We get down off the roof and back into the air-conditioned silence of the house, where our mother is sleeping. Carol is shaking her head, her long, arched nose a study in determination. I think her nose is beautiful. I think she is beautiful and strong. She is the one who demands that we act like a family, put up a Christmas tree, eat in the dining room on Thanksgiving, when my father would rather stay at his office, I in my room, my mother in her bed. At that moment, I love her more than anything in the world.
“Remember,” she says, “in our family, we don’t do things like that.”
18
The Friday night after the Apollo 17 launch was the Cocoa High School production of Oklahoma! Carol was singing lead alto. This was not a named part. She had been going to try out for the female lead, but Mr. Bright, her chorus teacher, whom she loved with all the fierce loyalty of which she was capable, had told her he needed her in the chorus. Where would he be, he said, without his lead alto? Probably he said this looking into her eyes, maybe with one hand on her shoulder, thumb resting at the base of her neck. He touched when he talked and kissed people hello and good-bye. I imagined Carol nodding, agreeing with whatever he said.
Because of rehearsals, Carol had been gone every night for the last two weeks. She’d wandered around the house singing the alto parts to “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” until the soprano parts, which carry the melody, sounded weird to me. She’d bought the fabric for a pink gingham dress and white petticoat and paid Mrs. Boggs to sew it up for her. (Our mom hadn’t used her sewing machine in years.) Mr. Bright had also declared everyone had to wear cowboy boots, lest the production lack authenticity. Carol had very narrow feet (7AAAA) and so had to borrow my father’s Bank Americard to special-order a pair. They arrived by mail, finally. Too late for the dress rehearsal, too late for me to see them, but just in time for this, the opening night.
My father came home at five for the first time in months. Since he wore a suit and tie to the office, he was ready to go. My mother, though, was having a tougher time. She managed to get up and get dressed in a blue-and-white pants suit that was only a little too small, but when I came into her room she was sitting on the edge of the bed in her stocking feet.
“I can’t seem to find any shoes,” she said. Her hair was flat on one side from her pillow, and her green eyes looked as foggy and startled as our cat Lucky’s did if somebody shoved him off the dining-room table, his favorite napping place. Lucky was nearly twelve now, with cataracts so bad he could hardly see. When he stumbled blindly out into the backyard, the mockingbirds mobbed him, pulling out hair for their nests, leaving him with bald patches. My mother didn’t look much better. I wanted to pet her, to smooth her gray hair the way I would Lucky’s or at least give her a hug, but I was also embarrassed by how helpless she looked. Instead I got down on my hands and knees and hunted under the bed for something for her to wear besides slippers.
Ordinarily Carol would have been the one getting her dressed, but Carol was already at the theater, getting made up. “Did you try the closet?” my mother asked, naming the one place where, in my own messy room, I never put my shoes.
“Not yet,” I said, standing up, brushing the dust off the knees of my panty hose, “but I will.” On the top shelf, I found two pairs of orthopedic pumps, one white and one bone, still in their boxes. My mother had gotten them from the same company specializing in long, narrow feet that had sent Carol her boots. “Here,” I said, choosing the white ones, “just the ticket.” I knew she didn’t want to go out in the world where people could look at her, but this was for Carol. My mother slipped her feet into her new shoes.
Oklahoma! was being staged in the multitorium of my father’s junior college. It was a multitorium, my father had explained, because the Baptists in the legislature up in Tallahassee had forbidden the use of state money to build theaters. It had red plush theater seats, an orchestra pit, and orange-pink-and-green carpet my father had chosen because he figured it would never show stains or wear.
An usherette, a girl from the junior chorus, showed my father, my mother, me, and Carol’s boyfriend, Peter, to our seats. I saw the Boggses sitting two rows down and Mrs. Maltezo and Lynn in the first row. Nearly everyone I knew was there. It was the first time Peter had done anything with our family. Carol had arranged this, making my father buy the extra ticket. It felt very significant, also odd. I sat there hoping people who didn’t know better would think Peter was my date. He had light brown hair and was thought cute, although what Carol seemed to like best about him was that he was diabetic and had to inject himself with insulin twice a day. She found this both tragic and appealing.
