A Slipping-Down Life Page 8

  Early in July, the Unicorn began hiring Drum for Fridays as well. People were asking for him, the proprietor said. Joseph Ballew was no longer enough. But Fridays Drum worked late in the A & P, bagging groceries. “The only solution,” said David, sitting in the Jeep with one of his lists on the steering wheel, “is for me to pick you up first, Evie. Then we’ll get Drum at the very last minute. Even then it’ll be close. Does that suit you?”

  “Of course,” Evie said.

  “Or you could keep coming just on Saturdays, if you wanted.”

  “Why? Do you think I’m not working out any more?”

  “No, Lord, you’re working out fine. But if your father starts worrying, you being gone two evenings and all—”

  “No, I’ll come,” Evie said. Although it did seem that her father might begin to wonder. She frowned down at her skirt, gathering it in folds between her knees, while David made more lists on more scraps of paper.

  The next Friday they drove to Farinia to pick up Drum. Evie had been through Farinia often, but without really noticing. She stared out her window now at the town’s one paved street, with its double row of un-painted stores covered in rusty soft-drink signs. On a corner next to a shoe repair shop, a service station sat under a tent of flapping pennants, its lights already shining. David drove in and honked his horn.

  “You haven’t run over the bell thing yet,” Evie told him.

  “Bell thing? Oh. No, I don’t want gas, this is where Drum lives.”

  “Here?”

  Then she saw that the service station was an unpainted Victorian house, its bottom story tiled with shiny white squares. Above, lace curtains wavered in narrow windows. “What the hell,” David said. “I’ll run up and get him.”

  “Can I come too?”

  “If you want.”

  She followed him across the service area and up a flight of rickety outside steps. The door had a card thumbtacked to it saying “ObeD E. CAseY” in pencil. David knocked. “Who is it?” a woman called.

  “It’s me, David. I’ve come for Bertram, tell him.”

  The door opened. After the rickety steps and the penciled card, Drum’s mother was a relief—a plump, cheerful woman in a bibbed apron, smile lines working outward from Drum’s brown eyes. “Evening, David,” she said. Then she saw Evie, and she raised her fingers to her lips. “Oh, my Lord,” she said. “Why, you must be—my Lord. Come in, honey. I hate to say it but I’ve forgotten what they called you.”

  “This is Evie Decker, Mrs. Casey,” David said.

  The name on Evie’s face, of course, was Mrs. Casey’s own—something Evie hadn’t thought of before. But Mrs. Casey didn’t seem to mind. She only looked worried; she shepherded Evie to a chair and hovered over her while Evie sat down. “Here, honey, put a cushion at your back. It’s much more comfortable. My!” she said, staring openly at Evie’s forehead. “I never thought it would be so, so large!”

  David, still beside the door, shifted his weight uneasily. “Where is Bertram?” he asked. “We’re running late.”

  “Oh, he’s just now changing. I’ll hurry him along.”

  She disappeared, looking backward one last time, and David sank down in a flowered armchair. The room was dim but clean, with a line of vinyl plants on the window sill and stiff plastic antimacassars on every piece of furniture. Over the mantel was a picture of a cross with a radiant gilt sunset just behind it. The glass-faced bookcase contained three books and dozens of photographs in white paper folders, which Evie rose to look at more closely. Towheaded boys scowled out at her, three or four to a picture. One was Drum, his hair turning darker and longer as he grew. In the most recent picture he was posed all alone with his guitar held vertically on one knee. “Would you believe that he was ever blond?” Mrs. Casey said behind her. “Then one day it seemed it all turned black, surprised the life out of me. The others, now, they’re turning too. Bertram’s daddy says his did the same.”

  “It’s a good picture of him,” Evie said.

  “Would you like it?”

