“Damn, I hate when you do that, Charlie Landy. Pulling that long face, and that pitiable tone. âBut sure, finish your Scrabble game,'” she said in a voice that was petulant and unflattering. “What is so important that Reggie and I can't even enjoy a little learning and recreation without you having to interrupt us? This better be good.”
This wasn't the time to argue with his mother or raise her temper. So he said what he had to say as neutrally as a TV weatherman. “I've decided that I'm going to become a chaplain in the army. I'm going to attend a school right outside of New York City. Then I'm going to enlist in the army. There, was that good enough?”
Victoria never took her eyes off of her letters.
“Mom, did you hear anything I said?” Charlie was losing his weatherman composure. “I'm due to report to Fort Wadsworth by Labor Day.”
“Sure I did,” said Victoria. “What, do you think I can't do two things at once? You said some hogwash about wanting to join the army and become a chaplain. I heard every word. Reggie, it's your turn. Don't go taking hours. And here,” she tapped the cover of the dictionary. “Look it up before you put down gibberish.”
“So what do you think?” asked Charlie.
“What do I think about what?” answered Victoria, leaning over ever so slightly to catch a glimpse of Reggie's letters.
“About the army? About me becoming a chaplain?”
“You've always been a dreamer, sweetheart. Of course you aren't going into the army. And why on earth would you want to go to New York City? Besides, who will run the store?”
“Mom, I really am going into the army. I'm going to become a chaplain. And I've given the store a lot of thought. I think you should run it. You're great with details and organization. I have a hunch you'd be terrific at it.”
Victoria looked at Charlie as if he had just told her she had lipstick on her teeth. “I don't run stores,” she said, fixing her gaze back on the Scrabble board.
“We're not getting anywhere with this conversation,” said Charlie.
“I've gotten where I want to get,” she said. “You're not going into the army, and I'm not taking over any liquor store. It seems clear enough to me.”
“Mom . . .” But why bother?
Charlie's shoulders dropped and he started to walk away when Reggie spoke up. “Mr. Landy, If you don't mind my saying so, I think it's a great thing you doing, becoming a man of the cloth like Rex Humbard.”
“Thanks Reggie. I won't be as famous as Rex Humbard and you won't see me on TV, but I do hope to have my own ministry someday.”
Reggie stared at the floor, as if he'd already said too much. Charlie turned to back to his room.
Victoria stared at Reggie because if she looked at Charlie, she knew she would cry. Charlie had a big head, just like Maynard's, and his round face, as smooth and impassive as a slab of marble, was remarkable for its lack of guile. She envied his clarity. When Charlie knew what he needed to know, there was no changing his mind. With all of her petulant fits and refusal to see the truth, Victoria was able to put off reality for a time. But eventually even her own tricks of denial would wear her down. Charlie was different that way. She knew he meant it when he said he was leaving. She didn't know if she could bear another loss.
Victoria still hadn't recovered from the fire. She was still bereft over the things that had been taken all at once. Things of no value, like her music box with the skaters on top and the remains of her tooth inside, were as precious to her as the antique bone china in the dining-room cabinets. Where did Crystal's pink bedroom go? Did all the chocolate syrup from the soda fountain melt into the ground? Their wedding album, with its heavy gilded pages and white leather cover that said “Victoria and Maynard Landy, September 22, 1936” in gold lettersâdid that fall as soot into a neighbor's backyard?
It became a ritual. Victoria would be about to fall asleep or be driving into town, and out of nowhere, something small, Maynard's prized model of the Orange Blossom Special locomotive, or big, like the white leather couch in the “Rocky Graziano” living room, would appear and burst into flame. She'd watch the vinyl melt and twist and curdle into a small mass, or the couch burn to cinders. She'd see Anita Bryant sitting in the living room, and hear the sweetness of her tentative voice as she sang, “'Til There Was You.” Was that just a vapor of memory or did it really happen? The police never discovered the exact cause of the fire. The fact that there was an explosion
pointed to faulty electric wiring, but they would never trace its origins. After that, life became divided into “before the fire,” and “after.” She still wore the five-carat ring that she'd retrieved that night. It made her feel close to Maynard and was the only gift of his that survived. Somehow, she was able to put aside the fact that the ring was the reason Maynard ran back into the burning house.
