Still Life with Plums (18 page)

Linda stops wringing her napkin and stands. “The meal was delicious, Baby.”

Baby looks up at her friend, hears the disconnected words streaming from her mouth.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Linda whispers. She tiptoes past them and all three sisters hear the front door quietly close.

Isabel, still standing, looks down on Baby.

Carmen clears her throat. “You better go change for your interview,” she says.

“What?” Baby says.

“The newspeople,” Carmen says.

“Oh. Yes.” Baby rises and plunks her knife and fork in her tea glass then reaches for Joe’s silverware, too.

“Isabel and I will clear the table,” Carmen says. “You go change and then we’ll have some birthday cake.”

“Cake,” Baby says. “I should have offered Linda cake.”

Carmen stands and moves beside Baby. She grips her by the shoulders and urges her toward the hall. “And then you can open your present from Cowboy Bob.”

“The present,” Baby says. A dim light flickers somewhere deep inside her. She looks at the fat package on the table that just might contain a salve, or glue strong enough to restore whatever this is that’s falling apart.

In her room, Baby closes the door and stands before her closet jammed with flowery dresses and lacy blouses on quilted hangers. On the shelf, a tidy row of shiny, black pumps, stacks of round straw hats with flowing ribbons. Her sisters argue in the kitchen; their harsh words tumble down the hall and squeeze under Baby’s
door. Something about Joe, his intentions, his real reason for marrying Baby.

It’s ridiculous
, Baby thinks, going to the dresser to pull out Joe’s junk drawer where he keeps his good watch and his checkbook and the spare keys to the Corvette. There are also stacks and stacks of papers. Baby watches fingers unfolding sheet after sheet, not her fingers, opening them to read, trying to make sense of bank statements with columns that add up to sizable sums. And there are the JLA forms and she remembers the day Joe said:
Just sign right there. I’ll fill them out later
. She finds a Xeroxed copy of the form he sent in. She scans it and stops halfway down, staring at the words, the incorrect words. Baby reads the line over and over until it becomes a kind of mantra.
Born: Lima, Peru. Born: Lima, Peru
. And because she has to she formulates the question: What’s so wrong about that? So what if Joe put in the wrong place of her birth? She was conceived in Peru and would have, should have been born in the same house as Miguel and Carmen and Isabel. What’s $5000 to pay for that loss? What’s $20,000? Her family would still be together if not for the Americans, the stupid Americans! Then she remembers Cowboy Bob. And her adoring Texas fans. And of course Joe. Red-blooded Joe. Baby’s head feels woozy, legs rubbery, and she slumps onto the same bed where Joan and Wally Adkins slept for 53 years.

Half an hour later Baby scuffs down the hall in her skirt and blouse. She grips her shoes in one hand and fiddles with her right pearl earring with the other.

Carmen gazes out the front window at the sun sliding behind trees. From the west, a gray wall of clouds rolls in, smoky wisps twirling out from underneath. She looks up when Baby enters. “You look like a movie star.”

“Thank you,” Baby says, sitting on the couch to slip on her shoes.

A toilet flushes and Isabel comes down the hall, too. She can’t look at Baby, but she sits in the wingback chair across from her, Cowboy Bob’s gift and their family photo album between them, brass buckle gleaming.

Carmen goes into the kitchen and Isabel and Baby listen to cabinets and drawers being opened. Minor cussing. Moments later Carmen pads in, Baby’s red velvet cake in her hands. Twenty lit candles flickering. Carmen clears her throat and starts warbling, “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.” She looks at Isabel, urging her to join in, finally nudging her foot so she will, which she does, but in a woeful voice that sounds like howling wind.

When they finish the song Carmen holds the cake in front of Baby’s face.

“Make a wish,” Carmen says.

Baby closes her eyes, and sitting there, face illuminated by the kind candle light, Baby looks like a child, ready to wish for a bike or a Barbie. She’s wishing for much more than that. Finally she opens her eyes and blows out all twenty candles in one breath.

“You get your wish,” Isabel says.

Carmen starts to cut thin slivers of cake, but looks at Baby and decides on fat wedges.

Baby forgets about the ice cream in the freezer, just shovels in one forkful after another, barely chewing or even tasting the cream cheese frosting she especially loves.

“The brisket was delicious,” Isabel says. “Joe is a good cook.”

Baby looks up to see if her sister is joking, egging her on, but she doesn’t appear to be.

