News of the Spirit (15 page)

We crossed Stock Island and drove into Key West around suppertime. After the long stretches of water and the scruffy unpopulated keys we’d come through, Key West was disorienting, a bright buzz of color and noise.

“Did
you
have a uniform like that?” I asked Daddy as a young sailor dodged in front of our big car.

“Pretty much,” Daddy said. “In fact, that young man might have been me, thirty years ago.” This thought seemed to make him sad. He cleared his throat and went on. “You’ll see a lot of Navy personnel here right now because of the situation in Cuba, which is only ninety miles away. A dictator named Batista has just been ousted, and the rebels have taken over.”

“Castro, right?” I already knew about this from the
Weekly Readers
we had to read in civics class at Repass Junior High.

Daddy looked impressed. “Why, that’s right, Jenny. Fidel Castro is the rebel leader, a genuine hero.” Daddy was always for the people, for the underdog. His own father had kept the union out of the mill, but after Granddaddy killed himself, Daddy welcomed it. This was only one of Grandmother’s many longtime grievances against Daddy.

We stopped for the red light at Truman and White, which gave me a chance to get a good look at all the boys in uniform along the sidewalk. Several of them were as cute as Harlan
Boyd, in that same sweet country way, which made me feel funny deep down in my stomach. But nobody was as cute as Tom Burlington. Nobody would ever be as cute as Tom Burlington.

“Well, I like Ike,” Mama said irrelevantly. This had something to do with Castro, I believe.

It was the kind of remark that used to make Daddy smile, or pinch her cheek. Not now. Instead, he curled his lip in an ugly way. Luckily Mama did not notice; she was staring out the open window. “I just wish you’d look at all these flowers!” she said. “I have never seen such vines.”

I hadn’t, either. Nor had I ever seen anyplace that looked like Key West, with old frame houses covered and sometimes hidden by lush vegetation, with dogs and cats and chickens running around in the streets, and piano music and laughter pouring out of open doorways. I had never seen adults riding bicycles before, yet it seemed to be a common form of transportation here. People sat on their porches and balconies or stood chatting on the sidewalks beneath big-leafed trees. The light was green and golden. Everybody seemed to have all the time in the world.

I observed these people carefully.

Nobody looked like us.

“We’re almost there,” Daddy said.

Mama reapplied her lipstick. We turned left onto Duval Street, and now I could see a glistening patch of ocean ahead. Daddy pulled into a motel called the Blue Marlin, with a
huge fish on its sign. Mama and I waited in the car, under the entrance portico, while he headed for the office, tucking his shirt down in back as he went. The motel was made of blue-painted concrete, two stories in a U shape around a good-size pool featuring a diving board and a water slide and lots of lounge chairs and palm trees. “Wow, this is really nice, isn’t it?” I said to Mama, who was lighting a cigarette and didn’t answer. Still, I was hopeful. The Blue Marlin
was
nice. But was it nice enough to get Mama and Daddy back together? Mama smoked that whole cigarette and lit another, blowing smoke rings out her window. I watched a neon-green lizard zip up a blue concrete wall.

“Why is this
taking so long
?” Mama said finally. She looked like she was about to cry.

I was halfway out of the car, on my way to find out, when Daddy came through the plate-glass doors jingling two keys, with a funny look on his face. “Jenny, get back in the car,” he said abruptly, and I did. Then Daddy got in and closed his door and turned to look at us instead of starting the car.

“You’re not going to believe this, Billie,” he said slowly.

“What? What is it? Are the girls okay?” Mama’s pretty face was an instant mask of alarm. She had had too much bad news.

“Oh no, nothing like that.” Daddy smiled his new, distant smile. “It appears that almost this entire motel has been taken over by the cast and crew of a movie that they are shooting on location right now in Key West, over at the
Navy yard. There are only four rooms they’re not occupying, and it turns out we’ve got two of them.” Daddy jingled his keys again. “They asked me a lot of questions. I had to swear that we weren’t journalists or photographers in order to stay here.”

