Runny03 - Loose Lips (21 page)

Louise answered, “You’ve got an hour to go, Maizie.”

“Momma, my hair will fall by then.”

“No, it won’t, but if you don’t sit still you’ll wrinkle your dress.”

“When does Aunt Juts get here?”

“When she gets here. She stopped by church. It’s food-basket night.”

“When do we do that, Mom?” Mary wondered, although her mind was in South Carolina at Billy’s training camp.

“Tomorrow. This would be easier if all the churches coordinated their baskets to the poor on the same day. Your aunt ties the bows on most of them since she’s so good at it. Maizie, sit still!”

“Mother, time is so slow.”

“Just wait until you’re my age. It’ll fly fast enough.”

Doodlebug wandered in looking for food or company, preferring the food.

“Maizie, have you written your thank-you to Mrs. Chalfonte yet?”

“How can I write her a thank-you before I’ve gone to the party? I have to tell her what happened.”

Louise pulled a sheet of paper and an envelope out of the little secretary in the corner. “At least address the envelope. I know you. You’ll put off writing and I’ll be embarrassed.”

“No, I won’t.” Maizie sat down at the secretary.

She wrote, “Mrs. Ramelle Chalfonte.”

Before she could add the address, Mary held the end of the pen. “Wrong.”

“What’s wrong?” Maizie frowned.

“Mom, she has to write ‘Mrs. Curtis Chalfonte,’ doesn’t she?” Louise leaned over Maizie’s shoulder. “Oh, Maizie, you know better than that.”

“Better than what?” Maizie, on edge, was getting irritated.

“You address a lady by her married name. You wouldn’t write ‘Mrs. Ramelle Chalfonte’ unless her husband was dead.”

“Mother, Ramelle doesn’t care.”

“Whether her husband is dead or not?” Mary teased.

“You know what I mean.” Maizie slapped the pen on the secretary. Ink spritzed across the leather pad.

“Idiot!” Louise grabbed the pen. “If you get any on that dress I’ll never be able to fix it.”

“I’m sorry.” Maizie hung her head. She pulled another envelope from the slot and wrote the correct form of address. “There.”

“Now, tomorrow morning, first thing, you write her a thank-you. I mean it.”

“I will.”

“How come Ramelle married Celeste’s brother?” Mary idly asked.

“Because she couldn’t marry Celeste,” Maizie answered flatly.

“Maizie, where do you get such ideas?” Louise was scandalized.

“It’s no secret.” Maizie shrugged.

“Know-it-all. You have no idea of the relationship between Celeste and Ramelle. Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors.”

“G-Mom does.” Maizie defiantly stuck out her chin.

“G-Mom ought to shut her trap.” Louise sighed.

“Mom, nobody cares,” Mary said.

“You stay out of this.” Louise pursed her lips, Christmas-red today. “Maizie, will you stop wiggling. You are going to ruin that dress. If you spill one drop of soft drink on that dress I will wring your neck until your eyes pop. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

Juts stuck her head in the back door and gave the twoey whistle.

Maizie hurried to the kitchen. “Aunt Juts, what do you think?”

“Prettiest thing I ever saw.” Juts tossed her scarf over the chair. “Psst.” Juts palmed Maizie a tube of lightly colored lipstick. “Don’t let your mother see it.”

“Thanks.” Maizie’s petite nose wrinkled in delight.

“And don’t try to put it on without a mirror. Takes years to perfect that trick.”

A rumble outside, then a knock on the door, announced Maizie’s date. Angus wore a red bow tie and cummerbund with his rented tuxedo. Louise welcomed him.

“Here.” He handed Maizie an orchid corsage.

“Would you like me to put it on?” Mary offered.

Angus nodded and Louise waved to his father, driving the Oldsmobile.

Juts handed Maizie’s coat to Angus. He held it for her, everybody exchanged polite farewells, and Louise leaned against the door when Maizie traipsed down the drive.

“I have aged ten years since last Christmas. Two daughters. Double the trouble. Why me, Lord?”

