Second Skin (New Directions Paperbook), page 9
Wake with a Loving Thought.
Work with a Happy Thought.
Sleep with a Gentle Thought.
I would begin to smile, begin to whistle. Because it tickled my fancy, that prayer, that message for the new day, and because it was a talisman against the horrors of blue tit and saved me, at least for a while, from the thought of the black brassiere.
So the changes of those cold days. Until the local children became glum Christmas sprites and the first snow fell at last-sudden soaring of asthma powder stench, dirty little volcanoes smoldering in every room—and the night of the local high school dance loomed out of the fresh wet snow and I, I too, was swept along into the glaring bathos of that high school dance. Kissing in the coatroom. Big business out back in the car. Little bright noses in the snow. Jomo’s hook in action. Beginning of our festive end.
“Ready, Skip? Ready yet, Candy? They’ll be here any sec. …”
Even in the cold and echoing bathroom—lead pipe, cracked linoleum, slabs of yellow marble—and even with the cold water running in the tap and the snow piling against the window and the old brown varnished door closed as far as it would go, still I could hear her calling to us from the parlor, hear the sound of her tread in the parlor. But though her voice rose up to us crisp and clear and bold—a snappy voice, a hailing voice, deeply resonant, pathetically excited—and though I resented being rushed and would never forgive her for daring to invent and use those perky names, especially for shouting up that cheap term of endearment for Cassandra when I, her father, had always yearned hopelessly for just this privilege, nonetheless it was Saturday night and the first snow was falling and I too was getting ready, after all, for the high school dance. So I could not really begrudge Miranda her excitement or her impatience. I too felt a curious need to hurry after all. And perhaps down there in the parlor—kicking the log, sloshing unsteady portions of whiskey into her glass, then striding to the window and trying to see out through the darkness and heavy snow—perhaps in some perverse way she was thinking of Don, though her chest was clear and though from time to time I could hear her laughing to herself down there.
Laughing while I was making irritable impatient faces in the bathroom mirror. Giving myself a close shave for the high school dance. Trying to preserve my own exhilaration against hers. And it was pleasurable. After a particularly good stroke I would set aside the razor and fling the water about as wildly as I could and snort, grind my eyes on the ends of the towel. Then step to the window for a long look at the black night and the falling snow.
Wet hands on the flaking white sill. Sudden shock in nose, chin, cheeks, sensation of the cold glass against the whole of my inquisitive face. Kerosene stove breathing into the seat of my woolen pants, eyes all at once accustomed to the dark, when suddenly it coalesced—soap, toothpaste, warm behind, the cold wet night—and I smiled and told myself I had nothing to fear from Red and saw myself poised hand in hand with Cassandra on the edge of the floor and smiling at the awkward postures and passions of the high school young. I stared out the window, tasting the soap on my lips, watching the snow collect in the black crotch of a tree—slick runnels in the bark, puckered wounds of lopped branches crowned with snow—that grew close to the window and glistened in the beam of the bathroom light, and I felt as if I were being tickled with the point of a sharp knife. Thank God for the sound of the tap and of Cassandra’s little thin shoe spanking across the puddles of the bathroom floor. I waited, face trembling with the coldness of the night.
“Skipper. Zip me up. Please.”
“Well, Cassandra,” I said, and turned to her, held out both hands wide to her, “How sad that Gertrude can’t see you now. But your dress, Cassandra, surely it’s not a mail-order dress?”
“Miranda made it for me,” tugging lightly at a flounce, twisting the waist, “she made it as a surprise for me to wear tonight. It has a pretty bow. You’ll see. It’s not too youthful, Skipper?”
“For you?” And I laughed, dropped my arms—antipathy toward my embrace? fear for the dress?—and wiped my hands on the towel, frowned at the thought of Miranda’s midnight sewing machine, stood while with straight arm and straight Angers she followed the healing needlework on my skin, traced out the letters of her lost husband’s name—did she, could she know what she was doing? know the shame I felt for the secret I still kept from her?—then by the shoulders I turned her so I could reach the dress where it hung open down her back. “Of course it’s not too young for you, Cassandra. Hardly.”
