Test Pattern (16 page)

Lorena leans forward, folds her arms around her knees, stares into the darkness. She can make out her dressing table, sparks of light flashing from the mirror. Herself a ghostly form staring back at herself. “It worries me. She really believes she’s seeing these things.” She hears the beginning rumblings of a snore and gives him another nudge. “Are you listening to me?”

He rolls over on his back with a sigh. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“No.” She flicks on the bedside lamp. It bursts into light and they both squint against the glare. He puts the pillow over his head, moans, then pulls himself into a sitting position. His hair ruffles up in back like chicken feathers. His striped pajama top is open where a button has broken off. He yawns. She can see the dull silver ponds of his fillings.

“Okay,” he says. “Cassie watches the test pattern. What’s the problem?”

“There’s nothing there. And she thinks there is.”

“So? She’s always made things up. Remember Pookie?”

“She only talked to Pookie until she was four. Then she stopped,” Lorena says.

“Yeah. She stopped. What’s the big deal?”

“This is different.” Lorena reaches up and refastens a pincurl that spirals down from beneath her frilly nightcap. “She’s seeing TV programs that aren’t there. Some of them are in Technicolor, she says, like in the movies.”

“Remember when you saw Uncle Rudy in the A&P?” Pete asks.

“She says she saw nearly naked girls dancing on tables,” says Lorena. “She said they had words painted on their stomachs and bee-hinds.”

“Uncle Rudy had been dead nine years and you saw him in the A&P, putting Grape-Nuts in his basket.”

“She says ‘Sock it to me.’ She says that’s what one of the naked girls says. ‘Sock it to me.’ What does that mean?”

“I remember I said to you, ‘How can you see Uncle Rudy in the cereal section? He’s
dead
,’” Pete says. “And you swore you saw him anyhow, wearing those baggy tweed pants he never had cleaned and the Hawaiian shirt he wore to our wedding. Picking his teeth with his little fingernail like he always did. I mean, you had details.”

“Then she says some colored man in a robe comes out and says ‘Here come de judge, here come de judge.’ Where would she get that from?” Lorena pulls off the nightcap, rips the bobby pins out of her hair, and begins to repin the curls.

“Did I say you were crazy for seeing Uncle Rudy? No. All’s I said was ‘You got some imagination, putting Uncle Rudy in the A&P when everybody knows Aunt Lula did all the shopping.’”

“It worries me. Do you think Cassie might be like Lula? A little, you know … crazy?”

Pete yawns noisily and plops back on the pillow. “Wouldn’t surprise me. It’s in your family. You see Uncle Rudy. Lula saw Buddhas on refrigerators. Cassie sees TV shows that aren’t there. Y’all just got it in your blood.”

Well, she thinks, pummeling her limp pillow before settling back to stare once again at the ceiling, at least they never locked Lula up or anything. Why, she even got famous for that Buddha she saw. Where was that clipping?

Lorena throws the covers off, sits up. Is it still in her treasure box? She creeps over to her dresser and reaches beneath some moth-eaten sweaters she’s been meaning to donate to the Salvation Army. She takes the Whitman’s Sampler box into the bathroom, opens it, inhales the phantom aroma of long-ago-devoured chocolate. Blinking in the sudden brightness, she rummages through sweetly scented mementos.

Dance card from her senior prom, scrawled with names long since forgotten. Pressed flowers from her wedding corsage, brown and crumbled as cornflakes. Faded few inches of torn red sash, the letters “Miss Buc” barely legible. Sepia-tone photo of her mother looking proud and stern beneath a hat decorated with a stuffed bird. Lorena stares at the crinkled photo, examines it for parts of herself although her mother always said, “You look like your father, that SOB, may he rest in peace.”

Here it is. The clipping was beginning to yellow but the type was black and clear:

BUDDHA APPEARS ON KELVINATOR

Scores of curious onlookers gathered to see the image of Buddha which appeared on the refrigerator of Mrs. Rudy Willet of Phoebus, Va.

“Ordinarily you get Jesus on refrigerators. You get your weeping Madonnas on walls,” said Phoebus’s mayor, Andy Barlow. “This is our first Buddha. Couple of years ago, we got what we thought was a Moses, but since nobody knows what he looked like, that don’t count.”

The refrigerator, a Kelvinator, was just fine until Mrs. Willet put leftover Hawaiian Tuna Noodle Surprise inside after dinner last Tuesday. The refrigerator gave what Mrs. Willet describesas “a pitiful moan, just pitiful” and then broke out in green hives. As Mrs. Willet watched, she says, “The hives started to clump up and take a shape, and all of a sudden I realized it looked like this roly-poly statue my Rudy brought back from when he was in the Philippines. He said the statue was of Buddha, and over there he was just as famous as Jesus.”

