Guests on Earth: A Novel

by Lee Smith

  “Rowena!” It was Mrs. Fitzgerald herself, rushing across the room. “Rowena, you won’t believe it!” she cried, as somewhat taken aback, Miss Malone stood to hug her. “She’s here, she’s here, she’s already here! Oh Rowena—they just called me from the hospital.”

  “That’s wonderful, Zelda.” Indeed, Miss Malone looked overjoyed herself, both for her favorite patient and because she and Karen were genuinely fond of children; they adored them, in fact, arranging games and activities for them at every staff picnic and event. I had always thought it a great pity that they would never have one of their own.

  “This is a new grandchild?” I ventured.

  Mrs. Fitzgerald turned a beaming face upon me, radiant as a spotlight, and suddenly I saw her old self pictured there, and remembered how beautiful she had been when I first saw her. “This is a brand-new little girl who has most recently arrived upon the earth, a very little girl with a very large name.”—now Mrs. Fitzgerald was hugging me, too—“Her name is Eleanor Lanahan, isn’t it clever of such a little girl to have such an important, serious name as Eleanor? To balance out the Lanahan, don’t you see, so now it’s a seesaw name, with equal weight, three syllables, on each side. A felicitous name, a noteworthy name. Names are very important, you know. Furthermore, Eleanor Lanahan has beautiful manners as well, having already invited me to pay her a visit in six weeks’ time.” Mrs. Fitzgerald was practically babbling, her face alive and glowing.

  “Congratulations,” I said sincerely. “This is wonderful news.”

  Mrs. Fitzgerald nodded vigorously. “She will be an angel in the world, I am making sure of that. These are for her, and for little Tim, too”—indicating the pictures with a sweeping gesture—“that they may know the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, and walk in godliness all the days of their lives, and dwell in His house forever.”

  “Why, what a lovely thing to do for them, such a thoughtful gift,” I heard myself say, while privately I thought that these paintings would terrify a child.

  “And they are for you, too, Patricia Pie-face!” Mrs. Fitzgerald announced suddenly, “for you were once my little girl, too, weren’t you?” She hugged me fiercely, terrifyingly, and then was gone.

  “I don’t have a clue what that was about,” I told Miss Malone honestly, in answer to her inquiring look. “Just nonsense.” Yet my voice caught in my throat.

  “Ah, nonsense,” she mused slowly. “Non-sense. Non-sense often contains the most sense, and the deepest truths of all. I’ve been listening very closely to my guests for many years, you know. “

  “Your guests?”

  She smiled. “Well. The patients. It has been a privilege.” Miss Malone made a little bow then, to what deity I didn’t know. “And none more so than that one—” She indicated the way Mrs. Fitzgerald had gone, then followed slowly after.

  I stayed alone to look at the paintings more closely.

  “The Deposition” struck me as especially horrible, with the dead Jesus being taken down from the cross, apparently, amid a plethora of unaffected naked ladies stacked about the canvas. Another woman appeared dead or at least unconscious in “Do Not Steal,” and an actual fight was featured in the foreground of “The Parable of the Vineyard.” Only “Adam and Eve” held any appeal for me, though still I would never let a child see it, for it was disturbing in another way, with both Adam and Eve naked and vulnerable in the spiky, scary garden featuring large cats with hooves and the huge, vertical snake. Somehow—perhaps because they looked like paper dolls—these two young unmarked people seemed like Zelda and Scott to me, back when they were young and alone together with the whole world laid out before them tempting and beautiful, yet dangerous, too, with apples on every tree. I closed my eyes and wished—or prayed, I can never tell the difference—for a better life for those precious little children, Tim and Eleanor Lanahan, and I hope that they have experienced it.

  Leaving, I turned off the lights and picked up a scrap of paper from the floor, which turned out to be part of a letter which Mrs. Fitzgerald must have been composing for Scottie, her daughter.

  On Photography

  Please send a photograph of little Eleanor Lanahan immediately, without fail, along with another of that handsome big boy Tim. Also it is well to impress him with a sense of responsibility for her even now, you know, for anything can happen to a girl, hence a big brother is a pearl beyond price, an edifice against disaster, which lurks everywhere.

