Runny03 - Loose Lips (45 page)

“Did you ask yourself how those Baby Ruths got in the pool?” He chuckled.

“Nicky. I know it was Nicky. Who else would think of such a thing?”

They exploded with laughter.

Chessy said, “She had him dead to shit.”

T
he next morning, Juts was trimming back her wisteria, which threatened to take over the entire front porch, when Louise screeched into the driveway, slammed the car door shut, then charged up the front steps.

“How could you?”

“How could I what?”

“You humiliated me in front of everyone. I will never forget this. I may forgive but I will never forget.”

“I shouldn’t have tipped over the raft.” Juts sounded contrite. She wasn’t.

“That was the least of it. I lay there, lungs filled with water, fighting for air, then I had to defend myself against the idea that I’d defecated in the pool!”

“Wheezie, everyone knows you didn’t do it.”

Her long black eyelashes fluttered. “It was nip and tuck there for a while. The humiliation.”

“Look at it this way.” Juts tapped the end of a fresh pack of cigarettes, the cellophane smooth to her touch. “No one will ever forget the party or you.”

Buster trotted around the corner, saw Wheezie, and bounced up for a pet. Nickel barreled up behind him.

“Hi, Aunt Wheezie.”

“What’s this I hear about you getting in a fight with Peepbean?”

“He started it.”

“Nickel, he’s slow in the head.”

“Probably didn’t get enough oxygen in the womb,” Juts added.

Nickel put her hands on her hips. “Peepbean’s a dingleberry.”

“And what, may I ask, is a dingleberry?” Louise’s eyebrows raised.

“A heinie hair with poop on it.”

“Where do you hear such talk?” Louise was scandalized. Even Juts was taken aback.

“Jackson Frost told me Peepbean was a dingleberry. He
is
, too.”

“Be that as it may, young lady, I don’t ever want to hear that word out of your mouth again.” Juts pointed her glowing red cigarette at Nicky.

“Why not? Momma, he called me a bastard and that’s a nasty word, too. Why do I have to be nice? It’s not fair.”

Both sisters exchanged loaded glances. Louise gestured with her hand as if to say, “You first.”

Juts sucked hard on her cigarette. “A Southern lady does not return rudeness for rudeness. You smile and walk away.”

“Mom!”

Juts held up her hand. “I didn’t say it was easy, but you earn the respect of everyone around you. Peepbean isn’t worth fussing at.”

“Do you know what a bastard is?” Louise prodded.

“No. But it’s a bad word.”

“Well, why don’t we leave it at that?” Juts quickly said.

“If he hits me I’m hitting him back.” She defiantly glared at her mother.

“You do have to defend yourself.”

“You’re telling her to hit him,” Louise grumbled.

“No, I’m not, but kids are cruel. If she doesn’t hit back they’ll beat her to a pulp.”

“She’s not very big.”

“I’m big enough to hurt someone.” Nickel doubled her fists. “I’m not scared, either.”

“That’s obvious.” Louise sighed. “I don’t remember this kind of trouble with my girls.”

“That was a different time.” Juts was in no mood for a lecture on Louise’s feminine daughters.

“It wasn’t that long ago.”

“Maybe not in years, but in other ways. The war changed everything.”

Louise thought awhile. “Things are different.”

Nickel studied their faces. “When I grow up I’ll pound Peepbean to powder.”

“That’s hardly the answer.”

“‘Turn the other cheek.’” Louise quoted the Bible.

“No.”

“Nickel …” Juts frowned.

“No.”

“It’s in the Bible.” Louise repeated a fact Nickel already knew.

“I’m not Jesus.”

“Of course you’re not, honey, but you must strive to live like Jesus.” Louise’s voice dripped saintliness.

“No.”

“All right, Nicky, that’s enough,” her aunt said firmly.

“Jesus was crucified. I don’t want to be crucified.”

“Jesus died for our sins.” Louise was positively unctuous.

“I don’t have any sins.”

“Of course you do. We are born sinful and unclean.”

“I take a bath.”

Set back by this intransigence, Louise bore down on the child. “We are born into Original Sin, Nickel. That is the word of God.”

“I don’t have any sins and I’m not turning the other cheek.”

“Oh, Nicky, what would Jesus think if he heard you?” She stared up at her aunt. “Jesus isn’t here.”

“‘Lo, I am with you always.’” Louise’s voice lifted to the heavens.

“He’s not here! He doesn’t care about me.”

“He does,” Louise, shocked, blurted out.

Juts, amazed, watched and listened without speaking, a first for her.

Nickel stepped toward her aunt, ready to fight her, too. “If Jesus loved me he wouldn’t let Peepbean pick on me.”

“He knows you’re strong enough to take care of yourself.” This was a clever argument on Louise’s part, but Nicky wasn’t buying.

“Jesus let children die in the war.”

“Not that again,” Juts whispered, then spoke louder. “Nickel, I don’t understand these things either. Why don’t you work on your soap box? Okay?”

The child gave them both a long, hard look, then left.

Juts exhaled. “Goddamn, I wish she’d never seen that news-reel. That was months ago.”

“The one with the dead dog?”

“And the gangs of orphans. What she remembers—” Juts shook her head.

“When we were knitting socks for the doughboys I don’t remember thinking about the children over there. Did you?”

“No.”

Louise shrugged. “Why is she building a soap box? Girls can’t run in the derby.”

“I know that.”

“Well, the derby won’t be for another year. It just happened.”

As Louise’s house was on the finish line everyone congregated there, and Nickel was vastly impressed by the competition.

