What I Saw and How I Lied (11 page)

"You mean we're moving to Florida?"

"We're moving, kiddo! Nothing's been signed, but Tom and I shook hands on the deal."

"Wow!"

"We sign the papers on Wednesday. Come on, let's go spread the cheer. Tom said I could take the Cadillac." He grabbed my hand and we flew down the hall.

We jumped into the big beautiful car and Joe took off, driving down along the ocean, all the windows open. As we crossed the Lake Worth Bridge, the blue lake turned flat gray and the first drops began to fall. I heard a distant rumble of thunder.

Joe turned into the parking lot of the golf course. In front of us was a long rectangle of green that ran down the side of the lake. Golfers were pushing their carts toward the clubhouse, not hurrying too much yet in the cooling rain. We sat, waiting to see Mom, trying to spy the splash of pink of her blouse, or her white golf skirt.

I looked around the parking lot. Her car wasn't there. I was about to tell Joe, but I realized he'd already noticed. Still we sat in the car, staring at the wet grass, until every last golfer left the course and the thunder boomed.

She came in the front doors as Joe and I sat waiting. He wouldn't go upstairs, he wouldn't change, he just sat in the chair, feet planted. I wanted to wait for her out in the courtyard but he said, "Stay here, Evie," and that was that.

Mom smiled as she saw us, but something in Joe's face must have warned her, because she tossed her hair back in a way I knew well. When the rent was late, when she hadn't paid the milkman, she never got weasely, she got defiant.

Joe put down his drink and leaned back. "How was the golf game?"

She took another deliberate step forward and picked up his drink. She took a sip.

Arlene came though the door then, carrying her big canvas bag, and Mom put down the drink.

"Hello, troops," Mrs. Grayson said.

"I didn't go golfing today," Mom said. "I was with Arlene."

Arlene was wearing her sunglasses. We couldn't see her eyes. And if you weren't watching carefully, if you were, like Joe, keeping your eyes on your wife, you wouldn't have seen that she hesitated for a minute before she turned to Joe. "I found all the bargains, you'll be glad to hear," Arlene said to him. "Your wallet is safe, m'dear."

Arlene walked off to the elevator. Mom leaned over and kissed Joe. "Let me take a quick bath and I'll join you," she said. She slipped away, hurrying to catch the elevator with Mrs. Grayson.

"You didn't tell her," I said.

Joe leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

That night the voices woke me up. Arguing. "Why ties, Bev?”

“Not this again."

"Why ties? Why not gloves? Why not dresses?"

"Oh, for Pete's sake. I told you, that's where they placed me."

"The tie department?"

"That's right, Joe." Her voice was so weary.

"You must have had a lot of customers."

He hit the last word with a hard
c
and let it roll out,
cus-to-mers.

"Shhh! You'll wake the hotel!"

I slid out of bed and went to the louvered door, put my ear against it.

"Yeah," he continued. "Mom told me how well you did, how you sold more ties in a month than the poor slob you took over for did in a year."

"Not really. There was a war on —"

"Oh, you remember that, do you?"

I heard the sounds of them moving around, getting ready for bed. The slap of the hairbrush against the vanity.

"So you recalled you had a husband in the service, that's good."

"It's late. Let's go to sleep."

"And the candy store, Bev. Nice how your uncle took care of you."

"Yeah, it was lucky."

"Evie told me. Cut you plenty of slack, gave you extra money on rent day. But then after he died, your aunt cut you off. Why do you think she did that?"

"Because she was a bitch."

"No reason, then."

"Dry up."

"No reason in the world.”

“I'm going to bed."

"Right?" Joe's voice was loud now. I heard a crash, and Mom gave a little yell. I flung open the door.

The pineapple vase was on the floor, smashed. Mom bent down to pick up the pieces. I started forward, but she shook her head.

"Go to bed, baby." Her voice was calm but her hands shook as she stacked the pieces, bright yellow, bright green.

"No reason in the world." Joe muttered this, his back to me, and I heard ice hit a glass.

I woke up to the sound of my door opening. Four
a.m
. I sat up. Joe stumbled through the doorway, tripped on a sandal, and fell by my bed.

