Cloud Nine (7 page)

“Yes sir.”

“The nerve of that twerp,” said Sonya, after the girl had gone, “calling me your daughter. How did
she
know who I was?”

“Brat,” I said, “easy does it. She was merely trying to be friendly. Wipe your nose—and shut up.”

“Okay.”

She ate fruit cup, two crab cakes with tartar sauce, cole slaw, steak, baked potato, string beans, and apple pie à la mode, while the waitress stood off and gaped. I asked: “Do you know what you look like?”

“Cow, chawing her cud.”

“I was going to say a Raphael cherub—cute.”

“Tell it like it is. I love to eat.”

“I love to see you.”

“It’s going to cost you something, feeding me.”

A pay phone was up near the door and I had the waitress bring me two dollars in quarters, telling Sonya, “I’d better be calling my mother.”

I called, with her standing beside me, listening to what was said. Mother was slightly testy, even before I broke the big news. “Well!” she said. “I was wondering what had become of you.”

“We’re on our way to Ocean City.”

“‘We’? Does that mean Sonya is with you?”

“She’s right here, beside me.”

“Well at least you took my advice.”

“But that’s not all. You ready for a surprise?”

“...All right. What is it?”

She sounded a little grim, but I made myself plow on. “We’re getting married, Mother. Monday.”

It was quite a while before she said anything, and I began to wonder if she’d fainted or something—the second stunned reaction I’d gotten over the phone that day. But at last she asked: “Did you say married, Gramie?”

“That’s right—M-A-Double-R-I-E-D”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“I think so. Yes, of course.”

“I don’t think so, Gramie.”

“Listen, she’s a very nice girl, and we met long before now—around Christmastime, actually. Listen, we’re getting married. Who’s—”

“Gramie, it has nothing to do with her.”

“Then who else can it have to do with?”

That got another long silence, and then: “Gramie, is she there? Can she hear what you’re saying to me?”

“She’s standing right here beside me.”

“I think I should say something to her.”

I wasn’t so keen about that, because if she started trying to talk Sonya out of it, it would just mean one awful headache. But not letting her talk would have meant a headache almost as bad, so I passed the receiver to Sonya, who started talking herself, without waiting for Mother. She said, “Mrs. Stu, I’ve seen you a hundred times, in church and kinds of places, and once was presented to you, after a school entertainment, at University Park Elementary, when I played a piano piece.” And then, very excited: “Yes, that’s right! That’s just what I played! And to think you’ve remembered!”

She talked along, and Mother talked along, and then I took the phone once more. “Well?” said Mother. “Was I all right? I wished her all happiness. Did I please her?”

“She’s pinching herself.”

“I met her once and liked her.”

“She certainly seems to like
you.
”

“Gramie, now that I’ve collected my wits and pieced it together a bit, it makes more sense than I realized—if you’re taking her to New York, to have the surgery done, if that’s what you have in mind. And yet—”

“Well, say it! What’s your mysterious objection?”

“I can’t say it! Not with her standing there!”

“You act like I had a past or something.”

“If you haven’t a past, that’s what frightens me.”

“You make it clear like mud in a wineglass.”

“When are you having it done?”

“Monday, by the deputy clerk in Rockville.”

“Am I invited?”

“Well I hope to tell you you are.”

“You’ll keep me posted on the details?”

“I certainly will, you bet.”

When she’d hung up, Sonya kept studying me. “What’s with her?” she asked me. “She seems to like me, she
said
she liked me, and yet something about it is bugging her.”

“Well after all, she’s my mother.”

“Are you promised to somebody else?”

“Not even slightly, no.”

“Well there’s
something.”

“Listen, I’m her Sonny-Boy. Isn’t that enough?”

“I guess.”

The Pocohontas is beyond the honkey-tonks, up the beach where the boardwalk ends, and I spotted it by the neon sign on top. But when I pulled in to the parking lot, she made me sit in the car with her, while she made herself up once more, twisting her hair into a knot, pulling the wig over it, and marking her face again with the pencil she had in her bag, or “liner” as she called it. Then at last she said, “Okay,” and I handed her out, getting the bags out of the trunk, and locking the car. She preceded me to the desk, wearing the little spring coat, which was beige in color, and walking in a way that seemed strange, heavy on her heels, as though she were slightly tired, without a trace of her usual hop-skip-and-jump. She looked like a woman of thirty, and the clerk never once doubted her. He was all smiles for us both, and gave me the card to sign, first pushing the pen-stand at me. I wrote:

Mr. & Mrs. Graham Kirby,

College Heights Estates,

Hyattsville, Md.

