Bonita Faye Read online

  “Shut-up. You’re not funny. I hate you, too. Are we there yet? I knew we shoulda flown.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Bonita Faye!” Patsy started crying the minute she opened the door and she couldn’t do anything about the fluid that ran from her eyes and nose ‘cause both arms were filled with babies, one braced against her hip and the other over her shoulder.

  I took the smallest one. “Good Lord, Patsy, is this another one?”

  “Yes, that’s the new baby. He was born while you were in San Diego, but I didn’t think there was time for Cherry to write you a note. And I didn’t tell you I was expectin’ ‘cause Cherry don’t know how to spell pregnant.” Cherry was Patsy’s oldest, the one who read my postcards to her mother, and the one who had sent me scrawled notes in France.

  “What’s this one’s name? Terry?” Besides Cherry, Patsy had Harry, Jerry, Jr., Mary, Sary and Carrie.

  Patsy wiped her eyes and nose on the hem of her skirt. “It’s Omega.”

  “Omega?”

  “Yep, the last one. That’s what I told Jerry and I don’t want him to forget it.”

  We started laughing as only Patsy and I laugh. I hadn’t forgotten the feeling. I just had kept it recessed somewhere when it hadn’t been available to me. We finally had to set both babies and ourselves down on the floor to keep from dropping them.

  I had on blue jeans and a t-shirt so I wound up wiping my eyes on the other side of Patsy’s hem.

  “God knows, I’ve missed you, Bonita Faye. I didn’t think you were ever coming home again. After the first year, I began to think I’d just imagined you, and that Cherry and me were writing letters and getting postcards from somebody who didn’t really exist.” She reached out and pinched my cheek like she was proving I was real. She asked anxiously, “You ain’t changed have you? You are still Bonita Faye, even if it is ‘Adams’ instead of ‘Burnett?’ ”

  “I’m the same all right.”

  “You look different.”

  “You haven’t seen my hair this way before. And I’ve put on a little weight. Look, I’ve got real bosoms now.” I cupped my hands over the t-shirt. We started laughing again.

  “And Harmon? How is he, really?”

  “Better. But, oh, Patsy, I know he’s in such pain ‘specially when he does his physical therapy. He went through a down spell in Hawaii, but his spirits have been the same ol’ Harmon ever since. He’s home now, in bed, waiting for me. I just came by to say “howdy” and to thank you for freshening up the house for us and for the food. I gotta get on back. Harmon might need something and he’s gettin’ so independent that he might stumble around and hurt himself. He’s still not too steady on those crutches.”

  “And you’re married to him. I declare. But, Bonita Faye, I wondered, but didn’t get Cherry to write. Didn’t want Harmon to read it…what about Claude? From your postcards, I figured you to be falling in love with him.”

  Everybody I knew wanted to know about Claude.

  I hadn’t heard a word from him in the four months since I’d left France.

  Simone had written. And Denis. And Robert had sent books to Hawaii. He was determined to keep on with my education even if he had to do it long distance.

  But only silence from Claude.

  Every day Harmon and I walked the back country roads I loved so much. He switched from crutches to two and then one cane. He was really pushing himself. I liked amblin’ so the slow pace didn’t bother me none and we took advantage of those long walks to get to know each other again. He was glad I was reading different books and we’d talk about them, and gradual like I quit using the country English I’d started speaking again and began talking like Robert had taught me. If I had started out sounding different to Harmon, it would have scared him. He didn’t want anything between us or about me to be different from what he had known before.

  I asked silent forgiveness to Robert every time I said “ain’t,” but if one little illiterate word or a dropped “ing” now and then helped keep open the bridge between me and Harmon, it was worth it to backslide. The day Harmon corrected me was the day I knew he’d accepted a new Bonita Faye and I didn’t have to play that role any more.

  “Don’t say ‘ain’t,’ Bonita Faye. You’re doing so well with your speech, you oughta try to stop saying words that aren’t right.”

