Fever
I was fourteen when my best friend Kyra’s mother died. At the funeral there were flyers on the seats with a black and white photo. Underneath it said:
That picture, it was all wrong. It made her look like a housewife, and I never once saw her do a dish. She was in a shiny dark reddish casket with gold handles. The top half was open, and I was thinking how glad Kyra would be that her mother didn’t look like that stupid photo. She looked beautiful. Exactly like she did when she napped in the afternoon. That nap was necessary, so Kyra’s mother would be fresh before she primped for cocktail hour at 5:30.
Me and Kyra got to sit on the two matching chairs that flanked her vanity table while she primped. Kyra’s mother always wore a full slip that was, she said, a little snug. She never let us turn on the overheads. She had two lamps that cast a patchwork of light and shadow. “This,” Kyra’s mother said, was the preferred environment for grown-up women. In the half dark, her skin looked translucent. Blue-gray veins covered her forearms like an intricate weaving, all pointing toward her pulse points. She always talked about pulse points, where they were, how they worked. She favored those on her neck above the collarbone. That was where the essence of scent was best released and appreciated. Kyra and I agreed that her mother did have a very nice collarbone.
Kyra’s mother always carefully prepared her “ensemble du soir.” That’s French, she told us, for the evening’s outfit. I already knew that from my French class. “Many parts go into a successful ensemble,” she said. I learned that these parts didn’t have to match, they just had to blend well, like the different flavors in her imported cigarettes. So, it was perfectly acceptable to wear the pink silk sleeveless shell with the rose colored skirt and top it with a blood-red bolero jacket with a delicate magenta scarf at the throat. “It’s all in the same family” she would say, “just like me and Kyra. Look how different we are, but we mix together so well. Besides, it’s deadly to sing a single note all the time. I am a symphony of reds.” And I had to admit that she was, especially if you counted her lips (sienna) and nails, painted in super high gloss pomegranate.
The best part of primping was when Kyra’s mother chose her shoes. They were arranged by color, season, material, purpose, heel height and age. When she was her red symphony, she could select the wine-colored satin sling-backs, open-toed leather mid-heeled pumps (although they were fraying at the back), high-heeled maroon sandals with the skinny ankle strap, flat cherry skimmers or five-inch spike heels in mirror-shiny fire engine red. She wobbled in these even before cocktail hour started, but so did me and Kyra whenever we tried them on.
I couldn’t tell if Kyra’s mother had shoes on because that part of the casket was closed. I really hoped she was wearing the specially-dyed-to-match shoes she always wore with the dress she was in, the one that has the 23 mother-of-pearl buttons up the back. Shoes, she said, were the piece de resistance for any ensemble.
Our job, Kyra’s and mine, was to prep for cocktail hour – strainers, straws, crushed ice, the little lemon twists and olives we put in a shallow bowl. We lined up all the glassware. Tumblers, flutes, snifters, and of course, martini glasses that we took out last since they had to be chilled properly, or you would ruin the whole thing. Sometimes we cut up little cubes of cheese and stuck red and blue plastic imitation sword toothpicks right in the center of each one and put them in a semicircle on the wooden board, surrounding the Ritz Crackers that we arranged in short stacks.
I always thought there would be other people at cocktail hour but there never were. Kyra and I had cokes with a lime garnish, or sometimes orange juice with a splash of grenadine. Kyra’s mother drank scotch-on-the-rocks. She always sat on the high-backed stool near the counter. It had long skinny wrought iron legs that ended in little circle feet and a shiny wicker seat and back. Kyra’s mother would line herself up with the stool and, depending on the size of her heels, either just lift her hip slightly and edge onto the seat, or do a little hop on to it, using the back of the chair as leverage. She always sat erect, head high and shoulders back like the Spanish flamenco dancers we saw in a filmstrip at school called “World of Dance.” She crossed her legs at the ankle “Never at the knee, girls,” she said, “unless you want early varicose veins.”
Me and Kyra usually finished our Cokes way before Kyra’s mother finished her cocktail. To tell the truth, I think we slurped them up fast because our refill (“it’s called your second round,” she said) was our cue to start the music. Earlier we had put a stack of records on the hi-fi, and at her nod we slid the lever over, watched the first one drop down onto the turntable and the needle jerk its way over. Kyra then handed her mother one of the long-necked beer bottles (unopened) from the ice bucket, and she would start to lip-synch along with “Paper Moon” or “A Fine Romance.”
I was getting antsy in my hardback chair when I saw Kyra edging away from that bunch of fluttery ladies all dabbing their eyes with embroidered handkerchiefs. She made her way toward the buffet table and waved me over. We met in front of the punch bowl. Kyra lined up two heavy cut-glass mugs and ladled them full of pink fizzy liquid, all the while singing, but real soft. I could just make out the words as they floated under the steady din in that room.
“Fever.” That was Kyra’s mother’s favorite song. Cocktail hour always ended with “Fever,” all of us singing along with Peggy Lee at full volume.
Kyra and I belted out the refrain:
Then we clinked our glasses and drained them dry.
“Fever,” the song made popular by Peggy Lee in the fifties, was written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell (aka John Davenport) and originally recorded by Little Willie John for his debut album of the same name and first released as a single in 1956. In 1958, Peggy Lee covered the song, changing up the lyrics and the arrangement. Her rendition became a top-ten hit in the United States and her signature song and was subsequently nominated for the first annual Grammy in 1959 for both record and song of the year, competing with Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Vic Damone, Ella Fitzgerald, and the winner Domenico Modugno.
The song lyrics are still under copyright by Fort Knox Music Inc., Trio Music Company, Fort Knox Music Co., Trio Music Company Inc., Trio Music Co., Inc.; the limited excerpts reprinted here are considered fair use by the author and the publisher.
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Rhonda Zangwill has long flirted with the literary life, writing, editing, teaching and rabble-rousing for New York Writers Coalition, Read650, PEN Prison Program and The Moth. She now runs writing workshops for the Educational Alliance and Sirovich Senior Center. Her published work is in print journals such as Calyx, Natural Bridge and Hoi Polloi. She reads around town, including at the National Arts Club, the NYC Poetry Festival, NYPL, and thanks to Fahrenheit Open Mic, in some of the East Village’s most charming community gardens.
I'll drink to that! Wonderful story, Rhonda
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