News of the Spirit

by Lee Smith

  “She’s gone back to California to be with the children,” Mama said automatically. “Kelly and Jamie.”

  Daddy looked at her for a while. Then he cleared his throat and said, “That’s not all.”

  “Who?” Mama and I breathed together. Over the top of the seat, I clutched her hand.

  “Cary Grant.” Daddy was trying to sound offhand.

  “Cary Grant!” We couldn’t believe it. The most gorgeous, the most elegant, the biggest star in Hollywood!

  “He’s got the bungalow and several of those end units.” Daddy pointed. “His secretary is here, and a number of other people, his whole staff. The man at the desk says he’s a real gentleman.”

  “Of course he is,” Mama said.

  I was not so sure of that. I sucked in my breath, thinking of his recent affair with Sophia Loren.

  Mama and I peered in Cary Grant’s direction but couldn’t see any particular activity over there beyond the pool and the pink bougainvillea, which grew in profusion, shielding the bungalow.

  “They’re still on location today,” Daddy said. “They don’t get back until about eight o’clock. They’re filming down at the Navy yard, where they’ve painted a submarine pink for this movie. The movie is called Operation Petticoat. So if everything is understood, Jenny”—I bobbed my head vigorously—“then let’s get unpacked, girls!” Daddy finally started the car and drove around back.

  Our rooms were on the second floor. I insisted on helping Daddy carry the bags, even though he said I didn’t have to. It was my good deed for the day. My room, 208, had a connecting door into Mama and Daddy’s room, 209, which was actually a suite with two beds and a rattan settee and coffee table and two armchairs and a tiny kitchenette. I was utterly charmed by the kitchenette, with its two-burner stovetop and miniature refrigerator. It had four of everything—four spoons, four forks, four knives, four plates, four glasses.

  “You can go swimming before supper if you want to,” Mama told me, so I went in my room and put on my bathing suit and headed for the pool, while Daddy fixed gin and tonics for himself and Mama and pulled two chairs out onto the balcony.

  “Honestly, John,” Mama was saying behind me as I took off down the concrete stairs, “is that really true, about the movie company? Or did you make all that up?”

  “Scout’s honor, Billie,” Daddy said.

  At least they were talking to each other.

  I took a running dive into the water.

  IF WE RARELY SAW CARY GRANT, IT WAS NOT FROM LACK of trying. He had his own chef, and took his meals mostly in his bungalow, where he held private parties as well. He rode to and from the set in a chauffeured limousine, which had been written into his contract, according to Mr. Rudy, the motel manager, our informer. Sometimes I sneaked out to the parking lot in the early morning to wash the windshield and polish the hubcaps of the limousine, though I was discouraged in this particular good deed by Rocco Bacco, Mr. Grant’s chauffeur.

  Cary Grant often gave other cast members, and the pretty young script girls and makeup girls, a ride in the limousine. Mama considered this very democratic of him; she pronounced him a “perfect gentleman.” I was a little disappointed in his looks, personally. He was so old, for one thing. I thought he looked pretty much like any other old guy, for instance Dr. Nevins, our family physician back in Lewisville, or Ronnie Tuttle, Aunt Judy’s first husband. Cary Grant was not even as good-looking as Daddy.

  I did like his accent, however. I liked the way he said “hot dog” on the night they had the cast cookout by the pool. He said “hot dog” as if the o’s were long instead of short. Mama said this was English. On the night of the cookout, Mama and I sat on our balcony, suspended over the crowd, so we could see everything: the gorgeous girls in their two-piece bathing suits, the muscly young men, two guys with beards (was one of them the director?), the tall bitchy woman with red hair and glasses who seemed to be in charge of herding everybody around. We were there to see her break into a terrible tap dance (everybody clapped politely) and to see Tony Curtis do his Cary Grant imitation at Mr. Grant’s request, and then to see Tony Curtis get thrown in the pool by most of the crew, who soon joined him, swimming around in their clothes. Mama and I pulled our chairs up to the rail and hung over it to watch. By then it was dark and the lighted aqua pool glowed like a jewel in the fragrant night, full of impossibly attractive people trailing wet clothes through the water.

  Mama nudged me. “Hollywood high jinks,” she said.