  On Baby Food

  Do not buy the tinned baby food but boil up your own, whatever fruit or vegetables you have at hand until soft and mushy, then mush them up some more. Eschew salt! For salt is the enemy of the Liver. And children are like little puppies, you know, they will eat anything, so the responsibility is ours.

  It was beyond me to imagine Mrs. Fitzgerald ever making any baby food herself; I thought perhaps she had read such advice in a ladies’ magazine, and had appropriated it.

  Lacking the Cook

  On the topic of Many Little Meals: Do not scorn paper napkins and plates au contraire invest in a goodly score of these and plastic utensils as well. Lacking that one necessity, the Cook, the modern household must needs make do. A countertop of dirty little dishes disheartens all. This includes the returning husband.

  On Baby Talk

  Though baby talk may prove irresistible to grown-ups, do not indulge yourselves in it too much, as all children love to learn real words, actually preferring, for instance, the word BEAR to “poo-ba,” and BELL to “ding dong,” and EATING AT A RESTAURANT to “gogo yumyum,” and GRANDMOTHER to “Googy ” though Googy herself would never complain, and will happily answer to anything.

  On Yourself

  You cannot imagine the beauty of your own little self as a child, those fat apple cheeks and round eyes, nor the joy we took always in your very being which seems to me a miracle even now. I know there are bad times which you must remember, for bad times stick in the mind while good times pass as a summer day, but our love for you never wavered, like that steady green light at the end of the pier in Daddy’s book. For you completed us, you were always the best of us, oh how we loved you with all our hearts

  I smoothed out the sheet of wrinkled paper carefully and gave it back to Mrs. Fitzgerald the following day, though she scarcely glanced at it, sticking it into her notebook without comment.

  REMEMBER WHEN I told you that I had gone back to Graystone to pick up some music I had forgotten? The time I encountered Charles Winston pounding down our stairs? There is more—much more—to this part of the story.

  For that morning, Phoebe Dean had asked me, right out of the blue, if I knew anything about Mardi Gras, and whether it involved any particular sort of music. “The activities committee is planning a dance,” she’d said, “like we used to have, remember? I think it’s a great idea—it’ll get us all out of the winter doldrums. But the next holiday is Valentine’s Day which just makes a lot of people sad because they don’t have any romantic attachments right now, living here—and anyhow, Valentine’s Day is too soon. We’d never have time to get ready. So I looked at the calendar and what did I see coming right up? Mardi Gras, that’s what!” She slapped the table in her characteristic way. “So the dance is set for March tenth, and that’s our theme. If anything can pep us up around here this winter, that’ll be it. Now, I am hoping that the jazz group can perform—what do you think?”

  “You mean our jazz group?” I smiled to think of nervous little Louis Lagrande and red-faced Freddy. “Sure,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “Oh, good,” she said. “The biggest problem we’ve encountered is Dr. Bennett—you know how he is about money, or maybe you don’t, but he won’t spend a penny he doesn’t have to, and he says we can’t hire an orchestra. So our job, Evalina, will be to get hold of some typical Mardi Gras recordings to broadcast for the dancing, and perhaps some music for you to play as well—” She fixed me with her typical pop-eyed expectancy. “What do you say?”

  “Phoebe, do you h
ave any idea that I am actually from New Orleans?”

  “Go on!” Now she slapped her big thighs in astonishment.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I grew up there.” I did not tell her anything else. “So yes, I can definitely help you. The music is wonderful—jazz, blues, Dixieland band, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong . . . You can get hold of plenty of recordings from people right around here, I’ll bet—for instance, Richard Overholser has got a huge collection of jazz. And I’ve already got some sheet music—” I had quite a lot of it, actually, which I had purchased at a local estate sale, tipped off by Mrs. Hodges.

  “So you could play something suitable then, before the program begins?”

  “Oh honey,” I said, “I can even play ragtime!” I was surprised by the sudden, deep excitement welling up inside me. “And we can start things off with a Mardi Gras parade. That’s the tradition, you know.”

  Phoebe had clapped her hands, setting off a flurry of activity. As a result, ballroom dancing and parade marching were now being offered for Exercise in the gymnasium, along with the regular calisthenics. Word came that people were really enjoying it. It was funny to hear the strains of “When the Saints Come Marching In” or “Carnival Time” come wafting out from the big old building, over the snow.

