Destiny (25 page)

"Too young?" Billy frowned. "You're almost a woman." He hesitated. "Seems to me."

There was a little silence, and she saw him glance up. On the far side of the restaurant Dale and Priscilla-Anne were just coming in.

"My daddy got married when he was eighteen." Billy fiddled with his knife. "My mama wasn't more'n sixteen, seventeen, when I was bom. Still . . ."He sighed. "Maybe yours sees things differently, being from England and all. . . . You want to look at the menu now?"

Helene picked up the card and raised it in front of her face. The prices danced before her eyes, and she felt a httle sick. Everything seemed so expensive, and for all he said, she knew Billy didn't earn that much. Half of what he earned, more maybe, went to his mother. Maybe, if she said she wasn't very hungry, if she just ordered a salad? But Billy would be disappointed if she did that, she knew. He'd been planning this for weeks, months maybe.

And her mother—what would her mother say if she knew where she was? Helene wasn't sure anymore. She'd lied, to be safe, because if she'd told her the truth, her mother might have lost her temper and refused to let her go. But on the other hand, she might have just accepted it, said nothing at all.

Helene didn't understand her mother these days, she was so unpredictable, so strange. Sometimes she was up, high as a kite, filled with the weird tense excitement that Helene had come to recognize and to dread. Dread, because it meant it wouldn't last long. The next day she'd suddenly be down. She'd drag herself around like she hardly had the energy to move anymore. She'd listen and nod while Helene talked, but her wide violet eyes would have this blank look in them, as if she were locked away in some world of her own, as if she didn't hear a word that was being said. She took less care of herself now. She was terribly thin, and never seemed to want to eat, and there were gray streaks in her hair, and she didn't set it in pins, not the way she used to.

Sometimes Helene thought she drank. She'd found a vodka bottle once, wrapped up in paper, empty, hidden away in the garbage can, and after

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that she'd watched her mother carefully. But she never saw her drink, never found another bottle. She slept a lot, too, especially these last weeks; Helene had noticed it. Sometimes she'd come home from school, and her mother would be in bed. She'd just stayed there, she said. It was simpler; her head ached so. It didn't matter; Cassie Wyatt had two new assistants. She could cope now. She'd have to.

And the money. The prices on the menu swam before her eyes. She didn't want to think about the money or the old tin box. Last time she'd looked it'd been down to forty-three dollars. . . .

She'd wanted to tell someone, talk to someone, but loyalty held her back. Once, just once, she'd tried. Half-tried. Sometimes I think I'll never go to England, she had said to Priscilla-Anne. But Priscilla-Anne had just laughed. "Honey, did you ever really believe you would? Quit dreaming. Orangeburg isn't so bad. ..." She'd made a face, gestured down Main Street. "Stay here! You could always marry Billy Tanner. ..."

Helene shut her eyes. She wouldn't think about it, she wouldn't. It was her birthday! She ought to feel happy. If she got to thinking too much, the cage closed in, and then she felt sick and mean and scared; she felt like an animal in a trap.

Billy was reading the menu now; one finger was moving down the long lines of print. His lips moved. Priscilla-Anne nudged Dale in the ribs, and it was all Helene could do not to reach across and grab the menu. Don't do that, Billy, she wanted to cry. / know you're worth a hundred of them, but can't you see they're laughing at you? Oh, Billy, can't you? Then the waiter came over, and Billy tried to give him everyone's order, and got all tangled up and blushed scarlet.

"I'll settle for a steak. And fries."

The waiter smirked.

"And how would you like the steak cooked, sir?"

Billy stared at him blankly.

"Why, just the way you always cook them, I guess," he said finally.

"He means how d'you want it, Billy?" Priscilla-Anne took pity on him. "You know—rare, medium, well-done?"

"Oh. Well-done. . . ."

"I'll have the same," Helene said quickly.

Priscilla-Anne gave her order. Then the waiter turned to Dale. The smirk disappeared.

"Sir?"

"Well now ..." Dale leaned back on the banquette. He had seated himself next to Helene; now he stretched his arms along the back of the seat above her shoulders.

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"ril have the filet. Rare. Fries. Onions on the side. A large salad. Roquefort dressing. I guess you don't have a wine list in this place?"

"No, sir."

"Then I'll take a bourbon on the rocks. And a beer. How about you, Tanner?"

"Nothing for me."

"That'll be it then." Dale grinned. "These lovely ladies are under age. ..."

When the waiter brought the bourbon, ice tinkling, Dale lifted his glass.

