How High the Moon (20 page)

I tilted my head and studied Miss Tuckle. “You swear that you and Teddy aren’t doing the Juicy Jit…” I glanced up at Jesus, then stopped, just in case saying
Juicy Jitterbug
was swearing. I cleared my throat and started over. “You swear that you and Teddy are only friends, and not doing boyfriend-and-girlfriend stuff like kissing and whatnot?”

Miss Tuckle turned sunburn-pink. “I swear we’re not,” she said.

“Okay… hold that thought.” I ran out of the Sunday school room, and sure enough, I found a stack of Bibles on a little table in the church entrance hall. Bibles, I think, that were for borrowing by the sinners who forgot theirs, so they could follow along as the good pastor read. I grabbed four or five of them and ran back downstairs. “Here, put your hand on these and look at Jesus, and
then
swear that you and Teddy aren’t doing boyfriend-and-girlfriend stuff together. Then I might believe you.”

Miss Tuckle looked uncomfortable, but she put her hand on that stack of Bibles and she swore it.

“I don’t know, Charlie,” I said as we walked home. “She
did
make a swear to God, yet you saw how giggly she got when Teddy gushed about her stupid casserole and her pie, didn’t you? Her eyes got all googly looking. She’s trying to wear her hair more like a glamour girl now, too. And did you get a whiff of her when she came over last time?” Charlie shook his head. “Well, lucky you, because she
was wearing some stinky stuff that was so strong it made my throat burn.”

I scootered a few more swipes with my foot, then said, “I sure hope Miss Tuckle wasn’t being a fibber-face when she made that swear. If she was, she’s going to have some explaining to do. To me, and to God. She’s lying, and I won’t ever talk to her again. And God, he just might condemn her to damnation forever.”

“Where’s damnation?”

“I don’t know, Charlie, but it’s got a cussword in it, so you can bet it’s not anyplace nice.”

The next week, Teddy invited Miss Tuckle over for dinner as his way of saying thank you for her bringing all of that food over while he was laid up with his wrist. The wrist he claimed was better so he could go back to work, even if he winced when he did little things like turned a doorknob.

Teddy made fried chicken that night, even if cooking chicken got a tad bloody in the pan, and when I said it smelled good, Teddy hit me with a bomb by telling me I was eating my dinner over at the Frys. “Why?” I asked.

“Well, Mrs. Fry is making spaghetti with meatballs for you and Charlie. She knows it’s your favorite. It would be rude if you didn’t have your supper there after she went through all that trouble.”

“Well why aren’t all four of us having supper there, then? It could have saved you all
this
trouble.”

Teddy looked uncomfortable, like people look when their butt itches and they can’t scratch it because they’re in public. He stuttered a bit when he said, “Well, we each didn’t know the other was making a big meal.”

“Good thing I know you’re too respectable to lie, Teddy,” I said, “or I’d think you were just making all that up.”

“Something smells fishy,” I told Charlie as we sat on his steps after our spaghetti. And that Charlie, who misses the boat so many times that if he really was in the water he’d have drowned by now, said, “No. Teddy was making fried chicken.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t mean that I
really
smell fish. I just meant that I think Mrs. Fry and Teddy planned this like sneaks, just to get me out of Teddy’s hair so he could be alone with Miss Tuckle. Maybe even so they could do the Juicy Jitterbug.”

“What’s that?” Charlie asked.

“Something grown-ups do in their beds,” I said, and Charlie said, “Oh. You mean that sex stuff.”

“That sex stuff?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, “How big people make babies.” Then he told a story so ridiculous I had to laugh. I’d seen a wee-er once. Jack Johnson’s. He’d dropped his pants, right behind the shed, and said, “Look what I got.” I wish I hadn’t. It looked like a pinkie finger with no bones, flopped over two lumps of skin that had swallowed a couple of steelies. I took one look at that goofy-looking mess and told Jack that if I had a boy’s wee-er, I’d hide it like cracked elbows.

