Blanket Game

Blanket Game

 

A cream-colored convertible Jaguar 120 raced beside the burnt sienna hills.  In her movie, Caroline had decided that the driver would be Jean Paul-Belmondo, looking exactly as he did in the movie Breathless.  She, Caroline would have long, thick blonde hair, which would whip around in the wind.  There would be music – the Rolling Stones or something French. The camera would get closer and closer to the car until it was just her and Jean-Paul, who would be wearing sunglasses, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.  She would pull her hair back, turn to Jean-Paul and say…

“I’m gonna throw up.  Caroline!  I’m gonna throw up!”  Caroline’s brother, Christopher, sat on her lap, their father’s Jaguar was a two-seater.  He squirmed and turned to face her.  He looked frightfully green.  She sighed and touched her father’s shoulder just as he downshifted into a tight turn.  He did not acknowledge her.  She didn’t think he would.  Christopher put his hand over his mouth.  Cynthia, their younger sister was asleep, pressed against Caroline in the tiny rectangle of leather seat behind the gearshift.  It was a wholly awful situation.  Worse, it ruined Caroline’s movie.  

“Pull over!  Christopher’s going to puke,” she yelled to her father, into the growl of the engine, into the wind.

Wordlessly, he pulled into a turn-off somewhere on Mulholland Drive.  The Jaguar turned pink from the fine layer of dust that settled on the long hood.  That would not make father happy. Caroline popped open the door, Christopher hopped out and vomited his cheap hot dog and milk shake lunch onto the dusty ground.  The strawberry smell from the milkshake was strong and sharp.     Caroline knew she should get out and help him, but looked at the hood of the car instead.  Wordlessly, Father got out of the car.  

Caroline wondered if she had willed him to do so. 

Christopher wiped his mouth on the corner of his Madras shirt.  “I’m sorry, Father.  Can we still play the blanket game?  Please?” Christopher was on the verge of tears. 

Caroline’s legs, arms and feet were asleep – a million pins and needles.  She imagined being tortured by Russian spies who had tied her to a bright orange chair.  She would be wearing all white - turtleneck, mini skirt and boots.  A single light bulb would swing over her head.  The spy boss would threaten to cut her hair, then her arms, then her famously beautiful face.  But she would not tell them where Jean-Paul was hiding.  Cynthia awoke dazed, kicking Carolyn by accident as she climbed over her and walked toward the Technicolor vomit.  Again, Caroline had to stop making her movie.  She wished they would all go away and just leave her on the mountain.   

“Caroline, come over here,” Father called to her.

His tone was neutral.  She was usually in trouble for not paying attention, for breathing, for living, but saving the Jaguar from vomit had to be a mark in her favor today.  Father, Christopher and Cynthia were standing in front of a border of boulders, behind them the great expanse of flat valley ringed by mountains.   An attractive family posing for a car advertisement, Caroline thought.  All that was missing was the mother.  Cynthia broke rank first, scrambling up a boulder.  Christopher kept dragging her down as if it was his duty to protect fearless six-year-old Cynthia.    Father was smoking a cigarette.  Caroline pretended it was French, a Gauloise.  She’d read that was the only cigarette that they smoked in France.  She stood there; her faded pastel striped dress was wrinkled and childish with its Peter Pan collar and smocking. Her shoes were too small and hurt her feet.   The rivets from the pockets on Christopher’s pants left round indentations on her legs.  She pretended that they were gunshot scars from a spy mission.   

“That was where we filmed most of my movies.”  Father pointed to the right with his cigarette.  A ladybug landed on the sleeve of his khaki cotton jacket cuff.  He stood in profile, his head held high as if someone other than his children were watching him.  Her mother said he had a patrician nose.  Caroline hated her nose, the way the nostrils flared.  She thought she looked like an angry horse.  She sighed and scanned the wide flat expanse below.  A whole world of little buildings and streets bathed in orange tree smog lay below them.  Spies and Russians would never live down there.   A breeze kicked up and blew her light brown hair into her mouth.  Cynthia had made it to the top of a boulder, her platinum blonde curls shone in the sun.  She sang loudly and in key, 

“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…tea for two and two for tea…”

“Those are two different songs.  You can’t just sing them together.  You’re so stupid sometimes,” said Christopher, who in spite of his tone of voice looked worried about her standing on the boulder. 