  NOW THAT I was indispensable—the Mardi Gras expert—I found myself attending my second committee meeting in the Art Room, where soon, Mardi Gras masks would be made. Miss Malone was showing us the big silly feathers and the tubes of glitter that had already come in. The only item that would be entirely “store-bought” would be the strands of Mardi Gras beads, which I had assured them all that we must have. No substitutes!

  “Evalina, you’ll be glad to know that they’re already on the way,” Miss Malone announced. “And we ordered tons of them because they’re so incredibly cheap, too. I’m amazed!” For Dr. Bennett’s budget had turned out to be as draconian as feared, with no provision for live music at all except for such talent as we could summon up from our own midst. We were still hoping that Mrs. Carroll would be back in time, but oh, how I longed for Nina Simone, long gone, the toast of Europe. She would have been perfect.

  “Anything else we need to take up today?” Phoebe Dean asked. A little late-afternoon silence descended upon our committee, there in the corner of the Art Room: Miss Malone, myself, Phoebe Dean, Mrs. Morris, and old Mr. Pugh, who had the final word on all such parties, outings, and public events. Beyond the round table where we sat, several of Miss Malone’s “guests” continued their work, including a small group who were piecing a quilt together, and Mrs. Fitzgerald at her easel, utterly absorbed, as usual. “All right then, thank you very much!” Phoebe Dean clapped her hands a final time and stood up. Now that I was more staff than patient, I realized that many of the Highland activities were held as much for the staff as for the patients.

  I still don’t know what made me think of it. But as I put on my coat, I had a sudden inspiration.

  “Mrs. Fitzgerald,” I called out softly to her. “Mrs. Fitzgerald?”

  She looked up, emerging from whatever state or vision produced those paintings. She focused upon me. “Oh, Patricia,” she said. She smiled.

  “Actually, this is Evalina—” Mr. Pugh began.

  “It’s all right, Harry.” Miss Malone cut him off. “That’s just a nickname. They’re old friends.”

  I went over to stand in front of her easel. “We are going to have a dance,” I said, “like the dance we had before, with the nursery rhyme theme, don’t you remember? When you were Mary, Mary, and choreographed the performance with all the flowers—”

  “The Waltz of the Flowers,” she said immediately. “From the Nutcracker.” She put her brush down.

  “Exactly,” I said. “You choreographed the whole thing, and you had a garden full of dancing flowers, but you were the prima ballerina. The star.”

  “That was a long time ago,” she murmured, looking down now.

  Afraid that I was losing her, I came a bit closer. “Now it’s time for another dance,” I said. “For a Mardi Gras party. And we need you to choreograph it. What do you say?”

  She twisted her hands in her lap, still looking down, saying nothing.

  “Nobody else can do it,” I said.

  “Oh no,” she murmured, shaking her head. “It’s too late, too late, my flowers are dead, and all those lovely boys gone off to war.”

  “Evalina.” Miss Malone put a restraining hand on my arm.

  I knew that Mrs. Fitzgerald was remembering the Beauty Ball back in Montgomery when she was sixteen, when she met Mr. Fitzgerald, then a soldier, the beginning of everything. “Please,” I said.

  “No, no, no, no, no . . .” Mrs. Fitzgerald started saying until it was a chant, swinging her bowed head back and forth like a metronome.

  I felt terrible.

  Miss Malone was drawing me gently away when Jinx Feeney popped up suddenly out of nowhere, as was her wont.

  “Oh, come on!” she cried. Her nasal voice sliced into the quiet afternoon and left it in pieces on the floor. “Do it! Do it for me! I want to be in the dance soooo much. They told me there would be parties, and dances here—you told me!” She pointed at me. “But you just lied—they haven’t had a one yet. Please do it! I’m a great dancer, I swear. You want to see the jitterbug? Look at this!” Jinx started throwing her skinny little body into contortions right there in the Art Room. “Oo Poo Pa Doo!” she sang at the top of her lungs.

  Mrs. Fitzgerald was looking at her now. We were all looking at her.

