Rita Will

by Rita Mae Brown

  Whenever I’m backed to the wall, I remember that match.

  Denise won the sixteen-and-unders. She was a better player than I was, a true baseliner, but the defeat hardly stung. I’d gotten that far.

  That particular city tournament produced the most exciting tennis match I’ve ever witnessed. It’s strange, I’ve been fortunate enough to sit in the best seats at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the Australian Open (my favorite) and countless other wonderful tournaments, but this match for the women’s city title remains untouched in my mind.

  Gretchen Summerfield, the first seed, advanced to the finals, and Betty Rinehart, the second seed, made it too. The match, bound to be a good one, pulled a big crowd. The bleachers sagged under the weight. People stood by the sidelines. Kids crouched behind the back, peeping under the green wind nets. One spectator that day was Brian Piccolo, a class ahead of me.

  There wasn’t a boring point. Tooth and nail, hammer and tongs, those two battled without pause. Gretchen, in her twenties, had the advantage of height and maturity. Betty, at eighteen, possessed extraordinary athletic ability and charisma.

  Gretchen, Scandinavian, tall and austere, contained her emotions. Being tanned and blond didn’t hurt her. She worked for the parks department running the Holiday Park program for sports other than tennis.

  Gretchen, strict and proper, used to correct me regularly. My exuberance rubbed her the wrong way. I didn’t like her because of that but I respected her. I’d probably like her much more today because I can understand how trying it must have been to do your job with half the kids in the city running around you, screaming. She recognized my ability and from time to time would give me a tip here or there. I drank in every word because she was good.

  Betty, with her curly red hair, freckles, great body and adorable face, was my idol. We all worshipped her. Betty would catch sight of you and smile as though you were the most important person on earth. One of those rare people loved by men and women alike, she happened to be one of the finest natural athletes I have ever seen in my life. Had she been born ten years later, she would have made her mark in either women’s tennis or women’s golf. She could do anything.

  I don’t remember breathing during that match. People teetered on the edge of their seats. Even Jimmy came out to watch. I think Colette was the umpire. Colette was unimpeachable.

  The match rolled on for hours. Ad in, ad out, deuce, ad in, ad out, deuce. Their shoulders must have ached from serving.

  Finally, Gretchen won. Betty bounded up to the net and shook her hand. They walked over and thanked the umpire. You knew that Betty wanted to cry. She didn’t. Nor did Gretchen gloat.

  I was exhausted and all I’d done was sit there. From the distance of three and a half decades, I can see that match more clearly than ever. It was the first time I recognized fundamental differences in human temperament and worldview. It wasn’t a baseliner versus a serve-and-volleyer, it was play-it-safe versus take-a-risk, it was Apollo versus Dionysus. Betty, all out, emotional but never rude, provided high contrast to Gretchen, methodical, patient and cool on the surface.

  Had Betty continued with her tennis, I think she would have finally beaten Gretchen in some future city championship. She entered a convent that summer. Before she left she asked me to think of her and she promised to pray for me. The last day Betty played at the courts was her last day before entering the convent. We couldn’t write her there nor could she have written back. The finality of it scared me. Even Jerry, a devout Catholic, appeared shaken.

  After she drove out of the parking lot, I went back to my locker to pull out my tennis shoes. I found she’d stuffed twenty dollars in the toe—a lot of money then, and Betty was not a well-off girl. That’s the closest to crying in public I have ever come. Denise, Pat and some of the other girls asked me what was wrong and all I could do was hold up the twenty dollars.

  I have never seen or heard from Betty since. If she remains in the religious life, I hope it is fulfilling. If she has left, I hope she’s found peace and love in the outside world.

  One summer night I came home late from the courts. Dad, slumped in his favorite chair, was reading the newspaper. Mom recited her list of chores for me. Skippy purred and Sunshine squatted on Dad’s feet.

  Somehow or other Dad and I wandered into a disagreement. I had never had a fight with my father. This wasn’t so much a fight as an argument about Kennedy’s policies. He’d been elected the year before. I must have been cranky, and so I said, “Well, Dad, if you’re so smart, why aren’t we rich?”

