Gemma turned Mrs. Bartling toward the front door and gave her a little nudge. “I promise you can trust us.”
One beat passed between them. Then two. Mrs. Bartling must have been taken by surprise at that promise because she was slow to reply. “Can I?”
Funny how one question, one reply, can have so many implications, Gemma thought. “Yes, you can,” she answered.
Gemma followed Mrs. Bartling out, closing the front screen squarely. She tried the knob to make sure she’d locked the door. When she skipped down the steps, Alva T. and Charlene had already climbed in the front seat of the New Yorker, while Paisley scrooched all over Mrs. Bartling’s lap in the back. “Sit on the seat beside her, Paisley. You can’t sit on top on her. You’re too big.”
Charlene leaned over the seat and handed out sticks of Juicy Fruit gum all around. “You have to close your eyes, Bea,” she instructed. “We aren’t going to drive anywhere until you aren’t looking.”
“Oh, heavens,” Mrs. Bartling said as she covered her face with her hands. “Okay. I’m not looking.”
The radio was already blaring when Alva started the car. “Bluer than blue, life without you . . .”
“Can you turn it down, Alva? We can’t hear a thing back here.” Gemma buckled her seat belt.
“Can you guess where we’re going?” Paisley’s little hand rested against Mrs. Bartling’s covered face, her tiny splayed fingers warm and moist.
“I have no idea.”
“If you think about it, you’ll know.”
Mrs. Bartling’s answer was muffled behind her hands. “Well, no. I can’t imagine. I can’t guess at all.”
The car made a right turn, then a left. After that, they traveled straight a long way before Alva signaled and steered the Chrysler left again, into a parking lot. The tires bumped over rocks and jostled into potholes. By then Mrs. Bartling must have heard the carousel music and seen the lights and heard the engines of carnival rides revving, because she yanked down her hands and stared out the front window. “I can’t believe it,” she gasped. “You’ve brought me to the fair.”
In front of them, the rides on the midway soared and spun, and half the people from Garden County rode them, screaming and laughing, waving baseball caps in the air. Flags swayed and snapped in the high breeze. Red, yellow, and green tubes of light whirled and glimmered as the last of the sun reached into the horizon behind the western High Plains.
Alva turned off the car.
“You’ve brought me to the fair,” Mrs. Bartling said again as she aligned her two palms flat against one another and propped her fingers against her lips.
Gemma touched the woman’s knee and felt a pang of terror. “Is it okay that we’ve done this?” she asked. “I mean, are you glad that we came?”
“Why . . . Oh, goodness. I never thought about the fair. It’s been so long.”
Paisley snuggled beneath the crook of Mrs. Bartling’s arm and peered up at her with big hazel eyes. She wriggled closer still. “Will you ride the merry-go-round with me? Pleeease?”
The expression on the woman’s face told Gemma that Mrs. Bartling found herself quite at a loss. “You want me?”
Paisley’s curls bobbed up and down when she nodded.
Mrs. Bartling touched the little girl’s nose. Old and young, their foreheads inclined together. When Mrs. Bartling answered, she sounded as if this one invitation meant everything to her. “Of course I’ll ride the merry-go-round with you. Only you make sure I’ll get a horse that goes up and down. Don’t like the boring ones that just sit still.”
“I’ll make sure!”
“And we have to visit the exhibit hall. I’ve got to see the ribbon on Jan Blackwell’s crumb cake.”
“That’s it, then. Let’s go.”
The mixed, sweet stench of cotton candy and Sloppy Joes and popcorn met them as they climbed out of Alva’s New Yorker. While they waited in line at the red-and-white striped ticket booth and the others fished in their pockets for change, Gemma laid her hand on Mrs. Bartling’s shoulder. “I’m treating tonight.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ve got plenty of money.”
“Paisley and I counted, to make sure we could do this. We wanted this to be special.”
Mrs. Bartling acquiesced. “Only if you want to.”
“We do.”
They bought long curls of tickets for the rides and headed toward the exhibit hall. Once they’d gotten in side the crowded Quonset hut, they marched down the rows of displays with purposeful determination, eager to see every beribboned item before they hurried out to make themselves dizzy and slightly sick on the rides.
