Beneath my feet, tucked between the bottom of the stool and the counter, rested the several packages I’d collected this morning—the Christmas gifts for Jake’s family…except for Royce.
“What on earth should I get for your father?” I asked.
Inis shrugged, her eyes on her magazine.
“What did you get him?”
“Nothing,” Inis mumbled, slurping on her milkshake.
“Well, what are you going to get him?” I prodded.
“I ain’t getting’ him nothing,” Inis said, staring balefully at a Revlon ad for “Fire and Ice” lipstick. “I hate him! I wish he’d die!” Her face whitened as if she’d just realized what she’d said. She abruptly closed the magazine and looked up at me, her eyes turbulent. “I know that’s wrong of me, but it’s true. I do hate him.”
I gazed at the girl, and summoned the courage to ask the question that had been hovering in my mind since we’d grown close. “Inis, does he ever hit you?” Now that I knew Royce first hand, I’d come to believe all the rumors I’d heard about him beating up on Jake and his older brother, Tully. And I wouldn’t put it past him to do the same to his girls.
But Inis shook my head. “Not me or Meg. He hollers at us, but never lays a hand on us. Ma would probably kill him if he did. She won’t truck with him beatin’ up on girls. But he like to beat Jake to an inch of his life one time.”
I chewed on my lower lip. That can’t be the time he’d got into trouble for playing with me in the woods. Inis would’ve been only two, and surely wouldn’t remember it even if she had witnessed it. But then, a horrible thing like that might leave its mark on a poor child’s mind.
“He always beat up on Tully, too,” Inis went on. “That’s why he left home and never comes back. We haven’t seen him in almost five years. Ma got a letter once from Cincinnati, and that’s it. Pa got even meaner after Tully left, and he mostly took it out on Jake.”
I shook my head. Poor Jake. No wonder it was so hard for him to show love and affection. He’d grown up deprived of both, so how could he show it to someone else? Well, that was going to change when he came home.
My heart gave a jolt. That would be in exactly four days. His bus would be arriving in Somerset on Christmas Eve, and I’d already arranged for Slim Jessup to drive me there to meet him. I could hardly wait.
And when we were together again, I vowed to do everything in my power to make up for Jake’s horrible childhood. I would give him all the love he’d never got at home, and we’d both shower our baby girl with love and attention, and she’d grow up to be secure and confident and…
A gust of cold air swept into the drugstore as the front door opened and an obviously pregnant redheaded woman entered. It took a moment before I recognized Pat-Peaches. She looked nothing like the girl I’d last seen on graduation night nestled in Chad’s arms. Her freckled face was devoid of make-up and oddly bloated, and she looked like she’d gained fifty pounds—and not just because of her protruding belly. Even her legs, visible beneath a shapeless wool coat, looked like gnarled tree trunks.
I cupped my hands over my own rounded belly, wondering if it was possible I looked as bad, and just didn’t know it. I certainly hadn’t thought I looked bad at all when I’d glanced into the mirror this morning. In fact, I’d thought I looked especially pretty. My eyes had sparkled and my skin had glowed with good health. I’d gained only twelve pounds—right at average, the doctor had said. The only parts of my body that had expanded had been my belly and my titties, which, I was pretty sure, Jake was going to be pleased about.
Pat-Peaches glanced around, her gaze skating over me and Inis to fasten on the candy aisle beyond us. She lumbered toward it like a thirsty horse heading for water.
I looked back at the door, wondering if Chad was with her. I hadn’t seen him since this summer when I’d run into him at the library. The moment had been awkward with a brief exchange of pleasantries before he’d hurried out with the books he’d come in with.
What would he say when he saw I was pregnant? What would I say to him?
The door opened, and a handsome man in uniform stepped into the drugstore. He carried a duffle bag slung over one shoulder and wore his cap at a rakish angle. For a moment, he stood just inside the door, scanning the interior.
I caught my breath as his blue eyes connected with mine. “Oh, my Lord,” I whispered.
“What’s wrong?” Inis asked, looking around.
The soldier’s face broke into a big grin, and my heart began to race.