The school band began the overture. The audience applauded as the curtain went up to reveal hay bales and a front porch that was not attached to any house. Tonti Treppler, our future homecoming queen, sang tenderly of the absent Bill Larson, our class treasurer. Bill danced up behind her in cowboy boots. Tonti turned, swinging her skirt. They were playing at being in love. Since elementary school, Tonti and Bill had heartily disliked each other, a fact that everyone but Mr. Bright knew, so it was not good casting. I yawned, waiting for Carol. Peter stirred restlessly beside me. Mother was asleep, slumped discreetly in her seat. I hoped Peter didn’t notice. Where was Carol?
Finally, the chorus started singing low and offstage. I heard Carol’s voice. I could always hear her voice. I told her this once, after her first chorus concert back in junior high, thinking it was a compliment. She was furious. “You did not,” she said. “The mark of a good alto is that it blends” Still, I heard her, each note clear and strong as the chorus came trooping across the back of the stage behind the hay bales. Then I saw her, and my heart stopped.
Someone, in a hurry to make up the whole cast, had sprayed her long blond hair a sticky gray to kill the shine and had drawn a single dark eyebrow across her forehead above her long nose. The pink calico dress looked fine, was just Carol’s color, or would have been if her hair were its usual blond. The real problem was her boots. Big, mud brown, they looked more like waders than cowboy boots. The chorus hoedowned across the stage, arms swinging, deep in song, but above it everyone could hear Carol’s boots. Clump, thud, clump, thud. Peter froze in his seat beside me. I felt my face turning red. Clump.
Carol had made a terrible mistake. I watched, sweating with a sympathy so strong it was as if we were twins or even the same person. Then I remembered stepping off the bus holding hands with Marly Boggs our first day of junior high. Kids had stared, a couple of boys had laughed, and now I felt a flash of anger toward Carol. She was my older sister. She had certain responsibilities. She should have warned me about holding hands with girls once you were out of sixth grade. And she shouldn’t be wearing those ugly, loud boots. She had been my only protection, and I could feel her social standing dropping like a thermometer in an ice bath. All over the multitorium, people were laughing.
Thud. In line behind Carol was Lulu Felton, a fat, legally blind girl in thick tinted glasses who was obviously moving her mouth without singing, clear proof of the lax standards for membership in this chorus. Lulu and Carol passed with lowered eyes behind the beautiful Tonti. Clump. I couldn’t believe it. Carol had trusted Mr. Bright, her adored teacher, and he had done this to her. Lulu stepped on Carol’s heels. The chorus crossed into the wings and disappeared. The boots echoed back, thud.
After the performance, my parents and I went backstage, Peter in tow, to see Carol. Peter looked embarrassed to be seen with us. Carol had changed from her calico dress into her blue jeans but was still wearing her makeup, which looked even worse under the fluorescent lights in the gang dressing room. She ran up to us barefoot, her boots in one hand. She took Peter’s arm firmly in hers.
“So what did you think?” she asked. Peter smiled faintly at her, then shrugged.
My father, who hated musicals, said, “It was very professionally staged.”
“You know you have a beautiful voice, Carol,” my mother, who had once had a beautiful vo
ice herself, said. “You don’t need us to tell you that.”
Carol nodded, then looked at me. I didn’t want to say anything about her performance at all. “Here,” I said, taking her boots from her. “If you’re staying for the cast party, I’ll take these home for you.” I was afraid she might put them back on. I thought I could manage to leave them where they would never be found again, like maybe the ditch on the edge of the parking lot.
Carol’s cheeks flushed as though she could read my mind. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, smearing her black mono-brow across her forehead. She said, “Fine. Put them in my closet.”
A SOUND AT my window woke me. Someone was knocking on one of the jalousies as if it were the door. “Jesse!” I cranked open the window, almost catching whoever was there in the head. It was Peter. He was standing with a flashlight in one hand. When he and Carol had left for the opening night party, he still looked faintly embarrassed. Now it was late, and he just looked worried.