“You’re stupid.  Christopher is stupid and wets the bed,” sang Cynthia.

“I do not!  I should throw you over the side!” Christopher railed. 

Caroline closed her eyes and took a few blind steps.  She opened them as a bright blue souped up car pulled into the vista turn off raising a cloud of pink dust.  The white stripe that announced it was a GT350.  Caroline knew it was a Mustang, as her father had dragged them to the big boring building by the airport where they were made.  The car’s windows were open and tinny music was blaring – get off of my cloud.  Two boys and two girls got out of the car.  The girls wore bright mini skirts and little boots.  Caroline wanted to hide, or better still, freeze the boys and girls in place so that she could study them.  But of course they didn’t stay still - they were a blur of out of reach perfection.  One girl had long blond hair.  The other girl had short red hair and looked like Jean Seberg in Breathless.  

One of the boys walked over to the Jaguar.  He wore a plaid button up shirt.  Caroline didn’t find him interesting.  His friend, a boy with long hair and a flowered shirt, hung back with the girls.  He wore funny looking white sunglasses and moved gracefully, dancing around like he was at a discothèque in Paris.  That was interesting, but then he tickled the blonde girl and ruined it.  They did not look like spies.  Her father walked his lone rider walk back over to the Jaguar.  The boy in the plaid shirt whistled. 

“Nice ride.  She a ‘54?” the boy asked.  

“’53,” said Father flicking his cigarette toward the boulders.

The boy and Father continued to talk cars.  This, as Caroline knew, would lead to popping hoods and beer bottles appearing from somewhere and she would be stuck forever on Mulholland Drive, growing taller and taller like Alice in Wonderland until her head hit the top of the sky.  Then she’d be the 50 Foot Woman and stomp all over the hills and canyons. Or she would simply die of boredom.   She walked over to a boulder at the far edge of the turnout, climbed up, took off her painful shoes and let her long legs dangle over the edge of the world.  

Caroline hated these recent Sunday drives.  Hated them.  They were her mother’s fault - she said she needed to breath - whatever that meant.

“I’ll just stay here with baby Carl.  Don’t worry about me,” Mother had said.  There was an odd gleam in her eyes these days.  Caroline knew her mother hated Sunday drives too, hated the good neighborhoods they whizzed through and the sparkling ocean they passed, hated living at the Sunset Motel, hated the thieving gypsies and drunken wastrels who lived there, hated the teachers who questioned why her children missed so much school, hated the Herald Examiner newspaper, hated the cheap hamburger meat she was forced to buy, hated her father in San Francisco who wouldn’t help her out and especially hated the way her children’s feet kept growing.  Caroline knew her mother’s hates by heart.  

Mother had finally come to the nadir of her hate in a confession to Caroline two days ago.

“He tricked me.  Your father made me think he was someone he was not.  I had screen tests at Paramount. Important men took me out to dinner at Ciro’s.  Now look at me, I have four children and have lost my looks.  I hate him,” Mother had said, her endless tears running down her face.  Her mother hadn’t lost her looks, that much was obvious to Caroline.  Men had always watched her mother, now some of them looked at her the same way, which was both boring and shameful.  Still all the crying made everyone nervous, especially Christopher.  

Later that day, Caroline had left the small bungalow because Christopher was dreadfully maudlin.  Two of the gypsy children were hanging around the split Palm trees behind the motel.  

“Where’s your brother?” asked the girl with the matted hair and the constantly crusty eye.  The boy, who never spoke, squatted in the dirt pinching roly-poly bugs between his fingers and shooting them into the bridal bouquet bushes like marbles.  They were forbidden to play with the gypsies, because Mother said they were dirty and Father said they stole a flywheel.  But Caroline liked them. They showed her how to get free Cokes from the broken machine at the gas station on the corner of Kingsley Drive and the girl knew every forbidden word and phrase.  

