Homecoming Queen, page 12
“No. I didn’t pay attention. Didn’t matter; the guy was so stupid he didn’t know the diff. I’m just not ready.” She blew smoke over her shoulder as if blowing the guy away. “Shouldn’t have let him walk me home from work. But that’s still not as bad as you, telling that one guy you couldn’t go to the basketball game with him because you had a headache, then going with Sally.”
“Yeah, that was bad. Out of two thousand students crammed into those bleachers, who would’ve guessed we’d wind our way up to a seat right in front of him.”
“And he was so pissed he yelled at you in front of everybody.”
“Well, I told him my headache miraculously got better.”
“Right. You’re the worst liar on the planet.”
“What I need is for you to make me an arm cast. Too bad you’re out of that business.”
Llayne referred to the side hustle Priscilla had the year before of making casts for students, mostly during final exam week, for fake broken arms and legs. As an art major, she was brilliant at it. She did them in their bathtub, wrapping a student’s arm or leg in gauze, then setting it in plaster of Paris. As it hardened, she’d rub her cigarette ashes on it and instruct the poor injured kid to have the cast autographed by friends so it would appear to be authentic. That way students could delay their exams. It had been a great moneymaking gig until a snitch turned her in. She’d been on probation with the college ever since.
“So, what’re you doing tonight?” Llayne asked. “Homework?”
“Hell, no.”
“What about your paper and the painting?”
“They’re not due ‘til next Tuesday. I’ll do them Monday night.”
“Wanna go to The Cabin?”
“Nah, I’m sick of The Cabin.”
“Me, too. Mack hasn’t even been there lately. Must be too busy with all those broads he dates.”
“Speaking of broads, we could go see Myra Breckenridge, again,” Priscilla kidded.
“Oh gag. That was the worst movie ever made.”
They laughed, recalling the night recently when they’d sat dumbfounded in the Central Theater downtown, watching Raquel Welch play a transsexual schemer, Mae West play a bad caricature of herself, and Rex Reed make a complete ass out of himself.
Priscilla added, “There were a couple of new actors in that movie who were kinda interesting. That one actress with the big, blond hair is gorgeous.”
“Yeah. Farrah Fawcett I think her name is. I wonder if she’ll ever make it big.”
“And that new guy, Tom something. Tom Seckell or Selleck or something. Lord almighty, he’s a stud. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers.”
“Yeah,” Llayne agreed, “but unless Tom-baby is coming over to ask me to marry him, wild horses couldn’t drag me to that movie again.”
“I know what we can do!” Priscilla excitedly stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the side table. “Some of the waitresses have being going out to the reservation to see an old Indian woman. She’s supposed to be psychic. Let’s go see her.”
“Psychic? Are you kidding? Do you believe in that stuff?”
“Not really. But it might be a kick. Come on. What’ve we got to lose?"
Llayne looked around their drab apartment and noted, “Not a thing.”
They donned their jackets and drove the seven miles to the Chippewa Indian Reservation east of Mt. Pleasant. It was obvious the minute they hit Native American soil, even though there was no sign or barrier. The land became flat and barren, the scattered clapboard houses looked poor. The night was charcoal gray, the land was gray, the mood turned gray, too.
Two teenagers strolled down the dirt road, smoking cigarettes and hunkering into their coats to fend off the wind. Llayne stopped and asked for directions. Without a word, they pointed to a small, dingy white house with three new cars parked in front. Llayne found a spot between two of the five rusted-out cars strewn around the side, none of which appeared to be in operating order, and her rusty old Beetle looked right at home.
A scrawled handwritten sign on a piece of cardboard tacked on the front door said, “Back Door.” Assuming it was meant for intruders like them, they headed around the house.
In the back they looked through a glass door decorated with a multitude of fingerprints. There was a waiting room of sorts on a closed-in porch, so they went in. Two rusty folding chairs were occupied, two on opposite sides of the porch sat empty. Musing that this place had the corner on the rust market, Llayne sat next to a man in a suit reading the Wall Street Journal. Priscilla sat next to a stately elderly woman who knitted poorly.
