Squashed

by Joan Bauer

  I woke up at 2:00 A.M. The rain was pounding off the roof. I pulled on my jeans, grabbed my slicker and plastic sheet, and ran outside to dress Max. He was soaked through, puddles surrounded him, the ground too wet to absorb all the water. I dug three runoff channels, slapped on the plastic, and lay over him like a hen covering her brood. The lightning cracked, the ground rumbled from the thunder. I figured I must be near crazy to love a vegetable this much.

  The rain was cold and soaked clear to my bones. A chill flew over me that a grower rarely feels until October. I knew if Dad saw me hanging over Max he’d ground me for life, but Max needed support and warmth, and nobody who grew giant pumpkins ever did it for their health. The rain poured down in sloppy buckets. Lightning lashed the sky, coming in so close I could feel the heat. If this didn’t let up soon I was going to fry or start building an ark.

  At dawn the storm broke. I was half dead, but managed to push past it. I cut pieces of hose to suck out the floods of water around Max, running it back down the small hill into the rock garden Nana and I had planted. Nana would understand. You can always find more rocks. Max was drier now and warm under the plastic. I slipped inside for dry clothes, knowing I would have to lie about why I had to stay home from school.

  “It’s my throat, Dad,” I said, freshly dressed, dried, and looking miserable. “I feel awful.” Dad felt my clammy forehead and bought in. I am an honest person who doesn’t use sickness as an excuse unless it is absolutely necessary. Missing school meant I couldn’t watch Wes, but today school and honesty were out of the question.

  Dad took forever to leave that morning. I lay in bed waiting, groaning appropriately, sipping cranberry juice. The sun was blasting out, and Max was sucking it up. You could be the greatest pumpkin grower in the world, which I almost was, but without the sun, you might as well be farming radishes. Dad left finally. I ran to the field and began emergency care.

  I dried Max off with clean cloths, inspecting him for any sign of beetles or fungus, ran four electrical cord extensions into the house, fired up my hair dryer, and dried his leaves good right there in the field. Between the hot air and sun Max was feeling his old self and stretching to grow. I dug the wet surface dirt away and patted down two bags of my special mixture of soil, peat moss, and pearlite. The breakfast of champions. He was drying fine now. I covered him with a reemay cloth to keep him a few degrees warmer. The hoses had the flooding under control.

  It was eleven o’clock. Wes was just getting out of band and cleaning his clarinet. This was a good place to watch him because he took great care cleaning that instrument. I watched Wes whenever I could, which took some doing, since we had no classes together and our lockers were on different floors. Grace wanted to introduce us right away, but I wanted to lose a few more pounds. I’d be wearing my khaki pants, which don’t fit when I’m above 140 pounds, my floppy orange silk blouse, and my mother’s gold dangly earrings, which make me look deeply sophisticated. I ate hardly anything because I was going to get into those khaki pants if it killed me. It probably would.

  Grace had sent out invitations to her annual beginning-of-school bash. The only year she didn’t have it was when she got mono from kissing Jimmy Schroeder, but otherwise it was during the fourth week of school, and everyone came. Grace didn’t think much about the party, it was really for her mother. Grace was the youngest of four children by eight years, and Mrs. McKenna was hanging on for dear life.

  Mrs. McKenna wanted Grace to attend Drake University in Des Moines to keep an eye on her, but Grace was looking east, far east, to Tokyo or Hong Kong. Grace figured a four-hour flight to Los Angeles followed by twelve hours to Tokyo with all that white rice and no potatoes would finish her mother off good. Mrs. McKenna split a gut when she heard this and refused to pay for any education east of Chicago, a seven-hour car trip if you made two bathroom stops and ate lunch in the car.

  It was not good to cross Mrs. McKenna. She was the reigning secretary until death of the Rock River Pumpkin Weigh-In and Harvest Fair—the entertainment event of the year, the town’s number one moneymaker, and my only hope for achieving greatness. Mrs. McKenna called it “Probably the Greatest Free Show on Earth (at Least in Iowa)” and talked about it in her sleep. She dressed in orange for the whole four days and personally rang the town bell that closed the schools for the long weekend. The woman was connected. No grower worth his salt would so much as belch in her direction.

