The Orange Blossom Special

by Betsy Carter

Victoria never took her eyes off of her letters.

  “Mom, did you hear anything I said?” Charlie was losing his weatherman composure. “I’m due to report to Fort Wadsworth by Labor Day.”

  “Sure I did,” said Victoria. “What, do you think I can’t do two things at once? You said some hogwash about wanting to join the army and become a chaplain. I heard every word. Reggie, it’s your turn. Don’t go taking hours. And here,” she tapped the cover of the dictionary. “Look it up before you put down gibberish.”

  “So what do you think?” asked Charlie.

  “What do I think about what?” answered Victoria, leaning over ever so slightly to catch a glimpse of Reggie’s letters.

  “About the army? About me becoming a chaplain?”

  “You’ve always been a dreamer, sweetheart. Of course you aren’t going into the army. And why on earth would you want to go to New York City? Besides, who will run the store?”

  “Mom, I really am going into the army. I’m going to become a chaplain. And I’ve given the store a lot of thought. I think you should run it. You’re great with details and organization. I have a hunch you’d be terrific at it.”

  Victoria looked at Charlie as if he had just told her she had lipstick on her teeth. “I don’t run stores,” she said, fixing her gaze back on the Scrabble board.

  “We’re not getting anywhere with this conversation,” said Charlie.

  “I’ve gotten where I want to get,” she said. “You’re not going into the army, and I’m not taking over any liquor store. It seems clear enough to me.”

  “Mom . . .” But why bother?

  Charlie’s shoulders dropped and he started to walk away when Reggie spoke up. “Mr. Landy, If you don’t mind my saying so, I think it’s a great thing you doing, becoming a man of the cloth like Rex Humbard.”

  “Thanks Reggie. I won’t be as famous as Rex Humbard and you won’t see me on TV, but I do hope to have my own ministry someday.”

  Reggie stared at the floor, as if he’d already said too much. Charlie turned to back to his room.

  Victoria stared at Reggie because if she looked at Charlie, she knew she would cry. Charlie had a big head, just like Maynard’s, and his round face, as smooth and impassive as a slab of marble, was remarkable for its lack of guile. She envied his clarity. When Charlie knew what he needed to know, there was no changing his mind. With all of her petulant fits and refusal to see the truth, Victoria was able to put off reality for a time. But eventually even her own tricks of denial would wear her down. Charlie was different that way. She knew he meant it when he said he was leaving. She didn’t know if she could bear another loss.

  Victoria still hadn’t recovered from the fire. She was still bereft over the things that had been taken all at once. Things of no value, like her music box with the skaters on top and the remains of her tooth inside, were as precious to her as the antique bone china in the dining-room cabinets. Where did Crystal’s pink bedroom go? Did all the chocolate syrup from the soda fountain melt into the ground? Their wedding album, with its heavy gilded pages and white leather cover that said “Victoria and Maynard Landy, September 22, 1936” in gold letters—did that fall as soot into a neighbor’s backyard?

  It became a ritual. Victoria would be about to fall asleep or be driving into town, and out of nowhere, something small, Maynard’s prized model of the Orange Blossom Special locomotive, or big, like the white leather couch in the “Rocky Graziano” living room, would appear and burst into flame. She’d watch the vinyl melt and twist and curdle into a small mass, or the couch burn to cinders. She’d see Anita Bryant sitting in the living room, and hear the sweetness of her tentative voice as she sang, “’Til There Was You.” Was that just a vapor of memory or did it really happen? The police never discovered the exact cause of the fire. The fact that there was an explosion pointed to faulty electric wiring, but they would never trace its origins. After that, life became divided into “before the fire,” and “after.” She still wore the five-carat ring that she’d retrieved that night. It made her feel close to Maynard and was the only gift of his that survived. Somehow, she was able to put aside the fact that the ring was the reason Maynard ran back into the burning house.

