Victory Over Japan (22 page)

“There's a seagull,” Nora Jane said. “Look out there. They're lighting on the
bridge. That must mean it's all right now. They only sit on safe places.”

“How do they know?” Celeste said.
“How do they know which place is safe?”

“The whales tell them,” Nora Jane said. “They ask the
whales.”

“How do the whales know?” Celeste insisted. “Who tells the whales? Whales can't talk to
seagulls.” Celeste was really a very questionable little girl to have around if you were pregnant. But Nora Jane was saved explaining whales
because a man in a yellow slicker appeared on the edge of the bridge, climbing a ladder. He threw a leg over the railing and started toward the car.
Another man was right behind him. “Here they come,” Alexander said. “They're coming. Oink, oink, oink.”

“Here they come,” Celeste screamed at the top of her lungs. She climbed up on Nora Jane's stomach and stuck her head
out the window, yelling to the Coast Guard. “Here we are. Oink, oink. Here we are.”

What is that? Tammili Whittington
wondered. She was the responsible one of the pair. Shark butting Momma's stomach? Typhoon at sea? Tree on fire? Running from tiger? Someone
standing on us? Hummmmmmmmmm, she decided and turned a fin into a hand, four fingers and a thumb.

Here they come, Nora Jane was
thinking, moving Celeste's feet to the side. Here come the rescuers. Hooray for everything. Hooray for my fellow men.

“Oh, my God,” Madge said, starting to cry. “Here they are. They've come to save us.”

“Oink, oink,” Celeste was screaming out the window. “Oink, oink, we're over here. Come and save us. And hurry up
because we're hungry.”

THE worst thing that ever happened to Miss Crystal happened at a wedding. It was her brother-in-law's wedding. He was marrying this girl, her daddy was said to be the
richest man in Memphis. The Weisses were real excited about it. As much money as they got I guess they figure they can always use some more. So the
whole family was going up to Memphis to the wedding, all dressed up and ready to show off what nice people they were. Then Miss Crystal got to get in
all that trouble and have it end with the accident.

What they want to call the accident. I was along to nurse the baby, Crystal
Anne, age three. I was right there for everything that happened. So don't tell me she fall down the stairs. Miss Crystal hasn't ever fall
down in her life, drunk or sober, or have the smallest kind of an accident.

No, she didn't fall down any stairs. She's
sleeping now. I got time to talk. Doctor Wilkins be by in a while. Maybe he'll have better news today. Maybe we can take her home by Monday. If I
ever get her out of here I'll get her off those pills they give her. Get her thinking straight.

How it started was. We were
going off to Memphis to this wedding, Miss Crystal and Mr. Manny and her brother-in-law, Joey, that was the groom, and Mr. Lenny, that runs the store,
and Mr. and Mrs. Weiss, senior, the old folks, and me and Crystal Anne and some of Joey's friends. We took up half the plane. Everybody started
drinking Bloody Marys the minute the plane left New Orleans. They even made me have one. “Drink up, Traceleen,” Mr. Weiss said.
“Joey's marrying the richest girl in Memphis.”

Miss Crystal started flirting with Owen as soon as the plane left
the ground. This big Spanish-looking boy that was Joey's roommate up at Harvard. She'd already seen him up at Joey's graduation in the
spring, set her eye on him up there. Well, first thing she does is fix it so she can sit by him on the plane. Me sitting across from them with the baby.
Mr. Manny up front, talking business with his daddy.

Owen's telling Miss Crystal all about how he goes scuba diving down in
Mexico. Her hanging onto every word. “I'm going to start a dive school down there as soon as I get the cash,” he said.
“I'm quitting all that other stuff. It's no good to work your ass off all your life. No, I want a life in the water.” He poured
himself another Bloody Mary. Miss Crystal had her hand on his leg by then, like she was this nice older lady that was a friend of his. He pretend like
he don't notice it was there. Baby climbing all over me, messing up my uniform.

“To hell with graduate school at my
age,” Owen was saying. “I'm too big for the desks. I'm going back to Guadalajara the minute this wedding's over. Get me a
wicker swing and sit down to enjoy life. You come on down and see me. You and Manny fly on down. I'll teach you to dive. You just say the
word.” Miss Crystal was lapping it up. I could see her fitting herself into his plans. It had been a bad spring around our place. It was time for
something to happen.

