Runny03 - Loose Lips (53 page)

“Come on, Louise—”

“You weren’t cut out to be a mother.”

“Well, too damned late to do anything about it now!”

“She’s right, Louise. The child is here.”

“And the damage is done.”

“Oh, great, now Nicky is damaged.”

“I didn’t mean Nicky. I meant blowing your guts about the warplanes.”

“As I see it, we’re even.”

“Me, too. Now shake and make up and for the love of God, shut up!”

Grudgingly the two sisters shook hands.

That night as Cora drifted off to sleep she wondered if she’d been a good mother. She never could get her two daughters to realize they were both sipping through the same straw.

H
ere.” Nicky handed Juts a yellow-covered manual. “She’ll just lo-o-ve that.” Juts laughed, tucking
The Complete Guide to Guitar Prayer
under her arm. “Aunt Wheezie can play anything.”

“Mouth organ, too?” Nicky plucked out a harmonica book. “She’s too grand for that. Now come on, we’ve got to find you a bookbag.”

“But I want to get a book for Daddy.”

“Daddy’s not much of a reader, honey.”

“He reads to me.”

“That’s different. You have to learn that the things you like aren’t necessarily what other people like. Daddy would really like a new bow tie. We’ll go by the Bon-Ton.”

“Okay.”

They walked down the aisle, hand in hand, to the back-to-school section. Red bookbags, blue, tan, even bright green ones, filled a row on the shelf. Juts picked one up and replaced it. It was much too big.

“I like this one, Momma.”

Juts took the true-red canvas bag and flipped it open. A place for pencils and a ruler was inside the flap. The big interior pocket was divided in half. The strap, sturdy webbing, ought to last one
school year. She checked the price: $6.95. That was a little more than she wanted to pay.

“Hold this.”

“I like this one,” Nicky repeated herself.

“I do, too, but let me just check out these other ones. That one is a little pricey.”

She rooted around but couldn’t find anything she liked better. The cheaper ones were too flimsy, the more expensive ones out of the question.

Nicky held her tongue. She had learned that pressuring her mother didn’t work.

“Well, if I buy this we’re going to have to give up something else.”

“I don’t need a new dress,” said the child who hated them.

“Big sacrifice.” Juts laughed, then caught sight of Louise pushing open the door to the Five and Dime. “Here, I don’t want Louise to see this.” She handed Nicky back
The Complete Guide to Guitar Prayer
. “What are you doing here?” She waved to Louise.

“Hi, Nicky.”

“Hi, Aunt Wheeze.”

“Finished up early at St. Rose of Lima’s. That’s the first time since the cornerstone was laid that a Ladies’ Improvement Society in Jesus’ Name meeting ended early.”

“You’ve improved all that you can stand.” Juts winked at Nicky, then slipped her arm through Louise’s. “I want to show you something.” She pointed behind her back that Nicky should take the bookbag and the book to the counter. By the time Juts and Louise joined her there, Verna BonBon, yet another of that numerous clan, had the items in a brown paper bag. Louise bought a pair of hot-coral square earrings with a preserved seahorse in the middle.

They walked outside into the hot hand of late August.

“Where does the summer go?” Louise sighed. “It’s almost Labor Day.”

“I don’t know, but it sure goes faster than the winter.” Juts
pointed toward a park bench. “Let’s sit down. Nicky wants to give you a present.”

Nicky eagerly slid out
The Complete Guide to Guitar Prayer.

“Well, isn’t this nice?” Louise kissed her on the cheek, then flipped the book open to “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

“That’s easy. Why, Maizie and I can have duets. I’ll play the piano. She gets too carried away on the piano.”

“Momma says you and Maizie look exactly alike.” Nickel’s feet stuck straight out off the park bench. “But I don’t look like my momma.”

“I guess Maizie and I do look alike. Well, Juts and I strongly resemble each other. Her smile is prettier.”

“Your hair is prettier.” Juts complimented her back.

“I think you’re both pretty. I want to grow up and look like you.”

