Runny03 - Loose Lips (47 page)

“She’s cruel to me.”

“Maybe so, but she’s not cruel to your children or your grandchildren, and you’re hurting Nicky.”

“I am not.”

“Everyone in town knows she’s not Julia’s child—”

Wheezie interrupted. “They always knew.”

“Yes, but they didn’t talk about it. Now they do. Nicky will notice those sideways glances.”

“Well, that’s Julia’s problem. She should have told Nicky who she was a long time ago.”

“And just who is she?” Cora folded her arms across her chest.

“Rillma’s child.”

Cora, enraged, came within a whisker of slapping Louise’s face. Her expression scared her daughter enough that Louise held the pillow up to protect herself. Cora ripped the pillow away.

“She’s Julia’s baby. Don’t you ever again say she’s Rillma’s.”

“But Momma—” Louise felt queasy inside.

“Don’t you ‘Momma’ me. Louise, you’re fixing it so Nicky’s got a harder fight. Everybody knows Juts gets notions. But not everybody thinks Juts is a bad mother. Plenty do now because of your fat mouth. You want to get even. Well, you did, but it’s Nicky you hurt and she never did noways to you.”

Wheezie’s lower lip trembled. Cora picked up her purse. She left without another word.

J
uts?” Louise called at the backyard gate. Getting no answer, she gave the twoey whistle.

Juts, paintbrush in hand, came out of the garage. “I’m in here.”

Nicky, a smaller paintbrush in hand, heard her aunt Louise and stuck close to Juts.

Four wooden kitchen chairs dripped bright red paint onto newspapers.

“Redoing the chairs, I see,” Louise said.

“They needed it.” Juts prodded Nickel.

“Hello, Aunt Wheezie.”

“Hello, Nicky, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nicky returned to her task of painting the chair legs.

“I need to talk to you for a minute.”

“Okay.” Juts was suspicious.

“Alone.”

“Nicky, I’m going into the garden with Wheezer for a minute.”

“Maybe you should leave the brush here.” Louise had visions of Juts ruining her dress with it.

Juts laid the brush across the can. They walked through the dark green grass of late August to a small bench under a rose trellis.

Louise started. “We need to hash this out.”

“Yep.”

“You first.” Louise wavered.

“You’re not making my kid a Catholic. You and I don’t see eye to eye about religion and I resent you going behind my back and dragging Nicky to mass.”

“Well.” This was harder than Louise had anticipated because she believed that if everyone in the world were Catholic, all would be well. “It worried me when she questioned Jesus that day. I even talked to Father O’Reilly about it.”

“She’s a kid. Kids say all kinds of things. Remember the time when Maizie was four, she called Junior McGrail an elephant?”

Wheezie replied, “Well … yes.”

“You go to your church. I’ll go to mine.”

“Agreed.” Louise folded her hands together. “I got hot. I said some things around town I wish I hadn’t said.”

Juts cocked her head. “Like what?”

“Like you’re a bad mother.”

“Oh.” Juts crossed her legs at the ankles. “You’ve said that before.”

“Yeah, I know, but I got so mad about the Feast of the Magi
mess that I said it to Orrie Tadia and a few others. I said you weren’t bringing her up in a proper Christian home and I’m sorry I said it. Even the men are talking about it, and they usually just talk about one another.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it—but I sure wish you hadn’t done that.”

“I do, too.” Louise started to cry.

After Louise left, Juts walked back into the garage. Nickel had finished two chair legs. She waited for her mother to paint the seats and the backs, since people would pay more attention to those than to the legs she had painted. This way if she missed a spot or it dripped too much no one would notice.

“Sorry, I was longer than I thought.”

“See.” Nicky pointed to her accomplishments.

Juts hunkered down, inspecting for drips. “Very good. Not one missed spot. You’ve got a little drip right here, though.”

“I’ll fix it.” Nicky eagerly ran the brush over the spot, smoothing it out. “Momma, these will be pretty.”

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Juts chanted the phrase she’d learned as a child. “Want some lemonade?”

“Sure.”

They poured lemonade and sat under the rose trellis, where it was cool. Yoyo watched from her perch in the big tree. “Momma, I love painting.”

“That’s good.”

“Maybe when I grow up I can work for Uncle Pearlie.”

“Nah—when you grow up you’ll own your own company if that’s what you want to do.”

“Aunt Wheezie says girls don’t do stuff like that.”

“Aunt Wheezie’s tried to make a lady out of me since I was little. Didn’t work. Now she’s trying to make one out of you. Don’t listen to anybody. Do what you want. Doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, but go out there and scratch.”

“Like a chicken?”

“Yeah. Sooner or later a bug turns up.” Juts reached into the deep pocket of her housedress and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She was glad she smoked, because her other choice would have been to drink too much. That was expensive and it often led to more trouble.

“Nickel, do you know what ‘adopted’ means?”

“Like from the SPCA?”

“Uh—yes.”

“I know we’ve got Yoyo and Buster but Momma, think of those puppies and kitties. I bet we’ve got room for one more.”

