Walter accelerated. Wind rushed into the backseat. Irini’s hair flew about her head, whipped into her eyes. “Could you roll your window up, Walter?” Irini asked. “Ruby?”
No one seemed to hear her. “You’re too good for the Sweethearts,” said Walter. “You could play for Racine. They always need pitching in the majors.”
“Do you think so?” Ruby asked. Her smile deepened into her cheeks. “I just want to play. I don’t care where. I’m happy to be here.”
“We’re happy to have you here,” said Walter.
“It’s nice that you’re here.” Irini’s voice had a funny tone to it, just a bit cross, perhaps, because when she opened her mouth to speak, her hair blew into it. But no one seemed to notice.
They arrived at the school. The May girls were late. Irini took the field, jamming her hair back into place with her cap. Walter took up his stance at the plate and tagged practice balls around the diamond.
The outfield had become a mass of dandelions, each ripened into the shape of a detonated firework and only slightly more permanent. Irini made a wish and blew one clean. The very next ball came to her. She picked it up smoothly and threw it all the way home.
27
Anna Peal escaped from the circus in clown shoes. The prints they made in the snows of her little island were considered too big to be hers, so no one followed. But her ordeal was far from over. She headed north toward home. The sun was draped and invisible, but she adjusted her directions by the mossy sides of trees.
The farther she went, the snowier it got. She dug under the snow for food, dug into the snow to sleep. She fell into a snowdrift and was forced to build a fire to dry her clothes. She trapped a white rabbit and stewed it with a few simple but aromatic herbs. The story cut delicately away so no one had to picture little Anna tearing a rabbit apart and eating it with her bare hands. Probably she would set a place of leaves.
She transformed the clown shoes into snowshoes by adding a lattice sole made of strips of bark. After stripping the bark from the tree, she had tapped for syrup. Even with her extensive cold-weather training and native good sense, it began to seem possible that she would not make it. She was beginning to go snow-blind, beginning to hallucinate dark shapes in the shining clouds in her eyes. This was Anna, so the difference between her delusional and regular state was a subtle one.
“I’m home,” she cried happily, although the music told otherwise. “There’s our little cottage. There’s Mother and Father. But why won’t they look at me? Mother! Father! Oh, they don’t see me. And I’m so sleepy. I think I’ll just rest here. It can’t hurt to close my eyes, just for a minute.” She heard her mother’s voice singing softly, ominously, the lullaby from Hansel and Gretel, the one that is so full of angels.
“Isn’t that funny, Mother?” she said. “It’s snowing like everything, but suddenly I’m nice and warm.”
“She’s cooked her goose this time,” Irini’s father opined. He was smoking his after-dinner pipe. The curtains were drawn to keep the heat out of the house, so the smoke swirled and settled in the dim light, giving the kitchen an odor somewhat like bus exhaust. In spite of the curtains, there were still beads of sweat on the plate of cheese, butter melting away like the Wicked Witch of the West.
Irini wiped a damp hand across her forehead. She didn’t feel like playing. “Nothing is ever going to happen to Anna,” Irini said. No doubt housework was a dignified and honorable activity, but barring the occasional laundry-day surprise, it lacked excitement. She resented little Anna for implying otherwise. “A bear will befriend her. She will bake a bear a berry pie.” Irini herself was doing the dishes and putting the soda crackers away. How many times had she done this? How many more times would she, while her father sat at the table with his shoes off like a maharajah? She put the crackers in the bread box, just for the variety of it, just so her father would have to hunt for them the next time he wanted them. “She’s a sap-head. A buck says she wakes up in her own bed, surrounded by goose feathers from her pillow. As if anyone cares.”
“I wish I had your confidence.” Irini’s father’s tone was laced with disapproval.
It almost satisfied Irini, but not quite. “A snow globe falling from her hand, the word ‘Rosebud’ on her lips.”
“I wish I had your composure.”
“And, strangely, frostbitten feet.”
“And an icicle in her heart,” said Irini’s father. “Honestly, Irini, there is no point to growing up too much. Take it from me.”
