Pink, white and blue.
In the warm gloom of the kitchen, Gladys has laid three pretty pills on the counter before her. One is pink and no larger than a pinhead, one is a blue capsule that puts her in mind of ammunition, and the other is a thin white disc. The colours would look good on a spring coat of the kind Elvis’s girls often wear: lightweight, high-collared, cropped at the waist and of little use against a March wind. Placing each pill on her tongue, she allows herself a moment to taste the dead chalk of the drugs, then takes a swig of beer, closes her eyes, swallows, and manages not to gag. Doctor’s orders. She knows the pink pill is for her weight, but exactly which problems the others are supposed to tackle is a little fuzzier in her mind. She hopes they will at least deaden the throb in her ankles.
It is midnight, and the mansion is quiet. Her husband turned in an hour ago; even Minnie Mae’s television is silent. And this morning her son left for Hollywood. The army has granted him a deferment until 24 March, leaving him free to work on the New Orleans movie. He says this picture will be better than the others. He has high hopes. The script, every line of which he memorised before leaving, is based on a popular novel, and the songwriters he likes are working on the music.
Perched on her stool, Gladys feels cocooned by the pastel appliances and thick drapes. She undoes the top button of her pink housecoat. The kitchen – low-ceilinged and without a sufficient through draught – has always been the warmest spot in the house, and the only one that’s ever felt homely. For the first time since Elvis left, Gladys’s body feels, if not at ease, at least fairly comfortable. She has taken her medication, she has poured her beer, and she has sent Daisy home, because she wants to drink in peace while she waits for her boy to call.
Taking another gulp, she thinks, as she often does at this hour, of that night a couple of summers ago when Elvis’s pink Cadillac burned up on the highway. She’d been dreaming that Elvis was in a fire before she woke to the phone ringing and his excited voice telling her there’d been an accident but he was just fine; she should’ve heard the horn as his car went up in smoke, though! It had sounded, he’d said, like a dying cow. Then, as now, she could clearly picture the flames, feel their heat and glare, the way they must have made Elvis shield his eyes as he stood on the ridge, watching his beautiful car burn. Gladys presses her fingers to her lips, worried that horn sound may be the kind of noise she is making now. Sometimes she hardly knows what’s coming from her mouth.
Partly to hide her own sounds, and partly from habit, she reaches for the portable record player. Her son keeps several portables in the house, so he can hear what his songs sound like to his fans when they play them in their bedrooms. Gladys runs a hand across the papered ridges of its surface before clicking the clasps open and propping up the lid. Then she twists the knob and lowers the needle.
She’ll play it just once.
Her son’s voice begins, at once familiar and strange. It’s ‘Don’t Be Cruel’. She has always loved the upbeat rhythm, the way the song is so happy to plead for love, so exuberant in the face of loss. It’s been her favourite ever since Elvis recorded it, but these days it never fails to bring a lump to her throat.
To Gladys it feels as though her son has already become a soldier. While he was an entertainer, or even a movie star, it seemed he might still become what she wanted him to be: settled, married, a father. She didn’t have much influence, but at least she had some. What influence can she have over a soldier? A soldier is no longer a boy, but a man. A man with a gun, or driving a tank; a man capable of killing; a man who has seen things no woman has witnessed. He will become one of them, now.
She turns down the volume. Her husband is a light sleeper, and will be mad if he knows she has stayed up again, crying. Vernon hates what he calls her goddamn dismals. She hasn’t once reminded him of his own intense melancholy all those years ago when he returned from the state penitentiary, although she has come very close.
The sudden pulse of the phone’s ring goes through her. She switches the record player off, then picks up the receiver.
‘Mama?’
‘Baby! You at the Wilshire?’
‘Safe and sound. We got the suite.’
‘It’s a beautiful hotel.’
‘It’s nice. But it ain’t home.’
‘How was the journey?’
‘Long. Is Anita there, Mama?’
Gladys hesitates. He’d wanted Anita to sleep in his room while he was gone. But this morning, after his family and friends had said goodbye to Elvis at the train station, Anita had headed back to her apartment before Gladys could speak with her.
‘Mama? Can you put Anita on?’
‘She ain’t here, son.’
There’s a pause. Over the line, she hears a woman’s voice, and a door slamming.
‘I told that girl I wanted her home when I called.’
Gladys reaches for her beer. Holding her hand over the receiver, she takes a drink.
‘Mama?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Can you call her, get her over?’
‘It’s late here, Elvis. You might could try her apartment.’
‘Call her in the morning, then. Tell her I want her to stay with you while I’m gone.’
‘I think she had some work to do—’
‘She says that, but what she gotta do? I don’t want you being alone.’
‘Daddy’s here.’
There’s a noise like static, and he disappears for a minute. Gladys can just make out other men’s voices, calling his name.
‘Baby? You there?’ she says.
She hears him say, ‘Wait a minute,’ and laugh. ‘I gotta go, Mama.’
‘I miss you, Elvie.’
‘I miss you too. I’ll call tomorrow, OK? And get Anita to come.’
He hangs up.
Gladys spends a moment listening to the dead line. He’s told her nothing. She’s waited up, and all she has received are her son’s instructions to call his girl. Her heart knocks at her chest, and despite the usual ache in her legs she has an urgent need to move, fast. To go someplace. Anyplace. The doctor always said the diet pills would give her extra energy. Maybe she should use it.
She replaces the receiver, then goes to her bedroom. She slips on her big fur coat and low-heeled pumps, cursing as she discovers the shoes are a little tight on her swollen feet. There’s no time to change, though; she must act now if she’s going to do this. If she waits, the pain will set a fire in her ankles and she will change her mind.
Holding her breath, she tiptoes to the front door. She pulls back two locks and she’s out, standing beneath the glass lantern. Humming Jimmie Rodgers’s ‘Blue Yodel’, she hurries down the steps, into the night.