Rita Will

by Rita Mae Brown

  I never much liked the smell or taste of cigarettes, but I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to have a puff.

  “Don’t swallow the smoke. Breathe it in and breathe it out.” I did. It wasn’t so bad.

  She brought it back to her lips, red lipstick staining the pure white paper. “Smoking is one of life’s greatest pleasures, but it’s not good for you. If you do start, you know a lady never walks and smokes at the same time.”

  “I know.”

  “And if a gentleman doesn’t light a cigarette for you, forget him.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Never three on a match. Bad luck.”

  It was bad luck, too. Soldiers festering in the trenches learned that the opposing artillery officer had time to find his range when they let a match flicker long enough for three people to light up. She said boys returning from World War I had told her that.

  We chatted until the storm finally relented. I never did take up smoking, but now when a wicked big thunderstorm crashes over my head I imagine Dad, Aunt Mimi and other friends up in heaven applauding Mother, who would surely be onstage, offering her commentary on everyone’s individual quirks, and then breaking into a dance.

  16

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee

  The Fourth of July found the world, or the world as I knew it, crammed onto Aunt Mimi’s sweeping porch. Hanging begonias and ferns, potted plants, sparkling painted furniture and a swing lent color to the expanse, for it was a big porch.

  A watering tub filled with cracked ice, beer and soda squatted by the wide steps. Rolling Rock, Gunther’s, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Carling Black Label, Budweiser, Miller and the occasional jar of country water (moonshine) nestled next to Coca-Cola, RC Cola, Nehi, Dad’s root beer, 7-Up and Canada Dry ginger ale. At this time people didn’t drink expensive water with tiny bubbles in it.

  Hot dogs, hamburgers, barbecue, German potato salad, pickled eggs, deviled eggs, coleslaw, potato chips, floppy soft pretzels with mustard, baked beans with bacon, corn bread, white bread and pumpernickel covered the red, white and blue tablecloth. When all else failed there were ham biscuits, homemade pickles and fried okra, my special favorite.

  The finish of the soapbox derby was right at the corner of Aunt Mimi’s house. Only boys could compete, which set my teeth on edge. A few years later Mom, Dad and I would get in trouble for wedging me into the derby while flying false colors.

  This particular Fourth of July, Dwight D. Eisenhower was running against Adlai Stevenson for the presidency. Since Ike lived in nearby Gettysburg, some of the Democrats of the county were wavering.

  PopPop Harmon, sitting in the swing, remembered when McKinley was shot. Unlike Jack Young, my natural grandfather, he hated politics. Until heart failure knocked Jack down, he plunged into the thick of any gathering, shaking hands, collecting votes, listening to troubles.

  Mother, Aunt Mimi and other ladies busied themselves with seeing that guests ate, drank and were introduced properly, though most people knew one another. I recognized some of the night hunters and members of Dad’s clubs. Then there was Kenny, Wadie and our little group.

  I didn’t remember Truman versus Dewey, so this was my first real presidential election. Banners hung from second-story windows, a huge banner was strung over the street, people wore hats with different ribbons according to their candidate because the lesser offices were up for grabs, too.

  Bands played and the liquor flowed like water. Floats rolled down the street between the bands, and candidates stood upon them like so many prom queens waving to their court.

  Mother was a Republican. Aunt Mimi was a Democrat. Not only did they battle over the Reformation daily, they battled over political issues, too. Always apples and oranges with them. I was sure to get both sides of the story.

  However, there was another reason that the sisters allied with rival parties. The story goes that when Thomas Buckingham fled the rise of Puritanism not only did he bring his wits and good looks to the New World in the beginning of the seventeenth century, he brought his cynicism about politics. In each generation the siblings divided up among the competing parties. In this fashion the Buckingham family always had someone in each generation who could talk to whoever was in power. There were only two exceptions. Buckinghams were always Cavaliers, never Roundheads, and during the War Between the States they were Marylanders who stood with the South.

  Julia Ellen was to be a Democrat and I was to be a Republican.

