What I Really Think of You Page 8

  “He had his daddy’s fancy car.”

  “I’d like to know a way to get money off the brain for sure,” said Daddy. “We took in peanuts again, and every bit of it was loose change. Not a dollar bill in that plate. You’d think paper was gold.”

  “I know a way to get it off the brain,” Mum said, undoing her apron strings, meaning she wanted us to kneel down and pray.

  “Amen,” Daddy said, and got up from his lounge chair. “Where’s Bobby John?”

  “He’s over to Drive-In Burger. Jesse Pegler drove him over.”

  Mum got down on her knees, holding on to the Barcalounger for support.

  Daddy got down, and I did.

  “Oh Lord,” Daddy began, “help us to see the goodness though the bad. Help us to see this fine morning, the chicken smells coming from the kitchen, Opal here had a nice young fellow, son of a preacher, come calling on her—”

  “Hey, Daddy!” I complained. “Don’t tell Him that. That’s not for sure he came to see me.”

  Eight

  JESSE PEGLER

  SEAL AND I WERE working for ACE that summer.

  One of the things we were supposed to do was go up to teenage drivers at the sunrise service and present them with “It’s Up to You” bumper stickers.

  We handed out about forty, then went back to my father’s study to watch the show. Seal took notes on everything: camera angles, choir members whose faces didn’t “light up” as they sang, the need for more closeups of blacks and Hispanics—you name it and Seal was scribbling it across an ACE pad with her gold ACE pencil.

  She was stretched out on the rug in white shorts and a white T-shirt with “IT’S UP TO YOU!” printed across it in gold letters. She had these long legs, already tanned from tennis in early June, and sun streaks through her long yellow hair. I was watching her watch my father, waiting for the end of the service, when I could finally say, “Hey, let’s drive somewhere. I have Dad’s car for the morning.”

  “Hey, the thought of driving somewhere doesn’t exactly thrill me,” she answered. “I’ve had my own car for years.”

  “Oh that’s right,” I said. “You’re The Jaded Lady who’s seen and done everything. What would exactly thrill you?”

  “The thought of catching Reverend Cloward’s eleven-o’clock service,” she said, “I told your father I’d go there with good wishes from ACE. We’re supposed to build up goodwill between ACE and local churches, remember?”

  “That is thrilling,” I said. “Be sure and catch a glimpse of Dickie while you’re there.”

  “I’d want more than a glimpse of Dickie,” she said.

  Dickie was my age, and he was in my class at Seaville High. All the girls were blown away by Dickie’s good looks, but there was something eerie about Dickie, too. He was like a science-fiction clone of his old man. He didn’t look like he’d had another parent—just the Reverend. He stood like him, walked like him, sounded like him—he had all his gestures. Even the part in his hair was the same.

  “Sometimes I think you’re a P.K. groupie,” I said.

  “Sometimes I think you’re jealous.”

  “Sometimes I am.”

  “You can always come with me, Jesse.”

  “The thought of going to church twice in one Sunday doesn’t exactly thrill me,” I said. “I’ve been going to church for seventeen years.”

  I drove her to her house, waited for her to change clothes, and dropped her off on Main Street, at the First Methodist Church.

  Seal had said what I ought to do was call on the Ringers, take Opal for a ride, something. We owe them something, she said, I feel guilty around Arnelle. Just pretend you’re a male hummingbird. She laughed. The day before, we’d watched this movie called Sex and Courtship, sent to ACE by Faith Films. They were trying to sell it to ACE for our teenage “Play and Pray” program. There were shots of this male hummingbird showing off his dazzling plumage, stunt flying through the air to attract a female calmly perched on a branch waiting.

  Even if I could talk myself into pretending I was the male hummingbird, the idea of Opal Ringer calmly perched anywhere didn’t fit. Opal was more like some little cat, forced out into the wild to make her own way too soon. She was the kind of creature you’d have thought one loud noise would send her clinging to something, mewing with fear, like the cat hanging to the side of a tree, its fur on end, while dogs barked up from the ground.