  Now there was going to be another marker: “after Charlie.” This time, she worried that whatever glue and willpower had kept her together after Maynard’s death would crumble and turn to dust. Maynard’s steadfastness and decency had been the cornerstone of her life. His kindness and reliability had allowed her to be who she was, to live the life she’d always dreamed about. Then Maynard was gone, and Crystal moved in with Dinah, and now Charlie, who gave himself over to her and Ella and Reggie so that their lives could continue as best they could, was deserting her as well. It was time for him to live a life that was his for a change. How could she deny him that?

  NOTHING WAS THE way it was. The fight with Crystal, the fact that she would be graduating from high school in a few months, being in love with Charlie, the realization that this was but a moment in her life and, like it or not, everything was about to change—these things were like a jitterbug in Dinah’s brain. They were loud and constant and always moving. When Señor Swanky called one night, she answered the phone.

  “Hi sweetheart, how are you?” he asked. Normally, she would have said, “Fine, how are you? Here’s Mom.” But on this night, his emphasis was on the “are” and she thought he really wanted to know.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m kind of confused.” She told him about Charlie. “He knows things I don’t know, and it scares me sometimes. What if he thinks I’m someone I’m not?” And she told him about Crystal. “She’s so cold to me, we barely speak. How could I tell her about Charlie and me before I was sure myself? We’re best friends. We can’t suddenly not be best friends because of this.”

  Barone listened and never tried to hurry her along. “I’m talking your ear off, aren’t I?” she said, suddenly caught in her own embarrassment.

  “This is a funny time in your life, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re not a little girl, but you’re not quite grown up either. Being somebody’s girlfriend, especially somebody like Charlie Landy, calls for a kind of maturity. It’s like Eddie the cat. Suddenly somebody counts on you for things no one’s ever wanted from you before. You’re still somebody’s daughter—you’ll always be that. But you’re becoming more, how shall I say, womanly. That’s different for you and for Crystal. Don’t worry, you’ll both get used to it.”

  It was so queer that he used the word womanly, thought Dinah, though it was neat that he listened and treated her like a grown-up. “You’re probably right,” she said, “it just feels that everyone suddenly has secrets and it didn’t used to be that way.”

  Dinah remembered one August night when she was six years old. The air was close and sticky, as if it hadn’t been changed in days. They’d finished dinner at around seven o’clock. Her mother had cleared the table and stacked the dishes in the sink, getting ready to wash them. “Those can wait,” her father had said, taking her mother’s arm. “Let’s hunt down a Good Humor man before it gets dark.” They’d headed toward the park downtown and sure enough, as the sky turned a dusky shade of purple they heard the familiar chiming of the ice cream bells. Her dad had waved down the truck. He’d ordered her mom a Cherry Twin Popsicle, himself a Fudgsicle, and her a Creamsicle, her favorite. They’d gone into the park and sat on swings, each with the faraway look that people get when they eat ice cream. As Dinah pumped her legs back and forth, a little bit at a time, she’d lost her concentration and dropped the Creamsicle. In moments, an orange and white river was running beneath her feet. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” her dad had said. “If we run, I’ll bet we can catch up with him and buy you another.” The truck was slowly clanking down the street. In no time, they were standing in front of the square freezer door, and the Good Humor man was reaching into what seemed his bottomless supply to find her another Creamsicle. “We could use a few extra napkins,” her mom had s
aid. By the time they’d gotten back to the park to mop up the mess, it was nearly dark. The river had stopped flowing and a mass of black flies had formed a crust above it.

  “How did they all know to come here?” asked Dinah.

  “If you see one, you can be sure there are dozens nearby. It’s not in the nature of flies to be singular,” her father had said.

  She loved to tell Crystal that story. “No one even got mad at me for spilling my ice cream,” she’d say. “We just ran after the truck, and he bought me another.”

  She never forgot about her father’s words: “It’s not in the nature of flies to be singular.” They came back to her now only in a different configuration. It’s not in the nature of secrets to be singular, she thought. If there was one secret, there were probably dozens more close by.

