A cafeteria worker—his name tag says Delbert—carries Aunt Lil’s tray ahead to their table.
Aunt Lil stops before they reach the table. “Have we eaten yet? Or are we about to eat?”
This is a little scary. “We’re about to eat.”
“I already got my food?”
“Yes ma’am. It’s over there on the table.”
“What did I get?”
“Fried chicken.”
“Oh.” She starts walking again. “I’m not surprised.”
They settle in and Aunt Lil says the fellow who brought her food, Floyd, has been working at the Piccadilly for twenty years. He comes by again, Carl checks his name tag, and tells her it says Delbert.
“Well, his name is Floyd Delbert, then.”
The next time he comes by, she stops him. “How long have you been working here, Floyd?”
He looks at his name tag, back at her. “About six months.”
“I don’t think so. You just don’t remember. And you’ve lost about twenty pounds, haven’t you?”
“No ma’am. I been weighing about the same for the last twenty years or so.” He takes a step back and looks around.
“I think you just think you have.”
“Well, that’s okay.” He picks up a tray on the next table, moves away.
After the meal, on his way to the cash register to pay with Aunt Lil’s MasterCard, Carl realizes that he’s forgotten to talk to her about the driving episode—the need to give up her license.
And on the way to A-I Hair she wants to talk about Mr. Flowers, his plans to get some of the ladies on television. Should she buy a new dress? Will Carl be playing music with Mr. Flowers for good, now?
A-I HAIR DOES business from a large converted bungalow in a part of Summerlin Carl hasn’t been to in years. But he knows all about the owner, Emma Brown, because every now and then Aunt Lil talks about Emma, her old business-school buddy, and her husband, J. M., who had a stroke some time back.
Just inside the front door is a foyer, with French door openings straight ahead, left, and right, but no actual doors. Inside, it smells like a damp basement and old magazines. The floor of the room on the left is covered with newspapers, magazines, and hair supplies, and dust. Just inside that doorway, fifteen or twenty phone books are stacked with a rotary phone on top. Rotary phone?
Carl leads Aunt Lil into the room straight ahead—a former hairdressing room, it looks like, but only one hair-dressing chair is left, and that is full of hair supplies. And the smaller plastic chairs, around the walls, are mostly full of supplies. An elderly man is sitting in one of those. J. M.?
“Howdy,” says Carl.
The man looks, but doesn’t respond.
Mrs. Brown emerges from somewhere in back, holding a bottled Coke with a straw in it. “Hello . . . why, Lil! How in the world are you?” She hugs Lil over the walker.
“I’m not doing so good. I fell a while back and I’ve ended up out at Rosehaven for a while. This is my nephew, Carl.”
“Yes, I’ve heard you talk about him. Of course. And Jo Ann Pitman told me about your fall. I’m so sorry to hear about that.” She places the Coke with the straw on a stool beside J. M. He leans forward so he can drink without holding the bottle.
“I don’t know what I’d do without Carl,” says Aunt Lil.
“Oh, you’re so lucky. What can we do for you today?”
“I want to buy me a wig like the one in this picture. The two I’ve had all these years are about worn out. Except my new one needs to be more or less gray, like I am—or used to be when I had my hair.”
Emma holds the photo in her hands, turns it so the light is better. She doesn’t seem upset about the other wigs. “I think we can help you out. You all sit down.” She disappears through swinging doors into a back room.
Carl sits across the way from J. M., who nods his head. J. M. is not looking well.
Aunt Lil slowly eases herself down into the chair beside Carl. “J. M., how you been doing?” she says.
J. M. opens his mouth, but nothing comes.
Emma backs through the swinging door with a stack of four or five boxes. “Okay,” she says to Aunt Lil, “I’ll show you these one at a time, and you pick the one you like best.” She lowers her stack of boxes onto a chair, opens the top box, reaches in, and pulls out a new wig—a tight little ball of hair. She holds it in her right hand, a couple of fingers on the inside, thumb on the outside, steps back to give herself room, stretches out her left arm for balance, like a dancer. Emma isn’t young herself and is slightly humped. She slowly lifts the wig and then suddenly chops down—like a karate chop—and whuff! the wig is full and fluffy. She straightens up, looks at Carl with a light in her eyes. A few hairs float to the floor. She steps over to Aunt Lil and holds out the full wig in two hands.