“He’s sick,” Caroline lied.   The gypsy girl took a sip of coke and spit it on the dirt where it sizzled and bubbled.  “Let’s walk the wall.  First one to fall off has to knock on the drunk’s door until he answers.” The girl had pulled a tattered book out of the paper bag she carried around and handed it to Caroline. “There’s dirty parts. Really nasty and dirty parts,” she had said knowingly.  Caroline had hid the book - The Tropic of Cancer - under her floor mattress.  She hadn’t even opened it, but was sure Jean Seberg had read it out loud to Jean-Paul Belmondo.   

She had skipped school the next day and walked a mile down to Sunset and Vine.  Men tried to get her into their cars and she was afraid the police would arrest her for truancy, which was both exciting and terrible. She hid for a time in Wallach’s Music City, pretending to be the child of a couple who were looking at albums. She imagined that they all lived in a tidy house up in the hills and that she was an only child. There would be a boy who lived next door who loved her and played his stacks of 45’s for her.  The couple looked her way – she bent down as if to tie her shoe, but her shoes had no laces.  The couple settled on a jazz record, bought it and left.  So Caroline left too.  

She then walked up to Graumann’s Chinese Theater where she pretended to belong to a family.  The mother kept telling people that they were from New York.  The whole family had cameras and took pictures of each other.  Caroline put her feet and hands in almost all of the women movie star’s footprints and handprints. None of them were a perfect fit.  She liked Humphrey Bogart’s block the best. It said, “Sid – may you never die until I kill you,” which sounded dangerous.  She did not get home until it was dark and her feet were covered in little water blisters which she tore open that night. The blister fluid tasted salty like tears.

She had not told her mother about skipping school, as it would have been just one more thing for her to hate. 

From up on her boulder perch, Caroline squinted and tried to make out any houses with green lawns and flowers gardens filled with Gladiolas.  Her mother had once said that she loved Gladiolas.  Caroline had been surprised that her mother loved anything.  Yet even squinting, everything below seemed dry and brown, punctuated with turquoise swimming pools that looked like so may scattered beads.  She imagined diving into a pool to escape the Russian spies, the cool water skimming her skin.   

“Crazy view, right?  Everything looks so teeny tiny, like little ant people are riding around in Match Box cars in a Lionel train town.” 

The voice startled Caroline.  She started to slide down the boulder into the chaparral below.  The boy with the flowered shirt and funny white sunglasses grabbed her arm and pulled her back up.  He took off his sunglasses and smiled at her, his eyes were green. Caroline looked away quickly.  They were alone on the boulder.  The car girls were playing and laughing with Cynthia and Christopher. The other boy was still talking to Father - they had popped the hood of the blue car.   The breeze picked again and blew Caroline’s dress up.  She slapped it down.  The boy stared at her for an interminable amount of time before he put his crazy sunglasses on again.   

“I live down there,” he motioned as Father had. “You can’t really see my house.  It’s a big house stuck on the side of this mountain filled with sad, stuck people.  I’m stuck there until I go to college.  I should be hitting the road and seeing the world. I asked my old man, ‘why do I have to go to college, what’s the point?’  And he said, ‘well, if you don’t Bobby, then you’ll have to go fight, and damn it, I pulled a lot of strings to keep you here and keep your damn mother happy.  Then I think, I don’t know exactly where Vietnam is and I certainly don’t want to fight anyone.”  

His breath smelled of beer and something sweet, Caroline pretended it smelled of wine, because that is all they drink in France. She glanced at him, saw her face reflected in his sunglasses.  Her nose and mouth looked huge.  She couldn’t speak and was afraid that she would lose her grip and slide off the boulder again.  The boy took off his shoes.  His feet were hairy and smelled like old boiled eggs.  Caroline tried not to look at them.  The boy shook his head. 

“I guess it’s different for girls.  I can’t say better or worse, just different.  My sister just got married.  She used to be so much fun.  Now she says ‘please remove your feet from the coffee table Bobby.’ Her husband’s a nice enough type – he’s going to medical school  - but he’s really uptight about a lot of things. He doesn’t like me, he acts like he does, but he doesn’t. How can you hate someone you barely know? That’s not cool, man.”  They sat there in silence.  The boy took her hand.  

“What are you doing?” Caroline looked at him - he had small white pimples on his forehead.  Her heart was pounding.  Normally, she would have jumped up and ran away from anyone who tried to talk to her, let alone touch her.  

