“Heh!” she called to the chickens, scattering seed. “Here, heh! Cluck, cluck, cluck, chickee.” They stepped stiffly around her, clucking and pecking at the ground. She became like them, stepping and clucking, jerking her head to see.
On the fence post the rooster raised his head to crow again. His throat was exposed. Cock, I thought, turning my eyes from the red comb and wattle. When he crowed Cock-a-doodle-doo, I cringed. On the post, he stretched his scaly yellow talons. “Heh!” she called to him, tossing seed, but he ruffled his feathers, flapped his wings, and stared past her shoulder, meeting my gaze with his wet black eyes. I thought, Scared of a chicken! and went boldly into the coop after her.
Inside, I blinked. Rays of bloody sun slanted through the cracks in the boards, but the corners were dark.
“Shoo!” she said, kicking at a hen. “Git.” The hen squawked, flapping her wings until she rose off the ground and feathers drifted through the air. What was the smell? Like mouton, but stronger. A mother smell.
“Heh.” She pulled my arm. With her other hand, she shoved a bird out of her nest. “Stick your hand in there. Git that egg.” The egg, crusted with dried shit and feathers, warmed my hand. The bird jumped from her roost. Flap! Flap! Flap! Squawk! Squawk! I ducked my head and stepped back, but my foot landed on another bird; I screamed, and suddenly the dank close air was filled with down and straw, and I couldn’t breath, like Roderick. He said I didn’t know but I did. I clenched my hands, sucking in more dust, and the thick yolk ran between my fingers.
Suddenly, the door opened, throwing light on Grandmother in her apron, holding the pail in the crook of her elbow and the birds, smaller now. I saw another egg. In the doorway, the shadow of Florida said, “You all come in the house. Something has happened to Roderick.” I thought, I knew that. How long have I known that?
Frommlecker said, “You had to repress the sexual attraction you felt toward your father, so you transferred it to Roderick. Eventually, you’ll transfer it to me. All patients fall in love with their psychiatrists.” He looked at me with distaste, as if steeling himself for the day I would fling myself at him.
I spoke my first words to him. “You’re overpaid. Henry can’t stand you.”
“You’re a brat.” He looked at his watch, signaling that the hour was up.
In the car, Florida pursed her lips and tried not to pry, but she was like a kettle of water boiling on the stove; the whistle had to blow.
“Well, what did he say?” she blurted out. I took my glasses off and cleaned them on the hem of my shirt, pretending to think. “What? Did he say something about me? He thinks I’m a bad mother, doesn’t he?” I decided to tell her the truth.
“He said that you are a beautiful woman.”
“Pshaw,” she said, dismissing the subject.
Frommlecker loved to talk about Florida. He said that she had “a terrific body” and “a sensuous walk.”
“That makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?” he’d say. Then we’d go back to Roderick and Henry. I was sorry I didn’t have a sister.
“TELL ME ABOUT your father,” Frommlecker said at our next session. “How did he react to Roderick’s death?” I stared at the ceiling, imagining that it was the sun, and I was Icarus. Then I cried some more, flying around and around the sun, melting the tips of my wings.
After Roderick’s death Henry began to save things. He’d always saved used tin foil, washing it first, and his toothpaste tube was flat from tip to tip before he threw it away, but now he went through trash cans, pulling out things he thought we should have saved.
“Do you want this?” he’d ask, handing me a postcard Drew had sent from Camp Berry Hill. “I didn’t read it,” he said, when I narrowed my eyes. “I just thought you might want to keep it in your scrapbook.” Last fall, when he tried to clean out the garage, he found that he couldn’t get rid of a pair of used brake pads, a stained bedspread, a high chair.
“You all might be able to use this one day.” He tightened a screw in the high chair. It was only a month after the funeral, and we all made these slips. Sometimes when Florida walked into the house, she hollered “Yoo-hoo! Henry! Roderick! Louise!” as she always had. Afterwards, there was dead silence.
“You were saving this for me and Roderick?”
