Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (6 page)

“My mother . . .” he said, but could not go on.

“That's all right, Ollie. Would you do me a favor?” Ollie shook his head yes, he would do anything for her. “Would you take me to your home?” He shook his head yes again and looked around at the others, feeling both proud and terrified. How could he walk beside one so tall and dressed so strangely?

“Come now. I've traveled a great distance. Let me hold your hand and let's be on our way.”

Ollie blushed but complied with her wish. He expected Leon or Wade to call out “sissy,” but instead they followed the giant lady in black from a safe distance. She looked as if she should be the object of worship, a whole religion might spring up around her feet. She was so calm and graceful she might go waltzing with the Pope of a spring evening. Wade looked at Leon as if he were
crazy for having such thoughts. It's not that this lady demanded respect, she simply, and obviously, deserved it. Perhaps she would move to their town and everything would be different.

“I never knew your father,” Sister Theodosa was saying to Ollie.

“He wasn't around much anyway,” Ollie replied. “I've got some letters from him in a box, and a picture. I guess he just liked to travel, that's what mom says, that he was a traveling man.”

“I bet he loved you very much.”

“Not so's you'd notice.”

“Some people just don't know how to show it, but they love in their own way.”

“I don't think he loved me, at least not much. He would have stayed home more.”

Sister Theodosa tousled Ollie's hair, and Ollie didn't care what the kids behind him thought, he knew he was the lucky one.

When Edith Cunningham greeted Sister Theodosa at the door, Ollie was surprised to hear his mother address this strange and magical lady as “Vera.”

She said, “Vera, you've come, how thoughtful. I see you recognized my little scoundrel from his pictures. I hope he wasn't rude to you.” Ollie was pained by this suggestion.

“Quite the contrary, he's been a perfect gentleman.”

Edith looked around Vera's robes at the little congregation of followers her old friend had attracted. A silent vigil had formed on the other side of the street.

“And what about those hooligans, did they give you any trouble?”

“None whatsoever, Edith. I must say, you appear well, in spite of your grief.” She embraced Edith, a trifle uncertain of her role.

“I'm fine, really I am. I suppose it's terrible to admit it, but there is a certain amount of relief. I mean, I never knew when . . . Oh, how rude of me. Please come in, please make yourself comfortable. I'll just pick up and fix us something nice and cool.”

Ollie stood by himself off to one side and looked around the room. He had never thought about it before, but suddenly it occurred to him:
We're poor. We're poor and I never even knew it
. He thought a person like Sister Theodosa, or Vera, whatever her name was, must live in a splendid palace with servants and thrones, while he and his mom watched their broken TV on that couch with the springs sticking through and the arms half worn away.

“Ollie, come help with the lemonade,” his mother called from the kitchen. Vera, Sister Theodosa, had not seen her friend, Edith, in ten long years. That last summer they had shared a cabin on a remote beach. Each day they swam and sunbathed. They shopped at a nearby village. They picnicked. They read long novels and talked. Vera sensed an awakening in herself, a possibility for total love, but when she confronted these feelings in herself she was forced to conclude that Edith was innocent of the same ardor, that for her it was simply a summer free of the complication of young men's inconstancy.

“Vera, I wish you would tell Ollie how important it is that he do well in school. The boy is lucky he hasn't been forced to repeat this past year. He was sent to the principal three times. He doesn't know how rough it can be in the world without a proper
education.” Edith had brought in a tray with three glasses and a pitcher of lemonade and was clearing a place for the tray on the coffee table.

“What subjects do you like best, Ollie?”

Ollie saw how gently she deflected his mother's criticism.

“Geography, I guess I like geography, reading about foreign places.”

“Do you want to travel when you're older?”

“I guess.”

“Where would you like to go?”

As luck would have it, now he couldn't think of any place. He tried to remember all the pictures, pictures of natives in Africa, pictures of old cathedrals in other parts of the world, but he couldn't remember names.

“I'd like to go to Swaziland,” he said, and then felt a cold shiver run through his stomach, it was such a stupid thing to say. But Vera sensed his embarrassment.

“You've got me on that one,” she said. “Is it in Africa?”

“I think so. The King has six hundred children.”

“Vera,” Edith interrupted, “would you like to change clothes? I mean, no one will know. I just thought you might be more comfortable.”

Vera didn't seem upset with Edith's suggestion. In fact, the idea refreshed and stimulated her. Ollie, on the other hand, could not imagine her in anything but the majestic black robes. He was afraid of losing her, her specialness, as though she would reappear in common dress and treat him exactly as his mother did—as
though he could do nothing right. “He had one hundred wives,” he said.

“Yes,” Vera said, “I'd like to change. Thank you for suggesting it, Edith. You can't imagine . . .” She didn't finish the thought, but took her bag into Edith's room and closed the door behind her.

“Ollie, I'm going to call Mr. Grady and tell him that you will be down to pick up a bottle of wine for me.”

“But Mom . . .”

“You do as I say. Here's five dollars. Be sure to bring me the change. Now get going.”

Only Leon still sat vigil on the curb. He was whittling on a stick, but stood up when he saw Ollie come down the front steps of the house.

“What's she like?” he asked. “Can she perform magic tricks?”

Ollie didn't feel like talking to Leon, but there wasn't much he could do to discourage him from walking with him to the store.

“Does she really know your mother? How can you talk to her?”

