Paradise, Piece by Piece

by Molly Peacock

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, I have a credit card, and I know you don’t have one….”

  “Cash, man, I deal exkloosively in cash!”

  “And you need to put the ticket on a credit card to reserve it, so I’m doing it, all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So when are you free to go?”

  “Free? Honey, I’m always free! I’m free as a bird! I’m free as a Peacock!”

  “But, like what date, Gail, and well, like how long is it going to take you to get the money together?”

  “Coupla weeks, doll. Hey, you know what I’m calling you to everybody here in Woodstock? I’m calling you this to everybody, man, even to the social worker at the fuckin’ agency that screws up my goddam fuckin’ welfare checks, man, I’m callin’….I’m callin’….” There was not quite a dead silence, since she was gulping, as if to catch her breath. “Little sister,” she suddenly crowed. “I’m calling you my little sister! Whaddya think about that! Jules my Louisiana honey, he thinks I’m the older one!”

  “That’s great, Gail,” I said, annoyed as hell.

  “Oh, Molly-ooch! I got under your skin, didn’t I? Wheee! I love it under your skin!”

  “You are not under my skin. You’ve been introducing me as your little sister since you were five,” I said. “So get out on the street with your candles and get some airfare.”

  She was going to drive down from Woodstock and meet me at my house. Some friend was supposed to drive her. Gail had never gotten a license. And never gotten a job after the candy counter at the Fillmore. And never gone to college. When they went through the welfare rolls and took out “all but the truly needy” my sister was left on. “I had this great shrink, Mol. He wouldda said anything for me. Daphne, my call-girl friend, she knew him. He did the tests and everything. I’m crazy as a loon! The U.S. government is not going to mess with this crazy girl. I’m the truly needy, Mol!”

  Two months later a sparkling new red truck with an empty gun rack—was that standard issue?—pulled up outside my house. Gail got out with a huge, rangy, muscular man whose angelic mop of blond curls was caught with a ribbon into a comma of a ponytail.

  “Hey, little sister!” she yelled. “We’re here! It’s me and Jules!”

  I leaned across the porch railing to shake his hand. Clean fingernails.

  “Hi, Jules!”

  “Hey, little sister, I’m glad to meet ya!” he said with a grin.

  “Julesie drove all the way from Baton Rouge to Woodstock, Molly. He came up to get me and drive me here in record time,” she burbled.

  Jules was holding an airplane ticket in one hand. I shook the other. I was going to shake that girl by the shoulders when I got hold of her! She was bringing this goddamn Jules. She had never since we left home seen either of our parents without some male escort. She traveled in a cloud of sexuality with them. Now Jules was going to come with us. The ticket was in his hand.

  “I got enough candle money for a whole ticket and I gave it to Julesie, here, he’s coming to party! I called up the airline and they fit him right in next to you and me.”

  “Oh.” That was my big response.

  When I got her in the bedroom I hissed, “You gave away your money!”

  “Don’t be such a goody two-shoes, Molly.”

  “But Dad is only paying for part of yours!” I moaned. “That means I’ll have to pay the other part!”

  Gail looked around the bedroom. “Hey, nice new sheets. Hah! They don’t give you nice new sheets at the Salvation Army where I get mine! Hey, is that a new sundress?”

  “Yeah, I got you one, too.” I couldn’t stand buying the new dress for me without getting her one. I knew they didn’t have new dresses at the Salvation Army, either.

  “I’m trying it on right now!” Off went her clothes immediately and on went the dress, bare shoulders, red. Mine was the same in cinnamon, only three sizes larger—the cost of giving up smoking. She was a vision in the dress. I was the enlargement.

  “Hey thanks, Mol, it’s really cute. Don’t I look nice, Cher?” Jules had strolled into the bedroom. He picked her up by the waist and twirled her around. “Don’t worry, Mol,” she said from three feet off the ground, “Daddy’ll pay you my part. I’ll get him to do it. You know he likes me best!” Her eyes twinkled in mockery.

  —

  Our plane was three hours late and Ted had spent it in the bar. He shambled toward us, his left arm hanging loose at his side from the stroke. He was all spiffed up in a white shirt and beige pants and aftershave. “Who’s this?” He peered at Jules.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Gail said. “It’s Jules, my new honey from Baton Rouge. We’re all here to see ya! You smell like you’ve been partying, Dad!”

