“Better than Julia’s?”
“You know I can’t say yes.”
“But you know that I know it’s true.” She picked up a copy of the Clarion. A photo of the heavily mascaraed Tammy Bakker glared back at her. Tammy’s eyelashes must precede her into the room by five minutes. Wheezie put on her glasses and studied the photo. “If I looked like that my mother wouldn’t have let me go to church.”
“The woman’s tear ducts must be connected to her bladder. I’ve never seen anyone cry so much.”
“If they’d stayed within the True Church, none of this would have happened.”
“Bull, Wheezie. Catholics are wearing out sin same as Protestants.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but we have a system for forgiveness.”
“No, you’ve got a system for relieving guilt. You confess, get slapped with a few extra Hail Marys, and go out and do it again.”
She drew her breath in sharply. “I’ve done the Stations of the Cross in my time.”
“You know, I’ve been considering starting my own church. It appears to be a growth industry. I’ll call it the Church of Your Redeemer Not Necessarily Mine.” I took another bite of delicious egg. “Or how about A Couple of Saints Cathedral?” I warmed up. “First Church of Christ Electrician.”
Louise chuckled despite herself. “You’re a blasphemer, Nickel.” She regarded me through her bifocals. “Your mind doesn’t work like a Hunsenmeir mind.”
“I’m grateful.”
“Don’t be smart. We haven’t done so bad.”
“Neither have I.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“I just mulched your flower beds. Don’t start your lesbian lament.”
Her hand made a dismissive sign. “I gave up on you years ago on that one. No, I meant you can be sarcastic and airy. Above it all.”
“I prefer to think of myself as detached. My profession encourages it.”
“You can’t live separate from people. Maybe you can be detached on the job but not off of it. You go around only once on terra-cotta.”
“Terra firma.” “That’s what I said.”
I knew Mother would kill me but I couldn’t control myself. “How was your date with Ed Walters?”
“Too, too wonderful.”
“Tell me.”
“Some emotions are best kept to oneself.”
“Now who’s being detached?”
“Nick, sometimes you can be too clever by half.”
As I drove away from the house, Louise turned out the light shining on the Virgin Mary in half a bathtub on the front lawn. Then she turned out the lights throughout the house and I could see her climbing the stairs. Who knows what dreams Louise had in her bed, the bed she’d slept in since her wedding day, June 14, 1918, when she’d been seventeen. Most of the people old enough to remember her wedding were dead, so she didn’t even have to lie and call herself a child bride. These days, seventeen is a child bride. The marriage worked. Whatever Louise’s faults, she accomplished something most of my generation couldn’t: a successful first marriage. Louise had lost her older daughter to death in a fire at age twenty-nine. She used the sorrow shamelessly but she survived it, even if I did still have to hear about it. Worse, in some ways, she’d lost her younger daughter, Maizie, to insanity. When Mother and I were feeling beneath contempt we would say to ourselves that she drove Maizie to it. Realistically, I think the problem was chemical and Maizie’s brain was like an alarm clock. In her forty-seventh year the bell went off and so did Maizie. Runnymede was a small town but Louise lived a full life. I’ll never know what her dreams are or were but I knew I couldn’t discount her as a contentious old lady. My aunt had more to her than that. The question has always been, which side of her would win out: the good or the bad. I never knew, but then I never knew that about myself either.
10
THE NEW MADONNA AT SAINT ROSE OF LIMA’S
FRIDAY … 3 APRIL
My desk sat in front of the big Clarion window. I could survey the entire Square. I started coveting this desk when I was fourteen years old and began working at the Clarion as a copy girl. Back then the reporter who occupied the desk was one Isaac Cooper. Apart from the papers covering the desk it was loaded down with Isaac’s cheap cigars. Isaac was drafted by the wire service to go to Vietnam. I was already in college when that happened. Unfortunately, Isaac never came back. People forget that a journalist will die to get the story. I keep a cigar in my desk drawer so I won’t forget. John says I’m grotesquely sentimental but he forgets I’ve seen his face when one of our profession is killed in Central America or Lebanon.
