Runny03 - Loose Lips (36 page)

Juts grabbed her hand. “Come on, kid, we’ve got a lot of shopping left to do. We’ll settle this hash later.”

As they walked past a booth with a big sign, Fletcher’s Fruits, Nickel pointed up. “Fruit.” Except it sounded like “Froo-ot.”

Louise stared at her, a curious expression on her stern face. “How’d she know that?”

“I don’t know.” Juts shrugged. “I tell her stories all the time.”

“She’s three and a half years old. Children don’t read until they’re six.”

“Well—I guess she’s ahead of the game. Anyway, she’ll be four in November.”

Louise put her hand under Nickel’s chin, staring into those brown eyes staring right back at her, not giving an inch. “Be quiet, Nicky. Sometimes it’s better to not be so, uh, smart.”

“Louise, leave her alone.” Juts knelt down. “Nicky, you can read anything you want, if you really can read. I think Aunt Louise means it’s not polite to point to things and call out a word. Now come on.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Louise growled at Julia. “She’s going to be out of place. You have to think about how she will get along with other children. She has a strike against her before she even goes out to bat.”

“Children don’t know about such things.”

“They learn them fast enough from their parents.”

“Do we always have to worry about what’s a year down the road or ten years down the road? What will Lillian say, or Fannie Jump or Caesura, that ancient of days? What will Father O’Reilly think, and hey, the pope might get his nose out of joint. Tomorrow a hurricane might blow us off the face of the earth and if that doesn’t do it, what about a flood as big as Noah’s next springtime? If her little friends throw things up in her face, I guess she’ll learn that some people are shits. And I hope she’ll have the brains to hang with those that aren’t.”

Louise whirled on her. “You do a child no favors by letting her get ideas above her station. It doesn’t do for a girl to be so obviously smart. You can be smart after you’re married, not before.”

“My God, she’s not even four years old and you’ve got her married off.”

“Someone’s got to think ahead. You’re like the grasshopper. I’m like the ant.”

“Now we’re insects.”

“I know what’s best. Didn’t I tell you Chester Smith wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans? You two soon won’t have a car to drive, you’ll have to push that old thing you’ve got. Didn’t I tell
Mary the same thing? If Pearlie hadn’t given Extra Billy a job, they’d be begging on the street. Didn’t I tell her?”

“Yes, you sure did.” Julia was getting mad.

“And didn’t I tell Maizie not to go to New York? Not to even think about such foolishness? No, she didn’t listen. Now what does she write me? That she wants to go back to school but not one associated with the church. What kind of request is that? What is that going to cost me? I know what’s best.” She paused. “She has to learn her place. Life is much easier when you know your place. She’ll be another Rillma Ryan if you don’t nip this in the bud.”

As they passed luscious baked pies, Juts said low, “Well, Louise, what’s your place?” She was so angry she didn’t register that Louise had identified Nickel’s mother right in front of the child.

“That’s a silly question.”

Menace laced Juts’s voice. “You shut up about Nickel. You just shut up. Shut up about her place. She’ll find her own place because, God knows, the world is full of people like you who won’t give her one just because of something somebody else did!”

Nickel, tired of their fussing, left. They didn’t notice.

“I didn’t make the world, I just live in it!”

“Well, you’re not doing a damned thing to make it any better.”

“I, for one, do not believe people should engage in physical relations without benefit of marriage.”

“Jesus H. Christ on a raft.”

“Don’t take the name of Our Savior in vain.” Louise stepped toward a stall of calico aprons. “I need a new apron.”

“You need a new mouth.”

As Wheezie ignored her she noticed a pair of little shoes sticking out from under the draped fabrics overhanging the wooden stall. “Nicky?”

“She’s not here.” The reply was determined.

Louise stooped over and lifted a corner of a bright quilt. “What are you doing under there?”

“Thinking.”

“Hi, Mrs. Stoltz, my little niece thought your quilts were beautiful.” Louise forced a smile.

