Special Smashwords Edition
The Interstate 5 Companion
by
Annasteven
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Interstate 5 Companion
Special Smashwords Edition
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Version 2011.09.26
Foreword
My name is Annasteven.
For twenty years, I rode the bus up and down I-5 between my apartment in Mountlake Terrace and my clerical job in Seattle.
This is what happened inside my head during that time.
Several sequences, particularly those portrayed in Mrs. Rosegarden, came from wildly vivid dreams that followed the taking of vitamin B supplements for the purpose of better remembering numbers at work.
The Interstate 5 Companion is a work of fiction. The anthology contained in this book has not been professionally edited. It is the natural and unpolished product of my imagination, and I am solely responsible for its content. Please excuse its limitations.
A.
Table of Contents
Aunt Alene And Her Sisters And Their Children
When I Saw Merrin and Her Sister Again, by Harry
Mrs. Rosegarden: I. The Honeyman
Mrs. Rosegarden: II. Mrs. Rosegarden
What I Heard Farsheed Johnson Say To The Man At WXTT
Sole Sister
There was a young lady who lived in a shoe
Had so many kids she knew not what to do
Her loop hadn't worked, nor her pill, nor her foam,
And now, there was not any space in her home.
She had moved from a sandal in '72
To an Earth shoe, where her family suddenly grew
But the neighbors were loud, and the place was a dump
So she moved her whole brood to a sleek, high-heeled pump.
She then lost her job and she asked, "Who will feed us?"
And, in search of low rent, she moved to an Adidas.
She put makeup on and she lost pounds and ounces
And she slunk into bars wearing sequins and flounces
One night in a club, she lucked on some old coot
Who married her—
Now, they all live in a boot.
****
Bride of Christ
I am merely one nun from the First World
Not far from where I stand right now
I work very hard for the children
Not that it matters
I perform a most beautiful duty
A custodian of sweetest, new life
I deliver and baptize the children
As a midwife
The children I bring into this world
Are the fruit of terror and betrayal
They will have neither father nor mother
Only myself
It's not enough
Yet, I baptize each child in sunshine
Promise each one wild games in the grass
In the peaceful times their mothers left behind
In a world full of kindness and healing
For I am a bride of Christ
I am a bride of Christ
Who once found sorrow improbable
In spite of the yards' destitution
My faith's table groaned with its bounty
I never could know my regrets
Would be so severe
For the mothers will never know loving
Their reason was stolen away
Sacrificed with their will and their sweetness
In the impassive soil
Their fathers will never know manhood
Their bravery myth among braggarts
In a context they cannot be distinguished
From the pitiable women
It angers me
Nonetheless, I baptize their children in sunshine
I promise wild games in the grass
In the peaceful times their mothers left behind
In a world full of kindness and healing
For I am a bride of Christ
I am a bride of Christ
Who has found sorrow in plenitude
We are the drones of God's hive
Who harvest the desperate carrion
And teach them to speak with the flowers as we do
Even as we cloister our own desires
Within the walls of grace, because
We, we are the brides of Christ!
Yes, we are the brides of Christ!
But how, how can a bride of Christ
Fail to sustain the children of mere men?
The source of my joy once elusive
Today seems much more than it was
What is this that imbues me with something so vital?
I cannot determine the cause
Still, I baptize each child in sunshine
I send them to romp in the grass
In the peaceful times their mothers left behind
In a world full of kindness and healing …
The changing within me intensifies
With each child I bring into the teeming
For an instant it is I in their guardianship
And I know I am not merely dreaming
Once more I am chosen to relish the finish
I feel only joy as I greet each newcomer
Satiety follows my humble exertions
Hope sets after pouring, mere ideal no longer
And I too am kissed by the sunshine
We play our wild games in the grass
In the peaceful times that lie before us
This will be a promise kept I am certain
For I am the bride of Christ
I am the bride of Christ
I perform a most beautiful duty
That makes oh such light work
Of the children we bear together
****
Aunt Alene And Her Sisters And Their Children
It was the Tongan cousins who brought it up, but it had been on all our minds, at least the minds of the darker cousins.
We had grown up hearing our mothers complain, in each other's company, about the races of our fathers. Whenever the numerous sisters got together at the home of Aunt Alene, the eldest, their boisterous conversation followed the same path: what we children were up to, what Alene does with all her money, who among them was the biggest liar, where the fish were plentiful (always the same spot at Lake Clarette), and what race produces the worst behaved children, the ugliest or most uncouth women. And the bets varied somewhat based on personal preference.
At this point, it's probably best to clarify a matter—not one of us cousins assembled that day in Aunt Alene's TV room was of the same race as our mothers, who communed comfortably in Aunt Alene's cramped kitchen. Our mothers were born to a Cajun and his Indian wife a long time ago. None of the sisters appeared to see themselves as part of the dominant society and, if any one among them found it important, none of us children would expect to be told.
The sisters had never known reservation life although, at the outset of their impoverished youth, they lived rustically. They went to schools where the nuns instructed them alongside colored children. In spite of our grandmother's birth on a reservation, which is all we knew of her beginnings, no one that we knew could say with absolute certainty which Native clan or nation produced her, although an Indian could probably tell me with the same sureness that I can spot a DC black in a crowd of New Yorkers. My grandmother traded with local Indians and went to fais do do with her husband and later with her children. Her maiden name was French, her eyes clear and light. Her married name was common in the parish where she and her husband raised their large family and where they did not teach their children Indian ways.
