“Jack said you’d know by next Friday.”
“Looks that way. Foster’s going to Baltimore on Thursday. Since Charles has agreed to hold a note for the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I’m in a better position vis-à-vis the bank. None of this portends what Diz will do, since he has more money than God.”
“If the bank gives you the loan he might back off. He likes you.”
“Not that much.” I reached for another sandwich because now I was starving.
“Won’t that make you sick?”
“No. I toss once and then I’m great. I ought to go to Trixie and get something to coat the lining of my stomach, probably.”
“What about tranquilizers?”
“Couldn’t work.”
Regina opened a bag of Wise’s potato chips. “Yeah, I couldn’t do it either. They say millions of people are hooked on them too. Somehow it’s cleaner than booze.”
“True. You support your physician, you support your pharmacist, and you support the big drug companies who produce the stuff. Taking tranquilizers is All-American.”
“Yeah, snorting cocaine only makes Colombians rich.”
We laughed and finished our lunch. Then we went out and played doubles. I felt terrific.
26
BLESSED EASTER
SUNDAY … 19 APRIL
Easter dawned radiant and fresh. We each cherish personal rituals, and rising with the sun on Easter Sunday is one of mine. Easter remains my favorite holiday except for my birthday. Christmas I have to share with Jesus but my birthday is all my own. However, for public holidays and high holy days, Easter wins. Who can resist the soft spring light, the hymns, the hope of resurrection—except that the Resurrection only applies to one of us. Easter’s also a terrific opportunity to display one’s wardrobe.
Runnymede Square, a moving kaleidoscope of people, proved that point. Pinks, yellows, smart navy-blues, mint-greens, polka-dotted dresses, every color, stripe, and combination imaginable paraded through the Square after services. Portia and Lucretia Rife, home for the holiday, competed with each other as well as with Liz, Diz’s wife. As none of the rest of us could drape ourselves in Valentino, Versace, and Kenzo, those three battled it out in a class by themselves. Among our group, Verna BonBon traipsed down the steps of Saint Rose of Lima wearing a silk dress with a scalloped cape. She wisely chose a deep periwinkle color. Louise indulged in the Victorian look and this was for Ed’s benefit, since he attended mass with the Bonnevilles. What only Mother and I knew was that her dress belonged to Grandma Hunsenmeir. Louise’s hair, atop her head in that becoming fashion, was wreathed with a ribbon plus one palest-pink rosebud. The rosebud about gagged Mother.
Mother wore a light-yellow dress with teal accents, gloves, shoes, hat, and purse to match. The veil of her hat was pale yellow and the little dots on the veil were teal. I pulled myself together in a decent blue skirt and a cashmere sweater. My heels were killing me.
Together Mother and I tottered about the Square, where we passed and repassed. David Wheeler and Bucky Nordness coolly walked by each other, families in tow, and did not speak. The wives did. This was duly noted by everyone.
Aunt Wheeze put up Christmas dinner and Mother cooked Easter dinner. They’d divided up the holidays long before I was born. Mr. Pierre came for dinner, bringing with him a spectacular salad to complement Mom’s ham.
Goodyear and Lolly behaved but Pewter did not. The lure of ham tested her willpower. After three mad leaps onto the table and a dash from one end to the other, Mother shut her up in the kitchen, where she wailed her fury and hurt feelings. My repeated trips in with ham calmed her not a bit and finally Lolly sat on the other side of the kitchen door and cried.
I broke down and put Pewter on my lap so she could eat with me. Aunt Wheezie grimaced about cat hair in my food but by this time I had hair balls myself. It shut up the cat and she purred through the rest of the meal, even enjoying a bite or two of white cake. The dogs and Pewter got bowls of ice cream too.
The best part of Easter or any holiday with Mother and Louise was open house after the meal. Anyone could visit up until ten at night. As it was warm enough to open the windows, we could hear our friends coming up the walk.
