Runny03 - Loose Lips (46 page)

“I’m not mad at you.” Juts loomed over Nicky. “But I am ripshit at that religious-nut sister of mine. Come on.” She grabbed Nickel by the hand.

They rode the bus to a joke shop out on Frederick Street. The faint aroma of mildew and alcohol permeated the premises. Musty, dinky, and dark, it was filled with items like fake ice cubes with flies in them, whoopee cushions, rubber snakes and spiders, and Groucho Marx noses, as well as sexual items hidden behind the desk. Stationed there, parked like a behemoth, was a distant cousin of Rob McGrail’s.

“Momma, if I put this under Wheezie’s seat she’ll let out a real boomer.” Nickel held up the whoopee cushion.

“That’s too big to hide. I’ve got a better idea.” She bought a large, realistic piece of plastic vomit and spent the trip home coaching Nickel on how to behave during her first high mass.

“Momma, why don’t you like the Catholic Church?”

The maple trees swayed overhead. A light breeze was keeping the heat down. “The Lutheran Church is good enough for me and it ought to be good enough for you. Besides, one church is about as bad as another, so stick with the one you know. Louise thinks she’s the Virgin Mary, and it’s all Celeste Chalfonte’s fault.”

Nickel knew who Celeste was, if for no other reason than that she had died the day before Nickel was born, and people still talked about her. “Was Celeste Catholic?”

“No, she was Episcopalian, although just as happy going to the Lutheran Church. It’s a long story. I’ll make it short. Louise liked to play an old piano Celeste had—by ear, mind you, Wheezie is very musical. After a big fight because Celeste wouldn’t give Louise the piano, Momma walked out on Celeste—she worked for Celeste, you know—Celeste weakened and finally gave the piano to Momma. Louise fell ass over tit. She played morning, noon, and night and was so revoltingly adorable that
Carlotta Van Dusen, Celeste’s older sister, found her a place at Immaculata Academy and Celeste paid for Wheezie’s education. That’s how Louise became a Catholic. That piano.”

“St. Rose of Lima’s is pretty.”

“Sure it is, but I’m not having any child of mine taking orders from some greaser in Rome.”

“What’s a greaser?”

“Oh—never mind. Now, do you remember what I told you?”

Nickel nodded that she did.

July 23 was the Feast of the Magi. The bones of Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar were said to be in Cologne Cathedral, except that nothing much was left in Cologne now, and the Wise Men’s bones were discreetly omitted from discussion. Then again, some stray schnauzer might have had a holy feast after the bombings.

The feast fell on a Sunday, so Louise fabricated a story about why she needed Nickel that Sunday even though it meant she’d miss church at Christ Lutheran. Juts pretended to believe her.

That Sunday when Louise picked up her niece, the plastic vomit was folded in Nickel’s white patent-leather pocketbook, which matched her white Mary Janes. A white ribbon was tied around her black curly hair.

Nickel rehearsed every step in her mind. She was quiet, but then she was usually quiet, so Louise didn’t notice. Also she was too busy saying, “I don’t want to talk against your mother but—” after which she would launch into the litany of Julia Ellen’s sins in the hopes that Nicky wouldn’t repeat them.

Louise wore so much jewelry for high mass that she resembled a glamorous beetle, everything hard and shiny. She shepherded Nickel down the center aisle near the altar. The two sat at the end of the pew. Pearlie, backed up and working weekends, attended early mass, so it was only the two of them.

Mary Miles Mundis sat opposite them, Rob McGrail
immediately in front. Nickel returned everyone’s smiles. They were all wondering, of course, why the child was in church with Louise rather than at Christ Lutheran with her mother.

The processional began, the music filling the beautiful, small church. Light flowed through the brilliant colors of the stained-glass windows.

Father O’Reilly walked down the aisle preceded by Peep-bean, the acolyte, swishing the incense. An older boy, immediately behind Peepbean, held high the gold crosier. Behind Father O’Reilly walked the new junior priest, young Father Stewart.

Just as Peepbean passed the pew, Nickel yelled, “Your purse is on fire!” Then she threw out the plastic vomit.

She didn’t throw it where Juts had told her to throw it, which was in front of Father O’Reilly. In her excitement, Nickel gave it a weak pitch and it splattered in front of Mary Miles Mundis. The sight of it made her sick as a dog.

Peepbean jumped to get out of the way, and in so doing he swung the incense bowl a little too high. He lost control of it and it flew off, whirling toward the altar.

Father Stewart, a quick thinker, sprinted from the procession to the vestibule to find the janitor.

“I’ll kill her!” Louise exclaimed as Peepbean took a swing at Nickel.

“Peepbean wears skirts,” Nickel taunted him.

The congregation was in an uproar as Louise yanked Nickel out of the pew by her wrist, holding her dangling for a moment, then dropped her as Peepbean rounded for another swing.

Father O’Reilly grabbed Peepbean as Wheezer hauled Nickel out of there.

“Did you think of this by yourself?”

“No.”

The
click-click
of Louise’s high heels reverberated through the marble vestibule. She pushed open the door with both hands. It
swung back so hard it knocked Nickel off her feet. She picked herself up, opened the door, and stood on top of the steps, watching Wheezie hurrying down the sidewalk toward her car. Then she roared off, leaving the child standing there.

Nickel walked home. By the time she got there Juts was on her hands and knees trying to splice together the phone cords. Louise had pitched a fit and fallen in it, yanking the cords out of the wall. She’d yank her own out of the wall, too. Once, in the 1920s, she had wrecked a phone booth in the Bon-Ton. They had asked for her charge card back.