  “All right, Harmon.”

  Becoming lovers again took longer.

  We had talked it over and agreed that to relieve Harmon of any unnecessary stress, either mental or physical, that the initiative had to come from him. When he was ready…when he felt like it, I promised I’d be waiting. That didn’t mean that as he improved that there weren’t a lot of kissing and touching and holding. It was almost like being courted.

  One afternoon after our walk, Harmon lay on our bed taking a nap. I tiptoed into the darkened room and placed some folded laundry on the bureau. As I was creeping out of the room, I glanced toward the bed. Harmon was watching me through heavy-lidded eyes that weren’t full of sleep. I recognized that look.

  I walked toward the bed. “Are you sure, Harmon?”

  “Will you help me, Bonita Faye?”

  “Sure. Robert Sinclair says ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ Let’s see what we can invent.”

  Harmon’s right hip had been shattered by the last burst of fire from the machine gun nest he’d charged. It was a mass of scars and the puckered tissue stood up in ridges against his thigh. The insides were held together with screws, nuts and bolts. “And maybe a little bailing wire,” he always joked.

  He still couldn’t bear much weight on it for long periods of time. So I got on top.

  Afterwards, we cuddled together. “Maybe we didn’t invent that way of having sex, but I bet I know where I could sell a lot of picture postcards of the way you looked while we were doing it.”

  “You hush, now.” I snuggled closer and he absently stroked my arm.

  “Where’d you get this scar? I don’t remember it before.” It was the thin line that Max had made on my upper arm.

  “I had a ‘domestic accident’ with a kitchen knife,” I answered as truthfully as I could. “And you’re a fine one to be talking about my scars. You look as if you have the whole Battle of the Bulge mapped out on your hip. Aren’t we a fine pair?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “We’re really married now, Harmon, aren’t we?”

  “You goose, we’ve been married for five months.”

  “I know, but today, we’re really married.”

  Leave it to Claude to know exactly the day Harmon and I consummated our marriage. I looked it up on the calendar in the kitchen when I got Simone’s letter. Claude had married in Switzerland the same day Harmon and I first made love as husband and wife.

  Her father was a banker in Geneva, one of the ones Claude had overheard calling him “a wonder boy.” I remember Claude coming home to Boulogne and telling us about that after his first meeting with one of the financial cartels there. He’d never mentioned a daughter. She had a long, high-sounding name, but Simone wrote that everyone called her Didi. Claude always was the only one who could ever surprise me.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Patsy’s real Paris nightgown was red satin and had more black lace than my original one had. She strutted around her bedroom, throwing us into fits of laughter as she assumed what she thought was a model’s pose.

  “Bonita Faye, when Jerry sees this…”

  “Ooh la la, Patsy. That’s what he’ll say.”

  “Well, he’d better be careful or I’ll ‘ooh’ his ‘la la’. ”

  When we’d stopped laughing again and Patsy was changing back into her housedress she told me, “Remember that little girl? That Elly Ross? From up toward Mountainburg? The one whose papa…”

  “Yes, yes. I know who you mean. What about her?”

 
“My cousin Mary in Fayetteville sees her all the time. I told her to kinda take notes about what’s going on and to let us know how the kid’s getting along. Is that okay?”

  We stared at each other over the discarded gown and stack of presents on the bed between us. I was slow to answer. “Yes, I think that will be just fine, Patsy. Do you think Mary would like one of those silk scarves from Paris? Just as a little ‘happy’? ”

  “I think one of the red ones.”

  “Yes, a red one.”

  Settling back into Poteau, Oklahoma, was a definite culture shock. It might of been extra maturity on my part, but I saw the people different. Each one took on a depth of character I hadn’t noticed before. When I recognized them, that is. I was only gone less than two years, but when I ran into someone at the market or the gas station, they’d just go on and on about how they had missed me and how good I was looking and how was Harmon?

