Rhonda the Rubber Woman

by Peterson, Norma;

  By night, fog hung in the streets, and the yellow headlights of passing cars seemed to come out of the mist like creatures from another planet. I sat on a wooden rocking chair in the sunporch of the apartment on Fourth Street holding two books Clark had loaned me in my lap. My mom was deep asleep in her bed from pills Dr. Di Salvo had given her for her nerves. Aunt Cora and Uncle Walt had gone home to Clinton but my aunt had promised to come back first thing in the morning.

  I opened one of the books. It was about a guy called Immanuel Kant who Clark had said was brilliant. I turned to the first page and started reading.

  “Kant’s philosophy presupposes a radical distinction between de facto and de jure questions,” it said. What? I skipped to the next page. “For Kant, the fundamental question of the critic of reason was how are a priori synthetic judgments possible.”

  I closed the book, got up and walked to the door of my mother’s bedroom. Her arms and legs were limp, flung out like a rag doll’s over the double bed. She looked like a little kid, as though any second she’d stick her thumb in her mouth and grope for a teddy bear. For a minute I felt jealous. My mom would never have to worry about whether or not she understood Immanuel Kant. I wished I had a cigarette. I wished I had a Bloody Mary.

  I tiptoed to the kitchen, heated some milk in a pan, got out the tin of hot chocolate and opened the other book. The Portable Dorothy Parker. Standing by the stove, I flipped the pages to some verses in the back and read one.

  “Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

  A medley of extemporanea;

  And love is a thing that can never go wrong;

  And I am Marie of Roumania.”

  I smiled. She was being sarcastic. She wasn’t really Marie of Roumania. She didn’t really believe love could never go wrong. I sat down and turned to another verse.

  “One perfect rose he sent me since we met.

  All tenderly his messenger he chose.

  Sweet-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet.

  One perfect rose.

  Why is it no one ever sent me yet

  One perfect limousine do you suppose?

  Oh, no, it’s always just my luck to get

  One perfect rose.”

  “One Perfect Rose” was even funnier. It started out like the other one, flowery, and then it got bitter. I stared at the cover of the book. Dorothy Parker. She was like me. I could hardly believe it.

  The milk started boiling and as I got up to turn it off, I thought, “I could write verses like that. I could be cute and funny and sarcastic.” I hugged the book, so thrilled with Dorothy Parker I couldn’t wait to call Clark and tell him.

  The kitchen clock said eleven forty-eight. He’d still be up so I went into the hallway and dialed his number but there was no answer. I paced back and forth between the sunporch and the kitchen. I couldn’t wait to get back to Philly and start writing cute sarcastic verses. I could see it now. The Portable Nancy Sayers. A couple of stories. A few clever verses. How long could that take? Maybe my father would see it and come looking for me, he’d be so proud.

  A light wind had started up outside, whooshing and rustling in the night like ghosts. Teeth chattering and flesh creeping, I pulled down the blinds and slipped underneath the plaid wool blanket on the cot and tried to fall to sleep.

  I jerked awake to the sound of my mother moving in the kitchen. Strips of thin morning light slipped through the slats of the venetian blinds, and I smelled coffee. That seemed like a good sign, but I still felt edgy. How would we get through the day?

  I eased off the squeaky cot, reached for my purse, and groped for the pep pills Betsy had wrapped for me. She said I’d probably need all the confidence I could get and she was right.

  In the kitchen, my mother looked groggy. She was sitting at the table in her champagne-colored housecoat with a peach-colored cardigan sweater over it.

  “Ah, you made some coffee.” I hardly breathed. “Good.”

  “Yeah.” She held a half eaten piece of shoofly pie in her hand.

  “I’m … uh … bathroom,” I muttered, giving a weak little wave.

  I peeked at the clock. Only seven-thirty.

  In the bathroom, I took a pep pill, washed my face and hands, and brushed my teeth then carefully wiped the water spots off the spigot.

  Taking a deep breath, I padded back to the kitchen and glanced at the clock again. Seven thirty-five. I swallowed, “So Aunt Cora’s coming at eight, right?”

  “Yeah.” I noticed my mother was working on her second piece of shoofly pie.

