“I beg your pardon.”
“Take parts when tarts—”
“What’s it mean?”
“You don’t know what that means? It means when a tray of tarts is passed at a party, you take as many as you can because you don’t know when the tray will come around again. Don’t you have sense?”
I decided not to answer. Although the deluge continued, the color of the sky lightened from anthracite to putty. Aunt Wheeze twittered about one thing and another. We passed a fifty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit sign.
“Sign’s going to be changed. They raised the speed limit to sixty-five. Well, I’m sixty-five and accelerating. I’m picking up speed. At my age that’s all I’m picking up.” She breathed deeply. “How old do you think I look?”
“That’s hard for me to say, since I see you every day and I’ve known you since I was born.”
“Don’t weasel me. Do I look seventy?”
“Uh—yeah, I guess you do.”
“Eighty?”
The road wasn’t the only thing dangerous. “That’s maybe the upper limit.” I sounded convincing, I thought.
“Liar. You’re a terrible liar. Tell me this”—a sharp intake of breath—“do I look older than Julia?”
“Do you know that song, Aunt Wheezie—it has the line in it: ‘Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me’? Maybe we could practice that.”
“No, I don’t know that song. I never heard such a thing and I could care less. I want some answers to my questions. Do I look older than my sister?”
“A tad.”
“I knew it! Well—I have a better chin.” She rapped her fingers on the dash. “Of course, you could be taking her part again. I don’t think you are, though. Not this time. What do I do? I’ve never been old before. How do I know what it’s like to be old? I don’t know where the time went. Do you know that sometimes I wake up in the morning and it takes me a second to remember that Momma’s dead and I don’t have to go to school? I know that sounds silly to you but it’s true. Where did the time go?”
I couldn’t answer, because I was beginning to have those feelings myself. The more I lived, the more I wanted to live. Every day I learned something new; maybe it was something bad, but it was new and I loved learning—except when it was something bad about myself. I tended to undercut that. Anyway, since others were anxious to point out my shortcomings, I saw no reason to dwell on them.
Aunt Wheezie continued. “If I got a face lift, you think it would take twenty years off my face? Ten?”
“Sure. Those plastic surgeons are artists if you go to the right one.”
“Those magazines at the Curl ’n Twirl write about face lifts all the time.” Her voice dropped a half octave. “Remember the time Mr. Pierre told us he went to Rio?”
“He did. He brought back pictures of Carnival.”
“I believe, I truly believe, that he had a face lift. He has to be fifty if he’s a day and he looks—what do you think—forty something?”
“He looks pretty good but he’s fanatical about what he eats and how much he sleeps. He’s like Mom that way.”
“Oh, her. She’s showing her age plenty, I can tell you. I swear Mr. Pierre had a nip and a tuck.”
“Ask him.”
“I could never.” A beat. “You could though.”
“Me?”
“He’ll tell you anything.”
“I’m not going to ask him. If he didn’t tell anyone when he came back from Brazil, beautifully rested, why would he tell now?”
“That’s a fact.” She nestled back in her bucket seat. “So how can I find a good doctor? I don’t want some quack.”
“You don’t want a face lift either.” I bit my tongue to keep from saying she was too old for major surgery.
“Why not?”
“It costs a fortune.”
“How much?”
“At least five thousand dollars.”
That information created a solid silence that lasted five minutes, an eternity for Aunt Louise.
“I could sell the third Chrysler.”
“Don’t you dare. What’s the fuss? You’ve never worried about your face before.”
“Ed Tutweiler Walters pays more attention to Juts than to me.”
“He does not.”
“Yes, he does. You’re not around him. You don’t know him. She’s weaving her web again. Damn her!”
“Don’t let her get your goat. Relax.”
“Easy for you to say. She gets her witty face on. Her let-me-entertain-you face. Men are so dumb. Fall for it every time.”
“You’re making too much of it.”
