Born Under a Lucky Moon (6 page)

Figuring that hitting the house and seeing the limp tent lying in the backyard might be a bit much for Lucy, Mom pulled in to Main Street, a restaurant three blocks from our house. Chuck hadn't said a word since we had left the church. Granted, men did not tend to speak much around the Thompson females, because it meant jumping into the fast-moving current of our words. Seated at the table, Mom, Sammie, and I looked expectantly at Chuck. He looked expectantly back at us. Lucy fiddled with her fork and kept checking the door to see if anyone she knew was coming in.

“So, Chuck, do you study Russian as well?” Mom asked politely. I could tell she was wondering when he was going to take his hat off.

“No, ma'am.”

“Are you an officer?” It was a good question, but none of us knew what that meant anyway. He could have told us he was Field Marshall Rommel and we would have nodded our heads politely until we could check with Dad.

But his answer again was “No, ma'am.”

Then he did it. He made the fatal mistake. The one thing that sealed his fate in my mother's eyes. She would deny it, but I knew better. It was a small gesture, but my mother had not spent her life trying to better herself for no reason. Chuck's Coke was sitting in front of his plate. Leaving his hands resting at his sides, he leaned forward and fumbled for his straw with his mouth. I watched Mom lean slightly back from the table. Her eyes were glued to Chuck's lips as he slurped his Coke, his hands dangling uselessly. And that was that. He was not “our people.”

None of us dared to look at Lucy, who surely must have noticed. Chuck, clueless to the awkward silence, volunteered, “I'm a private first class, ma'am, in B Five-Three Company.” This sounded vaguely like a Boy Scout troop. I wondered if their oath was similar to the Girl Scout oath. Once, on a Girl Scout camping trip, I had been asked to lead the pledge. I practiced hard the night before, lying in my Raggedy Ann sleeping bag in my tent. The next day, we all stood in a circle around the flagpole. The troop leader looked at me expectantly. And—I forgot. Absolutely could not remember the first words to save my life. I recited them silently to myself for reassurance, “On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country . . .”

“Jeannie.” Mom was talking to me.

“Huh?”

“Chuck just said he's a runner.”

“Oh.” What was I supposed to say? That I was a runner in high school? Did this mean we had a deep connection?

“I run long distance for the army.”

“Why? Is it training for combat or something?”

“No. It's for medals. Competition between units.” He stuck a fist in the air and belted out, “Hoorah B Company!” The lunch crowd paused and stared in our direction to see what was going on.

“Chuck, sweetie, maybe not in here,” Lucy said. She turned to us. “He's very good. He's won almost every event. It's a big deal in the army.”

Sammie was surprisingly silent through all of this. Looking at her, I saw something like worry, mixed with compassion, on her face. She reached across the table and squeezed Lucy's hand. “It's nice to have you home.” They exchanged long smiles. Lucy knew exactly what we were all thinking. “Now give me your hat. It'll look great on me.”

Lucy took off her hat and handed it to her. “I have to have it back. It's against regulations for a civilian to wear it.”

“If I see a general I promise to hide,” Sammie assured her. We finished the “biggest sourdough sandwiches on the coast of Lake Michigan” and drove the last few blocks home. As Mom had feared, Dad was out back with a gigantic tent sprawled on the ground. He got up and wiped his hands on his plaid pants before shaking hands with Chuck. He gave Lucy a big hug.

“Chuck, I sure could use some help out here. The crew left the tent and said they'd be back, but that was hours ago. On top of that, I've got a gopher problem. But Pete next door said this would take care of them.” He held out a handful of M-80s, which anybody north or south of Tennessee could tell you are big old firecrackers. The kind that blow mailboxes off their posts. The kind they run commercials about around the Fourth of July, showing kids with bandaged eyes and hands. We left Chuck out back with Dad so they could bond over explosives and went into the kitchen. Lucy sighed and sat down at the table. Mom hugged her and stroked her hair. “My little Velvet.” However, it said
PRIVATE THOMPSON
on her name tag, which Sammie asked if she could have for an art project. Lucy took it off and handed it to her.

