A Gulf Gothic

A thin stream of smoke rose from the cigarette abandoned in the ashtray perched on the arm of the lawn chair, rising just above his head before billowing out in a barely perceptible breeze. In the afternoon heat, sun still high, his hands were concerned with the tall yellow glass he held. Both clasped it steady in his lap, his cold gaze never wandering from me. You know when someone is looking at you rather than just in your general direction. Eyes will meet iris-to-iris, and some sort of energy passes between them. His made me uncomfortable. Even as he raised the tumbler to his lips, ice clinking against the sides, the hard blue eyes stayed fixed on my face, making me wince inside when I dared look at them. Smoke dissipates with random patterns in still air, wavering once one way, then another, without any apparent reason when one can't feel a breeze that might explain. I wondered if he would ever pick up the ever-shrinking butt to take a puff, maybe squint as the smoke reached his eyes. But he didn't.

They had been expecting us to call that afternoon - I was standing aside her when she phoned. I wondered if Daddy always sat there like that in his aluminum chair, guarding the lawn, or if it was a stunt, hastily arranged to impress a stranger before we arrived. No one ever introduced the woman standing behind him, though I assumed she was Momma. There was no empty chair on the lawn, and I wondered if she always stood just behind him, waiting demands for a fresh drink or a light of a smoke. He sat midway between the drive and the light green ranch house planted behind, two motionless pink flamingos flanking its doorway. How odd the picture: the wiry man, graying hair receding at the sides, slicked back, khakis still creased but eased up as he sat, revealing white socks and whiter canvas shoes. He sat at the middle of a perfect lawn, woman standing behind, as out of place as the house. I followed their daughter's cue as she stopped at the sharp edge defining grass and asphalt, and stood there, too.

Wringing hands, face tense as if she expected an explosion imminently, Momma made a weak offer to bring us drinks. I assumed it was southern hospitality, a social expectation learned from generations, that forced words not meant. Her expression clearly spoke what she wanted to say: "Please go away!"; so I, polite too, refused. Inside my mind, I amused myself by imagining her face had I said instead, "Sure, and how about a light?" and struggled to stifle a smile at the thought. Anyway, accepting would have obliged me to stay longer...and how obscenely awkward it would have been to stand there in the drive, just off the grass, holding a glass of iced tea, speaking across the distance like people diseased and in quarantine. Afternoon heat began to burn my feet through my shoes.

Ada Jo started in with news of a surprise find of a ten cent-off coupon for Blue Bonnet she found in the cart at Publix, the traffic on I-75 being unexpectedly high Wednesday last week, "...must have been an accident...that girl a' mine, Penny, just loves Cheerios, Momma. Girl eats them all day!" Momma nodded, squeezing the fingers of her right hand white as death, and nodded vigorously at each of Ada Jo's words like a bobble-head doll. As long as conversation remained as pedestrian, she would be happy. Daddy said nothing, just stared at me. It came to mind it might break our ice if I told him she was still pure - I never touched her. But it would've been sort of a lie. Then, how ridiculous it all seemed! She was, after all, a mother herself, no virgin princess. Last night, we kissed; I had smoothed her hair and caressed her breasts - that was all. Then, maybe Daddy already suspected the stranger in his driveway was only seventeen.

"Bobby's from Pennsylvania, Daddy." My mind had been drifting in the smoke of her old man's forgotten cigarette as she spouted idle trivia of her week, all of which was meaningless to me, having alit here only last night. I came to earth again at hearing my name. "Pennsylvania" rolled slowly, seductively, from her southern lips like an exotic foreign land, and I felt special for a moment. Daddy was unimpressed, and said nothing, though I detected a slight movement of his gaze towards his child.

"He's going back home this week ... gonna call when he's ready for us. Penny and me are going up north," she called across the green expanse. It sounded almost like a taunt, but it couldn't be true. We had met just the night before. She, drunker than I, had passed out. I fell asleep of fatigue, and still remembered every detail of the dark. There had never been any talk of us being together beyond the immediacy of a moment, I was sure; and my briefs never came off. Still, I felt panic, fantasizing a run to the passenger side of the car; Andres, still sitting at the wheel, could floor it in reverse. The Crown Vic would spin into the road, and we'd escape like bank robbers. Andres' head was hung low, still groggy from last night, succumbed to the heat. Ada Jo reached out for my hand and squeezed it tight. My own hand felt limp and helpless.

