Live Free or Die

by Jessie Crockett

  “That’s heartless. Don’t you remember playing here when we were kids?”I asked. “When Mum and Dad played bridge with Beulah and Granny?”

  “Sort of.” Augusta leaned against a stuffed chair with broken springs. “I think we were here a few times.” She stashed the album back in the box.

  “I can’t believe how bad your memory is. We played in this attic every Thursday night for years. It’s like you never lived here at all.”

  “I can’t help it if my memory’s like a wad of cheesecloth. Besides, you can’t move forward if you’re always looking back.”

  “We played dress-up and damsel in distress. You always wore one of those fox stoles and played the princess. You made me be the prince who rescued you.” I stood up and scouted around for the trunk that held the dress up clothes.

  “That sounds right,” Augusta said. “You were a tomboy and never wanted rescuing.” She had a point. The idea of waiting for someone else to fix what ailed me never held any charm.

  “Help me look for the dress-up trunk,” I said. “We’ll see if the clothing jogs your memory.” Just as Augusta stood up to join the search, I thought I heard a thumping noise at the base of the stairs. I froze and strained my ears. The arsonist spooked me more than I wanted to admit.

  “Gwen, you’ve got to see this,” Augusta called from the far end of the attic. I kept glancing back over my shoulder as I followed the sound of her voice. A low wattage bulb hanging in the center of the room was the only source of light besides the grimy windows tucked into each gable. Augusta stood silhouetted against the fading sunlight and pointed into a long narrow box.

  “What is it?” I would have sworn the floorboards behind me creaked.

  “I believe it’s meant to bring you face-to-face with your own mortality. I bet it belonged to a secret men’s society.” Augusta moved sideways, and more light shafted onto the box. Inside the satin-lined box lay a skeleton, its bones held together by metal pins. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a shadow moving steadily across the floor. I screeched and hurled myself to the far side of my sister. Knocking against the underside of the roof, I gouged my scalp on a protruding nail.

  “You can’t be frightened of this old thing.” Augusta reached into the box and patted the skeleton so high up his thigh that his ghost was probably blushing.

  “It’s not him. Something’s moving around up here,” I whispered.

  “You’re imagining things. No one’s with us except this guy, and we can handle him.”

  “Shh,” I whispered, squinting under the dusky eaves.

  “Oh,” squealed Augusta, spotting Beulah’s cat Pinkerton. Like all men, he made a beeline for Augusta and displayed interest in her legs. “We forgot all about you. You must be half starved.” Puffs of fur drifted off Pinkerton’s oversized body as she squeezed him to her chest. She picked her way across the cluttered floor to the narrow stairs. I followed as closely as I dared, sneezing and blinking my watering eyes.

  “He must have a kitty carrier around here somewhere.” Augusta tugged on her coat.

  “Where are you planning on taking him, Gusty?” I gave a little cough, hoping she’d remember my allergy.

  “Home, of course. He can’t stay here.” Augusta buried her face in his neck and made a smooching sound.

  “I’m allergic to cats. He can’t stay at my house.”

  “I’m starved,” Augusta said over the wails coming from the cat carrier.

  “Let’s pick up something at Dinah’s on the way home.” I brushed at dust and grime clinging to the legs of my sweatpants.

  “We’re not going anywhere with you looking like that.” Augusta pointed a manicured finger at me and looked to the cat for support.

  “Like what? I wear this outfit all the time.” I glanced down at my flannel shirt hanging unbuttoned over a fundraiser tee shirt from when Josh was in elementary school.

  “That makes it worse. Besides, remember my date with Gene?”

  “I’d forgotten.” Actually I hadn’t, but I hoped she had. I didn’t want to spend the evening alone while Augusta went out. It was easier not to date if no one else was doing it either.

  “Maybe Gene has a friend. We could double.” She nudged me in the ribs.

  “I don’t need anyone to fix me up.” She looked at me like I was a dog with three legs trying to run, spunky but pitiful.

