The Future Homemakers of America

22

Lois went from never being home to never being any place else. I went round to see her all the time. Her quarters were messy, unless Herb had been home and had a field day, and she just grouched around, watching The Roy Rodgers Show and feeding Sandie on cookies.

I said, ‘You still feeling rough?’

‘I could sleep round the clock,’ she said. ‘Was I like this with Sandie?’

I said, ‘I don’t recall. But I think your temper was a little sweeter.’

She said, ‘You and Vern gonna have any more?’

I said, ‘Nope.’

She said ‘You seem very sure.’

I said, ‘I am. I have my Dutch cap. House catches fire, after Crystal it’ll be the first thing I grab.’

‘I can’t stand those things,’ she said. ‘By the time you’ve remembered where you left it. Then it has life of its own. Springs outta your fingers, goes flying across the bathroom and it always lands in that skronk behind the WC. I’d sooner take my chances.’

I said, ‘Well, there y’are then. And now you have one of those little chances on the way.’ I said, ‘You could always clean up the skronk behind the john. You could always wear your Dutch cap every night.’

‘Hm,’ she said. ‘How come you’re so damned smart?’ She just sat there, stains down her sweatshirt.

I said, ‘You just tired?’

‘Sick and,’ she said.

‘Nothing else wrong?’ I said.

She looked at me. ‘No,’ she said, ‘nothing else. Why? Ain’t that enough?’

I couldn’t read her.

I said, ‘Kath’s knitting for you. You have a preference for lemon or blue?’

‘Couldn’t care less,’ she said. ‘How about grey?’

I still couldn’t read her.

‘Well, you’re good fun,’ I said. ‘You wanna come on a trip, next week? To the beach? The girls are all coming. Two cars.’

‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘What beach? Does it have surf and everything?’

I said, ‘All I know is, it’s called Cromer and it probably beats staying home.’

She said she’d think about it.

I said, ‘You do that. If you’d rather sit here, sniffing jet fuel, we’ll understand.’

By the time I walked through my door, she was on the phone.

‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘On one condition. Can Sandie ride in a different car than me? I can’t stand her climbing all over my belly.’

I said, ‘Fair enough. Course, you might be trading for Deana or Sherry.’

‘No problem,’ she said. ‘One look from me and those Gillis girls turn to stone. Is there a funfair at Cromer?’

23

So the deal was, I’d take Betty and Kath and Lois, and Audrey’d bring Gayle and all the kids.

Gayle said, ‘I’m getting in practice for next year, Peggy. Soon as this tour’s done, me and Okey are gonna have a little baby.’

Of course, the minute it seemed like we were all set, Betty started changing everything around.

‘I’ll have to take my own car,’ she said. ‘Ed don’t like the girls riding with other drivers.’

Then she was worried about Cromer. ‘We don’t know a thing about the place,’ she said to me. ‘What if we break down and they don’t even have telephones out there?’

Tuesday was dry and bright. We said we’d try for Wednesday, and Tuesday night there was such a sunset, that great big sky was all pink and orange and then it turned green and mauve. Crystal had her lunch-pail packed and ready. Snickers, potato chips, and her rabbit-fur mittens sent by Mom Dewey.

I said, ‘Precious, you’re gonna lose them and then you’ll be sad. Why don’t you just leave them safe at home?’

Her lip started to tremble.

Vern pitched in. ‘Don’t you start snivelling,’ he said to her. Fastest way to get the tears flowing, of course. Amazing how a man can know so much about aerodynamics and so little about psychology, but I guess the brain only has space for so much.

Then he turned on me. ‘You only don’t like her treasuring her mitts on account they come from the Deweys. What she ever get from your side of the family? What did your mom ever send her?’

Crystal was now going full throttle. Then Betty phoned. ‘Ed wants to know what time we’ll be home,’ she said.

Me and Vern picked up where we’d left off. He was right about Crystal’s Gramma Shea, but I wasn’t gonna give him the satisfaction.

I said, ‘I could care less who sent what. It’s high summer, high as it gets in this two-bit island you brung us to, and I ain’t having my day in the sunshine ruined when she loses her fur mittens. Which I guarantee she will do.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you’re having a real hard time of it here, Peg, I can see. Hanging out with the girls, uh-oh, Pepsi Hour again – my, how the time does fly! Driving around, taking in the sights. Running a beauty parlour for breeds.’

