The Orange Blossom Special (24 page)

“Oh my God, a kitten,” cried Crystal, reaching to pick it up.

It dug its claws into Barone's shirt. Gently, he lifted the animal and cupped it in his hands like water. “He's a scared little fellow. I found him on the beach at Crandon Park. He was hanging around the refreshment stand looking for scraps. I asked the guy behind the counter if he belonged to anyone, and he said no, that it seemed as if someone had left him there the day before. The guy said he was very gentle and sweet, and I said I knew someone who was also gentle and sweet and that I thought they might become fast friends.” Barone shot Tessie a look. “Want to hold him?” he asked, offering her the blotchy ball of fur.

Tessie stepped back. “No, that's all right. He's comfortable with you.” Tessie had never owned a pet before. Cats, in particular, scared her. They weren't to be trusted. There was something stealthy about them; they were too quiet, too fast. Those sharp teeth and razorlike claws, even their whiskers felt wiry and abrasive. If she had to choose, she'd pick a dog, any day. They were dumber, less subtle, not as judgmental. Though Jerry was slim and graceful, in temperament he was much more doglike. Barone had a large chest and short, thick arms, like a bulldog maybe, but he had the sleek wily character of a cat. Even this: making sure the girls were here when he brought the creature to her house, knowing full well that they'd love and cuddle him right away. What a typically conniving, feline thing to do.

“Can I hold him?” asked Dinah. Barone placed him in her arms. The cat twisted and splayed his paws before settling into the crook of her elbow. She noticed that he had four toes on his hind feet and five on his forefeet.

“Would you like to keep him?” asked Barone.

“Yes,” cried out both girls. “Can we, Mom?” asked Dinah. “Please, Tessie,” said Crystal.

“I don't know the first thing about raising a cat,” said Tessie firmly.

“I'll take care of him,” said Dinah. “So will I,” said Crystal.

“Cats are nothing compared to adolescent girls,” said Barone. “You'll grow to love him, you'll see.”

Crystal grabbed the cat by its front paws and tried to wrench him away from Dinah. The cat arched its back and gave Barone a knowing look:
So this is what it's going to be like.

“Let's name him Elvis,” said Crystal.

“No,” said Dinah. “We're going to call him Eddie.”

“Oh. After Eddie Fingers,” said Crystal, and then turned to Barone. “The boy who died.”

Tessie hadn't thought about that funeral for a long time. It got her thinking about her early days in Gainesville and how frightening everything had seemed: the new house, the job, Dinah's friendship with Crystal and the first time she picked her up from the Landy's house, the time she ran over the cat. She had told Barone about the cat, and he'd never brought it up again. For that matter, Dinah had never brought it up either, even after the barbecue at the Landy's, when Charlie got up and sang “The Cat Came Back.” Charlie Landy had a curious intuition. He always seemed to know what she was going to say. Maybe that's why she felt so at ease with him. Most of all, thinking back to those days made her ache with how much she missed her Jerry.

The cat. Jerry. Who else? It suddenly made sense. Jerry had sent her the cat.

“Eddie sounds right,” said Tessie. “We need to make him a sleeping box.” She went to the hall closet where she stored the carton from her Magnavox hi-fi. She took an old sheet and folded it so it
filled the box. “He'll sleep in my room.” Later, when Tessie and Barone were alone, he said to her, “The cat will be a real companion. You'll feel a lot better having him around.”

“The cat is a cat,” said Tessie. “It's just another thing I need to take care of.”

Of course, almost immediately, Eddie took over Tessie's heart. At night, he'd jump onto her bed just before she'd go to sleep. He would snuggle up next to her and sleep with his head on her collarbone. During the day, when no one was around, she would carry him on her shoulder and talk to him. Nothing personal, just little asides like, “Let's open the window and get some fresh air,” or “I wish Crystal would make her own bed, don't you?” Remarkably, with his purrs and meowing, Eddie always seemed to answer back. Tessie couldn't remember when the nicknames began, but not long after he arrived, she began calling him Mr. Paws, and Eddie Bear. After a couple of weeks, she started calling him the Bear, and Pooh Bear, but never in front of the girls. She even gave nicknames to his toys. Tessie felt such love for Eddie that she'd find herself laughing when he would jump onto the kitchen table and lap up whatever food was left on the plates. “You'd kill us if we jumped on the table and started licking the plates,” Dinah teased.