  “That looks good,” I said. My voice was thick and fuzzy. “One of the girls from work brought it, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She looked up at me with empty eyes. The wind had died down; the world seemed still and lifeless outside.

  I took a coffee cup from the cupboard and glanced at my mother’s back. Her hair was matted and bunched up so you could see her pink neck. It looked so innocent and helpless, suddenly the back of her neck seemed like the saddest thing in the world.

  “If you’re still a little sleepy, you can go on back to bed,” I said. “I’ll clean up here.”

  “Nah, I’ll do it.” My mother started to get up when the doorbell rang. It was Mildred, and I was so happy to see her.

  She gave me a hug. “Nice thing about being one of the mucky-mucks at the plant, you can take a day off without groveling and jumping through hoops.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t imagine Mildred groveling or jumping through anybody’s hoops.

  We sat down with my mother at the little maple table and sipped coffee and babbled about the floral arrangements at the funeral, which ones were the biggest, the most colorful, which had flowers you didn’t usually see this time of year, whatever we could think of. I surprised myself, having so many opinions about flowers. The pill must be working.

  A little after eight, Mildred said, “Georgia, let’s take a walk. It’s a nice, still day, and real warm for December. It’ll be good for you.”

  My mother looked bewildered, then got up like a wind-up toy on a low battery.

  Aunt Cora dashed in at 8:25, carrying Barbara in a bundle of pink flannel blankets. The baby was wrapped up so tight, she looked like a little packaged coconut with eyes.

  “I ran into Georgia and Mildred down on Broadway,” my aunt said, rolling her eyes.

  After putting Barabara down for a nap, she poured herself a cup of coffee and plopped down on a chair with a sigh. She looked me in the face. “Nancy, I’m glad to have some time alone with you.”

  “Oh, me, too,” I said, but I sucked in my breath, afraid of what was coming next. “I might as well get to the point. I think you should move home with your mother. She needs you.”

  “What does she need me for?” I whimpered, “I’m just a kid. Can’t she move in with you?”

  My aunt sighed. “I think it’s better for her to keep a place of her own.” She cupped her right hand, swept some shoofly pie crumbs into it and dropped them into her saucer.

  “How come?”

  She cleared her throat. “I have Walt. I have Barbara. Our lives are different.”

  “You mean my mom isn’t good enough for you?” I felt flushed, amazed at myself for sassing Aunt Cora, and even more amazed at sticking up for my mother.

  Aunt Cora looked up sharply, “Well, of course, that’s not what I mean.”

  I knew my aunt had her hands full with my uncle and the baby. I knew Uncle Walt ridiculed my mother, and it wouldn’t really work. This wasn’t the way I wanted to be talking to Aunt Cora, but I had to stand up for myself. It was what she’d told me to do that day at the park.

  “There are people in Philly just like me,” I said. My voice sounded whiny. “They understand me. They’re smart and funny. They read books. Immanuel Kant. Dorothy Parker.”

  Aunt Cora pulled a Kleenex out of her skirt pocket, wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  “Nancy, I know you haven’t had an easy time of it. But neither has Georgia, and she
is your mother.”

  “She doesn’t even like me,” I yelped, tears starting up. I kept hearing Clark warn me not to let them talk me into anything. “She hardly even pays any attention to me except if I put the tuna fish cans on the wrong shelf or I forget to walk on hankies after she waxes the floor.”

  My aunt took a sip of her coffee and frowned. “Sometimes she doesn’t know what to say. Georgia is … simple. I think she’s a little afraid of you. All she wants is for you to be friendly and cheerful. That doesn’t seem to me to be too much to ask.”

  I shifted in my chair, feeling sorry for my mom, and then for myself, as tears slipped into my mouth.

  My aunt came around the table and put her arms around me.

  I took a deep breath. “You know, my mom never even told me a word about my dad.” My voice quivered. “Who he is. Where he lives. Anything.”

  I felt my aunt stiffen. I looked up. She’d closed her eyes as though she hoped that might shut me up, but I couldn’t stop. It’d taken too much nerve to get started. “Everywhere I go, people ask about my dad. What am I supposed to say?”