As we drove into the mall the rain stopped and the sun popped up like golden toast from behind the clouds. The abrupt change lifted Wheezie’s spirits. I parked the Jeep and we found cigarette pants and a suitable blouse but she couldn’t find her earrings. We decided to try a jewelry store in the town of Emmitsburg itself. We climbed back into the Jeep and I remembered there was a sale on tennis balls—Wilson’s, my favorite—at the sporting goods store. I drove up to the curb, left the motor running with Aunt Wheeze in the passenger seat, and hopped into the store. As I was standing at the counter, six cans of balls in my arms, I glanced out the front door and saw two young men get into the Jeep. They drove off.
I dropped the balls and ran out of the store. I could see Wheezie hollering and I could hear her, too, since her window was down.
“Thief!”
The Jeep accelerated. Stupidly, I ran after the car. It began to swerve. Aunt Louise had her shoe off and was hitting the driver about the head for all she was worth.
Now she was bellowing, “Rape!”
A few drivers in their cars noticed the weaving pattern of the Jeep. They got out of the way. I kept running. One smart soul, a teenaged boy, raced his car up behind the Jeep. He honked his horn. The Jeep circled, fast, around the huge parking lot. People leapt out of the way. One lady dashed into a store and I hoped she had the brains to call the police—which is what I should have done but I didn’t want to lose sight of Wheezie. Finally, these two bozos, the driver and the one in the backseat, found the way out of the parking lot, but the light was red and traffic was heavy so they couldn’t shoot against the light. The next thing I saw was my aunt Louise being kicked out of the car. She skidded across the asphalt. The light changed and the Jeep tore down the Pike. Aunt Louise hobbled to a phone booth there on the corner. I was impressed with her presence of mind. My lungs, searing with pain, about gave out by the time I sprinted up to the phone booth. I was just in time to hear Wheezie say, “Juts, you’ll never guess what happened to me!”
19
FORT SUMTER REMEMBERED
SUNDAY … 12 APRIL
At noon the church doors open in Runnymede and we buzz out like bees from various hives. Christ Lutheran, Mom’s and my church, reposes on the Emmitsburg Pike, immediately off the Square on the Maryland side of the line. Christ Lutheran is one of those Georgian gems found only along the Eastern Seaboard of our nation. The warm brick, offset by creamy white lintels, a gilded and white steeple, and the white of the marble steps glistened in the spring light. The gardening committee of the church planted thousands of daffodils and tulips. The daffs rolled like a yellow tide in the wind, and the tulips were breaking the surface of the earth. As Easter was next Sunday, they might open if the weather held, which would make it a perfect Easter.
As we did most Sundays unless it was brutally cold, Mother and I turned right after leaving church and walked past both city halls on the Emmitsburg corner only to plunge into the Square. Everyone else did the same, so Sundays became a grand promenade.
The doors of Saint Rose of Lima opened. We could see Louise, assisted by the statuesque Shirley McConnell, hobbling down the steps of the Gothic church. Mom and I called Shirley “Attila the Nun” because she had been a Dominican sister for years, finally renouncing her vows because she discovered love in the form of O. Logan McConnell. The “O” stood for Orion, but L
ogan sure wouldn’t stand for it.
Bruised and scraped from her ordeal yesterday, Aunt Wheeze flourished as the center of attention. Given the amount of bandages swathed about her person, she resembled a mummy. Aunt Wheeze had pitched a fit yesterday when the police wanted to take her to the Emmitsburg Hospital. A squad car dropped us off at Trixie Shellenberger’s. Aunt Louise encouraged the good doctor to exaggerate her injuries. Clear across the Square we observed the unusual attentions bestowed upon Wheeze. She lapped up the sympathy. I could have used some myself, because the police had quickly recovered my Jeep but found it totaled.
We strolled past Runnymede Bank and Trust; the drugstore, open for business now that church was out; Mutzi’s greengrocer stand; and Brown, Moon & Frost.
I knew God would forgive me for my adultery with Jackson Frost but I wondered if I would forgive myself. I guessed I loved Jack. No, I didn’t guess. I did love him but I saw no reason to burden him with this knowledge, since our affair was doomed. In a funny way I loved Regina more. I was never attracted to her, so my love was free from lust. Maybe because of that or in spite of it, I’d never know, I could open up and let the love grow. Everything that Mr. Pierre said preyed on my mind, especially after church. I saw Regina and Jack with their boys, Winston and Randolph, gracefully descend the steps of Saint Paul’s Episcopal, and seeing Louise, they hastened to her.