"To Helena." He swung around to face her, eyes glittering, mouth moist. "You know, I can't believe you're just fifteen years old? You look so grown-up now. . . ." His eyes fell to her breasts, then back up to her face. "Priscilla-Anne, honey," he drawled, "how come you never told me you had such a cute little friend?"

He began as he meant to go on, never losing a chance to put Billy down, never missing a chance to flirt with Helene. Billy hardly spoke; once she reahzed what was happening, Priscilla-Anne's face set in hard lines. Whenever Helene tried to catch her eye, she turned her face away. Helene sat there while he systematically destroyed the evening. Dale alone seemed to be enjoying himself. He ate with relish. He swilled back several glasses of beer, and the more he drank, and his color rose, the more flagrant he became.

When Helene pushed half her steak and most of her french fries aside, uneaten. Dale laughed. His hand circled her shoulders, his fingers briefly caressed her bare arm.

"That how you keep that figure of yours, Helene? She's just so slender! Why, I bet my two hands'd go right around her waist—what do you think, Priscilla-Anne?"

Priscilla-Anne drained her glass of ice water in one gulp. She was wearing a pink knit top, very tight. Her face was pink, too, and her eyes were round with indignation.

"And they wouldn't fit 'round mine?" She glared around the table.

"That what you're saying. Dale?"

Dale laughed. "Course I'm not, honey. I can think of better places to put them when I'm with you, you know that. . . ."

Priscilla-Anne's face softened; she gave a nervous laugh.

Helene quickly shifted so she was out of Dale's grasp. Billy, who had stopped eating, picked up his knife and fork again, and went on patiently trying to saw the steak. When the waiter finally took the plates away, no

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one wanted anything else—except Dale. Dale ordered cheesecake, and another highball, and coffee. When the coffee came, he poured the cream carefully over the back of the spoon, so it floated in a pale circle on the coffee below. He sipped it, then turned to Helene. He had a thin hne of cream along his upper lip.

"Just the way I like it. Smooth and creamy on top, hot and dark underneath . . ."He smiled, regarding her with lowered lids, then leaned back expansively on the seat.

"Well now. That was good. Thank you. Tanner. A real fine meal." He half-suppressed a belch. "Where d'you work, Tanner, by the way? I don't think you said—"

"Over Maybury way. At Haines's garage."

"You don't say! You know Eddie Haines? Used to be at Selma High? He's an old boyfriend of Priscilla-Anne's—you know him?"

"I've come across him." Billy glanced at Priscilla-Anne. "He's married now."

"Don't I know it!" Priscilla-Anne tossed her head. "Married Susie Marshall, used to be a grade ahead of us. Married her just in time, I heard. ..."

"Strange ..." Dale wasn't listening. "Didn't know Haines hired white boys. I thought, the wages he pays, he could get only niggers. ..."

"You thought wrong then." Slowly Billy replaced his cup on his saucer.

"Dale's starting law school in the fall," Priscilla-Anne interjected quickly into the ugly silence that followed. Helene saw her glance nervously at Dale. "He plans to start his own law practice here in Montgomery—don't you. Dale? And his daddy made a real big contribution to George Wallace's campaign, and Dale's been working on his campaign staff. Speech-writing and research and all ..."

"Is that so?" Billy looked at him across the table, and Dale shrugged. He threw Priscilla-Anne a little smile.

"Certainly is." He made a deprecating gesture. "Don't actually write any of the speeches, you understand. Spend a lot of time making coffee as a matter of fact. But it's a real privilege, you know? An honor. He's a fine man, Wallace. Smart. Knows we're going to need all the smart lawyers down here we can get, the way things are going in Washington right now. Federal government sticking its finger into every little pie. Goddamn Yankees trying to tell us what we should and shouldn't do. I tell you—it just makes my blood boil. And that Lyndon Johnson, selling us all down the river the way he did, voting for a civil rights bill. Getting it through the Senate hke that. He'd sell his old grandmama for a bucket of shit, and he calls himself a southerner. . . ."He broke off with a smile. "Sorry, ladies. I guess I get carried away. But my daddy says, every time he hears the

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words civil rights, he goes reachin' for his gun. And I feel the same way. Niggers voting? Sitting in the same schools with white girls and white boys? That's commie talk. Jews and commies. But I tell you one thing. It'll never happen. No way. Not here in Alabama . . ."

He came to a stop, then winked across the table at Billy. "Still, mustn't talk politics, eh, Tanner? Don't want to bore the little ladies, now, do we? Ain't met a lady yet didn't turn her eyes up and start to yawn the minute politics was mentioned. . . ."

