Joey quit chiming the poles together and approached the new boy with the diffidence of a fourteen-year-old.
“Hi,” he said, hanging back a little. “I’m Joey.”
“I’m Judd.”
After a second of hesitation the two shook hands. Joey said, “Wanna help with these poles?”
“Sure,” Judd said.
And so the picnic began.
ORRINtouched a match to the briquettes, sending the smell of hot charcoal across the yard. “The Stars and Stripes Forever” came from the speaker, and Janice’s friends started an impromptu parade. Lee found an old baton in Janice’s room and everybody took turns trying to twirl it. Peg Hillier did surprisingly well and admitted she’d been a majorette in her youth. While she was twirling, dressed in pedal pushers and a loose shirt that covered her slight potbelly, Orrin’s eyes got quite avid and he whispered to Joey, “You know, when your grandma was a senior in high school every boy in the class wanted to date her. I was the lucky one.” Judd overheard and took a second look at Peg. She threw the baton into the air and missed it. “Try it again, Peg!” “Go for it, Grandma!” everyone shouted. On the third try she succeeded in catching it and the entire crowd cheered. When the song ended she laughed at herself, pressed a palm to her chest and fanned her face with the other hand. Orrin took her by both shoulders and whispered something into her ear, after which she laughed again and gave the baton back to the younger girls. Joey lugged a box of bocce balls out of the garage and a game started up, going from front yard to back to front again with nobody paying attention to court rules.
Lee came out of the garage with a baseball bat, shouting, “All right, everybody! Time to choose sides for the volleyball game! Christopher and I will be captains!”
She marched toward Christopher and sent the bat on a vertical ride through the air. He caught it low on the barrel, just beneath the trademark, still surprised by her announcement.
“You count knobs?” she asked, slapping a right-handed grip just above his while firing him a mischievous look of challenge.
“Darn right.” He gripped it with a right.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
Clear up the bat till only the knob was left. She put a cat claw on it and said smugly, “Me first. I choose Judd.”
“Oh, you are really underhanded,” he murmured with mock scorn, then shot back, “Joey!”
“Dad.”
“Mrs. Hillier.” Everybody did a woo-woo number because there were still lots of guys left. “Well, we can’t have a husband and wife on the same team!” Christopher claimed. “Too much scrapping! Besides, she twirls a mean baton. I’ll bet she’s going to be good.”
“For heaven’s sake, call me Peg,” she said, joining his squad.
“Barry.”
“Janice.”
“Sylvia.”
“Hey, I thought we couldn’t have a husband and wife on the same team!”
They had a pleasant time haranguing back and forth during the remainder of the choosing up. They had just finished when Nolan Steeg sauntered into the backyard, tall, lean and muscular.
“Hey, we get Nolan!”
“No, we get Nolan!”
Nolan puffed out his chest and spread his arms wide. “Am I wanted?” he hammed. “Take me . . . take me!”
It turned out his cousin, a redheaded kid named Ruffy, was up for the week, and stepped into the backyard right behind Nolan, so each side took one of the power players.
They played a stupendously bad game, with lots of people letting the ball drop two feet in front of their faces. They got into arguments about the out-of-bounds markers and finally laid out four tennis shoes to represent the corners of the court. Lee yelled “Oh, noooo, not the flowers!” the first time the ball headed that way. Then they all watched the ball snap off a yellow lily. Lloyd retrieved the ball, high-stepping into the flower bed and putting the lily behind his left ear with a “Sorry, honey” as he returned to the game. The next time the ball headed for the gardens about four voices chorused “ Oh, noooo, not the flowers!” After that it became the battle call that inevitably raised laughter as the gardens took a battering and Lee, shrugging good-naturedly, turned her palms up to the sky.