  He was snockered.

  “You’re fat as a schoolteacher!” he said to me. “Listen, girls, I’m tryin’ here, but ya gotta…” We waited for him to speak again. “Ya gotta unnerstan my preedicament. My car’s in the shop, see? I borrowed a fren’s car to get out here. So it’s in the shop, see, and I ain’t got nothin’ done for ya ’cause I been at the shop with the car.”

  We piled in the borrowed car and wove down the Florida coast. It was July. Even at midnight the heat swung its fist. He parked sideways across the driveway of his bungalow and we went inside. There was probably furniture in there, under the piles of laundry—clean—and empty paper bags from the liquor store. Bags upon bags. The air conditioner didn’t make a dent in the humidity. The smell of Black Velvet hung over the two bare mattresses on the floor he had gotten for us to sleep on. He hadn’t reckoned on Jules. No sheets on the mattresses. The floor was gritty with sand. “I got the laundry done!” he said proudly.

  Gail started making up the bed for herself and Jules. I was going to get to sleep next to them. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water and turned on the light.

  The counter was slathered in strawberry goo. A broken bottle of Ann Page jam, family size, was stuck on the dirty dishes, and down the yellow cabinets. Not dripping, but pasted on, because it had spilled long ago and solidified. The dirty dishes were piled up on the counter and in the sink. The floor was sticky with jam footprints.

  “Oh my God!” I shrieked. I thought of Gram’s house, clean as a sacristy.

  “Heh, heh, Molsie.” Ted was in the doorway with a big paper bag. “I tol’ ya I did not have no time for nuthin’ becaus’ a the car. Goddamn car. So here.” He shoved the bag at me.

  “What’s the bag for?”

  “Throw ’em out!”

  “Throw what out?”

  “Them dishes, Mol. That’s what I do when it gets real bad. I throw out the dirty ones and buy a whole new set!” He started piling the dishes rather neatly in the bag.

  “You throw them out? Regular dishes? Not paper plates?”

  “Hate paper plates. Buy cheap sets of dishes. Sometimes I wash ’em. But when it’s bad, I ditch ’em. Throw out the cutlery too. Cheap. I just buy them cheap replacements. Heh, hen!” He laughed his thin laugh.

  “Hey, Gail, look how your dad does dishes!” Jules hung in the doorway.

  “Oh, Teddy,” Gail purred, “what are you up to now?” She began picking up dishes and throwing them in another paper bag. Hers broke though. “Wow! You can smash a whole set of dishes!”

  Jules clattered the cutlery in against the broken dishes. White, with rosebuds. Then Ted started smashing them. Then Jules.

  “Hey, Mol, get in on the fun before we smash ’em all!” Gail squealed. I picked up a dish and threw it in with a thud. “You gotta really throw it, Mol, like this!” Gail grabbed a whole dish with crusted egg on it and whacked it against the other dishes. “Gusto, Mol, you gotta get gusto!”

  Car lights swept the driveway. “It’s my car!” Ted shouted. Out he went, followed by Gail and Jules. Now the depopulated kitchen was a mess of shards and paper bags. I washed a glass within an inch of its life and dried it on a bathroom towel, then used it to drink some water.

  “M
olsie!” Ted called from the driveway. I washed a square of the counter and put my glass down. “MOLSIE!” He was waking up the neighborhood.

  In the driveway was the buddy who fixed the car, my father’s car itself, and the loaner car. The buddy wanted his loaner back, but Ted didn’t have all the money.

  “I gotta get the car outta hock here, Mols, and I need a hunerd bucks here, ’cause Duane here he needs three hunerd ta fix it and I only got two hunerd ta give him.”

  “We’ve got to have a car to get around,” Jules said directly to me.

  “Fork it over, little sister! You’re rich compared to us!” Gail said.

  I got my purse, whacking the front door closed and breathing in the air-conditioning and the Black Velvet and the dried jam and the sand and the clean laundry. A line of pain caterpillared across my chest. Then I sneezed.

  “Here,” I said when I came out again. I gave Duane five $20 bills.

