Bingo

by Rita Mae Brown

  32

  THE HAIR OF THE DOG

  SATURDAY … 25 APRIL

  My mouth felt like cotton, my head throbbed, and an intruder was in my kitchen. I hauled myself out of bed, disturbing Pewter, who slept on the pillow next to me. It was eight in the morning, late for me. I stood at the top of the stairs straining my ears. There definitely was someone in my kitchen. I couldn’t understand why Lolly hadn’t barked.

  Click, click, click, her claws tapped on the floor downstairs. A second set of clicks ballooned in my ears. If I called my dog, the thief would know I was awake. I didn’t know what to do so I hastened to the bathroom and threw up. Why did people drink if this was the result? After the purge I felt somewhat restored, although my headache continued unabated but at least it didn’t feel like a migraine. This was a new-model headache.

  I tiptoed back to the top of the stairs and slowly, one careful step at a time, crept down. Suddenly Lolly Mabel skidded around the corner. Chows smile a lot and Lolly’s wrinkled red face registered pure joy at seeing me and at being chased, because right on her tail was Goodyear. I relaxed and sat on the stairs. Lolly licked me. Goodyear kissed me too.

  Mother was bending over the big butcher block in the center of the kitchen. “You look like the dogs got at you under the porch.”

  I moaned. “You’re all heart.”

  “And a lot of liver too. Here, drink this.”

  She handed me a foul concoction. “What’s in here?”

  “Trust your old mother. It’s the cure for your ills.”

  I gulped it down. My throat caught fire. My eyes watered. My hand shook and Mother snatched the glass from my fingers before I could drop it. She then pried open my mouth once I stopped shaking and poured down black coffee. My body was too assaulted to even puke again. In about five minutes I decided I would live. Pewter, on the butcher block, purred at me.

  “Well?” Mother demanded.

  “Very effective.”

  “Sit down. I’m going to feed you.”

  “No. I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Your blood sugar is in your toes. You need to eat. By noon you’ll feel like yourself again.” She pulled out my cast-iron skillet.

  A small nook with a bay window overlooked the meadows to the west. That’s where I ate my breakfasts and my dinners if I was home for dinner. The big dining room had Grandma’s formal dining table but I bet I used that room less than five times a year. I lived in the kitchen, but then I think everyone does. I rested my head on my hand and gazed out on the meadows. My pink and white azaleas blossomed at the edge of the yard, and in the woods at the edge of the meadow I could see the pink and white dogwoods at the peak of blooming. The whole world was pink and white. Even my tongue was pink and white.

  Lolly and Goodyear tore back into the kitchen. This time Lolly was chasing Goodyear.

  “All right, kids,” Mother warned them, “slow it down or no treaties.”

  The dogs recognized the word treaties and the angelic expressions that came over those furry faces made me laugh and then my head hurt again.

  “Oh.” I put my head in my hands.

  “Try not to think about it and take these.” She tossed two B.C. powders at me.

  B.C. powders, manufactured in Memphis, are a remedy known to Southerners. B.C. cures a headache, arthritis, neuralgia, rheumatism, maybe even bad temper. This wonder drug has but one drawback. It tastes violently awful. You can swallow it in pill form like an aspirin but that’s for weak-asses. If you want the substance to slam into your bloodstream at full speed you take the little packet of powder, knock it back in your throat, then drink whatever is at hand as fast as you can.

  I fetched myself a Coke, steadied my feet, threw back two packets of B.C. powder, and chugged the co-cola.

  I sat down with a thump. “I’ve got so much liquid in me my stomach will rise and fall with the tide.”

  “Don’t worry, the coffee and Coke will go through you in no time.”

  She fried up some eggs, the butter sizzling in the pan, as she looked out the big kitchen window.

  “Oh, no.”

  “What?” I need not have asked because I heard the screech outside.

  The dogs barked.

  “That’s enough,” Mother said.

  Goodyear stopped but Lolly didn’t.

  “Lolly, I can’t bear it.” Lolly turned to study my expression. She decided to growl instead.