Mother organized an Easter egg hunt for the kids. Little Decca BonBon found the most. Children from the neighborhood adored Mom’s Easter egg hunts because they were testing. Mother would climb trees and stick eggs in the hollows where limbs joined. Her attitude was, if this old lady can get up there, so can a kid.
As the light faded we prepared cold cuts, even though everyone moaned about how full they were and how fat.
Ed Tutweiler Walters played kick-the-can with the children while we laid out the table.
“Food!” Mother opened her front door as Regina and Jackson strolled up the walk.
Jack and I avoided each other as much as we could. We were cordial. The sight of him cut through me like a knife. I wanted to touch him, to smell his hair, to run my hands over his bulging pecs. He had the most beautiful chest. Even though that one affair before me had dented my pride, I wanted him. The power of attraction, whether it’s chemistry or fate, fries your brain cells. I was determined to make it mind over matter.
Mr. Pierre entertained us at supper with a story we’d heard before but Ed hadn’t. This was the tale of Penny Pfeiffer, who lived in Greenville, South Carolina, where Mr. Pierre was born and raised. As the children also had not heard it, we fell into a casual silence.
“When I got out of the service after Korea, I wanted a trade I could take anywhere. In the service I was your basic infantryman so I didn’t learn anything there that would carry over into civilian life, and what I learned I will not repeat in mixed company.” He smiled at the ladies.
Thatcher Bonneville, a Vietnam vet, chimed in. “Hear, hear.”
As the men nodded agreement, Mr. Pierre continued. “So I said to myself, ‘What can I do where I can be my own boss, not get a lot of money tied up in inventory and yet make a good living, meeting interesting people?’ I thought about being a diesel mechanic but one gets so filthy. Also, I didn’t like the diesel mechanics I’d met. That was out. I thought about being a florist but you can lose your flowers if the power goes off on a cold winter’s day. That wasn’t for me. Why, I even thought about farming but then I’d never be able to travel. I’d seen too much blood in the war to want to be a doctor and I certainly don’t have the temperament to be a lawyer—forgive me, Jackson. I don’t know how you do it. After a lengthy process of elimination I hit upon hairdressing. Hairdressers have been the intimates of nobility for centuries. They know the trends first. They are able to exercise some artistic flourish, particularly with progressive clients, those chic women on the cutting edge.” He glanced toward Mother.
“I went to school and studied and discovered I had a flair for it. One of my teachers—I’ll never forget her, Mrs. Penny Pfeiffer—taught us about hair health. Every Saturday, Penny would go to the old folks’ home and do the ladies’ hair. She performed this service out of the goodness of her heart because the pensioners could not have afforded even a wash and rinse. One Saturday she asked me to accompany her. I did and when we got there I watched her work on the residents and I, too, styled a few ladies’ hair. In particular, I remember two girls advanced in their years who thought they were on a boat to Halifax. I had to speak to them as though I were the captain. What I noticed was that Penny only styled the front and the sides of heads. Never the back. As we left I asked her why and she said she used to work for an undertaker, and given the occupants of the home, she was doing the local funeral parlor a favor.”
He loved that story. I don’t know why. I never thought it was that funny but because he laughed, the kids laughed, and then we laughed at the kids.
“Did I tell you that last week Regina and I went to a party over at the rectory of Saint Paul’s? Tim Deane was there handing out business cards—I kid you not,” Jackson said.
Tim Deane was our local fune
ral director. I don’t believe undertakers should network.
We giggled about that, then conversation veered toward Nordness versus Wheeler, the Clarion, the question of whether Charles could really retire, the Hunt Club, tennis, school, the basketball scandal at the University of Maryland due to the death of Len Bias, drugs, lack of discipline, the weakening of moral fiber, and pass the dessert.
Except for my turmoil over Jack, it was one of the nicest holidays I can remember, the calm before the storm.