Juts smiled. “Two’s enough. You’re old enough to know things and you’ve got some sense in your head. Daddy and I couldn’t have children. We wanted a baby something fierce. That’s how I got you. Another lady bore you and then Daddy and I adopted you. You’re special.”

Nickel drank her lemonade, thought a long time, then said, “Does that mean I won’t get Christmas presents?”

This puzzled Juts, who had expected a grilling on adoption, mothers, fathers, the whole nine yards. “Now why wouldn’t you get Christmas presents?”

“What if Santa Claus is looking for me somewhere else?”

Juts laughed, more from relief than humor. “Santa knows you’re here. He knows you belong to me.”

“Oh.”

“Honey, is there anything else you want to know?”

Nickel shook her head no, finished her lemonade, and walked back to the garage. Once she started a job she liked to finish it.

C
hessy, left out of the adoption discussion, grumbled, but Juts filled him in on Louise’s attacks. She said the time had felt right so she had pressed on with it and Nicky didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

He wanted to say something to Nicky. He wanted to tell her he loved her with all his heart and soul, that she was his daughter. But watching her play with the animals, he figured his need to tell her was larger than her need to hear it. Anyway, actions spoke louder than words. He scooped her up, kissed her on the cheek, and played catch with her.

Louise, contrite after her outburst, trudged around town telling everyone she hadn’t meant what she’d said. Juts’s gags irritated her and pulling one in church just made her see red. Runnymede folks found the spectacle of Louise eating crow as noteworthy as the plastic-vomit episode.

There were those who felt Louise had backtracked, that she had been right in the first place. Others felt she had learned two wrongs don’t make a right. Still others wondered if she had grown up a bit, although they agreed time would tell. Newcomers like Pierre and Bob at the Curl ‘n’ Twirl couldn’t understand how the two sisters could be so childish with each other yet seemingly mature with everyone else. People who had grown up with the Hunsenmeir girls shrugged: That’s the way they were.
No one expected them to change, and while some would have welcomed it, most people found their antics an antidote to smalltown boredom.

The brouhaha died down just as those children born in 1944 entered first grade. Nickel, eager to go, skipped the whole way to school. She wore a neatly pressed plaid dress with dark green smocking on the bodice top. She carried a small bookbag and a lunch pail. She had two new yellow pencils with No. 2 lead, a wooden ruler, a big pink eraser, and a small metal stencil template, containing both numbers and letters.

Juts dragged her feet the whole way. Nickel didn’t want to hold hands; she was too busy rushing up to every child on the way to Violet Hill Elementary School. Not even the big kids daunted her. Those children carrying books really impressed her. She couldn’t wait to carry books home from school.

At the red-painted doorway to the old brick building, Juts, along with other mothers of first graders, paused and waved good-bye and good luck. As soon as Nicky bopped through the door the tears gushed over Juts’s cheeks. She wiped her eyes, then noticed that other mothers were in the same fix.

Charlene Nordness stood next to Juts. “I’m a big bawl-baby.”

Lillian Yost sniffed. “They aren’t ours anymore. It’s their first step into the world.”

“Can’t they stay little just a bit longer?” Julia wistfully added.

“I’d like to turn back the clock for myself but not for Kirk. I can never wait to get him out of the house,” Peepbean’s mother replied. He’d been held back a grade and she wondered if this was going to be a pattern. Her recurring nightmare was Peepbean, aged twenty-one, just graduating from sixth grade.

“Girls, let’s go to Cadwalder’s. An ice-cream float is the best thing after a cry.”

They trooped over and who should be sitting at the counter but Maizie Trumbull.

“Maizie, what are you doing here?”

“Aunt Juts, I couldn’t stand another day of it. I had to come home from Baltimore. Mom was so proud when I kept working there but I don’t like big cities. I can’t do it, Aunt Juts. I’m afraid to go home and tell Momma.”

“Don’t. Let’s find your dad first, but the girls and I are going to have ice-cream floats. Want one?”

Vaughn rolled his wheelchair out from the back and was surprised to see Maizie. “Hey, this place is dull without you.”

Maizie noticed how green his eyes were. “Can you fit back there to make me my ice-cream float? You do it better than anybody.”

“Sure I can. Dad and I rigged up bars so I can do anything I want behind the counter.” He guided his wheelchair to the end, grabbed a bar and pulled himself out, then along the bars, his arms huge and muscular now, to reach the ice-cream section. He wore wooden legs but the doctors were still working on getting the fit right and he’d lost muscle tone in his thighs. He could stand well enough though, just swaying a little. He made Maizie her favorite, a chocolate ice-cream soda, and pushed it across the dark marble counter to her.

“The best.” She sighed. “You’re the best.”

Juts, joking with the girls, noticed that Maizie, far from being morose as Juts would have expected, was perky this morning. She was especially perky when talking with Vaughn.

For the first time it occurred to Juts that the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

T
he light in December had an ethereal radiance that compensated for the fact that there was so little of it. Juts hated the short days and the long nights but she appreciated the quality of the light.