“How can you be so stupid?” Amy Joy asked.
“Well, I’d hate to see my future grandchildren go up in smoke one day,” Sicily had said. “That’s the only reason I ask.”
“I hope she begin to like me some, her,” Jean said, and let his fingers intertwine with Amy Joy’s.
“You’re marrying me, Jean Claude,” said Amy Joy. “You’re not marrying her.”
“Holy Shit de Tabernacle!” said Jean Claude. Just the thought of marrying his future mother-in-law caused such a rush of adrenaline that his English quickly comingled with his French, a habit among his generation.
“Ta-barn-nack is right,” said Amy Joy, and flung her head back on the seat for Jean Claude to kiss her. He pushed his tongue deep into her mouth, in search of hers.
“Talk about French-kissing,” thought Amy Joy, and let the blessed smell of Old Spice send her reeling.
A curtain panel moved gently in the kitchen window, overlooking the scene in the Super Sport. It moved gently enough that human breath could have propelled it. However, it was not Sicily’s breath but the pinkish nail of her index finger that separated the curtain panels and gave her a ringside seat. What were they doing out there in the cool night?
“She’s worse than an old tomcat,” Sicily said, and her own tomcat, Buster, left off his tedious licking to listen to her words. Sicily let the curtain flap back in place and plugged in the teakettle. It quickly began to hiss. A nice cup of tea would help to settle her nerves. Ed used to be irked when Sicily called it a nice cup of tea.
“What the hell is a nice cup of tea?” he would demand. “How would it be different from all other cups of tea? Do you realize that in twenty-five years of marriage, I’ve never known you to drink a cup of tea that wasn’t a goddamn nice cup of tea?” Oh, he could be upset at the silliest things. Sicily hoped that it wasn’t hearing her state one time too many that she was having a nice cup of tea that sent him down to the grammar school to plant a bullet in his brain. She missed Ed, but she had come to realize that what she missed most was the common ground they shared. She had long gone past any romantic elements and prevailed instead upon the companionship in their relationship. That happens sometimes. Most times, in fact. Sicily was no fool. She’d seen enough marriages in her day to take note. There comes a time when the honeymoon is over and the preacher’s words ring true as bells. Until death do you part.
“Death from boredom,” Winnie Craft said one time to Sicily, about her own marriage to Fred Craft, and the two had laughed. It was probably true of city folk as well. Men and women have a tendency to settle in with one another like old oaks, too well rooted, too stubborn to transplant.
“Instead, they keep a close eye on the acorn,” Sicily said, and lifted the curtain panel one more time. She let it flop back quickly. The interior light had burst on in the Super Sport and Sicily could see Amy Joy gathering up her sweater and her purse and giving that Frog a good-night kiss. She had been bringing him in, right into their house, every chance she had since she announced her plans. And she expected Sicily to talk to him!
“But I can’t understand a single thing he says,” Sicily had protested just that morning when Amy Joy had shamed her for her manners. “I’d talk to him if I could. Of course I would.” Well, now she was talking, all right. Now she was asking him important theological questions about Catholic cremation rituals. See how Amy Joy liked them apples.
When Sicily heard the front door slam, she pretended to be busy with her teacup. Amy Joy came into the kitchen and draped her sweater about a chair.
“Hi,” she said.
“Oh, hello there,” Sicily answered, and her cup rattled dramatically on its saucer.
“Making tea?” Amy Joy asked. Sicily heard that little ring of sarcasm known so well to mothers.
“Of course I’m making tea,” she said. “Why else would I be out here in the kitchen?” Amy Joy smiled that little smile, also well known to mothers, and then went to browse in the cupboard. Sicily dunked her tea bag slowly as she took a quick inventory of her daughter. Amy Joy was looking slimmer by the day. Gone was the plumpness of childhood upon which Chester Lee Gifford had so cleverly hitched his wagon. If Sicily could just snuff out the marriage plans, maybe one day she could even convince Amy Joy to have that Pepsi bottle surgically removed from her hand.
Amy Joy took a can of corn from the pantry and opened it. She put it in a pan to heat.
