“It’s not fair. If Nicky wants to race she can race. We didn’t commit a crime, Louise.”
“Well, you shoved Trudy Epstein. As if letting that child pretend to be a boy wasn’t bad enough, you had to publicly attack that woman.”
“She said he only stayed with me out of duty. That he really loved her. Dumb bitch.”
“Did she really say that?” Louise leaned forward.
“If you hadn’t been Our Lady of the Veils I would have told you everything, but you haven’t talked to me since the Fourth of July. There’s a lot you don’t know,” Julia said cryptically, knowing that was the way to ignite Louise’s curiosity.
“But why would she say that in front of everyone? She takes such pains to be good, poor thing.” Louise was no fan of Trudy’s.
“How the hell should I know? Probably thought she could get away with it. No one would hear her but me.”
“Did anyone hear her?”
“Well, not the first part, but after I clocked her, sure, everyone heard, because she was shouting right along with you, Wheezie.”
“I was merely trying to head off an embarrassing situation.”
“That’s why you ran into the middle of the road? To head off an embarrassing situation? Subtle,” Juts dryly replied.
“You weren’t going to do anything about Nickel.”
“No, because I didn’t think we were wrong.”
“Boys do what boys do and girls do what girls do.”
“Bullshit.”
“Next she’ll want to play for the Orioles. Actually, she might as well. Why you bother with that bottom-of-the-barrel minor-league team I will never know.”
“You just wait, Louise, someday the majors will come back to Baltimore. Just like before World War One. We’ll have a real team and then we can beat the Yankees.”
“Dream on, sister mine.”
“Are you two going to make a united stand? I don’t care about who wins what in Baltimore. I want this settled now. No getting off the track.” Cora brought them back.
“What’s to settle? We wrote the letter.” Juts sat sideways in her chair.
“You blew the whistle. That’s what’s to settle. We wouldn’t be in this mess. Julia, it’s in other papers, too. People are laughing at us!”
“Let them laugh. At least they’re laughing—not crying. I’m performing a public service.”
“At my expense.” Louise pouted.
“I didn’t say geese were German airplanes.”
Louise’s eyes bulged; the cords on her neck stood out. “You went along with it! That’s as bad as making the wrong call.”
“Shut up, both of you. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“Yeah, but why should I pay because she was stupid?”
“Julia Ellen, that’s not the way to bind this wound.”
Louise smacked the table with her open palm. “Wound? Wound? I’ll tell you what it is, it’s a stab in the back from my own sister in front of the world! Where’s your Christian charity? Oh, I don’t expect you to be a loving sister. No, I know better than that. You first, everyone else last, but for the sake of sheer Christian charity, you might have spared me this humiliation.”
“The last Christian died on the cross.” Juts quoted Nietzsche, although she didn’t realize it. She just liked the line.
“Julia—” Cora’s tone was stern.
“She accused me of being a bad mother!” Juts stood up from her seat. “On her front lawn with eleventy million people around. I’m not putting up with that shit another minute. She’s lucky I didn’t kill her.”
“I didn’t say you were a bad mother.”
“The hell you didn’t.”
“I said you encouraged Nicky to break the rules. And”—she held up her hand for silence—“that she was enough to juggle without adding that.”
“Well, aren’t you Sissy Tolerance? That’s the same as saying I’m a bad mother, which you do behind my back anyway. It all comes back to me, you know. Everything you say comes back to me. This is Runnymede, after all. The last thing to die on people around here is their mouths. For all I know, the stiffs at the undertaker’s are still talking.”
“I have never said you were a bad mother.”
“Excuse me? I guess I’ve got a hearing problem.”
“I have not said that! I have said”—and her voice sounded like a lawyer’s in the courtroom—“that you have extra burdens because Nicky isn’t yours.”
“You told me to have a baby. I did.”
“But she’s not yours.”
“I am still a mother!”
“Kind of.”