But what the sisters called themselves depended upon whom you asked. My mother would say she was Creole; she became "black" without a fuss when she went north with her black husband, my father, in the fifties. Aunt Carina was "white" on her California driver's license. Aunt Alene was "French" and you knew better than to forget it. Aunt Grace had cultivated an accent that made her sound like Lena Horne and would simply say that she was from Louisiana. "Creole" would bring the most agreement, "Cajun" the most approval, "colored" a shrugging acknowledgement, with stronger endorsements from sisters with black children. A splash or two of liquor gave rise to a little joke they had among themselves – usually Aunt Carina or Aunt Alene would refer to one sister or another as "conasse," which I didn't get until the age of twenty-nine, when a white friend from Texas hurled the term "coon ass" while talking about someone she used to work with and, knowing only my East Coast associations with the term "coon", I angrily left the table, to her utter confoundment. Later that day, over the telephone, my mother teased the reason out of me for my sour puss, and I told her, only to hear her nearly cough up a lung laughing. After stuffing her lung back into her chest, she taught me the birds and bees of race at the bottom of the country, and I guess I was finally in on the joke.
The sisters knew of no Negro relations where they grew up, but had white relatives who "didn't speak," that is, did not acknowledge them socially. No one denied the likelihood that like other, similar families, they might have an African ancestor somewhere. And this was enough logic in the disgraced South of their youth for most of them to willingly go along with being "black" where their lengthy tresses, relatively fair skin and light eyes would be valued by the darker men who courted them at a time when men of color learned to treasure such looks rather than find them innocuous.
This all seems very complicated, although the sisters do not give that impression, or any deliberate impression. We are all here now; what could be simpler?
The East Coast world I grew up in was black and white; I had no knowledge of complications with the English in Europe or in Canada or any notion of Cajuns as an "unassimilated white culture." In my youth, I had no inkling whether or how much some Indians contributed to the freedom of blacks in the early days or who among them took black slaves. When I was growing up, "Indian" was what girls like me wanted to be when they felt too plain. The label of "Creole" bestowed on me at these gatherings felt foreign and contrived given the simple ethnicity I had grown up with.
I had a lot to learn. As did the sisters.
On this day their men, the uncles, sat in a circle on Aunt Alene's deck, where the women served them their food and their beer and left them alone, as usual. The uncles fanned themselves out to disguise their thinning ranks. The guard no longer included my father, whom my mother divorced many years ago, or my common law stepfather, who had died two years before. Also missing was my ex-husband, who had fled with the clothes on his back. Another uncle had disgraced his marriage and been kicked out of the house. We followed the lead of his wife and let the familial waters close over him. This aunt's boyfriend would arrive after he finished his shift and finally, one or another of my male cousins would drift in, like cats wandering in and out of a garden.
While the gathering was putting itself together in this manner, several of the old uncles pulled me aside to ask how my father was doing. He had been part of their good old days, and they a part of his. As always, once the rituals of arrival were complete, the menfolk who made up the corps would finally be accounted for and the uncles would liven up after they got a few beers in them.
I joined my female cousins, who were tucked away in the TV room. Yleana spoke first.
"I'm really tired of this crap."
Her sister, Paulina, nodded and put in her two cents' worth. Our ritual of grievance was as much on schedule as our mothers' order of business in the kitchen. There was an exception—this only went on if Lana was absent. Lana was the daughter of Aunt Carina. Her white skin, fair hair and sparkling, catlike eyes did not put her in our position or, at least, we didn't think so, and didn't want to offend her in any case.
Aunt Grace's daughters, Karys and Selene, sat quietly as they always did. They were pious and mild of spirit like their mother, whom I had heard once and again castigate her sisters for their badmouthing. It wasn't good for the children to hear such things. Aunt Grace's words, like her sentiments, never changed whether we were ten or, as today, close to thirty. At thirty-one, I was the eldest cousin in the room even though my mother was the youngest of the sisters.
Ours was a very large family. There were close to two decades between Alene and my mother, oldest and youngest. Therefore, I had numerous cousins, some of whom were nearly as old as my mother. I was the last born of the old cousins, most of whom lived in Louisiana, and the first born of the young set who were born of second marriages or late in life, and most likely in California. It was the younger set that groused today in Alene's TV room.
We all seemed to inherit our mothers' standing in the group, though not necessarily their personalities. The Tongan cousins, Yleana and Paulina, were the offspring of the tomboy among the sisters, Aunt Estelle. They were regarded as Amazons much as their mother was, and treated as offhandedly as could be imagined. The daughters of Aunt Grace, Karys and Selene, were wholesome, quiet and always impeccably dressed. Pampered, cultivated and dominated by their religious mother, they appeared to have little voice; perhaps even lacking their mother's strength or skill. Because of Aunt Grace's reputation, they were regarded as dutiful, industrious marionettes wielded by their astute mother. But make no mistake—they could buck the system when pressed; at age twenty-two, Selene threw eggs at the neighbors' homes on Halloween.
Despite my being the eldest of those assembled, I was regarded as the baby's baby, and it was thought among the sisters that I could do no wrong. Like my mother, I was "nice." No eggs on Halloween for me.
But it was I who answered Yleana.
"Do you think you hate it more than I do? Next to Aunt Carina, my mother's the loudest. Louder than Aunt Alene, if you can imagine."
I am the darkest cousin and truly dark, not only relatively so. The father of Yleana and Paulina was a Polynesian beauty; my father was an okay-looking East Coast black man. I was a carbon copy of him and felt very plain indeed in the company of my cousins. The men from Baltimore who kept me ankle deep in rose petals had not accompanied me to this part of the country.
Another cousin, Laura, stormed into the small room.
"They're at it again!" she hissed. "After they got done trashing blacks and Tongans, it was our turn!"
Aunt Irene was Laura's mother. Laura's father was Mexican American.
"This has to stop," Paulina said, looking to her sister for backup. Yleana put her face in her hands to think.
