“At this hour?” he says, fishing for more information.
“If you must know, I need my caddy clothes,” I reply, making myself sound like a parent. “I’ve got to wash them, or people’ll start complaining that I smell like a dirty gym sock.”
What I don’t tell Doug is that the next time I run into Angela, I don’t want to smell like a dirty gym sock. I want to be—like Walt Whitman grass—a scented gift.
We turn the corner and come smack up against a crowd of about a hundred people standing in the street outside the clubhouse. Doug opens his mouth and lets out an incredulous “Whoa.” How is it possible that Doug hasn’t heard a single story about the Blessed Virgin Mary’s appearance in Jupiter? Everyone in town has been talking about it nonstop, and there have been reports on the TV and pictures in all the local papers. The people are holding candles, singing songs, and swaying back and forth like the swell of the sea against a breakwater. It’s an impressive sight. Doug is at a loss; he can’t figure out what’s going on. As I bring him up to speed, I feel like a tour guide.
“I mean, where’ve you been?” I ask him as I wrap up the tour.
“Well, I dunno. I work all day with my head in the sand, so I miss a lot.”
Then, as though a tiny lightbulb has clicked on above his big fat head, he sits up straight and cries out loud, “Hey, that’s why you wanted to Google the Virgin Mary the other day!”
Ding. He’s figured it out. A prize for the guy behind the wheel.
The just-dusk sky over the clubhouse is losing light fast and giving way to the deep blue-black of night. A star comes out, and as Doug and I are walking through the crowd toward the clubhouse, I look up at the first star I see and think about making a stupid, kid wish that begins with, Star light, star bright, and ends with Angela tonight. But before I can utter a single word—
“Hey, stud muffin.”
I turned around, and there she is, standing in front of me, out of breath, hair pulled back, looking like the answer to a prayer.
“What’re you doing?”
“Me?” I ask, sounding like a third grader who’s been caught outside his classroom without a pass. “I was just about to make a wish on that star up there.”
“Really?” she asks, gazing up into the night sky. “Y’know, some of those stars don’t exist anymore. Something about the speed of light. We’re just seeing the left-behind light. You could be looking up there and wishing at nothing.”
Then she surprises me by taking a step closer and making a big show of sniffing my shirt.
“You’ve been to Dairy Queen!” she announces.
I grab hold of her arms before she can pull away and take a quick whiff of her. It seems only fair. She smells like a just-baked something, a stack of clean towels, a new day.
“You smell amazing,” I say to her, and I mean it.
“So is it true?” she asks, completely ignoring what I had intended as a compliment. “Have you been to Dairy Queen?”
“My grandmother’s missing,” I tell her, letting go of her arms. “We’ve been looking for her. Sometimes she hangs there. She’s big on their Blizzards.”
“Yeah,” says Angela, adjusting the front of her blouse. “Blizzards are totally cool.”
I’m about to ask her if maybe she’d like to go with me to the Dairy Queen sometime when I notice Doug staring at us. He ahems, but I ignore him and pretend that he’s just a guy who’s hanging too close and creeping me out.
“I oughta go,” I say to Angela, and I begin to slowly inch away from her.
“You always have to go,” she says. “Why is that?”
Before I can think of what to say, Doug jumps in, trying to block my game.
“Well, well,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “You didn’t mention you had a girlfriend.” He emphasizes the word girlfriend by drawing it out and making it go on for about a week. Even after he’s finished saying it, the word continues to echo in my ears. I hate him.
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Angela says. “I mean, we just met today. Give it time.”
Doug and Angela are both looking at me, but their expressions couldn’t be more different. His is all wrong. Hers is all right.
“Oh. Wait,” says Angela as she looks past me and into the crowd. “Hey, guys! Over here!”
The next thing I know, a guy and a girl about my age are standing next to her. I’m sure they aren’t from Jupiter. It’s not just that they each have their own particular style (Goth Boy and Beyoncé-on-a-Budget), it’s more that they appear to be visitors from outer space, each visiting from his or her own personal planet or galaxy. Where I live (planet Earth), never in a million years would these three people be hanging out together. It would invite too many questions—the main one being: “What do these people have in common?”
“So this is us,” Angela says, looking at her misfit duo. “We’re the club. Guys, this is Alex. The one I was telling you about.”
“Alex?” Doug asks. His eyebrows shoot up and stay that way. He stares at me as though maybe I am not his own son. “Well, Alex has got to get going.”
“My grandmother,” I say by way of an explanation. But then I yank myself free from Doug’s paws and add, “I don’t suppose any of you’ve seen an old woman with dyed black hair and a flower-print dress?”
“We could help you look,” Angela suggests.
I tell Doug that it wouldn’t hurt to give the place the once-over, and as soon as he agrees I suggest splitting up as a way of covering more ground. Then, in a desperate attempt to get rid of him, I say, “You’ll get around better on your own anyway.”
“Meet me by the car in an hour,” he tells me, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. He holds up his cell phone and says, “Call if you find her.”
When Doug is just a head bobbing above the crowd, he turns and calls to me, but he’s too far away, so I just wave and nod as though we’re cool.
