Rhonda the Rubber Woman

by Peterson, Norma;

  “It was the damn war,” she said all of a sudden. “That’s what it was. Walt couldn’t shake it. It does terrible things to men, Georgia. War.”

  “Oh, I know,” Georgia answered. “I’ve heard stories.”

  Cora had seen from the day he got home Walt was different. Refusing to wear his civvies, drinking with the other vets, getting into arguments at work. He hated being a cripple, hated having to work as a sorter until his leg healed. Then one day a woman in his department asked if he killed any Japs overseas and he exploded, yelling wasn’t that great, he’d been over there getting his leg ripped open, seeing his buddies killed left and right, arms and legs flying all over the fucking front, and now he’s supposed to work alongside a goddamn fool who sat on her fat ass the whole time, doesn’t even know there aren’t any Japs in Italy. His supervisor’d tried to smooth it over, saying the woman meant well, but that just made Walt even more furious, so he quit and told Cora good riddance, he’d find a better job. But he never tried, and he stopped going to see the V.A. counselor.

  The window rattled from the winter wind. It’s almost February already, Cora thought. She looked up. “Nancy coming?”

  Georgia stiffened, “Nah, she’s eating over at Joanie’s. Or somebody’s. I can’t keep track.”

  “Bobby soxers. They think if they’re not together every minute, they’re gonna miss something,” Cora joked, but privately she felt uneasy. Things weren’t the same between her and Nancy. Part of the problem was if Cora wasn’t off at work, Nancy was out gallivanting with her friends. Even when they tried to clown around, they’d talk too loud or their laughs would stop too abruptly and Cora noticed Nancy was getting a bold and weary look to her. Cora had thought a couple of times of giving Nancy a hug and saying, “Hey, don’t let it get you down, living with a couple of sad sacks like me and your mom; remember, everything is temporary,” but she realized it sounded corny and she was too heartbroken to come up with anything wiser, so she just let it drop.

  Georgia took the sausages out of the pan, put them on a plate, and broke four eggs into the sizzling grease. Cora watched the yolks splatter and spread. She sighed again, then looked at the clock. Five on the button. “Time for a seven and seven for me,” she said. “Want a Coke?”

  “Yeah.” Georgia’d gone on the wagon after the day she passed out on the street. Cora fixed herself a drink, heavy on the Seagram’s, light on the 7-Up. She opened a Coke for Georgia and poured it into a Little Orphan Annie mug.

  Georgia lifted the eggs out of the pan with a spatula, put them on two dinner plates, added the sausages and poured the pan fat down the sink.

  “Hey, don’t do that,” Cora grumbled. “You can take that fat to the butcher’s and get red points.”

  “Oh, I don’t save fat,” Georgia answered, putting the plates on the table and taking a sip of her Coke. “It’s too messy. All those greasy jars. We don’t cook enough to have much.” She grimaced at the butts, dumped them out, and ran hot water over the ashtray.

  Cora sighed. She’d learned all the statistics when Walt was overseas. A pound of fat had enough glycerine in it to make fifty 30-caliber bullets or six 75-millimeter shells. She’d saved every ounce of bacon fat, every tin can, every lipstick tube. The saving somehow made her seem like a soldier, too, fighting alongside Walt in a way.

  She suddenly felt irritated at Georgia. Walt would have saved fat. He had a temper, sure, but at least he thought about a few things in the world except himself.

  Georgia tore off a piece of bread and tried to dip it into her egg, but the yolk was as hard as a dandelion heart. “It’s hard to get them right,” she said.

  “Mmm.” Cora picked at her food. Once after work she’d driven over to their apartment in Clinton but Walt wasn’t there. The place was a mess. Piles of clothes all over. Moldy food and a bitter beer smell. She sat and cried, then on her way out she ran into a neighbor—not the saxophone one—and the neighbor said she heard Walt was staying with another vet over on Dixie Cup Road.

  “What time are we going?” Georgia asked, cutting a piece of sausage into five neat pieces. Cora was taking Georgia to Finkel’s annual recognition party. It used to be a dinner, but this year because of war shortages it was just going to be drinks, dessert and dancing. Whoever’d sold the most corsets and brassieres during the past year got a handshake from one of the mucky mucks and a round of applause from the others.

