A Room on Lorelei Street (11 page)

She stares out at the green. It rolls like eternity, an area too big for her voice to penetrate. Too big to whisper,
Come here
. Too big to reach out and gather him to her. Just to her, without the world scrambling in the way. And would he come? Would he be afraid because he knows she loves him and she hates him? She hates him for leaving her. Alone. After everything she did. How could he leave her? She wants to look into his clear, blue, watery eyes that are just like Mama's and ask…
why?
And then she wants to slap him. Slap him a hundred times across his beautiful face, and then kiss his tears away and beg forgiveness. Because she loves him. She mostly loves him.

He plays in the five-foot Doughboy pool Uncle Clint set up at the beginning of summer. Wain, too. Their laughter and hoots jump across the hot afternoon air. And the hooligans. The five hooligans Grandma is surely frowning over. But Zoe can't see her face. She is far out in the green expanse, planted at a round table in the shade of an orange-striped umbrella. Her eyes move from Grandma's stiff gray hair to the head next to her. Blond, freshly curled hair is pulled back into a clip.

Mama.

Mama wears a long navy cotton skirt and a blousy red and white top that makes her look cheerful and patriotic. It lifts Zoe. The effort. But she knows about appearances. It settles her, whispers to her,
Don't be fooled, not again
. But it wouldn't take much, she knows, perhaps just a hand cupped tenderly under her chin. The wanting is still there.

Kyle spots her. Silhouetted against a hot, silky-white sky, he waves. His arm cuts across the blinding backdrop, back and forth, back and forth, filled with wet, splashing, eleven-year-old freedom.

“Zoe…,” his voice calls, but it rolls through the air like a fog, slowly fingering its way to her ears in a blurry echo because, with the waving of his arms, heads turn, and across the distance of grass and betrayal, she is looking eye to eye with Grandma—Grandma turning heavy shoulders, a stiff neck, her jaw cutting the air. Looking. Looking just long enough so Zoe knows. She saw her. And then she turns back, as big and unmoving as the Doughboy pool.

And then Mama, last of all, because sound and movement are curdled for her, and she finally awakens with the knowledge who the turned heads are for, and she turns, too. She stands, her hand balancing a glass that even Aunt Patsy and Uncle Clint can't seem to deny. She lifts her hand, but Grandma grabs her arm and pulls her back into her seat with something urgent that must be said right at that moment. Was it a wave? Was Mama going to wave? But just as quickly, Mama has forgotten her, tucked Zoe back into her sleepy dark memory, and Zoe is staring once again at the back of her head. She wonders, a slow uncurling thought…
Did Grandma lie about Mama crying for me? Was that only what Grandma hoped for?

The knowing crawls up her back, stiffens her. Mama didn't cry.

“Zoe! You came!” And Kyle is upon her, his hair wet, pressing upon her breast, and she doesn't care that he is soaking her crisp ironed clothes she wanted Grandma to see. She holds him, letting the wet glue them together, pressing her lips against dripping cords of hair. Closing her eyes and drinking in the cool and the touch of arms wrapped around her waist.

“Of course, Kiteman. Where else would I be on your birthday?” she says. He pulls away, glancing over his shoulder to his friends, who are calling him back to the pool.

“It's just that…” He hesitates. She sees a too-old crease surround his eyes, and the light blue grows dark. “Is it true you left? You left Mama…
alone?
”

And then she wants to slap him. Shake him. She wants to clutch her stomach and squeeze away the hollow his worried eyes have carved in her.

“I had to, Kiteman” is all she can say.

His voice is hoarse, barely a whisper. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I don't know.”

He looks down like he is tossing away the thought and then lifts his gaze to her again. “You okay?” he asks.

And all is forgiven for the share of worry that is for her. She ruffles his hair and says, “Go! Stop being such a drudge! Your friends are calling you.” His smile returns, and he runs back to the games and worries of being dunked. It is all he has ever known. To move on, because Zoe has made it so. For him. She rubs it out of his hair, out of his life, because she can.