“Oh yes,” said Irini. “We all know you’ll never make that mistake.”
Apparently Irini was not too grown up to be sent to her room. She lay facedown on her bed, wondering why she had done that. And why she wasn’t sorry. She imagined doing it again, doing it worse.
Someone tapped at her window. She sat up. Tracy May stood on the gravel at the side of the house, her face shadowed like a pencil sketch, with cross-hatches from the screen. “Can I talk to you?” Tracy said.
Irini swung her legs around to face the window. The curtains were dusty, a degraded rendition of the Sears catalogue picture. There was a large, dead fly on the sill. Its wings were as thin as silk and as clear as glass. Someone had sucked it dry. Irini hated it.
“You need a new permanent,” Tracy said. “I could do it for you.” Tracy had recently recut her bangs. They bubbled along the top of her forehead in a blowsy fringe.
“Thanks,” said Irini, thinking that of course she would ask Margo or Arlys. Tracy had no sense of timing and you couldn’t give someone a permanent without that.
“I think Tommy is about to ask me out. I might say yes. I’ve been sort of playing hard to get, but I think I’ll say yes.”
“Good,” said Irini. The fly stirred slightly in the breeze of the window, rattled against the screen like a dry, hacking cough. Even after death it was still trying to get out.
“I think I pitch as well as Ruby,” Tracy said. She was looking off to the side. She pursed her lips and her nose humped slightly as a result. It was a nervous, rabbity face. Even Tracy had to know she was lying.
“I never saw anyone who pitches as well as Ruby.”
“You all field better for her.”
“We don’t have to field.”
“It’s not scientific.” Tracy traced down the screen with one red fingernail. “I thought this was a scientific experiment. With controls and all.” She drew across the top.
T. T for Tracy, Irini supposed. Although it could have been Tom. Tommy. “She’s eating her Sweetwheats. I’ve seen her.”
“We’ve eaten Sweetwheats for years. We were eating them before they were puffed. Now she comes along and she eats them for about a day and suddenly she’s the pitcher. I don’t call that science. I’m going to talk to Mr. Henry about it.”
“We win with Ruby.”
“What is the big deal about winning? What does winning have to do with science? Or baseball? Or getting husbands?”
“Winning has to do with everything. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” Irini’s voice came out high-pitched and irritating. She made no attempt to modify it. “And why shouldn’t we win? Just because we’re girls no one thinks we need to win. You know what? I like winning. I like going out onto the field and knowing we’re going to win. Someday I’d like to win at something really big.”
“So you don’t want her off the team?” Tracy asked. “Even though we were all doing just fine without her?”
Irini thought about that. She thought about the fly, which was scrabbling for her attention. The fly that had lived its whole life in Magrit without ever getting out. She thought about her father going to Bumps tonight just like every night and how she would be doing the dishes tomorrow night just like always. She thought about Ruby’s hair on Walter’s hand. Then she thought about Ruby smiling so that little dips appeared in her cheeks, almost like dimples, but not quite. She thought about Ruby saying she just wanted to play, Ruby’s thumbnail bitten away to below the tip, Ruby dressed in Helen’s c
lothes. She thought about coming in from the outfield, when Ruby had set them down, one, two, three. Sometimes it was hard to know what the right thing to do was, but even now, even in her current desperate mood, this wasn’t one of those times. “Nope. I don’t think so.”
Irini heard her father’s step on the creaking board in the hall. He could never stand to fight with her; she could always outlast him. He was going to come in on some pretext to see if she would apologize. Sure enough, there were four timid knocks on the bedroom door.
“You’ll have to go now,” Irini told Tracy. “I’m being punished.”
On the radio, snow falls with the tinkling sound of tiny bells. It is a delicate effect, but even subtler in Magrit, where reception was frequently interrupted by whole seconds of white sound, sounds more like popcorn than like bells.
Against this background, a lovely contralto voice spoke.
WOMAN: Wake up, Anna. You mustn’t sleep here.
ANNA: Where am I? I thought I was home. Where’s my mother and father?