Carmen’s head bobs in agreement. “He certainly was a good catch.”

“He was, wasn’t he,” Baby says, feeling buoyed. “He bought me these earrings, you know,” she says, touching one of the pearls. “Only someone who truly loves you would buy you real pearls.”

“That’s right,” Carmen says. “Isn’t it, Isabel.”

Isabel looks at Baby, face practically pleading. “Yes,” she says. “He must love you a great deal.”

Movement from the front window and Baby looks out at the crepe myrtle in her front yard frantically swaying.

“It’s going to storm!” Baby says, jumping up to open the front door. A gust of cool air blasts in, whipping her hair, her skirt. “Finally, an end to this heat!” she says, forcing the door closed. “Now Joe will be back any minute!”

Carmen and Isabel look at her, puzzled.

“He doesn’t like to drive his Corvette in the rain,” Baby says.

“Oh,” the sisters say, but their eyebrows remain furrowed.

Carmen points to the brown package. “Time to open your gift.”

“Yes!” Baby says, plopping on the couch, pulling the package to her knees. She rips off the brown paper and is disheartened to see that the box inside is not wrapped in festive birthday paper. It’s just a tattered shoe box, yellow envelope taped to the lid. Baby slides out the note. It’s from Cowboy Bob’s secretary, not Cowboy Bob. As Baby reads it aloud she tries not to draw conclusions about the similarity between the secretary’s handwriting and Bob’s signature on her birthday and Christmas cards all these years.

Enclosed are the last of Cowboy Bob’s papers re: The Cowboy Bob Show. Bob has gone downhill quite a bit this past year and I know he would want you to have these
.

The cake in Baby’s belly churns. No crystal vase, no carved statue, no jewelry. Baby is glad Joe isn’t here to see this. He would be sorely disappointed, too.

Baby lifts the cover and a musty smell wafts out. She tugs out wads of aged envelopes and passes some to Isabel and Carmen. The sisters sit unfolding fragile letters, most addressed to Cowboy Bob care of WTBC, the station that produced and broadcasted the show. Inside are
requests for autographed pictures. Heart-shaped cards with real lipstick kisses. A few mothers enclosed photos of eligible daughters. There are internal memos about scheduled guests: dogs who play ping pong, chickens who type. Some date to even before Baby was a cast member. There’s a letter from Sheldon Rosenberg, the executive producer, congratulating Bob on his continued success, his devoted audience.

Baby remembers Mr. Rosenberg. Always so tidy in his pinstriped suit and wingtip shoes. A fresh carnation in his lapel every morning. Kept his jacket pockets filled with suckers and Necco Wafers just for Baby.

“This one is about me!” Baby says, holding up a sheet of onion skin. It’s dated June 7, 1946. Mr. Rosenberg informs Cowboy Bob they will be adding a new cast member. A little girl from Crystal City to help start the healing process.
Rosa Takei
, the letter reads.
What a lucky baby
.

“This is how it all started,” Carmen says. “Imagine if he never had the idea?”

Baby cannot imagine. She refuses to imagine and it’s silly to even try.

Baby unfolds the next letter, also from Sheldon to Cowboy Bob:
I’m disheartened by your resistance
—

Baby stops. She looks at the paper in her hand. The words on the page that are increasingly difficult to read because they are shaking, vowels and consonants banging against each other.

“What?” Carmen says.

“Nothing,” Baby says, trying to laugh. Trying to tuck the paper back in the envelope before it is too late. And where is Joe? Why isn’t he here to share in this wonderful gift sent all the way from Florida by Cowboy Bob?

The paper won’t fit, and it won’t fit, so Isabel takes it from Baby’s hands. “What is it?” she says, unfolding it to read aloud:

I’m disheartened by your resistance, but my decision is final. Your racist comments about this child are appalling. Be advised: they will not be tolerated on the set. This is not up for debate, Bob. The girl stays. If you cannot work with her in a professional manner, then I will expect your resignation forthwith
.

Baby sits too still on the couch, tightly gripping the shoe box as she tries to make sense of the letter. It’s a forgery, of course. A cruel trick Bob is playing. Tossing it in with the others to make a joke at her expense.

“Bob always had a strange sense of humor,” Baby says. But suddenly she is back in that black convertible during the Easter parade, men throwing raw eggs, calling her names, screaming at her to go home.
Go Home!
How she wanted to press her tiny body against Cowboy Bob’s side, have him drape his arm around her to protect. To keep her safe. But when she scooted toward him, even as an egg splattered on his fringed leather jacket, he shoved her away, eyes full of loathing, mouth pressed into a self-righteous smirk.

