The Orange Blossom Special

by Betsy Carter

  CHARLIE WAS WALKING back to his barracks after a long day of classes. It was snowing. Not the fluffy white stuff he’d imagined as a child. These were meager snowflakes that melted the moment they hit the ground. Nor was it the winter wonderland of storybooks, just lead skies and banks of ice black with soot. How odd to yearn for Christmas in Gainesville, he thought, dreading the upcoming holiday. At least at home he’d be with people he loved, some of them anyway. This was going to be one bleak and lonely Christmas. Thank God he could go home for New Year’s. Funny, for all the thought he’d given to getting away, it never once dawned on him that he’d be homesick. Remember how this feels, he said to himself. It will come in handy when you’re talking to young recruits who feel the same.

  When Charlie got to his bunk, he found Ella’s letter. He lay on his bed savoring the thick envelope in his hands. He’d lain on this bed staring at the gray cement walls around him so often, that he’d identified figures in the irregularity of the surface. There was a duck face, a mushroom cap, and a lumpy area that he could swear was the map of Florida. Since he arrived at Fort Wadsworth, he felt the way he had after the fire and his father’s death, like who he was and where he belonged had been pulled out from under him. He opened the envelope and pulled out the newspaper clipping. For a long while he studied Eddie’s guileless face and Dinah’s sweet round eyes. He ran his fingers over Eddie’s nose and could feel it, damp and cool. Then he brought the picture to his face and closed his eyes. His fingers remembered being entwined in Dinah’s hair and the sudden softness of the back of her neck. When he looked up again, Eddie was staring down at him. He saw the cusp of the moon in the cat’s eyes and felt a great tide of loneliness. Eddie’s gaze was impatient and insistent: What are you waiting for?

  Charlie leaped ahead in his thoughts. There he was with Dinah. That was right. There was something else, though he couldn’t quite make it out. That night, as he lay staring at the duck face, the mushroom cap, and the map of Florida, he wrote to Dinah.

  How can I tell others to listen to their hearts when my own is breaking with how much I love you? I know how you feel about itinerant preachers, but I now know that this one will only be at home when you say you will marry me. Forgive my mushiness. It’s been nearly three months since I last saw you and every day that goes by without you is a painful reminder of how quickly life passes. I’ll be home for New Year’s Eve. Will you ring in ’65 with me? I want to start the new year with you. And Eddie of course. He came so alive in the Gainesville Sun picture. All my love, Charlie

  Tessie was late coming home from work on the day that Dinah received the letter. She’d been at the annual Lithographics Christmas party, much as she hated it. But how would it look if she didn’t show up? As head bookkeeper now, the Bechs kept reminding her she was one of the principals of the company. That night, at dinner, as she started to tell Dinah about how the Bechs kept sneaking rum into the punch, she noticed that Dinah had this slippery grin coming and going on her face.

  “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” she said, then looked down at Eddie. “Don’t you go getting any ideas.”

  Dinah put on her highfalutin voice. “While you were out partying and drinking rum with the Bechs, your daughter received a marriage proposal.”

  Tessie looked confused. “Either you’ve met somebody awfully fast, or I’m missing something.”

  “It’s Charlie Landy,” said Dinah. “It’s always been Charlie Landy.”

  “You’re going to marry Charlie Landy?”

  “I can’t marry Charlie Landy. He always goes away,” said Dinah.

  Tessie pushed her plate away and propped her elbows on the table. “When you were a little girl, your father and I would play a game called Who Will Dinah Marry? The answer was always different, depending on what phase you were going through. We had you married off to a ventriloquist, an airline pilot, and a dry cleaner.” Tessie laughed at the memory. “The last time we played that game was just before he died. You got an A on some paper you wrote for school and the teacher wrote, ‘This has real soul.’ Your dad said to me, ‘Jo’—he used to call me that—‘Our girl really does have soul. I hope whoever she marries recognizes that and has some of his own.’ ”

  “He’s sure got plenty of that,” said Dinah, tapping her foot against the chrome kitchen chair.

  “You’re lucky if once in your life you meet someone like him.”