“She’ll eat that with one slice of bread and butter,” Sicily told herself. “She’s done that since childhood. She’s had her one slice of bread and butter before bed. Except I used to butter it for her, and then cut it into four squares, and she used to munch the squares slowly, one at a time, counterclockwise. But she used to drink milk back then, not Pepsi.”
“Where’s Puppy?” Amy Joy asked of the family’s large dog.
“I don’t know,” said Sicily. “If he’s not on the sofa, I don’t think he come in yet. Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Amy Joy. “It’s just that I thought I saw him peeking out of the kitchen window just a few minutes ago.”
Sicily ought to take Amy Joy right now, across her knee, and let her have a good old-fashioned Scotch Irish spanking. A Protestant one at that. She hadn’t had the opportunity to know her own mother. Grace McKinnon had died a few days after giving Sicily birth. She died of birth, is how the old-timers described the malady. Sicily had always hated to hear this fact conveyed, as it had been over the years. Died giving Sicily birth. It was not an easy fact to live with. It was the word giving that bothered her most. As if, by being given life, Sicily had taken life. But if Sicily had known her mother, she would have obeyed and respected her.
“I wish I’d had a mother myself,” Sicily said. “I would to this day give my eyeteeth for the opportunity to have a mother of my own.” Then her nice cup of tea in hand, she went off up the stairs to bed.
Amy Joy dished her warm corn into a bowl. She buttered one slice of bread and cut it into four squares. Sicily used to do that for her. It was her midnight snack when she was a child. And she’d kicked her legs happily beneath the kitchen table, long after Sicily had crawled back into bed beside Ed. She’d dangled her legs and pretended that each square was a field of yellow hay, like the ones around the house.
“I’ve eaten a lot of hay in my lifetime,” Amy Joy thought, as she ate the first two squares, counterclockwise. She was now remorseful for tricking Sicily into the joke about spying out the window. The truth was, Amy Joy was lonely for her mother’s company. Sometimes, at least before the betrothal, they had been more like friends, playing dominoes until after midnight, doing crossword puzzles from the Bangor Daily. Sometimes Sicily surprised Amy Joy with what she remembered from school. Puzzle words like tine and supple. Old-fashioned words that Amy Joy had never heard before. There were many good things about Sicily that Amy Joy would miss.
“I’ll be leaving here soon,” she told herself. “I’ll be leaving my childhood home forever.” Breathing was now difficult, and Amy Joy reminded herself to breathe slowly to avoid hyperventilation. It was a horrible thing to want to leave, to desire to go off and test the new places of the world, even if they were in Watertown. And it was another thing to want to stay. It was an emotional tugging, this going-out-on-one’s-own business.
Amy Joy heard Sicily stomping around upstairs. The bathroom door slammed and, minutes later, Sicily’s own bedroom door.
“She’s pretty keyed up for a woman who’s only got a few weeks left to live,” Amy Joy said to Buster the cat, who was begging for crumbs. She left a square of field uneaten, for the first time since she could remember. The truth was, and Amy Joy had to admit it, she was having second thoughts. Or tots. Whatever they were, in whatever language. She would even like to tell Sicily of them, to ask her advice, but she knew she couldn’t.
Amy Joy knocked on Sicily’s door. It was ajar, so she pushed it open at
the sound of her mother’s voice.
“I just came in to say good night,” said Amy Joy, and flung herself onto the bed next to Sicily. Her mother was reading, and quickly slid the book under a pillow. Amy Joy waited for the right second and then whisked her hand in after it. As Sicily fought to grab the book from her, Amy Joy held it high and read aloud, “Troublesome Teenagers: The Key to Discipline.” Sicily fought harder for the book. “‘By Dr. Rosalind K. Wooster, Child Analyst and Mother of Five’! Oh Mom, I’m not a teenager.”
Sicily slipped the book back to safety under her pillow.
“Nevertheless,” she said and smoothed the blankets over her. Amy Joy laid her head on Sicily’s shoulder.
“What’s different in here?” she asked.
“Different how?”
“I don’t know,” said Amy Joy. “But there’s something different.”
“Well, you tell me,” said Sicily, and tried not to notice the silver streaks in her daughter’s hair. They lay side by side in silence.
