Candles Burning (36 page)

As soon as I was out of sight of Merrymeeting, I removed my homemade hat. It was one of the few things that I could do to avoid becoming a goat. I could do nothing about my looks, let alone the inevitability that it was known that my father had been murdered and dismembered. The younger they are, the fewer social inhibitions children have. I was immediately asked directly if it was true that my daddy had been suffocated to death and cut to pieces. My first instinct was to act as if I did not understand the question.

A furrowed brow, “Huh?” and the witless announcement that I had seen a mouse on the beach, convinced my questioners that I was twice as stupid as a doorstop. My schoolmates did not persist, thankfully, as the commencement of the school term provided many more excitements than the frisson supplied by gore associated with a newcomer. When I was a little bit older, I realized my instinct had been correct: If ever I had started describing Daddy's murder, I would never have been shut of it.

The learning part was largely effortless and enjoyable; the social part of school, like constant sunburn to me. Science and languages came easily to me, so much so that by the time I was ten, I was being bussed to junior high school classes in those subjects. Social ineptness was expected of those who turned out to be “whizzes” at some subject or other. My schoolmates were in any case as put off by evidence of intellect as they were by overly large ears—waggable ears, after all, constituted true talent, along with being able to touch one's nose with the tip of the tongue, or make armpit farts. My teachers, most of them, were my schoolmates grown up; they suspected any child who gave evidence of being smarter than they were, and nonconformist behavior was swatted as quick as a housefly. Naturally, there were others like me in some way: their physical defects all too evident, or they were intellectually too slow or fast, relative to the norm. Every social group has its castes; I accepted mine with something like relief, as it excused me from the anxiety of being someone and something that I was not. My ability to overhear my class-mates whispering and the confidences of the teachers to each other also gave me a useful edge in self-defense.

My formal schooling on the island settled into a dreamy, remorseless repetition of morning and early afternoon hours, five days a week, thirty-eight weeks a year. I rarely thought about it except when I was actually there.

My best school was Santa Rosa Island. Older and younger than its human residents, it was constantly remaking itself over time infinitesimal and infinite, immeasurable by my limited human senses. The great storms that I experienced on that exposed coast—Irene, in October of 1959; in 1964, Hilda, the first real hurricane of my life; the nameless tropical storm that came in June of 1965; and Hurricane Betsy, in the fall of that same year; in June of 1966, Alma would frighten, humble and exhilarate me all at the same time. But no less than the sight of a heron standing in the swash of the storm-wracked shore, one foot on a downed sand pine bole. No less than the peeps playing footsie with the quieted wavelets, the ghost crab peeking out of its tunnel, the hermit crab from a conch shell, the narcissus-pale trumpet of the railroad vine, or the houndstooth pattern of bird's feet on the sand.

How could any ordinary school compare?

For Mama, playacting at Merrymeeting was hardly enough. She discovered that first fall a little theatre troupe in Pensacola and cast herself instantly as a star. The discovery that the troupe had put on
Teahouse of the August Moon
the previous season devastated her. Only the conviction that the show must go on enabled Mama to fight off a massive migraine. She comforted herself with the anticipation of trying out for the new production the troupe was planning:
Anastasia
. For hours, she fussed with her hair, and put on her most regal diamond earrings. Her accent developed a tinge of the foreign, though just what foreign it was impossible to say. Constipated British English was the only element that I could name; the rest had likely never been heard on any known continent or planet.

She returned from her audition with the ever-threatening migraine at full bore, and sore feet, leaving her in misery from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes.

On seeing how white and strained Mama's face was, Miz Verlow sent bourbon and ice for her up to our room.

“So thoughtful of her,” Mama said, with her old Alabama accent, and knocked back half a glass at once.

Tears ran down her face as I massaged her feet by candlelight that evening.

“I should have known,” she said. “All these little theatre groups are cliques, talentless cliques. Pass me the ashtray, darling. Those people—classless. They wouldn't know talent if somebody came in and knocked them over the head with an Oscar.”

Under my fingers, she stretched her toes and flexed her feet and moaned softly.

