Bingo

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Nothing’s the matter with Peepbean except he’s got the personality of a gargoyle. Isn’t that what you call those things atop Yankee city hall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyway, if there’s a family emergency Peepbean can’t help us at church. After all, they’re from the same family.”

  I had the strangest feeling Aunt Louise was lying to me but for the life of me I couldn’t imagine why. Tempted as I was to tell her I was changing my life, I would become Shirley of Nazareth, specializing in foot washings, I bit my tongue. The charge I would get from her outrage would be vitiated by the subsequent lecture. Was I growing up at last?

  30

  A VISIT TO DAD

  THURSDAY … 23 APRIL

  My father’s grave, rosy in the dawn, was smothered in pink-throated tulips. Mother brought him a steady stream of flowers, wreaths, and occasionally something funny like a plastic pink flamingo. Her diligence in tending his resting place was admirable. I wasn’t so diligent, but cemeteries make me feel as if I’m in a marble quarry. The graveyard covered the slope of a wide hill, facing east. Dad’s grave nestled under a huge black gum tree at the top of the hill. Dante’s grave—the firehorse—was at the bottom of the hill. In summers Mom and I would picnic up here both for the view and to be close to Daddy. Today I came up to put a horseshoe on his grave. It seemed more appropriate for Dad than flowers—from me anyway.

  His tombstone read:

  CHESTER CLIFFORD SMITH

  BORN AUGUST 7, 1905

  DIED JULY 13, 1961

  We didn’t go in for sentiment. The world didn’t need to know how we felt about him so long as we knew. What astonished me about my father’s death was that I never stopped loving him. Here it was almost twenty-six years later and each year I loved Dad more. Each year I realized on a deeper level how much he gave me. Love doesn’t die. It keeps growing. Perhaps someone you love has to die before you can believe that.

  Knowing that love doesn’t die makes me oddly brave. I don’t want to die. I think death is a greatly overrated experience. I disliked experiencing my father’s death and I have absolutely no desire to experience my own. But die I must and in some corner of my being I’m not too afraid. Because those people who love me—there are a few scattered about—they’ll keep loving me. Maybe someday they’ll learn what Dad has taught me and they’ll become a little braver themselves. What the hell, you might as well do what you want to do. You’re going to be dead a long time.

  The biggest chance Dad took was to marry Mom. The second-biggest chance he took was to adopt me. The third-biggest chance he took was to open the hardware store, since it plunged him into debt. For Dad, the risks yielded rewards. I’m not saying that Mom couldn’t be a pain in the ass or that I didn’t wear the poor man out, since I tagged at his heels like a penny dog. And I know the hardware store provided him with a healthy share of headaches, yet when you tallied it all up, his asset column won.

  The sun, a ball of scarlet fire, illuminated the tombstones. I could believe graves would open in such a light and the earth offer up her dead to the Kingdom Come. Dad would crawl out of the ground, dust himself off, and hurry forward, worrying that he’d overslept. I wondered if the soul did outlive the body, because if it did, I knew my father’s soul was somewhere out there trying to be useful. Dad abhorred negative thinking, laziness, and waste. “You’re here to do the best you can and you’re here to give. Any fool can take.” Bet I heard that one a thousand times. Bet I’d give everything I had to hear him say it one more time too.

  Under the sod lay Runnymede’s other Protestant souls and our Jews in a special section compliant with their religious rules. The Catholics remained separate from us even in death, but their cemetery was only a mile away. The thought of Louise being buried next to Pearlie, and Mom being buried next to Dad, gave me a pang. Seemed the Hunsenmeir girls ought to be buried together. In a snit Louise once suggested that Mother’s tombstone read “Laid Out Again” and Mother replied, lightning fast, “Yours ought to read ‘At Last She Sleeps Alone.’ ” Wheezie pitched a hissy and smacked Mother with her purse over that one.

  Aunt Wheezie did not sleep around but I do think she gave herself up to the thrill of infidelity once in the 1920s. Mother swears to this and then Wheezie swears at Mother. It’s a subject best not discussed.

