Rhonda the Rubber Woman

by Peterson, Norma;

  I nodded.

  “If there’s … uh … anything I can help you with … around the house, let me know,” Bobby said. “I’ll be in town over Christmas.”

  “Oh, well, isn’t that thoughtful?” My mom beamed.

  “So you’re going to be okay now?” I asked, sounding worried and sincere, but now I couldn’t be sure if I was putting it on for Bobby or if it was real.

  “Oh, yeah. Mildred’s coming over later, and meantime, I’ve got lots to do. I have to change the sheets and wash and starch some blouses.” She picked up a list from the table. “Let’s see. I have to dust the leaves on the ivy plants, put some Sani-Flush in the…” She stopped, “Oh, well, there’s just lots. You know what they say. No rest for the idle.”

  The sun was a dazzling winter white, as if it was saying, “Look, I’m giving you a special day.” Walking alongside Bobby toward the curb, I thought to myself, this is nice, Bobby coming to pick me up at home, chatting with my mother. Of course, it was easier with a mom who was a grieving widow than it would have been back in the days when she was still a slut and a scarlet woman.

  He opened the passenger door of his stepfather Barney’s pea green Buick, and helped me in. “I thought we might take a drive over to Wind Gap.” I looked up at him, giddy. I wanted to pull him in beside me right there on Fourth Street, wanted to feel him against me, wanted the warmth of his breath on my neck. I felt shameless.

  “If you like, we can stop at the diner for coffee,” he said.

  “That sounds perfect,” I murmured, suddenly full of confidence from the diet pill and the wispy curls that I knew set off my eyes. I felt bright and pretty.

  As we rode along, side by side in the car, it was like we were in a bubble together, just me and Bobby, set apart from the world.

  He gave me a sidewise glance. “I missed you.”

  “Oh, I missed you, too,” I gushed, then caught myself. I wasn’t going to invite another brush-off. “But I’ve been busy in Philly, you know. Parties. I went to a nightclub last week. Blondie’s Eleventh Hour Club. You would have liked it. The people in Philly are so debonair.” I decided not to mention I’d gotten drunk and done my Rhonda act and the comedian had to heckle me off the stage.

  “I’m sure they are,” he said in a quiet voice.

  Nobody spoke for a minute.

  “So you’re switching colleges, huh?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Yeah, they have a better music program at Hamlin. I’ve decided that’s what I really want to do in life. I know it’ll disappoint Barney, partly because it will take me away, but the music really pulls me to it.”

  “Oh, I think he’ll understand,” I said. “He seems like an understanding man.”

  He slowed the car down and I noticed we were on Wind Gap Junction Road. He turned to me. “So do you. You really pull me to you.”

  He parked the car and we flew into one another’s arms. He kissed me so long and hard I went dizzy. He nuzzled my neck and he brushed my ear with his lips. I folded my arms tight around his warm neck.

  Then suddenly he pulled away and lowered the car window on his side. The cold air was like a slap in the face.

  He didn’t say anything and I felt my heart sink. I figured he was asking himself what he was doing in broad daylight with a girl who was only good for one thing. My face burned with shame at the way he had left me gasping. I decided I might as well shock him even more.

  I swallowed and said, “You know, I’ve been talking with my Philadelphia friends about looking for my father. I’m thinking of looking for him.”

  He whirled toward me, his face twisted.

  “I have no idea who he is, you know.” I felt ashamed admitting I was a bastard, but what did it matter? He probably knew anyway. Everybody else did. At least I could show him I was getting worldly and debonair about it. “My mother has never said peep to me about him, and Clark, one of my friends from Philadelphia—Clark is the smartest person I’ve ever met—he said I’ll never feel like a real person unless I find him. Clark says a girl’s relationship with her father is the most important.”

  Bobby looked me full in the face. “You might not like what you learn.”

  “Oh, sure. I understand that,” I responded, but all of a sudden I didn’t feel confident and debonair anymore. I felt sweaty and soiled. Suddenly shocking Bobby didn’t seem as wonderful an idea as it had a minute ago.

