Test Pattern (30 page)

So now I’m lying on my bed with all my clothes on, afraid to get undressed in case something else happens. But nothing is happening. The house is so quiet I can hear the chinaberry’s leaves swishing the wall like a broom in the summer-night breeze. Now and then I hear the bedsprings squeak in Mom’s room,
eek eek

like a mouse. She’s probably not asleep. She’s probably mad at me.

I don’t know what will happen, now that Dad knows about the mailman, now that Mom tried to shoot him between the eyes. I just know that nothing will ever be the same again. I can’t think about tomorrow, so I listen to the tree’s leaves swish and the mattress squeak, and wonder about all those things I saw on test-pattern TV.

Were they real, too? As real as the newsman who announced that Mom shot Dad? Will all those things I saw really happen someday—the spaceman up in the stars, the painted dancing ladies, the president who got shot? And going to school with colored people? And the scary stuff with guns and wars? And the guy who got his penis cut off?

And then I remember the spooky thing I memorized: “There is a sixth dimension beyond that which is known to man …” Maybe that’s it. Maybe I did see the dimension of the imagination. Maybe what I saw was the Twilight Zone.

I never want to see it again.

Mr. Finkelstein said that if you could change the future, who knows if it’s for better or for worse? If it’s true that I
did
change it for the better this time, maybe next time it would be for the worse. Maybe, like Mr. Finkelstein said, it’s best to let things be.

L
ONG HOURS AFTER Miss America’s crown has been balanced upon the dark shining locks of Lee Ann Meriwether, long after Pete has fallen into twitching slumber on the living-room couch, Lorena lies awake in her solitary bed and plans her next move. When morning comes, she makes that move. She reaches over, picks up the phone, and dials up Binky at his mother’s.

He’s left for work already, but Lorena, undaunted, plows on: “Oh, Mrs. Q, I bet you don’t remember me—Lorena? Lorena Wythe-but-now-it’s-Palmer?” And though it’s clear that Mrs. Q has no clue, Lorena proceeds to confess her hopes, her dreams, and especially her need to meet Wally. She so charms that befuddled lady that Mrs. Q agrees: “Why, sweetie, of course I’ll tell Binky you called. Why, my goodness, I had no idea you were so talented! Wally’ll love you. You know he’s my sister’s oldest boy, a little peculiar but made a real name for hisself with those TV people.”

When Lorena calls him from Delia’s that night, Binky sounds slightly crazed. “Who told you to call me here?”

“You promised I could meet Wally.”

“My
mother
lives here.”

“I know. We had a nice talk.”

“Why did you tell my
mother
?” His voice escalates to a croak. “She’s already called my aunt!”

“Well, you promised. No,” she corrects herself, “you
swore
it. You swore I could get an audition with Wally.”

“You know what this means? It means I’ve gotta take off work and get you to Norfolk on Thursday because that’s the day Wally’ll be there. It’s my aunt’s birthday. He’ll just be there for the day.”

“Perfect,” says Lorena.

“Perfect? Perfect? You think the post office is going to think it’s perfect? My
record
was perfect. Not one day off, not one missed day, always on time, always there, rain, snow, sleet, whatever, I forget how it goes. And now this.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

Binky is silent, then, “Yeah?” he asks. “How’s that?”

“Remember in your truck? That little trick?”

“You mean, that thing with the rubber bands?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.” She lowers her voice to a purr. “Any time. Any place. You name it.”

She can almost hear him thinking. “Thursday,” he finally agrees. “In my car. On the ferry home.”

“It’s a deal.”

“WELL? DO YOU love it?” Lorena twirls for Delia in her new dress, an explosion of red poppies gathered at the waist by a wide red cinch belt. On her feet are new red shoes, three-and-a-half-inch heels, she tells Delia, three-and-a
-half.
She’s never worn such high heels before because they’d make her taller than Pete. Now that she’s left him, it doesn’t matter.

Delia surveys Lorena from her perch on her kitchen counter because there’s no place left to sit. Lorena’s clothes are scattered everywhere, over the couch, the chairs, even over the TV set, where she’s hung several pairs of stockings to check for runs against the light from the screen. She’s moved in with Delia—just temporarily, just until she can get herself together for her audition with Wally.