  I asked Daddy what he thought and he said he always voted the man. Americans liked to vote for generals, he said, but not for admirals. As far as he was concerned, Stevenson didn’t have a prayer.

  Aunt Mimi overheard this and displayed a sulfurous reaction. She fired off a few choice words that were not “The Lord bless thee and keep thee.”

  Mother instantly reminded her that Christian charity applied to politics, which made Sis see red. The fur flew.

  Aunt Mimi lurched for the garden hose, turning it on Mom and wrecking her hairdo.

  Dad, Uncle Mearl and Big Kenny separated them. Dad said politics was just the choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee anyway.

  Everything appeared to be normal. Later Mother, armed with scissors, snuck up behind her sister and lopped off a hank of hair.

  Aunt Mimi sat right down on the steps and cried because her “do” was really ruined. Mother’s could dry out, which it did; since she’d been giving herself those stinky Toni home permanents, she looked like a frizzy poodle. Aunt Mimi lamented the disgraceful behavior of her little sister.

  “Oh, I’ve tried to bring you around, Juts, but you’re beyond hope.”

  She went on in this vein for some time. Everyone had heard that, so they returned to the festivities. I, however, wanted to hear more.

  So she told me that when her mother died, she had asked her to take care of Juts.

  Since Big Mimi had dropped dead of a heart attack, I didn’t think she’d had time to give earthly directions to Aunt Mimi. I saw no reason to inform her of this fact.

  After wearing out that line of talk, she switched back to politics, telling me that the Republican Party was the party of “big business” and the Democratic Party represented the “little man.”

  Mother had always told me that the Democratic Party started wars and spent money whereas Republicans encouraged business so people could make money.

  Finally, Aunt Mimi wearied of not enjoying her own party and with a theatrical small sigh she got up and again began serving her guests. Before the party was over both sisters were arm in arm again.

  It kind of made me glad that Patty had left when she did because I didn’t think I had the energy to carry on like Mom and Aunt Mimi.

  And I certainly don’t think that both political parties are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties is the difference between syphilis and gonorrhea, a statement I am particularly fond of reading when I give speeches.

  17

  The Glide

  Mother believed in enjoying herself. Aunt Mimi believed in enjoying herself, then feeling guilty about it. If a celebration wasn’t connected to Our Dear Lord or some obscure saint. Aunt Mimi harbored grave suspicions about the frolic.

  Those punctuation points of pleasure like the Memorial Day barbecue, the Fourth of July parade, the butchers’ picnic in August and the York Fair were eagerly anticipated by Mom and me. Hanover even had a nice horse show, which was exciting.

  Softening up her sister started two weeks before the nonholy event. Mother would make a cup of coffee, light a cigarette, then pick up the phone, which was a party line. Every person who wasn’t disgustingly rich had a party line. When you lifted the receiver you might hear another conversation. Courtesy decreed you hang up and wait for the line to be free.

  Mother perfected the trick of picking up, putting the receiver in the cradle with a click, then carefully lifting it so she could eavesdrop. Since most people on our party line were farmers, sh
e grew bored with weather stories and crop reports. She’d hang up for real.

  When she used the phone the reverse was true. Her conversations sparkled. The neighborhood listened in. That infuriated both Mom and Aunt Mimi, who loudly decried the practice even though they did it themselves. The issue had less to do with privacy than with the fact that both sisters wanted to be first to spread their own news.

  Mother would say, “Sis, I’ve been thinking about the butchers’ picnic. Butch is in charge of—”

  Aunt Mimi would interrupt, “Now, Julia, I told you I don’t have time for that this year. I’ve got to put up my baby corn and …”

  Women made jams, pickled cucumbers and beets, and boiled peaches in heavy syrup at the hottest, stickiest time of the year. Bad enough that your shirt stuck to your body outside, it was a good fifteen degrees hotter in the kitchen. The vegetables or fruit, once prepared, would be put in Ball jars, which were in three parts. The top would be sealed with wax. A small square of cloth was put over that and tied with twine. The food could last years if the process was properly done.