“I don’t know.  I really don’t know what I’m doing,” he said with a certain surprise.

She stayed still and was shocked by her own actions and inaction – she let him hold her hand and imagined him speaking French.  He picked a stone chip off the boulder, put it in his shirt pocket.

“I want to make movies, but my old man says that’s for pansy’s and Jews and not a real way to make a living.  As if selling new cars to people whose old cars are just fine is somehow more real than making a movie.”  She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or just talking out loud so she said nothing.

They sat there and Caroline watched a jet plane glint across the sky and she imagined that she and the boy were flying to Paris.  They would talk forever and smoke Gauloises.  She wanted a word to describe what she felt, a word like yearning or exhilaration or some word that she had not yet found in her heart or the old dictionary held together with yellow scotch tape. The boy’s friends were calling for him to come. He waved back at them.  He then brushed Caroline’s hair from her face.  She didn’t flinch.  His touch was delicate, like a mother’s should be.  

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Caroline,” she said.  He waited expectantly, but she didn’t say anymore. 

“Just Caroline,” he kissed her cheek, then her hand.  She put her hand to her face and looked at him, her mouth an o.   “We’re going to meet again, Just Caroline. We’ll swim in the Seine. Hey, you can star in my first movie.”

He jumped down off the boulder.  

Caroline turned and watched him run tender footed, shoes in hand. The girl with the long blonde hair looked pouty and swatted at him.  He turned and gave Caroline a sweeping bow.  She shuddered and felt sun warm and ice cold at the same time.   Christopher called her, 

“Come on Caroline!  Dad says we can still play the blanket game. Come on!” 

She slid off the bolder, meandered back, stunned by her encounter.  Her father met her three quarters of the way.  He looked serious.  She stopped and waited it for it, for him.

“I never want to hear you use the word ‘puke’ again.  We say vomit.”  

He turned and walked away.  The blue car’s driver revved the engine for her father’s approval. He gave the boy an A-ok as they pealed out of the vista turnout leaving a cloud of red brown dust behind.  In her movie, the camera would follow the blue car down the road then come back to her, standing in the settling dust.  Her long hair would be chopped short, her white clothes would be dirty, but she would be free from the gang.  Bobby would be Jean-Paul’s brother who had been stolen by gypsies and sold to a rich family who lived in a house stuck on a hill.  She touched her cheek where Bobby had kissed her.  Caroline’s father opened the Jaguar’s boot and pulled out an ancient yellowed wool blanket. 

“Blanket game, hip-hip hurrah!”   Christopher cried.  He marched in place like a little solider.  Caroline wondered if the boy Bobby would have to go to war and get shot.  She imagined him making faces as he lay on the ground dying just like Jean-Paul at the end of Breathless.  She didn’t like that.  No one would die at the end of her movie.  

Cynthia was twirling, making the yellow skirt of her dress a perfect circle.  She then got dizzy and fell down, but didn’t cry.  Cynthia didn’t cry, it was not in her make up, as Mother would say.  Because of Cynthia’s extraordinary make up, she did print ads.  Caroline didn’t hate her for it - she just didn’t understand how she could do whatever they wanted her to do.  Christopher was the same way except that he was too nervous about things.  But he was doing print work too.  Caroline had never done print work – it was not in her make up.  That had hurt her feelings for a long time, but she had acted as if she didn’t care.  She could not imagine the boy Bobby doing print work.

“I’m going to sit on your lap this time,” Caroline said to Christopher.  She knew Father would say no. Christopher was small for his age – she was tall and coltish.  Her mother said she might be a beauty if she grew into her nose. “The boys will love you,” she had said in a moment of kindness. Caroline had been mortified.   

“Dad says you have to sit on the bottom.  So ha-ha too bad, I’m glad and Caroline’s sad,” Christopher chanted, his spirits apparently restored by the promise of the blanket game.

“Stop it.  Just stop it. You are such…an annoying, ingrate of a child,” she used perfect words and diction. Father couldn’t be mad if insults were well spoken.  Christopher glared then looked hurt. Caroline thought him far too full of moods. 

“All of you, into the car.  Mind your shoes.  Here, wipe the bottoms on the chamois before you get in,” Father said.  

