Guests on Earth (7 page)

“She kicked me, on purpose!” Virginia cried out on the very afternoon of the ball. “That little bitch!” flailing out at Grace Barker, a new girl, who doubled up and fell forward weeping onto the stage.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Lily muttered.

“Get up now, dear, this won’t do,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald. “No temperament. You don’t have time for it. You have a performance tonight.”

Miraculously, Grace obeyed her.

We all marveled at this new, calm Mrs. Fitzgerald with her black notebook—“Cool as a cucumber, she is!” Mrs. Hodges pronounced.

As for myself, I was more excited than I had ever been; anticipation was not an emotion I had had much cause to feel. Apprehension, yes, even fear—but not anticipation.

“H
OLD STILL,”
M
RS.
C
arroll said, buttoning up the back of my blue silk frock herself, a hand-me-down from her grown daughter. Mrs. Hodges stood by with her needle and pincushion, prepared to alter the fit if need be, but “Perfect!” Mrs. Carroll breathed, smoothing the liquid silk down over my nonexistent hips. “Look now.” She led me to the long mirror on the back of the door that opened into her own private dressing room, where I had never been before, and suddenly there I stood, a thin, unrecognizable girl in fashionable new shoes called “French heels” and a long shiny dress as blue as the sky, with flyaway curls down to her shoulders and big blue eyes and rosy red dots on her cheeks that looked like rouge, though I wore none. Mrs. Carroll grabbed my chin and tilted it up to the light. She smoothed pink lipstick on my lips. It felt good, and tasted delicious, like strawberries. “There now. What do you think?”

“I think I look beautiful,” I said sincerely.

They both burst into laughter, though Mrs. Hodges dabbed at her eyes.

“Don’t you get nervous out there now,” she said as she helped me into my old coat.

“You don’t have to worry. Evalina will not be nervous,” Mrs. Carroll announced grandly, arranging her own evening cape around her shoulders just so. “Why, Evalina doesn’t have a nervous bone in her body, isn’t that right, honey?” She smiled at me. “She is already a professional, Mrs. Hodges, with a brilliant career ahead of her. I knew it the moment I first heard her play. She’s the real thing.” I was to repeat this phrase, doggedly and sometimes desperately, over and over in my mind in the years to come.

But in all truth, she was right. I was not nervous at all, despite the fact that we had not had a dress rehearsal. I seated myself at the grand piano onstage and warmed up the crowd by playing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” and “Mighty Lak’ a Rose” by ear while viewing the Great Hall, now hung with glittering suns and moons, while cows, dogs, cats, fiddles, and real spoons borrowed from the dining hall dangled at the ends of their strings. These decorations came from my favorite nonsense rhyme of all:

Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed to see such sport,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Such silliness astonished me—I had had no chance at silliness, so I had not much aptitude for it, either. Still, I was delighted.

The Great Hall was transformed utterly, as were the partygoers, all in fancy dress, patients and staff and townspeople alike. Looking out upon this crowd from my perfect vantage point at the piano onstage, I really couldn’t make any distinction among them. They mingled and chatted, a vibrant sea of color beneath me. I played “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “Moonlight Bay.” Unobtrusively the flowers and maids slipped out onstage and knelt or sat and bowed their heads in their dormant positions—all nine of them! even the obstreperous Grace.

I hit five stirring major chords—the prearranged signal—and the golden curtains parted as the Grand Parade began. Here they all came, the characters from the nursery rhymes marching in ragged step as I played “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.” They crossed the stage, came down the steps, and made a full tour of the ballroom, to continuing applause, then tramped back up on stage to form a semicircle behind the still motionless flowers. I finished with a commanding flourish as Mr. Pugh himself stepped forward first—a surprise to all of us, even the other performers!—elegant in a top hat, wearing a suit with an enormous flowing purple silk tie and a yellow waistcoat stuffed with a pillow as he declaimed:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

And all the King’s horses, and all the King’s men

Could not put Humpty together again.

Everybody clapped, and I played a little interlude as he bowed and went back to his place. Though improvised, it was easy, easy, my fingers filled with a power I didn’t know I possessed.