  Behind us, in their room, Daddy lay on one of the beds reading some big book, a biography. Sometimes he seemed amused by our reaction to the movie stars; other times he seemed disgusted; and that night, when we wouldn’t leave our vantage point to go out for dinner, he had gone without us. We didn’t care. We were perfectly happy to have potato chips and Fritos for dinner. We weren’t about to leave the balcony, that was for sure, especially after they all jumped into the pool. I thought they might peel off their clothes at any moment, but nobody did. The party broke up soon after the swimming part. People disappeared into their rooms or sat quietly in the lounge chairs around the pool, where there were so many plants and it was so dark that Mama and I couldn’t see who they were anymore; all we could see was the occasional flare of a match, and all we could hear was a low laugh now and then.

  In fact, we never did see as many high jinks as we expected. The biggest surprise about the movie business was how hard everybody worked. The bus was waiting under the portico every morning at seven-thirty; by seven forty-five, everybody, even Cary Grant, was gone.

  Though I was always there to witness their departure, it was much too early for Mama, who had to make do with peeping from behind the venetian blinds. Then she’d fall back asleep for two more hours while Daddy took a long walk around the island or went fishing with Captain Tony. This left me free to roam the streets, or swim in the pool, or talk to Mr. Rudy, or do anything else I wanted, and often I’d fit in my good deed right then, so I’d have it over with.

  Sometimes I walked around the corner to the big scary church and prayed with the Catholics. I loved the gory statues and the candles. I loved the feel of the scratchy cold stone floor on my knees when I knelt to pray. I loved the old people dressed in black, bent over and mumbling their prayers. Where did all these old people come from, anyway? I never saw them on the beach or in the streets, that’s for sure. They looked dark and sad. I knew they would die soon. The Jesus in the Catholic statues was a lot less peppy than the one back at St. Michael’s—and certainly than the Jesus in my cousins’ church in Repass, who looked like a Ken doll. This Jesus’ brow was encircled by thorns, and He was always bleeding.

  It was hard to imagine what He would think of anything. He was too busy suffering.

  But I loved the way I felt, clean and new and bursting with goodness, when I popped back out of that church into the sunny Key West morning, like a girl in a cuckoo clock. I always took some money to donate, and if I could scrounge up enough, I’d buy a candle from the sad lady and light it in honor of my uncle Mason and Carroll Byrd and Harlan Boyd. Whenever I did this, I’d check in throughout the day to see my candle flickering in its red glass holder in the bank of candles burning in the alcove. I liked to see how long my candle would last in comparison with the others, and make sure I got my money’s worth. The money came from Daddy, who left change from his pockets scattered on top of the bureau. I’d gather this up and take it with me on my morning good-deed run.

  Other times I’d give the money away to the bums who slept on the beach at the end of the street, or to the children who lived on top of the Cuban grocery where I went to buy cigarettes for Mama and café con leche for myself. I came to love café con leche, and usually that was what I’d have for breakfast, café con leche and a Hershey bar.

  It thrilled me to walk down the alley behind the Havana Madrid nightclub, where strippers worked and “unimaginable things” went on in the back room, according to Mama. One of the signs on the front of the club
said “Live Bottomless, Friday Only”—a show I’d have given anything to see. By mid-morning, the strippers were often out on a wooden porch behind the nightclub, sunning themselves and smoking cigarettes and giggling like high school girls. Two of them, sisters maybe, even looked like high school girls, not much older than I.

  One day they were sitting together on a ratty chaise longue, looking at a fashion magazine, when I came walking along. “Hi!” I said loudly, on impulse. Immediately I could feel myself turning red all over.

  “Hi!” they said right back. They jumped up and came to the rail. Their fresh morning faces, without makeup, were open and friendly. “Me Luisa,” the thin one said. “Me Rosa,” said the other, blinking into the sun. Over the rail, they stared at me curiously. I felt like an exhibit—an American Girl, member of an American Family, suddenly exotic in this locale.

  “Me Jenny,” I said, thumping my chest in a gesture so awkward it made us all break into giggles.

  “You smoke a cigarette?” Luisa offered her crumpled pack of Camels.

  I loved the way she said “seegarette,” and resolved on the spot to say it that way for the rest of my life.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I said, and took one.

