The Fortunes of Indigo Skye

by Deb Caletti

  Visions of envelopes are dancing in my head, or maybe not dancing, but walking really fast. I’ve thought so much about the envelope that the idea of it is close to being worn and tired, as if it had stayed up too late having more than its share of a good time. Caution is creeping in, not bloody-knife caution, but the guardians of disappointment. The excitement of not knowing has been so fulfilling that the knowing can’t possibly compare.

  Trina isn’t at Carerra’s yet, no Thunderbird at the curb. Jack the dog rises from his tired haunches and greets me with a nose to my palm as I go in.

  I do a double take when I see Trina already at her booth. “Where’s your…Oh, shit,” I say.

  “I don’t want to hear a word. Not one word,” Trina says.

  “It’s gone,” I say.

  “Good riddance,” Trina says. But something’s wrong with her face. Her cheeks seem bigger and her eyes smaller, and then I realize her face is puffy from crying.

  I get this hollow-horrible feeling, that cavern of loss. Along with it comes an awareness—the kind that comes when you realize a situation is a few layers deeper than what it seemed. Getting rid of the Thunderbird is not a way to exorcise Roger. Trina needs the money. Suddenly that fact is a secret we’re all keeping—Trina from us, us from Trina. I don’t know what to do. “Pie,” I say. I put my stuff down quick, put on my apron and wash my hands, and understand why people feed grief with macaroni casseroles.

  Joe ambles, shakes his head sadly, and then Nick, too.

  “Who bought it?” Nick says. “Tell me it at least went to a good home.”

  “Tell us you got a fair price,” Joe says. He lifts himself up onto the counter stool, opens a menu and peruses, as if it’s the first time he’s seen it.

  “My cousin,” Trina says. “He’s always…” She clears her throat, straightens the wobble in her voice. “Admired it.”

  The kitchen door swings open. Jane’s got a new haircut, and it’s short and swoopy-banged, youthful around her strong face. “Come on, people, it’s a car.” Her voice has the buoyancy of the well-intentioned lie. “Indigo! God. The envelope! Let me go get it.”

  She bustles to the back and Funny Coyote comes in, her backpack over one shoulder, and so does the same couple with the toddler from the weekend before. Just my luck, they liked the place. I fetch the high chair and the menus and then Jane is back.

  “Cute new hair,” I say.

  She combs the ends with her fingers, the ones that are not holding the large yellow envelope. “You think?”

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  She hands the envelope to me. “Well? Here it is. Do you think he’ll be in today?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. But I do know. Because as I hold that envelope and see my name on it, written in the lovely, polite loops of the Vespa guy’s handwriting in black ink pen, I understand it holds something decisive.

  “What are you waiting for?” Nick Harrison says.

  I turn the envelope over, run my finger against the licked-down edge. And then: “No,” I say. I don’t want to open it like this, as if its contents are a party trick for the amusement of all involved. It’s my name that’s there, it’s to me, and it’s between me and Vespa guy. I feel like this requires special surroundings, the right time. Me alone, sitting at the edge of my bed, unhurried.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Funny Coyote says. “You’re not gonna open it? Somebody hand me a knife.”

  Trina hands Funny her butter knife over the back of the booth, and Funny brandishes it menacingly for a moment before setting it down on her napkin. I’m saved, though, because the people with the toddler catch my attention and ask for a banana for Junior, To help keep him busy, because Junior is scootching and squirreling way down in the high chair seat, so that his chin is nearly on the tray and his body is dangling beneath.

  I fetch the banana and Junior is righted again with screaming protests and then a couple comes in and sits at Leroy’s table, which is going to piss him off. Leroy comes in and glares at the couple who will eye him nervously through the rest of their meal, though Leroy joins Joe at the counter and does something he never does: orders Joe’s same full breakfast. Bill, the creep that works at True Value, comes in and sits with Nick when he’s just been served his oatmeal, and the toddler is tossing pancakes to the floor and watching them drop, and Joe and Leroy begin to arm-wrestle and knock over a ketchup bottle.