I didn’t get his desk for my very own until 1979. I can’t imagine not wanting to sit here and see the Square while the Square sees you but Charles has an inner sanctum, cherry wood, too, which is unusual, and he holds court in there so when the desk became free he gave it to me.
Michelle’s copy, much improved, rested before me. Michelle, however, did not rest. She paced by her desk. She made phone calls and paced some more. I couldn’t edit this copy fast enough for her. As I knocked out one adjective too many on the last page, I noticed Goodyear streak across the park. The local fury, Bucky Nordness, was in hot pursuit. Bucky was the northern side’s chief of police. On our side we had a sheriff, David Wheeler. Bucky took his duties seriously. David got the job done but had fun while he was doing it.
“Michelle, answer my phone.” I shot out of my chair and was through the door before Pewter could raise her head.
“Goodyear! Goodyear.”
The black chow with his purple tongue shot over to greet me. So did Bucky.
“You know there’s a public ordinance about dogs being on a leash.”
“Well, Goodyear’s on the Maryland side now and so are you, Bucky.” I crooned this with buckets of good nature.
“I don’t give a damn, Nickel. We can’t have dogs doing as they please.”
“Goodyear’s not my dog.”
“I know that.” He thought. “I wanted to remind you, that’s all. You ought to print an update about the leash law in the paper.”
“I’ll take it up with Charles. I apologize for Goodyear. Mother probably forgot.”
“Forgot, hell. Julia flagrantly disobeys the law. She thinks the rules apply to everyone but herself.”
I didn’t appreciate this assessment of Mother’s character but there was a grain of truth in it. “I’ll take Goodyear over to the Curl ’n Twirl. I’m sure that’s where she is. Mind if I take him without a leash? Haven’t got one.”
“Yeah, okay,” he grumbled. “Nickel, someday those Hunsenmeir girls are going to push me over the line.”
I nodded sympathetically and Goodyear followed me to the Curl ’n Twirl.
Georgette smiled as we zipped through the door.
“Hi, George.” Mom was in the chair with a conditioning cap on. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Mr. Pierre. Bucky Nordness is ass over tit about Goodyear being in the Square without his leash.”
“From the waist down, Bucky Nordness resembles an umbrella.” Mr. Pierre was sly.
“Ha!” Mother put down the magazine she was avidly reading.
“Be that as it may”—and it was an apt description—“you can’t let Goodyear run as he pleases. What if Wheezie were coming around the Square in her Chrysler?”
“The vehicle of doom,” Mr. Pierre intoned.
“You’re right.” Mother held up the magazine for me to see. “I’m going to redo my living room just like this.”
This was one of those house magazines where the decoration job in every room cost about $150,000.
“Mother, the coffee table is made of marble. You can build an addition on your house for what it would cost.”
“Mr. Pierre and I have it all figured out. We’ll do a fake marble—”
“Faux, my precious,” Mr. Pierre interjected.
“And you can help me paint. I want pale apricot.”
The trapdoor in the pit of my stomach opened
up. Not only would I paint, I’d spackle, put up drywall, sand, plane, and break every fingernail I had. Mother’s improvement schemes came out of my hide. By now I was experienced enough to start my own construction company and hated it. There are women out there who want to be electricians, plumbers, carpenters. Not Miss Smith. That butch crap just tears my ass with boredom. The fact that I never liked to get my hands dirty with anything but ink didn’t stop Mother from pressing me into service with bribes, guilt, or outright threats to my physical well-being. I was heartily sorry that she and Dad hadn’t adopted more children so I could spread this burden among my siblings. And when she was done with me, Louise would start up.
I left the hair salon with a heavy tread, remembered I hadn’t told Mom when I’d pick her up tonight, and whirled back through the door.
“Mother, we go an hour early to bingo tonight.”
The mouth that wouldn’t die was strangely closed. Mr. Pierre busied himself cleaning his spotless counter.
