by K. L. Cook
She liked the new anticipation in their home, the desire to impress, or at least not be embarrassed. It galvanized them all. Dresser drawers and closets were organized to make room. Old clothes and unused toys were placed in boxes and taken to Jensen’s Thrift Shop. Manny mowed the yards, and he and her father and Gene repainted the trim on the house, and they all pulled the weeds from the garden and around the foundation. Laura gave old Fay a bath. She hadn’t been bathed in—what was it now?—a year; the dog seemed so grateful for the attention that she licked and licked Laura’s neck and face, which made Laura decide to brush the dog’s teeth with baking soda. The poor thing. She surely didn’t have many years left. After the incident with Greta, Laura’s father had Fay spayed, though at her age it probably wasn’t necessary. She felt sorry for the dog, and perhaps it was pointless to give her a bath anyway. There’d be too many people in the house to bring her inside. But we all need some attention, Laura thought. Even a dirty old dog.
By the time they left for the bus station, the house was as clean as it had ever been, and it was sad, in a way, to leave it. They all just wanted to stand there and admire their hard work. They were more than a little disappointed when they arrived back home, after dinner at 4-D’s, and Gloria’s first words were “I don’t remember the house being so small. How on earth did we all fit in here?” Which seemed ironic to Laura, given what Gloria had said about the cramped base housing.
A nervous, resentful silence thickened the air, and Laura exchanged worried glances with Manny. They both eyed their father—a blush rising from his neck, the corner of his lips twitching. She felt his shame, and her own. She thought of something her father had once said years ago when he’d taken them all to see the new courthouse extension he’d helped build. It seemed like any other structure: ordinary, governmental, nothing that ornate or impressive. “Good work is never recognized and must be immodestly pointed out, or it goes ignored.” She came home and wrote it in her diary, impressed by the surprising wisdom of her father.
Laura suddenly saw the house through her sister’s eyes, not as their home, the place where they’d all been raised, but as this relic from Gloria’s past, a shabby, ramshackle dump in a “dusty, provincial village” (Gloria’s phrase) in the Panhandle, something that she, with good reason, could make fun of with the other wives on the bases, in that sharp, clowning way of hers: “You’d never believe the shoe box I grew up in!”
Laura felt suddenly angry, and then depressed and hurt, as if the fault were somehow her own. How could this compare to the places Gloria had been, the exotic countries and famous cities? How backwater they all were. Hicks. She had never really thought about it, didn’t really wonder about it, until now, when the slightest expression on her sister’s face could confirm their worthlessness.
“We been cleaning it all week!” Rich shouted.
Gloria smiled and said, “Well, I can tell. It looks marvelous! Maybe you should come to my house. It could use a good cleaning.”
“You can say that again,” Jerome scoffed. Gloria slapped him on the arm, and Gene and Manny chuckled.
“Looks like you repainted,” Gloria said.
Mr. Tate said, “Well, yeah, we did some touch-ups.” Laura thought, Dad doesn’t get it.
Laura watched her sister carefully, studied her movements, the way her eyes darted over the rooms. She felt weak, dependent on Gloria’s silent judgments and evaluations, her unspoken disappointments and reproaches.
“It’s strange coming home again,” Gloria said. “It’s very strange.”
Soon enough, though, the house was just the house, and by that evening, once Gloria and Jerome and the kids spilled into the place with their bags, the polish they’d all given it seemed inconsequential.
But Laura’s fascination with her sister did not wear off. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to have another female in the house. Old Mrs. Ambling had been in it, looking after her when she’d been sick, and Mrs. Letig, too, that night near the end of her illness. And that woman her father had secretly brought over after he’d gone dancing, a while after their mother left. But that was so long ago.
Laura had never, that she could remember, had a friend spend the night. (Where would Debbie or Marlene sleep?) It simply hadn’t been a possibility, or she had never thought of it as such, though maybe she’d known, on some level, how shameful it would be to have her friends see where she lived, all of them crammed into this house like sardines. It was shabby. It was embarrassing.