“My Lord,” says Aunt Lil.
J. M. sits up straight, grins. “She’s a wig-popping mama.”
Aunt Lil says, “That’s exactly what I want. Let’s put it on. That is something, the way you did that.”
“Don’t you want to check out these others?” Emma asks.
“Yeah,” says Carl. “Let’s see another one.”
“No, this is the one I want.”
“I just kind of want to see her open another one,” says Carl. “That was something.”
“Why?” says Emma. “Oh. Okay. Yes. Let’s see another one. Been doing it forty-five years. Through thick and thin. You know—” she turns to Carl—“Lil had to go through looking after a sick husband too. It’s not easy, is it, Lil?”
Carl wonders if J. M. can hear.
“No, it’s not . . . This is the one I want. But yes. Yes, let’s do look at another one. Let me put this one on, though, and see how it looks.”
Emma holds up a large hand mirror. Aunt Lil removes her old wig, pulls on the new one. “Oh, I like that. Don’t you, Carl?”
“I sure do. Very becoming.”
Emma straightens the wig, tucks a strand of Aunt Lil’s hair.
Is there a song here somewhere? thinks Carl.
Emma opens another box, goes through her moves again, and this time Lil laughs, and so does Carl.
J. M. puts his hand on his head. “She’s a wig-popping mama.”
Carl writes a check to A-I Hair for $41.17. Lil, sitting, signs it slowly. Emma tosses Lil’s old wig into a trash can behind J. M.’s chair.
Outside, as he’s about to open the passenger door for Aunt Lil, Carl stops, steps back—he’ll try to make her laugh again—stretches out an arm, chops down with the other, and holds both hands out to Lil. She laughs a short laugh, and then she goes through the motions herself, and Carl says, “She’s a wig-popping mama.” Aunt Lil’s head falls back; she looks into the sky as she laughs harder, then starts into the motion again and staggers in her walker as she keeps laughing. She looks at Carl and he sees that her eyes are wet.
• • •
TURNING INTO THE parking lot at Rosehaven, Carl faces a fact: he needs to stop by Anna’s office. He doesn’t feel good about it, sort of like he’s visiting the doctor. After walking with Aunt Lil to her room, he continues on past the flower and fruit paintings in the hall, the supply closet, the bulletin board. He can’t tell exactly how he feels or what he wants to happen. Anna’s door is closed and there’s a white envelope taped to it. His name is on it. Wow . . .
Dear Carl,
Things are not smooth in my life right now. I like you a lot and do not want to hurt our friendship, but the relationship that I am presently in and was in before our trip to the movie the other night is also very important to me. I will need to concentrate on that relationship for a while and I hope you understand. Please drop by and we can talk about this if you like.
Sincerely,
Anna
“Sincerely”? Well, that settles that. Drop by and talk about it? Right. He hadn’t liked Anna’s little girl all that much anyway, and besides, he hadn’t even met the other one. Two children? That wou
ld be—would have been—impossible.
Part 3.
What about Carl?
Washington and Lee
L. RAY LOOKS ACROSS the front lawn from his wheelchair. Small, newly planted trees, staked with white ropes, stand here and there on the lawn. He and Faye, the physical therapist, have been discussing his condition. He was up to a seventy-five-degree bend more than a week ago. There’s been no improvement since. L. Ray tells her it has seized somehow. She explains that with no improvement, therapy can’t continue.
Mrs. Satterwhite—Beatrice—sits beside L. Ray. Beyond her are Lil and Clara. He decides to use their first names, now that they are the first disciples of his new movement.
