In Those Dazzling Days of Elvis

by Josephine Rascoe Keenan

  “Julie don’t smoke,” he said.

  The lie spouted out of me. “Carmen got me smoking.”

  His eyes grew hollow and filled with disbelief.

  “I’m too old for these shenanigans. Where’s the splint for your finger?”

  Adrenalin shot through me as another lie popped out. “The doctor said I could take it off at night.”

  He stared out toward the “eternal” flame burning at the Lion Oil Refinery, just a few blocks from the house.

  “That stink coming from over yonder is hovering all around us,” he said. “You know what folks say when they smell it, don’t you?”

  I could feel the clueless look on my face.

  “Everybody knows that,” I said with bravado.

  “Okay, let’s hear it.”

  This whole charade had been my idea. I couldn’t blow it the first day.

  “Is this a test?”

  “It might be.” He looked sideways at me.

  “Quit trying to rattle my cage, Papaw.”

  “There’s another whiff of it,” he said.

  I pinched my nostrils. “Phew! It goes all over town. I’ve smelled it clear to our house.” An image of the house mother and I lived in on East Third popped into my mind. I quickly replaced it with a mental image of Julie’s home. Stuff like that could cause me to blow the whole project.

  “Do you know it?” he persisted.

  I put on an innocent expression. “Know what?”

  “The saying.”

  He had me, and we both knew it.

  “So you never heard of the Lion lifting its tail?”

  “Oh, that. Mama won’t let me say it. She says it’s crude.”

  Once again, confusion took over his face.

  Chapter 12

  TREAT ME NICE

  Late in the afternoon on Sunday, Elizabeth came to get me on her way back home from Texas. When Dad walked with me out to the car, I watched her face for a sign that she still loved him. My own mother got “that look,” complete with misty eyes, when someone so much as mentioned his name. After three scotch and waters, and if my stepfather was safely out of earshot, like across the ocean, she would admit she’d never had a lover like Dad, but she always denied it when she sobered up. Elizabeth’s reaction to him would best be described as a sheet of white marble. She barely glanced at him when he rapped on the car window with a knuckle and said, “Roll ’er down.”

  While he talked and she replied with low, grunting uh-huhs, I threw my sack into the backseat and crawled in. The raincoat Julie had hidden under was gone, a forecast of how empty the house would be without her.

  “It was good of you to let her spend the night,” Dad was saying as he leaned on the lowered window. “We hope you’ll let her come again soon.”

  Elizabeth shrugged and turned her face toward the windshield.

  “We’ll see.”

  “I sure had a good time, honey,” Dad said, looking at me in the backseat. “And so did Mamaw and Papaw.”

  “Me too.”

  “How are her grades?” he asked Elizabeth.

  “Not as good as Ju—” She broke off. “As they should be.”

  From where I sat, I could see her face redden. She was thinking of me as Carmen.

  I jumped in. “Thanks for taking me fishing. It was fun, even in that old boat.”

  He turned on his engaging smile.

  “You’ll catch more next time, now that you’ve got the knack.”

  I waved. “Bye, Dad. See ya.”

  Elizabeth goosed it, and we shot off so fast he barely had time to step back. I watched him through the rear window until we turned at the end of the block and he slid out of sight.

  “How did it go?” Elizabeth asked, a note of anxiety permeating her voice.

  I shrugged. “They sort of bought it, but not totally.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing to sweat. Papaw caught me smoking, that’s all.”

  “We’re done in!” she said.

  “No, we’re not. Simmer down, and I’ll give you a blow-by-blow. Watch out!”

  The tires screeched. I braced myself against the back of the passenger seat as we slammed to a stop.

  “Jeez! You almost flattened that lady.”

  Elizabeth fanned her face with her hand. “She was jaywalking.”

  “The punishment was too great for the crime.”

  “I didn’t hit her.”

  “A miss is as good as a mile, huh?” I said, trying to get my breath.

  “Just tell me what happened at Scott’s this weekend. Then I’ll tell you about Julie.”

