“My friend Claudia was looking for her daddy. She thought he might be seeing someone here.”
She seemed taken aback, protectively silent, as if she were accustomed to shielding male clients. Perhaps my presence softened her, for she asked, “What’s his name?”
I did not want to say. I shifted around trying to find comfortable seating on the smelly cushion.
“No matter. I don’t care. I’m just glad to see you.” She lit a cigarette and smiled. “I don’t know that you’re quite as glad to see me, though.” She pulled a bit of tobacco off her tongue.
“I am,” I said, biting my lip. “But, no, I didn’t expect to find you here, not in a place like this.”
She got up when one of the other ladies working at the club pounded on her door. She had five minutes until her act. She stuck her head out and asked the girl to reschedule her dance number in the final slot. The other dancer seemed to like her and was glad to help out.
“I guess you’ve made friends here,” I said. “Good to have friends.” Everything coming out of my mouth sounded insincere and wooden.
After an awkward pause, Alice said, “I know this looks bad, but you’ve no idea the trouble that followed me after I left. One thing led to another. None of it good.”
I was already fighting a sinking feeling. I finally turned to face her. “I’m not here to judge you, Mama.”
“Mama.” She looked stunned upon hearing herself called “mama” after all these years. “I’ve never stopped being your mother. I want you to know that. I’ve wanted to come and see you so many times. But not like this. I’ve been saving up so I could walk away from here, start again. But, most of all, to see you again.”
“Start again where?”
“California.”
“You always said you’d end up on the west coast,” I said, still struggling to sound agreeable. “On the big screen.”
She laughed, surprised. “You remember. You were always a smart little girl. Nothing got past you. I’ve gotten too old, though, for the camera. But I’m still good at make-up and hair. I’m getting my certificate in cosmetic’s school.”
“You could work for the stars in Hollywood,” I said. Although I didn’t know if she had always been star struck for celebrities like Vesta.
She seemed bolstered by my words. “I’m really good, Flannery. A photographer called me up to service a print model. She said I made her look better than any make-up artist she’d ever worked with.” She smiled, saying, “First reference and all that.”
“You’re leaving here soon then?” I felt oddly resentful that she might leave the state so soon after meeting me.
She looked toward the door. A group of dancers gathered outside laughing coarsely. The light evaporated from her eyes. “Yes, soon. I’ll let you know”
“We moved,” I said, pulling out a notepad and pen. I gave her our phone number. “You can call me anytime, day or night and I’ll answer.” Then I hesitated before adding, “Using a different name though, in case I’m not home.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“Before you move to California, right?”
“I promise,” she said. “Will you not tell your daddy yet though? I’d rather give some thought to how I should let him know. I wouldn’t have told you where I was working if you hadn’t shown up like this.”
“I won’t tell Daddy,” I said, still tamping down an angry feeling. I wasn’t making an empty promise. I could not stand the look in Daddy’s eyes if he knew the truth about Mama.
Someone knocked again.
She got up to answer the door. She talked in whispers to a man who questioned her delay. She closed the door and told me, “You’d better go. I don’t want you around when I go on, if you know what I mean. Besides, the boss needs to see me and I’d rather not let him in until you leave.” She stood looking at me as if I was an object, far off.
I purposely situated myself in the front seat next to Drake again. I ignored Daryl’s sullen glance when I closed the front passenger door. I had told so many lies tonight I wasn’t in the least worried about breaking an idiotic promise made to Daryl under duress.
“You scared wits out of me,” said Claudia. “When Daryl said you’d gone into the club, we didn’t know what to do, or what had happened to you.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “But I thought it would be best if one of us could look around inside. Did you see your father?”
“That’s what’s been so hard about this. I did see him but you weren’t there to give me support. Daddy walked right past me and I just stood there with my mouth open. I was paralyzed, like I was six years old. Of course, he never suspected I was here watching and waiting for him.” Under the interior car light, her face was drained of all color. She had been crying.I was stunned. I could not think of a thing to say. Here both of us had just gotten the worst news a daughter could get about a parent yet I could not tell her my news was worse.
“But if you were inside, you had to have seen him,” she said. “Did you? Don’t protect me now. I want to know.”
“I did not see him. I swear.” That was all that I could say. It was at least an honest answer.
Claudia glanced over at Daryl and then up at Drake. She nodded as if she knew why I fell so quiet in front of two big-mouthed boys. But what she did not know was how I could not imagine ever telling her or anyone why I had disappeared into The Gentleman’s Pleasure tonight. I was sick at heart over the whole evening, finding my mother awaiting her call to dance for those horrible men. Then Claudia’s news that her daddy was most likely cheating on Irene just as the mysterious caller had divulged topped off our evening horror show.
It was an awful night I had to put behind me as soon as possible. I could never tell Claudia. Or Daddy. Not him or Vesta. Not Billy. Not even Theo or Dorothea. Especially not them. My burden was my own.
