News of the Spirit

by Lee Smith

  “Hello, darling,” Tony said.

  Mama sighed. I sighed. We kept on reading.

  Tony talked about what had happened on the set that day; he referred to Cary Grant as a fine fellow. Then he’d ask about the kids, and about the rest of the family, and about their friends. They seemed to have a lot of friends. Sometimes they’d talk about really boring things, such as money. Janet Leigh always had a lot to say, and Tony chuckled intimately into the phone and smoked another cigarette while he listened to her. Then he always told her how much he missed her. At this point, Mama and I would take deep breaths and straighten up: here came the moment we were waiting for.

  First Tony said, “I love you,” and then listened, while (we guessed) Janet Leigh said, “I love you,” back.

  Then he said, “God bless you, darling,” and hung up.

  By then Mama was breathing so hard she could barely hold her paper, and I felt just as I had felt in the Bomb Shelter when Harlan Boyd stuck his tongue in my mouth. Mama and I were so rattled that we didn’t even notice when Tony Curtis strode back through the lobby and out the door. “Thanks, Hal,” he’d say, giving Hal a mock salute. Tony Curtis was so cute. I even thought old bucktoothed Hal was cute, by then. I thought everybody was cute.

  Romance was in the very air here—in the lush bright flowers, the seductive vines, the lazy twirling overhead fans, the snatches of song on the soft, soft breeze. Surely Mama and Daddy would catch it somehow. Surely they would fall in love again.

  I had everything riding on this.

  Then came the big night—when Tony Curtis had just said, “God bless you, darling,” and Mama and I were still in a fever state—the night that Tony Curtis paused before going out the door and then turned on his heel in a military way (his role was that of Navy Lieutenant Nick Holden) and walked to the davenport, right up to Mama and me. He was wearing white shorts and a red knit shirt, I will never forget. He cleared his throat. “Ladies?” he said.

  Mama and I went on reading as though our lives depended on it.

  “Ladies?” Tony Curtis said again.

  I looked up into those famous blue eyes and suddenly had to pee.

  Mama folded her newspaper and stuck out her hand. “I’m Billie Dale, from Virginia,” she said, “and this is my daughter Jenny.”

  Tony Curtis shook Mama’s hand, bowing slightly from the waist, and then took mine. “So pleased to meet you,” he said. He was smiling. “From Virginia,” he repeated. “A beautiful state.”

  “Yes, it is,” Mama said.

  “Are you in Key West on business or pleasure?” Tony Curtis asked.

  “Oh, it’s just a vacation,” Mama said.

  “Actually, my parents are trying to patch up their marriage,” I blurted out. All of a sudden I was determined to spill the beans, to tell Tony Curtis the whole thing. He had such a good marriage himself that maybe he could fix up Mama and Daddy’s, give them some good Hollywood advice—a hot tip from the stars.

  “Jenny, don’t you dare!” Mama shrieked.

  Tony Curtis looked very surprised. “Well,” he said, inching back, “I was going to say, if you’ve got the time, and if you’re interested, we’ll be shooting crowd scenes for the next two days, and we need extras. Your daughter”—he rolled those big blue eyes at me—“might get a kick out of being in the movie.”

  I threw my book on the floor and started jumping up and down. “In the movie? I’d love to be in the movie!”

  Behind the desk, Hal started laughing.

  “It’s a deal, then,” Tony Curtis said to Mama. “You and your husband can be in it, too, ma’am, if you want to see what it’s all about. Just show up at the Navy dock tomorrow morning at nine. We need a big civilian crowd to wave hello at the submarine when it comes into the port.”

  “All right,” Mama said. You could barely hear her.

  Tony Curtis left for good then, waving to me from the door before he spun militarily on his heel and vanished into the shrubbery. I gathered up his cigarette butts from the ashtray, for my collection.

  “Maybe you’ll be discovered.” Hal winked at me.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” Mama said. “Don’t give her any ideas.”

  But I already had ideas. Why not? Jean Seberg, the daughter of an Iowa druggist, had been picked from eighteen thousand hopefuls to be Joan of Arc.

  “Anyway, who knows?” Mama flung back over her shoulder to Hal. “Maybe I’ll be discovered!”

