Enchanted Isle (8 page)

“Guess that’s what I’ll have too.”

So he called down and ordered, and then we got up. It was fun walking around in pajamas and barefoot, with no reason to worry about a swipe being made at my breastworks. He had money, as I’d given him a package of five-dollar bills there in the plaza, but when the food came he signed, giving the waiter a five-dollar tip. It was a very nice guy who said he was going to college and seemed to know we were new at hotels. So he told us what to do with the tray when we finished our supper, to put it out in the hall on the rolling table he brought, and in the night they’d come and get it. So then we ate our sandwiches, and everything tasted so good. We put the tray out, then sat talking about our island, Rick in one chair, me in the other, our bare feet curled up under us. Then I said, “Rick, there’s just one thing.”

“Yeah, Mandy? What?”

“Mother. I ought to call her up.”

“...Call her up? What for?”

“To tell her...what’s been on my mind ever since I came back from talking to that rat, Vernick. Rick, I’ve been so ashamed to feel toward her like I did and to put what I did in that note. And the reason was that I blamed her for the way he had treated me, Vernick I’m talking about, never writing or calling me, or sending me something for Christmas. I thought it was because she’d never told him where we lived or anything. But now I know whose fault it was. I want to tell her how sorry I am for putting the blame on her.”

“...Mandy, no, no, no!”

“But, Rick, why not?”

“You’ll spill it to her, that’s why.”

“Spill what?”

“Everything!”

“Well, not about the robbery, if that’s what you’re talking about. Only about Vernick.”

“Oh, that’s all, about Vernick! Wasn’t it bad enough, Mandy, that you went to him with that coat, that you bought it with hot money? It was just our dumb luck that the store didn’t call the cops in and that he didn’t want any trouble. Now you got to start over with a crazy call to your mother! Isn’t there going to be any end to your battiness?”

“But I said I’m not going to tell her!”

“About anything, except Vernick and how you showed him the coat and how it flattened him out, with his talk about you wanting money. So she asks where you got it. What are you going to say?”

“I don’t have to say anything, do I?”

“OK, you don’t say anything, but she calls Vernick to ask what he knows about it. And he says you didn’t tell him. And she says, ‘I’m telling the cops, I have to, I dare not let it pass.’ What then?”

“Well, she wouldn’t do that.”

“How do you know she wouldn’t?”

“You seem to forget she’s my mother.”

“On this I wouldn’t trust Jesus Christ.”

“Well, that’s not a nice thing to say.”

“O.K., I wouldn’t trust anyone.”

“Then, I won’t call. But you make me feel so guilty.”

“I was easier in my mind. Now I’m not.”

B
UT IN THE MORNING
we were nice and friendly again, and he let me dress in the bathroom, without peeping or anything. Then I came out and he went in, and when he came out he was shaved, combed, and fresh, with a clean shirt on, one of those he had bought, and his pants and jacket clean and pressed up, after being delivered by the valet the night before, enduring while I slept. So then we went down and had breakfast and talked over what we would do. We decided to hit for Miami, where we could ask about islands, where they were and what they cost. So we went up again and packed, then came down and paid and checked out, then took a cab to the bus terminal, at Howard and Center streets. But my heart almost stopped when we unchecked our bag, the one with the money in it, and the man suddenly asked Rick, “What you got in that thing, bricks?”

Rick told him, “Books.”

“Oh, that explains it. Boy, is that heavy.”

Walking away, we looked at each other, and Rick said, “Well, we found something out. Now we know what we got. In case the subject comes up. In case it does again.”

“I almost died.”

“Forget it. We made a gain.”

