A Wedding on the Banks (19 page)

It must have been only minutes after she had fallen asleep that the voice woke Pearl. She had snuggled up to Marvin for nearly an hour while she pondered the unearthly circumstances out in the summer kitchen, that haven for ghosts. And although she was sure it couldn't happen, she'd fallen asleep. At first it had filtered in to her as part of her dream, but then it grew louder and tugged her toward it until she opened her eyes and realized that it was coming from outside the house, from the back of the house, from the site of the summer kitchen.

“Marvin?” Pearl whispered. “Wake up.” He answered by chopping off a snore in midflight and turning over on his side. Pearl was glad he hadn't awakened. If she let him see her like that, frightened in the night by ghosts, how could she convince him she could stay in the house alone? The voice again, a male's. Had the old reverend himself come home from China? Could ghosts navigate such great distances? In real life he couldn't even drive a car.

Pearl struggled out of bed and tiptoed over to the window. She leaned forward to the cold glass and peered down. Suddenly a male form moved out of the shadows of the house, into a pond of starlight. It stood stiffly, looking toward the river, toward the old highway. All Pearl could discern, from her crow's nest view, was the figure of a sturdy man with a full head of thick curls. She gasped. She remembered just such a dark, curly head from her childhood, one connected to the summer kitchen.

“Marcus Doyle,” thought Pearl. Who else but Marge's missionary lover, who had slept in the very summer kitchen during the autumn of 1923, would come back to cavort with Marge among the mason jars and old love letters of another time?

“He wrote those letters to her,” Pearl whispered, and shivered involuntarily as she peered down on the phantom. Then it was gone, lost on the black trail that led around the house. Maybe he had followed the trail all the way to the river, past the lilac graveyard where Pearl had seen the woman-ghost. Maybe he was inside the summer kitchen right now, had gone straight through the shingled wall, rather than follow any old river path. Maybe he was, at this very minute, huddled with Margie over her trunk of letters, reading them again, almost fifty years after they were written. Another thought occurred to Pearl, as she stood barefoot on the cold floorboards of her old bedroom and looked down on the summer kitchen. And it frightened her more than the pale woman-ghost seeking her dead children. It frightened her much, much more than the Catholic fireballs that used to roll at little Protestant trick-or-treaters, fireballs from hell. This was much scarier.

“Sicily and I threw those old letters away!” Pearl thought, and leaned against the wall. Hell hath no fury like a letter writer scorned. Marge would be furious when she found out! Marge would be what Randy called really pissed off. Had she been waiting, then, these ten long years by the lilac bush, that favorite hangout of ghosts, for Pearl to innocently, unsuspectingly come home?

“Her ghost'll probably go into a tailspin,” Pearl thought.

Pearl McKinnon Ivy developed such a genuine case of the jimjams that she was unable to sleep anymore on the first night of her homecoming.

“It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas,

Everywhere you go…”

—sung by Bing Crosby

The last week of April turned into a cold one, with the ground reluctant to shake loose the embedded icy veins. Then, to no one's surprise, a heavy wind decided to get involved. The last week of April was not heralding wedding weather, by any means, and the fact that Amy Joy Lawler was having hers on May first suggested a
hurriedness
to the entire town that left it purring with gossip. Both clans of Giffords had passed the notion that something was afoul around the supper table since they first heard of the quick wedding. It did not occur to anyone in town that Amy Joy's
head
was in a rush for the wedding, not her
belly.

It was not wedding weather that followed the Gifford kids out to the school bus on the last Friday of April. Cold still clung to the mammoth cakes of ice that lay like white Roman walls along the Mattagash River bank. Snow still peeked out from beneath the trees at the edge of the woods, and during the nights, the dead grass in the fields crusted with frost so that the morning sun careened off it in glittering bounces.

The last Friday of April found a school bus full of rambunctious children, with MATTAGASH CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL DISTRICT #12 on its side, winding its way along the main road, dropping off all the modern descendants of the old loyalist settlers. That daily bus ride home from school had been a ride of terror for everyone on board until Fred, the driver, grabbed Little Pee and Little Vinal and knocked their heads together. He then assured them that if they so much as breathed loudly on his bus again, they would become acquainted with the two-by-four he had stashed beneath the driver's seat.

“If you two don't want the Watertown mortician visiting your mothers,” Fred had said, “you'd better sew up them lips.”

Although Little Pee and Little Vinal had quieted during rides, Fridays always contained an excitement that stirred up the whole busload. Freedom from school, and the elusive joy that creeps in as the weekend is about to roll around, precipitated a kind of People's Revolution on board. When the lumbering school bus pulled to a halt in the heart of Giffordtown that Friday, all the school-age Giffords except for Little Vinal, who was enjoying the final days of his suspension, raced down the steps and out into the chilly air wafting up from the river. Vera's kids went left, across the road to their house, and Goldie's climbed the hill as the bus pulled away in a cloud of exhaust. Among the mountaineers was Miltie, Goldie's baby, who had been so congested during the notorious cough season that Goldie insisted he wear his mittens even before April turned cold on them. Preferring to tough the nippiness, as the big kids did, Miltie perpetually lost his mittens. Sometimes they stayed sizzling on the warm register at school. They were often left behind in his seat on the bus. They were forgotten in the boys' bathroom or, worse, they were actually
lost
. On the last Friday of April, Miltie managed to come home with his mittens.

