Where was Jean now? Danner saw her then, sitting in the middle of the line in one of the aluminum lawn chairs, pouring a glass of iced tea from the cooler. She held up the glass and gestured to Danner; Danner approached her, and her mother’s dark face, framed in the red scarf and the line of her black hair, was calm and steady in the heat. The colors of another band jangled behind her.
She put her hand on Danner’s forehead. “Take a drink of this. You’re so hot your face is flushed. It’s that long hair. I don’t know why you won’t let me get you a nice haircut for summer.”
Danner took the glass. “I don’t want short hair.”
“All the girls have short hair this summer. Did you see Bonnie Martin’s hair?”
Bonnie Martin was a majorette. “No,” Danner said.
“Sure you didn’t.” Jean smiled. “Don’t you want me to pull it back for you? Want my scarf?” She touched the scarf to pull it off.
Danner shook her head. The scarf would smell of Jean’s hair, a perfume dense and subtle at once, like heavy waxen flowers wilted by warmth. How could her hair smell that way? Danner wanted to touch the scarf and hold it.
Jean sighed. “This parade will go on another two hours. Why not sit on the porch with Katie?” She nodded at Bess’s house. “See how cool Katie looks.”
Danner turned. Katie didn’t see them looking and peered at the street, the porch swing under her moving slightly. Her skin was very pale and she swung absently on the broad white swing, as though the street were empty and she were totally alone. Usually she was alone on her frequent visits; her husband owned a hardware store in Winfield and came to Bellington only a few times a year. Danner turned back to Jean. “Mama, is Gladys coming out for dinner?”
“Yes, and she’s bringing the strawberries. Would you rather I have to drive clear up to Hall’s field in this traffic and get them?” She waited for an answer; then her expression softened. “Does Gladys bother you so much? She lives all by herself. Who does she have but us, with Jewel clear up in Ohio? It’s not like Bess, with Twist and his family right here, and your dad, and Katie coming so often from Winfield.”
“I know.”
“Go ahead, sit on the porch. Let Katie do French braids. For the dance tonight. Tight as Katie does them, they’d last. Be pretty with your new dress.” She stroked Danner’s wrist with her warm fingers.
The new dress: Danner’s heart sank at the prospect of wearing it. Jean had gone all the way to Winfield to shop and bought the dress as a surprise; it was a tailored white shirtwaist with linen cuffs at the short sleeves. Surely no one wore such clothes at the pool dances; the high school girls would wear full swing skirts and sleeveless rayon shells that clung. The sweaters would be colors like tangerine, aqua, chartreuse; Danner would be the only one in white. Last night she’d lain in bed and heard her parents quarreling in low tones: You had no damn business and Jean’s bitter I work for my money as the dress hung pale and crisp in the darkness of Danner’s open closet. You don’t think I work? You need a good slap, and Danner lay listening, wondering if she could say she planned to swim, and take her real clothes to the dance in a beach bag. Someone would see if she changed in the poolhouse dressing room; suppose she walked into the tall bushes by the railroad tracks? No one would notice. Just you touch me, go ahead. The voices stopped then or Danner slept, the dress in her mind’s eye veiled with tissue paper, offered in her mother’s arms.
“Mama, maybe we should take the dress back.”
Jean looked easily away at the parade. “Now why would we do that? You’ll look so pretty in it. I can’t wait to see you.” There was the sound of bells jingling and a steel clack of hooves on cement. “The horses—twice as many this year, and here come the palominos. Oh, roses.”
Danner knelt by Jean’s chair to look; she saw the closest animals almost from below, and the chests of the horses were beautifully broad. They stepped high in what seemed an effortless gait, but the costumed riders held the reins tense. They prodded the horses sharply, stirrups tight against the veined bellies of the animals. The two palominos, show horses from a stable in Win-field, were always in the parade. This year their ashen manes were plaited and deep red roses sat like knots along their arched necks.
“Someone was careful and took every thorn from those long stems,” Jean said.
