T-Backs, T-Shirts, Coat, and Suit

  While her back was turned, Chloë ventured to take a forkful of salad. It was not exactly what she was used to. The dressing had a tart and yeasty flavor, and she found herself taking a second bite to figure out the mystery of the taste. Her third forkful was halfway to her mouth when Bernadette turned around to sit back down at the table and wait for the water to boil. Chloë was embarrassed to be caught eating what she had said she would not, but Bernadette acted as if Chloë’s eating the salad was the most natural thing in the world. Chloë finished her one bowlful and took a second.

  Bernadette asked Chloë if she would like to join her in the living room for a cup of coffee.

  “Is that European?” Chloë asked. “Giving coffee to children and having it in the living room?”

  Bernadette replied, “I don’t know if it’s European or not. It’s what I like to do. You may join me if you like.”

  Chloë couldn’t figure out if she liked the coffee itself or the ritual of drinking it in the living room after supper. But by the end of her first week there, it was no longer unexpected and was very welcome.

  * * *

  Besides learning to swim, Chloë also learned to play cribbage. She had never even shuffled a deck of cards, but before their first week was out, Bernadette had taught Chloë how to play cribbage, her favorite. Chloë loved keeping score by moving the little pegs along the board, and cribbage quickly became her favorite too.

  When at last she won a game, she said, “I must have card sense.”

  Bernadette replied, “You must have a good teacher.”

  Chloë said, “Have you ever known any twelve-year-old who learned as fast as me?”

  Bernadette replied, “Me.”

  * * *

  On Friday of that first week the sky was overcast, and before they left the Ritz, Bernadette closed up the van and stood on a high dune, looking out on that huge volume of gray.

  “Won’t we go swimming today?” Chloë asked.

  “Of course we will. Only sissies need sunshine to swim.”

  As they started back toward the van, Bernadette looked over her shoulder and said, “It’s a funny thing about horizons. You can never get close to them, but you sure do miss them when they’re not visible.”

  That afternoon when they arrived at Seminole Beach, Chloë raced from the car and plunged right in. It was riptide, and she got carried out by the current. Before she realized it, she was in water up to her neck. She ducked under and bobbed up again and found the dog at her side. Well, she thought, I’ve gotten as good as this animal. It wasn’t until she turned to wave to Bernadette that she realized that her feet couldn’t touch bottom.

  She didn’t panic. She knew she would be able to swim back. Maybe her form would not be Olympic class, but she knew she could face the unexpected all the way back to shore. And she did.

  When she got back, she dried off and said to Bernadette, “I think I can save you now if I want to.”

  As she climbed the dune on her way to the car, Chloë allowed the soft drizzle from the sky and the salt spray from the ocean to wash over her. The sea and the sky and the sand had all become one, something that was neither water, air, nor land and yet was all three.

  Over the course of that first week, Bernadette, Chloë, and Daisy had a start on becoming something that was neither woman, child, nor dog and yet was all three. Chloë no longer thought of Daisy as an animal. Daisy had become one. So had she. Chloë liked being one and three-in-one at the same time.

  On their first Saturday—and the Saturdays that would follow—they did the laundry, cleaned the house, and shopped for groceries. Chloë quickly learned to cruise the aisles of the supermarket to search for food that did not look like anything they served in the van, did not taste like anything they served in the van and, most especially, did not smell anything like it either. They bought bushels of fruit and fresh vegetables and cartons of breakfast cereal.

  And in the late afternoon, they again went to the beach. After Chloë’s swimming lesson, Bernadette sat under a large umbrella and read.

  On Sunday Bernadette washed her Firebird and worked under its hood. She took a stethoscope to the motor. “Checking its heart?” Chloë asked.

  “The valves,” Bernadette answered.

  Bernadette finished her work on the car before noon, and in the late afternoon they went to the beach again, taking along a picnic supper this time.

  On Chloë’s second Saturday in Peco, it rained.