“Okay,” says Angela, taking control of the situation. “I guess I should introduce you to everyone.”
First up is the tall, thin black girl who looks like Beyoncé without the bling, big hair, and the heavy lighting. Her skin is flawless, and her eyes are so big and keen they seem to be taking in the whole world at once and then shooting it back at you twice the size. Whenever she smiles (which is often), she makes it seem as though she really has something to smile about.
“I’m Desirée,” she says, giving her left hip a quick twist and her right shoulder a sudden thrust, and then for her finale, she gives me a hard hug around my middle. It’s a move I never would’ve been able to manage without hurting myself, almost gymnastic.
“So is Desirée your real name?” I ask her as I gently pull away from her. “Your true name?”
“Of course it is,” she replies, blinking her big green eyes at me. “What else would it be?”
I turn to look at Angela, hoping that she might jump in and explain the thing about true names versus real names, but she just shrugs and directs her gaze toward the night sky as if she doesn’t have a clue what I’m thinking. She then turns her attention to Goth Boy. But Goth Boy isn’t that quick to pick up his cue. He just stands there in his floppy bell-bottoms, swimming in his oversize black T-shirt that spells out so NOT A BIG DEAL in large white letters. He looks at me from behind a tangle of dyed black hair that hangs down over a pair of oversize sunglasses with white frames. Even through the shades I can see he’s wearing eye makeup, but it reads more ghoulish than girlish.
“He won’t bite,” Angela says, though I can’t tell if she’s referring to me or to Goth Boy. In either case, both he and I give our chins a quick flick, and we do the “Hey, man” greeting.
“Crispy,” he mumbles into his chest.
I assume this is his name. But it has to be made up, because what parents in their right mind would give a kid a name like Crispy?
There’s a pause, and I can tell that it’s my turn to say my name. Maybe this is how it works; maybe this is a test, my initiation into
the club. I’ve been assigned a name and now in order to belong all I have to do is say it, own it, believe it, be it.
“Hey,” I say, offering my hand to Crispy. “I’m Alex.”
The Apparition
As I watch Angela maneuver through the crowd, I can’t help noticing that she’s looking good in her tight green shorts. I feel the definite, deep-down stirrings of possibility, and I think, Here’s a club I could join.
Crispy catches me checking out Angela’s ass. He groans, gives his head a slow shake, and mutters, “No way, José.” He then looks away as though my actual story is lost somewhere in the stand of distant scrub pines. Is it my fault that I can suddenly imagine a bright and shiny life in which Angela and I have hooked up and we are living some modern version of happily ever after? Maybe I’m just telling myself a story, but I like the story and I want to believe in it—a car, the open highway, her and me: New York, here we come.
“And your grandmother’s been missing for how long?” Angela asks, tossing the words at me over her shoulder.
“A few hours,” I reply. “But she can get kind of disoriented. She forgets. She’s got Alzheimer’s.”
As we pass in front of the clubhouse, Jack Felder is standing in front of the plate-glass window. He’s got a phone pressed to his ear and he’s obviously upset because his mouth is going a mile a minute and there’s a vein sticking out from his neck like he’s being strangled. When he spots me just below the window, he flips the phone shut and starts tapping on the window and gesturing at me like a maniac. He’s even standing on his tiptoes to make his point—and his point is that he wants me.
“Me?” I mouth and point to myself.
“Now!” he mouths back at me through the glass.
I give him an excited wave and pretend that I’m too busy now but will definitely get back to him—later. He starts gesticulating wildly again, yelling at the glass.
“So, you famous around here?” Desirée asks me once we’re beyond Felder’s sight lines.
“I work the grounds as a caddy,” I explain, and she looks at me like I’d just hit a hole in one.
“For real?” she says. “I never met a caddy in my life. Must be so cool.”
Cool? I’m not so sure. But on a night like this, when the moon is up and it’s spreading a carpet of light along the entire length of the third fairway, the place is beautiful and I’m happy to be a part of it. The grain of the grass is visible, like a close-cropped head of hair combed and sheening silvery white. The air is warm and heavy, carrying with it a smell so sweet I’d swear I was in a department store. I can hear the tiki-tiki-thwack of the water system doing its nighttime thing out there in the distance.
“Marie!” we call out in unison. “Marie!”
“Is she religious, your grandmother?” Angela asks me. “Because maybe she was drawn to this place. A lot of people are these days. Miracles and all. Maybe she broke through security and found her way to the Virgin Mary.”
“She used to go to church,” I tell her. “Methodist, I think. But then I guess she forgot about religion. Along with everything else.”
“Methodists don’t believe in the BVM,” Crispy reminded us.
“Does she remember you?” Angela asks me.
“Most of the time.”
Up ahead the area is cordoned off with yellow police tape that says CAUTION: DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE over and over in big black letters. On the far side of the tape, the tree with the image of the Blessed Virgin is doing its thing in the moonlight, unaware of how it’s upsetting Jack Felder and the Jupiter community; it just sits there as oblivious as Doug after a beer and two tokes on a Saturday night. There isn’t a soul in sight, so I offer my posse the opportunity to sneak under the CAUTION tape and pay their respects to the BVM. In response, they give me various versions of a shrug and say that they’ve been there, done that.