  I RAN ALL THE WAY TO OUR ROOMS, MAMA FOLLOWING. Daddy sat in one of the wicker armchairs, reading in a yellow pool of light from the Chinese lamp with the tassels. The rest of the room was dark. A drink sat sweating on the glass table beside him. Overhead, in the darkness, the fan went around and around, making a whispery noise like wind in the fields at home.

  “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Guess what? You’ll never believe it! We get to be in the movie!” I stood panting just inside the door.

  Daddy looked up at me very slowly then, as if he were coming back from somewhere far away, as if I were speaking a foreign language. In the light from the Chinese lamp, his face looked haunted, lined, and old; his eyes were bleak and dark in their deep sockets. My heart went down to my feet. I had caught Daddy out, surprised him. This was the way he really felt, and all the fishing trips and good deeds in the world could never change it.

  “What is it, Jenny?” he said.

  I had to say it, to blunder on. “All of us—you and Mama and me—get to be in the movie tomorrow if we go down to the docks. They need extras. Tony Curtis said.”

  Daddy looked at me. I realized that the last thing in the world he’d ever want to do was be in a movie. He put a piece of paper in the book to mark his place, and put the book on the table.

  “Come on, Daddy, please can we do it?”

  A gray smile came and went at the sides of his mouth. “Well, honey, of course you and your mother can go down there—”

  In the middle of that sentence, I felt his attention shift away from me, and I realized he was speaking now to Mama, who must have come in behind me as he spoke. “—but I believe I’ll pass on it.”

  “John—” Mama was still breathless from her climb up the stairs. “John, come on, this is the chance of a lifetime.”

  “Mr. Kinney has sent me some figures I have to look over in the morning.” Daddy’s face was gray, his long cheeks shadowy and hollow.

  Of course. How could he do it? I thought. How could he? A man who voted for Adlai Stevenson and loved Carroll Byrd? A man whose own father had killed himself? Of course he couldn’t do it.

  Behind me, Mama started to cry. I heard her ragged breathing and those snuffly sounds she always made. Get a grip! I wanted to scream at her. Didn’t she understand him at all? Didn’t she understand anything?

  Daddy did not get up from the chair. “Jenny, go on to bed,” he told me. “It’s late. Go on, so you can be in the movie in the morning.”

  I spun around, pushing Mama aside. “I hate you!” I screamed from the balcony. “I hate you both!” I tore off into the dark and ran all the way to the cemetery, where I threw myself down on somebody’s grave, and cried and cried and cried. The concrete was still warm from the sun; I could feel its heat down the length of my body. It felt strange, good. Finally I rolled over on my back and looked at the starry bowl of the sky. I took a deep breath. There was a full moon coming up, so I could see the white graves in their orderly rows, the palms, the urns, and all the angels. I would never be an angel. I knew that now. Mama was an angel, and Rayette was an angel, but I would never be one, not in a million years, no matter how many good deeds I did. I was suddenly sick of good deeds, and vowed never to do another one. They hadn’t worked, anyway. Nothing had worked, and nothing was ever going to work. Mama and Daddy would never patch up their marriage. They would never get back together.

  I would be an orphan, like Jane Eyre. I would wander alone in the world, doing bad deeds. I would become a stripper. A prostitute. A love slave. Who cared? Not Jesus, obv
iously, who hadn’t done a damn thing for me in spite of all my efforts. I probably didn’t even believe in Him, as a matter of fact. He was too damn picky. Too hard to please.

  I lay on my back on top of a dead person, thinking this stuff.

  Bats swooped around overhead. A cat stole up to rub against my drooping arm, and I petted it till it purred. The longer I stayed there, the brighter the moonlight grew, and the more I could see. I could see everything.

  It was after midnight when I got back to the Blue Marlin, where I found Mama and Daddy and Mr. Rudy and a young Cuban policeman all sitting around in room 209 waiting for me. They jumped up when I came in.

  “Oh, thank goodness! Oh, thank God!” Mama rushed over to smother me in tears and Chanel No. 5.

  Daddy said, “I guess we won’t be needing your services after all,” and shook hands with the young Cuban policeman, who left looking disgusted. Mr. Rudy clicked his tongue disapprovingly at me before he slipped out the door, too.

