Too Close to the Falls (22 page)

He remained calm, as though he were talking to the Duponts or Warty or Marie. Roy had a style that didn't change with the wind. He said, “I go all over these parts, givin' out Juicy Fruit sticks and gettin' autographs. Why, yesterday we got . . . who was it, Cath? Ava Gardner, wasn't it? But she wanted Doublemint.” He beamed back a smile right at her.

Marilyn didn't wait for Cathy's share of the joke. “Well,” she said, raising her shoulders and everything else that seemed connected as well, except for her slip, “I guess you can't satisfy everyone.”

Roy was quiet and never moved away after getting the book back. He said, “So I've heard tell.”

For some reason Cathy didn't feel included. Marilyn hadn't even said hello to Cathy and now she was ignoring the fact that she was in a slip in front of a man. Dolores would have said she had no shame at all. Cathy moved toward the door to give Roy the hint that this was really too silly for words and then Marilyn asked him, “Do you have any
Photoplay
or any full packages of Juicy Fruit with you?” Roy smiled and shook his head like he'd been caught out and this was a normal question. Did she think he travelled with an arsenal of gum and magazines? “Say!” she said as though she'd just had a flash of genius. “Do you think you can drop by later with the latest
Photoplay,
and a
big
package of Juicy Fruit?”

Roy indicated that wouldn't be a problem as he and I walked to the door. With the door opened, he turned and said, “I'll be droppin' them sundries off around nine tonight.” Before you could say “Bob's your uncle,” Cathy and Roy were in the hall, sinking into thick carpeting that silenced their steps.

Cathy waited for Roy to say something when they were in the elevator; however, he was silent with no perceivable expression on his face. “You know what I think, Roy?” He looked down to hear Cathy's opinion. “Well, I think she was a floozy.”

Roy lifted an eyebrow. “That's a new one on me,” Roy ventured.

“Well, I guess I'll have to tell you what a floozy is. Dolores said Mrs. Sapider was a floozy because she wore shorts to the post office. Isn't that sort of like wearing a slip in front of a man?”

“Why, was that a slip? I thought it might be an evening dress.”

“Roy!” was all Cathy chose to say as they got off the elevator.

They walked along on this scalding night, when even the katydids were too hot to fiddle, past the coloured lights of the Falls, where they lingered, allowing the cool mist to cover their faces until it dripped off. Now, Cathy knew when to let things drop, especially when Roy was concerned, but for some reason she was like a dog with a bone with this one and couldn't help but ask, “Roy, did you notice she had dark roots — longer than Irene's — and her nails were all chewed?”

“Nope, didn't notice.”

“Well, I thought since she's a movie star she'd be more polite or more — ladylike.”

He put his hand on Cathy's shoulder and said, “I don't know if she was ladylike, but she was sure a lady I liked,” and he started laughing.

Cathy remained miffed and marvelled that she had never had a feeling quite like the one she felt as she was cooled by the mist of the Falls. She decided to just go with her grouchiness and let Roy laugh alone.

As they approached the drugstore, Cathy was already planning her imitation of Marilyn, and how the actress had implored Roy to peel her Juicy Fruit. Now, Roy had worked with Cathy for many years and, smoking out her plans, he said, “I'm goin' to ask you for a favour. I think it's my first. You let me know now if you can do it.”

Cathy was so shocked you could have knocked her over with a feather. She snuck a glance up at Roy, but he looked fairly relaxed with the if-you-can-do-it-fine — if-you-can't-fine kind of expression. Still it was totally unlike him to ask for a favour. He usually played his cards close to his chest. “No matter what it is I can do it,” Cathy said, with the confidence she felt.

Finally he said quietly, “When you is doin' your routine of the Marilyn delivery for the staff — and by the way, I'm sure you'll have a heyday with that imitation at Coke break — don't ever mention the part about me bringin' back the
Photoplay
or the Juicy Fruit.”

“Your wish is granted,” was all she said.

Cathy and Roy walked back to the store together and lived happily ever after.

As I finished my story and looked over at Roy, his hair was now frosted and resembled a lamb's-wool bonnet as his head bobbed up and down with laughter. “Lord, you's a fox in the chicken coop!” Howling, he said, “Lord above, I got to tell ya that story really warm me up. No one in their right mind can say Cathy McClure cannot spin one good yarn. Someday that memory of yours is goin' to get ya in trouble.” Still chuckling, he continued, “You never took to ol' Marilyn. Now that is a
fact
. You two just didn't see eye to eye.” He laughed so hard he had to lean on the steering wheel.

“Roy can I ask you
one
question?”

“You always just got
one
more question.”

“Well?”

“Go on. Hit me.”

“Did you go back to the Sheraton that night? If you tell me, I'll tell you a secret about Ted. . . . Something I saw him doing.”

“You know somethin', Della? You been watching too much Perry Mason. One thing a gentleman learns is never tell anything about a lady, especially to another lady, or you ain't no gentleman.”

As usual the world was too much for me to figure out. Even though I was now two years older than when the Marilyn Monroe
saga transpired, I
still
couldn't help but wonder what was right and what was wrong. I tried to sort the issue out logically and present myself with the facts. My mother and father made this big fuss about being ladylike. When I showed Ted, one of the pharmacists, my red petticoat under my strawberry party dress that I wore for the employees' Christmas party, my father said it wasn't ladylike. Everyone makes a fuss about how you sit in a chair, how you chew your gum, the words you use, bright yellow hair dye, women wearing shorts to the post office, Gretchen Prince's older sister who sat too close to her boyfriend in his convertible and “parked” with him. Dolores called her a “hussy” and Irene called her “cheap.” Roy said men pack .44s and women pack a reputation and both can kill you. Once I heard a customer telling Irene about a woman who wore an ankle bracelet. Irene shook her head and said, “Once you get on the wrong side of the tracks, there is no way home.” That scared me because I wasn't sure what catapulted you to the wrong side of the tracks, and I didn't want to inadvertently put myself there on a one-way ticket.

