The Orange Blossom Special (2 page)

“You're lucky that way,” said Dinah. “I can't find him.”

Tessie paused and took a drag on her cigarette. “I've been thinking about us moving to Florida. There's this place called Gainesville. It has those grand oak trees I've told you about and it's a university town, like this one. The difference is it's warm year-round.”

The way it had been with Dinah lately, Tessie had no idea what she would say. Dinah stared at her and Tessie looked back, expecting to see that scorched look in her eyes.

“You mean leave Carbondale and never come back?” she asked.

Tessie shook her head yes. The ash that dangled from her cigarette fell to the floor.

Dinah thought about how her days had become about walking home alone from school every day, then climbing into bed. She recognized that it could be different somewhere else where people didn't know about her father, and the teacher wasn't writing notes home about her odd behavior. She felt her face soften into a smile.

“That could be okay,” she answered. “I might like that very much.”

Her smile made Tessie remember how the warming sound of her daughter's laugh nourished her in ways that nothing else did. “I'll give notice at Angel's tomorrow,” she said.

Three years after his death, Jerry Lockhart took up residence with Tessie and Dinah in a cedar-shingled Gainesville house with its upside-down V roof. Here, Tessie became bolder about talking to him, not bothering to whisper anymore. She welcomed him in the morning and blew a kiss to him at night. She would ask for his opinion in arranging the furniture—“What do you think, the couch under the window or facing outside?” She accepted his compliments on her initiative. “What choice did I have? She couldn't keep on the way she was. I think she'll be better off here.” And she made him some promises. “I'm going to be the best mother I can. And the drinking. I'm worried about the drinking.” During the last couple of months in Carbondale, the four sips of Almaden had become eight, and so on, and she had begun stashing empty wine bottles in the laundry hamper, waiting until she'd accumulated six or seven. Then she'd wrap them in double-lined grocery bags and drive them to the large trash container outside the Bee Wise supermarket. She told herself she did that because she didn't want to be a bad influence on Dinah, but in truth, she was ashamed that the garbage men might see the bottles day after day. “I'm going to cut down on that,” she said meekly, looking skyward. “Maybe you can help me.”

In this new place, the sun bore down, softening the cold edges of her memory and making hope a dim possibility. Tessie could feel it
in her step and see it in the way her eyes took on definition, separate from the rest of her face.

The night before Dinah started school, the two of them had schemed like schoolgirls about what she would wear. Tessie held up a piece of clothing, then pretended she was doing a television commercial. “This fine white blouse, with its perfect Peter Pan collar, is guaranteed to make whoever wears it the prettiest
and
the most popular girl at Auberndale Junior High School. Tired of snow pants and woolen sweaters? Try our Florida delight, a pumpkin-colored chemise with white piping.” Finally, all that time spent at Angel's had paid off. Tessie couldn't remember when the two of them had laughed so much together, certainly not since Jerry had gone. They finally decided that the sleeveless dress with the red cherry print and brand-new white bucks with white socks would be perfect.

Before school the next morning, Dinah Lockhart brushed her hair in front of the bathroom mirror and hummed the Davey Crockett song to distract her from counting the number of strokes. She practiced smiling in the mirror and studied her lips as she said “Nice to meet you.” She could be a whole different person in this place. She could walk barefoot in the backyard, and there was a tree house in the vacant lot across the way. Her father had never been to Gainesville, Florida, so this town wasn't his the way Carbondale had been. Here it was easier to make herself believe that he was somewhere watching over her, maybe even helping her out on the first day of junior high. She would no longer expect to walk out of school one day and find him waiting for her in the car.

Tessie came into the bathroom and studied Dinah's face in the mirror. She saw her daughter's eyes brimming with eagerness and stroked her hair. “Knock 'em dead, baby,” Tessie said as Dinah walked out the front door, noting the soft clopping sounds her daughter's new white bucks made against the bare wood floors.

Dinah walked the three blocks to school alone; at thirteen, she was too old to have her mother come with her. Stolidly, she walked into the principal's office. “I'm Dinah Lockhart, the new girl in seventh grade,” she said. Mrs. Widby, with her gray hair in a bun, and a large bosom that sank down to her waist, grasped Dinah's shoulders with her spiky fingers. “Ah, yes, Mrs. Morris's homeroom. I'll escort you.”

