A Life of Bright Ideas (36 page)

The women might have kept Freeda there forever if she’d let them, but she cut them off, paid Claire for the use of her station, and we left.

When we got home, Boohoo met us at the door. “Guess what, Winnalee? Evalee got all the way up on her elbows. She did! She got up and looked right at me.”

Winnalee frowned. “I missed it,” she said.

After Aunt Verdella admired my new hair, I ran home to change into my bouncy skirt. Winnalee helped me pick out shoes and a top (a gold one), then Freeda dragged me around the yard and bent me into one “natural” pose after another. Poses, she said, that would best accentuate my “perky knockers” and “long legs.”

“Hold that pose,” Freeda told me, once she had me sitting on the picnic table, skirt hiked and perfectly fanned, my legs crossed so my thigh would look fuller, my arms behind me and spread, fingers splayed so I wouldn’t tip over, and my back so arched that I was sure I’d look like the McDonald’s arches. “Hold it, hold it …,” Freeda said as she moved to take a few
shots. Then we stood behind Boohoo at the picnic table and waited for the snapshots to appear on the paper squares like magic.

After we got home, I snuck peeks at my photograph every time Winnalee wasn’t looking. In the morning I tucked my letter, my picture, and my hope into an envelope and sent it off to Jesse.

The day of Cindy Jamison’s wedding, Aunt Verdella watched as Winnalee and I loaded the dresses into the van, a smile tickling her lips. She put her arm around Freeda, who was holding Evalee. “I sure am proud of these girls. Thank you, Freeda, for lending me the camera, and watching the little ones so I can tag along and get pictures of Button’s first bridal gown.”

“Little
ones
?” Boohoo said. He went to stand next to Freeda, and pointed first at himself, then Evalee. “Look at this. Me. Big. Cupcake. Little.”

I sat in the back with the gowns, so Aunt Verdella could take the only other seat in the van. Cindy was getting married at
the Lutheran church a block off Main Street. We were heading out an extra twenty-five minutes early, because Uncle Rudy had warned us about the detour on Highway 8. “They’re redoing that bridge just past the Smithys, and the county’s putting in new culverts on a five-mile stretch,” he’d said. “You’ve got to go all the way down Pike’s Peak Road, and up Circle Avenue.”

Linda was waiting for us, along with Cindy and her bridesmaids, Mrs. Jamison, Marge, and Hazel. The whole dressing room turned into a bouquet of color as the girls slipped into their dresses.

“Look at her dress!” Cindy said to her bridesmaids, when she saw Winnalee. Winnalee had grabbed one of her long granny dresses from her closet, decided it was boring, and shredded the dress from about the knees down with jagged horizontal cuts. She’d done the same with the sleeves, but her cuts were vertical. “I love the way you dress,” Cindy told Winnalee. She loved my hair, too, and wanted to know who’d streaked it. She was disappointed to hear it wasn’t a local.

I dressed Cindy, and she waved her arms so the petal edges could flutter. “This dress is
so
cool!” Even Mrs. Jamison called the dress “lovely,” and bragged to the pastor’s wife that Cindy’s dress was “one of a kind.” Designed just for her.

Linda was pleased, too. After the girls were dressed, she confessed that she had been nervous about me taking on a whole wedding myself, then added, “But like Hazel and Marge just said, they couldn’t have done a better job themselves.” I smiled, because I knew it was true.

Aunt Verdella took a whole roll of pictures. She gave Cindy and her bridesmaids each one, then handed the rest to me and Winnalee.

I helped the bridesmaids dress, then lined them up so I
could make sure that the hems, when side by side, made a perfectly straight line. While I did this, Aunt Verdella and Linda talked about when or if her husband might get called back to work.

Before we left, Linda held up her finger like she just remembered something, and pulled a paper bag out of her trunk. She handed it to me. “Some girls brought these jeans by. They said you’d know what to do with them. Their phone numbers are pinned to the jeans so you know whose are whose.” No doubt Linda thought it was a little mending on the side.

Aunt Verdella insisted we stop for ice-cream floats before going home. She prattled on and on about what a beautiful job we’d done, while we ate. Winnalee shoveled a scoop of ice cream into her mouth and her eyes got huge. She made a couple high pitched grunts, and I thought maybe she’d gotten a brain freeze, but she was even more excited after she swallowed. “Hey, I just thought of something. Aunt Verdella, does anyone ever sell old clothes at the Community Sale?”

