The Orange Blossom Special (20 page)

Normally, Charlie would have relished discussing Reggie Sykes and his up-for-grabs soul, but not tonight. He had other things on his mind and he couldn't wait to talk to Ella about them. His sit-downs with Ella had become routine, every night after dinner. Though he was less gregarious than his father, Charlie was a good listener. People at the store told him things that were personal or revealing, and never felt in danger of being judged or talked about behind their backs. They were comforted by his broad smile and solid demeanor, and noticed how, when they would talk, he would cock his head and stare straight on at them with his soft blue eyes, so as not to miss a word. Because he said so little, people felt free to interpret his silence in ways that would suit them, and as a result, they revealed even more.

All day he listened, keeping the stories in his head so that when he and Ella had their time together, they could discuss the characters she had come to know through his telling.

“Betty Foley was in today.” She was the registered nurse with the
crooked nose and the veined hands who usually showed up around four, just off her early morning shift.

“How's old Mr. Thayer doing?” asked Ella.

Ben Thayer was the pharmacist, muted now by a stroke.

“Betty says she can see something going on in his eyes. She says that when she sings to him, particularly the Irish songs, his eyes seem to get moist.” Betty told Charlie that she sang to Mr. Thayer while she bathed him. Charlie could imagine her voice, husky and intimate, as if she were talking to someone she couldn't see. “Just so's you don't think there's anything lewd in my manner,” she said, her voice tilting to a question. “I think it makes him feel less shamed about his nakedness.”

“Mr. Thayer's a real proud man,” said Ella. “I'm sure Betty Foley is a fine comfort to him.”

Then she asked about Isaac Solomon, the gardener. “Did he have anything to say today?”

Isaac came in for a pint of scotch every couple of days and always paid with exact change. Each time he'd say, “Howdy doo, Mr. Landy, it certainly is a fine day, isn't it?” Isaac had a terrible stutter. A good day for him was when he didn't have to speak. He let his gardens—magical designs with bursts of color, secret pathways, and exotic sweeps of grass—talk for him. Charlie knew how hard it was for him to utter that cheerful greeting. He'd always tried to say something in return to make Isaac aware that people noticed him, but without obligating him to give an answer. “Nice job with the Roscoes' rock garden, it's the pride of the neighborhood,” he'd say. Isaac would nod and purse his lips, as if he were mulling it over.

Last winter, after Isaac didn't show up for over a week, Charlie learned that he was sick with pneumonia. Isaac didn't have a phone, but since he went to Ella's church, she knew where he lived. On a Sunday afternoon, she and Charlie walked through the colored section
of town to Isaac's one-room wooden house. They found him lying in bed, his eyes glassy and his face flushed with fever. The windows in the room were closed, and judging by the stale and sour smell inside, they hadn't been opened for days. “All of God's creatures need light,” said Ella, throwing open the two windows in the room. “As if you, Isaac, of all people, were ignorant of that fact.” Ella fed him some chicken soup she'd cooked, and left him a potful of boiled beef on the stove. Charlie brought him a pint of his favorite scotch in a brown bag and placed it on the kitchen table. “This is for later, when you're better,” he said.

Ella got a kick out of hearing about the Glenns—how they'd dart in, their eyes searching the corners of the store like bank robbers, and say something like, “One man's poison is another man's guilty pleasure,” before exploding into sharp bursts of laughter and rushing out again.

If it was close to the weekend, the university kids would come in—the frat boys with their cocky smiles and fake IDs, the grad students with their airs of indifference. Charlie had come to know many of them by name and sometimes they'd invite him to their parties. “C'mon, Charlie, take a busman's holiday,” they'd say. “Thanks, but I've got to finish up here,” he'd answer. He knew they thought he was a queer one. Still, they confided in him their fears about flunking out or problems with girlfriends. Charlie Landy could keep a secret—that was for sure. Who was he going to tell anyway? He told Ella, of course, but she was only interested in the ones who got pregnant.

