Rubyfruit Jungle (10 page)

Carrie and Florence were scandalized that I had been elected student council president. Carrie had her heart set on me being prom queen and she knew you couldn’t be both president and prom queen. She felt I was a traitor to my sex. Florence wasn’t so het up about it but she did think it was odd. Her theory was that government was so dirty we should leave it up to the men. I stayed out of the house as much as I could but then I’d been doing that since I could move on my own two legs. Whenever I was home there was always a fight. One night after a huge mouth battle over
my cutting my hair, I stormed out of the house and started to get in the car. Carrie ran out the door screeching, “Don’t you go taking that car, your father wants to use it.” So I got out and slammed the door as hard as I could. Carl came outside and asked me where I wanted to go.

“Nowhere. I just wanted to drive, that’s all. Anyplace to get away from our friendly neighborhood harpies.”

“Well, you can drive with me.”

Carl drove out Sunrise Boulevard and turned left at the beach. Up by Birch State Park we found a quiet spot and got out. He sat on a green bench and looked at the ocean.

“Ocean’s really beautiful. I can’t believe there’s countries on the other side of it and someone over there is sittin’ looking at it right as I’m sittin’ here now.”

“Yeah.” I was still pissed.

“I don’t think I could live without the ocean. All those years in Pennsylvania. I couldn’t go back to that.”

“Yeah. I love the ocean too, but I don’t know if I’ll live by it all the time. Anyway, I don’t really like Florida.”

“I guess it is kind of a place for old people. Kids don’t like to stay where they was raised anyhow so you’ll probably move on.”

“I want to go where I have a chance. I don’t have a chance here. Besides I want to get away from all the people we know. They just get in my way.”

“You and your mother are like oil and water. You can’t just say ‘Yes’ to her and go about your business. You have to flare up at her. Pride, girl,
pride. If you’d pretend to give in to her you wouldn’t have all these fights.”

“She’s wrong. I give in to her and it confirms her mistakes.”

“She’s set in her ways. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s all the time wrong.”

“I say she’s wrong, leastways when it comes to messing with my life she’s wrong. She’s got to have her own way. No one is telling me what to do. No one. Especially when they’re wrong.”

“I dunno. Me, I don’t like fights, right or wrong. I smile and say ‘Yes’ to the boss at work and ‘Yes’ to Carrie and ‘Yes’ to my folks when they was alive. I slide by.”

“I can’t do that, Dad.”

“I know. You’ll pay for it, honey. Tears and bitterness, ’cause you’ll be out there fighting all by yourself. Most people are cowards, like me. And if you try to get them to fight they’ll turn on you, bad as the people you originally fightin’ with. You’ll be all alone.”

“I’m all alone now. I’m a tenant in that house and that’s all I ever was. I got no one but my own sweet self.”

Carl looked startled and said, “You got me. I’m your father. You ain’t gonna be alone when I’m around.”

“Oh Daddy, you never are around.” He looked so hurt I could have bitten my tongue off.

“It’s that I’m so tired when I come home from work these days. When you was little and I got home you’d be asleep. Then as you grew you’d be outside with the kids. Now I can’t seem to work up a head of steam. Some days at work I think I’ll go home and eat supper then drive down to
school to watch you run the show. Then I sit down and read the paper and fall asleep. I don’t get around you much. Too old, I guess—I’m sorry, honey.”

“I’m sorry too, Daddy.” I stared out at the dark waves and tried not to look him in the face.

“Molly, I’m real proud of the things you been doin’ at school. You’re something else again, you are. You’re gonna go on and be something someday. And you keep on fighting for yourself. Hell, if you can fight Carrie anyone else will be small potatoes.” He chuckled and continued, “Do you know where you’re gonna go to school and what you’re gonna take up?”

“Not yet—the schools I mean. Maybe I’ll go to one of those snotty Seven Sisters where the rich brats go or maybe a big city school. Depends on who gives me the best deal. But I know what I want to do, sort of—gonna be law or film directing. Those are the only things I care about.”

