The Orange Blossom Special (14 page)

“She came in and walked around the house like a zombie, picking stuff up from here and there, straightening the books on the bookshelf, staring out into space every couple of minutes. When I asked her if she was okay, she kind of blinked, like she'd forgotten I was there. ‘Sure I'm fine. Why do you ask?' She's been in her room most of tonight. I'm worried that she hasn't eaten all day. Wait a minute. We're the children. Aren't they supposed to worry about us?”

“Fat chance,” said Crystal.

“Do you suppose both our mothers are crazy nymphomaniacs?” That got them both to laughing so hard, it pushed aside the events of the day.

“Crazy nymphomaniacs!” They kept saying it until it was unclear whether the thought of it or just saying it was what made them helpless with laughter. From that moment on, all one of them would have to do was raise her eyebrows in a knowing way, glance toward the other, and say “CN,” and they would laugh as if it were the first time.

O
N THE FOLLOWING
Saturday, Tessie opened her Jerry Box, took out the ad from J. Baldy's, and stuffed it in her handbag. She had never been to a fancy beauty parlor. In Carbondale, she'd gotten her hair cut at the same barber's where Jerry had his cut. In Gainesville, she went to Regina's, a place a few blocks from her house. For six dollars, Regina, whose copper-colored hair was piled atop her head and flowed down her face like lava, would wash and cut Tessie's hair. “Ain't no point in teasing this,” she'd say, holding
Tessie's limp hair in her hands as if it was some spit-up from a baby. “It'd be like trying to make a bee hive out of a spider web.” Then Tessie would tip Regina fifty cents and leave the one-room win-dowless shop feeling more worn and haggard than when she'd first come in.

J. Baldy's was like no place she'd ever been. The walls were a soothing peach color, not white peeling paint, and light streamed in from the large bay window in the front. There was a receptionist, and classical music played softly from a hi-fi. Tessie pulled out her clipping with the 20 percent discount coupon. “I have a noon appointment with Mr. Baldy.” She kept her voice steady and made it a point to look Delilah in the eye.

Delilah looked her up and down. Another scholarship case, she thought to herself, and said he'd be with her in a moment. Tessie sat down on a blue brocade armchair. She reached into her purse for the envelope she received Thursday morning. Again she read the note written in the hasty hand of Barone:

Dottie, We only danced one dance and yet the music keeps playing in my head. I took you in my arms and the world melted away. Then life intruded, with a bang (and a splash) and our magic bubble burst too soon. Have the next dance with me. Your place, a week from this Saturday night. I'll bring the food and music.

A familiar voice sliced through her daydream. “Why of course I don't plan to go into the water today,” it said, rather shrilly, “not with this masterpiece I am carrying on my head.” It was Victoria Landy, unmistakably. Tessie looked up, straight into Victoria Landy's ice-blue eyes.

“Well, of all people,” said Victoria. “I didn't expect to see you
here.” Tessie covered the Baron's note, as if someone might cheat off of it. She hoped that Victoria hadn't seen her hand Delilah the coupon. “Yes,” she answered, running her hand through her hair. “I thought I'd try something new.”

“You've come to the right place. This man,” said Victoria, turning to Jésus, “is the Albert Einstein of hair. Aren't you, Jésus? Jésus, this is my friend, Tessie Lockhart.”

Victoria never took her eyes off Tessie when she called her “my friend.”

“How do you do, Jésus,” she said, aware that by accepting Victoria's gesture of friendship, the two women had sealed a pact.

“What are you doing after your appointment?” asked Victoria.

“Nothing much,” shrugged Tessie, who planned on spending most of the day waiting for the night.

“Tell you what. I have a lunch date, but I'll meet you back here at one. We can have a cup of coffee.”

“Sure,” Tessie said, surprised by Victoria's offer. She had too much on her mind already to worry what the women would talk about. She watched Jésus, his dark long fingers floating over Victoria's hair, pulling a strand here, patting another one in place there.

He'll find me so plain after her, thought Tessie. But her anxiety dissolved once she sat in his chair.

Jésus rubbed Tessie's shoulders in a way that no one, not even Jerry, had. “Mrs. Lockhart,” said Jésus. “I'm sure that everyone has told you of your resemblance to the actress Joanne Woodward.”