  Dad didn’t reply. He was too much of a gentleman. He should have fanned my rear end. Mother flew up at me. I retreated to my bedroom, certain I was the injured party. You’re always the injured party when you’re sixteen.

  My self-imposed isolation irritated me. I opened my bedroom door a crack. Dad was placidly reading his paper.

  I hissed.

  He didn’t look up.

  I hissed louder, which upset Skippy, and Dad glanced back at me. I made the snakes sign.

  Mother used to make snakes with her fingers. It’s pretty silly but you point your fingers palms down at the offending party and hiss, “Snakes.” Usually this was employed by Mother during games of five hundred rummy.

  Snakes could be used to hex someone or to bedevil them. It came in handy during fusses with Aunt Mimi unless she used it first. After that your only hope was to reach the garden hose before she did.

  The remainder of the evening passed without incident. I should have apologized but I didn’t. It takes me a while to reach the apologizing stage.

  Everyone went to bed.

  A weird red light awakened me about three in the morning. This red light circled around the ceiling of my bedroom. My bedroom door was closed, which confused me, because I never closed that door. The next thing I knew the door was thrown open and Mom hurled herself on me. A figure was right behind her but I couldn’t see who it was. I sat bolt upright and tried to push Mom off. She screamed and cried, grabbing at me. Then I saw that Aunt Mimi was right behind Mom.

  “Butch’s dead!” Mother howled.

  Aunt Mimi, the best in a crisis, pried Mother off me. I threw on shorts and a T-shirt. Shaking like a leaf, I couldn’t get my sneakers on.

  Aunt Mimi, calm, said, “Your father’s in the living room. They have him on a stretcher and the ambulance is about to take him away. Do you want to see him before the funeral?”

  Mother grabbed me again. “His face is blue.”

  “No. I don’t want to remember him like that.”

  Aunt Mimi left for a second. I heard the men carry Dad out. I hurried out to the living room. Uncle Mearl, devastated, looked at me. He tried to say something but his hands fell to his sides.

  Dr. Easton, a good family physician who’d known us since we moved, told Aunt Mimi to keep Mother on tranquilizers for a few weeks. He handed Aunt Mimi the pills.

  No one slept the rest of that night. I called Fairchild Funeral Home. Ron Fairchild was my classmate. I trusted the Fairchilds.

  Mother, disoriented, couldn’t do much of anything. She didn’t know day from night. Aunt Mimi, Julia Ellen, Russell and friends took turns keeping an eye on her.

  Funerals require so much work that you’re numb but busy. Since Mother couldn’t function, the task of burying my father fell on me and Aunt Mimi. We worked closely together. I saw a side of my aunt I’d never seen before. She knew what to do and she was rock solid.

  Russell cried like a baby. He loved Dad. We had to wait for Eugene and Dorcas, his wife, to get down from York.

  Dad had died of a massive heart attack at 56. He thought he had heartburn, got up and walked into the kitchen to drink Alka-Seltzer. By the time he walked back to bed he knew it wasn’t heartburn. He woke Mom, telling her to call Dr. Easton. Then he crawled into bed. The pain worsened.

  My father’s last words were, “Juts, close Rita’s door. I don’t want to wake her.”

  Mother had also called Sis. Mimi and Mearl
, living so close, reached her before the doctor but it was too late. Dr. Easton tried everything known at the time to revive Dad but he finally said to Mom, “He’s gone.”

  That’s when she tore into the room after me.

  Aunt Mimi and I went through Dad’s clothes. He had owned precious little: a watch, a carnelian ring with a Greek warrior’s head on it, a sport coat and a pair of dress shoes. He had some shorts and work shirts. He’d poured what little money he had into Mom and me. Dad hadn’t wanted anything for himself.

  When we took the clothes to the funeral home, he wasn’t there. The ambulance driver had taken Dad to Brown’s Funeral Home on North Route 1, an easy mistake to make, I guess. Anyway, we finally got him to Fairchild.

  Mother laughed through her tears because Dad was always late, even for his wedding. Now he was late for his funeral.