Judd could leap like a pogo stick and every time he got on the front line Lee’s team would score. Joey was pretty good at spiking, too, and the game picked up momentum. Peg Hillier made a save on the sideline and garnered high fives from her teammates when the point had been made. And twice while Lee and Christopher were playing on their front lines directly opposite each other, they banged chests while going for the ball at the same time. The second time, he knocked her down and stepped on her left ankle when he landed.
Immediately he came under the net. “Sorry. You okay?” He offered her a hand up.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Hopping on one foot, she added, “You big lug.”
“You sure?” He brushed some dry grass off her back.
“I’m gonna get you for this,” she threatened in the best of humor. “So get back over to your own side of the net.”
The game ended when the redheaded cousin named Ruffy accidentally broke wind—very loudly—while going after a tough return on game point, making everyone laugh.
“It’s time we put the steaks on,” Lee said, heading for the deck, wiping her brow. Someone turned on the garden hose and it got passed from hand to hand for drinks. Beer and soda cans popped. “Who’ll take care of the sweet corn?”
Barry and Sylvia did. From a tub of saltwater they fished ears of corn, still in their husks, and slapped them, sizzling, onto one of the grills. They turned them wearing asbestos mitts, while Orrin and Lloyd took over the grilling of the steaks, raising an aroma that made everyone’s mouth water. A parade of helpers carried bowls of food from the kitchen. The sun had shifted and tables needed moving into the shade.
Orrin announced, “I think some of this steak is done.”
Sylvia stripped the corn husks off the first perfect yellow ear and swabbed it with a paintbrush from the butter kettle. “Corn’s ready!”
The slow procession started around the buffet table, past the corn station and over to the grills where the steaks were raising curls of fragrant smoke.
“Anyone want iced tea?”
“Here, Mom, I’ll do that.” Janice came to take the cold pitcher out of Lee’s hands and distribute paper cups.
Lee was nearly the last one to fill her plastic plate with potato salad, baked beans, pickles and steak. She carried it to one of the two long picnic tables where Chris sat with Joey, Judd and some others. “Hey, skootch over,” she said, nudging him with her hip. He pulled his plate over and she slid onto the bench beside him.
“How’s the corn?” she inquired.
“Mmm . . .” He was butter from dimple to dimple. He grinned at her and chewed another mouthful with his elbows propped on the tabletop. She took up the same pose and went to work, nibbling along a row of buttery yellow kernels. He reached for a salt shaker, sprinkled his corn, and as he settled back into place, his warm bare arm slid down along hers.
They both pulled apart, concentrated on their corn and tried to pretend it hadn’t happened.
Across the table Judd and Joey were comparing notes on the music they liked—rap versus country.
From a table nearby, Janice called, “Mom, these baked beans are terrific.”
“So is the potato salad,” Christopher added. “Bachelors don’t get a treat like this very often.”
“Even ones who know how to cook?” she inquired.
“I cook pretty simple things, mostly.”
“My mother taught me how to make potato salad. She’s got a secret.”
“What?”
“A little sweet pickle juice in the dressing.” Lee raised her voice. “Isn’t that right, Mom?”
“What’s that?” At another table, Peg turned in her chair and looked back over her shoulder.
“Pi
ckle juice in the potato salad.”
“That’s right. But yours is every bit as good as mine, honey.”
Lloyd came around refilling iced tea glasses. He patted Lee’s shoulder. “Nice picnic, dear.”
From another table one of the cousins called, “Hey, Aunt Lee?”
“What, Josh?”
“Is it really true that when you were eleven years old you drove Grandpa’s car through the window of the dime store?”
Lee dropped her empty corn cob and covered her head with both arms. “Oh my God.”
“Did you, Aunt Lee?”
She came up blushing. “Daddy, did you tell him that?” she scolded.
“Did she really, Grandpa?”
“Well now, Josh, I told you it wasn’t exactly through the window, just a few feet into it.”
Christopher smiled down at Lee’s right ear, which was as red as the zinnias in her garden.
“What’s this?” he teased quietly.
“Daddy, I could crown you!” she blustered.