She thought. “Well, Aggie usually has some old dresses and hats and things. Most of them come from the forties and the fifties. Some sixties. Just old junk clothes some pack rat like me had boxed away.”

“Do they have old buttons and jewelry, belts there, too, like they did when I was a kid?”

“Agnes and Mavis usually carry some. Why?”

Winnalee turned to me, all excited. “Button, you know that wine-colored dress I have that you love? That long one that I wear bunched under the boobs with that big brooch? I got that old dress in a secondhand store. The pin, too. I couldn’t do with it what I wanted because I can’t sew, but you and I could do that sorta thing together. Let’s go to the Community Sale this Saturday and see what we can find. I’ll bet we could recycle some old clothes and make some cool hippie dresses. Dresses that Cindy, or those girls at the Purple Haze would
buy. Aunt Verdella, will you crochet more of that lace for us? We could do up some old jeans, too.”

“Sure, honey.”

“This’ll be fun. It’ll give me something to do when I’m not wiping baby butts and making bottles.”

That Saturday, we packed a lunch and took off for the Community Sale. Winnalee and I sang along with the radio as we followed Freeda’s car. In the backseat of the Rambler, Boohoo made Evalee’s bear dance, and Evalee grinned, her too-big bonnet askew on her head. Through Freeda’s back window, I could see her hand gesturing as she talked, and I smiled as I sang. It was one of those moments, one of those days, that I knew I’d remember forever. Not because of its bigness, but because in that simple moment, our hearts were light and happy, and we were twined like roots of the same tree.

The lady named Aggie had a whole rack filled with old-fashioned dresses in tiny prints. I blushed while Winnalee dickered with her until we got the whole lot of them for half of what they’d cost individually. I had no idea how we’d take fifteen outdated dresses and turn them into something girls would buy, but it would be fun to see what Winnalee came up with.

Three hours later, we had the back of Evalee’s stroller and my trunk stuffed with old clothes, belts, purses, and bags of gaudy costume jewelry. Evalee was getting fussy, and we were melting, so we went home.

We ate bologna sandwiches stuffed with crushed potato chips, then I lugged Evalee’s playpen downstairs because the upstairs was heated like an oven. Winnalee dozed off on the couch while Evalee sat in her infant seat next to me.

I was too eager to wait for bedtime to write to Jesse, so around dusk, I got out my stationery. I started my letter with
It’s the little things, the simple times, that we remember
, and I told him about the little things in my day that I loved, and about the quiet times I remembered with
him
that I loved. I was on page four when Winnalee woke. Evalee was still sitting contentedly in her chair, watching me, smiling when I paused to talk to her, so Winnalee went off to fill the baby’s bathtub.

I was licking the envelope when Winnalee shouted, “Button, come here a minute! Hurry!”

I raced into the kitchen. “What’s the matter?”

Winnalee had the baby lying naked on a towel on the table. “Look at this, Button.” She pointed at the red, peppery rash that spotted her chest and belly. “I think she’s got the measles!”

“They get shots for measles, don’t they? I don’t think she can have the measles. You got her her shots, right?”

“I didn’t get her any shots. I wasn’t around. What if Freeda didn’t? I think these are measles, Button. Go get Freeda and Aunt Verdella, will you?” Winnalee begged with such desperation, that Evalee could have been wheezing her last breath, rather than making soft little B sounds, her tiny fists punching happily at the air.

“She doesn’t look sick to me,” I said.

“Just get them. Hurry!”

Uncle Rudy was sitting in his lawn chair. Strands of hay were clinging to his pants and stuck to his shoes. “You’re back,” I said.

“Yep. Just pulled in.” I leaned over and gave his cheek a kiss, then hurried to the house. Boohoo was coming out as I was going in, and slammed into me. “Look what I got at the Community Sale,” he said, holding out a ball of twine about a foot in diameter. “Aunt Verdella got something good, too, but I can’t tell you what it is. I’m gonna go show Uncle Rudy my binder twine.”

“She doesn’t have measles,” Freeda said when I found her. “Tell her I’ll be right over.”

Winnalee was almost in tears when we got inside. “Geez, you took long enough.”

Aunt Verdella and Freeda peered over Evalee, who was still naked and grinning on the table. Aunt Verdella was about to blurt something out, then she folded her hands across her tummy and backed up, waiting for Freeda to speak.

