Boys like us, p.9
Boys Like Us, page 9
“Doll,” says Mom. “We have a powder room for such things!”
Doll looks innocently at the gathered crowd. “Sorry. I thought we were all family.”
“We are.” J.B. beams. “Least we will be this time tomorrow.”
“Planes bother her,” Mom says.
“What?” shouts Doll.
“I said, planes bother you!” Mom moves toward the buffet. “Y’all haven’t hardly touched my ham, and I practically had to pull teeth to get it.”
Ferratta looks uncomfortably at her husband.
“They don’t eat ham,” says J.B.
“But it’s not just any old ham. It’s one of those free-range pigs from up on Mount Petit Jean.”
“It’s a Jewish thing, Edie,” J.B. explains, helping himself to another slice. “And they’re just a little more Jewish than I am.”
“Oh,” says Mom, taken aback. “Why, of course. How stupid of me. I should’ve thought. I mean, I didn’t think!”
“This guacamole sure is good,” offers Ferratta.
“Can I call her Grandma yet?” asks the six-year-old.
“Why, you precious thing!” squeals Mom, picking him up. “Of course you can!”
The phone rings.
Mom answers it on the kitchen extension, still holding the boy.
“Hello?” she says. “What? …” Her voice rises an octave. “Oh, my! …” Then she hesitates. “I mean … Yes! But … Just a minute.” And she calls into the living room, “Zero, it’s for you.”
Puzzled, I get up. As I turn the corner to go in the kitchen, she grabs ahold of my arm and mouths, “Take it in my room.”
When I pick up, the caller is in mid-monologue. “I love you,” he’s saying. “God, how I love you.”
“Sparky?” I query.
“Zero! What have you done with Edie?”
“She’s hosting her rehearsal dinner. What are you doing?”
“I can’t stand by and let this happen. I thought I could, but I can’t. I love her too much!”
“You’re not in Little Rock, are you?”
“You bet I am!”
“Where?”
“The Capital Hotel.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Wonderful. I was just about to have dinner.”
“I’ve already eaten.”
“You’re young. You can afford to eat again.”
“You sound drunk.”
“I’m never drunk!” He hangs up on me.
From the edge of the bed, I say, “Mom? May I please see you in here for a minute?”
She practically jumps through the door, having been on the other side listening the whole time.
“Well?” she asks excitedly.
“Have you completely lost your mind? If you wanted to hear from him so badly, why’d you put me on the line?”
“Because it isn’t proper for a lady to talk to one gentleman friend while another’s sitting in the next room.”
“Proper?”
“Where is he, Zero?”
“Never you mind where he is! You just get back in there and entertain those people. And turn off those damn home movies!”
I escort her back to the living room. J.B. sniffs at the air like a bloodhound. “What’s goin’ on?” he asks.
“Sick friend,” I tell him. “Come with me, Doll. I might need your help.”
Drink and cigarette in hand, Doll follows me.
Once we’re in the car I tell her what’s going on.
“God,” she sighs. “It’s just like the end of Camelot when Lancelot comes to rescue Guenevere off the burning stake. How do you suppose Mom does it? I haven’t had a date in three years.”
When we were kids, the Capital Hotel was a run-down flophouse, home to transients, derelicts, and prostitutes. Recently, in an effort to revitalize the downtown, it’s been given an exquisite renovation. The marble columns, mosaic tile floors, original woodwork, grand staircase, and gilded mirrors have all been restored to their former glory.
Doll and I walk into the magnificent lobby, a wide-open space with a stained-glass skylight three floors up. The mezzanine circles it like a catwalk. That’s where we find Sparky, at a small table set for his sole use.
A rack of lamb lies on his plate, untouched. “Medium rare,” he says, “just like your mother would’ve ordered.”
“Well, go ahead and eat,” says Doll. “Don’t let us stop you.”
“I don’t like lamb rare. Besides, I haven’t got the appetite.”
“What a waste,” says Doll, eyeing the plate. “Mind if I …?”
Sparky pushes the plate toward her. We both watch as Doll cuts off a chop, picks it up with her fingers, savors the smell, then quickly devours it.
Sparky rises, drink in hand, and begins pacing back and forth. “I’ll be flying out first thing in the morning.”
“But I thought you’d come to save her from herself,” says Doll, cutting off another chop.
“With a wife and three grown kids, how can I save her?”
“Divorce.”
“If only it were that simple.”
“People do it all the time.”
“Hilda’s never given me any reason. I can’t just walk out. I’ve loved your mother since I was fourteen. Thirty-seven years ago I showed up the night before she married your father and begged her not to do it, to wait for me. She was as stubborn then as she is now.”
“Y’all sure you don’t want any of this lamb? It’s just delicious!”
Sparky stops pacing and grips the back of an armchair, knuckles turning white. “But I bailed her out of one marriage, and I’ll bail her out of another.”
“What makes you so sure you’ll have to?” I ask him.
“Because we’re in each other’s soul, like warts.”
“Why, Sparky!” Doll cries. “That’s just about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Where’re they having the wedding?” he asks.
“Why?”
“So I can send some flowers. And my congratulations. To the both of them.”