Christopher teased, “It’s no wonder you didn’t get upset about Joey driving. At least he waited till he was fourteen. And he didn’t do it on the main street of town.”
Somebody said, “Hey, what about the time when my dad peed through the screen. Tell ’em, Dad.”
It was Orrin Hillier’s turn to be put on the hot seat. He laughed and pretended embarrassment, but everyone convinced him to tell the oft-repeated story. “Well, it was when we were kids, and we lived on the farm and I slept with my brother, Jim. Our room was on the second floor, of course, and one summer we got the idea that when we had to get up and go in the middle of the night we could save ourselves the trouble of walking all that way outside to the outhouse by just whizzing through the screen. We got by with it for quite a while, but don’t you know, the next year in the spring when my dad was changing the storm windows, he noticed that one of the screens was all rusting out in a perfect circle, about, oh”—he measured off a distance from the ground with one hand—“about wiener high to a couple of snot-nosed boys. And we sure caught it then.”
“What happened?”
“We had to shell corn. He put us out in a corncrib with one of those old hand-crank shellers and said, ‘Go to work, boys, and don’t stop till the crib is empty.’ Well, he took pity on us around suppertime, when I suspect my mom stuck up for us, but let me tell you, I’ve never had blisters like that before or since.”
Christopher had been watching Judd’s eyes while the story was being told. He had hiked one foot up beneath him on the picnic bench and stretched his neck to see over the heads around him. Like any child of twelve, he had watched the storyteller and listened with his empty fork forgotten against his teeth. He had laughed when the others laughed. He had experienced firsthand the flow of familial lore from one generation to the next, and the fascination showed on his face.
When the story ended he said to Joey, “I thought grampas were like, you know, soybean people, but yours is definitely primo.”
Joey smiled and said, “Yeah, I think so, too.”
They had watermelon for dessert, followed by a watermelon seed spitting contest, which Sylvia won. She received a box of sparklers as her prize.
They played more volleyball, bocce and croquet, and when evening set in ate leftovers, then began cleaning up the yard and the kitchen. By the time they headed for Sand Creek Park, Lee hadn’t one item left to fold up, wash or pack away.
Joey said, “Hey, Chris, can I ride with you and Judd?”
“Sure.”
“You got room for me, too?” Lloyd asked.
“You bet. Jump right in.”
Lee rode with her parents, Janice with all the girls. The cavalcade left the house when the sun was sitting on the rim of the world and the neighborhood resounded with an occasional volley of firecrackers.
At Sand Creek, a huge multifield baseball complex, the surrounding unpaved parkland had been pressed into use as parking lots. The cars, entering bumper to bumper, raised a fine haze of dust that settled like a lanugo on the vehicles as they pulled in. The sky had lost color, faded like an iris left in water too long. The warmth of the day lifted from the sandy earth, met by a press of coolness beginning above. Crayon-colored lights, subdued by dust, blinked and gyrated in the distance where a carnival beckoned. Its enticing clamor drifted across the field, interspersed with the occasional report of firecrackers. Children ran among the cars. Adults walked. The oldest of them carried webbed lawn chairs.
Joey and Judd jogged ahead, raising puffs of dust, talking animatedly as they headed for the carnival and its promise of excitement.
Ambling after them, Lloyd remarked to Chris, “Those two seem to be hitting it off quite well.”
“Better than I expected.”
Lee called from behind them, “Hey, you two, wait for us.”
And that’s how Lee ended up beside Christopher, where she seemed to stay the remainder of the night, while Lloyd faded back and fell in beside Lee’s folks.
“Want to walk over to the carnival?” Lee asked the older ones.
Her mother replied, “No, I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day. I’ll just settle down on a blanket and wait for the fireworks.” Orrin and Lloyd agreed.
“Mind if we go for a while?” Lee asked.
“Of course not. Have fun,” her mother replied.
“We’ll find you later.”
