The Orange Blossom Special (15 page)

Water shoes, sneakers, nametags, tennis racquet, duffel bag, soap dish, poncho: there were so many things she'd need for camp, and Dinah didn't have any of them. When she asked her mother how they were going to afford everything, she shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands. “Beats me,” she said. “We'll figure out something.” It sounded to Dinah like no big deal. Little did she know that later in the afternoon, Tessie wrote an agonized note to her Jerry:

God help me, but I'm going to ask the Glenns to borrow some money. It's not how I choose to live, but it seems worth it for this camp business. You would be surprised at some of the things I'm doing these days. I had coffee and a sticky bun with Victoria Landy today. I've changed my hairdo. Who would have ever dreamed I could go on like this without you?

It wasn't rational, being so coy, but Tessie preferred not to talk to Jerry about Barone. Of course, if he could understand her notes and entreaties, how could he not be aware of what else was going on? She chose not to ask herself this question. That night, before Barone came over, she found a five-dollar bill in the back pocket of a pair of dungarees she hadn't worn in years. Five dollars was a heck of a lot of money: a message from Jerry loud and clear.

C
RYSTAL AND
D
INAH
were still looking at the Camp Osce-ola brochure when Charlie came home that night. Dinah hadn't seen him since the Eddie Fingers episode, and she worried what would
happen when she did. She liked him. He probably thought she was a real loser. He better get used to her, she thought, as they were about to see each other every day for the next two months.

“Charlie, guess what? Dinah's coming to Camp Osceola with us!” said Crystal when he came into her room.

“Have you taught her the songs?” asked Charlie.

As if on cue, Crystal leaped from the bed and stood next to Charlie. They both narrowed their eyes and pursed their lips together in mock seriousness. Then they began to sing in thundering voices:

The blue and gold we'll e'er remember
Though we are far apart
And friendships made during camping days,
We will cherish in our hearts.
To thee we raise our banners, pledging our allegiance.
And we, your loyal sons and daughters all be true.
We'll keep the memories of each golden day of summer,
Till someday we return Osceola, back to you.

They finished their song and took a bow. Dinah stared at them.

“Was that English?” she asked.

Charlie and Crystal laughed.

“No, I'm not kidding,” said Dinah, “was that really English?”

Crystal looked at Charlie. “That was color war English,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Color war English. You'll get the hang of it when you're there.”

“Color war, what's that?” asked Dinah.

“That's the highlight of camp,” said Crystal. “Toward the end of the summer the whole camp gets divided into two teams: the blue and the gold. Everything is a competition. How you make your bed, baseball games, the songs you write. At the end of color war, the team with the most points wins. It's so neat.”

“It sounds really stupid,” said Dinah.

“Not when you're in it,” said Charlie.

“Wait, somewhere I have last year's songs. I can show you,” said Crystal. As she stepped into her closet to look for the old song sheets, Charlie nudged Dinah with his elbow. “You doing okay?” he mouthed.

“Okay,” she nodded.

“I'm glad.”

The way he smiled and looked right at her when he said “I'm glad” made Dinah feel safe, as if they'd known each other always. It wasn't unlike the feeling she got from Eddie Fingers. Ever since the funeral, when Eddie Fingers sent her that last signal, the numbers and the need to count didn't matter so much anymore. The dread that used to add up, the desperation to be in her bed, they were gone now. Lately, she'd stopped counting and measuring her life. It made her wonder if, after Eddie Fingers, her father had been in touch with Charlie Landy as well.

O
N
T
HURSDAY
, T
ESSIE
got another note from Barone.

I look forward to resting in peace with you on Saturday. That was a bad joke, maybe, but you know what I mean. I am assuming that you have pots and pans, and that your stove works. I'll bring the music and the food. Wait until you taste my cooking. I hope it will knock you right off your feet and into my arms.

Underneath that sentence he had drawn a sketch of a woman biting down on what looked like a lamb shank, and swooning into the arms of a man wearing an apron who was a cartoon version of Barone. As she fell into his embrace, lamb shank and all, the following
words were coming out of her mouth: “I knew you were tall, dark, and handsome. But this, too?”