But when we asked at the ticket window, it turned out that to get to Miami, to get the express bus, we had to go to Washington by local. My heart did a little more skipping when we had to surrender our bags, check them through when we got on the bus, but no comment was made anymore about how heavy the big one was. We rode on the back seat, as we had on the local from Hyattsville going to Baltimore, and I whispered to Rick, “Hiya, Pop?” He squeezed my hand, so I felt happy and loved and safe. We changed in Washington, but bought tickets only as far as Raleigh so we could have lunch there before going further south. We decided to stop in Savannah and spend the night in a hotel, before going on next day. So we did have our lunch in Raleigh, more sandwiches and pie a la mode and buttermilk, and it wasn’t the same as it had been in the hotel, but not too bad either. Then we went on, with tickets bought to Savannah, checking the bags through again, riding the back seat again, and finally getting off again. And once more I almost died, as I was halfway up the aisle, leaving the bus, before I remembered the coat, which Rick had put topside on the rack. I ran back and got it and he sicked his finger at me. Then we unchecked our bags on the platform and right away rechecked the big one at the check-it-to-leave-it window, Rick taking the check that time, and then caught a cab to the hotel. Once more, I don’t say which one it was, except it was down by a square, near the City Hall and Cotton Exchange, with a view looking out on some river.

They treated us very nice, very different from how they were next morning with me, and they said nothing at all about being paid in advance. We went up, and I unpacked as usual, putting our things away, and then we went out and had dinner, as it was late and the hotel dining room looked deserted. We found a place called The Isle of Hope and had a pretty good dinner of crab soup, snapper, and parfait, and with his fish Rick had some wine. Then we went back to the hotel, and I didn’t undress in the bathroom, but in front of him, out in the open. But he didn’t pay much attention, and I guess I liked it that way, but I was beginning to wonder how long his fright would last and if it would ever end. I mean I liked it, him being my father, but after all I’m human. But he didn’t make any pass, and I sat there a while in the chair, the only one we had, and he sat sipping his Scotch, as he’d brought the bottle along, the one he’d had sent up in Baltimore. And I said, “Rick, there’s just one thing.”

“Yes, Mandy, what?”

“The same old. Mother.”

“...You mean you still want to call her?”

“Rick, it’s been bugging me all day. Forget what I said last night, about my reason for wanting to then—now there’s another reason. Rick, after what you said, about her calling the cops, it has popped in my head that she could, anyway,
without
knowing about the coat. Just to report me in as a runaway girl or something. A truant juvenile, something like that. Or suppose she takes space in that magazine? They have one, did you know that? That locates missing children. And how you do, you take an ad out, give in the missing child’s picture, and they run it with her description. And that magazine goes everywhere—to police, filling stations, bus terminals, airports, any place you can think of. And it gets results, so they say. The missing child is found. Well, suppose she does that to me—not out of meanness, but love. So she does what it takes to find me, and then they pick me up... and
you
up. And there we’ll be with that money, just from being too dumb to put in a call while we still had the chance and head off that dragnet stuff. That’s what I’m worried about!”

“OK, OK, I see your point. And I know what you do.”

“Yes, Rick? What?”

“Soon as we get to Miami you send five bucks to New York, to the newsstand at Grand Central Station, to mail you cards, picture postcards of New York, in the return envelope that you send. So they do, and when you get those cards, you write your mother one, what a swell place it is, New York. Then you say you’re all right and please don’t worry about you, you’ll write her more later. So then you send that in an envelope, to the same newsstand, with a note: ‘Please mail the enclosed card for me.’ So they do and that’s that. Your mother thinks you’re up there, she has no reason to worry, she don’t call the cops or take any ad in that magazine. ... Hey, Mandy, I try to help.”

“...OK, I guess that’ll do it.”

But in the night I kept thinking about it, and in the morning I said, “Rick, getting back to Mother, who you may be getting sick of, but I can’t get her out of my mind, and that idea you had, the card I’d mail from New York. It’s OK, except for one thing: it’ll take at lease a week, and this is Thursday, after me leaving home on Monday. Or in other words, sending a card that way, it’ll be ten days from the time I took off, and in that time God only knows what she does from worry about me. And if we lost out for that reason, we’d just have ourselves to thank for not getting with it and...”

“OK, I’ve changed my mind. Call her.”

“Oh, Rick, thanks, thanks, thanks.”

“But not from here, not from the hotel. It’s small, not like the one in Baltimore, and the girl on the board could get nosy, she could listen in. There’s a drugstore down the street, next door to that restaurant we ate in last night, and all drugstores have a booth. Put in a station-to-station call, dial the area code, then your house number, and drop in the money, in coins, soon as the operator tells you. Then she won’t know.”

