Heart of Palm (20 page)

Arla’s face shone with sweat, and her sunglasses had slipped down to the tip of her nose. A strand of red hair stuck to her forehead.

“Lord in heaven, it’s hot out there. Hello, sweetness,” she said, patting Elizabeth on the arm. “Sofia thinks her outfit is appropriate for Bell’s birthday excursion, although I have repeatedly tried to explain to her it is not.”

Elizabeth looked again at Sofia. She was wearing a pink spaghetti-strap tank top, a denim miniskirt, and a pair of flip-flops, and she clutched a white canvas tote. The attire might have looked fine on a younger, slimmer girl, but Sofia, she had to admit, was pushing it.

“It’s hot, Mother.
H-O-T
. I’m trying to stay cool,” Sofia explained.

“Where’s my Bell?” Arla said, ignoring her. “Bell!”

Something crashed in the kitchen.

“Come in and meet Bell’s friends,” Elizabeth said.

She led Arla and Sofia to the kitchen, where Myra sat at the table, gaping at Biaggio, who had dropped the cardboard box in the middle of the floor and was now squatting, trying to gather up the scattered contents.

“What
is
all this?” Elizabeth said.

“Dollar General was having a closeout,” Arla said. “Look at this.” She pushed past Sofia, bent down, and pulled a can of fried onion rings out of Biaggio’s hand. “Twenty-five cents,” she said. “And this”—she poked in the box with her cane, then reached down and retrieved a dented fig pudding—“a dollar. Thought you could use them.”

“Arla, this is Myra,” Elizabeth said. “Sofia, Biaggio, Myra.”

Myra had still not moved, but she collected herself and smiled at Arla.

“Here. Look,” Arla said. “Water chestnuts. Four for a dollar. Nilla Wafers, thirty-nine cents.”

“Show her the fish oil,” Sofia said.

“Chocolate truffles—a buck.”

“Show her the fish oil.”

“Fish oil—two bucks,” Arla said.

“I coulda got you fish oil for free,” Biaggio said. “Right out back of Aberdeen. We got plenty of fish.”

“Fish oil is good for you. I read about it,” Sofia said. “It increases brain power.”

“Well then, here,” Arla said, thrusting the bottle at Sofia. “You take it all, then.”

Bell and Brooke entered the kitchen.

“Belly-Bear!” said Arla. “Come here, baby.” She pulled Bell into a hug, and Sofia bent over and kissed the top of Bell’s head. They all sang “Happy Birthday to You,” and when they were finished, Arla looked down at Brooke. “And who is this pretty little girl?” she said.

“That’s Brooke,” Bell said.

Arla shook Brooke’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Brooke.”

“What happened to your foot?” Brooke said. Her eyes were wide.

“It got chopped off,” Arla said.

Myra cleared her throat.

“No shit,” Arla said.

“Well,” Elizabeth said. “Shall we go, then?”

They headed for the trolley station at Castillo Drive in the van, Biaggio insisting on dropping them off to save them the walk before he headed back to Utina. Elizabeth had bitten her lip as Myra and Brooke climbed into Biaggio’s Windstar, which had a piece of plywood nailed over a broken window and a Mexican blanket thrown across the tattered upholstery of the backseat.

“Sorry ’bout the transportation,” Biaggio said, his face red. He held Myra’s gigantic handbag while she climbed into the rear of the van, then he handed it through the open door. “This is my work truck.”

“What do you do?” Myra said.

“I’m a moving man,” Biaggio said. He did a jig on the hot pavement, flapped his arms like a bird. “I move—see?” Bell laughed, but Myra and Brooke stared at him blankly. He slid the back door shut and sat down in the driver’s seat as Sofia, Arla, and Elizabeth climbed in on the other side.

“There’s no seat belt,” Brooke said.

“It’s only a few blocks,” Elizabeth said. “Just to save us from walking, in this heat.”

“Just hold on to me, Brooke,” Myra said tightly. Her plaid sundress had begun to stick to her thighs.

“Maybe later we’ll get us an ice cream,” Arla said. “Oh, but poor Biaggio, he’ll drop us off and miss out on the ice cream.”

“Oh, no, Miss Arla. I don’t eat dairy. You know that.”

