The Orange Blossom Special (29 page)

It is hard for me to picture the things you are seeing in New York City. I am glad to hear that you feel you are finally fitting into your own skin. I pray for you every day. Your friend, Ella Sykes

Tessie wrote to Jerry:

Dinah's having a hard time going to college and living at home. Crystal's whooping it up in her sorority house and seems to have no time for her. She has made one girlfriend—a mousy little thing named Hedda who is always apologizing for herself. Dinah says she's a genius. There is no sign of a boy on the horizon. Her grades are good but her mood is horrible. Everything I do embarrasses her and we fight a lot. What am I supposed to do?

The man is getting old. He's sixty soon. Now that his wife has died he wants me to move to Miami Beach and be with him. How can I leave Dinah? My job? My life here?

V is spending all her time with Reggie getting the new bar ready. They're having a big grand opening next week. I bought a new shift to wear to the party. I envy how V can get so caught up in stuff like this. She doesn't seem to be bothered with depressions and moodiness like some other people I know.

Sorry to talk your ear off. I don't expect you to have the answers to all my questions, but who else can I ask?

And Barone wrote to Tessie:

Of course I'll be there for the party. It's the biggest thing to happen in Florida since Jai Alai!

The big bed in the big room is empty. The sound of the waves outside is sometimes so loud and hungry. Without you here, maybe I will feed the bed and the room to the sea. Dottie, you are
my
Orange Blossom Special.

(Here, a drawing with Tessie's face, arms, and legs sticking out of an orange that is rolling down a lane about to hit the pins.)

Yours til' the Orange Bowls, Barone (STRIKE!)

O
N THE NIGHT
before the big opening, Dinah and Tessie had a fight. It started when Tessie asked Dinah what she was going to wear to the party.

“Do you think I've given it a moment's thought?” Dinah snapped.

“Well yes, I thought maybe you had.”

“Has it occurred to you that I don't care at all about the party?”

Tessie knew that tone of voice, filled with nettles. But this time it had something woeful and disappointed in it as well.

“Sweetie, you don't have to go,” she said.

“Oh, yes I do,” said Dinah. “I have to go, all right. Not only that. I'm bringing a date.”

“Wonderful.” Tessie's eyes lit up.

“I'm bringing Eddie,” she said hugging the cat close to her. She rested her head on his and started to dance around the room singing the pop song “Eddie My Love.”

Silently, Tessie entreated Jerry. “Give me a hand here. Help me say the right thing.” Then, with some trepidation, she said to Dinah, “You're not really thinking of bringing Eddie. That's a joke, right?”

“Hell it isn't.” Dinah whirled around. “I go, he goes. Why's that a joke?”

“Honey, you know what they say about spinsters? How no one will love them but their cats?”

The moment those words left her mouth, Tessie knew she'd said the worst thing possible. She tried to recover. “Of course, I'm not implying that you're a spinster.”

“Of course not,” said Dinah. “But if no one in the world loved me but Eddie, that would be fine too.” Eddie tried to writhe out of her arms.

“That's ridiculous. There are so many people who love you.”

“Yeah. Name three.”

Tessie hated being put in a corner like this. “Don't be silly, I don't want to play this game.”

“It's not a game,” insisted Dinah. “Name three. And they have to be living.”

“Well me, naturally. Crystal. And Charlie. Charlie Landy.”

Dinah got that tone in her voice again. “You're my mother, so that doesn't count. You have to love me. Crystal has barely said a word to me since she became a Tri Delt. And Charlie Landy will never speak to me again after how awful I was to him before he went to New York City. So that makes one.”

Tessie stared at her little girl, all grown up now. Her body was all taut and sharp, at peace only when she was asleep. She still had the same large, searching eyes, but her expression had changed from one of a quizzical child to a wary adult wondering when the next blow would come. When she smiled, which didn't happen often these days, the world was sunny.

“Your dad makes two,” said Tessie. “Who says we can't count the dead?”

Dinah got a faraway look in her eyes and started singing again as she and Eddie waltzed out of the room.

