I had avoided discussing the upcoming fireworks with Misty and was relieved when Mr. Rhodes and Sally Jean announced that they were going to spend the Fourth at Myrtle Beach with some of Sally’s relatives. They left town the morning of the third and that night I could not sleep for thinking about Mo. Every time I closed my eyes she was there, smiling, in those little purple shorts, marshmallow stringing from her hand as her hips swayed back and forth to Buddy Holly’s “Raining in My Heart,” rain pelting her kitchen window. It was after one when I heard Angela come in and stand in my doorway. It seemed she stood there a long time without saying anything, without coming any closer.
“Angela?” I called, and she came in.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she whispered, then kicked off her sandals and stretched out on the end of the bed.
“I can’t sleep.” I started to reach up and turn on the light but opted instead for the darkness. “I want to ask you something.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “And then I’ll tell you all about tonight. What is it?”
“You said that you went to Mo’s funeral with your boyfriend.”
“Yeah?”
“Was that the James Garner guy?”
“Yeah.”
“And he knew the Rhodes?”
“Well, he knew her, I don’t know if he knew her husband or not. He certainly knew old Gene. We went to his funeral, too.” She raised up, weight propped on her elbow. “We went out of curiosity more than anything.”
“Why were you curious?”
“Oh, Kitty.” She slapped my arm as if to dismiss it all. “You don’t want to hear that.”
“Yes, I do,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure at all that I did.
She waited, maybe expecting me to tell her to just forget it, but I told her to go on.
“Well, Mo was no stranger around Ferris Beach, if you know what I mean.” There was a toughness in Angela’s voice that I had never heard before, and it made my stomach tighten. “She and Gene Files had been screwing around for years. Everybody but that poor fool husband of hers and that simple-brained Betty Files knew it, too.” She waved her hand in the air “Or hell, forget the wife. Gene had another girlfriend before Mo and was trying his best to keep her, too.” Fool. Simple-brained. Mo was no stranger.
“But you two acted like you hardly knew each other.”
“Well, I didn’t really know her. She certainly wasn’t a friend of mine. What was I going to say, ‘Hey Mo, how’s Gene doing?’ I had never even seen her with her husband until that day I was out on the porch.” Again with the mention of that day, Mo’s face came to me so vividly, her stomach round with Buddy while Mr. Rhodes wrapped his arm around her waist and Dean carried the groceries inside where her artificial tree glittered.
“You told Misty what a good mother she had.” I rolled away from her and faced out where I could see the glow of the streetlight.
“What was I going to say?” She was sitting up then, her hand firmly on my shoulder. “That poor kid’s got enough strikes against her without being told her mother was easy. That orange hair to name one thing.” Orange, she said, after all of her talk about Misty’s strawberry blond hair. “Kitty? Hey”—she shook my shoulder—“listen to this.” Suddenly her voice was lifted into false enthusiasm. “The good news is that Misty’s step-mother is not running around.” She put her head down and laughed. “I’ll guarantee that no man is going after old Sally Jean anytime in this century. Kitty? Kitty?” She nudged me with her foot. “C’mon, I’m kidding. Please laugh. I didn’t want to tell you all of that. You asked me.”
I closed my eyes, trying not to cry but I couldn’t keep it in any longer. When she shook me again, I let out a sob, and then she was there, her arm wrapped around my head and pulling me in close to her. “Oh, Katie, I’m so so sorry,” she whispered. “Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have told you.” I just shrugged and lay there as she rubbed her hand up and down my arm. I faked sleep when she finally stood and leaned over me, whispered good night.
The next morning Angela was gone, no note, nothing. “I so hoped she had changed,” Mama said, and put away all the things she had gotten out the night before for the bread-baking lesson that was to take place that morning. “Of course, maybe Sue needed her to come right away and Angela just didn’t have time to write a note. That Sue sounds like one who’d go to drastic means.” She turned to me, a stick of butter in her hand. “But I didn’t hear the phone ring, and I always wake when the phone rings. Did she say anything to you?” She looked at me and I hesitated too long, that extra second that gave me away, though I knew I would never repeat what she had said about Mo.