When she’s not shopping or undergoing hair transformation at the hands of Mr. Ralph, Lorena practices her routine, tapping away on Delia’s kitchen linoleum until its surface has become as pitted as the moon.
Tappety tappety,
she perfects her routine,
tap tap tap,
adds flourishes to the steps she learned from Cassie—the monkey step, the swimming step, that backward-forward sliding step. She doesn’t stop practicing until she hears “The Star-Spangled Banner” signal the end of the broadcast day and Delia call “Nighty-night” on her way to bed.

After three days of this, Lorena feels she’s ready. She leaves for Norfolk tomorrow on the early-morning ferry. She knows her costume for the audition itself is perfect. But … the dress. Will it do?

“It’s a great dress,” Delia says.

“So why do you look like you just ate a pickle?” Lorena twirls again. “Be honest. Is it too sexy? Should I wear something a little more …
church-y
to meet Wally?” She flips up the hem of the dress to reveal a crunchy crinoline, flirtatiously points the toe of one red-clad foot. “Maybe I shouldn’t dazzle him too much at first.” She fluffs out her newly dyed curls with Flame Red-lacquered fingernails that almost match her hair.

“I don’t know.” Delia is quiet, for Delia. She dangles her legs over the counter and studies Lorena.

“You hate it.” Lorena folds her arms and pouts. “I can tell. What is it? Too low-cut? Red’s not my color? What?”

“It’s not the dress.” Delia shifts uncomfortably on the hard countertop. “It’s just … this is such a big step. Leaving your family and all. I mean, it’s one thing to develop your talent. But … what about Cassie?”

Lorena’s pout deepens. “I’m not
leaving
leaving. I’ll come back for Cassie.” She releases the cinch belt, exhales with relief. “This could be my only chance to be discovered, to follow my star. Would you let opportunity pass you by?”

“What opportunity? My only talent is being able to type sixty words a minute.”

Lorena pulls her skirts up like a cancan dancer, gives a little kick with one black-stockinged leg. “Now don’t you go talking about yourself that way. You’ve got loads of talent. What about your art? That
Twin Scotties
painting you did for your bedroom, well, nobody would even guess it was from a kit.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“And that adorable little toilet-paper cover you crocheted for my birthday, the one that looks like a hat? You could go into business making those things, that’s how cute it looks sitting on my toilet tank.”

Delia ponders that possibility for a moment. “Nah,” she decides. “That’s not what I really want to do with my life.” She sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe if I had your talent, I’d do what you’re doing, leaving and all. But… I still think it would be hard to leave a kid, if I had one.”

“I told you, it’s Pete I’m leaving, not Cassie. If I don’t get away from him, I’ll wind up crazy as Lula.”

“Well,” Delia says after taking a deep breath, “as your very best friend, I got to be real honest with you. When you told me what happened last night with you and Pete and the gun, I thought to myself, Lorena’s gone bonkers. Nuts. Crazy as Lula.”

Lorena opens her mouth to protest, but Delia plows right on: “You coulda
killed
him, Lorena. If it wasn’t for Cassie, you’d be sitting in jail right now, wearing stripes ‘steada that fancy dress. How do you think Cassie feels with her family all broke up? And still, all you want to talk about is your stupid routine.”

“It’s not stupid!” Lorena says, lip quivering.

Delia looks contrite. “Yeah, okay, I’m sorry. It’s not your routine I’m talking about. It’s your family. Seems like you just forgot about them, forgot about Cassie and what she’s going through.”

“I haven’t forgot Cassie. I saw her yesterday.”

“And …?”

“She’s not ready to talk to me yet. Crimminy, it’s not like I haven’t tried, you know.” Lorena makes a pouty face.

“Well, try some more,” Delia says. “She’s the only daughter you’ve got.”

Lorena’s ebullience deflates at Delia’s forlorn expression. “I’m not
leaving
leaving,” she says again, more to herself than to Delia. And this time she thinks she really means it.

LORENA FEELS ENERGIZED. Wind off the water—wind crisp with a touch of autumn, crunchy as her crinolines—kicks up her skirt as she stands on deck. Waves lick the ferry with black tongues in the predawn darkness. There had been no moon that night.

As Newport News fades into the watery distance, she sees, like a fragment of dream, the image of Cassie’s face last night when Lorena came over to pick up her top hat, forgotten when, a few days earlier, she hastily packed her costume with her clothes. She had tried to hug Cassie, almost said “I love you,” but Cassie’s tear-streaked face was a mask, her body stiff as a mannequin. She didn’t hug her back.

