Tiger Lillie (2 page)

He retrieves his barren hand. “Earth to Lillie. Earth to Lillie.”

Earth to Lillie? “Yeah?”

“You were wandering off on me there, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart?

I wore a skirt for this? “Tomatoes do that to me, Les. And alfredo sauce always makes me so sleepy I can’t concentrate.” Which is totally true. See? Should’ve taken me to the Thai place, boot boy.

Times like these I wish I owned a cell phone so my best friend, Cristoff, could call me an hour or so into each date and fabricate an emergency at work.

“Oh. How about some espresso then?”

Your treat?

“It gives me…gas.” Which is totally a lie. I glance leisurely at my watch. We’ve only been together ninety minutes? Oh Lord, somehow I now see the earthly application of a “day is like a thousand years in Your sight.” Or is it the other way around?

“Well, I’ll just get some for myself then. Dessert?”

And heels, too. I even wore heels. “No, thanks.”

“I’m going to take the cannoli.”

The waiter receives the order and Leslie says, “Just bring the check back with dessert. Split it fifty-fifty, would you?”

Fifty-fifty? I didn’t even have dessert! Or espresso. In fact, I just ordered ice water and he got Sprite. And my fettuccine alfredo beggars his shrimp scampi by almost half.

With my chin in hand, I let my gaze journey up his blue button-down shirt, over the lump of his Adam’s apple, and up to his face. Stopping at his mouth, I peer closely at the scooped bottom lip and I know as sure as I know my own gigantic bra size that scooped bottom lip will never get close to mine. It’s not that it grosses me out. But I am afforded no visualization of a future, nothing, only a swirling mist and a total lack of imagination. “Doesn’t it weird you out to think you have a skeleton inside of you, Leslie?”

“Say what?”

“There’s a skeleton inside of you.”

He wipes his lips, eyes darting. “I’m not following you.”

“It’s not just bones. It’s a skeleton. Like, a whole skeleton. Right there. Inside your own body.”

“Are you okay, Lillie?”

I dig a twenty and a five out of my purse and lay them by my plate. It’s all over! Nothing left to see, folks. Move along! Move along!

“See you at singles group on Wednesday, Leslie.”

And I stand to my feet, the sole survivor turning away from the wreckage. But I lied again. I’m not going back to that group. I’m desperate enough without hanging around more desperate people.

I’m not sure what he says to my back. Soon enough, the city streets swallow my deed, and my insignificance strengthens with each step homeward. I’d held out such hope for this one. And for the life of me, I sure can’t see why. Daddy’s obviously not the only blind one in the family.

I let myself into my old row house after the excruciating, high-heeled, thirty-minute walk home, and I proceed to pump out a few zippy miles on my exercise bike. Hey, I’m plump, not out of shape. Afterward I feel energized enough to reward myself by taking out my contacts and whizzing up a raspberry soymilk shake.

Not that I’d tell anybody else I enjoy the nutty taste of soymilk. It makes me sound so…so natural.

I slide in my socks on the smooth hardwood floors of the hallway back to my bedroom where my planner lies open on the bed. Only nine thirty, and I had blocked out another two hours for this date. Good. Plenty of time remains for a phone call.

Cristoff will love this one! I reach for the phone on my nightstand, dial the number of the apartment on the upstairs floor, and wait for my best friend’s answering machine to click to life.

“My smile is wide.
My hat is doffed.
You’ve reached the pad. Of me, Cristoff.
So leave your words and make them few
‘Cause I’ve got better things to do
Like make a return phone call to you!”

I can’t help but roll my eyes every time his greeting chirrups in my ear. Not only does the poetry induce nausea, Cristoff almost never returns his calls.

“Another disaster to record for your book, honey,” I report. Yes, report. Cristoff records my dating exploits, in novel form, naturally. Talk about horrible. Passive verbs litter the pages and the words
surreptitiously
and
suddenly
appear over and over again. Daddy would be appalled as would all my undergrad professors, who were heartbroken when I got my MBA instead of an MA in literature. But Cristoff’s writing, as well as old movies and Bible study—he loves that Kay Arthur with a passion—keep him home at night, away from the bars and a possible third detox stint. He’s also working on a memoir. He hasn’t let me read it, and I don’t ask for the privilege.

“Hey, honey, it’s me. Pick up.”

He does. “How bad was it, sweetie?”