  “See, Mols, I got my credit card, but Duane, he don’t take no credit, and I’ll pay ya back tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  Before I fell into a kind of dead sleep on the mattress next to Jules and Gail, I whispered to my sister, “I don’t know how long I can stay here.”

  “Me either.”

  —

  But it was just me and Ted for breakfast the next morning, since Gail and Jules were already at the beach. And it was me alone for lunch because Ted was at his bar and I wouldn’t go there, and Gail and Jules were gone. So was the car. And it was me and Ted for dinner when he remembered to come home because Jules and Gail must have come back while I was out looking at the Gulf of Mexico and left the car in the driveway and gone off again on foot. There was a strip of bars and restaurants you could walk to. Ted and I found them shooting pool.

  “So why didn’t you stay long enough to make any plans?” I greeted her, whining.

  “Hey, Julesie and I didn’t want to wake you up! We drove around, man! Pelicans and orange juice! Then we found this place. We love it. We’ve been here most of the day.”

  Jules was bringing drinks back from the bar. They had money for cigarettes and money for booze and apparently money for lunch and dinner.

  “Well, Daddy, we’re glad you’re here with your MasterCard!” Gail said. “We’ve been runnin’ up a tab for ya!”

  Everybody there knew my father. “Teddy!” the bartender yelled. Several blondes in high-heeled sandals at the bar raised their glasses.

  “Jules is a great pool player, Mol, he really is, and we were hustling for money, but we got stiffed. There’s some sharks around this fuckin’ place.” Gail lit a Marlboro. “I can’t believe you stopped smoking, Molly!”

  “Come on, you kids, come on, Teetotaller Molly, let’s get a booth. I’ll buy ya dinner on my MasterCard.” My father spent dinner describing a hurricane, tree trunk by tree trunk. Gail hung on Jules. She had traded jewelery with a woman on the beach that afternoon and glowed with a carnelian necklace above her red sundress. She tossed her hair, then put a shrimp on her fork and fed Jules. Then he put a shrimp on his fork and fed her. Then she combed his ponytail stub and retied the purple ribbon. “Let the evening begin!” Jules announced. The three of them moved toward the pool tables, leaving me to order dessert.

  I had a silky chocolate brownie with ice cream by myself in the booth. Outside the water crashed in the dark below zigzagged strings of lights. Inside the pool balls cracked as somebody opened and the bets were on. “Have you got a newspaper?” I asked the waitress. I read the local paper in the half dark and drank my coffee and let my fork play in the chocolate sauce.

  “Hey, Mol, how come you’re readin’ the friggin’ paper, for Chrissake!” Ted yelled from the poolroom. “Jules is great! Ya gotta see Jules!”

  I looked over my shoulder to see Jules arch his back in a choreographed movement and place his shot.

  After I slipped out of the booth, my sanctuary, I slid up to my father. “Hey, Daddy, didja win anything?” I said coyly.

  “I’m breakin’ even, Molsie.”

  “So, have you got my hundred dollars?”

  “Fifty, Mols, here’s fifty. Give ya the rest tomorrow. Hey, where you goin’? The night’s young!”

  I was backing out with my $50. “I’m walking home, Ted. See ya, Jules! See ya, Gail!” I was getting out of there before he lost and needed my $50 because he’d never get it out of them. Jules was giving Gail money to buy another round, or was that her money? She was giving him the orange slice from her cocktail.

  I dragged my mattress from the living room to a tiny side TV room and squashed it in. I had a novel. I had the TV on to read by. I fell asleep. By the next morning the three of them were crashed and I slipped out for breakfast. I wasn’t walking in that kitchen again. But by the time I got back, Jules and Gail and the car were gone again.

  Ted had rented a Sunfish, and we were supposed to sail it, except he was drunk and had only one good arm and I kept slipping off the Sunfish and he kept slipping off the Sunfish, and we hadn’t even got it out of shallow water yet and the man who rented it kept saying, “I can give you your money back, sir. Really, if you think you’d rather do this another day, I’m authorized to give you back your money.”

  “We can get our money back, Daddy, the guy says so.”

  “I’m fine, Mols, I’m fine!” he said as he slipped back into the Gulf of Mexico.

  “Really, sir,” the man said, “I’m responsible for that boat. I’m afraid I’ll have to give your money back.”

  “All right!” Ted said suddenly, and rather soberly took the bills—his pool winnings—while the man crashed in after the boat.