“Not everyone.” Tessie blushed. Jésus ran his hands through her hair with respect. “You have fine silky hair. We should open up your face, let the world see your radiant eyes. Have you ever worn bangs before?”

Tessie shook her head yes. “But that was years ago.”

“There is so much to work with here,” he squeezed her shoulders. “Sonia will wash you first.”

The young girl from the pool: Tessie recognized her immediately. Sonia watched her silently as she washed her hair and gently massaged her head with a towel. As she led her back to Jésus's chair, she said to Jésus, “Sir, I go to lunch now.”

Of course, thought Tessie. She has a lunch date too.

“Your friend Mrs. Landy is an extraordinary woman,” said Jésus. “She has, like you, very fine hair yet she has managed to do so much with it.”

“Yes,” Tessie agreed, “Mrs. Landy is a very versatile woman.”

By the time Jésus had finished with her, Tessie had a short bob with bangs. “You look like the daughter of the woman who walked in here an hour ago,” said Jésus, pleased with his own creation.

Tessie stared in the mirror. It was as if she were looking at a face she hadn't seen in nearly four years.

“Thank you, Mr. Baldy,” she said, unable to take her eyes off herself. “This is amazing. Thank you so much.”

Jésus noticed how Tessie's hands were red and dry, and how her nails were jagged as if hastily clipped. Normally, he would have suggested a manicure, but something about her unabated gratitude made him hold back.

“I hope I will see you again,” he said.

“The next time you have one of those coupons in the paper, I'll be first in line,” said Tessie, trying to make light of it.

Jésus was moved by her honesty. He knew what it was like to be poor and proud.

“It gives me such pleasure to cut your hair, Mrs. Lockhart, I'll tell you what. Anytime you come here, I will give you twenty percent off. It would be my honor.”

“Oh I couldn't do that,” said Tessie. “Besides, you do such a good business, why do you need me?”

“It's the women like you that make my work such a satisfaction,” he said graciously. “We will keep it just between us.”

Maybe Jerry brought her here to remind her that there was kindness in the world if you knew how to see it.

Well if that isn't the sweetest little hairdo,” said Victoria, rubbing her hands together with satisfaction. She was seated across from Tessie in a yellow vinyl booth with red trim at Harmon's Luncheonette. Harmon's was right across the street from Baldy's and the ladies of town would meet there for a BLT or tuna melt before their appointments or for one of Harmon's famous sticky buns after. “I swear, you look twenty years younger,” Victoria went on.

It might be construed that by using the words “sweet little hairdo” or implying how old Tessie had looked before, Victoria was talking down to her. But seeing as Tessie had never conversed with any of the women in town, much less sat face-to-face with one here at Harmon's, she chose to think that Victoria was being kindly in a Southern sort of way.

“Have you ever tried one of the sticky buns?” Victoria continued. “It's just the best thing I've ever had. You're such a petite little thing, you could eat a room full of sticky buns and never gain an ounce. Me? I take one look at those things and my thighs turn to mud. Go ahead, try one.”

The twenty dollars she'd spent at Baldy's that morning, plus the two-dollar tip she'd left, had already put Tessie in the hole for next week's spending. Another thirty-five cents for coffee and fifty cents
for the bun would leave her with not enough money for groceries that week. But she didn't want Victoria Landy to know how carefully she had to count her money.

“I can't pass that up, can I?” said Tessie, trying to sound casual.

When the bun came, warm and smelling like something baked on a snowy winter afternoon, Tessie slowly pulled it apart. The white icing oozed into the swirl of cinnamon. Had Tessie been alone, she would have licked the sugary stuff off the plate. But with Victoria's eyes on her, she simply swallowed and took a gulp of coffee.

“Bet they don't bake like that in Ohio,” said Victoria.

“Illinois,” said Tessie. “Carbondale, Illinois.”

“Jiminy! Idaho, Ohio, Illinois. I never can keep those vowel states separate,” said Victoria.

Tessie smiled broadly, revealing a brown fleck of cinnamon stuck in a back tooth. “I know what you mean. Like Okefenokee Swamp or Lake Okeechobee.”

Victoria's eyes narrowed with the knowledge that in some way, she'd just been put in her place.

“Seeing as our daughters have become inseparable, I thought it best we get to know each other,” said Victoria, her voice lowered by an octave.