  “Oh, no, I—”

  “Go on, take it, we have more. It’s the least I can do. Honey, I feel I owe you something. ‘Bertram,’ I said (I never call him Drum), ‘that little girl has put your name in the paper and started you on your way. Now don’t you forget that,’ I said, and sure enough, here they are having him work Fridays too and I just know you had a part in it. Oh, how can you sit up at your little table that way? I heard all about it. ‘She is doing you just a magnificent service, Bertram,’ I said—”

  “I’m sure they’d have started him on Fridays anyway,” Evie told her. “He’s the best singer I know of.”

  “Now aren’t you sweet? Well, I can’t say it myself, of course, being his mother, but deep down I know he has a wonderful career in front of him. He is what I am pinning my hopes on. ‘You remember,’ I tell him, ‘that wherever you go, you are carrying my hopes around with you.’ And it’s on account of me that he’s not just a filling-station attendant like his daddy. ‘Boy’s lazy,’ his daddy says. ‘Nineteen years old,’ he says, ‘and spinning out his days plucking music, only pumping gas when it suits him.’ I tell him I won’t stand for that kind of talk. ‘You just remember,’ I tell him, ‘that Bertram is going to be famous one day. He’s carrying all my hopes,’ I say. There’s a spark in Bertram, you know? He gets it from my side. My father played the banjo. Not just being musical but a sort of, I don’t know—”

  Evie nodded, over and over. Agreement welled up inside her like tears, but even saying yes meant breaking into Mrs. Casey’s web of words. “There was always something special about him,” said Mrs. Casey. “Right from when he was born. I felt it. Would you like to see the album?”

  “We got to go, Mom,” Drum said. He was standing in the living room doorway, buckling his belt. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  “Oh, why do you rush off like this? Bertram, honey, I want you to bring Evie back again, you hear? We just get along like a house afire. I hope you will never be so famous you forget the people who did you a good turn.”

  “A good turn, what’s she been telling you? I’m paying her, ain’t I?”

  “Not to do all that cutting you didn’t. Can’t any money pay for that. Evie, honey, what do the doctors say?”

  “I don’t know,” said Evie.

  “Well, you might just inquire. When Bertram leaves this area I expect they could fix you up just like new.”

  “Mom, for Lord’s sake,” Drum said.

  “Well, she don’t want it all her life, now does she?”

  “We better be going,” David said. He stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. “Nice seeing you, Mrs. Casey.”

  “Well, hurry back.” And at the door, as she handed Evie the picture in its paper folder, she said, “Don’t be a stranger, Evie, we’ll welcome you just as often as you want to come. Next visit I’ll let you see Bertram in the photo album, you hear?”

  “Thank you,” said Evie. She was surprised to feel David’s hand suddenly clasp her elbow as she started down the steps.

  She went back often. Drum usually had to be called for on Fridays, and it was Evie who ran up to knock on the door while David waited in the Jeep. “I don’t see how you stand that woman,” he said.

  “Why? I think she’s sweet.”

  “How can you listen to all that talk? And going on about your forehead and all, how can you put up with that?”

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” said Evie.

  She thought that David might even like her now, in an absent-minded way. They had had so many long rides together, with the filling of the silence resting on the two of them—Drum being absent or as good as absent, twanging that one guitar string. Once when they were alone David said, “I’ve been thinking about your forehead. I mean, they’re only white now, the letters. Have you ever thought of wearing bangs?”

  “Then no one in the Unicorn would see them,” Evie said.

  “Well, no.”

  “Don’t you w
ant me to come to the Unicorn any more?”

  “No, I was thinking about the rest of the time. People must stare at you a lot. Your friends and them.”

  “I don’t have any friends,” said Evie.

  “Oh.”

  “Only Violet, and she doesn’t stare. And besides, by now I don’t notice. I don’t even see the letters in the mirror, half the time. Sometimes I wonder: Does anybody see them? Or have I just gotten adjusted? Do they come as a shock to strangers still?”

  “They do stand out some,” David said.

  “A lot?”

  “Well, I don’t know—”

  “You can tell me, I don’t care. Are they bad?”

  “Well, not with bangs they wouldn’t be.”

  “I see,” said Evie.

  But she still didn’t get around to cutting bangs.