“Because you pissed Him off,” Juts said.

“That’s not funny.” Louise stood at the window and waved some more until the car disappeared around the corner.

Mary, not ready for a litany of her misdeeds, bowed out. “I’m going upstairs to study.”

“Don’t lie to me. You’re going upstairs to write Billy another novel. That boy will go blind reading your letters. I can barely read your handwriting.”

“It helps if you wear glasses.” Juts was hungry.

“I don’t need glasses.”

“Is that a fact? I’ve noticed you holding the newspaper as far away from your face as you can get it.”

“Everyone does that.”

Mary tiptoed upstairs.

Louise trailed Juts to the kitchen, where Juts reached into the
icebox, helping herself to her sister’s cheese. They sat down at the table.

Louise’s eyebrows knit together. “You know, I feel bad. I called Maizie an idiot tonight.”

“She won’t remember. She’s too excited.”

“Julia, sometimes I say things and I don’t mean them. They just fly out of my mouth.”

“I know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Louise got her back up.

“It means I know—I do it myself.”

“But I wonder, what will Mary and Maizie remember? Are they going to remember me as this mean mother? They just prey on my nerves sometimes and I think if I hear their voices or the word ‘Mother’ one more time I will scream. And then something ugly pops right out of my mouth.”

“Everybody does that.”

“Pearlie doesn’t.”

“Men don’t count.”

This made Louise laugh. “That’s a new one. Especially from you.”

“You know what I mean. They’re raised differently. They keep more stuff bottled up. They probably think as much hateful stuff as we do, but they don’t say it.”

“I don’t know about that. Paul can miss the most obvious things. Really simple things, like forgetting to tell the girls they look pretty. That’s not a good example, but you know what I mean.”

“Chester does that, too.”

“There’s a part of their brains missing. I don’t know exactly what it is but I know there’s a blank space up there. I get afraid that Paul is saving everything up and then,
boom.”
Louise threw both her hands up in the air. “That’s what happened to Hansford.”

“Yeah, he went up like a rocket and came down like a stick.” Juts paused a moment. “Do you really think Pearlie could be storing up anger or jealousy or something and one of these days he’ll explode?”

“I don’t know.”

“He seems pretty levelheaded to me. Quit worrying. You’ve got too much on your mind. Lay it by.”

“I’m forty. I’ll admit it to you,” she whispered. “You know anyway, but I wish you wouldn’t say things in public about my age. Just wait until you get there. I won’t pick on you.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. But here I am at forty and I feel like I’m supposed to know something, except I don’t know what it is.” Louise turned up her palms in supplication.

“Maybe there isn’t anything to know, Wheezie. Maybe we make it up as we go along.”

“No. There has to be some reason.”

“I don’t think so. Life is a crap game, two bits a shot. When you’re cold, you’re cold, and when you’re hot, you’re hot.”

They sat for a while, then Louise said, “I’m afraid life is passing me by.”

Juts got up and hugged her sister. “No, it’s not. Life can’t pass us by. We are life.”

E
ach Christmas, carolers sang their way to the square, moving in four groups down each main artery: Hanover Street, Baltimore Street, Frederick Street, and the Emmitsburg pike. Those who could commandeer sleighs, hay wagons, carts, gigs, phaetons, or any other horse-drawn conveyance lorded it over those on foot. Blankets for people and horses, wicker baskets bursting with food, jugs filled with libations of varying intensities, plus apples and carrots for the horses, were crammed into the carriages.

Cherubs, usually accompanied by a mounted adult, sat their ponies astride. Many houses in Runnymede had stables in the rear built from the same materials as the main house.

With so many people parading through the crunchy snow, it was a wonder anyone remained at home to serenade. The small brick houses, the lonely frame ones, and the grander stone ones had big bay wreaths on the doors and mistletoe hanging in archways; candles in the windows awaited the singers.