The wooden floor of Bess’s porch was cool and the boards were vaguely uneven; Danner sat cross-legged and waited for Katie to come back with the celluloid brush and comb, and the round white hand mirror, Bess kept on her dressing table. The porch was a big empty rectangle except for the swing; all the other chairs were set up on the sidewalk for the parade. Rhododendron grew shoulder-high around the front of the house, the long waxen leaves so close against the white trellis of the porch they seemed to press the lattice. Danner looked across the wide stone steps of the porch and watched the Shriners march past. They wore skirts and played the bagpipes that were so harsh and sad and melodious; the crowd clapped.
The street, blocked off since the previous night, would have looked completely empty before the parade and the crowds came. Bess would have been up early, sweeping the floor and the thin mats of the porch with a stiff broom. Danner imagined the brushing of the broom in the quiet morning. How would it be to wake up like Katie to that sound; to have a mother so old, nearly seventy; to be an old child nearly thirty and sleep often in the bed you’d always known?
Katie wasn’t like other people; Danner wasn’t sure why. Katie was thin and willowy and she moved quietly; she wore her dark blond hair in the same pageboy she’d worn in her high school graduation picture, and she wore no makeup. Her face was so fair that the freckles on her cheeks each looked singular and precise, as though someone had painted them on. Her hazel eyes had tiny lines beneath them and in the creases, as if she had to strain slightly to see. Her sweater and sketchbook lay in the empty swing; Danner touched the sweater, a red woolen one. Just touching it made Danner feel too warm, but Katie carried a sweater everywhere, even in the middle of summer. On the hottest days, she wore a white cotton sweater around her shoulders; always, she took a long nap in the middle of the day. Everyone accepted the fact that Katie slept; when she visited Bess, the French doors to the bedroom were pulled shut and Katie lay still, never wrinkling the spread, her arms and chest covered with her sweater. She had been a sickly child, but that wasn’t what made her different: Danner thought it was the way Katie slept that signaled her difference. She slept easily and completely, as though some part of her was constantly engaged in serene rest. She had only to give over the wakeful aspects of herself to slip completely into her practiced sleep, her face still, her pale lips delicate as peach-toned porcelain.
Now the screen door banged and Danner felt Katie behind her. Katie sat down and leaned forward; the swing moved to touch Danner’s shoulder.
“Danner, you can’t see the parade sitting down so low. Want to sit up beside me?”
“No, it’s cool here, and you can reach me better.”
Katie lifted Danner’s hair as though weighing it in her hand. “Tires you out to see so many colors, doesn’t it.”
“You mean the parade?”
“Yes, to see so much at once, going by and going by.” She combed Danner’s hair with her fingers first, to keep the comb from pulling. “I remember the very first festival, in 1949. I think Jean was pregnant with you then; you were going to be born soon. I was—what, thirteen? Just the parade then, much smaller, and a shortcake supper at the firehouse.”
“Why do they call it the Strawberry Festival?” Danner sat still as Katie parted her hair down the middle; Katie always stroked the hair apart, petting it into place with strong downward strokes of her wrists.
“They had to call it something,” Katie said, “and there have always been big berry crops around Bellington. There were weeks when the berries rotted in baskets before the farmers could sell them. Big baskets they would nearly give away. And when the berries had gone dark and soft, the men made
wine. The wine was so light and fragile-tasting, no one valued it much. It was like leftovers, can you imagine?”
“Did you ever drink it?”
“No, they wouldn’t let me drink anything like that.” She laughed. “I had to drink egg nogs, and raw milk with vitamin tonic.”
Recorded music suddenly blared. O beautiful for patriot dream; the VFW float was going by. A huge round globe turned on a gold foil axis; the globe was solidly, darkly blue except for a red- and white-striped America on one side. The globe trembled as the float moved, crepe rosettes of the colors ruffling.
“Isn’t it pretty?” Katie rested her hands on Danner’s back. “Looks unfinished, with no people on it.”