  But Seal told me exactly where the Ringers lived on Hog Creek Road, and I turned the car around and headed that way.

  When Mrs. Ringer told me Opal wasn’t there, I wound up giving Opal’s brother a ride to Drive-in Burger.

  He said he needed a new car, he thought—“a new secondhand one.”

  He said, “Riding around in this thing, I feel like I’m getting above my raisings.” He was cracking his knuckles, stretching his long legs out after moving the seat back.

  “This car really belongs to ACE,” I said.

  “Don’t everything? I hear Diane-Young Cheek does, too, now. Hear she’s going out with ACE to witness.”

  “She’ll make The Helping Hand Tabernacle famous,” I said.

  “That’d be another miracle, wouldn’t it?”

  “Don’t you think she’ll do you some good?”

  “I think she’ll do you all some good,” he said. “I think her folks want her out of Seaville is what I think. … Was that your first healing?”

  “I’ve been to a lot of healings, Bobby John. My own grandfather could heal, or at least he could use the power of suggestion to good advantage.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened with Diane-Young? The power of suggestion?”

  “I think that had something to do with it.”

  “Don’t that bother you any?”

  “Why should it?”

  “You got to ask yourself who did the suggesting.”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it? She’s off the crutch.”

  He asked me a lot of questions about ACE Winning Rallies, how long the tour took, who went on it, what happened, and I finally told him we weren’t even sure we could raise the money for the summer one. I told him we had all we could do to stay on TV.

  “We got all we can do to keep our doors open,” he said. I pulled into Drive-in Burger and offered to buy him a burger, “for helping us find Diane-Young. Come on,” I said. “My treat.”

  “I didn’t come here to eat,” he said. “I’m on the afternoon shift.”

  Then he said, “Opal’ll be real pleased you came by to see her, and much obliged for the lift.”

  He gave me a little two-fingered salute and slammed the car door shut.

  I was in charge of ACE’s “Personal Touch,” which my father described as “a one-man outreach operation.” I was supposed to drive around to the jails and hospitals, shake hands with people, pass out our leaflets and charms, and remind everyone that It’s Up to You was on TV every Sunday at noon.

  Seal was helping my mother run the ACE cassette course, and the ACORN program (A Counselor of Reborn Neighbors).

  It was Donald Divine’s idea that my mother should make white her trademark. She bought an all-white wardrobe. She used our sunroom for her office, and Donald got a decorator in who filled the place with white wicker furniture, white cushions, white rugs over white ceramic tile floors, and white flowering plants.

  We were a far cry from the days down South when we piled into motel rooms at day’s end, and only unpacked what we needed for the next day.

  Donald had even gone out and bought a white angora cat for my mother, which he named Blanche. Blanche slept over on the windowsill of the sunroom, in a white straw basket, atop a white pillow.

  There were photographs taken showing my mother working there, for the front cover of the ACORN bulletin.

  I stopped by the sunroom my first Monday morning on the job, the end of that June.

  “Jesse,” my mother said when I walked through the door, “change into a suit. Put on a tie. Sick people, pe
ople in trouble, don’t want some kid in blue jeans calling on them.”

  “Dad didn’t say anything at breakfast,” I said. “Hi, Seal.”

  Seal was sitting there taking dictation from my mother. She said hi back and I noticed she was dressed in white, too—white dress, white sandals, even a white watchstrap.

  “Your father didn’t realize you were going out in the same clothes you came down to breakfast in, Jesse. Now change into a suit and tie, then come back down here, because we’ve got some good news.”

  “Super news,” Seal said.

  “What’s so super about it?” I said, and suddenly got this shaky feeling inside it was news from Bud.

  “I said change your clothes, darling, and let me finish up here with Seal. Then we’ll tell you.”

  I went back up to my room and changed into a suit. I hated neckties, and spending my clothes allowance on them, so the few I had were real cheapos. Bud’s closet was jammed with sports coats, slacks, sweaters, shirts, and ties—he’d packed only one suitcase when he took off. But we were leaving everything just as Bud had left it, orders from the old man. “You may borrow anything from me, but leave Bud’s things alone.”