I just had to laugh in his silly face when he called Kath’s kitchen a beauty parlour. He raised his hand to me. I said, ‘Don’t even think about it,’ and the phone rang again.

She said, ‘Ed wants to know…’

I said, ‘Betty, what is wrong with your husband? Does he wanna come along with us, ride shotgun?’

‘Well!’ she said. ‘There’s no call to take that attitude. Ed just wants to know…’

I said, ‘He think you’re going on this trip to meet men? Put him on. I’ll tell him he’s right.’

By the time I was through with her, Vern had got a smile back on Crystal’s face, pulling one of his tickle-fight stunts, and he was on his way out the door, going eel-netting with John Pharaoh.

Goddarned mitts. Probably full of bugs and all sorts. But that’s Maine folk for you.

24

We had such a day. Never got to Cromer ’cause Ed had decided that would have took us too deep into Indian country. He said Betty was allowed to go to Hunstanton, so that’s where we went. I had lost the will to argue. Same stretch of water, far as I could make out. Audrey was navigating.

I asked Kath if she minded about Cromer. She said she didn’t, and she sure didn’t look like a disappointed woman. Got her head tied up in a scarf Lois gave her, to cover where the permanent had gone a little wild, and she was wearing a pair a peep-toe sandals, bought with her beet-hoeing money.

We got buckets and spades soon as we arrived, and Crystal ran on to the sands, started right in digging. She said she was building an air base for Sandie.

It was a wide, wide shore. Kath asked a man selling newspapers where was the water and he said the tide was out, gave her a withering look. So we spread our blankets up against the sea wall and waited.

Crystal was getting unwanted help from Sandie, trampling across the nice runways she had made.

I said, ‘I thought you said it was for her?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘She’s too young for an air base. She’ll just wreck it.’

So Gayle tried to distract Sandie and get the Gillis girls playing in the sand too, helping her to build Fort Jackson, but they were too busy torturing their dollies and calling them bad names. Deana banged Sherry’s doll against the wall in a blind fury. Then she bit its face and threw it back at Sherry.

Betty was a little way off from us, laying out the picnic, all nice and dainty. ‘Play gentle, now,’ she kept calling.

Kath was watching them. She said to me, ‘I suppose they play so nasty ’cause of what they’ve seen at home. They’ll have seen her getting a few weltings.’

In some respects, Kath was ahead of her time.

We had cold chicken and meatloaf sandwiches. Welch’s Grape Juice to help it down and Lois and Gayle never travelled far without some hard liquor. There was some kinda puppet show just along the sands, and Audrey and Kath and Gayle took the girls along there, give us five minutes’ peace. We could hear Crystal and Sandie squealing at the puppets from where we sat. Betty was tidying away the picnic. Lois was stretched out alongside of me.

I said, ‘How’re you doing there, red-haired momma? You glad you come along?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. She still sounded kinda weary. ‘Sooner I drop this brat, the sooner I’ll be my sweet old self.’

I said, ‘I can’t hardly wait.’ I looked her in the eye. I said, ‘Herb happy? About the baby?’

‘Herb’s always happy,’ she said, making herself a pillow out of sweaters.

I said, ‘Then you’re a lucky woman.’

She missed a beat. Then she propped herself up on her elbow. ‘Meaning?’ she said.

I hadn’t realised till then how a thought, once you have thought it, can never be laid to rest. It may lay low, but any time it can pop right up again, put certain words in your mouth. ‘Meaning nothing,’ I said, but I was blushing at what I had remembered, and she saw.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Anyway, four weeks and I’m outta here.’ She was going back to Astoria, Queens, staying with her cousin Irene till her time come. ‘Back to the world, Peg!’ she said. ‘Root-beer floats, yellow cabs, the Coney Island Steeple Chase…’

I said, ‘You are going on a ride in your condition?’

‘Well…no,’ she said.

I said, ‘And I thought Irene had roaches?’

‘Okay, roaches,’ she said. ‘But what about egg creams? I bid vanilla egg creams against roaches.’

I said, ‘I guess there’s no point mentioning crime, vermin and high humidity?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘’Cause I’ll just come right back at you with hot corned beef and Radio City Music Hall.’

I said, ‘It must be real hard to drag yourself away from us.’

