Faithless: Tales of Transgression Page 4

  12

  BY THE END of November my hours at the Sandy Hook Diner had been cut back considerably. My shifts were unpredictable, depending upon the availability of other waitresses (I gathered). One day I might begin at 7 A.M., the next at 4:30 P.M.—the hour of the Early Bird Dinner (a senior citizens’ special platter, $7.99). Other days, I didn’t work at all. I slept.

  When I worked the evening shift at the diner, somehow Mr. Cantry seemed to know. He’d linger over coffee as late as 10 P.M. when the diner closed, in the hope of “escorting” me home.

  Politely I told him thanks but I had another engagement.

  I whispered fiercely to him, not wanting anyone else to hear.

  I was in perpetual terror of being fired from the Sandy Hook Diner and so moved in a trance of energy, high spirits, and smiles. My wide, fixed smile was so deeply imprinted in my face, it was slow to fade after my shift ended; sometimes, waking in the middle of the night, I discovered that it had returned. Waitress! waitress! I heard myself summoned impatiently and turned to see no one, no customer, there.

  Though Mr. Cantry was there, often. In his corner booth, which was usually in my section. Brown tweed suit, stiff-starched white shirt. The metallic glimmer of his crew cut. Shifting his shoulders and odd-shaped head as if the alignment of his neck required continuous adjustment. Since the evening he’d walked me home, we hadn’t spoken at any length; still, when I approached, he smiled eagerly, shyly. I gave him no encouragement. I dreaded anyone at the diner guessing that Lover Boy—Fag Boy—and I knew each other, however remotely we knew each other. When Mr. Cantry greeted me, “Hello, Xavia! How are you this morning?” I smiled like a robot and said, “What may I get you, sir?” If Mr. Cantry dared to leave me too large a tip (for instance, a $5 bill for a seafood platter costing $9.99!) I’d call after him, “Sir, you forgot your change.” Blushing, contrite, he’d accept the money back from me with a murmured apology.

  At such moments my heart pounded in vengeful triumph. My cheeks glowed with the heat of my blood. As in my high school gym classes when I’d outscored, outrun, intimidated, and frankly bullied other girls in our rowdy games of basketball and volleyball, at which, being so much stronger than the others, I’d excelled.

  13

  ONE EVENING at closing time there was no one in the Sandy Hook Diner except Mr. Yardboro and me.

  How’s about a ride, honey? Mr. Yardboro said and there we were in his slightly rusted but still glamorous, sexy Lincoln Continental cruising along the shore road. Beyond the Sandy Hook lighthouse, beyond Sandy Hook State Park. A moon like polished bone, moonlight rippling on the dark water. Lee Yardboro was a man to drive fast and unerringly with one arm resting on the steering wheel and the other on my shoulders. The interior of the car was warm, dreamy. My head on Mr. Yardboro’s shoulder, forehead against his throat. It wasn’t clear what we talked of, maybe we talked of nothing at all, there was no need. His distinctive smell, his smoker’s breath, his body, his armpits, the ointment he rubbed into his roughened skin made me dizzy, delirious. Where are we going? What will you do to me? If I looked too closely, however, at the girl with her head on Lee Yardboro’s shoulder, I saw that her hair was shimmering blond. Her face was a heart-shaped pretty-pretty face, no face I knew. Even the pearly moonlight rippling on the ocean dissolved, sheerly vapor.

  Yet there was another evening, and no one in the Sandy Hook Diner at closing time except Mr. Yardboro and me. And I wiped down the booths for the final time that day, and the counter. And turned off the lights. And in the kitchen doorway Mr. Yardboro stood, hands on his hips and watching me, smiling in that teasing way that could be friendly or mean. Saying, “C’mon into the kitchen for a few minutes, honey, I’ve got some special instructions for you.”