“You’ll grow up and look like yourself. Anyway, by the time you grow up, the way we look now will be so old-fashioned you’ll laugh.”

“You think?”

“I think,” Juts answered her.

“Remember those awful high-button shoes we used to wear? We thought they were the cat’s meow.” Louise laughed.

“Yeah.” Juts smiled. “Know what I remember? When we were little, no lady would go out in the summer without her parasol. Actually, it was pretty, remember, walking through the square with Momma and all the ladies had parasols of different colors—some had lace, some had ruffles. People knew how to dress then. The way we’re heading, by the time Nicky’s grown they won’t wear clothes at all.”

“The human body was meant to be covered. In the Garden of Eden—”

Juts interrupted. “The Garden of Eden has nothing to do with it. Can you imagine Josephine Smith nude?”

“I’d rather not.”

“How about Walter Falkenroth, skinny as a rail.”

Louise shook her head in distaste.

“And then there’s Caesura Frothingham, that would be like seeing an elephant, with all those wrinkles. She’s got to be ninety-five if she’s a day.”

“What about Harmon Nordness?”

That sent them into guffaws, for the sheriff’s gut expanded every year. Soon he’d have to walk and let his stomach ride.

Nicky stared at her legs, the tiny golden hairs catching the sunlight. “What about me?”

“That’s different. Children are beautiful,” Louise answered.

“Not Peepbean.”

“Well, he wouldn’t be so bad if his teeth were fixed.”

“Beauty’s only skin deep, ugly’s to the bone.” Juts repeated the old phrase.

“Pretty is as pretty does.”

Both sisters snapped their fingers and said, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” Then they laughed.

“G-Mom says that all the time.” Nickel laughed with them.

“We ought to write down her sayings. She was always quoting rules to us. Every now and then she’ll fire off another one just like we were still children.” Julia kicked off her espadrilles; her feet were burning up.

“Guess we are children, we’ll always be children to her, just like Mary and Maizie will always be children to me.”

“So, Momma, what are the rules?” Nickel hopped off the bench. The hard slats hurt her rear end. There wasn’t much padding there.

“Rules. Okay, here are some rules of the road: Never break your word. Never be disloyal to a friend. Never whine when you lose. I can’t think of anything else.”

“Pick your friends with care. You can’t be everybody’s friend. It doesn’t work,” Louise added.

“What’s the Golden Rule?” Juts asked Nickel.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

“If you forget the others, that one will do. Not that it’s easy. Boy, I need something to drink. I usually don’t mind the heat but today it’s creeping up on me.” Juts stood up.

They walked toward Cadwalder’s, Nickel charging on ahead out of earshot.

“Nicky thought you’d like the guitar book. She can be very sweet. I didn’t have the heart to tell her you might want something different, because she picked it out herself.”

“She’s bright as a cigar band.”

“I wanted to buy her Cootie. All the kids are crazy about that game, but her bookbag cost six ninety-five, so she’ll have to wait awhile for Cootie. She calls Peepbean a cootie, which is an improvement on ‘asshole.’”

“If you’d stop swearing she wouldn’t pick up these words.”

“Everybody swears in Runnymede. It saves having to take the time to find the right word.”

“I don’t swear.”

“I forgot about that.”

“I don’t.”

Juts ignored her, her eyes on Nickel skipping now through the square, which must have seemed huge to her. “She’s a pistol, isn’t she? I love her.”

“That’s what they need. If more children had love, we’d have a whole lot less trouble in this world.”

“I’m trying to be a good mother.”

“I know. You are, Juts. I pick at you over little things but the big things, well, you’re a good mother. Kids can run you crazy. I’m beginning to think any mother that doesn’t strangle her brats is a good one.” She waved to Lillian Yost, passing at the edge of the park.

“Chester’s so good with her. It’s funny, but watching him play with Nicky makes me love him more. I’m starting to trust him again.”

“Men play with children because they’re children themselves.”

“You’re too hard on men sometimes.”

“Ha!” She snorted. “You show me the woman who invented the income tax. Huh?”

“You got me there.”