“Who did you say we are?” I asked. It was exactly what I had been trying to figure out.

Daddy looked at me. “An American family,” he said firmly. I felt something very deep inside myself relax. “But Jenny,” he added in a no-nonsense voice, “I promised that man that you
would not bother
the stars, do you hear me? Or the crew, or anybody else. I promised because I knew that you and your mother would want to stay here. There are no other children at this motel, so you’ll just have to amuse yourself. You can meet some other kids down there, I imagine”—Daddy pointed to the beach at the end of the street—“but you can’t bring them here, and you
cannot
bother anybody at this motel. Is that clear?” He had his key in the ignition, yet did not turn it. I knew he was speaking as much to Mama as to me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Which stars?” Mama asked.

“Well, there’s Dina Merrill,” Daddy said, “and Tony Curtis…”

“Tony Curtis!”
Mama and I squealed together. Tony Curtis had just been voted the most popular young actor in
Hollywood, after the recent success of
The Defiant Ones.
Mama and I were crazy about Tony Curtis.

Daddy had to grin in spite of himself. “And you just missed Janet Leigh,” he said. “She left yesterday. She was here for two weeks, apparently, on vacation. She’s not in this movie, though.”

“She’s gone back to California to be with the children,” Mama said automatically. “Kelly and Jamie.”

Daddy looked at her for a while. Then he cleared his throat and said, “That’s not all.”

“
Who?
” Mama and I breathed together. Over the top of the seat, I clutched her hand.

“Cary Grant.” Daddy was trying to sound offhand.

“
Cary Grant!
” We couldn’t believe it. The most gorgeous, the most elegant, the biggest star in Hollywood!

“He’s got the bungalow and several of those end units.” Daddy pointed. “His secretary is here, and a number of other people, his whole staff. The man at the desk says he’s a real gentleman.”

“Of course he is,” Mama said.

I was not so sure of that. I sucked in my breath, thinking of his recent affair with Sophia Loren.

Mama and I peered in Cary Grant’s direction but couldn’t see any particular activity over there beyond the pool and the pink bougainvillea, which grew in profusion, shielding the bungalow.

“They’re still on location today,” Daddy said. “They don’t get back until about eight o’clock. They’re filming down at the Navy yard, where they’ve painted a submarine pink for this movie. The movie is called
Operation Petticoat.
So if everything is understood, Jenny”—I bobbed my head vigorously—“then let’s get unpacked, girls!” Daddy finally started the car and drove around back.

Our rooms were on the second floor. I insisted on helping Daddy carry the bags, even though he said I didn’t have to. It was my good deed for the day. My room, 208, had a connecting door into Mama and Daddy’s room, 209, which was actually a suite with two beds and a rattan settee and coffee table and two armchairs and a tiny kitchenette. I was utterly charmed by the kitchenette, with its two-burner stovetop and miniature refrigerator. It had four of everything—four spoons, four forks, four knives, four plates, four glasses.

“You can go swimming before supper if you want to,” Mama told me, so I went in my room and put on my bathing suit and headed for the pool, while Daddy fixed gin and tonics for himself and Mama and pulled two chairs out onto the balcony.

“Honestly, John,” Mama was saying behind me as I took off down the concrete stairs, “is that really true, about the movie company? Or did you make all that up?”

“Scout’s honor, Billie,” Daddy said.

At least they were talking to each other.

I took a running dive into the water.

I
F WE RARELY SAW
C
ARY
G
RANT, IT WAS NOT FROM LACK
of trying. He had his own chef, and took his meals mostly in his bungalow, where he held private parties as well. He rode to and from the set in a chauffeured limousine, which had been written into his contract, according to Mr. Rudy, the motel manager, our informer. Sometimes I sneaked out to the parking lot in the early morning to wash the windshield and polish the hubcaps of the limousine, though I was discouraged in this particular good deed by Rocco Bacco, Mr. Grant’s chauffeur.

