Читать книгу Brides in the Sky - Cary Holladay - Страница 8

Shades

WARREN SAW THE GIRL before she saw him. He was waiting in the parking lot of the barbecue place for his daddy and Aunt Tate, had been waiting a long time when the girl came out, balancing Styrofoam containers against her chest. He liked her red-and-gold T-shirt. She went to a white car and put the food on the passenger seat.

She closed the door, and then she saw him. She had a serious look about her, the way Warren felt much of the time, even when he played with his toys or his kittens. His daddy laughed a lot, to cover up his sadness, but he was serious when he sat down on the back porch, tired after mowing grass.

The girl came over.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He poked at the grass with a stick.

“Nothing.” He tossed the stick away. “Waiting for Daddy and Aunt Tate.”

“You have different eyes.”

“I know. One’s blue and one’s brown.”

“Did you eat barbecue?”

“Yes, and I had some French fries. Why did you buy so much?” he said.

“It’s for my friends. They gave me money, and I picked it up.”

“You must have lots of friends.”

A strand of long black hair blew across the girl’s lips. She pushed it away. She reminded him of an Indian maiden in a book, but she wore sneakers, not moccasins. The girl in the book had birds flying around her.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Warren. It’s Daddy’s name, too.”

“I’m Natalie. Is your dad in the restaurant?”

“Yes,” he said, angry as he added, “I’m sick of waiting. Aunt Tate spilled stuff on her dress.”

“That sauce is messy.” Natalie’s beautiful face looked serious again. “How old are you?”

“Five.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“I don’t know. At her house, I guess.”

“She doesn’t live with you?”

“She used to.” It hurt to talk about his mama. When he saw her these days, it was only for a little while. She would take him places, maybe to the mall to look at puppies.

“Would you like to take a ride with me while you’re waiting?” Natalie said.

“Daddy’d get mad.”

“No, he won’t. You’ll be with me, and we’ll have fun.”

He looked toward the restaurant, but there was no sign of his daddy or Aunt Tate.

“Can I go tell them?”

“We’ll be back so soon.” Natalie held out her hand. “By then, your aunt’s dress will be clean.”

“Okay.” He followed her to the car.

She moved the food so he could sit up front. Out on the road, she went fast, passing a pickup truck. Red sauce had leaked from the containers onto the cloth seat.

“That looks like blood,” he said, and laughed.

“It’s okay. It’s not my car. Where do you live?”

“At 4920 Grace Road,” he said, the address coming back to him like a song. “The mailbox is a duck. If you have a letter for the mailman, you put its wing up.”

They passed a field he loved because it was full of horses. They went through a deep patch of forest where trees arched over the road like a tunnel, and they headed into town.

“Would you like to meet my friends?” she said.

“Okay.”

They reached an area Warren recognized. He saw a restaurant with a neon sign he liked, which was lit up even in the daytime—a giant red bug.

“That’s a lobster,” Natalie said.

“What’s a lobster?”

“It’s summertime,” she said, “summer in Maine when you’re feeling free and rich.”

The street narrowed as they reached the old part of town. Aunt Tate always said about the red brick buildings: There’s the college. Natalie parked behind a house. Crumbling pink crape myrtle blossoms drifted down on the windshield.

“We’re home,” she said. “Toot the horn.” He reached over and honked. Natalie laughed and said, “Can you help me unload?”

He was careful with the containers she handed him. As they went around the house, he saw young women all over the porch.

“You took long enough, Natalie,” said one girl, with gladness in her voice. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Warren,” said Natalie. “Here’s your keys.”

The glad-voiced woman took the keys. She had thick yellow curls and a red-and-gold cap. She saw Warren notice it.

“I’m Roma. Want to wear this?” She placed the cap on his head.

It covered his eyes. The girls laughed.

“A little big,” Roma said, and put it back on.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Warren said.

“I’ll show you where it is,” Natalie said.

He followed her into the house. It smelled perfumey, and a big TV was on. The bathroom was nice, with gold faucets, and the towels had owls on them. Then he found Natalie in the kitchen, where the girls were unpacking the food and pouring Coke into paper cups.

“Have some, Warren,” Roma said. To Natalie, she said, “Okay, who is he?”

“My nephew.”

“What’s a nephew?” he said.

The girls chuckled.

“You’re an only child, Natalie,” Roma said. “How can you have a nephew?”

“I’m friends with his parents,” Natalie said. “They asked me to watch him for a while.”

“He’s a cutie,” said a girl whose cheeks made apple shapes when she smiled. “My name’s Jennifer,” she told him.