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’m not in the market.”

  “Everyone’s in the market. Even married people are in the market. It’s biological.” Augusta locked the door behind us. It was probably the first time the door had been locked since Beulah had visited our mother in Florida four years earlier.

  “The batteries in my biological clock have corroded.” I jerked open the car door and shoved the keys in the ignition.

  “Then you just need new batteries.” Augusta slid in beside me and pulled my keys out. “I think you need a change.”

  “I’m fine. Everything is great.” Augusta stared at me, and I did my best to stare back. “I’m used to being me, and everyone else is, too.”

  “Who cares about everyone else? For once stop thinking about everyone else and start looking in the mirror. Try it right now.” Augusta dug in her purse which could double as a moving van in most of the world and dragged out a compact. Flipping it open and clicking on the map light, she shoved it in my hand. “Does this look like a woman who should be worrying about everyone else?”

  I took stock of myself. My face looked like my sweatpants, grimy and worn out, covered in wrinkles and bits of fuzz. Even my eyes, which I thought of as my best feature didn’t hold any sparkle. Actually, they were red and felt gritty.

  “It just isn’t important to me, Gusty. Raising the boys and working are my priorities.” I closed the compact and handed it to her.

  “The boys are grown. You have time for yourself now.”

  “I’m busy with village commitments. I’m a museum trustee, a historical society member. I’m on the planning board.”

  “Don’t forget the fire department.”

  “See? I don’t have time.”

  “Why do you choose not to have time?”

  “I don’t choose it. People ask for help, and I can’t say no.”

  “Everyone else says no. What makes you so special?”

  “Being the postmistress is kind of a default public official. People expect it of me.”

  “Well, they ought to stop expecting it. I’m not just talking about your wardrobe, Gwen. I’m worried about your happiness and health. When I say you don’t look good, it isn’t just your hair or clothes I’m talking about. You look run down and discouraged. And lonely. If you don’t do something about it soon, I’m telling Mum.” She leaned over and stuck the keys back in the ignition then fastened her seatbelt. I backed down the driveway wondering which was worse, reinventing myself enough to satisfy my sister or having my mother decide to come take care of me.

  It had happened once before. Once Owen was born, my mother decided the baby and I needed round-the-clock care, so she moved in with us for two weeks. Unfortunately, her version of care involved sitting in the rocker holding the baby and telling me stories about the women she knew whose babies died of mystery illnesses.

  “You do that, and I’ll be sure to mention how you brought a cat into my house. You know she worries about my allergies.”

  “They’re all in your head.”

  Eleven

  Fuzzy nuzzling woke me the next morning. At first I thought it was Peter’s armpit hair tickling my nose. I stretched and draped my arm over what I thought was his chest. Picking a hair off my tongue, I remembered Peter was still dead. Pinkerton had taken his place next to me. That summed up my life at present, nothing in my bed but a writhing mass of allergens shedding all over me.

  I threw back the covers and dug my feet into my slippers. Maybe it was my imagination, but it felt like my face was on fire. I clomped to the bathroom and peered into the mirror. Raised wel
ts covered my face, leaving just enough space for my eyes to squint out.

  Beulah’s funeral was going to be the most-attended in town since Elmer Burrows’ twelve years ago, necessitated by an icicle dislodging from his roof and driving through his skull. Staying home sick was not an option. I needed to be there, but I didn’t want my face to be bigger news than Beulah’s death. Besides, I wanted to look professional if Hugh showed up to compare notes. This called for groveling.

  I knocked on Augusta’s door. No answer. I pushed it open and saw my sister sprawled on her back, a red satin eye mask on her face. Her blond hair fanned across the pillow as if she’d been posed by a fashion photographer or a serial killer making a statement. It was going to be painful to grovel before the queen of beauty.

  “Help.” I hoped I sounded sad enough to evoke sisterly pity.

  “Help,” I tried again in a louder voice. Nothing.

