They bragged about all the island had to offer, and with so much gusto it made the makeup crease around their mostly blue eyes. Like they were selling him an all-inclusive resort package. It’s a real family place. As if, he thought, they’d forgotten there was a factory making war machines only a mile away. They asked questions—had he taken the kids to Singing Beach; down to the docks to see the sailboats; to the Whaling Museum, where you could carve your own scrimshaw keepsake out of a real oyster shell? He nodded and smiled, chitchatted until his head swam. He wasn’t going to make another mistake, like the night of the fair with the orchid lady, putting himself out there by showing off.
The East Avalon boys, most past middle age, had marched straight out of a country-club pamphlet in their jewel-tone golf blazers and butterfly-collar shirts, many in outrageous prints—palm trees, golf tees. He’d seen an old guy in a poodle-print shirt walking around the appetizer party. He was relieved the men all but ignored him. He visited the periphery of a few man-heavy clusters, listened as the men took turns sharing theories on the mysterious graffiti bandit. A chap in a cherry-red golf blazer (it matched his vein-streaked nose) was convinced it was old Captain Armstrong, who, the man explained, had lost his marbles back before Nam. No, no, no, interrupted a skinny dude in plaid trousers with a Parkinsonian quiver. He had heard from so-and-so, brother-in-law to the East Avalon sheriff, that it was the west side kids. Up to no good again. The circle of men bowed their heads. As if, Jules thought, in prayer. He traveled the fringes of one group of brightly clad men (he’d never seen men wear such colors—pink, lavender, coral—not even on Easter Sunday at Calvary Baptist back home) and listened to the conspiracy theories. According to the men of the island, a variety of sources could be responsible for the graffiti—from the CIA to the goddamn Russians to the goddamn hippies to Grudder’s competition, So-and-So Aircraft Company. One old guy blamed William Jefferson Clinton.
The women, in contrast to the men’s vibrant attire, were ethereal in soft pastels and flowing whites that reminded him of his mother’s beloved “angels”—the framed photos of turn-of-the-century society women that had hung on the kitchen walls of his childhood home. White women dressed in theatrical garb and frozen in melodramatic poses for the tableaux vivants they put on in their homes as parlor games. The photos had been handed down from his grandmother Laverne, who’d been a washerwoman for a Gilded Age debutante. And proud of it, his mother had reminded him.
He’d spent many nights hunched over his school textbooks trying to ignore those white women. Their long wavy hair, Cupid’s-bow lips, and gossamer gowns as they played Delilah, a clump of Samson’s locks clutched in a fist; or Diana the huntress, a bow and arrow pointed off-camera. Joan of Arc in a diaphanous gown, one shoulder bare, tied to a makeshift stake wrapped with silk flowers. Her Clara Bow eyes lifted toward heaven in pining adoration of her God, who young Jules had imagined as pale as those martyred women. When he’d returned home for the summer after his first year of college, having taken a history course with a radical professor whose lectures included a healthy dose of social determinism, Jules had explained to his mother that her precious photos were simply rich white women with nothing better to do than play dress-up. Who knows, he’d added, Grandma Laverne probably had to scrub those same costumes after each photo shoot. It had been the one and only time his mother had hit him, slapping him so hard his cheek had stung all through Sunday pot-roast dinner.
His mother’s angels had worn crowns of flowers in their hair and crucifixes around their necks. Avalon Island’s waifish apparitions wore double strands of milky pearls and each her own thumper of a diamond ring. His Leslie looked like Mother Earth incarnate with her makeup-free face and sea-tousled hair. A flower child among the Stepford Wives.
Still, it took him a head-spinning moment to pick her out of the throng of blond, willowy women, and he thought again of the FREE SOUTH AFRICA posters boxed up in the Castle’s enormous garage. He tipped back the last of his drink, the sugar grainy on his tongue, and wondered if those posters would ever see the light of day.
With each progressive dinner stroll, sobriety diminished, and by the time they were making their way to the final leg of the dinner—dessert! the crowd cheered before piling out of the officer’s widow’s house—the east islanders were what his pops would’ve called shitfaced plastered. Stumbling, swaying, slurring and belching. Jules spotted a matronly woman barfing into the weeds on the side of the road, a sight that tipped him and Leslie into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
“What if,” he whispered, “the barfer is Orchid Lady?”
Leslie shushed him. “Stop. I can’t laugh anymore. It hurts after I stuffed down all those mini eggrolls.”
“It could be her. But,” he paused, “they do all look the same to me.”
“I’m going to pee.” Leslie doubled over. “And I’m not wearing panties.”
As the night wore on, the caterpillars’ feeding swelled until it was a constant hum pulsing from the woods, threatening the parade swerving down the dark roads. Every few steps, Jules heard women screech, watched them shake their composed tresses like dogs after a swim, stomp their high heels, Get it off me! Bristled caterpillars inched across shoulders and bosoms, tangled in hair. He found one tucked all cozy under the collar of his suit jacket. The enchanted Roaring Twenties mood had dissipated. Not even the violinists’ renditions of Big Band tunes—like “Stardust,” a song his mother had played over and over on the record player—could drown out the string of curses that were straight-up 1992.
Shit! Motherfucking caterpillars!
It was a relief to make it to the final house, a four-story colonial whose six tall white pillars reminded him (predictably, he thought) of the plantation houses he’d seen in Hollywood films about slavery. Two of the house’s help—an older black man in a cheap suit and a teenage white girl in a caterer’s vest—stood at the front door, each holding a lint brush in one hand and a small metal tray in the other. The guests separated into two lines, men and women, and shuffled forward to be swiped at delicately so the caterpillars crawling across backs and shoulders, pants legs and skirts, fell into the metal tray.
As he and Leslie waited their turn to be combed, Jules drank in the estate grounds that looked straight out of Garden Design. He pointed out the snapdragons and bachelor’s buttons to Leslie, explaining how the purple smokebush and arching sprays of Sporobolus wrightii created charming texture, but she wasn’t listening, busy scanning the line ahead of and behind her.
“Who,” he asked playfully, “could be more important than my botany lesson?”
“No one in particular,” she said, her eyes still searching. “Everyone and no one, I suppose.”
“Look at those hydrangeas! You think I could talk to the hostess? Find out who’s responsible for such a sweet garden?”