Warren drank his Coke. He liked all the girls.

“It’s a big day for us, Warren,” Roma said. “We’re in Rush Week. Has Natalie told you what that is?”

“No.” He gazed around the kitchen. The fridge was white and extra-big. Everything was clean, except where barbecue sauce had spilled. Some of the girls smoked cigarettes, leaning their heads back and laughing as they blew smoke into the air.

“Rush Week,” said Roma, “is when we choose who else will be in our club. It’s fun, but it’s heartbreaking too, because there are so many girls, and we can’t take all of them.”

“Why not?” he said, yet knowing you couldn’t get everything you wanted.

“Silly rules are why.” Roma raised the Coke bottle toward him.

“He’s had enough,” said Natalie. “I promised not to let him have too much sugar.”

“Ohh,” said Roma, breaking into a yawn. She pushed her plate away, pillowed her head on her arms, and said in a muffled voice, “If y’all want to rest up before the parties, do it now. We’ve got to be tip-top.”

“Warren, do you want to see my room?” Natalie asked.

“Yes,” he said, as Daddy and Aunt Tate popped into his mind. He wondered if they were still inside the restaurant. He followed Natalie up the steps. On the walls above the stairs were group photos of the girls at railroad tracks.

“A choo-choo train!” he said.

“That’s one of our symbols,” Natalie said. “It’s in a song I’ll teach you.”

Her room was wonderful. Sunlight turned the curtains golden, like the bands on her shirt, and she had bunk beds. He reached for the top one.

“Let me give you a boost.” She lifted him. “You’re heavier than you look.”

From the top bunk, he surveyed her dresser, crowded with sparkly jewelry. In a corner stood an easel with bright colors splashed on canvas. Suitcases were stacked against a wall.

“Are you going on a trip, Natalie?”

“I made trips all summer,” she said. “I went to California with a guy, a ski coach. We got married and drove all over the country. Then we split up.”

“Oh. Where is he?”

“He’s not here. He was never here. Nobody sleeps in that bunk. My roommate decided not to come back this year.”

Something shiny hung on the bedpost—a crown, set with bright clear stones.

“Are you a queen, Natalie?”

“I was the Queen Bee at the Honey Festival back home.” She pulled open her closet door. “Here’s my gown.”

She held up a long shimmering dress made of layers and layers of floaty cloth.

“It looks like clouds,” he said, “or butterfly wings.” He reached out to touch the soft, dazzling material, which had tiny golden bees stitched to silver netting. He loved the dress and the way she was smiling. “What did you do when you were the queen?”

“I gave away little jars of honey at fairs.” She hung the dress in the closet. “Let’s draw.”

“Are you a good draw-er?”

“The best. I’m an art major.”

From her desk, she took crayons, colored pencils, and paper, and spread them on the floor. He climbed off the bunk and settled beside her.

“Don’t tell the others what I told you,” she said. “About being married. They don’t know.”

He didn’t see why that had to be a secret. “Okay.”

She sketched a man with long poles on his feet, flying off a mountainside.

“Have you ever gone skiing?” she asked.

“No,” he said, thinking Aunt Tate’s dress would be clean by now. They’d be out in the parking lot, maybe home. “I have to go back.”

“Please, not yet.” She looked sad. “Aren’t you having fun? We’ll play—we’ll play some more.”

She lifted the sparkly necklaces and earrings from her dresser and piled them on his lap. She took jars of glitter, sequins, and confetti, and tossed handfuls into the air so they rained down brilliantly. He laughed, catching glitter in his hands, on his tongue. It tasted like the tinsel on a Christmas tree. She set the heavy, jeweled crown on his head, but it fell off. He spat glitter into his hand.

Somebody knocked on the door. Apple-cheeked Jennifer stuck her head in and said, “Natalie, we need you downstairs. You’re supposed to be a greeter.”

“Can’t somebody take my place?” Natalie said.

“Hurry up,” said Jennifer.

“Get Kimberly or Heidi to do it,” said Natalie, but Warren sensed she wasn’t talking to Jennifer, who had already gone away, or to him. “So many sisters,” she said tiredly.

“Are they all your sisters?”

“So they say. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No. I wish I had ’em.”

“You have me,” she said. “I’m going downstairs now. I’ll be back soon.”

Warren found he was sleepy. He scrambled up to the top bunk by himself this time, and she climbed high enough to kiss his cheek.

“I love you,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m going down at all.”