"Will you excuse me?" Helene stood up quickly. Billy's face had gone hard and tight; he was staring at Dale across the table. But Dale didn't seem to notice. He made an elaborate show of rising to his feet to let Helene pass. Priscilla-Anne rose, too, and Dale laughed.

"Don't you keep us waiting too long now. . . ."

The minute the door of the ladies' room closed behind them, Priscilla-Anne rounded on her. "Helene Craig, you two-timin' cat—what d'you think you're doing? Call yourself my friend ..."

Her cheeks were flushed; Helene could see that she was close to tears.

"Doing? I'm not doing anything. It's him. It's Dale. I can't help the way he behaves. I'm not encouraging him. . . ."

"Oh, you're not? Well, it doesn't look that way to me—not where I'm sitting. Oh, you keep quiet and you don't say much, I give you that. But you don't need to. You just look at him with those blue eyes of yours, and it's the biggest come-on I've ever seen. Why, Susie Marshall had nothing on you. . . ."

"That's not true!" Helene caught her arm, and Priscilla-Anne brushed her angrily aside. "I wouldn't do that—you know I wouldn't. You're my friend, Priscilla-Anne."

"Was. I was your friend." She gave a toss of the head. "I was so dumb. Listening to you. I should have known. All the other kids, they warned me. 'Stay away from Helene Craig,' they said. 'Why would you want to be friends with a girl like her?' But I liked you. I trusted you. I must have been crazy."

"Priscilla-Anne . . ."

"I broke up with Eddie Haines because of you!" Priscilla-Anne's voice rose in a wail. "Listening to you, going along with all those dumb things you told me to say! If you respected me, Eddie, you just wouldn 't do that — remember that? Remember how we practiced it up in my room? And then I said it, and you know what? That was my last date with Eddie. He took up with Susie Marshall then, and—"

"You can't blame me for that!" Helene stared at her in disbelief. Priscilla-Anne's tears had started to fall. "I didn't know that was going to happen. I was just trying to help. ..."

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"You were?" Priscilla-Anne gave her an angry push. She turned to the mirror and began to fumble in her purse. "Well, I thought that then. But I don't think that now. Now I know better. I think you did it on purpose. You wanted me to break up. Because you were jealous, Helene Craig, that's all. Just mean and jealous . . ."

"Jealous? Of Eddie Haines? You've got to be joking."

"Oh, I have?" In the mirror Priscilla-Anne's eyes narrowed. Their gaze met. "And I suppose you're going to say you're not jealous of Dale either? That you wouldn't rather have him drive you home tonight than that creep Billy Tanner?" She rubbed angrily at her swollen eyes with a tissue, then unscrewed her mascara wand, and began poking it jerkily at her lashes. Helene watched her.

"I would say that," she answered at last, slowly. "Yes, I would say that. I'm not jealous of you and Dale, Priscilla-Anne. Truly. I wish you'd believe me." She shrugged. "If you want to know the truth, I don't even like him very much. I think he's rude. He drinks too much. He has no manners worth mentioning, and ..."

It was the wrong tack. In the mirror Priscilla-Anne's eyes hardened, and she turned around slowly.

"Oh, you think so? You'd know, for sure. I mean, they teach you real fancy manners back there in the trailer park, huh? In that crummy dump you're so ashamed of that you never even asked me back there. Jesus, Helene Craig, you're something, you know that? Why, a man hke Dale wouldn't bother giving you the time of day if it wasn't for me. He knows white trash. He can smell it—same as I can. . . ."

Priscilla-Anne was shaking. She still had the mascara wand in her hand. Now she screwed it in place and put it back into her purse. She pulled the zipper shut. She turned to the mirror. Helene stood absolutely still; her skin felt very hot, and then ice-cold. The tiled floor beneath her feet seemed to ripple like a wave. In the glass Priscilla-Anne stared fixedly at her crisp blond bangs. She lifted them with one finger, let her hand fall.

"How many times you do it with Billy Tanner to get to come to a place hke this?" Her voice was very deliberate. "Five times? Six? Ten? D'you go down on him, Helene, the way Susie Marshall told us that time? That what you did? I mean, Billy makes what? Fifty-five dollars a week? Sixty? It's a big deal for a guy like Billy to come to a hick place like this. You must have done somethin' special to fix it. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you give it away easy. Like your mama. I mean, every man in Orangeburg knows your mama'll shake her tail for a new dress. And for a bottle of liquor— well, I hear she gets very original then. Must be kind of weird, I always thought, wearing a dress like that—" she flicked her wrist at Helene's