That night, Tessie went through her drawers looking for a pair of gold hoop earrings to wear with her new shift. Tucked way in the back of everything was a rumpled old red bandanna that she used to wear like a turban over her pin curls. Jerry used to say that she looked like the Maharani of Mars.

The next morning, when Dinah came to breakfast, she found the
neatly ironed bandanna folded into a square next to her orange juice. On top of it was a note in her mother's squiggly hand:

This is for Eddie. Tie it around his neck tonight and he'll look like the coolest cat at the party. I love you, and it does too count. Mom

When Tessie opened her sandwich later that afternoon at her desk at Lithographics, she found this note from her daughter.

Thanks Mom. I've got you, dad, and Eddie. That's more than enough.

And early that evening, before Barone came to pick her up for the party, Tessie slipped this note into her Jerry Box.

You are one shrewd son of a bitch. Pardon my French.

T
O
T
ESSIE
, C
HRISTMAS
in Gainesville always seemed like an apology. There were no fireplaces. Those fake Santas coming down the chimney and silly snowmen with their carrot stick noses and zigzag twig smiles seemed to be trying too hard. She hated the fake fir trees that looked to her like Fuller Brushes, and the pathetic carpets of white felt that were supposed to pass for snow. Christmas was the hardest time without Jerry. She knew that Barone would shower her with expensive gifts—including the little orange something that he promised in his note—and that Dinah would get her something, grudgingly and at the last minute. But all of it seemed like a record playing at the wrong speed, a warped reminder of a past that never stopped playing over and over in her memory. So Tessie was grateful that Victoria and Reggie had decided to hold their big opening bash on Christmas Eve. A lot of people in town thought it was selfish, even a little high-minded. But it didn't keep
any of them from showing up at seven
P.M.
when Victoria, splendid for this night in her white tight pants with a melon stripe down each leg and a matching melon-colored vest, threw open the shiny double doors and shouted to the waiting crowd “The Orange Blossom Special is open for business. Y'all step aboard for the ride of a lifetime.”

Klieg lights blazed through the night skies beckoning everyone to the party. There was a band that included a kazoo, two fiddles, and a banjo, and it serenaded the crowd all night long. There were pretty girls dressed in short white skirts with melon-colored vests serving platters of crab cakes, thick pink slices of steak, and little black squares of bread with dots of sour cream and caviar. Of course the liquor, all of it free, was everywhere. In the background, the sound of a chugging train played nonstop punctuated occasionally by a tooting whistle. At midnight, everyone was told to step into the street for a special surprise. Fireworks cracked open the sky. The smell of sulfur and champagne filled the air. People clapped and shouted out drunken accolades: “Holy Toledo!” or “What in the Sam Hill was that?” It was the kind of party that made people feel as if they were having a good time, even if they weren't. Before they left, all the guests got gifts: cloisonné pins with the Orange Blossom Special diesel and the logo beneath it.

Turned out that Eddie was more of a party cat than anyone imagined. He spent most of the evening calmly snuggled in the pouch that Dinah had fashioned for him with his head buried under her arm. Only once, when the photographer from the
Gainesville Sun
came around and said to Dinah, “Who's the little guy?” did Eddie poke his head out and look up for a picture.

The next day, under a photo of a smiling Dinah holding a solemn Eddie staring right into the photographer's lens, there was a caption in large boldface type that said: “Is There Anyone in Gainesville
Who WASN'T at the Orange Blossom Special Last Night? (see story, page 3). Dinah Lockhart on board with pal Eddie.” In the article, Victoria was quoted as saying, “It's about time that Gainesville entered the Sixties. Keep your eyes on Landy, Bowman, and Sykes. You haven't seen anything yet.” Frank Bowman told the paper that in all modesty, he thought that the Orange Blossom Special was his greatest masterpiece to date. Phil Ryan, owner of Ryan's Bar and Grill, called the whole extravaganza a tasteless farce. “It was like a circus, for Pete's sake,” he said. “Whatever happened to plain old elbow grease and hard work?”

Ella clipped the story and the picture from the paper and sent it to Charlie.