Cary Grant often gave other cast members, and the pretty young script girls and makeup girls, a ride in the limousine. Mama considered this very democratic of him; she pronounced him a “perfect gentleman.” I was a little disappointed in his looks, personally. He was so old, for one thing. I thought he looked pretty much like any other old guy, for instance Dr. Nevins, our family physician back in Lewisville, or Ronnie Tuttle, Aunt Judy’s first husband. Cary Grant was not even as good-looking as Daddy.

I
did
like his accent, however. I liked the way he said “hot dog” on the night they had the cast cookout by the pool. He said “hot dog” as if the
o
’s were long instead of short. Mama said this was English. On the night of the cookout, Mama and I sat on our balcony, suspended over the crowd, so we could see everything: the gorgeous girls in their two-piece
bathing suits, the muscly young men, two guys with beards (was one of them the director?), the tall bitchy woman with red hair and glasses who seemed to be in charge of herding everybody around. We were there to see her break into a terrible tap dance (everybody clapped politely) and to see Tony Curtis do his Cary Grant imitation at Mr. Grant’s request, and then to see Tony Curtis get thrown in the pool by most of the crew, who soon joined him, swimming around in their clothes. Mama and I pulled our chairs up to the rail and hung over it to watch. By then it was dark and the lighted aqua pool glowed like a jewel in the fragrant night, full of impossibly attractive people trailing wet clothes through the water.

Mama nudged me. “Hollywood high jinks,” she said.

Behind us, in their room, Daddy lay on one of the beds reading some big book, a biography. Sometimes he seemed amused by our reaction to the movie stars; other times he seemed disgusted; and that night, when we wouldn’t leave our vantage point to go out for dinner, he had gone without us. We didn’t care. We were perfectly happy to have potato chips and Fritos for dinner. We weren’t about to leave the balcony, that was for sure, especially after they all jumped into the pool. I thought they might peel off their clothes at any moment, but nobody did. The party broke up soon after the swimming part. People disappeared into their rooms or sat quietly in the lounge chairs around the pool, where there were so many plants and it was so dark that Mama and
I couldn’t see who they were anymore; all we could see was the occasional flare of a match, and all we could hear was a low laugh now and then.

In fact, we never did see as many high jinks as we expected. The biggest surprise about the movie business was how hard everybody worked. The bus was waiting under the portico every morning at seven-thirty; by seven forty-five, everybody, even Cary Grant, was gone.

Though I was always there to witness their departure, it was much too early for Mama, who had to make do with peeping from behind the venetian blinds. Then she’d fall back asleep for two more hours while Daddy took a long walk around the island or went fishing with Captain Tony. This left me free to roam the streets, or swim in the pool, or talk to Mr. Rudy, or do anything else I wanted, and often I’d fit in my good deed right then, so I’d have it over with.

Sometimes I walked around the corner to the big scary church and prayed with the Catholics. I loved the gory statues and the candles. I loved the feel of the scratchy cold stone floor on my knees when I knelt to pray. I loved the old people dressed in black, bent over and mumbling their prayers. Where did all these old people come from, anyway? I never saw them on the beach or in the streets, that’s for sure. They looked dark and sad. I knew they would die soon. The Jesus in the Catholic statues was a lot less peppy than the one back at St. Michael’s—and certainly than the Jesus in my cousins’ church in Repass, who looked like a Ken doll.
This
Jesus’ brow was encircled by thorns, and He was always bleeding.

It was hard to imagine what He would think of anything. He was too busy suffering.

But I loved the way
I
felt, clean and new and bursting with goodness, when I popped back out of that church into the sunny Key West morning, like a girl in a cuckoo clock. I always took some money to donate, and if I could scrounge up enough, I’d buy a candle from the sad lady and light it in honor of my uncle Mason and Carroll Byrd and Harlan Boyd. Whenever I did this, I’d check in throughout the day to see my candle flickering in its red glass holder in the bank of candles burning in the alcove. I liked to see how long my candle would last in comparison with the others, and make sure I got my money’s worth. The money came from Daddy, who left change from his pockets scattered on top of the bureau. I’d gather this up and take it with me on my morning good-deed run.