  As we rode to the funeral home, Mom, Aunt Mimi and I in the back of a white Continental, Mother said, “I’ve always wanted to ride in one of these things. Isn’t it terrible that someone has to die before you can do it?”

  It struck us as funny. We laughed until we reached the funeral home.

  In our family, the eldest child covers the body of the deceased parent. After the service I would have to walk up and cover Dad.

  What I didn’t know was that there would be over three hundred people at my father’s funeral.

  Stunned by the size of the crowd, since Dad was a simple butcher, Mom mumbled, “Who are these people?”

  “I don’t know,” Aunt Mimi replied.

  Betty Pierce, Connie Coyne, Jerry, Karen McCarthy and some other high-school friends attended. In a daze, I half knew they were there and half didn’t.

  I walked up and covered Dad and returned to my seat.

  We then drove to the cemetery for the final interment. All those people drove out with us.

  Once the ceremony was over, people came up to me. One black lady, sobbing, said, “Your daddy gave me food.” Some other people of color told me the same thing, and so did some white people. I’d had no idea my dad was taking care of people. Mom hadn’t known, either.

  Other people came up and shook my hand and said, “Your dad said you’d be the first woman president of the United States.”

  Still others told me how he’d recounted every single point that he had seen of my tennis match against Martha.

  Wave after wave of mourners walked over to pay their respects. Even Uncle Kenny was bawling like a baby. Mother had collapsed, and Uncle Mearl, with Russell’s help, had carried her back to the white Continental, where Aunt Mimi tended her sister. I was left with the social responsibilities. Wade and Kenny stood at a distance but they were ready to assist.

  I hurt so much it was hard to think. I was actually grateful for cotillion because I’d been drilled in proper funeral behavior for Protestants, Catholics and Jews. Form carried me through.

  By the time Russell escorted me back to the car, I wondered how I could have been so ignorant of my father’s life. Dad acted from his heart. He didn’t call attention to his deeds. He touched the lives of many people by helping where he could, handing out day-old bread or slipping someone meat or shoving five dollars into their hands.

  He wasn’t just there when I needed him. He was there when others needed him.

  People arrived at the house bearing food. Advise and Consent, a novel I was reading, provided a little comfort. I’d sneak into my bedroom, read a few pages and come out to speak to more people.

  The strain, lack of sleep and concern for Mother must have frayed Aunt Mimi’s nerves. At one point I think I was talking with a bit too much animation to a few high-school friends and she snapped, “Cool as a cucumber. Well, he wasn’t your father.”

  I said nothing. I was sixteen. The one person who I knew loved me just as I am was gone. I didn’t know if Mother would make it. It’s a strange sensation, because you’re the center of positive attention but the circumstances are dreadful. Maybe I was enjoying myself or seeming to enjoy myself because of that. Then, too, Aunt Mimi and Mother brooked no rivals for center stage. They played tragedy as handily as they played comedy.

  I decided I needed a walk. The Florida East Coast Railway ran near our house. I walked over to the tracks. A gleaming red and yellow engine roared by, pulling car after car of passengers.

  Staring at the faces in the windows, I was overcome with rage. My father was dead. How could they sit there as though nothing had happened? But nothing had happened—to them. I was a lonely speck standing by the railroad tracks.

  And that’s as it should be. Life goes on.

  I waved; a few people waved back.

  35

  Do or Die

  Mother dragged to work. Hollow eyes, no laughter, not even a flash of hostility—she was dead in a way, too.

  The night after Dad’s funeral I had a dream that woke me. I was mowing the lawn. Dad walked toward me from the railroad tracks. He was young again, in his thirties.

  I said, “Dad, you’re dead. What are you doing here?”

  He smiled at me and said, “Take care of your mother.”

  That’s all I remember. But I sat up in bed and knew I was the head of the house. I also remembered with a shiver that about two weeks before Dad died, I’d dreamed of his death. I’d run into the bedroom to make sure he was alive. I’d forgotten about that dream in my relief. Funny, that I would dream such a thing.

  We had no money. Even with Dad working, our annual income was two thousand dollars a year.