Too much grief had rained down these past few weeks to lay more anguish on what was already stirred up. “Drake, I’m not feeling well. Drop me by my house rather than Claudia’s.” Before Claudia could complain, I told her, “Claudia, I’ll have Billy drop me by tomorrow and collect my bag.”
Claudia looked too broken to raise an argument. And ashamed, as if I was rejecting her for all that had happened to her tonight.
I kept running different explanations through my mind until I was too tired to think any more. I would have to let her believe whatever she wanted. Even letting her believe she was being judged seemed the lesser of both our parents’ evils.
* * * * *
Vesta dropped the box of old costumes beside my bed shortly after eight in the morning. “Billy mentioned he saw your advertisement at the studio. You didn’t ask if you could sell them,” she said, perspiring from the trip into and down from the attic. “Of course, he thought it was a good thing.”
I sat up, surprised and annoyed to find she had dragged the costumes out of the attic. “Could you give me time to wake up at least?” I had slept so little, staring out the window all night.
“Surely you wouldn’t sell Siobhan’s costumes too without asking me,” she asked as if she were put out with me.
“Not Siobhan’s,” I said, although I had considered doing that very thing. “But mine yes. And why not?” I asked fully expectant Vesta would back away from the subject when confronted reasonably.
“I paid for those dresses, that’s why,” said Vesta, defensive. “Besides, you know you will dance again. It’s a matter of time.” She smiled serenely, as if elated at the thought of seeing me perform again.
Not since the accident had Vesta implied anything of the sort.
“They were getting too tight anyway,” I said, offering the first excuse that came to mind. “Besides being out of practice, I have other things on my mind.”
Then she gushed, “I got a call about you. I’ve been waiting for the right time to bring it up. This is big. Bigger than any gig you’ve ever done.”
“Vesta, can we talk about this later?” I
asked, angered she was cornering me without asking me what I wanted. She had said nothing at all about my returning to dance rehearsals until now. I’d spent most the summer planning on going away to a university. It was as if Vesta woke up naively believing the days had been reversed to the Friday before the accident. “Look, you did pay for them and if I sell them the money is yours if that’s your worry.”
“I don’t want them sold because you’ll need them again. I sacrificed to get them for you. I don’t want to have to go back to your daddy and start that war all over again.” She had a strangely tender tone. She was genuinely implying that I would return to step dancing. “You’ll get back into them after a week or two of rehearsals. You always do.” She was delusional.
“Vesta, I don’t want the costumes. Let them go or advertise them at the studio. Another dancer will buy them off you.” It was true. Our costumes were the envy of every dancer we had competed against.
Vesta laughed softly but she was not backing down. “I’m going to have them dry cleaned. When you’re ready, the costumes are yours for the asking.” She left me without another word of protest, closing my door as she left.
I dropped my feet over the side of the bed, lying down and holding my hands over my face. I had a terrible headache.
I showered and dressed. By the time I got back to my bedroom Claudia had left a message. Vesta stuck it to my door. She said Claudia sounded anxious to see me. I was in no mood to keep up a pretense in front of her. I lacked the energy to cover up for my mother today. Besides, I knew Claudia was bursting at the seams to tell her mother about seeing her daddy at The Gentleman’s Pleasure last night. Neither did I possess the strength to coax Claudia into waiting and letting things transpire naturally. For all I knew, Claudia had already spilled the news to Irene. Maybe that was the reason she sounded so anxious. I groaned.
What was worse, I half-expected Alice to call me. Having slept on it, I regretted giving her our phone number. Come to think of it, she had not given me her telephone number. ,I realized we had not decided on a name she should use when she called. I mulled that over until I realized that nothing about last night was what it should have been. Alice behaved as if she were some old girlfriend of Daddy’s and not my own flesh-and-blood mother. I imagined that her shock at seeing her daughter so unexpectedly might even send her to flight just as she had run away when I was a four-year-old.
I was angry with myself for not insisting on her telephone number. Other than knowing where to find her after dark, I had not provided her a clue as to where we lived or that we had built on Daddy’s property. I sighed, burying my face in my pillow. Alice Curry was as much a ghost of the present as she was of my past.
Daddy stuck his head into the room quite cheerful since he was taking a personal day, he said, at his boss’s insistence. “I thought you were sleeping over at the Johnson’s last night. You and Claudia didn’t have another fight, did you?”
“No, not a fight. I was tired and wanted my own bed,” I said, at ease because Daddy always believed me.
“I know Claudia can get on your last nerve.”
“It wasn’t that. We’re fine. I’m going over there sometime today,” I said, deciding I could make up another excuse later for not going.
“Since you’ve already showered and I’m taking the car in for a tune-up, why don’t I drop you by on the way?” He was such an uncomplicated man.
“I don’t want to put you out,” I said.
He laughed.
Within minutes, Daddy ushered me out to the car. Before he drove me into Claudia’s estate-lined neighborhood, he said, “I know girls have their time of the month and so I never want to pry, but if this thing with Vesta and the Millers has you put out with me, I want you to know I was against it,” he said.
“Meaning what?”
“I told her I was against it.”
“Did you also tell her you were against her draining my college fund?”