“Urn, hi,” he said. “Your sister isn’t feeling very well.” I stood there for a moment, warm air pouring in through the window. I considered that I might be dreaming. Then I heard the central air cut on.
“Give me a minute,” I said. I threw on some clothes and went outside. It was another moonless night.
He told me Carol was down on our dock. He turned on his flashlight, and I followed him. Actually it wasn’t our dock. It belonged to the neighborhood civic association, to all the people who lived in Luna Heights and kept up with their annual dues. One summer, the fathers (but not my father) had gotten together and built the dock out of pilings stolen by Mr. Heck, who worked for the phone company. A long flight of stairs led down a steep, overgrown bank to the stinking water.
I found Carol hanging off the end of the dock throwing up. Peter’s flashlight flickered over an amazing array of empty bottles. I caught sight of a couple of labels, STRAWBERRY RIPPLE. SMIRNOFF VODKA. He kicked one of the bottles into the water. “It was quite a party.” He sounded proud of Carol.
“Yeah,” Carol said, her voice echoing from under the dock. It sounded remarkably cheerful. Then she gagged and was sick again. I knelt and took one of Carol’s ankles. Peter took the other. We sat looking down into the water. After a while, Peter told me a math puzzle he had been working on. I was hopeless in math. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but that didn’t seem to matter. The puzzle was from a book of mathematical puzzles. He told me another.
The river was so dark, the stars reflected in it looked like they were hung in some second black sky. Looking down was so much like looking up that only the warmth of Carol’s ankle in my hand gave me a sense of direction. I had no idea what time it was. Peter was on his fourth puzzle when the cops pulled up and shined a spotlight out over the water. Peter’s voice died in midword. One of the cops called out, “Who’s there?” I opened my mouth, but Carol answered, her voice clear and strong.
“Members of the Luna Heights Civic Association, Officer.” A pause. The cop didn’t answer. “We appreciate your concern.” The spotlight snapped off, and the cruiser moved on. Peter and I pulled Carol up.
“Can you walk up to the house?” I asked. She nodded, then regretted it. We did get there eventually. Down the dock, up the stairs, the hill, our driveway, the steps to the front door. Peter left us there.
“I’m going to catch hell,” he said, sounding both proud of himself and genuinely worried. “I’ll call,” he said to Carol.
After a stop at the bathroom, Carol and I made it down the hall to her bedroom. Her sweat smelled like Ripple, but she had stopped heaving. Now that she seemed mostly okay, I was mad at her.
I couldn’t believe that after all she had said about how we didn’t do things like that, she had gone and gotten drunk. Our whole family, mother included, did do things like that. But I’d thought Carol meant just her and me, the two girls, the real family. Now she had given up on all her principles, just to get back a little popularity. At that moment, she seemed no different to me than Sergeant Nichols, the cop who had lectured us on bicycle safety in elementary school and on drugs in high school. He would hold up this tiny glass vial that was probably full of nothing but tap water and announce that it contained enough LSD to turn on the whole state of Florida. Liars.
“Thanks,” Carol said when she was at last in bed, the covers up to her chin.
“I’m not sure I’m speaking to you,” I said.
THE DAY AFTER Oklahoma! was Saturday. Carol was scheduled to have her wisdom teeth removed, something she’d refused to have done until the show was over. The oral surgeon had told my parents it would be easier to take out all four teeth at once and keep Carol in the hospital overnight. Carol was still hung over when she left with my father for the hospital, her skin a pale gray-green. If he noticed, my father probably thought it was makeup from the night before. When she came home on Sunday morning, she looked worse. She’d woken up in her hospital room after the surgery with her mouth packed full of bloody rolls of gauze. Then the nurse brought in a tray of split pea soup and tomato juice. Just the sight of it, Carol said, had made her throw up.
She kept throwing up. She stayed home from school on Monday. Peter called, but she told me to say she was too sick to go to the phone. On Wednesday my father called our family doctor, Dr. Bach, who was giving my mother the Valium, and he called in a prescription for an antinausea drug for Carol. The blue station wagon brought it from Peebles Drugs along with my mother’s weekly refill. After she took the medicine, Carol complained more, not less. Her legs kept cramping. Her tongue felt funny. She missed the rest of the week at school. I thought she was overdoing it, afraid to see any of her friends after Oklahoma!, or Peter after her night on the dock. I also thought she was trying to get my attention. I didn’t want to forgive her just yet. I wanted to get even.