The Gould twins followed, skittering out in bright polka-dot sacklike dresses, each carrying a pail, to recite “Jack and Jill.” They blinked in the stage lights and seemed totally surprised by the applause.

Enormously fat Mr. Lewinski stepped forward with a pie to proclaim, in his funny accent, “Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating his Christmas pie . . .” He gave a big wink as he held up his plum, and left the stage in a funny skedaddle walk.

Mean, bossy, and universally despised Mrs. Aston Archer came out as Little Bo Peep wearing a long green silk dressing gown and a ruffled cap that, I knew, had been made in Art, from one of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s sketches. The idea that this pompous lady could be “little” anything was extremely amusing.

But I was unaccountably upset by one of the nurses, pretty Miss White, who cradled a big glassy-eyed baby doll in her arms as she sang,

Rockabye baby, in the treetop

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and all.

We all gasped when she dropped the baby, catching it just as it hit the floor. Perhaps it was because she wore her own real nursing uniform, but this performance was entirely too realistic for me, calling back certain nightmares from which I still suffered.

Three young men wearing big mouse ears and whiskers and sunglasses—two patients, one staff—began running around the stage in circles while Mr. Axelrod, in his accustomed cowboy hat and kerchief, brandished an enormous knife. He shouted out “Three Blind Mice,” before chasing the others off the stage and right out through the crowd, overturning several chairs and creating a hubbub.

The “garden” stirred restively, complaining. I didn’t blame them one bit, realizing how hard it must be to hold one position for so long. Virginia, in fact, sat up. But there were a few more performers—a black sheep, a baker—and then, finally, here came Robert, moving forward in somebody’s big flannel nightgown to generous applause, for he was a favorite of all, having actually lived at Highland Hospital for three years by then.

Robert went out to center stage and froze, his huge white forehead glistening with sweat. Was he supposed to be Wee Willie Winkie? Or Diddle Diddle Dumpling, my son John? We were never to know. Robert took his glasses off and mopped his face with his sleeve, then put his glasses back on and grinned a big goofy grin at the assembly before shambling offstage, waving good-bye, to laughter and friendly cheers.

Now only Mrs. Fitzgerald was left for the Finale, perfectly poised in a graceful attitude, utterly still. She seemed to swell up, growing larger before our very eyes as she waited for silence and attention. Alone among the participants, Mrs. Fitzgerald was clearly a real performer, every inch the prima ballerina in her flowing costume and her pink satin toe shoes, carrying a gauzy silver wand with streamers. A hush fell upon the hall.

I begin to play softly, almost tentatively, as “Mary” wanders out into her garden—bending, peeping, searching for her flowers, then whirling across the front of the stage in a pique because she cannot find them. Now the music sounds vexed as well, glissandos and arpeggios, and “Mary” is contrary indeed, stamping, leaping, whirling, searching furiously everywhere, to no avail . . . I play more softly now. She stops, still as marble. She is not even out of breath, holding a ballet position to recite, “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?”

I play a tinkly harp-chords introduction to the “Waltz of the Flowers” as she touches the “silver bells and cockleshells” one by one with her wand. They stretch and rise, then leap up to “bloom” vigorously. Finally the “pretty maids all in a row” jump up, too, executing their funny little jig step in perfect synchronicity. Now the music is happy and jubilant, the major chords of springtime in a floating melody over the three-four time, as Mrs. Fitzgerald leads her ensemble in a “flower dance” similar to the one that she performed herself as a young girl in Alabama, where she grew up.

“Oh I was the prima ballerina of Montgomery,” she had told us. “I could have gone anywhere, and done anything. But then my husband saw me perform a solo at the Beauty Ball for officers during the war, and could not take his eyes off me, and that was that. He fell in love with me at first sight. So that was the end of it, or the beginning. He looked so handsome in his uniform. I was not yet eighteen. We danced all night and then walked out into the moonlight together, among the honeysuckle.” Her eyes had looked through us, past us, as she remembered.

Now arranged in two lines upon the stage, her pretty maids sway in unison to and fro, to and fro, to and fro—one can easily imagine a springtime breeze wafting through this “garden.” They dissolve into groups of three to dance a charming step, my favorite, holding hands and prancing round like little children in a game. Led by Mrs. Fitzgerald, they form up into a line across the front of the stage again, twirling one by one and then all together before joining hands to sink to the floor in a graceful bow . . . somewhat ahead of my final chord, but I make do. They rise and bow again, now in delight and disarray, as the applause swells.