A young woman emerged from a door within, turned inward and, her voice quivering with emotion, said, “Thank you, Mrs. Lacey. Thank you.” She left.
A raspy voice called through the inner door. “Mr. Johnson.” The man went in and closed the door.
Priscilla joined Llayne on her side of the porch, taking Mr. Johnson’s chair. “Mrs. Lacey?” she queried. “I thought it would be Medicine Woman White Feather or Shaman Sunrise or something.”
The older woman cleared her throat in disapproval and gave them a nasty look, so they shushed and bided their time by staring at a faded picture of Jesus on the wall, fiddling with their jackets, looking out the streaked windows at scraggly trees, and trying to get a lazy, fat, calico cat to let them pet it. It totally ignored them, never moving from its spot on a rag rug near the door.
Finally the man left and the woman came and went and the voice within clipped, “Next.” The two young women entered a room no bigger than a pantry. A small lamp with a red shade dimly lighted a card table, which was covered with a muddy-colored cloth. Dark wooden shelves, warped with age but managing to hold stacks of home-canned goods, lined the back wall. The cubicle smelled like raw, dirty potatoes, although none were within sight.
“I do one person at a time,” the ancient, leathery-skinned woman said from her chair behind the card table. Her age would have been impossible to guess, appearing to be anywhere from eighty to a hundred and twenty. Slightly overweight, with scattered white hair with ends that spiked out in random spots where it’d been carelessly caught up in black hairpins, she wore a charcoal gray housedress that’d been in style during the Depression and looked like it’d been worn everyday since then.
“We want to do it together. We don’t care if we hear each other’s future,” Priscilla insisted.
“Fine,” Mrs. Lacey snapped. “It’s your life. Sit down.”
Llayne sat directly across from her in a rickety folding chair. Priscilla sat on a beat-up metal trunk to the side.
“Give me your hand,” the seer demanded. Llayne put her right hand on the table and the wizened woman took it. The youthful, woman felt a surprising warmth and comfort within the knotted knuckles. Mrs. Lacey closed her eyes for what seemed an eternity, and when she opened them Llayne was drawn into their earthy, dark brown depth.
“You will be granted a great gift,” she said, her harsh voice tinged with surprising tenderness. “The spirits will give you this gift so that you can learn. You have much to learn. As so many gifts on this earth, however, yours will be cloaked in sadness. But you will survive this great sadness, even though it will seem unbearable at times. We cannot stop pain, but how much we suffer is up to us. We can learn from sadness. When we do, we appreciate the joy. You will be given great joy later. That is all I can tell you.”
The old woman dropped Llayne’s hand, abruptly dismissing her. Shaken for a moment, Llayne quickly decided this was just a bunch of gobbledygook. She rose and switched places with Priscilla. If the woman didn’t tell Priscilla anything specific, either, she was a fraud and there was no need to worry about anything she said.
It was some time before Mrs. Lacey opened her eyes and looked at Priscilla, tightening her grip on the smooth, young hand.
“The young man,” she whispered, “the man who went to a foreign land but can never return. He wants you to know he loves you.”
Priscilla froze.
“Don’t be afraid, my child. He loves you; he always will. Even though you will not see him again on this earth, do you realize what a gift such love is? Many people never find it in a lifetime. You have it already. It will be with you always, in all you do. You must take that love with you and carry on with your life, you must marry and have children. It is very important that you have children, that this love pass down through the generations.”
She closed her eyes again. When she opened them she said, “The engagement ring. What have you done with the ring? I don’t understand. You have it and you don’t have it. What did you do to it?”
Both young women turned stark white.
Priscilla’s voice became almost inaudible as she explained. “I took my engagement ring to a jeweler last week to be remade into a ring I can wear on my right hand.”
