For the first time since he came home, to Charlie's great relief, he wasn't the center of everyone's attention. For the most part, he sat quietly and watched the girls talk, though he understood half of what they said. Every time they laughed together he visualized colored lights blinking on a Christmas tree.
“How's Huddie doing?” asked Dinah.
“Only two more months, and then: dum, dum, da dum . . .” She hummed the “Wedding March.” “We're getting married on Valentine's Day. I know it's sappy and all, but if me and Huddie don't have the all-American love story, who does?”
Dinah felt a tight band around her throat, as if she were going to cry. How could the woman who lived with her like a sister all those years be getting married and she not know it?
“Big wedding?” Dinah managed to ask.
“Yeah, probably,” she said. She reached into her bag. “Wanna see a picture of the dress?” She unfolded a picture from a wedding magazine and shoved it under her nose. “How do you like it?”
It was an ivory strapless A-line dress with what looked like a hundred tiny mother-of-pearl ivory buttons running down the back.
“It's beautiful. I hope your maid of honor has thin fingers,” said Dinah, hoping that didn't sound the way she thought it did.
Crystal didn't answer and turned her attention to Charlie.
“So you were on the Vietnam diet, huh?”
Charlie smiled and ran his hand up and down against his stomach to show how flat it had become.
“You look handsome, a little like Burt Reynolds.”
She stared Charlie in the eye when she spoke, and kept her words
clear and succinct, as if she'd been dealing with his hearing loss all of her life.
When she asked him, “How do you like Reggie's new teeth?” and he answered that the blisters on his feet had finally healed, she instinctively knew to rephrase her question.
“Reggie has new teeth,” she said. “What next?”
Charlie closed his eyes and shook his head as if to say, “I don't know what's next.”
The three of them laughed, grateful to be able to share something. As each day went by, the conversation quickened and the laughter came with ease. A little over a week after they arrived, they woke up early on a Sunday morning to go hiking in Stone Mountain Park. The sky was a cerulean blue and the late autumn air was crisp and bracing. Crystal was at the sink, slicing tomatoes to put on their tuna salad sandwiches. Dinah was filling their canteens and going on about how the wet canteen covers smelled like the dorms at Florida.
Oddly enough it was Charlie who heard the phone ring. He didn't hear it really; he felt it as a tingling sensation in his stomach. Felt it as the quickening of his heart. Saw it. Smelled it. Recognized the color and shape of it.
Crystal, one hand still on the tomato, picked up the receiver.
“Hello.” Her voice trilled with expectation.
Dinah was trying to force an ice cube into the too-small mouth of a canteen. Charlie stood at the kitchen door watching his sister. He sensed the life go out of her and rushed to catch her as she crumpled to the floor.
It was Mrs. Harwood, Huddie's mother. Huddie had been reported missing. The helicopter he'd been in, shot down. At first they thought maybe he'd survived the crash and was hurt somewhere behind enemy lines. Though he was officially MIA, they were certain he was dead. As soon as they could locate his remains they would be sent home.
Dinah took the phone from Crystal and placed it back in its cradle. Charlie kneeled down and put his arm around his sister. Crystal wriggled out of his embrace as if it were a blanket of bees. Charlie was still crouching and Dinah was standing by the phone as Crystal sprang to her feet, ran to her room, and slammed the door.
Charlie and Dinah stared at each other, shocked and puzzled about what to do next. Pain like this was too intimate to share with the strangers they'd become. Charlie sat down on one of the wooden kitchen chairs. Dinah sat in silence next to him. Please help me to do the right thing, he thought. He wasn't praying as much as he was beseeching whatever or whomever it was that gives a person mercy and strength at a moment like this.
Dinah began to cry. Charlie cried with her.
Intuitively he knew that she was thinking about her father.
“I'm going in to talk to her,” said Dinah. The sharp sound of her chair legs scraping against the kitchen floor sounded like determination to Charlie.
Crystal lay on her bed, her body curled in a vise of misery. Her shoulders heaved and horrible aching sounds came from her throat.