“Mother?” I spied the small glass ashtray in her lap. That old trick. I came up behind her and smacked her between the shoulder blades. Billows of smoke poured out of her mouth.
“You little shit!” She coughed.
“If I’m a shit, you’re a liar.”
“Tumulte.” Mr. Pierre threw up his hands. That meant bedlam in French but I never knew if he was pronouncing the stuff correctly. I thought of French as the venereal disease of the tongue.
“Call your own mother a liar.”
“You promised to give up smoking.”
“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”
“Not your flesh.” I relented. “If you smoke, you smoke. I just don’t like you being a sneak about it. And what are you doing in here so early anyway?”
“Full schedule.” She inhaled gratefully and blew the smoke as Bette Davis would have done it.
“Mildred Adams was in at the crack of dawn.” Mr. Pierre volunteered this information. He also called her “Mildew” behind her back.
Mrs. Adams, as the wife of the bank president, had a high opinion of herself which was not shared by the rest of the community. Charles said she was that way because she was shy. If it was shyness it was effectively disguised.
“And how is Mrs. Adams?”
“She says that Foster is going to appraise your farm, the Clarion building, and the lot, too, as well as the equipment, press, type, the whole nine yards.”
“That’s standard, isn’t it? I mean, if a business is on the market and the bank may carry a loan on it, they would need to know what things are worth.”
“Bloodsuckers.” Mother didn’t like bankers.
“They’re just conservative, Mom.”
“You didn’t live through the Depression!”
“Hear! Hear!” Mr. Pierre agreed.
Even Kim Spangler, washing hair in the back, called out from behind the curtain. “You tell her. I remember too.”
“It’s standard operating procedure. There’s nothing wrong with Foster doing his due diligence,” I said.
“Mrs. A. says you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. You have few assets except what’s in your head. You’re a woman perilously close to middle age, and furthermore, you’re a lesbian. Her very words.” Mr. Pierre’s eyes darted dangerously.
“Did she say that?” Mother stabbed out her cigarette. “I’ll give her a piece of my mind. And today, too, that stuck-up bitch.”
“Mom, don’t you dare. That would really put an end to the loan.” I turned to Mr. Pierre. “In those words?”
“Close to it.”
“Damn, I hate everyone knowing my business.”
“Get out of Runnymede then.” Mr. Pierre’s voice was far more kind than the statement.
“But financial stuff. The sex bullroar I can take but she can’t be blabbing about my finances. It’s unethical.”
“If we picked our friends on ethics, who’d be left?” Georgette called out from the reception desk.
Funny, Georgette was so quiet I made the mistake of thinking she wasn’t very smart. I was revising my opinion.
I sighed and collected myself. “Let’s keep this to ourselves. If she wants to run her mouth we can’t stop her and maybe she’ll make Foster so damned mad he’ll approve the loan to spite her.”
“I told you your problem is in Baltimore.” Mother’s eyes looked at mine from the mirror.
“Let’s take it a step at a time.”
Mr. Pierre put his arm around my shoulder. “I took revenge. Attack a Friend of Bertha’s and you attack me, n’est-ce pas? I gave her hair a poisonous rinse. Her change-of-life red has a definite greenish cast to it.”
“Bless you.” I laughed and kissed him.
I no sooner got through the door of the Clarion than Michelle leapt at my desk. “Well?”
“Check my changes. I think we can run it.”
She leaned over me. Lolly lifted her head to observe this. Lolly didn’t like people getting too close. “I have this terrific idea for our Sunday supplement.”
“Shoot.”
Just then, a lumbering compositor—one of the guys who compose the page form, which is almost solid lead—moved through the front office. He winked at Michelle and made her blush. “Nick!” he called at me.
“Yes, Hans.”
“Tell Arnie if you see him that I’m taking an early lunch.” He winked at Michelle again and pushed open the front door.
Her face was red. “He makes me nervous.”
“He likes you.”
She blushed again. “I’m not used to working-class men.”
