Standing in the Rainbow (57 page)

Then, as these things sometimes happen, one Monday morning Tot woke up and looked out the window and watched Verbena out in the backyard hanging her laundry on the clothesline when all of a sudden what looked like a bumblebee flew up Verbena’s dress. Verbena immediately dropped her basket and whooped and high-stepped around the yard, holding her dress up in the air as if she were dancing a jig, all the time hollering “Whooo! Whooo!”

After a moment, when the bee had finally found its way out of her skirt and flown away to safety, Verbena calmed down, regained her composure, and looked around to see if anyone had witnessed the event. Satisfied that nobody had seen her flying around her yard in broad daylight with her dress over her head, she went over and finished her task. But in the next house Tot was laughing so hard that tears ran down her cheeks and she had to put a pillow over her face to keep Verbena from hearing her. She had never laughed so hard in all her life and she couldn’t stop. All alone in the bed, the minute she would start to quiet down, the vision of Verbena would reappear and she would be screaming with another fit of laughter. She laughed so hard and for so long that she could not get out of bed and finally went back to sleep, but the moment she opened her eyes she thought of Verbena doing the jig and had another laughing fit.

Later she had to get up to go to the bathroom and when she looked at herself in the mirror that started her laughing again. She laughed so hard all that day that her upper plate came loose, and even that made her laugh. The next day she woke up feeling sore all over but very calm and rested, and for the first time in months she felt like she might get up for good.

After all of Verbena’s trying so hard to pep her up, Verbena never knew that a bee up her dress had finally done the trick. From that day forward, Verbena was convinced that it had been little Frieda Pushnik who had done the trick and Tot never told her any different.

Soon everyone in town knew Tot was going to recover from her terrible ordeal. For the first time in weeks she pulled up the shades in the living room, and week after week the shades came up room by room until one day Tot got dressed and went back to work with a new outlook on life. “Norma,” she said, “I’ve been on the verge of a nervous breakdown all my life and now that I’ve had it, I feel a whole lot better.”

Daughters

M
ACKY AND
N
ORMA
’
S DAUGHTER
, Linda, had married but continued to work to help put her husband through law school, a fact that irritated Macky to no end. “If he can’t support a wife on his salary, then he shouldn’t have gotten married,” he said. However, at the time Norma thought it was a good idea for Linda not to quit her job. “I wish I had a job,” Norma added wistfully.

Several months later, when the Pancake House opened, Norma applied for the job of hostess and, to her surprise, was hired but her mother, Ida, now an imposing dowager of seventy-five who wore six strands of pearls around her ample bosom and carried a black cane, talked her out of it. “Norma, for God’s sake, how would it look to people? The daughter of the president of the National Federated Women’s Club of Missouri being a hostess at a pancake house. If you will not think of your own social position, then think of mine!” And so Norma continued to be, as she put it, just a housewife. Her hopes of becoming a grandmother had been dashed when Linda had had a miscarriage in her third month. After the miscarriage, Linda and her husband had begun having problems. Linda had wanted to try again but he was against it until he finished school. Macky said it was because the husband was afraid he would lose his meal ticket but as Norma pointed out, he’d never liked him in the first place.

One afternoon a year later, when Macky walked in the door from work, Norma met him in the living room. “Linda called and said she is calling back at six because she wants to talk to both of us.” They looked at each other wide-eyed. “What do you think?”

Macky said, “I hope it’s what we think.”

“Do you think it could be?” Norma asked.

“I’m hoping it is.”

“Do you want anything to eat now or do you want to wait?”

Macky looked at his watch. “We only have forty-five minutes. Let’s just wait.”

“All right, but what are we going to do for forty-five minutes?”

“Should we call her?”

“No, she’s on the road and said she had a meeting and would call us when she finished.”

“I hope it’s what I think it is,” Macky said.

“I know you do, but you never know, and if it is what we think, don’t offer any advice. Just say it’s your decision and whatever you decide to do about it we will support you.”

“Norma, I know how to talk to my own daughter. She knows how I feel.”