  Aunt Cora sighed again, slumping into the chair.

  “I don’t know. I was young,” she said. “All I know is he was married. He had a family. He was somebody your mother met at work.”

  “Married? My father was married? To somebody else?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so, but that’s all I know.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled a huge cloud of smoke.

  The back door opened and a rush of cold air swept in. I felt a wave of shame, and when Mildred walked into the kitchen with my mother, I couldn’t face them.

  “I … uh … think I’ll go for a walk myself,” I muttered, and slouched to the sunroom to grab my jacket.

  Aunt Cora’s words rattled in my brain as I lunged down Broadway. My father was married. He had a family. Now I wished she hadn’t told me. It ruined everything. I thought of my fantasy that I’d find him sitting on a cliff with a breeze behind him tousling his dark hair, handsome as Tyrone Power, overjoyed to see me. I shoved my hands deep into my jacket pocket. I didn’t want to think of my dad with a wife. A wife wouldn’t be overjoyed to see me,

  I walked faster, looking back as though somebody was closing in on me. The air was still moist but my throat felt parched as I headed toward Pysher’s Pond. Wet leaves squished under my saddle shoes. I reached the damp gray bench, sat down, and stared up at the bare limbs of the trees twitching in the breeze.

  I couldn’t sit still and got up, starting toward the eucalyptus grove at the Old Welsh Church, when a voice behind me said “Nancy?” A tiny sweet voice. I turned.

  It was Sylvia Staples.

  “Sylvia,” I said, so glad to see her, I rushed up and gave her a hug. She looked better. She’d had a perm and her hair was parted in the middle and fastened on each side above the ears with barrettes shaped like corn on the cob; then it fluffed out in curly little clouds like puffed sleeves.

  “Well, how are you? Gee, I’m glad to see you. I mean, I’m really glad to see you.” I’d always felt bad about the way I’d snubbed Sylvia after I started hanging around with Joanie. Maybe it meant something, running into her now. Maybe we could become good friends again. Except, of course, I wouldn’t be in Marysville very long. Aunt Cora’s words raced through my brain, “… I think you should move back home with your mother.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mother’s husband,” Sylvia said.

  “Oh, thanks. Poor Earl.” I glanced in the direction of the cemetery, shook my head and shivered.

  “So how do you like the big city?” Sylvia asked.

  “Oh, I love it.” I couldn’t stop babbling.

  “And how about you? Anything new at your house?” I was bouncing and energy seemed to be building inside me.

  “Yeah, Clarissa went off to Allensburg to a commercial school. My mom got arthritis. She don’t get around so good, so I quit school to help take care of my brothers.” She was wearing a washed-out looking yellow sweater underneath a blue plaid jumper with straps that were too long and one of them hung down over her upper arm.

  “You quit school? Oh, Sylvia, no.” The thought of her having to quit school suddenly seemed like the saddest thing I could think of. It wasn’t fair, Sylvia having to quit school, having to wear a jumper that didn’t fit while Clarissa got to go off to commercial school. Why was life so damned unfair?

  “Well, you quit, too,” she said.

  “Oops, you’re right. I did.” I laughed but I knew with me it was different. I was off in Philly hanging out with bright witty people who were part of the avant garde. I reached over and picked up the loose jumper strap and set it back on Sylvia’s shoulder.

  “It fell down.” I smiled awkwardly.

  “Oh, thanks.” She glanced at me, “Maybe you could come and see me tomorrow.” Her voice was sweet and inviting. “I could buy some Tandy Takes. I remember you loved them. You could tell me all about your life in Philadelphia.”

  “Oh, that would be great,” I gushed. I wanted to make up to Sylvia for the way I’d used her, making friends just to get back at my mom. I wanted to make it up to her that she had to quit school. Maybe I’d dedicate one of my poems to her, one of the poems in The Portable Nancy Sayers. “That would be really great,” I said. “I’ll come over early in the afternoon.”

  “Okay, good. So I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  As she rambled off in the wet leaves, the strap of her jumper fell down again. I stomped away to the eucalyptus grove behind the Old Welsh Church, climbed on the bandstand and twisted until I ached.