  “Rosa! Luisa! What are you doing? This little girl doesn’t smoke!” An older woman wearing a purple silk kimono stepped up behind them. She had a hard leathery face and dyed red hair.

  “Oh yes I do,” I assured her, putting the cigarette in the pocket of my camp shirt. “I’ve just been trying to quit.”

  The woman grinned at me. “You have, huh?” she said. “Well, as long as you’re here, why don’t you make yourself useful, and get me a newspaper.” She flipped me a fifty-cent piece.

  When I came back with the paper, she said, “Aw, honey, keep the change,” and I did. Then I got to go up on the porch and sit in a chair and smoke my cigarette and get my stubby fingernails painted by Rosa, who was doing everybody’s, while the woman turned to the crossword puzzle and worked it in a flash, just like Daddy. Her name was Red.

  Rosa and Luisa had other, stripper names (Candy Love, Nookie) for their acts. The billboard on the sidewalk in front of the Havana Madrid featured a photograph of Luisa/Nookie, wearing only a G-string. She was much too thin, with no breasts to speak of. (Rayette could have made a fortune at the Havana Madrid.) Luisa and Rosa both looked tired, too. I was always worried about their health. Sometimes I brought them oranges, and one morning I left a bottle of vitamins for them on the porch rail. The bottle had disappeared by afternoon, but Rosa and Luisa never mentioned the vitamins to me. Of course, they didn’t know I was the person who had brought them. But this didn’t matter; it was still a good deed.

  Another place I loved to go was the graveyard, where I could always clean off a grave or two. There were about a million graves over there, a million people buried above the ground in white concrete boxes that you could walk on or sit on, and some of them had not been cleaned off for the longest time, you could tell. You could tell that nobody cared about those people anymore at all. Maybe everyone who ever knew them was dead. I’d push the brown leaves off the graves into little piles, then scrape green mold off them with the snow scraper from Daddy’s new car. Then I’d walk around the graveyard admiring the statues—swans, angels, lambs, cutoff tree trunks, and even some stone dogs on dogs’ graves. Those dogs are all dead now, I’d think, and a thrill would shoot through me. I liked to subtract the dates and figure out how long the people had lived and try to imagine what they had died of. I liked to read the names and inscriptions, my favorite being:

  HERE LIES OUR HEART

  What if I died right now? What if I was hit by a car on my way back to the motel? What would they write on my grave? I hoped it would be “Our Jenny, a good girl.” The very thought of this made me cry and cry. Mason’s stone had only his full name on it, Henry Mason Rutledge, and the dates of his birth and death, and the carving of a bird in flight. They had buried him in our family plot at St. Michael’s, next to Granddaddy who had killed himself, and a whole bunch of other old dead people in our family, people so old that even their names were all but gone from their stones. I wanted to be buried in the nifty aboveground graveyard in Key West, and informed Mama of this one morning when I got back to the motel and found her out sunning by the pool.

  She took off her dark glasses and sat up in the lounge chair to stare at me. “You what, honey?” she said.

  “Bury me in Key West,” I said. “In case I die, I mean. I want to be buried in the cemetery here, in one of those cool white concrete boxes, with an angel. A big angel.”

  “Oh, honestly, Jenny, where do you get these crazy ideas? And for heaven’s sake, take off that awful blouse,” Mama said. “I swear, it looks like somebody made it.”

  WE FELL INTO A ROUTINE. I’D GO FISHING WITH DADDY, and I’d shop or sun or watch the movie stars with Mama. This way, I got to have plenty of everybody’s undivided attention, though I kept wishing my parents would do more things together. Sometimes they did, though Daddy always looked like a man fulfilling a duty, even after Mama started wearing flowers in her hair.

  I loved those rare nights they went out without me. I’d swim in the pool or run errands for Mr. Rudy or smoke Mama’s cigarettes or hide in the shrubbery by the pool in order to keep up with several romances I had taken an interest in. Then, of course, I would have to do a lot of good deeds to make up for all that. Then I’d read East of Eden, which somebody had carelessly left by the pool (I had finished Bridey Murphy), and then I’d have to read my New Testament to make up for that. I was really busy, and was often completely exhausted by my efforts.

