Blueberry Hill

by Bette Lee Crosby

  “This is the place?” I ask. Already I’m thinking this is a bad idea.

  She nods. “Cool, huh?”

  I follow her inside and stay close behind. This is a place where I feel neither comfortable nor safe, but Donna loves it so I try to love it with her.

  We stand off to the side and order drinks. For a while we listen to the music; then when the band takes a break this short guy with an oversized nose starts walking toward us.

  Donna pokes an elbow in my rib. “This is the guy,” she whispers.

  At first I think she’s kidding, but she’s not.

  “Hey, Charlie,” she says.

  He sticks his arm out, flattens his hand against the wall, and leans into Donna. “I figured you’d be here.”

  I’m amazed that this is the guy my beautiful, cool, with-it sister is crazy about. I don’t get it, but she obviously likes him so I say nothing.

  Before he heads back to the bandstand, Charlie says, “When we close up, we’re getting together at Mike’s. You want to come?”

  I say no. Donna says yes, and she’s driving.

  We don’t get home until five o’clock that morning. I am weary to the bone, but Donna is the happiest I’ve ever seen her.

  Now I look back and wonder: if I had refused to go, would she have gone anyway? If she hadn’t gone, would they still have connected in some other time and place? There is great wisdom in hindsight, but even hindsight has its blind spots. And this, I suppose, is one of them.

  ~ ~ ~

  As it turned out, Charlie was not the party boy Donna described. He was a brutish man with a callous way of thinking and a nose that overshadowed his face.

  “Be careful,” I told my sister, “he reeks of trouble.”

  “Careful is for people who are afraid of life,” she answered.

  Five months later Donna was pregnant and they got married. They didn’t have a white-gown, invite-all-your-friends ceremony but a courthouse quickie. For Donna that was enough. Beneath the crusty exterior beat the heart of a wild woman ready to settle down.

  Having a baby, that’s what changed her. The baby, and the fact that she’d actually fallen in love with a man who loved himself far more than he loved her.

  Seven months after the wedding, their son was born. She named the boy after his daddy, but within the year she and Charlie got divorced. He’d left her for a new groupie who followed the band from place to place. A younger groupie. One who didn’t come with a baby attached.

  Donna never cried. Not once. You could almost see through the hole in her heart, but she covered it with a breastplate of resolution.

  Instead of giving way to the hurt, she moved in with Mama and Daddy and resumed her roller skating carhop job. She also went back to late-night drinking and smoking. But there was one change: she now pulled herself out of bed every morning and took care of the baby.

  You might expect that she’d be a terrible mother, but you’d be wrong. Donna was not exactly orthodox in her manner of handling things. There was no set schedule, no dinner on the table at the dot of six, no eight o’clock bedtime. But she held little Charlie so close to her heart it was as if they were one person.

  A year later Donna told me she was getting back together with Charlie and they were planning to be remarried.

  I gasped. “You’re kidding! Why would you do that? He’s a terrible father, he lies, cheats—” I caught myself mid-sentence and stopped.

  Donna eyed me with a puzzled look. A look that questioned why I’d say such a thing. She didn’t even answer.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn,” I said, “but you’re so special. You deserve so much more. Is this really what you want?”

  I stopped talking when I noticed Donna nervously tapping her fingers on the table and fingering the pack of cigarettes in front of her.

  A long minute passed before she shook one loose, lit it, and pulled a long slow drag.

  “Yes, it’s what I want,” she answered. “I really love Charlie.”

  That was the end of the discussion.

  The Madness of Marriage

  Seven months after the second courthouse marriage, Donna gave birth to a daughter. By then she’d given up her roller skating carhop job.

  Charlie’s mother, who at one time praised her son for being what she called an entertainer, now looked down on his pastime with disdain.

  “You’re a married man with two babies!” she said. “It’s time to settle down.”

  She withdrew a considerable amount of money from her savings account, bought a house two blocks from where she lived, and then handed the keys to Charlie.

  “I’m not expecting rent,” she said, “but I am expecting you to give up that trashy job!”

  Charlie did. For a while. He took a day job and began work as an assistant administrator in a local college.

  At first it was good. Caring for the two babies brought out a softness I’d never before seen in Donna. Charlie, not so much. He grew restless, itchy to do something more than hurry home to a pot roast dinner and watch television.

  “Why don’t you take the kids to the playground?” Donna would ask, but his only answer would be a look of incredulity.

  After a few years of working a day job Charlie pulled his guitar from the closet and began plucking at the strings again. At first it was a casual thing, but in time he went back to joining the group.

  “Tony’s got a broken arm,” he told Donna. “They need a fill-in.”

  “For how long?” she asked suspiciously.

  “A week, maybe two.”

  A week turned into a month and a month into several more, and when Donna reminded him of his promise to leave the band Charlie fell back on the pretense of needing money.

  “The car needs a new radiator,” he said. After that it was the back fence that would need to be replaced and an extraordinarily high heating bill. When he piled the financial needs on top of one another, Donna volunteered to get a job and she did.

  No longer interested in being a roller skating carhop, she began to search the newspapers for a job close to the house so she’d be there when the kids needed her.