He blotted it, said, “Okay, Mr. Kirby your suite’s on the second floor, facing the sea—I think you’ll find it in order. Extra blankets in the lower bureau drawer—if you need anything, call.”

Carrying your own bag in a motel is a feature I can’t get used to, but if that’s how it is, it is. I picked up our two and followed her upstairs. She found our suite and unlocked it, and I took our bags in. She followed and closed the door. I was up tight with the moment I’d dreaded, being alone with her, due to spend the night, and perhaps the rest of my life.

D
ID I REALLY DREAD
it as much as I thought? I can’t say, but I was so nervous I could hardly speak, as just being around her, to see her and hear her and touch her, excited me more than anything ever had. I watched as she took up kind of a survey, first of the kitchenette, which was at one side of the living room, with a chrome-steel sink, very pretty, and a little electric stove; then of the living room, of the bedroom, and of the bathroom, which was beyond the bedroom. She came back and said, “They’re in a row, all four rooms, the little ones on the ends, the big ones in the middle, with windows facing the ocean. I like it. Do you?”

I said I did, and then screwed up my nerve to talk of the night, and how we were going to spend it. I told her: “What we’ll do is you take the bedroom, and I’ll tuck away here, on one of these pull-down things.”

I reached for the turnbuckle that held up one of the beds, but suddenly she burst into tears. “Well what the hell?” I snapped. “What have I done, what is it?”

“I thought you loved me.”

“...Well, I guess I do, but—?”

But at that she just wailed like a banshee, with tears squirting out of her eyes, first rocking on her feet, then flopping into a chair, where she buried her face on her sleeve and went on with the crying jag. I snapped, “Hey, cool it! And answer me what I asked you: What have I done?”

“Putting me in by myself.”

“Well where do you think you should go?”

“With you, of course.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Listen, I’m going to be your wife!”

“But you can’t sleep with me now—not in your condition. You were the one that said it, it would just be messy. We have to wait till Tuesday.”

“I know it, but I could be with you!”

“I’d give my eye teeth to be with you, but—”

“And I could inhale how you smell.”

“That sets me nutsier than anything.”

“And me nutsiest of all—but I want it.”

She wept a bit more, then mentioned that the bedroom had twin beds, “Which won’t help much,” I said.

Then, wailing, she said: “But I was hoping you’d protect me.”

“From what?
Nobody
knows we’re here.”

“From what’s going to happen to me.”

“But nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“Oh yes, something is.”

What she was talking about I hadn’t the faintest idea, but I had a pretty good idea it wasn’t about anything—that it was just a bugaboo she’d made up, to make me say yes, that we’d stay in the bedroom together. By then I was kneeling beside her, first patting her, then giving her little slaps on the cheek, which she didn’t seem to mind. Then she rubbed her cheek against mine and smeared me with her tears. Then she kissed me. Then she took off the wig, unpinned the knot of hair on top of her head and let the curls fall on my face. Then she poked a hole in them with her finger and kissed me through the hole. Then she got up, put her bag on a chair, and said: “I put two nighties in, one fresh back from the laundry, the other, the one I slept in all week. Which one do you want me to wear?”

“The one you slept in all week.”

“I thought you would.”

She took both bags into the bedroom and undressed, so she was naked, but without turning on the light. Then she opened her bag and took out a nightie, holding it out to me. I smelled it and she put it on. She whispered: “I’m glad you like how I smell. I love how
you
smell, Mr. Kirby. Get undressed. But don’t put pajamas on yet. I want to smell under your arms.”

“Sonya, you’re making it tough.”

“I love you, that’s why.”

I undressed down to my underpants, and she came and sniffed my chest, sliding around to my armpit. I said: “That’ll do, that has to be all.” She stepped back and I got my pajamas out, peeling off price tags and labels. I slipped out of my underpants, then put them on. She stood watching, then turned down a bed and got in it. I turned down the other and got in it. She came over and slipped into bed beside me. I said: “Know what’s going to happen to you?”