“Go to sleep now,” I'm saying to Crystal Anne. “Get you a little sleep. Lots of
excitement coming up. You cuddle up by Traceleen.”

The minute the plane landed there was this bus to take us to the hotel.
I'll say one thing for people in Memphis. They know how to throw a wedding. The bus took us right to the Peabody Hotel. They had two floors
reserved. Hospitality rooms set up on each floor, stayed open twenty-four hours. You could get anything you wanted from sunup to sundown. Mixed drinks,
Cokes, baby food, Band-Aids, sweet rolls, homemade brownies. I've never seen such a spread.

The young people took over one
hospitality room and the old people took up the other. Me and Crystal Anne sort of moving from one to the other, picking up compliments on her hair,
getting Cokes, watching TV. I was getting sixty dollars a day for being there. I would have done it free. Every now and then I'd put on Crystal
Anne's little suit and take her up to the pool. That's where Miss Crystal was hanging out. With Owen. He was loaded when he got off the
plane and he was staying loaded. He was lounging around the pool telling stories about going scuba diving. Finally he sent out for some scuba diving
equipment to put on a demonstration. That's the type wedding this was. Any of the guests that wanted anything they just called up and someone
brought it to them.

It was getting dark by then. The sun almost down. Someone comes up with the scuba diving equipment and Owen
puts it on and starts scuba diving all around the pool. He's trying to get Miss Crystal to go in with him but she won't do it. “Come
on, chicken,” he saying. “It's not going to hurt your hair. You'll be hooked for life the minute you go down. It's like
flying in water.”

“I can't Owee,” she says. That's what she's calling him now. “I'm
in the wedding party. I can't get wet now.” Well, in the end he coaxed her into the pool, everyone hanging around the edge watching and
cheering them on. All these bubbles coming up from the bottom where I guess she is. Mr. Manny standing with his back to the wall smoking cigarette after
cigarette and not saying anything. Miss Crystal and Owen stayed underwater a long time. Crystal Anne, she's screaming, “Momma, Momma,
Momma,” because she can't see her in the water so I take her to the lobby to see the ducks to calm her down.

The ducks
in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel are famous all over the world. There's even a book about them you can buy. What they do is they keep about
thirty or forty ducks up on the roof and they bring them down four or five at a time and let them swim around this pool in the lobby. I was talking to
this man who takes care of them and brings them up and down in the morning and the afternoon. We were on the elevator with him. He told Crystal Anne she
shouldn't chase them or put her hands on them like some bad children did. “You have to stay back and just look at them,” he said.
“Just be satisfied to watch them swim around.” So we go with him to take the old ducks out and put the new ducks in and that satisfies her
and she forgets all about her momma up in the pool drowning herself to show off for Owen.

I kept seeing Mr. Manny standing against
that wall with a drink in his hand. Not letting anything show. None of the Weisses let anything show. They like to act like nothing's going on.
They been that way forever. My auntee worked for the old folks. She says they were the same way then.

Then it's dark and
everyone go to their rooms to get ready for the rehearsal dinner. Miss Crystal's in the bathroom trying to do something with her hair. She
can't get it to suit herself. She's wearing this black lace dress with no back in it and no brassiere. And some little three-inch platform
shoes with that blond hair curling all over her head like it do when she can't get it to behave. Like I said, it'd been a long spring. All
that bad time with Mr. Alan breaking her heart. Now Owen.

So she finishes dressing and then she orders a martini from room service.
She's in such a good mood. I haven't seen her like that in a long time. We're in two rooms hooked together with a living room. I had
on my black gabardine uniform with a white lace apron and Crystal Anne's in white with lace hairbows. We should have had our picture taken.

“Don't start in on martinis now,” Mr. Manny said. “Let's just remember this is Joey's wedding and try
to act right.” I feel sorry for him sometimes. He's always having to police everything. Come from being a lawyer, I guess. Always down at
the law courts and the jail and the coroner's office and all.

“I'm acting right,” she says.
“I'm acting just fine.”

“Don't start it, Crystal.” I move in the other room at that.

“I'm not starting a thing,” she said. “You started this conversation. And you really shouldn't smoke so
much, Manny. The human lungs will only take so much abuse.”