“OK, I’ll do it now.”

“But let’s pack and check out. I’ll wait in the lobby.”

“Yes, that’s the best way.
I’ll
do it.”

So I packed and went down, and he checked us out. Then he sat down to wait, and I said, “I’ll make it as quick as I can, and then we can have breakfast. In the bus terminal would be nice.”

“OK, I’ll be right here.”

I went out and walked down the street and, sure enough, there was the drugstore. I went in and changed five dollars into quarters, nickels, and dimes. Then I went in the booth and dialed. But I kept getting a busy. That was Mother, it turned out, calling the dispatcher downtown of Steve’s trucking company to say he couldn’t drive that day for reasons I’ll get to later. Then she had to call his replacement, guy name of Jim Dolan, to tell him he had to drive—take the Parcel Post up to New York, then pick up wine off the boats, off the French Line boats at their pier, and bring it back on the down trip next day. So it kept her on the phone, and that’s why I couldn’t get through. I guess it went on for twenty minutes, until the fourth or fifth time that I tried, and then at last Mother came on. I said, “Mother, this is Mandy.”

“...Well! Where are you? And what have you been up to?”

“Mother, is that how you talk to me? When I call with love in my heart? To explain to you what I did. I mean leaving home that way and leaving that note for you.”

“I asked what you’ve been up to.”

“Who says I’ve been up to anything?”

“You must have been. What about that coat?”

“...What coat?”

Because I own up that caught me completely off guard, and I had to stall, to get my mind together. She said, “The one you showed Ed Vernick!”

“How do you know about that?”

“He called me, that’s how I know. To warn me that something went on—and put himself on notice. He did not mean to be dragged in. I ask you once more, where did you get it?”

“...From a store is where, a Baltimore store.”

“You mean you stole it?”

“I mean I bought it.”

“With what?”

“Money, what do you think?”

“Yes, but where did you get it?”

“...I found it. On the floor of a car.”

“What car?”

“I don’t care to say what car!”

“The whole thing sounds like what Ed Vernick said, a mess. And you’re not telling the truth about where you got that money! I don’t believe you found it, on the floor of a car or anywhere. Mandy, if some man gave it to you, you’re going to pay a price, you’re going to pay one awful price, I warn you. Mandy, while you can, I beg you come home. It’s only...”

“Mother, I can’t, I won’t.”

“Where are you?”

“That I prefer not to say.”

“Mandy, I have to know!”

“Mother, I promised not to say.”

“Promised whom?”

“It’s none of your business whom.”

She began hooking it up then, with loud, snuffly sobs, about all she’d done for me, giving me “money, clothes, everything,” and what a pest I’d been, “since the day you were born, bringing me nothing but grief.” And then, “taking off that way, and leaving me that note. I never read such a thing in my life. And on top of that, going to see Ed Vernick and flaunting a mink coat at him. What on earth possessed you?”

“Mother, cool it.”

“...You dare say such a thing to me?”

“I do. Cool it. Knock it off!”

For some moments she didn’t speak, and then in a different, more sensible tone she asked me, “Where are you?”

“I said I prefer not to say.”

“But I have to know, there’s a reason.”

“What reason?”

“One I may have, but don’t yet have.”

“Where I am doesn’t matter, as I’m traveling and first I stop one place, then another. When I’m settled I’ll let you know.”

“Then don’t say you weren’t told.”

“Told what, Mother?”

“The...reason I’ll have for wanting to know where you are. Which I’m not sure of yet but may be sure of later.”

“Then, OK, Mother, I called up to say I’m all right, that you don’t have to turn me in as a missing person or something, and...have you, by the way?”

“No! And after what Ed Vernick told me...”

“Then, don’t. I’m OK.”

“And that’s all you have to say?”

“That’s right. What do you have to say?”

“...That you have all my love.”

“And, Mother, you have mine.”

Suddenly, both of us were crying, but with love mixed in, and then she kept saying, “My love and my prayers, I keep saying them over and over.”

“Then, OK, Mother.”

“OK...OK.”

Then we’d both hung up, and I was standing there in the booth, with an empty, queer feeling, the tears still on my cheeks.