“Look at that,” Alva noted, pointing toward an arrangement of blue flag and larkspur and poppies that cascaded from a child’s shoe. “I could do something like this on all the tables in The Cramalot. Oh, wouldn’t that be unusual?”
“Seems to me,” Charlene surmised as she started off in the direction of the Boy Scout gun-safety posters in search of one that had been submitted by her nephew, “that folks in a restaurant might take exception to having someone’s shoes on the table.”
Mrs. Bartling found Jan Blackwell’s crumb cake, which had one tiny piece cut from the left-hand corner for the judges, and a grand-prize rosette fastened to its tray. Gemma and Paisley laughed aloud at one photograph of a mule in the sunset and another of a baby who was sitting in the mud. They carefully inspected a display of hand-tooled leather belts and a village built out of Legos. Mrs. Bartling admired a floor-length satin skirt that had been awarded a blue ribbon for construction. “My, this is beautifully made.” She fingered the tiny stitches on the seams. “Oh, how I’d love to have a place to wear something fancy. I get so tired of wearing sweat shirts.” She read the tag. “Laura Stell made this! When I see her at the Superette, I’ll have to say something.”
In the animal pavilion, they saw bunnies and sheep and bulls with names like Elvis Parsley and Baa-Baa Walters. They made their way to the front of the pavilion only to besidetracked by a crowd of rowdy parents cheering their children in the diaper derby. Six babies at various stages of undress had been freed on the race course—some sitting up and crying, others going backwards—while dads gestured wildly with toys and bottles and lollipops from the finish line, trying to make their babies crawl.
“Look at that baby with all the curly blond hair.” In the excitement of the moment, Mrs. Bartling slipped her arm around Gemma’s shoulders. “He looks so much like Nathan used to. He’s so fat. And those two little bottom teeth!”
Such a curious feeling, being embraced for no reason but happiness, to Gemma who hadn’t had much practice being embraced at all. She found herself afraid to breathe. She found herself afraid to turn or speak. She stood stock-still, her heart clattering against her ribs, while Mrs. Bartling enjoyed the memory and seemed not to notice that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
“That’s what Nathan looked like?”
“Oh, I’ve got pictures I could show you. Wearing those tiny overalls and those scuffed white baby shoes. I still have those shoes somewhere.”
A spark of hope burgeoned in Gemma’s spirit. She opened the flap of her little purse and dug around for her wallet.
“I have this picture of him right here, too, if you’d want to see it.”
Mrs. Bartling’s hand slipped from Gemma’s shoulder. “You have a picture of him? A recent one?”
Gemma dug around some more and finally came up with her billfold. “It’s the only one I have of us together. Somebody at the courthouse took it on our wedding day.”
“You’ve got a picture?” Bea repeated herself.
“You know how it is when there’s just two of you? You get plenty of pictures of each other alone because there’s never anybody else around to take pictures of you side by side. I mean, we had Paisley, but we were afraid she’d hold the camera upside down or something. We only have this one—”
“Why didn’t you show me before?”
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p; “I guess I didn’t want to. It felt like I’d be using it to prove something.” Gemma opened her wallet and thumbed through an assortment of cards—an Omaha Public Library card, a discount card for groceries, a Sears credit card. “Here.” She drew the little photo out of her billfold with a hesitant motion, a gesture that showed it cost her dearly to bring this to light and hand it over.
“Oh, I can’t see close things without my glasses.” Mrs. Bartling scrabbled in her purse, too, and pulled out a pair of bifocals that Gemma rarely saw her use. She slipped the frames over her ears and squinted keenly at the tiny picture.
Gemma’s hand shook as she held the photograph under the harsh pavilion lights.
Mrs. Bartling seemed to take in every detail of the wedding photo. The chiseled sign beside them that read “Douglas County Courthouse.” The patches of crusted snow on the grass because they’d posed for the camera outdoors in February. The Honorable Judge R. C. Riley standing with them, beaming with pride because he had joined them in holy matrimony.
Gemma had dreamed of a pretty wedding in a little church somewhere, with a white dress and a cake, and ribbons tied in puffy white bows along the aisle. Nathan had told her they couldn’t afford anything so extravagant. They’d waited on the hard wooden bench outside Riley’s office for well over three hours while the judge finished up a bad-check court case downstairs. By the time the judge had flown in—the sleeves of his black robe flapping like a crow in huge, winglike sweeps—to marry them, Paisley had been overwrought, a one-year-old slumping all over the seat and whining from having to wait so long.