Owen was waiting for us at the door of the dining room. He was
really loaded now, laughing and joking at everything that happened. He was wearing this wrinkled-looking white tuxedo, big old shoulders like a football
player about to bust out of it. He had half the young people at the wedding following him everywhere he'd go. Like he was a comet or something.
That's the kind of man Miss Crystal goes for. I don't know why she ever married Mr. Manny to begin with. They not each other's type.
It's a mismatch. Anybody could see that.

Well, this night was bound for disaster. It didn't take a fortune-teller to
see that. I found Crystal Anne some crackers to chew on and in a little while everyone found their places and sat down. A roomful of people. I guess
half of Memphis must have been there. They were all eating and making speeches about how happy Joey and his bride was going to be. She was a wispy
little thing. But it was true about the money. Her daddy owns the Trumble Oil Company that makes mayonnaise. All her old boyfriends read poems they
wrote about being married and Joey's friends all got up and talked about what a great guy he was. All except Owen, he got up and recited this poem
about getting drunk coming home from a fair and not being able to find his necktie the next day. It got a lot of applause and Miss Crystal was beaming
with pride. I'm sitting by Crystal Anne feeding her. The bride had insisted Crystal Anne must come to everything.

Then the
band came and the dancing started. Mr. Manny, he's sitting way down the table talking to the bride's father about business, just like
he's an old man, making jokes about how much the wedding must have cost. I felt sorry for him again. His jokes couldn't take a patch on that
poem Owen recited.

Everybody ended up in the hospitality room about one o'clock in the morning. All except Miss Crystal and
Owen. They're in his hotel room talking about scuba diving and listening to the radio. They've got this late night station on playing
dixieland and I'm in there to put a better look on it. Crystal Anne's asleep beside me. Still in her dress. “Night diving's the
best,” Owen is telling us. “That's where you separate the men from the boys.” He's lying on the bed with his hands behind
his head. Miss Crystal's sprawled all over a chair with her legs hooked over the side.

So Mr. Manny comes in. He's
tired of pretending he isn't mad. “Get up, Crystal,” he says. “Come on, you're going to our room.”

“I'm talking to Owen,” she says. “He's going to take us diving in Belize.”

“Crystal, you're coming to our room.”

“No, I'm not. I'm staying here. Go get me
a drink if you haven't got anything to do.” She look at him like he's some kind of a servant. So he moves into the room and takes hold
of her legs and starts dragging her. Owen, he stands up and says, stop dragging her like that, but Mr. Manny, he keeps on doing it. Miss Crystal,
she's too surprised to do a thing. All I'm thinking about is the dress. Brussels lace. He's going to ruin the dress.

Then Mr. Manny he drag her all the way out into the hall and to the top of the stairs and they start yelling at each other. You're
coming with me, he's saying, and she's saying, oh, no, I am not because I can not stand you. Then I heard this scream and I come running out
into the hall and Miss Crystal is tumbling down those stairs. I heard her head hit on every one. Mr. Manny, he's just standing there watching her.
You should have seen the expression on his face.

They don't put lawyers in jail for nothing they do. Otherwise, why
isn't Mr. Manny in jail for that night? It's been two months since I ran down those stairs after Miss Crystal and hold her head in my lap
while I waited for the ambulance to come. I've still got my apron, stained with her blood. And she's still in this hospital, crazy as a bat
and they're feeding her pills all day and she don't recognize me sometimes when I go to visit. Other times she does and seem all right but
you can't make any sense talking to her. All she want to do when she's awake is talk about how her head is hurting or wait for some more
pills or make long-distance calls to her brother, Phelan, begging him to forgive her for turning his antelopes loose and come and bring her a gun to
shoot herself with. And Mr. Manny. He's got her where he wants her now, hasn't he? Any day when he gets off work he can just drive down to
Touro and there she is, right where he left her, laying in bed, waiting for him to get there. And my auntee Mae, that worked for the old people, the
Weisses that are dead now. She says that's just how it started with LaureLee Weiss that ended up in Mandeville forever because she wouldn't
be a proper wife to old Stanley Weiss. They ended up putting electricity in her head to calm her down. My auntee has been around these people a long
time. She knows the past of them.