“You’d make a good lawyer. Nobody can outtalk you, you mix’em up worse than a dog’s breakfast. But now this director business, I dunno. You gotta go to Hollywood, don’t you? That’s a bad place, they say.”

“I don’t know. The studios are falling apart, that much I know. Seems like there ought to be some openings somewhere—new companies and stuff. But I got to get the skills first. There aren’t any women directors, so I will have a fight for sure and law, well, I know I have a good shot at it. But I’d rather make movies than talk to some sleepy jury.”

“Then make movies. You only got one life so do what you want.”

“That’s how I figure it.”

“What about gettin’ married?”

“I’m never doing it. Period.”

“I could see that coming. You wouldn’t look too hot on the other side of an apron and between us, it’d kill me to see you buckle under to anyone, especially a husband.”

“Well, don’t worry about it ’cause it’ll never happen. Besides, why should I buy a cow when I get the milk for free? I can go out and screw anytime I damn well please.”

He laughed. “People are silly about sex. But if you’ll take a word of advice from your old man—do it all you want but be quiet about it.” There was a strange sadness in his voice; he paused and bent over to make a circle in the sand. “Molly, I haven’t done much good with my life and now it’s almost gone. I’m fifty-seven. Fifty-seven. I can’t get used to it. When I think of myself sometimes I think I’m still sixteen. Funny ain’t it? To you I’m an old fogey but I can’t quite believe I’m old. Listen to me,” his voice got stronger, “you go on and do whatever you want to do and the hell with the rest of the world. Learn from your old man. I never did a goddamned thing and now I’m too old to do anything. All I got is dead dreams and a mortgage on that house with ten years left to pay. I worked my whole life and all I got to show is that square, pink house sitting next to the railroad tracks with other square houses. Shit. You damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, kid; don’t listen to nobody but your own self.”

“Dad, you’ve been watching those war movies again.” And I gave him a big hug and a kiss on his gray salty stubble.

The middle of July was hot. I had returned from Girls’ State triumphant as governor. Carrie and Florence mumbled there’d be no living with me now. Carl went to work and told everyone he saw that his daughter was going to be the real governor someday. One night shortly after I came back from Tallahassee, Carl and I watched
Peter Gunn
on the tube. We took bets on who was the villain and Carl won because it was a repeat. He didn’t tell me that he’d seen it before until after the show and he laughed his way into the bedroom.

I went to bed around eleven and fell asleep with palm leaves rustling outside. Palm fronds sound like—rain—it’s a soothing sound. I was jolted out of a deep sleep by someone clawing at my face. Fingernails scratched at my throat. The room was jet black but for an eerie red light from outside flickering through the drawn Venetian blinds. I could see another shape on the bed pulling at whoever was clawing me. Gradually my eyes focused and I saw that it was Carrie who was attacking me, making strange noises.

She’s gonna kill me. She’s off her nut and she’s trying to strangle me. Then she started wailing at the top of her lungs, “Wake up, wake up. Carl’s dead. Wake up, Molly, your father’s dead.” Florence had her hands full getting Carrie off me. She confirmed the report. “He’s out there in the living room if you want to see him before they roll him away. Go now ’cause the ambulance is here and so is the doctor.” I threw on my robe and ran into the living room with the big mirror that had flamingoes painted on it. There under the mirror in front of the door was Carl’s body. His
eyes were staring straight up into mine and he was all blue in the face.

“Why’s he blue?”

The doctor answered, “Heart attack. It happened very suddenly. He had time to warn Carrie and he said he thought it was his heart, then boom, he was gone.”