  “I’m sorry,” I started, though I wasn’t, but Daddy put his finger to my lips. “Hush, Jenny. It’s all right. Just go to bed now, okay? It’s late. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

  BUT IN THE MORNING THERE WAS NO TIME TO TALK. Mama woke me by shaking my shoulders and saying, “Jenny! Jenny! Come on, get up! We’re going to be in the movie! Wake up, honey, you’ll want to wash your hair—” I opened my eyes to find her sitting on the edge of my bed looking as beautiful as any movie star, hair fixed just so, fire-engine-red lips smiling. She wore a fresh dose of perfume and a full-skirted red-flowered dress.

  “You look beautiful, Mama,” I said.

  “Come on, Jenny, hurry.” Daddy stood behind her. He was dressed for the movie, too, in a clean white shirt and khaki pants. I didn’t ask any questions. I jumped up and took a shower and put on my middy-blouse outfit and some of Mama’s dusting powder. I parted my hair and combed it carefully, and made spit curls over my ears. Then I put on a whole lot of Mama’s makeup, turning the corners of my eyes into silver points like shark fins, like angel wings. Mama and Daddy looked at each other but did not say a thing about my makeup.

  They grabbed my hands and we set off down the street along with the crowd. People poured out of motels and shops and restaurants—tourists, tramps, artists, merchants and shopgirls and women wiping their hands on their aprons. Even the iguana man fell in, with his big lizard circling his shoulders. It was a holiday. “Buenos días, Jenny,” called Luisa, mincing along in yellow short shorts and high heels. Sleepy-eyed Rosa waved. Mama’s eyebrows made little arches of surprise. She jerked my hand. “Jenny, who are those girls?” But I didn’t have to answer, because somebody started singing: “You had a wife and forty-nine kids, but you left, you left, you left, right, left,” and everybody took it up. We became a parade.

  We trooped to the Navy yard and onto the docks, bursting into a spontaneous cheer at the sight of the pink submarine that steamed back and forth in the harbor, decks covered with actors. I had never seen it under way before. Against that bright blue water, the pink submarine was miraculous. Mama squeezed my hand. Pelicans and gulls wheeled overhead. Camera crews were everywhere: on a launch in the water, on an official-looking truck at the dock, on top of a warehouse. A man with a beard and a bullhorn was lifted high above us on a crane.

  “Okay!” His amplified voice rang out. “Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! We appreciate your participation here today! Now, all you have to do is cheer—” At this point, we drowned him out. He had to wave his arms back and forth to restore order. “Good! Very good! All you have to do is cheer—just like that—when the sub comes up to the dock. That’s it! Got it?”

  We cheered again. My throat was getting sore already, and it didn’t even count yet.

  “Okay! Now save it. Don’t do it until I give you the sign. Then you start, and be sure to wave hello. These guys have been out in the Philippines winning a war for you, so you’re glad to see them, right? Okay?”

  I strained to see Tony Curtis on the deck of the submarine, but it was still too far away. The actors looked like ants. The director held his bullhorn up against the sky, then brought it down. Great puffs of white smoke shot out of the smokestacks as the pink sub headed toward shore, toward us, toward home. I started crying and couldn’t stop. The crowd went wild. I could hear Mama’s high voice, Daddy’s piercing whistle. My makeup was running but I didn’t care. I wiped silvery tears off my chin and kept on crying. It was the happiest moment of my life. We waved and cheered until the pink submarine was at the dock, and Tony Curtis looked straight at me, I swear he did, and winked.

  SO I DID IT. I PULLED IT OFF. WE STAYED IN KEY WEST for an other week, and every day Daddy softened up a bit more, relaxing into his old self again. I could see it happening. My parents paid more and more attention to each other, less to me. When the maid came to their room in the mornings, she had only one bed to make up. I was free to roam all over town by myself, free to get my ears pierced by the oldest of the Cuban children who lived over the grocery—an act which served to unite Mama and Daddy even more, against me: “Honestly, Jenny, nice girls in Virginia don’t have pierced ears! Only maids have pierced ears, don’t you know anything?” Mama wailed, clutching Daddy’s hand for support. They would be together for twenty more years.