“Roderick and I,” he corrected. “Educated people always put themselves last. “Don’t say me; say I. That’s the proper way to speak. You say, ‘Judy and I went to the store’, not ‘Me and Judy went to the store.’ Roderick and I, not Me and Roderick.” He smiled kindly. Me and Roderick. I wanted to cry. Instead, I said tartly, “Objective pronouns are always used after prepositions.” He blinked several times, but insisted that educated people never said me; that was rude. I was about to tell him that Mr. Rutherford called this Johnny Carson grammar, when I looked up at the garage wall and saw Roderick’s handprint.
Lightly, I pressed my hand over it, in case I’d made a mistake, but no—it was his. Oil. He’d checked the oil in the Galaxie 500 before we left for the farm in Red Cavern, where I killed him.
“If I have to tell you one more time not to touch the walls with dirty hands . . .” Henry had said, going behind him with a rag. Now we both looked at the spot he had missed.
“Don’t touch it,” Henry said. “Don’t mess it up. I’m going to tape a piece of plastic over it, to save it.” Then he made a hitching noise, and when I turned around, he was sobbing.
Florida turned to God. She joined the Christian Women’s Club and began taking her Bible out before breakfast, underlining like mad. She tried to add scripture readings to our blessing at the supper table, but Henry pretended not to hear her when she asked him to read, and I was openly hostile. Then she wanted to know if we loved Jesus, really loved Him. Or did we just say howdy-doo to people at church once a week, leave, and forget all about Him? Had we turned our backs on Christ? Whenever Christians talked about Jesus like this, as if he were a shut-in deeply offended by our infrequent visits, I wanted out of the relationship. I wanted my heart back. I wanted my life back. I wanted to sin on wheels, or at least a Catholic.
For the second Christmas in a row, we had a fake tree. “Don’t you find that neurotic?” I asked Frommlecker. I was sitting in the straight-backed chair these days, talking.
“What does that word mean?” When I didn’t answer, he said, just as Roderick would have, “Don’t use words you don’t understand.”
I sighed. “The point I’m trying to make is that my dysfunction is the predictable outcome of a family neurosis. Roderick served as a buffer for our madness . . .” Losing my train of thought, I asked, “Do you want to hear a dream I’ve had about my mother since I was five years old?”
“I don’t do dreams,” said Frommlecker. “I practice Reality Therapy. Louise, your brother is dead. He’s been dead for two and a half years; it’s time for you to get a life. Look at yourself. You’re smoking cigarettes; I smell it when you enter the room. How much do you weigh?”
“One thirty.”
“Don’t lie to me. One sixty, minimum. You’re fat, Louise. You bombed your finals last semester. You’ll never get into college. You don’t have a boyfriend. You buy liquor on a fake ID. Don’t lie to me. You smoke pot. You’d do heroin right now if I offered it to you. You’re making your parents miserable. You make me miserable. What are you going to do about yourself?”
“All shrinks eventually fall in love with their patients,” I replied sourly.
Briefly, the pained expression of failure crossed his face, and I thought he might make it as a doctor after all. Then he checked his watch and rolled back to his desk.
“You get out of here,” he said, “and don’t come back unless you’re wearing a pair of running shoes. I run five six-minute miles every morning. You won’t be able to make it around the block, but you’re going to get your butt out there every day. And quit smoking. It stinks.” He handed me a book titled Looking Out for Number One and told me to come back next Thursday.
Tha
t afternoon, Florida and I went to the mall where I was fitted with a pair of Adidas, just like the ones we had given Grandmother Deleuth.
Won’t make it around the block! I thought as I huffed up Mount Zion in my new shoes. What block? I beat off two vicious German shepherds and one rabid poodle, and when I got home, soaked with sweat, I fell to the kitchen floor in a ball of cramps.
“I think you did too much,” said Florida, her brows knitted in concern. “You go gung ho. How far did he tell you to run? Did he know you were running on a mountain? I better call him.”
“Give me some water,” I gasped.
“Henry, did you see how red her face is? I think she might have a stroke. Is your arm numb, Louise?”
“Aw, that was just a warm-up,” he said, grinning at the puddle of me on the floor. “She’s got another ten, fifteen miles in her.”
“Leo will be proud of you,” said Florida the next day, when I set off again in my Adidas, shorts, and sweatband. “You be sure and tell him you’re running on a mountain.”