  In my own will I set down that my tombstone will read “Now I’ll Really Raise Hell.” Jackson thought it was funny and he told Billy Moon, his partner, who told someone, who told Aunt Wheezie, who came after me and said that was sacrilegious and just like me. If I didn’t change my will and show it to her she would never speak to me again. Boy, was I tempted. Eventually I gave in and changed the damned will. Now the stone’s supposed to read: “She Did the Best She Could.” Wheezie still doesn’t like it but she agrees that this epitaph isn’t sacrilegious.

  The temperature, at about fifty-four now, would reach into the high sixties or low seventies today, our warmest day so far. A brilliant cardinal swept by my head, his mate not far behind him. Then I noticed two chipmunks chasing each other like mad. Spring. In my mourning over Jackson, I’d nearly missed spring, the mating season. The animals celebrated for me. The next round was about to begin. A new generation of robins, deer, raccoons, chipmunks, cats, possums, and grasshoppers and butterflies was about to enter the party. I breathed in the moist air. How fitting that this cemetery should be a scene of renewed life. And how fitting that the robins, deer, raccoons, and other animals erected no monuments to their dead. They were too busy living. Only humans hid away their dead so the remains couldn’t replenish the earth, so the flesh could not go to keep alive another animal. Were we honoring our dead or were we selfish? Dad would say selfish.

  In this necropolis moldered people who squandered their lives. They pissed away their money, pissed away yours if they could get their hands on it, drank, fornicated, and got dizzy on their own senseless carousel. Providing a meal for a bobcat might have been the only productive thing they ever did.

  Not every dead person here was a wastrel but there were enough of them to give me pause. As I walked down the hill I paused at Grandma’s grave. Mom put daffodils on Cora’s grave. Grandma loved yellow. Tubs of black-eyed susans, daffodils, jonquils, anything yellow surrounded Bumblebee Hill. Cora put them down and I saw no reason to pull them up. I faithfully fertilized them too. And I added a picket fence with an arbor. I trained yellow tea roses to climb over the arbor and along the fence. She would have liked it.

  A car crept up the hill. I must have been standing at Grandma’s grave longer than I realized. I hopped in the Chrysler and coasted down into town. Today was the day Foster Adams would present my loan application to the lending officers of Chesapeake and Potomac. By the time I pulled into the Clarion parking lot I realized I must have visited my ancestors to ask for their help. I know I’m not related by blood, if you want to get technical about this ancestor stuff, but I don’t think the spirits of Dad or Cora care. They never cared while they were alive.

  Mother was running around the Square. She wore a regular sweatsuit, like my old gray one except hers was pink, and she had a mallard-green towel wrapped around her neck. Nice combination. Goodyear padded at her heels. I let Lolly out to get exercise with them and shouted good morning.

  Charles, hands on hips, stood beside me to watch Mom. “Eternal Julia.”

  “Between the two of us we keep the manufacturers of amino acids in business.”

  “Nickel, do those things work?” he wondered.

  I pointed to Mom.” Need more proof? Exercise, sleep, eat right, and gobble amino acids.”

  He shook his head in admiration. “Hear Ann told you about Morningside.”

  “I’d never hear it from you.”

  “I forget. I walk through that door and my mind focuses on the paper. Drives poor Ann nuts. She says I’d forget my head if it weren’t on my shoulders.”

  “Did you find the house last time you were in Palm Springs?”

 
“Well, we looked. I didn’t think we could afford it but the house is a dream come true. There’s even a button by the bed so you can summon help if there’s a medical emergency. The houses are on one level. Be nice for Ann not to have to go up and down stairs anymore.”

  It would be nice for Charles not to go up and down stairs anymore. He was the one with arthritis.

  “I hope you both will be very happy there.”

  “Hey, got another hot one!” Roger and Michelle were huddled before a small TV by the AP wire machine.

  We hurried over in time to see Jim Bakker resign from the PTL Club. Tammy was crying her eyes out, but then she usually did. She said she wanted to get a job and she thought she might like to work in a doctor’s office.

  “A proctologist, no doubt.”

  Charles threw back his head and laughed. Every now and then I come up with a good one.