“She met somebody.” I said. “A man.”
“You mean while she was going out with Sue.” Mama felt her way into a chair, never for a second glancing away from my face. She shook her head, laughed sarcastically. “There’s no Sue,” she said with finality, tossed the butter onto the lazy susan and gave it a spin. “Well, then for sure she hasn’t changed.” She looked at my father, who was in the doorway, and he just raised his hands, then let them fall and slap his sides. She walked over and took a cigarette from his pack, lit it, breathed in and then out with a heavy sigh. “It’s just like the other times.”
“Cleva, you don’t smoke,” he said, a look of shock on his face, more shocked by her smoking than by Angela leaving.
“Nice to know where your loyalties lie,” she said to me and then went and stood by the window, her hand quivering as she held the cigarette up near her cheek. “And no, I don’t smoke”—she turned to my father—“at least not very often, but you’re not going to quit no matter how many times the doctor tells you to, so I might as well do as I please. And you eat too much pork, too,” she said. He looked like he was about to laugh but caught himself.
“Did she say anything?” She was looking at me again, her face pale. “Like, did she tell you she’d come back or never again or thanks for letting me eat and sleep here free of charge, kiss my foot or anything?” Her face was red, her voice shaky. “Did she tell you how many times we’ve gone through this? Way back in the beginning with husband number one, who was barely old enough to drive?” She took a deep drag from the cigarette and held it, the smoke slipping out as she began talking again. “Did she tell you what a terrible substitute mother I was? What a witch to try and keep her from running away with any Tom, Dick, or Harry who passed by?”
“Cleva,” my father said and was there, his hand on her waist. “Come on now.”
“No.” I shook my head. “She didn’t say anything about you.”
Right before time for us to go to the fireworks, Angela called to say how sorry she was to take off like that, that she decided on the spur of the moment to take Greg up on his offer to give her a lift back to Ferris Beach. She had realized suddenly, in the wee hours of morning, that she was on the threshhold of a new life, that she saw a whole new future for herself.
“She said to tell you thank you, Cleva,” my father reported as we drove to the Army Reserve field. “That she hopes you can forgive her this once. She said to tell Kitty how much she enjoyed all the fun times, sunbathing and talking.” Mama sighed and shook her head.
Mr. Landell was just pulling Mrs. Poole’s Lincoln into the parking lot of the old A&P as we crossed the street to the field. Mama said that she was not looking forward to Mrs. Poole’s explanation of where she got her adirondack chair, that she hoped to God she didn’t say adirondack once or she thought she might just ignite and head for the moon. Again my father looked like he might laugh but thought better of it and lit a cigarette instead. Fortunately, Mrs. Poole had brought a canvas director’s chair. “Easier on Mr. Landell’s back,” she said, as she hooked a little umbrella onto the back of the chair and pulled it around and over her head to serve as a roof so she could legitimately smoke her pack of Salem 100s. I felt Misty’s absence stronger than ever, and I kept thinking of things I needed to tell her, how Mrs. Pool
e had spent thirty stupid minutes talking about little Ruthie Sands going to prep school so as not to have to participate in integration, how I had heard the DJ on the radio say that they were going to open a new dedication line, how sometimes the thought of walking into that brand new high school made me feel so scared I felt sick, and how she was the best friend I had ever had and ever would have, and how I would give anything in the world if her mother had not left home. The band played a jazzed-up version of “Never My Love” as the tall leggy blond twirled her fire baton, the orange pom-poms on her boots shaking with every step. She was now the chief majorette and I knew that somewhere in the darkness of the trees and shrubs was her boyfriend, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he looked forward to when all this ended and he had her in that red GTO, parked on the other side of Whispering Pines. It’s amazing what being sixteen and in the backseat of a car can do to jour head.