“Yes, of course. That is good,” the psychic said. “That ring will keep you safe. It will give energy and love. Keep it near always. Now go. This old woman is tired.” She stood up and headed for a draped door at her back but stopped. Looking back at Llayne, her voice turning gentle again, she said, “It’s a child’s cry that pains you. God will grant you peace, if you will let Him.” She disappeared behind the blanket.
Each girl dropped a five dollar bill onto the plate on the table and barreled out. They drove in silence all the way home.
The knock on the door startled them. Lost in a fog of concentration, they’d frantically been doing homework all evening, trying desperately to catch up before the end of the semester in three days, which would also bring them relief with Christmas break. As usual, they’d put off doing their work until the last possible minute and were utterly exhausted. Llayne shoved her clinical psychology textbook and the bowl of stale popcorn left over from three a.m. the morning before off her lap and only fleetingly considered her appearance before going to the door.
She wore frayed, green flannel pajamas and sloppy, red wool socks, had no makeup on, and had her hair stuck carelessly into a plastic shower cap that sat like a mushroom on the top of her head. Assuming it was Sally from next door, she opened the door.
Alexander “Lex” Lexington, looking crushingly masculine in a full-length, golden tan leather coat, stood tall and handsome at the door.
“Hi,” he said sheepishly.
Llayne’s mouth gaped open and Priscilla, in disbelief, jumped up and joined her roommate at the door. Her mouth formed a cavern, too.
Priscilla’s head was covered in old-fashioned pin curls for a new “do” she was experimenting with, and she wore a pink flannel nightgown under one of Benny’s old Army sweatshirts and yellow handmade booties on her feet, compliments of her grandmother. Her thick, black-rimmed reading glasses sat low on her nose.
Lex seemed dumbfounded at their appearance and hesitated for a second before gathering his composure. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?”
Priscilla grabbed the shower cap off Llayne’s head, causing dirty hair to fall in every direction, then ripped off her own glasses and said, “No. No, this is fine.”
“Oh. Yeah. Fine.” Llayne added.
A moment of awkward silence ensued until Priscilla had the presence of mind to say, “Please come in.”
She ushered him in as Llayne poked her in the behind in reprimand. He missed Priscilla’s little dance to avoid the prod as he entered the apartment, because he was busy ogling Priscilla’s paintings.
His hair had grown out an inch and was indeed sandy brown. His coat covered his body, but the way the garment fell from broad shoulders to a slim waist and on down to the middle of his long legs assured that there had been no change in his athletic physique. And his hazel eyes looked at them with perfect clarity.
“Wow! These paintings are great.” He chuckled at the topless Madonna.
“Thanks,” Priscilla said, shuffling her weight from foot to foot.
“Let me just get a robe,” Llayne said, pointing to the bedroom.
“And let me get lost,” said Priscilla, pointing, too.
“No, please,” he insisted. “I’m only staying for a minute, and I need for both of you to hear this. I owe you both an apology. For homecoming. I know this is belated, but it’s taken me two months to get up enough courage to come here. You see, I know I was an ass homecoming night. I apologize to you, Llayne, for embarrassing you and ruining your big night. And I apologize to you, Priscilla, for the concern you must have had for your friend. I know you both must hate me, and I don’t blame you. I wanted to apologize anyway. I normally don’t drink much but went on a little bender when I got home from ’Nam. But that’s no excuse for what I did.
“The few times I’ve seen you at The Cabin, Llayne, I couldn’t stand it. I haven’t been avoiding you there, I’ve just been embarrassed. I’ve been avoiding going there, anyway, because I’m trying to get Rosie Deale to leave me alone, although she seems to find me no matter where I go. Well, that’s not your concern.
“I also need to talk to Mack. He doesn’t seem to have any idea how bad it was. The few times I’ve seen him he keeps thanking me for representing them. I’ll apologize to him, too.
“Well, that’s it,” he concluded, walking to the door. “Good-bye.”
He opened the door and Llayne found herself saying, “Wait. Would you like a Coke or something?”
His broad smile was quick and cute. “No thanks. I don’t even deserve a Coke. Have a great holiday.” With that he was gone.
