A Life of Bright Ideas (17 page)

“Maybe we should take her to a doctor,” Aunt Verdella said, her voice chasing off my daydreams. “Ellie Connor’s boy was addicted to drugs and that’s what they had to do with him. The doctor put him in the hospital and gave him medicine until he was done with the shakes and vomiting.”

“Marijuana isn’t like that, Aunt Verdella.”

“And that strange man she had over to the house …” Chet Bouman. A creep according to Tommy. A cool cat who was into Transcendental Meditation and played the bongo drums, according to Winnalee. Aunt Verdella’s sentence stopped mid-stitch, and I didn’t encourage her to continue.

Aunt Verdella sprayed another pair of Dad’s work pants with water, then rolled them. “I’m worried about her, Button. And I feel responsible, since Freeda isn’t here to look out for her.”

Aunt Verdella smacked her tongue against her gums. “I love that girl, you know I do, but she’s like a grown-up Boohoo.
So
lovable, yet so prone to trouble. I sure do wish Freeda was here. She had a way of snapping people back in line.”

“Winnalee isn’t doing anything that Freeda herself didn’t
do,” I reminded her, then corrected myself. “Okay, except smoke pot, but she stopped doing that now.” I didn’t add the “in the house” part.

Aunt Verdella went to the ironing board. She licked her finger and tapped it to the bottom of the iron, then unrolled a damp shirt and stretched out the collar. “Button, you notice how whenever we bring up Freeda, Winnalee changes the subject?”

“I know.”

Aunt Verdella’s iron, when pressed against line-dried cotton, emitted a warm smell that reminded me of sunny Saturday afternoons. Ma’s laundry day.

Aunt Verdella shook her head. “Freeda was only sixteen when she had Winnalee. Just a baby …” I’d known this fact as a child, but sixteen sounded pretty old then. Now the thought of someone being a mother at that age was almost enough to make me hyperventilate. Marls was twenty-one, and she looked like a scared kid when I drove her to the hospital. “She had reasons for leaving Winnalee as she did, just as she had reasons for taking her from Hannah. I wish Winnalee could see this,” Aunt Verdella added.

“Me too,” I said.

Aunt Verdella sighed. “I was thinking, the other day, how it don’t seem to matter how someone’s parent turned out in the end. What has the most impact, seems to me, is how that parent was when that child was little.” Aunt Verdella glanced at my arms, as if every scratch I’d ever cut into them was still showing. “Our Jewel changed over time, yet you seem more influenced by her mommying when you were little, than by her mommying after you were more grown.” She smoothed a sleeve over the ironing board and pressed the iron to the cuff. “I guess the same is true for Winnalee.”

Aunt Verdella looked up and the harsh light magnified her weariness. “Oh, I’m just being a worrywart about most everything
these days. I went over to your dad’s earlier tonight, and that stew I made him was still in the fridge, dried, and fuzzy with mold—your dad loves beef stew. He had a stick of summer sausage in there, tooth marks on the end like he just picks it out and takes a chomp when he’s hungry. That’s no way to eat.”

It was always the same when the topic of Dad came up. Aunt Verdella fretted, and the whole time she did, pity and scorn wrestled inside me. “Dad will be okay,” I said without conviction.

Aunt Verdella hung dad’s shirt and reached for another. She worked quietly for a minute, then said, “I don’t know if we should say anything to Winnalee about what we found.”

I looked down, my cheeks burning.

“Oh, honey, don’t
you
be ashamed.”

I fidgeted. “I was hoping you wouldn’t know what it was.”

Aunt Verdella chuckled a bit. “Oh, Button, those things have been around since Adam and Eve. Well, not that long ago, or none of us would be here”—she paused to giggle—“but practically since they invented latex. Course, in my day, they were mostly used by married couples … or cheating men. You remember that couple that lived above the drugstore? The Johnsons, Beulah and George?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t suppose you would. That was a long time ago. Anyway, Beulah always feared George was cheatin’ on her. She was sterile, so they had no reason to use, you know … but Fanny Tilman put a bug in Beulah’s ear that she’d seen George in the pharmacy when she went there for Epsom salt, and that she was sure he was buying some. Beulah asked the pharmacist if he had, and he told her that he couldn’t discuss what his patrons bought, even to a spouse, and she figured he was covering for George.

