Deacon A said, “But you must.”
Mrs. Westbeth opened her mouth as if to say something, but she couldn’t. Her chins fluttered hard enough to fan the air.
Deacon B tried to explain. “You must sign the petition to show that you are on our side.”
Bernadette replied, “But I’m not on your side.”
“But you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
Deacon B stood behind Chloë, laid his hands lightly on her shoulders, and said, “I know you are a loving and caring aunt who does not want her young and innocent niece exposed to such displays of vulgar nudity. I know that is why you do not wear a T-back.”
“No, you don’t know.”
Deacon B said, “Then tell us why you will not.”
“I don’t have to wear one or tell you why I don’t.”
Mrs. Westbeth regained her composure. She said, “We must stop these T-backs, Ms. Pollack. Many community leaders have joined us. Many, Ms. Pollack. A great many. And many are really big people in Peco. Allow me to read you some of the names of those who have already signed our petition.” As she reached for the petition, the flesh on her upper arms swung to and fro.
Bernadette said, “Don’t bother.”
“You are called upon to do this, Ms. Pollack. It is your God-given duty. T-backs are the work of the devil.”
Bernadette remained calm. “The devil, you say?”
Mrs. Westbeth said, “First Thessalonians says we should abstain from the appearance of evil.”
“T-backs don’t appear evil to me.”
“They are. They lead men off the path of righteousness.”
“What about Lionel? Is he leading men off the path of righteousness?”
“Your point is a false one,” Deacon B said, smiling cautiously. “I am a man, and I know the devil wears many disguises. It is our duty to recognize them and put up barricades along the newly paved roads to hell.”
Bernadette said, “You sure can turn a phrase, Deacon, but I will not sign.” Mrs. Westbeth started to say something, but Bernadette cut her short by walking in front of her on the way to the door. She opened the door and swept her good arm in front of her. “Y’all better get as good at turning around as you are at turning a phrase. I am asking you to leave and take your petition with you.”
Daisy got up and moved toward Mrs. Westbeth, her laser stare focused, her neck and back straight. She growled so low in her throat that the sound seemed to come from a distant time. Mrs. Westbeth pulled her arms in close to her body and nodded to A and B. They gathered up their papers and left in a flowered blur.
Bernadette and Chloë collapsed on the sofa laughing.
“The devil, you say?” Chloë asked, perfectly mimicking Bernadette when she had made the remark to Mrs. Westbeth, and they both broke out laughing again.
Bernadette decided they should go to a wonderful restaurant for supper, a place on the beach south of the Ritz. They would get all dressed up and be elegant. Chloë decided to wear the party dress she had brought from Ridgewood and had never worn. Bernadette said she would wear her blouse with the ruffled cuffs.
Bernadette seemed to take a long time to get ready, and when she came out, she looked different. She had done a make-over! Her hair was not tied back, and it framed her face like a smoky cloud; the gray now seemed to make it lighter and brighter. And she wasn’t wearing her glasses. Bernadette had contact lenses after all. Chloë was impressed.
“You do have good cheekbones and a good figure,” she said. “Why don’t you wear makeup and dress like that more often?”
Bernadette replied, “When I was your age—during that time I wanted everyone to call me Detta—when I was trying to be the image I saw in magazine, and friends’ faces, I spent a lot of time looking into mirrors. But then I got over it. I decided to look in the mirror and look for an image, not at an image. It is important to find the face that is your very own. It’s important to do it before makeup and make-overs. Twelve’s a good time.”
Chloë asked, “Are you saying you would never sign a hair contract?”
“I guess I am.”
“I didn’t either.”
“I know,” Bernadette said.
Chloë thought, Sometimes Bernadette is so smart I can’t stand her.
* * *
They drove along the coast road on the way to the restaurant. The windows of the Firebird were down, and they enjoyed the strong salt flavor of the air. Traffic was unusually slow because of a detour ahead. When they got to the patrolman who was directing traffic, Bernadette leaned out the window and asked what was going on. The cop said there was a demonstration.
