by Bev Marshall
I didn’t see Mama or Wallace until I walked into the den where they were sitting on the white sectional couch with Falstaff cans in their hands.
Chapter 16
NEITHER MAMA NOR WALLACE NOTICED ME STANDING WITH my back against the French doors. With their heads together, holding up their Falstaffs, they sang, “Big girls don’t cry-yiyiiii.” There hadn’t been any liquor in our house since Wallace moved back in and poured it all down our kitchen sink, and now they were drunk as skunks. I looked down at the crushed cans lined up on the white stone coffee table. Drunk on three beers each.
I sidled over to the huge fireplace to stand beneath a colorful tapestry hanging over it when Mama looked up and spotted me. She stopped singing, and after a moment Wallace’s voice died away, too. “Having a good time, Layla Jay?” Mama asked.
“Looks like you are.” I pointed to the empties on the table.
“It’s the Fourth of July. Independence Day. We’re entitled to a few beers to celebrate. No harm in it.” She kissed Wallace’s nose. “Is there, babe?”
“Not a bit.” Lifting his beer, he saluted with it to his forehead.“Want one? There’s plenty in the washtub out there.” When he cocked his beer to point to the door, it spilled on the crotch of his light blue pants.
Mama howled. “Oh, Wally, looks like you peed on yourself. Doesn’t it look like that, Layla Jay?”
I don’t know why I felt disgusted with Mama. I never had before when she had too much, but this time I thought about how neat Dottie Mizell was in her crisp camp shirt and khaki Bermudas and saw that Mama looked like a floozy in her white ruffled low-cut blouse and tangerine shorts that showed the bottom of her cheeks when she crossed her legs. Wallace was patting his crotch with a big grin on his face. A strand of hair, black as crow’s feathers, fell forward over his dark eyes, and when he grinned at me, I think he half-expected me to adore him like most women did.
I frowned instead.“You said after the accident that you’d never drink alcohol again,” I said. “Who’s going to drive us home?”
“Oh, little worry wart, stop your fussing. Wally can drive and, if he doesn’t feel up to it, Pop’s got his truck.” Mama stood up. “Speaking of pee, I gotta go.Where’s the john in this hotel?”
“There’s one down the hall,” I said. “ I’ll show you.”
Mama had been walking normally for the first time since her accident, but now she staggered worse than she had in months as she limped along behind me.
When I opened the door to the bathroom, the big round lightbulbs around the huge mirror over the countertop made me think of an actress’s dressing room. The potty was behind a white louvered door that Mama didn’t bother to close as she rushed into the tiny room.When she was done, she sat on the white wicker chair in front of the mirror and propped her elbows on the pink-veined marble counter. In the bright light, Mama’s beautiful white skin had turned sallow, her mascara was smeared beneath her glassy eyes.“I don’t feel so good,” she said, dropping her head into her hands, and then before I could hold on to her, she leaned over and vomited onto the white carpet.
“Oh no,” I yelled, staring down at the mess on the carpet. As I grabbed a handful of the decorative gold-rimmed hand towels, Mama staggered to the potty where she dropped to her knees and heaved over and over.The stench was awful, and I squirted the little rubber ball of the atomizer on a perfume bottle that I snatched from the counter all around the room. I tried to scrub away the big brown stain in the shape of a star on the carpet, but it was no use, and finally I gave up. Just as I was about to go in search of Miss Louise and Papaw to take Mama home, she flung back the louvered door and smiled. “Feel better now. That label on my pill bottles that says don’t drink booze is there for a good reason.” She leaned over the sink and rinsed her mouth. I handed her the last of the towels to wipe her face, “Go get my purse, Layla Jay, honey. I need fresh makeup,” Mama said, fluffing her hair with her splayed fingers.
“You need to go home,” I said, longing to be far away from the shame I felt when I looked down at the ruined carpet.
“No, I’m having fun. I haven’t had any fun for a long time. Don’t you think I deserve to enjoy myself just a little bit?” She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Never mind, I’ll get my purse myself. I can’t remember where I left it.”
I didn’t think Mama needed any more fun on this day, but there was no use arguing with her. I followed her to the door, where I turned out the light to hide Mama’s mess. I never knew if Dottie Mizell suspected that it was Mama who had ruined her carpet. If she did, she was too polite to mention it, just as she pretended she didn’t see the big wet stain on Wallace’s pants when he and Mama went back outside.