  The summer rains of Peco are so particular that one side of a street can get soaked while the other side stays totally dry. And when the rain clears, it exits quickly, as if it is embarrassed. By the time they got home from grocery shopping, the rain had come and gone.

  Bernadette rushed outside to see what the rain had done to her garden. After even so brief a rain, the earth of Peco gets steamy. Cement paths look moist enough to grow crops. Large bushes droop from the weight of water, and every color looks like the utmost shade of something natural. Bernadette pulled a few weeds from the flower beds and then wandered out to the field behind the house. “There will be a good selection of mushrooms tomorrow. There always is after a rain,” she said, smiling. “I’l1 need them. We’re having company for supper. Zack and Wanda are coming over.”

  Chloë’s spirits sank.

  Every time they ran into Zack at the commissary, he made a comment about “the kid,” and every time he did, Bernadette said, “She’s Nick’s kid, Zack, and her name is Chloë.” When she said that, Zack would smile a secret smile and continue on his rounds.

  There was something going on between Zack and Bernadette that Chloë couldn’t explain. Zack was not exactly teasing every time he insisted on saying the kid, and Bernadette was not exactly teasing every time she insisted upon correcting him. Nick’s kid, she would say. Zack’s smile—neither slow nor twitchy, but sly and secret—was one she couldn’t explain. Did he know that she was not really Nick’s kid? Or did he possibly think that Chloë herself didn’t know that she was adopted?

  There was something going on between Wanda and Zack that she could explain. Wanda was Zack’s girlfriend. She had been working for Zack for a year and had been his girlfriend for one month less than that. She worked the highway route. The highway route was always the job for the newest employee.

  Chloë was grateful that she had to see Zack only for short periods of time. Until now. Now she would have to spend a whole evening in his company. She was ready to protest, to tell Bernadette that she did enough food service during the week and deserved a day of rest and recreation, but something stopped her from complaining.

  Something in her heart told her not to complain.

  That something—which she recognized but could not describe—told her that Bernadette had invited Wanda and Zack over because she wanted them to see the us she and Bernadette had become.

  Then, unexpectedly, Bernadette asked, “Would you like to go to a movie this afternoon?”

  Chloë said yes.

  Chloë loved movies. Anjelica and Krystal had probably seen every new release at least once since summer began. In Ridgewood, in order to fit in, it was important to keep up. But that was one part of fitting in that was easy for Chloë. Unlike going to slumber parties or the pet store at the mall, she loved going to the movies.

  To Bernadette, movies did not mean the multiplex inside the mall. To Bernadette movies meant the dollar movie in a strip mall where all the stores except Karl’s Sandwich Shop had moved out. Chloë looked over the list on the marquee; she had already seen every one; four were already out on video. If Bernadette gave her a choice, she wouldn’t mind seeing Father of the Bride again.

  A large section of the parking lot to the side and back of the movie was marked off with sawhorses and orange traffic cones. On their way to the box office, they wandered over to see what was going on. A bunch of kids were swooping around the back lot on Rollerblades, and in the section on the side, others were doing leaps and turns. Bernadette and Chloë stayed and wat
ched so long, they missed the coming attractions.

  Chloë hated missing the coming attractions. In Ridge-wood she never did. And when the movie was over, she always stayed to see the credits—up to and including best boy—whatever that was. But The End was still flashing on the screen, and the music had not swelled to its full final crescendo before Bernadette was back out on the parking lot watching the skaters. Chloë followed, once again, feeling very much the grown-up.

  All the beginners were gone. Only the spirited, the brave, and the athletically gifted remained. A man as old as Nick was practicing jumping over barriers. A pudgy woman was skating on one leg, and around the perimeter of the lot, a chain of seven men and women, hand-to-waist, were skating in wide circles at high speed.

  Bernadette continued to watch the skaters, fascinated. “Looks like fun,” she said, reluctantly pulling herself away and reaching into her pocket for her car keys.