“Class, this is Dinah Lockhart,” said Mrs. Widby in her drowsy, formal manner. “She has come to us from Carbondale, Illinois. I want you to be gracious and extend her a welcome.” All the while she spoke, her fingers dug into Dinah's arm.

Dinah scanned her new homeroom. She noticed the girls with their Veronica Lake pageboys and pointy Capezio flats, and the boys with their perfectly angled flattops and button-down shirts. There was a girl in the front row staring at her. She was pretty and well dressed and Dinah could swear she saw a smile play on her lips. Then Dinah's eyes fell on the boy who sat in the front row closest to the door. She didn't mean to fix on him, only to block out the principal's voice and avert the curious stares from others. Was it the shoes? The shoes and the dress? Dinah's white bucks were sturdy enough to get her through a snowstorm if they had to. These kids languished in the sweltering unmoving air as if at any moment their clothes might slip to the floor: straps fell off their shoulders, hair hung in their eyes, their shoes were cut low enough so you could actually see where the cracks of their toes began.

After a while the boy became more than a distraction. She noticed his bluish fingernails and the spidery lines on his forehead. He had both hands on the desk and was clenching and unclenching them in an agitated manner. He'd make a fist then flash three fingers on his left hand, two on his right. The fist would ball up again and then there'd be two fingers on his left and four on his right. Over and over he would make this motion, the fingers flashing in different configurations and
pointing straight at her as though he were trying to tell her something in code.

Mrs. Widby left and Mrs. Morris put Dinah at a desk fourth from the front, on the opposite side of the room from the boy with the flashing fingers. Now as Mrs. Morris took attendance, no one paid her any attention at all, except for the boy who kept shooting his mysterious hand signals at her: four fingers on the left hand, five on the right. Dinah, no stranger to secret logic, tried to make sense of the sequences. So intent was she in figuring out the meaning of his numbers that the most obvious fact of what she had seen that morning only occurred to her during her algebra class. The boy had five fingers on his left hand, plus a thumb.

Six fingers.

The pretty girl from homeroom was also in Dinah's algebra class. Her name was Crystal Landy and she had crafty brown eyes and a crooked smile. Crystal studied the new girl from Carbondale. The girl had shoulder-length curly hair and the whitest skin Crystal had ever seen. This morning, as she'd stood in Mrs. Widby's grip, she looked stricken, as if she'd just been captured. She wondered if the new girl had noticed how the rest of the class regarded her white bucks. And that sleeveless dress with its cherry print pattern: Good Lord! It seemed downright contrary, like something you'd wear to church.

At lunchtime, Dinah sat with a couple of girls from her classes. As Crystal Landy passed their table, each girl looked up and said, “Hey, Crystal,” in a way that Dinah knew it was important that they get noticed by her. They told her that Crystal was one of the richest and most popular girls in the school. She wore madras shirts, they said, the kind that bled when you washed them, and Harpur skirts with real leather on the belts, not the fake ones with plastic. The girls talked fast and their words blurred together. “You are from up north
in Illinois. Well, I don't think I ever met anyone from that far away,” said a girl named Caroline. Ruby, a blonde with foxlike eyes and a mouth full of braces said she'd been as far north as Tennessee to visit her cousin but they'd never gotten out of the car because her sister developed scarlet fever, and they had to turn around and come home, so she guessed it didn't really count. Dinah struggled to come up with something clever to say back, but the best she could do was, “Tennessee. Gee that is so interesting.” By the end of lunch, word traveled through the cafeteria that Crystal Landy had dubbed the new girl the Redhead in the White Bucks.

D
INAH GOT THROUGH
the rest of that day by noting the time and then counting the minutes until she could go home and get under her green quilt with its white periwinkles. By the time she'd left Carbondale, in the middle of seventh grade, her calculations of MTH (Minutes to Home) filled pages of her notebook, like fragments of a theorem. The moment she walked into the house—the daily miracle of her life, as she saw it—she would stop counting. From there, she knew it was only two minutes and forty-six seconds until she was on her bed.