He cursed into the carpet. There was no Grandma Glad to say
None of that language, you're out of the army now, Sergeant.

"Are you okay?" I whispered.

"Yeah." He turned over and lay faceup. "I love her. I love your mother. You know that.”

“I know that."

"I didn't mean to break the vase.”

“I know."

"I'm not sorry it broke, though. Damn, it was ugly."

Somehow Joe and I started to laugh. "It was just plain awful," I whispered.

Joe stared at the ceiling. "She's all I thought about, getting back stateside, doing right by Bev. Getting her things she never had. Taking care of her. She's my baby doll." In the dim light, I saw the silvery streaks of tears on Joe's face. "I'm all balled up, now. I'm just all balled up."

"Go to sleep."

It was warm in the room, but I slid off the bed and put a blanket over him. He caught my wrist and held it, his eyes closed.

"Where does she go, Evie?" he asked. "Where does she go?"

To celebrate the sale, even though it hadn’t happened yet, Mr. Grayson announced that he was taking us all to dinner down the coast. Even Peter.

It was time to wear the moonlight dress.

I wanted to make an entrance. Mrs. Grayson would say, I was sure, that the dress deserved an entrance.

I got dressed the way I'd seen Mom do it. Not just throwing on clothes, but walking back and forth between the mirror and the closet, brushing my hair, studying my face, sitting in my slip, smoothing the tiniest wrinkles from the skirt of the dress. Carefully, slowly, putting on lipstick. Watching myself in the mirror as I put powder on my nose and my bare shoulders. Perfume in my cleavage, the way I'd seen Mom do.

I'd mostly been just a kid during the war, and now that it was over, the only thing I wanted to remember was the romance of it. I didn't want to think of it like Mrs. Grayson, that it gave the small-minded among us something to do. It made me think of Grandma Glad, pursing her lips over the success of her Victory Garden, refusing to give away her cabbages.

I wanted to think of music, of dances, of falling in love and getting married before he got shipped overseas. And the songs —
I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places
— all that longing, all that waiting. It made sense to me now. Every lyric. It wasn't about just hearing it on the radio. The strings were stretched and quivering and going crazy inside me.

If Peter and I had met during the war, would we have gotten engaged? Would things have moved faster? I knew girls who were pre-engaged at school. I used to laugh at their smugness. Now I wanted it. Time rushed at me like a subway, all air and heat. I was afraid one day we'd all pack up our cars and drive away, and I'd lose him.

"You ready in there?" Joe bellowed.

"I'll meet you downstairs! I'm not ready!"

"Aw, criminy, Evie. Do me a favor. Don't turn into your mother."

I could see it in his face. Peter saw me, really saw me, and so did Mrs. Grayson and so did Mom and so did Joe.

"You look like a dream," Peter said.

"Where did you get that dress?" Joe bellowed the words, and the lobby went silent.

Mrs. Grayson moved forward and took my arm. "I bought it for her. Doesn't she look stunning?"

"Beautiful," Peter said. "She's all grown up."

"No, she's not!" The sharpness in Mom's voice made everyone freeze.

Joe came forward. He took my other arm. "Go upstairs and put something decent on."

"Joe, she's perfectly decent —" Mrs. Grayson started.

"I'm her
father!”

Joe tugged me toward the elevator.

"She's almost sixteen," Mrs. Grayson said. But Mr. Grayson looked at her and she stopped talking.

Joe went on one side, Mom on the other. They steered me into the elevator and we went up to the room. I wanted to cry in great heaving gulps, in a way I hadn't cried in forever. But I didn't.

Mom went to my closet and got out my old best dress, the pink one with the lace on the collar. She unbuttoned the gown and got me out of it. She pulled the pink dress over my head.

"That's it," Joe said from the other room. "That's it, Evie. If you're sneaking around behind my back, it stops now."

Mom's fingers fumbled as she tried to zip up the dress.

"I won't have that man sniffing after my daughter!" Joe shouted. "Did you see the way he looked at her? Like a boy scout going for his merit badge in hound dog!"

Mom got the zipper up. She turned me around. She leaned forward and wiped my face with a wadded-up tissue. Which didn't make sense, because I wasn't crying. She was.

