Bingo

by Rita Mae Brown

  “I feel terrible. I was wrong to start up with him in the first place but I don’t see how telling you would have made it any better or easier. Why rub your face in it? Why cause you pain? I never lied to you. I didn’t say anything, that’s all. If the situation were reversed, what would you have done?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like to think that I’d tell you.”

  My hands were shaking. “You’re taking this with more good grace than I could muster.”

  “Well.” She paused for a long time. “Men are different from women and I know that and I know Jack. This is going to sound odd but I expect less of men than of women. Jack hasn’t been one hundred percent faithful over these twenty-two years. I don’t applaud him for that, mind you, but he’s got his frailties. He tries to do the right thing, and most times he succeeds.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the affairs?”

  “They didn’t seem that important. I chalked them up to his fear of getting older, and—forgive me for sounding conceited—I never thought he’d find a woman to replace me. But you—you were something else again. Apart from your history, there’s the element of conquest. You know how crazy men get around lesbians. I never thought he’d leave me for you but I knew this affair wasn’t superficial for him. I knew he was torn.”

  “Do you hate me?” My voice was barely audible.

  “No. I can understand how any woman would fall for Jack. What hurts me is that you did it behind my back. If you had come to me we could have worked it out. It would have been painful but it would have been clean.”

  “I’m sorry. What can I say except I’m sorry? I told Jack and Mr. Pierre that I would tell you. I figured after the baby—sometime.” I breathed deeply. “Does Jack know you know?”

  “I told him last night after the party. He was stunned but he didn’t back down. The difference between you and Jack is he didn’t say he was sorry. He profusely apologized for the other woman but he didn’t apologize for you. He said that he’s in love with you and that he’s in love with me. He also said that you broke it off and you’re sticking to your guns.” She sighed. “It’s confusing, isn’t it? I’m not mad at either of you, really. Maybe I’m too old for that stuff. Maybe I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t believe that love is a controlled substance. You can’t outlaw it or confine it within the bonds of matrimony. It wasn’t as if you stole anything from me. I don’t own him. I don’t want to own him. You didn’t do this to get even with me and neither did he. It happened. These things happen.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We don’t do anything. We go on. I’m disappointed that you didn’t tell me but I’ll live. It’s not the end of the world. Don’t do it again.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I don’t just mean sex. I mean about telling me the truth. When people withhold emotional information, invisible barriers go up. You should be able to tell me anything and I should be able to tell you anything—infuriating, insulting, painful, absurd. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we share and we heal wounds before they cut too deep.”

  Shaken to the core, I nodded my agreement, and at that moment Decca arrived to tell us we could go out.

  I received my second shock of the day. Mr. Pierre had washed out his lilac rinse. His hair was steel-gray and he’d cut it short.

  The wedding proceeded without a hitch. Mother and Louise were civil to each other. They both cried, for different reasons.

  I’ll remember my wedding day for the rest of my life, because my friends came together to wish us well and because my best friend taught me a lesson. She taught me that deep love is more complex and subtle than I’d realized. She taught me that conventional responses are for conventional people. She revealed my own arrogance to me. I thought I knew what her response would be. I thought I could control the situation and spare her feelings. I underestimated her. I kept trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. I kept trying to make life rational. And I kept trying to cover up my own emotional cowardice. Because I was smart and physically brave I could sweep under the rug my emotional shortcomings. Regina showed me myself. It wasn’t so much that she showed me my failures, only that she showed me who I was. If I wanted to change something, it was up to me. So often the truth is told with hate, and lies are told with love. She told me the truth with love, more love than I felt I deserved at that moment. I was beginning to understand that I would and could change emotionally, that anything could happen—I wasn’t dead yet. I hoped I’d be up for the adventure.