“You’re making that up. There’s no way a guy could get that thing in a girl’s pee-er,” I told Charlie. “It wouldn’t fit, for one. As floppy as it is, it would be like trying to stuff a wool sock into a baby shoe.”

Even as I stated my case, though, I wondered. Maybe that was why the bed banged so loud, because a guy would have to work like crazy to make that thing go in there. I told Charlie my doubts and he said that wee-ers didn’t stay little. They grew real big and stiff when men were going to “do it,” which I took to mean the Juicy Jitterbug.

“How do you know that?” I asked Charlie.

“Cause our house was only one room, and I saw my ma and dad doing it more than once. My dad and some other ladies, too. When I was supposed to be sleeping.”

I stayed quiet for a while, my head going back and forth, back and forth, thinking Charlie was all wet one minute, then thinking maybe he knew what he was talking about the next. After all, who would have thought that Charlie had the smarts to know how to play the piano, either? But that was Charlie for you. Full of surprises. And he did seem awful sure of himself on this one.

“No wonder Miss Tuckle never married or had a boyfriend before,” I told Charlie as we sat, me watching my house. “She probably thought the whole thing sounded disgusting, too.”

I narrowed my eyes until Charlie blurred. “Hey, wait a minute. Maybe that’s why she has her sights set on Teddy. She’s probably thinking that a guy as little as him has to have a little wee-er, too, which wouldn’t make it quite as painful.”

“Maybe,” Charlie said.

I looked across the street, where Johnny was leaned under the hood of his new hot rod, which was nothing but a junky old car he was going to fix up. “Hey, Charlie. If you get married, do you
have
to let your husband do that to you, do you know?”

“I think so,” Charlie said, and I said, “Man.”

I sat there thinking for a minute, then I said, “Hey, Charlie. If that’s how you make babies, and your dad was doing that with your ma and some other ladies all the time, then how come you’re an only kid?”

Charlie shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe he was doing it wrong.”

The night was warm, the wind still, and with the Jacksons inside probably having their supper, you could hear an occasional faint Miss Tuckle giggle through the screens. “Okay, that’s it,” I said to Charlie. “I’m going spying. You stay here. I’ll be right back.” Charlie looked disappointed, but the sorry fact was, Charlie wasn’t as fast as me and I didn’t plan on getting caught. “If Grandma G comes out and sees me gone, you just say I ran out to my shed to get something for us to play with, okay?”

“Is there something for us to play with in there?” Charlie asked.

“Course not, but how would she know that?”

It wasn’t easy sitting still and quiet under the window because skeetos with the appetite of a Charlie were gnawing on me, and I had to rub them away instead of squashing them with a slap.

“Teddy,” Miss Tuckle said after she got done giggling over something or other Teddy said (which couldn’t have been funny, since Teddy’s funny bone was undersized, like everything else on him). “I hope I didn’t offend you with my offer earlier. And I hope you don’t think I’m trying to buy your friendship. Though I have to admit, when I was younger, I
did
try to buy friends by giving them gifts and being overly helpful.”

Teddy’s voice sounded uncomfortable when he said, “I wasn’t above that myself. Though I can’t imagine you needing to buy anyone, April. You’re kind. Sweet. A genuinely nice person.”

I could almost hear Miss Tuckle blush.

“Well, anyway,” she said, after a soft giggle, “I just want you to know that I’d be more than happy to lend you the money. You can’t keep putting up with this emotional blackmail. That’s no way to live.”

“Oh, April, I couldn’t take money from you.”

“Wait. Hear me out. Okay?” April said, even though I knew she was wasting her time, because Teddy didn’t do handouts.

“I make decent money, Teddy. And I’ve not really had anything to spend it on. I’ve lived in my tiny apartment since I left home, and I make all my own clothes. I’ve just never had much reason to indulge in the things a lot of other women indulge in. What I’m saying is that I have money in the bank doing nothing but collecting dust. You can’t go on like this, afraid to let Teaspoon get the mail for fear there will be another one of those letters in the box, then having to fork out money you don’t have for fear of the repercussions if you send nothing.

