“Oh, uh, Sharon,” Harriet called out to her, “I’d like for you to meet my new houseguests.”
Expressionless, Sharon looked at all of us. “Hi,” she said curtly, nodding after everyone was named. Her face remained stonelike, detached, and a cold chill ran down my spine. Scary, I thought. Harriet told us she was a children’s nurse and very smart, but she looked mean to me. Without any further comment, Sharon turned quickly on her white rubber heel and stepped through her doorway, leaving us to question whether she approved of us or not.
Five days a week, Sharon pulls up in her blue, black-top Chevy Malibu at around 5:30 in the evening. In her white nurse’s uniform, she ritually heads for her cottage and carries a book bag full of patients’ charts and Harlequin romances. She wears thick, dark-rimmed glasses, no makeup, and a different-colored curling yarn every day to tie back her long, salt-and-pepper hair. Rarely does she speak to anyone. I only see her talk to people when she receives rent checks or arranges repairs for the tenants. When she is home, an occasional eerie glimpse of her silhouette stands quietly behind her screen door. She looks much older than John, and Harriet and Mike think she acts more like his mother than his wife.
“They’re not together like a couple,” Mike tells us one day after Terry comments on how cold the relationship between John and Sharon appears.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“John told me and, well, just watch them,” Mike answers. “They hardly even talk to each other. John goes home for dinner every night, and she does his laundry. That’s what he told me. It’s been like that for years now.”
“That’s so weird,” Terry says. “Maybe she’s seeing someone else.”
“I know. Maybe. Everyone thinks it’s weird, but no one asks them about it. It’s their thing, I guess.” He shrugs, as if it’s no big deal.
Mike’s cottage makes a great hangout and feels the most comfortable of the places we’ve been since we left Florida. He, it turns out, is a twenty-two-year-old struggling college student and not just a stoner. Mike slips easily into a big brother kind of friendship with Terry and me, and he and Juan become buddies.
Easygoing, Mike has a soft spot for us after learning about our trek here and Dad’s sickness. He knows Harriet’s place is crowded and awkward. In no time, Juan has a key to the front door and we are allowed to hang out even if Mike isn’t home. Just as quickly he agrees, along with John and Sharon, that Juan and Terry can live at his place. Juan has found a job in a hamburger joint down the street on Lomita, and Mike needs help with the rent anyway. Juan’s first paycheck makes the payment on a used water bed, and the obvious spot for it is smack-dab in the middle of the living room.
“Congratulations, Ter. You’re an official independent couple now.” Dad pats her on the back. Terry looks away. She is not very happy about Dad’s enthusiasm—and not too happy with Juan.
At first, I don’t spend a lot of time at Terry and Juan’s new place. I don’t want to interrupt their arrangement, and I’m enjoying more time to myself. I am also happy to be away from Juan. There is a new freedom in my heart, a lightness. The sun really shines here, I think. People walk down the street and don’t get jumped. I know Terry is scared, but I feel hopeful for the first time in many years.
The words to my poetry come to me like butterfly wings, happy and free and beautiful. Silly poems of gratitude and love flow like water from my pen, and I keep them like precious pieces of my soul, safely bound in my book of writings, pleased with the feeling that I have turned a corner of darkness in my life.
John continues to keep Terry and me busy with gardening during the month before school starts, but as I promised myself, my attitude toward him is cold. That doesn’t stop him. He takes every opportunity to be the center of attention whenever he is around. On days when he comes to Harriet’s to pay me for work or to give me instructions for gardening, he positions himself in the middle of the room, speaking with a booming voice and moving his body in animated gestures.
God, he needs so much attention, I think. Oddly, he never looks directly at me. Still, the uneasy feeling that John is really trying to attract my attention nags away at my gut, and I flinch at his quick sideways glances in my direction. I resolve to build the walls up around me even stronger—walls like the ones that kept me safe in Carol City. I’m good at that.
Dad spends time away from the cottage registering us for school, signing up for food stamps, and getting himself on the local veterans hospital list for follow-up care for his face.
While he is gone, Harriet and I begin to get close and hang out a bit. The kitchen is warm and full of good smells. She likes describing her incredible treelike plants and teaches me her secret method for making cheese potatoes. The stove sizzles hot with blintzes, a sweet Jewish pancake that is another of her passions. She enjoys teaching me the meaning of kosher foods and how to make delicious Jewish dishes, such as brisket. I am curious and ask lots of questions. I love her stories about her childhood Hanukkah traditions.
Occasionally, when Dad is gone, Harriet will call John over to check on the plumbing, the window screens, or other various things around the cottage. I think it’s kind of odd that she needs the manager so much. I can swear that Harriet is about to swoon every time John knocks on the door.
There is one day, however, when I decide to ask Harriet why she flirts and acts so goofy after John has just left. “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” She bats her eyelashes over her glazed look.
“I mean the way you act.” I make it clear that she obviously appears affected by him. “I know he and his wife aren’t together, but do you like him or something?” I ask, trying to figure out a reason for her silliness.
“Like him!” she shoots back. “Don’t you know who he is?” she says excitedly, her face coming in close to mine.
Completely repulsed at her change of character, I glare back. “Nooooo. Am I supposed to know who he is?”
Her eyes like brown saucers, large and round, stare at me with the utmost of disbelief. Suddenly, she grabs my arm. “Come here. Let me show you something.” She pulls me over to her hall closet, looks over both shoulders, and with one hand firmly on my arm she opens the closet door. I am stunned. Inside, long white rolls line the back of the closet wall. It is the largest collection of posters I have ever seen.
“What are those?” I ask, impressed by the collection.
“Look!” Harriet insists, too excited to keep her voice down. She grabs a large roll of posters and begins to unravel them.
The first one has the words Liquid Lips splashed across it in red.
So? I think. Then I see him. There is a super large, very handsome picture of his face as he holds another woman in a deep kiss. “Is that John?” I am shocked at what I see. “Wow! He’s really cute in this picture,” I admit, getting excited that I know a famous actor, simple manager of cottages.
Under the title on the marquee is “John C. Holmes as Johnny Wadd.” Below that, I see an X above the words “Adults Only.”
“Ah, WADD. That’s where the license plate comes from… and X?” I say out loud. The shroud of innocence lifts, and my stomach rises to my throat as the sexual tones of the posters become apparent.
“Uh-huh,” she answers slyly.
Harriet uncovers another one: The Spirit of Seventy Sex.
Oh my God! His shoes! Those obnoxious red, white, and blue sneakers he wore the other day glared at me from this next poster. Harriet continues pulling out posters. The title on the next one is Confessions of a Teenage Peanut Butter Freak.