Ferris Beach (32 page)

“Well, I want some grass in the worst way and so for my Christmas, Thomas has said that I can sodomize our yard.”

“Well, I never,” Mrs. Poole gasped and smoked her cigarette, sucked in hard.

“They’re doing it in all the new subdivisions,” she said, face and throat blushing.

“Well, good grief, Sally Jean,” my father said. “Are you going to charge admission for this?”

“Fred Burns, you’re a card, you know?” She looked at Mama. “Your Fred is something. It’s no big deal anymore, Fred.”

“Sodomizing a yard? No big deal?” he asked.

“No. They just bring the grass and roll it right out. Thomas tells me that they can even cut out around my trees and what not just like you might wall-to-wall carpet over a heating vent.” She nodded assuredly, took a deep breath and then smiled at Mrs. Poole. “I’ll have the greenest, thickest carpet of grass on this whole street.” She thrust out her chin but with one stern look from Mrs. Poole began to crumble. “Well, that’s what Thomas says anyway. You know my Thomas though, he does whatever it takes to make me happy.”

“Yes, he was always that way,” Mrs. Poole said, and then put her hand daintily to her mouth as if she hadn’t meant to make reference to the time
before
Sally Jean.

“It’ll look beautiful, Sally Jean,” Mama said. “Can I get you some tea or coffee?”

“No, we just popped by to say hi.” My father and I followed them to the door, with him reassuring Sally Jean how pretty her
yard would be with grass. I was relieved that he didn’t make any more mention of her sodomizing the yard. Even Misty hadn’t commented, had only nodded right along with Sally Jean, who it seemed had racked up quite a few points with her Christmas shopping.

“I should’ve gotten her something other than that pin,” Misty whispered. “How did I know she’d do all this for me?” My father and Sally Jean were at the steps when Misty spotted a gift all wrapped up beside our front door. “Hey, look.” She picked it up, turned it sideways to read the card. “To Kate.” She shook it just out of my reach. “Hey, who’s it from, you guess?”

“I don’t know.” I reached and took it, stared at the neat print of my name.

“Well, open it,” Misty screamed. “Let me see if that’s Dean’s writing.” She studied the tag while I ripped off the paper and opened the box. If I had had a choice, I would have opened it privately, in my room, but I couldn’t get away with that with Misty standing right there.

“Doesn’t
look
like Dean’s writing,” she said; a car was pulling up and stopping in front of her house, but she was watching me lift the porcelain egg from its box. Violets were painted on the white egg, and it was all edged in gold. The top lifted and inside was a violet scented candle. “That’s kind of pretty,” Misty said, shaking her head. “Who else could it be?”

“I think it’s from Merle,” I whispered, reaching out to twist her arm in our signal of
graveyard talk.
“I wanted to tell you yesterday, but you had all those relatives over.”

“What? Tell me what?” Misty’s eyes were wild with excitement as she pushed me over to the far end of the porch away from Sally Jean and my father. “Have you talked to him?”

“Yeah.” I stared out at the cemetery gates. “I was out here yesterday when he walked by, and we just sat and talked for a while.” I rubbed my finger around the edge of the egg. “He really is nice.”

“Haven’t I been telling you that
forever?”
she asked. “You see,
that flirting paid off, didn’t it? Did he mention me? Did he mention his brother?”

“He said he thinks you’re nice.”

“And?” She reached up and twisted the tiny Coke bottle earring around and around.

“I found out that Dexter goes with Perry Loomis,” I finally whispered. “They’re pre-engaged.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders relaxed as she turned and watched the doors of the station wagon in her driveway open. “Great. Sally Jean’s relatives,” she said sarcastically and then breathed in, turned back to me. “Well, there’s still R.W.,” she said. “And now that you and Merle are together.”

“I didn’t say we’re
together”

“Well, you might as well be,” she said, hope once again rising in her voice. “So you can fix me up with R.W.” I cringed with the thought of R.W. Quincy, the way he walked towards Perry, hands fumbling with his belt.

“Misty?” Sally Jean was on the sidewalk, and I was relieved for the interruption until I could think of a way to get Misty’s mind off R.W. I wanted so much to tell her the truth but every time I considered it, I thought of my promise to Merle. “C’mon, honey, our guests are here.”