“I know she knows how you feel. Especially about her husband—you certainly made that clear, nobody can accuse you of being subtle.” Norma shook her head. “Making a complete spectacle of you. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life.”

“All right, Norma,” said Macky.

“You could have at least said something in private and not waited till her wedding day to pull a stunt like that.”

Macky got up and went into the den but Norma continued. “Imagine such a thing. It’s part of the ceremony. Everyone knows when they say who
gives
this woman in marriage, you are supposed to say ‘I do’ and step back.” Norma got up and started rearranging the pillows on the sofa. “But no, you had to say right out loud, ‘I’m not giving her—I’m just loaning her.’ ”

“O.K., Norma,” he said from the den.

“And then to glare at the groom like that . . . no wonder they’re having trouble. I could hardly face his parents. They thought you were a drunk, or at least I hoped that’s what they thought. I didn’t want them to think you would do something like that sober. And then to have Aunt Elner laugh out loud like that, it’s a wonder that our daughter even speaks to us.”

Macky came back in. “Linda knows what I meant. I was not going to stand up anyplace, church or not, and say I’m giving my daughter away . . . like she was something that we had sitting around the house. And no matter what you and Linda think, I still say it was a rash decision.”

“Macky, she had dated him on and off for six years, how rash can that be? You knew she was going to get married sometime, and then to sit there and carry on like that, everybody heard you. I was the mother of the bride, I was the one who was supposed to cry, not you.”

“Norma, why are you dredging up all this old stuff?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just nervous I guess. Do you want some crackers or something? I have some pimento cheese.”

“No, I’ll just wait until after she calls.”

“But now, Macky, don’t get your hopes up, we’ve had false alarms before.”

“I’m not. I just hope it’s good news, that’s all.”

They sat across from each other, waiting, and said nothing until the phone rang and then he got on the extension in the den and she picked up in the kitchen. After they hung up Macky came strolling into the kitchen all smiles but Norma was not smiling. “Well, I hope you’re satisfied now.”

“I am,” he said, looking in the refrigerator for the pimento cheese.

Norma opened the cabinet where she kept the crackers. “Honestly, I never saw a man so happy his daughter was getting a divorce in all my life.”

Dr. Robert Smith Tours

A
FTER
M
ONROE
’
S FUNERAL
something happened to Bobby. Going back home again had stirred up so many old memories. Being there had made him remember not so much who he was but all the things he had wanted to be. Yes, he had made good money, had enough in the bank, held good stocks, no complaints there. They had two homes, one in Cleveland and one in Florida. His children had gone to the best schools, he had worked hard, been a good provider, but now those old secret longings came creeping back. That boy who had watched the shadows of a fire dancing on the ceiling of the old bunkhouse and dreamed himself to sleep seemed to be waking up inside him again. He found he hated to put on a tie and sit in stuffy corporate offices in every stuffy corporate town. He found himself staring out windows more and more.

After three months of thinking about it, Bobby walked in the door one night and said, “Lois, what would you say if I told you I wanted to go back to school?” Lois said, without a moment’s hesitation, “I would say do it!”

And so Mr. Robert Smith took an early retirement and went back to college and got his doctorate in history and his dissertation,
The American West: Dream and Reality,
was published and Dr. Robert Smith and his wife went on a lecture tour, and as Lois told their children, “Your father is having the time of his life.”

Darling, We Are Growing Older

M
ACKY WAS RESTLESS
. He walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table across from Norma. “Norma, what do I look like?”

Norma glanced up from her Things to Do Today pad. “What do you mean, what do you look like? You look like yourself.”

“No, I’m serious . . . what do I look like?”

“Macky, I don’t have time to play some silly game. I’m trying to figure out how many sandwiches I need to order.”

“It will only take a second. . . . Look at me . . . and tell me what you see.”

Norma put her pencil down and studied him. “You look just like you always did, Macky, only older.”

“How much older?”

“You look . . . oh, I don’t know, Macky, you look the same to me as you always did. I don’t know what you look like. Go look for yourself in the mirror.”

“I want an objective view. I see myself every day.”

“Well, I see you every day too. How am I supposed to know what you look like?”

