We Are Water (27 page)

After the pageant, Belinda Jean and her father gave each other the silent treatment for over a month. I finally went to Reverend Frickee and asked him for help. He come out to the house and talked to Belinda and me first, and then when Claude got home from work, he talked to him in private and then had the three of us pray with him as a family. Claude kept looking over at me all the time Pastor Frickee was there, and if looks could kill . . . Before he left, Mr. Frickee read some little poem about the world coming to an end either from fire or ice, and he give us a little sermon about how ice between family members caused more harm than fire. Which I interpreted as him saying that it was better to have a fight and get things out than to give people the silent treatment and let things keep festering. I could have been wrong, though; poetry’s hard for me to understand because it never says things plain and simple. Well, Claude did not appreciate that I’d involved Pastor Frickee in our family business, and after he left, I was told in no uncertain terms that what went on in our house
stayed
in our house, did I understand? But the funny thing was, by the next day, the ice began to thaw between Claude and Belinda Jean, so the pastor’s visit had done some good. The only problem was: Claude gave
me
the silent treatment for the next week or more. My forty-seventh birthday come up in the middle of that week, I remember. No money for carnations that year!

I knew Belinda Jean and Joe Jones had become friendly in spite of Claude’s warning, or maybe even because of it. I kept my mouth shut, though. I didn’t want Claude finding out and starting World War Three. Truth be told, I was afraid to tell him—afraid for Belinda Jean and for Claude, too. I was scared Claude might fly off the handle and do something he’d get arrested for. March over to the Joneses’ place next door and do more than just break some windows. So I decided I’d keep my mouth shut and deal with the situation in my own way.

This was
how
I knew she and him had become friends. After they laid me off from the school cafeteria, I got another, better job through the classified advertisements in the
Evening Record
. What I did was spy for this California company that distributes movies to the Loew’s Poli on East Main Street. (The movie theater’s just a one-mile walk down Jailhouse Hill and over the Sachem River bridge, so I didn’t have to drive downtown to get to work. I could hoof it.) What I had to do was go to the movies and count the number of people in the audience. It’s what’s called “spot checking.” They wanted to see if the number of tickets the theater reported being sold matched up to the number of people I counted. They were checking to see if those theater managers were on the up-and-up, or if they were underreporting ticket sales and pocketing the difference. For every show I went to and reported back on, they give me nine dollars, so I’d do four or five spot checks a week and make, most weeks, almost fifty dollars. Which was about ten dollars more than I’d made at the school cafeteria, plus I’d get to watch all those movies. I liked that I was my own boss with no one breathing down my neck and me not having to stand on my feet all day long. Claude knew what my job was, but Belinda Jean didn’t because her friend Peggy Konicki’s mother sold the tickets at the Loew’s Poli. (Peggy’d run for Tercentenary Queen, too, but she didn’t make the cut either. It was the big shots’ daughters who did: Anita Graves whose father was a doctor, and Sally McWilliams whose mother was a big chunk of cheese on the city council. It was rigged, I figured, because Sally got voted queen, and she could have used a diet and some pimple cream. She wasn’t any more of a beauty than Belinda Jean or Peggy.) When I was on the job, what I usually did was scoot upstairs to the balcony, where no one else went in the middle of the week except maybe an amorous young couple or two. If that was the case, I’d do this nervy thing that was very out of character for me. I’d say, like I was an employee at the theater, “Excuse me, but the balcony is closed. You have to go downstairs.” And they’d get up and go. After the previews were over, and the cartoon if there was one, I’d look below and count the heads and write the number in my little notepad. Of course, the balcony hung over the rear seats downstairs, so I’d have to lean over the railing and count the people in the back rows, too. Then I’d just sit back and, if it was a hot summer day, enjoy the refrigerated air and watch whatever was showing that week:
Rio Bravo
or
Lover Come Back
or
I Want to Live!
(Susan Hayward played a good part in that one.) Instead of buying the refreshments they sold at the concession stand, I’d bring my own: some Peek Frean or Hydrox cookies, or some peanut butter and Saltine crackers I’d put in a wax paper bag before I left home, plus the pint of Old Grand-Dad I would buy at Patsy’s Package Store on the way downtown and slip into my purse. I admit it: I liked a little nip while I was watching those movies up there in that empty balcony. It was very relaxing and helped me to get lost in the stories. Of course, after I’d done my count (counting myself, too, but they always added the cost of my admission onto my pay, long as I included my ticket stub), I would have to keep my eye out for stragglers and add them to the number I’d already recorded. To my way of thinking, if you have to come late to a movie, then don’t come at all. Those latecomers were a nuisance.