Mayor Barlow is unsure of the future of the Kelvinator Buddha. Due to a shortage of Buddhists in Phoebus, he says, there’s no church to send it to.

Well, there you go, thinks Lorena. Not one word about Lula being crazy in that whole story. And who knows? Maybe she did see the Buddha. Maybe it really
was
there.

Pete hasn’t started snoring yet. Lorena lies on her back in the darkness and listens to him breathe. She tenses as he turns in her direction. His hand scoots across the sheet, then plunks upon her flannel-covered breast. They haven’t had sex in over two weeks. This is Pete’s way of letting her know it’s time.

When they were first married, she dressed for bed. Slipped into the bathroom and emerged in her bridal negligee, a gift from Aunt Lula. Draped in a floor-length robe and gown of silk and lace, she would allow Pete to peel away each virginal white layer, his hunger unchecked by her arm catching in a sleeve or the gown tangling between her legs. His panting frustration fueled her desire and she found that sex was her time to shine, her opportunity to star in whatever fantasy she chose to swirl through her brain: ravaged virgin, willing mistress, red-hot mama.

Time and action shredded the silken gown. Years later, it wound up at Goodwill, never to be replaced. Bed became a place to sleep, and gowns were bought for comfort. Now when Lorena dresses for bed, she sees her mother in the mirror. Fluffy cap over pincurls, Lollipop panties under her flannel gown, she crawls nightly under the covers expecting nothing more exciting than a groaning yawn from Pete as he rolls away from her.

Every now and then, Pete comes to life, as he is doing tonight.

She lies immobile as his hand starfishes its way from one breast to another, then plunges beneath her gown to snap the elastic waist of her Lollipops. Her compliance is tinged with pity for his problems, as well as fear of his cold withdrawal if she should deny him. She knows that as far as he’s concerned, she could be anyone. He could be anyone to her, too.

She decides to make him Binky.

Oooo, Binky, she sighs to herself. Closing her eyes, she pictures Binky’s face, those rainstorm-gray eyes, that Errol Flynn mustache, that snappy postman’s hat set at a jaunty angle. Oooh, yes, yes, Binky, she moans silently, touch me there, as Pete grabs her, unceremoniously climbs on top, and begins to pump. Oh Binky Binky Binky, she begins, and then it’s over. With a grunt, Pete dismounts and collapses on his side of the bed.

Lorena always felt a little guilty after sex, like her mother was listening on the other side of the door. Her guilt was compounded by her secret fantasies, the crowds of men she had visualized over the years once the initial thrill of early-marriage sex was gone.

At first she fantasized about people she knew—friends, the pharmacist, the chicken man in the A&P who cut up her fryers with loving care and then threw in extra livers. But as her parallel fantasy of becoming a dancer grew, the lovers in her sexual fantasies became more than mere acquaintances. She had moved on to the rich and famous. Fred Astaire, of course, and Gene Kelly, but her amorous rendezvous also embraced nondancing stars of movies and television: Clark Gable, Kirk Douglas, Julius La Rosa. She even conjured up a memorable threesome with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Binky is the first true possibility. The idea of an affair scares her. She could never really do it, no, really, she’s a lousy liar. She’d wind up confessing, pleading guilty, spilling the beans. She had always been a good girl.

But this wouldn’t be just any old affair. Sure, it would have passion and all, but
this
affair would also have meaning. It couldchange her life, take her somewhere—take her straight to Cousin Wally.

It’s something to think about. Like Delia says, unless thinking’s going to get you somewhere, it’s best not to do too much of it.

So she thinks about it. She thinks about it a lot.

THE INVITATION COMES in the next day’s mail. “Tomorrow,” it says. “Three o’clock. B.” It slides, unstamped, through the slot, buried in a barrage of bills. She almost overlooks it. Just a slip of paper inside a plain envelope. She reads it over and over again, then tears it into tiny pieces and flushes it.

Tomorrow is Thursday. Lorena is flattered that Binky remembered that Cassie has dancing on Thursday. He cared enough to plan this. But tomorrow? So soon? She’s not ready. She needs Maybelle. With a trembling finger, she dials.

“Sorry, sugarplum,” says Maybelle. “I’m booked till next week. How’s Tuesday?”

“Too late. Too late,” Lorena mumbles, and hangs up. She fluffs her flattened curls in the mirror and sighs. She can’t do this, no she just can’t, it’s not right. But then she thinks of Binky’s slow gray eyes, remembers the way his lips felt, wonders what lies in wait beneath those black-striped gray pants. Oh yes.