“What if I was walking down the street and you saw me coming toward you, what would you say?”

“I’d say, There comes my husband, Macky Warren. What do you think I’d say? Here comes a perfect stranger?”

“Norma.”

“Oh, all right. If I didn’t know you and I saw you coming down the street, I’d say . . . Oh, I don’t know, Macky, I’m no good at these silly games, you sound like Aunt Elner. Go look at a picture of yourself if you want to see what you look like, go look in the yearbook where we were voted Cutest Couple. That’s what you look like now—older but still cute.”

It was not the answer he was looking for.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you think a person can still look cute when they’re older?”

“How old do I look?”

“Well . . . you look your age. You look like you’re supposed to look, Macky. I don’t know what you want me to say anymore. Macky, go ask somebody else. I’ve got to figure out if we should have potato chips or fruit salad. Just as soon as I decide on chips everybody will say they wanted fruit salad.” She went back to her list but said to him as he got up to leave, “I’ve never heard of anything so crazy in my life.”

After Macky left she thought about what he had said. He was obviously worried about getting old, but was he? How about her?

It was hard for her to tell, being with him day after day, year after year. They had never really been separated except for the night she’d stayed in the hospital when she had Linda and the three days she and Aunt Elner had spent in St. Louis visiting Aunt Elner’s niece Mary Grace. But little things had started to happen. She found herself going sound to sleep sitting straight up in the chair at night when they were watching television. Macky would more often than not wake her up to go to bed. Her eyes were bad now; she had to wear her glasses almost all the time if she wanted to read or do any close work. Macky needed reading glasses but he was too stubborn to get them and picked hers up when he read the paper. He had stretched all her glasses.

Maybe he was right, maybe they were getting old. When he came back home she was standing in the bedroom in her panties and bra looking at herself in the full-length mirror. “Macky,” she said, “does my body make me look fat?”

He would not have answered that question for all the tea in China.

THE NINETIES

Popsicle Toes

W
HEN
M
ACKY WALKED
in the door Norma was waiting for him in the living room and said, “Macky, sit down.” The look on her face told him she was about to tell him something terrible or wonderful, he never knew which. But he sat down.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been on the phone with Linda,” she said.

“Yes, and?”

“And. She said she wants to have a baby, she says her biological clock is ticking.”

“Uh-huh, has she met someone?”

Norma got up and started to rearrange the pillows on the sofa, just like she always did when she was nervous. “No, she hasn’t met anyone but she has been calling different agencies.”

Macky was alarmed. “Agencies? What the hell is she doing that for? There are plenty of men where she works.”

Norma cleared her throat. “That’s just it, she doesn’t want a man; well, at least not in person. She wants the baby but not the husband . . . that’s what she said.”

“What?”

“Now, before you get mad at me, I did not say I thought it was a good idea but she has decided to go to a”—Norma weighed her words very carefully—“a place that specializes in that sort of thing. She’s looking into one of those . . . you know . . . bank things.”

“Banks?”

Norma was becoming impatient. “Oh, Macky, don’t make me have to spell it out for you. She wants to get pregnant but she does not want to get married again. She’s going to one of those places that deal in . . . frozen . . .” Norma struggled but no matter how hard she tried she could not bring herself to say the actual word. She glanced out the front window to see if anyone was in hearing distance, then spelled it out: “S-P-E-R-M.”

“What?”

“Macky, have you never heard of artificial insemination? That’s what she wants to get and she just wanted to let us know.”

“Good God.”

“You always said she could tell us anything—well, now she has. I just don’t know what to say or what to think. She’s your daughter. If you hadn’t acted like you wanted a grandchild so much that other time, this might not have happened.”

“Norma, she was pregnant—what was I supposed to say?”

“You acted like a grandchild was the only thing you’d ever wanted in your entire life, then when she had the miscarriage it made her feel even worse.” Norma suddenly burst into tears and wailed, “I hope you’re satisfied. You’re about to have one with a Popsicle for a father!”

