Love (3 page)

“Is Mrs. H. Cosey here, ma’am?”

“She is.”

“May I speak to her, please?”

“Let me see that thing again.” The woman wiped her hands on a dish towel before touching the ad. “ ‘Highly confidential,’ huh?” She pursed her lips. “I believe that. I sure do,” she said, and dropped the paper with thumb and forefinger, as though depositing a diaper into a soak pail. She wiped her hands again and selected a shrimp. There, just there, beneath the flesh she held in her fingers, crept a dark and tender line. Deft as a jeweler, she removed it.

“Can I see Mrs. Cosey now, please?” Junior sank her chin into her palm, underscoring her question with a smile.

“I guess. Sure. Up those stairs, then some more stairs. All the way to the top.” She motioned toward a flight of stairs leading from an alcove near the stove. Junior stood.

“I don’t suppose you interested in my name?”

Junior turned back, her grin a study in embarrassment and muddle. “Oh, yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. I am. I’m just so nervous.”

“It’s Christine. If you get the ‘highly confidential’ job you’ll need to know it.”

“I hope so. Nice meeting you, Christine. Really. Second floor, you said?”

Her boots were muffled on the stairs.

Christine turned away. She should have said, “No. Third,” but she didn’t. Instead she glanced at the warming light on the rice cooker. Gathering the shrimp shells, she plopped them into the boiling water and adjusted the flame. Returning to the table, she picked up a garlic paw and, enjoying her bedizened hands as usual, peeled two of the cloves. These she diced and left on the cutting board. The old Philco refrigerator murmured and trembled. Christine gave it a reassuring pat before bending to a low cabinet, thinking, What’s she up to now? Must be scared or fixing to make a move. What, though? And how did she manage to get a notice in the paper without my knowing? She selected a silver tureen with a fitted glass bowl, sighing at the stubborn tarnish in the crevices of the
C
’s on its cover. Like all the carved letters in the house, the double
C
’s went beyond ornate to illegible. Even on the handle of the spoon in her apron pocket, the initials, once hooked together for life, were hardly a trace. It was tiny, a coffee spoon, but Christine ate every meal she could with it just to hold close the child it was given to, and hold also the pictures it summoned. Scooping peach slices with it from homemade ice cream, helpless in the thrill, never minding the grains of sand blowing over the dessert—the whole picnic lunch for that matter.

Christine soaped and rinsed the glass bowl as her thoughts skittered from beach picnics to Silver Dip, salt-spiced air to Q-tips, and on to the interview being held at that moment in the bedroom of the meanest woman on the coast. While sitting across from the lying Miss Junior-but-you-can-call-me-June, Christine had put her own body of forty—even thirty—years ago next to the girl’s and won. The girl had good legs (well, knees and thighs were all she could see in those tall boots) and the narrow, poked-out behind that was all the rage these days. But she had nothing to rival the Christine of
1947
, when the beach was the color of cream but glittery and the sucking waves reached out from water so blue you had to turn away lest it hurt your eyes. It was the girl’s face that struck gongs of envy. That and her Amazon hair. At first Christine had stared at her, then, wary, concentrated on the newspaper clipping. Except for that, she would never have let into the house a strange girl with no purse. The shrimp work gave her ample time to get a bounce from her, some sense of what (never mind who) she was. It also gave her reason to sustain a lowered gaze, because she did not like the heart jump that came when she looked in the girl’s eyes. She had the unnerving look of an underfed child. One you wanted to cuddle or slap for being needy.

Christine stirred the garlic into butter softening in a skillet, then set about making the roux. After a moment she sprinkled in flour and watched it bronze before loosening the paste with stock and whisking it smooth.

“I’m a pretty fair cook” is what the girl had said, all the while reaching with dirty hands for the bowl of cleaned shrimp. And “Used to be” from around here, she’d said, while sitting in front of the best-known woman in the county, a woman who knew every black person ever born from Niggerhead Rock to Sooker Bay, from Up Beach to Silk, and half the ones in Harbor as well, since that was where she had spent (or wasted) a whole chunk of her life. Junior Viviane. With an
e.
Sounded like a name from a baseball card. So what was the heart skip for? Was she afraid she would blush in recognition at any moment, sharpening her voice to a razor to cut off the possibility? The telltale signs of a runaway’s street life were too familiar: bus station soap, other people’s sandwiches, unwashed hair, slept-in clothes, no purse, mouth cleaned with chewing gum instead of toothpaste. So what did Heed want her for? How had an ad been placed in the newspaper without a working telephone? The Gibbons boy must have helped her—adding that errand to others after working in the yard. Whatever was going on was a trap laid by a high-heeled snake. Some new way to rob her future just as she had ripped off her past.