  14

  AT THANKSGIVING I took a bus home not wanting to go home but my mother pleaded with me angrily on the phone and I knew it was a mistake but there I was, in the old house, the house of one thousand and one associations and all of them depressing, the smell of the roasting turkey sickened me, the smell of the basting grease, the smell of my mother’s hair spray so I realized I wouldn’t get through it within minutes after walking through the door and that afternoon we were working together in the kitchen and I said excuse me, Mom, I’ll be right back and when I came back with the old photo album the palms of my hands were cold with sweat and I said, “Mom, can I ask you something?” and guardedly my mother said, for years of living with me had made her wary, “What?” and I said, “Promise you’ll tell the truth, Mom?” and she says, “What is the question?” and I said again, “Promise me you’ll tell the truth, Mom,” and she said, annoyed, “How can I promise, until I hear the question?” and I said, “All right. Did I have a sister born before me, given my name, and did she die? That’s all I want to know,” and my mother stared at me as if I’d shouted filthy words right there in her kitchen, and said, “Alice, what?” and I repeated my question which was to me a perfectly logical question, and my mother said, “Of course you didn’t have a sister who died! Where do you get your ideas?” and I said, “Here. These snapshots,” and I opened the album to show her the snapshots of me as a baby and as a little girl saying, in a low, furious voice, “Don’t try to tell me this is me, it isn’t,” and my mother said, her voice rising, “Of course she’s you! That’s you! Are you crazy?” and I said, “Can I believe you, Mom?” and she said, “What is this? Is this another of your jokes? Of course that’s you,” and I said, wiping at my eyes, “It isn’t! Goddamned liar! It isn’t! This is someone else, this isn’t me! This is a pretty little girl and I’m ugly and this isn’t me!” and my mother lost it then as often she did in our quarrels, lost it and began shouting at me, and slapped my face, sobbing, “You terrible, terrible girl! Why do you say such things! You break my heart! You are ugly! Go away, get away! We don’t want you here! You don’t belong here with normal people!”

  So I left. Took the next bus back to Sandy Hook so it seemed, when I went to bed that night, early, hoping to sleep through twelve hours at least, that I’d never been gone.

  15

  THE FOLLOWING Sunday evening Mr. Cantry dared to come to my apartment house. Ringing my buzzer as if I were expecting him! It was the first time the buzzer to 3F had been rung in the weeks I’d been living in this shabby place and the sound was as deafening as the amplified screams of maddened wasps. I wished I hadn’t known who it it was, but I knew.

  Taking my time I went downstairs, in my soiled POETRY POWER sweatshirt and jeans. And there was my former math teacher squinting up at me out of his puffy face the color of lard. He wore the trench coat with the flared skirt, he was turning his visored cap nervously in his fingers. “Xavia, good evening! I hope I’m not interrupting? Would you like to join me in a meal?—not at the Sandy Hook Diner.” He paused for my response but I didn’t smile, I said only that I’d already eaten, thank you. “Then to go for a walk? To have a drink? Is this a possible time? I saw you were not on duty at the usual place so I presumed to come here. Are you angry?”

  I intended to say Thank you, but I’m busy. I heard myself say, “I could take a walk, I guess. Why should I be angry?”

  I’d been cool to Mr. Cantry in the diner, the last couple of times he’d come in. I didn’t like him brooding in his corner booth watching me. Frowning-smiling as if sometimes he didn’t actually see me, God knows what he was seeing. And the day before, some guys had been teasing me the way some of the regular customers do, passing around a copy of Hustler; I was supposed to catch a glimpse of these photos of female crotches in stark closeup as in an anatomical text. My part was to pretend I didn’t see, didn’t know what it was I didn’t see, my face blushing in patches. Hey guys, I wish you wouldn’t! My embarrassed downcast eyes. My wide hips, my hubcap breasts inside a Sandy Hook Pier T-shirt and unbuttoned sweater. But it’s OK. I’m a good sport. Not begging exactly, guys hate females who beg, like females who cry, makes them feel guilty, reminds them of their mothers. More as though I was
asking for their protection. And it was OK, or would have been except there was Mr. Cantry looming up behind me, in his old teacher-voice and his mouth twisted in disdain, “Excuse me! Just one moment, please!” and the guys gaped up at him in astonishment not knowing what the hell was going on but I knew, I believed I knew, quickly I turned and tugged at Mr. Cantry’s sleeve and led him back to his booth and whispered, “Leave me alone, God damn you,” and he whispered back, “They are harassing you, those disgusting louts,” and I whispered, “How do you know? How do you know what’s going on?”—did he have X-ray eyes? Could he see through the backs of booths? So I got Mr. Cantry to settle down and returned to my other customers and they were laughing, making remarks, and I more or less pretended not to catch on to anything, just a dumb waitress, smiling hard and trying to please her customers—Hey, guys, have a heart, will you? So finally it worked out, they left me OK tips in small coins scattered across the sticky tabletop. But I was sore as hell at Mr. Cantry and would’ve asked him please never to come into the Sandy Hook Diner again except frankly we needed the revenue.