"It has to stop," she whispered. "Baby, it has to stop."

Joe's mood improved after three cocktails. At the restaurant he pounded Tom on the back and called him "buddy." His face was flushed red, and Mom started to stub out cigarette after cigarette. I had Shirley Temples and a big bowl of spaghetti. It was not a good combo.

It was supposed to be a celebration, but nobody was celebrating. They were just making noise, like Joe, or drinking, like Mom. Mrs. Grayson and Mom weren't talking. I thought it was maybe because of the dress. Mrs. Grayson ordered a gin and tonic and didn't drink it. Mom didn't eat.

Joe kept saying, "It's a night to remember!" but you knew everyone else would want to forget it the very next morning. Even Mr. Grayson didn't look happy. He ate his steak in big bites and tucked a napkin into his collar to eat his spaghetti. It made him look like a ten-year-old.

Peter gave me a wry smile when we sat down, but he didn't try to talk to me. Every bite of dinner, every moment, I wanted to grab his hand and run out the door. The dinner felt like the longest night, like the night the world would end.

"You know, we never went fishing," Joe said. "We should do that tomorrow. Hire a boat down at the dock, make a day of it."

Nobody looked too excited about that.

"What do you say, Tom?" Joe asked. "We'll pack a thermos of drinks, get Rudy in the kitchen to pack a hamper."

"I heard there's a bad storm out in the ocean," Mr. Grayson said.

"We won't be in the ocean. We'll stay in the lake."

"I get seasick on motorboats," Mrs. Grayson said. "Sailboats, I like."

"You just have to know how to handle them easy," Peter said. "I grew up on the water. Got my sea legs early."

"Aw," Joe said, "did your rich daddy buy you a widdle boat? Did he let you toot the horn?"

"Sure," Peter said. "I like to blow horns. Nice and loud, so everyone can hear."

This seemed to make Joe even madder. "Nobody invited you, Coleridge."

"I did," Tom said. "If we're going, we should all go."

"You see that, Joe?" Peter said. "Nobody likes being left behind. It makes you feel kind of itchy."

"So scratch."

Everyone looked at Joe and Peter. The wave of fury crashed and rolled back between them.

"Isn't the moon pretty?" Mrs. Grayson said.

Everyone smoked a cigarette with coffee after dinner, and then it was time to go at last. We all stood outside, waiting for the valets to get our cars. The dark palms whispered in a quickening breeze. I looked at Peter. He had his hands in his pockets and was looking at Mom and Joe.

The valet brought Mr. Grayson's car, and as everyone

started to move toward it Peter was suddenly next to me.

"What we need is a hurricane hole.”

“A hurricane hole?"

"It's a place to leave your boat in a hurricane. You find a little cove and tie her up, let her ride out the storm. You and me should get ourselves a hurricane hole."

"Time to get rolling, Coleridge." Joe was right next to us now.

"I'm not good enough for your daughter, Joe?" Peter asked. "Is that it? I'm not good enough to even talk to her? What else aren't I good enough for?"

Joe looked like he wanted to throw a punch.

And then Peter spoke so softly that only Joe and I could hear it. "Who's the dirty rat here, Joe? From where I'm standing?"

The two of them faced each other. Joe's face was closed up. His soft brown eyes had gone black and dull. I realized something for the first time: I'd gotten it all wrong. Peter wasn't afraid of Joe. Joe was scared of Peter.

Joe threw a punch. Peter stepped back and the fist didn't connect with a jaw or a nose, just Peter's ear, and not that hard. Joe staggered and almost fell, and this made him more angry. He looked like he was winding up for another one, but Peter stepped back, both hands up, palms out.

"I think it's time we called it a night, don't you, Sarge? Good night, Evie."

Peter quickly turned and walked across the parking lot. The Graysons and Mom had their backs to us while they got into the car. The valet was hurrying to get Peter's car, and Peter caught up to him and clapped him on the shoulder.

It had happened so fast that nobody had seen it but me.

We pulled up at the hotel and Wally walked forward, almost casually. Usually he raced to get to the car door before you could open it. "Here you go, young Walter," Mr. Grayson said, and gave him a quarter.