Carolina Moon (8 page)

Tom turns from the window where he has watched Quee oversee the trash pickup, and he drives the final nail into the molding at the top of the closet space. Quee didn’t want a door on the closet. Said she preferred the curtain look. She had supplied him with the curtain already on a heavy brass rod and asked that he hang it in place once the closet was finished. The curtain was green, velvet she’d bought from that crazy old junk man she supports. She told Tom when she saw it she knew it was perfect, kind of a
Gone with the Wind
look to welcome Mary Denise. He figures a
Gone with the Wind
look means that if this Mary Denise ever finds herself with nothing to wear she could snatch down the curtain over her closet and put it around her. He laughs a crooked laugh, the last nail in one corner of his mouth, because after what Quee told him about this chick, the possibility of her wearing no clothes was quite possible.

He hears the stairs creaking and the key turn. Impulse makes him pull the curtain closed, and then she is there, this vision. Quee had told him that as far as she could tell the girl was sort of a dingdong, but that the girl’s mama had been like a sister to Quee when they were growing up, and that loyalties never died, real loyalties, that is.
Quee said that even if she was a dingdong, she was college-educated and quite attractive, just what she wanted for the in-house therapist of Smoke-Out Signals. Quee said just because she undressed in the movie theater was no reason to condemn her; it might (if the whole story was known) even be a source of admiration for her. She had taken her clothes off, which is exactly what she’s doing now. Tom watches through the split in the velvet, the thick dusty odor of the fabric making him feel like sneezing.

She slides her jeans down her hips and over her thighs; there’s the imprint of the seam of her pants in the soft white flesh of her leg. Her cotton underwear is ripped up one side; her legs are hairy, knees knobby. The small indentations on either side of the base of her spine are deepened by her swayback stance. She looks at herself in the mirror, sticks out her tongue and then goes over to sit on the edge of the ruffly bed. She lies back and crosses her legs, hands behind her head. “It might just work,” she says and laughs. “It’s no Taj Mahal, but I’m no Sheba either. I’m just free at last, free at last, so fucking free at last.” She begins to unbutton her shirt. Tom tries to look at the floor, to count the nails he has spent the morning driving, but he finds his eyes drawn to her, the last thing he needs about now.

She goes back over to the mirror and grins at herself, inspects her straight white teeth. “Who the hell are you?” she asks, and his heart freezes in his chest; but she’s talking to herself again. “The Cheshire cat? The Runaway Wife? The Feminine Pee-Wee?” She turns and inhales from an imaginary cigarette. “What a dump!” She parades, dances, shimmies in her ripped-up underwear for what seems an eternity. Who would think that you could get bored spying on a nice-looking, near-naked girl who talks to herself, but here he is. She opens her suitcase and pulls a red and black silky robe from it. It’s that kind of robe that looks Oriental or something; it makes her look a little
hookerish. She pulls her hair back in a ponytail, sits cross-legged on the bed and pulls a tape recorder from her bag.

“Testing, testing . . . yoo-hoo. I’m home! It’s an okay room. Quee is what I expected, not as big as Mama had made her sound, but of course to Mama everybody is BIG.”

She stretches out flat on her back, one foot propped up on the wall.

“And she doesn’t look so whorish to me. I like her hair long like that. I’m going to let mine grow that long. Her clothes are kind of weird like Mama said, but all in all I’d much rather be wearing Quee’s muumuu than Mama’s girdle, or whatever it is she wears to keep her butt looking so small. I like a big butt, a butt that moves a little when it walks. I’m thinking I might grow mine a little bigger.”