Priscilla started dancing around the room, jumping up onto the couch, hopping from leg to leg, chanting, “Llayne’s gonna have sex with Le-ex! Llayne’s gonna have sex with Le-ex!”
“I am not!”
“Oh yes you are. As soon as I leave for Christmas vacation. Llayne’s gonna fuck Le-ex!”
“What a horrible thing to say. Don’t use that terrible word.”
“What word? Fuck? Well, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. And you, my dear are going to do it.”
“I most certainly am not.”
CHAPTER 15
Llayne hated being so transparent, but there she was fucking Lex. It was Priscilla’s fault, actually. If she hadn’t insisted they take him some of their home-baked Christmas brownies, Llayne might not have seen him again for months, if then.
Each year after their last class of the fall semester, they baked goodies to distribute to their friends to nibble on during their car trips home for the holidays. It was a daunting task because they were, as Priscilla said, food flopperoos. But it was hard to go wrong with box mixes, so it only took them two hours early that afternoon to bake and arrange the treats nicely into decorated tins. One went to Sally next door, some went to Priscilla’s coworkers at Falsetta’s, some went to Llayne’s former coworkers at the Embers restaurant, one tin went to Sonny’s house, one to Mack and Neckbreaker, and a couple to favorite professors. The latter made Llayne feel guilty because she didn’t give any to her clinical psychology professor, Dr. Leibowitz, whom she’d managed to avoid after class for two months. Then, with Priscilla’s reassurance that it was a good idea, a big tin went to Lex.
It took them all afternoon to distribute their offerings. Everyone was in a festive mood. Sonny made them come in and eat some with everyone in his house, all of whom relished them once they got over their initial disappointment that the brownies weren’t laced with pot. Mack was out but Neckbreaker offered them tea, the profs were convivial, and Lex was elated.
There had been a lovely, light snowfall that morning. By afternoon bright sunlight made sparkling diamonds of snowdrops that fell from the bare branches of trees and gracefully twirled about in a gentle breeze.
Lex casually shoveled his sidewalk in front of his apartment door as they drove up, enjoying the crisp, clear weather as much as working. His big smile telegraphed his pleasure the moment they pulled into view. He invited them inside, offered Coke, which they accepted, and sat with them at his little red kitchen table and chit-chatted gaily. They really enjoyed his company and didn’t leave for over an hour.
Priscilla’s parents picked her up at seven that evening to start their long journey to her grandmother’s house in Florida. Llayne was staying in Mt. Pleasant for another week to help fill-in over the holidays at the Embers, the restaurant where she used to work. She was glad the manager had called, giving her an excuse not to have to go home to the strained environment of her parents’ house until Christmas Eve.
Half an hour after Priscilla left, Lex appeared at her apartment door. He brought a bottle of wine and the rest of his brownies to share. They drank and ate and laughed and swapped abridged versions of their life stories.
He was thirty years old, an only child, born of older parents, both of whom were now dead. His father, an accountant, died of a massive coronary when his son was only twelve years old. His mom, a seamstress who had affectionately dubbed her beloved son “Lex,” died of cancer when he was twenty-six. He’d loved his parents dearly, was doted on and spoiled by his mom, he confessed, but had been blessed with a good life. Getting over their deaths had been grueling and traumatic each time, but he came out of it okay.
Now he was a counselor at the high school, working under a federal program to encourage students from the Chippewa Indian Reservation to stay in school. He loved his work.
Llayne’s version of her life was abbreviated, and she avoided too much disclosure by noticing it was snowing again. Merrily, they took a walk around the abandoned campus in a beautiful snowfall with big, fluffy flakes, playing the games that people of all ages play in such weather. Catching snowflakes on their tongues, seeing who could find the biggest one, speculating what it was like right there for Native Americans on a night like this before white men so rudely destroyed their lives. They made the obligatory snow angels in the campus park and skated on their feet down icy sidewalks in front of the Student Union, closed for the holidays. There was a perfect stillness, a calm, an overpowering beauty in it all. A fairy tale winter wonderland.
