Please disregard the 1970s collars flapping like jibsails in the breeze. This is hardcore 1950s. The Flamingos have to eat, and this is their only real ticket. This song is from an era before mine, of course, but so what? So is Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. If I had to pick one piece of music to explain to a Martian what the 1950s were, that would be it. The music is barbarous compared to the big band music it killed, but it’s light years more sophisticated than the rock music that pounded it flat in its turn.
It’s nighttime. You are on the road. It is sultry warm. The music is coming over a small speaker via a dashboard AM radio, and is mixed in a bizarre fashion to punch through the skinny bandwith. There is chrome and spending money and booze and cigs and a woman in a real dress or a man in a suit, maybe. Lipstick is red or coral pink. Guitars are gold or turquoise. Amplifiers are tweed, like Bertie Wooster’s traveling suit. You burn gasoline by the pail and drive around for the sheer joy of being abroad in the world.
The neon winks at you and you pull in and the harsh light shines on the formica tables with the Sputnik patterns printed on them. You don’t go in right away. The Flamingos are still singing.
I remember her laughter drifting out from the kitchen window. It was always muffled even before the trip through the house distilled it. Grandma would never let it all out. She laughed a lot, and smiled most of the rest of the time, but never with abandon. She’d glow with it like a lamp in a house at night.
Grandpa never spoke. I never met a man more like the Sphinx. He had that smile that wasn’t. Halfway between smiling and plain looking at you. He could have been a fool, I guess; his silence could have covered up for a million inane things he might have said, after all. I doubt it.
The grass was always hay when I came. Each blade a tree in a miniature forest. I’d get out the rusty push mower and meditate over the swish swish swish of the blades. The daylilies would sway like languorous hula dancers in the sea breeze and you’d dance the rigid right-angle minuet of the landscaper beside them. After you cut the grass it looked like a bald man’s crew cut. It’s all sand anyway.
Grandma would bring you out a glass of lemonade. I remember that, though it was long ago. Her eyes were weary and her hand trembled so one time it would be a sort of liquid lemon praline, and the next a jolt of lemon battery acid. But it was ice and lemons mashed by her hand and gobs of sugar from the same chipped bowl your mother dipped her spoon in to dust her cereal, back when U-Boats cruised off the coast there. It was a taste of forever, unchanging. I’ll never forget it.
All gone now, of course, but for the totem of the house. The time has long since gone by that’s needed to take the sting of it being empty from everyone. We all owned it, so no one did, and we’d go and shear the lawn once in a while and chase out a raccoon or a squirrel that managed to find a way in from time to time. We’d swim in the tepid ocean and drink at the little shack on the access road with the blue-hairs and the fishermen. Maybe an afternoon on the butt sprung couch or a night sleeping on one of the musty mattresses in the cobwebby bedrooms. Then back to the world over the bridges.
“A Three-Quarter Cape,” my Grandmother would gently correct you, if you called it a Cape.
Maybe I should open this house again. I’m three-quarters Cape already, too.
This was old crap to us. We rejected it out of hand. We wouldn’t drink gas –whisky — because that’s what the old farts drank. We drank gin and beer. We didn’t want to hear any unelectrified instruments. No after shave. No Brylcream. A suit was for being buried in, and you were never going to die anyway, and the old farts entertainment couldn’t die fast enough. A variety show was a variety of ways to annoy you. You only liked Don Rickles, and solely because he got up on the same stage and called his co-performers names, just like you wanted to.
How hard could it be, you thought, to smoke a cigarette and drink a Cutty and Ginger and wear a ruffled shirt tux and have a camera six inches from your face and sing a little song? It wasn’t our mistake, exactly; Dean led us on. I blame him. If he’d have acted like a rock band, grimacing like he’s having a kidney out while simply making a barre chord and yelling, we’d have known it was hard to make it seem easy.
[Editor’s Note: If the mawkish sentiment wasn’t bad enough, it’s a rerun. Happy Easter]
{Author’s Note: Hey, it takes courage to be square these days. And they re-run Easter every year, too. What, am I supposed to bring something new to the table? Alright, next year I’ll put a giant shark or a ninja or a hitman with heart of gold in the backstory. There is no editor. Happy Easter.}
Pater noster, qui es in coelis: sanctificetur nomen tuum: adveniat regnum tuum: fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo, et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.
I’ve got to steal one. God forgive me. I’ve got to steal a flower from you. There are so many, God, and mother only needs one. I’ll burn forever but mother needs her Easter lily.
“Child, what are you doing?”
“I need the lily for Easter, Sister. I have no money and there are so many.”
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.
“It is a sin to steal, child.”
” I know it is, Sister, but I can’t help it.”
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.
“You can always help it child. Where is your mother and your father?”
“Father is nowhere, Mother says, Sister, and I don’t know where nowhere is. Mother is sick and I think she needs an Easter lily or she’ll die.”
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona nobis pacem.
“Where is your mother, child?”
“She’s in the bed with the diphtheria, Sister.”
“Is she alone?”
“Yes, as I am here, Sister.”
“When did you eat last, child?”
Panem coelestem accipiam, et nomen Domini invocabo.
“It’s another sin I know, Sister, but I ate the heel of the bread this morning while Mother was moaning. She wouldn’t eat it, and I needed it.”
“I see. And before that?”
“I don’t know. I was sick first, and Mother might know but she can’t tell you. She is hot and talks of places I don’t know and people that are dead, Sister.”
“And she sent you for the flower?”
“It is my own sin, Sister. She said “The lilies, the lilies, the Easter lilies… ” over and over until I promised I’d fetch her one. She would not have me steal, but she cannot come. Will I burn forever, Sister?”
“You will have your flower, child, and the kingdom of heaven besides, for to tend to the afflicted is the hallmark of the saint.”
“And saints can steal flowers, and God don’t mind?”
Indulgentiam, et absolutionem, et remissionem peccatorum nostrorum, tributat nobis omnipotens et misericors Dominus.
“No, God does not mind. Now take me to your mother, and we will give her the lily together.
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