“Oh, she just wanted to hear me say some things. It’s always the same.” She dropped her hand.
“And Eddie?”
“Don’t worry about Eddie. He’ll be all right.”
We were standing on the sidewalk. It was only about eight, but Oak Street was empty. A few of the houses had turned on their front lights. “It’s creepy around here,” said Bunny. “Why don’t we go for a drive, or something. Let’s get out of here.”
“Do you think we should?”
“Why not? Mrs. Vernon told me we should relax tonight.”
“But I’m not dressed to go out.” I ran my hands down my sides. I was wearing a faded and formless old sundress, something I’d thrown in the suitcase without thinking the day I came to the Vernons’. This morning, when I’d spotted it in Sissy’s closet, the dress’s worn, familiar look had been comforting.
“You’re fine,” said Bunny. “You’re dressed just like me.”
I was uncertain about leaving, but Bunny was insistent and I didn’t want to argue. Just in case, I scribbled Mrs. Vernon a note and left it on the table near the phone. Her church meetings sometimes dragged on until midnight, and I was sure I’d be back before then. But in an emergency I wanted her to know I was with Bunny.
We drove aimlessly for a while, down toward the center of town, past the News Depot, around the square, which was already shrouded in leafy darkness, up West Morgan, past the Congo. A light was on in the minister’s study. Reverend Vaughn was back from his trip. I felt a quick pang that he hadn’t called me.
“How’s your boyfriend?” asked Bunny, when she saw me straining to catch a glimpse of him through the tiny window in the side of the church.
“Don’t call him that.”
“Why not? He’s kinda cute, in a skinny way.”
I folded my arms and didn’t respond.
The lines at the Dairy Queen were surprisingly short. “I guess everyone’s at the fair,” said Bunny. “You want a chocolate dip?”
I shook my head, remembering what had happened the last time I stopped there. Bunny continued out Walker Street, past the farm equipment store, the Hide-Away Motel, the Dog ’n’ Suds. After half a mile or so, the buildings stop abruptly and a field of corn spreads out, a cool green sea lapping up against the town. The sun was down now, and little islands of bright farmhouses or dark clumps of trees stood out above the flatness.
We followed Walker for a short ways, then turned off on a gravel road that slices between the fields. We were alone. Behind us, the taillights of Bunny’s car made fiery clouds shining through the road dust. Bunny was quiet and seemed distracted. I guessed she was contemplating life without Eddie. She’d never understand, of course, that she’d be better off that way. I thought of all the nights that he’d yelled at her, or walked out, or just drunk too much and fallen asleep on the couch, a useless sack of a man. I’d wander into the living room Sunday morning, and he’d still be there, asleep and pathetic, curled up like a baby trying to keep himself warm. Now that he was gone, Bunny wouldn’t remember any of that. Her capacity to forget unhappiness was incredible, maybe even a little crazy. As soon as the man was out of her life, the bad things had never happened.
Still, I knew, there was something different about Eddie. It wasn’t exactly that he was sad—it was more that he was sort of separate, apart from the rest of us, as if there were a small space between him and everything around him. Reverend Vaughn was a little the same way. They both had that quality, and it was alluring, it gave you some place to crawl into.
Poor Bunny. I looked over at her without turning my head, so she wouldn’t know I was staring. Lately, I’d been noticing that the lines at the corners of her eyes had deepened and spread. She’d smile or frown, and the wrinkles would suddenly appear, standing out like the angel’s wings on Mercury’s helmet. The skin over her cheeks was starting to get shadowy, too. You’d hardly notice, except in certain lights or at the times when she was feeling low.