"Don't put a hex on them," I said, knowing that Yleana and Paulina believed in using all the cultural powers put at their disposal. To this day, I think they hexed my ex-husband, whose luck has been unbelievably bad since he left me. It would never occur to any member of my mother's clan that the baby's baby was not perfect.
"I say we boycott," Yleana said. I was aghast. I told her so. Aunt Grace's daughters looked at Yleana, dumbfounded, although it was, admittedly, hard to tell unless you knew them really well.
Even the "wild" Selene could only offer, "God, Yleana, is it really worth all that?"
Paulina looked at me with hope in her eyes. Laura simply flipped the channels of the television set, the disgust evident on her face. Paulina and Yleana both knew that if I went along, it would have a stronger effect. Who among the sisters would want to hurt a little baby?
"I can't boycott," I said. Yleana thrust her handsome face forward to demand an explanation.
"I'd have to take another track," I added. "I'm Mom's only kid. Now that her old man is dead, she wouldn't have anybody if I didn't stand up with her." Mom had lost the love of her life, her second husband. The others nodded their understanding.
Laura added, "Plus, it would hurt your boys too much. They wouldn't understand." Laura then turned to the others. "She's right. Even though Ray Ray is the only one of us with kids, maybe we should all find another way of dealing with it."
"We've already asked our mothers to stop it," Paulina said, and I knew it was true because I had chastised my own mother in private. Mom pooh-poohed my point of view and claimed that I was so sensitive because she and Dad had sheltered me too much. Even Dad was not much help. He had grown used to it over the years he was married to my mother, and the other uncles even joked about it among themselves. After all, it was they who owned these fine women. The women could talk all they wanted.
Yleana, Paulina, Laura and Selene decided to leave right then and there. Yleana and Paulina lived together in their own apartment and had a car. Yleana suggested they go for some beer of their own, since none of us felt comfortable drinking in front of our parents after the first beer. The departing cousins could be reached at Yleana and Paulina's, if we others changed our minds. Their agenda set, they took off.
This left me alone with Aunt Grace's eldest daughter, Karys, who was closest to me in age.
I did not meet Karys until my parents took me to visit the West Coast when I was about ten. Selene was just out of diapers then. My mother had warned me that Karys was quiet and withdrawn. I was shy, too. Nothing had prepared me for the real Karys, who enraptured me with her incredible imagination and startling knowledge. That day long ago, she shared with me the feeling that our parents made life harder than it needed to be. As adults who had witnessed great change ourselves, unlike our youngest cousins, we finally understood.
I asked Karys what she thought.
She shrugged and said, "Now that the others are out of the way, I'll go with you if you want to speak your mind."
This was a twist. Where was the Karys of lively imagination and startling knowledge?
"You mean me—us—address all of them?" I said.
Them.
I was briefly unconvinced that I actually got the word out: "Now?"
I must have, because Karys nodded.
"And what are you going to say to them?" I asked my cousin.
Karys shrugged again. "What I usually say to them."
What she usually said to them was nothing.
I drew a breath and left the TV room with Karys riding shotgun.
A cry went up as we entered the room filled with our aunts and mothers.
"There they are!" Aunt Grace cried. My mother pinched something from her plate and exhorted me to try it from her fingers. An uncle tapped loudly on the glass door in greeting and the others smiled. My children, in the pleasant company of their great uncles, waved at me as they stuffed themselves with food. I couldn't get started amid the demands that we eat and questions about where the others had taken off to. Aunt Alene was stirring something in a pot. The expression on Karys' face did not change, but she looked at me expectantly and this was not lost on the elder women, who grew quiet.
"Where did everyone go?" Mom asked.
"They decided to boycott," I said to the entire group of women. Aunt Alene turned around, staring at me like the others.
"Boycott?" Aunt Irene asked. "Boycott what, chere?"
Karys stood behind me, motionless. The old men could not hear, but noticed the quiet. Laura's father pushed the glass door open a bit more so they could eavesdrop. My Tongan uncle halted in mid-request of another beer. A male cousin, recently arrived, told my children to hush for a moment. Karys's father, a Creole, ate quietly, his gentle eyes on the unaccustomed stance of his daughter.
"We don't appreciate the rude things you say about colored people," I said, not nearly as confident as I had imagined myself. I felt like shrinking, confronting my elders like this. It was embarrassing. And I had said "colored" like I was one of them! At least I didn't have to think up anything else to say right then, because Aunt Alene turned to me and charged,
"What the hell are you talking about, Ray Ray?"
To my relief and everyone's surprise, it was Karys who spoke up.
"We look like the men you married, then at these gatherings you insult us, year after year after year."
The sisters roared their refute. Mom looked at me, knowing at last that I was genuinely serious about this. Aunt Grace looked at her daughter and, not to be thought unprepared, asked her,
"Is this how all of you feel?"
Karys, unaccustomed to this much attention, started to lose it and I interjected,
"We don't know about Lana." Lana was Aunt Carina's daughter with the cat eyes. And as soon as that statement was out of my mouth, I realized that I could not tell whether I was guilty of excluding my cousin or merely speaking truthfully because she wasn't there.
"I suppose you don't," Aunt Estelle puffed with a toss of her hair. Then she leaned back to regard us with her steely eyes.
"You know we don't mean you," Aunt Alene said flatly, turning back to her pot.
Aunt Carina came over to the both of us and put her arms around us.
"Stop this nonsense," she said, kissing both of us on our cheeks.
Just before I died of shame in Aunt Carina's hug, Karys asked Aunt Alene why she had refused for the last twenty years to rent any of her various properties to blacks and Mexicans. Aunt Alene turned to face us and wiped her hands on her dress. My mother and Aunt Carina were making noises but, surprisingly, neither Aunt Grace nor her husband made any effort to quiet Karys. I could almost feel the ripple of energy they beamed Karys's way as she stood her ground.