Caroline took the chamois cloth from his hand and wiped Cynthia’s shoes, then her own feet. She did not put her shoes back on but set them on the black floor mat.  Christopher gingerly sat on Caroline’s lap. 

“One, two, three – here comes the blanket,” Father said without enthusiasm.

The old blanket came down on their heads.  It smelled of exhaust fumes and wild animal as it always had.  They all worked together to tuck it in tight.  The air became humid with child breath. Even a couple of months ago Caroline enjoyed the game; driving around the canyons and city while they, the children, tried to guess where they were, given Father’s clues.  Now, it seemed pointless and embarrassing.  She cringed when she thought of the camera shot of the Jaguar driving down the road with a squirming worm ghost of an old blanket in the passenger seat.  As her father slowly pulled out of the turnout, Caroline imagined instead a scene where she was hidden inside of a rolled up, priceless Persian carpet, it all scratchy and soft at the same time. The Russians would steal carpet and throw it onto the Jaguar’s passenger seat.  It would be hard to breath, but she was a professional.  

“The prettier girl, Susan, helped me tinkle. She was mad ‘cause the boy was talking to you like that, but the other girl laughed and said you were just a child and she was being silly,” Cynthia reported. Caroline looked at Cynthia, who seemed never to blink her big brown doe eyes.

“What else did they say?” Caroline asked. 

“I dunno.  Let’s sing a song,” Cynthia said and started to sing.

Father drove fast.  Christopher and Cynthia begged for clues.

“Please Father, please give us a clue,” Christopher yelled.  Their father didn’t respond.  He just drove.

Caroline suddenly realized that the only reason that their father played the Blanket Game was because he couldn’t hear all the chatter and clatter, as he called it, called them.  The Jaguar engine growled loudly.  Caroline knew a turn lay ahead.   

“He can’t hear you.  I’ll give you a clue, though,” Caroline said.

“You can’t give a clue.  You don’t know where we are. How come he won’t give us a clue?”  Christopher said worriedly.  He scratched his neck.  Caroline noticed a raw spot – it looked as if he’d been bitten by a snake.  A Russian Rattle Snake. 

“Cause he’s drinking a beer.  Beer rule.  I peeked,” Cynthia said.  

“He didn’t call Beer Rule.  That’s not fair,” Christopher said indignantly.  

Caroline tuned them out.  The scene in her movie changed to the beach.  It looked like a French ocean, but it was really by the Santa Monica pier.  She had escaped from the Russian spies, changed into a pink bikini and sat in the sand.  She had a gun in her beach bag and a radio that could pick up the Russian chatter and clatter.  Cynthia pinched Caroline hard on her upper arm. 

“Ouch!  Why did you do that?  You’re such a mean little girl,” Caroline hissed. She wanted to pinch her back, but didn’t.  

“Ask Dad for a clue. You’re the oldest,” Cynthia said.

“Go on Caroline, ask him,” Christopher said pleadingly.

“Fine.  Hold on to the blanket,” she said.  

But they didn’t.  The blanket flew out of the car.  Caroline turned her head back just in time to watch it come to rest in the branches of a Magnolia tree.  Father pulled the car over to the side of the road.  They were on a hilly residential street lined with low-slung modern houses.  The sign at the corner said Loma Linda Drive. 

“What have you done, Caroline?”  

Father spoke, but looked straight ahead, white knuckle hands gripping the wooden Coventry steering wheel.  His ears were sunburned and a vein throbbed in his long neck. 

“Beer Rule!  I told you so,” said Cynthia triumphantly pointing at the beer can wedged between their father’s legs.

“Not the blanket,” wailed Christopher. 

“For God’s sake, I’ll get the damned blanket.  Just shut-up.”  He pulled the hand break up, turned off the rumbling engine, got out of the Jaguar and walked back toward the Magnolia tree.  The children sat in silence.  They had never heard their father say God or damned or shut-up.  Now he said them all at in one sweeping monumental moment.  Christopher started to cry quietly.   Cynthia climbed into the driver’s seat.

“I’ll be Dad and give you a clue.  We’re on a street with a lot of houses,” she said brightly.  She put the beer can between her legs. 

