As Iris kept her eyes on the open door of her grandmother’s plane, she wondered whether that same handsome pilot might appear at any moment, tipping his hat at Grandma Whitacre, perhaps commenting on her exquisite scent, and lending her an arm as they descended the stairs together. Meanwhile, as the other passengers ducked their heads to step through the door and walk down the to the tarmac, Iris played a little game with herself, trying to imagine who the people were, where they had been, and why they were coming to Rochester. She could not always make out the expressions on their faces, but she searched for telltale signs in the way they walked down the stairs, some of them pausing to look around, others rushing ahead purposefully, that might indicate whether someone would be waiting there, ready to greet them with a hug or a handshake, the thought of which made Iris happy, or whether they had left behind everyone they knew, and would find themselves among total strangers, which made her sad.
At last, Iris spotted a coiffed blond head atop a soft-shouldered figure in an orange dress emerging from the open door with the countenance of a glamour queen. “There she is! I saw her!” she exclaimed, waving her hands wildly in the air as she jumped up and down, hoping to be seen.
“It is her! Let’s go!” Lily said, tugging at her sister’s elbow.
“Hold your horses, girls!” their mother said in a voice that was as close to a shout as it ever came. “We’ll all go down together. Iris, go call your father, please. Lily, you stay here with me.”
Iris approached her father, who leaned against the railing, his eyes fixed on the shiny fuselage of a Pan Am aircraft standing on the runway. Iris tapped him on the arm. “Grandma’s here, Dad!” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the increasing engine noise of the plane preparing for takeoff. Her father placed a hand on Iris’s head, but said nothing. He stood immobile, watching and smoking as the plane accelerated, then raised its nose as if to sniff the air. As it lifted off and disappeared from view, he took one last puff from his cigarette, then let it fall from his fingers. He ground the smoldering butt into the concrete with the toe of his shoe, then silently took Iris’s hand. Iris led him over to where her mother and Lily were waiting, and they went down the stairs to the arrivals gate together, accompanied by the sound of loose change and car keys jangling in his pockets.
Half an hour later, her father was hefting into the station wagon the set of three matching suitcases he had lugged across the parking lot. “When are you leaving, Grandma?” Iris asked, sliding into the backseat of the car next to her.
“Iris!” her father said, in a stern voice. “That’s not polite. Your grandmother just got here, after a thousand-mile trip!”
Iris’s cheeks burned at the reprimand. She always had misgivings about whether she was saying the right thing, or the wrong thing, and certainly hadn’t meant to sound rude; she just wanted to know precisely how many days she could bank on. She was already aware that time and money came in limited quantities, and she applied the same thriftiness to both. She knew that a day was not really twenty-four hours, because she had to sleep away at least eight of them, which left just sixteen at best, or a mere nine hundred and sixty minutes. And that was in the summertime, when you were not forced to waste any of those precious hours at school. This summer, she was determined to hold each day tightly in her fist, and squeeze every last drop of life from every single second. All she wanted to know now was how much time she had to work with during this visit.
“You sweet thang,” Grandma Whitacre said with a smile, as she placed a spotted, bejeweled hand on Iris’s bare knee. “I know y’all didn’t mean it that way, dahlin’.”
One of the things that fascinated Iris most about her grandmother was her drawl; the only other accent she had ever heard was Italian, and it amazed her to think that there were Americans born in other parts of the country that could sound so different, even if they had not immigrated from anywhere. Sometimes she even misunderstood her grandmother, like once when she had asked Iris for a pen and Iris had brought her a pin. It wasn’t only the accent that was different, but the slow, honey-like manner in which she spoke, as if her soft words stuck together to cushion her from any loud tones or vulgar expressions that might be tossed around in her proximity. To Iris, her pronunciation and mannerisms seemed like a fancy accessory, like her Zsa Zsa Gabor wig or the hairpins that fastened it to her head, which were encrusted with glittering jewels her big sisters said were rhinestones, but to Iris were every bit as beautiful as diamonds.