By the end of the summer, things were back to normal and I stopped wondering when we would hear from Angela. There had been many nights when I awoke, thinking I heard her tiptoe into my room; somehow I allowed myself the luxury of overlooking that last night when she had talked about Mo, and I focused instead on all the nights before it. I missed her being there, on the foot of my bed or under the covers beside me, as she told story after story about the various loves of her life, as she laughed like a teenager into her pillow.
Mama stopped rolling up her shorts, and began mourning the long hair she had had her whole life. “What on earth was I thinking?” she asked repeatedly. Oftentimes she wore long scarves, which she knotted at the back of her neck like a simulated bun. Mrs. Poole denied that she had ever worn chartreuse shorts when someone else referred to the outfit, and Sally Jean stopped dying her legs orange. Ruthie Sands moved to her girls’ school in Virginia and R.W. Quincy was caught spray-painting “We Surrender” on the base of the Confederate statue, which prompted a new circulation of memories and little stories about Mr. Thomas Clayton, his tale of the statue needing to pee, and his announcement that all was copacetic. And finally, Misty began measuring time by the approaching first day of tenth grade at E. A. Poe High, rather than by Mo’s leaving home. Finally that first year was over.
Eighteen
Many of the boys in the tenth grade spent a lot of time talking about Harleys. Boys who would one day drive Volvos and BMWs and sip martinis on decks, boys who knew the closest they would get to a motorcycle was breathing fumes on the interstate, talked about Harleys. Some even imitated Harleys, their lips pressed together and sputtering air like some engine at the starting gate. They fantasized themselves as free-flying bikers leaning to and fro on black leather seats, Steppenwolf lyrics blasting in their heads.
“My brother just bought a Harley,” Merle announced one day, looking at the class in a way that called for silence. He was leaned back in his seat, the collar of his denim jacket pulled up on his neck so that his hair fell over it. He had his feet propped up on the back of Misty’s chair, and she didn’t even shove them away.
E. A. Poe had brought to us—along with its spic and span linoleum floors, gum-free water fountains and graffiti-free walls—rows of new desks with pastel plastic seats and backs, the aluminum legs splayed like some kind of insect. You couldn’t even hide anything in your desk anymore, for there was just a wire basket beneath you, any balled-up paper or trash fell right to the floor. The school also had huge ultra-modern windows that didn’t open except for a tiny transom at the top, making the school like a greenhouse from August to mid-October.
But now it was late fall and there was Merle’s sockless foot propped up on Misty’s light blue plastic seat back. It was cold that day, the sky gray beyond the glass wall, the brand new crystal-clear glass. Mr. Grange, the gym teacher and baseball coach, had told Merle if he couldn’t come to gym with clean socks and gym shorts then not to come at all.
And so, even though he was the fastest runner in the whole school and one of the most feared on the basis of his last name, he had spent every gym period of football season sitting in the school auditorium and staring up at the slick new stage, where the chorus people sat in straight metal chairs and sang the same song over and over. Misty had been telling me of his presence since the second week of school, told me how he sat there and laughed every time they sang the song, which at that particular time happened to be “Spinning Wheels,” a favorite (though several years old) of Mr. Radley, who led the songs. Mr. Radley had thin greasy hair and looked like a little lost toothpick beneath the large colorful dashikis he wore. He liked to use the latest jargon, or what he thought was the latest, ten Jour good buddy, groovy, light my fire, yeah, I can’t believe I ate the whole thing, and the devil made me do it; he did a high five to every black student he saw, lifting his puny little fist symbolically. Misty was one of only three white students in chorus; she had tried to talk me into joining, but I joined Homemakers of America because I really enjoyed just sitting in front of a sewing machine for an hour without a lot of talking going on.
