Last Summer at Mars Hill (19 page)

I haven’t forgotten I’m telling about Loretta’s Cadillac, Alice Jean. You get too impatient. Let me give you a facial massage and masque, you got that hot water there, Erika? All right. Now this only takes a few minutes but I swear you will feel like a new woman. You need to relax more, Alice Jean.

There. Isn’t that nice? I think it smells like that shampoo they use at Fashion Flair.

So that was, what, Nineteen fifty-six? Nineteen fifty-six. Loretta got out of the hospital and I got her a job at the Blue Moon. Now I swear to god every small town and every city I ever lived in had a diner called the Blue Moon. But it wasn’t a bad place to work, just not what you’d want to do after you were married for three days to a Catholic whose rude mama came into the hospital and stole your baby and then gave it to a chiropractor and his wife in Richmond. Plus Nora Margaret said she was gonna change the baby’s name—

Her name is Eloise, Loretta shouted. Eloise LeMay Rule.

Not anymore it ain’t, Nora Margaret yelled back.

So she’s gone forever, Eloise or whatever her name was. Eddie Rule is gone, too, his father sent him off to college, some place where they take people even if you got kicked out of high school without graduating and your mother’s the kind of person says ain’t. But let me tell you, it’s an ill wind blows no one any good, ’cause Loretta hasn’t seen him since then and that’s the best thing ever happened to her. Good riddance to bad rubbish and I mean that. But of course she didn’t feel like that then—

I love him, Terry! she’d tell me, and I’d say, Sure, honey, you love him, but he’s gone now and don’t do you any good to moon over him. We all thought it best not to bring up the baby at all. Nowadays they wouldn’t do that, they’d have her going to some kind of Group, like now Loretta’s been going to AA, some place where they’d all talk about having their babies taken away. Like when Noreen was on Oprah, they had all these people claimed to have seen him since he died—

Well, all right, Alice Jean, I
am
getting to it. Let me put some more warm water there—

Well, I’m sorry, was that too hot? I’m sorry, honey, I surely am. Erika, see if there’s any ice there, will you?

All right. So we’re at work one day, this is still at the Blue Moon, and
he
comes in. The Colonel was with him, we recognized the Colonel first ’cause of he’s wearing this big hat, but let me tell you, it didn’t take us more than a New York second to recognize him. He was famous then but it wasn’t like later, he could still walk around like a regular person.

My god he’s a handsome man, said Loretta. Sweet Jesus he sure is.

Yup, I said. I was Manageress-in-Training so I had to be more professional, though that was a dead-end job, too. Doing this Mary Rose thing is the best thing ever happened to me, god strike me if that isn’t the truth. Erika, if you’re still interested you let me know, ’cause I get extra points for signing up new people and it all goes towards the You-Know-What.

The one they had you wouldn’t believe. One of the other girls saw it and told us, Look outside, and we did and there it was. Looked like it took up the whole parking lot, and that was before they opened the Piggly Wiggly next door.

Holy cow, said Loretta. That’s the biggest goddamn Cadillac I ever saw. Pardon my French, I told you she started talking like that after Eddie. But she was right, it
was
a big car—but you all’ve seen it, least you saw it the way Loretta had it. Sure you have, oh, Erika honey, thank you—

Alice Jean, I
am
telling it! Here, put this ice there and see if that helps. If it swells up Mary Rose makes this Aloe Vera Nutrifying Lotion, Kenny Junior sunburned himself caddying after school last week and I gave him some and he said it really helped.

So they come in and sit down, I started to give them the booth in the back corner ’cause I thought, well, they’re famous, maybe they’d like some privacy, but the Colonel said, No ma’am, we’re on vacation, and then
he
said, Put us right here in the front window, it’ll be good for business!

Which was just like him, because he meant it to be nice. He always was a nice man and good to his mother, I tell Kenny Junior he should pay attention to that. So anyway I sat them there and since I was in charge I had Loretta serve them. We were all feeling sorry for her, she just had that dinky little Half-Moon trailer to live in and some people in town thought she was just Bad Luck back in those days, she hadn’t had a real date since Eddie left. Though she was really nice looking, she hadn’t started drinking yet, not much at least, we used to have rum and Cokes sometimes after work but nobody thought anything of it back then.