In the bubble above the man's head, it said, “Oh Dottie, this is nothing. Wait until you taste my veal cacciatore.” The sketches were drawn in the same clean and tight style as the Jai Alai symbol of the man jumping in the air with the
cesta
strapped to his arm.

When Barone came to the door on Saturday night, his arms filled with grocery bags, Tessie was dressed more casually than the last time. She wore her dungarees and a red-and-white-checked blouse with a Peter Pan collar. No pearls. Red slippers on her feet.

The screen door slammed behind him as he stepped inside the house. “Nice to see you,” said Tessie, her arms folded in front of her. Barone put the bags on the floor and thrust his head forward like a turtle coming out of its shell. “Polka Dottie in squares!” he said. He kept staring at her. “And wait a minute, those bangs—Christ almighty you are a sight to behold.” As Barone pulled her toward him, he was overpowered by the odor of Spray Net. “You look so beautiful, I don't even mind that you smell like ether,” he said, his lips sticking to lacquered pieces of her hair.

Tessie had promised herself that she wouldn't get “physically involved” with Barone until after they had a conversation. And maybe, after that particular conversation, they would never get “physically involved” again. He kissed her collarbone and ran his fingers down the sides of her breast. Her resolve weakened.

“So what's for dinner?” she asked, trying to sound as if it mattered.

“Mmm, dinner,” he murmured. “Let's have dessert first.”

“No, really,” she said, more adamantly. “I'm hungry. What's for dinner?”

“Okay, dinner.” Barone slid his hands down Tessie's sides until he was holding her around the waist. “Iceberg lettuce with blue
cheese dressing; Beef Stroganoff with a side of noodles and butter, Apple Brown Betty for dessert, and a wonderful bottle of French Beaujolais.”

Tessie had never tasted Beef Stroganoff. Or French Beaujolais. She tried to think of something to say that wouldn't betray her lack of sophistication. “Noodles, I love noodles. What kind?”

“I know a hungry gal when I see one,” said Barone. “Let's cook.”

For the next thirty minutes, Tessie watched Barone chop onions, whisk flour, mix up a salad dressing. She noticed the curly little veins in his wrist and natural grace with which he wielded a knife. The only mushrooms Tessie ever had came from a can. They had a slippery texture and no taste at all. Barone had brought a small bag filled with real mushrooms. Carefully, he wiped the grit off of each one and sliced them in thin slivers that looked like the columns outside the Victorians in Carbondale. Then he sautéed them in butter. These things, they smelled sweet and earthy unlike anything she had ever smelled. Barone moved around the kitchen as if he'd been there a thousand times before. Sometimes he hummed, but mostly he let the sounds of the crackling butter and the odor of onions frying and meat roasting do the talking for him.

Tessie set the table with her white dishes, so worn and plain for this meal. She stepped into the front yard and snipped some hibiscus from the bush, hoping that their gaudiness would make her utilitarian Formica table a little more festive. Damn, she didn't even have proper wine glasses. That was a laugh. For all the wine she drank, all she had were dumb old jelly glasses. She'd put out the ones without bears on them hoping Barone wouldn't notice. Oh wait, the silver candlesticks she and Jerry had gotten for the wedding. God knows, she hadn't had any use for them in years. There were still some white stubs of candle left and in the dim light, maybe he wouldn't notice how tarnished they were.

“You sit now,” he said.

He served her the beef with the thick sour cream, butter and mushrooms and noodles; and against her will, she wondered what Jerry would think if he could see her sitting here, her face flushed in candlelight with this food, this wine, this man.

Barone poured generous helpings of the wine into each jelly glass. “To Polka Dottie in circles, squares, and whatever other shapes you come in,” he toasted.

Tessie clinked her glass against his. She remembered his last note. “I knew you were tall, dark, and handsome. But this too?” It was confusing having both men in her mind at the same time. The notion that somehow their notes might cross made her smile, but she didn't dare speak her thoughts out loud.

Instead, they talked about the week, about Dinah going to camp, about Victoria Landy. “If her brains were as big as her ass, she'd be the better for it,” he said. They drank more Beaujolais.