  He kept looking at me, then turned and gazed out of the open car window on his side. Unexpectedly, he opened his door. “Give me a minute. There’s something I have to tell you. I need to think how to say it.” And just like that, he walked away and stood on the other side of the road, staring at a huge live oak tree with a meadow behind it. A flock of blackbirds whooshed by and headed toward a cluster of deep green hills in the distance.

  I felt my shoulders collapse. He was probably trying to figure out a nice way of saying I wasn’t good enough for him. He thought he should be kind because poor Earl had died and I was stuck back with my mom again. I closed my eyes and watched yellowish blobs build and break and build again. That’s me, I thought, a big yellowish blob, building and breaking, building and breaking.

  I looked out the car window at Bobby who was kicking at an exposed root of the live oak tree. Partly I wanted to run to him and partly I wanted to slip away into the field of weeds on my side of the road. I stared out at a field and that’s when it came to me, in a quick blazing flash, like a sun spot.

  Why in the world should I look for my father? What did my father ever do for me except to cause me grief? And what’s worse, if I started to search for my dad, I’d end up just like my mother, like a fish on a hook, counting on a man to make me happy.

  I was so startled at this realization, I felt my brain start to push the thought into a little corner, as though it was too big to feel all at once.

  I looked up at the sky and wondered if I was trying to make a bargain with God. I’d give up on my father if he’d let me have Bobby. But then something stirred in me, some old fury at a faceless man who had ruined my life for too many years, and I knew I wasn’t trying to make a deal. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes.

  The air in the car was too close. I opened my door and stepped out, exhausted, as though I had done something that took tremendous effort. The damp weeds smelled slightly minty and the hills in the distance were a glistening blur as tears began to form on my lashes.

  Bobby turned, walked back and put his hands on my shoulders. Our breath made warm puffs of air between us as he brushed his fingers over the wispy curls that framed my forehead.

  “First the coffee,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you what I have to tell you. Promise.”

  I thought to myself, maybe I’ll get another chance. Maybe if I’m pretty and witty and debonair at the diner, he’ll decide I’m good enough for him, after all.

  We sipped coffee while Bobby told me about the combo he was going to sit in with that afternoon in the Poconos. He said the piano player had once worked for a band that played for Frank Sinatra back in his Hoboken days.

  “Really?” My voice came out like a squawk, a little like Henry Aldrich. “Wow,” I said, “that’s really something.” I hadn’t realized Bobby was becoming such a big timer. I’d have to bone up on music.

  “Yeah.” His eyes took on a mischievous look. He grinned, “This guy was at the performance when Frank first sang, ‘I’ll Walk Alone’ and a girl in the audience screamed, ‘I’ll wok wid ya, Frankie.’

  I giggled. He looked so adorable my throat ached.

  I recited a Dorothy Parker poem.

  Bobby laughed and said, “It’s clever, but I like your own poems as well.” He put his hand on the table near mine. “Are you still writing them?”

  I lowered my eyes. “No, not lately, I’ve been busy, there’s so much to do in Philadelphia. But I’ll get back to it. I was thinking just this morning I should get back to it.”

  Bobby just nodded and kept looking at me, his hand still alongside
mine.

  “Anyway, speaking of music,” I said, wondering what he was thinking, “I listen to it all the time. I love music. You should ask my roommate, Betsy.”

  He kept looking at me. “Good,” he said.

  Be pretty and witty, I reminded myself,

  Outside in the car, Bobby turned on the ignition, then turned it off again.

  He sucked in his breath. “I thought I could just go off and never have to tell you this. You might never have to know, but I can’t do that.”

  “What?” My heart sank.

  “I know who your father is.”

  I gasped. “What? You know what?” I blinked, bewildered. I looked around me as though my father had turned up outside the diner all of a sudden. I looked back at Bobby. Behind him, I could see the waitress in the diner cleaning off the table we’d sat at.

  “We … uh…” Bobby’s gaze fell. “We have the same father.”

  “What?”