  With a voice that would waken the dead, Aunt Wheezie stuck her head in the back door: “Yoo-hoo.”

  “We’re in the kitchen,” Mother replied.

  Louise stomped through the mud room, which was right off the kitchen. She cheerfully burst upon us, prepared to improve my lot despotically. A bag of groceries nestled in her arm.

  “Gonna fix you up.” She placed the groceries on the butcher block.

  Pewter stuck her head in the bag which prompted Aunt Wheezie to unpack it quickly and toss the bag on the floor. Pewter jumped off the butcher block—the thud was deafening—and shot into the bag. Her rattling around in there sounded like defective machine-gun fire.

  “Pewter, let Mommie bribe you with some catnip.”

  “Sit down. I’ll do it.” Mother fetched some catnip, fresh, out of the pantry where it was sequestered in a shiny Italian cracker tin.

  Pewter vacated her bag and pounced on the catnip. Her eyes rolled in her head. She abandoned herself to pleasure.

  “Better living through chemistry.” I laughed. “Kitty drugs.”

  “Here.” Mother set a plate before me.

  She set one down for herself and Aunt Wheezie, too, and we ate a calm breakfast. Wheezie didn’t let me clear the table. She did it. Mother washed. Wheezie dried and I began to feel much better.

  “Eagle Insurance trying to screw you?” Mother asked.

  “Yeah. Another job for Jackson.”

  “You pay these people thousands of dollars over the years, you need them once, and they do everything they can to evade their responsibility.” Louise snapped the dish towel.

  “And we have to put up with it because one company is about as bad as another,” Mother added.

  “You can’t even buy the car you want anymore. What’s the difference if it’s insurance or cars or bowel cleaners like Comet,” Louise said.

  “Bowl cleaners,” I corrected her.

  “No, I mean bowel.” Her voice rose.

  “Fleet, then, not Comet.” I smiled.

  “Wonder what Comet would do up there?” Mother splashed around in the water. “Bet you’d have the cleanest intestines known to man.”

  “Remember Packards?” Louise got a dreamy expression. “Now there was a car. They don’t build ’em like that anymore.”

  “They don’t even build ’em. Robots do it,” I said.

  “Rolls-Royces and Bentleys are still made by people, people who aren’t afraid to have their names on the car. I read that.” Mother pulled the plug and the water spiraled down into the drain.

  If we lived in New Zealand it would spiral in the opposite direction. If I ever visit New Zealand or Australia I’ll probably spend too much time staring into drains and toilets. The natives will fear I have a nasty fixation on fluids.

  “I’d like to own a great car and keep it for the rest of my life.” I gazed out at the beautiful dogwoods again.

  “Me too,” Mother said.

  “Think about it. If you buy a Bentley Turbo for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars and you run it for thirty years—and I think I’ll live for thirty more years if I don’t have a night like last night again—well, that’s four thousand dollars a year for that car. If I live forty more years it’s—let me think a minute—it’s three thousand dollars a year. Just maintaining a piece of American junk will cost you that, plus think of the number of cheap cars we go through in our lifetimes. It’s more economical to buy the Bentley.”

  “If you can get the money in the first place.” Mother wiped her hands. “That’s what gets me about the rich.
They can afford to buy quality, so dollar for dollar they’re getting much more for their money than we are.”

  “I have the best deal.” Louise sat back across from me. “My hubby knew what he was doing.”

  “He did, but it’s not a Bentley, Wheezie.” Mother sat down too.

  “What do you know about cars?”

  “I know a lot about cars.”

  “Oh, ha! Chessy wouldn’t let you near his machine. Not after your first driving lesson right up here at this house. She rammed into the porch, Nickel. The piano slid off the porch. Momma always put the piano on the porch in the summertime. The porch splintered up like a toothpick. Fannie Jump Creighton climbed onto the roof and shimmied up the pole. People flew off that porch like rats off a sinking ship.”

  “You exaggerate.”

  “I most certainly do not! You nearly killed me.”

  “Don’t tempt me, Wheeze.” Mother’s foot wiggled.

  I was trapped on the inside of the trestle table and couldn’t get out.