  SEVENTEEN

  It was typical of Charlie to sense when people—Jésus, Huddie—had a secret they wanted to reveal to him. That was Charlie’s gift, plucking a filament of a thought out of the air. The paradox was that when it came to himself he could be just the opposite. “I swear, sometimes you’re as thick as a big fat slab of pork,” Victoria had said to him the day after he told her he was going into the army.

  All morning she had been screaming at him. “You’re leaving me high and dry, trapped in this house with Reggie and Ella. Do you have any idea what position that puts me in? I know it’s hard to tell from looking at me, but I AM NOT A FRIGGIN’ SOCIAL WORKER. People say, ‘Oh, that Charlie Landy, he’s so kind, he’s so empathetic.’ He is to everyone but his own mother! I know what you are. You are a selfish, hypocritical egomaniac. That’s what you are!” Then she said the thing about the slab of pork. “If your father were alive today, you wouldn’t be doing this to me.”

  “If my father were alive today,” he answered sadly, “I would have been gone long ago.”

  She made aggressive staccato sounds as she cracked her gum. Her lips curled and contorted, and she never took her eyes off of Charlie. It was as if all the gum chattering was Victoria duking it out with herself. Finally she stopped and put one hand on her hip. “Go on, go to New York City, go to the army, just get the hell out of here.”

  “I’ll always come back,” he said, trying to soften her fury.

  “Nah. Once you’re gone, you’re gone. I know that.”

  “No one is ever completely gone,” he said.

  Victoria turned and walked out of the room, the sound of her cracking gum diminishing the further away she got.

  Charlie thought about that conversation later that day as he drove over to the Glades area. He’d told Dinah he had something important he wanted to discuss with her. “Oh no, not more about Crystal,” she had said.

  “No, it’s not that. This is pretty serious.”

  Charlie knew he would have to explain things about himself that he never thought would matter to anybody else but Ella. Dinah had always accepted his intuitions. She never questioned how he knew what he knew, or whether or not he was right. Often, she’d made fun of how much he talked—“enough for both of us,” she’d say—but she never seemed to realize where his words were coming from.

  When he got to the Lockhart house, no one was there but Dinah and the cat. A house takes on a different personality depending upon who’s in it. When Tessie was there, the place bustled with her nervousness. She’d run into the kitchen to get a pack of Marlboros from the cabinet where she always kept two cartons at a time. Then she’d skitter around to every other room wondering where she’d left her matches or last put down her ashtray.

  Crystal always left droppings of clothes, food, or whatever was occupying her at the time. She still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that there was no Ella to pick up behind her. Occasionally Dinah would sweep through the house, gather all of Crystal’s detritus into her arms, and dump them onto her bed. “There’s more to you than meets the eye,” she would say, and Crystal would sass her right back: “At least I have things to leave around. Unlike other people who might as well be living in a nunnery” But all that was before Dinah told her about Charlie, when they were still as taunting and bitchy to each other as only two sisters can be.

  Charlie found Dinah sitting alone in the Florida room with Eddie in her lap, and the house felt peaceful. The late afternoon sun was like a benediction. Dinah had a look of expectation on her face and was holding on to Eddie the way a frightened child might cling to a stuffed animal. Charlie sat opposite her on a love seat with a bamboo pattern. The cat glared at Charlie. What you have to say better be important, Buster. I don’t have all day.

  “Where is everybody?” he asked.

  “Crystal and Huddie are off studying,” she winked. “If you know what I mean. My mom’s at a barbecue at the Bechs’. She was hilarious before she left. She gulped down a glass of white wine and said, ‘I’ll never make it through the night on Flora’s apple lemon punch.’ God, those people seem like such morons.”

  “Oh, you mean the Baptists?”

  “Yeah. They’re such creeps, always acting holier than thou then cracking these stupid dirty jokes and double intendras or whatever they’re called.”

  “Some people make religion look silly,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “Don’t you think anyone who blindly believes all that stuff is pretty silly to begin with?” she asked.

  “Sure, if they believe it without thinking about it they are. But if they feel it in their hearts, well that’s something else.”