  “Oh, we should leave about 7:00. Get there by 7:30.” Cora mixed another drink.

  “Do you think my rhinestone earrings would be too dressy?”

  “Nah. There’ll be a lot of ritzy-fitz people trying to show off. You know models. They’ll be all dolled up.”

  “I thought I’d wear my blue wool. It looks rich, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. It’ll look cute.” Cora cut into an egg. It slipped away. Walt would probably say, hey, you should save this for the scrap rubber drive. She wished Georgia weren’t so boring. Most of the time Walt treated her good. It was just once in a while he’d go off the deep end but then he’d apologize and say, “Jeez, I don’t know what got into me, I love you so much, you’re so beautiful, I’m so lucky.”

  And he’d look so handsome and sincere. Like Gary Cooper in Sergeant York. Like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Cora’s heart would melt. She’d cry, sag against him, and he’d take her in his big arms and whisper, “That’s my girl.” She’d feel a thrill ordinary people couldn’t know. It was too special, being the girl the tough guy always comes back to, the girl he needs.

  Georgia was ready by 6:30. “So will the ritzy-fitz people act stuck-up?” she asked in a small voice. “I hate stuck-up people. Do I look all right? Uh … and … uh … where did you put the joke book?”

  “You look great,” Cora replied. “Nah, they won’t be stuck-up, they know what I’ve been going through, but the joke book won’t help. The people at Finkel’s already heard them all.” Georgia paced from room to room with a tissue, wiping invisible splotches off the woodwork. She asked did Cora think if she put her chin strap on for a few minutes it would ruin her hairdo and Cora said “Nah” so Georgia put it on and circled the rooms again, looking like an accident victim.

  Cora was leaning forward against the basin making up her eyes when Georgia showed up in the bathroom doorway with her rhinestone earrings and her chin strap, looking so ridiculous Cora smudged her mascara. She wanted to yell oh, for Christ sake, go have a drink, but she didn’t, out of pity. Georgia smelled like Tabu, and she was holding the perfume bottle Eddie’d given her for her birthday, the one shaped like a woman wearing a red corset with black lace. Since Eddie’d left, she walked around holding the perfume bottle a lot. Or sometimes staring at the belongings he’d left.

  “What do they usually talk about, the people at Finkel’s?” she asked, and Cora was feeling just irritable enough to say “Oh, the same stuff as everyone.”

  Practically as soon as Cora and Georgia walked in, a bunch of salesmen swarmed around them like bees going for honey.

  “Hey, Cora, I didn’t recognize you for a minute with your clothes on,” one joked.

  “Hey, Cora, if I told you you had a great body, would you hold it against me?” another one cracked.

  Cora just laughed and wisecracked back, “I told my sister there’d be a lot of wits here. I forgot to say half-wits.” Cora knew how to handle men. Eventually their wives came around and claimed them anyway. Watching them go, Cora joked to Georgia that, with the rubber shortage, there was no way anyone could make corsets broad enough for some of those backsides.

  Georgia giggled and whispered, “Oh, Cora, you’re awful!”

  Cora drank a Manhattan, Georgia sipped punch with pieces of mixed fruit floating in it and then they sat down for dessert at a table with some girls who worked in the bindery.

  The president announced that Finkel’s had done pretty well in 1945, even with the rubber cutback. One thing that had helped, they’d put more into brassieres. You can use wires and s
tays, so you don’t need so much rubber. Then he read the names of the salesmen who’d gone over their quotas and asked for a special hand for their advertising man who had written the slogan “Formfit, for the support you need during these hectic days of added responsibility.” Everyone clapped and a few guys hooted.

  After the ceremony, nobody at Cora and Georgia’s table said anything for a minute while everyone eyed one another’s hands to see who had wedding rings and who didn’t. Then a waiter wheeled the desserts around and everybody took one and dug in. One of the men started talking politics.

  Cora looked around the room. There wasn’t a guy in it who was anywhere near as handsome as Walt. Anywhere near as exciting. You could take the head off one and put it on another and it wouldn’t make any difference.

  Across the table Earl Speck, the company bookkeeper, asked Georgia, “So what do you think of the presidential candidates?” Georgia’s face went empty for a minute. “Well, uh … some of the girls I work with … uh … like Dewey,” she managed. “I like his mustache myself. It’s always so neat. I like a man with a neat mustache.”