“But the empty floats are some of the best ones.” Danner felt Katie fasten one braid and begin the second.
“I hear you and Billy are going to the pool dance tonight.”
“Well, it’s not exactly a dance. You don’t have to have a date—it’s more of a group activity.” Katie didn’t have children and her ideas of what they could do seemed liberal to Danner.
“Oh,” Katie said. “Is it Billy’s first dance?”
“I guess so, except for those church parties. But I’m sure he won’t dance. I mean people can swim in the pool or just hang around. Billy doesn’t care about dances—he’s just waiting for the air show tomorrow. He’s been riding his bike out to the airport every morning to look at the planes.”
“I see.” Katie began running the comb through Danner’s tangled hair. Danner hardly ever used a comb, but somehow Katie did it quickly and lightly, pushing with her cool hands on Danner’s scalp. “You should never take a brush to your hair, it’s so fine and soft.”
“It’s terrible hair.”
“Danner, it isn’t, and it’s a lovely color.” Quickly she braided the other plait, holding Danner’s head against her knees and sectioning long pieces. “I’m making them tight, to last. You’ll squeak when you blink.”
Danner leaned her full weight against Katie and closed her eyes. The white hands in her hair moved light and hard, fast. “Feels like you could pull my eyes wide open,” Danner said.
“All the better,” Katie said softly.
The bands sounded farther away and people on the street were a continuous, restful hum. The yelling and shouting were only sound; even the line of chairs, when Danner looked, seemed foreign. Danner watched her mother’s back, the familiar set of Jean’s shoulders. Mitch was farther down the row with Doc Reb Jonas and Uncle Twist, Katie’s brother. All three men stood with their arms crossed, in shirt sleeves. Twister was gaunt and thin and gray and drank bourbon even in his iced tea.
“Do you like dances?” Katie’s voice was startlingly close against the other faraway noises. She had leaned down to pull the crown hair tight, and Danner felt her breath, a silvery tickling.
“They’re all right,” Danner said.
“You know, your father used to dance with me when I was your age and a little younger. He seemed like a giant then. He was a wonderful dancer.”
“He was?” Danner supposed she should be quiet. “He sure gets mad easy now.”
“Does he?” Katie looked out toward the street. “Yes, I suppose he does.”
Danner said nothing.
“There,” Katie said. She leaned over Danner from above, picked up the hand mirror and held it, keeping her face close beside Danner’s so that both images were reflected in the glass. “Let’s see if we look alike,” she said.
Far off, sirens wailed, marking the end of the parade. Danner looked into the mirror. “I don’t think so,” she breathed.
“Look closer. Hold the mirror.” Danner took the wide handle of the mirror and Katie lifted both hands. Forefingers touching where their faces met, she drew one cool finger across Danner’s brow, one across her own. “Here,” she said, “we’re the same.”
The strawberries were ripe and juicy and left a pink tinge on Danner’s fingers. She sat on the edge of the concrete patio with Gladys and Jean while Mitch stood at the far side of the yard, pouring charcoal briquets into the barbecue. The fields around the house were still brightly yellow in the sun of the late afternoon, but the grasses had begun to move and show their pale undersides; later it might rain. Danner and Jean held the bowls of berries and capped them with small knives. Danner moved her knife automatically and watched Billy ride his bike at the far perimeters of the lawn; he rode around and around, the silver fenders of the bike shining. Every time he made the hill past the barbecue, he stood to pedal and moved by with a blast of sound; he’d taken Danner’s transistor radio and hung it from the handlebars. The volume was turned way up and strains of Top 40 songs twisted in the air.
“Billy’s got my radio,” Danner told Jean.
Gladys looked up from the bowl of beans she held. “He won’t hurt it, unless he wrecks and hurts himself, and then you’ll feel justified.”
“He went in my room and took it, Mom.” Danner heard strains she almost recognized as Billy disappeared around the front of the house; the songs, high wails, seemed to drift behind him.