  “He’s going to Vietnam,” said Dinah in a tight voice. “I don’t mean to sound harsh, but the thought of being a young widow . . . I just can’t stand it.”

  Tessie touched her forehead to Dinah’s. “I wish things were different,” she sighed. “But I can’t say you’re wrong.”

  PART 3

  1966

  NINETEEN

  Jésus wiped his hands on his apron. “You are too flippant,” he whispered. He was standing with Sonia, who had put Mrs. Landy under the dryer after coloring her hair with Miss Clairol’s Blondest Beige. Victoria had urged Sonia to add more peroxide. “I’m a tycoon now,” she said. “I need something that sizzles.” But Sonia refused. “Too much blonde, you look more like Twiggy than Mr. Rockefeller.” Victoria laughed wildly. “You are too much Sonia. You crack me up.” It settled things for both of them, this give and take. Sonia loved everything American and was proud whenever she could throw out a cultural reference. Victoria egged her on, admiring her enthusiasm and grateful for her forgiveness. But Jésus worried that Sonia was becoming too disrespectful, too American.

  “Ahh, Mrs. Landy. Her bark is bigger than her bite,” she answered.

  “That’s not how we talk about our customers,” he said.

  She told him, in Spanish, that he was becoming an old fogey. He told her, in Spanish, that she was getting too big for her britches.

  “Does anyone care that I’m frying my brains under here?” shouted Victoria as she extricated herself from the hairdryer. “Where are y’all?”

  Just then, Tessie arrived for her twelve o’clock. She and Victoria listened to Sonia and Jésus in the back, exchanging bursts of Spanish like two people snapping towels at each other. Tessie slipped into her chair and glanced over at Victoria, raising her eyebrows in the direction of the supply room. Victoria shrugged. “Do I look like U Thant? Why can’t they do this on their own time?”

  Tessie could smell the ammonia from Victoria’s hair dye. It made her remember the ordeal of feeding Dinah a tablespoon of castor oil each morning when she was a little girl. Dinah would scrunch up her face and her body would shudder as the castor oil made its way down to her stomach. After she stopped making gagging sounds, she would say, “It tastes like liquid eyeballs. I’m not kidding.” Thinking of that now, the pungent ammonia smell caught in the back of her throat, Tessie felt as if she were going to be sick, maybe even pass out. She placed her head in her hands and doubled over.

  “You all right?” asked Victoria.

  “Uh uh.”

  “Can I get you something? Water? A cold towel?”

  “Uh uh.”

  Victoria put her arm around her friend. Tessie felt the ammonia filling her insides, expanding and pushing everything else out of its way. She began to heave and retch. She heard guttural moaning sounds that seemed to come from a cave within her. Then she threw up: globs of yellow, brown, and white liquid all over the front of Victoria’s red plaid miniskirt.

  Sonia ran from the closet. “Mrs. Lockhart, are you okay?”

  Jésus turned his head away. It would be offensive to Mrs. Lockhart if he should stare. And Victoria, eager to clean the vomit from her skirt but wanting to show her compassion, did what she knew best. She told Sonia what to do. “Have her lie down,” she ordered. “Bring her a Coca-Cola. Get a cold towel for her face. I’ll be right back.” Tessie, meanwhile, remained bent over in her chair, strangely serene and content.

  When she first missed her period, she thought it was the beginning of menopause. At forty-six, Tessie no longer worried about slipping up or taking pre
cautions. Besides, Barone was sixty-six. How likely was it that her eggs or his sperm would have the energy to dance together, not to mention do all the dipping and gliding and fancy footwork it takes to make a baby? The impossibility of it dogged her until the reality of it became indisputable: the nausea, the tender breasts, bone-aching fatigue. Pregnant at her age? It was mortifying! Inconceivable! Conceivable? Even the pun of it was a bad joke. Finally, she went to her gynecologist, old Dr. Gasque, who seemed as surprised about the whole thing as she was. After probing around inside of her, he shook his head. “Yup, there’s no question about it. You’ve got one cooking.”