Slower than the older, long-legged children, Milton was the last off the bus. Despite Goldie's constant plea for Priscilla and the others to lag behind with him as protection, Miltie's siblings usually raced each other up the long hill, seeing who could tap their hand on the front door first. Miltie had long gotten over the insult of being left behind in such a fashion. He no longer even looked up in envy at the retreating soles of boots and sneakers. He consoled himself with the knowledge that one day he would be taller and faster than all of them. One day he would run up, tap the door, then run back to meet the losers halfway up the hill.

Running this imaginary race in his mind, Miltie decided he'd best put on his mittens, since they'd both come home with him anyway, and satisfy Goldie. The right one went on smoothly enough but, as Miltie's hands were also encumbered by a weeklong accumulation of school papers, the other green mitten fell to the roadside. Holding his papers in his teeth, Miltie squatted to retrieve it. But a gust of wind came roaring up like a truck and swept the mitten across the road and into Vera's yard. Miltie bit into his papers and chased it. He spotted the mitten, but so did Popeye, Vera's dog, who had long ceased to receive the hearty dishes that Vera insisted he eat last January. Popeye went for the mitten as if it were meat. Miltie was no match for the huge animal, but he dived in anyway. Popeye was less frightening than his mother, angry over another lost mitten.

Popeye had never taken sides in the Gifford family feud and instead wagged his tail diplomatically at all the children. But whether he meant to do it, or whether it was a freak accident, was not important. What was important was that Miltie's leg came out of the shuffle with tooth marks and some bleeding. Aunt Vera came running out and demanded to know what Milton Gifford was doing in her yard, on private property. Miltie was crying too hard to tell her. Instead he grabbed the mitten from Popeye, who was shaking it in an attempt to play, and raced up the hill, falling twice.

Goldie could not speak as she washed the wound and doused it with iodine. She covered it with a Band-Aid, planted Miltie on the couch, tucked a blanket about him, and snapped on
Bozo
the
Clown
. Then she bundled up in a scarf and coat and marched down the hill. But, like the January fight, nothing came of it except some extraordinarily loud shouting. Big Vinal came running from the garage, where he had been busy with some clandestine cuttings and skinnings that involved an illegally shot deer.

“She sicced Popeye on Miltie!” shouted Goldie.

“I did no such thing,” said Vera, who was barefoot, and stepping on one foot, then the other, on her chilly front porch.

“That dog ain't all there,” said Goldie. “He walks around all day with a rock in his mouth.”

“I wish you'd do the same,” said Vera, all ashiver. “It'd keep your tongue from wagging.”

Back at the Gifford house on the hill, Goldie told the senior Pike what had taken place. Still not wanting the roof to blow off, considering the weather, Pike inspected Miltie's leg wound and said, “That ain't too bad a bite, is it, Miltie?”

Miltie felt differently. It was indeed a monstrous bite, a trauma he might never get over, but then Pike said, “You're Daddy's little man, ain't you? You ain't gonna act like no old girl now, are you?” No. Of course Miltie wasn't.

“You can't blame Popeye,” said Goldie. “It's the first time that poor dog's been near a bone with meat around it.” She was briskly folding towels from her laundry basket. “Vera never feeds him. Half the time he walks around looking for low crotches to sniff. He's too weak to jump for the high ones.”

The more Vera sat at the bottom of the hill and thought about it, the madder she became. Why hadn't she brought up the Christmas tree lights to Goldie? She had been waiting since December, in a kind of emotional hibernation, to remind Goldie of her greed. To reacquaint her with the fact that all of Mattagash knew that the basement or the attic at the top of the hill must be bulging with boxes of lights. She wanted to rub it in Goldie's face like it was snow, or maybe even snot. Either one would be distasteful in April. Instead she had only shouted, and chilled her bunion-cursed toes. What a waste of a wonderful opportunity. And Goldie had been on Vera's land, in case the sheriff from St. Leonard had taken an interest in the family reunion. Well, now was the time to remind Goldie of those Christmas lights in a big way.

Toward evening, Goldie looked down the hill and saw Vera outside in the icy wind, trying to install what looked like
Christmas
decorations
! A five-foot-long cardboard poster of Santa Claus, with a mittened hand on Mrs. Claus's shoulder, proved especially difficult. The wind caught the bottom of the poster several times and yanked the tacks out of the top where Vera was trying in vain to secure it. When the wind died down for a minute, Vera managed to get several tacks up and down the poster, and now her door was no longer a dull brown but brightly emblazoned with the holiday husband-and-wife duo.

“It's one hundred percent menopause,” Goldie said to Pike, who had been summoned off the sofa for a peek. “The Bible might call it a crown of glory, but let's face it. What you see down there is a crazy woman.”