But after months of trying and many disappointments, Linda’s attempt to become pregnant was not successful and she finally gave up. Macky and Norma assumed that was to be the end of it but when Macky came in from a fishing trip Norma met him at the back door and announced, “Well, I hope you like chop suey.”

“What?”

“Your daughter called while you were gone. She is now on her way to China to pick up a foreigner baby.”

“What?”

“She said she applied for a little girl a year ago. She said she didn’t tell us before because she thought she would never hear from them but three days ago they called her and told her to come over and pick it up.”

He stood there holding his string of fish with his mouth open. It was the last thing in the world he expected to hear.

“Congratulations, Macky, you are now the grandfather of a Communist who will probably grow up and murder us all in our beds.” With that she left him standing in the kitchen and went back to bed in tears.

As upset and worried as they both were, the moment they saw the beautiful little button-eyed girl Linda had named Apple, they fell in love. Two years later Norma was out at the mall proudly wearing a sweatshirt with a picture of the little Chinese girl on it. Printed underneath was
SOMEBODY SPECIAL CALLS ME GRANDMA.

Cecil Figgs, a.k.a. Ramon Novarro

W
HEN THE BODY
of the large, heavyset woman in the red wig had been picked up off the street and brought to the Cecil Figgs funeral parlor for embalming, they discovered that the lady on the table was no lady. Imagine their incredible surprise when they were told that the man in the bright green dress was none other than Mr. Cecil Figgs!

What a scandal. Thank heaven, Cecil’s mother had not lived to see it. Jake Spurling immediately flew to New Orleans. But even he, with all his powers of deduction and all the resources of the F.B.I. behind him, could not figure out how Figgs had wound up living in New Orleans for the past twenty-something years as a Miss Anita “Boom Boom” De Thomas.

As hard as he tried, Jake could come up with nothing. The only human being who had really known what had happened to Hamm and the rest of the men was now dead, and even he had not known it all. Jake might have solved some of it but he had missed out on a very important clue years ago.

A piece of wood had washed up with the word
AYE
written on it. The river rescue authorities checked their logs, and a boat registered to a Mr. J. C. Patterson named
Aye Aye, Skipper
had been lost eighteen years ago. They assumed it was from the Patterson boat. But they were wrong. That piece of wood was from the only thing left intact of
The Betty Raye.

When
The Betty Raye
had docked in New Orleans, Cecil had the name of a contact in Louisiana who would sell him formaldehyde by the ten gallons at a cut rate, so he figured that as long as he was there, he would have the man load
The
Betty Raye
with eighty gallons, and Cecil would bring it back to Missouri.

Cecil did not know that the reason the man was selling the formaldehyde at such a good price was because it had been stolen from one of Cecil’s own warehouses. While Hamm and the other men were off having their meeting, Cecil was in the French Quarter, and the boat was loaded not only with the formaldehyde but with fifty cases of cheap, tax-free bootleg rum from Cuba, which Rodney Tillman had arranged to take back to Missouri as well.

Later that night after the meeting,
The Betty Raye
, loaded to the gills with cheap booze and cut-rate formaldehyde, took off, headed back to the boathouse. They were playing cards en route and Seymour Gravel was chewing on his smelly cigar. “I’m out,” he said and threw his cards down, complaining about his bad hand, and began looking for a match. It was a hot night and the rest of them were in the middle of a pretty intense poker game. Hamm said to Seymour, “If you’re gonna smoke that thing, go sit in the back.”

Seymour waddled back and sat down on a box and continued to search his pockets for a match. “Hey, Wendell—throw me your lighter for a minute.”

Wendell, preoccupied with trying to decide whether or not to raise Hamm, reached in his shirt pocket and tossed his heavy silver Zippo with the marine insignia on it back to him. Seymour reached out but missed, and it sailed on past him. As it was turning over in midair, the top of the lighter flew open, and when it hit the side of one of the boxes, it landed right smack on its small wheel. As people often say when such a freak thing happens, “If you tried you would not be able to do it again in a million years.” The spark from the lighter ignited the dry straw the liquor was packed in and started to spread like wildfire.