The Colonel ordered a ribeye steak sandwich and he got fried chicken. Loretta says she doesn’t remember, she was so nervous, but
I
remember. I told the director for the TV movie exactly what they had and even showed her how to set the platter. Just pay me my consulting fee, I told her.

I was only joking, Alice Jean. They’re not really going to pay me for it.

Here’s that Nutrifying Lotion. It doesn’t smell as nice as the other but it sure feels good, doesn’t it?

You’re welcome, honey. I’m sure sorry about burning you like that.

Well, he said it was the best fried chicken he ever had, and as you know if you read that book his wife wrote about him after he was dead, that man loved fried chicken better than Saint John loved the Lord, even after he got to be so famous he had to have it sent up to him in disguise from Popeye’s. And really Loretta did a real nice job, she brought the Colonel extra ketchup without him asking and extra napkins for the fried chicken, because it
was
a little greasy, but good, and she was so cute in that pink uniform and all that when they left he gave her his car. Just like that.

Brand-new Cadillac. They just walked downtown to Don Thomas’s dealership and bought another one. Drove by and waved to us on their way out of town.

Well, Loretta just about fainted. He kissed her cheek and the Colonel shook her hand and took a picture. Later Hal Morehead from the
Reporter Dispatch
came and took another picture of her and the car, and WINY made the next day Loretta Dooley Day and played “Hound Dog” and “Love Me Tender” about sixty-three million times, I thought I was going to throw up if I heard that song one more time but it did get the point across. And of course Loretta had to learn to drive, but by then people were starting to show more interest and think maybe she wasn’t bad luck after all, the absolute reverse in fact. Don Thomas came over, to see what model Cadillac it was this waitress got tipped with, and after a while he and Loretta started seeing each other. And I got promoted to Manager Full-Time. It was all good for business at the Blue Moon, I can tell you that.

But eventually it all settled down. She was still working at the Blue Moon, ’cause of course it was just a
car,
it wasn’t like he gave her a million dollars or something. But she’d drive to work every day and park it out front, and people’d stop by just to see it, and then of course they’d come in to see
her,
and most of the time they’d have something to eat. I always recommended the fried chicken.

After a while Loretta stopped seeing Don Thomas. She found out he wasn’t actually divorced from his wife after all, just separated, and his wife told him she was pregnant and Loretta put two and two together and told him he better find somewhere else to eat fried chicken, if he knew what was good for him. It was around then she got this weird idea for finding her daughter again.

Erika, I really do like the way he did your hair this time. Those red streaks really show off your eyes. With that color eye shadow you look like that actress in
Working Girl.
Doesn’t she, Alice Jean? You know, what’s-her-name’s daughter. Kim Novak. The one married to what’s-his-name.

Whoever.

So look at this, Loretta tells me one day at work. She’d been off for two days and drove in but I was in the back checking on the freezer ’cause the freon tube seized up, so I didn’t see her drive up. Come on out, I want to show you something.

Well, okay, I said. Just a minute; and then I went outside.

And you know, she had just ruined that car.

It was sky-blue and black, that car, I swear it was the prettiest thing on earth. The TV movie director, she wanted to make it pink but I told her, Come on, you think a man like that would drive a
pink
car? Back then you wouldn’t be caught dead in a pink car, less you were a fairy.

Pardon me, can’t say that anymore. I mean a gay. But
you
know what I mean, right Alice Jean? Back then regular people did
not
drive pink cars around. This one was sky-blue.

Look at this, Erika—Mojave Turquoise! Since you’re a Spring Rose you can wear that. Try this tester here. Alice Jean, that blusher takes ten years off your life, I am serious.

Did I tell you what she did?

All right. What she did was this: she spent that whole weekend off putting stuff on her car. I mean,
stuff
—old headlights painted green and blue and orange, rocking horses she took off their rockers and painted like carousel animals, Barbie dolls, you name it. All these old antennas she got at the dump and covered in foil and colored paper and stuck all over the car like—well, like these antennas stuck all over, the car. There was even this Virgin Mary thing she put where a hood ornament would go, I think that was because of Eddie being a Catholic and having the marriage canceled. I mean, it looked
awful.
And I said, Loretta honey, what in god’s name have you done to your car?