The Grists, Marilyn and Bill, dropped in from time to time when they needed a case of wine for a party. Nice people. She would always have a kind word about his father: “Every time I walk through this door I can hear your dad's infectious laughter.” She continued to see his mother, even though by now, Charlie told Ella, he was certain
it was more a chore than a pleasure. Bill would find a moment to come real close and whisper so Marilyn wouldn't hear: “You know if you ever find yourself short of cash, or in any kind of trouble, I'm always here.” He knew the Grists were strapped for money and that it made Bill feel proud to hold out the offer. “Thanks Bill,” he'd say, grasping him by the shoulder. “It's a comfort to know that.” He told Ella how he thought Bill felt responsible for him, since he was his dad's friend from long ago.

Charlie told Ella everything but this: each time Tessie Lockhart came in he felt embarrassed, as if being near her stirred up the dis-orientation he felt being around her daughter. He also felt a little greedy, knowing that Tessie might talk about Dinah and in that way, bring another piece of her to him. Aside from that, or because of it, she was the customer he liked the best. She always seemed nervous and disorganized. “Just stocking up,” she'd say, pulling four bottles of Almaden off the shelf. Charlie could tell when her married boyfriend, the Jai Alai mogul, was coming for dinner. She'd suddenly get particular about her choices, citing specific regions of France. “I need a champagne from the Loire Valley,” she'd say, her voice a little louder. (Tessie still nursed the belief that no one knew about her affair with the Baron.) But his favorite moments were when they would have one of their chats.

He would start by saying, “How's my sister, your new daughter?” Tessie would pause, as if the question caught her off guard, then reach into her pocketbook for a pack of cigarettes and lighter. She'd hand Charlie the lighter and bend into the flame as she sucked in the burning nicotine. A ring of smoke would form a halo around her head after she exhaled. Then the conversation would begin.

“Did you ever have a best friend?”

“Not really. Well, Ella, but she kind of came with my life. Did you?”

“None except my husband. But the two of them, they know each other's secrets and read each other's minds like they come from the same womb.” She pushed the bangs off her forehead as if to clear the way for her next thought. “They carry in their heads the expectations their fathers had for them. And when they fight, it's because one of them knows that the other isn't meeting up to those expectations.” Until she said those words, Tessie had no idea she knew this.

“We keep people alive however we can, I guess,” he said.

“How do you keep your dad alive?”

“By taking care of my mother and Ella and Reggie under one roof. By doing the best I can. The truth is, it doesn't seem enough. Does Crystal seem happy?”

“You know her adorable boyfriend, Huddie Harwood,” she said, making it sound like a question.

“I remember the Harwood kid,” said Charlie. “A little runt when I knew him, but not a mean bone in him.”

“That's good to hear. Dinah doesn't seem to do as well in the social department as Crystal does.”

“I wouldn't worry about her.”

“She's brainy, that one. Takes after her father.” Tessie got a faraway look in her eyes. Charlie knew she was too tactful to add that she was concerned that Crystal was headed down the wrong path, but with everything else on her mind she didn't have time to worry about that too.

T
HESE WERE THE
people that populated Charlie's world. He recognized his good fortune, but it was not enough to quell the restlessness. The river that ran beneath him was how he pictured it. He knew that in order to become who he was meant to be, he would soon have to leave this place. He'd been running the store for nearly
three years now. This is what he needed to discuss with Ella tonight. After dinner, Reggie and Victoria returned to the cable car in the dining room (“I swear they must've built San Francisco in less time than it's taking us to do this friggin' puzzle”). Charlie and Ella went to her room.

Charlie sat beside her on her narrow bed. From that close, he could see how white her hair had become. Her hands, which were normally busy, rested wearily on her lap.

“You're tired,” he said, putting his head on her shoulder.

“I'm old,” she said. “Old and tired, yes I am.”

“Not too old to give this old man some advice, I hope.”

“You've only seen twenty years. What you mean, ‘old'?”