  “You and I. We have the same father.” He glanced up, looking miserable. “I learned it the day you came to the Fourth of July picnic at our house. That’s why I had to break off with you.”

  Barney wasn’t Bobby’s real father. So if it was true, that meant he didn’t dump me because I was a slut. He didn’t brush me off because I wasn’t cute or witty enough. He was just trying to be honorable or whatever it is people are when they decide to break their own heart just to do the right thing. The waitress came back to our table with a rag and wiped away every trace that we’d been there.

  Bobby stared at the steering wheel, muscles moving underneath his clenched jaw.

  But wait again. If I was his sister, then there wasn’t anything I could do to win him back. At least if it was just that I was a slut, I could change. I could show him I was different. My head hurt and I rubbed my temples.

  A minute passed silently.

  “Who is he?” My voice sounded like a wind in the distance.

  “His name is Carl Markell. He used to repair machines at the Rutt Ridge Stocking Factory. He was married to my mother when we still lived out in the R.D. She told me all this the day after you came to the Fourth of July picnic at our house. Before that, she had your mother mixed up with somebody else.”

  “But how does she know your father … my mother …?” I couldn’t say the words.

  “She doesn’t know absolutely. But she’d heard gossip that he was carrying on with one of the girls at the stocking factory. Then when your mother had a baby, she put two and two together.”

  “But she can’t be really sure. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe he carried on with somebody else and she went off someplace to have a baby.” I thought of the eggplant girl at the Philadelphia Y.

  “Or maybe whoever he carried on with didn’t have a baby at all.” I was trying to figure out a way to show Bobby that the whole thing might be just a terrible misunderstanding.

  Bobby shook his head. “No, she can’t be sure, but she told me that day at our house she was startled at how much you looked like him. Around the eyebrows, she said. And a way you have of moving your shoulders when you walk.” Bobby’s voice sounded far away.

  I felt sweaty and light-headed. I stared at a power line coming out of the diner. “But, then that means the only person who knows for sure is my mother.”

  He nodded and bit his lips. It looked like he had tears in his eyes.

  “What was he like?” I asked.

  “Charming. Unreliable.” Bobby groaned and took me in his arms.

  When he dropped me off at the apartment, he said he’d come back for me at 7:00 after his jam session was over and we’d talk about what to do.

  “Will you be all right until then?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I’m going to visit a girlfriend. That’ll keep me busy.”

  “Good.” He brushed my chin with his fingers and drove away.

  32

  NANCY, 1946

  I slunk into the apartment and found a note from my mother on the kitchen table saying she’d gone to Mildred’s. Thank God. I poured a glass of water, rushed to the sunporch, snatched another pill from my purse and gulped it down. I sat on the cot, staring out at the white winter sky, waiting for the pill to work, but my blood was racing through my veins. I got up and pounded my fists on the wall until the whole sunporch shook.

  I wondered if Clark would know what to do. If he didn’t, at least he could ask his shrink. I needed to talk to someone who knew about the world to tell me what to do. I headed for the phone, but just then the apartment door opened and I heard my mother’s footsteps, light and nervous. I wanted to run. I knew if I faced her, it would mean trouble.

  “My favorite was the little kid with the short pants and the suspenders. The one who did the pig.” It was Mildred’s voice. Good. I wouldn’t explode in front of Mildred.

  “Nancy, you here?” my mom called.

  I wanted to scream, “What do you mean here? Do you mean like a normal person who didn’t have to spend her life feeling guilty about being born? Because if that’s what you mean, no, I’m not here.”

  “Nancy?” She called again in her baby girl voice, as if she knew I was hiding.

  I sighed. “Yes,” I yelled back, my voice hissing. I moved like a zombie to the living room door.

  “We just saw the cutest thing on television. Kids making bird and animal sounds.” My mother looked like a kid with who’d just found a four-leaf clover. “Mildred bought herself a television for Christmas. There are only six of them in town.”

  I looked at Mildred. She was large and bony with thick dyed red hair.

  I felt something lift in my head, almost like waves. It made me feel floaty, but calmer. I felt a little more confident that I could handle things after all.