Gladys and Jean ignored Danner; they were discussing Katie. Katie couldn’t get pregnant.
“She’s strung too tight, that’s why.” Gladys broke the beans with a snap. “She looks half-starved, like she’d break in half doing what’s necessary.”
“I don’t know what that would be,” Jean said. “All I ever had to do was lie there.”
“Not so. It has to do with a state of mind.”
“Gladys, that’s ridiculous. I got pregnant so easy—all he ever had to do was look at me.”
Danner imagined Mitch looking. In the home movies there were always a few dim frames of his face as he held the movie camera in his hands and pondered it, filming himself as he pushed the wrong button. His head filled the frame, lit on one side by tentative light. In the fish-eye view of the camera, his broad forehead curved in near darkness like the smooth plain of an awesome, lonely planet. His chin, his nose, all the features of his face, became a strange, enlarged geography. His eyes were nearly closed as he peered down, his expression wondering.
“Exactly,” Gladys told Jean, “he looked at you.”
“Oh, Gladys. People don’t have to be happy together for the woman to get pregnant.”
“Not saying they have to be happy. Happens faster lots of times if couples don’t get along. It’s a state of mind in the woman before the man even touches her.”
“So men have nothing to do with it?” Jean arched her brows at Danner to signal that this was another of Gladys’ nutty conversations.
“Sure they do.” Gladys looked unconcerned and shook the pot of strung beans. The beans rattled and she smoothed them level with her hand.
Jean smiled. “I hope you’re listening to this, Danner. Gladys is going to tell you her version of what makes women pregnant.”
“What?” Danner asked.
Gladys leaned closer. “Desperation,” she said, “suddenly satisfied.” She held up her hand for silence as Jean began to laugh. “Not always desperation for children—could be desperation about something else. But for a few minutes, the desperation is gone, and that’s when women get pregnant. After they do what’s necessary, of course.” Gladys nodded once, decisively.
“Most people don’t have any trouble getting pregnant,” Jean said. “It’s hard to believe so many people are desperate.”
“Almost everyone is desperate,” Gladys said. “Katie is desperate, too. But a hard case like Katie has to have exactly what she needs—” Gladys paused for emphasis “—to forget what she wants, and have her desperation satisfied.”
“Well, what does she want?” Danner asked.
“Something else besides what she has,” Gladys answered.
“But that’s human nature, Gladys,” Jean said. “Everyone wants what they don’t have.”
“Not as bad as Katie does.”
“Gladys,” Jean said sarcastically, “maybe you’d better have a talk with K
atie right away.”
“Not me. You can’t talk to a hard case.” Gladys placed the bowl of beans in her lap with deliberation, pleased with herself.
“What do you mean by ‘satisfied?’ ” Danner sat hugging her knees, gazing down the expanse of lawn to the fence. Billy was rounding the bottom boundary of the grass, pedaling evenly. The whispering radio swung, veering its music closer in a shimmered falsetto: in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight©. The high-pitched words were not loud across the distance, but carried audibly; Billy passed the flaming barbecue in a stop-time and moved out of sight as a shuffled wee mah wettah, wee mah wettah faded with him.
“And they call that music,” Gladys said, brushing at the front of her skirt. “As for satisfied, I’m not saying people stay satisfied. You’d be crazy to stay satisfied in this life.”
“I’ll sugar these berries,” Jean said, and she took Danner’s bowl. “Danner, go ask your dad what time we’ll eat.”
“Jean and Gladys will just have to wait. These coals are still burning down.” Mitch held the clean grill of the barbecue in one hand and looked into the fire.
“How long does it take?” Danner asked, studying the heat. She stared into the coals as the fire flickered in jagged orange pieces, then disappeared. The briquets glimmered, disintegrating slowly, each piece growing a white ashen fur that looked as though it would be soft to the touch. How could he have danced with Katie? Danner’s eyes burned from looking at the warmth.
“Stand back a little,” her father said gently, and touched her shoulder.
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