27
LOVE LIFTED ME
MONDAY … 20 APRIL
I passed Mildew Adams, wife of Foster, on my way into town. She pulled over by the side of the road, saw it was me in the Chrysler, waved, and rolled back on the road. Mr. Pierre’s rinse shone with a greenish cast on her hair. It did my heart good to see it, and while harboring ugly thoughts against Mildred might not have been the way to heaven, she deserved it. Pillow talk between her and Foster included my financial statement and she had no right to blab it around town. However, now that Charles was holding a second for me on the paper buy-out, her lips were sealed. Actually, I’d like to staple them shut.
A whiff of coolness hung over Michelle and Roger. Both were diligently bent over their typewriters but looked up to greet me, Pewter, and Lolly. John was on the phone and hung up with a bang, scaring Pewter.
“That’s the sorriest son of a bitch that ever shit behind good shoes,” John exploded.
“Who?”
“Nils Nordness.”
“So what else is new?” I said.
Roger called out, “Yeah, there are two douche bags in Runnymede. Nils Nordness and Nils Nordness.”
“What’s Bucky then?” I asked.
“An enema bag.” Roger returned to his story.
“Nils operates under the erroneous impression that because his brother is chief of police for North Runnymede, the rules don’t apply to him,” John fumed.
“He was that way before Bucky became the chief of police.” I offered this small historical insight.
“Hey, I don’t care if the guy is a terrible developer, a suck developer. I wouldn’t live in that crap he throws up out there on the Baltimore Road. But to each his own. Right?” John laced his coffee. It was ten past nine in the morning. “I wanted to know if the rumor I’d heard was true: that the old Bon Ton Department Store had been bought by Mid-Atlantic Holding Shares and Nordness put in a bid for reconstruction.”
“Where’d you hear that?” I sat down with a bump.
“I’ve got my protected sources. Mid-Atlantic’s been successful in keeping it quiet but the deed transfer is next week. Then it’s a matter of public record.” John drank his coffee.
“Diz Rife bought the Bon Ton?” Michelle, silent but attentive until now, spoke.
Roger stopped typing. “Why?”
John leapt back in his chair. “My hunch is that if he buys this paper he’s going to modernize. What good is this old building with the huge press under glass, a dead duck as opposed to a pheasant under glass.” He faced me. “I give you a fifty-fifty chance to get this paper now with Charles’s cooperation, but Diz is going to do something with the old Bon Ton even if he doesn’t get the Clarion.”
“Like what?” Michelle, out of her seat now, brought me a cup of tea. I’d not had time to make it yet.
“Thank you, Michelle.” I gulped the tea, trying to focus my meager mental abilities. I’m not much good in the morning and my detractors would extend that to the remainder of the day.
“I say he’ll mount a frontal offense.” John left no doubt in his tone of voice.
“Are you telling us Diz will start a paper whether he gets the Clarion or not?” Roger was incredulous.
“Exactly.” John sounded triumphant.
“Can this little town support two newspapers?” Michelle wanted to know.
“Who knows?” John shrugged.
“We can.” I was firm. “We used to and I don’t see why we couldn’t do it again.”
“No way.” John disagreed, as I knew he would. “You can’t compete for the advertising dollar. Two papers flourished here before television but they flourished everywhere. Hell, New York City had more newspapers than the fingers on my hand once upon a time. The fact that two papers lasted here as long as they did is testimony to how backward this place is.”
“Or testimony to the fact that we don’t watch television,” Roger said. “I don’t watch it.”
“Me neither,” Michelle supported him.
“It’s beneath contempt. The pabulum of the mind.” John fixed another cup of coffee. If this kept up he’d fall asleep or get belligerent, and he was leaning toward belligerent.
“I like it,” I piped up.
“What?” They all looked at me as though I were a sea slug.
“No, I really do. I don’t watch much of it because I’m busy and because we know each other here.”
John cut me off. “I don’t get the connection.”
“I mean we make our own fun. If I lived in a big city and lacked the close friends that I have here, I know I’d watch TV a lot. The characters on the shows would become fantasy friends, kind of.”
The AP wire coughed then and began chugging. Paper spewed out on the floor. Roger got up to check the news as John, Michelle, and I continued a spirited discussion of TV and the concept of pitching to the lowest common denominator, since that was John’s view of how networks choose programming and people get to be stars. Roger appeared spellbound by the AP machine.