  While Ted went back to the Treasure Island Surfer Bar, I went home to discover the car in the driveway and Gail and Jules in the outdoor shower.

  “Hey, Molly! Ya want the car this afternoon?” she asked me over the wooden half-door.

  “Well, why don’t we all go somewhere together or something?”

  “Cool! Hey, Julesie, my little sister probably wants to go to the historical museum or something like that!” Jules was shampooing and gurgling under the showerhead.

  I wouldn’t have minded. “How about the gardens? We could go out to the gardens they have here,” I began to suggest.

  “We can’t hear you!” my sister shouted. “The water’s running.” So it was. I hid in my little TV room to let them get dressed. There was a red satin ribbon instead of the purple one. Gail flowed in a long violet dress. “It’s for our night on the town!”

  “But it’s still afternoon, so want to go to the gardens?” I said slowly. Evidently Jules was not the horticultural type.

  “Well, Molsie…” Gail played for time, but not for long, because my father came in and stumbled for the bathroom and upchucked on the way. Jules rose to the occasion with a towel. “I’m sick,” Ted moaned. “I got a bug.” Jules guided Ted toward his unmade bed.

  “He’s sweating and he looks pale,” Jules called from the bedroom. My sister stomped in to see him.

  “It’s because he fell off the Sunfish eight or nine times,” I said, pouting, refusing to go in there. Gail breezed out. “Somebody better stay with him. We can’t leave the old fart alone.”

  “Somebody, as in me?” I asked.

  Gail blanched. “Well,” she began, then brightened, “we could take turns!”

  “I know what taking turns means. So when does your turn begin?”

  “Look, Julesie and me, we’ll just take a drive along the water and see the pelicans and stuff, and smoke a joint, and then we’ll come back so you can drive to the garden. We won’t be gone long. Because tonight’s our big night! We’re going out on the town!”

  “I could go to the garden right now, and then be back for you to go out for the night,” I said, edging toward the door.

  Jules bustled by. “Going to the drugstore! Come on, Gailie, we gotta get your dad some Maalox!”

  “Wait! I’ll get the Maalox!” I said.

  The door was slamming.
“We’ll be right back!” Gail called.

  After I got dressed to go to the gardens I sat there reading Elizabeth Bowen’s Death of the Heart, listening for the car to drive up. I read about the cottage at the beach and looked up at my father’s cottage, the three chairs and the mattresses on the floor. There was the gritty rug with a clean place where my father’s vomit had been wiped up. I no longer smelled the Black Velvet or the caked-on food smell from the kitchen. I looked in on Ted, finally. He was snoring. His air conditioner rattled. They’d have to drive up pretty soon.

  It was 5:30. The gardens would be closed. I wandered in the bathroom. There was a full bottle of Maalox on the sink. I’d been suckered. I wandered into the kitchen and suddenly looked under the kitchen sink. There was a package of sponges and some Ajax and Fantastik. I didn’t bother to change my clothes. I started right in on the jam. I got a knife out and scraped off the worst of it. Then I laid the wet sponges on top of the counter to soak the rest off. I carried the paper bags full of broken dishes out to the neighbor’s trash can, hoping I wouldn’t be spotted. Ted had no trash cans. Somebody probably took them because he’d never remember to drag them in from the curb. My mother had always done that. Then me. I thought of Polly. “Gail and I are going to Florida!” I’d told her. “Daddy’s paying for our tickets!”

  “Yeah, sure,” Polly had said meanly.

  The tickets! Oh my God, he’d never given me the money! I had a big Ajax stain on my new-for-Florida sleeveless top. I went into the TV room and took it off. I found an old T-shirt of my father’s in the pile of laundry and put it on and went back to work. By 7 P.M. I had the kitchen in great shape. The faucets were sparkling. Time for the living room. I found a vacuum cleaner in the closet. Grit Be Gone! I revved up the Electrolux and was mowing swaths down the living room when something tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Turn this goddamned thing off! I’ve got a bug I tell ya, I’m sick!” It was Ted. I’d woken him up.

  “Hi, Dad, look what I did in the kitchen!”

  “Molsie, for Chrissake, you’re on goddam vacation. What are ya doin’ in the fuckin’ kitchen with all that jam?”