  48

  HER MOTHERSHIP

  MONDAY … 14 DECEMBER

  Two new guests arrived at the party on planet Earth. Twins. By the time I gave birth, Trixie had told me I was going to have twins. Since I know very little about my own bloodlines I had no way of knowing that I might bear two children. Twins generally skip a generation, so that meant that my grandmother or grandfather was a twin. I did not use the Lamaze method. Dr. Lamaze is a man. He wouldn’t be suffering the birth pain. Women since B.C. would have given anything to ease that pain and I ordered Trixie to hit me up with Demerol.

  Julia Ellen Smith arrived first by eleven minutes. She was followed by Grayson Chester Smith. Mr. Pierre’s real name is Peter Gerald Grayson, which I never knew until we were married. As I kept my maiden name, I named the boy after his “father.” I would have given little Gray my dad’s name first but I don’t think Dad liked Chester. Chessy he could endure. I figured wherever Dad was, he’d understand.

  Mr. Pierre wore out the floor in the waiting room. I told him he could come in if he wanted to but he declined. However, when those two tiny babies with curly black hair were presented to him, he went to pieces. He cried. He kissed me. He cried some more. He said it was the happiest day of his life and what a blistering idiot he was to have waited so long to be a father. The fact that these two little ones were not of his loins mattered not a bit to him. It was love at first sight. He also gave me a fantastic pair of ruby and diamond earrings. I know a man is supposed to present his wife with a major piece of jewelry when she presents him with a child, but I was happily surprised when Mr. Pierre gave me the earrings. Once he made certain that I was fine, he paraded around the Square, cold as it was, stopped in every shop, gave out cigars, and bragged, bragged, bragged about the astonishing beauty of his daughter and son. He had Peepbean paint a huge sign with blue and pink ribbons which he put in the front window of the Curl ’n Twirl.

  I found out sometime later that he also paid a clandestine call on Jackson Frost. Mr. Pierre, behaving like a gentleman, relieved Jack of any financial responsibility for the twins. Jack thanked him but said that he’d set up a small trust and it was going to stand. Both men agreed that if Mr. Pierre died, Jack would step forward and assume the masculine responsibilities toward the children.

  Diz Rife wanted that job too. He proved an attentive godfather, because he showed up about two hours after Julia and Gray were born. Already she was dubbed Little Juts. I think he bought out F.A.O. Schwarz. Diz had no children and although he didn’t speak of it, it must have stung him, for he was the first Rife not to reproduce. Apparently he, too, had a heart-to-heart with Mr. Pierre, so my babies, born to an emphatically unwealthy mom, had the good fortune to have three men step forward to assist them through this life.

  Diz and I competed like two crazed heavyweights up until the time of my delivery. He—I should say Mid-Atlantic Holding Shares—poured a ton of money into the new Clarion. There were color photos on the front page, colored weather maps, lots and lots of entertainment gossip, and a big special real estate section. Our Mercury kept the old front-page layout and concentrated on hard news plus expanded local coverage. To our shock, Aunt Louise’s column, “I Remember,” took off. Before the column was two months old it had been syndicated. The column reeked of nostalgia, that residue of pleasure. She dictated the column to me and I put it down as she spoke. Aunt Louise became a star. The fan mail for Wheezie arrived by the truckload. Her success mellowe
d her to the point that she forgave me my pregnancy and hasty marriage. She was less quick to forgive her sister, now living in sin.

  Blackout bingo was outlawed north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Whatever Diz said or did to him, Bucky dropped the charges against Aunt Louise, me, Lolly, and most of the town, whom he accused of obstructing justice. The bingo pot went to fix the Falkenroth, Spangler & Finster law offices. Mutzi, furious at being denied blackout bingo, instituted a new practice called Nevada cards. This didn’t supplant the actual bingo game but accented it. The cards were like miniature slot machines and Runnymede went wild for them. I won a hundred-dollar pot on a Nevada card the week before the kids were born.