But she had grown proprietary. Now, with her mother and sister gone, this place, in an important way, was her house. She cleaned, shopped at the Piggly Wiggly, cooked most of the meals, and did the lion’s share of tending to Rich and Gene. While Gloria had once lived here, too, and done what Laura had done, though to a much lesser degree, she no longer had the same rights of ownership that Laura now possessed. And Gloria seemed to acknowledge Laura’s status, asking her where things were, asking for permission to make a meal. She didn’t have to do that, but Laura liked it that she did.
Laura had spent so much time thinking about her sister that it was weird to have her here in the flesh. In some ways, Gloria was the same as she had always been. There was that high-pitched, cackling laugh of hers when she thought something was really funny. She’d start giggling, and then the sound would trill in her throat, and then there’d be a snort on the end of the laugh, which made you worry slightly for her, but it was also infectious and could make you giggle like a child until tears streamed down your face and your stomach hurt. And she had an animated way about her, acting out an anecdote or story, assuming the attitude and character of whoever was talking. She’d always been good with accents, and she’d acquired some new ones, a thick Viennese one she called Freud, and a ditsy, high-pitched yodel she called the Swiss Miss, and the sultry-eyed, shoulder-wagging arrogant one, with pouty lips and condescending eyes, with a voice like the actresses in Gigi, which she called the French Artiste. When she told stories, she was dynamic, her arms and hands graceful, and it seemed so easy and natural for her. Laura both admired and envied her sister, and she knew she’d remember these things and rehearse them herself, as if these ideas and characters were her own, and she’d try them out on Marlene and Debbie, playing Monopoly at their houses, or maybe even with Dean Compson, and most certainly with John, to make him laugh.
When she wasn’t the center of attention, telling a joke or a story, Gloria watched them all. Laura caught her observing others—their father, Manny, Gene, Rich, her own children, Jerome, even Laura herself. Gloria carefully scrutinized everything that was happening, and Laura remembered this as well, how it used to unnerve her, as if Gloria was looking for something to mock you with, and Laura had always been careful to stay in Gloria’s good graces. She didn’t want to be the one teased and tormented. And Laura was aware of this hard, cynical, even selfish part of Gloria, which she both admired and feared. It was what had given Gloria the courage to elope, to defy their parents, to do something so drastic. You needed to be selfish in order to do such things. Gloria was bold, but there was also (wasn’t there?), in the boldness, the careless disregard of others and of consequences.
There was a softer side to Gloria as well. She had always been capable of great generosity. She had once bought Laura a brand-new dress at the Amarillo Woolworth’s with the last of her money because she felt that her little sister needed some “cheering up.” (Laura still had that dress; it didn’t fit, but she wasn’t about to give it away.) And when she and Gloria and Manny swam across Lake Meredith, Gloria insisted that Laura could make it, even though Laura doubted the outcome. Both during and afterward, Gloria had been tender and encouraging, making her feel triumphant, heroic. Laura could see that her generosity had ripened, with motherhood, perhaps, or being Jerome’s wife, into something akin to patience, rough edges smoothed over—the soft nuzzling of the baby, the easy way she tended to Julie, not like when she was younger and had to care for Laura, Manny, and Gene.
There was also, just below the surface, a layer of melancholy. Perhaps it had always been there. Laura could remember her sister crying in bed about this boy or that one (Billy Sidell, in particular), and there had been the anxious quality to her before she eloped, but Laura was looking for the sadness that had come through in the letters—a darker, richer vein of feeling, which made Gloria real in a way that she had never been before. Laura thought she could detect this sadness. She could see it sometimes in a look her sister exchanged with Jerome, the way she deferred to him when he spoke, stayed quiet and a little on edge, which made Laura wonder if Gloria was happy with him or if there were times when she regretted what she had done, felt that this life she’d chosen had now enclosed and trapped her. Laura was looking for the young, pregnant wife walking in the Berlin fog, or the woman who couldn’t sleep at night and dreamed of her husband engulfed in flames, or who screamed at her children and wondered if, like their own mother, she would or could abandon them. Those details in the letters had unsettled Laura and stayed with her, like shards of colored glass—dangerous, painful, mesmerizing.