“No I wouldn't. It's kind of cute,” said Tessie, scratching the top of his head.

Eddie was definitely her cat. He tolerated the girls when they took pictures of him in silly poses, but Tessie was the one he lived for. It was Tessie he'd greet at the door whenever she came home, his tail up, ears forward, as happy to see her as if she'd been away for months instead of hours. He'd sidle up to her and rub her legs with his whiskers and muzzle,
Welcome home. This is the greatest thing that has ever happened.
Sometimes she hugged him so hard, she was afraid she'd crush his little bones.

One morning, after he'd been there a month, Tessie found herself sitting on the kitchen floor, mesmerized by Eddie, sound asleep, a swirl of fur bathed in sunlight. He had a little black marking on his upper lip, like a smudge of charcoal, and she had to stop herself from burrowing her head in the softness of his pink belly. Tessie wondered how she ever lived life without a cat, and what Jerry would think of her infatuation. Before she left for work, she placed a note in the Jerry Box:

I have a new friend. His name is Eddie, and he's black and white and rust colored, and the cutest thing I've ever seen. He makes me laugh and seems to understand things that I say. Have I mentioned he's a kitten? I never understood about people and their pets, but I have a kind of love for him that makes me feel protected, loved, and less alone. He never disappoints me. Who knew?

That night, for the first and only time ever, Eddie peed in her bed.

“S
HE LOVES THAT
cat more than anything,” Dinah told Charlie a couple of weeks after Eddie arrived. “I know she loves me, and she probably even loves Crystal. But this is different. No matter what he does, even disgusting things like puking up hairballs on the couch, she thinks it's cute.” They were sitting in Charlie's car at the canoe outpost near High Springs.

The first time they went out at night, he drove her home from the movies right afterward. This time, when the movie ended, he suggested High Springs, a favorite place to go parking. She'd visited him in the store every day for the past two years, and he'd seen her at her house at least once a week when he came to visit Crystal. But being with him alone in his car reminded her of the time she saw her math teacher, Mr. Halstead, walking down the street holding his
son's hand. Mr. Halstead was wearing shorts and sandals. She had never really known he had a kid, much less one whose hand he would hold. The whole thing, the shorts, the bare feet, the little boy, was intimate and embarrassing at the same time, which was exactly how she felt with Charlie now.

“That's what they say about animals, that they give you unconditional love,” Charlie said. “They don't hold grudges, they don't care how you look. They just live to love you.”

Dinah stared at him and said nothing. He stared back. The Everly Brothers were singing “Devoted to You.” The music was sweet and the words made you want to believe that love could be forever. He put his arm around her and she softened into it. She was beautiful, Dinah, so full of spirit and life, like her curly fiery hair, which could never be completely tamed. He could see how her father came up with the name Boing Boing Girl. He imagined what his father felt like when he fell in love with his mother. The way he had told it, she was a fractious beauty in her day: wild, eccentric, already divorced at twenty-two. To her, Maynard must have seemed solid and safe and a world apart from the boys she had known. Charlie had never thought of either of his parents that way, but it must have been like this.

He kissed Dinah. She brushed his cheeks with her fingers. He kissed her again and wrapped his arms around her, holding her as tight as it was possible to do. She put her arms around him and tried to pull him closer. They kissed and rocked back and forth through the Everly Brothers and at least three other songs. It was as if they had found this place of refuge after a long journey, and neither was about to let go.

“I love you.” It was the first time he'd ever said those words to a girl.

“I love you, too, Charlie. I've always known it, I guess, I just didn't know what it was.”