What none of the men knew was that a few months ago, the real owner of the boat, Mr. Anthony Leo, had acquired some stolen dynamite he was planning to use in the future to settle a business dispute. And he had it stashed in a secret compartment in the bottom of
The Betty Raye
for safekeeping.

The gallons of flammable formaldehyde, boxes of ninety-proof alcohol, and a cargo full of dynamite below proved to be not only illegal but a lethal combination. Two men who were out on the river in a rowboat fishing that night came in and said they had just seen a huge comet come hurtling down from the sky. They said it had shot across the horizon and had landed about a mile upriver. But they were wrong. What they had seen that night had not been a comet coming down. It had been Hamm Sparks, boat, and cronies going up!

The bad news: This spectacular event had certainly ended a remarkable political career. The good news: Hamm Sparks had always wanted to go as high in the world as he could—and he had. And as usual, the rest of the men had just been along for the ride.

But as it turned out, there was
one
man who had not been along that night.

Cecil Figgs had failed to show up at the time they were scheduled to leave and they had left without him, which was fine with him. He was having too much fun. He had left the car keys with Rodney, and Cecil figured he could always fly home.

He woke up in New Orleans two days later in a seedy hotel in the French Quarter with a bad hangover. His young companion was gone but had left a note.

Dear Ramon,

Thanks for the good time. Call me the next time you are in town.

Love,

Todd

Cecil always used the name Ramon Novarro when he was out of town. When Cecil suddenly realized it was Tuesday and that he had missed taking his mother to the eye doctor the day before, he felt sick with guilt. He would have to call her right away, but not before he had a cup of coffee. Cecil dressed and walked next door to eat breakfast and figure out what he would say to his mother, who was sure to be upset. Shortly before his first sip of coffee he picked up the
Times-Picayune
newspaper someone had left on the counter. When he saw the front page he almost fainted.

HAMM SPARKS, FOUR COMPANIONS PRESUMED DEAD

The article underneath the pictures of all five men, including him, said the police believed the missing men had most likely been murdered and as far as they could tell, it looked like the work of professionals. At the moment they were questioning several men in St. Louis with Chicago mob connections.

What little hair Cecil had stood up on the back of his head. He had no idea what had happened. After he got over the initial shock of the whole thing, his first instinct was to run and call his mother. But then he realized that if someone had been out to kill them and found out he was still alive, they might try it again. Desperately, he tried to figure out what to do next. While he sat before his cold coffee in a dilemma, pondering his future and perhaps his impending murder, it struck him like a bolt of lightning. Wait a minute, he thought. In the middle of this seeming tragedy there was another part of it he had just realized. He was, for all intents and purposes, dead, or at least everyone thought he was. For the first time in his life he was free. Free to be who and what he really was. He would no longer have to lead a double life, always looking over his shoulder, afraid of getting caught; always terrified he might upset his mother or disgrace the family. He’d have to die to do it. It would be a big price to pay but he figured it would be worth it.

In the end, the man Hamm and the boys had taken the meeting with in New Orleans said nothing. He could not afford to have his name involved in any scandal. Mr. Anthony Leo of St. Louis did wonder what had happened to the boat and his missing dynamite but he was certainly in no position to say anything and for years continued to wonder but kept his mouth shut. The man who’d sold Rodney the illegal Cuban rum said nothing and the man who’d sold Cecil the stolen formaldehyde certainly said nothing. And Cecil said nothing.

In fact, there was no Cecil. From that day forward, nobody but himself knew that Miss Anita “Boom Boom” De Thomas, gorgeous headliner at the famous My Oh My Club in New Orleans, Louisiana, was the sole survivor of the late Mr. Cecil Figgs of Missouri. Cecil had been given an opportunity that few people in this world ever get. He had been shown an open door that led to a new life and he had walked through it to the other side and there was no turning back. Mother Figgs and the entire Figgs clan were left a small fortune and the warm memory of a good son and he was going to have a good time the rest of his life. He had only one major and painful regret in leaving Cecil behind. It had just about killed him not to be able to plan the governor’s funeral. It would have been the triumph of his career. Oh, well.