A Slipping-Down Life Page 3

  After that he walked off the platform and past Evie’s table. An envelope of cold air traveled with him, as if he had just come in from a winter night. Evie heard his denim jacket brush Violet’s chair, and when she felt that it was safe she turned to look after him. But he had not passed by, after all. He stood behind her with his chin tilted up, his eyes on her beneath half-shut lids.

  “You from some newspaper?” he asked.

  “No,” said Evie.

  “Oh,” he said, and then he walked on out.

  “ ‘Oh,’ he said. Was it ‘oh’? Or ‘Well.’ I should have had an answer planned.”

  “It’s not something you would have expected, after all,” Violet said. She was spending the night with Evie, up in her flowered bedroom where the radio still spun music out. They were the only ones awake in the house. They had come home late, packed three abreast in the front seat of Fay-Jean’s father’s Studebaker, while a bushel basket full of tools rattled around in the back. Now Violet sat yawning and blinking as she unpinned her hair, but Evie was wide awake. She wandered around the room fully dressed, snapping pictures. “I want to use up the film,” she said.

  “Wait till tomorrow, why don’t you?”

  “I want to drop it off at the drugstore tomorrow. Is Lowry’s open on Sunday? Do you think that his picture will turn out halfway decent?”

  “Oh, I imagine so.” Violet yawned again and reached for her comb.

  “Once I was standing up, I couldn’t think what to call him,” Evie said. “Bertram or Drumstrings.” She photographed her bulletin board, hung with programs and newspaper clippings and a hall pass handwritten by a man teacher whom she had liked the year before. Then she said, “It’s those quotes that confuse me. ‘Drumstrings’ in quotation marks. Which does that mean I should call him by?”

  “Like Nat ‘King’ Cole.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten. What did they call him?”

  “Nat.”

  “Then I should have called him ‘Bertram.’ But I could never do that. I’d feel silly saying ‘Bertram.’ ” She snapped her own picture in the full-length mirror. “I was so scared, I was shaking,” she said.

  “I know. I saw.”

  “My hands were shaking. You mean it showed?”

  “Well, I was right next to you.”

  “It wasn’t something I had thought up first, you know. It was spur-of-the-moment. ‘Why not?’ I thought, and did it. Just stood up and did it.” She turned toward Violet, who had lain down on the other side of the bed. “Impulse. That’s what it was.”

  “Right,” Violet said with her eyes closed.

  “If I’d thought before, I would have fallen on my face. Or dropped the camera. Or lost my voice. Impulse was the clue. Are you listening?”

  There was no answer. Evie fitted another flashbulb into her camera and snapped Violet’s sleeping face.

  3

  Fay-Jean Lindsay was always dancing, and sometimes going off to huddle in dark cars with boys who only showed up once. She wasn’t the kind to chauffeur two girls around indefinitely. So Evie and Violet started borrowing their fathers’ cars, taking turns at it, and coming to the Unicorn by themselves every Saturday night. They still sat at Fay-Jean’s table, although generally her chair was empty and her purse left spilled open beside her beer mug. They wore skirts and blouses now, and waved when they passed the policeman at the door. Evie’s skirts were dark, to slim her down. Her blouses were white cotton that turned gray and limp halfway through the evening. Violet’s skirts were rose and purple and chartreuse. She seemed to have taken the place over for her own—striding between chairs like a huge, stately queen, serene in the face of whistles and catcalls, ordering draft beer by the pitcher and pouring it expertly down the side of her mug so that there would be no foam. She reminded Evie of the lady chaperones she had learned about in Spanish class, except that Violet did no chaperoning: Fay-Jean returned from long absences with unknown partners, tilting against their shoulders like a solemn rag doll, and Drumstrings Casey slid his hips in easy circles under Violet’s calm gaze. She said she liked this kind of life. “I should be a barmaid,” she said. When a boy at the next table said, “Hey, fat mama,” she threw back her head and laughed.

