It was Porter who found her on the kitchen floor, knocked into a coma like a starch-crazed Sleeping Beauty. Not that any of us were surprised—it was just the kind of stunt Mama was apt to pull: gorge herself sick on a pile of dirty old vegetables. No nifty bottle of pills, no blade drawn smooth across her wrist. Just plain old sweet potatoes plucked from a bin and dusted off, boiled and mashed, eaten with a silver spoon. She’d learned the trick from her own mother, likewise a diabetic, who quite by accident stuffed herself into a sugar-spiked coma a decade back with one too many slices of sweet potato pie.
It was impossible to ignore the message Mama was hoping to send, harming herself in the exact same way. My grandmother, after all, had forced her to marry Dad when she became pregnant with me, their only child. I’m sure she knew we’d read just fine between the lines as we stood in the sun-splashed kitchen, registering evidence of her self-absorbed madness in the gobs of potato dripping down the walls.
Dad and I had ruined her life.
~
I helped Porter clean up all the orange goop and afterward we ordered a pizza. Dad, the nev’r-do-well prince, was at the hospital. I was to stay home and await updates like an unwanted stepchild. Porter was the reluctant messenger, but really, he was so much more than that. He’d lived with us since Christmas and at nineteen, had me beat by about four years, which made him our youngest tenant ever. Tall and skinny, he carried that scrawny surfer look though he never went near the ocean unless it was to work on one of the many housing projects he helped build.
The day we met I sat reading at the picnic table in the front yard. Barely a shadow moving across raggedy crabgrass, Porter shuffled out of the house and plopped down on the bench across from me. Accustomed to strange people coming out of our house all times of day—Mama ran with a strange bunch—I kept my eyes on my book.
“You Katie?”
“Who wants to know?” I said, without looking up.
“Want a cigarette?”
“Oh, how original.”
He chuckled. “You want original? I bet you don’t know anyone else on the planet who’s got metal stuck in his eye. Wanna see?”
When I didn’t answer he shrugged, gathering his long blonde hair into a ponytail and tying it off with a rubber band.
“Suit yourself.”
It was high tide, the shore shrunken to half its size. We sat in silence, him smoking, me stealing surreptitious glances. I decided his eyes were the color of the ocean after all, only more layered, as if he’d soaked up all the water and salt and invented a new brew. I started to regret turning down his offer to lose myself in them. To make up for lost time I asked how he’d ended up with metal in his eyes.
“You know those new condos over on Ninth? I was sanding some posts and the shit just—” Here, he flicked his fingers as if his nail had the slightest piece of lint on it, “blew right in my eyes.”
“Ouch.”
Shrugging, he tapped ash on the edge of the picnic table. “Damn shit nearly took my eye out, but that’s okay. I’m gonna get me a windfall pretty soon. I should’ve been wearing my goggles, but they always slide down my face. Damn things are more trouble than they’re worth.”
“If you had been wearing them, they might’ve been worth a little something.”
For a moment he looked confused, then his face split into a wide smile. He pitched his cigarette in the sand, then cocked his thumb and finger, squinting me down from behind a make-believe pistol barrel. “Pow,” he said, still grinning. “You’re dead.”
Now, I set the table with our best dishes and linen napkins Mama had picked up at the thrift store. A hunt for candles proved fruitless. When the doorbell rang I snatched the money and told Porter I had it.
“Katie!” cried Honor, choking me in a hug. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mother.”
Honor was Porter’s girlfriend. I liked her enough to forgive her that transgression but Mama had never approved. She hated the fact Honor stripped at one of those gentleman clubs advertised all over town.
“How about some music?” she said now. She flipped through Mama’s albums, reading the titles out loud in an overly chipper, car salesman voice: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Earth Wind & Fire. Soon she settled on Abba. As the soft strains of “Fernando” hit she sauntered over to Mama’s work table.
“Judy’s got a great eye,” she said, picking up a mismatched pair of earrings made only a few days ago. Mama was a jewelry designer. She worked at the brightest corner of the living room, sitting hunched over an old door she’d turned into a desk. She’d wanted the spare room for her office and never did forgive Dad for renting it to Porter. For weeks they argued about it until finally Dad, normally so quiet, shouted for the whole block to hear that if she didn’t like it she could always go out and get a job.
How Mama looked at him right then! Dark eyes snapping like the coldest ocean gust. She slammed out of the house, disappearing for the night. Dad searched all over Myrtle Beach with no luck. When she finally did call it was after midnight; it was me who answered the phone. She was riding naked in the truck, she said, the stars scalding her skin. I tried to reel her in but she hung up. When she came home the next morning she breezed in as if nothing had happened, heading straight for her worktable. “I had a vision, Katie,” she said, looking at none of us as she lit a candle. “I’m going to make you a necklace out of soapstone. Won’t that be nice?”
