The Flamingo Rising by Larry Baker

Author:Larry Baker [Baker, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77567-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Photographs, Memories, and My Future

In a few years, I will be fifty. Dexter, my late and last child, named after Martin Luther King Jr.’s son, will not even be a teenager. My other sons will be in college. Grace will also be fifty, but she still looks like a much younger woman. She has not aged. I often wonder about the others. Alice will be fifty-five when I am fifty. When she was twenty, she looked much older. I wonder about now. How does she look? Did she ever get to be happy?

I have a picture of me and Alice taken on my sixteenth birthday. My mother was taking pictures of me and Louise, but Louise had refused to stand beside me that day. Alice replaced her. We are very close. I have my hands down at my sides, but she has her right arm over my shoulder. We are standing on the concession patio. Alice is wearing those sort of granny sunglasses that were popular in 1968, her dark hair tied up on her head to keep her shoulders cooler. I am wearing shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt, and holding a shovel. Alice called it “Florida Gothic.”

There are other pictures from that day. Me and my mother, both my parents and me together, even one of my parents and Louise and me all together, a rare shot, since Louise was beginning her Greta Garbo leave-me-alone routine. A picture of Polly and Alice together, with Alice making rabbit ears behind Polly’s head. A picture of my father and Polly side by side, probably closer than they should have been, my father’s hand resting low on Polly’s hip. Me and Pete, one of my favorite shots, us looking like a 1968 version of a multicultural poster. Pete and Judge Lester together, Pete with a severely distressed look on his face, the Judge looking bug-eyed. A picture of all the Flamingo men lined up by height. The Judge was at one end, then Gary Green, my father and me level with each other, and then the dropoff with Pete at the other end.

There is also a picture of the Flamingo women, with my mother in the middle, Alice behind her and off to one side, Polly and Louise in front. I often look at that picture. Louise has a copy, and she once told me that when she sees it she is always amazed by how different each one of them looked and yet how so very beautiful they each were in their own way. Louise has never been intimidated by her own beauty, and she is not afraid to be unattractive in some of the character roles she plays in the movies, but she seldom acknowledges beauty in other women. But she is right about that picture. Even in black and white, the four of them are stunning.

I also have a picture of me and Grace on my birthday. It was done in secret, back in St. Augustine. Alice had arranged it, telling my parents that she was taking me to town to help her look for a present for Louise.

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