The laughter and splashing resume with a dash and a jump, pushing her back into the world she came from. Alone. The dampness at her breast fades to dryness, and in seconds, Kyle's touch is gone. She smooths out the wrinkles left across her crisp white cotton blouse and sees she forgot to do her nails. Shit. She forgot to do her nails. A wrinkled blouse, ragged nails, and alone.

She looks back at the house, but Aunt Patsy has gone inside. Uncle Clint, his neighbor Odell, and Aunt Patsy's older brother Evan, hover over a barbecue near the storage shed. Evan's wife, Norma, is clucking and playing lifeguard near the pool. And then there are the disapproving backs of Grandma and Mama ready to swallow her up.

“Hello!”

She turns. Out of nowhere, Quentin Hale has descended like an angel to save her from a lawn that pins her to its middle.

“Hello,” she says. His ponytail is a full six inches longer than the last time she saw him. A mere nub before, it is now long enough to swing right into Grandma's disapproval. It warms Zoe. Wrinkles have grown out from his eyes, and stubble on his chin glistens in the sun.

“Been a while,” he says. She is thankful for his presence, but his voice chills her. It is forever stamped with the nauseating scent of sweet mixed bouquets, carnations and amaryllis wilting in afternoon heat, forever married with the sound of whimpers and echoes and a spade turning over soil. His voice, genuine, warm, but now tainted by a day he had nothing to do with, except for the exchange of a few words.

“Yeah,” she says. “Two years, almost. Not since…” She doesn't finish.

He nods. “Yeah. Not since.” He takes her cue, and she is more grateful now than she has been in the last two years that he is the one who preached at Daddy's funeral. Grandma had howled. “He ain't nothin but a pot-smokin' hippie. Never even seen this side of a seminary. What will folks think? It ain't decent.” But Mama had nodded approval. Daddy had always liked Quentin. Said he was the real deal. And Mama couldn't be swayed. Aunt Patsy's baby brother would see Daddy off to the Great Beyond. “If that's where he's going,” Grandma grumbled.

Zoe looks into Quentin's face. She reads it, or tries. She doesn't know about real deals, but if a face can be true, Quentin's is. He may not be a real preacher with a fancy seminary degree or proper pastor clothes, but he is real enough that Ruby First Baptist hired him on as an assistant pastor. He lives in a tiny travel trailer in the parking lot and serves as a pastor on call. He was on call the night they found Daddy.

“You're lookin' good, Zoe. Life treatin' you well?”

Her fingers curl into a fist to hide her nails. “Well, enough,” she says. The words sound whiny, and she tries to lighten them with a smile that comes too late.

“Considering?”

“What do you mean?”

“You've had a hard time of it, is all. Lots of growing up for your years.”

There has been no growing up,
she thinks. “I've always been grown up.”

He nods. “Yeah. Guess you have. But you've done good.” Good. The words feel like a warm bath on a cold day. She remembers he was kind with Daddy, too. He said nice things he didn't have to say. Words rolled from his lips and hemmed in her tears as she sat in the first pew. Kind words that wrapped her up warm and hopeful and made her think on the good. But why?

“Two years too late to ask a question, you think?” she asks.

“Nothing's ever too late.”

Really. In what world?
She looks away and squints at the pool in the distance. She shades her eyes like she is more interested in splashing and boys' belly flops, like her question is an idle thought that is casually slipping out. “You really think he's in heaven—Daddy, that is—or was that just preacher talk for a grieving family? He never went to church, you know, and he died dead drunk. Doesn't sound like heaven material to me. And besides that, he—” And it has all run out and doesn't sound casual at all.

“You just now getting around to critiquing my sermon, Zoe, or you got something else on your mind?”

“Nothing else,” she says.
Nothing else except Mama.