  Finally, Nick leaves; his bowl sports two leftover raisins looking at me like slightly crazed google-eyes, and I wipe the cold glue of banana off the floor and legs of the high chair. Someone comes in with the name of Ronald Reagan; he’s young and tall and has dreadlocked ringlets, and tries to disguise his name by signing his credit card slip “Ronny.” I add his name to the list of “famous” customers that we keep behind the counter. You wouldn’t believe how many regular people are saddled with the names of the rich and famous—we’ve had James Bond and Daniel Boone and Jenny Craig and Martha Stewart and even a guy named Tom Cruise, who, if I remember right, was about eighty years old. I’m working late, late enough to see Trina leave next, and she walks down the street with the saddest pair of knee-high boots you’ve ever seen, scissor flicks of despondent white disappearing around the corner. After Trina, Joe and Leroy leave together and Funny takes out her tablet and starts to write. No Vespa guy, I am right, and I work the lunch crowd of corned beef and turkey and mounds of potato salad and pickle spears until it’s time to go. I do a last favor for Jane and take Jack out for a pee, and it makes him so happy and satisfied that it makes me happy and satisfied.

  Jane seems to have forgotten all about the envelope, because she is fully submerged in new haircut love/insecurity. I’ve caught her peeking at her reflection in the glass of the dessert case with the intermittent smiles/scowls of acceptance/rejection we give our new selves. There are few things that can make as us vulnerable as new hair.

  “God, Jane,” I say. “You just look like a whole new person.”

  “Really?” she says. She scrunches her nose. Either it’s self-doubt or her allergies are bothering her again.

  “It’s great,” I say.

  I pat Jack’s black satin head and leave with my envelope in my hands. Indigo Skye, it still says. When I get home, I place it under my pillow, and smooth out the cotton of the pillowcase with my palm. If I open it now, what’s coming will be instead what has come. This time, right now—it’s the instrumental before the vocals, the love before love’s been admitted, the Christmas eve before the Christmas. Some things need a delicious before, and this envelope is one of them.

  We’re almost late to the MuchMoore party because I worked the lunch shift and Severin says we need to be there by four and then he tells me I need to wear nylons, which makes me want to shoot him because I hate nylons, and then I have to go hunt through Mom’s underwear drawer for a pair, and the only ones she has make my legs look Ace-bandage-y and granny pale. Nylons are in my top three worst feelings, along with tight jeans and clothes still wet from the dryer, so my legs are already cranky. Then Trevor comes, and Severin says he needs to wear a tie, and now Trevor’s gaze is murderous because he hates ties, and required strangulation clothing was not part of this deal. Severin looks around for an extra tie, and plucks out this hideous clip-on that he has from when he was maybe ten, and it’s not only too short, but it’s got penguins on it. Already, I’m getting a bad feeling about all the need to’s that apparently must be met to be acceptable in the presence of the wealthy.

  We pile into Trevor’s Mustang; Bob Weaver looks hideously splotchy with the flat, steely gray of primer. A few days ago, the car developed a death rattle, which has now turned to some serious and hugely loud, thunderously pained cry for help. I clap my hands over my ears.

  “The muffler,” Trevor shouts in his too-short penguin tie.

  “Oh, great,” Severin says. He’s already shifting around in pre-embarrassment and it’s only us. He’s all spiffed up himself, looking sharp in the shirt and
tie he wore to homecoming last year, and his face is smooth from just being shaved.

  “You don’t have to ride with us, you know. You could walk,” I say.

  “I’m fine,” he says, or rather, it’s what his moving lips mouth, since you can’t hear a word anyone’s saying. It’s the kind of fine that’s obviously not fine.

  We drive across town, and I imagine people ducking in fear at what they think is a descending jet; I picture dogs with sensitive hearing whimpering and hiding under beds. We cross over Lake Washington, and Trevor’s driving only about thirty-five, because every time he accelerates, you can feel your kidneys rattle from the vibration. The Moores live on Meer Island, this dollop of land in an inlet of Lake Washington, which is full of waterfront houses set down at the end of secluded, gated drives.

  Severin is shouting directions that he reads from a piece of paper. There’s a right here and then a left and you can feel yourself curving closer to the water. Severin has been here before, but he’s getting nervous and snappish and we make a wrong turn and have to turn around in someone’s driveway, meaning Trevor’s Mustang has just shattered all the crystal in their cabinets.

