“Two dollars.”
“I’ve got carfare.”
“Let’s go.”
“No.”
I thought, “Oh brother, she’s got cold feet,” but she offered me her arm with a smile and said, “Let’s dine first.”
Jeanne had somehow managed to lay the table. It was just a kitchen table between the sink and the ice-box but it was covered with a snowy lace cloth and set with silverware engraved with “J.B.” Rose lit the candles. She filled our crystal goblets with bubbly root beer and heaped the bone china plates with what we call boiled dinner down home. Potatoes, carrots, pork hocks (she calls them “pig’s feet”), doughboys, but instead of cabbage there were green leaves of some kind. Daddy was right. There has come a time when I think it’s the most delicious dish in the world. We sat across from each other and clinked our glasses, “To Mecca.”
“To Mecca.”
And drank. There was a place set for Jeanne too.
“She doesn’t eat much anyhow,” said Rose.
“It’s good luck to set an extra place at table.”
“Why?”
“In case your guardian angel wants to join you.”
“Don’t spook me.”
“They’re not spooky, they look after you.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Oh yes I do.”
“Why, what’s your guardian angel ever done for you?”
“Sent me to New York. Made me meet you.”
“Lucky you.”
“We’re going to know each other for the rest of our lives.”
After a moment she said, “I don’t think I have a guardian angel. I think I’m on my own.”
“You have one as long as I’m around.”
She listened and I could tell she wanted to believe me, and I didn’t think about what I was saying, I just said it, “And if I die before you, I’ll come back.”
She got tears in her eyes and so did I, it always happens when you talk about ghosts. I had two helpings of stew. Would you believe Jeanne cooked it? “She does all the cooking.” So I guess she’s not a completely useless mother after all.
“What does J. B. stand for?”
Rose hesitated, then said, “Julia Burgess.”
“Who’s that?”
“My grandmother.”
“She alive?”
“Yuh.”
“Where’s she at?”
“Long Island.”
“Do you visit her often?”
“I’ve never met her.”
“I’ve never met my grandparents either.”
“To hell with them all.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
We toasted again, then I raised my goblet for the third time. “Let’s drink to the twentieth century,” I said. “Because it’s ours.”
“To the twentieth century.”
Do you think it’s possible to get drunk on root beer?
Lily plucks big waxy leaves from a maple tree and replaces the lining of what’s left of the soles of her boots. She walks across the United States border into Maine and the road turns from gravel to pavement. She kneels down by the side of the road and says a little prayer because, after all, she has entered a foreign country. This is at a spot near Calais, and if you go there now your watch will stop.
Lily knows where she is going, it is only necessary to keep to the coast. If she can see the ocean on her left she can’t get lost.
We quickly washed the dishes, then Rose fixed a silver tray with two glasses, an ice-bucket, a canister of soda and a bottle of whiskey, and put it on the coffee table next to the sofa where Jeanne lay. I was nervous that Jeanne would wake up and catch us but Rose said, “Don’t worry. She won’t wake up till her company comes.” I didn’t ask “What company?” because I didn’t want to make Rose lie to me again. She led me to the door and opened it for me, très galante, saying, “Ladies first.” As I stepped through the door, I turned my head to smile at Rose and caught sight of Jeanne in the mirror over the mantelpiece. She was lying perfectly still on the sofa, staring straight at me.
Do you think there’s such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?
Lily loses sight of the water for days at a time, stopping to enquire, “Where’s the water?” She is far from the only one walking the roads. She shares a meal of boiled potatoes with a slow thin man from Oklahoma, he’s not going anywhere in particular. She asks him where the water is. He leads her to railway tracks that swing south-east until the ocean comes in view. That night, between the trees and the track, under a pure black sky, he talks about his home in the land of milk and honey and Lily asks why he left. “It blew away,” he says. “What’s that you’re reading?”
“My mother’s diary.”
“Where’s your ma?”
“She’s dead.”
“Well you hang onto that book, that’s a precious remembrance.”
And he shows her a picture of his wife and baby.
“Are they dead?” Lily asks.
“Not so far as I know.”
Lily is awakened by his bad chest. She watches him sleep and his wheezing stops, but when she nods off his torment resumes. So she stays awake. At dawn he sits up and forgets to cough. He scoops her up by the waist and pelts, years younger, towards the line of prehistoric boxcars lumbering by, all rust and thrust.
I didn’t tell Rose that her mother had seen us.
What a feeling to walk arm in arm with Rose as a fella. People stared in a whole new way. I guess I’ve found the one thing that could make me look even more suspicious in this neighbourhood. It was a breezy evening. Rose had polished her old black lace-ups to a high shine and I wished like crazy I had my new dress on. Oh well, next time.
I had to force her through the door of Mecca as though at gunpoint. The great thing about Mecca is that there’s all kinds. I’d never soaked the place up like I did last night with Rose. I saw it all through her eyes and I was able to point out the regulars. It’s mostly young coloured men and not that many women. The fellas are all slick dressers except for the holes in their pockets where the money’s burnt through. They’re earning more than miners, building tanks and artillery for “over there,” I know because I been told by the guy in the silk tie called Aldridge. I’ve never seen guys preen and present themselves the way they do. They lean against the bar like honey-drenched stamens, waiting for the women to buzz around, and you just know they’re all breaking their mothers’ hearts. They wear secret smiles and chuckle a lot when they chat with the white guys.
There are a couple of middle-aged men too, a famous jockey who eats five heads of lettuce a day, and a retired heavyweight champion with a bald head from Halifax. They’re the only ones who bring their wives, two very serious looking women of a certain age who spend the whole time with their heads glued together, chatting. There’s a group of West Indian fellas who stick together and wear pencil-thin moustaches. One of them’s a lawyer and another is my acquaintance Nico, a little live wire who has made a fortune in real estate and can’t stop smiling. He calls me “chérie”. There’s a studious young man who always sits alone and writes in a notebook and there are two tables pushed together of motley individuals who are delighted with each other and everything else and who turn out to be actors. There’s a Chinaman who holds court at the same table in the far corner every night.
Tonight I notice three or four other white girls sitting with their coloured boyfriends and I say to Rose that at least we’re not the only mixed couple in the joint and she says, “Yes we are.” I say, “They don’t look coloured.” And she says, “Say Negro.”