  At the end of July a heat wave struck. Crops shriveled, lawn sprinklers ran all day and all night, Clotelia carried a black umbrella to fend off the sun and Violet stopped wearing underwear. “Seems like this summer will just go on forever,” people said. But Evie thought of the heat wave as the peak of the season, a dividing point after which summer would slide rapidly downhill toward fall. And how could she go back to school? She had never planned past August. She had cleaned out her locker with the feeling that she was leaving for good, and the thought of going back to the rigid life of winter smothered her.

  Lately her rapid-fire questions to Drum had slackened off, grown easygoing. “I suppose you’ll be playing at a party tomorrow,” she would say, too hot and lazy even to add a question mark. All Drum had to answer was, “Mmm” and lapse into silence again. But the thought of summer’s ending came to her one Friday night at the Unicorn. Drum was speaking out: “Was it you I heard crying?” “Yes!” someone shouted. But Evie hadn’t been listening. She didn’t even know what song he was on. Then she was riding home in the Jeep, picking absently at a seam in his guitar. Drum jerked it away from her. His face was turned to the window, only the smooth line of one cheek showing. What had happened to all her spring plans? Things were no different from the very first night.

  She changed her tempo. She concentrated on Drum alone, running a race with time, which she pictured as a hot, dark wind. “Why do you speak out in songs? Oh, you’re going to say you don’t know, but you could tell me what started it. Was it by accident? Did you just want to give a friend a message or something?”

  “I forget,” Drum said.

  “Think. When was the first time you did it?”

  “Oh, well, the picnic song, I reckon. That’s right. It was too short. I tossed in extra lines, speaking out, like, just the pictures in my mind. Then a girl told me it was a good gimmick.”

  “What girl? Do I know her?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Nothing you speak out is connected,” Evie said. “How can so many pictures come to your mind at once?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She noticed that people in the Unicorn had stopped staring at her. No one whispered about her; no one stood up to get a better look. They craned their necks around her in order to see the musicians. Sooner or later David would notice too. She dreaded his firing her. As if she could change anything by beating him to the draw, she came right out with the news herself one evening when they were alone. “People are not whispering when I walk in nowadays,” she told him.

  “I saw.”

  “Does that mean I should stop coming?”

  “Well, let me see what Drum says.”

  She knew what Drum would say.

  Then next Friday night when David picked her up, she told him the entire plot of a movie without giving him time for a single word. When the plot was finished she analyzed it, and when that was finished she told him Clotelia’s life story. By then they had picked up Drum and arrived at the Unicorn. Neither Drum nor David had had a chance to say she was fired. It will be afterwards, she thought, when we are riding home. All during the show she sat memorizing the cold smell of beer, the texture of her netted candle-vase and the sight of Drum Casey tossing his hair above her as he sang. After that night it would all be lost, a summer wasted.

  But on the ride home they had other things to talk about. “You hear the news?” Drum asked her. Evie only stared. Drum never began conversations.

  “We’re going to a night club in Tar City. A man came looking for me, all the way to the Unicorn, hired me for a two-week run. I thought it would never happen.”

  “This is the beginning, now,” David said. “Didn’t I tell you? A genuine night club where they serve setups. From here on out we’ll be heading straight up.”

  “But what about the Unicorn?” Evie asked.

  “Oh, we’ll take two weeks off. It’s all set.”

  “And may not be back,” said Drum. “I tell you, after this I’m going to buy me some new singing clothes. Spangly.”

  “Well, congratulations,” said Evie, but no one heard her. They were discussing lights and money and transportation.

  When they reached Farinia, Drum said, “Let’s wake Mom and tell her the news. Tell her we want a celebration.” He might have been speaking only to David; Evie wasn’t sure. The two of them bounded across the darkened service area while Evie followed at a distance, hanging back a little and looking around her and stopping to search in her pocketbook for nothing at all.

  Mrs. Casey wore a pink chenille bathrobe, and her hair was set in spindly metal curlers all over her head. When she opened the door her hand flew to the curlers. “Bertram, my land, I thought you was alone,” she said.

