“They can fight like cats and dogs.”
“Who can’t?”
“Paul and I didn’t fight like that.”
“Oh, yes you did. I recall once he took the car, got drunk, stayed out late, and Chessy had to go looking for him.”
“Celeste brought him home on her horse.” Louise laughed, remembering.
“If you’ve got feelings for someone they can heat up. Better than staying cold, you know?”
“I know.” Tears glistened in Louise’s eyes. “Juts, are we getting old?”
Juts shrugged. “I don’t feel old.” She put her arm around her older sister’s waist, still girlishly small. “Do you feel old?”
“Some days I feel one hundred years old and I don’t even know why. And the strangest things float into my mind, like little boats. I remember Aimes and how much Momma loved him.” Cora’s boyfriend had died in 1917. “I remember Celeste and how she’d lift up her chin, never say a word, just lift up that chin and you knew you’d better toe the line. I remember the straw hats we wore one Easter. You pulled the streamers off mine and I cried. I remember holding Mary in my arms for the first time and I thought that wrinkled red face was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Oh, and I remember the headlines on the Clarion and the Trumpet when the Titantic sank and remember, the list of the missing would be posted outside the newspaper offices every day—” Her voice trailed off, and she made a small gesture with her hand, as if trying to scare off the flood tide of emotion.
“I remember the first time I smelled lilacs.” Juts smiled, then hugged Louise. “We’re walking encyclopedias.”
“But it’s all a jumble.”
“Everybody’s mind is like that. If you asked someone what they ate for breakfast or lunch even two days ago, they couldn’t tell you.”
“Harmon Nordness could. Two weeks ago, Idabelle McGrail could, while she was alive.” Louise laughed. “You know what I mean.”
“I know, but Juts, what happens when I go?” An edge of anguish cut through the air. “What do you mean?”
“What happens to the memories, to everything I’ve seen and heard and done and learned? Poof.” Tears rolled down Louise’s cheeks. Nicky reached up to hold her hand. She hated to see anyone cry. Louise squeezed her hand but couldn’t say anything.
“I have this theory”—Juts smiled to cheer Louise—“that there’s this humongous bank in the sky, the memory bank. Everything is sorted there, and if some new person like Nicky wants to learn what you learned, she asks the memory bank.”
“Juts, you’re silly.”
“Well, a library is a memory bank.” Juts breathed in the scent of newly cut grass. “A song is a memory bank. What about ’The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’? That’s full of memories for someone who lived at the turn of the century, like Momma. All Nicky has to do is hear it. I believe everything remains here in one form or another.”
“Except for us.”
“Yeah, except for us. I guess we’ve got to make way for the spring shoots. Hansford made way for us, even Idabelle McGrail, the silly ass. They stepped out so we could step in.”
“Oh, Juts,” Louise was pleading, “I don’t want to step out. I don’t want to miss anything—ever.”
“Only the good die young, Louise. Have no fear.”
Louise stopped a minute, caught a ragged breath, then smiled through her tears. “We’ll live forever.”
“Yep.”
The sisters kissed each other and separated. Nicky reached for Juts’s hand. Mouse quiet, she finally spoke as they pushed open the gate into the backyard, seeing Buster stiffly ambling forward and Yoyo lounging under the big blue hydrangea bush.
“Momma, you won’t die.”
“Not anytime soon, I hope.”
“And Aunt Wheezie won’t die.”
“Nah.” Juts bent over to love on Buster.
“You all won’t die because I’ll remember you.”
Juts laughed. “Sure, kid.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RITA MAE BROWN is the bestselling author of several books. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, she lives in Afton, Virginia. Her website is www.ritamaebrown.com.
LOOSE LIPS
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published 1999
Bantam trade paperback edition / May 2000
Bantam trade paperback reissue / February 2008
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1999 by American Artists, Inc.
Illustration and design © 2007 by Wendell Minor
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-56079
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-57362-9
www.bantamdell.com
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