Ferris Beach (25 page)

“He did?”

“I’m exaggerating but he did give those poor guys a hard hard time.” She laughed quietly and then stopped, rubbed her hand over my head. “But, Kitty, there will be plenty of boyfriends for you, just mark my words. You’ve got to believe in yourself.” She rubbed her hand over my cheek and then just held it there, pressing in. “What about that cute little blond-haired fella who was on the sidewalk the other day?”

“Merle Hucks?” It sounded funny to hear his name whispered in my room as if by the very sound I had invited him in.

“Yeah, I think he’s kind of cute.” She shook me. “He walks by here all the time, too. I’ve seen him pass every day.”

“He has to walk by here,” I said. “It’s on his way to work.”

“Oh,” she said, paused. “I know what.” Again her hand brushed my face. “Tomorrow I’m going to give you a complete make-over, what do you think?” I told her I’d like that, and from then on I let my comments get further and further apart, feigning sleep to her final whisper of good night when she got up and tiptoed back across the hall. It seemed I could feel every creak of the house as it settled; every sound was harshly magnified. I thought of Anne Frank tiptoeing through darkness, fearful of loose floorboards or a simple sneeze as she waited for those brief moments when she could stand in front of the attic window, with bells chiming in the distance, sea gulls circling overhead. I thought how spatially
she
could have been my mother, the years just right, and yet confined to the pages of her diary, she was my own age. I tried to imagine all of them at my age, my mother and
Angela, Mo, and Sally Jean. I got up once to look out the window; the ivy hung ghostlike on the columns of Whispering Pines, the huge granite tombstone smooth and pale in the moonlight. I think I half expected to see Merle sitting there, blond hair blown back from his forehead as he stared at my window, and I got back in bed with that picture in mind.

It was late afternoon the following day when Angela finally sat me down in front of my vanity, spread out all of her cosmetics and gave me the make-over she had promised since her arrival. She wanted me to close my eyes so that it would all be a surprise, and so I sat for what seemed like hours while she rubbed her lotions around my eyes, over my cheeks and neck. As usual she talked about all of the places she had been and the things she had seen, Disney World and the big hotel at Myrtle Beach with the rotating restaurant. It had been in that very restaurant where the James Garner-man had told her that he was going back to his wife; if only he’d met Angela two years earlier, their lives would have been so different.

“He was married?” I asked incredulously, only to have her swat me playfully and say,
How was I to know?
“It’s not like his wife was my best friend or anything. You know, like Mo Rhodes.” Then she brushed my hair, lifting it up from my neck, back from my face.

“Where were you all day?” I finally asked, the question my mother and I had exchanged since early that morning, when my mother
thought
she was giving Angela a bread-baking lesson.

“Can you keep a secret?” She leaned in close, her cheek next to mine as I nodded. “I had a date.”

“Who?” Without thinking I started to open my eyes and she held her hand in front of them.

“Here, face away from the mirror and you can open them.” She pulled me around on the bench. “There.”

“Who did you meet?” I asked again.

“Well”—she brushed over my eyelids with a little sponge brush—“really I already knew him.” Her brows arched as she said “him,” laugh lines stretching from her eyes. “The truth is that last night after you fell asleep, I called this restaurant where I sometimes used to fill in at Ferris Beach; you know, I thought it might be good for somebody to know where I am, check on my apartment, my mail and so on.” She pulled my hair back on the left side and clipped it; I didn’t say anything but I knew I’d never wear the left side clipped back. “Anyway, who answered the phone but Greg. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. Actually I was still with Ken the last time I saw him.” She lowered her voice and giggled. “Real, real good-looking.” When I thought of Angela’s loves, I saw the intersecting circles my father always doodled to pass the time, no circle isolated, no failed romance without another in the wings, hidden spouses within the shaded areas.

“Good-looking like who?” I asked.