  Late that afternoon, some of the girls from the factory stopped by with a meat loaf and a macaroni and cheese casserole. They stayed awhile and talked shop and I could see the color creep back into my mother’s cheeks. Charlotte said some plants were laying off women to give jobs to men who weren’t vets. Mildred said no fair, they had to protest.

  I thought of a magazine article I’d read that said women had spread their wings during the war, even those who didn’t work in defense plants. And they said women were more independent now. I wouldn’t in a million years have thought of my mom in the same breath as an independent woman, but I could tell she felt good being part of this group, and by dinner time she’d perked up.

  Aunt Cora was heating up the macaroni and cheese when Barbara woke up crying, fluttering her tiny fists in the air.

  “Pick her up for a minute until I finish here,” Aunt Cora said.

  My mother looked scared, but she reached down, tucked her right hand behind Barbara’s wobbly head, and slowly lifted the baby up with the other. She cradled the bundle of blankets in her arms and watched Barbara move her tiny wet mouth in quick puckering motions. Then she looked me in the face and said, “Isn’t that cute? Just like when you were a baby.”

  I gasped and stared back. I couldn’t say a word.

  31

  NANCY, 1946

  By the time Bobby called at 8:30 that night, things were going real well. During dinner, I’d told a couple of Philadelphia stories and everybody’d snickered. Aunt Cora hadn’t said another word about me moving home. Mildred had stopped by to say, hey, let’s all take a ride out to Amish country on Friday, and my mother’s dull eyes had brightened. She loved Amish country. “The girls look so sweet,” she’d once said when we’d taken a drive there with Eddie, “like angels on earth. I’d like to be Amish myself if I wasn’t Baptist. I think I’d look cute in a bonnet, and I wouldn’t have to put my hair up every night.”

  When Bobby telephoned to ask if he could come over Tuesday morning to pay his respects to my mother and take me out for a ride, I began to think things might work out all right after all.

  “Well, it’s nice your friend wants to come pay his respects,” my mother said the next morning, tearing a piece of waxed paper off the roll to wrap up the remains of the shoofly pie. “That’s a sign of a nice boy.”

  “My friend is a nice boy,” I said, giving
her a shy smile. The kitchen clock said eight forty-five. He was coming at nine. I’d already taken a pep pill. In fact, I’d been up since five studying myself in the bathroom mirror. I’d pulled my hair back from my face, and made spit curls along my temples. Then I rubbed on some of my mother’s Pink Perfection rouge. Back in the sunroom, I started to read through my lists of quotations, then picked up The Portable Dorothy Parker.

  Now my mother and I were in the kitchen where I was washing dishes; so many different people had come to visit over the weekend.

  “I forget, where does he live again? Your friend?” she asked.

  “Out in the R. D.”

  Her jaw tightened. “I don’t trust people from the R.D.,” she said in her little voice.

  I put down a plate. “You said that once before. I don’t understand. There are good people in the R.D. Some of the best people live there.”

  She looked at her tiny hands. “Was that the boy who was peeking in the door with you that day?”

  She was talking about the day Eddie moved in and when I was sick and ran into Bobby at the park.

  “Mother, that was years ago. You’ve met Bobby since then. Look, maybe you’re not up to company. You don’t have to talk to Bobby right now if you don’t want to. He’ll understand.”

  Just then the bell rang. I looked at her, unsure what to do.

  She gave me a trace of a smile. “Oh, sure I’m up to talking. I guess my nerves were just working overtime there for a minute.” One of her hands fluttered toward me, like a little hummingbird.

  I grinned back at her, thankful. This was the way mothers and daughters were supposed to be, looking each other in the eye, talking things out. I raced to the door.

  Bobby looked wonderful, with his hair a little ruffled, as though he had dressed in a hurry, as though he couldn’t wait to see me. He handed my mother a cake box closed with a silver sticker that said “From Katy’s Kitchen.”

  She flashed him a wide smile and said, “Well, that’s so thoughtful.” She looked at me. “Isn’t that thoughtful, Nancy?” You wouldn’t have known she was upset a minute ago.