  Grace’s party was a lesser affair, but a good excuse for Mrs. McKenna to bake, eavesdrop, and interfere, all of which she did very well. I could do without Grace’s party because I did better in small groups, but Dad got worked up when the invitation came. Anything that would get me away from Max for an evening and hopefully propel me to popularity was fine by him.

  “Well,” he said, beaming. “Well. Won’t this be nice?”

  Being popular was important to Dad, since he had achieved it late in life, having been a nerd when he was younger. I knew popularity wasn’t all roses and that Dad was expecting something of me he couldn’t achieve in his own youth. Richard said this was typical of parents—wanting Willie Mays to also take piano lessons so he’d be popular at parties in case his career went belly up.

  Nana said to be patient with Dad because a part of him died when Mother did: “He used all those motivating words to build a hedge around himself” was how Nana described it. “Kept the hurt from oozing out.”

  So I chewed my lip as Dad kept yakking about Grace’s party. Who was going? What was I going to wear? Maybe some nice boy and I would hit it off. I chewed until I drew blood.

  “Everyone’s going and I don’t know what I’m going to wear,” I said finally. “Maybe a gorilla suit.”

  “Ellie,” my father droned, “I am not your enemy. I simply mean to suggest that this dress-for-success business works. I have seen it transform dreary lives. We project to others what we really feel about ourselves. If our clothes shout dull, not interested—”

  “I do not have a ‘dreary’ life.” Usually.

  “I didn’t say you did, honey. I simply meant that fragile self-esteem can be corrected and that—”

  “I don’t have ‘fragile self-esteem,’” I insisted, looking at my broken fingernails and mud-caked jeans. I hated it when he sounded like one of his motivational tapes. “Fragile people do not grow giant pumpkins, Dad.”

  “Ellie,” he continued, “as your father who loves you and who is also a specialist in success and motivating others, it is my professional opinion that you are standing at the end of the line when you could be out in front leading the big parade.”

  By “end of the line” he meant agriculture—the Absolute Dead-End Existence, according to Dad. I bet if I’d picked anything outside of farming he’d support me. Reptile Research: “Well,” he’d say, “that’s certainly a motivated lizard you’ve got there, Ellie. Keep up the good work.” As for “leading the big parade,” I’d done that once. I was a sixth-grade Girl Scout and dropped the American flag on Porter McIntyre’s grave in the Memorial Day ceremony. It lay on the ground as the high school band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Two shaky old VFW guys hauled it away to burn it.

  “Leading the parade is one of life’s great thrills,” he continued. “It is not only a great honor, but a responsibility as well.”

  Now, the articles I’ve read about getting along with your parents say that when the battle’s lost, do not start another war. But being a grower, I took special pride in doing things myself and wasn’t too keen on turning outside for help. When you can nurture a plant and turn a seed into a giant, you get your strength from the land, something impossible for nongrowers to understand. Which is why Wes fit the boyfriend bill, but I sure wasn’t going to tell Dad that.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  Dad sighed and gave me his Old Abe stare. He took off his reading glasses, folded them like they were made of diamonds, and put them in his breast pocket. He patted me on the shoulder and walked away, slowly f
or emphasis.

  I checked Max, who looked good despite the pressure. His vine had lifted two feet off the ground. I felt clunky and dumb and misunderstood. I covered his leaves with insecticide and wondered if the spray worked on fathers.

  I weighed 144 pounds and was dreaming about chocolate chip cheesecake. Max weighed 430 pounds and was dreaming about victory. I hadn’t had any sugar for three weeks and was going through withdrawal—the heavy emotional variety. I watched a Sara Lee pound cake commercial on TV and burst into tears. At midnight I hacked a frozen fudge pie with an ice pick before tossing it in the garbage. I stole Richard’s Twinkie from his backpack, and he caught me tearing the wrapper off with my teeth. Richard said this was a sign that my diet should end. He could say that because his khaki slacks always fit. Grace’s party was three days off.

  I’d found a new hairdo that involved braiding the hair with a ribbon and letting it drape elegantly over one shoulder. I had a thick ribbon that matched my orange blouse and began perfecting the braiding process to one hour and twenty minutes. Richard felt hair was for putting under baseball caps and didn’t understand the concept of glamour.