The weird and incomprehensible thing about the Marilyn Monroe saga that both confused and actually alarmed me was the seemingly obvious contradictions. Didn't she wear what my mother called “provocative attire”? Who answers the door in underwear? Didn't she have bad hair dye? Didn't she stand too close to Roy to be ladylike? Wasn't she messy and tardy, holding up the whole crew? Didn't she look like she was from “the wrong side of the tracks”? Yet my father wanted to deliver her medicine.
My father.
My mother
laughed
when I said she was in her slip. She said, “Oh my word!” Everyone crowded around me in Helms's Dry Goods Store as I told the story of Marilyn Monroe's Nembutal
delivery. Marilyn was treated as royalty. Thousands of people stormed the Maid of the Mist lineup to see her. Yet wasn't she everything that people in Lewiston warned you
not
to become? I didn't get it. Maybe when you go so far over the wrong side of the tracks, you come full circle?

The Marilyn Monroe saga was just a loose string on a tangled ball of yarn. There was something about women and their relationship to men that I didn't get. I knew that much. I also knew it was bigger than Marilyn Monroe. It had something to do with everyone. Yet it was deeply camouflaged. It was somehow connected to the magazines in the store that were well-hidden in manila sleeves on the top shelf of the rack and sold like hot cakes — but only to men. I knew that everyone was secretly involved because my mother had a black long-line getup similar to Marilyn's in the bottom drawer of her bureau, hidden under beaded evening bags and pearl opera glasses. I tried it on sometimes when my parents were out. I sauntered around alone in the empty house wearing the long-line bra stuffed with Kleenex, teetering in
peau de soie
black high heels, holding unlit Camel cigarettes while looking into mirrors.

The whole Marilyn-Monroe-as-a-goddess enigma paralleled the phoney battlefront photos that Mr. Harlan passed off as his own, when everyone knew he spent the war right here at Fort Niagara. If lying was really bad, then why was it okay to lie about being in the war, and why did my father, Roy, and the chamber of commerce go along with what they called a “white lie.” Sometimes the world seemed so complicated, I felt as though everything were spinning, like a ride at Crystal Beach Amusement Park, and I was barely holding on for dear life. What puzzled me
was why
I
seemed to be so troubled by all these irregularities and exceptions to major rules while others blithely marched ahead.

As I snapped out of my reverie and flashed back to the chilling situation at hand, I realized Roy was, as usual, right about telling the story. I had miraculously forgotten about the cold. Now I noticed that the inside of the window was covered with my frosty words which had condensed then frozen the second they hit the windshield. Frost had begun to creep onto the dashboard in shapes of cracked crystals and hairy sticks and was moving toward us like frozen lava as the minutes crept by. Our breath was literally closing in on us.

“You know,” I said, “I was just thinking about all those times Irene told you that you weren't dressed for the weather and you were going to catch your death. . . . Well, here we are.” (I was a true I-told-you-so fan.)

“Yup.” I wished he'd said something more reassuring. Reading my mind he lightened his tone. “Yes siree, Bob! I always said Irene got enough makeup on to keep her warm. Not even the cold would go near that much Evening in Paris perfume.”

I was really starting to feel cold, especially in my ears. I looked over at Roy and he had a little white spot on his nose, sort of like the scrap of paper my dad puts on when he cuts himself shaving. I reached over and touched it to brush it away, but it was his skin.

“Roy, are you cold?” I asked.

“Hey, is the Pope Catholic?” was his answer. After a moment he perked up and hit the steering wheel with his gloved fist and said, “Now it's my turn for a story, but the trouble, as I see it, is I could never top your Marilyn Monroe tale. I don't remember
all the who-said-what-to-who the way you do.”

“You're just trying to get me to do another story, but I'm not falling for it.”

“Give me some ideas?” he implored.

“OK. Think of your happiest childhood moment,” I said, imitating Dr. Small, the child psychiatrist. “You
have
to include your mom and dad and your brothers and sisters and the whole story has to have hot weather.”

“The hot weather is easy ‘cause I grew up down south. The rest. . . I don't know.” He rubbed his face, which he did when he was figuring something out or he was a little nervous. “Ya know, I'm thinkin' of the strangest thing when you ask me about my happiest childhood moment? I haven't thought about this in over twenty years.”

Roy told a story about when he was a little boy and his mother took in laundry. It was his job to keep the fire going under the barrel which held the white clothes that he stirred with a magnolia stick. He said that sometimes he would sweat so much he'd put out the fire. One blistering day a delivery truck pulled up to his back shed and unloaded a wringer washing machine. It turned out that Roy's dad had ordered it as a surprise for a certain young lady he was gallivanting with down the road; however, it was mistakenly delivered to Roy's mom. Roy said his mother was so upset when the washing machine was taken away, she fell on the unpaved driveway, clutching dirt in both hands, and gave birth to her ninth child, a sister who had water on her brain. Roy said her huge head carried the troubles for the whole family. All of Roy's brothers and sisters blamed the father for the sudden tragic birth. No one in the family ever talked to him again and Roy's older
siblings ran him off the property whenever he tried to come by. Roy said he saw him in town once or twice after that, but out of respect for his mama, he never gave him any heed.