Every year Mary Miles Mundis lashed her husband, Harry, to spray paint a tree white. For days afterward he walked around town with speckles of white paint on his face and hands. Then Mary Miles, called M.M. by everyone, hung enormous shiny red balls on each branch along with red garlands. The tree excited comment and inspired competition from Junior McGrail and Caesura Frothingham, her neighbors on either side. They, too
bullied husbands, sons, workers, and friends into spray painting trees white. Junior graced hers in the emerald-green of Ireland; after all, she was a McGrail, even if by marriage. So Caesura adorned her tree in royal blue balls with golden garlands, very Union.

Julia Ellen festooned her tree with everything but the kitchen sink, whereas Louise, considering herself the Dorothy Draper of Christmas trees, wrapped a deciduous tree in white cotton and then hung multicolored balls, cranberry strings for garlands, and a big angel on top plus tons of tinsel.

Celeste, having the highest ceilings in Runnymede, sported the biggest tree—it needed guy wires to hold it up—except for the one smack in the center of Runnymede Square.

O.B. Huffstetler had been grooming Celeste’s matched pair of saddlebreds. She loved driving them because they reminded her of the grand hackneys she had seen in Rotten Row in Hyde Park as a small child. Glorious as the standardbreds from Hanover Shoe Farms were, she would make pilgrimages to Kentucky to pick up saddlebreds for driving. These two mares, matched bays, were named Minnie and Monza. Minnie had a star on her forehead and Monza had a stripe down her face.

As the sun set, the activity became more feverish in the little barns and big stables surrounding Runnymede.

Two long surcingles with bells of different sizes were draped over Minnie and Monza. Their breast collars rang with bells. The rosettes where the browbands met the crowns carried small bells, as did the back straps to the cruppers. Two silver bells also hung on either side of the sleigh. Celeste was driving, Ramelle seated next to her. Julia, who loved to drive, snuggled in next to Chester and Louise. Pearlie sat opposite them.

Mary and Maizie, far too grand to be seen with their parents, were singing with the group walking down the Emmitsburg pike.

Celeste and company were moving up Frederick Street.

Cora and Hansford met Martel Falkenroth, Walter’s father,
and a boyhood friend of Hansford’s. Martel drove a sleigh he had bought from the Amish about the time of the Spanish-American War.

As various groups assembled at their respective meeting places, the squeals of children could be heard all over the Mason-Dixon line.

The carolers stopping by each house were plied with food, drink, and cheer. Often the inhabitants would bundle up and join them so that as the voices moved ever closer to the square, the sound grew stronger.

Maizie, who had been the hit of the party, didn’t just emerge from her sister’s shadow, she catapulted from under it. Surrounded by friends, many of them boys and therefore especially useful in relations with the girls, Maizie glowed with excitement. Mary, artfully shedding a tear over Billy when speaking to her friends, didn’t notice this transformation at first. However, as the party moved eastward on the pike, she finally realized her little sister was the belle of the ball. It seemed impossible to her that this worm could have blossomed into a butterfly. Mary caught herself. Maizie wasn’t a butterfly, she was a moth. She, Mary, was the butterfly. Maizie could be one of those pretty moths, though. Then again, what good did it do to be a butterfly if no one noticed?

As they came within a block of the square, the Frederick Street carolers could hear the other carolers as they moved down the various roads. A tingle shot down Juts’s spine as she heard their distant voices floating up from the three other directions. She remembered the first time she had heard this as a child. At five she’d been allowed to go caroling, but, pooped out, had to be carried on her mother’s shoulders. She thought the night was magic then and it was magic now. Big chunks of stars glittered in a crystal-clear black sky. The moon, surrounded by a large pulsating halo, smiled down on them. The shepherd’s-crook street-lamps, bent over like angels, cast a warm glow over the packed snow.

As the groups entered the square, each burst into “Adeste Fideles,” trying to outdo one another as they proceeded to the huge symmetrical tree. Sitting under it was old Patience Horney, tone-deaf, caterwauling to her heart’s content. She had her pretzel cart beside her.

Big Digby Vance, the band director at South Runnymede High—called Tubby behind his back and Tonneau by Celeste—stepped forward and held up his baton. Everyone quieted.