  Other than a call from Regina telling me that Diz and Jackson decided to play their tennis match Sunday at the club, it was a quiet day, which was disquieting. Gave me more time to think about tomorrow.

  31

  THE BIG DAY

  FRIDAY … 24 APRIL

  Jackson and I said little to each other on the way over to Foster’s office. We longed for each other’s company and we were both nervous about this meeting.

  The minute we hit the door to Foster’s inner sanctum I smelled trouble. For one thing Foster looked stricken. After we sat down and pleasantries were exchanged he got to it.

  “Nickel, Chesapeake and Potomac felt you were a bit too much of a risk. I’m sorry.”

  “Can you give me the reason for their denial?”

  “You don’t have enough assets.”

  “Even with Charles’s help?” Jackson had an edge to his voice.

  “Yes.” Foster was struggling, but with what I didn’t yet know. “I don’t expect you or anybody to have sympathy with a banker or the bank. But let me give you a few things to think about which may put this in perspective. If a bank shows a return on assets of one and a quarter percent, that’s a banner year. Because we have the money, the public’s attitude seems to be ‘screw ’em.’ We get one bad loan application after another, and I hasten to add that your application wasn’t bad, but it was a squeaker. Bankers are by nature conservative because people are conservative when it comes to their money. Notice the distinction, ‘their money,’ yet when they go to borrow money it’s ‘the bank’s money.’ I am terribly sorry. I think you’re a good risk.”

  Jackson dropped his charm. “How’s it feel being jerked around like a teller by Chesapeake and Potomac? You’re supposed to be the president of this bank.”

  Foster, taken aback, sputtered.

  “Jackson, I’m sure Foster did all he could.” I felt like the bottom of my stomach had fallen out. I would have thrown up except I forgot to eat breakfast that morning.

  “Thank you, Nickel. I did.”

  “Let me ask you one thing.” Jackson was like a dog worrying a bone. “Did they inquire into Nickel’s marital status?”

  Foster became wary. “It was mentioned.”

  “And if the single woman also happens to be a lesbian I imagine it’s even more of a minus, isn’t it?”

  “That never came up. I absolutely promise you it never did.”

  “Come off it, Foster. It didn’t have to. Anyone who isn’t married by age thirty looks suspicious these days.”

  “Jack, I resent your tone of voice. I have known this girl all her life.”

  He didn’t mean to be rude in calling me a girl. To Foster I was a girl, I was so much younger than he was.

  “So what?” Jackson bored in on him.

  “So I vouched for her character. You asked me a question and I told you the truth. I do not want you to get the idea you can sue Chesapeake and Potomac because of Nickel’s being denied a loan. Yes, being a single woman is a detriment. In the best of all possible worlds it wouldn’t be a detriment but it is today. I don’t know if she would have gotten this loan if she were a man. It was shaky as it was.”

  “But she would have had a better chance.” Jack’s voice rose.

  “Yes, goddammit, yes! What do you want me to do about it? These things don’t seem very important until they hurt someone you care about. I never thought about it. Hell, Jack, when I grew up there were no women in business around here except for Celeste and she was a law unto herself. I’m sorry as hell about this.”

  Foster, not a man to speak from the heart, was exhausted by his efforts. He seized the handkerchief in his breast pocket and mopped his brow.

  “Foster, I thank you for going to bat for me.”

  “Don’t be so accommodating and nice,” Jack snarled at me.” There’s a community reinvestment act and the Clarion fits the bill. The banks, taking the money out of the community, are required by law to put a certain amount back, to stimulate the local economy. I’ll find an angle because the Clarion belongs to you!”

  Foster’s voice was heavy. “You can slice it any way you want to, Jack. Chesapeake and Potomac isn’t going to give her the cash. They don’t care what goes on in Runnymede. They’ll do the minimum to comply with the reinvestment act.”

  “That’s what we’re fighting,” I said. “That’s why we don’t want the Thurston Group or Mid-Atlantic Holding Shares to get the Clarion, because once the paper slips out of the control of the community it no longer serves the community as effectively.”

  “I understand,” Foster said.