Now there was going to be another marker: “after Charlie.” This time, she worried that whatever glue and willpower had kept her together after Maynard's death would crumble and turn to dust. Maynard's steadfastness and decency had been the cornerstone of her life. His kindness and reliability had allowed her to be who she was, to live the life she'd always dreamed about. Then Maynard was gone, and Crystal moved in with Dinah, and now Charlie, who gave himself over to her and Ella and Reggie so that their lives could continue as best they could, was deserting her as well. It was time for him to live a life that was his for a change. How could she deny him that?
N
OTHING WAS THE
way it was. The fight with Crystal, the fact that she would be graduating from high school in a few months, being in love with Charlie, the realization that this was but a moment in her life and, like it or not, everything was about to changeâthese things were like a jitterbug in Dinah's brain. They were loud and constant and always moving. When Señor Swanky called one night, she answered the phone.
“Hi sweetheart, how are you?” he asked. Normally, she would have said, “Fine, how are you? Here's Mom.” But on this night, his emphasis was on the “are” and she thought he really wanted to know.
“To tell you the truth, I'm kind of confused.” She told him about Charlie. “He knows things I don't know, and it scares me sometimes. What if he thinks I'm someone I'm not?” And she told him
about Crystal. “She's so cold to me, we barely speak. How could I tell her about Charlie and me before I was sure myself? We're best friends. We can't suddenly not be best friends because of this.”
Barone listened and never tried to hurry her along. “I'm talking your ear off, aren't I?” she said, suddenly caught in her own embarrassment.
“This is a funny time in your life, sweetheart,” he said. “You're not a little girl, but you're not quite grown up either. Being somebody's girlfriend, especially somebody like Charlie Landy, calls for a kind of maturity. It's like Eddie the cat. Suddenly somebody counts on you for things no one's ever wanted from you before. You're still somebody's daughterâyou'll always be that. But you're becoming more, how shall I say, womanly. That's different for you and for Crystal. Don't worry, you'll both get used to it.”
It was so queer that he used the word
womanly
, thought Dinah, though it was neat that he listened and treated her like a grown-up. “You're probably right,” she said, “it just feels that everyone suddenly has secrets and it didn't used to be that way.”
Dinah remembered one August night when she was six years old. The air was close and sticky, as if it hadn't been changed in days. They'd finished dinner at around seven o'clock. Her mother had cleared the table and stacked the dishes in the sink, getting ready to wash them. “Those can wait,” her father had said, taking her mother's arm. “Let's hunt down a Good Humor man before it gets dark.” They'd headed toward the park downtown and sure enough, as the sky turned a dusky shade of purple they heard the familiar chiming of the ice cream bells. Her dad had waved down the truck. He'd ordered her mom a Cherry Twin Popsicle, himself a Fudgsicle, and her a Creamsicle, her favorite. They'd gone into the park and sat on swings, each with the faraway look that people get when they eat ice cream. As Dinah pumped her legs back and forth, a little bit
at a time, she'd lost her concentration and dropped the Creamsicle. In moments, an orange and white river was running beneath her feet. “Don't worry, sweetie,” her dad had said. “If we run, I'll bet we can catch up with him and buy you another.” The truck was slowly clanking down the street. In no time, they were standing in front of the square freezer door, and the Good Humor man was reaching into what seemed his bottomless supply to find her another Creamsicle. “We could use a few extra napkins,” her mom had said. By the time they'd gotten back to the park to mop up the mess, it was nearly dark. The river had stopped flowing and a mass of black flies had formed a crust above it.
“How did they all know to come here?” asked Dinah.
“If you see one, you can be sure there are dozens nearby. It's not in the nature of flies to be singular,” her father had said.