“Winnalee, that’s just heat rash,” Freeda said.

Winnalee blinked up at her. “Is that bad?”

“It’s nothin’,” Freeda said. “Just bathe her and dry her off good and powder her. Leave her naked, but for her diaper. It’s not supposed to drop below seventy-nine tonight. It’ll be gone by morning.”

“You sure? Because it might be measles. Did she have a shot for measles?”

“It’s not goddamn measles, Winnalee. For crissakes, it’s heat rash.”

“It’s heat rash, honey,” Aunt Verdella confirmed. She tugged her neckline out from her chest. “Look, I even got a bit of it today.”

Freeda laughed. “Then maybe we’d best strip you down to your undies and powder you up, too.”

I would have thought Winnalee would have relaxed after Aunt Verdella confirmed Freeda’s diagnosis, but instead she burst into tears.

“Winnalee, what’s the matter?” Freeda asked.

Winnalee shrugged. “I just got scared, that’s all.”

“Yep, that’s what we mothers do. Get used to it.” She caressed Winnalee’s back.

While Winnalee bathed Evalee, Freeda and Aunt Verdella and I meandered out to the porch, where it was a bit cooler. I thought they’d head home, but Freeda flopped into a chair and told Aunt Verdella to “take a load off.”

“But Boohoo …”

“Rudy’s there. Sit.”

“But Freeda …,” Aunt Verdella said between her teeth, like Freeda wasn’t getting something.

“Relax.”

We left the yard light off because the moon was bright, and to have it on would only draw more mosquitoes. After Winnalee fed Evalee and got her down, Winnalee came out carrying a filled pitcher clinking with ice on the silver platter she’d found in the back of the cupboard and liked, even though it was tarnished. She had a small plate stacked with cookies, too.

Freeda reached for a glass and took a long gulp, smacking her lips as if it was hand-squeezed lemonade, rather than lime Kool-Aid. “Now don’t I feel just like frikken Scarlett O’Hara, sitting on her veranda, getting waited on hand and foot. Thanks, honey,” Freeda said.

“Oh, I loved that movie!” Aunt Verdella said as she took her glass and reached for a store-bought gingersnap. Freeda went to bat her hand, then stopped. “Oh hell, go at it,” she said. “Gotta treat yourself now and then.”

I scootched over so Winnalee could sit with me since there were only three chairs.

“My girlfriends and I went to see
Gone with the Wind
at least six times when it came out—and we cried at the end every time.”

“You saw it when it was released?” I asked.

“Wasn’t that about a hundred years ago?” Winnalee said, then sheepishly added, “Sorry.”

Aunt Verdella laughed. “It was 1939. I was thirty … uh … thirty-six.”

“Wow,” Winnalee said and I nudged her with my elbow. “I know,” she whispered in my hair, “but ’39? Man.”

“We were all madly in love with Rhett Butler,” Aunt Verdella said. “But who wasn’t? To this day, I think of him
leaning on the banister, and well, put it this way, he could have parked his slippers under my bed any day.”

I sputtered Kool-Aid onto my shirt.

“He had the breath of a dead fish, you know,” Freeda said, and it was Winnalee’s turn to spit her drink.

“Who? Rhett Butler?” Aunt Verdella asked.

“Well, Clark Gable,” Freeda said, which kept Winnalee and me laughing. “Vivien Leigh said so. Anyway, that’s what the women at the salon told me. One of them read it in a movie magazine. I guess it was from his dentures—doesn’t make sense, though.” She shrugged.

“You’re kidding!” Aunt Verdella said this as though suddenly her chances for a juicy, sweet kiss from him were dashed.

Headlights glowed in the edges of the trees close to the road and Aunt Verdella got up and went to the screen. She turned to Freeda. “He’s coming!”

“Who?” Winnalee and I asked in unison.

“Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes, by the looks of it,” Freeda said when Tommy’s truck pulled into the drive and Tommy and Craig stepped out.

“Oh my God,” Winnalee said. “Do I have spit-up on my shirt?” I couldn’t see in the dim light, so I pulled her hair over her shoulder.

Freeda stood up. “Tommy Smithy? Is that you? Get over here you little shit!”

Tommy looked shy when he stepped onto the porch and Freeda reached for him—either because he still had a crush on her, or because he was remembering when he did.

“My God,” Freeda said when she let go of him. “Just look at you. All filled out, shoulders like a football player. I’ll be damned.”