WOMAN: You are in my kingdom, Anna. You are in the land of Winter.
ANNA: Winter’s not a land. Winter’s a season.
WOMAN: No, no. Winter is a state. A state of mind. The state of your heart. Winter is the place I rule.
“I have a bad feeling this is going to be a story with a moral to it,” said Arlys. “You know I hate those.” The Kitchen was exploring new uses for leftover potatoes. Arlys held an egg as if she were about to curve it over the plate, but cracked it smartly against the counter instead. She separated out the yolk, the white falling into the measuring cup in a gluey, translucent clump.
“An allegory,” said Margo. The girls all stopped for a moment and looked at her.
“What would that be?” asked Helen, tucking back her hair. “For those of us who didn’t graduate top of the class?”
“Like Chaucer,” said Margo. “The roosters?”
Everyone was still looking at her.
“I guess I don’t remember,” said Margo placatingly. The girls turned back to their work.
ANNA: It’s a beautiful place. So white and shining.
WOMAN: Thank you, Anna.
Irini stood at the Kitchen window, looking out. The tarry parking lot was swollen with heat. If you stepped on it, the heat would pass right through the soles of your shoes. Hot enough to fry an egg, people in Magrit always said, but it wasn’t quite; the girls had tried this once. The egg stiffened and spoiled, but it didn’t actually fry. “Wouldn’t some cold weather be nice right now?” Irini asked.
“If you can’t stand the heat get out of the Kitchen,” Arlys suggested. As punishment for wishing winter back, she passed the yolks to Irini for beating.
ANNA: How do you know my name?
The wind came up, howling between the tinkling of the bells.
WOMAN: I know everyone in my kingdom. Come with me. I’ll take you to my castle.
ANNA: I guess we should go inside. It’s so cold here. Just for a little while. Then I have to go home.
WOMAN: Just for a little while.
The wind sawed through the airways like a violin.
“Don’t go, Anna,” said Claire. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
CHORUS OF WOMEN: Every mother’s day starts with Sweetwheats for her Sweethearts.
ANNA: Sweetwheats have Anna Peal!
“Mush, Anna,” said Helen. “Mush!”
Maggie Collins says: “How do you decide what you will eat? Do you follow your own cravings or will you listen to our American scientists, working ceaselessly and scientifically to uncover the secrets of human nutrition? Studies have now shown that our daily caloric intake should be divided into approximately these proportions: ten to twenty percent protein, twenty to thirty percent fats, fifty to sixty percent carbohydrates.
“If your diet is lacking in fats and carbohydrates, consider accompanying tonight’s meat with a serving of potato soufflés. This is an economical and delicious use for leftover French fries. And it couldn’t be simpler. Just deep-fry the potatoes again. This dish, more French than the French fries themselves, was created for Louis XIV, a man of fabulous appetite. If your fries don’t puff on first immersion, don’t be discouraged. They may be dipped in the hot fat again and again without adverse effect.
“For those who live in cold climates it should be noted that additional daily fat may be required.”
28
Irini’s new permanent made her look like a poodle and smell like a flea collar. This was absolutely unavoidable. The hair would relax in a couple of days and the scent would go even quicker, but Margo was apologetic over it all the same. Margo was wearing gloves as if she’d been cleaning ovens or handling uranium. She prodded Irini with one rubber finger. “Your hair takes curl so easily,” she said, as if this were something Irini could be proud of, something Margo envied.
Margo’s hair was both fine and heavy. She wore plaits to keep her hair out of the food at work, a coronet braid at weddings and dances. This twisting contained and diminished the astonishing golden color of her hair. Irini had always thought her a paler version of the German doll in the Dolls-Around-the-World series. Fair-haired and proletarian. It was a pretty look, but not a sexy one.
When Margo undid the braids, everything changed. Her hair rippled down her back, then straightened again slowly as it hung. Even the sauna didn’t curl it. “My Rapunzel,” Irini’s father would say to Margo. “Let down your hair.”