“That’s not a clue, it’s got to be a rhyme or tricky.  Your clue is dumb.  The game is ruined anyway,” Christopher said with a small sob.  Caroline looked back at the tree and her father.  Both looked out place.  She felt sorry for them and didn’t know why.

“Look! A movie star!” said Cynthia pointing toward a woman who was walking down a swooping driveway, waving at them.  She was wearing bright fuchsia Capris, and her straw blonde hair was teased up so high it looked a bubble hat. “Hello, hello!” she called as she came closer.  

Caroline could see that she was neither young nor old.  She had very pink cheeks and lips and there were lines around her mouth.  Still, she was attractive.  Like an old French film star who harbored spies of all countries in her apartment in Paris or her home on Loma Linda. 

“Are you a movie star?” said Cynthia, who never minced words.

The woman laughed loudly, then coughed deeply.  It was a hideous sound.  Caroline watched the woman’s large breasts bounce in her low-cut white blouse as she finished coughing.  

“Well, aren’t you the cutest thing. You could be the movie star, little miss.  Look at all of your precious faces.”  She looked at each one of them individually, not as a group as most strangers did.  Her eyes were brilliant blue and crinkled at the corners.   “I was standing in front of my window,” she pointed up the swooping driveway to what must be a hidden house, “and saw your blanket go flying by just like a UFO.”

“You sure look like a movie star,” said Cynthia. 

Then Christopher did something he had never done before.  He opened the car door and got out all by himself.  He had always waited for Caroline or even Cynthia to pull the door handle, as if it was radioactive or a sacred thing.  He walked over to the sidewalk and pointed at their father who was looking at the blanket just out reach in the tree.  “That’s our blanket,” he said.

“Well, we’ll need a ladder, won’t we?  My goodness, you are all such beautiful little things…” She took a cigarette out of red case, tapped it and lit it with a golden lighter. “I should go and see if I can help your Daddy.  Would you like to accompany me, sir?” she said to Christopher.  “You look so much like my son Andy when he was your age.”   Her eyes filled up and she looked at the sky, as if she was looking for someone.  Caroline got a chill. That would be the shot of the spymaster – her eyes filled with tears, looking up at the sky before she turns Sabine over to the Russians.   Father was walking back to them.  He was walking his lone rider walk again.  It was for the woman, he only did it for pretty women or men with the right cars, Caroline knew.

“Oh my goodness, I’d know that walk anywhere!  Carlton Richards, is that you?”        

“Lucy Reilly?” Father said his voice somehow deeper.

“The very one!  Except it’s I’m sure you’ve heard it’s been Lucille Berman for years and years now.  Look at you! Whatever are the chances?” she said with a Scarlett O’Hara accent.   

Caroline felt the air change like it did before the Santa Ana winds blew the ozone smell away.  Christopher looked at the blanket worriedly.  Cynthia pretended to drive while memorizing the woman inch by inch.  

“Daddy, is she a movie star?” Cynthia asked impatiently.

“Well, this is just too wonderful for words.  Carlton Richards and his beautiful children just happened to stop right in front of my house on a lonely Sunday.  I think this calls for a party,” the woman named Lucy said. 

“We wouldn’t want to impose, but it would be nice to catch up,” said Father smiling slyly.

“What about the blanket? Can we get the blanket?” said Christopher. 

“I want to go to a party,” said Cynthia as she opened the car door and put the beer can in the street. 

“We’ll get the blanket, honey.  Don’t you worry. We’ll send Jonita’s husband down with a ladder.”  She smoothed Christopher’s hair, which visibly calmed him down.  “Now, Carlton you just drive your race car up to the house.  The children and I will walk up and close the gate. However did ya’ll fit in that machine?” she asked no one in particular. 

Caroline put on her shoes and got out of the car.  She wished that Bobby would drive up in or Jean-Paul in a tiny French car and take her away.  Instead her father drove up the driveway and they were going to a party.   She felt superfluous, like an extra thumb.  Lucy hooked her arm into Caroline’s, surprising her out of her revelry.  She smelled of heavy, flowery perfume and cigarettes.  She smelled as Caroline imagined Paris should smell.  Lucy swished her hips as she walked up the driveway, Caroline could not match her rhythm. 