  She was still lying on the examining table when he leaned over her and said in a conspiratorial manner, “I am speaking to you as a friend now, not as a doctor. If you want to do away with it, I can give you the name of a person to see.” His face was so close to hers that she could smell the tuna fish on his breath. “Excuse me,” she said, “I don’t feel very well.” Before she could get her feet out of the stirrups, she threw up everything she had eaten that morning all over his Cordovan loafers. She never knew if it was the tuna fish or the thought of killing the child within her that made her sick, but after that day she never again visited Dr. Gasque.

  She waited to tell anyone until she couldn’t wait anymore, then tried to predict how they would all react. Dinah was in graduate school, sharing an apartment off campus with Hedda. Eager to be on her own, she rarely visited her mother. When Tessie said to her, “I have to make an appointment to see you. Can you imagine that?” Dinah had snapped back, “Mom, I’m grown up now. Things will work better between us if you consider me as a contemporary rather than a daughter.” Tessie wondered, Will the news that she’s about to be somebody’s older sister bring her closer to home or make her run farther away?

  Victoria will have a cow when I tell her, she thought to herself. For all I know, I’ll have a cow too. That was funny. How come Dinah didn’t think she was so funny? Maybe this child will think its mother was a riot. Hope has to start somewhere. Maybe Victoria is so caught up in the success of the Orange Blossom Special, she’ll barely notice. She and Reggie are even talking about turning it into a franchise. She and Reggie: she and Reggie this, she and Reggie that. They are inseparable. The two of them plus Ella in that house, of course people talk, what would you expect? But Reggie’s such a friendly guy, always remembering everyone’s name, you can’t help but like him. He’s so different from Victoria, who can be—you know—such a bitch. “Bitch.” Tessie said it out loud. She never used language like that. She’d preferred not to call attention to herself in the way that cursing does. But she was about to flaunt her womanliness, her sexuality, in front of the world. She and Barone might as well strip naked and make love right there at the Orange Blossom Special, for everyone to see. That’s what they were all going to think about anyway. So big deal if she called Victoria Landy a bitch. What was that compared with having sex at forty-six with a man you’re not even married to?

  Of course, Barone. How will I break it to him? What in the world will he think? He and Fran were childless and, aside from the friendship he’d formed with Dinah and Crystal, children played no part in his life. She remembered how, years ago, they’d gone to the opening night of the opera at the Dade County Auditorium in Miami. They went because Dania Jai Alai was sponsoring a party afterward. “Do you like the opera?” she’d asked him. “I feel about the opera the way I feel about children,” he’d said. “I can take them or leave them.” Wait until I tell him he’s about to have a little diva of his own. Tessie chuckled. That was funny too.

  The only person she told was Jerry. She wrote to him,

  I have no idea what a 46-year-old woman does with a new baby or how I will be able to have the patience to be a mother. Somehow I will manage. Do you think I’m totally crazy?

  That night, as she lay on the couch, Eddie jumped up and curled up on her stomach. He’d been doing that a lot lately, and she wondered if he could feel the warmth and the life inside her. “Can you keep a secret?” she whispered to him. “I’m pregnant. I’m gonna have a baby.” He stared at her, his stern little face never losing its composure. “I hope everyone else takes the news as well as you,” she said.

  A month went by, and there was still no sign from Jerry. By then it was time to start breaking the news. She invited Barone to dinner on a Friday night in late November. They ate outside, the damp humidity finally out of the air. She made steak and rice and a green salad. When he poured her a glass of Bordeaux, she brought it to her lips, then put the glass down without taking a sip. It had a metallic smell. Just a whiff of it made her stomach curdle.

  Barone noticed how little she ate.

  “Are you feeling a little under the weather?” he asked.

  There it was, the perfect opening.

  “I am feeling a little under the weather,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, maybe you have a touch of something.”

  “I do. I have a touch of pregnancy.”

  He laughed as if it were a passing joke. “Have some wine,” he said, “it will make you feel better.”

  “Really,” said Tessie. “I’m pregnant. Eight weeks.”

  She could tell he was figuring backward to eight weeks ago. That would be the end of September. The weekend in Palm Beach to celebrate their tenth anniversary.

  “Quit counting.” She smiled. “It’s yours.”

