A blue jay swooped low and yakked about the sleeping cat, then just as quickly spun off. Cora shook her head and grabbed another handful of peas. A dark shudder made her drop the peas into the bowl. Another stab made her gasp. She put her hand on her heart, for that's where the pain lay. Cora knew she was too old to withstand the attack. At last, her time had come. She rose as if to greet this powerful visitor, but sank back, heavy. The bowl of peas clattered on the worn porch. The cat, startled, stretched herself and then rubbed against Cora's leg. The gasping woman reached down to stroke the fur and she heard a rewarding purr. Slowly she lifted her right hand as if to touch the sun one last time, and she murmured, "Thank you, God, for all of it."
A few weeks after Cora's death, Julia asked Chessy if he would mind moving down into town. She used as an excuse the fact that Bumblebee Hill was steep and she was no spring chicken. Such memories flooded each room. Juts felt surrounded by bruised shadows. She couldn't get used to going into a room and not finding her mother there. With Nickel off at college, the emptiness was even more profound. Chessy agreed. Louise and Julia, who now jointly owned the house, rented it out.
Louise helped Julia pack and move. As the two sisters walked away from Bumblebee Hill, Julia fought back the sobs.
"Louise, now we're really alone."
"We got each other." Louise slid her arm around Julia's waist and quietly walked her sister to the car.
May 25, 1980
Orrie Tadia flamed in. Ev Most was hot on her heels. Word was out that today was D-day, hit the beaches for Louise or else. Orrie didn't know what the "or else" meant, but she sure didn't want to miss out on the fun. Juts and Nickel prepared for their arrival. Sometime between noon and sundown, Louise would straggle in with the house papers.
"Big day," Ev said, smiling. The secret knowledge tasted delicious on her tongue.
Orrie, bedecked in pedal pushers, a peasant blouse and mountains of jewelry, made small talk. "Nickel, exactly how old are you now?"
"Thirty-five, but I'm big for my age."
Juts buzzed around her two guests, seeing to their physical comforts.
"Julia, sit down. You're busy as cat hair," Ev commanded.
"Just a minute. We need potato chips." She zipped into the kitchen and came back with three different kinds of potato chips. "Here, feed your face."
"Say, wasn't it around this time in '75 that Maizie had her accident?" Orrie wondered.
"Yes, I believe so," Julia answered her.
"No one knows if it was an accident or not." Ev had put her foot in her mouth. She and Julia discussed it in hushed tones between themselves, but not in front of Orrie.
"That sure was weird, her calling up Aunt Louise and singing 'Happy Trails to You' before pulling the trigger." Nickel added fuel to the fire.
"Maizie never was playing with a full deck." Julia decided to steer this conversation away from such subject matter. "The doctor believes she thought it was a cap gun. Poor thing."
"Poor thing," Orrie agreed, satisfied with her having dug information out of both Julia and Ev.
"This town has everything in it." Nickel crossed her legs.
"Ain't that the truth." Orrie's smile was like a crack in old plaster.
"How's the car doing?" Ev inquired of Julia. Any chance to brag on her new car made Juts happy.
"Runs like a top. I'm so glad Nickel bought it for me. That other heap was a pip. Every time I took it in for repairs it was Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves."
The buzzing voices obscured Louise's footsteps. The door opened and she stepped in. "What's this? A convention?" She wore battle uniform for the occasion, all her Catholic Daughters of America medals pinned to her dress.
"Louise, your left tit is going to fall off from pinning all that metal on it." Julia pulled a chair over for Louise to sit in while she sputtered. "Now, Wheezie, don't get testy. It was a fair fight."
"Fair!" Louise snorted. "Well, I suppose this is the right thing to do." She plucked the papers from her purse. "So many people that we know are dead and gone. It's time for a new generation to take over."
Julia handed her sister a pen.
"I got one. Thank you." Louise found a ballpoint in her purse.
"If you don't mind, I'd like to use my Mont Blanc pen. It's lucky," Nickel stated.
"Suit yourself." Louise folded her hands in her lap. As Nickel went back to the bedroom to get her pen, Louise said, "I wonder who she is, really."
Julia knew this line of thinking by heart. Nickel was one of us but she wasn't one of us. There were times when she thought she'd strangle her sister over that. Today she was in too high a mood to let Wheezie catch her. "Maybe she's Jack Benny. After all, we've never seen them together."
"Here." Nickel reappeared and handed the pen to Louise.
Louise was in no hurry to sign the papers granting the house to Nickel. The young woman had her checkbook in her hand.
"I got aches and pains today," Louise grumbled, hoping to slow the proceedings.
"Getting old is hell," Orrie sympathized.
"Fannie Jump Creighton lived to be one hundred years old before she finally died in her sleep in 1977. She used every minute of life. Think I'll see if I can't beat her record," Julia sang out.
"Go to it, Mom." Nickel laughed. "Being old has its drawbacks, but being my age isn't without problems."
"Like what?" Ev leaned back, waiting.
"Well, a friend of mine got so carried away with the birth movement she made a stew out of her placenta." Nickel's voice was lowered confidentially.