Baby sets the box clumsily on top of the photo album, but it tips over and falls to the floor, spilling letters and post cards that might reveal more horrible truths Baby cannot bear. She numbly stands and walks to the picture window to look out at black clouds swirling in.

“It’s going to storm,” she says again. “Joe will be back soon. He doesn’t drive his Corvette in the rain.”

“We know,” Isabel says.

“It’s getting dark,” Baby says about the storm, about the room. She should turn on a light, but she doesn’t. It would make something real. Some hideous thing she can ignore as long as it is dark. She sees her sisters’ reflections behind her, the pathetic way they look at her. Ha! Them feeling sorry for her. If Joe were here he would laugh at Bob’s joke. He would understand this joke, however cruel. And with the lights out she can better watch for his headlights. Surely he will be
home soon. Any minute now Joe will pull up and she’ll run to him and he’ll hug her and pat her hair and tell her everything will be all right. What a good laugh they will all have.

Then there are headlights, heading for her, and she can breathe again as they pull into her driveway.

“He’s home!” Baby says.

Walls collapse in her chest when she realize it isn’t Joe at all, but Channel 7 coming to interview her, to invariably ask what it was like to work with Cowboy Bob all those years. And what is she to say?
Wonderful. He was like a father to me
. Her standard answer for the last fifty-four years. A man gets out of the van and opens the trunk. He looks at the sky, the impending rain, and wraps something in plastic, the camera, no doubt. A woman gets out, too. Baby recognizes her face, sees the microphone in her hand and Baby steps back from the window. If she slips deep enough into shadows maybe they won’t see her, maybe they’ll think she isn’t home. That she forgot. And perhaps they’ll forget Baby, too.

A knock at the door and Isabel and Carmen both stand. “I’ll get it,” Carmen says.

“No,” Baby whispers, holding her arm out as a gate to keep her sisters from nearing the door.

The three awkwardly stand, listening to the persistent knocking. Harder and harder.

Isabel says, “I’ll tell them to go away.”

“No!” Baby says, looking out the window, straining to see into the distance. “Just wait.”

“For what?” Isabel says.

“For Joe,” Baby says. “He’ll tell me what to say.”

Baby can feel her sisters’ stares, but she doesn’t care as she looks outside at the crepe myrtle whipping in the wind, practically horizontal. Crimson buds holding on for dear life. Now rain pelting the glass,
wet streaks blurring her vision. And the news crew banging on the door, yelling for her: “Lucky Baby! Are you in there? It’s Channel 7!”

Baby stands firmly and doesn’t breathe as she hears the storm beating down, fists battering the door, her sisters imploring: “Baby, let them in! Just let them in!” Baby ignores them all because she knows that Joe will be here any minute, any second now to tell her what to say. How to act. She stares out the window without blinking, praying, willing her husband to appear, begging Joe to appear.

A crack of lightning and the room bursts with light, then is thrown back into blackness, except for the glint on the photo album’s brass latch. A voice in Rosa’s head begins calling, begging, not her own voice, exactly, but one that sounds very much like Carmen, or Isabel, pleading for Joe, or for someone, for some dear one, to come home.

I hover in the foyer for five minutes, my heels digging little graves in the plush carpet as I pace back and forth, back and forth before the muted wall mural: cypress trees and tranquil streams meant to console. They don’t soothe me because I know you’re in there, Tommy, waiting. And the thought of you, the image, even after all these years, makes my fingers tremble. Finally I clench my teeth and rush into the teeming room, though I’m knocked back a step by the nauseating sweetness of too many flowers. I push through it, looking frenetically for familiar faces, peering into sagging jowls and sun-creased eyes, trying to subtract twenty-five years. Do I know you? Did I know you?

Across the room your mother stands like the grande dame she is, only ever bowing down to one person: you. Polishing your shoes, bringing your hot lunch to school every day because she knew the few foods you would eat: lemon-pepper chicken livers your favorite, yikes, and for a minute of my life I thought I would have to learn how to make them, if not eat them. (Rest assured. The ironic snobbery is not lost on me, who lapped up pâté in the ’80s when I lived in Dallas—or was it Seattle?—this exquisite cuisine that couldn’t possibly be kin to the common chicken livers served up back in West Virginia.)