  I couldn’t tell whether or not the good deeds were working. My parents were endlessly cordial to each other now, but so far they had never slept in the same bed. I knew this for a fact. I checked their room every morning.

  So I doubled my efforts—buying more candles, cleaning more graves, using up all Mama’s Kleenex on Cary Grant’s hubcaps, donating a jar of her Noxzema to the Havana Madrid girls. But we seemed to have reached a stalemate. Entranced by the stars, Mama was becoming herself again. But would this ever be enough for Daddy? Could it be? I knew that Frank Sinatra still loved Ava Gardner right now, even though she was now in Spain living with a bullfighter. The bullfighter meant nothing to Frank. He was peanuts; he was toast. Frank would always love Ava.

  I prayed it would not be so for Daddy and Carroll Byrd.

  It was hard to stay mad at Daddy, however. His lawyerlike quality of paying close attention was flattering; he was winning me over again. I especially liked our fishing trips. Once we got up at four a.m. to drive up the Keys and go out with a one-eyed man named Captain Lewjack who gave me a mug of black coffee and a jelly glass of brandy and strapped me into a fighting chair and kept chanting, “C’mon, baby, c’mon, baby, hootchie-koo,” when I hooked a dolphin.

  “Not a dolphin!” I cried out at first, though Daddy and Captain Lewjack assured me it wasn’t that kind of dolphin but the other kind, a game fish. Still, the dolphin was so beautiful that it took my breath away when it leaped out of the water for the first time, its lovely colors like a rainbow in the sun. It turned iron gray the instant Captain Lewjack hit it on the head with a hammer after I pulled it in, with Daddy’s help.

  This was the same day Daddy caught a marlin after a three-hour struggle, and I still have the photograph that was taken of him and the marlin on the dock when we went back in: Daddy bare-chested and grinning from ear to ear, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, wearing a Panama hat. It is impossible to tell that he had a broken heart, or that anything at all was the matter with him.

  I have another photograph, of myself beside a giant jewfish which I hooked when we went out on Captain Tony’s party boat. This picture ran in the Key West newspaper, even though I didn’t actually catch the fish; it was brought up with block and tackle by several of Captain Tony’s crew members. It was the ugliest fish I had ever seen. In the picture, I’m nearly invisib
le behind somebody’s enormous sunglasses; the caption reads “Va. Miss Gets Big Jew.”

  Daddy and I were fools for fish. We also took the glass-bottom boat trip out to the reef, where we peered down into another world, another universe, with its softly waving sea fans and giant brain coral and gorgeous deadly fire coral and silly octopuses and squids with big round doll-baby eyes. Daddy took me to the old aquarium at Mallory Square, and later I went again and again by myself. I liked to touch the barracudas and turtles. I especially liked the sharks, and never tired of leaning way over their open pen to watch them glide by (constantly, endlessly, they could not be still), knowing that they would kill me if they could. They would love to kill me, and I loved to think about this. For a nickel, you could feed them, which counted as one good deed.

  What I did with Mama never varied. Shortly before nine o’clock every evening, just after dinner, we’d go into the lobby of the Blue Marlin and settle ourselves on a large rattan sofa, which she called “the davenport.”

  “’Lo, Miz Billie,” Hal, the skinny night clerk, would say, and Mama always said, “How are you, Hal?” as if she really cared. Now restored to something approaching her old self again, Mama had everybody at the motel eating out of her hand. Hal adored her. Everyone did.

  Mama carried a newspaper. I carried a magazine or a book. (Once I brought my New Testament, but Mama said, “Honestly, Jenny! Take that thing back to your room,” rolling her eyes, so I did.) We’d sit down ostentatiously on the davenport and begin to read. Right behind us stood a row of potted plants. Right behind them stood a table with an ashtray and a telephone on it, the only telephone at the Blue Marlin available for guests to use. An old armchair was next to the table.

  And every night, at exactly nine o’clock, here came Tony Curtis through the plate-glass doors. He nodded to Hal, then walked to the table, where he sat down and lifted the receiver and asked for a long-distance operator. Mama rattled her paper, reading. Sometimes there’d be a brief wait, during which Tony lit a cigarette, until Janet Leigh answered the phone in Hollywood, all the way across the continent.