Dinah lay down on the opposite twin bed. She turned on her side, put her hands under her head, and stared at her friend. When they were young girls sharing a room, they'd lie in this position at night and talk for hours. Tonight they stayed like this until the sun cast stalky shadows across the bedroom floor, though they said nothing to each other.
At some point before the sky turned into bands of lurid yellows and oranges, Crystal said to Dinah in a tiny voice, “Do you suppose Huddie's up there with our dads?”
“I'll bet he is,” said Dinah.
“Do you think they're eating dinner together?”
“Absolutely. Steak and potatoes.”
“And beer, lots of beer, I hope,” said Crystal.
“God, I hope so. Speaking of dinner, you must be starving.”
Crystal sat up, her matted hair sticking to her cheeks. “I can't believe it, but I am hungry.”
“Come on honey.” Dinah brushed her hair off her friend's cheek then put her hand on her shoulder. “Let's make Charlie cook for us.”
For the next three weeks, Charlie, Crystal, and Dinah were never out of each other's sight. They talked about Huddie, about their own fathers, even about Eddie Fingers. Victoria called at least once a day, begging Crystal to come home. Each time, Crystal refused. After one of those calls, Crystal put down the phone and said, “She's probably bought some cute new mourning outfit.”
It was the first time they laughed since that awful day.
They didn't see anyone from home except for Señor Swanky, who took the train to Atlanta so that he could drive Tessie's DeSoto back home. Barone hugged Crystal to him. “Sweetheart, I am heartsick for you. Please let me know if you need money or anything else,” then kissed her on the cheek. Later Crystal told Dinah that it was reassuring how some things never changed. “He still wears Old Spice,” she said.
On a Sunday afternoon, two weeks later, Charlie was sitting on the front porch working a crossword puzzle while Dinah and Crystal were preparing dinner.
“I'm worried about how Charlie struggles with his sentences,” said Dinah.
Crystal punched her softly on the arm. “Sugar, you are hearing things,” she said. “Charlie's talking as much and as right as he's ever talked.” She shouted to Charlie, “Isn't that right, Charlie?” When he didn't answer, she nudged Dinah's knee with her own. “He's fine, don't worry.” Then Crystal asked about Tessie and the baby. “Is she going to keep it?”
“Yes, she's going to keep it. Maybe this one will be normal! But get this, she is not going to marry Señor Swanky!”
Sometimes whole sentences would go by and Crystal would be like the old Crystal. Then suddenly her eyes would get hooded and she'd stare into the distance and Dinah would know she was lost in her own thoughts.
Crystal came back from her silence. “Remember Mr. Reilly and how he used to ask us rhetorical questions,” she said.
“Is that something I would forget?” asked Dinah.
“You and Charlie, it's been so comforting to have you here. One of the reasons is that there's something between the two of you that is soâI don't knowâeasy, sympathetic. You know?”
“I kind of do,” said Dinah.
“I see how you watch him, like he's going to disappear any minute.”
“Well he has been known to do that, you know.”
“Yes,” said Crystal, “but he came back. And he's here, right now, with you.”
“And you,” said Dinah.
“It's nice,” said Crystal wistfully. “I mean that he came back. Don't let him get away again. If you love him, you need to do something about it.” She paused and turned away from Dinah. “We would have made a good foursome, don't you think?”
“We really would have.”
C
RYSTAL ALLOWED THE
grief to wash over her but fought being drowned by it. After three weeks, she went back to work. Her friends rallied around like a fleet of tugboats that wouldn't let her sink. They'd bring food and send her notes with inspirational sayings and funny poems. One girl named Polly showed up every night. She had striking blue eyes, and pomegranate pink skin. Crystal called her Polly Wolly, and when she called Crystal Dandy Landy, her lips
would pucker as if she were sucking on an ice cube. Dinah studied Polly's slender hands and wondered if she was who Crystal had in mind to be her maid of honor.
More and more Charlie and Dinah would find themselves alone in Crystal's house during the day with nothing to do but wait for her to come home. Sometimes they would get on a bus and go to nearby shopping malls to see if they could find a contender for the Ugly Contest. Anything uglier than the seahorse would have won, but nothing ever came close. Other times, they would walk around the neighborhood and talk about where to go grocery shopping, how Charlie would find a congregation to run, and why Dinah didn't want to finish business school. Later, when they reminisced about this part of their courtship, they would call it their hatching period. Finally, it was Crystal, her face sallow and puffy with sadness, who said to the other two, “I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I need to start living the rest of my life.”