It took Louise five years of good behavior to get another card from the store.

Juts looked up at Nickel as she trudged into the house.

“Good job.”

“Peepbean threw his purse at me.”

“Ha!” Julia laughed after taking the precaution of removing her Chesterfield. “As you can see, your aunt Wheezie had a moment. At forty-nine, perhaps she’s had too many of them.” She laughed again, then held out her hand to Nickel, who sat next to her.

“Here.” She turned around her cigarette, offering Nicky a drag. “You earned it.”

Nickel eagerly lifted the cigarette to her lips and gently inhaled.

“Don’t suck in too much. Okay, now let it out.”

“Tastes funny.”

“I love the taste. I bless the American Indian every day for cultivating this weed.” Juts smiled and returned to twisting wires. She held out her hand for the cigarette, but Nickel took another puff.

“Momma, when I grow up I want to be just like you. I’m going to smoke Chesterfields.”

Juts’s laugh turned to a hum as she wondered what she’d have to do to top this one: a food fight in the Sistine Chapel?

T
he open can of paint sitting on the drop cloths dripped mint-green. Lillian Yost, due again and thrilled, had decided to paint the upstairs hallway mint-green. Millard indulged her every whim when she was pregnant, partly out of pride and partly out of guilt, he worked her so hard in the bakery.

Extra Billy Bitters dipped a wide brush into the paint. A vision of his life—open cans of paint, pink, blue, green, white, beige, eggshell, red—frightened him. His eyes glazed over, he held the brush a moment too long, and a big drop splattered on his shoe.

“Pop.” He’d taken to calling his father-in-law that.

“Huh.” Pearlie was cutting in woodwork.

“Is this it?”

“Huh?” Pearlie didn’t look up.

Billy laid the brush on the wall in swift, controlled strokes. “What I mean is, when you came back from France … what did you do?”

“Started working for Bob Frankel.”

“That was that?”

“Well, I was damn glad to be alive.”

“Yeah.” Billy’s voice trailed off.

“You know, Billy, sometimes you can think too much. Sometimes I see the faces of my buddies … funny things. Like I
knew this skinny Italian kid from Massachusetts, Vito Capeto, and we were eating fresh French bread, those long loaves. He compared French bread to Italian bread and I wish I could imitate him. Funny boy.” He paused. “Guess I was just a boy, too.” He exhaled. “Well, two days later we were in Belleau Wood and I slipped, fell facedown, mud up my nose, couldn’t breathe. The earth shook. A damn sea of mud rolled onto me. I slid out, clawing for anything solid. Got on my feet and Vito was up in the tree branches, just like a rag doll. And here I am painting houses.”

“Yeah.” Billy, relieved, smiled at the older man.

“You know what else? I still don’t know why I was fighting. The war to end all wars.” Pearlie’s voice had a mocking tone.

“Did you ever feel trapped?”

“Over there?”

“Here.”

A long pause followed. “Sure. After Mary was born I had a rough time. I loved the little tot.” He stood up to face his son-in-law. “But once the babies are on the ground you can’t leave. You’ve got Oderuss and David. Boys need a father. You thinking about leaving?”

“No. It’s just sometimes I can’t breathe. I don’t know why.” He brightened. “I want to get in my truck, pick up the boys, and get drunk … go out and howl at the moon.”

Pearlie gave a little howl and Bill joined him. The howling dissolved into laughter.

Billy abruptly stopped and imploringly asked, “What am I gonna do, Pop?”

“Make the best of it.” Pearlie put his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “You play the cards life dealt you.”

L
ouise avoided Juts for three weeks, a record. She succumbed to the thrill of being a victim. She could shake her head, lower her voice, and intone how Julia Ellen was leading Nickel along the paths of unrighteousness. Filled with delicious anguish, the center of sympathy and attention, she told Orrie Tadia that Juts wasn’t a good mother because she wasn’t a natural mother. That pronouncement roared through Runnymede like prairie fire, everyone adding their own commentary to the issue. Some people agreed with Louise, others didn’t, but everyone expressed some variation on the theme of the child’s future, Juts’s personality, and life in general.

The human tongue is like the rattler of a rattlesnake: People would be better off without it.

Mother Smith enjoyed this tempest thoroughly. Julia Ellen’s reputation was being assassinated but Josephine’s own hands were clean. Trudy Epstein didn’t much mind, either, because her version of the past was that Chessy had truly loved her, only staying with his wife out of respect for social convention. Once she married Senior Epstein she shrewdly kept her mouth shut, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love hearing her friends trumpet her version of the story.

Mary Miles Mundis surprised everyone by saying, “We needed some excitement.”

Ramelle heard about the gossip from Ev Most, who loved Juts but didn’t want to be the one to break it to her. Ramelle then told Cora, working that day, who grabbed her purse and marched out the door. Ramelle hopped in the car to drive her over to Louise’s. Cora rarely lost her temper, but she was so mad she couldn’t see straight.

At the Trumbulls’, Ramelle turned off the motor and waited.

Louise was sitting on her back porch, baskets of thread at her feet alongside Doodlebug. Needlepoint and suffering were her two comforts.

Cora threw her purse on the floor, looming over her daughter, who was so surprised at the sight of her mother that she held the needle poised in midair, royal blue thread dangling.

“Momma—”

“Sickness comes in through the mouth and disaster comes out of it. Shut yours.”

“Huh?” She stuck her needle in the pillow but held the pillow to her chest.

“You’ll kill Juts. You can’t say she isn’t a good mother because she didn’t birth that baby. That’s not right.”

“It’s true.”

“You can’t be saying that. It’s cruel.”