He preached another sermon the night before, he and Carl played music, and now Beatrice has asked him how they are going to get their show on the road. The ladies seem interested, enthusiastic, as he’d hoped.
L. Ray leans forward, elbows on knees. “I think,” he says, “the very first thing is to simply proclaim that churches and nursing homes should become one and the same. Some kind of public statement. Do a press conference.”
“Think about the number of hours in a day,” says Beatrice. “And think about the number of days in a week.” She sees her way, through Flowers, to the doorstep of Walter Cronkite. She will explain what happened to the money he gave her and ask him to help patch things up with her son.
“Well, yes. But listen, if this plan works out, all sorts of problems, given our new ways of staying in touch with each other—cell phones, the Internet—can begin to get solved, in a kind of chain reaction.”
Maybe she can get in touch with Walter Cronkite on the Internet. She sees a close-up of his face. She sees how tall he is, probably.
“And after old people,” Mr. Flowers is saying, “old people who need help, we’ll go with hungry children. They should be the first priority, but they can’t vote or get mad about things the way old people will—I hope. We’ve got to get it structured just right, like the Wright brothers and that first airplane. They got all the angles just exactly right, and that thing lifted off.”
Beatrice sees in her mind that picture of that old airplane lifting off on the beach up there at Kitty Hawk. Kitty Hawk. That’s a funny name. Kitty Hawk. Kitty Hawk. Kitty Hawk.
“And the thing is,” the preacher goes on, “it can get going the world over, on its own. A world movement can lead toward unity where there is none, peace where there is none, and harmony where there is none. And you know, already in many countries elderly people are respected lots more than among us proud-to-be-all-powerful Americans.” He rolls his chair forward so he can see all three of them better. “And I want you to keep up your good singing,” he says to Beatrice. “I’m going to get you on TV.”
Beatrice envisions lights, cameras. She sings:
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling . . .
“Now that’s a good one,” says Maudie, sitting down with them.
“Once it gets rolling, will we be able to travel places?” asks Lil.
“I don’t see why not.”
Lil sees herself in the Everglades, a place she’s always wanted to visit. She will go to a nursing home down there, explain how easy it will be to make the place into a church for church people to visit on Sunday mornings. People like Mr. Grayson, with the lead poisoning, always swatting at butterflies, can have visitors every Sunday if something like that is started up.
“You’re going to lose all the Christians,” says little Maudie. “I can tell you that right now.” She moves her shoulders forward then back so she can rock a bit.
There’s one in every crowd, thinks L. Ray. “I’m not so sure. Some of them, maybe.”
“You’ll have a hard time with my niece, and me too.” Beatrice touches her gold mourning pin. “I love everybody. I think the whole world needs to change. I think there are too many companies. There’s too much business. And on the television there’s too much interference with life. It’s like they turned loose a silly sideshow in every house in America. And besides all that, what you say you believe has nothing to do with how you live your life, and how you live your life is what Jesus watches. It’s the same with our country. We say one thing, but look at what all these businesses do. And it’s no telling what they do overseas where can’t nobody see. They fire people exactly when they should help them—like a family helps. Companies are going to take over the world, like Hitler. You mark my words. Giant companies run out the little companies, and little companies are the backbone of a democracy. Giant companies are bullies because they’re so big. If companies were run by people like Walter Cronkite, there wouldn’t be as much evil in the world. Jesus wouldn’t have run a company, because he didn’t want to. Maybe John the Baptist would’ve. He could have sold some sewing machines, I’ll bet.”
“Nobody uses sewing machines anymore,” says Maudie.
“Of course they do.”
If I could get Beatrice off that Walter Cronkite kick, thinks L. Ray, she could be my right-hand man. “Whatever Jesus was, he was not a fundamentalist. Or whatever he is. I finally figured that out. Whoa. The fundamentalists were the ones always after him—the ones with all the laws written on their sleeves.”
“Those were the Pharisees,” says Maudie. “You got your math wrong.”