She can barely cut out the biscuits for dinner, her hands shake so. The pork chops are overcooked, the mashed potatoes lumpy, but dinner is eaten in hurried silence without a peep of complaint. For that, Lorena is grateful.

The silence of dinner continues through the evening, broken only by
Perry Como
and
Arthur Godfrey and His Friends.
Cassie goes up to her room after Haleloke does her hula, and Pete and Lorena are left alone, the light from the TV washing their faces with silver.

She waits for the commercial, then asks, “How’s work been?” On the screen a blonde swings impossibly shiny hair. A chorussings “Halo everybody, Halo.” Pete doesn’t answer, not now, not during the entire half hour of
I’ve Got a Secret,
not when he gets into bed and rolls away from Lorena.

Lorena stares at the patch of light on the ceiling until she falls asleep, the patch imprinted on her brain. Indelible and glowing, it surfaces in dream, becomes a TV screen filled with the crewcut image of Garry Moore, the host of
I’ve Got a Secret.
Next to him sits Lorena herself, whispering in his ear her secret, which is superimposed across the screen for the audience: “Having an affair with Binky Quisenberry.”

The audience applauds. She beams at the camera. Garry Moore winks, adjusts his bow tie, calls first on Henry Morgan, who asks, “Does your husband know your secret?” She shakes her head no. Bess Myerson looks thoughtful, taps her beauty-queen teeth with a fingernail, then asks, “Does this involve some talent?” Lorena consults in a whisper with Garry Moore before vigorously nodding yes. The audience’s applause is louder this time.

Garry calls on the next panelist. It’s Cassie. She’s wearing the dress of tinsel and her hair is a tangle of curls. She looks piercingly at Lorena, then asks, “Are you as crazy as Lula?”

Lorena’s eyes pop open. The patch on the ceiling is gone. The room is dark and Pete is snoring. She lies and waits for morning.

BRA. BRA. LORENA paws through her underwear drawer looking for the least-frayed of her Maidenform Chansonettes, all identical: white cotton, 34-B. She holds each one up, looking for signs of wear, examines the cone-shaped cups for breaks in the concentric stitching. Oh, well, she sighs, and plucks one from the jumbled heap.

She showers, pulls on toreador pants and her peasant blouse, cinches her waist with a wide stretch belt, releases her hair from its pincurls. Mitzi Gaynor, Mitzi Gaynor, she pleads with the mirror, her hand trembling as she applies Seagreen eye shadow, Powder Pink lips, a spritz of Evening in Paris behind each ear. She’s ready. She waits. Three o’clock. Where is he? Three-fifteen. She dabs on another layer of Odor-O-No, reapplies her lipstick.

Doorbell.

Oh God. She feels herself move down the stairs, across the living room. She peers through the glass square of the door, sees Binky’s hat and matching gray eyes, opens the door, and shuts it quickly behind him.

“Lorena,” he says.

“Binky.”

She’s not sure what’s supposed to happen next. If this were the movies, he would embrace her and sweep her off her feet. But what he does is slap the leather of his mailbag before dropping it at her feet. “Weighs a ton,” he says. “Makes me sweat like a pig.”

Suddenly he’s suctioning her lips with his, cupping his hands around her bottom, grinding his pelvis into hers. His tongue is snaking around her gums and she can tell he had tuna for lunch. They shuffle over to the couch, where they collapse, burrowing into each other with snurfing sounds. Binky grasps the elastic shoulders of her peasant blouse and pulls it to her waist, exposing the stiff cotton cones of her Maidenform. A look of disappointment crosses his face but he moves on, reaching behind her to unhook the bra.

“Wait!” She yanks her blouse back up. “Not here.”

“Huh?”

“Upstairs.”

He shrugs and follows her up the stairs, into her bedroom. At the sight of her marital bed, a wave of panic envelops Lorena. “Maybe we shouldn’t …” she begins, but Binky has pulled her down on the bed and her blouse is back around her waist and he’s grappling with the stubborn hook of her bra, which won’t release, so he pulls it down far enough to nibble on her nipple.

“Oooh, Binky,” she sighs to the top of his hat. Impulsively, sheremoves it, flings it off the bed, then runs her fingers through his Vitalis-slick hair. He’s struggling with the zipper on her toreador pants, finally peels them down over her Lollipops. She kicks off her sandals, pedals her legs until she’s freed the toreadors, and they pause, exhausted, she in her Maidenform and Lollipops, he still in full dress uniform. He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his wallet, extracts a rubber, and turns his back for a brief but busy moment. His purpose accomplished, he plunks himself atop Lorena.