“Oh? Are you vegan?” Myra asked. She leaned forward.

“Oh, no, ma’am,” Biaggio said. “It’s just bad luck, in my book.”

Myra blinked, leaned back in the seat.

“You ever heard of Romulus and Remus?” Biaggio said.

“No,” she said.

“Well, let me tell you what they were all about,” he said. He pulled out onto San Marco Boulevard, got comfortable in his seat. “They were these twin sons of the Roman god Mars, see, way back in ancient times. Their mother was Rhea Silvia, who was supposed to be a vestal virgin but I suppose she forgot all about that when Mars showed up in her bedroom one night. So she bore these twins, and when her uncle, the evil king, found out about it, he ordered the babies killed,” he said.

Brooke stared at him. “Killed?” she said.

“Kaput,” Biaggio said. He sliced a finger across his throat. “Game over.”

“How do you know about Roman gods?” Sofia said.

“I seen it on PBS,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

“Well, of course, like it always happens in these kinds of stories,” he continued, “the servant who was supposed to kill the baby twins took mercy on them and just set them adrift in the river Tiber instead. You had to wonder what some of these people were thinking back then.”

“No kidding,” Sofia said. “
Imbéciles
.”

“Anyway, the babies, Romulus and Remus, survived out there in the wilderness by drinking the milk of a wild wolf,” Biaggio said. “When they grew up, Romulus and Remus founded Rome, but then they got in an argument over who owned it, or who was going to be the king, or something like that, and Romulus went ahead and killed his brother Remus. And after all they had been through together!”

“That’s pretty low, to kill your brother over some piece of dirt,” Sofia said.

“Well, never mind about Rome,” Biaggio said. “It was the drinking of the wolf’s milk that made Romulus kill his brother. It was the dairy, you see?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Arla said. “They don’t make ice cream out of wolves’ milk, now do they?”

Brooke turned to Bell. “Do they?” she said.

“No,” Bell said. “They use cow’s milk. Or goats, maybe.”

“No goats. No wolves,” Elizabeth said. “Just cows, and it’s perfectly fine to eat.”

“Maybe,” Biaggio said.

“Biaggio—” Elizabeth said.

“I’m just sayin’,” he said. “Here we are! Trolley station!”

He pulled in and parked, and they all climbed out of the van.

“Don’t forget my laundry pickup,” Arla said to Biaggio.

“Right,” he said. “St. Anastasia. I’ll get it when I leave here.” He waved as he pulled out of the parking lot. Elizabeth bought tickets, and a surly girl behind a sliding glass window handed them all orange train-shaped stickers to affix to their shirts. Sofia placed hers on the hem of her tank top. Myra stuck hers to her bare upper chest. They climbed aboard the trolley, a bright red tourist tram driven by a Colonel Sanders look-alike in blue suspenders. He gawked at Myra, then put out the cigarette he’d been smoking and put the train in gear. In one row sat Elizabeth, Myra, and Sofia. Behind them sat Arla and the two little girls. Sofia reached into her bag, took out a magazine, and commenced to using it as a fan.

“Jesus,” she said. “Did somebody forget to pay the oxygen bill?”

“No use complaining about it,” Arla said. “We all know it’s hot.”

“I enjoy it, actually,” Myra said. “I mean, that’s why we live in Florida, right?”

Arla stared at her.

The trolley pulled up at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditorium.

“First stop,” boomed the driver through a tinny microphone.

“Are we going in?” Bell said.

“We just got on the trolley,” Elizabeth said. “We’ve only been on it thirty seconds.”

“She wants to go in here,” Arla said, leaning forward.

Elizabeth turned around, looked at Bell.

“Bell, I thought you wanted to ride a bit,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh, let her go in,” Arla said. “It’s her birthday.”

Bell stared at Elizabeth, opened her eyes wider. She was working it, Elizabeth thought, watching the way Bell monitored Arla in her peripheral vision. She was good at this.

“Any riders disembarking?” the driver bellowed.

“I don’t like this place,” Brooke said. “It’s scary.”

“No, it isn’t,” Arla said. She was already struggling to her feet. “Bell wants to go in. It’s her birthday. Come on, everyone.”

Elizabeth sighed. “We can get back on, right?” she said to the driver.