  Rollerblades were not new to Chloë. She had seen them before and thought of them as objects that created sweat and frizzy hair. In the almost two weeks she had spent in Peco, she had not conquered sweat but had conquered her fear of it. The frizzies were another matter. Whereas a good shower took care of the sweat, a good shampoo did not cure the frizzies. But Bernadette’s life-style left her no time to fight it. Chloë washed her hair and let it dry in the air, certain that she was saving Bernadette millions of dollars worth of electricity because she was not using either a hair dryer or hot rollers. There were days when she did not recognize what she saw in the mirror, and other days when she didn’t even bother to look.

  On Sunday morning they waxed the car. With more direction from Bernadette than she felt was necessary, Chloë helped. After lunch they went together into the field behind the house and foraged for edible weeds and mushrooms. Bernadette washed all the salad ingredients and dried them in paper towels and arranged them in a huge, clear plastic bowl. It did look beautiful, and Chloë was honest when she said, “I don’t know if we should eat it or take its picture.”

  Bernadette made a small curtsy and replied, “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “It ain’t bragging if it’s true,” Chloë said.

  Bernadette stocked the refrigerator with beer and Coke and set out little bowls of trail mix and roasted peanuts. She said they would order in a pizza after everyone had settled down.

  Everyone turned out to be a surprise. Wanda brought along her sister, Velma, and Velma brought along her son, Tyler.

  Chloë had often seen Wanda at the commissary, but she had never seen as much of her as she saw that Sunday night. Wanda wore shorts and a halter top. The halter was cut low, and the shorts were cut high and low. High on the thigh, low on the waist. She wore a thin gold chain around her waist, where a belt should be, except the chain was so thin it couldn’t hold anything up, even if there were something to. Wanda was a woman without wrinkles. No wrinkles. Even her belly button—an inny—looked unwrinkled.

  She had let down her long blond hair.

  Velma looked a lot like Wanda. Her hair was as long as Wanda’s but was brown all the way past the roots. Her fingernails didn’t stop; they were long enough to chop onions. Velma was two years younger than Wanda, every bit as unwrinkled as her sister and every inch as well-built. They were dressed like twins, only in different colors. Chloë thought they looked like two full-size Totally Hair Barbies—one blond, one brunette.

  Besides dressing alike and looking alike, the sisters sounded alike. Not only did they have the same accent and the same way of saying things, they also had the same way of not saying things.

  What Chloë sensed was that, for all the sisters showed of themselves, there was something underneath that they tried to hide.

  There was no laughter beneath their smiles.

  There was no heart beneath their cleavage.

  Daisy was agitated. Bernadette called her into the kitchen and told her to sit.

  Wanda said, “Chloë, darling, why don’t you and Tyler take the dog for a walk.”

  Chloë said, “Daisy? Do you mean Daisy?”

  Wanda smiled. “Yeah. Why don’t you take it for a walk with Tyler.”

  “Daisy’s a she,” Chloë replied. “I would enjoy taking her and Tyler for a walk.” She put on Daisy’s leash and said, “Come along, Tyler. Come.”

  Tyler was thirteen. Chloë had often dreamed of what taking a walk with a teenaged boy would be like. This would be her first.

  Chloë couldn’t decide if Tyler didn’t have the beginnings of facial hair or if it was too blond to show; his eyelashes were so blond, they looked invisible. He was slender and neat, and no taller than she was, even if he was a teenager. His hair was long for a boy’s and as blond all the way to the roots as Wanda’s was on the ends. He must have been a thumb-sucker long past the time his second teeth came in because he had an overbite that made his lips look like pages in a pop-up book that would not properly close. His voice was still soprano.

  Taking Daisy along was a good idea. Holding the leash gave Chloë something to do with her hands, and having a well-trained animal gave her the feeling of being in control of something—even if it was only an animal that she had had no part in training.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes before Chloë asked Tyler if he would be helping out on his aunt’s van the way she helped out on Bernadette’s. Tyler said, “No way. I’m enrolled in Bible school at the Church of the Endless Horizon. I already got started.”