But anyway, this was how I found out about that friendship that was brewing between Belinda Jean and Joe Jones. When I bought my ticket that day—
West Side Story
was what was playing—Peggy Konicki’s mother told me that Belinda Jean had already gone in and was probably waiting for me in the lobby. “Oh, thanks,” I said, pretending like what she assumed to be true
was
true: that my daughter and me had made a plan to meet at the show. There was no one in line behind me, and that Mrs. Konicki has got a gift for gab. She was telling me all this stuff like how
West Side Story
was a Broadway show before it was a movie, and that Natalie Wood didn’t do her own singing for the picture—that she just mouthed the words to someone else’s voice. I was getting a little impatient with her, but when you’re a spy, you have to act nonchalant so no one gets suspicious.

Mrs. Konicki said, “Natalie Wood is Peggy’s favorite actress. That girl will go to see whatever picture Natalie Wood is in.”

“Oh, Belinda Jean, too,” I said. “They’re two peas in a pod.” Which was an out-and-out fib. Belinda likes Debbie Reynolds the best—all those
Tammy
movies. But while I was chatting with Mrs. Konicki, I was worrying that Belinda Jean might see me before I could get up to the balcony because, like I said, she didn’t know about this job of mine. And also I was wondering why Belinda was at the movies instead of at the library where she said she was going. She’d started her part-time job there that summer, but it wasn’t one of her regular days. One of the other girls had called in sick, she said, and they’d asked her to fill in. “Well,” I told Peggy’s mother. “I guess if Belinda’s already in there, I better not keep her waiting.”

Up in the balcony, after my eyes adjusted to the dark, I made out Belinda Jean from her silhouette. She was sitting by her lonesome in one of the middle rows. The movie had already been going for about five minutes when I see some boy come in and sit in the row behind Belinda and one seat over, even though there were plenty of empty seats all over the place. Well, more a man than a boy, it looked like to me. He was more solid than skinny like a high school boy, tall and wide-shouldered. I just hoped he wasn’t some masher. But I figured that wasn’t the case when he leaned forward with his elbows resting on the seat in front of him, the one next to Belinda Jean’s, and him and her started shooting the breeze. Kept it up, too. They were doing more giggling and talking to each other than watching the movie, and of course, neither of them realized that
I
was watching
them
. I didn’t know yet that it was Jones that was sitting right behind her. That come later, after I had to sneak down and use the ladies’ room and I saw him out at the snack bar buying popcorn and two sodas. I was a little bit tipsy from the Old Grand-Dad by then, and when I realized who it was, I missed a step and had to catch myself. The refreshments lady looked up at me, but thank God Joe Jones didn’t turn around. Not that he would have even recognized me, probably, but I didn’t want to chance it. Whether you’re spying for a movie company or spying on your own daughter, the last thing you want to do is get noticed.

When I got back to my seat, all I could think about was what would happen if Claude found out that Belinda Jean was sitting in a public theater and acting so chummy with a colored man. It give me the shakes, I got so worked up. Well, that afternoon I finished the Old Grand-Dad before I slid the bottle under my seat; usually, I put the cap back on and leave some for home. But it didn’t matter how much I drank. I still couldn’t concentrate on the movie. I knew it was about two groups of dancing hoodlums, but that was about all. And later, after the credits come on and everyone started walking out, I realized I’d been so distracted that I’d forgotten to count the number of people in the audience. So in addition to all my fretting, I was going to be out my spot-checking money. I could have just made up a number, I suppose, but I’d never do such a thing. I’m as honest as the day is long and I’d like to think my good character’s worth more than nine dollars.

That night, before Claude come home, I told Belinda Jean that I’d gone shopping downtown and had stopped in at the library to say hello but hadn’t seen her. “They had me downstairs, shelving books in the stacks,” she said.

“Oh, then I guess it
wasn’t
you I saw coming out of the Loew’s Poli after all,” I said. “But boy, it sure looked like you. Same blue checked skirt and white blouse with puffy sleeves. You two could have been twins.”