“And we’re not making a mistake tonight? We shouldn’t just stay home and let Miranda go to the dance alone with Red and Bub and,” pausing—moment of deference—whispering the name into the little clear cup of her collar bone, “and with Jomo?”
“Of course not,” I said, and reached for the zipper, probed for it, quickly tried to work the zipper. “It’s only a high school dance, Cassandra. Harmless. Amusing. We needn’t be out late,” pulling, fumbling, trying to work the zipper free, “and think of it, Cassandra. The first snow. …”
She nodded and plucked at the bodice, fluffed the skirt, put one foot in front of the other, and with each gesture there was a corresponding ripple in the prim naked shape of her back and a corresponding ripple in the dress itself. That dress. That green taffeta. Flounces and ruffles and little bright green fields and cascading skirt. Taffeta. Smooth for the palm and nipped-in little deep green persuasive folds for the fingers. Swirling. Shining. Cake frosting with candles. For a fifteen-year-old. For a cute kitten. For trouble. Green taffeta. And when we went down the stairs together, Cassandra holding up the knee-length skirt, I following, steadying myself against the flimsy bannister, I saw the green bow, the two full yards of fluted taffeta with a green knot larger than my fist and streamers that reached her calves. Bow that bound her buttocks. Outrageous bow!
So I zipped the zipper and in the mirror full of contortion, mirror crowded suddenly with hands, elbows, floating face, I tied my tie and spread a thin even coating of Vaseline on my smooth red scalp—protection for the bald head, no chafing in wind or snow, trick I learned in the Navy—and grinned at myself in the glass and buffed my fingernails and struggled into my jacket and rapped on Cassandra’s door—exposure of black market stocking, gathered green taffeta hem of skirt, hairpin in the pretty mouth—and waited and waited and then escorted her down the dark stairs.
“Candy! My God, Candy! She looks like a dream, doesn’t she, Skip?”
Before I could reply or smile or make some condescending gesture they hugged each other, hooked arms and crossed the parlor to the fire, in front of the fire held hands, admired each other, babbled, swung their four clasped hands in unison. Girlish. Hearts full of joy. The big night. Miranda was dressed in black, of course—her totem was still hanging in the bathroom—and around her throat she wore a black velvet band. Her bosom was an unleashed animal.
“My God, Candy, we’re just kids. Two kids. Two baby sitters waiting for dates! And they’ll be here any sec! ”
“And me, Miranda?” Squirming, shrugging, raising my chin toward the cracks in the ceiling, “What about me, Miranda?”
“You?” She laughed, showed her big white knees, pretended to waltz with Cassandra in front of the fire. “You’re the Mah Jongg champion. Boy, what a Mah Jongg champion you are!” And suddenly locking Cassandra’s face between her bare white hands, and swaying, smiling at Cassandra’s little downcast eyes: “My God, I wish Don were here,” she said. “I wish Don could see you tonight, Candy.”
“Watch out for the asthma,” I murmured, but too softly and too late because the dates were stamping on the veranda, banging on the door, and she was gone, was already rushing down the hall and kissing them, throwing herself on the sniffling figures standing there in the cold.
And under my breath, quickly: “First dance, Cassandra? Please?”
“I can’t promise, Skipper. I can’t make promises any more.”
Then the fire shot high again and the black beauty was herding them all into the parlor—Jomo, Bub, Grandma who looked like a little corncob tied up with rags—and they were all blowing on their fingers, kicking the snow off their boots, sniffling. Red ears. Mean eyes. Smears of Miranda’s lipstick on each of the faces.
“Have a drink, Jomo?” she said, and hugged his narrow black iron shoulders with her long white arm, ran her other hand through Bub’s wet hair. “Just one for the road?”
“Can’t. Red’s out in the car. Waiting.”
The long-billed baseball cap, the steady eyes, the flat black sideburns sculpted frontier-style with a straight razor, pug nose and skin the color of axle grease and little black snap-on bow tie and lips drawn as if he were going to whistle through his teeth —this was Jomo and Jomo was looking at Cassandra, staring at her, with one oblivious snuff of his pug nose expressed all the contempt and desire of his ruthless race. It was the green taffeta bow, of course, and before he could finish his contemplation of that green party favor, green riddle as big as a balloon, I stepped in front of him, and hoping, as I always hoped, that one day he would forget and give me his cold hook of steel, I thrust out my hand.