  “Well, your sense of history seems to suit yourself.” Louise sniffed. “But you don’t know beans about cars. You turn on the ignition key and that’s it.”

  “I remember Ev Most’s father had a Rochester Steam Runabout,” Mom said.

  Ev Most was Mother’s best friend in childhood and throughout life. She died after a long illness in 1978 and since then Mother had drawn closer to me. Ev’s grandfather built the Yankee city hall. The Mosts contributed a lot to our town, and sadly, her son left for the big city, so there wasn’t one Most left in Runnymede.

  “Steam engines were good. Don’t know why they didn’t catch on. There was a Hudson Steamer and the Stanley Steamer. Everyone knows about that one.”

  “Make a bet.”

  “What?” Louise rose to the bait.

  “Set aside steamers. I bet I can name more cars that are no longer manufactured than you can.”

  “That’s an easy bet. Ford Model T. Ford Model A,” she chirped, then paused. “What’s the prize?”

  “Trip to Orioles game.”

  “No deal. You like baseball better than I do and you have tickets anyway. Make it a gift certificate for”—she thought—“fifty dollars at Young Sophisticates.”

  Young Sophisticates was on the Emmitsburg Pike and specialized in clothes that do well in areas where the population is overpoweringly WASP.

  “You should go to Old Sophisticates,” Mother said.

  “Don’t get fresh and don’t think you can throw me off the track by being snide, little sister. Either you take the bet or not.”

  “I’ll take it.” Mother reached across the table and shook Louise’s hand.

  “Wouldn’t this be easier if you weren’t allowed to name different models of the same brand? For instance, Ford Model A and Model T, Cadillac Fleetwood and Osceola,” I said.

  “There was never a Cadillac Osceola.” Wheezie sounded dismissive.

  “Yes, there was,” Mother said, “in 1905. I knew you wouldn’t win this game.”

  “We haven’t started yet!” Louise snapped.

  “Do you each accept those terms?” I persisted. “No model names, just brand names, and the cars must be extinct today.”

  They nodded in unison.

  “How many chances do I have?” Louise wanted to know.

  “We should go until we run out. Order doesn’t matter.”

  I assumed the task of being the referee. “No, doesn’t matter at all. Now I happen to have in my pocket a quarter. I’ll flip it and, Wheezie, you call it in the air. If you get the toss you go first. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Wheezie’s excitement sparkled on her face. I flicked up the quarter.

  “Heads!”

  “Heads” it was and Aunt Louise had the ball.

  She savored the moment by enjoying a sip of coffee. “I’m ready. Nickel, write these down.”

  Pencils and pads of paper littered my house. A legal-size yellow pad rested on the window ledge. I picked it up, poised the pencil, and said, “Go.”

  “The Morris Electric—”

  “No fair!”

  “We agreed no steamers. We didn’t say anything about electric cars.” Wheezie grinned like the Cheshire cat.

  “Mother,” I intervened, “as there are so few electric cars, I think you’re safe.”

  Mother wasn’t having any. “How do you know?”

  “A hunch.”

  “I say it’s out of bounds.”

  Louise leaned back in her chair, a superior air wreathing her face. “I knew you’d crawfish out of the game. I know more about cars than you do.”

  “Bullshit. Keep your old electric cars. Go on, bigmouth.”

  Wheezie nodded to me and began anew. “Nash, Rambler, DeSoto, Kaiser, Hudson, and hmm, the car invented by that poor man they drove bankrupt.” She placed her finger to her temple. “I know, Tucker, and LaSalle.”

  A long silence ensued.

  “Running out of gas?” Mother smirked. “You keep thinking. I get a turn now.”

  “I won the toss.”

  “Yeah, but you’re taking too long. It’s my turn.”

  “Aunt Wheeze, you have been quiet for a few minutes.”

  “Can you believe it?” Mother tormented. “The last thing to die on Wheezie will be her mouth.”

  “You always say that. Be original.” Louise glared.

  “My turn.” Mother inhaled and rattled off names, “Pierce-Arrow, Willys Jeepster, Studebaker, Packard—”

  “I said that!” Louise trumpeted.