“At the Yoakums’,” says Doll.
“J.B.‘s a good man. You kids remember that. He’s just not the man for your mother.”
A soft tinkling bell sounds from below. Sparky opens the French doors that lead onto the terrace. “Sounds like the opening bars of ‘Laura,’ doesn’t it? Your mother and I danced to that at our prom.”
I follow him out and look over the rail to see what the sound really is. “Not the opening bars of ‘Laura,’ Spark. It’s just that crazy man who sharpens knives.”
Mom has managed to rid herself of the guests and is sitting on pins and needles awaiting our return. “Where is he?” she demands to know.
“The Capital,” Doll says matter-of-factly.
“The state capitol? What’s he doing there?”
“No. The Capital Hotel.”
Mom gasps. “Oh, my god! I should’ve known. The sentimental old fool! That’s where we had our prom!” She grabs her purse and car keys and heads out the door.
“You’re getting married tomorrow,” I remind her.
“So this is my last chance. And don’t think I intend to waste it!”
I sink into the armchair, my dead grandmother’s armchair, wondering why I even bothered to come home for all this. Why do I even bother, period?
What I need is to get to the nearest gay bar and stand among my own for a while.
Doll, in her rent-a-car, drops me off at Discovery. I invite her to come along but she wants to go check out the latest swingles spot. “Just to see if I still know anyone. Think you can get a ride home?”
“At the very least.”
I sit at the bar drinking a beer.
An eager-beaver collegiate type comes up and says to me in a heavy twang, “You’re not from ’round here, are you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Your shoes.”
I look down at my saddle-oxford sneakers, then tell him, “I used to be, but I escaped.”
“Another one who went over the rainbow, huh?”
“I’d hardly call Toronto over the rainbow.”
“Where’s that?”
“Canada.”
“Oh. I’ve heard it’s real pretty up in Canada.”
“Parts are, parts aren’t.”
“Just like Arkansas.”
“Are you from the Chamber of Commerce or what?”
“No. I just happen to be interested in people. Sociology’s my major.” He shifts his weight from side to side. Undaunted by my ill humor, he asks me to dance.
“Sure,” I say, surprising myself. I hate disco music, though tonight I’d try anything.
He dances like the young Elvis Presley, a lot of hip action and eye contact.
After several rousing numbers, all of which sound exactly alike, I suggest we take a break.
“Good idea.”
He leads me up to the balcony. We stand in front of a giant air-conditioning vent to cool off. Our bodies fall together like two parts of the same thing. We start to kiss. And keep kissing. And caressing. Until half an hour later when he says, “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go someplace more private. I got me a toolshed out back of my grandma’s. Got a mattress in there and everything.”
Little does he know I’m suffering from a vicious outbreak of herpes, something that always happens whenever I visit home. “Sounds great, but tonight’s just not the night.”
He pouts, rearranging his erection.
“But listen,” I say. “Why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll call you sometime next week?”
He writes it out. That’s how I find out his name’s Lance. Then he offers me a ride home.
Bingo.
Doll is planted on the couch, chain-smoking and rewatching the home movies, mostly on fast forward. “I’m glad they didn’t get much footage of me. I was such an ugly kid.”
I head to the kitchen and fetch us a couple of beers. “You were not. You were as cute as a bug.”
“Bug? Hell, I looked like an absolute toad.”
“You just have a confidence problem, Doll.”
“I’ve got all the confidence in the world. What do I care if you got all the looks?”
I sit down next to her and make a toast. “To all the footage Dad missed.”
“Hear, hear!” she says. “Like that night I came home so drunk I knocked all our childhood pictures off the wall.”
“I never heard about that.”
“It must’ve been when you ran off to California and no one was speaking to you.”
“Well, what happened?”
“I was trying to propel myself up the staircase by leaning into the wall and sent every one of those damn pictures clattering to the entrance hall floor. Mom heard the racket and came out to see what was goin’ on. She had on one of her see-through nightgowns and that paper hat she used to wear to protect her ’do. I was barfing real bad by then. French fries, sweet wine. She helped me to the toilet, then, when I was done, dunked my head into a sink full of cold water. That sobered me up just enough to realize I didn’t have to take her bullshit anymore. I was a big girl, goddammit. Bigger than she was.”
“What’d you do? Hit her?”
“I thought about it. But I just staggered back down the staircase, past the broken pictures, and went out to the car. This was when we were living in the condo and times were bad. Dad was between jobs and we only had one car, which we certainly couldn’t afford to have me wreck. So Mom came after me.
“I was pulling out of the parking space when she leapt on the hood. She flailed her arms in front of the windshield, which made me run over the curb into the two-foot flower bed. She bounced like a wild thing. I slammed the car in reverse, backed up real fast, then hit the brakes, trying to throw her off. But she just flopped toward the bumper, scrambled back up, and grabbed ahold of the windshield wipers. I turned ’em on high. She tossed from side to side, screaming, ‘Stop, Doll, damn you, you’re killing me!’ Lights began going on in the other units. People started to yell, ‘Quiet down there!’ A few even started rooting: some for me, some for her.