  Mother would listen to the litany of excuses and then beg her sister to come along. “It just won’t be the same without you.”

  “I can’t, I’ve got too much to do.”

  The next morning this performance would be repeated. The first week of calls and encounters, Mother would always tell Aunt Mimi that everyone would be miserable without her, and Aunt Mimi would use any excuse she had except for declaring she had to go to St. Rose of Lima and do the Stations of the Cross.

  The second week Mother would imagine the games that she’d win: bingo, horseshoes and poker on the side. She’d enumerate the dishes she would pick out for her prize, the glasses, maybe even something new and really expensive like a mixer. And she wouldn’t mention that we’d miss Aunt Mimi.

  The protests weakened on the other end of the line.

  Meanwhile, Dad and Uncle Mearl would have worked out the details of who would carry the kids, the blankets and the extra clothes we always took in case someone fell (or was pushed) into the pond. The men worked well together. They had survived many a Buckingham battle, which drew them close together.

  The next time Mother saw Aunt Mimi she’d solemnly inform her that she’d figured out how to get all of us kids to the picnic without Aunt Mimi’s car.

  The day after that she’d casually remark that the picnic fell on the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and that she, herself, had devised a morning prayer to honor the BVM.

  The Thursday before the picnic she’d take the bus down the hill to her sister’s, walk in the door and plop the big wicker basket she carried down on the kitchen table. Aunt Mimi, with her good eye for space and design, had a wonderful, airy kitchen.

  I tagged along, since vacation Bible school lasted only six weeks and by this time I was free and glad of it.

  “Sis, I brought you some jars, wax and twine. I’ve got stuff left over.”

  Aunt Mimi would open the basket and thank Mother. Then they’d have coffee while I had lemonade or Coca-Cola.

  Pretty soon I’d be hearing, “It’s supposed to be dreadfully hot this weekend.”

  “A real stinker,” Mother nonchalantly replied.

  “I wonder if I should put off canning for a couple of days.”

  “Too much heat can soften the brain,” Mother solemnly informed her sister.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that, too.”

  Of course, Aunt Mimi would go to the butchers’ picnic.

  This picnic stands out for me because Eugene had graduated from high school, class of 1951, and was working in the store. Girls trailed him to the picnic, although he had invited only one. Out of high school for almost a year, he decided to enlist in the army and serve his tour of duty. This was his fling before all that.

  The dreadful gloom from the deaths of Big Mimi and Virginia had finally lifted.

  A large turn-of-the-century bandstand stood down by a pond. You walked over a curving bridge to reach it. Colored lanterns hung overhead, casting liquid light on the lily pads. It was romantic.

  For us kids there were swings, baseball and horseshoes, and dodgeball for the teeny-weenies.

  The men pitched horseshoes and played baseball too.

  There were also mixed teams so the ladies could play, but this was after the men’s game. Mom said the men played for blood. No quarter asked, none given, but after the dust settled the men clapped one another on the back, repairing to the open-air square wooden bar. Injuries heal faster with ice-cold tap beer.

  I would accompany Dad to the bar. He’d sit on a stool or stand with his foot on the rail. I’d sit on his broad shoulders or on the bar. I must have been marginally amusing because the men laughed at my chatter. No one looked cross or told Dad to get me out of there.

  I also stood on the bar and sang a song about a perfumed Persian cat, the words of which I remember to this day. That must have been a huge hit because the bartender gave me a small glass with real beer as a reward.

  Dad told me I could drink it. People didn’t fret then as they do now about cigarettes and alcohol. If my dad thought I could drink a small glass of beer, then I could. I did and no ill effects were suffered, nor did I transform into a raging alcoholic.

  I rushed back to Mom, Aunt Mimi, Julia Ellen and the group surrounding them to announce that I had drunk beer.

  Mother laughed.

  Aunt Mimi surprised us by saying, “On a hot day it tastes better than anything.” Then she really surprised us by going over to the men’s bar, where Dad bought her a big mug.

  By early evening we’d eaten ourselves into a stupor.