  “Ah!” Chloë said. “The Church of the Endless Horizon. Endless horizon,” she repeated dreamily. “It’s a funny thing about horizons, Tyler. You can never get close to them, but you sure do miss them when they’re not visible.” She trusted that Bernadette wouldn’t mind her cribbing. They walked a little bit farther. “With a name like that, your Bible school must be a wonderful place,” she added, not believing it for a minute.

  Tyler said, “Yeah, well, it’s okay. I was at skating camp last summer. Tomorrow, I’m going Rollerblading. There’s no sidewalks where Aunt Wanda lives, so I have to do it on the road when I get home from school. Can’t hardly even practice, even though I’m already real good at it. Aunt Wanda promises that she’s gonna find me a place. I was at swimming camp the year before and at nature camp the year before that. I know every kind of poisonous snake in these United States, and I touched two of them.”

  Chloë could have told Tyler about the parking lot at the dollar movie where he could practice his Rollerblading, but she didn’t. “Can you skate backwards?” she asked.

  “Nothing to it. Can swim backwards too. It’s called the backstroke,” Tyler replied.

  “Bernadette taught me how to swim without ever doing it herself. She knows exactly what to do and how to teach it without even letting her feet off the ground. Learning from her is better than swimming camp.”

  Tyler shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I just know I got real talent for learning stuff.”

  As they walked deeper into the field behind the house, Chloë hoped Daisy would show off how she found wild mushrooms. That was pretty impressive.

  Like magic, Daisy did. She stopped dead in her tracks, her nose, back, and tail making a line so straight you could set bowling pins on it.

  Chloë reached down to pick up the mushroom, and Tyler yelled, “Don’t touch it. Field mushrooms is poisonous. I learned all about them at nature camp.”

  “Wait until you taste the salad we made for supper.”

  “Do you mean she put them wild things into the salad we’re supposed to eat tonight?”

  “They’re delicious.”

  “Oh, sure,” Tyler said. “They may be delicious to you, but there’s an old saying, One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

  “If you really had a talent for learning stuff, then you would know that they are not all poisonous. Bernadette knows which are and which are not.” They walked in silence for a while, then Tyler began falling a few steps behind, acting as if he didn’t want to walk with her. Chloë grew unc
omfortable, then annoyed. He would walk with her. She would make him. She stopped dead in her tracks, Daisy by her side, and waited for him to catch up. He did, but he kept his hands in his pockets and his eyes down on the ground.

  She said, “I chose to spend my summer in Peco because living with Bernadette is better than nature camp. It’s like living with Mother Nature herself. She knows all about mushrooms and can make tea out of weeds and roots, and she does all the work on her Firebird herself. All of it. She spends most of her spare time under its hood.”

  Tyler’s head jerked up, and his eyes opened wide. “What color is it?”

  “Black with licks of flame on its hood.”

  “She has a hood?” he asked.

  Chloë replied. “Of course. I just told you she spends a lot of time under the hood. That Firebird is so familiar, she knows it blindfolded.”

  Tyler said, “Well, the hoods is mostly how they get blindfolded.”

  Chloë was puzzled, but she wasn’t about to let Tyler know that. “Bernadette told me that she had bought one of the first Tercels that came into this country, but it wasn’t powerful enough for her, so she traded it in for an old Firebird.”

  Tyler said, “It’s a well-known fact that male falcons is smaller, but they are powerful, too. But probably not as powerful as a Firebird.”

  Chloë said, “Bernadette never had a Falcon. Why would she want a Falcon when she has a Firebird?”

  “A tercel is a falcon. It’s male. I guess, being a female, your auntie would find the female more familiar, if you get my meaning.”

  Chloë did not get his meaning. As a matter of fact, she had no idea what he was talking about.

  They had not walked much farther when the mushroom she was holding began to stain her hand. She started to throw it away. Tyler said, “Take a bite of it. I dare you.”