“Hans?” I’d never once thought of the typesetters, the compositors, the proofreaders, and that backroom gang as working-class people. They were the muscle of the Clarion family, kind of like stokers in a battleship. “Hans is Hans. Now what’s your idea?”
“I want to do an article that’s different. What if each of us were to write a letter to ourselves as children?”
“I don’t get it.”
“You write a letter to yourself at five or eight or whatever.”
“That’s a little too vague for me.”
“You put down every idea I have that is psychological!” Her lower lip jutted out.
“I guess I do.” I didn’t want to be nasty. “To me, it’s not news. It doesn’t even belong in the living section.”
“You’re wrong. The Lifestyles section generates a lot of reader interest with self-help psychology.”
“Okay, Michelle, bring me a better idea and I’ll consider it.”
“I have a piece about the bombing of the synagogue after the Rosenberg trials.”
“That’s not current news.”
“You can put it in as a history piece, a remembering. Passover is April fourteenth. Run it then.”
“Let me see it.”
She smacked the pages in front of me, then hovered.
“Michelle, let me read in peace.”
When Michelle arrived at the Clarion, she’d displayed a breathtaking willingness to turn guesswork into fact. You’ve got to get eyewitness reports. You’ve got to go to the original documents. You’ve got to spend hours, wear and tear on your car engine, and wear and tear on your feet to get those facts. There’s no shortcut. She’d done her homework on this piece. I knocked out a few florid sentences, but otherwise it was clean.
I put it on her desk. “Not bad.”
“You’ll run it?”
“Unless Charles has an objection, yes.”
Michelle smiled from ear to ear and didn’t bug me the rest of the day.
Louise planned her grand entrance to bingo. She arrived ferociously rouged. As Ed was her escort, she wanted to make sure everyone would notice. Mother knew that. Poor Louise. She thought she was going to be the center of attention, and once again her younger sister held the trump card.
When she saw Mom she screeched, “What have you done?”
“You like it?” Mother patted her silver-white curls.<
br />
“My finest creation.” Mr. Pierre framed Mom’s head with his hands.
Over her ears, sweeping back like graceful wings, were two streaks of violent magenta. I’d had time to adjust to it. I’d picked Mother up at her home. Once I recovered from the shock I liked it. As every person entered the bingo hall they reacted either pro or con.
“You look like Madonna.” Louise’s spite illuminated her face.
“I don’t know what Madonna’s got that I haven’t, only I’ve had it longer.”
Ed Tutweiler Walters laughed. This further inflamed Louise but since Ed sat down next to Julia, my aunt had no choice but to sit on the other side of him and make the best of it. The BonBons minus Thacker clogged the remainder of our table.
“Where’s Goodyear?”Aunt Wheeze bent and searched under the table. I could hear the thump of Lolly’s tail.
“He wasn’t up for bingo tonight,” Mother replied.
This was a bald lie. The wretched animal bawled his head off when we pulled out of the driveway but Mother was firm. Ed hadn’t seen Goodyear’s trick yet and she figured he’d call Louise “Louise.” Damned if she was going to have her show ruined. An extra Milk-Bone did not take the sting away for Goodyear as he witnessed Lolly and Pewter get into the car.
Mutzi called out, “Inside picture frame. Now you remember, you must complete a square around your free space. Exactly like a picture frame. Okay, here we go.” He reached into the bouncing Ping-Pong balls. “Number seventy-one, let’s have some fun.”
“I am. How about you?” Mother turned to Ed.
“Yeah. Never a dull moment in this town.” His voice, a light baritone, suited his person.
I was sitting opposite this volatile threesome. I didn’t want to miss anything. Also, I wanted to be able to run if necessary. Mr. Pierre sat next to me.
“Forty-seven. Forty-seven. If I were forty-seven I’d be in heaven,” Mutzi sang out and the older members of our bingo crew laughed.
“Where were you when you were forty-seven, Mr. Walters?” Mother’s teeth gleamed in the light.
“Birmingham, Julia. Don’t be dense. You know he’s from Birmingham.” Louise tried to cut her off at the pass.
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