Refund (6 page)

E
VELYN AND
G
INGER RENTED A ROOM IN A
S
ALVATION
A
RMY, AND
Evelyn began to weep. She curled up on the hard, stained mattress and cried so hard she screamed. Ginger sat beside her sister, a hand on her shoulder. Sometimes, she had an urge to laugh. Other moments, she wished she could put her hands around Evelyn's throat and strangle her. She was shocked by the private nature of her emotions. Evelyn seemed to believe she was comforting her, and Ginger was surprised that she could.

During the day, they walked down Hollywood Boulevard,
trying to decide what to do. Their breath smelled, darkly, of bananas. In the light, Evelyn talked rapidly; they both listened with hope to the sound of her voice.

“We will be cigarette girls,” Evelyn announced one afternoon.

They walked into sixteen bars before they found one that had jobs for both of them. Every night the two of them strode in wearing black tights and rhinestone loafers, selling cigarettes to heavy, sad-looking men with liquored breath.

Once, Evelyn told Ginger that she tried not to be afraid for five minutes a day. Ginger was impressed that Evelyn could identify when she was afraid, for her own fear floated just outside her skin, like a cloud; she experienced nothing but a heavy numbness. She watched her sister closely, trying to catch her in those precious five minutes when she was clearly not afraid. In those five minutes, Evelyn owned something mysterious, and even the claim of strength made Ginger ache to experience it, too.

At home, Evelyn's grief metamorphosed into a bloodthirsty envy of the loved, the parented. She wanted their expensive possessions: the jeweled brooches, the feathered hats.

One night, she leaned close to a man clad in a velvet jacket and said, in a husky, unfamiliar voice, “I have a baby at home.”

Ginger, walking by with her tray, stopped.

“He is sick,” Evelyn said. “Bad stomach. He needs operation. Look. Please.” She brought out a wrinkled photo of some stranger's baby. His mouth was open in anguish. “I need just ten more dollars—he cannot eat—”

“All right,” he said. He dug into his pocket and handed her a bill. His face was haughty with a perplexing pity, and Ginger stared at it, awed.

Later, Evelyn walked with Ginger down the sidewalk and smoothed the bill, like green velvet, in her hands. “I have a baby at
home,” she said, laughing. She looked at the people walking, lifted her hands, and said, almost gently, “Fools.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, G
INGER SAT IN HER CABIN, LOOKING THROUGH
the nine photographs that she owned. They were souvenirs from fancy occasions, set in cardboard frames so old they felt like flannel. She had kept them because she liked the way she looked in them, as though she had been enjoying herself.

She heard a knock at the door. It was that girl again. “I wondered if you wanted some company. Can I come in?”

Darlene was dressed in imitation of a wealthy person. She wore a sequin-trimmed cashmere cardigan that Ginger believed she had seen in the cruise gift shop and a strand of pearls. Her shoulders were thrust stiffly backward, giving her the posture of a rooster. The girl's earnest quality shone through her outfit like the glow of a light-bulb through a lampshade.

“Who are you?” asked Ginger.

“I am his dream.”

“No,” said Ginger. “Don't try so hard. Wear your usual and add an expensive piece of jewelry. Make him guess why.”

Darlene shrugged off her cardigan and stepped forward too purposefully, like a salesgirl trying to close a deal.

“I can buy you a Rolls-Royce,” she said, her voice too bright, to the air.

“No, no! Just hint that you went on a trip to—Paris. The four-star hotels have the best sheets. Nothing he can prove,” said Ginger.

Darlene looked at the photos laid out.

“So who are these people?” asked Darlene.

Ginger stood up and picked up a photo. “Here I am on New Year's Eve, 1959,” said Ginger. “The presidential suite of the Beverly Hills Hotel.” She still could see the way the pink shrimp sat on the ice
beds, as though crawling through clean snow. “I lit Frank Sinatra's cigarette,” said Ginger. “I lent my lipstick to Marilyn Monroe.” She remembered the weight of the sequined dress against her skin, the raucous laughter. “Don't I look happy?” she asked.

