“Carolee’s trouble,” Starr said, holding out her foot to look at the silvery pedicure. “You stay away from her. I’m going to have to talk to that girl, stop the downward spiral. Needs a big dose of the Word.” She pulled out a curler, looked cross-eyed at the ringlet over her forehead, started pulling out the other ones, dropping them into her lap. “You’re the good girl. I’m making my amends to you. A-mend. Where’s Carolee, you seen her?” she asked again.
“I think she’s with Derrick,” I said, wiggling the ribbon end near the glider where the kitten was hiding.
She leaned her head forward to get the curlers at the back. “Of all the white trash. His mama’s so dumb she puts the TV dinner in the oven with the box still on.” She laughed and dropped the curler, and the kitten that had just come out dashed back underneath the glider.
That’s when I realized Starr was drunk. She’d been sober eighteen months, kept the AA chips on her key ring, red, yellow, blue, purple. It was such a big deal to her, too. I never quite understood it. Ray drank. My mother drank. Michael drank from the moment he finished reading his Books on Tape at noon until he passed out at midnight. It didn’t seem to hurt him any. If anything, Starr looked happier now. I wondered why she’d tried so hard to be some kind of saint, when it wasn’t really her nature. What was the big deal?
“He’s crazy about me, you know,” she said. “That Ray. There’s a man that needs a real woman.” She rolled her hips in their tight cutoffs as if she were sitting on him right now. “His wife wouldn’t do shit for him.” She took another hit on her cigarette, lowering her mascaraed eyelashes, remembering. “That man was starving for a piece. I saw her once, you know. The wife.” She drank from her coffee cup, and now I could smell it. “Sailor’s delight. Sensible shoes, you know what I’m saying. Wouldn’t give head or anything. He’d come to the Trop and just sit and watch us girls with those sad eyes, like a starving man in a supermarket.” She squared her shoulders, rolled them forward, so I’d get an idea of what Ray had been watching, the cross caught in her cleavage, Jesus drowning in flesh. She laughed, dropped cigarette ash on the white-patched kitten. “I just had to fall in love with him.”
It made me queasy thinking of Ray in some strip club, goggling at the girls with their enormous breasts. He just didn’t know where else to go. I picked up the stick again, rustled the ribbons, trying to get the kitten interested so she wouldn’t see my red face.
“I must have been crazy to think you and him . . . ,” she said into her coffee cup, drained it and put it on the mosaic-topped table with a thud. “I mean, look at you, you’re just a baby. You didn’t even wear a bra until I got you that one.”
She was convincing herself there was nothing between Ray and me, that nothing could possibly be going on, because she was a woman and I was nothing. But I could still feel how he knelt in front of me on the unfinished floor, how he held me around the thighs, kissed my bare belly. I could smell the odor of the raw wood, feel the clutch of his fingers, and we burst into flame like oilfat chaparral in oleander time.
A FULL MOON poured white through the curtains. The refrigerator cycled around in the kitchen, ice cubes dropping in the ice-maker. “I can’t believe she’d go out after all this time,” Carolee said. “Never trust an alcoholic, Astrid. Rules one, two, and three.”
Carolee sat up in bed, peeled off her nightgown, put on her miniskirt, nylons, and a shiny shirt. She opened the window, pushed the screen out, and clambered onto the dresser, high-heeled shoes in her hand. I heard her drop down on the porch outside.
“And where you think you’re goin’, missy?” Starr’s voice came from out of the darkness.
“Since when did you care,” I could hear Carolee reply.
I went to the window. I couldn’t see Starr, only Carolee’s hip jutting out in her white skirt, hands on her hips, her elbows defiant.
“Goin’ out to spread ’em for every Tom, Dick, and Harry.” Starr must have had a few on the porch, in the lawn chair over by the living room.
Carolee put on her high heels, one at a time, and walked out into the yard, which was full-moon lit, bright as a stage. “So what if I am.” I wished I could draw the way her broad-shouldered body threw a shadow on the moonpale dust. How brave she looked just then.
Starr wouldn’t let it go at that. “You know what they say. ‘Call Carolee, she does it for free.’ Whores are supposed to get paid, don’t you know anything?”
“You should know better than me.” Carolee turned and started walking to the road.
Starr lurched across my field of vision, staggering down the stairs in a shortie nightgown, and smacked Carolee in the face. The sound of the blow reverberated in the still night, irrevocable.
Carolee’s arm drew back and struck. Starr’s head jerked to one side. It was ugly, but fascinating, like a movie, like I didn’t even know them. Starr grabbed her by the hair and dragged her around as Carolee screamed and tried to hit her, but she couldn’t straighten up far enough to reach her. So she took off a high heel and hit her with that, and Starr let her go.
I saw Ray come down the steps wearing just a pair of jeans. I knew he had nothing on underneath, that body I loved so much, as Carolee grabbed Starr by the front of her nightgown and shoved her down hard in the dirt. She stood above Starr so she had to look up at Carolee’s legs in their nylons, her high-heeled shoes. How bad could this get, could a daughter kick a mother in the face? I could see that she wanted to.
I was relieved when Ray got between them and helped Starr to her feet. “Let’s go back to bed, baby.”
“You lousy drunk,” Carolee yelled after them. “I hate you.”
“Get lost then,” Starr said, staggering unsteadily on Ray’s arm. “Bug off. Who needs you.”
“You don’t mean that,” Ray said. “Let’s just sleep it off, okay?”
“I’ll leave,” Carolee said. “You bet I will.”
“You leave, you are never coming back, missy.”
“Who’d the fuck want to?” Carolee said.
She slammed into our room, opening drawers, pulling stuff onto the bed, cramming what would fit into a flowered suitcase. “Bye, Astrid. It’s been real.”
Davey and the little boys were waiting in the hall, scared, blinking from sleep. “Don’t go,” Davey said.
“I can’t stay. Not in this nuthouse.” Carolee gave him a quick one-armed hug and went out, banging her suitcase against her knee. She walked right past Ray and Starr, never turning her head, strode out of the yard on her high heels and walked down the road, smaller and smaller.
I watched her for a long time, memorizing her shoulders, her long-legged gait. This was how girls left. They packed up their suitcases and walked away in high heels. They pretended they weren’t crying, that it wasn’t the worst day of their lives. That they didn’t want their mothers to come running after them, begging their forgiveness, that they wouldn’t have gone down on their knees and thanked God if they could stay.
WHEN CAROLEE LEFT, Starr lost something essential, something she needed, like a gyroscope that kept the plane from flipping over or a depth gauge that told you whether you were going deeper or coming up. She might suddenly want to go out dancing, or stay home and drink and complain, or get all sweet and sloppy and want to be a family and play games and cook brownies that burned, and you never knew which it would be. Peter didn’t eat her casserole one night and she took his plate and turned it over on his head. And I knew it was my defiance, my sin. I took it all, never said a word.
If only I hadn’t started with Ray. I made her go off her program. I was the snake in the garden.