  “Help!” I shouted, shaking the foot of the bed like a caged gorilla. Augusta surfaced from slumber like a rescued drowning victim. Lurching upright, gasping and clawing at her eye mask, she took one look at my face and burst into hysterical laughter. She stumbled out of the bed and staggered down the hall. The bathroom door slammed, but laughter still echoed down the hall. I slunk back into my room to get dressed. It was 5:45 a.m. according to my digital alarm clock.

  I dressed more carefully than usual. Nothing was going to offset the face entirely, but perhaps the artful use of accessories might help. In my jewelry box I found a pair of large, gold hoop earrings I never wore. Yanking a multicolored scarf from a box at the bottom of my closet, I tied it around my neck as a distraction from my face. Twisting it to the left, then the right, I wondered how foreign women on TV always looked chic in scarves. They throw them on any old way and look glamorous while I couldn’t manage one that wasn’t made of worsted wool and designed to ward off frostbite when you fed the chickens. I pulled it off and tried it on my head.

  “Are you a gypsy or a pirate?” Augusta asked from the doorway.

  “Neither. I can’t go to work looking like this,” I said, pointing at my blistering face.

  “Well, you can’t go looking like that either.” She snatched the scarf off my head and placed an antihistamine and a glass of water into my hands. “Take that, and we’ll get you started drinking about a gallon of water. We need to flush whatever is bothering you out of your system.”

  “I told you not to bring that cat here.”

  “He would have died if we’d left him.”

  “I could have died from anaphylaxis.”

  “Because you’ve been having a hard week, I won’t mention you’re overreacting.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “What am I going to do about my face? I can’t go to work or the funeral like this.” She left the room, and I stood there alone, twisting the scarf around and around in my hands and wondering how I was going to live through a day full of Winston, Clive and Ray laughing at me.

  Augusta breezed back into the room with a pitcher of water and a mini steamer trunk. She heaved it onto the bed and shoved Pinkerton onto the floor.

  “Scoot,” she commanded the cat, and like most men, he obeyed. She popped the latches on the trunk and selected some brushes and jars. She turned to the closet and flicked through the clothes. “Don’t you own anything that doesn’t look like you washed the car with it?” She frowned at fleece vests, ratty cardigans and baggy pleated wool skirts.

  Augusta shuddered as she crossed the room to the dresser. Opening the top drawer she rooted around and held up a pair of white cotton granny panties and a sports bra with holes for inspection. She slammed the drawer closed and tried the next. Augusta tossed faded turtlenecks and University of New Hampshire sweatshirts in a heap on the floor in the corner.

  “And I thought your face was in bad shape.” She shook her head at me and left the room again. Returning with things from her suitcase, she held dozens of garments up to me before settling on an outfit.

  “Drink another glass of water and put those on.” She pointed to the pile.

  “We aren’t the same size.”

  “How can you be drinking water and talking at the same time?” she asked. I drank some water and picked up a black turtleneck sweater. It was soft and looked three sizes too small. A lacy bra topped the pile. It was reinforced in ways that were probably regulated by a government oversight board.

  “I’m not desperate enough to borrow your bra.”

  “Yes, you are. You just haven’t realized it yet. You have to learn to harness the power of your bust for good instead of evil. Your sports bra presses your breasts under your armpits and turns them into back fat.” Thinking about my photo in the paper, I conceded that she might have a point. Swallowing my pride along with some more water, I took the bra.

  “What is that?” I poked at an under garment that looked like it belonged to the Victorian era.

  “A foundation garment. It sucks in all the jiggly bits.”

  “It looks like something Granny Binks would have worn.”

  “Where do you think I get my fashion sense? You’ll love it.”

  “I’ll try it.”

  “Good. You get dressed while I start some coffee. I’m not up to giving you a makeover without caffeine.”

  Thrashing and squirming, I wedged myself into the underwear and then moved on to a pair of gray trousers. The pants slid over my hips and even zipped. I was attempting to hook together the bra when Augusta returned.