  “I hope you are not upset, about yesterday? You didn’t seem pleased.”

  “Those customers are the owner’s friends. I have to be nice to them.”

  “They are crude, vulgar. They are—”

  “They’re the owner’s friends. And I like them, anyway.”

  “You like them? Such men?”

  I shrugged. I laughed. “Men, boys. ‘Boys will be boys.’ ”

  “But not in my classroom.”

  “You don’t have a classroom now.”

  We were excited. It was like a lover’s quarrel. I walked in quickened steps, ahead of Mr. Cantry. I believed I could feel the sharp stabbing pains in his legs, bearing the weight of his ungainly body.

  We went to Woody’s, a café I’d seen from the outside, admiring the winking lights, a preview of Christmas. Through an oval window in a wall of antique brick I’d often seen romantic couples by firelight, holding hands at the curving bar or at tables in the rear. Once Mr. Cantry and I were inside, seated at a table, our knees bumping awkwardly, the place seemed different. The firelight was garishly synthetic and a loud tape of teenage rock music played and replayed like migraine. Mr. Cantry winced at the noise but was determined to be a good sport. I ordered a vodka martini—a drink I’d never had before in my life. Vodka, I knew, had the most potent alcohol content of any available drink. Mr. Cantry ordered a club soda with a twist of lemon. Our waiter was young and bored-looking, staring at Mr. Cantry, and at me, with a pointedly neutral expression.

  “A person yearns to make something of himself. Herself. A being of distinction,” Mr. Cantry said, raising his voice to be heard over the din. “You must agree?”

  I hadn’t been following the conversation. I was trying to twist a rubber band around my ponytail, which was straggling down my back, but the rubber band was old and frayed and finally broke and I gave up. My vodka martini arrived and I took a large swallow even as Mr. Cantry lifted his glass to click against mine, saying, “Cheers!”

  I said, feeling mean, “But why should a person make something of himself?—herself? Who gives a shit, frankly?”

  “Xavia. You can’t mean that.” Mr. Cantry looked more perplexed than shocked, the way my mother used to look before she caught on to the deep vein of ugliness to which she’d given birth. “I don’t think that’s an honest response. I challenge that response.”

  I said, “Most people aren’t distinctive. Most lives come to nothing. Why not accept it?”

  “But it’s human nature to wish to better oneself. That the inner being becomes outer. Not to sink into desolation. Not to—give up.” He spoke with a fastidious curl of his lip.

  “Haven’t you given up, Mr. Cantry?”

  This was a cruel taunt. I surprised myself, aiming for the man’s heart. But to his credit Mr. Cantry took it well. He drew his shoulders up, took a deep breath, brooded. Then he said, “Outwardly, perhaps. Inwardly, no.”

  “What’s ‘inward’? The soul? The belly?”

  “Xavia, you shock me. This is not truly you.”

  “If you look in a mirror, Mr. Cantry, do you seriously think that what you see isn’t you? Who is it, then?”

  “I am disinclined to mirrors,” Mr. Cantry said, sniffing. He’d finished his club soda, ice and all, and was sucking at the lemon twist. “I have never taken mirrors as a measure of the soul.”

  I laughed. I was feeling good. The vodka martini was a subtler drink than I’d anticipated, and delicious. Blue jets of flame raced along my veins, antic as the synthetic gas jets in the fireplace. “I’m ugly. I don’t need to kid myself.”

  Mr. Cantry stared at me, pursing his lips. “Xavia, you are not ugly. What a thing to say!”

  “I’m not? I’m not ugly?” I laughed, slapping my fleshy cheeks. The flames were passing over me, my skin was feverish.

  Mr. Cantry chose his words with care. “You are a young woman of an exotic cast. You are not conventionally attractive, perhaps—in the bland, banal way of American ‘girls.’ Your eyes, your facial structure—intriguing! But not ugly.”