"Miss Leah Karys and Miss Raydia Ann," Aunt Alene began, "I am seventy-two years old and I have been a landlord for as long as you've been alive. I make my living that way and, although I do not have to answer questions from anybody's children, I want to make one thing very, very clear.
"I rent to whomever I please. The property is mine and I busted my butt to get it and to nurture a relationship with my agents so that I could get whatever tenants I wanted all these years. And don't think it's been easy for me, looking the way I do. There was no respect. No respect!" "French" or not, Aunt Alene was the only one among the sisters who had an appearance anyone would characterize as Indian.
"You only know how it is today," Alene continued. I heard Aunt Alene's siblings make noises of acknowledgement and nod their heads.
"And while we're on the subject," Aunt Alene continued, "which one among you has not been offered a place to live when you chose to go to college out here?" Aunt Alene paused and said loudly, "And for free!"
She adjusted the flame under her pot and turned to us again. "Because you are family." At the mention of family, her siblings voiced their unanimous support. Alene finished her thought for our benefit. "Those people out there are not family and they don't treat my property like my family." Actually, more than one blood relative had let her property go down badly but Alene's words carried the tone of victory.
Karys and I started to wither under the reproachful looks directed at us.
It was Aunt Carina who overcame the heavy silence that followed.
"Well, I'm sorry," Aunt Carina mumbled. "I know what I said wasn't very nice." She looked around at her sisters for support and shared culpability. Mom just looked at her plate and grunted softly to fill the space opened by her sister's apology. Aunt Estelle chewed loudly, still looking at us without sympathy. Aunt Irene got up abruptly to see if the uncles needed more food and to check on my children. Aunt Grace reached her hand out to Karys, who touched it lightly before she left the room with me following meekly behind.
Karys and I were again cocooned in the TV room when, through the open window, we overheard the slow drawl of one of the uncles as he facetiously commented,
"Well, I guess the little nigras told them!"
The old men laughed heartily among themselves.
Karys and I were doing penance in silence when we heard the delighted cries of our uncles. Karys peeked between the blinds and smiled.
"The others are back from their drunk?" I quipped.
"It's Lana!" my cousin said brightly.
I threw the door open just as the elder women began to rejoice. By the time Karys and I made it to the kitchen, Lana was planting a kiss on the forehead of the last uncle, and raising a hand to high-five her mother. However, instead of meeting Lana's hand in a high five, Aunt Carina slid her hand lightly down Lana's face, to the amusement of her sisters.
"Okay, you only fell for that a hundred times," I said in greeting.
"We're upstairs, in exile," Karys said.
"Nonsense, child. Lana, look at your little cousins. Haven't they grown?" Aunt Irene stood with her hands on her hips, gazing lovingly at my children, who briefly remembered who I was and came over to hug me and be wondered at by their grandmother and her siblings.
"Did you finish your nap?" my youngest asked, looking bleary eyed and in need of one himself.
"Yup," I said, realizing that the sisters had granted Karys and me some privacy by telling my children we were napping. "How about you?" I asked, looking at his tired eyes. He knew what I was looking at, and widened his eyes to appear more alert. This was no time for a nap. He was a honeybee trying to work the entire acre by himself before nightfall. I chucked the boys' cheeks, but offered no cries of amazement. My eldest hit my arm and went to rejoin the uncles. I let the baby pour out of my arms to follow his brother.
Lana followed us gamely as far as the bottom of the stairs when it occurred to her to remark, "I could smell Alene's gumbo from the freeway. They got anything else?"
Karys indicated that there were red beans, ribs in the oven, and tamales.
Lana's face lit up with hope. "Whose tamales?"
"Mom's," I replied.
"Chattie?" Lana asked, referring to my mother by her nickname, which I might best translate as kittycat. "Chattie made her tamales? Y'all wait for me." Lana headed back to the kitchen.
In the TV room, Lana explained the obvious. Aunt Irene could cook Mexican, but Sha-TEE's tamales kicked ass and took names.
Lana gestured with her fork as her mother did. "Why did you say you were in exile earlier?"
Karys turned off the set and explained our earlier confrontation.
"You're crazy," Lana laughed. "You're not serious—?"
I nodded.
Lana put her plate down. "No way."
I made a face that was both silly and reproachful. Of course she knew the deal as well as we did.
"But we're all insiders," Lana said in a voice that was both incredulous and plaintive. "We belong here. We come to Alene's, we eat food that never runs out. Nobody cares whether we drink or smoke weed, as long as it's not in their face. We're a bunch of conasses and for as long as we're here, we don't give a damn. It's our damn and we don't have to give it until we're good and ready."
The normally deadpan Karys erupted into laughter. I couldn't hold back a smirk.
"Go ahead, conasse," Lana said. "Laugh! Is that where everybody else is, sulking somewhere?"
"How did you know?" Karys laughed at our cousin.
Lana stood. "Please. What don't we know?" With her finger, she gestured in a circle that included all of us.
Insiders.
I was mesmerized by the genius of her statement. Of course, she was right.
The phone rang. I picked it up as though it was my house.
Lana's look seemed to say, See?
Mom had also picked up the phone.
"I love you," she said quietly. Had she known it was me on the upstairs phone? Then I heard Paulina's voice announcing they would return shortly.
"Good," my mother replied, "your cousine is here."
"Oh, did Lana finally blow into town?" Paulina asked. At the mention of Lana, I could hear the other cousins' voices perk up, in the background.
I almost laughed at how little sense it made that anyone would guess which "cousine" my mother meant, out of so many, like an autistic savant knowing which cards had been played already in a game of chance.