Gemma had worn a green street dress two sizes too big. Nathan had borrowed a sports jacket from the night supervisor at Omaha Corn-Fed Packing Company and had worn it with his jeans.
They’d stopped by the supermarket on the way and Nathan had bought her one yellow rose to carry, in clear, crackly paper.
A civil ceremony, Gemma imagined Mrs. Bartling thinking.
“It wasn’t a fancy wedding,” she hurried to explain, feeling her color rise. “We went to the jewelry counter at Sears and bought my ring one morning. Then we drove to the courthouse and got the license. Easy as that.”
Gemma waited, but Mrs. Bartling didn’t say she could tell it wasn’t fancy, just by looking at them in the picture. Maybe the starkness of it didn’t matter to her. Maybe Mrs. Bartling wasn’t appalled by the plainness of the ceremony.
When Mrs. Bartling raised her face to Gemma’s, though, Gemma understood the woman’s true answer. She hadn’t come to the place where she could look at any sort of ceremony and think it mattered. She sought out only the features of her son’s face, only the solemn expression in his eyes, the new lines of maturity at his brow, the square determination of his jaw.
Mrs. Bartling seemed unable to speak.
“I’m sorry,” Gemma whispered. “I shouldn’t have gotten it out now.”
Mrs. Bartling folded her bifocals away. She struggled for words. “That boy hadn’t changed as much as I’d thought. He still looked like Nathan.”
Gemma opened her billfold again and filed the photograph away with care. Mrs. Bartling wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “We don’t ride that merry-go-round soon, they’ll have all the horses put out to pasture.”
“They don’t pasture merry-go-round horses, silly-silly.” Paisley grabbed Mrs. Bartling around the loins.
“They leave them standing in a circle all night because they aren’t alive.”
The diaper derby ended and a grand prize—a medallion on a red-white-and-blue striped ribbon—was awarded with much pomp and circumstance to the winner. Mrs. Bartling gestured to Charlene and Alva. “You two ready for the midway?” She gripped Paisley’s hand. “Come on, little girl. You lead the way.”
They rode every ride they could possibly stomach. The Zipper turned them upside down. The Matterhorn raced them backwards. Pharaoh’s Fury, a favorite with the teenagers because it gave them reason to sit eight abreast and wrap their arms around members of the opposite gender, swung them back and forth so high that they felt like they’d left their innards behind. Mrs. Bartling bought them cherry slushees at the concession stand, which left Paisley with a cherry-colored moustache as broad as a clown’s mouth that, try as she might, Gemma could not get off with spit and a napkin. At the merry-go-round, Charlene, Alva, and Gemma stood in a cluster and waved furiously every time Mrs. Bartling or Paisley passed by.
On a roller coaster so small Gemma could barely get her knees in, Deputy Jay Triplett, dressed in his full uniform, waved from the next car up. “Having fun?”
“Yes.” Gemma waved back.
On the Spinnaker, which Gemma, Mrs. Bartling, and Paisley rode alone after Charlene and Alva complained of vertigo, Gemma and Mrs. Bartling had a slight disagreement over who might be heaviest and therefore ought to ride on the outside. Mrs. Bartling won. “Or lost,” she announced, “whichever way seems best to look at it.” She settled herself on the outside, Gemma sat in the middle, and Paisley came last. When the engine on the metal whirly-gig began to hum and, spider-like, the cars began to spin clockwise across the ground, Paisley giggled in glee. Without stopping to think about it, they all three clasped hands in Gemma’s lap.
“Hold on!” Mrs. Bartling shouted.
The amusement ride picked up speed, and their hair started flying straight behind them. Paisley shrieked with joy. The entire time they twirled, they clung to one another for dear life, laughing. When the ride ended, they staggered off, Paisley grinning, Gemma losing her step from dizziness, announcing, “I should have taken a Dramamine,” and Mrs. Bartling shaking her disheveled hair, saying, “Oh, my, I haven’t done such an unladylike thing in years!”