“Watch!” Nicky called, then spun a cartwheel.

“That’s good,” Juts called. “That Co-Cola preys on my mind. Come on, Nicky.” They stopped at the corner, looked both ways, then sprinted over to Cadwalder’s.

After passing and repassing with Flavius Cadwalder and Vaughn, who, unknown to all, including his father, was calling on Paul that evening to state his intentions, the three left, refreshed.

“He’s going to ask for her hand.” Louise, her intuition on target, was nervous.

“Better than her foot,” Juts joked, making Nicky giggle. “Don’t fret so much, Wheezie. It’s right. You feel it when it’s right.” They walked to Lee Street, where Juts would turn toward home.

“I guess.”

“Here’s our corner.” She stated the obvious. Louise stood for a second, then blurted out, “If you have a better answer, tell me.”

“About what?” Julia was confused.

“I don’t know.” Louise clasped her hands. “Sometimes it’s like a wave’s crashed over me and I worry myself sick. I worry about Vaughn’s health and—”

“Louise, two years with the right man is better than twenty with the wrong one. Now, don’t fuss up yourself. Really. Look how good Mary and Extra Billy turned out.”

“They can fight like cats and dogs.”

“Who can’t?”

“Paul and I didn’t fight like that.”

“Oh, yes you did. I recall once he took the car, got drunk, stayed out late, and Chessy had to go looking for him.”

“Celeste brought him home on her horse.” Louise laughed, remembering.

“If you’ve got feelings for someone they can heat up. Better than staying cold, you know?”

“I know.” Tears glistened in Louise’s eyes. “Juts, are we getting old?”

Juts shrugged. “I don’t feel old.” She put her arm around her older sister’s waist, still girlishly small. “Do you feel old?”

“Some days I feel one hundred years old and I don’t even know why. And the strangest things float into my mind, like little boats. I remember Aimes and how much Momma loved him.” Cora’s boyfriend had died in 1917. “I remember Celeste and how she’d lift up her chin, never say a word, just lift up that chin and you knew you’d better toe the line. I remember the straw hats we wore one Easter. You pulled the streamers off mine and I cried. I remember holding Mary in my arms for the first time and I thought that wrinkled red face was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Oh, and I remember the headlines on the
Clarion
and the
Trumpet
when the
Titantic
sank and remember, the list of the missing would be posted outside the newspaper offices every day—” Her voice trailed off, and she made a small gesture with her hand, as if trying to scare off the flood tide of emotion.

“I remember the first time I smelled lilacs.” Juts smiled, then hugged Louise. “We’re walking encyclopedias.”

“But it’s all a jumble.”

“Everybody’s mind is like that. If you asked someone what they ate for breakfast or lunch even two days ago, they couldn’t tell you.”

“Harmon Nordness could. Two weeks ago, Idabelle McGrail could, while she was alive.” Louise laughed. “You know what I mean.”

“I know, but Juts, what happens when I go?” An edge of anguish cut through the air. “What do you mean?”

“What happens to the memories, to everything I’ve seen and heard and done and learned? Poof.” Tears rolled down Louise’s
cheeks. Nicky reached up to hold her hand. She hated to see anyone cry. Louise squeezed her hand but couldn’t say anything.

“I have this theory”—Juts smiled to cheer Louise—“that there’s this humongous bank in the sky, the memory bank. Everything is sorted there, and if some new person like Nicky wants to learn what you learned, she asks the memory bank.”

“Juts, you’re silly.”

“Well, a library is a memory bank.” Juts breathed in the scent of newly cut grass. “A song is a memory bank. What about ’The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’? That’s full of memories for someone who lived at the turn of the century, like Momma. All Nicky has to do is hear it. I believe everything remains here in one form or another.”

“Except for us.”

“Yeah, except for us. I guess we’ve got to make way for the spring shoots. Hansford made way for us, even Idabelle McGrail, the silly ass. They stepped out so we could step in.”

“Oh, Juts,” Louise was pleading, “I don’t want to step out. I don’t want to miss anything—ever.”