There was no need for me to speak. I hung up gently and turned to face Karys and Lana. Lana was tearing up those tamales.
"How many?" Karys asked.
I shrugged. "Probably everybody." All of the sisters' daughters, like keys on a ring.
"Boycott!" Lana grunted between bites, just like all of the sisters except probably Aunt Grace. "Did you actually tell them that? You know what? I can't believe Alene didn't kick your ass."
"She sort of did," Karys murmured.
"Well, good, then," Lana mumbled around her fork. "Saves me a step."
Things were quiet. I realized I hadn't heard my children in awhile, and I peeked out the window. My eldest was playing Chinese checkers with Aunt Estelle; my youngest was sprawled in a lawn chair, his chubby face covered by oversized sunglasses. I watched my uncle adjust an umbrella over him until I could only see his little sneakers.
Another elderly uncle put his glass down and mused, "Think they'll figure it out?"
The uncle with the umbrella shook his head and answered, "Nothing to figure out." He picked up his own drink and, with it, gestured in a circle similar to Lana's. "It's all right here."
****
When I Saw Merrin and Her Sister Again, by Harry
She had always been a little offbeat, even in high school. But that was a long time ago, and most people change. The Navy had changed me a lot.
I can't really put my finger on why I looked Merrin up after so many years. I guess she struck me as being a good starting point at this time in my life. I guess I felt that we sort of knew each other.
So here I was, on Merrin's bar stool, sipping green tea and wondering why somebody with hair like hers would keep it as short as a thistle. When I finished sipping my tea, she let me sit on her couch, which was new.
"Nice couch," I said, running my fingers over the upholstery. It was a good grade of cotton, pebbled, with a slight sheen; an interesting ethnic print.
She smiled indulgently and replied, "Bob cost me an eyeball."
A sofa named Bob? Hey, why not? She had named her car Sonny. The cat, Jones, wound herself around my ankle, leaving a cuneiform pattern of dander on my trouser leg.
"That expensive, hey?"
"Flatulence will not be tolerated on Bob."
Agreed. I ran my hand over the nice fabric again, and asked to see her patio garden. She still owned only LPs and got up to change our entertainment from Johnny Mathis to Peter Frampton before leading me out through her sliding glass door.
The view from the living area was one of a chlorophyll galaxy. Once on the patio, however, I realized that the verdant expanse suggested by Merrin's landscaping was only an illusion. Her potted trees stood immediately against the wall like felons facing a firing squad. She led me, in one half-step, to a mildly interesting bush with leaves of green and gold together.
"This is a euonymous," she explained to me, taking my hand warmly.
I chuckled and, thinking of the emeralds and topaz the leaves reminded me of I quipped, "What did you name it, Jules?"
She looked at me as though I had told her that her possessions named her, too.
With complete earnestness, Merrin informed me, "Euonymous Monk."
We sat in the garden on wooden stools, which seemed appropriate in so little space. There was room for neither a lounge nor a bank. My left shoulder and her right brushed against leaves.
She spoke gaily, looking around with satisfaction at her arrangement. "I switch everything around to change the look."
Change the look? There was barely enough room to change her mind. Together in the tight space, we were crowded even by sunlight. My feet were cold.
My cold feet were forgotten once I tuned in to Merrin's relaxing weirdness as she introduced me to the plants and to another cat, Mascara, now tagging over Jones's hirsute message. It was obvious to me that Merrin didn't need the bouquet of cut flowers I had given her in exchange for her hospitality.
After more talking, she got up to put on a Mozart album and boil more water for more green tea, which would be followed by baked chicken, corn bread and green beans as soon as they were ready. Needless to say, I could hardly wait. I had snuck a peek the last time she checked on the food, and I had seen that the portions would be kingly. I followed her back into the house after a few moments, and eased myself onto Bob, careful not to break any rules.
There was a knock at the door, which surprised me. At Merrin's mellifluent invitation, the door opened, immediately revealing only the outer frontier of a very imposing 'fro. I recognized at once the entrance of Merrin's sister, Carmine. The hair, dappled in gold frost, was followed in quickest succession by an equally imposing front.
Carmine's magnificent opulence was draped in azure gauze. A great deal of her was now in her sister's apartment, and the air near me was becoming radiant with patchouli. I drew a deep, satisfied breath. One tapered, gorgeous hand curled around the door's edge and a Birkenstock on an exquisite left foot appeared. This was accompanied by a grunt and the rustling of heavy paper.
Momentarily, the entire Carmine stood before me, smiling devilishly and pointing to me with one lovely finger. She had the most beautiful hands ever bestowed on a woman, minted, like her petal soft face, by a most loving coppersmith. And it was obvious she knew my face from somewhere but couldn't remember my name. Always in charge, Carmine turned the situation around and asked me if I recalled who she was. I replied by telling her her own name and pausing to continue the game.
I rose to take the large grocery bag Carmine had lugged with her, which I learned contained peach cobbler. Even in high school, Merrin's sister's peach cobbler brought a small fame to both. Carmine was the girl who made the fabulous peach cobbler, and Merrin was the younger sister of that girl who made the fabulous peach cobbler. It was good to be famous that way in our high school. Unabashedly, I stuck my face in the fragrant sack and confirmed at that moment that I was the luckiest man alive.
Finally, I let Carmine off the hook by telling her I was Harry, and how had she been? Merrin breezed out of the kitchen to give her sister a peck on the cheek, and asked her how Telephone was.
I had learned something about telephones in the Navy, and offered to take a look at Carmine's telephone.
"You're a vet?" Carmine asked, beaming.
I was hesitant. My Navy experience had not put me in the Gulf. As I was hedging, Merrin understood my confusion and explained that Telephone was Carmine's cat.