  “What’s that?” he said, eating a Snickers as I emerged from the bathroom after my first trial run.

  “A braid,” I said, eyeing the candy. Milk chocolate, peanuts, caramel.

  “You look different.”

  “I’m supposed to look different.”

  Richard considered this, eating his Snickers slowly. He did not cope well with change and often slept in the last row of Mrs. Vernon’s seventh-period freshman study hall, where he had snoozed all last year, forgetting he was now a sophomore.

  “Richard,” Mrs. Vernon would say, “how old are you?” Richard would think before he replied, because age to him was relative, and he’d been awakened from a deep coma. The little freshman girls would start giggling, and Richard would shuffle out to seventh-period sophomore study hall, where the desks weren’t nearly as comfortable, feeling that school was tough enough without having your sleep patterns interrupted.

  Richard touched my braid, unsure. “Are you going to look like this from now on?” he asked sadly.

  “Not every day, no.”

  “Good,” he said.

  I retreated to the bathroom for another braiding. I was wearing a T-shirt with a corn stalk that said MAIZE on the front. Wes’s girlfriend was safe in Gaithersville, and Grace was finally going to introduce us. I was ready.

  I had read up on growing corn—not in Max’s presence, certainly, but off-hours. Corn was a noble vegetable—strange how I’d never seen that before. What was more beautiful than a golden field of corn against a summer sunset? A gargantuan pumpkin from my patch covered with first-place victory ribbons and basking in applause and adulation was the only thing I could think of. Without corn, where would America be? Think of all those hogs dying in their slop without a corn husk to munch on. Think of sitting down to a big plate of barbecue with nothing but lima beans on the side for roughage. It made you thankful there were men like Wes who cared about their country. Corn farmers were solid people. Pure, honest, American.

  “Like baseball,” Richard said, bouncing his ball off a passing barn roof and catching it, running. “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Who?” I said, horrified my secret was out.

  “Oh, come on, Ellie!”

  I told Richard I didn’t want to talk about it, and he said fine, neither did he. As a partial baseball star, he’d been invited to Grace’s party even though he was a lowly sophomore and not worthy of the honor. Richard was going in formal attire, which meant without his ball and glove. Dad, unfortunately, was driving us. And Dad had this thing about being on time.

  “Promptness or lack of it is the first definition of a person,” he announced throughout my childhood. “Lateness is sloppy, Ellie. Often seen in persons with low self-esteem.”

  Or persons with two feet of hair to braid. It had taken one hour and fifty-five minutes today because I was nervous, but I finally got the braid to look like the one in the picture. Dad marched in to tell me what time it was and that we were going to be late.

  “The thing is, Dad,” I said, deciding not to get ruffled no matter what, “it’s best to get to these things a little late. Let the party get started, you know. Make a big entrance.”

  He backed off and I was thankful we were only driving Richard who handled Dad by talking baseball. He was back again and looked at me strangely. “You look very pretty tonight,” Dad murmured. “Very much like your mother.”

  That really knocked me out and I wasn’t sure what to say except thank you. His eyes got fuzzy and he went outside to start the car. I went into my room, opened my top bureau drawer, and took out the picture of my mother and father on their honeymoon, arm in arm, walking down the beach.

  I studied my mother’s face but couldn’t find the resemblance. She was small and delicate, with laughter flowing out of her. Dad’s face was filled with love, much different than now. I think Dad got as close to his roots as he ever would when he married Mother.

  I wondered how things would have turned out if she hadn’t died. She probably would have helped me with my braid. She used to braid my hair. On Sundays she’d tie my braids with lacy bows that matched my church dresses. I remembered how gentle she was and funny and how well she played the guitar, which everyone told her but she never believed. I remembered how Dad always wanted her to open her own florist shop and get lots of clients. But Mother would just laugh and then do something crazy like shove a bunch of snapdragons down his shirt, and that would be the end of that.

  She was good for my father because she softened him. Her name was Claire, but Dad called her “Clairie,” a big deal for Dad, who called Pete Ninsenzo, the garbageman, “Mr. Ninsenzo.” I could have talked to her about Wes and she would have listened.