Honor took her own earrings out and slid one of Mama’s in, a dolphin made from broken pottery washed ashore from a sunken ship. I was a kid when divers discovered the wreck, and helped Mama find bits of the broken pottery, running ahead so I could be first to lay eyes on what had been kept lost for so long. Each piece collected felt as triumphant a discovery as the ship they came from, something I never knew I wanted until Mama’s eyes lit when I placed it in her upturned palm.
Honor’s head bobbed gently to the music’s beat, eyes closed as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. She looked beautiful. I couldn’t help but laugh as she pulled Porter onto the floor. Unlike his girlfriend he moved awkwardly, a jumble of bony joints and stiff limbs. Smiling, Honor pulled him close. They kissed. Light-headed, I stumbled out onto the front porch for some fresh air.
Our house sat a block up from the ocean, far from the touristy hot spots smashed together at the southern tip of the beach. You could see the water from our front porch, the reason Mama had wanted the house in the first place. We’d moved to the coast from Greenville, where I was born. Happy in those days, Mama was serene and sweet, eternally patient. We often sat on the porch, feet side-by-side on a wooden crate, eating ice cream from the carton with a shared spoon. Once, she said we’d moved near the ocean because her spirit belonged in water.
“You mean like a mermaid?”
My question seemed to please her. Beaming, she tousled my hair, her touch as warm as the sun.
“That’s right, sweetie. We’re all creatures of the sea.”
“Then why do we live on land?”
She grew quiet, the tip of the spoon resting against her chin. “Well, if we didn’t come up for air sooner or later, we’d start to think the world was perfect,” she said finally. “And then where would we be?”
~
“Can’t I come with you?”
“Oh, baby.”
“Please? I won’t do anything but watch.”
“As if that isn’t enough,” retorted Porter.
“Well, I guess I wouldn’t want to hang around here either,” Honor said softly. She rubbed my back, smiled sweetly at Porter.
“She could stay in the back while the girls are on.”
Porter worried a hand through his hair, pushing long strands from his eyes. “Fine, fine. But only if you stay in the back, and only if Rick OKs it.”
Honor scurried to the phone. In the middle of dialing she delivered me a fat wink, the gesture of complicity, I realized, I’d expected from Mama the morning she returned after driving around God-knows-where.
I swallowed hard, and returned the smile.
~
Under the glow of passing neon, Honor’s tanned hands faded back to white, an apparition against the black steering wheel. Since Porter’s accident, she’d assumed all driving duties. He didn’t seem to mind. As we cruised the Strand, he propped his feet up on the dash, blowing smoke out the window while I peppered questions at Honor about the club until she laughed and said, “Katie, girl, you are wearing me out.”
We pulled into a parking lot where a neon sign flashed a cocktail of hot pink and lime green:
TONITE!!! SEE PENTHOUSE PET LISA LOVE!
“If only I were Lisa Love,” sighed Honor, swinging into a parking spot near the back door.
“I thought you said she quit,” said Porter.
“Exactly.”
~
Rick, the manager, was short and stout, and moved under a cloud of cigar smoke.
“So you’re Honor’s cousin,” he said, eyes roaming the short black dress she’d stuck me in. Earlier, I’d paraded into the living room, bowing as she and Porter clapped.
“Your father’s going to kill me,” Porter had joked, giving me a little hug. Then, in a skin-tingling whisper: You look terrific.
“Sorry to hear about your mother,” said Rick. Then, to Honor: “Make sure she stays in back.”
“Cute,” I heard him tell the bouncer as we walked past.
We left Porter at the bar, then Honor took me by the shoulders, steering us through a maze of tables and chairs until we get to a cramped, stuffy room where half a dozen women were in various stages of getting dressed. The room smelled like dryer sheets and hairspray.
“Hey, everybody! Meet my cousin Katie!”
A woman much older than Honor—as old as Mama, even—stepped forward. Her purple robe wasn’t tied and a gold crucifix dangled like a brick between her breasts. “Hey, this ain’t no peep show,” she said, scowling.
“Speak for yourself, Duncan! For the right price, I’d let your little boy take a peep.”
“You sick bitch,” laughed someone else.
“Hey, girl’s gotta make a buck.”
Not long ago Mama had been in her bedroom, getting ready for a night out with Dad. Impatient, he finally sent me in to fetch her, but my knocks went unanswered and I ended up cracking open the door and peering inside. Naked, she stood in front her dresser mirror, cupping her left breast. Too stunned to speak, I stood watching silently as she took the cigarette dangling from her lips and, squeezing shut her eyes, put the lit tip to her breast. I must have made a noise then because our eyes met in the mirror: hers, dull and indifferent; mine, wide with alarm.
“Want some motherly advice, Katherine?” she said, calmly bringing the cigarette back to her lips without taking her eyes off me. “Don’t let anyone piss on you and call it rain.”