Cristoff’s voice soothes the open wound of singlehood. Cristoff loves me and I love him. Oh, not in
that
way, of course. He’s the brother I never had. I’m the platonic partner he needs these days. What a family life he endured growing up! Some things you refuse to think about for long or you’ll lose your faith, if you know what I mean. We’ve had this “honey/sweetie” thing going for years, as though we’re Lucy and Ethel. Unfortunately, he’s Lucy, which makes me—

“I’m lying in bed with a raspberry shake.”

“How many prayers of forgiveness so far?”

“Just one.”

“So
he
was the jerk this time?”

“Honey!”

“Just calling it like I see it, sweetie. You can be a little… well, disconcerting… to the lesser man, of course.”

Sounds good to me. Too good. “Oh please. Let’s face it. I’m a geek magnet.”

“And you know you write people off too quickly.”

“Only when they deserve it.”

“And when Miss Thing cops an attitude.”

“Okay, Gilbert!” Cristoff hates being called by his first name.

“You need me to come down? It’s only nine thirty.”

“Nah. Tomorrow’s Friday. It’s going to be a big day for both of us.”

“You know I’ll come down if you need me to.”

“I know, honey.”

“And you even wore a skirt.”

“I know. Heels, too.”

“Really? Wow. High hopes, huh?”

“Yeah. Bummer, right?”

He yawns. “So what happened?”

“I walked out on him. Just left him sitting all alone in the middle of Della Notte.”

“You’re usually not rude. He must have deserved it then.”

“Not really.” I sip my milk shake and pull off my glasses. “He was just a goofball. There’s no crime in being a goofball.” And I sigh, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

Cristoff pauses, then says, “You posed the skeleton question, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be right down.”

2

Lillie

Yep, as far as I’m concerned, the Christian singles group scene has gone the way of the girdle. For me anyway. First of all, I do believe loneliness, and not any desire to find God’s will, invited me there in the first place. Dreams of a family, a little home with white kitchen cupboards and a blue nursery right next to our soft-yellow bedroom rendered me helpless against my own sorry life. So, being raised as a good Episcopalian, I at least knew where to go for help. The bars held no appeal. God instituted marriage, right? The least He could do was give me a leg up. And the Baptists sure possess a knack when it comes to singles ministries.

But, instead, I’ve ended up even
less
sure of myself than ever. Well, I’m never going back to Chesapeake Bay Baptist. If all I ask of God is a husband, and He isn’t delivering, maybe He has something else in mind. Maybe I’m shooting too low.

Don’t laugh. Saint Paul said the same thing!

That poor man. He gets such a bad rap from the bra-burners.

Tacy

I was swaddled in a blanket.

I sat in a highchair eating from my mother’s hand—a spoonful of apricots.

The warm water in the sink accepted my little body and soothed where the diaper had been.

I took a step and busted my eyebrow on the edge of the coffee table.

Mom yelled at me when I colored on the sofa.

I played an angel in the Christmas pageant.

I went to my first day of school and met a little girl named Barb. They served french fries in the cafeteria, and the teacher read us a story from
Frog and Toad All Year.
I loved the story and the way those two friends stuck together, different but the same.

I lost a tooth.

I won first place in the third-grade art contest!

I won first place in the fourth-grade art contest!

Dad bought me a guitar for Christmas. I hoped my hands were big enough to really learn. He said he started learning when he, too, was ten.

Daddy said I only needed to know three chords, four if I wanted to get a little fancy, to play almost any song I’d want to pick out. D, G, A, E minor. Or was it B minor? I haven’t picked up my guitar in years. I picked out that ancient Beatles song “Yesterday” and played it for the relatives at my birthday party. Eleven seemed so old.

I won the sixth-grade art contest!

I got my hair cut short before eighth grade began. But I didn’t like it.

Lillie

The first time I ever saw Teddy, he was sitting in a puddle of oversized clothing, crying by the school door. His mother, Mrs. Gillie, a woman I would come to love almost as much as my own mother, sat down next to him, legs extended, smoking a cigarette and stroking his brown hair. I pranced up the steps, my own mother barely keeping up with me. A kindergartner! I was so ready for school I could barely keep from dancing. I was going to learn to read! Just like Daddy had, years before, before he learned to read with his fingers—a skill, I know now, that isn’t reserved just for those with no eyesight.