  One morning as we sat with steamy cups of coffee and searched the want ads, a smile lit up her face. “Here’s a great one,” she said. “Bank teller.”

  Bear in mind that Donna was a high school dropout. While others her age finished high school and moved on to college, she was skating from car to car with overloaded trays of root beer.

  ~ ~ ~

  I glance at the ad then look back at my sister. “This says college graduate. No experience required.”

  Donna laughs. “Well, I don’t have any experience!”

  “You also don’t have any college,” I remind her.

  “That’s probably something they’re flexible on,” she says. “Anyway, this job is perfect for me. It’s close by; I can get the kids off to school and be home an hour after they are.”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try,” I say, “but I wouldn’t get my hopes up because of the college thing.”

  “Wonder what I should wear?” Donna muses. The next day she calls me, and I can practically see her smiling over the phone.

  “I got it,” she says.

  “You did?” My surprise is obvious. “How’d you get around the college requirement?”

  “I told them I went to school in California, but the building burned down and the records were lost.”

  “You’re kidding,” I exclaim.

  She assures me she’s not. “I was kind of nervous when they asked me the name of the college.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Well, I remembered there was a college near where Aunt Jean used to live, and it really did burn down.”

  “That was nine years ago.”

  “Yeah, I know. I said when I went there it was called Chico College, but since then they’ve changed the name and I’m not too sure of what the new name is.”

  “You told them that and sti
ll got the job?”

  “Yep,” she answers proudly.

  I rest my case. Donna was an enigma. She was that rare person you couldn’t help but like. She was still the kid who had enough grit and determination to win a banana split, only this time it was a job.

  ~ ~ ~

  She stayed at the bank for almost ten years, advanced to become the branch manager, and was written about in the local newspaper for nailing a fraudulent check casher. Without him being any the wiser, she pushed the silent alarm and then stalled and kept him waiting long enough for the police to arrive.

  The sad thing is that while Donna built a life for their family, Charlie rebuilt a life of his own. A life based on wide-eyed groupies following him from place to place and serving up free sex.

  More than once Donna suspected as much, but there’s a long stretch between suspecting and knowing. It wasn’t until Cyndi Lou happened along that she was forced into knowing. That was six months after Charlie went from playing once or twice a week to every night.

  I’m certain the Cyndi Lou thing had been going on for quite a while, but it didn’t surface until the Tuesday night Donna and I took the kids bowling.

  ~ ~ ~

  While I’m still pulling on my shoes, Donna spots three of the fellows in Charlie’s band in the lane next to us.

  “Hey, Tony.” She waves. “Aren’t you guys playing tonight?”

  This is a deer-in-the-headlights moment. The panic-stricken Tony looks down at his watch and says, “Holy shit, I lost track of the time.” Then he and the other two hightail it out of there without bothering to finish the game.

  “Son of a bitch,” my sister says angrily. “He’s at it again.”

  Her daughter, Debi, who is now thirteen going on thirty, says, “Don’t be mad, Mom. Maybe there’s a reason.”

  “I’m sure there’s a reason,” Donna answers. There’s a hard crust on her words, but she leaves it at that and we go back to bowling. Donna laughs and talks as if nothing is wrong, but I can see inside my sister. I can see the heartbreak pushing against her skin.

  Donna says nothing more about the incident until the next morning. Charlie sits at the table nursing a cup of coffee and she asks, “How was the gig last night?”

  “Not bad,” Charlie mumbles.

  “Where’d you play?”

  “A club in Brooklyn; you’ve never been there.”

  “You got in really late,” Donna says casually. “Was it a long drive or a late set?”

  “Both.”

  “Did Tony ride with you?”

  “Yeah, him and Buck.”

  Donna nods, but she is already thinking of what she will do.

  That afternoon she calls me and relates the story.

  “Charlie’s screwing around again,” she says. Then she explains how she needs me to come with her. “He’s playing at Club Fresco tonight, but I want to see where he goes after that.”

  Sensing trouble, I ask, “Are you sure this is what you want to do? Why don’t you just confront Charlie with what you know and see what he has to say?”

  She heaves a sigh that carries years of weariness. “I already know what he’ll say,” she answers and gives no further explanation.

  Part of being a sister is sticking together in good times and bad. I don’t have a good feeling about this, but I agree to go along. I almost know what will happen, but I also know that like all the times before Donna will forgive him. She will swallow her own hurt to keep her family together. Little Charlie is now fifteen and Debi is thirteen, but they are still her babies and she is fierce as a mama lion when it comes to protecting them. I guess she feels that having a cheating daddy is better than having none at all.

  It’s after ten when we drive to Club Fresco. She doesn’t park in the street, nor does she park in the club parking lot. She parks alongside a delivery van left overnight in the lot beside the hardware store. She’s already spotted Charlie’s car, and from here she can keep an eye on it.

  We sit there until shortly after one o’clock. Then handfuls of people start drifting out. It is a good half hour before we see Cyndi Lou come toddling through the door with Charlie. He walks her to her car, and before she climbs in he bends her over the front fender and kisses her with such ferocity that I feel embarrassed watching. I cannot fathom what is going through my sister’s mind, but her face is a mask of stone.

