Follow Me (35 page)

Left and right, day and night…

That sweet sound of music rising from inside her. The nice, silky coolness of cigarette smoke sliding in the opposite direction,
back down her throat. Home from Typhoon Sam’s, she’d sit by the window and think about how strange it was that the sky out
there was the same sky above the Jensons’ pasture in Tauntonville.

Here’s to the stars shining above.

And the river spilling over the Upper Falls by the brewery was the same river she’d watched flow beneath a crust of ice in
Fishkill Notch. Strange…

Turn around, Lou, just turn around.

She’d earned the right to relax. Once in a while, alone in the kitchen, she’d open one last beer, and that’s when she’d raise
a toast to Mason Jackson for giving Sally her first break. And to Georgie, who probably had more children than she could keep
track of by now. And to Swill of the pigsty and Erna of the beehive. To Gladdy Toffit, who had gone to Florida; to Penny,
who was a wife; to Buddy Potter, who would never retire; and to her own dear Mole way up in heaven.

Nothing left of rainy-day love

But a secret memory…

Who could blame her for wanting to fill the silence with sound. And remember how they loved her at the Rotary Club?

It wasn’t over until it was over, and still there were all those beginnings, such as the day she watched her daughter head
off to school carrying a book bag — gee, that was something nice. And so much of the world waiting to reveal itself. And the
clouds passing in front of the moon with or without anyone’s consent —

Grinning his grin and fading away,

Grinning and fading away,

away

away…

She sure liked to sing, and she’d go on singing to keep from talking to herself, though only in the privacy of her own home,
with just her daughter, lying awake in her bed, listening to her through the walls, and maybe Mr. and Mrs. Botelia downstairs,
who probably wondered what they were hearing until they realized it was Sally, their own Sally Bliss, her tongue loosened
by an extra drop.
Poor dear. But really, you don’t need to feel sorry for her, it’s only Sally being Sally. And won’t you just listen to that
voice
.

She really didn’t intend for them to listen, but the way the sound seeped through dense solidity — why, it would have been
considered magical if it weren’t so ordinary.

So maybe Sally overindulged once in a while. So what? In her daughter’s retelling of these years, she couldn’t count up the
many times she lay awake listening to her mother’s drunken singing. It was a sound that would be mixed up in Penelope’s memory,
raising feelings of pride, along with plenty of lingering embarrassment. In Sally’s memory, though, it was a rare exception
and didn’t mean she wasn’t respectable. Mostly she stayed focused. She never slept through an alarm or forgot to pay a bill.
She saved her money and regularly sent a portion to her son. And she never failed to provide her daughter with whatever she
might need.

And since her daughter needed to be protected from her father, on the Thursday of her scheduled appointment with Kennedy and
Kennedy, Sally called in late to work and made her way to the office on the seventh floor of the Terminal Building. The reception
desk was in the foyer, and beside a bookcase an archway led to a hallway, off of which were several closed doors suggesting
that secret proceedings were going on behind them. The man at the desk was the same who had answered the phone. She recognized
his whispery voice, and even more, she felt as though she recognized his face, having imagined it with impressive accuracy
beforehand. She was right about his age — she’d judged him to be between forty and fifty — and she’d been correct in picturing
him with dark hair and graying sideburns, the hairline receding from the temples and the full waves in the center flattened
and pasted against the scalp with cream. He was thin, handsome in a way, though his hollow cheeks made him look hungry, and
even with a ceiling fan clicking above him, his face shone with sweat.

He came around the desk to shake her hand, a move that struck Sally as awkward and unnecessary. He introduced himself as Arnold
Caddeau and asked how he might assist her. Sally said that she had an appointment with Mr. Kennedy. With Mr. Kennedy — really?
The man seemed perplexed, as though he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to meet with Mr. Kennedy. Or with the other
Mr. Kennedy, she suggested. There was no
other
Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Arnold Caddeau offered gently, almost as a question. But if she wanted to meet with
the
Mr. Kennedy — no relation to the president and his family, as she’d learn later —
then right this way, please.