I had dreamed these would be days in paradise, a gift to myself for graduating high school. How better to start that summer than with a visit to an old friend on the Gulf, enjoying beach, fishing, catching up on years passed by. The first night, just off the flight, I took a cab ride, perhaps longer than necessary, to the address he read off to me over the phone. Details had been sparse, but he couldn't meet me at the airport to drive me himself. The cabby found the place, a palatial high rise condo overlooking the glowing Gulf of Mexico, Sannibel Island off in the distance. The summer retreat of a Pennsylvania steel company executive, I was there by details I didn't really care to know. My old buddy, Andres, was a friend of the girl who seemed to live there but had been too drunk to explain how or why. In a brief moment alone, he explained that the night before I arrived, she had climbed to the patio rail, set to sail to the beach below when he caught her ankle from his wheelchair and hauled her back in; still the gifted fisherman. He had been reticent to leave her for the trip to the airport when I showed up - hence my cab ride.

We had drunk from the bar and smoke cigarettes, recalled old times. Ada Jo sat quietly, uncomfortably close on the couch, her bare thigh brushing against mine intermittently. I inched over, downing drinks too quickly, excuses to get up for refills, seating each time just a little bit farther away on the couch. She found me again each time, until I was finally pressed against the armrest, her thigh finally resting firmly against my skin, tingling with jolts like electricity. I felt embarrassed and trapped, hoping Andres hadn't noticed the dance. He yawned, avowed how tired he was and begged to turn in, rolling his chair down a darkened hall, disappearing.

Finally, fearfully, alone, just two; I felt like cursing my friend for abandoning me. Ada Jo was pretty, but thin lipped and so white, not like girls I knew at home. I feigned a yawn, too, and rose. The patio door was wide open, warm humid air and sounds of waves wafting in. I strode quickly to the deck to escape what I feared might come next, pretending interest in the star-littered sky. Then so did Ada Jo, who suddenly pressed her lips into mine. My belt somehow unbuckled, and bermudas slid to my ankles. So skillfully brought down to the ground, I don't remember putting up any resistance, There we were, two bodies entwined on the patio deck. Her black hair was as soft as elder down, and my fingers couldn't help but run through it. Refusal became a thought far away, like a girl still waiting back home. Reservation submitted to breathlessly exhaled, exciting words describing what should happen next, then silence.

Liquor and pills had finally caught up to her. In fact, I worried she might be dead, the suddenness from passion to passivity, details I knew of the night before. I held her wrist for a pulse while hovering an ear over her mouth to hear for breath. She was alive, but too heavy to move without help. There we both slept the night, wrapped in beach towels I found on a chair, pillow brought out from the sofa. Comforted by the steady pulse of her wrist in my hand, breaths regular, cool moisture between our cheeks, I had fallen asleep.

"You got a job, Boy? Gonna need a job to keep those two." It was the first time I had heard Daddy's voice, words slow the way honey drips from the tip of a spoon, but deliberate and as incisive as the gaze of his eyes. I nodded, then remembered a proper reply from an old movie I'd seen, and hastily added "Yes, sir," playing along with Ada Jo, hoping I might leave his stare sooner that way.

"Call Momma when you and the bastard get there, then," he directed his daughter, never taking his gaze from me. Ada Jo tugged my hand as she turned to the car, tears in her eyes. The ride back to the beach was quiet. Ada ran a hand across my cheek as she got out of the car, suddenly turning once again as if she had forgotten something - a peck to my forehead, plans for dinner that night - something else special.

Takeoff was always my favorite part of a flight, the speed and sudden lift like a roller coaster ride. One moment on the ground then, in an instant, shot above the wisps of clouds. They reminded me of cigarette smoke, the way they drifted in patterns that seemed random when we can't feel the wind. Spinning in mist below, Ada Jo was still trapped in a tower. It was as if she had dreamed of a prince to come from the forest to save her; I showed up instead. Though accidental, unwilling, I still felt failure, unable to untie the binds. Royal cloth never suited simple frames like mine. I pondered what winds once had shaped her; worried she'd again try wings to fly over the gulf of lawn. Fishermen and princes are undependable, not always there when needed, nor up to the jobs that are required of them. Then, I would soon be back home where the world would become normal again. A boy out of high school, I'd share summer tomatoes sprinkled with salt and smiles with Dad, and hold hands at the movies with a girl that could smile, steal her kiss in the dark. All things that would help me forget the one I left behind to stare across the Gulf on her own.

Copyright 2010, Robert Zanfad