The School of Beauty and Charm (2 page)

Our rec room, where I had my first religious experience, had orange indoor/outdoor carpet, a billiard table, and some furniture Henry would not allow upstairs: a pair of black-and-white vinyl hassocks designed to look like dice, a lime-green bean bag, and a white vinyl couch accented with leopard print pillows. To create the illusion of light, Shirley covered one wall in mirrored tiles. For added interest, she mirrored the ceiling, and hung psychedelic suns that twirled in the steady draft of the air-conditioning.

Henry never could get used to the strings of aqua beads that replaced a perfectly good door. In the doorway, he'd hesitate, as if trying to decide exactly where to part the beads, and after he entered, he'd wipe his arms. He called the room “your mother's love den.”

Shirley insisted that Florida hang her acrylic copy of
Femme au Miroir
over the couch, and Florida obliged, even though she didn't think it was her best work. “I want to do something original,” she said. “But I'm not creative enough.”

“Oh listen to you! Florida, yes you are,” said Shirley.

Shaking her head, Florida straightened the canvas on the wall. “I guess you can't really tell that's a bosom.”

“Not unless you're looking for one,” said Shirley. She urged her to replace the gray La-Z-Boy recliner with a Jacuzzi, but Henry put his foot down.

“You could wear your bathing suit,” argued Florida. “You just don't want to get wet.”

“Shirley likes to play with other people's money,” said Henry. “Let Leo Frommlecker read a soggy paper. I haven't noticed a Jacuzzi in their house.”

“What's wrong with the Frommleckers?”

Henry mumbled something behind the stock page.

“What did you say?” demanded Florida.

“I said, he's a nut, and she's showy.”

“You are prejudiced against the Jews, Henry. Tell the truth.” In reply, Henry crackled the paper.

“You're as repressed as you can be,” said Florida, but she couldn't get another word out of him.

O
UTSIDE THE HOUSE
, Henry was nice to everybody. That was his job. Besides being the best general manager Southern Board ever had, he was chairman of the Counterpoint Chamber of Commerce, president of the Elks Club, chairman of the board at the Counterpoint Bank, treasurer of the Rotary Club, deacon at the Bellamy Baptist Church, a Mason, a Boy Scout leader, and a member of the board at the Three Bears Country Club. “I don't
enjoy
any of this,” he explained to Florida when she complained that he was inattentive at home. “It's how I make my living.”

Florida did her work out of pure love for her family, even if no one appreciated it. She did a lot. Aside from her regular janitorial duties, KP, and a weekly wash, dry, and fold, she ran a
twenty-four-hour on-call taxi service for Roderick and me. She chauffeured us to and from Bridgewater Academy, Boy Scouts, Brownies, the Royal Ambassadors for Christ, Girls in Action, ballet, tap, trampolining, soccer, Junior Thespians, Bible School, Beginning Wilderness Survival, Hooked on Books, Intermediate Macramé, and anywhere else we needed to go to enrich our lives or pass the time. She was never late.

She wrote notes to our teachers, ran security checks on our friends, typed our papers, watched our language, and disposed of our dead pets. She decorated the house for every holiday, baked a cake for each birthday, and got Henry to take his socks off when he went on vacation.

Henry was a good provider, once he got kicking, but Florida was convinced he would sleep all day if she wasn't there to get him out of bed. Usually, she had to call him three times. Her work wasn't over when he wandered into the kitchen in his bathrobe, smiling sleepily at the box of cereal she had set at his place at the table. Throughout the day, she urged him to stop dilly-dallying and procrastinating. She picked out his secretary's Christmas gift, tolerated his boss's dumb jokes, and turned the news off at night when he fell asleep in his chair. She wore lipstick and a good bra for him every day of her married life.

On the rare occasion that Florida went out of town, even for a day, our lives came to a halt. We'd sit around in silent, unlit rooms, with glazed eyes, as if we'd been unplugged from our current. Eventually, Henry would offer to open a can of tomato soup, but we were usually too apathetic to eat.