  She watched his face as he absorbed the news. After some moments, he threw his head back and laughed. She could see the gold fillings in his molars, and thought that when this child was Dinah’s age, he would be eighty-seven. Old.

  He stopped laughing, then shook his head. “A gambler, a hustler, even an artist. All of these were things I could have become. But a father? Never.”

  “The doctor asked me if I wanted to get rid of it,” said Tessie. “I will understand if you want nothing to do with it, but I’m keeping it.”

  Barone grew serious and took her hands in his. “Dottie. This is something we made together, something precious. I knew there was a reason I kept the big house. It is for us, for you and me and our family. Of course I want it. Now you have no excuses, you must marry me.”

  Tessie placed his hand on her stomach. “Let’s get through one thing at a time,” she said. “A baby and a wedding. That’s one change too many for me.”

  TWENTY

  With Charlie gone, there wasn’t anyone in whom Ella could confide. She kept house for Victoria and Reggie and sometimes helped out in the kitchen of the Orange Blossom Special. She’d also started to teach Sunday School, grateful for the company of the young people. In the evening, she’d stay in her room and read. She wrote to Charlie nearly every day but was careful not to say what was really on her mind. Given where he was and what he was doing, he certainly didn’t need the additional burden of Ella Sykes. So she kept to herself the things that she was seeing right before her eyes.

  Reggie’s hair was now slicked back and shiny. He wore shirts with crazy colored patterns and a white vest. People at the Orange Blossom called him Reg, and the name stuck. When Ella asked him, “Reggie’s been a perfectly fine name for all these years, why are you suddenly calling yourself Reg?” he answered, “New man, new name,” sounding way too jaunty for her taste. He had no time to do the things he used to do, fix a broken light or take the car in for repairs. “Reg is a businessman now,” Victoria would say when Ella would ask him to do an errand. Instead of Reggie mowing the lawn and tending to the shrubs and trees as he always had, he hired a gardener.

  He still called Mrs. Landy Miss Victoria, and she still ordered him around but there was something different about the bickering between them. It had more of a teasing nature and wasn’t as mean spirited. When Victoria got a new haircut or bought some new clothes, she would dance around Reggie the way she used to in front of Ella. She’d taken to wearing those miniskirts that left nothing to the imagination. The first time she brought one home, she modeled it for Reggie, smoothing
it over her thighs and bending over like a cheerleader. “Not bad legs for a forty-six-year-old, are they, Reg?” she asked him. He laughed and looked her up and down in what Ella felt was an inappropriate manner. “Nope, not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.” Ella was reading Valley of the Dolls and knew she was somewhat under the spell of Jacqueline Susann, but that didn’t account for her feeling a stranger in her own house. That was just plain wrong.

  Anyway, it didn’t take any Jacqueline Susann to see what was going on with Mrs. Lockhart. Beginning to burst at the seams, she was, and Ella had overheard Mrs. Landy tell Reggie that Mrs. Lockhart was going to raise this child herself, she had no intention of marrying that older fellow from Miami. Ella never saw Crystal anymore. She left town right after graduation. All she knew was that she was living in a little house in Atlanta. She had a job at some advertising agency where they thought up snappy little jingles about why people should buy deodorant or wax paper. Ella couldn’t understand why people would get paid for work like that. She and Huddie were planning a big wedding for when he got out of the army after the first of the year. The last time Ella talked to her, which had to be nearly six months ago, she had said, “I miss you, Ella, but I’m never coming back to that nut house. I want to get as far away from her and Reggie and that stupid Orange Blossom circus as I possibly can.”

  With Charlie gone, there was no reason for Crystal to stay. Charlie was the only reason Crystal ever saw her mother. He’d call up and say, “Just come over for a quick bite. We’ll watch I Dream of Jeannie, and catch up.” At some point in the evening, Victoria would come into where they were watching television and stare down at them. “Isn’t it wonderful to have the whole family together?”

  Then she’d leave the room and Crystal would shake her head. “She can’t really mean that, can she?” she’d ask. Charlie would rub her arm and say, “She knows that she’s fooling herself. It’s just that if she admits it, everything else will come undone. Let her be.”