“What’s a Magnolia Trail Maiden? Sounds like some sort of flower.”
Sookie laughed. “No, they’re not flowers, they’re girls, silly, all dressed up in antebellum dresses; you know, with hats and parasols. They are darling.”
“Do they sing or something?”
Sookie looked at Dena like she had lost her mind. “No, they don’t sing, they curtsy.”
“Curtsy?”
“You know, bow to the ground, like this.” Sookie did a deep curtsy. “When a person gets off the plane or train or whatever, we stand in a line and curtsy to them as a gesture of welcome.”
Dena was impressed. “Were you a Magnolia Trail Maiden?”
Sookie opened the door to the back patio and walked out. “Of course, and Buck was a little Colonel of the Confederacy. You know, we love to dress up. Besides, Winged Victory made us do it. Mother had her seamstress make the girls three miniature, little Trail Maid outfits and hats, but don’t mention it whatever you do or they will insist on trying them on for you. They wanted to wear them when you got here but I wouldn’t let them.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want you to think we were any crazier than we are.”
They sat out by the pool under the canopy. It was another wonderfully bright day. Dena said, “Everything is so green.”
Sookie seemed surprised. “It is?”
“Yes. And it’s so quiet here.”
“It’s quieter anywhere after Mother leaves.”
“Oh, Sookie, stop. You’re lucky to have a mother, lucky to have lived in one place all your life. I’ll bet you know everybody here, don’t you?”
“I guess between the Simmonses, the Krackenberrys, and the Pooles, we’re probably related to everybody in town.”
“What was it like when you were growing up?”
Sookie took a sip of her tea. “Like a three-ring circus, with Lenore as ringmaster. The house was always full of people. The bridge club or garden club always had some kind of meeting at our house and Buck’s friends were running in and out. Poor Daddy, I miss him. He was the sweetest thing; he said the only reason he could live with Lenore was the fact that he was deaf in one ear. One time Buck said, ‘Daddy, why can’t you hear out of that ear?’ And Daddy said, ‘Wishful thinking, son, just wishful thinking.’ He was a scream.”
“Did you go to the same grammar school and high school?”
“I had no choice.”
“How great. And in high school, were you a cheerleader or majorette or something?”
Sookie looked at Dena in horror. “Dena, surely you don’t think I was ever a majorette. A cheerleader, yes, but a majorette? There was never a Kappa that was a majorette, Dena.”
“Well, I don’t know, what’s the difference?”
“If you don’t know I’m certainly not going to tell you. Honestly, Dena, sometimes I wonder where you’ve been all your life.”
Toncie came out with more tea. “Those girls are having a jumping-up-and-down fit to get out here, Mrs. Poole.”
They looked up at the second story of the house. In the window were little faces pressed against the glass, staring at them longingly. “Look at that, like three little monkeys.” They waved and just as Toncie had said, they were literally jumping up and down.
“Oh, Sookie, let them come down.”
“Can you stand it after Mother?”
“Yes. Don’t make them stay inside.”
“All right, if you say so.” Sookie raised her arm and announced to Toncie, “Release the prisoners. Free all the infidels at once.”
A minute later, the three girls, dressed in matching bright pink-and-white-polka-dot bathing suits, came running and screaming out the back door headed straight for Dena.
Dena spent the day at the pool with Sookie and her girls and it was not until Dena had been upstairs in the girls’ room and had been introduced to seven hamsters by name, looked at every doll, every toy, every dress, and every pair of shoes that Dee Dee, Ce Ce, and Le Le owned that they finally calmed down and went to sleep. All three passed out in one bed, exhausted from the day’s excitement.
It was after nine when Sookie and Dena went back downstairs so they could relax.
Sookie handed Dena a glass of wine. “I hope you realize that you have ruined my children forever. From now on they will ignore me, think I’m just some old frumpy housefrau.”
“Don’t be silly. I hope I was all right with them. I don’t know how to act around children.”
“Are you kidding? They adore you. I know what’s going to happen. They’ll grow up and run away to New York to live the glamorous life with you and I’ll wind up just like poor Stella Dallas, old and broken, standing hiding in the yard, watching my children through the window get married to rich and famous men.”
“What are you talking about. You are rich.”
“I am not, stop saying that. Honey, Earle’s daddy was nothing but an old country doctor and Mother’s practically given away all our inheritance to the poor.”
“Really?”
“Well, not really, not all of it. She’s set up a trust fund for the girls. She didn’t run off and join the Peace Corps like Jimmy Carter’s mother or anything. Believe me, Mother lives well, but since Daddy died, who knows what she’s liable to do next. She can come up with the craziest things.”
“Like what?”
“Just crazy stuff. Five years ago so many new people started moving here and she didn’t think the Welcome Wagon and the Newcomers’ Club were doing enough to suit her so she formed the Welcome to Selma Club … and I feel sorry for the poor people who move here. As soon as they hit town, Lenore’s troops make a beeline over to their house and swarm all over them like ants before anybody else can get to them. I said, Mother, it’s a wonder you don’t scare them to death. I know if I looked up and saw Lenore Krackenberry and her gang storming up my driveway with ribbons and balloons, singing at the top of their lungs, ‘Welcome to Selma,’ I’d move back where I came from.”