So I went to see Mark Lish. Mark had been one of my best friends in sixth grade. Back then, he, Marly Boggs, Joanna Fosbleck, and I were nearly inseparable. This was another case of the blindness of love. Honestly, I used to think Joanna Fosbleck was the most beautiful name in the world. How it rolled off the tongue! Jo-ann-a Fos-bleck. She moved away at the end of sixth grade. Mark, Marly, and I went on to junior high. My first day there, the day I embarrassed myself holding Marly’s hand, I turned and saw Mark with new eyes. He was fat and his voice was still childishly high. I left a note in his locker saying maybe it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while. I knew it was a shitty thing to do, but I felt I had no choice.
Mark had gone on to become popular in his own way. By this time, he was widely reputed to be the biggest drug dealer in high school. Actually, he wasn’t. His little brother Dana was, but it was a family business. Mark lived in Indian Heights, where most of the houses didn’t have central air. Friday after school, I walked over there, crossed his yard, brown and full of sand spurs.
His mother was coming out. She was a short, dark-haired woman who worked at the public library. “Jesse,” she said, stopping in the doorway, looking at me. “We haven’t seen you in a while.” I nodded, not sure whether she meant since she had seen me at the library or with Mark. Both were true. “Go on in.” She held the screen door for me. “Mark’s in the family room.”
Mark was tall now, without an ounce of fat. He was sitting on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, watching Star Trek and drinking from a quart bottle of Tab. He looked up. All the way over, I had been rehearsing my apologies and also trying to think of how to get around to what I wanted. Mark did not act surprised to see me. “Hey, kiddo,” he said.
“Hey,” I said back and sat down. He handed me a huge bowl of potato sticks.
After a few minutes, while Kirk and a landing party beamed down to yet another planet with an odd-colored sky, Mark got a box from under the couch and rolled a couple of joints. He lit one. I watched as he seemed to swallow the smoke and hold it. He handed me the roach clip, and I tried to do the same, but I coughed. Some of the smoke came out my nose. It was sur
prisingly hot. Mark handed me his Tab. He took another hit, and then I tried again. We passed the joint back and forth, until it was no more than a hot red point of light. Mark finished it. I felt nothing. Then I realized I had been breaking a single salty potato stick into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces for I didn’t know how long. I ate it. Then stick by stick, I ate the whole bowl.
I looked up to see Captain Kirk standing, legs spread, hands on his hips under a bright purple sky. “Humans are not happy living in comfort,” he said or something like that. “We must suffer. We like it.” I nodded. It seemed obvious.
“Come on.” Mark took me by the hand. He put a motorcycle helmet on my head, pulled the strap under my chin. Outside, he got on his bike.
I had never been on a motorcycle before. Basically, I was the kind of kid who, when I saw a ball coming, instead of trying to catch it, covered my face. I got on behind him. Mark told me to put my arms around his waist and hold on, so I did. Then we were off, and I closed my eyes against the wind. I felt the warmth of Mark’s body through his T-shirt on my arms and my cheek. I felt the vibration of the bike, the way the cool air flowed out of the shade when we rode past a clump of trees. Even with my eyes shut, I knew we were on the River Road. Narrow, curving, dangerous. We flew down it, the wheels leaving the ground when we hit a bump. I smelled car exhaust and the river and the detergent Mark’s mother used, and I had never been so happy. I felt paralyzed with joy.
We left the River Road, headed into Empire Heights, an unfinished subdivision. Up empty paved streets, past halfdead orange trees. This had been our secret playground when we were friends. Mark left the street and tore right up the tallest hill, the knobby tires of his bike spraying sand. At the top, he laid the bike on its side, having warned me to lift my leg. We rolled off and found ourselves in a hollow, all that was left of our old sand fort. We lay side by side, but not touching. My body missed his warmth, but Mark made no move to touch me. I was incapable of moving, numb. We smoked another joint.
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