Their final night in Atlanta, Charlie dreamed his old dream again, for the first time in a long while. Only this time, he could tell by their faces that he was talking too loud. And the words that were coming out of his mouth, they were Dinah's.
Dinah and Charlie took the train home to Gainesville the next morning. Things were settling between them; talking would only shoo them off their course. Dinah walked the length of the train and back again. She bought some donuts and bottles of soda. She went to the bathroom and took her time putting on makeup and combing her hair. When she came back, there were still five hours to go. Charlie didn't mind the quiet and the stillness. Sitting next to Dinah and feeling the steady clacking of the train was a comfort. She filed her nails then reached into the seat pocket in front of her. All she could find was a pamphlet. She read every word of it, about safety procedures, various routes you could link up to from this train, and
the history of it. “Get a load of this!” she said thrusting the passage in front of Charlie's eyes. She pointed to the sentence that read, “Formerly known as the Orange Blossom Special, this is the first train to run from New York City to Miami, Florida.”
“A sign, don't you think?” he said and smiled.
“Not really,” she said, tucking the pamphlet back in its pocket. “Just a silly coincidence.”
Nobody who worked in advertising could afford to miss the annual ASAE conference. The American Society of Advertising Executives never had trouble drawing big names to its meetings. Jesse Jackson came one year, Paul Volker another. Sometimes a famous television newscaster spoke or the hostess of an afternoon talk show. A first lady was always a big draw, and one year Steven Spielberg almost made it. His name was already on the program when his office called and said he had to do some last-minute editing on his new movie. The folks at ASAE had to stay up all night hustling to find a substitute so they could reprint the programs in time. Finally, H. Ross Perot said yes. The meeting was always held at a snazzy location, and it was customary to honor the Advertising Executive of the Year at a luncheon on the first day.
In the spring of 1986, Crystal Landy got a letter from ASAE saying that she had been chosen for the honor. The meeting would be held at the new resort, the Windsurfer, which had just been built in the heart of Gainesville, Florida: “So don't forget your golf clubs and tennis racquet!”
When Crystal read the news, she let out a hoot-hoot kind of laugh and shouted to her young assistant, Mark, “Will you look at this? The big boys in New York City finally looked beyond their own peckers.”
Crystal should have received that award years before. Her company, the Harwood Agency, handled every big account in Atlanta including Coca-Cola, Ted Turner's Superstation TBS, his fledgling cable news station CNN, and his hobbies, the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks. Everyone in Atlanta knew Crystal. She'd recently been on the cover of
Atlanta Woman
magazine and was always mentioned in any story about Southern women executives. But her picture had appeared just once in the prestigious national magazine
Advertising Age.
It was a postage-stamp-size photo alongside a four-line mention that she had been chosen to do pro bono work for Habitat for Humanity. Every year, the big award went to someone at one of the major firms in New York or Chicago. Even though at one time or another, the big firms had all tried to hire her, it never crossed their minds to make her one of them.
“How can I pass this up?” Crystal asked Mark. “Even if it is in Gainesville.”
C
RYSTAL DIDN'T VISIT
Gainesville often. When she did, it was mainly to see Dinah, Charlie, and Ella. They lived in a big old farmhouse outside of town. When she went down for her award, she would stay there instead of at the Windsurfer. It had a freshwater pond on the property, and the last time she was there, they went fishing at sundown and caught some catfish that they cooked up for dinner. Dinah had thought that buying a house with so many rooms was foolish, but Charlie told her there'd be plenty of room for the children when they came. But the children never came. Charlie didn't care about knowing why or getting help. “If we can't have them naturally, I'm not interested in manufacturing them,” he told Crystal. Charlie had become an avid gardenerâcorn, mangoes, squash, beans, grapefruits, hibiscus flowers the size of tambourines. The first time Crystal came to visit and saw the acres of vegetation he had
spawned, she declared, “My word, Charlie Landy's seed is spread over half of central Florida.”