She stops the machine and laughs great big and then turns it back on. “Now as for business. I’ve got a plan as to how to divvy up the clients. There are the anals and there are the orals. The one and only client here—let’s call him the guinea pig—is clearly an oral. He talks all the time and even makes his living at it and it’s clear that he eats a lot, and from the looks of the red nose of his I’d venture to guess that he drinks a bit. Clearly he’s oral, but the Spandex Poet who is checking in this very minute is an anal. You can tell by the way she’s way too thin. Eating disorders and anal control impulses seem to go hand in hand. Now what I know from experience is that an oral personality out of control is really bad news. My personal little episode of late is proof of that, but, honey, the worst news you can ever find is an anal
in
control. Let’s just say, for example, if your spouse is an anal type who gains control then sex is mechanical, food is measured to a T, pennies are pinched, and much time is spent on the toilet wrestling with all sorts of issues that life may present. You are likely to find magazine racks and little mini televisions in such a person’s
bathroom. You are likely to find things in the medicine chest alphabetized; there’s probably one economy size of the drugstore brand floss. The utilitarian bathroom. You could live there. There are people I wish would. For business purposes, I will refer to the As and the Os. Look out at the world, and it’s easy as pie to figure. Like look at that show
The Odd Couple
. Felix is an A and Oscar is an O. Elvis was a cross between the two, probably because he was a twin. Quee is clearly an O, and I think I am, too.”

By the time she has gone through just about everybody who has ever been on television or in the movies (Bette Midler is oral and Nancy Reagan is anal), Tommy catches himself dozing against the wall. What wakes him up is the sound of his own name being called, and Blackbeard’s bark from the truck. He jerks awake and peeps out in time to see this raging dingdong hide her tape recorder under the bed and pull a pair of jeans up under that skimpy robe.

“Tom? Where are you?” There is a knock on the door and Denny goes to open it. Quee pushes right in the room, looking all around. “Now where did that boy go?” she asks, and before Tom can think, she pulls back the curtain and there he is like the Wizard of Oz, hammer in hand, nails in his mouth. “I guess you two met, huh?”

“No, no.” Tom pats his top shirt pocket that has nothing at all in it. “I was wearing my Walkman, didn’t hear a thing.” He steps out and extends his hand. “I’m so embarrassed,” he says and the whole time this Denny is giving him the once-over. She stares hard at his shirt pocket.

“What were you listening to?” she asks and pulls that awful-looking robe closer around her body.

“You mean just now?” He holds his hand up to Denny to pause the conversation and turns to Quee. “Did you need me?”

“I just want to see you before you leave, that’s all.” Quee stands
there looking back and forth between the two of them. She always makes Tom feel like he’s under a microscope, like she’s taking in every square inch of him. It used to make him nervous, but now he knows she’s just trying to place him among all the teenage boys who used to come to her back door. “So when you’re all done, come on back to the clinic. I’m thinking we’ll need to add a little salon before too long, you know, maybe just a room all by itself for the pedicures and such; dim lights, piped-in music, the addict can drink a glass of wine while getting a full foot massage and pedicure, doesn’t that sound good?”

“I reckon.” Tom looks at Denny. “If you’re into feet.”

“Well I
am
into feet,” Quee says and sticks one of hers out into the air, twists it all around. Her skin is white and freckled and her toenails are painted a deep maroon. “I wear a size ten, and I have since I was fourteen. I had to drive clean to Raleigh to find any kind of fancy shoes and it always made me feel so”—she pauses as if struggling to find just the right word—“
unique, privileged
. . . .” She grins great big at both of them, the kind of grin that is wise and well practiced—
fake
some might say—her thin eyebrow sharply raised. “Lonnie always said that there was nothing in this world sexier than a great big sturdy woman with extra-large feet.”

“Really,” Denny says, just as deadpan as you can get. She looks like she is trying not to laugh as she pulls the belt of her robe tighter.

“Not to say of course that someone of your average size can’t
also
be sexy.” Quee cups her hand under Denny’s chin and turns her face from side to side, looks at Tom as if to solicit his opinion as well. “I think she’s quite fine-looking, myself. I have always thought, since the day she was born, that she was an absolute beauty.”

“Well, I wear a size eight.”

“Good, good,” Quee says. “That’s a start. If you ever have children
you’ll probably make it into a nine. Just hold on to that thought; I believe in the power of positive thinking.”

“Yeah, your foot looks about the same as mine.” Tom sticks his brogan out beside Denny’s foot, and though there is a considerable difference in size he continues. “I bet we could swap shoes sometime.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” She looks up and stares at him with narrowed green eyes. Her eyes are saying
go to hell
, but there’s play around the mouth, the softness of the person comfortable enough to strip down and prance around in raggedy underwear. “I still want to know what you were listening to in there and where
is
your Walkman?”