“Louise, that’s just foolishness,” Cora interjected.
“Yeah, especially since she was the one who kept telling me I’d never know what happiness was until I had a child. Well, I’ve got one. Now what do I do with it?”
“See”—Louise pointed at her sister while looking to her mother—“a real mother doesn’t talk like that.”
“Plenty’s the time you came crying to me about your girls. You are getting forgetful.” Cora’s feet hurt. She sat down. This wasn’t going to be over soon.
“I’m a mother. I don’t see what’s so damned great about it. It’s a lot of work. And you conned me into it.”
“I did no such thing. You carried on about having a baby since the day you married. And didn’t I tell you not to marry him? He’ll never set the world on fire.”
“He set me on fire.”
“Oh, that.” Louise pursed her lips.
“He’s a good man. He’s made his mistake, but he’s a good man.” Cora loved Chester.
“You married him to spite his mother,” Louise retorted. “I did not. I don’t care one bit about that douche bag.”
“I’m going home,” Louise announced.
“Not until you two make up.”
“How can I make up with her? She’s impossible. She wrote in the paper that it was my fault. Bad enough she blew off her big mouth when she did, she didn’t have to put it in writing.”
“That’s not what I said. I said you screwed up and I covered up. One’s as bad as the other.”
“Oh, sure.” Louise crossed her arms over her chest.
“Well—it is. And I wouldn’t have done any of it if you hadn’t made an ass of yourself over Nicky.”
“I’m right about that. Tell her, Momma, tell her that you can’t let children do what they want. The derby is for boys.”
“I thought it was funny.”
“Momma!”
“Oh, Louise, what girls and boys do is like fashions. They change. In my day no woman would show her ankles, much less her calf. People are running around half-naked today. Women go out without hats.” Cora shrugged.
Louise interrupted. “Some things never change.”
“Name one,” Juts challenged.
“Death.”
“Okay, name another.”
“Women bear children and men don’t.”
“That’s two.”
“Taxes.”
“They change. When I was young there were no taxes. And it ought to be that way again.” Cora thought of the government as a sanctimonious thief.
“Any more things that never change?” Julia prodded with her finger.
“Don’t touch me. The sun rises in the east.”
“That doesn’t count. People things.”
Louise thought, then threw up her hands. “I can’t think of anything else. But I still think you were wrong.”
“I don’t.”
“It’s not such a big thing. Shake hands and stick together.”
“I’m not shaking her hand until she lays off telling me how to raise my kid.”
“You ask for advice and then you criticize me for giving it to you.”
“Come on, Louise—”
“You weren’t cut out to be a mother.”
“Well, too damned late to do anything about it now!”
“She’s right, Louise. Th
e child is here.”
“And the damage is done.”
“Oh, great, now Nicky is damaged.”
“I didn’t mean Nicky. I meant blowing your guts about the warplanes.”
“As I see it, we’re even.”
“Me, too. Now shake and make up and for the love of God, shut up!”
Grudgingly the two sisters shook hands.
That night as Cora drifted off to sleep she wondered if she’d been a good mother. She never could get her two daughters to realize they were both sipping through the same straw.
83
Here.” Nicky handed Juts a yellow-covered manual. “She’ll just lo-o-ve that.” Juts laughed, tucking The Complete Guide to Guitar Prayer under her arm. “Aunt Wheezie can play anything.”
“Mouth organ, too?” Nicky plucked out a harmonica book. “She’s too grand for that. Now come on, we’ve got to find you a bookbag.”
“But I want to get a book for Daddy.”
“Daddy’s not much of a reader, honey.”
“He reads to me.”
“That’s different. You have to learn that the things you like aren’t necessarily what other people like. Daddy would really like a new bow tie. We’ll go by the Bon-Ton.”
“Okay.”
They walked down the aisle, hand in hand, to the back-to-school section. Red bookbags, blue, tan, even bright green ones, filled a row on the shelf. Juts picked one up and replaced it. It was much too big.