I smacked my head and started to laugh at the preposterousness of this discussion. Merrin and Carmine stared at me stoically.
Merrin said softly, "Telephone is a Siamese show cat. She cost my sister $400."
"That's a little more than the going rate for Siamese show cats," Carmine continued matter-of-factly, "but you get what you pay for."
"But Siamese!" I countered. "Why would you name a Siamese cat 'Telephone?'"
Carmine looked me over as though I barely merited an explanation. By way of explanation, however, she asked me—
"Would it make more sense to you if I had a $400 telephone and called it 'Kitty?'" I had been in Merrin's company long enough to find this logical.
Uncharacteristically, Merrin started to laugh at the both of us, then returned to the kitchen to check on dinner. Carmine, perfectly at home in her sister's pad, went up to the cupboard, took out some dishes and foisted them on me, pointing me toward the table where we would eat. After directing me, she busied herself alongside her sister in the kitchen.
The two chatterboxes were ignoring me now. I started to set the table and caught myself smiling at their behinds. They filled the little kitchen, touching at the hip. I saw each sister tilted just a bit toward the other, which is all it took for Carmine's hair to spring lightly against Merrin's.
Yeah, I got it. I started to feel a beat in my head, started popping my fingers. I think I heard the women laugh at me, but the rhythm took over.
Whoa, yeah.
Gilded ladies, golden day, patchouli. Out of the Navy, free at last, peach cobbler. I mean, one lucky man.
Now, does the fork go on the right or on the left? Baked chicken, string beans, cornbread—
I was feeling right at home myself.
-H.
****
Mrs. Rosegarden: I. The Honeyman
Chapter One
"I just think that if you're twelve and somebody's father is trying to feel you up, why should you have to go around calling him 'mister?' Shouldn't he, like, lose his 'mister' status if he's a bad mister? Why were people in authority not held accountable for everything they did? Why did it always fall to the oppressed to be forgiving, and never to the powerful to be better people?"
"Searcy, I'm so sick of hearing you whine. That was a long time ago. Don't you ever just shut up?" Maylinn was close to slamming the telephone down. "I hope you didn't embarrass Mom with this. She certainly doesn't want to hear it now."
"She didn't want to hear it then," Searcy huffed. "Know what's wrong with you, Maylinn? You just swallowed any crap any authority figure gave you."
"I was very happy to swallow two college degrees given to me by authority figures. I'm happy to take their money, too. Maybe you should stop your whining. Maybe you should lose some weight, get yourself a man and let him screw your brains out to Mozart's Greatest Hits. I bet then, you would stop whining. Jesus, Searcy, just get yourself some happy and shut up."
"You're a moron, Maylinn."
"Oh, bitch, bitch, whine, whine."
The conversation ended with the beeping of electronic devices. Searcy stared at her telephone, slowly absorbing the notion that the days had passed when she and her sister could punctuate their disagreement by slamming rugged plastic receivers into their sturdy cradles.
This fact bothered her, much like reading an exclamatory sentence that ended without its bang.
Searcy rose from her recliner, the only chair in the living room, to retrieve a pad for making a grocery list. She did not need a grocery list to keep track of comestibles for one person. Rather, she needed to refocus, and making lists allowed her a line along which she could feel her way back to civility.
Fortified by her notes, she donned her favorite tee shirt, a faded pink rag with silk screened roses spilling over both shoulders and cascading over her breasts. As beautified as she would be that day, she left the apartment to air herself out. She headed for Hoenigmann's Deli.
The man at the counter smiled warmly at her, his eyes dancing into hers, engaging, serene, kind. He caught himself staring at the roses, and quickly returned his eyes to meet hers.
"What can I do for you today, Mrs. Rosegarden?" he asked her in a slow, thoughtful voice that reminded her of an older gentleman she had once met – a man who spoke as though he had all day long to air his thoughts. Searcy caught herself smiling in return. She liked the ring of "Mrs. Rosegarden."
Suddenly overcome with shyness, she pretended to consult her grocery list.
"I need more time." She tried to say this coolly.
"Sure," the man said, and turned to his duties.
After a moment, Searcy asked, "Mr. Hoenigmann, what would you recommend as a dessert?"
The grocer turned back to her, holding an item he was wrapping.
"Hoenigmann was my grandfather. My name is Franck."
"Mr. Franck . . ." Searcy murmured demurely, not knowing what else to say.
"My grandfather was a beekeeper before he immigrated to the U.S. I keep a few bees myself. I would recommend any dish with honey."
"I wasn't really planning to cook a dessert in this heat."
"Pour it over vanilla ice cream, then." Franck shrugged. "I stand by my honey. It's very good."
"Sounds perfect. I'd like a pint and then I guess I'll get a few more things . . ." Searcy fumbled with her list.
Shopping in the little deli was calming. Searcy purchased a few items and went home to prepare dinner. She followed Franck's advice regarding dessert.
Searcy found herself sleepy after the hot day. The simple dessert of ice cream and honey was divine in flavor and its consumption satisfying as her last conscious act of the evening. The aroma of Franck's honey enveloped her like incense.
In bed, she fell asleep immediately, as she had not done at any time in memory.
. . . Chicks.
Everywhere.
All kinds of chicks, but mostly old chicks. Unclothed, like her mother preparing for a bath. Women with eclectic hair and aprons of patterned skin draping over spent bellies. Sloping bosoms no longer tight with purpose. Strong, proud backs rising over legs of Montrachet.