“Singing what?”
“Some old stupid song that one of her friends wrote. “ ‘Welcome to Selma, Selma, Selma … can we help ya, help ya, help ya.’ It’s just awful, but God knows people know they are welcomed.”
Sookie got up. “Promise me you won’t let me have more than two glasses of wine. Earle says I’m a cheap drunk and I get silly and talk too much if I have more than two glasses. I’m liable to get drunk and reveal all the family secrets.”
“Do you have any?”
Sookie sat down and threw her legs over the side of the chair. “Secrets? Are you kidding? In Selma, honey, we couldn’t have a secret if our lives depended on it. My life is an open book. Everybody in town knows that Buck is a big goofball and that Mother is a card-carrying crazy … and I’m probably not operating with a full deck myself.”
Dena was unwinding and the feeling was pleasant. “Sookie, tell me about your life down here.”
“My life? It’s just a plain old normal life. You’re the one who hobnobs with the stars. We are just plain old people, dull, dull, dull.”
“No, really, tell me, what do you do?”
“We just do the same old thing just about every day, year in and year out. Dinner at the club once a week, church every Sunday, and brunch with Mother every Sunday at noon … that’s what my life has been, just the same old thing year after year from the day I was born.”
A wave of sadness swept over Dena. Sookie had no idea how lucky she was.
The Little Girl in the Lobby
U.S.A.
1948
Dena’s childhood had become a blur. She could barely remember it at all. When she had been four her mother suddenly left Elmwood Springs and after that they had just drifted from one cold city to another and from one set of lonesome rooms in apartment hotels to the next. They were sometimes red brick or gray but they were always furnished with the sparest of furniture. And even though the buildings had fancy names like the La Salle, the Royalton Arms, the Highlan
d Towers, and the Park Lane, they were never what they once were. The chairs and rugs in the lobby were always a little too worn and the halls were always bare. Even the neighborhoods seemed to look dim, with little light, and not quite but just on the verge of going down. These sad apartment hotels were filled with lonely people, the young who had been disappointed in love, had someone and lost them, or never had anyone. The old people in these hotels sat alone in their rooms, leaving only to walk an ancient dog or to buy an occasional can of soup that could be heated on a hot plate. All were living out their lives in these rooms, eating out, sitting at tables for one. Most had developed the habit of reading, and so their only dinner companion was the book from the library, their only tablemates the characters they were reading about at the time. Usually, Dena was the one child in the building. But they never stayed long enough to really get to know anybody. She passed through people’s lives and never became more than that little girl who used to sit in the lobby and wait for her mother to come home. Most of her childhood had been spent in lobbies waiting for her mother or, sometimes, when she had learned to ride the streetcar, she would go downtown and wait for her mother in the ladies’ lounge of the department store where her mother happened to be working at the time. She would read or color; she didn’t mind. She felt better just being close to her mother and getting to ride home with her. Her mother was her entire world and she adored her. She loved the way she looked, her voice, the way she smelled. She was fascinated with everything her mother did. She loved to watch her put her makeup on, dress, fix her hair. When they went out she could not take her eyes off her; Dena was so proud to be with her. After work, when the weather was nice, they would walk for hours and window-shop and then they would always eat at some restaurant because her mother did not cook. And after dinner Dena used to sit and wonder what her mother was thinking about while her mother drank her coffee and smoked cigarette after cigarette. When they walked down the street her mother frequently walked very fast, and if you had seen the two of them you would have noticed the little girl, just a few steps behind the woman but trying her best to keep up with her.
Hawaiian Good-bye
New York City
1975
Dena woke with tears running down her face. She wondered what that was all about. Then she remembered her dream, that same old dream that had popped up again. She would be on a merry-go-round and see a white house but lose sight of it as she went around, then it would come to her that her mother was dying and needed her. She would rush to the phone and try and get the number to call her but she would dial the wrong number over and over. Or the phone would not work. Then she would start to panic and wake up crying, lost and helpless. That was not a feeling she could understand. She was a person who was not lost or helpless. As a matter of fact, she was one of the most unhelpless, self-sufficient people she knew. Ask any man who had ever loved her. She did not want to depend on anybody for anything. She had always taken care of herself, didn’t want to need anybody, didn’t want anybody to need her. She had always been good at almost everything she tried; she was bright, and she was a fast learner.
But the one thing she was no good at was love and she knew it. Last week she had to tell J.C. that she couldn’t see him anymore, and it had been hard. She liked J.C. but he had turned out to be like all the rest. They always wanted too much from her, something she could not give. She had told him over and over she would not marry him or ever live with him. But, typical of most men, they always believed she didn’t really mean what she said and would change her mind. She never did. Why did they always have to push her into a corner and get so upset? She didn’t want to live with anybody. She liked being alone. She hated anybody grabbing at her, trying to smother her. Her job was getting harder and harder, and J.C. had become more and more demanding.