“Trolley stops here every thirty minutes,” he said. “Just keep your stickers on.”

They walked to the entrance of Ripley’s, stood in line a few minutes, then bought tickets and walked inside, where the chill of the air-conditioning felt like a salve.

“Oh,” they all said. Elizabeth pulled her shirt away from her chest, flapped it in the cool air. It was crazy hot out there. She wasn’t sure this day was such a good idea.

“Thank God,” Sofia said. “That’s better.”

They walked through the museum, a three-story Moorish building converted from a hotel once owned by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. They peered at the curiosities: a man with two pupils in each eye; the Lord’s prayer engraved on a grain of rice; the world’s largest feline hairball; a two-headed lamb; assorted shrunken heads; a lock of JFK’s hair. In the atrium, the world’s largest moving Erector model, a shiny twenty-foot silver Ferris wheel, squeaked and shuddered.

How strange it all is, Elizabeth thought, but stranger still that we will line up, bovine and malleable, to pay our money and take a look. An Odditorium. As if real life wasn’t odd enough. But she supposed it helped, in some ways, the soothing balm of comparison. Your life can’t be all bad, after all, when you hold it up and look at it next to the life of that poor mummified Fiji mermaid, for example, or of Chang J’ung, the human candlestick, who had a lit candle surgically impaled in his skull, or of Miss Betty Richeson, pretty little thing from Jacksonville, who died right here in a fire in this building in 1944, naked and wrapped in wet towels, shaking in the bathtub. Her ghost still roamed the halls, the sign said. Elizabeth would have liked to see her, ask her a few questions.

“That’s what happened to my parents,” Arla said, suddenly at Elizabeth’s elbow.

“Good grief, don’t sneak up on me like that,” Elizabeth said. “This place has me jumpy.” She paused, looked at Arla. “What do you mean, about your parents?”

“When they died in the fire up in New York,” Arla said. “You knew about that. Well, they were found wrapped in towels in the hotel bathtub. Just like that.” She gestured at the sign.

“How awful,” Elizabeth said. They moved down a dark hallway. “Do you miss them?”

Arla was quiet for a beat. “Miss them?” she said. “I suppose I do. But I think I missed them even when they were still alive.”

“I know what you mean,” Elizabeth said. “I missed mine my whole life.” Arla’s cane bumped the wall, and she took Elizabeth’s arm for a moment, steadied herself.

“Family’s a funny thing,” Arla said. “You don’t get to put in a custom order, do you?”

They rounded a corner and faced a wax replica of the world’s tallest man, Robert Wadlow, eight foot eleven and still growing at the time of his death at twenty-two.

“My word,” Arla said. “And I thought
I
was tall.”

Elizabeth had to crane her neck to see Wadlow’s face. He was a young man, with a wide, open face and round glasses. In a photo, he stood with his father, whose shoulder rubbed against Robert’s dangling wrist. Robert Wadlow’s shoes were a size thirty-seven, and he was famous the world over. When he died, the sign said, forty thousand people attended his funeral.

Good heavens, what a life. Such a young man, but such a big burden. The world’s largest man. Elizabeth couldn’t imagine the responsibility.

Myra and Brooke bumped up behind them.

“We may need to wait outside,” Myra said. “Brooke hates this.”

The little girl was sniffling, leaning into her mother, hiding her face in the skimpy folds of Myra’s dress.

“I
said
so,” Brooke said.

“It
is
creepy,” Myra said. She adjusted one of her boobs, then stared at a wax figure of The Skeleton Dude, a man who lived to seventy but never weighed more than forty-seven pounds. Nearby, a figure of the world’s heaviest man, more than a thousand pounds, gazed sadly across the room.

“I
told
you,” Brooke said.

“Well, we’ll all make our way out,” Elizabeth said. Arla, Bell, and Sofia had migrated to the next room, and the rest of them followed, past the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg (which slammed shut on a holographed victim as she passed), past the lizard man (who’d covered his body in tattooed scales and had his tongue surgically forked), past the African human skin masks and the Tomb of the Werewolf. Frank Sinatra’s funeral program. A photo of a man who descended the stairs by hopping upside down on his head. A Chinese man with a unicorn’s horn growing out of the back of his skull.