  Only Evie seemed uncomfortable there. It was she who planned ahead for the evenings, rinsed her hair in malt vinegar and mourned a broken fingernail and begged Violet not to disgrace her by wearing her wiglet. Yet in the Unicorn she sat slumped behind her beer, chewing her thumb and scowling. She turned often to study the faces of other customers, especially when Drumstrings Casey was playing. Who was that blond who hushed everyone as soon as Casey came on the platform? Wouldn’t you know that Evie could never have anything for herself without a lot of other people butting in and certain to win in the end? As if her coming here were a mysterious sort of publicity, the audience grew larger every Saturday and the clapping louder. “There, you see. I know what’s what,” she told Violet. “Now everybody’s catching on to him.” But she didn’t look happy about it. She watched with a thoughtful, measuring look on her face when he ruffled a strange girl’s hair on the way up to the platform.

  “You know I’m late,” he said. “Will you let me be?

  “I’ve listened all night.

  “I’ve pondered all day.

  “Faces don’t stick with me half as much as names.”

  The drummer slammed down on his drums. The music grew louder. Oh, it was that talking out of his that made the difference. He never should have begun it. While he spoke Evie held very still, but afterwards, with her eyes wandering over the room, she said, “What would make him do like that?”

  “I kind of like it,” said Violet, starting her second mug of beer.

  “Is he saying something? Is there something underneath it? Is he speaking in code?”

  Other girls thought nothing of going straight up to him. They crowded around as soon as a set was done. “Now, how did you ever …” “Where did you get …” Casey slouched easily with his guitar at his side and looked straight through them. He seemed to think they were part of the program. Meanwhile Evie sat by Fay-Jean’s empty chair and drew faces in a ring of beer.

  “If I were to get his attention,” she told Violet, “it would have to be without thinking of it first. Something that just happened. Can you see me going up with those others? I would be planning it ahead, smoothing down my skirt, tucking in my blouse, saying something memorized that would come out backwards, in a reading tone of voice.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t notice,” Violet said.

  “That’s exactly what I meant.”

  One Saturday a redhead who was dancing on the platform stood stock still while Casey did his speaking out. It was only one line.

  “If I called your name wrong, would you still say yes?”

  When the music crashed down again, the redhead said, “You bet I would!” Then she left her partner and pulled Casey around by one shoulder to finish the dance. He danced as he played, laughing. It was the first time Evie had seen him laugh. The sudden breaking up of that smooth olive face made him look unfinished and angular, like someone’s comical little brother.

  “There’s how to get his attention,” Violet said. “Just give him a yank.” But when she turned, she saw that Evie was several tables away by now, pushing toward the ladies’ room. The boy at Violet’s right said, “Hey, little marshmallow, you’re all alone.” Violet smiled and poured more beer.

  Or was it Josh Ballew they all came for? He swaggered onto the platform with his head down and one fist raised, like a prize fighter. Everybody clapped. Fay-Jean appeared in a man’s leather jacket and said, “Will you look at how his hair curls up? Oh, I wish mine would do that way.”

  “Nobody got a right to leave me like you left me,” Joseph sang. All of his songs were angry. His voice was furry and dark, roughening on vowels, and he stood very close to the microphone. When he started his second song Fay-Jean said, “Will you listen? Evie Decker can have six
of Drumstrings Casey. Where’d she go, anyhow?”

  “Excused herself,” said Violet.

  Someone screamed.

  Joseph Ballew looked pleased, and twanged two sharp notes on his guitar. Then he lowered it to sing another line. He never did both at once. Behind him a murmuring arose, and the other players began looking around, but Joseph sang on with his eyes closed.

  “Who screamed?” Violet asked.

  Fay-Jean moved away, her jacket swinging from her shoulders. As soon as she was gone Violet turned back to her beer, but then there was another scream. This time the voice was Fay-Jean’s.

  “My Lord in heaven, Evie Decker!” she said.