  She spoke the name “Scott” in that special way women speak the names of men they love. I’d heard mother say his name just like that. He was a looker, my old man. Probably great in the sack too. No wonder neither mom had exterminated him from her heart. The rest of the way to the house I filled her in on the events of the weekend, leaving out nothing, not even the Lion lifting his tail.

  “Maybe you’ll become more convincing with practice,” she said, pulling into the driveway.

  “There won’t be a next time for the fishing scene,” I said.

  “Can’t say I blame you. By the way, Julie would never address me as Elizabeth.”

  “Okey dokey.”

  —||—

  Inside, the first crisis occurred when the telephone rang and I answered.

  “Morgan residence.”

  A long, empty pause followed.

  “Who is this?” came the voice on the phone.

  “Julie,” I said.

  “That’s a falsehood, if I ever heard one.”

  I began to doubt I would ever succeed in playing Julie if I couldn’t even convince people with a one-worder. We had decided nothing had to be changed about my voice to persuade people. It would be next to impossible anyway. Although we didn’t sound precisely identical, our natural pitch tones fell into the same range, with only the slightest variation in vocal patterns.

  “Who is it?” whispered Elizabeth, wide-eyed and hands trembling as she held them out for the receiver. She listened only a second. “Mavis, what seems to be the problem?”

  I didn’t dare so much as twitch. Elizabeth’s eyes went from pale gray to a dark storm color as the voice clattered on the other end of the line. Although I couldn’t make out what she was saying, I could hear the railing tone in Mavis MacAfee’s voice, no doubt about the one word lie I’d uttered: “Julie.”

  “We went out of town,” Elizabeth said. “To Little Rock.”

  A tirade must have erupted on the other end, for Elizabeth’s cheeks ripened into red patches.

  “I just forgot to tell you,” she said with a weary voice. “You do that. Come on over. I’m unpacking, but Julie can make us a pot of coffee. No, come on. It’s fine, really.” Another long silence on Elizabeth’s end. Then, “Okay. Okay. Un-huh. Fine. See you next weekend.”

  She slapped the receiver onto the hook and sank down on her bed.

  “She doesn’t believe it was you. Uh . . . Julie. God, I’m getting so mixed up. She doesn’t believe Julie answered the phone.”

  “It would take someone with perfect pitch and a trained ear to detect the differences in Julie’s and my voice,” I said, sitting next to her.

  “Just such a person was on the other end of the line,” Elizabeth said.

  “Mavis MacAfee?”

  “Is a musical genius. She could have sung at the Met, but she got married instead. And yes, those miniscule differences could betray you.”

  She leaped up and ran to her closet. Rummaging around, she threw hat boxes aside, tossed shoes out into the bedroom, and rattled coat hangers until she emerged, triumphant, with a tape recorder.

  “I have a recording of Julie reciting a poem for English class finals last year. You must listen to it until you can mimic her exactly.”

  “I sound almost like her now,” I said, hoping to weasel out of such a boring chore.

  “Almost won’t do
it, obviously,” Elizabeth said, thrusting the machine into my arms. “Take it to Julie’s room and turn it on. Listen day and night, and master it.”

  “This is going a little too far,” I said, my arms trembling with the weight of the machine. “Why don’t we just go get Julie and bring her back and let her have the baby here? Facing down El Dorado’s snotty society folks couldn’t be any harder than all the tap dancing we’re doing.”

  I meant it to be funny, but Elizabeth didn’t take it that way. Her hand flashed out, and she slapped my face, hard. I was stunned. No one had ever slapped me before, not even my sometimes-volatile mother, who wouldn’t hesitate to swat me on the rear end. “Never hit a child in the face,” she always used to say as she prepared to give me a sound spanking on my bare bottom.

  Elizabeth gasped. Her eyes opened wide, and she threw her arms as far as she could reach around me and the tape recorder.

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  I drew back and stared at her.

