Runny03 - Loose Lips (27 page)

“Fifty-eight, and with all the padding I’ve picked up, I look every day of it. Any more and I’ll be the fatted calf.” She patted her tummy.

“You look just fine.” Louise concurred with her sister. “But what is Mary Miles talking about?”

“You have to remember that this is ancient history,” Dimps said, “and I was pretty young myself. They say that Josephine fell in love with Hansford, but he wasn’t in love with her.”

“Was he married to Momma?” Juts was intensely curious but tried to appear nonchalant. It didn’t work.

“Yes. He loved your mother, really, I think he did. I think he
still loves her. Your father was a devil-may-care young fellow. Just the type to inflame the heart of someone as proper as that damned Josephine, who hadn’t been married to Rupert but so long. Hansford was long on looks and short on responsibility, I guess.”

“But you said he didn’t love her.” Louise snipped another lock.

“He didn’t.” Toots spoke again. “I kind of remember. I was in grade school then. Anyway, whatever happened, Hansford left. People said he would have left anyway. Restless.”

“Did he have an affair with her?” Juts wasn’t one to beat around the bush.

“No,” Dimps quickly answered.

“Well…” Mary Miles paused. “Nobody really knows except that he walked out flat. Just—” She made a flyaway motion.

“Put your hands back here, M.M.,” Juts commanded.

“And Josephine broke bad after that. She was always a snob but after that she became insufferable.”

“I’ll ask him,” Juts said.

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Dimps warned her.

“You said it was ancient history,” Juts replied.

“Not to them, it isn’t. Don’t make one of your messes, Juts,” Dimps told her.

“Why is everyone picking on me?”

“Because we know you only too well.” Louise thoroughly enjoyed her sister wiggling on the hot seat.

“My mother-in-law is a whistling bitch,” Juts said. “I wouldn’t mind giving her a little back.”

“Leave her to heaven,” Aunt Dimps recommended.

“God is too slow.”

“Julia!” Louise appeared shocked. She wasn’t, really, but she believed everyone present considered her deeply spiritual. Nobody did; they thought she liked the pomp and ceremony of high mass.

“Well, Louise, it’s the truth. I see people getting away with
murder. God sits on his big celestial butt and nothing happens. I mean, why doesn’t he kill Adolf Hitler? If I can see evil, why can’t God?”

“People have been trying to answer that question since the beginning of time.” Toots heavily lifted herself out of the chair. She was sleepy and needed to move around to wake up.

“These mysteries are too great for our minds to understand.” Louise had no answer, but this sounded profound.

“I don’t believe it.” Juts pouted.

Mary Miles said, “Maybe God made the world and then left it. We bored him.”

“Then why do I bother praying?”

“Juts, you never pray unless you want something,” Louise chided her. “It’s like shopping with you.”

“You don’t know what I pray for.”

“I know you,” Louise responded.

“No philosophy has ever been able to answer the big questions—and neither will we. You live on a wing and a prayer, girls.” Aunt Dimps winced when Louise twisted a roller in too tightly.

“I have a philosophy. Birth leads to death.” Juts put cotton balls between Mary Miles’s fingers so she couldn’t close them and wreck her polish job.

“You’re a crab today.” Louise glared at her. “Rest your mind and shut your mouth.”

“I am not crabby. I’d like to know what happened between our father and my mother-in-law.”

“Well, I expect you’ll just blunder right in and ask,” Louise growled.

“Here comes Hansford, Juts. You’ve got your chance.” He opened the door and smiled. All eyes were upon him. “Hi, girls.”

“Hi,” Toots finally responded.

“Have I come at a bad time?”

“No.” Louise didn’t look up.

“Hansford, you just sit a minute and I’ll get to you.” Juts rolled the manicure tray to the side.

“Do you want me to move, Julia?” Mary Miles asked, aquiver with expectation.

“Uh-uh. Toots’s chair is open for the next quarter hour and this won’t take long. Toots, okay?”

“Sure.” Toots walked into the back room to make fresh coffee.

“Come on.” Juts pointed to the chair and Hansford gratefully sank into its comfortable contours. She studied his beard from every angle. “Some people see a long beard and think wisdom. I think: fleas.”

The ladies exploded with laughter, as much from tension as from the fact that Julia Ellen was herself again.

T
he cool, slick cards felt familiar in Juts’s hand. Ever since childhood she had loved playing cards. She used to imagine herself dressed as the queen of diamonds, a jack as her servant, a king as her husband. She had a wonderful memory for which cards were out and which ones remained in the deck. Although four years younger than Louise, she could beat her at fish, war, and hearts by the time she was six, which used to provoke screams of protest, fistfights, and tears. Louise hated to lose.

Yoyo was curled asleep in her lap and Buster snored under the card table. The old wall clock ticked in the kitchen; the house was so quiet she could hear it even though she was sitting in the living room, an afghan around her legs to ward off the chill.

Rarely did she get a quiet night to herself. Usually Louise, Mary, Maizie, or Chessy needed something, and if not, then a friend would call or drop by. Juts loved being around people, most especially as the center of attention, but occasionally she enjoyed her own company. This was one of those times.