“He’s a little frightened of the day,” said Mrs. Gillie, a robust, black-haired woman with thick glasses. “Maybe you could help?”

Shy around unfamiliar adults, I just nodded. She patted the decking next to her, but I sat around on the other side of Teddy. And I don’t know why, but I reached out, put my arms around him, and whispered in his ear, “Lets go in together. Let’s just do everything together, okay?” That seemed like a good arrangement to me. I didn’t know anybody at Churchville Elementary, and to have a ready-made friendship seemed like a great idea.

He looked up at me and grinned a little, and while I couldn’t appreciate the deep brown eyes then as I came to later, I knew they held something special that went way down inside. “You mean it?” he asked me.

I still had my arms around him. “Come on, don’t be afraid. I’ll be with you.”

My mother, standing over us, smiled, and I felt so proud. “It’s amazing how they mimic what they’ve heard over and over,” she said to Mrs. Gillie.

“That’s the truth. And if it’s the good things, so much the better. I’m Sally Gillie.”

“Kathy Bauer.”

They smiled and nodded, for that was in the days when women didn’t shake hands, and they acquainted themselves with one another. Meanwhile, I helped Teddy to his feet, showed him my new lunchbox, and held his hand. We walked inside, embarking on a twelve-year sail through oceans, across bays, and down a multitude of rivers, some navigable, others not. I felt as if I’d been given a job to do, like those guys on
Mission Impossible
, and I began to hum the theme song. Teddy joined in, and like the edge of a gentle cool front, something brought change, and it was my hand being tugged.

God, You know I miss him. My heart still reels at the realization that someone so wonderful loved me more than anybody else.

Tacy

I was so excited the night Lillie took me out for dinner, just the two of us, to Burger King. We ate chicken sandwiches and drank Cokes and we talked. She was so pretty and so strong and was almost finished with her freshman year of college.

My friend Barb turned miserable and depressed during her parents’ divorce. I told her I’d give her a makeover one Saturday night, but she only said, “You just don’t understand, Tacy. You think new eyeliner clears up everything.” That hurt my feelings, but I was powerless to understand her situation.

Mom told me to sit with Grandma Erzsèbet for a while as she needed to run my Dad to the doctor. It was the first time I was alone in the house without Mom or Dad. Grandma and I played bilingual Scrabble: English and Hungarian. I didn’t flaunt my fluent Hungarian in front of Lillie, who never could pick up the language.

Lillie came in one day with her calendar book in hand and told me that the deadline to submit my work for the Towson Art Festival was just around the corner. That summer, she drove me over and helped me unload my canvases, and I really needed her help with that big mother-and-child abstract. We had an ice cream at Friendly’s, and she took me over to Walden’s and bought me a copy of
Lord of the Flies.
“It’s a little disturbing,” she said, “but just goes to show you that kids really do need their parents.”

I sang a solo at church on Sunday at the hootenanny mass, as some of the older ones call it. “Take Our Bread” and then right into “On Eagle’s Wings.” Just me and my guitar. Yep, just the priest’s daughter and her guitar.

Lillie

Far beneath the bridge on which my bare toes rest, the river waters beckon as soundlessly as ever. The soaring steel structure crisscrossed with riveted support beams challenges my eyes as my weak vision skates up the arch.

You are mine. You are all mine.

I focus on the blinking orange lights at each corner, their hue reminiscent of the skin of the small jack-o’-lantern I carved yesterday to commemorate the coming of September. The humidity of the estuary coats my throat, wrapping my tongue in the taste of summer’s end and the dark settling of the day.

Ah, evening.

I try not to think about the pollution level.

“You ready, sweetie?” Cristoff asks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Get up there then. You’ll be fine. You always are.”

“You look nice in that tuxedo.” Boy, does he! So slender and taut, classic and beautiful. Too bad his looks can’t be put to good use on some sweet girl at his church.

“You’re not so bad yourself. Now go on, Lillie.”

The sparse nine o’clock Key Bridge traffic thickens at the sight of us gathered there. We planned to create this spectacle during the commuter traffic, but one of our clients, a frantic bride waffling between minicheesecakes and pecan tartlets, spoiled that idea. Sometimes I just want to head-butt these silly women, but we can’t afford to lose a single account. And so I steady a hand atop the warm cement guardrail and, gripping hard, climb up with firm footing. Not an easy accomplishment in a fancy silk evening gown and a stiff breeze, but again, I’m plump, not uncoordinated.