  “You said it at the kitchen sink. You didn’t say it in the contest.”

  “You slutbunny!”

  “Where’d you hear that one, Aunt Wheezie?”

  She lifted one shoulder. “Overheard Ursula Yost’s daughter Tiffany at Mojo’s. And I say Packard is mine.”

  “You didn’t name it during the contest. I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You take her part. You two are ganging up against me!”

  “I am not!”

  “Why not?” Mother turned on me now.

  “I’m not going to referee if you all act like this. I made a ruling that I think is impartial.”

  They stared at each other.

  “Since Julia is wasting time, let me go.”

  “I’m not finished. We had to settle a dispute. Don’t get so slick.”

  “Go right ahead. Be my guest. Probably only know two more cars, anyway, and I know a hundred. Hundreds.” Her voice rose on the second “hundreds.”

  “Opel.” Mother clenched her teeth.

  I held up my hand. “Made today.”

  “No, it isn’t. The Opel Admiral was an old car.”

  “Mom, there’s a car on the road today called an Opel.”

  “It’s not the same people.”

  “They were bought out, Juts, so it doesn’t matter because the name is alive. I’m taking a turn. You shut up and suffer.” Louise folded her hands. “Reo Flying Cloud. Bet you don’t remember that one. In the twenties.”

  “I was going to say it next.”

  “Tough.” Louise continued. “Cord.”

  “Auburn!” Mother shouted.

  I wrote down her entry but warned her: “Aunt Wheeze has the floor.”

  “Thank you, Nickel.” Wheezie pressed forward. “Duesenberg.”

  “That’s not an American car,” Mother said.

  “Who said anything about American cars? Anyway, it is an American car.” Louise lifted her hands to heaven.

  “We’ll be here all day. Remember Celeste’s Hispano-Suiza and the old Rife sisters’ big Graf-whatever it was called? We better stick to American cars. Bugatti. Hey, I saw one once in the early thirties in Baltimore.”

  “I’ll go along with you, Julia, in the interests of time but I want it clearly understood that if we included foreign cars I’d still win.”

  “Oh, la!” Mom tossed her head.

  “Pencil to paper,” Louise ordered. “The Essex Four.”

  A
fter this came a short pause, and her eyebrows knitted together.

  “I’m going.” Mom dived in. “The Stutz Bearcat. The Franklin—there were a lot of those around when I was a kid. Saxon and the little Imp.”

  “Doesn’t count. That was a cycle-car.”

  “Count it.” Mother pushed the pencil in my hand. “We didn’t say word one about how many wheels the machine could have.”

  “Maxwell and the Brewster,” Louise shouted.

  By now a quiet hung over the table. Both were straining.

  “Oakland,” Mom said.

  Another long silence.

  This time Louise broke it. “White, and Peerless.”

  “Damn,” Mother muttered under her breath.

  More silence.

  Mom jumped up. “Columbia.”

  Louise fired off. “The Henry J and the Frazer Manhattan. I win!”

  I tallied up the cars during the next long silence.

  Louise spoke again. “I win, Julia.”

  “But I know there were more cars.”

  “So what? You can’t remember them. I told you I know more about cars than you do. But you never believe me. You think you know everything.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Mother desperately wanted to think of more cars. Nothing came to mind.

  “Mother, do you concede victory?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Juts, give up. I win fair and square.”

  Mom grabbed the tablet. Louise’s column was longer than her own column. “You win,” she grumbled.

  “Gimme my fifty dollars.”

  “I don’t carry that much money on me. I’ll write you a check Monday.”

  “Cash. You might get spiteful and cancel the check.”

  “Wheeze, I wonder how your mind works. I wouldn’t even think of doing such a thing.”

  “Oh, la.” Louise imitated Mother.

  “Cash. Monday.” Mother hated to lose at anything.

  “Fine. Money earned is good but money won is sweet. And, Julia, I’ve been meaning to tell you those falsies look dreadful. You might be fooling Ed Tutweiler Walters but you certainly aren’t fooling anyone else.”

  “Watch it.”