Candles Burning

Four

THE Hotel Pontchartrain loomed twelve stories over St. Charles Avenue and we were staying on the very top floor, in Penthouse B. Penthouse sounded like some kind of jail to me, but Daddy said that meant it was the best. I was still scared when the hotel manager took us up in the elevator. I believe that I was born hating elevators. The minute I enter one, I just want to sit down on the floor and hug my knees and squinch my eyes tight, so I won’t see the doors close. It’s bad enough to have to listen to the machinery work and see in my head the push-pull-yank-thump-clank of the belts and chains and gears that could go awry anytime with nary a doorknob or sesame in sight.

Penthouse B turned out to be a patch of big rooms with high ceilings and a baby grand piano with a key in it that Mama snatched away when I reached for it. There was a color television console and a bar with cut-glass bottles, heavily carved dark furniture, turkey rugs, and damask draperies over swagged and bellied sheers on the windows. Except for the baby grand, our home in Montgomery was much the same, only bigger, and Mamadee’s in Tallassee was even more so.

The manager opened some draperies and shutters to show us French doors. We went out on the balcony and looked down. St. Charles Avenue was a black ditch of rain, so far down, it made me a little dizzy. I backed off the balcony and into the parlor of the Penthouse. The piano was still locked. A piano is an echo chamber, a sounding board, and I was not ever gone make this one tell me its secrets. Mama was gone keep that key for the whole time we were at Hotel Pontchartrain. I could see my face like a sick melting ghost in the mirror of its glossy black finish. I looked like I was in a grown-up coffin, way too big for me.

Mama ordered supper for Ford and me. I helped her unpack and hang her clothes and watched her change to go to dinner with Daddy. She used the dressing room while Daddy did his changing in the bedroom. Mama’s dress was a wasp-waisted horizontal-striped strapless sheath, with a filmy over-skirt in the back like a short train. She put up her hair like Grace Kelly and made herself up like a movie star, with emphatically arched brows and plenty of mascara and dark lipstick. When Daddy whistled at her and shook his fingers to put out the fire, she pretended to ignore him, but her eyes shone.

After they left, Ford turned on the TV to watch Sergeant Preston arrest criminals in the name of the Crown. In my bedroom, I plugged in my Elvis Autograph Phonograph. As I was deciding, shuffling through “Jailhouse Rock,” “Teddy Bear,” “The Twelfth of Never,” “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” “The Banana Boat Song,” “Blueberry Hill,” and “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window,” I heard a chink and gurgle, glass on glass, and then a gulp: Ford, getting himself a drink from the cut-glass bottles. He did it at home whenever Mama and Daddy went out but was careful to take only a little so as not to get caught. Ford was born even more devious than most Carrolls.

I sat on the floor, listening to my records and playing with my paper dolls. It was not easy to get a story going on account of the 45s hardly went three minutes or so, and then I had to start them again or change them. Concentrating was hard work. At seven though, I had more than an inkling of self-discipline. I was grateful for Betsy McCall. She was what Ida Mae Oakes called a focus.

The January Betsy McCall had been a disappointment. Betsy McCall Made A Calendar, which for once did not require any special wardrobe. But Mamadee had presented the February issue in time for me to take it with me on our trip. I was allowed a pair of those crinky little scissors that are made for small children. They were too small for my fingers and the edge on their blades was about fit to cut Jell-O. So one day when Mama’s seamstress, Rosetta, was in the house, I wheedled a small pair of real shears out of her from her workbasket. With those, I cut out Betsy McCall Has A Valentine Picnic and then sent Betsy McCall To New Orleans On The Banana Boat For Her Picnic On Blueberry Hill.

In the silence after Elvis finished offering to make Betsy McCall his Teddy Bear, the Zorro theme song came on the television. I was moved by the music to try out the small shears as a sword. They proved a poor substitute, as the very first slash of my Z took off Betsy McCall’s head. I dropped Betsy McCall’s bits into the box and the shears after them. Since Betsy McCall Came To Calliope Carroll Dakin’s House every month, I viewed her as disposable and often cut her up and rearranged her parts. With more cutouts from the advertisements in McCall’s, a sheet of paper and some paste, I could turn her into a clown or a circus freak, stuff her into a dryer so it looked like her bits were churning around behind the porthole door, or mix her up with peas and corn and mashed potatoes in a TV dinner. My collages horrified Mamadee, who said that they were sure evidence of degeneracy and mental disturbance, and proof that not only was I more Dakin than Carroll, but that Mama had allowed the influence of Ida Mae Oakes over me for far too long. Mamadee’s pronouncements just naturally inspired me to greater efforts.