“And now,” Gemma grabbed onto a railing and steadied herself, “for the grand finale.”
“What could be a grand finale to that?” Mrs. Bartling spread her hands wide as if to say anything better was impossible.
“Come with us.” Paisley took Mrs. Bartling’s hand and led her toward the colorful strip of arcade, each striped-canvas awning glowing gold from harsh light-bulbs beneath it. Big teddy bears and lime-green alien dolls dangled from their multicolored bowties, their plump bodies swinging whenever anyone jostled the tent. “Ever’body love da dog race!” the barkers sang out as Gemma and Paisley and Mrs. Bartling strolled past the booths. “Ever’body play da dog race.” “Get your ring-toss prize. Only three dollars for three rings!” “Knock over the jugs and win a bear.” “Goldfish here. Hey, ma’am, you wanna win a goldfish for that little one to take home?”
“No, thanks. Not now,” Gemma answered. “We’ve got something else in mind.”
They stopped in front of the shooting gallery. “Here we go.” Gemma fished three dollars out of her purse and plunked the bills on the counter.
“Shoot out the star. That’s all you gotta do,” the fellow in the tent instructed. He slapped a paper target in front of their noses, five inches square, and indicated a small red star in the center. “If there’s any red showing when you’re done shooting, then you don’t win a prize.” He gestured toward the ranks of monstrous teddy bears peering down from above him.
“Well.” Gemma crooked her elbow on the counter. “I guess you’d better have at it, Mrs. Bartling.”
“What do you mean, ‘have at it’?”
“You know what I mean.”
Paisley bounced up and down beside Mrs. Bartling’s hipbone. “Will you win me a prize? Will you? Pleeease?”
The dollars had long since disappeared from the counter. The man clipped the target on a pulley and ran it clear to the back of the booth.
Mrs. Bartling stepped forward and lifted the butt of the automatic air gun from its stand. She ran a hand along one side of its wooden stock. “What did Nathan tell you?”
“That you’re the best crack shot at the Garden County Fair.”
“He said that?”
“He did.”
Mrs. Bartling’s eyes gleamed with a sudden, unnatural bri
ghtness. “He might have been wrong, you know. You might have just wasted three dollars.”
“I doubt he was wrong.”
Mrs. Bartling lifted the BB gun and squinted through its sights. The barrel wavered an inch to one side, an inch to the other. “I don’t. . . know.” When she spoke, her cheek touched metal. She straightened, lowered the weapon to arm’s length and tested its weight with both hands.
“Come on, Beatrice.” A man with a baseball cap that read “Cleeland Boat Supply” stepped up beside her and eyed the gun. “None of us are getting any younger, waiting in this line. Either shoot or let somebody else take a turn. We all got grandkids bugging us for prizes.”
Gemma saw Mrs. Bartling’s face when it registered slight surprise. She doubted anyone had ever mistaken Paisley for Mrs. Bartling’s grandkid. Dread deluged Gemma. She waited for the awful response she was certain would follow.
Mrs. Bartling would say, “I’m not her grandma.”
But that response never came. Mrs. Bartling hoisted the air gun back to its stand and propped her hands on her hips.
“You hold your horses, Andy Cleeland. It’s my turn to shoot and, if I want to take my time at it, that’s my business. I am inspecting my firearm. You have to becareful. You never know when one of these things might explode in your hands or something.”
“It would be nice if you could shoot sometime before midnight, Bea Bartling.”
“I’ve got advice for you, Andy. If you’re trying to win your poor grandchildren a prize, maybe you ought to try the goldfish pond. You’ll never be able to hit this target.”
Mrs. Bartling turned back and took hold of the BB gun again. She raised it to shoulder level and aimed the barrel at the target. “Here goes nothing.”
She squeezed the trigger. Pop. Pop. Pop-pop-pop. BBs flew. Twelve times the pellets ripped through the paper target, clean in the center, forming one gigantic hole.
“There.” Mrs. Bartling grinned down at Paisley. “Let’s see how we did.”
The target moved toward them on the pulley. As it came close, Andy Cleeland laughed behind her. “See that, Bea? You shot too good. Got it so clean in the center that you left all the red spikes of the star.” He pushed up beside her. “Why don’t you let somebody show you how this is done?”
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