He led her down the hall, opening one door and then another, unsure, apparently, of Mr. Kennedy’s whereabouts. They finally
found him in the farthest room, a small library saturated with smoke from the cigar that the wizened Mr. Kennedy, in a wheelchair,
held clamped in his mouth.

Arnold Caddeau called him
sir,
and announced that he was pleased to present
Mrs. —
he glanced toward her left hand —
rather, Miss, um…

“Bliss,” Sally offered. As she approached, the old man put aside the magnifying glass he’d been using to peruse a book. She
saw that plastic tubing connected the tank strapped on the chair with the nasal apparatus aiding his breathing. But still
he puffed on that fat cigar, the ash pulsing with a glow as he inhaled, the embers mesmerizing her for a moment, so she didn’t
notice when Mr. Caddeau left, closing the door behind him.

The old man squinted through the smoke at her, and with his teeth gripping the cigar, he looked like he was considering whether
she’d make a good meal. And when he asked her what she
could do,
she felt sure that the question was offensive, though she couldn’t tell exactly why.

She could do lots of things, she said.

That was so funny to old Mr. Kennedy that he began choking and wheezing with what must have been laughter but was nearly enough
to kill him, causing him to spit his cigar onto the floor and double over, spluttering, coughing, hacking, his body contorted
by the effort to take in more oxygen than he was getting. He was suffocating, right in front of Sally. He’d be dead in a minute
if she didn’t do something.

She could do a lot of things, she’d already indicated. For example, she could hit an old man on the back to clear his clogged
lungs of phlegm. She thumped him hard between his shoulder blades, again, and with the third thump produced from him a loud
belch.

Ah, that was nice, almost as good as a massage. And to the missus who could do a lot of things — would she be so kind as to
pick up his Havana, before the whole room exploded in flames?

She handed it to him, even as she suggested that he should lay off the cigars for a while. He told her to mind her own business,
and anyway, there was nothing like a fine Havana to lift the spirits. But oh, for pete’s sake, he had work to do, he didn’t
have time for one more interview, so for that reason she was hired.

Did he say
hired?

That’s right — hired. And if she thought he was going to pay her more than one hundred dollars per week just to answer phones
and put away files, she’d better think again.

Did he say
one hundred dollars per week?

“Not one penny more,” he insisted. She could start immediately, Arnie would show her the ropes.

“Now get out of here.” He waved her away and positioned the magnifying glass over the book. Oh, and she should understand,
he added, that he would appreciate being left alone. She shouldn’t bother him with trivial matters.

Back at the reception desk, she cleared her throat. Without looking up at her, Arnold Caddeau asked if she’d had any success
with the old man. Well, sure…
success
… it wasn’t inappropriate, she supposed, to use that word to describe the outcome of her meeting with Mr. Kennedy. In fact,
he’d offered her a job on the spot. But he was probably joking, she added. Oh no, the old man never joked, Mr. Caddeau said,
meeting Sally’s eye finally, offering her a timid grin.

Then the salary of one hundred dollars per week, it was a legitimate offer? Entirely legitimate, with benefits in addition.
The office was in desperate need of a receptionist, as she could surely see for herself, and if that was suitable to her and
Miss Bliss was ready to accept the terms, he’d draw up the formal contract.

With apologies, Sally reminded him that she’d come to the office not to apply for a job but to ask for advice. She described
her predicament in broad terms, without specifics. Mr. Caddeau didn’t need specifics. He’d help her sort through her options
and plan a course of action. In fact, though his somewhat sheepish manner suggested that he wasn’t certain he had the authority,
he said he’d represent her for free — an extra perk of working at the firm of Kennedy and Kennedy that made the whole offer
impossible to refuse.

That same day, Sally gave notice that she was resigning from her job at the store, and by the following Monday she was working
for one hundred dollars a week as the receptionist at Kennedy and Kennedy. She soon learned that the first Mr. Kennedy, the
father of the second, had died thirty years earlier, and his portrait hung prominently in the hallway. Maybe it was his glowering
look that kept everything hushed and tentative in the office, maybe it was the shared sense that they were all participating
in a precarious venture, or maybe she’d been enlisted in the dream being dreamed by the surviving Mr. Kennedy — a dream that
mustn’t be disturbed.