  Severin’s head is still bent over that piece of paper, but there’s no need to look anymore, because it’s suddenly obvious we’re here. There’s a spotlight, one of those huge, rotating, blinding columns of light outside a high pair of open iron gates, flanked by a couple of guys in black pants and vests. The guys are talking into walkie-talkies.

  Trevor lets out a low whistle.

  “Are they expecting the president, or something?” I ask.

  “That’s just Mike,” Severin says. “He works with me in shipping. I don’t know the other one. Roll down your window.”

  Mike steps over to the car. “This is a private party,” Mike says. His vest has got some man’s face on it, with HAPPY 55, CHIEF! printed underneath.

  “Mike, it’s me,” Severin says from the back. “Severin?”

  Mike peers inside with narrow eyes. “Oh, cool,” he says. “The waitstaff is supposed to meet in the catering kitchen. Man, you realize you got something wrong with your muffler?”

  “No, hey, thanks for letting me know,” Trevor says. We roll up the window. “Maybe he should be a car mechanic,” Trevor says. “He’s obviously got some kind of intuition.” He rolls his eyes at me, and I roll mine back at him. Mike is talking on his walkie-talkie, which seems pretty ridiculous, because he’s talking to another kid with that same old guy on his vest, who’s just standing on the other end of the driveway, and who’s now gesturing wildly for us to stop.

  “I’m supposed to park the car,” the guy says. “Valet.” We pile out, and Trevor hands the kid his key. “You better bring me back a Mercedes or something,” Trevor says. “Little key mix-up, heh, heh, heh.”

  Trevor’s swingy and relaxed, but I’m getting this dark, rolling feeling in my stomach, black clouds moving across gray sky—maybe not dread, but the self-protective distancing that dread brings.

  The house itself is sprawled and layered, three that I can count, and there are wide steps that lead to the doorway, and each step is lit with toddler-size hurricane candles and decorated with vases of tall stalks of lilies. Musicians in black suits and long black skirts set up chairs and music stands on a balcony overlooking the entry, and they are all wearing the vest with Chief’s face. The door has a big basket of umbrellas (in case of a sudden storm, I guess), and his image is on those, too. It’s getting a little bad-dream creepy, this old guy’s face everywhere. A little man with a bald head and one of those cowboy string ties runs around rabbitlike, talking into the sort of microphone head pieces that you see on movie directors or air traffic controllers. We descend the stairs and my ace-bandage nylons feel scratchy with shame. Trevor senses my nerves and takes my hand, but I let it go—displays of support seem weak and middle-class. In the entryway of the house itself, on the wide marble floor, are cutouts of Chief; his head is on various bodies—Elvis, Han Solo, Einstein (he’s wearing a wild white wig and small glasses, carrying a book that’s labeled Theory of Relativity). Chief is a bodybuilder, with perfect six-pack muscles. Chief is God, with a white robe and a halo of light behind his head. A photographer with a long lens is already snapping photos, and another black-vested man stands on a ladder and adjusts the lights that shine down on every Chief cutout.

  I see a woman who can only be Mrs. Moore, wearing a stiff-skirted outfit with a jewelly sweater. “Anna! Anna!” she calls, and a barrel-shaped blond woman comes hurrying over with spot cleaner and a cloth to dab at the hem of Mrs. Moore’s sweater. We follow Severin past a stairwell with a rope across it, past huge windows overlooking the lake, past more vases now even taller than any of us. It’s a stage show, I see, because there’s the lighting man, and the soundman, the costume woman, and the set director. The only problem is, not only have I forgotten my lines, but the only play I’ve ever been to was Death of a Salesman with my freshman class, and even though Chief’s apparently being memorialized, he’s not dead yet, as he’s there in the kitchen, eyeing the cake, which has this huge photo of him and his wife on it, on the deck of some ship. Nope, this is not another cardboard cutout of Chief, it’s the real, living, breathing him, because his finger is moving toward the frosting.

  “Hello, Mr. Moore,” Severin says, and the man turns. It’s the face that we’ve already seen in replicated miniature.

  “Welcome,” he says. He holds his hand out and shakes Severin’s, and it’s obvious he hasn’t a clue who Severin is.

  “Severin Skye,” Severin says. “This is my sister Indigo, and her friend Trevor.”