By studying Gloria, she hoped to find answers to her own questions, though what those questions were, Laura wasn’t quite sure. She had the feeling that Gloria’s being here was somehow meant to teach her something, to show her a direction, a possibility. But it was more complex than that. What people teach is more elusive and indirect and strange, without motive or intention, like the variations and complications of light and shadow during the course of a day. What was there to learn in that? You just watch it, absorb it, admire it. Fall into it.
In their father’s bedroom the next afternoon, Gloria placed the baby, naked after its bath, out on a towel on the bed. Laura lay on the bed and watched her. She wanted Gloria to herself, for a few moments at least, and she was glad that everybody else was outside or in the kitchen, playing cards or listening to a baseball game on the radio.
“Do I seem so different to you?” Gloria suddenly asked.
She’d washed her hair, and the beehive was gone. Her hair now hung around her shoulders, flipped out at the bottom, and she wore an orange-and-white-flowered sleeveless summer blouse and bright orange capri pants that reminded Laura of a picture she’d seen recently in Life of Senator Kennedy’s wife in a similar outfit—pedal pushers and bright sleeveless blouse and dark sunglasses. Laura wondered if Gloria had seen that picture, or seen Mrs. Kennedy in one of the newsreels, wondered if the similarity was deliberate, if Gloria admired the senator’s wife the way Laura and Marlene and Debbie did. Maybe it was just the way women dressed in Europe. Mrs. Kennedy was, she’d heard from Marlene, half French and had lived in Paris. Maybe every European woman wore sleeveless blouses and pedal pushers rather than T-shirts and cuffed-bottom jeans.
“Sort of different,” Laura said, but didn’t elaborate.
“You keep staring at me. I can feel your eyes all the time. Are you disappointed?”
“No.”
“It’s odd having me here, isn’t it?”
Gloria diapered the baby and asked Laura to hand her a little green jumper from the suitcase.
“No, it’s wonderful,” Laura answered, handing the outfit to her sister. “Kind of strange. But wonderful. Is it weird being back?”
“A little. With Momma gone.”
Gloria glanced quickly at Laura and then down at the baby. This was the first time anybody had mentioned their mother, and they both were embarrassed by it. Gloria busied herself, squirting lotion on her hands, rubbing them together. Then she spread it slowly over Carroll’s stomach and arms. Laura felt as if this routine, the deliberateness of each stroke, was somehow connected to the memory of their mother.
“But I’m glad I’m here,” Gloria said, raising her head, a melancholy smile on her lips. “Maybe it’s just the fact that we’re in their room. I don’t know.”
Carroll squirmed a little on the bed, his mouth puckering. Gloria grabbed the pacifier and eased it between his lips.
“You seem different to me,” Gloria said more brightly, as if she was about to compliment Laura, but before she could continue, Jerome came into the bedroom.
He winked at Laura. “How’s it going, kid?” he said and then wrapped his arms around Gloria’s waist and nuzzled his chin into her neck.
“Stop it. I’m dressing the baby,” she said, but her voice didn’t say stop it.
He started tickling her, his fingers on her hips and waist and then his hand low over her stomach, and Gloria tried to wrestle away, but he held her tight, and then he turned her toward him, pulled her close so that her back arched. Her hair spilled over her shoulders. Gloria put her arms around his neck, and they kissed. It wasn’t a chaste kiss either. It was long, and Laura saw her sister’s tongue dart over Jerome’s teeth. The baby lay on the bed, unfazed, his feet in his hands.