  “Wanna see the Charleston?” she cried, dropping down to do something very fast and complicated with her knees.

  “Who are you?” Mrs. Fitzgerald asked.

  “I’m Jinx, Zelda”—never even slowing down.

  “But my name is Zelda, too.”

  “Well, mine’s not. I’m Jinx! What about the Black Bottom?” She broke into a bump and grind that was as funny as it was lewd.

  I started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  “Or the Hootchie Cootchie?” This was even worse.

  Now Mrs. Fitzgerald was laughing, too. “Oh, we can’t do that,” she said. “We’d never get away with it! It will have to be something more dignified—fun, you understand, but more dignified, more appropriate—” She turned to me. “Ponchielli,” she said.

  “What?” I was taken aback.

  “The air from La Giaconda, of course!” Mrs. Fitzgerald stood up and put her paint-splattered hands on her hips in a purposeful way. “ ‘The Dance of the Hours,’ it’s quite short. I shall begin immediately.” She grabbed up the black notebook.

  “Oh, goody, I am soooo glad, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Jinx combined her little-girl quality with a final bump and grind as she exited the Art Room, soon followed by Mrs. Fitzgerald, her color heightened, mumbling to herself.

  “Well, girls, you’ve certainly gone and done it now,” Mr. Pugh said.

  “ ‘The Dance of the Hours’ is what Mrs. Fitzgerald performed on the night she met Mr. Fitzgerald,” I told them, “at the Beauty Ball in Montgomery, when they were young.”

  “Jinx may remind her of the girl she was then, all those years ago. Zelda was pretty wild herself, you know.” Mrs. Morris smiled.

  “That Jinx is a real force, isn’t she?” Mr. Pugh said.

  “She’s terrifying—and wonderful,” said Dr. Schwartz. “I have absolutely no idea how things will turn out for her. She could do anything.”

  “And she probably will,” Miss Malone agreed. “But Jinx is just biding her time with us. My real concern is for Zelda, of course. This supposed Mardi Gras dance will take place only a few days before she is scheduled to go New York to visit her daughter’s family and meet that new grandchild. I hope all the excitement won’t derail her.”

  “I believe—I hope—it will be therapeutic,” Dr. Schwartz said.

  “Can you play that music?” Phoebe asked me.

  In the back of my mind I heard Mrs. Carroll saying, s
o long ago, Evalina can do anything. “Of course,” I said.

  Thus it was decided.

  Before heading back to Graystone, I ran up to the practice room for my things and found the bright spray of shiny green leaves and waxy white berries that had been placed across my keyboard. I knew what this meant. Everything else—Mrs. Fitzgerald, Jinx, the Mardi Gras dance—went completely out of my head. Stuffing all the day’s papers into the canvas pack I had started carrying, I wound an extra muffler around my neck and went out the side door, which looked down the hill toward the old well where Pan sat whittling, his dog at his feet. He vanished immediately. After a decorous pause, I set off down that walk myself, following him into the trees, where I knew he would be waiting.

  CHAPTER 13

  FREDDY STARTED TALKING ABOUT Valentines’s Day at least two weeks before it arrived. “You’ll need a new dress,” he had announced. “Something special, something fancy.”

  “Like what?’ I was amused.

  “Ohhh—silk!” he cried. “Or lace. Or something.”

  “Can it be black?” I asked, for that one black dress, off the shoulder yet suitable for concerts, still comprised my entire dress-up wardrobe, and I had no money to buy another.

  Freddy considered this. “I guess. But we’re going to a dinner dance at a really fancy place,” he blurted out finally.

  “The Grove Park?”

  Freddy grinned triumphantly. “Not the Grove Park!” he said. “Anybody might see us at the Grove Park! Besides, this is Valentine’s Day. I want to take you someplace else, someplace glamorous, someplace you’ve never been before. We’ll need to leave here by three o’clock so we’ll have plenty of time to explore before dinner. It’s a four-course dinner,” he added, “so don’t eat any lunch that afternoon. We want to get our money’s worth.”

  I had to smile at this typical remark, so Midwestern, so, well, Freddy-ish. Still, I couldn’t even imagine how much this evening must be costing him. “You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going, then?”