“Oh God.” Misty twisted my arm. “See him.” She pointed to a tall, gangly-looking guy who was stepping from the backseat of a big green station wagon. “He must be the guy who goes to Wake Forest. Sally Jean
said
he was cute and he
is.
How do I look?” She opened her eyes wide for my inspection, and I brushed a pale eyelash from her cheek. “Put R.W. on hold,” she said and then was gone. Sally Jean waved as they crossed the street.

When I went inside, they were all standing and getting ready to go into the dining room; Mrs. Poole was now asking Angela about her education. I placed the egg up high on our mantel so it wouldn’t get broken, but Mrs. Poole didn’t miss a beat. “Now, where did that come from?” she asked.

“Well, Kitty,” Mama said, “I thought Misty had already given you a gift.”

“She had.”

“Why, I bought one just like that the other day to go along with some things I had set aside for Gladys Hucks, you know.” She pointed her thin arm to the back wall of our living room. “They live here right behind you. She does some sewing for me from time to time. Well, I guess I chose a popular item.” She went to the mantel and turned the egg upside down to read the bottom. “Uh huh, ‘Made in the USA,’ just like the one I bought. You know, I don’t buy Japanese things in memory of my Mr. Bo. This is exactly like what I bought.” She shook the egg in her hand as she spoke. “I bought several. Make nice little gifts. Half-price table at Ivey’s.” Then she gasped, again as if she hadn’t meant to slip, and placed the egg back on the mantel. “I hope Gladys likes hers. I mean, what do you buy for a poor soul who needs
everything!”

“Something,” my father said, looked at me and winked. “Now, who here knows what you get if you cross...” He faltered and then laughed when Mama gave him a sharp look.

“I told that boy to say it was from him and that little girl if he wanted. You know if he hadn’t gotten anything for his mother.” Mrs. Poole walked in front of me, and I wanted to stick my foot out and trip her like I never had before. “Now, what became of your father, Angela?”

“Excuse me,” Mama interrupted. “Let’s all say grace.” Daddy prayed and I opened my eyes just long enough to glimpse Mama crossing herself, something I hadn’t seen her do in a long time, her lips moving as she spoke a prayer all her own.

Before we even finished our pie, a horn blew in the driveway; when I went to look out, there was a bright red Mustang, a dark-haired man in the driver’s seat. In a second Angela was right behind me and then out the front door, a constant cry of
“Greg, Greg, Greg,” as she slid across the front seat and began kissing him.

“I hate to leave,” she was saying to Mama and Daddy five minutes later. “And my, but Greg would love to come in but he’s taking me to meet his family, and then we think we might go ahead and get married. It’s okay if I leave my car here for a day or two, isn’t it?” As Mrs. Poole watched, Angela hugged my father and then my mother, kissed both of my cheeks, and once again was gone with a promise of letters and phone calls and a couple of revs from the car’s engine.

“Well, she doesn’t linger, does she?” Mrs. Poole asked, and lit a Salem.

“No, she’s always been the energetic type. Here today, gone tomorrow.” Mama lifted her hands and made a twirling motion, like a tornado, and smiled. “That’s our little Angela.” She looked at Daddy, who nodded enthusiastically and then gave Mama a break by asking Mrs. Poole just what her problem was with blacks and whites going to the same school and did she really give a big donation back when George Wallace was running for president.

“Well, I did no such thing, Fred.”

“You mean you didn’t
vote
for George Wallace like everybody says you did.”

“Voting is a private right, Fred, a private right of a U.S. citizen.”

“Well, is it true that you are sponsoring a Japanese child here in the States?” He sat back and lit a cigar, laughed as her face got tighter and tighter. Mama was standing in the kitchen with a forlorn look on her face, a silver tray beautifully arranged with strawberries and kiwis that she had had to travel great distances and pay great prices to find, her fondue pot bubbling with chocolate, the semisweet kind just as Angela had requested.

Merle called late that afternoon and asked if I could walk and meet him in the same place. I could hear lots of loud talk and television noise in the background, and though Mama had invited
several people from her garden club over to eat up all that fruit and said she needed my help, I begged off long enough to sneak into the cemetery. “Just for a walk,” I had told her when she asked where I was going. It was one of those drizzly days where it never really rains hard, just mists steadily, making the day seem much longer, as if it had been late afternoon for hours.