Tessie waited for the wine to take her to that warm and sure place. Then it was just a matter of finding the right moment, which finally came when Barone did his imitation of a velvet-voiced disc jockey on a local radio station. “It's Saturday night, date night in Miami, and I send this next song, Paul Anka's ‘Put Your Head on My Shoulder,' out to all the lovebirds on the beach, in a car, robbing a 7-Eleven, or simply getting drunk at home.” He watched her face, waiting for her to laugh.

“So what are you doing here on a date night?” She heard her voice get starchy. “I mean, what about Mrs. Antonucci? Where does she think you are?”

Barone's face went dark, accentuating the deep furrows that, in the light of the candles, made him look every one of his fifty-four years. He ran his hand over his mouth as if trying to hold back the words.

“Tessie, don't use that high and mighty tone with me.” His words
quavered with anger. “You have a thing or two to learn about judging people. Because I dress well and know about fancy wine doesn't mean I'm some vulgar Don Juan. What if I judged you by what I saw on the surface? Do you think I'd be here tonight?”

It was the first time he had ever called her Tessie. It crossed her mind that in his fury he might hit her.

“No, no, I wasn't judging, it's just that . . .”

He didn't wait for her to finish her sentence.

“My wife doesn't know I'm here,” he said slowly, the anger leveling his sentences. “When I'm home, she doesn't know I'm there. Fran Antonucci has been sick for twelve years. It's a horrible disease of the nervous system. She lies in our home, in a special bed. I have round-the-clock nurses. I promised that I'd never put her in a hospital. Now she can't move, she can't speak. When I talk to her, she stares blankly. If I squeeze her hand, nothing.” He shook his head. “God, that woman had such life in her.”

The room became chilly and the candlelight suddenly seemed like a foolish artifice. Tessie got up from her chair and walked to where Barone was sitting. She cradled his large head in her arms. The dead weight of it made it feel as though she was holding a Thanksgiving turkey. “I had no idea,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

Barone got up from the table and walked to the kitchen where he pulled the Sarah Vaughan album
Swingin' Easy
from one of his bags. He put it on the hi-fi and set the needle down on the fourth cut. He'd imagined how they would dance and how she would soften in his arms when she heard the words. Now they were sitting inches apart, many worlds between them.

Looking at the woman seated across from him, he saw his own ache and longing reflected in her face. They sat in their chairs, silently dancing with their private memories as Sarah Vaughan sang.

B
ACK BEFORE THEY
knew that the tingling in her fingers and the weakness in her legs were a sentence from which there was no reprieve, Barone would make Fran dinner while she lay in bed. This was after he'd sold Peerless and made enough money to move to Miami and make a killing in the real estate boom. A friend had just visited Havana, where he'd seen the game of Jai Alai. It was like super-speed handball, he said. He told Barone how the
cestas
made the players look like vultures with huge claws, and how they moved with such grace and cunning, leaping in the air and hitting the hard little ball as fast as 180 miles per hour. He wanted Barone to help him open a Jai Alai fronton in Fort Lauderdale. Barone was rich enough to retire, but Fran had discouraged him, saying she'd kill both of them if he spent more time at home. So he went to Havana and saw the Jai Alai and understood the thrill and simplicity of the game as well as how much money there was to be made when overly excited people bet on it. Their first fronton was built on what later became the parking lot of the Hialeah racetrack. Just six years earlier, in 1953, Barone and his friend opened the big fronton in Dania.

Most nights he'd come home around eleven and fall into bed, but on the nights he was home early, he'd put on the radio, lower the lights, and bring Fran a tray covered with a linen cloth and their best silver. There'd always be a glass of wine and a cut flower—a rose, a carnation. He'd carry in the beautifully arranged setting and she'd say something like, “If your father could see you now, he'd beat the shit out of you.” Anything to undercut the tenderness of the gesture. Years later, when she couldn't walk and her speech was badly slurred, it was an ordeal for her to leave the bed. On one of those nights, Barone brought her a plate full of roast beef and mashed potatoes, her favorite. When he walked into the room, he saw that her eyes were closed as if she were straining to hear something. The radio had gone static but in between the hissing sounds he could make
out the melody: “Someone to Watch Over Me.” When he passed a certain spot in front of the floor lamp, between her bed and the radio, the static dried up and the music became clear. He put down the tray and stood in that spot, a human antenna, until the song played out. Neither of them mentioned the tears that slid down her cheeks.