“Beulah had this dog named Willa, so bony, that I swear,
she clinked when she ran like a set of keys. Anyway, don’t know how she did it but she trained that little thing to sniff out the scent of a woman—
and
”—Aunt Verdella paused and lowered her voice, as if to make it too small to climb the stairs where Boohoo slept—“the smell of
latex
.”

I couldn’t help but giggle. Half because of the story, and half because Aunt Verdella was telling it so earnestly. That’s when Winnalee came in, giggling, too, because apparently she’d caught at least the last part of the story. Winnalee passed out quick hugs, kicked off her sandals and sat down, drawing up her knees and planting her heels on the seat. “Oh my God. Latex? As in
rubbers
?” Winnalee asked, oblivious, of course, to what led to the story in the first place.

Aunt Verdella dipped her head, and her chin bubbled under her pinkened face.

“We know what rubbers are, Aunt Verdella,” Winnalee said, rolling her eyes as she squeezed a “geez” out of her giggles.

“Yes, I
know
you know what they are.

“Anyway, that part of the story about Willa is true, because Beulah ordered an afghan from me once, and when I delivered it, that little dog wouldn’t stop sniffing my legs and yapping, hopping in circles. That’s what she’d do if she smelled a woman. Hop in circles, going clockwise. But if she smelled latex, then she’d hop counterclockwise.” Winnalee and I were in stitches by then, Winnalee was in such hysterics she was snorting.

But Aunt Verdella wasn’t even cracking a smile.

She made the shush sign, while glancing toward the ceiling, and we clamped our hands over our mouths so we wouldn’t wake Uncle Rudy and Boohoo.

My breath was hot against my hand, my cheeks billowed, as Aunt Verdella continued her story.

“George was taking out the trash one day, Willa at his
heels, and he ended up across the alley, at this young widow’s place, helping her change the inner tube on her boy’s bike tire. Course, Willa went nuts, and when Beulah heard her and rushed to the window to see her standing outside the garage hopping counterclockwise, she ran for George’s twenty-two. Good thing she didn’t know how to load a gun—she was trying to put the shells down the barrel!—or George and the widow would have been deader than doornails.”

Winnalee and I wiped our tears after the story was over, but kept bursting into fresh giggles every time we looked at each other. “Poor woman,” Aunt Verdella said. “To be that scared of losing her man.”

“Poor
woman
?” Winnalee said. “Poor
man
, is more like it. With a wife like that he’d be stupid
not
to cheat. I mean seriously, to be that jealous? How dumb. Why would anyone be jealous because her man slept with another woman, anyway?” she asked.

“You serious?” I asked.

“Of course I am. Nobody owns someone else’s body. We should all be free to share them with whoever we want. Besides, just because two people sleep together, it doesn’t mean they love each other. It’s just sex.”

Aunt Verdella startled. “Oh, Winnalee, I hope you don’t mean that, honey.”

“Times have changed, Aunt Verdella. At least for women. Men, they’ve been doing that shit for centuries, but with the Pill especially, now women have the same perks as guys. It’s no big deal.”

“But it
is
a big deal, Winnalee. And
times
might have changed, with all this women’s liberation stuff, and the Pill and all, but I’ll tell you one thing that will never change—men. No matter what they say, or how sweet they talk to get what they want, in the end, they aren’t gonna want a woman who’s been with every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

Oh boy!

“Well, women might end up with Tom, or Dick,” Winnalee said, “but I think Beulah will see to it that they can’t be with
George
.” Winnalee laughed at her joke, but Aunt Verdella and I didn’t.

“Why does everything have to be about right or
wrong
, anyway?” Winnalee huffed when she got done laughing.

“It’s not about being wrong, Winnalee. It’s about what hurts.”

“
Hurts?
Hell, unless the guy’s
really
hung, what’s there to hurt?” Winnalee cracked up all over again.

“Hearts, Winnalee,” Aunt Verdella said. “I was talking about hurting hearts. Somebody else’s if you’re cheating, and your own, if you’re waking up next to a stranger who’s treating you like one the next morning.”

I stood up abruptly, and picked through the box of items for the Community Sale. I put my hand inside a crocheted-rooster toaster cozy to make him stand up. “Oh, this is cute, Aunt Verdella.”

“Isn’t it? I just found that pattern. If you like it, Button, you take it. I’ve got plenty for the sale.” She was speaking to me, but her eyes were on Winnalee.