“Where is everybody?” she finally asked.

“Dad said Grandma is upstairs napping and Elizabeth will be over in a bit. Evan is getting ready for the rehearsal dinner. Which is”—Mom checked her watch—“Lord, in just a few hours. Do you know what you're wearing?” she asked.

“Yes. I just need to shower.”

Thank God Elizabeth isn't here yet, I thought. She had the shower schedule with her and I didn't know if we could handle that just yet. Although the house was fairly big, for some reason we had only one full bathroom. When we were growing up, all five of us women would squeeze into the bathroom at once, four of us doing our makeup and blow-drying our hair and doing our business while one of us showered. Then we would bitch at the person who was showering because she was fogging up the mirror. I don't recall Dad or Evan ever actually getting their turn in the bathroom, although I'm sure they must have, as they didn't pee out by the garage. I hoped.

We all prayed for a second bathroom, but Mom enlarged the kitchen instead. It had been a “one-butt kitchen,” she said—which was a problem when you had seven butts.

We heard the first explosion go off. Mom lit a cigarette. I went over to the sliders to see what was going on. The first explosion seemed to be successful. Chuck and Dad were peering down at a decent-sized hole.

“That'll fix them,” Dad crowed. “Or at least scare them over to the Longs' yard.” Dad didn't like the Longs. Mr. Long always complained about our dog, Buddy, peeing on his lawn. All of their kids played flute or violin in the school orchestra, and the entire family was high-strung and always on some vitamin regimen. When they started selling Amway products, Dad wrote them off for good.

The second explosion erupted. Chuck and Dad gleefully raced over to inspect the damage. A trickle of water started overflowing the hole. Dad was scratching his balding head when a geyser shot up in the air—not just some mini Old Faithful, but a thundering-straight-up-in-the-air-for-twenty-feet geyser.

“Shit. I hit the water main.” Dad trudged off to the side of the house to switch off the main. The geyser slowed down and became more like an open fire hydrant in New York in August. Then it died completely. “Is it off?” he shouted from around the corner.

“Yup, Mr. Thompson. It's done,” Chuck shouted back.

The third explosion took them by surprise as Dad was rounding the corner of the house. They both leapt back about ten feet. Smoke began to rise from the pile of dead leaves under the stairs that led down to the dock. Mom had been bugging Dad since last fall to rake them out. Then we saw flames. They weren't huge, only licking about a foot in the air.

“Get the hose!” Dad screamed.

I turned from the sliding doors back to my Mom, Sammie, and Lucy. “Is anybody else interested in this?”

The doorbell rang, and Mom went to answer the door.

Chuck ran around the corner of the house and reappeared on the other side. “Where is it?” he asked.

“It's . . . shit. It's right here.” It was on the lawn where Dad had left it while fixing the water sprinklers. He raced for the faucet and cranked the handle. Nothing.

“Oh shit. No water. Rose!”

Mom was by now, thankfully, not in the house. I ran out front and listened to her try to explain to Mrs. Petty why the love of her son's life was marrying another man a mere nine months after they had broken up. Mrs. Petty tearfully said that it shouldn't matter that Jeff had dumped Lucy for another girl. The other girl hadn't worked out, so why couldn't Lucy and Jeff get back together? They still had those Christmas ornaments with their names painted on them from the high school Christmas dance, after all. I decided that Mom was much too occupied to deal with our house being on fire and ran back to the kitchen.

Through the open sliding doors, I could see Dad trying unsuccessfully to stomp out the fire with his shoe. “Chuck, get a bucket!” he finally yelled.

Chuck ran into the kitchen, looking dazed and panicked. “Bucket?”

Sammie calmly opened a cupboard door and handed him a saucepan.

“Is that it?” Chuck looked at the saucepan as if he had never seen one.