“I want to generate an antifundamentalist righteous fervor that equals and then supersedes their own fervor, and I want this thing to be a movement of action, not words. If there’s talk of telephone lines to God, we will simply stick our fingers in our ears and refuse to listen. Old people can be seen. My First Breakfasters will put action where their mouths are. I don’t know, maybe I’m—”
“I think you’d better be careful,” says Maudie. “You’re starting some kind of government plan. You’re getting way too big for your britches. Pride goeth before the fall.”
“Maybe he’d better tiptoe through the tulips,” says Beatrice.
L. Ray touches his hair. “No true visionary is careful. Look at Jesus. And read carefully what he says about us doing for each other.”
“I think you ought to be careful,” says Maudie.
“I’m too old for that. And I’m not interested in eternal life.”
“That tells me you’re interested in eternal damnation. The final days are near.”
“I don’t—”
“What are we going to fix to eat at the First Breakfast?” asks Lil.
Thank you, thinks L. Ray. “Oh, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. Something good.”
“What’s a ‘First Breakfast’?” asks Maudie.
“You know,” says Clara. “Last Supper, First Breakfast.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It just is.”
“I know we probably won’t have fried chicken for breakfast,” says Lil, “but if you ever do, get the Piccadilly recipe. They have the best fried chicken.”
“I’ll remember that. We’re going to have all kinds of good food.”
“Oh, no,” says Beatrice. She holds her newspaper up for Maudie to see. On the front page is Bill Clinton. “Look. It’s him again.”
“That nose—I think he’s an alcoholic,” says Maudie.
Well, thinks L. Ray, I held them for a while.
“He was the president, though,” says Beatrice. “You’ve got to respect the office even if you don’t respect the man in it. I think people made a devil out of him just because he wasn’t the same kind of president as Washington and Lee and Lincoln.”
“Lee?”
“Washington and Lee.”
“I think I’ll go in,” says Maudie. She eases forward so her feet touch the floor and then stands slowly.
“That’s a school,” says Clara.
“What?” says Beatrice.
“Washington and Lee.”
“Well, Lee was something.”
“He was general of the Confederate army.”
“I think he was president
at some point.”
“Grant was president, but not Lee,” says Clara.
“He should have been.”
“Not after being on the losing side.”
“My uncle Benjamin lost a finger in that war,” says Beatrice.
“Which one?” asks Clara.
“Index . . . they said.”
“Which war?”
“Oh. Civil war.”
“If it’d been my family, they wouldn’t have known which one.”
“Which what—war?”
“Finger.”
Where’s the song here? wonders L. Ray.
“I wonder why I’ve always heard ‘Washington and Lee,’” says Beatrice.
“It’s the name of a school.”
“I wonder why they named it ‘Washington and Lee’ if Washington and Lee were on different sides.”
“That was at different times,” says Clara.
“What was different times?”
“Washington and Lee.”
“Then why’d they name the school after them, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care to know.”
“I don’t think they’d name something ‘Kennedy and Eisenhower’ nowadays.”
“No, they wouldn’t. They just don’t make them like they used to.”
“And ‘Washington and Lee’ has a ring to it.”
CARRIE AND LATRICIA are eating lunch on the picnic table behind the fence.
Latricia looks at the potato salad on her fork. “This stuff suck.”
“That’s why you ought to fix your own.” Carrie thinks about offering half of her sandwich, decides against it.
“I don’t have time, and this is free.”
“Tell Mr. Rhodes about it.”
“No way.”
“I heard him talking to that deputy sheriff brought back Mrs. Olive and them,” says Carrie, “asking did he remember Mr. Flowers’s IRS problems. I’ll bet you soon as Mr. Flowers is about to stan’ up on that leg, he be gone.”
“The ladies’ll miss him, I tell you that,” says Latricia.
“They need Mr. Flowers down at Shady Rest.” Carrie pictures the lunch room at Shady Rest, the patients’ small rooms, a bed collapsed with poor Mrs. Terry asleep in it. “He’d start a ruckus down there.”
Lunch at the Piccadilly Page 11