“Is Uncle Vinal gonna take Aunt Vera to Bangor?” Missy asked. “Is he gonna put her in the crazy bin?”

“He should,” Goldie answered. “Lord knows she belongs in it.”

Next, Vera lined the porch with Christmas lights, saving a string for the scrawny outdoor tree she'd told Goldie about last December. This was why she needed some of those extra lights that her sister-in-law had stockpiled. She instructed Little Vinal, who had to disrupt his sabbatical in order to do so, to pry a thin fir into the hard mud around the newly erected mailbox. Goldie watched with interest from behind the kitchen curtain as Vera ran an extension cord out to the tree and lit it up. It was still too early in the evening to catch the full lighting effects, but once Vera was assured it was working, she unplugged it and went about tacking sprays of pine branches at random about the porch.

Goldie stared down at the piteous tree driven into the mire near the mailbox. It was for the adoration of
this
that Vera had climbed the big icy hill four months ago and cried bloody murder?

“It looks like budworms lived off it all last summer,” Goldie said to Missy, and let the curtain fall back into place. “I don't give a damn what the Bible says, that's the work of a genuine hot flash.”

It was only ten minutes later that Goldie reappeared at her window, unable to resist, and peered down to see that Vera was arranging the plastic figurines of her Nativity scene in their usual place on the front lawn. By nightfall, all the plastic participants stood around the baby Jesus, who lay illuminated by means of an extension cord rather than a halo. The lighted faces of the group were in dire contrast to the low temperatures that had swept over Mattagash. Goldie looked down at the tranquil faces. There was the perpetual Mother, smiling at her naked son. Naked, and the temperature was still dropping! Goldie looked down into Mary's peaceful face, where a layer of frost had begun to form.

“With the windchill factor what it is,” Goldie said to Missy, who was eating relief peanut butter with a spoon, “you almost want to see Mary get up and take that baby inside.”

“She could at least put a Pamper on it,” said Missy, plopping her empty spoon in the sink.

It was only five minutes later when the telephone rang. Goldie was shocked to hear Vera's breathy voice on the other end of the line. The decorating had winded her, but her anger was in full sail.

“You can buy all the goddamn Christmas lights in Watertown!” Vera screamed. “But you don't own 'em all. Just take a peek down your hill.”

“You should be taking pills or something,” Goldie said. “You're under the influence of your hormones, Vera.” Goldie was about to hang up, but Vera got in her last words.

“Your problem, Goldie, is that you was a bastard baby,” Vera yelled. “Ed Plunkett marrying your mother ain't gonna make any difference with the Pope. You're gonna end up on the same cloud as them unbaptized babies.”

Goldie put the phone back in its cradle. Then she went upstairs, away from the kids, and Pike, and the noisy television set. She went up to her bedroom, closed the door, and lay back on her bed, eyes closed.

When Claire Fennelson, Dorrie's mother, had told Goldie one day on the playground that Ed Plunkett wasn't her real father, she went into the bathroom and cried hot, salty tears. Then she came out with her head held high in the air. What else could she have done? And the other children had laughed—Giffords and not-Giffords alike—and said she was stuck-up. They said that knowing her real father was from downstate had gone to her head. But Goldie knew that it was best they think this. And when they weren't looking, she found out all she could about her real father. She coaxed it word by word out of her mother, her precious mother, when she was sober enough to talk. Goldie's last memories of this person were of the fine yellow skin and the yellowish of her eyeballs. Her swollen ankles and the huge round blood spots on her shins. Her bloated stomach and her hardened liver. Goldie remembered how desperately those organs were fighting to get out of her mother's body. And so were the secrets, because she told Goldie the truth before cirrhosis took her off. Her father was in a nursing home in Bangor.

So Goldie had waited, and the day came when Pike went as far as that city to visit Clement, his second cousin. Clement had found Pike a good deal on a used Ford Fairlane and Goldie demanded to ride down with him. Once there, she got Clement's wife, Peg, to drive her over to the home. And then she went in with her heart full of forgiveness. He was too young to be in a nursing home, but he needed medical attention. The nurse whispered to Goldie short references to excessive drinking, ruined health, dying organs. She needn't have bothered. She could have saved her breath. Goldie had seen jaundice up so close it reminded her of how autumn came to the old vegetables in her garden, turning them to a sheeny yellow and then to mush. So Goldie had pushed quietly past the nurse and gone off down the hall in search of his room. Yes, he said, he used to live in Mattagash. Yes, he knew her mother, Mildred, but then, so did a lot of men. And no, he wasn't, he was quite sure, her father.

“Do I look like anyone in your family?” Goldie had asked. Everyone in Mattagash knew that Goldie looked like no one in Ed Plunkett's family, or in Mildred Gifford's. Surely she looked like someone in his family. A mother? A sister? Other daughters? A cousin?

“You got to understand,” Goldie whispered to him. “All these years, I been lost out there. All these years, I been floating.”