  Mother came to the hospital off and on most of the day. She was down in the cafeteria when little Julia arrived. One of the nurses paged her and she hurried back upstairs in time for Grayson. After Mr. Pierre left she came into the room. I must have looked awful because she combed my hair. I was exhausted. I could barely lift my arm. As the drug wore off I felt pain. The nurse told me I’d have to sit in a rubber doughnut for a while. The indignity of it all!

  Upon seeing her grandchildren, Mom said, “Why, they look just like me.”

  “We’re not related by blood, remember?” The painkiller was really wearing off now.

  “Who cares?” She ogled the babies.

  “You do—or you did.”

  “You’re too sensitive. You take things personally.”

  I scooched up so I could lean on the pillows. I’d been lying flat on my back, and tired as I was, I didn’t want to be lying down for this conversation, since it had taken me forty-three years to get to it. “Mother, I don’t ever want to hear about being adopted again. I don’t ever want to hear that my bloodlines are not your bloodlines. I have heard it so many goddamned times I know it word-for-word by heart, and I expect you to pass on this message to your media star sister.”

  Mother appeared stunned. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I have two beautiful babies and I never, ever want them to feel what I have felt every single day of my life.”

  “What’s that?” She forced herself to ask the question though I knew damn well she didn’t want the answer.

  “To be loved but never to belong. It’s a form of punishment.”

  “I do love you.” Her I’m-a-tough-bird face began to crumble.

  “I know you do, but you kept me at bay. You kept me under your thumb—maybe that’s a better way to put it. Every time I did something wrong, you or Louise would tell me I was an orphan or that I might be like my natural mother, and after today I don’t know how any woman could give up her babies. I couldn’t. I never want to hear that shit again. So this is the end of the line, Julia.”

  “Don’t you dare call me Julia!”

  “I will call you Julia until you agree to drop this subject. Then I’ll call you Mom again.”

  She put her face in her hands and sobbed. The only time I’d seen my mother cry like that was when Dad keeled over dead at the store and Wheezie was the one who had to tell her. She cried so hard she couldn’t speak and I am sorry to say my heart did not go out to her—not until she spoke, anyway.

  “You don’t know what it’s like not to be a real woman. You’re on the other side of the fence now.” She cried anew.

  “What are you talking about? A woman’s a woman.”

  “I’m not a real mother. I didn’t bear you. Some bitch got to know you for nine months before I did, and Louise rubs my nose in it. I wanted babies.”

  “You had me.”

  “It’s not the same!” She grabbed the Kleenex so hard the box tumbled on the floor. “Now you’re a mother and you’re even further away from me.”

  “Mother—” I had to wait while she blew her nose. “Mom, I think mothering is in the raising, not the bearing. You’ve got to get over this. You’ve hurt yourself with it and you’re hurting me and I don’t want you to hurt Juts—”

  She interrupted. “Little Juts. I’m Big Juts and don’t forget it.”

  “I don’t want you to hurt Little Juts or Grayson. You don’t realize how children see these things. When I was small I didn’t have adult emotions. I couldn’t put this stuff in perspective. I used to lie awake at night and wonder what did I do wrong that my natural mother would throw me away. And if I was bad, would you throw me away? Do you know, the only person who never said a word about this was Daddy? I really was his daughter and if it weren’t for his unqualified love I don’t know what I would have done.”

  “Are you saying I was wrong to tell you?” She was trying to understand.

  That in itself was a victory, since Mother couldn’t admit she was wrong.

  “No, it wasn’t wrong, but once would have been enough. If I had questions over the years I would have asked you. Now I am going to tell my two kids, someday when they’re old enough, that I was adopted. If they want to ask me questions, they can. If they want to ask you questions, they can, but let them decide when to ask and how much to know.”

  “All right—if you feel that way.” She wiped her eyes. “What about Jack?”

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I think as far as the children are concerned, Mr. Pierre is Daddy.”

  “Has he been back since this morning?”

  “No.”

  “He’s put up a sign in the store window with the babies’ names and times of arrival. He’ll bankrupt himself if he gives out any more cigars.”