“I sped out of the parking lot so fast Mom’s nightgown blew up to her shoulders and her paper sleeping hat flew clean off her head. It wasn’t until I turned onto the highway that I realized I could get my license revoked for such reckless behavior, so I swerved into the McDonald’s parking lot. Mom wouldn’t budge. Jesus, I thought, was I gonna have to get out and personally pry her off the hood?”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“And did you?”
“I had to help her down. She was pretty shaken up, as you might imagine. Then, of all things, she said, ‘I love you, Doll, don’t you know that? It’s your father. He’s what causes us to fight.’”
“Was that true?”
“Let me put it this way.” Doll stabs out her cigarette. “My biggest fear as a little girl was that Mom and Dad would get a divorce, that I’d end up taking Mom’s side, and Dad would never speak to me again. Isn’t that what’s happened?”
“He might speak to you if you’d ever visit him.”
“Well, I won’t. I don’t find his madness interesting like you do, Zero. It depresses me. What if it’s genetic? What if it happens to us?”
I give her a little pat. “It won’t.” Then I change the subject. “How was your night?”
“Horrible. All anybody ever asks me is am I married yet.”
“Any word from Mom?”
“Are you kidding? We can expect her about ten tomorrow morning.”
Ten is exactly when Mom waltzes in. “Wasn’t that something?” she says.
“Sore?” Doll asks her.
“Did he make his plane?” I query.
“Barely,” Mom says, snapping open her compact.
She looks at herself in the mirror. “I certainly hope they can fit me in at the beauty parlor,” she says distractedly. “I don’t know how that man does it, but he always manages to ruin my hair.”
Lorna Yoakum spots us in the drive, throws open the door, and steps out onto the porch, twirling around to show off her new dress. “Like it?” she asks.
“Gorgeous!” says Mom, stopping long enough to give her a peck on the cheek.
“Goes great with a gin and tonic. Can I get you one?”
“Scotch for me,” says Mom, proceeding into the house to greet Aunt Tula.
Aunt Tula, Lorna’s mother, is stationed in the den. She’s well over ninety, enormous, and selectively deaf. She’s been sitting there all day, having driven over for breakfast and to get her dress zipped up.
Tula whacks at Mom’s wedding bouquet with her cane. “Did he give you that?”
“No. I ordered it special. I wanted something simple. Something that just looked like I picked it off the side of the road.”
“Well, that’s exactly what I thought you’d done.”
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Humph! Wait till you see what your married boyfriend sent.”
“What?”
“In the dining room.”
“You won’t believe it,” coos Lorna, distributing the drinks. “A wheelbarrow full of long-stemmed roses!”
“Damn! What does he think I am, a prize-winning horse? I don’t even want to see them.”
“Well, what am I to do with ’em?”
“Throw ’em away!”
“Five hundred dollars worth of roses?”
“I’ll takes ’em for you, Miss Edie,” says Dutch, poking her head out of the kitchen. “I’ll takes ’em down to the cemetery. Dead folks love flowers.”
Dutch has been in the Yoakums’ employment for the last half century. She fusses over Doll and me, asking how we are, if we’re married yet, and how many “chillens” we got. A big smile spreads across her face. Dutch, who once had the teeth of a horse, is all gums.
“What happened?”
“Had to git ’em all pulled,” she says. “Personal reasons. I ordered me some new ones out of a magazine, but they ain’t come yet.”
“How do you eat?” asks the ever practical Doll.
“On the liquid diet,” confides Dutch with a wink.
“You just mind you stay on your feet,” warns Lorna, “at least until my ducks are done.”
“Yes’um.” Dutch disappears into the kitchen.
“Come on, bridesmaids,” Mom calls. “Come help make your old ma beautiful!”
“Why does she call that boy a bridesmaid?” barks Tula. “Didn’t he say he was married?”
“No, Mother, he’s not married. And don’t bring that up again.”
A few minutes later, I walk down the hall toward the bathroom in search of some bobby pins for Mom. Aunt Tula catches a glimpse of me, bangs her cane on the floor, and says, “Haven’t you got a girl yet, Zero?”
“Not yet.”
“Still living with that boy you brought down here last time?”
“No, I got me a new one.”
“Well, I don’t see why you don’t get yourself a girl!”
When J.B. arrives, Tula takes one look at him and says, “God, Edie, he’s older than I am!”
“No, he’s not!” Mom hollers from the guest room. “J.B.? How you holding up?”
“I’m holding.”
“Lorna, fix Groom a drink.”
“Gin and tonic?” asks Lorna, leading him to the bar.
“I should’ve been dead ten years ago,” mutters Tula.
“How’s my dress?” asks Mom, fidgeting in front of the mirror. “Too wrinkled?”
Doll, trying to brush Mom’s hair, says, “It’s fine. Now if you’d just quit bouncing around –”
“I can’t help it. I’m so nervous!”
“Why? All you’ve gotta do’s say two words. I’m the one who has to make a thank-you speech.”
“Any sign of the judge, Zero?”
“Not yet.”
“What time is it?”
“Still early.”
“Doll, is my hair gonna take all day?”
“Not if you’d hold still!”
“Well, I need me another drink!”
