The Music of Your Life (32 page)

Hazel appears back in the window, squeezing in next to Jessie. Yes, that wig is definitely listing. Oh, it's so damn sad. I think I'm just gonna break down right here, this has become the worst part of the entire day.

“Here you are, Talbert,” Hazel says, handing me a small white paper bag. “Now, honey, give me your hands.” There are two other cars behind me in the drive-thru line, but I don't think she's noticed. I pass my hands through the window. Hazel's gnarled, bony hands grasp and rub mine, and she closes her eyes.

“Let's us just say a little prayer thanking the Lord that you're doing all right, and let's pray for that Tyndall boy, too. Come on Jessie, let's all hold hands …”

And the two of them pray, with lots of
Oh Lord
's and
Yes, Lord
's and
Praise Be
's all coming out at me through the little window, and the people behind me in line are starting to honk their horns, which seems to me a sadly inappropriate musical accompaniment for Hazel and Jessie's lamentations; I know I ought to turn WGOD back on just to provide the right musical backdrop for our prayer session, but mostly I just want to get out of there and eat my biscuit. Finally I wrest the moment away from them with a big “Amen!” and the Dirt Devil and I peel out from the drive-thru with a big rubbery screech that I hadn't intended, but don't have time to go back and apologize for.

2:00
P.M.

The biscuit makes me feel better, and I'm reminding myself that by day's end, I will have convinced the all-powerful, all-important Duck Island Playhouse artistic director Charlotte Watkins to back the fabulous theatrical plan that I'm about to lay at her feet. I don't really like Charlotte all that much, truth to tell, but she does pull the strings at DIP and I know she thinks I'm talented. Still, I wonder if she has forgiven me for getting all the good reviews as Sister Mary Amnesia in
Nunsense
back in the spring. Charlotte directed our production, naturally, and also conveniently gave herself the starring role of the Mother Superior. But here is what Stephen Brickles wrote in the
Star-News:
“As Sister Mary Amnesia, the brilliant, talented, and handsome Talbert John Moss gives a performance that is, well, unforgettable (ha, ha), but as the Mother Superior, Charlotte Watkins is, decidedly, inferior.” I saw Stephen in a bar after that, and as I warded off his brazen overtures, I said, “No more Rex Reed for you, mister.” I'm sure he thought that was ungrateful and I know the next time I'm in a show, he'll crucify me.

The Dirt Devil and I race out onto Highway 17, which mostly cuts through scrubby pine woods filled with yaupon trees and droopy Spanish moss and oleander and that ugly pampas grass, which I say is the Devil's weed because it'll just about cut the pure-tee hell out of you if you as much as touch it. Between the hollowed-out places through the trees, where little roads have been built, you can see, in the distances, the ocean on one side, the Intracoastal Waterway on the other. Two years ago, Highway 17 was named in the
Guinness Book of World Records
as the site of more roadkill per mile than any other highway in the Southeastern United States. And the Duck Island Chamber of Commerce, bless their hearts, actually quoted that in brochures, as if that might be some kind of attractive feature to entice vacationers to come to Duck Island! Imagine that as a selling point for potential tourists:
Come on, Joyce, let's take the kids over to Duck Island this summer so we can sun, surf, and eat some good roadkill
. I'm convinced that all the local Rhodes scholars who don't work at WAVE work at the Chamber of Commerce.

Seventeen leads out to Surfside Beach, which is where Charlotte lives in her veritable, though now slightly decaying mansion, which was part of her take in her last divorce. Charlotte funds much of what goes on at the Playhouse with her own money, which is why she directs and stars in everything, and probably why the local critics resent her so much. She has finally started doing character parts, though, which is a good thing since she is way too long in the tooth to keep playing things like Reno Sweeney in
Anything Goes
, or—get this—Eliza in
My Fair Lady
. Stephen Brickles said they should have retitled it
My Fairly Over the Hill Lady
.