Suddenly Mrs. Carroll appeared at the edge of the stage and gestured to me—me, Evalina!—and I came out from the piano to curtsy deeply, instinctively, though I had never done this before, and did not know that I could do it.

Then we all melted into the crowd as a professional dance band took the stage. Chairs were cleared away. Couples began to foxtrot. We had been learning to dance, too, all those who would agree to participate—in exercise class, instead of basketball or volleyball. Most of us did not dance that evening, however; we sat in folding chairs and drank the red fruit punch and ate the usually forbidden cupcakes and looked at each other, and at the dancers.

“E
VALINA?”
S
OMEONE TOUCHED
m
y bare back. I jumped a mile, but it was only Robert. I had been looking about for him in vain, but he had rushed off into the darkness after his appearance. Now he had taken off the nightgown, but he looked ridiculous anyhow, in some sort of black suit at least a size too small.

“Do you want to dance?” He made a crazy little bow.

“I don’t know how,” I said honestly, for I had been too timid to try it. “Do you know how?”

“Oh, I had to take lessons,” he said.

I kept forgetting about Robert’s privileged childhood.

“Well . . .” I began.

He held his elbow out at an angle and I grabbed on to it and stood up, then pitched forward to fall flat upon the floor. Somehow I had forgotten to take my new French heels off the rung on my folding chair. There was a nervous hush, then a titter, and finally a smatter of applause as I finally got up off the floor, my face burning.

“Let’s go outside,” Robert said with utter tact, leading me out the diamond-paned door and onto the cold stone porch. Globe lamps made pools of light all down the sidewalk; partygoers were already leaving.

“I didn’t know you could play the piano like that.” His voice came out of the dark.

“I didn’t either,” I said. Actually I felt wonderful, glowing, every nerve on fire, in spite of—or maybe because of—my embarrassment. Out beyond the slope of the mountain, the whole dark sky was filled with stars, the Milky Way in a huge arch, the clearest I have ever seen it.

Robert came up behind me in the dark and lifted my hair from my neck and put his lips there, a kiss that ran all the way down my body, creating a shimmering, lovely sensation that I have never forgotten in all these intervening years . . . if not passion, then the promise of passion: the salamander, twisting and shining in the sunlight.

“Ev-a-lina! Ev-a-lina!” my chums burst out the door—Lily and Virginia and Melissa—and Robert stepped back. In fact, he disappeared, and it was over. The moment, my triumph . . . it was all over.

I
T WAS AS
i
f we were in a turning kaleidoscope—everything changed. Everybody went back to being sad, or crazy, or got better and went home . . . Mrs. Fitzgerald to Montgomery for a visit, Lily to Mississippi, Robert to Cap d’Antibes where his mother was getting married for the fourth time.

I made a new friend, Ella Jean Bascomb, one of the cooks’ daughters, who came to work with her mother when school was out. She surprised me one day by singing along when I was playing “Blue Moon” in the music room at Homewood. Ella Jean had a high, thin, pitch-perfect mountain voice, and she knew lots of songs. Soon she was seated on the piano bench beside me. She taught me all the sad verses of “Barbara Allen” and other ballads they sang up in Madison County, north of Asheville, where she came from, and I began teaching her to play piano. In no time at all we could play a duet on “Heart and Soul,” belting the words out over and over, as loud as possible, until we collapsed in laughter. I taught her “Shenandoah,” which she sang beautifully, even Mrs. Carroll agreed, though she disapproved of this friendship because Ella Jean “did not come from a nice family,” by which Mrs. Carroll meant a family in town.

And actually, Mrs. Carroll didn’t know the half of it.

For Ella Jean was a tomboy through and through. She thought it was silly to hike, unable to imagine why anybody would want to just walk through these mountains she’d been walking in all her life. Instead, she taught me to swing on grapevines in the deep forest up above the hospital, climb the rocky cliffs (which she called “clifts”), find caves and old Indian graves, and strike fire from two rocks.