“My mom and I have been to so many sites,” Desirée informs me. “She’s totally hooked now. Which is cool with me, because it gets us traveling. We meet people and stuff. But this site is not so great. I mean, from what I heard, you have to squint hard at the tree to see the Virgin Mary.”
“Still,” Angela says. “For me, it’s better than being stuck in Tucson. Because lemme tell you, in Tucson, no matter how hard you squint, you can’t see a thing.”
“This is my third spot,” says Crispy. “The last one was Stone Mountain, Georgia, earlier this summer. My mom and I were there for almost a month. That was cool.”
“Weren’t you just in Stone Mountain?” Desirée asks Angela.
“Yeah,” she replies, not looking at Crispy. “This one is number six for my mother and me. Texas, Ohio, two places in Georgia, Tennessee, now Florida.”
“For a virgin,” I remark, “she gets around.”
“Me, too,” says Desirée.
Angela kneels down to pet the trim surface of the second putting green. I can see her thinking with the palm of her hand, letting the grass tickle its way into her. She tilts her head, and for a second I think she’s going to recite the grass poem again, but then she looks at me and says, “How come this grass is so soft?”
“So the ball can roll easily into the cup,” I tell her. “They keep the grass on the putting greens manicured within an inch of its life.”
“More like within a half an inch,” Crispy adds as he lowers himself to the ground and stretches out.
Each of us claims a little area. Crispy falls back and stares up at the stars even though he’s still wearing his white-frame sunglasses, and even though some of the stars don’t exist anymore.
“That’s Orion,” he says, pointing to the constellation glittering in the heavens overhead.
Desirée examines the chips in her bright pink toe polish while humming a tune. Angela sits cross-legged and coolly explains to me that none of them believe in the Virgin Mary. Not really. Not in the way their mothers do. She goes on and tells me about her own mother, and I have the feeling that Des and Crispy have heard this story before. It’s all about how Angela and her mother have been driving from state to state for the past year, living out of public campgrounds and cheap motels, eating from truck stands, and always praying for the next big miracle while looking for the BVM.
“Yeah,” says Crispy with a laugh that’s stuck way back in his throat. “They’re like Virgin Mary groupies.”
Angela describes her life back in Tucson, Arizona, and I make up a picture of her house in my head (pink stucco with white aluminum awnings). I imagine the life she’s been living, and I get a picture of Angela’s mother, who worked as a domestic six days a week (folding laundry, ironing shirts, doing dishes, mopping floors, polishing silver). Then one day, everything changed. Angela fell down the school steps, and she couldn’t get up. She was rushed to the local hospital, where the doctors gave her every test they could think of without being able to find anything wrong with her. Eventually, she was released, but still without the use of her legs.
“It was totally weird,” she tells me. “I was a cripple. They had to carry me everywhere.”
“Like an Egyptian princess,” Desirée adds, trying to give me the full picture.
At first, the doctors thought it might be viral, but after a few weeks and many tests, the doctors decided that her condition was psychological. They explained this to her mother in a hospital corridor while Angela sat in a wheelchair several feet away.
“My mother said to them right to their faces: ‘I do not care what caused this illness. I want to know instead how to fix it. I want my daughter to be well again, and I want our old life back.’ ”
The doctors didn’t have much to offer in that department, but they did recommend a psychiatrist who specialized in something called hysterical paralysis. A week later, Angela’s mother was folding laundry in someone’s basement and watching a special on TV about the miracles that were happening in the town of Lubbock, Texas. People claimed that they’d been seeing visions of a woman wearing a white robe, a blue sash, and a crown of
stars hovering above her head; she was standing in the middle of a whirling orb of light and floating on a cloud. Others said that their rosary beads had turned solid gold. There were also testimonials involving spontaneous healings by people who had pretty much given up hope of ever doing things like walking or seeing.
At the commercial break, Angela’s mother called her daughter and told her to pack a bag because they were going to go to Lubbock to see the Blessed Virgin Mary and get a healing miracle. “If we can’t have our old life back,” her mother told daughter, “then we will get a new one.” Angela was thrilled; she hated Tucson and was bored sitting around the house doing nothing but eating chips and painting her nails. It was definitely time to go.
The next day they drove straight through to Texas. Neither of them saw much in the sky above Lubbock—a few birds, some clouds, planes.
“But something was there,” Angela tells me. “Call it whatever, but it was something. I felt it. For one thing, there was a ton of people. And none of them were from Tucson.”
After Lubbock, they traveled on to Estill Springs, Tennessee, where the BVM was appearing in a refrigerator; then up to Fostoria, Ohio, where she had been seen on the side of a soybean-oil storage tank; then to Stone Mountain, Georgia, where you could just barely make out her face on a Pizza Hut billboard. Angela and her mother were having the time of their lives, and somewhere along the way Angela regained the use of her legs.
“And now?” Angela says, leaning into me and putting her face very close to mine. “As you can see, I’m walking. I’m totally one hundred percent fine. I don’t care that my mother gives all the credit to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I mean, who knows, right?”
Virgin Territory Page 5