  “Maybe he’s drunk,” I suggest.

  Donna shakes her head and says nothing.

  After several minutes and a considerable amount of groping, Cyndi Lou climbs into her car and drives away.

  “It’s probably a just groupie thing,” I say. “You know how these girls throw themselves at the singers.”

  “We’ll see,” Donna answers.

  Charlie goes back into the club, and we continue to sit and watch his car. Fifteen minutes later he comes out, gets into his car, and drives away. Donna pulls out and follows him several car lengths back. We drive for almost twenty minutes; then he turns down a side street. Donna stops at the corner and watches. It is now two-fifteen, and there is only one house on this entire block with the porch light still lit. Charlie slows his little sports car and pulls into the driveway. Before he can unfold himself from the seat, Cyndi Lou is standing on the front step wearing panties and a lacy camisole. He climbs from the car, walks toward her, and again they embrace. His hands are all over her ass. They step inside and close the door.

  “Son of a bitch,” Donna says.

  For several minutes, she sits there without speaking. Then she turns to me and says, “Brace yourself.” She pulls out, guns the motor, and goes roaring down the street. I have no idea what she is planning, but she does. Just before we reach Cyndi Lou’s house Donna swings the car to the other side of the street, thumps over the curb and part of a lawn, then makes a fast right and ploughs into the driveway, ramming Charlie’s car from behind. The sports car crumples and smashes through the wooden garage door.

  As Donna backs out of the driveway, Charlie comes running out in his underwear. Cyndi Lou follows him, pulling a robe over her nakedness.

  “Crazy bitch!” Charlie yells.

  Donna gives him the finger and drives off. His car is demolished, but the only damage to the fifteen-year-old tank she drives is a broken headlight.

  ~ ~ ~

  That was the end of their second marriage. Donna told Charlie she’d take the kids and he could have the house. And that’s what happened.

  I questioned such a move. “Don’t you think you should tell him to get out and keep the house?”

  “Nope,” Donna answered. “It’s his house. His mama bought it for him and he’s entitled to keep it.”

  “But…”

  “Forget it, Bette. I’m done with Charlie, his house, and his mama.”

  “But legally…”

  “I don’t care about legally,” she said. “I wanted a daddy for my kids. Charlie’s never really been one, and he’s sure as hell not gonna be one now!”

  That was the end of the conversation, and Donna never went back on what she’d decided. She took both kids, and they all squeezed themselves into a garden apartment that would’ve been cramped for one. They didn’t have much in the way of material things, but they surely had a lot of love.

  As the Years Passed

  From time to time I hear someone talk about a person who doesn’t have their priorities straight. That wasn’t the case with Donna. Oh, it’s true enough that she made some bad choices, but when it came to priorities, she knew exactly what hers were: the kids.

  Donna was not a by-the-book mom. Things like schedules, curfews, and discipline had nothing to do with the way she raised the children. She was more of a friend than a parent. When I look back at these years, I picture my sister with seven or eight kids squeezed into her Volkswagen Bug; their heads hanging out the windows and poking up from the open sunroof as she drove through town beeping the horn to celebrate a football game win. The truth is Donna was the biggest kid of all.

/>   I think those years, when she still had the children with her, were the happiest of Donna’s life. Nobody can know for sure because while she was quick to share good times and fun, Donna never shared her heartache. Not even with me.

  Sometimes I caught a glimpse of it. Times when Charlie’s name came up or when she heard a song he sang. Times like that she’d light up another cigarette and move on without ever acknowledging the empty hole he’d left behind. The sad truth is that despite how little he had to give, Donna loved Charlie. An even sadder truth is that she kept on loving him for as long as she lived.

  Donna remained in New Jersey until the kids were out of school and on their own. Then she moved to Baltimore. Outside of Mama she didn’t know a soul in Baltimore, but that didn’t stop her.

  “What’s in Baltimore?” I asked.

  Donna laughed. “Mama,” she answered and that was all she said. There was no further explanation.

  By that time our baby sister Geri and I were both married and pretty well ensconced in living our own lives.

  The thing about being married is that you don’t love your sister one pinprick less, but your days are wrapped up in the million things you have to do: work, laundry, cleaning, cooking, and the mile-long list of errands to run. Looking back I wish I’d have said To hell with the laundry and gone out with Donna every Saturday. I didn’t see it that way then; I always thought there’d be another week, another Saturday, another time when we could get together and have fun. Having a sister is like having a thumb; you simply believe it will always be there, because how could you possibly get along without it?

  Geri and I were doing fine, but Mama needed a friend. After Daddy died, she married a man with a hearing impairment and now spent most of her time hollering out questions or pointing to what she was talking about.

  “Lord God,” she told Donna, “you’ve got to come down here and keep me company, or I’ll go stark raving mad!”

  In a twist of fate few could predict, the child who caused Mama’s nervous breakdown was the one who came to her rescue. Donna found an even smaller garden apartment two blocks from Mama’s house, then packed up the handful of things she owned and moved.