She loved to tell Crystal that story. “No one even got mad at me for spilling my ice cream,” she'd say. “We just ran after the truck, and he bought me another.”
She never forgot about her father's words: “It's not in the nature of flies to be singular.” They came back to her now only in a different configuration. It's not in the nature of secrets to be singular, she thought. If there was one secret, there were probably dozens more close by.
It was typical of Charlie to sense when peopleâJésus, Huddieâhad a secret they wanted to reveal to him. That was Charlie's gift, plucking a filament of a thought out of the air. The paradox was that when it came to himself he could be just the opposite. “I swear, sometimes you're as thick as a big fat slab of pork,” Victoria had said to him the day after he told her he was going into the army.
All morning she had been screaming at him. “You're leaving me high and dry, trapped in this house with Reggie and Ella. Do you have any idea what position that puts me in? I know it's hard to tell from looking at me, but I AM NOT A FRIGGIN' SOCIAL WORKER. People say, âOh, that Charlie Landy, he's so kind, he's so empathetic.' He is to everyone but his own mother! I know what you are. You are a selfish, hypocritical egomaniac. That's what you are!” Then she said the thing about the slab of pork. “If your father were alive today, you wouldn't be doing this to me.”
“If my father were alive today,” he answered sadly, “I would have been gone long ago.”
She made aggressive staccato sounds as she cracked her gum. Her lips curled and contorted, and she never took her eyes off of Charlie. It was as if all the gum chattering was Victoria duking it out with
herself. Finally she stopped and put one hand on her hip. “Go on, go to New York City, go to the army, just get the hell out of here.”
“I'll always come back,” he said, trying to soften her fury.
“Nah. Once you're gone, you're gone. I know that.”
“No one is ever completely gone,” he said.
Victoria turned and walked out of the room, the sound of her cracking gum diminishing the further away she got.
Charlie thought about that conversation later that day as he drove over to the Glades area. He'd told Dinah he had something important he wanted to discuss with her. “Oh no, not more about Crystal,” she had said.
“No, it's not that. This is pretty serious.”
Charlie knew he would have to explain things about himself that he never thought would matter to anybody else but Ella. Dinah had always accepted his intuitions. She never questioned how he knew what he knew, or whether or not he was right. Often, she'd made fun of how much he talkedâ“enough for both of us,” she'd sayâbut she never seemed to realize where his words were coming from.
When he got to the Lockhart house, no one was there but Dinah and the cat. A house takes on a different personality depending upon who's in it. When Tessie was there, the place bustled with her nervousness. She'd run into the kitchen to get a pack of Marlboros from the cabinet where she always kept two cartons at a time. Then she'd skitter around to every other room wondering where she'd left her matches or last put down her ashtray.
Crystal always left droppings of clothes, food, or whatever was occupying her at the time. She still hadn't gotten used to the fact that there was no Ella to pick up behind her. Occasionally Dinah would sweep through the house, gather all of Crystal's detritus into her arms, and dump them onto her bed. “There's more to you than
meets the eye,” she would say, and Crystal would sass her right back: “At least I have things to leave around. Unlike other people who might as well be living in a
nunnery”
But all that was before Dinah told her about Charlie, when they were still as taunting and bitchy to each other as only two sisters can be.
Charlie found Dinah sitting alone in the Florida room with Eddie in her lap, and the house felt peaceful. The late afternoon sun was like a benediction. Dinah had a look of expectation on her face and was holding on to Eddie the way a frightened child might cling to a stuffed animal. Charlie sat opposite her on a love seat with a bamboo pattern. The cat glared at Charlie.
What you have to say better be important, Buster. I don't have all day.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
“Crystal and Huddie are off
studying,”
she winked. “If you know what I mean. My mom's at a barbecue at the Bechs'. She was hilarious before she left. She gulped down a glass of white wine and said, âI'll never make it through the night on Flora's apple lemon punch.' God, those people seem like such morons.”