  I was fed up with this bullshit. I signaled the bored-looking waiter. He was about my age, with a round-button boy’s face, long eyelashes, and a rosebud mouth. A pretty boy, and he knew it. “Waiter,” I said, and when the waiter nodded agreeably, if a bit guardedly, I said, “Am I ugly?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Mr. Cantry hissed, like a scandalized parent, “Xavia! Please.”

  “Well, waiter—am I? You can tell the truth, it won’t affect your tip.”

  The embarrassed young man stared at me, his face reddening.

  “I mean,” I said, flirtatiously, “it will affect your tip. If you don’t give an honest answer.”

  The waiter tried to smile, to make the exchange into a joke.

  “Am I ugly? Just tell the truth.”

  But the waiter mumbled words of apology, he was wanted in the kitchen, he escaped.

  Mr. Cantry scolded, “You should not embarrass people, Xavia. If you are unhappy with yourself—”

  I protested, “But I’m not. I’m not unhappy with myself. I’m happy with myself. I just believe in telling the truth, that’s all.”

  A few minutes later the waiter returned, probably with a witty rejoinder prepared, but by this time Mr. Cantry and I were discussing other matters. The vodka had gone to my head, I was in a good mood. “Another round,” I said, snapping my fingers. “For both.”

  Mr. Cantry took out a large white handkerchief and carefully, loudly blew his nose. If I’d begun to feel something for the man, these blasts of sound dispelled it. I said, leaning forward solemnly, “Mr. Cantry, do you think much about death? Dying?”

  It was like holding a lighted match to flammable material.

  For a pained moment Mr. Cantry could not speak. His eyes quavered as if on the verge of dissolution. I saw that his skin, like what I recalled of my own, looked stitched-together, improvised; as if he’d been smashed into pieces and carelessly mended. “Death, yes. Dying. Yes. I think about dying all the time.” He went on to speak of his parents, who were both deceased, and of a sister he’d loved who had died of leukemia at the age of eleven, and of a dog he’d brought here to Sandy Hook to live with him, a cocker spaniel who’d died in August at the age of only seven years. Since this dog’s death, Mr. Cantry confessed, he’d had to face the prospect of, each morning, wondering where he would get the strength to force himself out of bed; he slept long, stuporous hours and believed he came very close to death sometimes—“My heart stopping, you know, like a clock—the way my father died. In his sleep. Aged fifty-two.” As Mr. Cantry spoke, I saw tears gathering in his eyes; his eyes seemed to me beautiful, luminous; his moist loose lips, even the glistening of his nostrils; my heart beat quickly in resistance to the emotion he was feeling, the emotion which pumped through me yet which I refused to acknowledge. A mean voice taunted, So that’s why he’s been dogging you.
He’s lost his only friend—a dog.

  I was fascinated by this ugly man who seemed not to know he was ugly. When rivulets of tears ran down both his cheeks, and in embarrassed haste he wiped them with a cocktail napkin, I leaned back in my seat and glanced about the crowded café, in a pose of boredom. Mr. Cantry’s nose was seriously running and once again he blew it loudly, in a cocktail napkin this time, mine. By the time he was finished, I was well out of my sentimental mood.

  I finished my vodka martini and stood. Mr. Cantry fumbled to stand beside me, like a man wakened from a dream. His bulbous forehead gleamed with perspiration. He followed close behind me as I pushed my way toward the door of the café, saying, “Xavia, I think you must know—I am attracted to you. I realize the difference in age. In sensibility. I hope I don’t offend you?”

  There was a crush of people at the coatrack. Almost, I managed to escape my companion.

  Out on the sidewalk, in the freezing air, a second time Mr. Cantry said, pleading, “I hope, Xavia—I don’t offend you?”

  Pointedly, I didn’t answer. I’d thrown on my windbreaker and crammed my knit cap down tight on my head. The windbreaker was unisex and bulky and the navy blue cap made my head look peanut-small. I caught a sidelong glance at myself in a beveled mirror banked by ferns in the café window and winced even as I laughed. God, I was ugly! It was no exaggeration. Almost, such ugliness is a kind of triumph, like a basket you sink after having been fouled.