“How nice,” said Tessie sincerely. “Dinah's father died four years ago. Since then, she's been so awfully sad and lonely. Her friendship with Crystal has brought her back to life. I am so grateful for that.”

“And what about you? Are you lonely too?”

Tessie placed both hands over her heart. “You have no idea.” Her voice choked. “Sometimes I can't believe I'm still alive. If it weren't for Dinah, I don't know . . .”

Victoria had planned to spin the conversation right along and ask about Barone. She thought she'd make it clear that she knew about
him, and she'd enjoy Tessie's discomfort with the knowledge that she also knew he was married. Maybe it was the way Tessie's voice went all tight when she talked about her dead husband, or how she was so naked in her gratitude toward Crystal, or maybe it was how pathetic she looked with the brown crumb stuck in her tooth. Victoria wasn't sure what it was, but she had lost her taste for cornering her.

Tessie's eyes filled with tears. “We moved to Gainesville to get away from the memories. We were in such terrible terrible shape, me and Dinah. Jerry—that was my husband's name—and I had honeymooned in St. Augustine. We thought it was the most beautiful place in the world, so I decided . . .”

It occurred to Victoria that this feeling of tenderness, curbing her impulse to lash out, was what Charlie meant when he talked about having compassion for other people. She could do this. She could have compassion for another person. What was so hard about that?

Tessie stopped herself midsentence, as if she hadn't been aware that she was talking. “I'm so sorry. You have better things to do than listen to me go on like this.”

Awash in righteousness and gripped by the desire that Tessie Lockhart view her as a kind person, a
compassionate
person, Victoria reached across the table and took Tessie's hand in hers. “Don't you go worrying about me, honey, I have all the time in the world. My heart goes out to you, for all you've suffered,” she said, biting back the urge to tell her that Nivea Creme would do wonders for her dry hands. “You and that poor little girl of yours.”

Tessie finished her sticky bun in silence, under the mournful gaze of her new friend. After a moment, Victoria's eyes brightened. “Oh my word, I have just been struck with the most brilliant idea. Crystal is going off to Camp Osceola in two weeks. There's another of those vowel places, isn't that a scream? Dinah should go with her.”

“Oh, no,” said Tessie, “I could never afford that. It must cost hundreds of dollars.”

“Doesn't either,” said Victoria. “Crystal is going to be a counselor in training; Charlie's going to be a counselor. They both go for free. Maynard and I have known the people who run the camp for years: the Frankels, Audrey and Ralph. They're Jewish, but very nice. I'm sure we could get Dinah a position. It would do her a world of good.”

“It's worried me, about the summer and what Dinah would do,” said Tessie. “With me working and Crystal being away and all . . .”

“Then it's decided! I'll call Audrey as soon as I get home,” said Victoria triumphantly. “Oh, and this is on me. Now that you've had a sticky bun at Harmon's, you're an official citizen of Gainesville, Florida.” Virtue coursed through her veins.

“D
O YOU THINK
they put strange things in the water down here?” Tessie asked Dinah as she told her about lunch with Victoria. “Honestly, she was like night and day.”

“Crystal says when God gave out brains, her mother was off shopping” said Dinah, slightly distracted. “Can I really go to Camp Osceola?” Dinah hadn't even noticed Tessie's haircut. Tessie might have been annoyed about her daughter's self-absorption if she hadn't been lost in her own daydreams about seeing Barone alone in the summer.

That night, Dinah had a sleepover at Crystal's. She sat with Crystal on her pink chenille bedspread, poring over the Camp Osceola brochure. “That's the lake,” said Crystal, pointing to a picture of a lake with a raft in the center. Dinah kept staring at the photo as if in her staring, something more would reveal itself to her. On shore, upside-down canoes were stored like wine bottles on a rack. There was another rack with row boats. The setting sun illuminated the water the way it does when lightning strikes in the night. Crystal moved on. “This is the tennis court. Oh, and there's the main dining hall.”

The two girls looked at the pictures slowly, turning the thick glossy pages of the brochure as if they were Dead Sea scrolls. “Could we go back to the picture of the lake?” asked Dinah. She stared at the photo, trying to put herself in that scene, in that water. “The bottom is rocky, so you'll have to bring a pair of water shoes,” said Crystal.