“I like this one, Momma.”
Juts took the true-red canvas bag and flipped it open. A place for pencils and a ruler was inside the flap. The big interior pocket was divided in half. The strap, sturdy webbing, ought to last one school year. She checked the price: $6.95. That was a little more than she wanted to pay.
“Hold this.”
“I like this one,” Nicky repeated herself.
“I do, too, but let me just check out these other ones. That one is a little pricey.”
She rooted around but couldn’t find anything she liked better. The cheaper ones were too flimsy, the more expensive ones out of the question.
Nicky held her tongue. She had learned that pressuring her mother didn’t work.
“Well, if I buy this we’re going to have to give up something else.”
“I don’t need a new dress,” said the child who hated them.
“Big sacrifice.” Juts laughed, then caught sight of Louise pushing open the door to the Five and Dime. “Here, I don’t want Louise to see this.” She handed Nicky back The Complete Guide to Guitar Prayer. “What are you doing here?” She waved to Louise.
“Hi, Nicky.”
“Hi, Aunt Wheeze.”
“Finished up early at St. Rose of Lima’s. That’s the first time since the cornerstone was laid that a Ladies’ Improvement Society in Jesus’ Name meeting ended early.”
“You’ve improved all that you can stand.” Juts winked at Nicky, then slipped her arm through Louise’s. “I want to show you something.” She pointed behind her back that Nicky should take the bookbag and the book to the counter. By the time Juts and Louise joined her there, Verna BonBon, yet another of that numerous clan, had the items in a brown paper bag. Louise bought a pair of hot-coral square earrings with a preserved seahorse in the middle.
They walked outside into the hot hand of late August.
“Where does the summer go?” Louise sighed. “It’s almost Labor Day.”
“I don’t know, but it sure goes faster than the winter.” Juts pointed toward a park bench. “Let’s sit down. Nicky wants to give you a present.”
Nicky eagerly slid out The Complete Guide to Guitar Prayer.
“Well, isn’t this nice?” Louise kissed her on the cheek, then flipped the book open to “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
“That’s easy. Why, Maizie and I can have duets. I’ll play the piano. She gets too carried away on the piano.”
“Momma says you and Maizie look exactly alike.” Nickel’s feet stuck straight out off the park bench. “But I don’t look like my momma.”
“I guess Maizie and I do look alike. Well, Juts and I strongly resemble each other. Her smile is prettier.”
“Your hair is prettier.” Juts complimented her back.
“I think you’re both pretty. I want to grow up and look like you.”
“You’ll grow up and look like yourself. Anyway, by the time you grow up, the way we look now will be so old-fashioned you’ll laugh.”
“You think?”
“I think,” Juts answered her.
“Remember those awful high-button shoes we used to wear? We thought they were the cat’s meow.” Louise laughed.
“Yeah.” Juts smiled. “Know what I remember? When we were little, no lady would go out in the summer without her parasol. Actually, it was pretty, remember, walking through the square with Momma and all the ladies had parasols of different colors—some had lace, some had ruffles. People knew how to dress then. The way we’re heading, by the time Nicky’s grown they won’t wear clothes at all.”
“The human body was meant to be covered. In the Garden of Eden—”
Juts interrupted. “The Garden of Eden has nothing to do with it. Can you imagine Josephine Smith nude?”
“I’d rather not.”
“How about Walter Falkenroth, skinny as a rail.”
Louise shook her head in distaste.
“And then there’s Caesura Frothingham, that would be like seeing an elephant, with all those wrinkles. She’s got to be ninety-five if she’s a day.”
“What about Harmon Nordness?”
That sent them into guffaws, for the sheriff’s gut expanded every year. Soon he’d have to walk and let his stomach ride.
Nicky stared at her legs, the tiny golden hairs catching the sunlight. “What about me?”
“That’s different. Children are beautiful,” Louise answered.
“Not Peepbean.”