Her breath was warm on his face as she stared at him with expectation. He had no words. He said, “I'm sorry, I never get this tongue-tied.” She said, “Don't be crazy. Besides, I feel the same way.” He kissed her again and their bodies folded into each other. For so many years they had watched each other and secretly reveled in the familiarity of a voice, a smell. Now it was as if someone finally opened the door and both of them were home. Dinah heard herself groaning, “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Please.”

Suddenly, he got still and pulled back.

“We should stop.” His voice was gravelly. “It isn't right.”

“I don't care,” she whispered.

“I do. I mean I don't right now, but I do in the scheme of things.”

“How can you think about the scheme of things at a time like this?”

He sucked on the tips of her fingers then said, “I never stop thinking about them. Can you stand that?”

“I can stand everything about you,” she said.

On Saturday nights, Gainesville came alive. The fraternity houses were lit up and the music from their parties filled the streets. Charlie and Dinah drove down Fraternity Row, a beautiful street with giant oak trees, and old Victorian houses grown shabby from neglect. This is what I'm missing, thought Charlie at the same time that Dinah was wondering if Charlie was a little too perfect to be true.

Out of habit, Charlie followed West University onto University Avenue, and went another four blocks past the liquor store. The first thing he noticed was the glass. It picked up the reflection of his headlights and shone like glitter. There was a giant hole where the front window used to be. Someone had shattered it with a rock. Charlie and Dinah got out of the car and walked toward the store. “This is just the beginning,” he said to Dinah. There had to be a
punch line to the Harmon's incident. Charlie knew that. He just didn't think it would happen so fast.

That night, he dreamed that he was standing in front of a room full of people and words were coming out of his mouth that weren't his. He kept saying the words and afterward people came up and told him how much what he had said meant to them. The following night, he had the same dream and after that, the dream became part of the texture of his days and the puzzles of his night. What did it mean and why did it keep coming back?

First thing Monday morning Huddie Harwood showed up. Huddie seemed smaller, more tentative than that day in the street.

“Huddie Harwood, how glad I am to see you,” said Charlie, who was boarding up the window. He clapped him around the shoulder and shook his hand. “I owe you a big thanks for me and my friends. You really got us out of a jam. For all I know, you saved my life.”

Huddie smiled his jagged smile. “It was nothing, Mr. Landy. Sorry about your window. Stupid hoods.”

“Don't go calling me Mr. Landy, buddy,” said Charlie. “As far as I'm concerned, after what you did, we're friends forever.”

“That's what I came to talk to you about, sir,” said Huddie. “Well not exactly, but sort of.”

Huddie looked so serious and tight with determination.

“What say we take some of these chairs, have a beer, and sit out back?” said Charlie, trying to put him at ease. “C'mon, we can watch the loading dock at Florsheims.”

They dragged out the two folding chairs and placed them on a mottled swath of grass. Charlie kept moving his chair to try to escape the sun, but there wasn't a sliver of shade to be found.

Huddie pressed his lips together, trying to figure out how to start. He took a swig from his beer.

“It's about your sister,” he said. “Crystal.”

“Oh yes, my sister, Crystal. I know her well.”

Huddie didn't crack a smile. “Seeing as though you're the man in the family—I mean, well your mother, um Mrs. Landy, is probably the head of the house, but you're the only man—so anyway, your sister, Crystal. I love her very much and I wanted to tell you that I would like to marry her.”

Huddie continued. “Well, of course we can't get married right away, us both being in high school and all. But I've been thinking how when I graduate, I want to go into the army and serve my time. If Crystal will wait for me, then we could get married when I get back.”

“Does Crystal know about any of this?” asked Charlie.

“No, sir, at least not about the army part.”

Every day, more soldiers were being shipped to Vietnam. Talk of the draft was hovering around young men like a virus. “Why do you want to go into the army?” asked Charlie.

“Well, you know, to serve my country. The communists are getting closer and closer. I'll get drafted, and besides, it's my duty as an American.”

Huddie was only five years younger than Charlie, but he seemed to Charlie like such a boy, a boy with an idealized version of what it was to be a man. The way he said those words, Charlie knew they weren't his.

“I'll bet your dad is real gung ho about you going,” said Charlie.