  “Don’t ever hit me in the face again. If you do, I’ll walk right out of this house and tell the world what you’re up to.”

  “I said I was sorry. You must never, ever say anything like that again. El Dorado people are good people who don’t deserve your condemnation.”

  “You are the one who condemns them. When you sent Julie off, you were condemning them. You’re the one who won’t give them a chance to forgive her for making a mistake.”

  “They wouldn’t. She’d have been ruined for life,” Elizabeth said.

  “Then how ‘good’ are they?”

  “They can’t forgive her for something like that, don’t you see? It’s the way they’ve been taught—the way we’ve all been taught.”

  “Still, you’d better treat me nice if you want me to help pull off your black deception.”

  “You’re not lily-white, yourself,” she countered. “It’s too bad you are so different from Julie in every way except looks.”

  I held up a hand and said, “I dig,” and turning away, I carried the tape recorder to Julie’s room. Elizabeth followed on my heels.

  “Tell me what happened out there in Texas,” I said, pulling from my pocket one of the two emergency cigarettes I had pilfered from Papaw.

  “I took her out to eat at The Golden Pheasant,” she said with a stifled sob.

  “Like a last meal?” I quipped.

  She blinked. “That’s exactly what she said.”

  “So maybe we’re not so different after all.”

  She shook her head and pulled a packet of matches from her own pocket.

  “Would you happen to have another one of those?”

  I took out the other cigarette I’d intended to save for three A.M. desperation.

  She took it between her thumb and forefinger, making a face, as if it might be riddled with germs, coming as it did from my father’s house.

  “It’s limp. What is it? Odell’s roll-your-own?”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers, now can they? If you don’t want it, give it back.”

  She stuck the firmer end between her lips and struck a match. I leaned toward her.

  “Light us up, Mama.”

  Chapter 13

  SUSPICIOUS MINDS

  That same night, I flipped out.

  “Is it my turn to drive the carpool tomorrow? Julie told me where everybody lives, but she didn’t say when it would be my turn to pick up. Think, did she drive last Friday? Or did someone pick her up?”

  “So much has happened since then,” Elizabeth said. “Seems like a lifetime ago.”

  We spent twenty minutes pacing around the den, racking our brains to remember.

  Finally, I said, “Let’s go for cigarettes. We’ll never figure this out without them.”

  “You can’t run around with tobacco breath. And I promised Julie I’d quit. It’s coming back to me. She drove the carpool on Friday. She had to drop me off at work first, and I was worried about getting the car gassed up for the trip the next day.”

  I exhaled relief, wishing it was smoke.

  —||—

  It was Darcy Doyle driving the Dreamsicle who honked in the driveway that Monday, my first day of school as Julie. Wearing a “Julie dress” of the dowdy variety the other in-crowd girls wore, I went out onto the front porch with Julie’s school books in my arms and the fake splint on my finger.

  Maylene was the first to greet me. “Your hair’s a mess.”

  Knowing I couldn’t answer her without rancor in my voice, I merely smiled.

  Laura Meade leaned forward, and I squeezed into the backseat, scared to death and excited out of my skull at the same time.

  “It looks like you cut it yourself,” Maylene said.

  “I did do a little whacking.”

  Laura turned to look at me. “Get thee to a beauty parlor.”

  So far, no one seemed to sniff me out. I was on my way to becoming one of the in-crowd. Julie hated Maylene, but she hadn’t done anything to me. I needed her. I intended to use all the energy I could no longer put into sucking on cigarettes to suck up to her. I wanted dear old Maylene in the palm of my hand. This was my chance to be popular, and I was going to make the absolute most of it.

  “I’m so glad you’ve swapped your saddle oxfords for loafers,” Maylene said, leaning over and pointing at my shoes.

  Another two seconds of skipped heart beats. I’d automatically stepped into my own brown shoes this morning instead of putting on Julie’s. Too many slip-ups would be fatal.

  “Thanks, Maylene. I always value your opinions.”

  She blinked, surprise on her face.

