branch of the tree and waited for parkers. “Wow,” Misty had said. “Just think. You may be a real live
love child.
And somewhere you may have this young, really cool Dad.” She grinned and tossed an acorn out into the cemetery, snapped her fingers and in her best Diana Ross mode, began singing “Love Child.” It was what we called
graveyard talk
both literally and figuratively, words never to be spoken to another living soul.