She was quiet. I could see the gang coming back from the puppet show.

Kath and Gayle were showing off, seeing who could walk on their hands the longest time. That was something I never could get the hang of.

‘Well, I’m gonna miss you, Lo,’ I said, after a time.

She turned away from me, but she grabbed my hand and took it with her. ‘Gonna miss you too,’ she said. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said Lois Moon had a tear in her eye.

Somebody sighted the sea about two in the afternoon. It was just a strip of silver, far across the sands, but we set off to get a closer look at it. Betty stayed behind with her knitting and Lois was asleep. Kath carried Sandie on her shoulders.

‘Lois’ll have her work cut out,’ she said, ‘after that little baby comes along. I could give her a hand. When I’m not at the singling, I could push that little baby out in its pram, sit this one on the top. Give her five minutes.’

I said, ‘She won’t be here, Kath. She’s going back Stateside to have her baby. Then the boys’ll get orders, some time in the fall, and we’ll be gone too.’ I heard my words fall, ruining her plans.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘that’s right. I remember that, now.’

Audrey was first to the water’s edge.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I was looking for the rocky shore that beats back the envious siege of watery Neptune? Is that anywhere hereabouts?’ Miss Scholastic Quiz Kid.

That North Sea Ocean or whatever it was called was just creeping across the sand like it could hardly be bothered.

‘Is that it, then?’ Kath said. ‘That’s nothing much, is it? The way Harold Jex spoke, I thought that’d be something worth seeing.’

The lagoon at Matagorda was the only thing I had to measure it by, but Audrey said it was a real apology for a shoreline. Still, I liked the smell of it. I liked the cool wet sand under my feet. Crystal was fascinated with some little squiggly lines she found. Audrey said they were worm-casts. Then Gayle showed Sherry how to walk on her hands, so Crystal had to have a go at that too. Kath held her legs in the air, till she found her balance, then she was off, her and Sherry giggling at what we looked like upside down.

Kath said to Deana, ‘You want a try?’

Deana said, ‘No. We’re not allowed. And if Sherry gets sick, then there’ll be trouble.’

There was a band playing on the promenade and a little carousel we all rode on, and a stand selling crab claws. We just had so much fun. Looking back, years later, I realised that day was the last time ever we were together, all six of us.

Lois had been improved by her nap. One side of her nose was sunburned, but she was smiling again, walking arm in arm with me and Kath. ‘Find me some cotton candy,’ she said, ‘and I’ll make believe I’m at Coney Island.’ She started singing ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’, and some old bubba sitting on a bench took exception to it.

The English don’t care for high levels of noise. One of the first things I learned about them was, they never speak out loud and clear, and they don’t like it if others do neither.

‘Why don’t you stop your caterwauling and git back where you belong?’ he said.

‘Any day now,’ Lois shouted back to him. ‘Soon as our brave boys have blown those Russkies outta your back yard. And I wonder how long it’ll be till you need us the next time?’

‘Ruddy Yanks,’ he shouted. He was waving his stick at her. ‘Clear off where you come from!’

‘Our pleasure, y’old tight-ass.’ Lois loved a fight. ‘Think we like being in this mouseshit country of yours?’

Betty was trying to get the kids into the cars, Deana and Sherry playing up because they didn’t want to ride with her, Crystal snivelling because Sandie had gotten taffy on her rabbit mitts.

Lois had to have the last word, of course. ‘And another thing,’ she shouted. ‘You call that an ocean?’

I offered to drive in front, knowing what a old lady Betty could be when she got behind a wheel, dithering at every turn she come to, but she insisted she wanted to lead the way. And when I seen her taking that right turn when she should have kept straight ahead, I did my best to stop her. Flashed my beams, got Audrey to lean out and wave her arms around, but she wouldn’t be stopped and, even when she knew she’d gone wrong, she still kept going, thought she could cut across country and make good instead of turning back, till we ended up in a barnyard.

She blamed me, of course. Said I’d flustered her, signalling an’ all. She also blamed Lois for upsetting everybody with that ugly scene and Audrey for looking smug, like she never took a wrong turn in her life.

‘Hey,’ Lois said. ‘How about Gayle? You ain’t blamed her for anything yet. And Kath here. This some kinda discrimination? And you ain’t even mentioned General MacArthur.’

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