  Mr. Moore is a little disappointing, really. You expect someone who is that rich to have dashing jet-black hair or melting charisma. But Mr. Moore is plain; he’s got an average, amiable smile and folding wrinkles in his forehead, the kind a tiny dune buggy would have a blast on. He is still looking at Severin with that half-quizzical smile you give the oddly familiar—he’s seen him somewhere, but where? Trimming a hedge? Detailing his car? Dating his daughter?

  Right then, with that thought, Kayleigh Moore enters, stage left. Her hair has a snowboard gloss and she’s wearing a shorter version of her mother’s stiff skirt and sweater. It’s beginning to feel like those movies where the poor boy dates some girl named Buffy, who calls her father Daddy.

  But not quite. “You’re not eating that frosting, are you, Chief?” she says. “Hi, Severin.”

  “Oh, you know each other,” Mr. Moore says, mystery cleared. His voice sounds familiar. Who does he sound like? Kermit? No, that’s not right. A cartoon character. A cartoon character puppet?

  “I’ll show you where you’re supposed to be,” Kayleigh says.

  “This is Indigo and Trev—,” Severin says, but Kayleigh interrupts.

  “The Chief shouldn’t eat so much sugar—he’s got a touch of diabetes,” she says. We follow her to a separate kitchen; this is obviously the infamous catering kitchen, because here there are actually plates and food and chopping blocks and crumbs hidden from view, unlike the other kitchen, a “kitchen” in quotation marks, like those living rooms people have that no one lives in, only a kitchen no one cooks in. Where the other room had silvery wall-size appliances that look like art in a museum, and metallic pillars topped with huge blown-glass bowls, this one has people moving around and placing things on trays, and the black vests worn by all flash Chief’s miniature face. It darts and dashes and lands and dashes again, like a room of Chief flies. And speaking of vests, here are ours, placed in our hands by the caterer, a white woman in some kind of African caftan, wearing an African turban.

  “Boy, do we get to take these home?” Trevor jokes. “It’d look really good with my ‘Happy 80th, Grandma’ bowling shirt.”

  “Actually, we’ll want you to leave those behind,” the woman in the caftan says.

  “Sure, next year you can cross out fifty-five and write in fifty-six,” I say.

  Severin looks at me with a homicidal
stare.

  “The Chief likes to donate these to the needy,” Kayleigh says. “Well, I’ll let you people do what you need to do,” she says. She gives Severin’s hand a squeeze, and as she makes her way across the room, she lifts her skirt, already short, as she steps over some pieces of cut carrot that have fallen to the ground.

  The faux African woman, who is attempting to abduct the African culture and take it as her own for borrowed depth, tells us her name is Denise. Her catering business has a reputation for being “the best,” or so she tells us. The food is some bizarre collection of cultures—there’s a sushi chef in the corner, bent over his knife and his platter of edible art, and Denise has us fill trays of Moroccan beef-tipped skewers (beef on sticks), fresh mahimahi on whole grain flat breads (tuna on crackers), and free-range chicken with sesame teriyaki and rice wine glaze (chicken on sticks). The director with the cowboy tie rushes in after a while and stirs everyone up like a wooden spoon in a soup pot, shouts that there are only five minutes to go, then four minutes, and so on, and I’m hoping we’ll have a chance to duck before the rocket ship takes off. We all (the three of us and about six other helpers) are supposed to burst into the room at once with trays of food.

  The director gives us the cue and we’re off. The lights have been dimmed and the guests mingle in with glasses of champagne, handed to them as they enter. Everything’s aglitter, and the orchestra is playing—violins, cellos—“Hail to the Chief.” I’m having this overwhelming sense of the odd and laughable, only no one seems to be laughing. The women all have the same hair and are wearing clothes that probably cost what a month in college would. A booming, God-like voice comes over an intercom (kudos to the sound man), and suddenly there’s this film being played on the white walls of the second-and third-floor balconies, and it’s apparently a documentary of The Chief, and God is saying, “The Chief is a man who likes the finest things in life,” and the crowd laughs, and there’s the Chief in the film, smoking a cigar, a cap over his wrinkled forehead. “The Chief is a man who’s earned his reputation…”