“Ummm, let’s see.” She started braiding a thin strip of hair. “James Caan, that type, you know blue eyes, curly hair.” I nodded my approval and closed my eyes again as she braided. When I thought of James Caan, I saw him as Sonny in
The Godfather,
and I thought of the vivid death scene where his body is peppered and thrown by gunfire, but even more so, I thought of the scene at the wedding where he sneaks into the bedroom with the bridesmaid. That scene was on about page twenty-nine of the book; it had gotten passed all over the ninth grade, that one page dog-eared and worn smooth.

“Anyway, Greg is such a sweetheart, volunteered to check on my apartment and then said he was going to be passing through Fulton and would I meet him for a quick lunch over at the Holiday Inn.”

“But why didn’t you tell us?” I opened my eyes and she was staring right back at me, her head tilted to one side.

“I was afraid, Kitty,” she whispered, eyes cast downward. “You
see, I so want your mother to be my friend. I really want all of us to be a family.”

“I think she wants that, too,” I said. “I think she’d be happy that you like somebody nice. He’s not married, is he?”

“No, Miss Morality.” She sat back on the floor, her small tan legs crossed Indian style. “But I told you last night, I have to be so careful around Cleva. Have you ever felt like you had to prove something to somebody?” She waited for me to nod. Surely she had known that answer just from all the times Misty and I had talked about wanting to be popular. “Well, your mama has seen me go through a couple of bad relationships, and I just don’t want her thinking that I’m in another. I’d rather be sure about how I feel about Greg before I say anything. Like I’m going to see him again late tonight, and I’m going to ask him lots of questions about himself and just what he has in mind.”

“But where will you say you’re going?” I asked, trying to imagine myself in a position where I’d need to ask someone what his intentions were, what did he want from a relationship?

“I’m going to tell them I am meeting an old girlfriend of mine who works at the Presbyterian church in Clemmonsville, that she is recently divorced and having such a hard time and I’m going to take her to the movies and try to perk her up. Now you can keep a secret, can’t you?” She turned me towards the mirror, waiting for my response, but I was too shocked by my own face; she had applied a fine coat of make-up that almost covered my birthmark and my eyes were outlined in charcoal gray, making them look larger, but not really
made up.
“What do you think?” she asked, and bent down close so that her face was right beside mine.

“I like it.” I still couldn’t believe what a difference a little bit of make-up could make.

“And about my secret?” Her eyebrows were raised as she waited, another of her expressions that Misty had already copied and put into practice. I nodded and in that second her arms looped around my neck, her lips pressed against my cheek as she squeezed. “I knew I could count on you, Kitty.” She squeezed
again and then pulled away. “You know,” she whispered, and lifted my hair up from my neck, “it’s amazing how much you look like Fred.” I just laughed, turning my head from side to side to see how I looked from another angle. I had been thinking the exact same thing about her.

Angela went out three nights in a row, and each time she went on and on about poor, poor Sue and what kind of woman allows herself to be so controlled, so beaten down by a man;
honestly,
she’d rather live her life as a nun. And each morning she raved about my mother’s bread and said how she had to get that baking lesson. My mother told her how wonderful it was that she was taking such an interest in another person’s problems, that Sue should certainly be grateful for such a loyal friend, that maybe soon Sue would understand that just having a man, any man, does not make for happiness in the same way that money cannot buy love and that moving into a house does not mean that it will prove to be a home. Angela just smiled and nodded, agreed with every word. When I asked her later if there even
was
a person named Sue, since I had also caught myself briefly believing the lies, she laughed and slung her arm around my shoulder, her hair sprayed with the musk cologne she carried in her Indian-print bag.

I had avoided discussing the upcoming fireworks with Misty and was relieved when Mr. Rhodes and Sally Jean announced that they were going to spend the Fourth at Myrtle Beach with some of Sally’s relatives. They left town the morning of the third and that night I could not sleep for thinking about Mo. Every time I closed my eyes she was there, smiling, in those little purple shorts, marshmallow stringing from her hand as her hips swayed back and forth to Buddy Holly’s “Raining in My Heart,” rain pelting her kitchen window. It was after one when I heard Angela come in and stand in my doorway. It seemed she stood there a long time without saying anything, without coming any closer.

“Angela?” I called, and she came in.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” she whispered, then kicked off her sandals and stretched out on the end of the bed.