  “Not like that. It will work miracles but not without cooperation from you.”

  “I’ve been wearing a bra since I was thirteen. I know how to put one on.”

  “Obviously, you don’t. You have to lean forward and scoop everything available into the cups. That’s where the harness part comes in. Flab can be your friend. You just have to know how to use it.” With that Augusta bent forward and demonstrated. Her technique explained the discrepancy between my saggy bust line and her perky chin rest. I bent forward to give it a try for myself. My bust was naturally younger than hers by two years. The results would have to be at least as good. I stood up and inspected my work in the mirror.

  “I think you need to work on symmetry.” Augusta squinted at my handiwork. I agreed. About two more pounds of fat had gotten piled into the right cup than the left. It would be a more convincing look if both of my cups would runneth over instead of just one. After a few more tries I had no more difference between the sides than a mother whose infant was full after nursing on only one breast. It was a look I’d been comfortable with twenty years before. Not exactly how Augusta had planned on making me look younger, but it was all we had time for that morning.

  I slid the turtleneck on and checked the mirror again. I turned to get a rear view and sure enough, no back fat. I stared at Augusta with new respect.

  “Now sit over here, and we’ll fix your face,” she commanded. I perched gingerly at the edge of the bed. Cat hairs were scattered about the quilt like allergy land mines.

  Augusta dabbed light beige foundation around my face. The cream felt cool on my flaming skin, and I was less itchy than I’d been before.

  “Hold still. I’m moving on to your eyes.” She zeroed in on my eyebrows with a pair of tweezers and began sighing loudly. I couldn’t remember plucking them since Peter died. Humiliatingly enough, she plucked some things off my chin too.

  “Are you going to be much longer?” I asked.

  “Beauty takes time, Gwen, especially when there’s been so much neglect.” Augusta rolled up a tube of her favorite lipstick.

  “I’m not wearing that. I’ll look like a hussy.”

  “Are you saying I look like a hussy?” Augusta asked, eyes wide and innocent looking.

  “No, but you don’t look like you are from around here.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. The only belles around here are the ones in the church steeple.” She had a point. Traditionally, New England women have been too practical to be more decorative than useful. Fro
m the time the Pilgrims landed, we’ve needed all hands on deck to survive. A lot of New Hampshire has no more than a hundred frost-free days per year. Between snow, rain and mud season, the most practical footwear you can own is a pair of insulated boots. Predictably, the region’s leading fashion designer is L.L. Bean.

  “Your hairdresser should have her license revoked.” Augusta lifted my curls off the back of my neck.

  “What hairdresser?”

  “Figures.” She grabbed a round, prickly brush and a pot of goo that she worked through my hair like she was kneading bread dough. I sat there waiting for my scalp to rise until doubled. I was sure the only thing left was for Augusta to bake me until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped. “Okay. Take a look.”

  Augusta steered me toward the mirror. If someone had shown me a photo of the woman looking back at me, I would have suspected I’d seen her somewhere but couldn’t quite place her. A cousin perhaps, but not me.

  I turned sideways. No pouch popped out where my abs were supposed to be. Turning frontward, my saddlebags were missing. My bust stood front and center, proud of itself for the first time in forever. My thighs no longer looked like two sand bags left by the army corps of engineers once the river stopped threatening to jump its banks. But my face was the biggest miracle of all.

  Augusta had managed to hide or flush out all the redness from my face. I actually had eyelashes. My lips were pouty and voluptuous. Where there had been only one brown eyebrow sprinkled with graying hairs, there were now two—with no gray hairs in sight and no hairs of any kind sprouting from my chin.

  “I don’t mean to hurry you, since you’re obviously enjoying yourself, but it’s getting late. Isn’t that yummy fire investigator supposed to be there this morning?” I glanced at the clock and sprinted toward the stairs. Before I got to the base she called out to me.

  “Shoes make or break the outfit. Catch!” Augusta tossed down her black high-heeled boots and waved.