The setting was a mansion with vanilla colored walls and impeccable walnut flooring. There was no furniture and no need of furniture. Bushel baskets overflowing with clean, shiny fruit, peonies and sunflowers, spun candy tufts, and jars of jams and honeys lined hallways and rooms, and stood guard at open, inviting French doors with immaculate brass fittings. Barrels of ice with lead crystal stemware holding snow made of wine had been placed in the herb garden outside of the kitchen. The herbs, themselves protruding from the soil, were elegant green stems topped with flowers of cottony smoke that tasted of marijuana and Earl Grey. Searcy wandered throughout the mansion's rooms, which were jammed with chattering women, from the orange tiles of the kitchen throughout the waxed corridors and up the palatial, spiraling staircase.
Searcy meandered through the fete, amazed at the inviting eyes and familiar smiles of all the women, amazed at their contented nakedness and animated camaraderie, admiring of their ancient feet against the beautiful wood.
At the bottom of the stair was a mirror. Searcy looked at its reflection and was startled.
The reflection was not of an aging Searcy who belonged among the elder women. The glass beheld her natural face. Searcy was nearly startled enough to begin the waking process, when she heard the summoning chime from the top of the stairs.
The women ceased their chattering. At the top of the stairs stood a woman who, like the others in the mansion, was a stranger. If this was the afterlife, the woman's extraordinary tan had doubtless been her invitation to this party. Her head was piled high with windswept, platinum hair; her lips were lacquered in frosted pink paraffin. An infinity of wrinkles covered her slender mahogany body like script. Searcy drew closer to the bottom stair, straining her eyes to look for a message on the woman's body, but the words were in a language Searcy could not understand. Searcy then looked at the woman's hands and realized that the summoning chime had come from the crystal goblet and silver spoon the woman held in her hands.
"It's time for the men." The woman said this to the delight of all assembled.
And men, men who were beautiful even to Searcy, appeared in every space not occupied by the women of the mansion. One of the women tapped Searcy's arm and advised her, "Choose whomever you like. There are always enough to go around. If we need more, there will be more."
As Searcy reached for a man she desired, another woman took possession of him. Daunted, Searcy was slow to choose another but, when she did so, he assumed the features of the chosen partner she had not won.
Searcy's senses had been swimming in the taste of wine snow and the scent of bergamot. She and her lover were now slowly melding together, like candle wax, as were the bodies of the other couples. The most reaching, soulful kiss of Searcy's lover took over her senses until she was distilled into mere energy in the blackness that preceded the existence of the firmament.
Her hearing of the sighs signaled the return of her senses. As sight restored itself, Searcy drew back to regard her lover, only to find the man whose outrageous touch had changed the value of all touches that had followed.
She woke with a start, and realized she had climaxed in her sleep.
Chapter Two
"Maylinn, why is your sister always so . . . so angry with me? I had always thought that, especially since your father's death, we were the best of friends."
"The Three Musketeers." Maylinn agreed. "I don't know, Mom. Some shit about a friend's father who tried to feel her up when she was twelve."
Mom grew upset. "Maylinn, that's not what happened. It was all a joke."
Maylinn was puzzled. "You mean there's some truth to what Searcy has been going on and on about?"
Mom thought a moment. "The oddest things turned her on or off. You know, she always did her own thing and marched to her own tune. She was never one to follow the crowd, and you never knew how she would accept anything. On the one hand, your father and I wanted that for the two of you. But Searcy . . . well, Searcy often made me doubt the wisdom of giving you two so much freedom or so much . . . experience."
"What was the joke, Mom? Was I there?"
Mom was quiet. "You don't remember, do you? Listen, for whatever it's worth, I think your sister is overreacting, but at the same time, I need to connect with her about this. You seem to be fine. You should stay out of it. Okay?"
Maylinn did not wish to agree, but with the discipline, trust and acumen of a Musketeer, did as her mother asked and waited patiently for truth.
Meanwhile, each ensuing week found Mrs. Rosegarden making her purchase from the beekeeper.
Chapter Three
Thanksgiving.
Maylinn and her husband picked up Searcy from her apartment and drove to Mom's house, where they would enjoy Thanksgiving dinner like the ones Mom had prepared in the sisters' childhood.
While Mom fussed over her pots, the others were gathered in the kitchen: Maylinn reading magazines, her husband good naturedly tightening bolts and securing things that became undone in his mother in law's house. With a twinkle in her eye, Searcy drew a small jar from her bag.
"Oh, what's that?" Maylinn asked.
"A gift for Mom," Searcy replied. "Mom, look at this."
Mom twirled around, delighted, and took the jar. She reached into a drawer for her reading glasses.
"Hoenigmann's Deli," she read.
"Oh, Mom, do you remember Hoenigmann's Deli?" Maylinn asked, surprised.
"Sweetie, I remember Hoenigmann. When you girls were tiny, we lived near his original delicatessen – the one that was razed back when the city went through its Urban Renewal thing. Mr. Hoenigmann wore a yarmulke and called me 'Mrs. Angels' Mother' because you two were so beautiful and well mannered." Mom's reminiscence brought a sweetness to her face as she remembered Mrs. Hoenigmann's delight at pinching the girls' cheeks. She remarked on their rich complexion in nearly the same words each time "Those fat little cheeks are just like honey, as I should know!"
Mom reminisced a moment longer before saying, "Thank you, Searcy. I bet it's great honey."
"It's not just honey, Mom," Searcy interjected.
"Well, I hope it isn't what's left of Mr. Hoenigmann!" Mom said, inciting the family's laughter.
"Mom, every day that I eat this honey on something or stir it into my coffee or tea, I have the most vivid dreams that night," Searcy explained.
Mom stopped her kitchen motions and regarded her daughter closely, then looked at the honey jar.
"Oh, really?" Mom said with good humor. "Searcy, you're on. I bought a pound cake for dessert. I will pour some of the famous Hoenigmann honey over my dessert and we shall see what we shall see."