Your mother, bless her heart, is very happy. I believe that she and Reggie will be very successful with the saloon. It was a sight to see last night, Reggie talking and smiling at everyone he met. He is the toast of the town. I thought you'd like this article and picture of Dinah and her cat. She is such a pretty girl. Her eyes are sad. I pray for you every day. Your friend, Ella Sykes.

C
HARLIE WAS WALKING
back to his barracks after a long day of classes. It was snowing. Not the fluffy white stuff he'd imagined as a child. These were meager snowflakes that melted the moment they hit the ground. Nor was it the winter wonderland of storybooks, just lead skies and banks of ice black with soot. How odd to yearn for Christmas in Gainesville, he thought, dreading the upcoming holiday. At least at home he'd be with people he loved, some of them anyway. This was going to be one bleak and lonely Christmas. Thank God he could go home for New Year's. Funny, for all the thought he'd given to getting away, it never once dawned
on him that he'd be homesick. Remember how this feels, he said to himself. It will come in handy when you're talking to young recruits who feel the same.

When Charlie got to his bunk, he found Ella's letter. He lay on his bed savoring the thick envelope in his hands. He'd lain on this bed staring at the gray cement walls around him so often, that he'd identified figures in the irregularity of the surface. There was a duck face, a mushroom cap, and a lumpy area that he could swear was the map of Florida. Since he arrived at Fort Wadsworth, he felt the way he had after the fire and his father's death, like who he was and where he belonged had been pulled out from under him. He opened the envelope and pulled out the newspaper clipping. For a long while he studied Eddie's guileless face and Dinah's sweet round eyes. He ran his fingers over Eddie's nose and could feel it, damp and cool. Then he brought the picture to his face and closed his eyes. His fingers remembered being entwined in Dinah's hair and the sudden softness of the back of her neck. When he looked up again, Eddie was staring down at him. He saw the cusp of the moon in the cat's eyes and felt a great tide of loneliness. Eddie's gaze was impatient and insistent:
What are you waiting for?

Charlie leaped ahead in his thoughts. There he was with Dinah. That was right. There was something else, though he couldn't quite make it out. That night, as he lay staring at the duck face, the mushroom cap, and the map of Florida, he wrote to Dinah.

How can I tell others to listen to their hearts when my own is breaking with how much I love you? I know how you feel about itinerant preachers, but I now know that this one will only be at home when you say you will marry me. Forgive my mushiness. It's been nearly three months since I last saw you and every day that goes by
without you is a painful reminder of how quickly life passes. I'll be home for New Year's Eve. Will you ring in '65 with me? I want to start the new year with you. And Eddie of course. He came so alive in the
Gainesville Sun
picture. All my love, Charlie

Tessie was late coming home from work on the day that Dinah received the letter. She'd been at the annual Lithographics Christmas party, much as she hated it. But how would it look if she didn't show up? As head bookkeeper now, the Bechs kept reminding her she was one of the principals of the company. That night, at dinner, as she started to tell Dinah about how the Bechs kept sneaking rum into the punch, she noticed that Dinah had this slippery grin coming and going on her face.

“You look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” she said, then looked down at Eddie. “Don't you go getting any ideas.”

Dinah put on her highfalutin voice. “While you were out partying and drinking rum with the Bechs, your daughter received a marriage proposal.”

Tessie looked confused. “Either you've met somebody awfully fast, or I'm missing something.”

“It's Charlie Landy,” said Dinah. “It's always been Charlie Landy.”

“You're going to marry Charlie Landy?”

“I can't marry Charlie Landy. He always goes away,” said Dinah.

Tessie pushed her plate away and propped her elbows on the table. “When you were a little girl, your father and I would play a game called Who Will Dinah Marry? The answer was always different, depending on what phase you were going through. We had you married off to a ventriloquist, an airline pilot, and a dry cleaner.” Tessie laughed at the memory. “The last time we played that game was just
before he died. You got an A on some paper you wrote for school and the teacher wrote, ‘This has real soul.' Your dad said to me, ‘Jo'—he used to call me that—‘Our girl really does have soul. I hope whoever she marries recognizes that and has some of his own.' ”