* * *

ROMA adored Rush Week: these fevered days. She was talking with an eager girl whose braces shone like crushed dimes and whose mascaraed lashes brushed her brows when she blinked. For some time, Roma had been standing in the official distress position—hand on hip—but none of her sisters had come to her aid. She excused herself just as the bell rang, indicating the end of the party. In five minutes, another group of rushees would burst in. She reveled in these parties, even when she got stuck with somebody dull.

She felt drunk and didn’t know why. She did not, as some of the girls did, spike her punch cup. Alcohol was against the rules. So was having anybody in the house besides sisters and rushees.

In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face—her homely face, but she was used to it—and adjusted her nametag, a cardboard owl with folded wings. The little boy wasn’t supposed to be here, but nobody would criticize Natalie. Nobody ever did. She was too beautiful and scandalous; she was beyond this world. She hadn’t cared whether or not she got in, so every sorority on campus had been mad for her, and Roma, setting her cap for the presidency, had led a great conquest. Once Natalie was in, she made fun of the rituals and stole everybody’s boyfriend, even Roma’s, a shy physics major. Natalie cast her spell, trifled with him, and dumped him. He had never come back to Roma.

At least Natalie had asked to borrow Roma’s car today before picking up the barbecue. She didn’t want to risk spilling sauce in her own car. She’d said so, and Roma had handed her the keys, as she always did. The seats were splattered and stained from all the times Natalie hadn’t even asked.

Well, what to do? Roma could find out the child’s address and take him home herself. It was strange: she’d felt a sense of recognition when she saw him coming around the yard, as if he belonged to her. In fact, she had felt a piercing, painful love, so when she laid her head on the kitchen table and talked about resting up for the party, she’d really wanted to cry.

She should have expected Natalie to do exactly this. Often when a group of girls were out and about—at the candy store where tourists jostled for sweets, or at the deli where sandwiches were named for the college dormitories—there’d be a particularly cute child feasting on a sundae, or a toddler flailing underfoot while its distracted parents dithered about burgers. Natalie would stop in her tracks and say, Oh, I’d like to steal that little thing. The other girls laughed, but Roma discerned a hint of craziness in the lilting voice and mournful gaze. She’d imagined Natalie snatching an infant from its mother’s arms or seizing a youngster from a schoolyard.

Natalie must have found Warren at the barbecue joint. She was a criminal, she ought to be in jail, his parents must be frantic. Roma had to figure out how to get Warren back to safety and keep the sorority out of trouble, but the next wave of girls was surging through the door, violently cheery.

She dried her face on an owl-themed towel and stepped into the hall. She liked all the girls, even those who sent her hand to her hip. She didn’t want college ever to end, because then the rush parties would be over, and every autumn of her life, she would miss them.

She would grow old with missing them.

“Hi, I’m Stephanie,” cried a girl in a plaid wool suit. Whoever heard of wearing wool in this climate, the first week of September?

“Where are you from?” Roma asked.

“Alexandria,” came the answer. Or had she said Winchester? Roma’s ears buzzed with the soprano clamor. “I’m a business major, unless I switch to poli sci.”

“We do stress scholarship in our sorority,” Roma said.

“If I don’t get in, I’m going to kill myself.” The girl flexed her red-frosted lips.

“Some have,” said Roma, as sweat crept from the edges of the plaid wool.

* * *

WARREN dreamed about Aunt Tate and the game they played on hot evenings. They were out in the backyard and Aunt Tate was making an arc of water with the garden hose. Under the rainbow, she called it. He raced back and forth under the waterfall until Aunt Tate turned the hose on him full blast, driving him down to the grass. It felt ticklish, cool, and wonderful.

There in the quiet, sunlit room, he woke up and remembered about Natalie. Merry voices drifted through the floorboards. He wanted to find Natalie and learn the choo-choo song. He climbed down from the bunk and went downstairs into a crowd of flowered sundresses.

A girl knelt beside him and said, “Whose boy are you?” She had freckles on her nose and clinky bracelets on her arm.

“I’m Warren.”

The girls laughed, looking around at the others with raised eyebrows.

Roma appeared, her blonde curls gone frizzy, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s get you some punch,” she said, but the gladness had gone out of her voice.

The punch was pink, with slices of lemon floating in it. There were cookies and gumdrops in crystal bowls, which Roma offered to him. Natalie came over, shaking glitter out of her black hair, and swooped down to hug him.

“Did you have a good nap?” she said.

“Natalie, you should have changed out of your jeans,” Roma said. “You know the rules.”

“Oh, fiddle,” Natalie said. “I didn’t want to come back to these stupid parties. Guess what? I got married.”