  I got a tie from the back of my father’s closet, mulling over how I’d feel if they said Bud was on his way home.

  At dinner last night we’d gotten another “ding.”

  The ding was something my father’d worked out years ago when he was out on the road. He’d dial our number, and hang up before the first ring was over. There was just a little ding sound, “A ding,” my father said, “to remind you all I’m thinking of you, and I love you.”

  Bud always dinged us at dinnertime. It couldn’t be anyone else.

  He’d written my father and mother one letter after he first left, which I’d never seen, and all the other communications were dings.

  “They’re coming closer and closer together,” my father said. “I hope that means it’s getting closer to the time he’ll be back with us.”

  “I think he’s ready,” my mother said. “I just feel it.”

  We’d interrupted our roast-beef dinner while my father bowed his head and said a prayer. He was a little teary eyed; maybe that was helped along by the two martinis he’d put away before we were called to the table. I couldn’t read my father very well anymore. It was getting so the only time I could was when he came across TV. He was dynamite then, I had to give him that.

  I checked the tie out in the mirror and thought about how much Bud loved summers at the beach. He and Seal were both surfers. They could spend a whole day on their backs in the sand, too, soaking up the sun, getting neat tans. My skin broke out in the sun, and the only summer sport I really liked was fishing. Seal said you had to do too many cruel things to fish—put hooks through worms, tear the faces of fish; she had a whole lecture against fishing.

  When I got back down to the sunroom, my mother was in the midst of dictation: “… and this is why I am personally writing to encourage you to become an ACORN.

  “Dr. Pegler and I have talked together about what an effective ACORN you’d be! We were so impressed with the beautiful summary you wrote for us, at our request, when your cassette course ended.

  “‘Rhoda,’ Guy said to me, ‘could we convince blank to enroll as an ACORN? Her personality has just that certain Christian charisma we need!’

  “We will be praying that your answer will be yes, and we are enclosing the registration form for ACORN.

  “Remember, blank, Jesus wants you to win! So do we! Sincerely.”

  Then my mother said, “Seal, change the thirty dollar registration fee to fifty dollars. Have five hundred copies of this letter made up in the personalized style, using that list of names from subscribers to the cassette course. Now, honey, be very sure no letters are sent to two people from the same town. Of course, when blank is a he, substitute his for her.”

  I said, “It must have been really boring hearing Dad say that five hundred times. Rhoda, could we convince blank to enroll as—”

  My mother cut me off. “Oh, that’s just a figure of speech and you know it. That just makes being an ACORN sound more inviting.”

  “It sounds like a con game to me,” I said.

  “And you sound like Bud to me. Doesn’t he sound like Bud, Seal?”

  “He will when his voice gets deeper.”

  My mother went across the room, grabbed Blanche and Blanche’s white comb, and started grooming her.

  “What’s the good news?” I said. “Did we hear from Bud?”

  “Jesse Pegler,” said Seal, “do you think if we’d heard from Bud I’d be able to sit still?”

  “Seal von Hennig,” I said, “do you think you’ll ever give up on Bud?”

  “Now, Jesse, don’t be sassy,” said my mother. “We just had that ding, that’s all we’ve ever had, but that ding says he loves us.”

  “I never even got a ding,” Seal said.

  “Maybe never getting a ding says something else,” I said.

  “Oh, Seal, sweetheart, dinging is our family tradition,” my mother said, “and I doubt Bud even knows you know what a ding would mean.”

  “Then that’s the good news?” I said.

  “Even if I never got a ding,” Seal said, “I wouldn’t mind seeing him coming through that door, even if he doesn’t want me.”

  “Bud doesn’t know what he wants,” my mother said. “Oh, he’ll be here one of these days. He’ll plan it real dramatic, because Bud’s vain like Blanche here. Knows she’s going to be the prettiest cat in Suffolk County where I get through combing her. When the Lord blesses you with good looks, there’s nothing wrong in celebrating such a blessing. Within limits, of course. Bud went overboard in the clothes department, but at least he knew not to wear jeans and sneakers to visit sick people in the hospital.”