I wondered—did she blame me? That wouldn’t be like her, but maybe she really did believe that this was her last chance for a great love. Now, she has to give it up, because of me. Through all Tom’s troubles and her problems with men, I’d always been there. She used to call me her anchor, she’d say it all the time. I was the one she could rely on. I was always at her side. Once, when I was nine, I stayed home from school and cared for her for a week after Wayne Wadlinger betrayed her. She thought she was in love with Wayne, and he’d been making promises. Then he showed up at the Tennessee Lounge with a woman named Nora. Within ten minutes, three people called to tell Bunny, and the phone rang four more times that night after she’d stopped answering it. Bunny went to bed and didn’t get up for a week. And the whole time, I was there—bringing meals in on a tray, fetching magazines from down at the News Depot. I even climbed in bed and slept with her, putting up with Bunny’s constant thrashing. I’d wake up in the morning, and she’d be spooning me, her arms around my chest, her face in my neck, her heavy morning breath on my cheek. And then one morning, she got up and went back to work, as if a week had been set aside for mourning, and once that was over, life went on. But I’d been there. When she needed me, I’d been there.
Outside the car, the fields streaked by, smooth and regular. Mack Creek meanders around this part of the countryside, and Bunny slowed every now and then to cross one of the small stone bridges spanning the murky water. Frogs were croaking back and forth. The air was warm, but the young corn gave it a crisp, fresh smell.
Bunny came to a paved highway, took a right, continued for a few miles, and then took another right on another gravel road. She was making a big loop around one side of Katydid. Pretty soon, we were pointed back toward town and could see the dome of colored lights reflecting off the sky. Then we were just outside town, staring at the circle of colored bulbs on the Ferris wheel, spinning high above the fairgrounds.
“Why don’t we park and go in for a few minutes?” said Bunny. It was the first thing she’d said in a quarter hour.
“I don’t know,” I said. But she’d already slowed down in front of the field they use for parking. A boy waving a red flashlight guided us down a bumpy lane, past a long line of cars. At the end, another red light swung back and forth, indicating our spot.
Bunny parked and started to get out. She could see I was reluctant. “We won’t stay long,” she said. “I just feel like getting cheered up a little. I could use a little cheering up.”
Still, I sat there, staring at the dashboard.
“Jesus!” said Bunny, jumping out and slamming the car door. “Sometimes you really depress me, you really do.” She stomped around for a few seconds, then leaned back inside the window. “You really depress me,” she repeated.
“Why can’t I just wait here?”
“Jesus!” she muttered again, turning away. She started walking down the line of cars toward the entrance to the fair. She was taking short, jerky steps and swinging her arms rapidly. Her baggy dress rode up and down clumsily on her hips. From the back, I hardly would have recognized her.
She did blame me, I thought. She blamed me, and she’s right, it’s my fault. I’m all she’s got and I depress her. I depress my own mother.
I hurried out of the car and ran after her. She heard me coming and slowed, taking my arm in hers when I caught up. “We’ll only stay for a bit,” she said. “Just enough for some cheering up.”
The outside of the entrance gate was hectic and noisy. People milled around a cardtable covered with Eisenhower stickers and buttons. A balloon man stood in a colorful thicket of plastic. A man in a top hat offered little toy farm animals that dangled from key chains. People were laughing and calling out to each other, talking above the sounds of the fair.
“I hope I don’t see anybody I know,” I said, after Bunny had paid our way in.
“Why not? Hold your head high.”
We wandered down the main path, getting used to the lights and commotion. Babies were crying, and dust
covered everything. Each step on the hard, worn ground kicked up a little explosion of dry, yellowish clay. One year, I remembered, I wore sandals to the fair, and, when I got home and took them off, they were still on, in reverse—perfect white lines from the straps across the tops of my feet, and everything else dark yellow.
After a few minutes of wandering, Bunny bought some pink cotton candy and tried to nibble around the outside without getting her face all sticky. Soon she gave up and dumped it in a trash can. “I want to try a game,” she said.
We came to a small, open tent, set in a clear space, so groups of people flowed around it. The tent covered a huge, pastel pyramid of little fish bowls, each filled with colored water—pink or yellow or blue. The pyramid was lighted from within and made a spectacular display, like some otherworldy rainbow hovering in the dust of the fairgrounds. To win at the game, you had to toss a Ping-Pong ball into a bowl. In the top few layers, each bowl contained a goldfish. If you landed in a bowl with a fish, you won the fish. Landing in a fishless bowl earned a water whistle, shaped like a chick, or a thick, hot dog-sized pencil with a hula skirt on it, or a hollow straw tube that locked your fingers if you stuck them in both ends and tried to pull out. The water whistles were something new and were proving quite popular. I’d already heard six or seven of them bleating around the fair.