  I’d answer and say all the right words, but most of the time I didn’t have any idea in the world who it was I was talking to until about an hour later. Then it would hit me like a ton of bricks. “Well, I’ll be. That was Mrs. Pearleman…or…Old Lady Shaw”…and so on.

  It didn’t matter. No one in all of Oklahoma, except Patsy, of course, wanted to know about my time in France. No one wanted to look at my pictures, hear me speak French or even ask how the weather was in France. Finally I got where when they’d say, “Now where was it you’ve been at, Bonita Faye? New York City?” I’d answer back, “Why, I’ve just been away at school.”

  You’re not going to believe that I didn’t recognize Miss Dorothy, but it wasn’t all my own fault. She’d started bleaching her hair yellow. ‘Cept it had a greenish cast to it.

  “Bonita Faye Burnett. Oh, I am sorry. It’s Adams now, isn’t it?”

  Most of the time when I didn’t know somebody who knew me I’d just smile and fake it. Most people want to talk and tell you about themselves anyway and don’t care about anything ‘cept if you’re listening. So I’d just nod whenever it seemed appropriate and they’d be satisfied. But I just stared at this woman. I had never seen her before in my life.

  “It’s me. Dorothy. Over to the post office?”

  “Oh, yes. You look different somehow.”

  “Just keeping up with the times, honey. I just wanted to tell you that I read all the postcards you sent everybody. Hope you don’t mind, but it gets so boring around here and you were having such an exciting time. Poteau must seem dull to you now. How’s your friend Claude? Did he get that job in Switzerland that you wrote Patsy about? You know, I always thought something was going on b’tween you two. Just goes to show you how wrong a body can be. You married to Harmon now and all.”

  Later, the more I thought about Miss Dorothy, the madder I got. The nerve of that bitch. Her and her green hair and day-glow yellow dress. I hadn’t cared when she’d slept with my first husband, but reading my United States of America mail was another matter. Why, that was against the law. That’s when I got the idea to do what was probably the only truly mean thing I’ve ever done in my life.

  The next time Harmon and me went to Fort Smith, I picked up a postcard of Judge Parker’s Courthouse and sent it to Miss Dorothy. I wrote it with my left hand while I was in the bathroom of the Courthouse and mailed it from Fort Smith before we left.

  Dear Dorothy, I just had to write and tell you how pretty you look in that new yellow dress of yours. You should always wear that color. It goes so good with your pretty hair. We can never meet, but I will always be Your Secret Admirer.

  For the rest of her life, you could see Miss Dorothy coming a mile away. She never wore anything but that god-awful shade of yellow and she always kept a yellow-green bleach on her hair.

  And I took to putting my postcards in sealed envelopes.

  Six months after I left Paris, three months after Harmon and I came home to Poteau, I had a letter from Claude. It was written on cream-colored, heavy paper with a black engraved guillotine splashed with Vermeillon red up in the left-hand corner. It was just like the cups, but the words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité were missing and the name of Claude’s company had been added.

  Dear Bonita Faye,

  The souvenir cup line continues to thrive. Since you were the one who had the original idea of designing, packaging and marketing our first successful product, it is my pleasure to inform you that Vermeillon, Ltd., has been putting aside 50% of the profits of the venture for you. It has now reached a considerable sum. Please notify my solicitors as to where you would like the money deposited.

  Sincerely,

  Claude Vermeillon

  I sent him back a postcard of the gallows in Fort Smith that said, “50% is too much. Will not accept.”

  Three weeks later I got another letter with just the number “40%” on it.

  I wrote back on a postcard of Fall in the Ozarks. “10%.”

  The return offer was “30%.”

  My answer on a postcard of the Tahlequah Trail of Tears was “15%.”

  The return reply of “20%” was written on a postcard of the Eiffel Tower.