“I know we haven’t known each other long, but I can tell a trustworthy person when I see one. And what good is money if you
can’t do something worthwhile with it? You need a loan, and with that lien on the house…”

Teddy must have made like he was going to say something because Miss Tuckle said, “Don’t say anything just yet. Just think about it, okay? We could work out a payment plan with interest, if that would make you feel better. Teaspoon’s future has to be more important than my uncomfortableness at offering this, and, more important than your pride in taking it.”

I turned around and rested my back against the siding when Teddy changed the subject to something dull.
My security? The lean? My future? Blackmail?
What on earth were they talking about?

And then I got it. Before the roof started leaking, one day when Teddy came out to the mailbox, his foot hit a creak on the porch and he stopped and bounced in place on boards that were frayed like old ropes. Then he said, “I don’t know how much longer this old porch is going to stay secure.” He shook his head and carried his mail inside. Wasn’t that just like Teddy, to worry about me running back and forth across an unstable porch. Like what? I was Charlie-fat and might roll right off it, or fall right through it?

And my future? Sure enough, Teddy was thinking about how one day after he got old and the Lord called him home, I’d inherit this place, just like he did. Teddy just didn’t want to leave me the same run-down house his ma left him. That Teddy, what a worrywart. He was only thirty-eight years old. Mrs. Fry was eighty-two and she was still kicking. That should have told him something. As for me seeing a bad black bill in the mail, what difference did it make what color the envelopes were or if I saw them or not? I always knew when a bad bill came anyway, because Teddy’s eyebrows would bunch until payday.

I wanted to jump up right then and there and stick my face up to the screen and yell,
I’ll use the back door, then, for crying out loud! And it won’t matter what shape the house is in in a bajillion years from now anyway, because Ma will be back before then and we can fix it up with
her movie-star money
. But I didn’t do that, of course, or Teddy would have known my ears were snooping.

“I should go,” April said. “Please think about my offer, Teddy.”

I heard the couch spring squeak and knew they had gotten up, so I raced around the back of the house so it would look like I was just coming from the Frys.

“Hi,” I said, maybe a bit too loud, because I startled Miss Tuckle, which would have been funny, had Teddy not put his arm on her back to steady her.

Teddy walked her to the car and I tagged behind them. I could tell Miss Tuckle thought my friendliness meant that I liked her like I did when she was only my Sunday school teacher. Little did she know that I was just hanging around so Teddy wouldn’t forget he was somebody else’s boyfriend and that Miss Tuckle and him were only friends and try kissing her, like men always did when they said good-bye to ladies in the movies.

Poor Miss Tuckle, all slumped and skinny and homely. I almost felt sorry for her as she slipped behind the steering wheel of her car and smiled up at Teddy, like she didn’t know that he would never give up a pretty movie star for an old maid who made oven mitts.

Teddy was more quiet than usual the next day, like he was thinking, but he wasn’t as fidgety, either. And when he decided to take a stroll because the evening was breezy and the sunset pretty, I went with him, just in case he decided to veer over to Miss Tuckle’s place, which I’d learned from Mrs. Fry was right above the drugstore.

We went down Thornton Street, past Mr. Miller’s house, and Miller came out of his garage and called, “Hi there, Big Guy,” in that booming voice of his that always sounded like he was doing a TV commercial.

Miller headed right over to the sidewalk, so we had to stop. Then we had to wait while he lit a cigar—Cuban, he said. Ordered
special for him by Pop. “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful to you the other day. But you get that lien squared away, and we’ll do some business,” he said. Teddy nodded without looking Mr. Miller in the eye.

“And while you’re at it, maybe you should get yourself some cash for a car, too. I’d give you a good deal.”

“Teddy’s face got red, and started twitching right here,” I told Charlie after Teddy and me got home, and I tapped my face right on the sharp bone under my ear to show Charlie where Teddy twitched. “And he didn’t talk the whole way. I told him right out that what Mr. Miller said sure was idiotic, since if we could get the lean and the leaks fixed in the first place, we wouldn’t even need a loan.