“Evening, Jomo,” I said. “How’s the cod? Running?”
He waited. No artificial hand. No real hand. Only the soft light of fury sliding off his face, only one more baffling question to ask his old man about and to hold against me. So he turned to Miranda, jerked his head toward the door.
“Anyways, Red’s got a pint in his pocket. Let’s go.”
But the little old woman, mother of the Captain and grandmother of his noxious sons, was pushing on Bub’s sleeve and pointing in my direction and trying to talk.
“She wants to say something,” Bub said. “Tell Bub,” he said, and stuck his ear down to the little happy bobbing clot of the old woman’s face. Crushed once with a clam digger. Dug out of a hole at low tide. Little old woman with love and a sense of humor.
“All right,” I said, “what is it? And how is Mrs. Poor tonight?” I smiled and glanced at Cassandra—shining and silent cameo by the hearth—and smiled again, squared my shoulders, leaned my head slightly to one side for Mrs. Poor who was clinging to Bub’s arm and pumping with excitement in all the little black muscular valves of her mouth and eyes. Every Saturday Red went down to feed her doughnuts, and on Sundays after grace he would sometimes tell us about her health and happiness. “Well,” I said, knowing that she was shrewd, not to be trusted, that the little rag-bound head was stuffed with Jomo’s jokes and snatches of the prayer book which she knew by heart, “well, tell us what Grandma wants to say tonight.”
Bub looked at me, wiped his nose. “She says all the girls are sweet on you. You’re apple pie for the girls, she says. All the girls go after a rosy man like you. Real apple pie, she says.” And Bub was scowling and the old woman was nodding up and down, grinning, pointing, and Miranda was kneeling and fixing Cassandra’s bow.
“What a nice thing to say,” said Cassandra. “Don’t you think so, Skipper?”
Jomo leaned over and smacked his thigh. “God damn,” he said, “that’s good.”
And going down the hall toward the open door where I could see the snow driving and sifting—Miranda first, then Cassandra and Jomo and Bub and last, as usual, myself—I noticed Bub’s quick ferret gesture, quick fingers nudging his brother’s arm, and clearly heard his young boy’s voice cupped under a sly hand, in the darkness saw his boy’s feet dance a few lewd steps to the fun of his question:
“What’s that thing she’s wearing on her ass?”
And Jomo, in a dead-pan voice and puppet jerk of the silhouetted head: “Never you mind, Bub. And watch your language. You got a mouth full of rot.”
“Maybe. But I’d like to kill it with a stick.”
Old joke. Snickering shadow of island boy. Jackknife shadow of older brother. But then the snow, the darkness, the packed and crunching veranda, the dying oak and the picket fence heaped high with snow, and beyond the fence, low and throbbing like a diesel truck, the waiting car. It was a hot rod. Cut down. Black. Thirteen coats of black paint and wax. Thick aluminum tubes coiling out of the engine. And in the front an aerial—perfect even to the whip of steel, I thought—and tied to the tip of the aerial a little fat fuzzy squirrel tail, little flag freshly killed and plump, soft, twisting and revolving slowly in the snow, dark fur long and wet and glistening under the crystals of falling snow. The lights from the house were shining on the windshield —narrow flat rectangle of blind glass already half-buried like the silver hub caps in the heavy snow—and I glanced back toward the house and waved and, blinking away the snow, licking it, thinking of another departure, “Au revoir, Grandma,” I called softly, “take good care of Pixie.” Then I stumbled to the car with wet cheeks and with a smile on my wet lips.
I took hold of the handle. Turned, pulled, shook the handle. “Come on, Bub,” I said, leaning down, rapping on the glass, shading my eyes and attempting to peer into the car, “open the door, you’re not funny.” I squinted, brushed at the snow with a cold hand. I saw the two heads of hair and the knife-billed baseball cap between them in the back, saw Bub laughing, poking at Captain Red who sat behind the wheel holding the pint bottle up to his lip. I saw the pint bottle making the rounds.
“All right,” I said, when the door came open at last, “now get out for a moment, Bub. You can sit on my lap.”