In Carbondale, she'd enter her bedroom at 3:35. Then, as if in a trance, she'd take off her shoes and dress, rub her hand back and forth over her pillow, making sure to catch a whiff of her own hair, then pull back the covers ever so slowly. She'd run her hand over the bottom sheet, erasing any lumps or creases that might have materialized during the day, then slowly mount the bed and lie on her back. The luxury of letting her body relax, of not having to remind herself to breathe, of no one watching her, gave her such an intense feeling of relief, she had to give in to it slowly. She'd pull the quilt around her shoulders and watch out the window as the sun got duller in the winter sky. Dinah would close her eyes and let the pleasure of it wash
over her. Involuntarily, her arms would flap up and down the way they did when she and her father used to make snow angels in the backyard.

Ecstasy, that's what you'd have to call it.

After some time, when the sheets warmed and her body settled into just the right spots, she'd imagine herself into scenes where she was a little baby in a crib and her mother and father were sitting next to her waiting for her to fall asleep. Or she'd put herself in a pram, her father at the handle. It was cold outside, but she was warm because he'd tucked in the blankets around her. Sometimes she'd allow herself the ocean fantasy. It was a warm ocean with waves that rocked her. Each time the water washed over her, it cleaned out the poison in her body. Other days, she'd lie frozen in position for what seemed like hours and make believe that she was dead.

Now that she was in Gainesville, Dinah was determined not to fall into that awful pattern again. When she walked home, she worked hard
not
to count the number of steps between home and school and purposely
didn't
avoid stepping on the cracks.

Tessie was waiting for her at the front door. She threw her arms around Dinah. “So honey, tell me everything,” she said. “How did it go?” Dinah told her about how everyone wore a white sleeveless gym suit in Phys. Ed. with their last name sewn in purple thread above the breast pocket. She talked about the girls and their funny accents and the way everyone called Mrs. Morris “Ma'am.” Then she said, “My dress, and those shoes, what a mistake. No one wears clothes like that down here. I looked like such a clod.” But she never mentioned the boy with six fingers.

“Seventh grade in the wrong clothes! No one should have to go through that,” said Tessie. Dinah looked at her as if to ask if she was kidding. “I'm on your side, honey,” said Tessie. “C'mon, let's find something for you to wear tomorrow.” Dinah forgot about her longing
to dive under the quilt. Choosing the right outfit for tomorrow, that's what really mattered.

The closet in her room had a sliding door. Few houses in Carbon-dale had sliding doors. To Dinah it seemed very modern, especially the sound it made when it rolled back and forth—like electric trains on a track. “Madame, open the door please,” said Tessie as they stood in front of the closet. Dinah slid the door open slowly, as if what lay on the other side was precious and mysterious.

By the time she showed up for school the next morning, the white bucks were in the back of the closet. This time, she wore a simple white blouse with a navy skirt and flats that had rounded toes instead of pointy ones. They would have to do until her mother said they could afford new ones. She took her seat in homeroom and caught the boy's eye. Before he could move a finger, she flashed him three fingers. She didn't know why, except that she was drawn to his intensity. Besides, he was the only person in the class who had made an effort to connect with her. Excitedly, he shot back four. She returned with five and he came back with seven.

Dinah started writing down the numbers in her notebook. She'd find herself daydreaming about the significance of
five.
At night she'd lie in bed and run the numbers through her head. She'd add them up and look for meaning in the sum. She'd play them backward and try to make sense of them that way. One afternoon, while she was straining to hear what Mr. Nanny, her algebra teacher with the shoe-shaped face was saying about like terms and common factors, her father's voice suddenly filled her head.

The boy with fingers has nails that are blue,
but his heart's as pure as you know who.

That was when the thought struck her. Her father was speaking to her through this boy. Of course that was true. For three years, she'd
been trying in vain to hear her father's voice, catch a glimpse of him in her dreams, pick up a signal from somewhere that he was watching. But nothing came. Now there was this mysterious boy with his spastic gestures. Her dad was talking to her through this boy. She'd never tell anyone, they'd think she was insane. But in her heart she knew this was so.