Quentin eases her hand down and swings her gently to face him. “We don't know nothin' about that moment he went to meet his maker, Zoe. Nothin', you hear me? No one was there. I think when we get to heaven there's goin' to be a whole lot of gasps and whoops over who's there and who's not. Lots of surprises. I always think on that poor bastard hangin' up 'side Jesus. One minute a sinner and the next walkin' in Paradise. Bet none of them Pharisees could've guessed it. Yep. A whole lot of surprises, 'cause only the Lord knows the heart of a man. Ain't our job to be second-guessin'.”

He talked a good talk. She knew at least he believed it, and maybe that was all she needed to hear. Possibility. Someone's possibility. Someone believing in someone else. Quentin believing in Daddy. Daddy who was dead. Daddy who had believed in her. Daddy who talked a good talk, too.
Special, Zoe. Stars, Zoe.
Talk. Only talk and nothing more.

But it was enough. At least, then it had seemed enough.

“Gifts!” Aunt Patsy calls. She unloads armfuls of offerings for Kyle onto the picnic table. “Gifts!” she calls again like she is ringing a bell. Other activities are pushed aside, and feet move, gather up like a magnet slowly toward the patio. Norma relays the call, “Gifts,” and claps her hands, and the boys are bounding out of the pool and the sky is a quilted flash of towels and hoots.

Zoe turns obediently with Quentin and moves toward the patio, knowing it will bring her elbow to elbow with days of worry and years of wanting.

She hears the murmurs, the heavy footsteps of Grandma and Mama behind her, muffled, shuffling, a low sound no one else can hear but Zoe. A whisper of sound that says,
Run Zoe, don't look back, Zoe.
She picks up her pace and smiles as she steps onto the patch of concrete that will hold them all for the next thirty minutes.

Zoe holds out her arms to Uncle Clint and then greets Evan and Odell, and then teases with Wain, and the movement is all so carefully orchestrated, so full and busy, that no one notices the gulf between her and Grandma and Mama. It is amazing, she thinks, how simple appearances can be created—a rush, a smile, a new coat of paint, a slow, calm voice, a hug, a new dress—a resolve to keep out questions and cling to secrets.

The boys crowd at the picnic table; the adults scatter in rickety lawn chairs around them. Zoe stands, leaning against the awning pole, holding her distance from both. Uncle Clint warns them that the barbecue will be ready in twenty minutes, and Aunt Patsy clucks that the barbecue will wait for gifts.

“Zoe, sit here,” Norma offers, patting the arm of the chair next to her. “There's plenty of room.” But there is an empty chair next to Mama, too. Why didn't Mama pat her chair? Why does someone she barely knows notice she is standing, but Mama does not?

She wants to look at Mama. Glare straight into her hazy, indifferent eyes and spit words into her face, but instead she smiles at Norma and says, “Thanks, but I think I'll stand for a while.” And the smoothing over, her forced smile and the appearance of contentment, simmers so hotly inside her she doesn't even see the first few gifts that Kyle opens.

And then a card is opened and a twenty-dollar bill falls to the ground. “It's from Aunt Nadine!” he announces as he snatches it up. Mama smiles. Grandma grunts.
Aunt Nadine, the only one smart enough to escape this misery,
Zoe thinks. So far away, but still remembering Kyle and her on their birthdays. Letting go, but maybe not completely.

Paper flies, and then another box. “This one's from Mama,” he says, and Zoe shifts feet, stands up straighter, wondering at the large box, the very large box wrapped so carefully. Mama's shaking hands could never have creased the corners so sharply. Not Mama's shaking, fumbling, never-there hands. The details reach out at her, the ribbon, the card, the little squares of tape that hold it all together so nicely. But Kyle is beyond details and rips away paper, barely reading the card, and beams as he throws stuffing away and lifts a skate-board from the box.

“Yes!” he yells. “This is it! This is the one!” He runs to Mama and throws his arms around her neck. He kisses her cheek, and she nods. Her eyes blink. She pats his back.

And Grandma smiles.

Grandma, watching what she has created, smiles and takes a satisfied drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke over her shoulder. “And don't forget the paperwork in the box, Kyle. Them wheels come with a guarantee. Your mama got you the best.”