  Aunt Mimi suggested I quit school and go right to work.

  Mother was in no condition to consider anything. I didn’t want to talk to her about it.

  Aunt Mimi leaned hard on me and I leaned right back.

  My senior year in high school meant the world to me. I wasn’t going to give it up, but I was willing to work after school and on weekends.

  Before I could go job hunting, Jimmy Evert offered me more work at the tennis courts. Sometimes I would come in in the morning, before school. The city’s tiny budget had a little room for me, or so I thought. Jimmy could well have paid me out of his pocket and told no one. He’s that kind of man. His help meant I could have my senior year. Other people surprised me. Adults, as you would expect, had a real understanding of how deep a blow Dad’s death was. The men at the courts would buy me hamburgers. One of the ladies made me a pretty tennis dress since I had only white gym shorts and white T-shirts.

  Hans made a point of bringing me books.

  Without my being aware of it, I was watched out of the corner of many an eye.

  God knows I needed help, but I was too young and too dumb to know it. I didn’t know what to do with Mother, though. She’d get up in the middle of the night, go outside and call Dad as if she were calling the cat.

  Skippy and I would wake up, and Sunshine, Mom’s poodle, would be next to her, scanning the yard. We’d open the front door and bring her inside.

  Befuddled, she’d implore, “Where’s Butch?”

  I’d put her to bed but then I couldn’t go back to sleep.

  True to form, she never missed a lick of work. The house sparkled. She cooked, washed and ironed. She gardened.

  She hardly spoke. That shocked me. Even Aunt Mimi hardly spoke.

  I buried myself in school. I hung blue and white yarn dolls from Mom’s rearview mirror to show school spirit. I knocked out great college board scores, which took some of the pressure off me. I knew that high grades from a southern high school wouldn’t be enough to get me into a good college.

  My service club, Anchor, offered plenty of activity to keep my mind off home, and as a member of the student council, I had keys to get in and out of school after hours. Sometimes I’d turn a library light on and read. I didn’t want to go home.

  Other times I’d stay at the Holiday Park courts until the last person left and Jimmy shooed me out.

  Around this time one of my girlfriends, and I will never quite know why she did this, told me she was dying. O
ne curveball had beaned me already. Two?

  I told Betty Pierce. A few of us huddled together and decided we’d make her senior year great. We had before us the example of one of our husky football players from the class of 1961, dying of leukemia. And one of the most popular girls in school, Vicki Leaird, had died three years earlier because the hospital didn’t have an iron lung. Death at a young age was real for all of us.

  One night, this girl stayed late at school. She started crying and seemed to feel so awful. I hugged her and told her things would get better. She kissed me and I kissed her back.

  It never occurred to me that this was a lesbian act. I didn’t think in those terms and I still don’t. Determined to put aside sex until I could become financially established, I wasn’t going to fall for boys or girls.

  She was good company, a hard worker, and I really liked her.

  In looking back, it’s clear our relationship was so innocent. We wrote one another romantic letters. We kissed and hugged. We hadn’t a clue about sex, really, but our relationship was clearly romantic.

  As far as I was concerned, I was going to marry Jerry Pfeiffer even though he hadn’t asked me. I was quite untroubled by the prospect of caring for two people and I just figured whatever she needed, we’d all pitch in. This kissing stuff was okay. I liked it fine.

  Her mother read the letters I wrote her. My mother read the letters she wrote me. Mom, still grieving, was waking up a little. The girl’s mother, Mrs. Busybody, visited Mom and told her we’d have to stay apart.

  When I came home that night, Mom told me all this. I was mad but not too upset. I told Mom that the girl had said she was mortally ill. Boy, that burned Mom up. But she got hold of herself and didn’t call Mrs. Busy-body. She let it go, telling me to steer clear—I had enough to contend with in my life. I agreed. Whatever my sexual inclination might be, Mom didn’t care. You married, had children, saved face and did whatever you wanted to do discreetly.

  Who knows what Mrs. Busybody said to her daughter? The girl panicked and told our friends that I was a lesbian. She, of course, wasn’t.