“Whose?” Chloë asked.
“Some group,” he answered and waved them on.
Bernadette found a parking place about four blocks back of the beach road, and they walked down to the demonstration. Some people were carrying signs that said BAN T-BACKS or what had become the official COAT logo:
Others carried lighted torches.
Chloë said, “I knew it would be COAT.”
Bernadette said, “I guess we didn’t have to be rocket scientists to figure that out. There will be a bonfire.”
“How do you know?”
“The torches. The beach. After the draft-card burnings, the city passed laws that won’t allow bonfires anywhere else. Every time there is a rally at the beach, something or other goes up in smoke.”
After a good crowd had gathered—Chloë and Bernadette weren’t the only ones who had stopped—the Reverend Mr. Butler led everyone down to the beach. Bernadette said she would watch from the top of the tallest dune. “I’ll meet you here when you’re ready to leave,” she said.
Chloë followed the crowd down to the beach. The reverend stopped halfway between the ocean’s edge and the dunes. Driftwood was piled as high as a party tent. The protesters formed a circle around the pyre. Screaming against the sound of the surf, the Reverend Mr. Butler gave a short sermon about the evils of T-backs and how nakedness was next to Godlessness. Then, using a torch that someone handed him, he lit the heap of driftwood. The fire blazed. At a signal from the reverend, the protesters tossed bathing suits into the fire. There was a frenzy of bathing-suit tossing, and the flames leaped and fell, brightened and darkened as the citizens of COAT fed the fire.
At last there were no more bathing suits to throw, and the fire died down to where it gave as much heat as light. The people in the first circle crossed arms and held hands with those on either side of them and began to sing “We Shall Overcome.”
Chloë stepped back. She started to leave when she saw Tyler. He was standing almost directly across the fire from her, his head turned, trying to grab the hand of the man to the left of him.
“Tyler!” she called. He did not look up. She called again. “Tyler! Tyler! Over here.” He looked up; their eyes locked for just a second. There was something fierce in his look. Also something worried and lonely. Then he squinted across the fire, as if he couldn’t see her clearly, and took the hand of the woman to his right and the man to his left. He raised his eyes and stared ahead, gazing at a wedge of dune that rose behind Chloë’s head. He opened his mouth and sang.
Chloë did not move for a minute. Couldn’t move. She wanted to make sure she had an accurate picture of the world’s best young hypocrite. Hands to the left and right of her were reaching toward her, urging her to join them, but she didn’t want to join hands. She didn’t want to sing. She didn’t belong to the front circle of COAT. As she turned to go, someone grabbed her shoulders. A woman lowered her face level with hers. It was Mrs. Westbeth. “Is that you, Chloë Pollack?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting,” she answered.
“Did I hear you call to Tyler?”
“Me?” Chloë asked.
“Yes, you. I heard you call Tyler. How do you know him?”
“With all due respect, Mrs. Westbeth,” Chloë said, “I think you ought to ask Tyler how he knows me.” She shook h
er shoulders loose from the woman’s grip and ran to Bernadette.
Chloë was badly shaken by her encounter with Mrs. Westbeth and by the sight of Tyler demonstrating against T-backs. She said nothing to Bernadette as they drove to the restaurant. Bernadette allowed the quiet to nestle between them.
When at last they were seated at the restaurant and had given the waiter their orders, Bernadette said, “Do you think you can stand another story, Chloë?”
“Sure,” Chloë replied, “What is this one about?”
“About another bonfire.”
“You already told me. Remember? You told me about burning the draft cards.”
“No, this bonfire is much older and much more famous. It is so famous it has a name. It is called the Bonfire of the Vanities. Do you want to hear about it?”