“Jake!” I jumped off the stool as gracefully as my condition would allow and ran toward him. He dropped his duffle bag and reached for me.
I burst into tears as he wrapped me in his arms, holding me so tight I could barely breathe. I inhaled the scent of him—starched cotton, Winston cigarettes and Brill hair crème—still not quite believing I wasn’t dreaming.
He kissed me, deep and hard. And I knew it couldn’t be a dream. He was really here!
When he finally released me, I clung to him, and gasped, “But you’re not…your letter said…”
He shook his head, grinning. “They let us out early for the holidays. I hitch-hiked from Somerset. You happy to see me, Lily Rae?”
“What do you think?” I giggled, and took a step away from him. “Look at me, Jake. You see how big I’ve gotten? Oh, and Jake, the baby is moving all the time now. Doesn’t it, Inis?” I looked around at Inis who was still sitting on her stool, staring at her brother like she’d never seen him before. “Inis! It’s your brother! Don’t you recognize him?”
Inis nodded and gave a little smile. “Hey, there, Jake. You look different.”
He took off his cap and gave his head a scratch. “I reckon I do,” he said wryly. “Lord, I’m glad to be home. I ran into Burps Dewey at the junction where my ride dropped me off, and he told me Twila Foley had mentioned just seeing you two at the drugstore, so I decided to walk on down here before heading home. And here you are!”
I smiled up at him, still feeling the urge to pinch myself. I couldn’t get over how different he seemed, and it wasn’t just the uniform. No, he seemed older and more easy-going. The Army, apparently, had had a good effect upon him. Maybe my man had finally grown up.
“Oh, Jake, I’m so glad you’re home,” I whispered, wanting nothing more than to get him back to our room at his parents’ house and strip that uniform clean off him.
He grinned down at me. “Not for long, baby,” he said, giving my shoulders a squeeze. “Come January 1st, you and me…we’re going to Texas.”
Mother's Kentucky Oatmeal Cake
1-1/4 c boiling water
1 c oats
1/2 c butter, softened
1 c sugar
1 c brown sugar
1 t vanilla
2 eggs
1-1/2 c flour
1 t soda
1/2 t salt
3/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
Pour boiling water over oats, cover and let stand 20 minutes. Beat butter until creamy. Add sugars gradually. Beat until fluffy. Blend in vanilla and eggs. Stir in oats. Sift flour, soda, salt and spices together and add to mixture. Pour into greased and floured 9 x 12 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 min.
Topping
1/2 c butter, melted
1 c brown sugar
6 T milk
1/2 c chopped pecans
1-1/2 c coconut
Mix all together and spoon on cake the last 5 minutes of baking.
January 1953
New Boston, Texas
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I stood at the sink, my hands thrust in hot, sudsy water. On the counter nearby, a decade-old radio played Mario Lanza’s “Because You’re Mine,” and I hummed along with it through the occasional static. It was better than nothing, and it was ours. Jake had bought it secondhand with his first paycheck after we’d moved to New Boston. And he’d promised me we’d buy a TV set if he had enough left over from his next paycheck—after paying for
rent and groceries, of course.
The rustle of a starched uniform behind me caught my attention. I glanced over my shoulder as Jake stepped into the kitchen, looking gorgeous in his Army fatigues. He grinned at me, and I caught my breath as a wash of pure love rushed over me. As if in response to his appearance, the baby gave a hard kick inside my rounded belly.
“How’s my handsome husband this morning?” I asked, flashing a smile his way.
He’d been fine and dandy an hour earlier—and randier than an alley-cat in spring. Back in my days of innocence, I would’ve figured that a husband wouldn’t be hankering for sex when his woman was near eight months gone with pregnancy, but now I knew that didn’t make a bit of difference. Jake wanted it all the same, big belly or not, and…as a matter-of-fact, so did I. In fact, I couldn’t seem to keep my hands off the man these days. Partly, I supposed, because for the first time in our relationship, we could have sex just about any time we wanted it. And…well…we wanted it a lot.