  Though this ought to be the end of the story, it’s not. One more thing happened. One more thing is always happening, isn’t it? This is the reason I have found life to be harder than fiction, where you can make it all work out to suit you and put The End wherever you please. But back to the story.

  A few days before we left for home, Caroline and Tom flew down to Key West for a weekend visit, bringing their brand-new baby (Thomas Kraft Burlington, Jr.—then called Tom-Tom) with them. I couldn’t wait to see Tom Burlington again, especially now that I had gotten such a nice tan and a new haircut and had my ears pierced and did not have to be good anymore. I had grown up, I felt. I had been tongue-kissed, and lived among stars.

  I was ready for him.

  But when they arrived, Tom wouldn’t pay a bit of attention to me, no more than Mason ever had. All he would do was wait on Caroline hand and foot, and make goo-goo eyes at his stupid little pointy-headed baby. It made me sick! Tom-Tom had colic, and spit up his milk, and cried all the time. I was dying to show Tom around Key West (I had not specifically invited Caroline), which I couldn’t do until Tom-Tom fell asleep, which took forever. But finally he lay curled on his stomach in a little red ball, oohed and aahed over by Mama, and Tom stood up.

  “Come on, honey,” he said to Caroline. “Let’s let Jenny give us this grand tour we’ve been hearing so much about.”

  I held my breath, but Caroline shook her head. “No, honey, you go on. I’ll just catch a few winks myself, I think. I’m really tired.”

  Tom looked doubtful, but she squeezed his hand. “Go on, silly,” she said, and he did.

  I showed him the cemetery first, but he seemed preoccupied, and didn’t even laugh at the funny tombstone that read “I Told You I Was Sick.” Instead he looked sweaty and pale, worried. “I ought to go back,” he said.

  “No, don’t!” I was howling. “Come on. You’ve got to come down to the docks for the sunset. I want to show you the sharks and the iguana man.”

  Tom looked uncomfortable now. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said, “when Caroline can come, too.”

  We stood there awkwardly among the tombs and angels, which I loved, while—for the second time in Tom’s presence—I started crying uncontrollably. I don’t know what I had thought—that he would say a poem to me in the graveyard, perhaps, something about love and death, or undying love…about his undying love for me. Now I knew I was a fool—an idiot.

  I turned and took off running through the cemetery without another word.

  “Hey!” Tom yelled behind me. “Jenny! Stop!”

  But I wouldn’t have stopped for anything. I ran like the wind, straight through the cemetery and out the gate and into the carnival bustle
of late afternoon, all the way down Duval Street to the Havana Madrid, where I nearly crashed into Luisa’s billboard. Here I stopped short, panting hard. The door to the bar stood wide open, dark and inviting.

  I walked in.

  It took a while for my eyes to adjust, but then I could see fine. It was plenty light where the sailors sat with their beers, looking up at a girl who walked the long shiny bar wearing nothing but pasties and a G-string, stopping from time to time to dangle her breasts in their faces. She was a big-legged Cuban girl, nobody I had ever seen before. While I watched, she reached out and grabbed a sailor’s hat and rubbed it between her legs while he turned bright red and started grabbing for it. “Gimme that!” he said. “Give it back!” No older-looking than Harlan Boyd, he was mortified. Everybody was laughing at him when the girl smacked the hat back on his head and swayed off down the long bar and exited. I peered at the girls and men sitting at the tables all around the sawdust floor, looking for Rosa and Luisa, but I didn’t see them. The unimaginable corners of the cavernous room were dark and vast.

  “Are you lost, Miss?” a tall black man at my elbow asked.

  “I just came in for a drink,” I said, and went over to the bar and climbed up on a wooden stool before he could stop me. Two men sitting to my left elbowed each other, grinning at me. They were old and fat. I grinned back. “Well, hello there, honey,” one of them said. A skinny redhead sashayed down the bar in a top-hat-and-tails outfit, then came back without the tails.

  I knew exactly what Jesus would think of this place, but since he didn’t exist anyway, I ordered a Coke from the flat-chested blond bartender, who was wearing a sort of corset.

  “Make that a rum and Coke for the little lady,” the man said, and the bartender raised an eyebrow at him but brought it. I took a big drink. The man scooted his stool closer to mine. He touched my knee lightly, with one finger.