He did not answer. He pulled directly into the Johnson’s pristine circular drive. “All out for the Johnson Express. You girls try and get along today.” He obviously wanted to make the tension in the car about some imagined feud between Claudia and me.
I pulled a tissue from my pocketbook and wiped my eyes and nose.
“You’ve been through a lot. I understand why you’re so distraught. But Vesta will calm down in a few days and drop this whole thing. Give her time.”
“Theo Miller is out of time,” I said.
He kissed my cheek.
I sprinted up the long walk to the Johnsons front doorstep. Before I could buzz the intercom, the front door opened. Irene looked happy and serene like always. “Claudia has been pacing a rut in the floor waiting for you. I hope you can find out what’s going on with her.” She grew serious. “And then let me in on the secret.”
Irene Johnson did not know anything about our trip to The Gentleman’s Pleasure last night. I could not be more relieved.
* * * * *
Claudia sat hugging her gigantic pink pillow as if by holding it against her stomach she could ease her inward agony. “I thought you’d never get here. I got no sleep last night, one minute worried about my mother, the next about you.” She sat back against her headboard, a high white heavy bed, decorated with curving arabesque designs inlaid into the wood. She had yet to change out of the baby doll pajamas she often slept in, worn pink socks, her blonde hair tousled on top and grown out since the haircut she had gotten that day at Wrightsville Beach.
“I didn’t sleep well either, if it’s any consolation,” I said.
“Now you have to tell me what happened last night.”
“When?”
“I swear I’ll kill you if you make me wait another second, Flannery Curry. How did you get into that club?”
I pulled a half-truth out of the ether. “Daryl had an ID, as you knew.” When she did not take the bait, I added, “I finagled the bouncer. He slipped me into the club. I thought if I could look around, I’d have the proof you needed that your daddy was innocent.”
She seemed touched, saying, “You did that for me? Then what? Wait! I know already. You saw him, but you couldn’t bear to tell me the truth, not in front of Drake’s troll-of-a-cousin.”
I handed her a tissue, stalling. Finally I said, “Yes, that’s right.” I swallowed hard, for the lie wasn’t going down as well as I would have liked. “It wasn’t his business.”
“But I already knew,” said Claudia as she wrapped her arms around me. Then she let loose and tearing the tissues into tiny shreds.
I could hardly stand to see her so beside herself. But also, I was running out of lies. “Wait, what I wanted to say, was that,” I paused, but Claudia drew back, her eyes begging for consolation. “I didn’t want to believe it. So I don’t.”
“I know you must have seen him with his girlfriend. What’s she like? Is she young? Prettier than my mother? Oh, misery! She isn’t as young as us, is she? I’d kill him.”
“I only said I saw your daddy,” I said, not wanting the lie to escalate into something out of both our hands. The lie stuck in my throat. I couldn’t take it any further.
“You should have stayed, you know. To see who he was meeting,” she said.
“But I didn’t because I couldn’t. I was underage and making the bouncer nervous in the first place. After I saw what I went inside to see, he insisted I leave right away.”
“I already know why Daddy was there. Whoever called me filled me in on the details, and something inside me knew that caller wasn’t lying to me. She was sincere, you know, and defensive of my poor mother.”
“But maybe your daddy just like’s stopping by there for a drink. You know, men go to bars after work,” I said, still not convinced Dwight Johnson was cheating on his wife.
“Daddy works in his uptown office. There are plenty of bars to drop by after work. That drive in heavy evening traffic has to add another hour to his trip from work.” She was piecing together a truth. I had no bus
iness dismantling it. “I know,” I finally said. “I like to imagine parents are like our guardian angels. You know, unable to fall?”
“I know, but that’s because your family is so above board. You get to live within the security of your own guardian angels.”
I was mystified. Claudia had never admitted jealousy for my patched together family. I remembered how mad I was when she was nearly disparaging them. My thoughts raced for any shred of evidence that might help her believe the best about her own daddy. But I had no point of reference, teetering on the fragile scaffolding of my already unstable propaganda. I climbed up onto her massive bed and stretched out next to her. The two of us lay quietly, for there was nothing else to be said or debated.
My only consolation was in knowing I was not the only daughter born to instability. Claudia had now entered her own personal state of grace.
Chapter 10
I stretched out on a gorse-yellow blanket I had spread on our back lawn. The Miller’s granddaughters had not played back here since their daddy’s funeral. The whole back yard was quiet and free of children.
The sun would set within the hour. The temperature was dropping and the sky turned a lucent peach. Without the sunflower garden blocking the light, the last bit of sun streamed over the top of the Miller’s house.
I half-hoped Reverend Theo would appear magically as he had done so many times in the past. Much to my disappointment I heard neither the shudder of the old screen door or the leather squeak of his brown preacher’s shoes padding through a row of sunflowers.
I rolled onto my stomach although falling asleep was not what I intended to do. I was hoping for a glimpse of Reverend Theo. I imagined he would come over and invite me for lemonade. We would laugh and see who could tell the saddest story. But he did not stir from inside his house.
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