Soon enough, of course, the Dirt Devil and I encounter road-kill: a long, thick copperhead snake smashed and strung out across the highway. My grandmother Florence Moss died at the age of eighty-eight from being bit by a copperhead that was hiding behind a refrigerator on her back porch, and people rudely said that there was something ironic about that, seeing as how she was already so full of poison anyway. I worry sometimes that I carry what my mama calls the Moss family's “mean gene,” but I think I have more of what Daddy says is the craziness from Mama's side of the family, the Rideouts. During my self-imposed exile, I thought a lot about killing myself, maybe not like I actually was gonna do it, but more like the ways you
can
do it. When I was a child, about eight, my mother actually did, as they say, “make an attempt.” And of course, with my nose for drama, I was the one who found her. One hot summer Sunday, Mama trotted out of the house completely naked, but sober as a judge, and lay down on an entire, thriving village of fire ants in our backyard—just lay there waiting for them to eat her alive, or whatever fire ants do. Stark naked, except for her bedroom scuffs and big Jackie Onassis sunglasses. I followed her out there. She looked like a female version of Gulliver in Lilliput, tied down and trounced upon, not by Lilliputians but by the ugly, red, fire ants. I asked her what she was doing, and she said, “I'm just taking a nap, Talbert John, you just run along. Mommy loves you. These fire ants don't bother me.” And I began to cry and then I tried to brush the ants off her body—I had never seen her naked before that I could remember—and I kept brushing and trying to get her to get up and the ants kept coming back up but she wasn't helping me get them off, and then I started to scream for Daddy to come help me—“Daddy! Daddy, come here!”—and out of the corners of her eyes behind the sunglasses, I could see big tears starting to roll down, mingling with the rivulets of sweat on her cheeks and neck because it was so hot, and that's when Daddy found both of us, and made everything all right again. To this day, people still whisper: “That's Loralee Moss. Tried to kill herself once by lying down on a village of fire ants.” I keep trying to forget about certain bad events in my life, but the more I try to forget them, the more they just keep playing back over and over in my head. As Mama herself would say, “That's the way the Devil works.”

I get to Surfside Beach and to Charlotte's driveway, which is about a half-mile long leading up to the mansion, the site of many good cast parties in which I was cheered and toasted as the Dustin Hoffman of Duck Island Playhouse. (Charlotte would always say, “Oh, I guess that makes me the Meryl Streep!” to which I always wanted to say “You mean Meryl's grandmother,” but I never did, I just took the high road.)

I pull in behind Charlotte's black Lincoln Continental (which she also received as part of her last divorce settlement) and I'm thrilled to see that Charlotte's personal assistant slash maid, and my friend, Printemps Decoupage, is here. Printemps's car, an old Volkswagen bug, is parked next to the Lincoln, and I happen to know Charlotte doesn't really think that is appropriate with regard to the employer-employee relationship—she thinks Printemps should really park around to the side—but that is all a part of Printemps's newfound “Woman of Power” assertiveness. Five years ago, Printemps was known by her birth name, which was Delores Jackson, and Delores was perfectly happy to identify herself as the maid of the richest white woman in town. That, of course, was just fine with Charlotte Watkins too. But then four years ago this fall, Delores went down to New Orleans to take care of her aunt who was sick, and while she was down there, she met this drag queen in the French Quarter who called himself/herself “Printemps Decoupage.” Delores began spending all her time with the original Printemps, who was still working in the drag shows, but who was dying of AIDS.

Now what I think is that Delores actually fell in love with Printemps, although she's never told me that, exactly. But Printemps was good for Delores, and gave her lots of assertiveness talks about living up to her true potential and stuff, and he/she told her to stop referring to herself as a maid and to think of herself as equal to her employer, and when Printemps died that winter, Delores took his/her name as a kind of tribute, and came back to Duck Island a new woman, all empowered and full of righteousness and everything, and had her name legally changed to Printemps Decoupage. And boy, if you don't think some of the white people around here had a problem with a formerly shy little black girl transformed overnight into an assertive, beautiful, empowered African-American woman with an exotic name … I, of course, thought it was magnificent. Printemps is a walking Oprah/Sally Jessy/Ricki Lake show rolled into one, and I think she's totally fab.