Thanksgiving dinner was, as always, one of the highlights of the family's year. The pound cake, which had become a little stale, was rejuvenated with thin, sticky streams of Hoenigmann's honey. Maylinn's husband, who did not care for sweets, chose to have coffee without dessert and without honey.
Searcy slept on the rug in the living room, as Maylinn and her husband occupied the guest room, and there would certainly be no slumber on Mom's Queen Anne sofa.
Searcy could hear the laughter from the driveway approaching the mansion. She flowed freely, at perfect ease in her skin, dimpled fat shimmering in the perfect day. The momentum of unrestrained flesh was as comforting as the rhythm of soft waves on a south Atlantic beach. Searcy heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Maylinn running to join her on the emerald lawn. The sisters locked arms and continued to the gathering.
The crystal had been tapped by the silver spoon and the men had materialized. Searcy and Maylinn could hear the voices of men in complete enjoyment of themselves and their partners. A great sprig of mistletoe could be seen hanging from a beam at the living room's entrance. The laughing voices of the men changed to a mix that now seemed familiar to both sisters. As Searcy prepared to enter the mansion with her sister, she felt the air suddenly turn very cold. Although the sisters were still outside, Searcy felt an odd sensation, like that of a door closing behind her and trapping her. Looking around, Searcy realized she and Maylinn were now pubescent, clothed, and standing in a place of great familiarity. This was no longer the great house of women, and Searcy turned, ready to bolt.
The waking process had begun when Maylinn turned to her sister and touched her arm.
"Don't leave now. Let's go in," Maylinn said, pulling Searcy back into the dream.
"I want to stay outside," Searcy insisted. "You know what they're doing. I can smell the pot from here. I could smell it from the driveway."
"You are such a square," Maylinn chided. "It's like you're ashamed of Mom and Dad being hip. Tell you what – if we go in right now, they might let us have some beer or something."
"Yeah, 'or something.'"
"Oh, shut up. They're not going to let us get near the bong or the bourbon." Maylinn rolled her eyes and continued, "The very most we can hope for is half a beer and a drag from a cigarette."
"I'd like to at least wait until I'm in high school," Searcy muttered.
"Christ, you are so lame. Well, I'll be in high school next year. I'm going in. You know what they say, 'eight is too late.'"
"That's disgusting," Searcy hissed. "Plus, that was some horrible person talking about children having sex, wasn't it? Wasn't he on Merv Griffin or Dick Cavett? Even our parents thought it was gross."
"No, it was only about sex ed, but we're both late, if it makes you feel any better." Maylinn stuck her nose in the air. "And, no, I think they were only talking about telling your children they can't get pregnant from kissing. I'm going in before the beer dries up."
Searcy hung back for a moment, long enough to absorb Maylinn's knowledge, and decided to join her sister inside the house.
The air was thick; it had mass. It had a smell that Searcy thought was like burnt spinach. Her parents and their married friends lounged comfortably, some in mismatched couples, on the floor of a sunken living room layered in the woven visions of laboring harems. Dee Dee Rand sat in a corner with a teenaged child of one of the guest couples, looking at records and eating chips. Searcy thought she registered a furtive look or slight smirk from some of the adults toward her sister, who now stood beneath the stalk of mistletoe.
Suddenly, strong, groping hands reached out of a wall and enveloped Maylinn. Maylinn squealed in surprise as the adults in the sunken area laughed. The man who had grasped Maylinn then showed himself in his entirety and kissed Maylinn sweetly on the cheek before releasing her and returning to the others. Beaming, Maylinn followed him to the group and sat between her parents. Mom tousled Maylinn's hair and looked away for a moment. Dad got up to make himself a drink. Seeing an opportunity, Maylinn reached for Mom's burning cigarette only to have her hand smacked. Before Maylinn could protest, Searcy's screams pierced the air, ricocheting throughout the house. The host, Mr. Rand, had enveloped her as the other guest had embraced Maylinn, but in contrast to Maylinn's complacency, Searcy was kicking and flailing.
"Okay, Searcy, okay . . ." Mr. Rand started to back away. Dad turned from the bar; Mom grasped Maylinn's wrist.
"Searcy, Sweetie," Mom began. Alarmed, Mrs. Rand tried to stand, but was too stoned to make it completely upright.
Mr. Rand backed away from Searcy as, to everyone's horror, Searcy came for him, kicking and cursing. Searcy tore a framed photo of the Rands' wedding from the wall and swung it at Mr. Rand. Dad was over to her in an instant, restraining her.
The party dissipated in a cloud of the family's disgrace. Searcy began to toss and turn on the floor.
Chapter Four
"No, People, I am fixing breakfast," Mom insisted.
"You always cook. Let me fix my world famous greasy potatoes with onions and cheddar," Maylinn's husband offered. "It will put hair on your chest."
"Mom, you won't regret it," Maylinn smiled. "I never turn down Dave's potatoes when he feels like making them. And you should see my chest."
Searcy sat stiffly at the table. Her coffee was untouched.
"What's wrong with you?" Maylinn huffed arrogantly at Searcy.
Mom glided over to Searcy and threw her arms around Searcy's neck.
"Let me tell you about my Honey Dream," she said, kissing her daughter.
Searcy regarded her mother with tired eyes.
"I made love with your father last night. It was positively the most awesome dream I have had in a lot of years. We did everything – the laws of physics were completely suspended, and we probably broke a few state laws as well."
"I'm glad, Mom," Searcy replied weakly. "That's kind of what I hoped you would get."
Maylinn looked at both of them skeptically. "What horse shit."
Dave looked at his wife knowingly. "You are in no position to call anything horse shit. I almost had to put you in a headlock in the middle of the night."