She got kind of defensive. What do you mean? she said.

What do I
mean?
I said. I
mean
why have you made the car that beautiful man gave you look like it belongs in Ripley’s Believe It or Not?

It’s
my
car, she said. She was mad but she also looked like she might cry. And I already was one girl short because Jocelyn Reny’s son Peter, the older one who’s at Fort Bragg now, had unexpectedly fallen off the roof of their house and broken his arm and she had to take him to the hospital. So I couldn’t afford for Loretta to go home because she was crying because I insulted her car, which looked like a blind person had decorated it.

So I said, Well, it’s very interesting Loretta, that’s all. It’s very unusual.

She smiled then and walked over to it. She’d put a bicycle wheel over the front grill, and stuck these little Troll dolls all around the edge, of the wheel so it looked like a wheel with all these Troll things sticking on it. I mean, how she drove that car to work without getting arrested I don’t know.

Thank you, she said. She started braiding one of the Trolls’ hair. She was always good at things like that. Probably she should of gone to the Academy of Beauty and studied Cosmetology. That’s another reason it was so sad about her little girl.

Really, I said. It’s very interesting.

I had to think about the customers.

Thank you, she said again, and she adjusted another part of the front, where she had stuck these Rat Fink key chains and a flamingo like we have in our front yard. Thank you, Terry. I put a lot of work into it.

I didn’t know what else to say, but I had to say something so we could end this conversation and get back to work. So I said, Well, they’re sure gonna see you coming, Loretta, that’s for sure.

I know, she said. That’s what I want. That’s the whole point. And she patted it like it was something she had just won on “Let’s Make a Deal” instead of a car you wouldn’t want to see clowns climbing out of at the Fork Union Fair.

She said, People’ll see me coming and they’ll talk about me, and everyone’ll know who is in this car. Even if they’ve never been to this town, even if they’re a complete and total stranger, they’ll hear about me and know how to find me.

Then without another word she turned around and went inside, like nothing unusual had happened at all.

Well, I’ll tell you, everyone in the tri-state area pretty well
did
know who owned that car already, because even though it had been a couple years now since she got it Loretta was sort of the town drunk and people knew her ’cause of that. And let’s face it, a sky-blue Cadillac that the most famous man in the world gave you as a tip, who could forget about
that
? I mean, some people had forgotten, but then they recognized her for the other reason, so one way or the other Loretta Dooley was not exactly sneaking around Black Spot, Virginia, without somebody knowing about it. So I didn’t get why she wanted people to see it was her driving this car that looked like a King Kone on wheels, unless she wanted to give them the chance to see her coming from about three miles away and stay home if they wanted to.

Later I understood better, how she had this kind of daydream that someday her daughter would figure out who her real mother was and start looking for her. And I guess in Loretta’s mind somehow her daughter would hear about the story of what happened and come to Black Spot to find her. And then of course once she was here she’d hear about the lady with this famous car, which on top of everything else now it looks like Woolworth’s blew up on it. And so that way she’d be able to find her mama. It was kind of a sad thing, to think Loretta had this crazy old idea and thought junking up her nice car would help things along. But I didn’t have time to discuss Loretta’s problems right then.

Although to tell you the truth, it did seem to cheer her up some. She was lonely a lot, and sort of quiet. Some people thought she was stuck up, because of the Cadillac, but it wasn’t that. It was that Nora Margaret Rule took her baby girl and gave her to perfect strangers when she was only three days old. Up until then Loretta was fine as frog hair. And afterwards, well, she wasn’t mean or anything. I mean, she was always nice to the customers and me and everybody, it’s not like she was ever mean. But you could just sort of tell that maybe she felt like the only good thing that was ever going to happen to her already had, and let’s face it, living in a rented Half-Moon trailer down on Delbarton and slinging hash at the Blue Moon is not what anyone wants to spend the rest of their life doing, even if you do own a famous Cadillac.