As if reading my mind, he gave me a wink and came over, pressing his hands against my belly, and rubbing up against me from behind. “I feel like staying home with you instead of going to work,” he muttered, nuzzling my neck.
I giggled as a delicious shiver rippled up my back. “Well, you got to. We got to eat, right? Oh! And speaking of eating, remember…I invited the neighbors over for supper tonight. Betty and me have been talking about this for ages, and she wants you to meet her husband.”
Jake sighed and drew away from me. “Lord, Lily! I don’t know why you have to go and invite strangers over here. I have to deal with folks all day at the post, and I just want some peace and quiet when I get home.”
I rinsed a plate and put it into the rack on the drain board. “Come on, Jake! I get lonely here when you’re working. And I miss my folks. I gotta make some friends. And Betty is just a barrel of fun! She and her husband have been looking for another couple to play cards with, and…oh, Jake, please do this for me. We’ll have them over just this once, and if you don’t like them, I’ll never ask again. Please, honey? I’m making your mama’s fried chicken recipe and…” I smiled hopefully at him. “Mother’s oatmeal cake.”
His face softened. “Well…I guess I can put up with company for a little while tonight. But I’ll tell you right now, Lily Rae, if I don’t like them folks, they ain’t coming over any more.”
“You’ll like them!” I grinned. “I know you will.”
How could he not like Betty? She was simply the most fascinating person I’d ever met.
***
“Soon as you pop that bun out of your oven, hon, I’m going to teach you how to drive,” said Betty, lifting her coffee cup to her lips. “It’s a goddamn shame that a woman your age doesn’t know how to drive a car.”
I drew a box of Bisquick from the grocery bag and gave it a skeptical look. I still wasn’t sure Betty knew what she was talking about when she’d urged me to add it to my grocery cart, swearing it made biscuits just as good—better, maybe—than ones from scratch. But since I’d calculated that the cost of the items in my cart would be well below the fifteen dollars Jake had budgeted for weekly groceries, I’d gone ahead and bought it.
“I don’t know,” I said, placing the box in the cabinet next to a tin of Chase & Sanborn coffee. “I can hear Jake right now. He’ll say…” I placed a hand on my hip and lowered my voice to imitate him, “‘what’s the goddurn sense in teaching you how to drive when you don’t have a car, and why do you need a car, anyway, when you should be staying home and taking care of the baby?’”
Betty rolled her eyes. “Oh, to hell with Jake and his old-fashioned opinions!”
“Betty!” Half-laughing, but shocked all the same, I closed the cabinet door and moved to the coffee pot to pour myself a cup. I glanced over at my friend. “You want a warm-up?”
“No, thanks. Carrying Davy around for almost ten months shot the hell out of my bladder. I’ll be running to the little girl’s room every ten minutes if I have another cup.” The wavy-haired titian-blonde took a long draw from her cigarette and allowed the smoke to curl out of her nostrils in a long gray ribbon. How on earth did she do that, I wondered. It was just one of the many marvels of Betty Kelly.
Hard to believe it had only been three weeks since Betty had breezed into my life and become my very best friend here in this military town in northeast Texas. Make that my only friend here. I hadn’t met anybody else.
On the first day Jake reported for duty at the Red River Arsenal west of Texarkana, I’d been in the middle of unpacking our sparse household goods in the small one-bedroom apartment we’d rented, feeling a little sorry for myself, and more than a little homesick for Kentucky. Everything changed when a knock came at the front door, followed by a female voice on the other side, trilling, “Knock-knock!”
When I opened the door, Betty Kelly stepped inside, talking a mile a minute before even introducing herself, bringing with her the sunshine of her home state of California and instant friendship. I couldn’t resist her, and didn’t want to. Since that day, we’d visited each other every afternoon for coffee or a Coke, sometimes here, and sometimes at Betty’s more spacious two-bedroom apartment down the hall.
Twenty minutes ago, we’d returned from grocery shopping at the post commissary. When Betty had first learned (with a rapt expression of horror on her face) that I not only didn’t have a car, but didn’t know how to drive, she’d insisted on taking me grocery shopping every week—and other places, as well. One day we’d gone shopping in downtown Texarkana and Betty had practically bought out Briley’s department store while I’d just looked around in awe.