“A walk in this weather?” Mrs. Poole had decided that rather than go home and sit alone she would just spend the time between dinner and the garden club gathering at my mother’s kitchen table. I didn’t answer her, just grabbed an umbrella out of the bucket by the back door and left, walking the long way around in case they were watching me. The house with the manger scene was quiet, no music, no lights, probably afraid that they’d short-circuit in the dampness. Angela had also given my father a stainless steel lighter, and when I approached him after lunch, saying that I needed a gift for someone I had forgotten, he held it out to me still wrapped in green tissue paper in the small white box.

“Is he a smoker?” he asked, one finger up to his lips as he breathed a long “Shhhhh.” I nodded, and then he put the box in my hand, crossed his heart to keep my secret, and then shooed me away just as Judy began singing,
What’ll I do when you are far away.
... He mouthed the words, a pencil in his hand as he drew an elaborate greenhouse that he could never afford to really build.

When I arrived, the door to the little shed was open. I bent down to look inside, and there he was, leaning against the wall, knees bent up as his feet pressed against the other side. Merle motioned for me to come inside and I did, sitting opposite him on an old blanket he had spread there. Water dripped from the low doorway.

Most of the time we just sat and listened to the other one fumbling for something to say, our knees touching.

“Thanks for my present,” I said, all the while trying to blot
Mrs. Poole’s sharp face and words from my mind. He shrugged a “you’re welcome” and then I pulled out the lighter and waited for him to open it. Thank God, Angela hadn’t had it monogrammed as most people would’ve done, or maybe it was a leftover gift from her as well, Greg quit smoking or never had.

“Thanks,” he said, and rubbed his thumb downward to light it. We sat there and watched the flame until he said his thumb was scorched and let go. It seemed to have gotten a lot darker. We heard the streetlight in the far end of the cemetery buzz on. Mostly we talked about Christmas and food. He had gotten some clothes, some money, but didn’t elaborate. He said his sister had gotten a doll that said the same three things over and over when you pulled her string and it was driving him crazy. He said Dexter did give Perry a pre-engagement ring.

“What about your mother?” I asked, trying to picture Gladys Hucks in my mind; I had only seen her at a distance, in the front of the pickup truck or bent over her kitchen sink.

“Old man gave her some old canisters or something like that,” he said, smiling. “You know, like what you keep flour in.” He squatted and awkwardly turned around so that he was sitting beside me, his hand warm as he reached out and took mine. “I gave her forty hours of hard labor. You know, like she can tell me what to do around the house and I have to do it.” I squeezed his hand and waited, knowing that any second he was going to lean forward and kiss me. Just before I left, he said that he was wondering if I wanted to say that we were going together, like if people asked, would I mind if he said that I was his girlfriend.

“That’s fine,” I said in a very calm voice, my chest pounding twice as fast as Mrs. Poole could smoke or Angela could talk. “I’d like that.” I backed out of the shed and, just before standing, watched him pull the lighter back from his jacket pocket and spark it. He said that he had always gone to the cemetery to sit; he said that in good weather he might sit on the great big rough gray tombstone near the gates, and I told him that I already knew that. “I know that you know,” he said, and grinned.

It was the beginning of a routine; we met there every day, sometimes walking together from school and cutting in on the side street where Misty and I had spent so much time watching for parkers. “Better check the trees to see if anybody’s watching
us
,” Merle said one afternoon when I described all the time Misty and I had spent playing there, but the mention brought to mind that night with Perry, which was something we avoided discussing. She was absent a lot the first month after the holidays, and the rumors ranged from mononucleosis to pregnancy; Merle said she was just having a very hard time, no thanks to his lousy brother.

My mother often paused in the driveway or in an upstairs window to look over at the cemetery and see if she could see us. It was her belief that you should not be with a
boyfriend
in a place hidden from the public eye; it did not look nice. “Please invite this Merle in,” she said over and over. “We hardly know him and certainly we should.” She got that
stern yet sensitive
look which I’m sure she had employed as a school teacher when dealing with failing students. “Unless, of course, there’s some
reason
you don’t
want
us to meet him.” She was still talking about Angela’s quick exit at Christmas and how if she had truly found a winner to marry her this round,
then wouldn’t she want people to meet him?
Mrs. Poole had offered ever since that day to have a bridal shower or a little engagement tea. “I mean this is Fred’s niece, for crying out loud,” she had said. “And a poor little orphan at that, though I never really heard what
did
happen to the father.”