Orrie Tadia decided she'd have to pay more attention to Nickel if she was good at collecting such dirt.
Grandly and with much ceremony, Louise raised herself and paraded to the kitchen. There she sat down and put the papers in front of her. The others nearly got stuck in the door running for the kitchen.
"Nickel," Louise intoned, "I hope you make good. You've done pretty good so far."
"I'm trying to roll Auntie Mame and Mao into one." Nickel smiled broadly.
"One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go." Juts handed Nickel's lucky pen to her poised sister.
The pen scratched loudly on the paper. Louise handed the pen to Nickel. Nickel signed. Then she pulled out her checkbook and wrote out twenty thousand dollars to Louise Hunsenmeir Trumbull.
Observing the sum, Julia cracked, "Isn't education a wonderful thing? If you couldn't sign your name you'd have to pay cash."
"Done." Nickel handed the check to Louise.
"I have my half. You can work out your mother's half with her."
"Congratulations." Juts shook her daughter's hand. The other women shook her hand also and then decided to kiss her on the cheek as they always did.
"Julia Ellen." Louise stayed in the chair at the kitchen table.
"Oh, yes." Julia opened the freezer and took out a plain brown wrapper.
Louise snatched it from her hands. "Thank you."
Orrie was dying to know what was in that packet.
"Celebration!" Julia opened a bottle of champagne she had bought to surprise her daughter.
As they lapped up the stuff, Julia bet Orrie and Ev one hundred dollars they couldn't staple two potato chips together. Louise, in a rare moment of self-revelation, whispered to Nickel amid all the uproar and cracking of chips, "I don't know what gets into me. I do love you. Sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees."
"I know, Aunt Wheezie, I know."
September 21, 1980
"You are going up there?" Julia squinted and peered at the barn roof.
"Needs fixing. Anyway, the weather vane is crooked." Nickel pulled thread off her denim cutoffs.
"You be careful, hear?"
"Mother." Nickel climbed up the ladder and worked her way along the spine of the roof to the weather vane. "How's Aunt Louise today?" She grunted as she tried to bend the vane back into shape.
"That piano fart had the nerve to tell me my glasses make me look l
ike a dried apple trying to be a teenager."
"God, Mother, how you talk!" Nickel wiped the sweat off her forehead. The sun was blazing.
"Piano fart really gets to you?"
"Yes!"
Julia yelled up, "Just imagine how enormous a piano fart would be."
"Then why not call her an elephant fart?" Nickel called down.
"You don't see elephants. You see pianos all the time."
A car scratched up the hill. Louise tumbled out. Each day she found herself at Bumblebee Hill, curious as to the work Nickel was doing.
"Don't you fall," Louise called before she was even out of the car.
"There she goes again. Telling everyone how to live their life." Juts groaned, but she was glad to see her sister.
"Nickel, you're doing that wrong." Louise stood next to Julia and shaded her eyes.
"Aunt Wheeze, I'm up on the goddamned roof. Not you."
"All right, all right. I'm just trying to help."
"Yeah, well, thinking is so difficult, the majority prefer to judge instead." Nickel grunted again as she gave the weather vane a twist.
"Piddle." Louise scuffed her foot in the grass. "You're tetched to be up there in this hot sun."
Julia elbowed her sister. "One out of four persons in this country is mentally unbalanced. Think of your three closest friends."
"You, Orrie and Ev," Louise said without hesitation.
"If they seem O.K., then you're the one." Julia cackled.
Watching Nickel work, Julia said, "You know, Louise, I didn't do a half-bad job with that girl."
"Depends on the day," Louise hedged.
"For that matter, Momma did O.K., too."
"Our poor dear mother was a saint." Louise looked pious.
"Louise, you say that about everyone once they're dead."
"Don't get an attitude, Julia. It's too nice a day."
Overhead, the sun beat down on Nickel's uncovered head. The sounds of the two bickering sisters floated up to her, a well-trained duet. "You know, you two are a pair, a real pair."
"Are you making fun of me?" Louise shaded her eyes again.
"No, just stating a fact."
"You'll miss us when we're gone," Juts shouted up at her.
"Yes, I will. No argument." Nickel waved in agreement.
This reply pleased the two groundlings considerably. As they stood there bickering but glowing and the sun poured into Nickel's body, she felt an incredible euphoria. She felt lifted, inspired. She suddenly trusted the future. She had always trusted herself, but now she trusted the future. Hearing the comments, catcalls and laughter from the ground, she knew in her heart she could trust the future because those two women had given it to her. She opened her arms wide like a bird and gathered the sunlight.
"Don't fall up there!" Juts yelled.
Crying with happiness, Nickel replied, "Everything is possible. Pass the word."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of Ruby-fruit Jungle, In Her Day, Six of One, Southern Discomfort, Sudden Death, High Hearts, Bingo, Venus Envy, Dolley: A Novel of Dolley Madison in Love and War, and Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual. She is co-author with Sneaky Pie Brown of Wish You Were Here, Rest in Pieces, and Murder at Monticello. Rita Mae is also an Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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