Her grandmother’s affectionate response softened the effect of her father’s scolding (even though she still did not reveal how long she would be staying), especially after her mother surprised her by speaking up, too, and saying of course everyone knew Iris didn’t mean anything rude by asking how long her grandmother would stay. From her seat, Iris could see little more than the back of her mother’s head as they drove home, with her wavy auburn hair blowing in the breeze from the open window, and snatches of her profile when she turned halfway around to follow the comments being volleyed between the front and back seats. Iris admired the delicate shape of her mother’s nose, her high brow and bright eyes, the smooth, translucent skin that blushed pink in the sun but never tanned, the perfectly pursed lips glistening with a light coat of pearly coral lipstick, the only makeup she ever wore. It seemed odd to hear her mother call her grandmother “Mother,” and Iris realized consciously for the first time, that Betty Capotosti had not always been a mother, but had also been a little girl named Elizabeth Whitacre, with a mother of her own.
“Can I have first turn at brushing your hair tomorrow, Grandma?” Lily asked, speaking up for the first time. Iris couldn’t blame Lily for wanting to take advantage of the fact that Iris, and not she, had been scolded, but she also knew that had it been a more serious infraction, Lily would have taken a stance in her defense, even if she was younger.
“It’s ‘may I,’ and of course you may, my l’il Lily of the Valley,” came the reply; though slow, it was quicker than the time it took a tongue-tied Iris to lodge her own request. She knew Grandma Whitacre had a soft spot for Lily, the same way Grandma Capotosti had a soft spot for her, and felt slightly disloyal for thinking how much more pleasant it was to brush Grandma Whitacre’s long blond hair, than Grandma Capotosti’s thin white wisps that barely covered her balding head. Iris was rarely the one to suggest combing Grandma Capotosti’s hair, but never refused to comply when asked, her fingers nimbly dodging contact with the warm, pink skin of the scaly scalp that smelled like the old chunks of Parmesan Auntie Rosa said could be used for grating after you trimmed away the mold, even though Iris thought it made the spaghetti taste musty. Ritual dictated that after twisting the hair into a little bun that she fixed in place with hairpins, Iris would pass her grandmother a mirror, holding another at the back of her head so that she could inspect her bun while remaining seated in her rocking chair.
It was at that moment when Iris always thought of the faded portrait of a young Irene Capotosti taken back in Italy, which she had found one day tucked away in the bureau drawer when her grandmother had asked Iris to fetch her a pair of nylons. In the photograph, her grandmother was young and handsome, dressed in a high-collared blouse with puffy sleeves and a row of tiny buttons peeking out from embroidered eyelets that ran down its front to meet her dainty waist, where it was tucked into a full-length skirt. A mass of thick, black hair was swept into a curly crown that sat atop her head as she posed with her index finger resting in the indentation of her chin, her lush eyebrows lending her dark eyes a sultry look. Iris wondered which head her grandmother saw in the reflection when she handed her back the mirror, nodded, and complimented her on her work with a “Brava.”
In the end, Iris always felt better for having groomed Grandma Capotosti, but never as good as she felt those mornings when she sat cross-legged on the bed as she and her sisters took turns brushing Grandma Whitacre’s silky blond hair, which fell halfway down her back when it was loose. Like most older people, no
matter where they came from, her grandmother seemed to prefer chatting about the past rather than the future, which was certainly more interesting than her talk about the present, which was mostly about her bowel movements. Stroke by stroke, Grandma would tell them all kinds of stories about her life, as she dipped the tips of her manicured fingers into the little jars of cream the girls passed her as part of her morning beauty ritual, and warned them to always keep in mind that frowning caused more wrinkles than smiling. Iris was mesmerized by tales of her life growing up in rural Missouri, the only girl among five brothers, who not only forced her to chop the firewood for the stove, but made her hide behind the barn when she performed the chore, so their friends wouldn’t see her and think them lazy.