In the guest bedroom, where earlier Dottie had directed me to change if I wanted to swim, I wiggled into my suit and dashed past the adults down to the lake. I jumped off the pier into the cool water, and then, turning onto my back with my eyes closed, I tried to shut out the voices that drifted out across the lake. I didn’t care that Jehu was with Lyn. I didn’t care that Mama and Wallace were making fools of themselves. I didn’t care that I was used goods. I didn’t care that Grandma was dead, that God had taken my daddy from me. I didn’t deserve them. Nothing mattered to me. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I am nothing, I thought, and maybe I’ll float away and no one will even notice that I’m missing. Not even Papaw, whose laughter rang out above everyone’s chatter. He had Miss Louise now. He didn’t care about me, and if he knew what I had done with Roland, he would be ashamed that I was his granddaughter. I rolled over and paddled farther out into the lake. My arms and legs were cold and heavy, and I turned onto my back again with my arms stretched out from my shoulders and squinted up at the sky. A blue heron soared above me. She flapped her broad wings several times and dove toward the water before lifting again out of view. I closed my eyes and then scissored my legs and regained my balance as the calm water beneath me began to roll slightly. I heard the motor of the boat before I saw it coming toward me.
I dropped my legs and treaded water, circling around to face the boat. Joey stood at the wheel, looking back at the skier. I knew it was Frances skiing because I saw the two strips of her red bikini jumping across the wake behind the boat.With one hand hanging on to the rope, she waved the other over her head.
No one in the boat had seen me. I hollered as loudly as I could. “Hey, I’m here. Hey, hey hey!” But I couldn’t be heard over the roar of the boat’s engine and the laughter of the five kids on board. I kicked and thrashed my arms, swimming as fast as I could, but the fear hammering my chest weighed me down, and when I gasped with effort, my mouth filled with water. I stopped and coughed and waved one arm, cried “Hey,” one last time before Joey turned his head and saw me. His smile turned into horror as he frantically turned the wheel so hard, the boat tilted up on its side, nearly overturning. Screams rang out from all directions. I saw Frances’s body jerking sideways, and then her skis were in the air. At nearly the same instant, the rope whipped across my neck before I sank down into the water.
I remember very little of what happened next. Blurry worried faces, vomiting, smooth cold fiberglass, Frances’s leg touching mine. I hadn’t died, and I hadn’t even thought to ask God to save me.
They carried me to the guest room where Miss Louise and the other two nurses hovered over me as I lay on the soft bed with the sweet-smelling sheets. They discussed what to put on my neck, whether I needed an X-ray, and whether there was still any water in my lungs. Joey, who knew CPR, had saved my life, but I didn’t remember his mouth on mine before I vomited what seemed like half of the lake into the boat.
The irony of Mama’s and my dual spewing wasn’t lost on me. Now our entire happy little family had disgraced themselves. Nearly everyone had asked me why I’d done such a dumb thing as to swim out to where people were skiing. I didn’t care what they thought. I was just glad I hadn’t died a sinner, especially one
who had faked salvation, and then gone right ahead and committed even more sins. Had I died I would have been burning in hell instead of lying in this beautiful bedroom.
As soon as I recovered we left the party. Miss Louise drove Mama and Wallace home in Wallace’s Galaxie and Papaw and I followed them in his truck. I laid my head back on the seat and closed my eyes, hoping to avoid Papaw’s questions. If he had any, he kept them to himself. The only words he uttered on the long drive home were “Louise drives too damned slow.”
Jeanie, my so-called new friend, telephoned me from the pool the next afternoon. She pretended that she wanted to know how I was feeling, but after a lot of hemming and hawing with this and that about how she and Faye missed me, she let slip that Lyn had told everyone at the pool that I had tried to commit suicide by drowning myself in Dixie Springs Lake.“She said if it weren’t for Joey saving you, you’d be lying in Hartman’s Funeral Home right now.”
“Did she also tell you why I was supposed to have been drowning myself?”
Jeanie hesitated, then blurted it out. “Yeah, she said it was because of Jehu dumping you for her.”