“You’re kissing me nice, that’s what.”

“That’s right, and the—!”

I kissed her, doubled up my legs, put both feet on her bottom, and pushed her out on the floor. “Well that’s nice,” she said; “I’ll say it is,
that’s nice.”

“You
git!
You git in your own bed.”

She knelt by her bed and bawled even louder than she had in the sitting room. I said: “You can howl your head off and you don’t get back in this bed. Keep it up and I’ll blister your backside.”

She kept it up.

I rolled out of bed and blistered her. She stopped howling, sniffled, and said: “Okay—now that I know you love me.” I don’t figure that one out.

We lay there some little time, she in her bed, I in mine, her hand occasionally finding my hand, where it lay outside the covers, and patting it. She excited me though, just having her there in the dark near me, and it seemed impossible I’d ever drop off. I must have, though, because suddenly I came wide awake, from some kind of scream in my ear. When it came again, I realized it was from her. Then I realized she was dreaming. I jumped up, shook her, and then shook her again. She woke up, saying: “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

I whispered: “Easy does it, you’re having a dream.”

“Oh!... I told you, didn’t I?”

“Is that what you were afraid of?”

“I have that dream every night, that same horrible one. I’m in Prince Georges General Hospital, in the delivery room, giving birth. I have awful pain, but the child comes at last—it’s over. Then the nurse is going to bring it, but I say I don’t want to see it. But she says I have to, it’s the rules. And then she brings it, squirming around and covered with blood. And it’s a gorilla.”

She called it
goriller.

I told her: “Now, now, now! Calm down—it was only a dream, and I’m here. Go to sleep—there won’t be any gorilla, they’re taking it from you Tuesday. Then it’ll all be over. So, relax.”

“Okay, I’m trying to.”

“You’re a sweet, wonderful child.”

“Now we can go back to sleep.”

After a long time her breathing slowed, then got deeper, so I knew she’d fallen asleep. I went back to my bed, but didn’t sleep right away. I kept thinking about what it meant, in under her little jokes, about food, about her father’s dumbness, about the love my blistering proved, to have this thing inside her. And if I had been chosen, as the instrument of her deliverance, I felt I was consecrated, somehow.

W
HEN I WOKE UP
the sun was shining in, and when I looked she was sitting there, in the chair, all dressed, in plaid shorts, blouse, red socks, and tennis shoes, the wig on, her face made up, and wobbling her finger at me.

I said “Good morning” and she said “Haya,” and when I asked what time it was, she said eight-fifteen. I said I’d get up if she’d take herself off, but refused to do it with her sitting there. She asked: “But aren’t you taking a bath? Don’t you want me to scrub your back?”

I said I could scrub my own back, and that she could wait in the lobby, “where I’ll join you all in due time.” To my surprise she agreed, and went.

I got up, shaved, bathed, and dressed, and when I went down, found her next to the dining room door, waiting. I thanked her for being so sensible, and she said: “Okay, but I’m hungry.” I once said she was born hungry, and she said, “You’re only young once.”

So we went in and ordered, and she had melon, cornflakes, three fried eggs and bacon, toast and coffee—but I loved watching her eat. I had my usual, orange juice, two eggs and bacon, toast, and coffee.

When we were done I said, “So! Let’s get our shopping done, your wedding dress, engagement ring, wedding ring, and beach outfit—so long as we have an ocean, we ought to do something about it.” I also thought: The more we sit by the sea, the more we don’t sit in that suite, hankering to do things we’re not permitted to do.

So we strolled out on the boardwalk, walked down a few steps, came to a shop with clothes in the window, went in, and began buying her stuff. For a wedding dress, she picked out a white linen suit, with white hat, white gloves, white shoes, white stockings, and white bag—and the woman who waited on us, the proprietress as it turned out, found a yard of lace, white lace twelve inches wide, for a veil. Sonya borrowed needle and thread, and “tacked” it, as she called it, to the hat. Then she tried it on and crumpled me up by how she looked, the veil over her face. Then she took the hat off and pinned the veil up, so she could wear it without the veil showing, and at the same time drop it down whenever she wanted, just by pulling the pins. The lady packed the whole outfit into a box that she did up in ribbons.