“Now wait a minute. Just you wait. I got this seat first. Didn’t I? If there’s any lap-sitting to be done, it’s you who’s going to do it. Now you want to ride to the dance with us you better just climb into the car and have a seat. Right here.” Pointing. Laughter. Bottle sailing out the window. Captain Red—tall man dressed in his Sunday duds, shaved, fit to kill—blowing the horn three times. Three shrill trumpet blasts through the falling snow.
“But, Bub,” leaning closer, trying to whisper into his ear, “I’m bigger than you are. I’ll be too heavy.”
And the shout: “Never you mind about that. I’ll do the worrying, you just do what I say. And I say you can sit on my lap or you can walk!”
Then there was the meshing of metal, the hard shower of snow, sparks under the snow, and if I hadn’t leapt—puffing, pumping, displaying blind humiliating courage since it’s always the fat man who has to run to catch the train—surely I would have been left behind, left standing there with my hopeless breath freezing on the dark night air. An evening at home. Evening with Grandma. Up and down to the lavatory. Smiles. But I did leap, sucked all possible breath into my lungs and desperate, expecting and even willing to be maimed, for five or ten steps plowed along beside the moving car and then jumped, ducked my head, got a grip on the dashboard and back of the seat, hunched my neck and shoulders—presence of mind to save fingers, feet, loose ends of cloth and flesh from the slamming door—and perched there, balanced there absurdly on Bub’s tough wiry little lap. Steaming upholstery, six steaming people. Smells of gasoline, spilled whiskey, fading perfume, antifreeze. And Bub. With my head knocking against the roof of the car I knew him for what he was: a boy without underwear, holes in his socks, holes in his pockets, rancid navel, hair bunched and furrowed on the scrawny nape of his neck, and the mouth forever breathing off the telltale smell of sleep and half-eaten candy bars. This country boy, this island boy. Filled with fun. With hate. With smelly self-satisfaction.
“Jingle Bells, everybody,” cried Miranda, “sing along with me!” But we were swerving, skidding, sliding through the snow and all at once the lights of the high school were flickering above the tombstones in the cemetery on the hill.
And into the tiny exposed orifice of Cassandra’s ear: “I got dibs on the first dance,” said Jomo, and I understood the meaning of her downcast eyes and through the snow I heard that the bass drum was out of time with the rest of Jack Spratt’s Merry Hep Cats.
But how long, oh my God, how long did I endure that drummer—pimples, frightened eyes, chewing gum under his chair, some kind of permanent paralysis in his legs—how long endure the cornet—begging for alms—or the little girl with the accordion —black and white monster on her bare knees—or the poor stick of a schoolteacher at the upright piano or the paper cups of pop, the wedges of chocolate cake—chocolate on the lips, cheeks, melting all over the hands—how long endure the concrete walls, steam pipes, varnished and forbidding floor, the red, white and blue bunting hung from the nets, how long endure the mothers or the fat old men waiting around for the belly-bumping contest? How long? How long endure all this as well as the sight of Jomo going after Cassandra with his damnable hook? Long enough to be tempted into love once more, long enough to perspire in that cold gymnasium, to win the belly-bumping contest —treachery of my long night-long enough to have my fill of pop and chocolate cake. Too long, oh God, much too long for a man who merely wanted to dance a few slow numbers and amuse his daughter.
“If the power fails,” and I startled at the sound of Red’s deep voice, glanced at the uncertain yellow glow of the caged lights, glanced at the windows filled with wind and snow, “if it fails there’s no telling what all these kids will do. Might have quite a time in the dark. With all these kids.” And the two of them, widow in black, Captain Red in black double-breasted suit, swung out to the middle of the floor, towered above that handful of undernourished high school girls and retarded boys. Two tall black figures locked length to length, two faces convulsed in passion, one as long and white and bony as a white mare’s face, the other crimson, leathery, serrated like the bald head to which it belonged, and the young boys and girls making way for them, scattering in the path of their slow motion smoke, staring up at them in envy, fear, shocked surprise. From the side lines and licking my fingers, swallowing the cake, I too watched them in shocked surprise, stuffed a crumpled paper napkin into my hip pocket. Because they were both so big, so black, so oblivious. But if this was the father, what of the ruthless son? What of Cassandra? What dance could they possibly be dancing?