I thought of June. She would be glad to know that she wasn’t the only person who told lies about me. “Oh, right,” I said. “I would end my life over a twerp like Jehu. I could care less who he dates,” I said. “I gotta go. My mother needs me.”When I hung up, Jeanie was still talking. Now she could be the center of attention at the pool because she’d been the one to talk to poor old brokenhearted, crazy Layla Jay. Suddenly, more than anything, I wanted to move out of Zebulon, go someplace where no one knew me or Mama or Wallace.
Afraid that someone else might call, I told Mama I was going to the library. She had a hangover and was lying down on the couch in the living room. “You’re not going to the pool today?”
The pool was the last place I wanted to be, not just because of the gossip, but also because I didn’t plan on ever submerging myself in water anywhere except the bathtub for the rest of my life. “No, the library,” I said, going out the door before she could ask me any more questions.
I didn’t go to the library. I wandered aimlessly around the neighborhood without caring where my feet took me. I walked past the neat lawns, edged walks, trimmed hedges, and stately trees surrounding me, thinking that it was all fake. Inside the tidy exteriors lived people like Wallace and June and me and Mama with disheveled lives. Who knew what went on behind the lacy curtain in Mrs. Paterno’s kitchen window? Or what evil lurked within the walls of the Esterbrooks’ white ranch-style home. Maybe Mr. Esterbrook beat the little boy who sat on the steps with molding clay, a cup of grape Kool-Aid beside him. Perhaps there were fornicators and drunks and lesbians and people trying to kill themselves in houses all over Zebulon. And God saw that the world He created hadn’t turned out like He expected at all. But maybe He didn’t care one whit. Maybe He felt like I had when I made a beautiful peach cobbler for dinner. I had been so pleased with my handiwork: the smooth, lightly browned crust over perfectly cut peaches and round dumplings resting in a thick rich creamy nest.Then Wallace had stabbed a tablespoon in the middle and slopped the cobbler onto our plates, mashing up the dumplings, chopping the peaches and crust into a messy glob that was so unappetizing, all of my former pleasure was stolen away.
In front of June’s cream-colored house I stopped walking and stood on the sidewalk. All of a sudden a peculiar feeling came on me, prickling my skin so that I felt a chill creeping up my neck. It was as if a voice was urging me forward up the walk, and slowly I obeyed and stepped onto the porch. I peered into the dark house and saw that no one was home. I rang the bell anyway to make sure, and when no one came to the door, I lifted the potted mum and picked up the key. I let myself in and tiptoed into the living room.The house was eerily quiet and I looked up at the silent clock on their mantel, wondering if it was broken. Everything was as I expected. No dust anywhere, no tossed newspapers, or clothing heaped on the floor. In the kitchen there were no dishes to be washed, no ironing flung over the six chairs pushed into the table in perfect alignment. I went into June’s parents’ bedroom and lifted the book on the mahogany night table that Mrs. McCormick was reading: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by some author named John le Carré. A spy was what I felt like, standing in the dark room as though I were looking for a clue. But what I expected to find, I didn’t know.Whatever it was, it was most likely in June’s room, and I wheeled around and headed down the hall.
The only hint that June was away was that the stuffed white dog that usually lay on her bed was missing. Nail polish bottles lined her dresser beneath the mirror, and the clear glass jar that held her barrettes and ponytail holders was in its usual place. Staring into the mirror, I traced the faint red line on my neck with my forefinger. It didn’t burn any longer.Turning away from my image, I went to her chest of drawers and pulled out the top one, where only a few pairs of panties lined the bottom of the drawer. I yanked out the second and third ones, both empty except for a lone pair of frayed shorts, but when I tugged on the bottom drawer, it resisted. I jacked it up and down and stuck my hand in the small opening and removed a notebook that had jammed there. Sitting on the floor, I sorted through the mess of papers and miscellany of school mementos I found there. June had saved scraps of her entire life. Drawings, macramé jewelry we had made in Brownies, ribbons from the fair, programs from school plays, dead corsages, her cheerleading booklet “Go Cougars,” and graded papers from nearly every class she had taken. Beneath her Spanish I final exam paper (on which she’d gotten a C), I pulled out a brown photo album.