Ollie had always felt that his mother secretly blamed him for his father's staying away so much of the time. He didn't really know Vera, but already he wished she would stay on with them. Maybe then his mother would forgive him.
Forgive him
, he didn't know what he had done, aside from the little things, and being born. He assumed that was it: his father hadn't wanted to have a child, maybe they were too poor, and this meant that his mother couldn't travel with him.

“Yeah, they were friends before I was born, I guess.”

“Does she always dress like that?”

“Leon, I don't know much myself. I just met her today. All I know is that she's real nice to me and that she has two names. My mother calls her Vera.”

Leon was even more fascinated now, how anyone could have two different names mystified him, as if she could turn into a leopard if she wanted.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked Ollie.

“No, I've just got to hurry, that's all.”

When he returned from the store, he found his mother and Vera sitting on the back porch. Vera had been transformed into a startling wonderwork of womanhood. She wore a pair of faded bluejeans and a white t-shirt that said I LOVE NEW YORK in red across the front. But what stole Ollie's attention most powerfully was the sight of her long, dark hair. It altered her face in ways he could not explain.

“Well, what do you think, Ollie? Which do you prefer, Sister Theodosa or plain, old Vera Sims?” She did not mean to put him on the spot, just to include him in their discussion.

“I like both of you,” he said, and he meant it.

“Very diplomatic, your son is.”

“It's you, I think he has a crush on you, Vera.”

Ollie went back inside to avoid further embarrassment. He went to the refrigerator and got himself a Coke. He could hear the two women talking.

“. . .it's my last chance,” Vera was saying, “If I don't leave now . . .”

“You could stay with us for awhile until . . .”

“I still think of our summer . . .”

“I don't know, Vera, I've never . . . Ollie . . .”

“I could love Ollie. You know that, Edith. I could be the father he never had . . .”

T
he two young women had developed some kind of friendship over the past three months while working together part-time at the Cozy Corner Nursing Home, though in fact they came from very different backgrounds. Diane lived in a comfortable section of town with her parents and three siblings, while Miriam lived in a poorer neighborhood with only her mother whom she called by her first name, Greta. Miriam told Diane right off that her father had been merely a one-night stand, but that, according to Greta, he had been tall and handsome. This was some consolation, Diane thought to herself. Miriam also told Diane in their very first conversation that Greta was crazy. Diane didn't know if she should take this seriously or not. People say funny things just for effect sometimes. Still, she didn't have friends like Miriam at her school: everyone pretended to be so proper and on some kind of upward-bound track. So she found Miriam's candor refreshing.

As the weeks went by Miriam continued to amaze Diane with other kinds of confessions. She told Diane that she went to a certain discotheque at least three nights a week. She would go late and stand alone in the long hallway leading into the club. Eventually some stranger would approach her and she would go home with him and have sex. Once she went home with a rich man when she was having her period and she stained his sheets and he
made her wash them right after they finished. Diane was simultaneously enthralled and appalled. What kind of life was this anyway? What kind of person? Still, she listened and occasionally asked questions. Apparently nothing could shock Miriam, so she asked her if she ever asked for money and Miriam said, “No, never. Of course not.”

Diane never told her family or other friends about Miriam. She was certain they couldn't understand, especially since she was not sure she did. But the fact remained: Miriam was her friend, she couldn't really figure her out or criticize her because that's just the way she was.

“Why don't you come over to my place after work tonight,” Miriam asked Diane one night.

“And do what?” Diane asked in return, discovering a pocket of fear in herself. She hadn't meant to insult Miriam and Miriam didn't appear to take it as such.

“Just mess around. We'll think of something. Greta's going out. It's safe. The old hag has a date, can you believe it? At her age. I'd like to see the gentleman caller that would stoop to taking Greta out on a date. Ha!”

“Okay, but I can only stay a couple of hours.” For the rest of the shift Diane tried to put it out of her mind, but in fact she was apprehensive and she didn't really know why. She liked Miriam.

She had rarely ever been in that part of town, and it was a bit scary in the dark. There were drunks asleep in alleys, and what she took to be pimps and hoodlums sizing everybody up as they drove by. The fear tinkling in the pit of her stomach was also excitement, excitement for the unknown and for the sense of danger
and adventure that these sleazy, rough late-night street people aroused in her. Diane's parents would have died if they had known where their daughter was.

Miriam's apartment was another kind of shock: it was
so
dreary. Everything was faded pink and grey and dark green. The over-stuffed chair in the corner was hardly any color at all, and the couch sagged and looked like one one would see discarded at the dump. “That's where Greta sleeps,” Miriam said pointing to the couch. “I've got the only bedroom. In here,” she said, crossing the living room.

Miriam's room had a full-sized mattress on the floor and a pair of matching chairs with yellow plastic seats. But what caught Diane's eye first were the posters of nude or bikini-clad women on all the walls. She looked at each of them in turn with growing puzzlement.

“I'm not a dyke, if that's what you're thinking. My god, you of all people should know that, from what I've told you. I just like to see other women's bodies, to compare, you know, to see how I'm doing.”

“Oh I never thought you were a dyke, give me a break. I've just never looked at naked pictures before. Of men or women. Maybe once my brother showed me a magazine, but I didn't really look. I thought it was, you know, forbidden.”

“Well, there's no time like the present. I've got
stacks
of nudie magazines in my closet.”

Miriam immediately produced one such stack and the two of them sat on Miriam's bed and proceeded to look through them, Diane's curiosity sparked sufficiently to join in commenting on every variation of breast size and curve.