  Violet stood up. Joseph Ballew stopped playing. The commotion was in a rear corner, by the door to the ladies’ room, but even when Violet had angled her way over there the crowd was too tightly packed for her to see anything.

  “Will you let me through?” she said. “What is it? Will you let me through?”

  Someone bumped into her from behind. “Police,” he said. “Clear the way. Clear the way.” The crowd divided. Violet passed through, widening the path for the policeman. When she reached the door of the ladies’ room she stopped suddenly and rocked backward against the policeman’s chest.

  “Evie?” she said.

  Evie was smiling. Two people supported her, the redhead and a skinny blond girl. They held her in a professional, movie-like way, each with one hand beneath Evie’s elbow and one at the small of her back. Evie’s face was ridged with vertical strands of blood. There were crimson zigzags across her forehead, dampening her hair. “Evie, what happened?” said Violet.

  “It’s his name,” Evie said.

  The policeman stepped forward, carrying a small pad of paper and a retractable ball-point pen. He clicked the pen. “Name?” he asked.

  “Drumstrings Casey,” Evie said.

  4

  She had cut the letters with a pair of nail scissors. They ran all the way across her forehead, large and ragged and Greek-looking because straight lines were easier to cut: . In the emergency room, after they had swabbed the blood away, there was a silence lasting several seconds. “Backwards?” someone said finally. It looked as if she were staring out at the letters from within, from the wrong side of her forehead. Or maybe she had cut them while facing a mirror. Whatever the reason, Evie wasn’t telling. She sat in a white enameled chair beside an instrument case, her shoulders slumped, the lower part of her face round and blank and pale beneath the red slashes. Her pudgy feet in their vinyl sandals were twined around the chair rungs. Beside her stood the policeman who had brought her in, still curious although he had already taken down the necessary information; and opposite her, right alongside the doctor and nurse, was Violet. Oh, it would take more than this to shock Violet. She had ridden with Evie in the back of the squad car, patting her hand absently. “Evie Decker, I declare,” she said, “I wish you would tell me—Goodness, will you listen? Sirens. They’re for you.” Evie only blinked and watched as the headlights scraped the edges of a tobacco field. When they drove up to the hospital door she said, “I left my pocketbook in the ladies’ room.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll call about it.”

  “And then what about your car? And I never paid for my last beer.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  The others treated her as if she were unconscious, resting their hands on her shoulder while they leaned forward to discuss her. “Is she all right?” the nurse said once, and patted Evie’s cheeks sharply, almost slapping her. “Do you think she’s all right?”

  The doctor shrugged and filled a hypodermic needle. “Who knows?” he said. “Damn fool teen-agers. Find her a room, will you? I’m keeping her the night till I see her state of mind.” The nurse left, and so did the policeman, still staring backwards over his shoulder as he closed the door. “Should we have tipped him?” Violet said.

  “No,” said the doctor. “You might as well call her family. Does she have a family?”

  “Only her father.”

  “He’ll have to be told about this.”

  So Violet left too, rippling the fingers of one hand at Evie. “Just be a minute,” she said. “Take care.”

  Evie was the only patient in the emergency room. The doctor worked in silence, snapping threads just above her eyes with gloved, dead-feeling hands while water dripped somewhere behind him. “Casey your boyfriend?” he asked finally.

  “No.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Just a singer.”

  “Rock-and-roll, I suppose.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mmhmm.” He snapped another thread. “This is nothing dangerous, you understand. First-degree cuts. But they’re ragged. They’ll leave scars. You’ll need a good plastic surgeon to get rid of them for you.”

  Evie stared at a crease in his white coat.

  “You all right?” he asked her.

  “Yes, fine.”

  “Well, I can’t think why.”

  Violet returned, swinging her purse by its long strap so that it jingled against her shins at every step. “Your father’s on his way,” she said. “I said you had to have a little cut stitched up. Was that what you wanted? I couldn’t see just out and out telling him.” She settled on a stool beside the doctor and arranged her skirt around her. “Would you rather I had?”