About five hundred years ago, in the city of Florence, Italy, there lived a man named Lorenzo de’Medici. He was not a king. He was a businessman, but he was as rich and as powerful as any king. He lived in a beautiful palace, and although he had no official part in the government, he ran the city. No doubt about it, Florence was Lorenzo’s city. Lorenzo loved poetry, music, and art. He believed—as many people in those days did—that looking at beautiful things or hearing beautiful poetry and music brought people closer to God.
Some of the philosophers in the Medici palace served as talent scouts. They would tell Lorenzo about talented young men they discovered, and Lorenzo would invite them to come live at his palace to perfect their art. One of the young men that Lorenzo sponsored was the talented son of a stonecutter. His name was Michelangelo Buonarroti.
About the same time that Michelangelo was invited to come live at the palace, one of Lorenzo’s talent scouts heard about a monk named Savonarola, who was preaching some spellbinding sermons in the towns around Florence. Lorenzo couldn’t invite him to come live in his palace because monks live in monasteries, but he did use his influence to have Savonarola transferred to the monastery in Florence.
Lorenzo believed that the human body was an expression of Godlike perfection. Painting or sculpting nudes was a way to show beauty or heroism or sublime spirit. For example, Michelangelo’s giant statue of David uses a naked youth to express a heroic spirit, but where Lorenzo saw art, Savonarola saw wickedness. To him the human body was a source of shame. Actually, Savonarola saw shame and wickedness all around him. He thought Lorenzo was a heretic, a person whose beliefs were not officially acceptable to the church. And Savonarola also thought that the beautiful city of Florence was a terrible place, as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah, because the people who lived there not only liked pleasure, they believed in it. Such beliefs, Savonarola thought, were heresy, and the people who held them were heretics. Of all the heretics, Lorenzo was the worst.
Savonarola claimed to be a prophet, a messenger sent by God, and he was a very convincing speaker. His sermons packed them in. Needless to say, he developed a very large following. They had to move him from the small monastery to the large cathedral in the heart of the city. Those on his side were definitely not on Lorenzo’s. Some people claimed they saw angels at his side as Savonarola spoke.
Then, in 1492, Lorenzo de’Medici died, and Savonarola became the ruler of Florence. Like Lorenzo, he too had no official position, but he ruled the city from his monastery as certainly as Lorenzo had ruled it from the palace.
Once in control, Savonarola lost no time. He outlawed horse-racing, gambling, profanity, bawdy songs, and provocative female dress. He proclaimed dozens of fast days. Eating pastry was forbidden. And everyone—well, almost everyone—was enlisted as a spy for him. Children were encouraged to report on their parents, and servants were encouraged to report on their masters. But the best spies of all were a group of young men called the Youth Corps; they patrolled the streets of the city spying on everyone, looking for sin. They attacked gamblers, pastry sellers, and richly dressed women. If they saw a woman who they thought was improperly dressed, they sent her back home to change her clothes, and they had the authority to do so.
Savonarola believed that the people of Florence were particularly wicked just before Lent, during the time called carnival. In the year 1497, just before carnival, he sent his Youth Corps out to every household in the city to collect vanities. They gathered up cosmetics, playing cards, game tables, lace, jewelry, and books that did not make the monk’s approved list. From the artists, the young men collected drawings of nudes. On Mardi Gras, the last night of carnival, a huge fire was lit in the city square and all these “vanities” were thrown on the fire and burned. And that was the first Bonfire of the Vanities.
That first Bonfire of the Vanities was so successful that Savonarola repeated it the following year. But the second one was not as good as the first. Sequels seldom are. By the time of the second bonfire, the butchers of the city were furious because there were so many fast days they were going bankrupt. The silk weavers were mad because no one was buying fancy fabrics. The artists couldn’t paint nudes, and the artists’ models were out of work too. The pastry makers had to close their shops. And the people—the users of these “vanities”—missed having beautiful things. Even if they couldn’t own them, they missed seeing them. They missed having fun. Man, they said, is the only animal that plays as an adult. Would God have made us playful if he didn’t want us to play?