  She was gliding away from painful knowledge. I suppose I couldn’t blame her, and as her spirits were restored she chattered on. Her faults, in modified or maybe even worse form, were my faults, and I guessed in some ways they’d be Little Juts’s and Gray’s faults too. We were fighters, not criers. We stiff-armed the anguish of our own limitations, our own labyrinth of fears, even as we grasped more tightly at life with the other hand. I knew I’d struggle with that tendency for the rest of my days.

  I slipped back down in the bed. Strange as it may sound, this brief conversation with Mom took more out of me than bearing the children. She got up to leave and kissed me on the cheek. I must have been dozing because I was startled.

  “I’ll see you later tonight.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  “Nickie—”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry I threw out your paint set.”

  With that she left and I knew I’d won, at long last.

  49

  FLYING A KITE

  FRIDAY … 25 MARCH, 1988

  Aunt Louise turned eighty-seven today, although we pretended she was eighty-one. The Today show came to Runnymede in honor of her birthday and to show the rest of the nation this little town, bisected by the Mason-Dixon Line, which Wheezie had catapulted into fame.

  When they initially approached her they wanted to fly her to New York City, but after lengthy discussions with her and out of deference to her age they decided to spotlight the town. Aunt Louise gave an idiosyncratic tour of the town, with the accent on the idio. She flirted outrageously with Bryant Gumbel, horned in on Willard Scott’s weather report, and nearly caused Jane Pauley a nervous breakdown. Before the camera, dear beloved Louise threw out her script, evaded Ms. Pauley’s questions, and went off on a toot. Her crowning moment was when she was walking around the Square and she pointed to the Hanover Street corner and said, “And here is where George Porterfield, a distant cousin of George Spangler’s, exposed himself to me in 1931. Reasons as to this unnatural act are still debated.” Fortunately, the Hunsenmeir sibling rivalry flickered in front of the camera but did not explode into emotional flames. Louise allowed a shot of herself and Mom but then kept edging in front of Mother, who finally reached back and grabbed the fabric of her coat so she couldn’t move, smiling wildly all the time.

  The staff of the Today show left town more exhausted than the Ancient of Days they sought to protect by coming here in the first place. However, the ratings shot through the roof and I feared that television would return for more of Whee
zie. Visions of my aunt rubbing shoulders with stars danced in my head. Not only would she rub shoulders with them, she would gleefully tell them how to live their lives and they’d learn more of her life than they ever wanted to know.

  Mother tolerated Louise’s fame as well as she could, although she did say loudly enough to be picked up by audio, as the camera moved in for a close-up of Louise at the Confederate statue and cannon: “Lifelike, isn’t she?” Apart from that and pulling back at her coat, she restrained her competitive juices, but then she had Ed. Mom was happy.

  After the excitement of the morning I returned to the paper. We were holding our own and then some. Mr. Pierre and I took turns taking the babies to work. He’d have them one week and I’d have them the other, but on the weeks that I would have them at the Mercury he’d run in and out of the office. He then would return to the Curl ’n Twirl to announce to anyone who would listen the wondrous feats of his babies.

  Michelle doted on the kids too. Pewter did not. While she did not dislike them, she suffered no bouts of enthusiasm either. Once she discovered she could lick the formula bottles she showed more affection, and one morning I found her curled up in the crib, although when I came into the room she turned her back on me as if to say it was an accident that she’d fallen asleep here.

  Lolly, like my husband, was a goner. She kept within two feet of the babies. If they’d gurgle, she’d cock her head and wag her tail. If anyone she didn’t know came near them, she’d bare her fangs. Sometimes I’d watch her watching them. I think she thought they were hairless puppies. One thing was certain: She knew they belonged to her.

  I envied the babies because they’d grow up in a newsroom. Eventually, when they got bigger, Mr. Pierre and I would have to figure out day care, although I hoped we could manage them at our places of work until kindergarten. I found myself, like Lolly, staring at them. It was hard to believe they came from me.