“I’ve got to go help Ruthie shred her cancer sticks,” Quee says and eases out the door. “She’s getting hysterical, and it’s only been five minutes since she put out what I like to call
the final request smoke
. She was eyeing the dash of your truck there, Tom, you must have a stash scattered around in there. You’re next on my list, honey.” She points her finger at him. “I need a lot of things done around here, and if you always come in smelling of smoke, the addicts’ll be asking to suck your clothes.”

“Suck my toes?”

“She said
clothes
.” Denny slings back the velvet curtain and is running her hand up and over each and every shelf.

“Worse things could happen,” he says and grins, and Quee just laughs a laugh that makes the room vibrate, calls him
so bad
.

“I’ll get you, Tommy,” she says. “I’m gonna use you as the supreme example of the miracle of my cures.”

“I hear you.”

“Make yourself at home, Denny love.” Quee flashes that same grin, complete with the affected batting of her eyelids before closing the door.

“Yeah,” Tom says, his arms opened wide to the small cluttered room. “Make yourself at home.”

“You were spying on me,” she says now. “There’s no Walkman.” She has collected a bundle of clothes and now is holding them in front of her.

“Look,” he shakes his head and starts to walk toward her, but she takes two steps back. “I am curious about what you’re wearing. Would you call
that
a muumuu?”

“No, Mr. Eavesdropper, I’d call it a
robe
if I were to call it anything for your benefit.”

“Hmmm.” He shrugs and goes to get his toolbox out of the closet.

“Why did you ask to begin with?”

“I don’t know, just never quite saw anything like it.”

“So?” She grabs up a big hard red suitcase and slings it onto the low double bed. Just last week, Quee had had him hang a big pink velvet curtain behind the bed, with the idea that it would make the plain-as-a-jail-cell room look fancy. “I’m sure there’s a lot that you’ve never seen.”

“Seen more today than I cared to.” He laughs and extends his hand. “I’m just kidding really.”

“No, I don’t think you are kidding. I think you’re making fun of me.” She turns, holding the red satin lapels of her robe. “I mean what’s so different about
my
robe except that you happened to
spy”—
she spit the word and took a step closer—“and see what was
under
it.”

“Forget I said anything, really.” He goes over to the door feeling like he got the best of that one for sure, only to turn and see her with a look so forlorn he can’t take it. She looks a hell of a lot like his latest adoption, an abused cocker spaniel who answers now to Mary Read. “Really.”

“Oh, just go on.” She waves her hand and sits on the edge of the bed, legs stretched and crossed at the ankles, as she stares up at the odd overhead fixture that Quee had him install several weeks ago. It looks like a big lavender tit with a crystal pastie, again, a little accessory that Quee thought would bring elegance to the room.

“See you around,” he says, but she sits there, barely lowers her chin in response. Nothing pisses him off like this kind of silent, “pity me” reaction; he doesn’t even know her, and he’d like to put his fist through the wall. He should leave, just walk out, but he has always had such a hard time doing that. As soon as he did, she’d probably go to the closet only to have it cave in on her, decapitate her.
Tom Lowe was the last one with her
, they’d say.

“Look, what can I do?” He puts down his toolbox and takes one step back in the room.

“It’s not you. It has nothing to do with you.” She turns then with dry eyes and a whole new look about her. “I mean, yes, I wish you’d said you were in there looking at me without my clothes on, but you didn’t.” He wants to interject, to make a connection, to say that maybe this is reminding her of her little episode in the theater, but he thinks better of it and just stands there. “I mean it’s not like you really
saw
me.”

“No.” He shakes his head and laughs, a full image of her body—the narrow shoulders and waist channeling into an ample rear—is firm in his memory. Before she even has time to question his laugh, he turns with Blackbeard’s bark to look out the window where Ruthie, decked out in paisley spandex pants, is circling his truck. “Oh, you’ve got to see this,” he says. Denny comes over there beside him, her robe still pulled tightly around her. He feels strange standing this close to a stranger, so close that he can smell the lemon scent of her hair, can see the pale blue vein in her right cheek.