“Do I look like an understudy to you? I'm supposed to wait in the wings for that mumbling po-faced drip to fall off the stage?” She breathed cigarette smoke at the ceiling. “At least they're going to do
A Streetcar Named Desire
next. I
am
Blanche DuBois. Just look at me.”

Depend upon the kindness of strangers though Mama always had, she was not Blanche DuBois, nor did she manage to wish her rival off the stage of
Anastasia
. Each time she went to Pensacola for rehearsals, she came back with a migraine and pain in her feet. The night arrived that she could barely walk.

Miz Verlow summoned Dr. McCaskey, who ordered bed rest for Mama. That was the end of Mama's little theatre career. The migraines let up, and the pain in her feet. When she was on them again, she was summoned by the doctor to have her feet x-rayed. Dr. McCaskey found nothing wrong with Mama's feet that wearing a larger size shoe would not cure. The diagnosis made Mama furious. She made me swear that if she were on her deathbed, I would never ever call that charlatan.

On the twenty-first of November, smoke billowed over Pensacola. Mama and Miz Verlow and I sat on an overturned skiff on the splat of beach and watched the city docks burn. We could taste the soot in the air. The fire stormed on the docks and vomited lurid smoke and ash, the fire trucks and fireboats keened, the hoses and cannons hurled water onto the flames, and the figures of men, shrunk by distance and the enormity of the fire, looked like imps in the midst of hellfire. The cacophony of sound was hellish too; it seemed to me that if one could hear the caterwauling of the damned, it would sound just so. The water of the bay reflected pillars of flames, reveling and dancing, like a sea of drowned candles.

THE spring and fall bird migrations drew many of our guests. Of the regulars, the Llewelyns were actually among the guests when Mama and I first arrived, but I paid them no mind at the time, and in turn, they paid little to me. Dr. Gwilym Llewelyn was a retired dentist who invited everyone to call him Will. Mrs. Gwilym Llewelyn was quite emphatically Mrs. Llewelyn. Her wifely status emphasized by insisting on being “Mrs. Llewelyn” was a feint; her Christian name was Lou Ellen, and that had proved too much poetry for her.

On their return in the fall of 1958, the Llewelyns remarked on my interest in birds. Their enthusiasm was infectious, their pleasure in the birds so intense and immediate, that I was entirely comfortable with them at once. As soon as they discovered that I was unusually good at mimicry of the birds, they all but adopted me. Dr. Llewelyn insisted on examining my teeth and cleaning them with a little dental kit that he carried with him, and gave me free toothpaste with fluoride in it that probably saved my teeth from the high-sugar diet at Merrymeeting. Mrs. Llewelyn took me shopping with her on occasion, with the excuse that she needed me to carry packages. On those expeditions, she bought me shoes and clothing that fit me, and treated me to lunches and teas in Pensacola or in Milton.

Each Christmas, I sent the Llewelyns a homemade Christmas card with an origami crane in it for them to hang on their tree, and they sent me a store-bought card, half a dozen toothbrushes and a supply of toothpaste, and a calendar. My birthday brought not only a card but a gift, which was always what Mrs. Llewelyn called “frivolous.” Once it was a poodle skirt, with the requisite petticoat to wear under it, so that navigating the aisles at school was like docking a boat. Another birthday, the Llewelyns sent a girlish diary with a flimsy lock and a set of stationery, with stamps and an address book. Their gifts were the commonplace things that my peers were likely to receive from doting grandparents or aunts or uncles, and I always felt a little less of an orphan when I opened them.

From mid-March to June, the beach offered surcease from the northern winter. From June to September, our near-neighbors in the broiling Southern summer sought relief in the relative cool of the beach. Custom slowed a little in October, and fell off through November, December, January and February, but never quite stopped altogether, as guests found their way to Merrymeeting for reasons that had little to do with climate. Even at Thanksgiving and Christmas, which most folk could be expected to observe at home, a few guests took shelter at Merrymeeting. The Llewelyns always departed in time to spend their holidays with family. Mrs. Mank notably never observed the holidays with us.