The television went abruptly silent. The elevator was coming up.

By the time it wheezed to a stop, I was in bed. Daddy came in and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

He whispered, “Sunshine, your lamp here is still warm and I can see your pajamas in your suitcase over there. After I close the door, you hop out and get into them, okay? Say your bedtime prayer too.”

I opened one eye and winked at him. He kissed my head and went out.

Daddy might have been a Dakin, he might walk a little stiffly and have a weak left arm, but his eyes and ears and brains worked just fine.

I was seven years old: All I knew was the way things were. I could only reckon that was the way they were supposed to be. I expected them to stay that way. I had enough to do, coping with being Calliope Carroll Dakin.

Sometimes I pretended that I was Ford and when I glanced in a mirror with my Bored Ford face on, I thought I looked more than a little bit like him, no matter how much Mama and Mamadee said I didn’t have a bit of Carroll visible in me, that I was hopeless pure-D backside-of-the-moon Dakin.

They were right.

I looked just like my bony, graceless, goofy boy Dakin cousins, except for the twin ponytails that were meant to hide my ears. Ford said that they looked like somebody left the car doors open. I could waggle my ears as if they were the stumps of an extra set of limbs that had failed to grow. Despite the pleasure this parlor trick gave to others, I was forbidden to do it, particularly in Mamadee’s presence. To Mamadee, my ears were the definitive proof of Dakin degeneracy.

Without intending it, I left breakage like a trail of crumbs behind me. If I was very still, I could minimize the possible damage, and the unwelcome attention that I might draw. I worked at it diligently. Ida Mae Oakes used to tease me, saying, Diligent is your middle name, Calliope Dakin, and Calliope Diligent Dakin, I swear.

Because I had a difficult birth and was a troublesome infant—I screamed all the livelong day and night—and Mama had to recuperate a long time, Daddy hired Ida Mae Oakes to be my nursemaid. She stood in high repute in Montgomery for how well she took care of troublesome babies. My secret pride was that Ida Mae stayed with me longer than any other child in her career, at least until me.

Daddy paid Ida Mae’s wages, and Mama ordered her around, but Ida Mae made it clear that I was her job. Not Ford, and not housemaid’s work, kitchen work, or running errands for Mama. For a long time, Mama was too relieved not to have to take care of me herself to want to bend Ida Mae to her will. Whenever Mamadee got started on how insolent Ida Mae Oakes was, not to bring her sweet tea when she wanted it, or polish Ford’s shoes, because Ida Mae was too busy taking care of me, and how Mama didn’t understand how to be firm with those people, Mama would point out that it was Ida Mae Oakes who had stopped me crying all the time.

Mamadee and Mama didn’t care how Ida Mae did it, though Mamadee suspected Ida Mae of having spiked the diluted canned milk formula with moonshine. They agreed that if she hadn’t taken me out of the house and quieted me enough to live with normal people, they would both have been driven to the mental hospital and would probably still be there. Of course, if they were ever driven to the mental hospital, they would not let themselves go and sit around in bathrobes with their hair undone, like some people did.

Mama fired Ida Mae Oakes between my fifth and sixth birthdays, and there I was with my seventh near upon me, and I missed Ida Mae some time or other about every day. Mama didn’t know that I wrote letters to Ida Mae Oakes or that Daddy mailed them for me. The letters that came back for me, Daddy let me read when we were driving around, and then he would take them and hide them in his desk at the Montgomery dealership. It was highly deceitful, of course, but Daddy was some angry with Mama for firing Ida Mae, and I was too. Daddy said that we had to keep the peace in the house, Mama had her reasons and I would understand when I was older. Looking each other right in the eye, we both knew that he was saying that lying was gone save him some trouble with Mama. He was shamefaced and diminished, and I hated Mama for driving him to lies because it cost him so much more than it ever did her. I would lie the crows out of the sky for Daddy.

While I missed Ida Mae Oakes, I don’t expect that she missed me. Ida Mae Oakes was a professional. My letters to her were more like report cards, to let her know that I hadn’t forgotten all she taught me. Her return letters were prompt and polite but no more personal than a note brought home from the teacher. Nobody reading them could accuse her of encouraging me to defy Mama.

The way Ida Mae stopped me crying all the time was simple. She sang to me.