Yet even if initially she felt the whole situation wasn’t quite real, the reality of her paycheck made her eager to adapt.
She began to foresee a different, more prosperous future, contrary to her expectations. All that followed because of this
new position promised to unfold with a natural and irresistible logic, as if the contract included in its terms a prescription
for her conduct both on the job and away from it.

And regarding her predicament, she had to admit she’d never been married to her daughter’s father. She’d made the mistake
of thinking she was fond of him, she said, though even that was more than Arnold Caddeau needed to hear. He gave no sign that
he blamed her or thought less of her because of it. He studied the matter thoroughly and met on two occasions with Griffin
Marcus. And though he didn’t end up accomplishing much on her behalf, she had the impression that he could have saved her
a lot of trouble, if only she’d contacted him earlier.

So here was Benny arriving like Rumpelstiltskin to make good on a contract and claim the child he was promised; there was
nothing Sally could do or say to dissuade him. She’d been a fool to acknowledge her history with him, but there was no taking
it back. Like it or not, Benny Patterson was inextricably involved in Penelope’s life.

Since Sally was not the type to register her disappointment directly, her account of this period would tend to be terse and
to begin with a bland
suffice it to say… Suffice it to say,
the law clearly stated that a competent father had the right to be involved in the child’s upbringing. That the father had
once assaulted the mother was not an issue. As Mr. Marcus pointed out, there were no existing records indicating that a complaint
had ever been filed against Benny Patterson with the Tuskee police. And if Sally wanted to pursue the case in court, she should
remember that she was responsible for failing to inform the father about the birth of their child.

It was agreed that they would settle the matter out of court. Mr. Patterson would get what he wanted. There was one small
concession Arnold Caddeau achieved, though. He argued that the father, being a stranger to the girl, shouldn’t intrude into
her life all at once. Visits would be limited to one afternoon a month, Griffin Marcus agreed, until a relationship had been
established and the child felt comfortable in her father’s presence.

And so on September 9, 1961, Benny Patterson arrived to wedge himself into the narrow space between Sally and her daughter.
For their first visit, Benny brought along his own mother, a stout old woman draped with pearls. She was the one who came
to the door to pick up Penelope. Sally sat for the entire afternoon at the upstairs window, watching for the car to return,
hardly breathing. They were supposed to return at exactly four o’clock, and when they weren’t back at five minutes after four,
Sally considered dialing the police. At six minutes after four, Benny’s Cadillac pulled up in front of Mr. Botelia’s store,
and Benny’s mother stepped out of the car with Penelope, who was gnawing on the tip of an ice cream cone.

For the second visit, Benny arrived with his younger sister, Tessa, who came to the door holding a wrapped package. She wouldn’t
let Penelope open the gift until they were in the car. Again, Sally sat by the window waiting for them to return.

Eventually, she found something to occupy her during the empty hours. This was the period in her life when she began making
her own bread, less for the pleasure of producing something to eat than for the satisfaction she got from handling the mound
of dough. She’d pound it more than knead it, punching the bubbling surface smooth until she was worn out, and then she’d punch
it some more, right in the gut of the dough. She’d go at it for close to an hour instead of the twenty minutes suggested by
the recipe. It was a way to pass the time, and it helped her to be less afraid of Benny, even if it didn’t help her to get
used to him.

As it turned out, it was easy for Penelope to get used to a man who bought her ice cream and jewelry and, on his third visit,
a fancy three-story Victorian dollhouse, furnished and occupied by a whole family costumed in velvet and silk. It was easy
to like a jolly stranger who took her out to the amusement park and paid for her skating lessons and even promised to buy
her a pony for her next birthday. She liked having a real granny and an aunt. She liked the feeling of being important to
the whole clan of Pattersons, and she had her dad to thank for that. She didn’t understand why her mother didn’t like him.
Her mother wasn’t even impressed with that great big green car he drove. She said it was a piece of junk and more than once
wondered aloud why, if Benny was really a man of means, he didn’t buy himself a new car — a question that frustrated Penelope,
since though she knew there must have been an answer, she couldn’t think of it.