They ambled through the dusty grass toward the red, blue and yellow bars of moving neon, toward the smell of popcorn and Pronto Pups and the sounds of carnival engines and calliope music. All day long they’d been with others; their footsteps slowed as they shared this first time alone.
“Thanks for today,” he said, “and especially for letting Judd come.”
“You’re welcome. I was glad to have you both.”
“I don’t think he’s ever experienced anything like it before. He doesn’t have any grandparents that I know of. I was watching his eyes when your dad was telling his story, and the kid was transfixed.”
“The rest of us have heard that old story so often we know it by heart.”
“That’s exactly the point. I wanted him to see how a real family works, and you all certainly gave him a firsthand look.”
“Well, you can bring him anytime.”
“He and Joey seemed to warm up to each other eventually. They were talking and laughing together quite a bit by the end of the day.”
He glanced down at her as they reached the periphery of the carnival. She had put on fresh lipstick before leaving the house, and walked with a sweater folded over her arm. The lights of the carnival stained her face and danced across her eyes, which suddenly grew sad as the sights and sounds amplified. Instinct told him she was remembering Greg, a childhood Greg, perhaps, a little boy begging for one more ride, for money for another treat. In all his life, how many times had Greg Reston been brought here on the Fourth of July by his parents? Year after year until it became tradition. Now the tradition continued without him.
She stopped walking as they reached the midway, stood staring at it while his heart hurt for her.
“Do you want anything?” he offered—a paltry offering, but what else had he?
She shook her head and walked a few steps away, presumably to hide her tears.
He moved up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “You brought him here every Fourth when he was a kid, didn’t you?”
She nodded stiffiy and spoke only after a long silence. “You can go through a day like today and do pretty well. Then you face something like this and it’s as if you . . . you expect to see him running toward you through the crowd.”
“Eight years old, I bet.”
“Eight, nine, ten . . . asking for more money for the rides. I think it’s the smells that do it. It happens more often when there’s a familiar smell around than at any other time. Have you noticed that?”
“It’s still that way in the bathroom at our apartment. It seems wor
se in that room than anyplace else. Like his aftershave is imbedded in the walls.”
They stood motionless, his hand on her shoulder, while people milled past and a man in a white apron and a white paper hat twisted a white paper cone full of pink cotton candy.
“Let’s take a ride,” he suggested.
“I don’t feel much like it.”
“Neither do I, but let’s do it anyway.”
She turned, looked back over her shoulder and his hand fell away. “I don’t feel like it, Christopher.”
“How about on the Ferris wheel?”
She looked at it and realized he was suggesting the right thing to get them over this emotional stone upon which they’d stumbled. “Oh, all right, but I’m afraid I won’t be very good company.”
He bought a string of tickets, used four and they boarded the Ferris-wheel. Her eyes were dry but she looked as if only determination kept them that way. They sat without touching, their bare legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles while the machine took them backward in lurches and starts as others boarded below.
“I’ve been reading about grief,” Christopher told her. “It says that facing places the first time will be hardest and that you shouldn’t try facing them all at once. You’re supposed to give yourself time. Don’t try to be a hero about it.”
“I’m not trying to be a hero,” she said.
“Aren’t you? You made the flowers for his coffin. You went right into his bedroom and cleaned it out. You went right ahead and planned the Fourth of July, the same as always. Maybe you need to cool it for a while and not be quite so strong. Hell, Lee, I’ve watched you and you blow my mind. All the while I’m admiring your strength, I’m wondering how you do it. I think tonight it’s finally catching up with you.”
Her anger flared out of nowhere. Her rust-colored eyes flashed his way. “How dare you criticize me! You haven’t been through it! You don’t know what it’s like!”
“No, I haven’t. Not like you. But nobody’s asking you to be Superwoman.”
The Ferris wheel moved and green lights picked out the tracks of tears on her cheeks. Regret shot through Christopher and made his ribs feel too tight.
Family Blessings Page 15