“Oh! Turn that up!” Betty squeaked, stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray on the table and jumping up from her chair. “I love that song!”
I reached for the volume knob on the radio and turned it up. Georgia Gibb’s “Kiss of Fire” filled the small kitchen. Betty closed her eyes and began to sway her curvy hips to the music, singing along with the song. I watched her with a bemused smile.
Lord, that girl had a good figure! Hard to believe the six-month-old baby boy sleeping on the couch in the living room had come out of her trim body. Dressed in form-fitting gray trousers cinched with a wide double-buckled leather belt and a clinging red turtleneck sweater with three black penguins marching across her generous breasts (that’s what she called them, saying that only horny men and little girls said “titties”), Betty looked like the beauty queen she’d been in high school when she’d reigned as the Napa Valley Chardonnay Queen at the 1948 California State Fair.
Everything about Betty fascinated me. First, she was an older woman—almost 24--and coming from California, land of movie stars and glitter, she was worldly and sophisticated. She was also bright and pretty and opinionated and bubbly—and…I wanted to be just like her.
She whirled around to face me, still swaying to the music as Georgia sang about the fire consuming her. Betty beckoned me with a slender crimson-nailed hand. “Come on, dance with me.” She grabbed my hand, moving her hips to the Spanish-inspired melody.
“I feel silly,” I protested, but Betty’s contagious enthusiasm was impossible to resist. Grinning self-consciously, I imitated my friend’s dance moves.
Her smile widened. “’don’t pity me…’” She sang along with Georgia, her mascara-rimmed eyes shining.
I grinned back, putting more sway into my hips the way Betty was doing. I needed to get started on the oatmeal cake for tonight, but…oh, it could wait. I still had hours before Jake got home from the post.
The song on the radio built to its dramatic close, and still holding hands, Betty and I stopped dancing and sang out with gusto, “’Your kiss of fire!’” We burst into laughter, hugging each other.
“We should be onstage,” Betty giggled. “Hell with this military life! We can be stars!”
Still smiling, I disengaged myself from her arms. “Well, maybe later. Right now, I have to get started on my dessert.”
&n
bsp; Betty sat back down at the kitchen table and picked up her pack of Winston’s. She gave it a tap on the table top, drew out a cigarette, and slipped it between her crimson-glazed lips. Her blue eyes gazed thoughtfully at me as she ran her thumb down the ridged wheel of her cigarette lighter. “How long will it take to get it into the oven?”
I shrugged. “Half-hour or so. Why?”
“Perfect.” Betty grinned. “As soon as I finish my cigarette, I’m going to go home and get my make-up kit. Honey, you’re a gorgeous girl. No doubt about that. But I’m going to make you glamorous for tonight. Jake won’t know what hit him.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The mouth-watering aroma of Southern fried chicken filled the apartment. The plates and utensils were laid out on the small dinette table where Betty had sat, smoking, several hours earlier. The food—Gladys’s fried chicken, creamy mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans simmered in bacon fat, skillet-fried corn just like Mother used to make and a big basket of Bisquick biscuits─was covered with dish towels to keep warm, and the oatmeal cake glazed with its crunchy coconut-pecan topping cooled on the counter.
Everything was ready for our visitors. Betty had asked for a traditional Southern-style supper, and that was exactly what she was going to get. Now, if only Jake would get home!
I untied my apron and slipped it off my head, glancing up at the clock on the stove. Ten minutes to six. Dagnabbit, why did he have to be late tonight, of all nights? Usually he walked in the door at five-thirty sharp. Betty and Eddie would be here any minute!
With nothing else to do, I went into the bedroom to take another look at myself in the dresser mirror-- the new me. Betty had loaned me one of her maternity dresses—a navy poplin with a white sailor collar and a bright red scarf. But the dress wasn’t what had made me “new.” It was my hair and make-up. Betty had pulled my hair back in a sleek French roll, and made up my eyes, cheeks and lips with her stash of cosmetics.
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