Runny03 - Loose Lips (42 page)

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Rillma replied. It seemed to Juts she was trying not to choke up.

“Nicky, this is Rillma Ryan and she came to pay us a visit.”

Nicky bounded over—she never walked when she could skip or run—and held out her hand as she had been taught to do. “Hello, Miss Ryan.”

“Hello, Nickel. You may call me Rillma.”

“Neat name.”

“My brother named me that.”

Nickel couldn’t remember a Ryan man about Rillma’s age. By this time she knew everyone in South and North Runnymede. “Momma, how come I don’t know Rillma’s brother?”

Rillma replied, “He died of spinal meningitis when I was about your age.”

“Did I do a bad thing?” Nickel, chagrined, asked Juts.

“No, honey, you didn’t know.”

Nickel threw off her coat and her scarf, dutifully taking them to the mud room off the kitchen. When she reappeared she smiled at the visitor. Although they had the same coloring and the same eyes, Nickel couldn’t see it. She had the Ryan voice, too, but her high cheekbones, full lips, and athletic body were from the paternal side.

“Do you like school?”

Every adult asked this question.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Tell her what you like best,” Juts encouraged her.

“Horses.”

“No, your classes.”

“Drawing. Mrs. Miller lets us use finger paints!”

“That’s nice.”

“Where do you live?” Nicky asked. The rudiments of making conversation were being taught to her by the Wednesday Tea ladies as well as her own family. Wednesday Tea was the precursor to junior cotillion and then cotillion, and attendance was mandatory for children whose parents revered good manners.

“Portland, Oregon.”

“Oh.” She had no idea where this place might be.

“That’s all the way across the country on the Pacific Ocean.”

“Oh.” Nickel concentrated to come up with more to say. “Do they have horses in Portland?”

“Yes. The city is famous for its roses, though. It’s right on a big river, which flows into the ocean. Maybe when you’re bigger you’ll visit it.”

“That would be nice.” She became quiet. She had exhausted her line of conversation and was dying to play outdoors even though it was cold. “Momma, can I put on my pants and go outside?”

“Yeah, sure.” Juts lit up a Chesterfield after offering a smoke to Rillma, who refused.

“It was nice to meet you, Rillma. Do you have a little girl or a little boy I could play with?”

“No.” Rillma smiled.

“Bye.” She scrambled up the stairs to her room, followed by the cat and the dog. She changed in a flash and ran back down and out the back door.

The two women waited until the back door closed.

“She’s getting better about slamming the door.”

“She’s a sweet kid.” Rillma smiled tightly.

“She was born to be my baby.” A rush of color flooded Julia’s cheeks.

“She was.”

“Anyone know out there in Portland?”

“No.”

“No reason to.”

“No. I don’t even know if I’ll tell my husband. That is, if I ever get married.”

“A beautiful girl like you will get married.”

“I don’t trust men.” Rillma’s voice lowered.

“Who said anything about trusting them?” Juts exhaled through her nostrils.

“How can you love someone you don’t trust?”

Juts shrugged. “You just do, Rillma. They can’t help being what they are, any more than we can help being what we are—I guess.”

“I put my foot in it, didn’t I?”

“God, Rillma, this is Runnymede. Everybody knows everything about everybody. I survived. You survived. You just go on.”

Rillma lowered her lustrous brown eyes to the floor and then raised them again. “I’d rather be by myself.” She sucked in her breath. “You know how things flit across your mind? When all this was happening I thought my life was over.” She paused. “But it all worked out somehow.”

Rillma stood up and held out her hand to Julia, then hugged her instead. “Thank you. I was afraid you wouldn’t let me in.”

Juts held her cigarette away so she wouldn’t burn Rillma. “You can write me. I’ll write back.”

“I will.”

After Rillma left by the front door, Juts watched her walk down the sidewalk. Juts exploded into tears but she didn’t know why as the graceful silhouette receded into nothingness.

Y
ou did what!” Louise paused, her fingers on the lace of a brassiere, for she was standing in the middle of Bear’s department store on the square in York.

“I let her visit Nickel.”

“You can’t do that.” In the next breath she said, “Does Chester know?”

“Sure.”

“And he wasn’t upset?”

“No.”

She dropped the bra. “Then you’re both of you out of your heads. Blood calls to blood. You’re asking for trouble.”

“Nicky couldn’t have cared less. She was polite and then ran outside to play.”

Louise hit the serious register in her voice, accompanied by a telltale shake of the head. “She has no business around that child. She gave her up. Nickel is yours.”

“I didn’t have the heart to turn her away. Anyhow, she can’t take care of a child, and Chessy and I have legally adopted Nickel. There’s nothing she can do.”

“What if Nickel looks at her and sees herself?”

“Nicky doesn’t look like Rillma.”

“She talks in spurts, long silences and then boom,” Louise
said. “That’s unusual. Maybe there’s something wrong. Maybe inside she knows she’s not blood.”

“She talks about horses, Louise. You can be such an ass.”

Surrounded by lace panties—pink, yellow, white, and dangerous black—Louise and Juts got a hen-on. The customers at the lingerie sale hovered around the merchandise and the unintended entertainment.

“An ass, an ass? Who rode all the way to filthy Pittsburgh on borrowed gas-ration coupons to get your baby? Who wrapped her in a blanket and held her close during the blizzard? Who took turns driving with Chester? You are one brick shy of a load! You don’t know anything about being a mother.”

“Shut up,” Juts threatened.

“Furthermore, you should never, ever have let Rillma Ryan see that child!”

“Stop telling me what to do.” Juts slapped her with a brassiere.

