by James Aura
When we got to Elaine’s apartment I noticed her room mate was once again absent, and my thoughts turned toward the possibilities with Elaine. She got the wine out of the refrigerator and poured us each a glass, then set about making hamburger patties. I noticed she had salad too, with some kind of curly-leaf fancy lettuce, probably some of the same stuff we had tried to grow on the farm.
In the corner was a large burlap bag with a label that said ‘Americus Georgia- Gourmet Peanuts’.
“That’s a lot of peanuts, Elaine.”
“Oh, those are from one of Daddy’s clients. Have some if you want.”
Peanuts were one thing we had never tried on the farm. I wondered how hard they were to grow.
“Look on the bottom shelf of the coffee table, Russell, I’ve been saving something for you. “
It was a stack of ‘Le Monde’ newspapers.
She poured me another glass of wine and sat down next to me on the sofa.
“I asked a friend at the library if I could have these when they were done with them. Hardly anyone reads them, and I saw there was a lot of Vietnam news. I figured you might be interested if you ever came back down here, anyway.”
The night was sultry, but the wine was sweet and cold and a fan rotated back and forth in the living room. She had artsy paintings on the wall. One of them, she said was a naked person descending a staircase, but I never could really make it out. I was starting to sweat but each swing of the fan brought a rush of cooling air. Between the wine, and Elaine, it was hard to stay focused on the newspapers.
She told me France had accepted many refugees and there were problems in the Vietnamese communities in Paris. Some of the old timers, who had lived in France awhile, were pro-communist, actually supported Hanoi, and the newcomers were all anti-communist. These two groups did not get along. There had even been some street fights between the two groups.
She then commenced to read me the headlines, first in French, then translating to English. It was mesmerizing. I inhaled the wine and put my arm around her while she read to me. The story was more of the same: More Vietnamese people desperate to get out, refugee camps bursting at the seams with people on Guam and some islands off Malaysia. French churches and other groups helping mostly people from Saigon get settled in a new home.
I wondered what had become of two sisters from Huế, one of them desperately writing to my father for help. Had they gone to Saigon? Were they in a refugee camp? Or had they been sent for‘re-education’ into the countryside, or worse?
I thought about asking Elaine if there was a way to track down individual refugees by name, maybe the newspaper would have something about that. But Elaine had stopped reading and was looking at me with those big brown eyes, her face next to mine.
“We’d better start the barbecue, Russell. I need to eat something. This wine is getting to me, how about you?”
The spell was broken. I stood up, a bit unsteady on my feet and decided the manly thing to do would be to fire up the charcoal and start on the burgers. But what I really wanted was to fall into bed with Elaine.
After dinner I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up next morning covered by an afghan.
There was a note on the kitchen counter.
“Off to part-time job at the law firm. It’s the Armentrout firm, if you want to call me.-
Elaine.”
It was ten in the morning. I was thoroughly disgusted. It had seemed like we were headed for a good time in Elaine’s water bed, but I drank too damn much. I made a mental note to myself: avoid wine if I was planning amorous activities. It was only the third or fourth time I’d even had wine.
I walked to Toomer’s to get coffee and a doughnut and right after I sat down, a flock of sorority girls swept in. No sign of my Spanish tutor gal. But one of them knew me.
She came over with a big smile.
“Hey, you’re Roxanne Quinn’s friend, right? You’re Russell?”
“Why yes ma’am I certainly am. She helped me survive freshman Spanish.”
“Well she has been worried sick to death about you. Asking around, wondering what happened to you. You should go see her. And shame on you for just disappearing like that!
That was a surprise, but admittedly I had taken off for the summer without any farewells, aside from our brief encounter with Elaine at this very table in the spring.
These particular sorority girls were dressed down; only a couple had any makeup and most were in blue jeans. My guess was-- it was the off-season for pursuing the Mrs-degree.
Outside, the summer sun was heating up the campus. I stood beneath the oak trees in the shade awhile, watching a few students pass by, along with the Auburn townies, making the occasional pass at coeds from their jalopies. Finally, I decided to walk down to Roxanne’s sorority house, on the off chance she might still be in town.
It was a hike to the sorority house. I stopped a couple times and tried to thumb a ride but no one with a car was feeling charitable. I finally reached the big brick house in a sweat. The front door was open so I trudged in.
The place was full of activity. Workmen were stripping paint off the woodwork in the foyer and a small elderly lady was barking out orders like she owned the place. Then she fixed a narrow-eyed squint at me.
“Young man, what is your business here? Are you with the painters? “
“No ma’am, I am here to see a friend. Roxanne Quinn? Do you know if she is here?
“You’re not that worthless ball of twine from the Beta house, are you?”
“Oh no, ma’am. I’ve never been in a fraternity. Roxanne is my Spanish tutor, and a darn good one, I might add.”