Even in late November when the chorus worked on Christmas carols for the upcoming assembly program, he had them end by singing “Spinning Wheels.” All that semester, people were dropping out of chorus like flies, much to the surprise of Mr. Radley, who had told the principal that he feared the kids were in need of a hipper beat and though they had “Spinning Wheels” fine tuned, he thought he might also try “Proud Mary”;yeah, let it all hang out. Big wheels keep on turning.
By early December, just a couple of weeks before Christmas vacation, the chorus was still singing “Spinning Wheels,” and Merle was still going sockless, still spending his gym time in the auditorium. The skin of his ankle was not as white as you might think it would be from looking at him, and he had hairs there on his lower leg that were much darker than any on his head.
He was in my geometry class, and I couldn’t help but look at him as he sat there staring out the window, a pencil over his right ear, a hole in the knee of his jeans. Someone had just asked him about his brother Dexter, where was he and what did he do now that he had dropped out of school?
“He’s around,” Merle said, and glanced over at Perry Loomis, who was methodically drawing and then penciling in little tiny squares on a piece of notebook paper. “He’s got a girl, for one thing.” Perry looked up and the way the two of them looked back and forth at one another made me feel queasy. Perry Loomis was even more beautiful than the year before, her wavy hair longer and clipped back on just one side, the other side loose and tumbling near her eye; it was the same way Angela had wanted me to wear my hair. I hadn’t really talked to Perry since that day in the bathroom, just said hello when I passed her in the hall. We never really looked each other in the eye, and I always considered myself lucky when she spoke back.
“Does he still have a Harley?” Todd Bridger asked. “Does he ever let you ride it?”
“Do we know this girl?” another boy interrupted.
“I doubt it,” he said, and tossed his head to one side to get his bangs out of his eyes. “I really don’t know her myself.” He was looking out the window again, at the gray sky, treeless schoolyard stretching towards the new track and baseball field.
“Hey, I bet your brother . . .” Todd Bridger leaned in close to Merle, his hand cupped to hide whatever indecent thing he had to say, all the other boys looking on and nodding with authority. It was not hard to imagine where they would all be in ten years, twenty, thirty. Even at that age, even as they acted interested in Harleys and mimicked Merle’s toss of his head, they were as predictable as the Fulton Christmas parade. Merle just shrugged his shoulders, no reaction at all.
“I heard that,” Misty said, and then looked over at me. “I’ll tell you what they said later.” I just nodded and opened my math book to last night’s assignment. I could feel their eyes on me like so many woodburners going through my skin. I hated when Misty did that to me, pulled me into a conversation where I clearly did not belong.
“How would you know the first
thing about it?” Todd asked, and that face we had all loved for so many years reshaped and focused into that of a cowardly little jerk.
“I know plenty,” Misty said, and looked at Merle but did not look so long that she’d be in another staring battle with him. “I do.”
“Yeah? How could you?” Tony Bracy, a sour-faced little know-it-all, puffed up his cheeks at Misty and held his arms out to the side like he was waddling. He had just moved to Fulton over the summer and had already experienced the rising and falling of the new-person syndrome. He prefaced everything with “Nobody in Greensboro would do that,” or wear that, or say that; he called Fulton “Gritville” and said he couldn’t wait to go off to prep school the next year.
“Who’d touch you?” he continued, having collected a little audience for himself. “God, nobody would want that!” It was Napoleon’s complex, Hitler’s fever, little man’s disease, and there was an epidemic that year, some of the guys standing eight inches taller than they had the year before, shadows of beards and deep voices, and others like Todd Bridger and his sidekick from Greensboro, little and hairless and taking it out on the world.
“You’re a pig,” Tony said after Misty told him to go to hell by way of Greensboro and Virginia. He made a snort sound in the back of his throat. “You’re just a big fat pig.” He knew the soft spot; he had looked her over and found what would hurt the most, even though she wasn’t really fat at all. By then she had lost quite a bit of weight, but the pressure spot was still there. Now she sat, cheeks flaming and pale eyes watering in anger.
Ferris Beach Page 20