Mrs. Stoltz, as wide as she was tall, lifted the quilt from inside the stall. “I see.”

“Sorry.” Juts joined them, dropped to one knee, and held out her hand. “Let’s rodeo, scout.”

“No.”

“Nickel, you get your butt out of there this minute or you’ll regret it.” The cigarette bobbed in her mouth with each clipped word.

“No.”

Juts, pushed to the limit, although she didn’t know why, pinched her cigarette between her thumb and forefinger and touched the glowing end to Nickel’s arm above the elbow. Just a touch, but it produced the desired effect. The kid shot out of there—too fast for Juts to grab her. Nickel sped down the aisle.

“May the saints preserve us.” Louise shook her head. She hadn’t run since grade school. Louise thought running unfeminine.

“It’s going to take more than saints.” Juts trotted in the direction of her vanishing child. She called over her shoulder, “Don’t just stand there like a bottle of piss. Move!”

“I won’t be addressed in such a crude fashion.” Grumbling under her breath, Louise moved over to a parallel aisle and walked briskly under the old hanging lights as she checked stalls to see if the child had ducked inside.

The two sisters met at the Taylor Hams stall at the end of the aisles. The huge stall ran horizontally across the major aisles.

Juts flicked ashes on the floor, then ground them out in the sawdust that spilled out from the Taylor Hams booth. “I don’t know how she can move that fast.”

“She’s around here somewhere. Let’s try the two aisles over there.”

No booth revealed Nickel. To be on the safe side Louise asked the janitor if he had seen her. He said no but observed that kids played outside where the bushel baskets and other debris were tossed. He’d go out to clean up and there’d be maybe ten or fifteen of them in the alley. Juts walked outside in the soft September sunshine, a hint of fall in the air. She saw a squadron of children but not her own.

She rejoined Louise at the candy booth.

“I was sure she’d come here. Kids love candy.”

“Wheezie, let’s try the restaurant. She was over there before.”

They hurried over, both more worried than they wanted the other to know. No Nickel.

Despairing, Juts dropped into a chair for a minute. “It’s like living with a monkey. She runs and jumps and rolls around. She climbs and swings on tree branches. I get up in the morning and she’s already up. She’s pulled on her shorts and yesterday she had every cupboard door open, every single one, even the ones over the counter. She’d crawled up on the counter. Nothing was taken out, thank God, but every door open. She can sit for hours in the pantry staring at the labels on cans. She goes in my closet. She tries to put on my shoes. Last week she smeared powder and lipstick all over her face and she ruined Chessy’s best bow tie because she was wearing that, too. Just wrapped it around her neck. My God in heaven, what do people do who have more than one child?” Before Louise could answer that her two were never like that, Juts shot her a hard stare. “This is your fault.”

“My fault?” Wheezie’s hand fluttered to her throat. Her nail polish matched her lipstick.

“You wanted me to have a baby.”

“I what!”

“That’s right, Louise. Every morning, noon, and night you hammered at me about how I wasn’t a real woman because I wasn’t
a mother and you know how dumb I am, I believed you! I don’t want to be a mother. It’s hard work and I never get a break.”

Louise, usually so quick to defend herself and deride her sister, paused, weighing her words. “Some days are better than others.”

“Days? I’d settle for a good night’s rest. She gets up at five-thirty in the morning. I hear her but I’m so tired from chasing after her the day before that I go right back to sleep.”

“Well, at least she’s not noisy.”

“No, but she’ll probably set the house on fire someday. She’s into everything!”

“She’ll grow out of that,” Louise confidently predicted.

“I wish I’d never listened to you.”

Louise leaned over her. “You’re tired. She’s a little fireball, I’ll grant you that, but she is quiet.”

“Quiet—she’s practically mute. She hardly says three words together and I don’t get it, because that kid is smart, Wheezie. Sometimes she’s so smart she scares me. Those brown eyes watching me—I feel like I’m being watched by a tiger.”