  Another thing, Georgia was beginning to drive Cora to distraction. For a while they’d got along okay. They commiserated, but you couldn’t mope around and stare at somebody’s left-over underwear forever. You had to have a little spunk in life.

  Teddy Donatelli and His Rhythm Boys struck up the band as Teddy announced, “Now you men be sure to take turns asking the ladies to dance, so many of them have husbands or boyfriends off in the service.” Hah, Cora thought, glancing around the room again, spare me the favor. Some of the other women apparently felt the same way because they jumped up and danced with one another. Georgia danced with Earl Speck, but she looked scared. She wasn’t much of a dancer.

  On the fast numbers like “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” the women’s ballerina skirts swirled out like parachutes. Georgia, back at the table now, sat smiling at the dancers, her face flushed from the excitement. Earl Speck leaned toward her with puppy dog eyes and a grin.

  Cora watched them and swirled a swizzle stick in the air, thinking about something she hadn’t quite figured out yet.

  Later on the way home she suggested, “How about stopping at the Tip Top for a drink?”

  “Okay, but just a Coke for me,” Georgia answered.

  The two sat smoking, sipping their drinks and staring at the dull shine on the mahogany bar. The tavern was empty for a Saturday night, and the emptiness cut into Cora’s heart like a scalpel. She couldn’t bear the thought of endless empty nights ahead, nights without Walt.

  Georgia slipped off her coat and shoes and her clip-on rhinestone earrings. “Oh, boy, it’s nice to relax.”

  Cora narrowed her eyes and thought back to Mama whispering, “When I go, Cora, promise me you’ll keep an eye on Georgia. You know I worry about her.” Cora, teary-eyed, had picked up Mama’s gnarled hand and promised, but now suddenly she felt a fury at the obligation that shocked her.

  She ordered another drink and turned to Georgia. “You know, I’ve been thinking about me and Walt. I’ve been thinking about the way we’ve been through things together. It’s the same with his vet buddies. They’ve been through things together. That’s what life is about, really.”

  Georgia blinked and looked confused. Her innocent expression infuriated Cora. “The trouble with you, Georgia, you’re not deep, you don’t go through things with people.”

  Georgia’s face went flatter, then she laughed weakly. “Oh, Cora, you’ve had one too many. What does Walt say? Tee many martoonies?”

  That irked Cora even more. Her voice rose. “No, I haven’t had tee many martoonies. I’ve been thinking about Walt and the other vets. How they have something ordinary people don’t have. Stuff they won’t even talk about to anyone else. Ties. Ties. That’s what it is.” Cora looked Georgia in the eye.

  Georgia cleared her throat and swallowed.

  “Well, me and Walt, we have our ties, too. We’ve been through things. Some good. Some bad. Better. Worse. Same as the vets. That’s what life is about, don’t you see? Going through things. Deep things. Ties.”

  Georgia swiveled her Coke glass in a circle on the table and blinked. Her eyelashes fluttered like trapped bugs.

  23

  NANCY, MARCH, 1946

  In February, Aunt Cora moved back to Clinton, back to Uncle Walt after he promised to see the VA counselor again. “We have our ups and downs, sure,” she explained the afternoon she left, “but, to tell you the truth, I think we both like it that way.” She blew a smoke ring into a slant of dusty sun that pierced our living room window. “I’ve always headed for the roller coaster, you know. The merry-go-round is too tame for me.”

  My mom and I moved to a cheaper apartment out near Matlock’s Stables. It smelled like horses and had worn linoleum floors in a swirly cream and green pattern that looked like different colors of mold. The worst part, though, we weren’t able to run down to Doc’s anymore whenever we couldn’t stand one another’s company.

  Everything my mom did irritated me. The way she smacked her food. Her phony smile. Her chin. The strap she’d bought didn’t work and she was getting a double chin that looked ridiculous on a little 5-foot 2-inch person who was skinny everywhere else. The thing that drove me the craziest, though, was the way she let her sentences drift off like a person’s breath on a cold day. “I thought I’d…” “Let’s see, where did…” “I guess it’s time…” I wanted to scream, “Finish your stupid sentence.”