Oh yeah, she said. That
was
her. She forgot. The girl she was supposed to cover for came in anyway, so they let her go early. She didn’t feel like coming home yet, so she went to the movies instead.

“You know, Belinda Jean,” I said, “you are judged by the company you keep. Just remember that.”

She asked me what that was supposed to mean. Said it defiantlike. But I could see the blood drain out of her face.

“It means just what you think it means,” I told her. “You should always pick your friends wisely and act the way you would if you were out in public with your father and me.” She stood there, clenching her fists and jutting her chin out like she was gunning for a fight. Then she lost her nerve, I guess, because she stormed out of the kitchen, stomped up the stairs, and slammed her bedroom door behind her. That was when I first suspected that she and Jones might have gone past the “friends” stage. I got down on my knees and prayed on it that night, and for the next several nights. Prayed that it wasn’t so, because if it was and Claude got wind of it, he’d raise holy Hell and then some.

It was me who brought the whole thing to a head. Not on purpose, Good Lord! If I had only known, I would have avoided that art show like the plague. The Tercentenary celebration had been going on all summer and was having its final event that Sunday: a pancake breakfast inside the festival tent and a big art show outside of it. Between Rufus Jones winning the ice-melting contest and that incident at the history pageant, Claude had been a stick-in-the-mud about anything having to do with the Tercentenary—hadn’t wanted us to go to the parade, or the fireworks, or the firemen-versus-policemen rope pull, or either of the two concerts, the one with Les Paul and Mary Ford or the other one with Johnnie Ray and that Tommy Sands fellow who married Frank Sinatra’s daughter. I suspected it was because, after he’d made a scene that night at the history pageant and humiliated Belinda Jean, Claude was embarrassed to show his face at any of the other events. But both those things had happened in June and now it was August. I wanted to go to
something
. So I went on and on about pancakes and arts and crafts, and finally Claude gave in and said he’d take me if I’d just stop my “goddamn belly-aching.” We went right after I got home from early church, and the crowd was already so big, we had to park four streets over from the tent.

When we got there, we had our pancakes and coffee. Then we walked around looking at the booths inside, the pottery and homemade jewelry and leather goods and such, and I could tell that Claude was bored to tears. The paintings were all outside, hanging up on chicken wire fencing. When we started walking around out there, Claude kept making comments like “You call this art?” and “Some kindergarten kid could have made a prettier picture than that,” and there were the artists, sitting right there on stools and webbed chairs and most likely hearing what he said. Not all of the artwork was my cup of tea either, but I knew each person had tried their best. So I was relieved when Claude run into someone he knew and started talking with him. “I’ll just keep going and look at the rest and then we can leave,” I said.

Claude said, “Hallelujah for that,” and the other man laughed.

Joe Jones had his pictures set up at the south end of the show. Most of the other artists were chitchatting with the passersby, but he was standing there all by his lonesome, waiting for people to stop and look, I guess, which nobody was doing. It was hot and humid out, and his dark skin was shiny with sweat. He had on canvas pants and canvas shoes and a tight red-and-white-striped T-shirt that showed off his muscles. Whenever he moved, you could see them shifting under his shirt. He glanced up at me for a second or two, but I could tell he didn’t know who I was. His sign said
JOSEPHUS JONES, ENAMEL PAINTINGS ON POSTER BOARD AND MASONITE BOARD. SMALL ONES $5, BIG ONES $20.

To my eye, those paintings of his were crazy-looking. In one called
Hunting Day
, two men were out in the woods and one was holding his rifle to the back of the other one’s neck. In another called
The Cercus People
, a clown was pointing a stick at a woman in a bathing suit who was riding on top of an elephant. I looked away from the one called
Three Nude Women in a Garden
and another called
Taking a Bath with the Seneoritas.
I wished he had shown better judgment than to put those naked ones up; there were a lot of families with children at that art show. And I’m no great shakes when it comes to spelling, but I was pretty sure that
senoritas
only had one
e
in it, not two. Lord, but he’d sure brought enough of his pictures to show—forty or fifty of them, it looked like! There were paintings of colored cowboys and colored Indians, jungle animals fighting each other, a mountain lion up in a tree getting ready to pounce on a mother deer and her fawn. They were all very colorful, I’ll give him that much, but not one of those paintings was something you’d want to pay good money for and then go home and hang up behind the sofa in your living room.