“I miss you,” said Amy Joy.
“I miss you, too,” said Sicily.
“And I miss Daddy.”
“Me, too.”
“Can we be friends?”
“Will you cancel the wedding?”
“Okay. Let’s stay enemies.”
“Amy Joy, your trouble is that you’ve always been too headstrong. I just wish you’d take things slow is all,” said Sicily, and discovered to her horror that she’d been lovingly twirling one of Amy Joy’s silver strips around her own finger. She let it loose.
“What is different about this room?” Amy Joy asked again.
“Honey, you must be imagining things,” Sicily said. “Remember when you thought the troll from the Billy Goats Gruff story lived in the flush? You peed standing up for weeks. Your father said people at school were gonna think you were a boy.”
“What’s that?” asked Amy Joy, and pointed at a beautifully wrapped box sitting on the floor under Sicily’s bedroom window. The occasion paper was definitely wedding. Small bride-and-groom couples smiled happily from all over the box. The bow was magnificent. Sicily was an artist when it came to gift wrapping. Amy Joy was pleased. Her mother was coming around.
“Is that for me?” she asked Sicily, and Sicily nodded. Amy Joy hugged her. She had always known that if she was firm with Sicily, things would work out. What had she bought them? The box was fairly large. She cuddled up to Sicily and planted a small kiss on her mother’s hand.
“You can be the sweetest thing when you want to,” she said.
“So can you,” said Sicily, and hugged back.
Sicily had lifted her window two inches to let in a bit of April’s balminess. She had covered the bed with an extra blanket. April’s nights were most welcome after the winter, but they were terribly chilly. There was still snow in the deep woods and along the edges of the trees. Sicily liked to sleep cold. The heavy pressing of an extra blanket soothed her. She pulled it up over Amy Joy as well and thought how nice it would be if her little girl, the one who ate a slice of bread and butter every night, would fall asleep there in the bed beside her. Sicily was about to suggest that Amy Joy take off her boots and jeans, and slip into bed with her. Spend a loving mother-daughter night, the way they used to all those times Amy Joy was afraid of the dark.
Amy Joy focused on the wall near her mother’s bed. She stared hard at the bare space that hung there, as though someone had tacked it up.
“Damn her,” thought Amy Joy.
“What is it, dear?” Sicily asked. Amy Joy sat up and threw off the extra blanket.
“I’ve just realized what’s missing in this room,” she said.
“Oh?” asked Sicily.
“Thank you for giving me Aunt Marge’s old painting of Jesus and that awful lamb, which I dearly hate, for my wedding gift,” Amy Joy said.
“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” Sicily said, and pulled the extra blanket back up about her. “Don’t mention it.”
“Oh, I won’t,” said Amy Joy, disappearing from Sicily’s bedroom.
WOMANHOOD SLAPS PRISSY IN THE FACE: LITTLE VINAL GOES FISHING TWICE
“We’ll flip a coin. If I win, you’ll drink of the pint of whiskey. Then I’ll take the hatchet and, snip, before you know it, it’ll be gone. Come on, Vinal. You don’t use that little finger for anything but picking your nose.”
—Pike Gifford, on whether he and his brother should take out some accident insurance
Pike Gifford’s brood of children gathered around the large Formica breakfast table with the wobbly aluminum legs and grabbed toast off the plate faster than Goldie could pop it from the four-slice toaster. “A four-seater” is how Pike Gifford referred to the appliance. When the last Cheerios bowl was empty, the last toast lying soggy and unwanted on the plate, Goldie sat back with a cup of Taster’s Choice to relax. The morning breakfast was over well ahead of time. Usually the school bus was out in the dooryard honking itself silly while the kids were still stuffing doughnuts into their mouths, digging under the sofa for papers and books, searching for a mitten or shoe. Spring must have had a hand in getting everyone up on time. There must have been something in the April air that blew in under the blankets when the alarm clock rattled the sleepers awake.