The ambulance men came in and looked at me curiously in my robe. Made no difference to them that my father had died. I was another piece of sixteen-year-old ass in a bathrobe. The doctor told me to put Carrie on tranquilizers she was so whacked out. All that night even though we crammed her full of pills she kept waking up and crying, “What day is this? Where’s my Carl?” Then she’d call him like she was calling the cat, “Carl, oh Carl, come hereee.” There was no use trying to get back to sleep, so Florence and I stayed up the whole night and discussed funeral arrangements. Florence was looking at me with the searching eye, waiting for me to falter or cry. If I’d cried, she would have told me to pull myself together for Carrie’s sake. Since I didn’t cry, she accused me of being heartless and not truly loving Carl because he wasn’t my natural father. She upbraided me for being adopted and how adopted kids got no true feelings for their parents. I was wordless. I had nothing to say to that woman. Let her think what she damn well pleased. People like that, I don’t give a shit what they think.

The funeral was set for Sunday. When we went down to Zimmer’s Funeral Home with Carl’s clothes we discovered that Carl wasn’t there. We called every funeral home in the city trying to
track down his remains and found him at Bolt’s Funeral Home. Since his last name was Bolt the ambulance drivers got mixed up and took him to the wrong parlor. Didn’t matter to them that they’d made a mistake, they charged us twice anyway.

After the service we got in the big, white Continental to drive out to the cemetery and Carrie recovered her sense of humor long enough to say, “Well, this is the first time I got to ride in such a rich car. Seem’s like someone’s got to die before you can ride in a Lincoln Continental.” She giggled and Florence looked at her as though she’d been deranged by the sorrow. I thought it was pretty funny myself. For all our fights, there was no getting around the fact that Carrie wasn’t fooled by show and she regarded most of the world around her as a show for the rich at the expense of the poor.

Loneliness settled over the pink house with Carl’s death. Carrie cried nearly every day right up until I went back to school. I tried staying around for awhile to make her feel better, but all we did was fight. We’d fight about the funeral, fight about me not carrying on over it, fight about me working at the tennis courts instead of as a file clerk. I gave up on staying home and went out all the time. Then we fought about me leaving her in the house with her buckets of misery.

Two weeks after school started, I came home around five and changed my clothes to go back later for a meeting. Florence had succeeded in prying Carrie from the house and took her window shopping at the new Britt’s store. I was sitting in the bright yellow kitchen reading Virginia Woolf’s
Orlando
, laughing my head off, when I looked up at the clock and noticed it was five-thirty. I jumped up and put on the coffee pot. The deep rust colors swirled through the clean water when I looked out the jalousie door and realized Carl was never coming home again. I felt so stupid and desolate, putting on the pot so he’d have fresh coffee after work. I sat down and tried to read
Orlando
again, but I couldn’t focus on the page. I stood up and went back into Carrie’s bedroom. Carl had a drawer in the huge, brown old dresser with the gray linoleum top. The little thin drawer cherished a handful of old pearly penknives, a red and silver palm size cigarette case from the thirties and a worn, oval ring with Athena’s head carved in the sardonyx. A whole human life is gone. A wonderful, laughing life and all that’s left is this handful of used-up goods, and they’re not even quality stuff.

The limping ’52 Plymouth rolled into the carport and I heard those two get out, each one grumbling to the other that she didn’t need help. I zoomed back into the kitchen and opened my book. Florence right off noticed that my eyes were red and my nose was running.

“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.

“I was reading this sad book, that’s all.”

Carrie snorted that all I ever did was read sad books and I was going to ruin my eyes. “You all the time got your nose in a book. A bookworm, that’s what you are, straining those eyes since a baby on up. You won’t listen to me. No, you never listen to me. I tell you for your own good you got to stop this reading so much. Besides that it ain’t good for your brains as well as your eyes to be
reading all the time. Makes things percolate overtime. Ruin your health sure as I’m standing here talking to you. Molly, do you hear me!”

“Yes, Mom.”

She opened a big white bag with Thank You written on it in script and showed me a wilderness of plastic flowers. “They’re for your father’s grave. They’ll last longer than real ones. It’ll look pretty when people drive by.”

“They’re pretty. Excuse me, I gotta go back to school.”

As I started out the door I heard Florence say to Carrie, “That girl of yours is crazy. She don’t cry over her father’s death, but she sits here and cries over some dern book.”