“You have the most beautiful long legs, just like your father,” Lucy said, moving closer still to Caroline, who looked down at the white cement.  “Oh my, I don’t mean to say you have man legs.  That came out poorly.  It’s just your father was known for his finely shaped long legs.” Caroline couldn’t figure out if Lucy’s accent was real or acted. It seemed to come and go.  But the spymaster Madame would have many accents, and many disguises.   “It’s Jonita’s and Mack’s day off but I’m sure that will be just pleased as punch to set us up a pool party,” Lucy said gaily.

“Pool party?  You have a pool?” said Christopher.  

“Going to a go-go.  Going to a go-go.  Cause I’ve been working like a dog,” Cynthia sang.   

 The house at the top of the swooping driveway was all windows and angles.  Father was waiting for them.  To get to the front door, they walked across large blocks of blue sparkling cement that were set over a pool filled with giant black and gold fish.  Caroline thought it looked exotic and oriental.

Cynthia stopped, went down on her knees and swirled her finger in the water.  “Here gold-fishy.  Come here.”

Lucy Reilly laughed and coughed deep again.  “Honey, they won’t come to you, unless you give them some food.  You want to give them something to eat later?”  

“Yes, please.” Cynthia never said please.  Caroline took note of that. 

The red double front doors were open, so they all filed in, following Lucy.  The room was open and white - the few solid walls were hung with large pictures filled with stripes of bright colors.  There was a great copper fireplace in the middle of the room and fur rugs scattered about. It all looked as if no one actually lived there, like a picture in a magazine.  Caroline could see the pool sparkling in the back yard as the house was made of windows.    They all just stood there looking around.  Even Father seemed unsure what to do.  Lucy took Christopher by the hand.  

“After Andy…well, Maurice thought I needed a big change and this is it,” she laughed.  Caroline wished she wouldn’t laugh so much.  A spymaster would be more serious.  Unless she was acting a part.  Jean-Paul would know how to act in a house like this, he would act sophisticated. Caroline didn’t feel sophisticated. 

“Go on, take a seat anywhere you want.  I’m going to call Jonita and get the party set up…” Lucy looked right at Christopher, “…and have Mack get the blanket down.”   Christopher smiled.    

They each took a seat in a grouping of lime green S shaped chairs, except for Cynthia who climbed into one that looked like an egg missing half its shell – the cushion was a bright yolk.  Caroline could hear Lucy clearly in the kitchen – the house echoed.  

“Jonita, a dear, dear friend from my movie days just stopped by with his children.  We must make a party for them.  Oh, and their blanket is stuck down in the Magnolia,” she laughed and coughed.  “We’ll need Mack to get it down.”  

  “Why is her house so big and echo-y?” Cynthia had figured out that the eggshell chair spun. 

“Don’t ask dumb questions.  She’s a movie star, ‘course her house is big,” said Christopher.

“She didn’t say she was a movie star.  You just want to be right,” Caroline said. 

“Stop it.  Don’t say another word,” said Father.  But he wasn’t angry - he spoke as if it were expected of him.  A Negro woman in a pink dress that buttoned up the front entered the kitchen.  Her face was impossible to read.  Father looked out toward the back yard, not at all acknowledging the woman.  Caroline imagined that the woman was another American spy. 

“Look at them, Jonita.  Aren’t they just the most precious little family?  Andy would want us to have a party.  We’ll have punch and cookies.  And music, we’ll play music too.” 

Lucy spoke as if she were in a movie.  She reminded Caroline of her father somehow, not of this time. Caroline looked at her family.  They looked so shabby in the big, clean modern house.  She was not a part of them, yet she was them and that made her want to crawl into a hole. Father had moved to a bar off the kitchen, mixing drinks in glasses filled with round pebble ice cubes.   The Negro woman was pouring a can of Hawaiian Tropics punch into a pitcher. She had not said a word.  Cynthia had wandered into the kitchen and was watching her every move and asking if Lucy was really, really a movie star.  

Christopher was talking about the blanket and his puke to Caroline.  Chatter and Clatter, thought Caroline.  Lucy put on an Elvis Presley record. He was singing about a little sister.  It didn’t fit. None of it did.  

“Can we go swimming?” Christopher asked Caroline.