  “Done. Send it to First American in Poteau, Oklahoma.” I sent it on a postcard of an Arkansas Razorback Hog.

  It wasn’t much in the way of communications, but as my friend, Robert Sinclair, had taught me, communications between two people start simple and build. Claude and I had done it before when we didn’t even speak the same language. I didn’t see why we couldn’t do it again. The only difference was that this time we were speaking in numbers instead of French. It was all the same to me; just another foreign language.

  I was right in that I didn’t think Harmon would use the money from France. He said, “We don’t need anything from Claude.”

  “The money’s not Claude’s, it’s mine. I earned it.”

  And I had, too. In the months following Claude’s graduation party, I had taken to the roads with that damned coffee cup. It was bigger than the French vendors were used to selling, so I upped the price on it. They kept saying that bigger wasn’t necessarily better, but the ones I did sell kept calling me back for more. Seems the American tourists preferred it over the smaller ones.

  I had to be the salesman ‘cause Claude was taking off like a ball of fire in the financial world and was gone all the time, so it was Denis Denfert who would drive me to a broker’s office where Claude had set up a meeting. The “howdys” went okay, but when we got down to business, inevitably I’d have to say, “Doucement, s’il vous plaît,” but they’d start speaking louder instead of slower. So I’d go out to the taxi and drag Denis in, and he would interpret for us. We’d wind up smiling and shaking hands with one and go on to the next name on Claude’s list. Denis and I became quite a sales team.

  Friday nights when Claude came back to Boulogne from wherever he had been during the week, usually Switzerland, I’d try to show him the orders and the business of the week. All he wanted to do was hold me close and love me, so I just learned to wait until Saturday morning. I knew there was a lot of money coming in, but I also knew that it took a lot of money to finance Claude’s debut into the business world. It never occurred to me then that any of the cup money was mine.

  Claude couldn’t afford to give me any of it when I was in France, but he musta kept a record of the profits and now that he was doing so well, he wanted to do the right thing. Well, I’d earned it, so I’d take it and say, “Thank you very much.” Only when they called me to the bank to sign a receipt and to have some contracts Claude had sent over notarized, I was shocked at the large amount my 20% represented. For one brief greedy second, I thought, Jesus Christ, I could have had 30% more.

  John Falkenberry was the banker and he fawned all over me. At first I thought it was ‘cause it was such a lot of money, but actually it was because he was a dirty old man. I didn’t give him the time of day, and, in fact, thought about moving my mone
y to Fort Smith, but then I thought, what the hell, I’d forget those rumors of why he supposedly had to leave his last job. Let bygones be bygones. And I let him have the money…for one month. Then I couldn’t stand it, I switched, not only the money from France, but also our main account to the City National Bank in Fort Smith. I felt a lot more secure after that. In case you think I’m paranoid about money, you might remember that I first knew John Falkenberry by another name. Billy Roy and I used to call him “Judge.”

  Harmon eventually let me spend some of the money on our visit to Washington, D.C., when he finally felt like making the trip to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. He wanted to stand on his own two feet when he shook hands with the President of the United States of America.

  When we got back to Poteau and were taking one of our daily walks and discussing our future plans, was when Harmon told me he didn’t ever want to kill anybody no more. With one successful and one unsuccessful death notched in my belt, I knew how he felt. I didn’t want to plan any more killings in my lifetime either.

  “What would you think if I went back to college?” he asked.

  “Why, I think that’d be just fine, Harmon. What are you aiming to be?”

  “Anything. As long as I don’t have to wear a gun to work.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Stillwater, Oklahoma, is more of a foreign country than France ever thought about being. I look back on our time there as being strictly in limbo. We went to classes. We ate. We studied. We made love and we slept in our stupid little apartment where I had one dumb geranium that never bloomed ‘cause I watered it too much. I didn’t realize Harmon hated it there as much as I did until he came home one day and said, “The LeFlore County Commissioners want me to run for sheriff. What do you think?”