“That's it,” Sammie said, and closed the cupboard door. Even if we did have a bucket we would never find it. It's not like there was a special place in the garage marked
BUCKETS
, for God's sake. Chuck ran back out to the backyard. Dad pointed down the hill at Bear Lake. Chuck ran around the fire burning up the dock stairs and nearly fell down the hill trying to get to the lake. He scooped a pan of water and ran back up the hill. By that time, Dad had put out the fire with what was left of the coffee in his thermos and the water out of Buddy's bowl. As he stood surveying the damage, Chuck poured his 1.5 quarts of water onto the smoldering ashes.

“Guess I'll need to rebuild these stairs by tomorrow, huh?” Dad said, and went into the house to make a new pot of coffee and ponder the situation. The backyard was left with a bedraggled tent, three large holes in the lawn, and charred dock stairs. The top section of the stairs rolled over and fell down the hill later that night.

Chuck came in, stuck his face under the kitchen faucet, and tried to gulp water that wasn't coming. Crossing to the fridge, he found an old bottle of lemonade and gulped it down. I was sure he'd have stomach cramps later. Who knew how long that lemonade had been in there? Then he wiped his face with his sleeve, sat down, and began tracing the roosters on the kitchen table. I knew how he felt. He'd get used to it.

“Chuck?”

It was Jeff Petty. Sammie and I exchanged a look that meant “uh-oh.”

Chuck looked up, and Jeff extended his hand. “Hi, I'm, um, a good friend of Lucy's. I thought maybe you'd like to meet some of the guys. We're playing flag football down at the high school field. Do you want to come?”

I thought this was a pretty damn nice gesture on Jeff's part and Chuck didn't seem to recognize his name. So there it was: he didn't know about Jeff Petty. He seemed glad to do something that would get him away from the house. Lucy had just come in from the front yard, where apparently she had been talking to Mom and Mrs. Petty. She seemed prepared for the situation in front of her.

“Can I go?” Chuck asked her.

“Sure, honey. Have a good time. Just be back by five because we have to get ready for our rehearsal dinner.” Chuck looked blank.

“Mom decided to throw our rehearsal dinner at the same time as Evan's.”

Oh God, now we were usurping Evan's rehearsal dinner, too. Forget about sending Evan over the edge into therapy; he was gonna hit bottom any second. Some psychiatrist was going to make a mint off him. Although I wasn't sure we even had a psychiatrist in Muskegon.

Chuck changed into some sweats, and I had to admit, he looked pretty good. He took off with Jeff in Jeff's Camaro to drive the five blocks to the field.

Mom went out to survey the damage in the backyard, and then she went to the phone and dialed Tom, the handyman who usually cleaned up after Dad. She must have expressed some urgency, because his pickup truck roared into our driveway moments later. Tom charged into the house, straight through the kitchen and family room, then out the sliding doors to the backyard. As I trailed after him, I wondered why he hadn't just gone around the side of the house. He had left dirty footprints everywhere on the carpet. Sammie looked at the footprints, then at me, expectantly. I was already getting the carpet cleaner and the vacuum out.

“Does that really make you feel calmer?” Sammie stood over me as I scrubbed away on my hands and knees.

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“I don't know.” I finished up with the vacuum, then went outside to see if there was any progress. Dad and Tom studied the second hole. “I have about seven or eight people who need to shower here within the next hour,” Dad said.

“I'm gonna have to jerry-rig it.” Tom took his cap off and scratched his head.

“Think it'll hold until the city crew can get here to fix it right?” Dad asked.

“Beats me.” Tom got to work.

I don't know what he did, but about half an hour later he yelled at me to try the kitchen faucet. I turned the knob and water came out, which is what I yelled back to him.

“It's 4:00. You're supposed to be in the shower.” Elizabeth had arrived. “And we have to figure out who is going in which car. Since it'll take us about ten minutes to get there, we should leave at 5:45 in case parking is bad.”

“Someone has obviously lived in L.A. too long,” I replied. All we had in Muskegon was parking.