I turned my back to Aunt Verdella, and stretched my eyes at Winnalee until my forehead hurt. “We’d better go. It’s late, and I’ve got a dress to finish in the morning.”

Aunt Verdella looked at me and muttered a quick “Oh, that’s good, honey,” but she kept glancing at Winnalee, her wrinkles sunk deep with worry.

“What?”
Winnalee whined, as I yanked her to her feet.

“Okay … okay …,” Winnalee said as we headed across the dark yard. “I guess I should have shut up about that stuff. Aunt Verdella’s a little old-fashioned.”

“What do you expect, Winnalee? She’s sixty-eight years old! Who makes a joke about men who are ‘well hung’ to a sweet old woman who crochets and makes bunny pancakes?”

“Well, she doesn’t seem old to me. In fact,
you
seem more like an old lady than she does. Aunt Verdella has
sex
, Button. S-E-X! It’s not like she was going to fall over dead because I said something
she
didn’t know.”

Suddenly it felt like there were a hundred anthills trapped under my skin, but I was determined not to scratch in front of Winnalee. My jaw tightened. “What?
Unlike someone else you know?
Is that what you’re implying?”

“You said it, not me,” Winnalee said as she crossed the porch.

We headed straight upstairs, me following Winnalee, and the whole way I was telling myself that no matter how insulted I felt, I would
not
humiliate Winnalee back by telling her what Aunt Verdella found.

Winnalee pulled down her hot pants and gave them a toss with her toe, then stripped off her shirt—she wasn’t wearing a bra, of course. She started digging through the heap of her clothes that were tangled on top of the dresser.

I turned away and grabbed my nightgown from the window seat.

“Bet you can’t change up here, in front of me,” Winnalee taunted.

“I have to brush,” I said.

“Man, Button, why you always have to act like such a prude? We’re two girls, for crissakes.”

I wasn’t about to defend myself, just because I didn’t want thousands of people looking at my nipples, or because I didn’t want to show her my ugly, bulky, lumpy knees and stilt-skinny legs!

Winnalee found her sleeping shirt and pulled it over her head, her head popping up from the neck hole. “All you want
to do is sit around the house, cleaning and sewing, chasing after Boohoo, and sweating in your long pants. You might as well be ninety!”

“I do not!” I said, my eyes stinging.

“You do too. I’ve asked you how many times since I started working at the Purple Haze to come with me to see my artwork, but you haven’t. Even if
I
went to your job with
you
. You just stay home every night and write to some guy who isn’t even your boyfriend, because you’re too uptight to party.
That’s
being an old lady!”

The invisible ants scampered along the length of my arms. “It’s not that I’m too uptight to party. I told you, I don’t want to sit in some bar and choke on smoke and be hit on by potheads and junkies. But I want to see your artwork. I really do. I told you I’d go in the morning sometime if we could get in.”

“And
I
told you that it doesn’t look cool unless it’s dark and the black lights are on.” Winnalee’s hands were on her hips, the back of her hair still stuffed in her shirt. She opened her mouth to say more, then stomped to the closet instead. I could hear hangers clanking and I wondered what kind of mess she was making.

She came out with the urn and marched over, ramming it against me and letting go, so that I had to take it or let it crash to my bare toes. “There!” she said. “Since you’re lugging your dead mom around with you every day anyway, you might as well have something pretty to carry her in. Your turn!”

Winnalee dived to the bed and pulled the sheet over her head, snapping the light off and leaving me standing there holding the urn, a tear—one—slipping down a cheek that had gone as cold as window glass in winter.

“I can’t believe you’d be so mean,” I said. My legs felt as hollow as empty pant legs, so instead of returning the urn to the closet, I reached behind me and set it down on the window seat. I must not have scooted it far enough back, though, because
it caught on the edge and capsized. A tinny, rippling sound carried it across the floor, and I didn’t bother to retrieve it. Winnalee and I had had our first fight ever, and all I could do was stand there, helpless to stop crying.

I guess our argument bothered Winnalee, too, because after a moment she called softly, “Button? I’m sorry.”

She slipped out of bed, her white T-shirt and skin glowing in the moonlight. She came and wrapped her arms around me. She led me to the bed and sat me down beside her. “You’re a good person, Button. Better than me for sure. Maybe that’s why I got so nasty. But I’m sorry, okay?”