“I would be happy,” said Darlene.

Ginger's mind moved in her skull, and she felt her legs crumble. She grabbed hold of a chair and clung to it.

“Whoa! Are you okay?”

She grasped Darlene's hand and felt her body move thickly to the bed.

“What happened? Should I call a doctor?”

“No,” said Ginger sharply. “No.”

She let Darlene arrange her into a sitting position, her feet up on the bed. Her arms and legs fell open in the obedient posture of the ill. The girl got her a drink of water from the tap, and Ginger sipped it. It was sweet.

“Thank you,” Ginger said.

They sat. Ginger picked up another photo. “This was when I met the vice president of MGM and had him convinced I was a duchess from Belgium—”

Darlene frowned. Ginger realized that it was the same picture she had just described. “They were all at the party,” she said, quickly. “Sinatra and Marilyn and duchesses. It was in Miami. Brazil. The moon was so white it looked blue—”

Darlene looked at her. “I wish I could have been there,” she said. She reached out and briefly touched Ginger's hand.

Ginger looked down at the sight of Darlene's hand on her own. At first, the gesture was so startling she viewed it as though it were a sculpture. Then she could not look at the girl, for Ginger had tears in her eyes.

W
HEN
E
VELYN AND
G
INGER BEGAN TO LIE, THE WORLD BROKE
apart, revealing unearthly, beautiful things. They began with extravagant tales of woe, deformed babies, murdered husbands, terminal illnesses. They constructed Hair-Ray caps for bald men, yarmulkes with thin metal inside so that in the sunlight their heads would get hot and they would think they were growing hair. They bought nun's habits at a costume shop and said they were collecting for the construction of a new church.

She remembered particularly one scam in which she wandered through the cavernous Los Angeles train station with a cardboard sign declaring:
HELP. MUTE. HALF-BLIND
. When strangers came up to her, she wrote on a chalkboard that had chalk attached to it on a string:
HELP ME FIND MY SISTER OUTSIDE
. She handed the stranger, usually an elderly lady, her purse, an open straw bag. She let the stranger guide her out the door and carefully fell forward, tilting the bag so that an envelope inside fell out. Ginger did not pick it up. Then there was Evelyn running inside, yelling, “Violet!”

Evelyn looked in the purse and said, “Where's your money?”

IN THE PURSE
, Ginger wrote.

They looked at the kindly woman holding the purse. “Did you take my blind sister's money?” Evelyn yelled; that was Ginger's cue to weep.

“I didn't,” the hapless stranger would protest, but there she was, holding the purse, with a blind mute weeping beside her; they could get ten, twenty, thirty dollars out of the stranger. When the sucker left, Evelyn would walk Ginger around the corner and hug her.

“Good, Violet,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Ginger, feeling the solidness of her sister's arms around her, and she closed her eyes and let herself breathe.

W
HEN
G
INGER WOKE UP FROM HER NAP THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
, she did not know where she was. The dark afternoon light streamed through the mint blue curtains. She shivered and sat up. She flung open a drawer, looking for clues. The room felt as though it were moving. She was not in a hotel. Where were they going? She opened the curtains and saw mountains covered in ice. Her mind was a crumpled ball of paper. She stood up quickly, as though to straighten her thoughts. The phone rang.

“How are you feeling? Do you want to go to the dinner tonight?”

Her heartbeat slowed at the naturalness of the question, at the caller's belief that Ginger would continue this conversation. She remembered that they were on a cruise to Alaska. She also remembered that the girl had said something kind to her.

The room was decorated to flatter the passengers into believing they were traveling in opulence. There were plaster Roman columns, painted gold, topped with bouquets of roses. The waiters' jackets were adorned in rhinestones that said:
Alaska '03
. Outside the large glass windows, the water and sky, black and clear, surrounded the ship.