A crowd was gathering on the South part of the Square but Mom and I couldn’t see why. I wondered what Mother would say if I told her about Jackson. She’d probably be angry with me. I wasn’t in the mood for anger today. I rarely was. I’m one of those people who will avoid a fight if possible. If not, watch out.
The more I thought about Jackson and Regina the more I realized how much closer I was to her. This was a continuing theme of my life, my detachment on my deepest level from men. Jackson wasn’t my first long-term affair with a man. I lived with a man throughout college and for a year afterwards. I’d had a few crushes in between him and Jackson. Yet it never failed. I would reach a place emotionally with them, and I could go no further. I felt as though they shut a door on me, or maybe the door was closed to them as well. I was beginning to half-believe that men’s deepest emotions were inaccessible to them. I used to think I felt this way because I’m more gay than straight, but my women friends who are more straight than gay (and probably never thought of making love to another woman, silly girls) say the same thing. We feel much closer to women than to men. Even my friends in good marriages have confessed that there are things they’d tell their closest women friends that they wouldn’t dream of telling their husbands. Because he’s not interested? Because he doesn’t know how to handle it? Because he’d be threatened? I sure don’t know but I do know we do something terrible to men in our culture. We take them away from themselves and we substitute money, power, and toys.
Mother spoke up. “You’re quiet.”
“It’s not the company.”
A young woman walking along the Square with her family was in navy-blue. Mother sniffed, “People don’t know anything anymore. Look at her. Navy-blue and it’s not even Easter.”
“I think the dress code went the way of the whale-oil lamp.”
“A pity.”
“Well, Mom, what we’ve gained in informality and comfort we’ve lost in drama and beauty, so I guess I have to agree with you. If people don’t know what colors are appropriate, then they could at least learn to write a good thank-you note. Nowadays they pick up the phone instead. It’s tacky.”
“I’ll tell you what’s tacky. There’s Liz Rife shooting out of Saint Paul’s in chinchilla.”
“It might be tacky but I’d like to have it. I expect she’s got a fur coat for every day of the week. I’d settle for one,” I replied.
“What kind?”
“A full-length Russian sable with shawl collar—I guess that’s what you call those collars that aren’t really collars with no notches on them.”
“In cloth I think you call it a polo coat.”
“Well, that’s the one I want. In fact, I think I’d kill for sable.”
“I’ll help you bury the body.” Mother laughed. “Nickel, something’s really going on over there.”
We buzzed into the Square. The small crowd we had initially observed swelled until it must have included everyone leaving church. We squeezed our way into the mass and beheld David Wheeler, already deep in the grape. Mutzi Elliott, in no better condition, stood next to him and had a long artillery swab, the long pole used to jam down the cannonball. They must have been drinking throughout the night.
Mutzi waved the swab and David launched into a tirade about Bucky Nordness and the firing upon of Fort Sumter—which were intertwined. Not that it made any sense. I suddenly remembered that I was the dolt who suggested David celebrate April twelfth to spite Bucky. “Ready, Mutzi?”
“Ready.” Mutzi patted the Confederate cannon. David touched the wick, and boom. Except it wasn’t a can of gray paint that flew out of there. It was a real cannonball. Nor did it hit city hall, the intended target according to David’s garbled account. The ball whined across the Square, tore off a branch of a maple tree on the North side, and crashed into the front window of Falkenroth, Spangler & Finster.
A hush fell over us. Louise’s eyes bugged out of her head. Mr. Pierre’s mouth hung open. Regina’s hand flew to her face and David was coughing from the smoke.
As soon as he could breathe, his first words were “Jesus H. Christ on a raft.”
Mutzi giggled. The giggling turned into uncontrollable laughter.
Mr. Pierre dryly commented, “A little more to the left, David, and you can take out Rife’s offices too.”
Mutzi was now rolling on the ground. “You know that T-shirt: ‘First, we kill all the lawyers’?”