Her gaze softened a little.
“You’re that Kentucky boy that disappeared awhile back. Honey you just about broke that little girl’s heart, as if it hadn’t been broken enough already. I’ll get her.”
With that she marched down the hallway and disappeared behind a sliding door. A minute later a blonde in jeans and a T-shirt appeared barefoot, coming towards me down the hall.
I barely recognized her. No makeup, hair was disheveled but she had curves in all the right places. The woman was a man-magnet. I felt my loins quicken. Even in this state she looked good enough to eat.
“Hi Roxanne.”
She looked up at me and a tear trickled from her left eye.
“Where you been, Rusty? When you didn’t show up after summer session started, I looked all over for you. The rooming house, the feed store.. Aunt Jesse finally told me to call the Kentucky State Police. Maybe you’d been in a wreck, or something.”
“Who’s Aunt Jesse?”
“The lady you were just talking to, our housemother. Finally I went to the Dean’s office and a lady there told me you had dropped out and gone back up north. Really hurt my feelings, Rusty. I thought we were close. Not close enough, I guess.”
I had not anticipated that I would provoke this kind of emotion from Roxanne, who generally seemed about as deep as a pie plate. Then I noticed there was no lavaliere around her neck.
“You still steady with that Beta fellow?”
“It has not been a good summer, Rusty. No I am not. He is a shit.”
She suggested we go sit in the kitchen where the little old lady, Aunt Jesse, was fixing a large glass pitcher of lemonade.
“Young man, I ought to just pour this over your head, all the worry you caused this little chickadee, but you look hot and tired. Would you like some with ice?”
I nodded and stared at Roxanne. She managed a smile and twirled a lock of her hair. Aunt Jesse put the pitcher on our table and left the room, headed towards the workmen in the foyer.
“Roxanne, I am sorry I worried you so. But I knew you had the hots for the guy who gave you the lavaliere and I sure figured you wouldn’t miss me and my tongue tied Spanish.”
“Well I did miss you. Would you mind telling me what’s been going on? The only thing I remember is you said you had some family troubles. That was at Toomer’s. You were
with that tall girl. Are you two an item?”
I pulled an Uncle Wallace and sidestepped that one. I launched into the whole story about the night Saigon surrendered, and Grandma’s heart attack. I also told her about Uncle Wallace and the dog and the creek flooding our truck farm.
She reached across the table and took my hand. She stroked my palm with her thumb.
“Rusty, I had no idea. What an awful ordeal. And I thought my summer was bad. Momma and Daddy got a divorce, I decided to just live here in the sorority house awhile, and then I got dumped by Larry, who took up with some little tart from Chi Omega even while I was wearing his lavaliere!”
I shook my head in sympathy. Roxanne referring to another coed as a tart; that was almost funny. She rose a little, in my estimation.
So I told her about Daddy and Vietnam and how I was trying to figure out how to help some of those boat people who seemed to be in a hopeless situation, stuck on crowded islands with no place to go. I told her about the two sisters from Huế and how one wrote letters to Dad pleading for help.
Roxanne got a faraway look in her eyes. I figured I was going on too long to hold her attention but then she poured us each another glass of lemonade.
“Rusty, you are such a sweetheart. Here you are stuck on a farm, dropped out of school, lost your Dad and your Grandma and you are worried about some people from Vietnam! Did you know there’s an actress out in California who has been helping some Vietnamese women get jobs as manicurists? She sent them to cosmetology school and everything!”
“Where did you hear about that, Roxanne?”
“There was an article about it in one of those Hollywood magazines, ‘People’, I think it’s called.”
Even though she was sitting there in a T-shirt and jeans, Roxanne took on a regal air. She was the Queen of Sheba in my book. I also noticed she had perfect nails. I started thinking about Opal and her chain of nail salons, and what it would be like to kiss Roxanne, which I was very tempted to do.
Aunt Jesse appeared in the doorway.
“Young man, since it is summer session you really are not allowed in the sorority house, but since I knew Roxanne was so concerned about you, I made an exception. Our cook, Jolena, is driving into campus. Perhaps you’d like a ride back?”
I could tell it was an offer I shouldn’t refuse.
Roxanne embraced me in a full body hug and we stood there for a moment, suspended in time, until a very large black woman in a blue and white cook’s outfit appeared and cleared her throat.
“Young man, this train is leaving the station, you want a ride, you better get on board!”
Roxanne gave me a kiss on the cheek, which left me wanting more, but like a craven coward I followed Jolena out the back door to her big green Dodge Monaco.
Roxanne leaned out the door. “Rusty, sweetheart you call me, you hear?’
Then she ran out to the car and handed me a slip of paper. It had two phone numbers on it in her handwriting; the zeros were shaped like hearts. I folded the note and put it in my wallet.