“I’ll be damned,” she whispered.

Christine spread her fingers for the familiar jolt the diamonds gave her. Then she assembled the rice, the shrimp, the sauce, layering each meticulously, artfully, in the casserole. It would remain warm while she tossed a light salad. Then she would arrange it all on a silver tray, take it up three flights of stairs, where she hoped it would choke the meanest thing on the coast.

“My Lord. Snow.” She spoke without turning her head, simply parting the draperies further. “Come over here and look. Here of all places.”

Junior moved near the tiny woman at the window and peered through the glass, trying but unable to see snowflakes. The woman looked to be in her sixties at least—hair made megablack by a thick border of silver at the scalp—but she had something of a little-girl scent: butter-rum candy, grass juice, and fur.

“Strange, don’t you think? We never get snow. Never.”

“I saw a man sprinkling ice salt,” said Junior. “Since he already had it, he must have expected to use it.”

Startled, the woman turned. The girl had called her a liar before saying hello.

“You’re here for the job?” Her eyes swept Junior’s face, then examined her clothes. She knew the applicant was in the house long before she heard footsteps that were neither Christine’s nor Romen’s. Then she had quickly positioned herself at the window to strike the right pose, give a certain impression. But she needn’t have bothered. The girl was not at all what she had expected. Not just the messy hair and tacky clothes; there was some bold laziness in her manner, the way she talked. Like the “Yeah” she gave to Heed’s question.

“Don’t you mean ‘Yes’?”

Like the kitchen below, this room was overbright, like a department store. Every lamp—six? ten?—was on, rivaling the chandelier. Mounting the unlit stairs, glancing over her shoulder, Junior had to guess what the other rooms might hold. It seemed to her that each woman lived in a spotlight separated—or connected—by the darkness between them. Staring openly at the items crowding the surfaces of tables, desks, she waited for the little woman to break the silence.

“I’m Heed Cosey. And you are?”

“Junior. But you can call me June.”

“Oh, dear,” said Heed, and batted her lashes as if someone had spilled red wine on pale velvet: sorry, of course, and no fault, of course, but difficult to clean nonetheless. Moving away from the window, she had to step carefully, so full was the room with furniture. A chaise, two dressers, two writing tables, side tables, chairs high-backed and low-seated. All under the influence of a bed behind which a man’s portrait loomed. Heed sat down finally at a small desk. Placing her hands in her lap, she nodded for the girl to take the facing chair.

“Tell me where you have worked before. The notice didn’t specify a resume, but I need to know your work history.”

Junior smiled. The woman pronounced “resume” with two syllables. “I’m eighteen and can do anything you want. Anything.”

“That’s good to know, but references? Do you have any? Someone I can get in touch with?”

“Nope.”

“Well how will I know you are honest? Discreet?”

“A letter won’t tell you even if it says so. I say I am. Hire me and you’ll see. If I’m not good enough—” Junior turned her palms up.

Heed touched the corners of her lips with a hand small as a child’s and crooked as a wing. She considered her instant dislike of the Junior-but-you-can-call-me-June person slouching in front of her and thought that her blunt speech, while not a pose, was something of an act. She considered something else too: whether the girl’s attitude had staying power. She needed someone who could be coaxed into things or who already had a certain hunger. The situation was becoming urgent. Christine, true to her whore’s heart, sporting diamonds in their rightful owner’s face, was pilfering house money to pay a lawyer.

“Let me tell you what this job calls for. The duties, I mean.”

“Go ahead.” Junior shouldered out of her jacket, the cheap leather mewing. Under it, her black T-shirt gave no support to her breasts, but it was clear to Heed that they didn’t need any: the nipples were high, martial. With the jacket off, her hair seemed to spring into view. Layers of corkscrews, parted in the middle, glinted jet in the lamplight.

“I’m writing a book,” said Heed, a smile of satisfaction lighting her face. The posture she’d assumed to manage the interview changed with the mention of her book. “It’s about my family. The Coseys. My husband’s family.”

Junior looked at the portrait. “That him?”

“That’s him. It was painted from a snapshot, so it’s exactly like him. What you see there is a wonderful man.” Heed sighed. “Now I got all the material, but some things need checking, you know. Dates, spellings. I got each guest book from our hotel—except for two or three, I think—and some of those people, not many but some, had the worse handwriting. The worse. But most folks I seen had perfect hands, you know, because that’s the way we was taught. But Papa didn’t let them print it the way they do now, right alongside the signature. Didn’t need to anyway, because he knowed everybody who was anybody and could recognize a signature even if it was a
X,
but no
X
-type people came, of course. Our guests, most of them, had gorgeous handwriting because, between you and I, you had to be more than just literate, you had to have a position, an accomplishment, understand? You couldn’t achieve nothing worthwhile if your handwriting was low. Nowadays people write with they feet.”