  I started crying at the slightest thing. There was a built-in cabinet in the bathroom somebody had started carving a name onto. “M-a-r” it said. One day I couldn’t stand looking at the M-a-r another second. What was it supposed to be? Mary or Marion or Marvin or what? What kind of a person would start to carve a name and stop? I tore a picture of Van Johnson out of an issue of Photoplay and pasted it over the M-a-r as though my life depended on it, but the next day my mom tore the picture off cleaning. When I saw Van was gone and M-a-r was back I sat on the john and busted out crying.

  The only good thing was my mother was going to some kind of meetings at Mildred’s, a woman from work, and that gave me time to myself to write more black and bitter poems.

  One afternoon in March, my mom stood in the bedroom in her slip. “Uh, Cora and Walt are coming up tonight,” she said. “We’re going over to the covered dish dinner at the church.”

  She opened a jar of Mum and rubbed it under her arms like she was scouring, “Incidentally, they’re bringing a guest along. Earl. I met him the time I went to that … uh … function with Cora.”

  “The Finkel’s banquet?”

  “Yeah. The Finkel’s banquet. You remember, right?”

  I nodded. It was the day after the Finkel’s banquet Aunt Cora started talking about going back to Walt. “He needs me,” she’d explained. “This time I just need to lay down a few more rules.” You could tell by the sparkle in her eyes, she couldn’t wait to go.

  My mother put on a dusty rose crepe dress with a neckline that was scalloped like the top part of a heart. You could see her brassiere straps.

  “That doesn’t look like the kind of dress you should wear to a covered dish supper at the church,” I grumbled. Why did she still have to have a good shape anyway? Why couldn’t she look more like Kate Smith?

  She looked down at the dress. “Well, my heavens, what a thing to say. This is a sweetheart neckline. It’s all the style in the … You see it in all the…”

  “All the what?” I snapped.

  She looked bewildered, as though I’d said something in French. She grabbed a Raleigh and lit it. “You see … uh … sweetheart necklines in all the … uh … magazines.”

  “Maybe for a party but not for a covered dish supper at the church,” I grumbled.

  My mother closed her eyes and took a drag on her Raleigh. The tip of it burned orange. “Oh, I don’t know. These days people … uh … dress up more,” she said, but I knew
she wasn’t dressing for the covered dish supper. She was dressing for this Earl. I didn’t like him already.

  I grabbed my book bag from my drawer, took out some letters from Duane and sat on the bed running my fingers around the red, white, and blue borders of the onion-skin envelopes. Duane was the only bright spot in my life. I had eight letters from him, their creases worn soft from being folded and unfolded so many times. I’d stopped writing to Bruno. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was going to propose, and anyway, I liked Duane better. We had a lot in common. We both loved cherry Cokes, and Benny Goodman, and Duane had loved my peanut butter candy.

  I reread his last letter. “It’s only a matter of time now,” he wrote. Most of the boys in his company had already been sent home, but the married guys had come first.

  I pictured going to meet Duane at his house in Hatfield. He said it had a green roof and a big lawn, and I saw him coming to greet me at the door. His cocker spaniel Crackers would be yapping at his legs. We’d go inside and his parents would say how lovely to meet me, they’d always wanted a daughter. They’d look just like Andy Hardy’s mom and dad. Then Duane would put some records on, we’d dance, and he’d whisper in my ear, “This is what I fought for.” The only problem, when we started to dance, Duane began to sing scat and when I pulled back to smile at him, he looked like Bobby.

  My mother came back into the bedroom. “For heaven’s sake, get that dirty book bag off the bedspread.” She looked exasperated. “They’ll be here any minute.”

  “I thought it was a free country,” I mumbled. “I thought you could put your book bag on your own bed.” I shoved the letters back into the bag as my mom flounced off. “Anyway I didn’t realize you were going to entertain in the bedroom,” I shouted. I took my mother’s hairbrush off the dresser, picked out a handful of blond hairs, slouched into the bathroom, and set them in the middle of the sink. Back in the bedroom, I opened her sweater drawer and twisted the top button off a cardigan.

  Earl wore glasses, had chipmunk cheeks, and a belly that hung out over his pants like melted wax. He was carrying a paper bag.