She was self-centered, to be sure, but she had enough sense to know the world did not revolve around her, much as she wished it did. Sugar, coffee, and gas were being rationed, a reminder to her and everyone that small sacrifices had to be made so other people could make larger ones. Last week, the Battle of the Java Sea had brought home those sacrifices. On February 27, the previous Friday, a small Allied squadron of ships engaged the Japanese fleet protecting an invasion convoy. Outnumbered, the Allies took the fight to the Japanese. By March 1, the Allied force had been obliterated. The evacuation of Rangoon seemed sure to follow.

As she smacked down her cards in a line of seven for solitaire, one of her favorite games, she imagined being on the deck of a destroyer, torpedoes crashing into the sides, the smell of smoke and flame everywhere, a ship listing badly, men screaming, guns firing, and the sickening knowledge that you were going down, all hands on deck. She wondered if fear took over or if you became so infuriated that you decided you would take as many of the enemy with you as you could.

She didn’t want Death to be certain. She hoped he would sneak up on her. She didn’t want to see his face. Those poor men at the bottom of the Java Sea stared Death in the eye.

She moved the red four of diamonds over to a black five of clubs. This was going to be a long hand.

She banished thoughts of death from her mind, bending over
her cards. She thought about Hansford. She had asked him point-blank what happened with Josephine Holtzapple.

“Nothing.”

She couldn’t pry another thing out of him, and Cora’s response was, “Let bygones be bygones.”

She pulled out the ace of spades and the ace of hearts. She hadn’t even needed the cards in her hand yet. A good game was shaping up.

Yoyo turned on her back, reached up with a paw, opened her eyes, then closed them, purring loudly.

“Last time I played solitaire you jumped on the table and ruined the game.”

Yoyo only purred louder.

Juts pulled out the king of hearts after transferring a card off the piles. She placed him at the far-left space, which had just become vacant because she was able to move a black seven onto a red eight.

Chessy seemed distant lately. She attributed this to his recent appointment with Dr. Horning. She was nervous herself. She felt incomplete without a child. All the worse that Louise hammered away at her over it. Juts had thought marriage could complete her. Much as she loved Chessy, she found marriage wasn’t the great be-all and end-all she had dreamed of when young.

She had yet to find the wife who didn’t think for her husband. Some women had to work around their men, others had to sabotage them. Still others spent days, weeks, and months luring their husbands into believing some thought was their own, when it was really planted by the wife. It was exhausting. At least with Chester she could give a direct order.

She wondered if men were incapable of thinking ahead or if what they thought about was completely different from what women thought about. She thought about paying off their home, putting aside money for a rainy day—except she never did—and
then she thought about her friends, her enemies, and finally clothes. Clothes made the woman. She absolutely believed that and was convinced Louise would never be taken seriously by important people because she wore too much costume jewelry. Caesura Frothingham wore too much jewelry, to be sure—major jewels before sunset. Really, how lurid. But Louise would travel to Baltimore and back for a clunky bracelet. It helped if the earrings made noise, too.

Today, at the shop, her necklace, bracelet, earrings, and pin had created such a racket that Georgette Dingledine told her to take them off while she worked on her head. With a forced smile, Louise swept the bracelet off her wrist—and snapped the elastic in the process, sending little bits of painted wood and metal flying over the floor. That put her in a mood.

Juts couldn’t remember one time when Chester had paid attention to clothes. She had to drag him into the Bon-Ton for a jacket or a tie.

In fact, she couldn’t remember any man who cared about clothes. Even Millard Yost, who always looked natty, was dressed by Lillian.

What did she talk to her husband about? Chores, money, townspeople, and their schedules. She thought that was enough, but maybe she needed to make an effort to learn about stock-car racing. Both Chester and Paul adored the races. Watching cars go around in circles made her dizzy, but they could wax forth on the subject for hours.

Maybe if she learned about stock cars she’d become more alluring to him. She had heard stories about men’s sexual desires being reignited with such tactics. Maybe that was why they didn’t have a baby.

She won the hand of solitaire as he came in the back door. Buster scrambled up to greet him.

“Hi, honey.”

“Hi.” She turned her cheek so he could kiss it. “You know, I can double-clutch.”

He blinked. “You can?”

“I can take a corner on two wheels, too. I think I ought to enter the ladies’ stock-car races.”

“Juts, you hate stock-car races.”

She stared at her cards, now in four neat little piles. “Well—what do I have to do to be—uh—sexy to you?”

“You are sexy to me.”

“Black slip?”

“You don’t need a black slip.” He smiled. “What set you off on this tack?”

“I don’t know.” She gathered up the cards, straightening them out by tapping them against the tabletop. “You’ve been far away.”

“Oh, honey, I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Yeah, I know, and I never seem to be there.”

“You are.” He reached down and kissed her on the lips.

G
as rationing didn’t affect Mary Miles Mundis’s desire to show off. She tooled around town in a new 1941 Pontiac V-8 Torpedo sedan coupe in creamy burgundy with a tan pinstripe and tan interior. Harold bought the car in Baltimore for a good price because it had been sitting on the lot since the end of
1941 and the dealer, paying interest on his inventory, wanted to move it. Gas rationing killed car sales, and the automakers converted their factories for the war effort. No new cars.

Of course, Mary Miles Mundis just drove the Torpedo around town. There wasn’t enough gas to drive long distances in it, which was fine with her. The main point of the automobile was not to provide transportation but to excite the envy of her friends. In this she richly succeeded.

“Would you look at that? Just swanning about.” Louise slapped a comb against her thigh. “I’d look better in that car than she does. Her hair’s the wrong color.”