That weekend Frommlecker ran off with his receptionist. It was a scandal we could have forgiven in Counterpoint; in fact, it probably would have been a boon to Leo’s business, but he didn’t come back. He divorced Shirley by mail. For that, the town despised him. Doctors, bankers, lawyers, and former patients bonded together to ruin the man.
Every morning, I ran five miles into the rising orange sun on Mount Zion. With my fat thighs rubbing together, my lungs searing, and my eyes stinging, I raced the good doctor.
Chapter Six
IT WAS DANGEROUS for Florida and me to be together in an automobile on the interstate, with no escape from each other, but it was always fun at first. “Well isn’t this nice,” she said, reaching across the long front seat of the Bonneville to pat my knee. “A mother-daughter day in Atlanta.” For the first time since Roderick’s death, she looked happy. The autumn sun glinted through the pines along highway. On the radio, the Beach Boys sang, “Do ra ra . . .” Weighing in at a feathery 115, I felt airborne and full of hope.
I was to be made over at Salon di Emilio, recommended by Shirley Frommlecker.
“Louise, you are thin as a rail!” Shirley cried when she came up to Owl Aerie for a Christian Women’s Club tea. “Come here and let me look at you. How did you do it?”
“She set her mind to it,” said Florida.
“She’s an inspiration.” “Now Shirley, you’ve lost fifteen pounds, at least. I can’t get over it.” Shirley stirred a pack of Sweet ‘N Low into her Red Zinger tea and asked me in a confidential whisper, “Did you starve yourself?”
As I was about to reply, Shirley’s attention suddenly swerved to a portrait of Roderick.
“Florida! Don’t tell me you did that.”
“I tell you what, that thing made me so doggone mad I almost threw it out.”
“No! It looks just like him.”
“Well I couldn’t get the nose right. I can’t do noses.”
“You are talented. That’s all there is to it.” She looked back at me.
“Florida, after Emilio gets his hands on this girl, you’ll have to beat the boys off her with a stick.” Florida pretended to be distressed, but my lack of gentlemen callers had, in fact, been a source of concern for her.
Shirley had been a regular at Emilio’s since her divorce; Henry said she was on the prowl, but both Florida and I were impressed with the results. Suddenly, she looked as rich and smooth as chocolate. Henry, who was on the board of Counterpoint Bank, said this was no coincidence. She’d wiped Frommlecker out, but Florida and I firmly believed in style. In the hands of the mysterious and powerful Emilio, Shirley had remade herself. Now I was about to do the same.
“Are you thinking of going long or short?” asked Florida.
“I don’t know,” I said, sounding like a little girl. “What looks best on me?” I turned the rearview mirror toward myself, and Florida took one hand off the steering wheel to finger a strand of my lank brown hair.
“Well you know what I like,” she said. “But you’ll do just the opposite.”
“No I won’t.”
“You never looked cuter than when you had that pixie, when you were five. Your features showed up. Of course, that’s not glamorous. That may not be what you want. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Fernando what he thinks. Speak to him, now. Don’t be shy.”
“Emilio,” I corrected.
“Emilio. Why do I keep thinking of Fernando? Who’s that?”
“Ferdinand the Bull.”
“That’s right. That’s a cute story. I used to read that to you and Roderick. You all were so sweet; I sewed you red-and-white-striped nightshirts, with matching nightcaps. For our Christmas card that year.” Her eyes misted, then she rolled her window down to signal with her hand, not trusting the blinker.
“Shoot!” she yelled, twisting around in her seat to see if she could get into the left lane. “Dadblame it, I can’t get around him.” She slowed down to thirty miles an hour.
I remembered the pixie that felt so light on my head, and the nightshirt that wrapped around my knees at night. On Christmas Eve, Roderick and I slept in the same bed, so we could stay awake and see Santa. In the blackest hour of the morning, he leaned over me until I awoke with his thin fingers tugging at my arm, his wheeze, smelling of the cold inhaler, rasping in my ear.
“Your presents are here,” he said in an official voice. And we walked solemnly down the dark, cold hall. That was the year I had the bad dream.