“I even got time to finish my homework,” said Missy, aged nine, the smartest of Goldie’s six children. The oldest girl, Irma, had already quit school to begin her job in Watertown, at the well-respected cash register of J. C. Penney’s. The baby, Miltie, aged seven, was now in the first grade. Hodge, the shy one among the children, had just turned ten. With Little Pee past eleven, and Priscilla now thirteen, Goldie could envision a future beyond the children. She could possibly land a job at one of the sewing machines at Stitches Incorporated in Watertown. Maybe she would even take an adult education course. Let Vera say she was uppity. Goldie would do just what she wanted when the children were grown.
Goldie sipped her coffee at the kitchen table where Missy was busy ciphering math problems. The coffee was a well-earned treat, but the price of it was getting higher and higher. Goldie feared the day might come when she would have to give it up entirely. What would school mornings be like if there was no coffee?
“I heard a coffee analyst talking on the news yesterday,” Goldie said to Pike. He was still sprawled on the living room sofa where he had fallen asleep the night before. “He said that from a political point of view, it’s good for the USA to support higher prices because it helps out countries like Brazil and the Ivory Coast.” Pike closed his eyes and wished Goldie would choke on her coffee, regardless of how much it cost. What in hell was a coffee analyst, anyway? If someone who simply pondered the consequences of coffee could be called an analyst, well then, Pike Gifford was a lot better off than he imagined. Once, when a welfare worker had asked Pike Gifford his occupation, he rolled over on his side on the sofa and said “television viewer.” Well, he had moved up in the world. Now he was a hubcap analyst.
The truth was Goldie embarrassed him, especially when she made such highfalutin speeches in front of Vinal and others. “She says that she’s trying to expand her mind,” Pike had told Vinal once, minutes after Goldie had gone on about how great Lyndon Johnson had been for the highways in the country, those busy roads she would most likely never see in her lifetime.
“That’s all right,” Vinal had told his little brother. “You’re still better off than I am. The only thing Vera’s expanding is her ass.”
“It seems that Brazil and the Ivory Coast are having foreign debt problems,” Goldie now explained to Pike.
“Oh, I see,” said Pike. “What a pity. And here I’ve been, up here in northern Maine, enjoying myself in spite of it all.” He hadn’t even swung his legs off the sofa to begin the day and he was already exhausted. And the herd of cattle that came down the stairs every morning for breakfast was not exactly a lullaby
to his ears. He usually had one beer or a slug of cheap vodka too many to climb the long stairs up to his and Goldie’s bedroom. Once in a blue moon he stayed sober enough to make love to his wife. Or he caught her early in the day, before the kids got home, and let her remember what it was she saw in him in the first place. When warmer weather arrived, he would sleep on the soft seat of the old Ford pickup, hiked up on wooden blocks below the garage. The whole family could tear the house down and be damned. He would never hear them. He wouldn’t even be dreaming of them.
“And why should we give a damn about countries in Europe?” Pike asked. He sat up on the sofa and rubbed the residue from the corners of his eyes—his morning bath. “Let them pay their own goddamn bills and keep to hell away from our coffee,” he added.
Missy folded her paper and stuffed it inside her math book.
“Stupid,” she said. “Brazil and the Ivory Coast ain’t in Europe. That’s all you know.”
Pike stared at his daughter. She was getting more and more like her mother every day. Goldie was even encouraging this one to finish high school.
“You read too damn much,” Pike said, and pointed a finger at Missy. “You just remember, one day when it’s too late, that I told you so.”
“Did you go to school, Daddy?” Missy asked. “I bet you didn’t even get past kindergarten.”
“You’re wrong there,” Pike said, and wished for a cup of that Brazilian coffee. “I went all the way to where the two men was fighting in the book.” Missy and Goldie both laughed at this, but it was true. Sometimes Pike Gifford dreamed of those burly men in that old fifth-grade primer. Sometimes he was even tempted to go back to school, just to see who won.
But education was not to be the major issue on this glorious spring day, not if Little Vinal Gifford had his way. With the birds chirping and the buds almost popping on the trees, Little Vinal decided it was the perfect time to avenge himself for the manhandling of his bicycle.
Priscilla came home from school early, in tears and a torn dress. One of the teachers drove her up the long hill and then helped her climb the rickety front steps to where she folded herself in Goldie’s arms.
A Wedding on the Banks Page 14