“I can’t sleep.” I started to reach up and turn on the light but opted instead for the darkness. “I want to ask you something.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “And then I’ll tell you all about tonight. What is it?”

“You said that you went to Mo’s funeral with your boyfriend.”

“Yeah?”

“Was that the James Garner guy?”

“Yeah.”

“And he knew the Rhodes?”

“Well, he knew
her,
I don’t know if he knew her husband or not. He certainly knew old Gene. We went to his funeral, too.” She raised up, weight propped on her elbow. “We went out of curiosity more than anything.”

“Why were you curious?”

“Oh, Kitty.” She slapped my arm as if to dismiss it all. “You don’t want to hear that.”

“Yes, I do,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure at all that I did.

She waited, maybe expecting me to tell her to just forget it, but I told her to go on.

“Well, Mo was no stranger around Ferris Beach, if you know what I mean.” There was a toughness in Angela’s voice that I had never heard before, and it made my stomach tighten. “She and Gene Files had been screwing around for years. Everybody but that poor fool husband of hers and that simple-brained Betty Files knew it, too.” She waved her hand in the air “Or hell, forget the wife. Gene had
another
girlfriend before Mo and was trying his best to keep her, too.”
Fool. Simple-brained. Mo was no stranger.

“But you two acted like you hardly knew each other.”

“Well, I didn’t
really
know her. She certainly wasn’t a friend of mine. What was I going to say, ‘Hey Mo, how’s Gene doing?’ I had never even seen her
with
her husband until that day I was out on the porch.” Again with the mention of that day, Mo’s
face came to me so vividly, her stomach round with Buddy while Mr. Rhodes wrapped his arm around her waist and Dean carried the groceries inside where her artificial tree glittered.

“You told Misty what a good mother she had.” I rolled away from her and faced out where I could see the glow of the streetlight.

“What was I going to say?” She was sitting up then, her hand firmly on my shoulder. “That poor kid’s got enough strikes against her without being told her mother was easy. That orange hair to name one thing.”
Orange,
she said, after all of her talk about Misty’s
strawberry blond
hair. “Kitty? Hey”—she shook my shoulder—“listen to this.” Suddenly her voice was lifted into false enthusiasm. “The good news is that Misty’s step-mother is
not
running around.” She put her head down and laughed. “I’ll guarantee that no man is going after old Sally Jean anytime in this century. Kitty? Kitty?” She nudged me with her foot. “C’mon, I’m kidding. Please laugh. I didn’t want to tell you all of that. You asked me.”

I closed my eyes, trying not to cry but I couldn’t keep it in any longer. When she shook me again, I let out a sob, and then she was there, her arm wrapped around my head and pulling me in close to her. “Oh, Katie, I’m so so sorry,” she whispered. “Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have told you.” I just shrugged and lay there as she rubbed her hand up and down my arm. I faked sleep when she finally stood and leaned over me, whispered good night.

The next morning Angela was gone, no note, nothing. “I so hoped she had changed,” Mama said, and put away all the things she had gotten out the night before for the bread-baking lesson that was to take place that morning. “Of course, maybe Sue needed her to come right away and Angela just didn’t have time to write a note. That Sue sounds like one who’d go to drastic means.” She turned to me, a stick of butter in her hand. “But I
didn’t hear the phone ring, and I
always
wake when the phone rings. Did she say anything to you?” She looked at me and I hesitated too long, that extra second that gave me away, though I knew I would never repeat what she had said about Mo.

“She met somebody.” I said. “A man.”

“You mean
while
she was going out with Sue.” Mama felt her way into a chair, never for a second glancing away from my face. She shook her head, laughed sarcastically. “There’s no Sue,” she said with finality, tossed the butter onto the lazy susan and gave it a spin. “Well, then for sure she hasn’t changed.” She looked at my father, who was in the doorway, and he just raised his hands, then let them fall and slap his sides. She walked over and took a cigarette from his pack, lit it, breathed in and then out with a heavy sigh. “It’s just like the other times.”

“Cleva, you don’t smoke,” he said, a look of shock on his face, more shocked by her smoking than by Angela leaving.