Of all of Merrymeeting's guests, the most eccentric assortment were the ones who turned up for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Every year that I can recall, an elderly couple by the name of Slater arrived in the third week of November and stayed until the first day of January. Mrs. Slater loved Bridge. If she could not make up a table, she knitted. Mr. Slater was always looking for someone with whom to play chess or Pinochle. They were both intense competitors, and I often observed them cheating at games. For old people, their reflexes with cards, pins, and knitting needles were astonishing.

An extraordinarily tall, thin, loose-limbed man, Mr. Quigley, was in the habit of arriving the day before Thanksgiving, staying a week, and then returning for a second week at Yuletide. He played Bridge with Mrs. Slater or chess or Pinochle with Mr. Slater. It was my impression that he was also aware that they cheated and was amused to let them. He painted little watercolors, usually seascapes.

Dr. Jean Keeling, a woman much given to reading, spent the last two weeks of December and all of January at Merrymeeting. When she wasn't reading science-fiction paperback novels, she listened to opera on the Stromberg Carlson, and wrote a great many cards and letters. She played Bridge and other games with the Slaters and was as quick with her cards as they were, but like Mr. Quigley, seemed not to care whether she won or not. She was kind enough to give me her paperbacks when she finished them, but she was not a particularly gregarious person. She had one close friend among the group and that was Father Valentine.

An old blind priest, Father Valentine settled in the first of November and stayed until February fifteen. He was supposedly Episcopalian and retired, but was not the least bit frail. He paid me to read to him by the hour, which vastly improved my reading skills and vocabulary, to say nothing of my knowledge of the Bible, theology and philosophy. Fortunately for me, Father Valentine also enjoyed mystery stories, and through him, I was educated in the canon of fictional crime. He was voluble, not to say indiscreet, in a perfectly forthright way, not the least bit childishly or maliciously.

These guests' avocations, however, were not what made them our most eccentric guests, nor was it the habit of spending what are normally family holidays at Merrymeeting. It was that they were all adamantly and extremely superstitious, in different ways. They talked and argued about these beliefs as casually as other folks mentioned the weather. It seemed as if someone was always flinging salt over his or her left shoulder or through some other odd little ritual just barely fending off a dire end caused by a seemingly insignificant event.

Father Valentine's bed had to be placed with the head toward the south, to ensure long life.

Each of the others required the head of their bed to face east, for wealth, and regarded Father Valentine's insistence on the south as sheer superstition, and likely to bring bad luck.

They all tied knots in their handkerchiefs for a whole spectrum of reasons unique to each.

Father Valentine informed me that the necklace of amber beads that Dr. Keeling always wore preserved her from ill health.

He also told me that the single blue glass bead on a safety pin that Mrs. Slater invariably wore on her collar was to ward off witchcraft.

Mr. Quigley and Father Valentine, who both smoked, would never light three cigarettes with the same match.

Mr. Quigley required half an onion under his bed when he had a cold.

Dr. Keeling regarded the same as ridiculous superstition.

Candles were a general fixation.

A candle had to burn in a window from Christmas Eve through Christmas night. It was bad luck for the year if it went out, and good if it didn't.

Seeing oneself in a candlelit mirror would bring down a curse. I was neutral on that one, having seen myself in candlelit mirrors and not felt any particular curse.

Seeing a loved one in a candlelit mirror could be the first notice of their death. That I could believe. I had certainly seen Mamadee in the parlor mirror before the confirmation of her passing.

Then there was the one about seeing a loved one known to be deceased in a candlelit mirror meant one's own death was near at hand. Well, I hadn't been sure about Mamadee, so I guessed that I didn't need to write my will yet.

All the little rituals made for a nervous atmosphere, as if everyone was on tiptoe because someone upstairs was dying.

Mama shushed me a lot. I often escaped outdoors, though the cold wind off the Gulf made my bones ache, my lungs tighten, and my nose run. I hardly ever could remember my handkerchief, so the kerchief ties of my hat were always stiff with snot from wiping my nose on them.