She didn’t have the energy to fight him and fight for interviews at the same time, so she told him it was best that he find someone else, that it wasn’t fair to him to keep hoping. After she told him, he talked her into going out to dinner just one last time.
They were in a red booth at the Hawaii Kai restaurant on Broadway under a red and green lantern with red tassels. She sat and twirled a tiny paper umbrella while he lectured her on how she would never be happy until she made a serious commitment to another human being, and how he knew her better than she did herself—all the things people say. After two hours of this and several piña coladas, all she could think of to say was “Did you know that there are over four thousand little levers that control the lights at Radio City Music Hall? Not to mention the two hundred and six spotlights. And are you aware that the Rockettes are not all the same height, that it is an optical illusion?”
J.C. finally got the picture, and realized that Dena was a lost cause, and gave up. When he took her to her door for the last time, he hugged her good-bye and held her for a long time. It made Dena feel even worse; Dena did not like displays of emotion or affection. They always made her feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. Her mother had never really been affectionate with her, not like Dena had wanted, and she had always felt so awkward around her mother, all arms and legs, gangly and unattractive. Her mother was so cool, so isolated, so in control at all times. She had never seen her cry. She had never seen her laugh much, either. Her mother had been so beautiful, but there was something about her that was far away, removed, and even as a small child it had frightened Dena. As a little girl, she used to crawl in her mother’s lap and take her face and look into it trying to see what was the matter. She would ask over and over. Her mother would look at her and smile and say, “Nothing, darling,” but Dena knew something was wrong.
She hugged her mother tightly. Her mother would laugh and say, “You’re going to choke Mother to death.” And afterward, when she was older, she tried to hug her mother, but when she was seven or eight she had stopped trying. It was awkward to hug her, to kiss her, it was a skill she never learned, and after a while it did not come naturally to either of them.
In her personal life, Dena did not like to get too close to people or have them get too close to her. She was much more at ease sitting across from someone than having to sit beside them on a sofa, much more comfortable speaking to a group of five thousand behind a podium than talking with one person alone. When someone tried to hang on her it made her feel claustrophobic.
When she went inside and closed the door, Dena made a promise to herself: never get involved again. It was too difficult.
Mommies and Daddies
New York City
1975
At her next session with Dr. Diggers, Dena figured she might as well ask her about it and at least get something for her money.
“Let me ask you something, Dr. Diggers. Is it normal for people to keep having the same dream all the time?”
Dr. Diggers thought: This is the first real question Dena has asked. “Yes. Why?”
“I was just wondering. I keep having the same stupid dream.”
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long have you been having this dream?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Since I was a child. I can’t remember. Anyhow, it’s always pretty much the same. I see this house and it has a merry-go-round in the front yard or sometimes in the backyard, but sometimes it’s in the house, and I want to go in but I can’t find the door.”
“Can you see yourself in the dream?”
“No, I just know that it’s me, but I don’t see myself. Anyhow, I just wonder what the stupid thing means. Or if it means anything.”
“I wonder if you wonder,” Dr. Diggers said.
Dena said, “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I think on some level you know you just don’t want to look at it. How did you feel about losing your father?”
Dena rolled her eyes. Here we go again. Ask a simple question and get some psychobabble questions back. “I’ve told you a hundred times, I didn’t feel anything. I never knew him; it didn’t affect me a
t all. Look, I’m not here to whine about my childhood.”
“I know, you just come here for the candy. Now, for the hundredth time, what was your mother like? How would you describe her?”
“Oh … I don’t know.”
“Try.”
“It’s just a stupid dream.”
“Was she a loving mother? Mean? What was your impression of her?”
Dena started to tap her foot, irritably. “I’ve told you … she was just a mother, two eyes, two ears. What was your mother like?”
“My interview. Do you think maybe you left something unsaid—before she died?”
Dena moaned. “Why does everything have to be so damn shrinky? I don’t think that you understand that a person can get on with her life without being analyzed to death. I’m not saying some people don’t need it, but I’m not one of them. I am not some weak, damaged, little person unable to function. I am just under a lot of pressure at work right now, and it has nothing to do with any deep-seated secrets locked away in my psyche, and you didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?”
“What was your mother like?”
“She had fourteen ears and twelve legs and was polka-dotted. You know, Dena, you are harder than a hickory nut to crack, but I will. You seem determined not to tell me one thing about yourself but I am not giving up. You can bat those big blue eyes at me all you want, I’m not giving up. You have finally met your match.”
Dena laughed. She liked Dr. Diggers in spite of herself. “Do any of you psychiatrists ever get shot?”
“Oh, yes, I have to frisk my patients all the time.”
Later, when she was leaving, Dr. Diggers went with her to the door. As Dena was putting on her coat she said, “By the way … I broke up with J.C.”
Dr. Diggers said, “Oh.”
“Yes. He was a nice guy. But he got too serious.”
As Dr. Diggers locked the door behind her, she almost wished she could call Gerry and tell him, but she couldn’t. Dena was her patient. Besides, she knew that he was better off not knowing that Dena had broken up with her boyfriend. It would be better for him to forget Dena. She could not hold out any hope there, at least not at the present time.