“Well, he wouldn’t be so bad if his teeth were fixed.”
“Beauty’s only skin deep, ugly’s to the bone.” Juts repeated the old phrase.
“Pretty is as pretty does.”
Both sisters snapped their fingers and said, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” Then they laughed.
“G-Mom says that all the time.” Nickel laughed with them.
“We ought to write down her sayings. She was always quoting rules to us. Every now and then she’ll fire off another one just like we were still children.” Julia kicked off her espadrilles; her feet were burning up.
“Guess we are children, we’ll always be children to her, just like Mary and Maizie will always be children to me.”
“So, Momma, what are the rules?” Nickel hopped off the bench. The hard slats hurt her rear end. There wasn’t much padding there.
“Rules. Okay, here are some rules of the road: Never break your word. Never be disloyal to a friend. Never whine when you lose. I can’t think of anything else.”
“Pick your friends with care. You can’t be everybody’s friend. It doesn’t work,” Louise added.
“What’s the Golden Rule?” Juts asked Nickel.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
“If you forget the others, that one will do. Not that it’s easy. Boy, I need something to drink. I usually don’t mind the heat but today it’s creeping up on me.” Juts stood up.
They walked toward Cadwalder’s, Nickel charging on ahead out of earshot.
“Nicky thought you’d like the guitar book. She can be very sweet. I didn’t have the heart to tell her you might want something different, because she picked it out herself.”
“She’s bright as a cigar band.”
“I wanted to buy her Cootie. All the kids are crazy about that game, but her bookbag cost six ninety-five, so she’ll have to wait awhile for Cootie. She calls Peepbean a cootie, which is an improvement on ‘asshole.’”
“If you’d stop swearing she wouldn’t pick up these words.”
&nbs
p; “Everybody swears in Runnymede. It saves having to take the time to find the right word.”
“I don’t swear.”
“I forgot about that.”
“I don’t.”
Juts ignored her, her eyes on Nickel skipping now through the square, which must have seemed huge to her. “She’s a pistol, isn’t she? I love her.”
“That’s what they need. If more children had love, we’d have a whole lot less trouble in this world.”
“I’m trying to be a good mother.”
“I know. You are, Juts. I pick at you over little things but the big things, well, you’re a good mother. Kids can run you crazy. I’m beginning to think any mother that doesn’t strangle her brats is a good one.” She waved to Lillian Yost, passing at the edge of the park.
“Chester’s so good with her. It’s funny, but watching him play with Nicky makes me love him more. I’m starting to trust him again.”
“Men play with children because they’re children themselves.”
“You’re too hard on men sometimes.”
“Ha!” She snorted. “You show me the woman who invented the income tax. Huh?”
“You got me there.”
“Watch!” Nicky called, then spun a cartwheel.
“That’s good,” Juts called. “That Co-Cola preys on my mind. Come on, Nicky.” They stopped at the corner, looked both ways, then sprinted over to Cadwalder’s.
After passing and repassing with Flavius Cadwalder and Vaughn, who, unknown to all, including his father, was calling on Paul that evening to state his intentions, the three left, refreshed.
“He’s going to ask for her hand.” Louise, her intuition on target, was nervous.
“Better than her foot,” Juts joked, making Nicky giggle. “Don’t fret so much, Wheezie. It’s right. You feel it when it’s right.” They walked to Lee Street, where Juts would turn toward home.
“I guess.”
“Here’s our corner.” She stated the obvious. Louise stood for a second, then blurted out, “If you have a better answer, tell me.”
“About what?” Julia was confused.
“I don’t know.” Louise clasped her hands. “Sometimes it’s like a wave’s crashed over me and I worry myself sick. I worry about Vaughn’s health and—”
“Louise, two years with the right man is better than twenty with the wrong one. Now, don’t fuss up yourself. Really. Look how good Mary and Extra Billy turned out.”
Runny03 - Loose Lips Page 38