  “You sure do, because if you really ran Runnymede Bank and Trust, the Clarion would be Nickel’s. We’re being devoured by corporate giants who don’t see our faces, hear our voices, or pass us in the streets. People have got to fight back.” Jack stood up.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Foster wiped his forehead again.

  “Jack, come on.” I tugged at Jack’s arm. “Foster, no hard feelings on my part.”

  As we dragged ourselves across the Square I dreaded telling the gang. Right now my life was a potato chip in the maw of big corporations. Yesterday I’d gotten a call from my local insurance company, Richards, Hilton, and Richards, telling me they’d referred my Jeep claim to the wrong company, Maryland Accident Protection. The claim belonged to the giant firm of First Eagle Insurance. The Eagle lady called and grilled me. Christ, you would have thought I’d had the Jeep stolen on purpose. She hinted darkly that I shouldn’t have authorized any repairs, but of course I was doing what the Maryland Accident Protection claim adjuster told me to do. In the meantime, Eagle had two decades of insurance payments from me and not one claim until now. What was the difference if it was Eagle or Chesapeake and Potomac? They were out to screw me. To them we existed as walking pocket-books to be emptied. I felt very hateful at that moment.

  Jackson left me at the Clarion steps. He was as downcast as I was.

  “Nickel, don’t give up. There’s got to be a way.”

  “I don’t know, honey. Let me digest this first and then if we have room for a legal fight, I’ll think about it. I figure the minute you commit a problem to the judicial system you just tripled it.”

  “I can’t fault you there.” He kissed me on the cheek, a social kiss but it burned my cheek.

  I walked straight into Charles’s office and told him everything. I said if he was going to sell, he might as well give it to Diz Rife because better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, not that Diz himself was a devil. As I left he picked up the phone. Can’t blame Charles. He has to look out for himself.

  As I walked to my desk Lolly whimpered. She could read my mood like a weathercaster.

  “The worst?” Michelle asked.

  I nodded.

  John rose. “This is as good a time as any. I’m quitting. I took a job with National Geographic. Guess I’ll tell Charles.” He squared off in front of me. “Nick, I give you credit for trying. Maybe it’s time for you to move on too.” He lightly rapped on the door to Charles’s office and went in.

  Roger broke a pen
cil.

  “Hey, it’s not a funeral. Charles will fight for your jobs.”

  “We wanted you to have it,” Michelle said.

  Within minutes the news spread through the plant. Arnie and Hans came out to verify the story. Arnie, speechless, walked back to the printing press. I followed him. When I reached the big press, quiet because we’d run off the paper for the day, Arnie had his hands smacked against the feed. He was crying.

  I tiptoed over to him and put my arm around him. “They say all good things must come to an end.”

  He sobbed. “They’ll junk my baby. They’ll fire us.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. I patted the sleeping machine. I loved her too. “I reckon they will.”

  “You’ll be okay,” he said.

  “You go, I go. A bunch of goddamned computers and a pay raise aren’t enough for me. This is the paper. We’re the paper.”

  He wiped his eyes and I wiped mine. I noticed that Hans was misty-eyed, too, and the other guys in the back stood dumbfounded with misery.

  “Hey, let’s go smoke Isaac’s cigar.” Why I thought of this I still don’t know.

  We trooped back into the editorial room. I opened my drawer, grabbed the little penknife my dad had given me when I was in sixth grade. I cut off the end of the cigar and lit her up. We passed it around like a peace pipe. Even Michelle took a puff.

  Then Arnie produced a full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. I don’t drink but I took a pull. We cried and drank and smoked and sang and one by one we crept away. John outdrank everyone. Two drinks and I was a basket case. Roger hiccupped. Michelle drank Hans under the table, to everyone’s surprise. Even Charles got snookered.

  I stumbled over to bingo that night. If Lolly and Pewter hadn’t been with me I’m not sure I would have found my way to Saint Rose’s. I bought a card, sat down next to Mr. Pierre, who sniffed the air suspiciously, and Mother tells me that my head hit the card. Somebody got me home. I don’t remember a thing although Mother said that even Peepbean was sympathetic when I moaned before I passed out that the loan was denied. Imagine that, Peepbean being sympathetic.