Charlotte's front doorbell is musical, which means it plays the first few notes of some randomly selected show tune when you push it. And I always play “Name That Tune” with myself when I come here. Before pushing the doorbell, I say, “Well, Jack, I can name that tune in … five notes.”

(“
Well, name that tune!
”)

I push the doorbell and I hear a slow, legato
Da-da da-da
, then a quicker
da da da da, da da da da da
…

“‘If I Loved You …'” I say, hearing the clock tick.

(Studio audience applauds, and I win the Sarah Coventry jewelry.)

Naturally, it's Printemps who answers the door.

“Hey, Printemps,” I say cheerily.

“Well, if it isn't Eve Harrington,” she says. (Printemps learned the gay reference vocabulary from the drag queens in New Orleans.)

“Shhh … don't let Charlotte hear you say that. She might think it's true.”

“Talbert John, honey, do you think Miss Lady has forgotten that you stole all, I mean
all
, her thunder in
Nunsense
?”

“Well,” I say, with a trace of Eve's effrontery, “I can't help it that I'm so fabulous, now can I?”

Printemps harumphs disgustedly, but I know she gets a kick out of me and my me-ness, because I'm the closest thing she has around here to some of those boys she got to know in the French Quarter.

“Is she home?” I ask.

“Yes, honey, she's home … come on in.”

Printemps ushers me into Charlotte's grand foyer, with its clean, shiny floors of enormous black and white terrazzo pattern and Louis Quatorze gold chandeliers hanging from cathedral ceilings.

“Girl, you've done a good job of these floors,” I say, as innocent as Huck Finn walking into the Wilkes's house.

She immediately cuts me a slice-and-dice look, then arches her back, feline-style, and glares at me, but mockingly.

“No, no, child, you will not come in and insult Printemps with your little plantation-style jokes,” she says, wagging a long, exquisitely manicured finger at me. “Printemps will personally see to it that you are offered only chorus roles at the Playhouse from here on out.”

“I was never in the chorus,” I say.

“Yes, honey, but there is a first time for everything.” And we burst out laughing.

And I love her for this next thing, which she whispers: “I'm sorry you were depressed, honey. I understand. We all get the mean reds, baby.” (The drag queens must've turned her on to Truman Capote too.)

“Thanks, Printemps. I missed you.”

“Yes, child. All the children miss Printemps when Printemps goes absentia from their world. I'll summon Miss Charlotte.”

I poke around in some of Charlotte's rooms, because I know she likes to keep people waiting and it will be a while. Prominently featured on many of Charlotte's walls are huge, blown-up photographs of her stage performances, most of which have been in community theaters of North Carolina, but you would think, if you didn't know any better, seeing these dramatic photos, that Charlotte has had a theatrical career on the world stage to equal Helen Hayes's. There's Charlotte in
A Moon for the Misbegotten
, Charlotte in
Streetcar
, a younger Charlotte as Daisy Mae in
Li'l Abner
, and—oh, God—the infamous Charlotte as Eliza Doolittle in
My Fairly Over the Hill Lady
.

“Is that my darling little Sister Mary Amnesia?” I hear Charlotte intoning from the foyer, her rich voice embracing me.

“That would be she,” I call out, as if giving an onstage cue to an actress about to make her entrance from the wings. Exactly.

“Hello, darling!” she says, sweeping into the room, big and grand, arms outstretched, with an affected flourish that suggests she has been studying Diana Rigg a little too closely while watching imported BBC programs.

“Hello, Charlotte,” I say, kissing her first on one offered cheek, then on the other.