  And I know she would have understood about Max. She would have been crazy about him for sure. Mother grew roses—damasks, climbers, and brilliant yellow briers—they filled the yard, the smell of them sweetening every room of the house. People who grow roses understand deep things, Nana said, because they know about touching greatness.

  Dad was honking in the driveway, so I put the picture back in the drawer underneath my good underwear. I was wearing my standby black pants but suddenly felt lucky. I sucked in my stomach, tried on the khaki slacks, and froze at the sight. They fit! Snug, yes, not perfect, but I could still breathe, sort of. And like Richard said, if you wait for perfect you’ll never make the play.

  I tossed my head to watch Mother’s earrings dance and headed for the stairs, taking them easy to not create tension in the seams. I swept past Max who would have made a perfect carriage, and into Dad’s waiting Toyota.

  “We’re late,” Dad announced, pulling away. Some coachman.

  “To the palace,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Let’s get Richard,” I tried again.

  Richard was developing his left-hand swing on the front lawn. Richard, a right-hander, figured a switch-hitter was worth a few hundred thousand more in salary with the Chicago Cubs, so he taped his right arm to his side last February to strengthen his grip. This drove his mother crazy because in addition to having a one-armed son, she had a house full of broken dishes that Richard dropped when it was his turn to dry. She hung a sign in the kitchen that read: IF YOU BREAK IT, YOU BOUGHT IT. Richard lost most of his allowance that month to breakage fees, but felt that commercial endorsements would more than make up for it when he hit the pros.

  Being Richard, he didn’t say anything about how great I looked. He and Dad talked about the influence of the Japanese on baseball and the universe. I was squeezed in the backseat, thin and stunning, my feet straddling a pile of Dad’s best-selling success tapes: You and You Alone. I could see my perfect makeup job in Dad’s rearview mirror. I tightened my lips to make my cheekbones show.

  Dad, who normally didn’t put the top up on his convertible until the firs
t snow every year, stopped the car, snapped up the roof, and said, “Your mother never liked convertibles.” I sat real quiet, like you do in the presence of something delicate. We drove in silence to Grace’s.

  Dad pulled up the driveway of the McKennas’ three-story peach frame house. It had white shutters and gingerbread trim, like a doll cottage come to life. The lawn was freshly mowed, the walk lined with potted yellow mums. The bushes twinkled with Christmas lights in the middle of September.

  “Have fun, you two,” Dad boomed, patting my hand.

  Richard swaggered down the walk, knowing he was going to be accepted because he was a recognized athlete. I followed behind slowly, not wanting to test the strength of my seams. The night was dry and warm—perfect pumpkin conditions.

  “What’s that stuff on your face?” Richard asked.

  I was horrified and said, “Makeup,” like it was no big deal.

  “What’re those clumpy things on your eyes?” he continued.

  “I think,” I snapped, “they’re called eyelashes.”

  I could hear the party sounds from inside as Richard and I stood by the door. Perhaps a kind family would adopt me so I could have another cousin. Richard said maybe I needed to wash my face to get the gunk off and that I should have done that before we left, all of which made me feel like an ugly troll. We rang the bell, which didn’t ding, dong, or buzz. It tinkled. “Just like laughing fairies,” Mrs. McKenna always said. The fairies’ laughter didn’t carry too well, so Richard crashed the door knocker until Mrs. McKenna appeared, plump and happy in her frilliest apron. She said we certainly did look nice, and were we ready for a good time? Richard said he guessed he was as I lunged past her for the bathroom to check for clumping. The door was locked. I waited in the shadows.

  Grace’s party got Mrs. McKenna rolling for the Rock River Pumpkin Weigh-In and Harvest Fair and its pressures. No one is sure how she became its reigning secretary until death, and no one was going to ask her because Mrs. McKenna was the festival. The last day of the fair, when the sixty-cent taffy apples were going for a quarter and Marion Avenue was getting back to normal after the four-day extravaganza, Mrs. McKenna made phone calls to newspapers that hadn’t sent a reporter to cover her festival. She told them what a time they had missed and that they should be ashamed of themselves.