  Dinah could tell that Charlie was about to set off on one of his jags, but she wasn’t in the mood.

  “Charlie, didn’t you say you had something important to discuss with me?” she asked.

  “Oddly enough,” he said, “what we were just talking about has something to do with what I wanted to say.” He cleared his throat and wiped a stream of sweat from his neck. “I’m one of those people, you know, who feels God in his heart.

  “Ever since I was little, I’ve known things—things I don’t know why I should know. Sometimes I can tell what’s going to happen before it happens. It’s like finding out you can paint or you have a good voice. You want to test it and use it and do the best you can with it. Lately, it’s become clear to me: I want to become a preacher. I want to have my own congregation.”

  Dinah held Eddie tighter.

  “In order to do that,” Charlie continued, “I’ll have to go away for a while. There’s a school for chaplains that the army runs in New York City. I can go there for three months and then go into the army as a chaplain. After that, they can send me anywhere in the world.”

  It was so quiet Charlie could hear the refrigerator rumble like a hungry stomach. Even the cat seemed frozen in place.

  “That’s nice for you,” said Dinah, her words rigid.

  “I know this probably comes as a shock,” he said. “But here’s the thing: I want you to wait for me. Whatever I’m going to do, I want you to be a part of it. Do you understand?”

  By now, the sun had set and the house was shrouded in darkness. Neither of them budged from their chairs to turn on any lights. It was dark enough so they couldn’t read the expression on each other’s faces. All they had to go on was the sound of their voices and the articulation of their gestures.

  Dinah covered her eyes with her hands. Eddie tried to nuzzle under her knee. Charlie got up from the love seat and sat at the edge of her chair. He tucked his arm around her shoulder. “Don’t you see what I’m saying? I love you and I want you to wait for me. We can do this together, Dinah. We can give each other strength.”

  Dinah put her hands down. She spoke with long spaces between her words. “I love you, Charlie. I respect what you’re saying and what you want to do. I’m glad you and God are so chummy. I’ve been around for nineteen years and He hasn’t said a word to me. I don’t mean that sarcastically. I just mean that how am I supposed to go on this mission with you when all I know about God is that he took my father when I was ten and now he wants you. It doesn’t
exactly make me a fan.”

  Charlie dropped his chin to his chest and thought hard. “This doesn’t have to be about you and God. It’s about you and me. It’s about you being who you are, and me being who I am. Who I am happens to involve Him. Who you are, doesn’t. That’s fine.”

  Dinah squirmed as she pulled her legs from under her. Eddie rubbed his head against Charlie’s arm. Just leave things as they are and pay attention to me. “Supposing we get married,” said Dinah. “Not that I’m proposing, but just suppose we do. Then you become a minister and you have a congregation. Every Sunday you go off to church and I do what? I play tennis? I go fishing? How would that look to everyone? And don’t preachers’ wives have to do stuff like hold bake sales and visit sick people? What if I don’t want to do those things? Don’t you think you need a wife who will be in the front row each Sunday smiling up at you as you deliver your sermons? And what about the army? Am I supposed to sit around and wait three years while you go to New York City and study to be a chaplain, and then when you get sent off to some godforsaken place?”

  Her eyes filled as she comprehended the weight and consequences of his plans.

  “I love you, Charlie. I really do. But you have a hell of a nerve making me fall in love with you, then telling me you’re leaving, and oh, by the way, you want to become a preacher. Shouldn’t you have come with some sort of warning label? ‘Do not fall in love unless you are prepared to sit around waiting for many years, after which you will get to bake lots of cookies and iron your husband’s dresses.’ That’s asking an awful lot, Charlie, it really is.”

  “Ministers don’t wear dresses,” he said. “You’re thinking about priests.”

  “That’s not the point. You know what I mean.” Her voice was so charged with anger that Eddie figured he’d done something wrong and scooted under the couch.

  “I want to marry you, Dinah. I thought you wanted what I did. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

  “You’ve done a pretty good job of imagining your life without me,” she said. “It works fine for you. There’s not one bit of it that works for me.”