Florida did not limit her activities to Earth. Although Jesus said, “In my Father's house there are many mansions: if it were
not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you,” Florida was a stickler for making reservations. At least once a day, twice on Sundays, she prayed for our salvation. On Saturday night, she pressed our clothes for church and set our shoes on a piece of newspaper by the back door for Henry to polish. In the morning, she curled my hair and made sure that I did not leave the house without a slip on under my dress. “We want to look nice for the Lord,” she said.

In her spare time, Florida painted. She used acrylic paint because oil takes too long to dry and is hard to clean up. Once, Henry suggested that she wear rubber gloves while painting, to keep her hands unstained.

“Artists don't wear gloves,” she answered tartly.

“Well I didn't know,” he answered. He had never paid much attention to art, but he considered her renditions of
Starry Night, The Last Supper
, and
Femme au Miroir
, almost as good as the originals, and of course, much less expensive.

Florida performed her jobs so well that no one really noticed them, but three times a week we followed her into the beige interior of Bellamy Baptist Church because Henry told us, with a doleful face, “It's the least you can do for your mother.”

Although much of the architecture in Counterpoint has enough historic significance to warrant a plaque, Bellamy Baptist Church was built to appear eternally new. It is beige, inside and outside: beige brick, beige trim, beige carpet, beige pew cushions. Since stained-glass windows don't come in beige, we compromised with pastel, which shine weakly in contrast to the brilliantly colored windows of the Catholic church next door. Those windows pour their heathen colors
through our pale glass, and sometimes, in bright sun, red and purple light slashed across my hands as I ran them along the beige pew cushion.

I longed to be a Catholic. I wanted to drink wine instead of Welch's grape juice, wear a rosary, and have a huge cross hanging on our living-room wall, bearing a plaster Jesus who looked like he'd been in a motorcycle wreck, his blue eyes rolled up in agony, blood dripping down his flat, white belly. My best friend, Drew St. John, was a Catholic, and she had class. Until the tornadoes hit, and Jesus called me, I was privately planning to join the St. Johns in hell.

Although I had broached the subject of my salvation with Florida and Henry several times, I had never received a satisfactory reply. “If I'm not born again, and I die suddenly, will I go to hell?” I asked. They babbled all sorts of evasive nonsense back at me, but the answer was plain from the worried frown on Florida's face. Sometimes, when Henry wasn't around, she'd hiss, “The devil's got hold of you. Do you want to end up with him in hell?”

To appease her, I'd say, “Oh, no. I want to go to heaven,” but I could only envision endless beige carpet.

E
VERY YEAR IN
Counterpoint, the Daughters of the American Revolution sponsor a tour of homes. Each year they traipse through half the choice new residences in town, noting pet stains on stair treads, unappealing shower curtains, odors of diapers, whiskey, or take-out food. Then they return to Mansion Avenue, where they select the same five white mansions they put on tour every year.

Still fuming from Red Cavern's dismissal of her house,
which Grandmother Deleuth had dutifully shared over the phone, Florida was determined to present Owl Aerie to the DAR. Henry balked, but he lost like a gentleman, and after locking up his financial records and personal correspondence, hiding the contraceptives, and polishing the forty-one plaques of recognition on his study walls, he left the enterprise alone. He was at work when Lacy Dalton, Regina Bloodworth, and Shirley Frommlecker arrived. Although Shirley was not in the DAR, she was rich, and as our official decorator, she took the privilege of showing the house—“To drum up business,” Henry said.

From my vantage point on the roof, I watched the Frommlecker's tank roll up our steep driveway and disappear behind a bend of crepe myrtle, where it stalled out. For a few minutes, the sound of birds was drowned in Lacy Dalton's shriek, punctuated by Shirley's exclamation, “Isn't this the most original thing you've ever seen!”

In a low voice that carried straight up to the roof, Regina said, “Indeed.” Regina had been legally blind in both eyes for a decade. When relatives urged her to have corrective eye surgery, she turned up her nose. “Hospitals stink,” she said. “Besides, I've seen everything. None of it is as interesting as what I can imagine.” A pillar of the DAR, Regina accompanies her friend Lacy to each of the residences seeking admission to the Tour of Homes, and Lacy considers her input invaluable.