“You want to try?” Bunny asked, after we’d admired the pyramid for a few seconds.
I shook my head. I’ve never been very good at games.
“Well, I’ll try, then,” she said.
A thin woman with dyed black hair was running the concession. She was wearing a money apron and standing inside a wood railing. “Try your luck,” she kept calling out. “Three throws for a quarter. Try your luck.”
“How can you miss?” whispered Bunny. The pyramid seemed to be nothing but yawning bowls.
The woman noticed us. “Come on, blondie, try your luck,” she yelled. “Show these folks.”
“All right,” said Bunny. She gave the woman a quarter and got back three Ping-Pong balls.
“That’s the spirit, blondie,” said the woman. “Win a goldfish.” A number of people who’d been listening to the lady’s spiel now moved closer.
“Here we go, Martha,” said Bunny. “This one’s for you.”
She leaned across the railing, lifting her left leg to help her keep balance. Her dress was pulled tight against her body. Her bottom stuck up in the air. The woman behind the railing frowned. Bunny brought her arm back behind her ear and let go with a hard, overhand throw. The ball ricocheted off the side of a bowl and bounced way out to the side and onto the ground.
“Awww,” said Bunny.
“Throw it underhand, honey,” said a man standing behind her. “Nice and soft.”
Bunny leaned forward again, stretching to get closer, wiggling her hips the way she does to get into her girdle. I would have been embarrassed, except that every eye was on her. No one even knew I was there. She held her arm out straight in front, gripping the ball with her fingertips. With a sudden, herky-jerky sweep, she tossed it underhand. The ball floated high above the pyramid, then looped down. It hit the lip of a top bowl, then bounced, plunk, plunk, plunk, off three lower bowls and onto the ground.
People groaned. “Hey,” said Bunny, “this is hard.”
“Come on, honey, nice and soft, you can do it,” said the man who’d spoken up before. He was thin, with a wine-colored face and a blue shirt that buttoned up the front. The top few buttons were undone, exposing a perfect wine-colored “V” down his chest. The man was angling, trying to edge forward in the crowd. “Nice and soft, honey,” he repeated.
Once again, Bunny leaned over the railing. Everyone was watching her and no one was buying a chance. Bunny held her last Ping-Pong ball in front of her eye, sighting the route she wanted it to travel. Then she stretched still further. With a quick thrust, she catapulted the ball toward the top of the pyramid. The little white sphere shot in a fast, straight line and plopped exactly into a bowl filled with pale blue water and one frantic orange goldfish.
“Hey!” said Bunny, sounding as if she expected the ball to pop out again.
People whooped and clapped. “Way to go, Bunny,” yelled Mr. Fanzone, the man from the hardware store, who was standing in the back with his wife. I tried to slip behind a few of the people who’d pushed up front, but Bunny turned to find me. “Come on, we won a fish,” she called.
The woman behind the counter hurried over to the pyramid and lifted out Bunny’s bowl. The fish was swimming around in a tiny circle. Using two fingers, the woman scooped out the Ping-Pong ball and handed the bowl to Bunny. “Here you go, blondie,” she said tightly. Then she shouted, “All right, who’s next? Win a goldfish. If blondie can do it, so can you.” Several people dug into their pockets and pulled out change. Suddenly, the woman was doing a brisk business. She didn’t like Bunny, though. “Come on, blondie, move on,” the woman said. “You got yours, now let some of these other folks have a chance.” Bunny just stood there, holding the bowl up to her nose and trying to see eye-to-eye with the fish. Finally, she slid over to me.
“He’s cute, isn’t he?” she said. “He’s got little tiny lips.” She thrust the bowl toward me. “Here, you carry him.”
“Oh, no. You won him. He’s yours.”
“Well, what am I going to do with it?”
Suddenly the man with the wine-colored farmer’s tan appeared over Bunny’s left shoulder. “Don’t you girls want to take that good-lookin’ fish home?” he asked. He had an angular face and a thin smile that moved diagonally from the right corner of his mouth to the left.