“She’s learning. Why, when Maizie was little she followed me from room to room pointing at everything because she wanted to learn the names for chairs and lamps. You’ve got to remember, she’s seeing the world for the first time.”

“Well, I goddamned feel like I’m seeing it for the last. I don’t know if I can live through this.”

“Give her to Chessy for a day.”

“She’d demolish the store.”

“He can take her for half a day on Saturday or Sunday.”

“Can’t I give her back?” Juts forced an anemic smile.

“You don’t mean that.” Louise stood up straight. “There were days when I wanted to give mine back—of course, there was no one to give them back to, but I would gladly have wrung both their necks.”

“You—the perfect mother?”

A wry smile played over Louise’s pretty face. “Show me a
mother who doesn’t dream of making her children angels even once in her life and I’ll show you a barefaced liar.”

“Yeah—but truthfully, I’m not up to this job.”

“Nobody is.”

“Then why’d you push me into it?”

“I didn’t. Well—maybe I mentioned being a mother once or twice?”

“Once or twice—every day!”

“Hasn’t she brought you and Chester closer together?”

“Yes, except now we never have time alone together. By the time we get to bed at night we’re too tired to even talk.” Juts ran her fingers through her hair, which showed only a hint of gray. “We’ve got to find her.”

They walked out of the restaurant. Catty-cornered across the lofty market was a second-story balcony. Painted dark green, it hosted wooden rocking chairs and a ladies’ bathroom. If a lady exhausted herself amid the asparagus she could climb the stairs, take a load off her feet, rock a bit, and pick up a thin rattan fan. A pile of fans was always on the table outside the bathroom. Juts lifted her eyes just in time to see Nickel spin a fan over to the top of the balcony rail. Now she was standing on the rail.

“Oh my God.” Julia spun down the aisle like Jesse Owens.

Louise, baffled, noticed that people were gathering under the balcony. The circumspect, ladylike Louise perceived the object of their attention now dancing on the railing. “Holy shit,” she breathed. She shifted her eyes to the right and the left, grateful that no one had heard her rude outburst. Then she hurried after her sister—to do what, she wasn’t sure.

Juts screeched to a halt under the balcony. Nicky tossed fans down at her mother.

“Nicky, honey, don’t do that. You’ll hurt somebody.”

Louise drew alongside and opened her mouth, ready to shout a warning. Nickel was dancing, grabbing a pole, and swinging around it. The kid seemed oblivious to danger.

Juts clapped her hand over her sister’s mouth, smearing her with her own lipstick.

“Don’t.”

“Lady, is that little boy yours?” a middle-aged man, brows creased with worry, asked.

“That little girl is mine.” Juts spoke to the crowd. “Don’t scare her.” She turned to Louise. “You go up the stairs. I’ll keep talking to her while you grab her from behind. If she falls I’ll try to catch her.”

“Julia, she’ll break your arms.”

“You worry too much. Go on.”

Louise tiptoed up the back stairway.

Juts smiled at the cavorting child. “Honey, you’re just a little monkey. I bet you can’t get down and sit in a rocking chair.”

“I can.”

“Let me see you.”

“No,” came the cry of defiance. Nickel found she liked being the center of attention. Having all those eyes focused on her was invigorating.

Louise softly crept up behind her and grabbed her around the waist, hauling her off the railing. Down below, people cheered. “Nickel”—Louise was shaking—“you can’t run off like that.”

Pounding footsteps rang out on the wooden stairway. Juts reached the top, face flushed. “Nicky, you could have been killed.”

“No.” Nickel shook her head.

Julia took the child from her sister’s arms.

“Well, we’ve had adventure enough for one day.” Louise’s whole body slumped. “I left my bags at Taylor Hams. I think we’d better collect our stuff and drive home.”

“Okay by me.” Juts squeezed the child before putting her down. “Promise me you won’t run away like that, Nicky?”

Nickel nodded her head but without much enthusiasm.

As they walked out of the York market, Juts thought she heard Nicky say under her breath, “Rillma Ryan,” but she convinced herself that she really said “Truman.”