I asked Jolena to drop me off at Toomer’s. She pulled up to the curb and looked askance at me.
“You be nice to our Roxanne, you hear? She is having a hard time and you don’t need to be heaping any more bad things on her.”
I thanked her for the ride, got out of the car and stood there in front of the drugstore, wondering what time Elaine got off work. I used the pay phone to call Elaine’s place and when there was no answer, I walked to the Dean’s office. I ducked off the entry hall into the men’s room and combed my hair, tucked in my shirt. Maybe they’d restore my scholarship. Maybe they’d give me a medal for running a successful farming operation. Maybe there were snowballs in hell.
I entered the outer sanctum and there, seated like the guardian of the gate, was Madame Secretary, her appointment book, bearing names of the damned and the blessed.
“Young man, I wasn’t sure we’d see you again. Coming back to school?”
“Hi. I wondered if there was any chance you could tell me if there are any Vietnamese students here at Auburn.”
“Well, we have students from all over. Korea, India, Iran, Europe. But I am not aware of any from Vietnam, as of now. What about students from Kentucky, will we have another one of those this fall semester?”
She was a little friendlier than I expected. The woman was probably attractive twenty years ago.
I stood up straight and looked her in the eye. “I have not decided yet, ma’am whether I will be returning to classes this fall, as my financial condition, with the death of my grandmother and all, is still uncertain. I was hoping the school might make an exception. I didn’t do as well as I should have on finals because I was tied up with the funeral and the farm.
“Russell I am sorry, but you fell below the required grade point average for the scholarship. I could get you in to see the Dean tomorrow, but I know he won’t make an exception.”
“I’ve been running the family farm and that has gone pretty well. We had some trouble with the weather. But that’s farming.”
“It sounds like you should major in agriculture.” She gave me an odd stare, and then turned back to her typewriter.
“Well. I’ll be in touch later, I hope. I have a few weeks to decide about classes.”
I turned to leave and I heard her voice behind me.
“Young man, your fly is open. I just thought you might want to know.”
I felt like I’d just won the stupid Olympics.
I walked down the street kicking myself. I thought about how stupid it was for me to brag about running the family farm. I hadn’t really. The things that brought in the money had been put into motion entirely without me, like Grandma’s life insurance and the wheat crop. Even the alfalfa had been planted by Uncle Wallace months ago.
I was just the damn farmhand and a clumsy one at that. Getting swept into a creek bed during a flash flood, and losing my scholarship. With out of state tuition I probably couldn’t afford Auburn even if I put in more part time hours at work. I was feeling pretty miserable about myself by the time I got to Elaine’s.
It was Alabama in July and it was hotter than hell. It was oppressive. You could practically cut the air with a knife. I sat down on her front steps, the sweat pouring off me. I liked the idea of coming back to school and moving in with Elaine. She sure was happy to see me when I got off the bus from Kentucky. Bad idea, I was too stupid for Elaine. I’d just drag her down. Then there was the money. Even if her roommate moved out, and I moved in, this was a high dollar place.
The yellow Pinto pulled up to the curb. Elaine beckoned me to the car. She had a load of groceries in the back and wanted me to help carry them in. She was all dressed up in her law office outfit, a white blouse and a black skirt and high heels. She looked pretty darn good to my sorry backwoods eyes.
I hauled the groceries into the kitchen. She threw me a big smile. “Sorry I couldn’t get us any more wine, Russell. My friend Carrie, she’s 25, who usually gets it for me wasn’t around today. But we probably don’t need any more wine tonight, anyway, do we?”
I attempted a wan smile. Another screw up by yours truly, I thought. Drank so damn much wine I probably blew the chance to get a roll in the hay with this pretty girl.
She headed for the bedroom to change. “Russell, why don’t you get in the shower and cool off. Then I’ll warm up the leftover burgers from last night, and there’s some fresh potato salad from the store, too.”
That sounded like a good idea. So I took her suggestion, cooled off in the shower and came out of the bathroom feeling a little better. She was in the kitchen, barefoot, in shorts and a tank top. There was a large pitcher of iced tea on the table, and she was playing some music on her fancy stereo record player. We’d never had a record player on the farm. But we listened to the radio all the time. I had thought about getting an Eight-track for the pickup, but it was too expensive.
“I just got this album, Russell; it’s called ‘Walking in Spa
ce’.
She started swaying to it, dishing up the burgers and potato salad.
I sat at the table sipping tea, listening to the music and watching Elaine. It sounded a lot like jazz, but there was a woman who kept singing about her body. Apparently the singer’s body was walking or floating in space. It sounded like sex music.
Which it definitely turned out to be.
Elaine and I were not experienced in lovemaking but we made up for it with our enthusiasm. She fell asleep shortly afterwards and I held her in my arms and watched the moon come up through the bedroom window. It had been a roller coaster day.