The law firm of Falkenroth, Spangler & Finster had suffered an eclipse on the South side of Runnymede. Those of us in Maryland used Brown, Moon & Frost, while those on the Pennsylvania side used Falkenroth, Spangler & Finster. You might say no love was lost on either side.
“Except it’s Sunday. Nobody’s in there,” Aunt Wheezie blurted out, then bumbled on. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”
David was fast sobering up. Jackson, our mayor, stepped forward. “David, I’m afraid there will be legal repercussions.”
In the distance we could hear Bucky’s siren. Father Christopolous, in his vestments, hurried down the steps of Saint Rose’s. He observed the situation and ran toward the offices to see if anyone was hurt. At the sight of him, Mr. Pierre started off to join him.
“Wait a goddamned minute, Pierre!” David growled at the fifty or so of us crowding around. “You all, every one of you, just stand still. Here’s the drill. Ain’t no one telling what happened. You tell and you will get parking tickets and speeding tickets until death do us part. Got it? Mutzi and I were cleaning the cannon and it went off.”
Jackson, perplexed, raised his hands for silence because the murmur of the crowd became a roar. “Ladies and gentlemen, let us review the facts.”
“No facts to review, Jack.”
“What you’re suggesting is a lie.”
“I’m not suggesting. I’m telling!” The veins bulged out on David’s neck.
“At the very least you are distorting evidence.”
“They do it in Washington all the time.” David’s belligerence was accelerating and so was the sound of the siren.
“If Oliver North can lie and get away with it, why can’t David?” Mother’s voice carried over the burst of chatter.
“Right.” Mutzi, still on the ground, agreed, but Mutzi would have agreed with anybody at that point.
“I’m defending my country by fair means or foul.” David had the bit in his teeth. “That asshole with the gift of speech, that jerk—and I refer to Bucky Nordness, who is so bad he could screw up a wet dream—that Yankee had the gall to celebrate our surrender at Appomattox this week. I won’t stand for it!”
“T
hat was 1865.” Jackson wanted to get David out of there before Bucky and company pulled up in front of Falkenroth, Spangler & Finster.
“Tell that to Nordness. He’s rubbing our noses in it!” David shouted. Then he turned to me. “Nickel, you promise not to write the story?”
“You mean I can’t use my headline: ‘War Not Over’?” I smiled and it relaxed David a little. “I shall use discretion, David.” You bet I would or he’d beat my ass then and there.
“What about the rest of you?” David scanned the crowd.
“Oh, we won’t tell,” Aunt Wheezie vowed. “Why see David put through the wringer because he got sloshed?”
“I am not sloshed, Mrs. Trumbull,” David vigorously defended himself, referring to my aunt by her married name.
The crowd talked but a consensus was brewing. We wouldn’t give Bucky Nordness the satisfaction of a big stink and possibly lawsuits flying like confetti. David should not have gotten drunk and Mutzi should not have jammed down a real cannonball, but they did. Best for them quietly to pay the repair bill of Falkenroth, Spangler & Finster and be done with it. David’s dislike of Bucky exceeded that of the rest of us but it was felt that Bucky did become overzealous in his duties and it was also felt that his jubilation each and every April ninth was in poor taste. As the squad car careened around the Square, coming down from the Hanover Road, the crowd dispersed. Jackson had David firmly under the elbow. David shook his arm off but did leave. Regina and I pulled Mutzi out of there with the help of Randolph and Winston Frost. Mom, Louise, and Mrs. McConnell walked three abreast behind Regina and me so that no one on the other side of the Square could see exactly what we were doing. We dumped Mutzi in his shop and figured he could sober up by himself. His wife was out of town—a good thing, because she was more to be feared than Bucky Nordness when it came to Mutzi’s drinking.
Mr. Pierre offered an impromptu party, and Mother, Louise, and Mr. and Mrs. McConnell, about half of the BonBons, Jackson and Regina and David crammed into his house. No one would allow David any more alcohol but he was becoming good-natured. Mr. Pierre shot me hot stares every now and then. I weakly smiled and tried not to stand too close to Jackson because I’d want to touch him.
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