  Evie shook her head.

  “Hold still,” said the doctor.

  He worked for what might have been hours, snapping threads endlessly and sometimes letting out a long whistling sigh between his teeth. Beside him, Violet twirled on her stool and hummed. A clock over the exit jerked each minute by with a deep, pointed click. When finally the doctor laid a strip of gauze over the stitches, Evie saw that it was nearly midnight. “This sets some kind of record,” he said. “Aren’t there any singers called Al? or Ed?”

  “His first name was Drumstrings,” Violet told him.

  “Well, then, I suppose she did the best she could.” He peeled his gloves off. “You can go home tomorrow, if you’re in a normal state. Though what that would be—Help her to the nurse’s station, would you, miss? Ask for Miss Connolly. I’ll talk to her father before I send him in.”

  “Thank you,” Evie said.

  “You’d be better off in the Peace Corps,” said the doctor.

  Evie’s room held two white beds, both empty, and a maple dresser with a mirror over it. There was only a nightlight on. When she looked in the mirror she saw a wide dark shadow with a band of startling white across the forehead. She touched the band with one finger. “Oh, look, you get a johnny-coat,” Violet said. “Only two ties down the whole back of it, and one of them broken. Shall I bring you fresh clothes to wear home tomorrow? Your father’ll never think of it.”

  “No, he probably won’t,” Evie said.

  She pulled off her clothes, which felt creased and heavy from being worn too long. As she dropped each piece to the floor, Violet fumbled for it in the dark and laid it on a chair. Their movements were slow and soundless—Evie’s because she felt awkward, Violet’s for no known reason because Violet never felt awkward. When Evie had put the gown on, she climbed into the bed farthest from the window. She sat up against the metal headboard, her hands folded across her stomach.

  “They’ll bring you breakfast in bed, I suppose,” Violet said.

  “Does Drumstrings Casey know about this?”

  “Well, I’m not sure.”

  “There was a lot of commotion over it. Wouldn’t you think he’d have heard?”

  “He wasn’t singing then. Joseph Ballew was. I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you look?”

  “Honestly, Evie, I don’t know. I was with you. I and the policeman. We were busy taking you out.”

  “I believe this might be the best thing I’ve ever done,” said Evie. “Something out of character. Definite. Not covered by insurance. I’m just sure it will all work out well.”

  Violet bent to line up the vi
nyl sandals beneath the bed. “Why don’t you tell me what you want to wear tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll stop by your house and pick it up.”

  “Oh, anything. Skirt and blouse. While I was walking through that crowd with the policeman, I kept thinking of my name: Evie Decker, me. Taking something into my own hands for once. I thought, if I had started acting like this a long time ago my whole life might’ve been different.”

  “Well, that’s for sure,” said Violet. “Anyway. Skirt and blouse. Do you want me to stay till your father comes?”

  “No, I guess not. Your family will be wondering where you are.”

  “All right. See you in the morning.”

  Violet’s shoes made a soft, plodding sound out of the room and down the hall. When the sound had faded Evie pulled the sheets over her and lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. Headlights swung across it in slow white wedges. Some sort of blower beneath her window made a steady rushing noise that turned other noises unreal and distant. Her forehead was a tight, thin sheet. There was only a surface pain, but the tightness gave her the feeling that her skin might split into shallow cracks at any moment. She bridged her forehead with one hand, clamping it inward with her thumb and middle finger to ease the stretch.

  “Evie?” her father said.

  She lowered her hand and winced toward the lighted door. Her father was a tall black angular silhouette, bent at the waist. He entered with his head leading, just as he entered his classroom while students whispered and passed notes and ignored him. “I brought you some clothes,” he said.

  “Oh. You did?”

  “Don’t you need them?”

  “Well, Violet was going to bring some.”

  He reached over to the bureau and turned on a lamp, so that her eyes contracted into a sudden ache. “Is that, does that bandage have to be so big?” he asked her.