Lorena yawns and stretches. Oh well. You don’t have to tell somebody you love them for them to know it. She’s sure Cassie would have hugged her if Pete hadn’t been skulking in the darkened living room, trying to make her feel guilty. He hardly looked at Lorena when she came inside. She could barely make him out in the shadows, his polished head the only gleam of light aside from the flickering TV.

The wind is whipping her hair like an eggbeater. She’d better get back in the car. She looks over at Binky’s Henry J hunkered among all the other cars on the ferry deck, their owners snoozingaway like Binky is, slumped against the door like a bag of laundry. He wakes up with a snort when she climbs into the car and flicks on the overhead light.

“Are we there yet?” he asks.

“No. It’s pitch-black out. I still don’t understand why we had to leave so early.”

“I told you. I gotta be back for the late shift. I traded hours with one of the guys. Thanks to you, I’ll be working till midnight tonight, shuffling mail in the back room.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” she promises. “On the way back.” She slides her hand over his orange-and-green plaid shirt and down one leg of his shiny brown slacks. She’s never seen him out of uniform before—at least, not when he was wearing clothes. She turns to examine him. Clumps of lubricated hair from his hatless head cling to the low ceiling of the Henry J. A spot of blood targets the shred of toilet paper on his chin. He picks at a tooth with his little fingernail.

Lorena gasps at the sudden revelation which rides in on a high tide of nausea: Out of uniform, Binky looks a lot like Uncle Rudy.

The more she stares, the less he resembles Errol Flynn. His eyes aren’t the color of rain; they are pavement gray, crusted in the corners with sleep. There’s a blob of doughnut custard on his mustache. Binky catches her glance and grins—not the slow-moving grin that made her heart turn quick flips, but the maniacal chimp grin of J. Fred Muggs.

“Rubber bands,” says Binky, and gives her a wink.

She stumbles out of the car, scurries to the railing, inhales the sharp seaweed scent of the bay. Way off in the darkness glimmers the vanishing aurora of the lights of Newport News. Lorena’s whimper harmonizes with the ferry’s mournful toot, a wail that ends in a melancholy
woo-o-o.

She bends her head and presses her face to the cold metal railing. What was that commercial? “Don’t trade a headache for an upset stomach"? Is that what she’s doing? Trading a Pete for a Binky?

She snaps her head up at the next toot of the ferry—a proud toot, an insistent toot, a toot that announces, rather than mourns. Splashed against the sky, twinkling upon the water, a dazzling array of lights dispels darkness and regret. The ferry glides into the harbor. Norfolk rises before her, a shimmering crown of neon that illuminates the heavens and heralds her arrival. She opens her arms and embraces the light.

BY THE TIME they get to Binky’s aunt Edna’s house, the sun is up and so is Aunt Edna. She waves at them from the porch, where she’s drinking something from a cup the size of a mixing bowl. “Hey, y’all,” she cries, “come on in, take a load off.” Lorena swivels the rearview mirror for one last makeup check, although she had freshened up in the ladies’ room at the ferry landing.

“Lawdy mercy,” says Edna as Lorena wobbles up the porch steps in her three-and-a-half-inch heels. “You showbiz people sure know how to dress.”

Lorena bats down her flyaway crinoline. “Oh, this old thing,” she says, and reaches out a white-gloved hand. “You must be Edna. The birthday girl!” She cranes her neck around Edna’s girth. Where is Wally?

“Postum?” asks Edna, waving them inside. “I got a potful in the kitchen. Lemme go see if Wally’s got hisself up yet.”

Wally stumbles into the kitchen several minutes later, bleary-eyed and cranky in a silk dressing gown. “What time is it?” he wants to know, then, “Binky? What are
you
doing here?”

“This is Lorena,” Binky blurts. “She’s going to dance for you.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, Wally honey, I forgot to tell you,” Edna says as she sloshes Postum into bowl-sized cups. “Binky’s mom called, said Binky wants you to meet this real talented person"—she indicates Lorena with a cheery nod—"who wants to try out for
Talent Scouts
.” Lorena gives a little acknowledging curtsy.

Wally closes his eyes, seemingly in pain. “Thanks, Mom,” he says.

“I just want you to know how much I really and truly appreciate this,” Lorena says, fluttering. “If you’ll wait just a teensy moment, I’ll change into my costume.” She turns to Edna. “Can I borrow your bathroom just a teensy moment?”