She spoke of the genealogical connections that made her a distant cousin of President Harry S Truman, surprising them with the information that his middle name was just the letter S, and not an initial that stood for something else. She told the girls to remember that like that letter S, sometimes things are just what they are, and it didn’t do any good to go digging around looking for something that wasn’t there. Grandma also shared some of her favorite quotes of cousin Harry, which Iris copied down in the leftover pages at the back of a used composition book for figuring out later, but there were some that struck her right off the bat, like, “Actions are the seeds fate grows into destiny,” and “Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.” Lily giggled at the quote that said, “If you can’t stand the heat, keep out of the kitchen,” and ran downstairs to relay it to their mother, who was sweating over the stove.
Hair brushing seemed to stimulate Grandma’s mental meanderings, and once she even revealed in a confidential tone that her long-dead daddy, already aging but very much alive when she was born at the turn of the century, had ridden with Frank James, the elder brother of Jesse, in the fearsome Quantrill’s Raiders during the Civil War. Iris knew something of Jesse James from the westerns her brothers liked to watch on television, and of course she had heard of the Civil War, but would have to find out about the other stuff. She jotted these facts down in her composition book, too.
Grandma didn’t talk much about her other grandchildren down in Missouri, though she did mention marrying a couple of other husbands after her first one died and she scraped by working as a singer in a speakeasy in Kansas City. Iris thought it curious that, unless she counted her husbands wrong, Grandma Whitacre had been widowed three times, yet still she didn’t look nearly as sad as Grandma Capotosti’s friends who had such a hard time getting over being widowed once. Those Italian widows would probably grieve themselves to death in her shoes, or at very least, would not feel up to wearing orange dresses or dolling up their balding heads in Zsa Zsa Gabor wigs.
One day, smack dab in the dead middle of a hot afternoon, Iris was stretched out on the mattress in the sunroom, clad in denim shorts and a smock top, the grass-stained bare foot of her right leg dangling over the crooked knee of her left, her head propped up on a pillow. “What’re you doing?” Lily asked as she walked in, closing behind her the double French doors that led to the living room.
“Reading,” Iris said, without looking up from the paperback she was holding in her left hand, as she twirled a lock of hair between the first two fingers of her right.
Lily sat down on the mattress, just as two fat tears detached themselves from the corners of Iris’s eyes, rolled across her cheekbones, and slid into her ears. “Hey, are you crying, Iris?” Lily asked. “Whatsa matter?”
Iris rubbed her ears to chase away the tickle from the tears, then removed her glasses, set them down on her tummy, and ran the back of a hand over her eyes and nose to wipe away her sniffles. “It’s this book,” she said, waving it in the air.
“What is it?” Lily asked, holding Iris’s arm still to study the cover, on which the title was printed in green and orange block letters. “Love Story. Where’d you get that? It doesn’t look like a library book.”
“I saw it upstairs, on Marguerite’s dresser.”
“And you just took it? You know how mad Marguerite gets when you touch her stuff.”
“I asked if I could borrow it, silly. She said it was a dumb story, and I was too little for it, but I ran out of stuff to read.”
“But if it’s a love story, shouldn’t it be happy, like in the movies?” Lily asked, leaning on an elbow to face Iris.
“That’s what I thought,” Iris sniffed. “Oliver, he’s the guy, and Jenny, she’s the girl, they really love each other. They give up everything to be together. All Jenny needs is Oliver, and all Oliver needs is Jenny.”
“That sounds pretty good.”
“Sure, until Jenny gets sick!” Iris’s lower lip trembled as she spoke. “It’s not fair.”
“Maybe she’ll get better?” Lily suggested.
“No. She dies. I peeked at the ending.”
“You peeked?” Lily looked at her with wide eyes. “You always tell me it’s against the rules.”