“I used to have a dream about you,” I said to Florida. “I had it over and over. Do you want to hear it?”
“Why is that man flashing his lights at me? Honey, do you have your seat belt on? I never! I’m going to flash mine back if he doesn’t stop that.” Her earrings swung as she shook her head. They were MacMe earrings, created by Mary MacDermott—“My artist friend,” Florida called her. When Henry saw the earrings and heard how much she paid for them, he said, “You should have told me you wanted some of those. I could have gotten you a pair out of my tackle box. I’d only have charged you forty-five dollars.”
“You’re so stodgy!” said Florida. “Boring, boring, boring.”
“Of course if you wanted live bait, I could hook some worms, but I’d have to charge you another dollar.”
As a preppie, I disapproved of the entire MacDermott line. I was wearing a Harris Tweed sport coat that I had commandeered from Henry.
I’d turned up the collar and slit the sewn pockets open so I could stuff my hands into them and slouch. The jacket had been used as a pillow, a smoke screen, and a flag of surrender. Drew St. John had thrown up on it. Still, the fine wool retained some of the clean, corrugated-board-and-freshly-minted-dollar-bill smell of Henry. He’d given Florida a handful of credit cards to buy me a new wardrobe in Atlanta.
I decided to tell Florida my dream. “The first time I dreamed this, I was five years old, but it keeps coming back. You and I are walking across a big field. There’s grass as far as I can see— maybe it’s the Badlands. Way off in the horizon sits a tiny shack with smoke curling out of the chimney. It looks like a child’s drawing of a house, with gray crayon smoke.”
“Is that the exit? Shirley said I could take the bypass and get there faster, but this doesn’t look right to me. No, I’m going to turn around if this fellow will let me over. Oh, it’s a lady. Move, lady. Come on now.”
“I’m trying to tell you my dream! You’re not listening.”
“Honey, I am trying to drive you to Fernando to get your makeover. If you want me to turn around and go home, I will. I cannot do two things at once. I just cannot!”
“Excuse me for living.”
“Okay, she’s going to let me in.” Florida waved and mouthed “thank you” through the window. “Now go on. Tell me your dream. I’m listening.”
“I don’t feel like it now.”
“Don’t be so sensitive.”
“Are you listening?”
“I’m lis
tening. Shoot.”
“We’re walking through this huge field to the little shack, and as we get closer, a man comes out the door. He’s a bad man. He’s wearing a black stovepipe hat and a black suit; he has a black handlebar mustache and a sharp chin. I think he’s a magician.”
“This cannot be a one-way street. Who came up with that hare-brained idea? It was two-way last time. Oh, foot. Here we go. Is your seat belt fastened? Henry would wring my neck. I hope we don’t get arrested.” All around us, horns blew with fury.
I lit a Virginia Slim Menthol, cracked the window, and picked up my tattered copy of the book Florida abhorred, Looking Out for Number One. I read to myself:
If a troublemaker refuses to be ignored, should you do nothing about it? You certainly know that doing nothing is not the answer, because looking out for number one involves effort; to remain stagnant makes you a sitting duck, waiting to be controlled by others.
“We’re almost there, Number One,” said Florida.
I did not reply.
“Now don’t you get in a snit with me. You’ve been real sweet up till now. Let’s not blow it, okay? You need to be thinking about your hair and your makeup. Your image. What you want him to do to you. I guess he’s got pictures; I don’t know. He’ll have some suggestions. You’ve got to speak up though. Be firm. Some of these Atlanta hairdressers, Counterpoint ones, too, for that matter, will go to town if you let them. Last time I went to Agnes, she wanted me to go strawberry blonde. I almost let her do it. She was talking my ear off. I guess the price is the same no matter what Fernando does. We’ll ask him.”
“I brought a picture,” I said, still sulking.
“Think about what you need to wear to school. We’re not going gung ho. I’m telling you that right now. Be sensible. Don’t buy a lot of sloppy clothes—now that you’ve lost weight you can show off your figure. Do you want a blazer? Henry’s is too big for you. It looks ridiculous. But you like his clothes; you don’t like mine.”
The School of Beauty and Charm Page 10