  “But you don’t have pennies in their slots,” Lynn said. “Maybe I’ve got a couple.” She dug around in her purse. “Nope, but I do have a dime. Put it in one of them for now. You can’t run around without money in your loafers. You’ll look like your lookalike.” She shook her head. “I keep forgetting you two are half-sisters. Hope I didn’t hurt your feelings. It’s just that you don’t want to make fashion mistakes like she does.”

  I swallowed. “No, no I don’t. But I imagine she thinks the way we dress is a bigger fashion mistake. At least she wears loafers.”

  I reached down, ostensibly to put the dime in one of my loafer’s coin slots, but mostly to hide my anxious face. It was hard to talk about me, Carmen, while I was pretending to be Julie.

  Laura sat up straight and preened. “Wonder why, with your finger still gimped, Mr. Nesbitt doesn’t just let you sit in study hall during first and second period band class?”

  “I guess he thinks I can at least learn the music, even if I can’t play my instrument.”

  “You’re a philanderer, you know that?” Maylene said. “I bet you could play that clarinet if you wanted to.”

  “The word is ‘malingerer,’ Maylene,” Lynn said in her laidback way from the other side of me. “Miss Bolenbaugh is going to have your head on a spike if she hears you butcher the king’s English like that.”

  Maylene blushed to her hairline. This was an opportunity to butter her up. Sitting next to her made it easy to nudge her in the ribs and give her a look that said I wouldn’t have known the difference in the two words either. Her nod back to me said she was pleased. Score one. To hell with how Julie felt about her. In the long run, what I planned to do to cement my friendship with Maylene would benefit Julie too, when she came home.

  “Julie, you’re not yourself today,” Lynn commented, a thoughtful look on her face.

  My heart did its flutter act, like when Papaw caught me pilfering a cigarette.

  “How so?”

  She gazed out the window. “Oh, I don’t know. You just seem different, somehow. Forget it. I’m not awake yet.”

  —||—

  The school administration had been informed that I, Carmen, was leaving to go abroad with my folks for the rest of the year.

  In the band hall, while they squeaked out the opening of some classical ditty, I, as Julie, surrepti
tiously studied the worn class schedule Julie had carried in her purse. We both took chemistry, so no problem there. No problem with Bolenbaugh’s English class, unless I used the wrong past participle or something. In American History I could hold my own. As I scanned to the bottom of the paper, alarm bells went off in my head. How had we overlooked her French class? As Carmen, I had been enrolled in the Spanish class. To me, French might as well be Hungarian.

  At the break, I rushed up to Mr. Nesbitt.

  “I need to be excused,” I told him, casting my eyes downward, as though trying to convey that I was referring to the condition girls didn’t mention to male teachers.

  He nodded, and I flew down the steps of the band hall, down the main steps, clear to the office on the first floor.

  The clerk, wearing her typical “I hate everybody” face, paid no attention to me. For five whole minutes I stood at the counter, tapping my foot, while she continued arranging schedule cards in a big, green file box.

  “’Scuse me,” I said.

  She lifted aggravated eyes to me. “Hold your horses, Madam Queen. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “I’m going to be late to class,” I said.

  “You’re already late. What’s the emergency?”

  “I . . . uh . . . I need to drop French and sign up for Spanish.”

  Suspicion darkened her face. “Smack in the middle of the semester? And why, pray, would you be allowed to do such a thing?”

  “I’m not doing good in French but—”

  She cut me off. “You’re not doing well.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but I’d be great in Spanish. I already know some. Adios, amigo. That’s Spanish. You have to let me change.”

  “No can do. And that’s English.”

  “But I have to!”

  She got out my file and perused it.

  “It says here you’ve got a B average in French.” She looked at me with questioning eyes.

  “I . . .” Oh God, what excuse to give? There was no way I could go into that class and convince the teacher I was Julie Morgan when I didn’t know a word of French. “My mother wants me to take Spanish. We might go to Mexico.”