Heed laughed, then said, “Excuse me. You have no idea, do you, what I’m talking about. I get excited is all, just thinking about it.” She adjusted the lapels of her housecoat with her thumbs, readdressing herself to the interview. “But I want to hear about you. ‘Junior,’ you said?”

“Yeah.”

“Well now, Junior. You said you can do anything I want, so you must have worked somewhere before. If you’re going to help me with my book I need to know—”

“Look, Mrs. Cosey. I can read; I can write, okay? I’m as smart as it gets. You want handwriting, you want typing, I’ll do it. You want your hair fixed, I’ll fix it. You want a bath, I’ll give you one. I need a job and I need a place to stay. I’m real good, Mrs. Cosey. Really real good.” She winked, startling Heed into a momentary recall of something just out of reach, like a shell snatched away by a wave. It may have been that flick of melancholy so sharply felt that made her lean close to the girl and whisper,

“Can you keep a secret?” She held her breath.

“Like nobody you ever knew.”

Heed exhaled. “Because the work is private. Nobody can know about it. Not nobody.”

“You mean Christine?”

“I mean nobody.”

“I’ll take it.”

“You don’t even know what the pay is.”

“I’ll take the job. You’ll pay. Should I start now or wait till tomorrow?”

Footsteps, slow and rhythmic, sounded in the hall.

“Tomorrow,” Heed said. She whispered the word, but it had the urgency of a shout.

Christine entered carrying a tray. No knock preceded her and no word accompanied her. She placed the tray on the desk where Heed and Junior faced each other and left without meeting a single eye.

Heed lifted the casserole lid, then replaced it. “Anything to annoy me,” she said.

“Looks delicious,” said Junior.

“Then you eat it,” said Heed.

Junior forked a shrimp into her mouth and moaned, “Mmmm, God, she sure knows how to cook.”

“What she knows is, I don’t eat shellfish.”

The second floor had none of the fussy comfort Junior found on the third. Here a hallway, two plain bedrooms, a kind of office, and a bathroom equaled the entire square footage of the room above, where Junior had spent two hours trying to read the woman who was now her boss.

It should not have taken that long but the taste of hot, home-cooked food so distracted her that she forgot. She was near the end of a second helping before she began to watch for the face behind the face; and to listen for the words hiding behind talk. It was Heed’s fork play that finally pulled Junior’s attention away from her own plate. Holding the fork between thumb and palm, driving leaves of Boston lettuce around oil and vinegar, piercing olives, lifting rings of onion on tines only to let them drop again and again, Heed had chattered on, eating nothing. Junior fixed on the hands more than on what occupied them: small, baby-smooth except for one scarred spot, each one curved gently away from its partner—like fins. Arthritis? she wondered. Is that why she can’t write her own book? Or some other old-lady sickness? Memory loss, maybe. Even before the food arrived she had heard the change in Heed’s speech, the slow move away from the classroom to the girls’ locker; from a principal’s office to a neighborhood bar.

Yawning under blankets in the bed to which Heed had directed her, Junior fought sleep to organize, recapture her impressions. She knew she had eaten too much too quickly, as in her first days at Correctional before she learned how to make food last. And just as it had been there, she was already ready for more. Her appetite had not surprised her—it was permanent—but its ferocity had. Watching the gray-eyed Christine cleaning shrimp earlier, she had leashed it and had no trouble figuring out that a servant who cooked with twelve diamond rings on her fingers would enjoy—maybe even need—a little sucking up to. And although she had caught the other one’s pose as well and recognized it from the start as a warden’s righteous shield, Junior hoped that some up-front sass would crack it. Still, gobbling real food after days of clean garbage and public filch, she had let her antennae droop. As now, when sleep—alone, in silence, in total darkness at last—overwhelmed caution for pleasure. Simply not having a toilet in the room where you slept was a thrill. The bath she craved had to be postponed. When Heed said the weather was too nasty, the bus depot too far, and why not spend the night and collect your things tomorrow? Junior thought immediately of a solitary soak in a real tub with a perfumed bar of colored soap. But the water she heard running through pipes above reduced the tap flow in the second-floor bathtub to a sigh. Heed had beat her to it, so Junior spent a few minutes rummaging in the closet, where she found a helmet, one can of tomato paste, two rock-hard sacks of sugar, a jar of Jergens hand cream, a tin of sardines, a milk bottle full of keys, and two locked suitcases. She gave up trying to force the locks and undressed. After massaging her feet, she slid under the covers with two days’ worth of dirt on hold.