  Before the dancing began, eagerly awaited by everyone but us kids, the band played a cakewalk. Mother and I were a team, team eleven. We won a devil’s food cake with creamy vanilla icing. You would have thought we’d won the Irish Sweepstakes because we jumped up and down, hugged and carried our prize back to our gang, where we ate some more.

  Mom said the trick to a cakewalk wasn’t just being lucky enough to hit the right number, it was in the glide. You didn’t walk, you glided. I practiced gliding.

  The band played “Red Sails in the Sunset,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and other songs from the thirties and forties. Kenny, Wadie and I took turns dancing with one another until we got bored and sat on the bridge to listen to the bullfrogs.

  We could see the men lining up to dance with Mom. She was a terrific ballroom dancer. Her perfectly shaped legs didn’t hurt, either. Aunt Mimi wasn’t quite as good as Mom, or at least that’s what I thought, but the men crowded around her too.

  They enjoyed more admirers than women half their age, but then they always did, even up to the end.

  Dad, who couldn’t dance, sat on the sidelines and watched Mother be the belle of the ball. He loved seeing her happy. After a time, he came down and sat with us on the bridge.

  I remarked that the pond was full of stars. The different-hued lantern lights washing over the water looked like colored comets streaking across the surface.

  Everything was perfect.

  18

  O Holy Night

  Mother accused Aunt Mimi’s Christmas tree of harboring cockroaches. At least, I think that’s how the fight started. Mother favored long-needled evergreens decorated with multicolored balls and tinsel painstakingly draped over the branches. Aunt Mimi yanked out of her attic each season a medium-sized deciduous corpse wrapped in white cotton. She’d hang Christmas balls on it and Uncle Mearl would put together the train set underneath the tree.

  I don’t know if Aunt Mimi’s cotton-wrapped wonder provided apartments for bugs, but it was looking a little tired.

  The season to be jolly catapulted the Buckingham girls into a frenzy of competitive decorating; on top of that, Aunt Mimi had to go to mass every single morning, and sometimes she’d hit vespers too. She must have been exhausted. Every present had to be hand-wrapped, made individual in some way. If you let the store wrap the present, it m
eant you didn’t truly love the recipient.

  Then there was the holiday cooking, because everyone kept open house the week of Christmas, plus there were parties to attend every night.

  Rich, poor or in the middle, everyone decorated for the holiday. A friend of Uncle Mearl’s even put a sleigh with Santa and reindeer on his roof. People sang in the streets, carols blared over loudspeakers and we gathered around pianos, fiddles and even harmonicas to sing together.

  We Buckinghams sang more than others, or at least I think we did. Half the girls in my class took piano lessons. I vowed never to do it. I’d play the tuba before I’d itch on a piano bench, crinolines torturing me, while I pounded out “Jingle Bells.”

  We didn’t have money for music lessons, but Mother, ruthlessly determined that I should master the social graces, was an excellent seamstress and she’d been putting money aside.

  I promised to start music lessons after Christmas. But we each had to make a contribution to the group. If you didn’t play the piano or cook a ham, you had to make something. I wrote a poem, coolly received by Mother, who said I’d cheated because words came easily to me. I should sweat over a group present. Still, she let the poem pass. It was about horses talking at midnight on Christmas Eve.

  Aunt Mimi thought I should have written about Jesus. I learned early that everyone is a critic.

  Anyway, Mother and Aunt Mimi started hollering at each other in Aunt Mimi’s heavily decorated living room—elves peeped out from picture frames, for starters, and even the naked-lady ashtrays, which Uncle Mearl adored, wore Christmas garb. (Aunt Mimi insisted the ashtrays were artistic.) These freestanding Nubian princesses now had wreaths around their necks, their nipples freshened with red nail polish.

  Both sisters were probably worn out getting ready for nonstop festivities. However, once a fight was engaged, it had to be seen through to the bitter end.

  Mother stomped out. I followed. Everyone else had the presence of mind to disappear. Once they raised their voices a small fit of destruction usually followed. You didn’t want to be in the line of fire.