Laura stretched out her leg toward the baby so he wouldn’t fall off the bed, and she tried not to look at her sister and brother-in-law. But she couldn’t help it. She was disappointed. She felt like he’d intruded. And this seemed inappropriate, in their parents’ room, in front of her. Showing off, a lack of courtesy at the very least. Yeah, they were married, but still. She felt her own irritation and distaste.
Why should she feel this way? she wondered. She had no right, but she didn’t know Jerome that well (she’d met him only twice before he and Gloria eloped), and though he was nice enough, she thought there was also something insincere about him. She couldn’t help but feel that he was on his good behavior, especially in front of her father, saying “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” and laughing a little too much at their jokes, too eager to please, like that Eddie Haskell character on Leave It to Beaver. But when her father or Manny wasn’t around, when it was just Laura, Rich, and Gene, Jerome seemed different, patronizing and inappropriate. She’d seen him touch Gloria casually on her butt and once, when he thought no one was looking, he squeezed her breasts. Gloria gave him a threatening glance and pushed his hand aside, and when he saw that Laura had seen what he’d done, he just winked at her and smiled in a way that made it seem like he was glad he’d been caught.
“Okay, enough already,” Gloria said and pushed Jerome away. “You go in there. You’re embarrassing my little sister.”
He ignored her, knelt by the end of the bed, and grabbed Carroll’s feet and roughly lifted him so that he was upside down. The baby giggled, and Jerome smiled. Men always roughhoused with babies too much, Laura thought. Like they were footballs.
“How old are you again?” he asked, not looking at her. “Seventeen?”
“Sixteen,” Gloria said. “I told you that. Don’t be so rough with the baby.”
Jerome set Carroll down and then rubbed his military brush cut across the baby’s stomach, and again the baby squealed with laughter. Jerome leaned over and put both of his hands on the bed, caging Carroll, and then he lifted his head so that his face was suddenly close to Laura’s, too close.
“How are things?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Laura asked.
“You got boyfriends?”
“Don’t listen to him, Laura.” Gloria slapped his butt. “She’s not going to tell you before she tells me.”
“God, it’s hot in here,” he said, pulling away from Laura and standing up. “I forgot how goddamn hot it gets in the Panhandle.”
He pulled his T-shirt over his head and mopped his face with it.
“Jerome,” Gloria said, frowning.
“What?”
“It’s not that hot. Put your shirt back on.”
“It’s stifling.” He turned toward Laura, touched her foot with the end of his shirt. Intentionally, she felt. She pulled her foot back. “Do you mind?” he asked.
She shrugged, tried not to look. His body was muscled and hard and dark, with a dense black triangle of hair in the middle of his chest and bushy outgrowths from his armpits. His waist was narrow, and there was a thick tangle spiraling down from his navel into his pants. There
was something hostile about his body. She decided that she didn’t like him.
“I better get supper started,” Laura said.
“I’ll be right there, honey,” Gloria said.
Laura pulled the door closed behind her. She didn’t really want her father or anyone else to see.
“You know why they get the bedroom, don’t you?” Manny said, a conspiratorial hush in his voice. They were in the backyard, Manny sitting in the swing with his head poking over the metal bar of the swing-set frame as Laura took down the clean towels from the clothesline. Fay was digging a bone hole at the far end of the yard. They’d finished dinner, and inside, Gloria bathed her kids while Mr. Tate, Jerome, Gene, and Rich played canasta.
“Privacy,” she said.
“So they can fuck,” he whispered and then bugged his eyes and obscenely wagged his tongue.
“Shut up!”
“You don’t believe me?”
“They have a baby,” she protested weakly.
“So what,” he said. “Why do you think Julie’s cot got moved to our room?”
“You are so crude.”
“Maybe, but it’s true. It’s a biological fact. Travel makes you want to fuck. I think it’s rather big of the old man to give up his room like that, letting his daughter be defiled in his own bed.”
“SHUT UP!” she shouted and threw a dish towel in his face.