“Free speech—this is America.”

“For Chrissake, Wheezie, shut up.”

Wheezie tossed her head as another bra flew at her face. “You’re trying to deprive me of my rights as a citizen.”

“No, I’m trying to shut you up! I’m sick of you.”

Louise grabbed a handful of underpants and dumped them on Juts’s head. One hung on her ear. Lingerie floated down like little silken parachutes. The floorwalker, a mincing twit in a brown suit, charged down the aisle.

“Ladies, ladies.”

“Stay out of this.” Juts threw a brassiere at him.

He pulled it off his face, his wedding ring catching the overhead light for an instant. Sales clerks deserted their posts to help him. Meanwhile, a crowd had gathered and women were scooping up the silk goodies. Most intended to pay. A few did not.

The two sisters, pulled apart, were dumped out on the street.
A pair of pink underpants was lodged in Louise’s blouse between the top and second buttons. She stormed down the street.

“Thief!” Juts pointed at the pink protrusion.

Louise stopped, saw the underpants, and turned around. She opened the front door of Bear’s, grandly dropping them on the floor, then she headed across the square for George Street.

“You can find your own way home.”

Juts, color high, tagged after her. “Gum flapper!”

“Don’t be so childish.”

A familiar face, though fatter now, smiled at them as Bunny Von Bonhurst came down the sidewalk from the opposite direction, waving at the sisters.

“Bunny.” Louise, switching into social gear, forced a smile. “I haven’t seen you in years.”

Bunny, in a smart beige suite, hugged Louise and then Julia. “Why, I came on over from Salisbury to visit Rollie and the kids.” Rollie was her son. “How are you?”

“I can’t complain,” said Louise, who usually did.

“You look good.” Juts lied because she thought Bunny Von Bonhurst was fat as a tick.

“I hear you’re a mother now.”

“Yes, she’s a handful.”

“They all are.” Bunny laughed heartily. “Say, I sure thought of you girls back during the war, when I read the article in the paper about the German planes. You must have been scared to death.”

“We were,” Louise truthfully replied, smiling reflexively.

“That was some night.” Juts decided to add to Louise’s distress. “Louise had the binoculars and we heard something. Naturally, we never assumed it could be the enemy, even though we were trained to look for them. Anyway, the clouds were big rolling ones so she had to really follow this high, faraway sound and then she saw them coming straight on in a V. My heart stopped.”

So did Louise’s, because she was sure that her angry sister would rat on her with an unvarnished account. “Really, Julia, Bunny doesn’t want to hear the details.”

“I do so!”

“Well”—Juts licked her lips—“Wheezie screamed ‘Germans’ and I swung the big light up on the aircraft, but they were really high up. Wheezie cranked the siren. It was the middle of the night. People ran out of their houses; Caesura Frothingham, you remember her—” When Bunny nodded that she did, Juts continued, “—hollered so loud she could have awakened the dead, ‘We’ll be killed!’ then she ran around like a chicken with its head cut off until she finally dove under her car. A lot of good that would have done. And—”

“Julia, really.” Louise checked her wristwatch in an obvious manner. “Bunny, I’m so glad to see you.”

“You know what was odd about those Germans, though, was that they disappeared. Must have been heavier clouds farther west, or maybe they turned and flew back out to the ocean.” Juts maliciously smiled at Louise and then sweetly smiled at Bunny.

“Pearlie always swore they came out of Newfoundland.” Louise clipped her words.

“That’s a long way away.” Bunny wrinkled her brow.

“They didn’t build aircraft carriers.” Juts rubbed it in.

“They could have borrowed one from the Japanese. They were on the same side, you know.” Louise stared daggers at her.

“Yeah, they had an Axis to grind.”

Bunny giggled. “Juts, you never change.”

“Unfortunately.” Louise smiled stiffly. “Still my bad baby sister.” She put her hand under Julia’s elbow and pushed her right down the road, calling over her shoulder to Bunny, “You come on down and visit us. It’s been too long.”

Bunny waved. “I will.”

Out of Bunny’s earshot, Louise hissed, “If you ever even hint at what happened that night I will slit your throat.”

“Then you’d better be real nice to me.”

“I am nice to you. I am trying to avert a disaster down the road.”

“When I want your advice I’ll ask for it. Then again”—that malicious smile returned—“you are my big sister. You are having a birthday in the next minute and soon you’ll be fifty.”

“I will not!”

“That’s right. I forgot. You were born in 1901. You’ll only be forty-nine. Guess we have to wait another year for the Big One.”

“I am not forty-nine.”

“Well, that’s funny, Wheezie, because I’m forty-five.”

“You never were good at math.”

They rode home in silence. Louise, warned, didn’t want to further provoke Julia, but she was still so furious she didn’t trust herself to talk. Juts hummed the entire way home, interrupting her musical reverie as they passed familiar sights on Route 116. She adored having Louise in her power. She even made her stop in Spring Grove so she could buy a Co-Cola, knowing the smell from the nearby paper mill would turn Louise’s stomach.

When Wheezie pulled into Juts’s driveway, Juts hopped out of the car, grabbed her few packages, and said, “I have a new philosophy—‘Tell the truth and run.’ Forty-nine!” She shut the door of the car and dashed to the house.

E
veryone invited to Louise’s birthday party had to keep up the fiction that she had only just nudged over the forty line.

Nickel, loving any kind of party, stood at the door taking coats. She threw them over the bed in Louise’s bedroom. After the bed was piled high she threw coats over Doodlebug’s bed because she figured it was the bed part that was important. The only bad thing about that idea was that Ramelle Chalfonte’s mink coat got fleas.