“I know, Lily, but this is different. I just had to know what was gonna happen.”
“So since you already know how the story ends, why don’t you just stop reading it?” Lily asked.
“Because I can’t. You don’t just stop reading a book once you’ve started it.”
“Even if it makes you cry?”
“It’s a different kind of crying.”
“What’s different about it? Your eyes are all red, and snot is dripping out of your nose. It looks like the same kind of crying you do when someone screams at you or Alexander calls you a spoiled brat.”
“No, believe me, it’s different. It’s not a mad sort of crying, it’s a suffering sort of crying. Kind of like how I feel on Good Friday, when we have to line up in church to kiss the feet of the crucified Christ.”
“But I don’t want you to suffer, Iris. Please stop crying. It’s only a story, remember. Plus …” Lily said, with a clap of her hands. “What I have to say is really gonna cheer you up!”
“What?”
“Grandma wants to go to the horse races, and she and Auntie Rosa talked Mom into letting you and me go, too!”
“Cool,” Iris replied in a flat voice.
“We’re leaving in an hour, so you better put away that book and cheer up. I’m going to help Grandma get ready!” Lily skipped out of the room. Iris’s head lolled on the cushion, coming to rest on her shoulder. She stared at the blurry brightness of the windows, at the blurry row of evergreen hedges in the front yard, at the blurry patch of blue sky above. Once in awhile, retreating to the fuzzy vision of her myopic world wasn’t so bad. She sighed, put her glasses back on, and began chewing on her bottom lip, as she turned her attention back to the remaining pages of her book.
The fictional woes of Jenny and Oliver were soon lost amid the tangible excitement of the racetrack. The buzz and bustle seemed to have an inebriating effect on everyone, including Iris, who was feeling giddy and reckless. As spectators rushed back and forth to check the odds and place their bets, Iris pulled out the dollar bill she had embezzled from the emergency money in her book bank. The novel she had read made her realize that like Jenny, she could die tomorrow, without ever having fallen in love, or swum in a crystal clear lake, or bet on a horse. To Iris, that seemed like enough of an emergency to warrant busting open her bank. Seeing Iris with a dollar clutched in her fist, Auntie Rosa chuckled nervously, then snapped open her pocketbook, and pulled out the worn old prayer book she always carried with her, where she kept the holy cards of people who had died and a few emergency dollar bills of her own, all bound together with a thick rubber band. She extracted a crisp green note, her voice quivering as she announced she would match Iris’s dollar with one of her own, so they could place a bet together. It would be up to Iris to select whatever horse she liked best.
All the horses looked impressively swift and handsome to Iris as they trotted past the grandstand, especially when compared to tired old Jiffy, who wouldn’t even walk around the back yard. Lily had picked
a horse with a bandaged foreleg right away, saying she felt sorry for it, and hurried off with the adults to place her bet. Though Iris was immediately smitten with the shiny black Beautiful Dreamer, after much debate she finally settled on Flying Fantasy, because she liked the horse’s name and number (twelve, like the number of brothers and sisters in her family) and color (purple), disregarding the fact that everyone told her it was a “long shot,” whatever that meant.
Iris had taken so long deciding, the betting windows were just about to close when she joined the others, and slipped the two dollar bills under the grate. From the moment the starting bell rang, she could hardly bear the excitement, and as the race drew to a close, Iris stood on her tiptoes, craning her neck to follow the horses, every muscle and tendon in her body taut, her ears straining to understand the words of the commentator in the droning voice blaring over the loudspeaker.
“As they round the final turn, Gambit and Flying Fantasy battle for the lead, with Beautiful Dreamer in a close third. Outrageous is breaking away and closing in fast on the outside! And it’s Flying Fantasy taking the lead by a neck! And at the finish line, it’s Flying Fantasy, followed by Beautiful Dreamer a close second, and Gambit hanging on for third!” Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might break away and gallop off with the horses.
The Complete Series Page 25