“Ask someone else.”  She walked over and asked the Negro woman where the bathroom was.  Her father looked at Caroline directly, with neither approval nor disapproval.  She wondered if she was invisible, and if she were, would anyone notice if she just left.  But she didn’t, and found the bathroom. Four little pink towels hung on a gold rod next the sink, each with a letter spelling out Lucy.  The pink and gold bathroom, like her family, like Lucy, did not fit the house.  Caroline took a tiny pink soap bar with an L on it from the dish and put it her underwear.  She washed her hands and dried them on the Y towel.  She tried not to look at herself in the mirror, but caught a glimpse of her face. She looked tan in the golden light, her nose looked smaller somehow.  She wondered if anyone would ever love her.

Rather than go back to the living room, where Christopher and Cynthia were arguing and a man on the record player was singing about blue velvet, she walked to the end of the hall.  The door stood open so she went in.  The walls were covered in pictures of a black haired boy with freckles.  In some, he was little and holding a baseball bat or sitting on a pony or holding a younger Lucy’s hand. In others, he was older.  She liked the one of him standing by a surfboard stuck into the sand with red cliffs in the background, so she picked it up.  In all of them he had exactly the same smile and looked exactly like Lucy, except his nose was much bigger and his hair was black.  

A silver framed picture of the boy wearing a blue uniform, sat on a dresser. Model airplanes and helicopters hung from the ceiling, all moving slightly as the air blew from a grill in the white ceiling.  She sat on the neatly made bed and thought about the boy Bobby.  She watched a black helicopter model start to spin slowly on its string.

“He was a good boy, took care of his mama.  Such a shame.”  Caroline jumped up off the bed, the bar of soap in her underwear fell to the floor.  The Negro woman stood in the doorway, looking at nothing at all.  “She don’t want anything moved, but you can sit in here.”  

Caroline held her breath until the woman left.  She picked up the soap and turned it around and around in her hands until the flowery smell filled the room.  She put the bar in the side of her shoe this time, which made her foot hurt even worse.  A new movie started in her head, this one about two boys, brothers – Bobby and Andy - both had to go to Vietnam.  They both loved the same girl, but one of the boys was going to die. Both boys kissed the girl on the same night, which was wicked and tragic.  Moving to the floor, she sat took off her shoes, and added color and sounds to her movie.  The light slanting into the room kept changing by degrees.  

Finally, she got up and walked down the white-carpeted hall absently, the movie running in her head.  She was on the beach, the boys running into the waves with their surfboards. The sky was pink and orange. Andy stopped and talked to her.  Bobby pushed him down and they wrestled in the sand.  She tried to pull them apart, but they came to blows. They both loved her so much. 

She wandered into a large pink and green bedroom and stopped short.  Father and Lucy sat side-by-side on the edge of a big bed filled with pillows.  They were talking quietly, heads together in a way that Caroline had never witnessed between her mother and father.  An intimate way, a private way.  It hurt her to look at them, yet she could not look away.  Both noticed her at the same time and stood up in unison with the same blank looks on their faces.  Caroline put her hand to her mouth, tried to back out of the room, but bumped into a table, sending silver framed photographs tumbling to the white carpet in a muffled crash.  

She ran to the living room, the record player clicked as the needle popped and hissed on the 45. 

“Make it louder!” Cynthia called out, the sugar cookie in her hand crumbling as she rocked on her tiptoes as the Beach Boys sang. 

Caroline could not breath.  She wanted to be back in the boy Andy’s room, to run out the door, to return to five minutes ago, but was paralyzed with embarrassment and confusion.  They were all dirty and wrong and belonged at the Sunset Motel. Mouth dry, she felt as if she was watching herself from the ceiling. Father walked toward her, his face serious, his mouth set.   She looked down at her feet, the bar of soap poking out of the side of her too small awful brown shoes.  She felt his hand on her shoulder, knew she didn’t want to look at him, knew he didn’t want to look at her either.  

Both looked out at the pool instead.  Floating in the blue water, on a cloud of yellow blanket, face down, arms outstretched, his shirt a big bubble around his small frame was Christopher.  

“She’ll have fun, fun, fun,” sang Cynthia, spinning and spinning and spinning to the music.