Bunny stared at him without saying anything.
He continued to smile. “Well, how about if I carry it, then?” he asked. “If you two don’t want it, I’ll take it home and give it to my little girl.”
“You’ve got a little girl?” asked Bunny, screwing up her face in disbelief.
“What’s the matter, don’t I look like the kind of man who could have a little girl?”
Bunny shrugged and shoved the bowl into his hands. We walked away, but he followed right behind. “You got a name for this fish?” he asked after a few steps.
Bunny looked at me and rolled her eyes. “Moby Dick,” she said. “I call him ‘Moby’ for short.”
“Heh,” said the man, catching up and walking alongside us. “You can’t go treating a good-lookin’ fish with that kind of disrespect. You got to treat him formal-like. I think I’ll address him as ‘Mr. Dick.’ ”
Bunny stopped and looked the man over. “Mr. Dick,” she said. “Hah, hah, hah, hah.” Her laugh came out in sharp, unnatural spurts.
“Let’s go,” I said softly.
Bunny stared at me blankly, as if she were confused, and then she turned back to him. He was smiling and nodding his head, letting his eyes drift down her body and then back to her face.
“Hah, hah,” Bunny laughed again.
The man said his name was Frank. He tagged along as Bunny toured the 4-H tents—the sweet-smelling one where big-eyed calves stared out at us silently, the noisy one where pig families were crowded together in wooden enclosures like immigrants in the hold of a ship. In the food tent, the entries were lined up on shelves in glass-fronted wooden cabinets. Some of the food had already been judged, and the plates of pies, cakes, breads, and muffins dripped bright ribbons. The tent for the vegetable competition had an entire table of cherry tomatoes. Each entry of three tomatoes sat on a small, white paper plate, looking like an idiot’s idea of a salad. Another table had the winner of the “Best Vegetable in Fair” ribbon, a pumpkin so big it was losing shape, melting under its own size.
Bunny moved quickly through the tents, and Frank hurried to keep up, all the time trying to make jokes and splashing water out of the goldfish bowl. I lingered behind, always keeping them in sight and hoping that Bunny would look back for me. She never did, and Frank eventually steered her away from the exhibits and into a beer tent. Three big,
silver kegs were resting in troughs of crushed ice. A makeshift bar had been set up, and four men in Budweiser hats were serving beer in tall paper cups. I came up while Frank was saying that he worked on a farm over in Edenboro, and he was going to compete in the tractor pull tomorrow. Bunny barely seemed to be listening.
“Beer, miss?” one of the bartenders asked me.
“Oh, no,” I said, hopping back. Did I really look that old? I stood near a tent pole, glaring at Bunny, though she didn’t seem to notice.
“What’s the matter with your daughter?” Frank asked after a while. “How come she’s not out with her friends?”
“We’re here together,” said Bunny. She looked at me for the first time in minutes. Her face broke into a smile—the same proud, open smile that’s hanging over my head like a moon, just out of reach, in my earliest memory.
“I don’t think the girl likes me,” said Frank.
“Of course she does. She’s just a little shy.”
“Let’s go, Bunny,” I said. I didn’t care if Frank heard. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I just want to finish this beer,” Bunny said, taking a small swallow.
“See,” said Frank. “I told you she didn’t like me.”
“Oh, hush,” said Bunny. “She likes you all right. Don’t you, Martha? Tell Frank you like him.”
I turned away and faced the tent pole.
“Martha,” said Bunny, raising her voice. “Do what your mother says. Tell Frank you like him.”
I crushed my eyes closed. Outside, you could hear the sharp clang of the strongman’s bell and the tooty music of a merry-go-round.
After a few seconds, Frank said, “The hell with you two. You know what? The hell with you two.” I opened my eyes just as he was stalking away. I noticed that he was wearing cowboy boots.
“Now look what you did,” said Bunny. “You’ve offended him.”
“Who cares. Let’s get out of here.”
“I told you, I want to finish my beer,” she said flatly. She took another sip. “Oh, look, he left the goldfish. Think of his poor little girl.” Bunny flicked her fingernail twice on the side of the bowl, and the terrorized fish began circling again.
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