For several moments, I concentrate on my toenails, lacquered a stainless steel for the occasion to match the bridge, and I breathe deeply. My toes curl around the top of the divider, the small knuckles knobby white angles that mimic the curve of the balustrade. The hardened cement floods my arches, massages my insteps. I love it. I grind them down even more.

A distant siren tightens the muggy air. The rest of those assembled for the occasion observe from ten feet away, nodding me on, necks jerking like park pigeons. I stand tall, the dark pond of land supporting Fort Carroll swallowing my gaze. Overgrown, unused, alone, and obsolete, Fort Carroll invites only the most intrepid adventurer. Maybe someday.

I coil my fingers into my callused palms and stare down. Quite a drop to today’s calm Patapsco River. Carefully adjusting my footing, turning my back on the gray liquid mass lined by a golden moon, I look the nearest motorist in the eye, see the shock illuminated by the streetlights, and throw her a reassuring smile, a nod, and a little wave.

“Go, Lillie!” Cristoff yells. “Be a good girl, or we’ll all be arrested!”

I knife-throw him a glare. Silly man. Of course we’ll all be arrested. We always get arrested.

The lights of the Baltimore Harbor twinkle in the darkness, and the blue dock cranes stand still and silent like monsters in the unfocused pools of brightness illuminating their sturdy structures. The wail of the siren sharpens.

And so I lean back, cross myself, and loosening my toe-grip, I fall in understuffed Raggedy Ann complacency toward the river.

In that moment of helplessness, air caresses me like a tender lover frightened of his own strength. Like Teddy at twelve, reaching out to stroke my arm for the first time. Freedom envelops me as my iron will liquefies, gushing forth from inside a dark place known as “What it takes to be a Strong Hungarian Woman.”

Grandma Erzsèbet. My mother, Katherina. My sister, Tacy. Strong Hungarian Women. I fall, liberating myself from their stoic clutch, their grim resolution, their ability to rise above all occasions with smiles on their faces and not a hair out of place.

I
am the bold one.
I
am the fearless one.
I
am gutsy and strong and daring.

Rrrr.

My ink-blue evening gown flutters in fluid ripples against my skin. The air drafts the flags of fabric upward as, finally, the bungee cord catches and my flight slows. Exiting the fall, I spring upward like a confused Phoenix who’d quite forgotten the rebirth process and went about it all wrong. I tuck my body for the upward wing, then plummet once again. I’d like to tell you it’s smooth and graceful, but when I was seven my mother suggested ballet lessons and I laughed.

My compatriots in the Extreme Delights Sporting and Adventure Club cheer, and as I fall once more I hear the pop of a very old cork. Cristoff yells loudest and someone drawls in a fake British accent, “Well, twist it all to Hades and back, we’ll just jolly well get arrested too.”

Flashing red and blue lights and a couple of state troopers meet me as they pull me over the dividers and onto the dry road. Honey hands me my glasses. The fresh-faced cop can’t contain a grudging smile, and his well-done steak of a partner barks, “Who, young lady, do you think you are?”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea.” The Lie-O-Meter buzzes.

“It’s just Tiger Lillie, sir,” the young trooper says. “Happy birthday, ma’am.”

Now that guy knows how to wink. And they’ve got a nickname for me? Yeah boy!

If they have any brains, they’ll mark the day on their calendar and show up before we do next year.

Tacy

The day I heard from
Teen Talk
magazine that I was a finalist in their writing contest, Write Stuff ’91, I saw all I could someday be coming together. Going to New York. Touring the facilities. A photography session. Oh yeah, the magazine world seemed just so me. Fashion, art, writing, beauty. I talked to Dad about it, about going to school for journalism or something like that, and he liked the idea. He was sitting in his chair, reading a Braille something.

“You would do so well in that profession, Tace.”

One day when I told him I just wanted to be a plain old artist or a photographer or something, he said, you can’t make a decent living at that. You need to be able to stand on your own two feet. Just take a look at me and see what happens when you choose a beggarly profession.”

I sat down in Mom’s chair, next to his, and put my feet up on the coffee table. “Tell me about your first date with Mom again, Daddy.” Back when you could see and Mom didn’t need to care for you.

I swear his eyes took on a look as though he could see. And maybe he could. Yes, he’d had lots of other girlfriends, “But when I took one look at your mother, I knew those days were behind me for good!”