“It keeps her busy. She likes to build things.”

“She’d be better off sewing.”

“She doesn’t like to sew.”

“Julia, you can’t let children do what they want. You have to guide them.”

“I am not in the mood for a lecture. Can it.”

“Okay, okay. I will say, though, that Aunt Dimps doesn’t sound like she’s doing a good job as a Sunday-school teacher. Nicky is—”

“Louise, I mean it. I don’t want to hear anything. I’m forty-five years old and
I
have a hard time believing in the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. How come Jesus gets to come back but no one else does?”

“Don’t even say such things. It’s blasphemy.”

“Christianity is not very logical, and if nothing else, Nicky is logical.”

“Faith. You don’t need brains.”

“That’s obvious.”

This jab flew past Louise. She sat down on the swing, a tendril
of wisteria at her feet. “Juts, I think you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“In all respects.” Juts sat next to her sister. “As the governor of North Carolina said to the governor of South Carolina—”

Louise chimed in with Juts. “‘It’s a long time between drinks.’”

A
soul was in mortal danger. Louise came to the rescue. She gave Nickel a set of rosary beads, pearl-white, telling the child not to let her mother see them. She showed her how to say her novenas and Hail Marys. She volunteered to take Nicky out on walks or to the movies and then would instead sneak her into St. Rose of Lima’s for a bracing mass.

Nicky, responsive to pageantry, adored the flickering votive candles, the icons, the paintings, the deep-rich colors of the vestments.
“Nomine Dominus, Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus.”
She could chant her Latin along with Louise.

The conspiratorial nature of their expeditions appealed to both niece and aunt. Putting one over on Juts was a thrill.

“Don’t mention this to your mother, now. Loose lips sink ships.”

“We don’t have a ship,” Nickel replied.

Louise was again reminded that children know nothing of the past. “During the war we were worried about spies. There were posters all over that said ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships,’ which meant you were never to tell secrets because it might help the enemy.”

“Is Mom the enemy?”

Louise drawled, “She’s just a terribly misguided person.”

“Did you worry about the enemy during the war?”

“Indeed I did. I was the one who saw the German bomber squadron on Runnymede Day … your mother was there, too. She didn’t do much. I identified the enemy.”

“Gee,” Nickel exclaimed, filled with awe.

“Oh, yes.” Louise nodded. “Now remember, pretend we’re at war. Christians against the nonbelievers. Loose lips sink ships.”

Juts, glad to be free of the rigors of loving motherhood, didn’t question Nickel’s jaunts. So long as Nicky said she’d had a hot-fudge sundae at Cadwalder’s or she liked Lash LaRue better than ever at the movies, Juts failed to notice any spiritual improvements in her daughter.

Louise, like all the Hunsenmeirs, had been born to the Lutheran Church. It was during her adolescence that she had embraced the One True Faith. It was more than an embrace, it was a death grip. Since Louise wanted people to be better than they were, she was doomed to lifelong disappointment and bitterness. The Catholic Church enabled her to survive these disappointments, chief of which was her wayward sister.

Juts’s habits preyed on her mind. When Louise made the sign of the cross at the dinner table, Juts would make the sign of the dollar. She’d trace an S in the air, dash her finger through it twice, and follow this with an extremely reverent “Amen.”

Louise worried that Nickel would be corrupted by such entertaining blasphemies.

She missed raising children. She had loved Mary’s and Maizie’s antics, sayings, and questions up until age fourteen. At that point she thought God had come down and stolen her two adorable daughters, substituting two recalcitrant slugs.

Maizie had taken a summer job in Baltimore. Louise felt some relief that Maizie was returning to her old self.

Although she saw Mary almost every other day, she never felt
that she spent time with her. It was rush here and rush there. She’d baby-sit for her daughter. She loved children but hated being known as a grandmother. She wouldn’t allow the two little boys to call her Grandma. They called her Wheezie.

Nickel’s enchantment with St. Rose’s made Louise forget occasionally that she and her niece weren’t the same blood. She was planning to take Nicky to high mass. So far, they’d only attended early-morning mass. High mass would do it. Nicky would be the church’s for life.

She also gave Nicky a small black book,
The Key to Heaven
, instructing the child not to let Juts find it or the precious rosary beads.

Nicky hid them in the corner of her toybox after first wrapping them in her bandana. Since Nicky usually wore her bandana, Juts looked for it one morning, thinking perhaps the child had stuffed it in a pocket, dropped it, or forgotten it somewhere, although Nicky rarely forgot anything. She flipped up the lid of the toybox and saw the red bandana tied foursquare. She opened it up, spilling the rosary beads and
The Key to Heaven.

“She’d better put her tail between her legs and kiss her ass good-bye.” Juts stubbed out her ever-present cigarette.

She threw the bandana in the wash, then ironed it along with the other clothes. When Nickel came home she found her clothing neatly piled on her bed, the bandana on top of everything.

“Uh-oh.” Nicky opened her toybox.
The Key to Heaven
rested on the chest of a worn teddy bear. She closed the lid. She wondered if she should slip out the back door and run to Wheezie or if she should pretend nothing had happened. As she sat on her trunk, pondering this crisis, she heard Juts’s footfall. A long shadow fell by the door. Yoyo scampered in first, followed by Juts. Buster, on Nickel’s bed, raised his head, then lowered it. Buster was slowing down.

Rosary beads twirled on Juts’s finger. “Nicky, here’s your necklace.”

Nickel stared at the hypnotic twirling. She cupped her hands underneath it and Juts dropped it dead center.