  “They were so cute,” my mother went on. “They came up to the microphone one at a time. I liked the one that went tweet-eek, tweet-eek. Wasn’t he a riot, Mildred?” And then she laughed her loud laugh and that did it.

  Pictures of my mother laughing her big laugh through the years zipped across my brain like the flip-it movies you could buy at the five and dime. I heard a hum in my ears.

  “Well, while you were out having a high old time, I was busy trying to figure out how I could get in touch with a certain Mister Carl Markell.” For a minute, I wasn’t sure if I said the words or thought them.

  My mother bounced so I must have said them.

  “Where did you hear that name?” She went white.

  My stomach heaved. So it was true. All the calmness I thought had been gathering in me went whoosh.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me who my father was?” I felt if I didn’t scream now I’d end up trying to choke her. My arms flailed, my heart stabbing at me like a jackhammer.

  “Nancy, what a way to talk to your mother.” My mom looked shocked and hurt, but I could see a flash of anger in her face, too.

  “Couldn’t you just have sat me down and said his name was Carl Markell and he worked at the stocking factory and he was married to another woman and you were sorry things weren’t different? Couldn’t you at least have done that? Is that too much to ask?”

  “Nancy…” My mother said in an odd voice, half-hurt, and half-scolding, “this is no time to talk about things like that.”

  “The problem with you is there’s never a time to talk about things like that.” I screamed, the cords pulling in my throat. “You’re just what they say. None are so blind as those who will not see.”

  My mother stood as if she was paralyzed. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a look of horror on Mildred’s face.

  But I couldn’t stop. “I just learned that Carl Markell is Bobby Felker’s father.” My voice was a hoarse cry. “He’s Bobby’s father and he’s my father, and I love Bobby and Bobby loves me and look at the mess we’re in all because of you.” My arms slashed the air wildly. “What kind of a mother would let me go out on dates with my own brother?”

  “Bobby? Carl?” My mother’s chin practically fell to
the floor.

  “Don’t act so damn innocent. Don’t you realize you’ve ruined my life, trying to act so damn innocent all the time when everybody knows different?”

  My mother went white as a ghost and grabbed Mildred by the arm. I knew I’d gone too far. I leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor.

  Nobody spoke. I stared at the waxed floor boards as my mother edged toward me.

  Her voice came out high and sobby. “You could be a little more thankful after all I’ve sacrificed for you.” You could tell she was trying to holler but was too upset to do it right. “I could have just put you in the rag man’s truck.” Now her voice broke. “I thought about it.” Then she burst into tears.

  I didn’t move a muscle, just sat there with my eyes fixed on the wood planks as what she had just said sank in.

  I heard Mildred move towards her. “Listen, Georgia, it’s an upsetting time,” she said in a low husky voice. “I think both of you could do with one of your nerve pills.”

  The sunporch windows were dark when I awoke feeling like my insides had been scooped out. I moaned, remembering where I was and what had happened. I tiptoed to the door to peek at the kitchen clock. Six twenty-five.

  I could hear my mother’s gurgly breathing that told me she was deep asleep in her room.

  I tiptoed to the bathroom, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. Slipping on my jacket, I hurried outside where I stood on the pavement alongside the house shivering in the chilly night air as I waited for Bobby.

  I should call Sylvia, I thought, looking up at the half-moon. I turned toward the house for a minute, but then I shuddered and knew I couldn’t go back in. I’d apologize to Sylvia in the morning. I’d go to see her first thing.

  I stared at a puddle of moonlight. A car backfired in the distance and a window slammed nearby. I realized that whatever else was going to happen, things would never be the same between me and my mother again.

  Maybe it was just as well. Maybe she’d face up to life more now. Maybe I’d really done my mother a favor in disguise. Oh, the timing might have been a little bad, but overall, maybe it was a healthy thing for both of us. That’s what Clark would say. He’d say it was a healthy catharsis, that it would clear the air. But then my mother’s face popped up, crying, “You could be a little more grateful. I could have put you in the rag man’s truck.”