  “Now, Mom, did you wait up again?” Drum circled her with one arm, nearly pulling her off her feet. “Listen, Mom. We want us a celebration. A man came and hired us to play two weeks at the Parisian.”

  “Is that right? Well, now,” she said. When she was pleased her cheeks grew round and shiny, and little tucks appeared at the corners of her mouth. “I was just mixing up hot chocolate. Will you all have some?”

  “Nah. Beer.”

  She talked even while she was out in the kitchen, freezing the three of them into silence. They sat in a row on the couch and looked toward the doorway. “I just know this is the break you been waiting for,” she called. “Once you’re in the city your name gets around more. Oh, I’ve half a mind to wake your daddy. Won’t he be surprised. ‘Now,’ I’ll say, ‘tell me again who’s wasting time when he should be pumping gas?’ The Parisian is a right famous place, you know. A lot of important people go there. Remember your cousin Emma, Drum? That’s where she had the rehearsal supper, before her wedding. I was there. Well, little did I dream, of course, at the time. Is Evie going too?”

  Evie stared at the doorway until it blurred.

  “What for?” Drum asked.

  “Why, to sit at her little table.”

  “Nah,” said Drum.

  “Oh, go on, Evie.”

  David cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, Evie’s been thinking of quitting,” he said. “Weren’t you, Evie?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She feels the point has been made, by now. No sense going on with it.”

  “Well, no, I suppose not,” said Mrs. Casey.

  She appeared in the doorway with three cans of beer on a pizza tin. “She might want to come with your daddy and me and just watch, though,” she said.

  “She don’t,” said Drum.

  “Will you let her speak for herself?”

  Everybody looked at Evie. Evie stared down at her laced fingers and said, “I don’t know. If it was up to me, I mean—I might want to come just once and hear him play.”

  “There now. You see?” Mrs. Casey told Drum.

  Drum slammed his beer down on the coffee table. “Will you get her off my back?” he said.

  “Bertram!”

  “Now, I mean this. I have had it. How do you think it feels to look at that face night after night when I’m playing? Do you think I like it? Following me with those eyes, wa
tching every move. It wasn’t my fault she cut those fool letters. Am I going to have to go on paying for it forever?”

  “Bertram. No one’s asking you to pay for it. She just wants to come hear your music, that’s all.”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” said Drum.

  “Oh, you’re turning hard, son. Are you going to be one of those stars that forgets the little people?”

  “Well, wait now,” said David. He stood up. “Seems to me we’re getting worked up over nothing. If Drum don’t want Evie in the audience she won’t come. Right, Evie?”

  “Right,” said Evie. The word opened a door, letting through a flashing beam of anger that took her by surprise. “I won’t come now or ever. Ever again. Not if that’s the way he feels.”

  “Praise the Lord,” said Drum.

  “And another thing, Drum Casey. If I had known what a cold and self-centered person you are those letters wouldn’t be there, I can promise you that. And your music is boring, it tends to get repetitious, and I hope everybody at the Parisian notices that the very first night and sends you home again. I hope you cry every mile of the way.”

  “Why, Evie,” Mrs. Casey said.

  “Not only that, but you can’t even play the guitar. You just hammer out noise like any fool at a Coke party, and I hope they notice that too.”

  “That’s a lie,” said Drum. “You’re talking crazy.”

  “Oh, am I?” She stood, but her knees felt shaky and she sat down again. “I may not be musical but I know that much. Joseph Ballew can play better any day.”

  “He can not. Joseph don’t know one end of the guitar from the other.”

  “That’s more than you know.”

  “You’re out of your head. I play a great guitar. Don’t I, David?”

  “Why, surely you do,” Mrs. Casey said.

  “All you’ve got going,” said Evie, “is the speaking out and me. Well, the speaking out does not make sense and I’m going to cut my hair in bangs. Then see how far you go.”

  “I was working at the Unicorn before I ever heard your name. I didn’t notice anyone asking how come no girl had cut ‘Casey’ in her forehead. Did you, David?”

  “It was a waste,” Evie said.