Tonight, Darlene's hair was slicked up into a topknot and shone, a metallic blonde, in the light. Her eyelids gleamed blue, unearthly.

“How are you?” asked Ginger.

“I just want to say . . . I am someone,” said Darlene. She looked dazed. “I am going to graduate with a B average in communications.” She sat down. “Listen.” She closed her eyes. “I left a message on his answering machine. I said, I'll do anything. Let me. I'll change.”

“What?” Ginger asked, alarmed.

“I tried to do what you said,” she said. “I know how to fool him. I'll keep calling him. I'll be what you said, generous, you're right, I have been selfish—”

“No,” said Ginger. “That's not what I meant—”

The girl stared at her with her reptilian eyes. “Then what do I do?” she said, and her voice was hoarse.

Music exploded from a band gathered near the stage. The audience clapped along. “Let's hear where everyone's from, all at once!” the cruise director called. The room rang with hundreds of voices. Los Angeles. Palm Springs. Ottawa. Denver. Orlando. New York. “Welcome aboard!” the cruise director called. “Time to relax. Shake off those fancy duds. We want to make you a deal. We need a pair of pants. Someone take off a pair! We'll give you fifty dollars! Come on, you'll never see these people again in your life!”

Ginger did not know what to tell the girl, and the sorrow in her eyes was unnerving. Instead, Ginger turned her attention to the stage. She used to love crowds, the way the people in them became one roar, one sound. But now, for the first time, all the people appeared vulnerable to her. Passengers drifted onto the stage, performing various tricks: singing “God Bless America,” attempting to juggle, dancing the rumba. They wanted to take off their pants in front of each other, or scream out the names of their home cities; they were confused about their place in the world. They had everything in common with her.

Yet everyone on the stage also looked pleased to be up there, happy to be briefly bathed in light. They smiled at the sound of cheering, their faces simple in their hunger for recognition. She did not know what to tell Darlene, and then she envied everyone on the stage. She wanted to be with the others, to have a talent, to simply stand in the clear white light.

Ginger raised her hand. The cruise director called on her, and she made her way to the stage. The lights glared hard and white in her eyes. Clutching her velvet purse, she felt the weight of her money in it. “Passengers,” she called. They stood like sad soldiers before their futures.

“My name is Ginger Klein, and I'm going to make you rich. Give me a dollar,” she called. “Everyone. A dollar.”

They dug into their pockets, and a few brought dollars out. She enjoyed watching them obey her. But what was the next step?

“Catch,” she called.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a handful of bills. She threw them into the spangled darkness. There were screams of disbelief, laughter. She dug into her purse and tossed out more. The passengers leapt from their seats and dove for the money. They were unhinged, thrilled, alive. Their screams of joy blossomed inside her. Her purse grew lighter and lighter.

After awhile, the cruise director strode onto the stage and gently moved her off. “Thank you, Ginger Klein!” he shouted. “Best talent of the night, huh?” She paused, wanting to tell them something more, but she did not know what it would be. Applause thundered in her chest; she had, somehow, been successful. She walked slowly down the stairs, looking for Darlene. “Darlene,” she said, softly, then louder. “I'm here.”

She did not see her. Ginger imagined how the girl would walk, carefully, off the ship by herself at the end of the week. Darlene would join the living pouring toward the shore, clutching her souvenir ivory penguins and Eskimo dolls, going to her future boyfriends and houses and lawns and exercise classes and book clubs and games. “Darlene,” she said as she walked down the hallway; she wanted to walk down the ramp with her, shading her own eyes against the dazzling sunlight, gripping Darlene's arm.

S
OMETIMES
, G
INGER COULD HEAR
E
VELYN LAUGHING IN HER SLEEP
, a harsh, broken sound, and she touched her shoulder, trying to feel the joy that her sister could experience most fully in her dreams. During the day, Evelyn talked about ordinary people, the loved and
loving, with too much scorn; Ginger knew that her sister wanted her life to be like theirs. She believed that Evelyn wanted to get rid of her.