“Sometimes I feel I'm living the life of a fifty-year-old man. I get up, I go to work. I come home. Instead of children, I have my mother and Reggie going at each other like magpies. I go to sleep. I get up, and it starts all over again. This can't be what I was meant to do with my life.”

“Oh honey,” she said, scratching his head the way she had when he was a little boy. “This is just the beginning. God dealt you a mighty blow. He's testing you and you doing just fine. Whatever it is he has in mind for you, you're getting ready to handle it. God's funny that way. It don't always seem like he has a plan but you've got to have faith that He knows what's best.”

“We used to talk about the changes coming. You think my dad's death was the change?”

“No I don't,” she answered. “I think your dad's death was just the beginning.”

They sat in silence, breathing in the truth. After a while, Charlie said the thing he planned on not saying.

“Did you ever find yourself thinking about one person all the
time, and getting this kind of nauseous feeling in your stomach when you did?”

Ella looked at Charlie as if meeting him for the first time. Then she let out a whoop of laughter and rocked back and forth with it until her cheeks were wet with tears. Finally, when she caught her breath she said, “Well, thank the Lord, Charlie Landy has fallen in love. From the first day that girl walked into the house, I saw something in your eyes and I knew what it was. WAHOO.” She let out another yelp. “You got it bad.”

“I'm glad you're enjoying this,” said Charlie.

“I've seen how she looks at you, the way she wets her lips when you walk in the room. I see how you get a bullfrog in your throat . . .”

“Ella,” he interrupted. “Could we please not talk about this anymore?”

“Don't be embarrassed, it's the most normal thing in the world, even for you.”

“Yeah, well it doesn't feel normal.”

Charlie had kissed girls before, even made out with them. He thought he understood what there was to understand about desire. But Dinah was different. Her smell, her habit of lifting her skirt and pulling it across her knees before she sat down, the way her eyes, in a certain light, sparkled with saffron flecks—these things filled him and never left him, even when she wasn't present.

After his talk with Ella, he agonized over Dinah. Did everyone see what Ella saw? Did Dinah know this too? Dinah was practically his sister. Wasn't this incestuous and not very normal? He wondered how he would act the next time he saw her.

The next afternoon, she came to the store. It was Bologna Day. They sat next to each other and watched out the door. Words, which always came naturally to him, froze in his throat.

“Would you like to go to the movies on Friday night?” He knew how mundane that sounded.

Dinah leaned her face so close to his you could have barely passed a blade of grass between them.

“I'd love to,” she smiled mischievously, then looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Charlie Landy, did you just ask me out for a date?”

Barone knew that what he had in mind sounded crazy even though it made perfect sense to him. He was sure that Tessie would understand too, this need to introduce her to Fran. He had real feelings for Tessie and didn't want to keep half of his life hidden from her. He never gave up on the thought that Fran knew what was going on around her, she was just too locked in to show any signs. If that was so, then she already knew about Tessie. If it wasn't, then he was honoring their marriage by making this gesture of truth. Tessie had told him of her conversations with Jerry, and how she felt his hand in the unfolding of her life. He didn't know how he would find the words to say this to her in person, so late one night he composed one of his notes.

Dear Dottie,

I know my letters are usually filled with suggestions of where we should go, what wine we will drink, which clothes I would like you to wear on that little body of yours. This time is different. I have a favor to ask of you. It's a request really, and something I have thought about for a long time. You don't have to give me your answer right away, but it's something I'd like you to think about.

For the past five years I have been living my life in
shadows. I say shadows because Fran, while she is not here in the usual ways, looms large over my life. You tell me how Jerry always knows what is going on. Sometimes he even guides you. I feel that way about Fran. If it was possible for me to meet Jerry, would you want me to do it? It is still possible for you to meet Fran. It is something I would like very much. Will you come to Miami Beach for the weekend? We could stay at the Fontainebleau Hotel (very ritzy). Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra perform there. We can go to the nightclub and dance the night away. If you decide to come, wear bright colors. Fran likes bright colors. I hope my request doesn't trouble you. I thought you would understand.