  She glanced over at me, still a little mad because I’d made fun of her ACORN letter.

  She said, “You look a whole lot better now, Jesse. But your father has to take you shopping. You need some new clothes. That suit’s so old it’ll walk by itself someday.”

  “Mom, I’m seventeen.”

  “That old!” Seal said, hitting her forehead with her palm. “Whew!”

  “Nobody has to take me shopping,” I went on anyway.

  My mother said, “Somebody is going to be eighteen soon, which is the news we have. Tell him, Seal.”

  “We’ve got an invitation to a party, Jesse.” She passed a card across to me.

  You Are Invited to Dinner Before The Last Dance

  on the occasion of Diane-Young Cheek’s

  18th birthday

  July 26

  7 p.m.

  Wear a hat representing your astrology sign, in keeping with The Zodiac theme of the dance. Transportation to the dance will be provided. A table is reserved for Diane-Young’s guests. Bring a date.

  Bud always said if he was my sign, he’d lie about it. Virgo, according to Bud, was the dullest sign of the zodiac. Virgos are drawer straighteners, Bud always said. Gemini, according to Bud, was the best sign. No need to ask what sign Bud was.

  “Is this the big news?” I said. “I do the jails on Saturday nights.”

  “Oh, everybody’s going to The Last Dance,” my mother said. “The jails can wait.”

  Seal said, “I’m on the hot line Saturday nights, but I won’t be July twenty-sixth. Tell him the rest, Mrs. Pegler.”

  “You tell him, honey. If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t have known Diane-Young Cheek from boo. We’d never have gone there for dinner or any of it.”

  “That was the thrill of all time, too,” I said. “Dinner there.”

  “You just watch that mouth of yours, Jesse,” my mother snapped.

  Coming home from the Cheeks’ that night she’d said Whew! I’m just glad that’s behind us. If I never hear another word about Rudolph Nureyev, or Margot Fonteyn, or Vera Volkova, it’ll be too soon, and she never even inquired anything to do with me, if I had a hobby�
��anything. My father said Ye have heard of the patience of Job. Job’s Job, my mother said, I was a guest in their home and never once got asked a question about myself.

  “The good news,” said Seal, “is there was something enclosed with this invitation. A check made out to ACE.”

  “Hallelujah,” I said.

  “Hallelujah is right!” my mother said. “The check is for ten thousand dollars.”

  I let out a slow whistle.

  “It’s to get our Winning Rally on the road,” Seal said.

  My mother said, “Thank you, Lord.”

  “Jesse?” Seal said. “Arnelle told me once the one thing in the world Opal wished she could do would be go to The Last Dance. Now we owe them that much. We’ll make up a table. You and Opal, me and Dickie, Verna and—”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You and Dickie?”

  “We don’t want Reverend Cloward’s nose out of joint,” said my mother. “He’s out ten thousand dollars, after all.”

  After I left my mother and Seal, I walked down to my father’s study to get his car keys.

  Donald Divine was with him. My father was staring out the window, complaining that he hated to ask Igor Sonnebend for any more favors.

  Donald was pouring himself more coffee. “It’s a favor to Igor, too, Guy,” Donald said. “Igor’s going to trade that jet in on a new one. If we can persuade him to donate it to ACE, he’ll have a tax deduction and we’ll have a plane that will carry our whole crew on crusades.”

  My father turned around, saw me, and said, “Jesse, that tie isn’t right for you, son.”

  “Hi, Jesse,” Donald said. “When you leave, I’d like a ride to the train station.”

  “It’s your tie,” I said.

  “It’s right for me but not for you, son,” said my father. “I love you, but not in a Countess Mara tie. Can’t you pick out one that’s not so fancy?”

  “Why wear one at all?” Donald said. “Aren’t you going to Riverhead jail today?”

  “He’s going to Oceanside Hospital,” my father said. “He has to wear a tie. Put on one of my ACE ties, son.”

  “Maybe you should lay out my clothes for me the night before,” I said.