The citizens of Florence organized. They arrested Savonarola, accused him of being a heretic. They said that he had misled the people of Florence. They tortured him, made him confess, and burned him alive in a great bonfire in the same city square where they had celebrated the two great Bonfires of the Vanities. They threw his ashes into the river.
Bernadette took a long drink of water, and Chloë absently twirled pasta around her fork. She had a lot to think about. “Who do you think tonight’s bonfire will help the most?” Chloë asked. “COAT or the T-backs?”
“Both,” Bernadette answered. “First it will help COAT, then it will help the T-backs. They cancel each other out. Bonfires have a way of getting publicity, and that’s what they really want. I saw people with cameras there. COAT will make headlines, and that will help get more signatures on that petition, but when the T-backers see how many people are signing up, they’ll try harder. It will fire up both sides just as our draft-card burning did, and just as Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities did five hundred years ago.”
What Bernadette said made sense, but Chloë thought of Tyler’s intense face and Mrs. Westbeth’s angry one, and she suffered from a strange, sinking feeling that this bonfire was going to backfire.
The phone rang while Bernadette was in the shower getting ready for her follow-up appointment with the doctor. Chloë answered. It was Tyler.
“I’ve got to see you,” he whispered into the phone. “It’s important.”
Chloë said, “We’re practically not here. We are practically on our way to the doctor’s office.”
“Tell your auntie that you got to practice your skating.”
“I told you not to call her my auntie.”
Tyler said, “Tell her the same way you done the last time she went to the doctor’s.”
“I told you to call her Bernadette.”
“You come on by and pick me up. Don’t tell her I called.” And he hung up. Chloë knew that she was about to learn the consequences of the Bonfire of the T-backs.
* * *
Tyler sat at the curb, staring at nothing. At last he spoke. “I got something to tell you.” He pulled at the laces of his skates. He wouldn’t look at her. “About the Reverend Mr. Butler, the head of our Bible school at the Church of the Endless Horizon.”
“I know who he is.”
“He found out.”
“Let me guess. He found out who you are. He found out that the two star T-back wearers in the town of Peco, U.S.A., happen to be your mother and your aunt. Well, I didn’t tell him.”
“You as good as did. It was because you called to me the night of the bonfire that Mrs. Westbeth heard yo
u. Old Westbeth knew who you were, and when she asked me how you knew me, it all come out that I had a connection with Zack’s. It come out that I’m Velma’s kid. Yesterday after school, he—the reverend—called me into his office, and after he established that I was child to one and nephew to the other of the T-backers, he said as how the Lord done to Adam and Eve, casting them out of the Garden of Eden in their nakedness, he was gonna have to cast out my momma and me right along with her. He called my momma a sinner, and he said I was a child of sin. I didn’t like that. So I told him that Adam and Eve wore fig leafs and what my momma was wearing was covering more than any fig leaf ever did, and he might could think of my momma’s mode of dress as biblical.”
The Reverend Mr. Butler told Tyler that he was like the devil quoting scripture to make a point. That evening he paid a visit to Wanda’s house and told both Velma and Wanda that they would have to stop wearing T-backs, or he would expel Tyler from Bible school. He stated that he could not allow the child of a woman with no virtue to come to his school.
Wanda told the reverend that only people with distorted minds believed that exposing the body was disgraceful. She said that it was her personal belief that since her body was given to her by God, it was a form of God-given beauty, and her lawyer had told her that wearing a T-back was a form of artistic expression.
It was the reverend’s personal belief that bringing God and lawyers together in the same sentence was another form of the devil quoting scripture to save his soul. The Reverend Mr. Butler became quite heated and raised his voice and told Wanda that she was a disgrace to her work and her family. He threatened to get COAT to close down Zack’s place since that was where this epidemic of evil had started, and that was where it ought to end. He said that there was only one woman of virtue in all of Zack’s place and that one woman was Bernadette Pollack, and he was sorry that she would have to lose her job along with everyone else when he closed them down.