“Roger, what are you doing?”
He couldn’t lift his eyes off the copy. “You’re not going to believe this.”
We bumped into one another racing to the wire. He was right. We couldn’t believe it. The PTL Club story blew apart into sex, sin, and seduction. It was scandal too good to be true. Jim Bakker, head of the PTL Club, was accused by another TV preacher of practicing oral sex in a Florida motel room with a secretary, of having homosexual encounters and group sex.
I grabbed the phone off Roger’s desk, since his was the closest to the AP machine. “Mother. Get down here.”
“You’re a dutiful daughter.” John laughed. He knew this news would be like cayenne on Mother’s brain.
Within minutes she and Goodyear burst into the room, having dashed through the alleyway and entered through the back press entrance. Her Adidas running shoes were grass-stained, so Mom must have cut across the neighbors’ yards.
“What?” She was breathless.
Michelle, Roger, and John respectfully stood aside while I took Mother to the machine and handed her the copy, some of which had spilled onto the floor. She pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and read. And read. We watched. She was silent. Then she smiled. This was followed by a girlish giggle, overcome by a laugh, until Mother was leaning against the machine helpless with laughter. I fetched her a cup of coffee while Roger, a gentleman, gave her his chair.
She recovered enough to talk. “There is a God!”
Surprised, I said, “You had doubts?”
She nodded. “Every now and then, like when Wheezie got that first date with Ed.” She wiped her eyes. She’d been laughing so hard she had tears in them. “I guess Jim Bakker turned ‘Love Lifted Me’ into a porno song.” She sang a few bars.
“You have a lovely voice, Mrs. Smith,” Michelle complimented her.
“Oh, honey, you’ll have to go to lunch with me so I can tell you how Celeste Chalfonte, Ramelle, Fairy Thatcher and Fannie Jump Creighton, Ev Most, and myself went across the county singing that very song. Why wait for lunch? Come on and I’ll buy you an omelet.”
Michelle looked beguiled.
“You can go, Michelle.” I okayed the defection and turned to Mom. “Why aren’t you calling Wheezie?”
“Because I’m going to wait until fifteen minutes before the noon news. Then I’ll call. It’ll drive her up the walls. Which reminds me. Mr. Pierre and I settled on a frothy apricot, so you figure out when you can paint. Come
on, dear.” She touched Michelle’s elbow and off they went.
I’d forgotten about painting Mother’s living room. I dialed Mr. Pierre.
“Bon soir.”
“Mr. Pierre, it’s morning.”
“Bon morning,” he replied.
“What’s this I hear about a frothy apricot?”
“Ma cherie, light as an anemic peach. We’ll do the woodwork in a linen-white and I’ve ordered teal pillows and even a magenta one to accent Mama’s hair.”
I groaned to myself. “She doesn’t have enough money for that.”
“Discount. I motored up to York and hit the fabric discount house that Bob and I found years ago. Better than that, my precious Nickel, I’ve found someone to paint a coffee table faux marble.”
“Who?”
“Peepbean.”
“Peepbean!”
“He’s very good. Millard has developed in his nephew an aesthetic impulse.”
Millard had developed little else in Peepbean.
“All right, how much do I have to lend her?” Lend was a euphemism for cough up cold cash.
“Umm, maybe three hundred dollars—if we’re careful. Maybe a teeninesy bit more.”
Well, there went my renegade bingo pot. “Okay, but you’ve got to watch her every minute. Mother has never heard of the word restraint in these matters.”
“You may depend upon me. And might I remind you, Nickel, that if it weren’t for me she would have rushed out and purchased these things retail?”
“And might I remind you, Mr. Pierre, that if you didn’t keep those fancy interior decorating magazines in your shop she would never know the difference?”
“How wrong you are. Your mother is naturally creative.”
“My mother is naturally nuts.”
“I shall strike that from my memory. I do have customers, you know.”
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