Camille (fiction). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mary McMyne

CAMILLE

Detroiter by Jerry C. Smith © 2014

T

hey honeymooned in a one-star Mississippi motel: a three-story dingy cube beside an asphalt lot scattered with El Caminos and Volkswagens, notable only for the towering neon sign spelling its name in phosphorescent pink glass tubes – S-U-N K-I-S-T, like the citrus – and the seven letters she bet always blinked beneath – V-A-C-A-N-C-Y. Originally, they had planned to drive all the way from Grand Isle to Florida, but they never made it because they got sick of driving – or, more accurately, because Odell’ s fingers had been sending a tingling sensation and a string of goose bumps up her thigh since the LouisianaMississippi border. By the time he suggested they stop in Pass Christian, she wanted nothing more. She laughed when he pointed at the vacancy sign blinking over the Sun Kist, and she laughed even harder when he drove over the railroad tracks into the lot. And so it was that their son was conceived in Room 301 under the neon pink glow of that sign, while the wind off the dirty Gulf floated molecules of salt and seawater she could taste through the open balcony door. And so it is that, today, on the first anniversary of that night, Mrs. Odell LeBlanc is weaving through traffic into the lot.

Her knuckles white against the steering wheel, she sighs: at the glare of the sun off the dash, the tilt of the second C in VACANCY, which has in the past year all but fallen from the sign. The motor whines as she parks the car. She hurries through the black parking lot toward the office, jumping at the bell that rings as she opens the door.

The receptionist sits behind a desk, legs crossed, seashell-pink lips shimmering as she smiles lazily from beneath her monstrous beehive. Everything in the office is dark brown, apart from the linoleum floor. A fan on the desk oscillates. Pale threads of hair snaking up the

woman ’ s scalp quiver, fuzzing out from her hairdo, that gravity-defying monument to all that is mod.

“Can I help you?” The receptionist hasn ’t changed at all. That hairdo, that lipstick. Her fingernails are even the same color, fluttering seashell pink above her desk. Penny remembers giggling at them last summer as Odell held her hand and inquired about a room with the straightest face he could muster – which wasn ’t very straight considering the LSD they had taken in the car. When the receptionist reached out to take their money, the pink of her fingernail polish had left traces of light in the air, marking the path of her hands.

“Penny Leblanc, ” she says. “I have a reservation. Room 301. ”

The woman checks a notepad. The oscillating fan turns, overwhelming Penny, briefly, with a sweet floral scent, the woman ’ s perfume. The receptionist nods, her beehive bobbing up and down, tiny threads dancing in the air like snakes being charmed. “By yourself?”

In the mirror behind her, Penny watches herself nod back. Originally, Odell was supposed to come with her. But he had called, the week before, to tell her that they were cutting his furlough, moving up his date so his whole battalion could take the same ship to Vietnam.

“Seven bucks, ” the woman says.

She fishes around in her bag, watching her reflection as she hands the woman seven crumpled bills. She has been too busy, since Teller was born, to spend much time in front of the mirror. But looking at herself now, she realizes she has her mother ’ s figure, in addition to her eyes. With her hair pulled back in the fraying bun she ’ s worn since her son was born, it’ s as if her mother is right there, watching her over the shades she bought at a gas station just outside Baton Rouge.

She pushes the glasses up on her nose, unsettled by the idea. Although almost a year has passed since her parents ’ accident, the thought of either of her parents still has the capacity to bring her suddenly, and without warning, to tears.

“Can you believe this sky?” the woman asks as she puts the money in the register. “It’ s so blue. And with that storm in the Gulf!”

She shakes her head, trying to feign disbelief as she worries whether she forgot her breast pump. Surely she took it out of Teller ’ s bag this morning before she left him with her mother-in-law. Surely it’ s just outside in the trunk. Here she is, separated from him for the first time since he was born – and she knows how she ’ s supposed to feel, a new mother separated from her infant, she ’ s supposed to feel nervous, guilty, worried –but she feels relieved instead, unburdened, for the first time since Odell left for the Depot. Teller would be fine; Odell’ s parents were thrilled when she asked them to keep him overnight.

The receptionist is staring at her.

Penny tries to remember what the woman has just said. “What storm?”

“Hurricane Camille. ”

“That’ s right. ” She heard about it on the drive up, but didn ’t pay much attention since it was headed for Florida. “The one that destroyed Castro ’ s crops. ”

“That’ s the one. ” The woman sets the key on the counter, her seashell pink fingernails fluttering above it, as if she doesn ’t want to let go. “Where you from?”

But in the time it takes her to ask, Penny has already swiped the key out from under her fingers, turned around, and pushed the door open, its awful bell ringing merrily as it swings toward the lot. She misses Odell. He was so good at talking. Whenever they were accosted by an inexplicably friendly stranger, all she had to do was stand beside him and smile. Whatever it was – the weather, the war, the fashions worn by astronauts ’ wives – he could talk about it politely. “Grand Isle, ” she mumbles over her shoulder, then stops, surprised to hear her husband’ s hometown instead of her own.

“But I’ m originally from Pride. ”

The sign makes her arms glow a psychedelic pink as she unlocks, then opens, the room door. A smell wafting out, a distinctly stale scent, which she doesn ’t remember the room having before. She crinkles her nose, hurries in, opening the balcony doors to let in the smell of sea salt, the sound of seagulls, the brown waves crashing on the beach across the street.

She sits down on the bed, looks around: at the wide brown Gulf beyond the balcony, the ancient-looking radio on the bedside table, the rusty bathtub, the beat-up armoire, the brass handle falling off its door. Nevermind the state of the room, she has to admit, it feels good to be out of the house. Maybe this trip will do her good. Ever since Odell left, there has been something wrong with her brain. It’ s gone haywire. Fuzzy. She has difficulty concentrating. Alone with Teller, all day, every day, her grief over her parents ’ deaths has come back to haunt her, full force. It was a good thing babies cried when they were hungry. Twice, three times this week, she has put Teller down for a nap, gone to the kitchen to do the dishes, and jumped at the sound of his cries to find herself staring through the window at the brown bay, a full hour gone. Such a strange sensation, to snap to yourself and realize you ’ ve lost a whole hour. Where do you go when you ’ re thinking? Is that even thinking, zoned out like that, to stare at the sea?

She pulls out the pack of smokes she bought at a gas station on the way up. Odell’ s brand. Lions paw the shield on the logo of the pack, where a slogan is engraved – per aspera ad astra – she doesn ’t know Latin. She lights up, takes a drag, breathing in the familiar scent of the smoke, then ashes in the zodiac-shaped tray on the bedside table. There ’ s a cigarette burn on the quilt beside it, a small black hole in the pastel blue. Did they do that last summer? She can ’t recall.

That’ s the door they flung open, the threshold where they stood, staring in, on their wedding night. She remembers standing beside him. Auburn hair falling out of his ponytail. Dark eyes laughing as