Irini sat at the Doyle kitchen table with a towel over her shoulders to protect her bathrobe, a washcloth over her face to protect her eyes, and a slight burning sensation on her neck where there was nothing to protect her and the solution had stayed perhaps a bit too long. In spite of the towel, rivulets of chemicals and water had run into her ears and down her back, making her damp, smelly, and slightly toxic. Her legs were badly in need of a shave. The bathrobe was an old one with all the fuzz rubbed off the rump.
Although they had started early, they had finished late. Irini heard the screen door and Tweed’s welcoming toenails, falling like rain on the linoleum. “What price beauty, eh?” her father said, coming into the kitchen after one of his long hard nights at Bumps. He was as ruddy and elfin as his lupine face allowed. But he was not talking to Irini or to Margo. To Irini’s horror, Thomas Holcrow followed him in.
“I apologize,” Holcrow said immediately. “I’ve intruded. Secret girl stuff. I had no idea.”
“Nonsense,” said Irini’s father. He went to the cupboard, got down two shot glasses. “It flatters us to see the lengths to which women will go.” Irini gave him a look, one of her best, an unambiguous, incontrovertible look. It did no good. He was so diluted with liquor, he was lighter than air. The look passed straight through him and out the open window, where it hit a passing robin, making it caw, just once, like a crow. “For mere mortals such as we, Irini will burn herself with potions and inhale dangerous gases. Women are the braver sex, make no mistake. They will squeeze, they will tweeze; they will teeter.”
“I doubt very much that Irini is curling her hair on my account.” Holcrow was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves neatly and precisely rolled up. His dark hair was just slightly too long, and his manner was slow and politely thoughtful. Delicacy of feeling kept him turned slightly away from Irini. She could see his profile from the corner of her eye. He was breathtaking in white. It made her perfectly miserable.
“Norma was in fine form tonight,” Irini’s father said to Margo. “You should have seen how she handled the rowdy, drunken element. She really laid into them. You have to admire a woman who can silence a man with just her bare hands.” He was having trouble opening the bottle of whiskey. He passed it to Irini. He was having trouble standing. He leaned against the counter.
Irini considered for a moment the possibility of pretending she couldn’t open the bottle and passing it girlishly on to Holcrow. But the evening was well past redemption. She twisted off the top, gave it back. This was 1947 and what the
y knew about codependency was nothing.
“Who were the rowdy drunks?” Margo asked.
“Modesty forbids,” said Irini’s father.
“I should be getting home,” Holcrow said.
“Nonsense. We were going to have a drink. We were going to pursue matters deep and philosophical.”
“I feel I’ve intruded. I feel knee-high to a cockroach.”
“Irini is delighted.”
“Irini will never forgive me. How am I to live with that?” Holcrow turned to her. He looked straight into her eyes, avoided her hair. “Anyway it’s late.”
“The very shank,” Irini’s father argued, pouring out two generous whiskeys. “Irini, there are fingerprints on these glasses. What would Maggie have to say about that?”
Tweed, who had seated herself close to Irini, was scratching behind her ear. Her leg drummed the floor by Irini’s feet. She shifted about, chewed and licked at her haunch. She moved on to her sexual organs, and then to her anus, with much evident pleasure. Irini kicked her, but it brought only a momentary diversion. The moment the pain subsided, Tweed returned to her ablutions. She licked, she sniffed, she licked again.
“I should be getting home,” said Margo. She removed the rubber gloves and laid them on the counter.
“There goes the bridge game,” said Irini’s father happily.
“I’ll walk you,” Irini offered. She stood, turned awkwardly, conscious that the fabric of her bathrobe was at its very thinnest over her rear. “I’ll just get dressed.”
“I’ll walk you both,” said Holcrow.
“You will force me to drink alone,” Irini’s father warned them. He clicked the two glasses together and raised one to his mouth.
Tweed came along as well. The pavement of Brief Street was still warm, but the air was cooler and scored with the din of insects and frogs. The air was 1947 Magrit clean. Back then there were no street lights, so people in Magrit could still see in the dark.
The Sweetheart Season Page 24