~
I didn’t last long in the dressing room. I waited ten minutes after Honor hugged my neck and told me she’d be back in an hour before slipping unnoticed through the door. Unlike the dressing room, the club was dimly lit, music pounding. Men, and some women, now sat at the tables, laughing and slurping down cloudy drinks crowned with tiny paper umbrellas.
I found a spot near the back that smelled strongly of disinfectant. To my surprise, it was Honor’s turn on stage. Shirtless, she was grooving to a Madonna song, bouncing all over the place while men pressed themselves against the stage. I couldn’t find Porter anywhere and was almost starting to panic when a man suddenly materialized in a haze of smoke. The sleeves of his black suit fell well past his wrists, and a tie hung loose around his neck. He was cute, with close-cut brown hair and short sideburns.
“Hope you didn’t need to call Spanky,” he said, jerking his chin at the payphone hooked to the wall beside me. Someone had clipped the cord to the receiver and Spanky Maloney Gives Good Head was scrawled in red magic marker above the AT & T logo.
Blushing, I turned my gaze to the floor.
“Hey, come on! You look like a girl who knows how to have a good time! You ever been to Tijuana?”
“Tijuana?”
“Yeah, as in Tijuana, Mexico. You can get tequila real cheap down there, in Tijuana. Those Mexicans sure know how to party, you know?”
Tequila. I liked that.
“That’s my friend up there,” I told him. Eyebrows raised, he turned to look. Together we watched Honor strut out of the heap of red cloth that had been her skirt. She stopped in the middle of the stage, licked her fingers, then slid them down the front of her g-string.
“Cute,” shrugged Tequila, turning back to me. “But not as pretty as you.”
A man down in front had beckoned for Honor and she danced over to him without missing a beat. A stadium cheer pounded the walls to dust. I scoured the room for Porter, terrified the man would do something violent. I finally spotted him in a dark corner, all that was visible of his lanky frame the huge smile plumping his face as Honor, having hopped down to the floor, made her way to where her customer sat, hands latched behind his head and grinning like a dope.
“Don’t you know what to say when someone gives you a compliment?”
“Oh, sorry.” Caught up in watching Porter and Honor, I’d forgotten all about Tequila. “Thanks,” I said, uneasily. What was Honor going to do with that man?
I never had a chance to find out. Tequila asked if I wanted to step outside and I agreed. He took my hand and I followed him through the darkness, head bowed as we walked past the bouncer.
Outside, a long white limousine glimmered in the shadows. Gravel crunched beneath my heels. I stumbled, and Tequila stopped. He shook out a cigarette, offered me one. I’d never smoked but took it anyway, letting him light it and then making the mistake of stuffing smoke back down my throat instead of exhaling. My lungs burst into flames and I started coughing like a maniac, bent over at the waist and struggling to stay upright.
“Steady there,” said Tequila, taking me by the arm. When I finally quit coughing he swept aside my bangs and looked me in the eye. “You’re really beautiful, you know that?”
He pressed my shoulders against the cinderblocks. I didn’t resist, not even when my skin split in two and something from deep inside flew up and into the night. Sometimes this looked like a rat with wings; other times it was Mama saluting with a rum-and-Coke, Patsy Cline playing on the turntable. One chastised, the other cheered. Neither represented the part of my life I’d lost, since I didn’t yet know what, exactly, that was turning out to be.
“God, you’re beautiful,” moaned Tequila, mouth pressed to my neck.
I stared at the bright orange tip of my cigarette. My underwear fell in a heap to my ankles. Glowing ash from the cigarette dropped to my thigh, but didn’t hurt the way I thought it might, almost to the point of wanting it to. Something sticky trickled down my legs. While Tequila leaned against the wall as I pulled up my underwear, using it to wipe at the inside of my thighs. I felt his eyes on me but didn’t lift my gaze and then he was pushing off the wall, propelled forward by a sudden burst of laughter.
“A fucking virgin,” he said.
I could still hear him laughing as I ducked back inside, wishing for once to remain invisible.
~
“I said, take me to the hospital. Now, thank you.”
Honor gripped the steering wheel with both hands as Porter roared into the backseat, “But your father said—”
“I don’t give a damn what my father said.”
~
We took an elevator to the fifth floor, but not before stopping at a 7-11 on the way, where I had Porter buy Mom one of those cheap plastic roses they sell at the counter, and Honor chipped in for a coke-flavored Slurpee; I carried both in my hands as the elevator slowly made its ascent. When the finally doors opened, the three of us spilled into the hall at the same time an orderly approached, chart in hand. Porter and Honor stepped aside to let him pass but I refused to move, smirking as he looked at me impatiently. But then he stopped halfway down the hall, spinning on his heel to scrutinize us with a small frown, and my resolve instantly vanished. Through this stranger’s sterile gaze, I saw the way we looked: the child playing a poor imitation of a grown-up, a stripper who reeked with the stench of brutal desire; and a not-yet-man who was no longer the love of my life but someone destined to see things in a way the rest of us would kill for, with a few blinders blown in to melt the world pretty.