I carried the book to the window where I had knelt in the rain. Sitting cross-legged with the book on my lap, I opened it.The first picture I saw was of me when I was around ten. I remembered June taking it in the yard at Grandma’s house. I was acting silly, posing with one hand on my cocked hip, the other behind my head like a pinup girl. I shifted my eyes to the next photo. Me again.This time outside of Pisgah Methodist Church in my Easter dress, holding a basket of candy. Quickly, I scanned the rest of the pictures on the first page; I was in all of them, and I turned the page to see who else June had fitted between the black triangular tabs. More of me. I caught my breath and flipped another page, me, June and me, me and Mama, Grandma with her arm around me, me on Jim . . . I flipped page after page until I came to the end where the last photograph she had taken of me was centered alone on the page. I could hardly bear to look at it, and yet I couldn’t take my eyes away. I was lying on my side with my head resting on my right palm on the floor near this very spot where I sat. I was smiling softly with a dreamy expression in my eyes that I hadn’t known I possessed.The word for it that came to my mind was rapture. I looked enraptured. I forced my eyes down to what I dreaded to see, and there above my pushed-down suit, shining with moisture, were my bare and glorious breasts. Beneath the picture, June had written “My Beloved Layla Jay.”
Chapter 17
I CLOSED THE BOOK, PUT IT BACK WHERE I HAD FOUND IT, AND then walked over to June’s dresser and opened her jewelry box. “Lara’s Theme” drifted out from the rose-colored velvet-lined box and I listened for a moment, staring at the assortment of rings, bracelets, and pendants. June hardly ever wore jewelry, and it occurred to me that probably these trinkets were gifts from her mother, who was always as bejeweled as Elizabeth Taylor in the movie Cleopatra.
I retraced my steps down the hall and opened a closet door adjacent to the bathroom. In the cupboard towels were folded and stacked in neat rows exactly like they were on the shelves of Salloum’s department store. There were three rows of robin’s egg blue, one canary yellow, and four towels with matching hand and washcloths the color of Grandma’s lavender hydrangeas. I took two of the blue cloths and opened the cabinet beneath the sink where the extra toilet paper was kept beside bathroom cleansers. I lifted the green Comet can, wrapped it in the towels, and left the house, checking to make sure the door was locked.
The next day I went back at the same time, confident no one would be home since I had remembered June telling me that her mother volunteered during those hours at the Zebulon Infirmary as a Pink Lady. I watched The Match Game on their TV set, lying on the slate blue couch. After the show was over, I ate an orange from the fruit bowl on their kitchen table, and before I left I took the wire whisk I found in the drawer beside the refrigerator.
By Sunday I had gone back to June’s house three more times and added a china figurine of a boy reading a book, an unopened box of Tussy’s dusting powder, and two of Mr. McCormick’s belts, one black, one brown. I kept these treasures in a box beneath some old stuffed animals in my closet, and when the house was quiet and I was sure Mama and Wallace were asleep, I would take them out, run my hands over them as though I were blind, and then I would lift them to my face and breathe in any scent that lingered on them.
Every night before I fell asleep I would see the photograph June had taken of me lying on her floor. I dreaded turning out the light when shadows danced on the wall and I would hear “Lara’s Theme” playing and replaying in my mind. I often awoke frightened and confused in the early morning before daylight. In one dream that recurred frequently I walked into Dixie Springs Lake, wearing June’s yellow bikini, and lying on my back, I floated on calm water. Above me white egrets and blue herons flew in tiered circular patterns. I floated, arms akimbo, peaceful and silent, until the sky darkened with hundreds of dissonant cawing crows. They attacked the egrets and herons and white and blue feathers fell like arrows from bows all around me. They pricked my neck and peppered my breasts, and I rolled over, swimming as fast as I could with my arms and legs thrashing, spraying great jets of water that washed over my head and pounded me down, shooting me toward the lake’s sandy bottom. In other nightmares Wallace appeared with hands the size of roasting pans that plucked my breasts from my body like flowers from their stems. I dreamed of June and Roland and I saw Mama swathed like a mummy from head to toe chasing me down the hall in June’s dark house. I couldn’t stop crying after these dreams, and sometimes I couldn’t muffle the sounds of my screams. Mama would rush into my room to shake me and holler, “Wake up, Layla Jay. For God’s sake, wake up!” I never told her about my dreams. Always I said,“I can’t remember.”