Roma’s cheeks turned pink like the punch.

“You really did? Who?”

Natalie paused. “Oh, it’s just a joke.”

“Funny,” Roma said, but she wasn’t laughing.

“Warren, Roma is very important,” Natalie said. “She’s our president.”

“Oh,” he said, but somehow he felt she was making fun of Roma. “Natalie’s a queen. Did you know that?” he said to Roma.

Natalie knelt down and clasped his hands, her grip warm and tight.

“I’ll take good care of you,” she said.

He gazed back at her, his mouth tasting of peppermint gumdrops. His stomach rumbled.

“I heard that little tummy growl,” she said. “We’ll have pizza after the last party. What do you like on yours?”

“Green peppers.”

“Me too,” Natalie said. He was surprised to see tears in her eyes.

“Where do you live, Warren?” Roma asked.

“At 4920 Grace Road,” he said.

Roma nodded slowly. “I think I know where that is. Is it near a grocery store?”

“Yes.”

Natalie pulled him against her hip and held him there. Her legs felt as slim and sturdy as the young trees in his backyard. She and Roma were arguing. He tried to follow what they were saying, but all he understood was they were mad because of him.

“Haven’t you ever seen somebody and just loved them?” Natalie said. “I saw his eyes and I had to. I knew he could love me back.”

“You are so selfish,” Roma said. “How do you think his parents feel right now? If you take him home right now, I won’t tell anybody.”

“Don’t fight,” said Warren. He was thinking of the way his mama and daddy used to get so mad at each other.

“It’s all right, Warren,” said Natalie. “We’re at a party. We’re having fun.”

“I had a dream,” he said, the happiness of that dream coming back to him. “Aunt Tate was making a rainbow in the yard.”

But somebody tapped Natalie on the shoulder and she turned away, so it was Roma who bent down to listen to him.

* * *

IN the breaks between parties, when there were only sisters in the house, the kitchen was the place to be. Girls shrieked as they plunged their bare feet into a tub of ice water, churning it up and down, yelling as they slipped ice cubes down each other’s backs. Climbing out of the tub, they groaned as they rubbed ice across their cheeks and foreheads and arms.

A current of fire ran from Roma’s heels all the way to her scalp—exhaustion or adrenaline, she didn’t know which. There had been seven parties in five hours. One more, only one, to go. She ordered two sophomores to drag the tub out and dump it in the yard. The others scurried to find their shoes in the heap on the kitchen floor.

She closed her eyes as the bell rang again, the next-to-last rush bell she would ever hear. The bell at the end of this party would be the last.

It was her senior year, and life as she knew it was ending, swift as the ice water was melting into the soft earth out in the yard. After the last party, there would be the grand finale, Porch Routine, when all the sorority girls tried to out-sing and out-dance the other sororities, and the audience, hundreds of bedazzled rushes, rocked back and forth in the courtyard, yearning, trying to sing along with the house they wanted to join, there in the searing sun of a September evening. Roma had drilled her girls all week, limbering them up, so they could line up on the old stone porch and cheer their lungs out, always smiling, luring the ones who would be campus stars, who would keep it all going next year and the year after that and forever.

The ice water had worked. Roma could no longer feel the blisters on her feet.

All around her, girls whooped, smoothed back their hair, and raced to their places in the living room and the front hallway to greet the final group of rushees. Yet Roma couldn’t move. She heard fifty first-year women thronging into the house, their earrings rattling as loud as their greetings. The smell of hair spray and nail polish was a drug in her nose, the owl nametag on her chest beat its wings as fast as her heart, her period announced itself between her legs, the roof of the house lifted off—and there she was in the kitchen with Warren, who said, “Natalie went to wash her hair. Do you like green peppers, Roma?”

* * *

WHEN it was all over, after Porch Routine had gone into encores and their throats were raw, the sisters swept back into their houses and left the courtyard full of applauding rushees. All the porches emptied at the same time; it was the rules. The rushees streamed away in hope and despair to await what the next day might bring: coveted white cards in formal script, inviting them to smaller, more select parties, whereas the initial round, strictly timed, was open to all.

For many, there would be cards from the wrong house, or no cards at all.

Inside, Roma listened for the next stage—exhausted silence. Sighing, the girls headed upstairs, where they peeled off their party clothes and put on denim shorts with their red-and-gold T-shirts. Roma had already called the pizza man, and he had delivered a sizeable order. The girls crept down to the kitchen, opened the warm cardboard boxes, heaped their plates, and retired to eat on the porch swing or the balcony. Cicadas chanted in the courtyard trees.