“Hold on to your hats, ladies!” cried Shirley, as she gunned the machine back into gear and brought it to a screeching halt at the back door. She drove the only Tracked Troop Carrier in town, given to her by Dr. Frommlecker after she had wrecked two Lincolns. Sliding across the roof on my belly, I dipped my
head over the edge to watch as Shirley, wearing a paisley skirt and a turban, directed the women away from our garage door and onto the raised walkway that crosses a cactus garden and eventually leads to the disguised front door. Lacy Dalton, who is shaped like a watermelon, wore a wraparound kelly-green skirt covered with watermelons, a watermelon-pink blouse and matching espadrilles. She tottered along with one hand on her hip so that Regina could hook her long thin arm through Lucy's short fat one.

Regina always wore black, so that she could dress herself. She kept her silver hair cut short above her ears, like a man, and despite everyone's warnings that one day she'd be knocked down and robbed, she adorned her person with half a million dollar's worth of jewels. Even her cane glittered with diamonds as it tapped along the planks. She smelled faintly of rum and vanilla. With their arms linked, the two women walked in practiced synchronicity behind the turbaned Shirley, who was talking a mile a minute. From the corner of my eye, I saw the white flash of Roderick's hair in the sun. He was hunting lizards beneath the trampoline. Silently, I descended the dogwood tree.

“I kid you not,” Shirley was saying over her shoulder. “There she stood, in the middle of Front Street, at ten o'clock in the morning, naked as a jaybird. Agnes had just done her hair.”

“Frenchie Smartt's girlfriend?”

“Live-in. I can't recall her name.”

“I know I've seen her. The one with the bosoms?”

“Of course I didn't stop the car, but I can tell you that she wears an underwire bra.”

“What goes up . . .” said Regina.

“Lawdee,” said Lacy, turning serious. “Someone really ought to do something about her. I mean, having a cocktail is one thing . . .”

Shirley halted and turned to face the women. In a hushed voice, she said, “Alcoholic.”

Just then, Florida opened the front door. All three women beamed back at her and began to talk at once. The high slippery waves of their voices filled the yard, then the door shut behind them, and all was quiet except for the buzzing of insects in the noonday sun.

Roderick approached me carrying a Japanese cricket box in his hand. Shirley had found the box in Atlanta, a purely ornamental piece to set on the living-room coffee table beside the Chinese vase, but Roderick soon discovered that it served as a fine cage for crickets, worms, and lizards.

“Here,” he said, handing me the box. “I got two of them. If they get rowdy, just thump their heads.”

Once inside, I removed my go-go boots and sidled along the walls so I could spy on the DAR, but they saw me.

“Isn't she precious.”

“The boy got the hair. She's the spittin' image of Henry.”

“Oh Florida, I disagree, honey. She's you all over again.”

Florida opened the front door and hollered, “Roderick! Are you out there in the weeds!”

He yelled back that he was fine.

“Come in here and get your inhaler! I don't want you having an attack tonight.” She marched outside with the small green inhaler in her palm.

“T
HESE ARE MY WORKS
,” Florida was saying in her studio while Lacy made
ooh
and
aah
sounds.

“You are so talented. I could just kill you. Regina, they are out of this world. Is that a Matisse, honey? It's just gorgeous.”

“It's supposed to be Van Gogh,” said Florida. “I flubbed up on the stars. The children were fussing that day.”

“Well, I learned all that in college, but I get them mixed up now. I guess it's old age.”

“Lacy! You're not old!” said Shirley, laying a ringed hand on her round pink shoulder.

“Oh yes I am! Did I tell you that Bill offered to loan me his razor, to shave my chin?”

“Shame on him!”

“Did you wring his neck?” Their perfumes mixed and filled the air. Regina did not laugh when other people laughed. She stood tall, leaning slightly on her cane, facing the canvas in her black sunglasses.

“Getting old is the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said loudly. Then she added, “
Starry Night
. I love that painting.”

“Isn't it great!” said Shirley. “I made her put these out when I was doing the house. She had them in a closet—”

“Henry doesn't like to put too many nails in the walls,” said Florida.

“Men!” exclaimed Lacy. “I tell you what.”

As the women rustled out of the room, trailing their scents behind them, Florida spotted me in the corner.