Some of the girls ate in their rooms, where the twilight breeze lifted the curtains up and down in time with their breathing and floor fans blew across the shag rugs so photos of boyfriends, stuck in mirror frames, took wing. Wearily the girls traded mushrooms and pepperoni like charms. There was beer, too, in icy bottles that they rolled gratefully across their necks.

Roma had allowed Warren to watch Porch Routine from Natalie’s window, and then she had shepherded him out to her car, intending to take him home, or maybe to the police station, she hadn’t decided. But Natalie ran out begging, Let me, please let me. And Roma had given in.

Back in the kitchen, she trembled all over.

A few of the girls—Jennifer, Heidi, and Kimberly—carried their food into the living room and turned the TV on. Warren’s face bloomed on the screen. With a collective gasp, the girls looked at each other, jumped up, and crowded around a phone.

Roma dove into their huddle and snatched it away.

“It’s just a little mix-up,” she said. “Natalie has taken him home. They just left.”

“But he’s been reported as a missing child,” insisted Kimberly, a last-year’s pledge with a stubborn mouth.

“You let her drive away with him?” Heidi screeched.

“Go finish your supper.” Roma put steel in her voice.

“I bet you gave her your car,” Kimberly said. “That makes you an accessory.”

“It’s fine. It’s all over.”

Of course it wasn’t over. Roma’s knees were weak. She should have let them call the police, should have made the call herself. Even if Natalie did take him home, his parents would get the story out of him. Innocently he would tell about the parties and the singing. He would name names, and the authorities would come. In a few hours, maybe even a few minutes, Roma would be in as much trouble as Natalie was—and that was the best Roma could hope for.

Yet Kimberly and Heidi retreated. Roma remembered how, at the initiation ceremony, Kimberly had tripped and staggered in her long white gown, and Roma had despised her a little.

Jennifer stood her ground. “Natalie kidnapped a child.”

“She was babysitting.”

“That’s a lie. And you don’t know where she might have taken him.”

“I never want to hear another word about it,” Roma said.

“You’re covering up for her.”

Under Jennifer’s blazing eyes, Roma quaked.

Warren had hugged Roma as they walked out to her car. By then, she had wanted to hide him, to pitch everything away and run off with him, with Natalie too if that was what it took. The pizza man had arrived, pulling up beneath the crape myrtles. A little gentleman, Warren put out his hand, and the pizza man shifted the boxes in his arms and shook it, and Roma and Natalie looked at each other above Warren’s head and burst out laughing. Warren was so young and the man was so old. I’ve delivered pizza to this house for forty years, he said. They stood there with crape myrtle blossoms floating down on their heads, and Natalie said, Let me, let me, and slipped the keys out of Roma’s limp fingers.

Jennifer’s gaze skewed to the door. “The cops are here!”

Shapes of people on the porch showed through the sheer curtains. The bell rang, and three women stepped inside, matrons in pastel linen with corsages on their lapels.

“Oh, my Lord,” Jennifer breathed. “It’s . . . it’s . . .”

“The national officers,” Roma said.

She moved forward and made introductions. The words came automatically. Thanks to the sorority handbook, she had memorized the names and faces, down to the mole on the chin of Mrs. Jean Jelpy, President. The others were Mrs. Louise Whitecliff, Vice President, and Mrs. Georgina Powers, Secretary.

“We are so honored,” Roma said.

This would be a legend. For years, girls would talk about the time the national officers just showed up.

“We can’t stay,” the women said. “Bring us wonderful pledges this year, like you always do, girls like yourselves. We’re counting on you. We keep track of you from our headquarters, far away from this lovely place. You are our favorite chapter in the country, the whole world.”

“Let’s sing one song,” said Mrs. Georgina Powers. She settled on the piano bench and launched into the anthem. She pressed the pedals so the chords sounded deep and slow. Pewter hair bobbed free from her chignon.

Roma closed her eyes and sang. Others joined in. Like divas, the officers loosed their full-throated vigor.

The anthem was never sung in Porch Routine. It was too sad, and it was secret, a song about reunions when they were all unimaginably old, when evening was coming down around them like shades. Roma smelled the officers’ White Shoulders cologne. She would be one of them some day, with varicose veins on her legs and a mink coat in her closet.

You are my favorite in the whole world.

The door opened, and Natalie came in, her head down. She raised her streaked face and found Roma’s eyes.

Grace Road, Roma thought, as if she’d been there when Warren crossed the yard and ran to tell his people, I met a queen.