The Future Homemakers of America (16 page)

So I took Crystal back to San Antonio and stayed at my mom's. Had a bedroom to ourselves ‘cause sister Connie had moved on. She was in Lubbock, living in sin.

I said to Mom, ‘We won't be under your feet long.’

‘Good,’ she said.

It took me a month to get a job stacking shelves at the Piggly Wiggly and two rooms to rent, and I guess by that time, I knew Vern wasn't coming back. We just kinda fizzled out. We never even bothered getting divorced till he met Martine and hell, that was years after.

40

Lance Rudman made major in ‘56. Herb Moon didn't, but according to Lo he had already decided to quit, had his fill of all that schmoozing you got to do, if you want to reach the heights. They went back to the East Coast and he got a job as foreman in a lumber yard, somewhere up the Hudson.

‘Herb's happy as a pig in a toilet bowl. I'm slowly going nuts,’ Lois wrote. ‘So no change there. Goad news is, we get twenty percent off rafters and planking.’

Me and Betty seemed fated to go through life together. Nineteen fifty-eight she came back to Converse after Ed flipped one night, busted her jaw and was declared unfit for duty. There were some people thought the neighbours had been over-hasty, calling out the MPs when they heard the kids screaming, getting Ed thrown in the glasshouse, and once her swollen face went down it wasn't long before Betty started agreeing with them.

‘I blame myself,’ she said.

I was working in layaway at Woolworth's and I told her they were hiring. She got a start as a part-time checker while Ed was coming to terms with civilian life.

I said, ‘Betty, I never heard such a load of hogwash. What did you do? Walk into his fist?’

‘I didn't handle him right,’ she said. ‘You can't make a trained killer of a man, then expect him to just turn it off when he comes home. I should have took the girls and gone for a drive. Leave him alone, he soon calms down.’

‘Trained killer my ass,’ Lois said when I wrote her about it. ‘Thank God Ed Gillis never took Bayoneting 101.’

But Betty was still hanging on in there, working her shift at Wool-worth's, then going home to the ironing and the cooking and the picking up. Ed got driving jobs, but he never lasted long. Didn't matter which outfit he went to work for, there was always some fool there he couldn't get along with.

‘Ed's a good man,’ she used to say. ‘He just has to learn to master that temper of his.’

I knew she was getting food stamps, but she didn't know I knew. Crystal and Sherry were both in eighth grade at Kirby Junior High, so sometimes I found things out without even trying.

One time she came home from school, she said, ‘We had to write about what we wished for and Sherry wrote she wished her dad'd drop dead and Miss Hopko saw her after school and asked if she wanted to talk about it or anything and now she's scared her mom'll find out. Do you think Miss Hopko would tell her mom?’

I said, ‘What did you wish for?’

‘Trainer bra,’ she said. ‘And a pet ferret. And to see my dad sometimes.’

41

It was a hard thing, raising a child on your Own back then. Course, everybody does it now. Vern'd send money. I can't fault him there. But he was shackled to that damned Dewey place up in Maine and Crystal did pine for him, I know.

I guess I wasn't much fun. Work, come home, fall asleep. That was my life. I got offers sometimes but most of them I wouldn't care to repeat.

I had the idea to learn typing and shorthand, try and improve my prospects, but all I seemed to do was watch the
Lawrence Welk Show
and then wake up with a crick in my neck. I wasn't feeling too proud of myself at that period of my life. Even Kath Pharaoh was taking classes.

‘I'm doing night school,’ she wrote.

Book-keeping. So far I've come top in all the tests. And you meet all sorts. I'd never realised how many different kinds of people there are. Some of them go for a pint afterwards, but I have to get back for John. Dennis Jex comes and sits with him. Or, if he can't, May does it, or the couple from next door. They're all good pals to me. I don't know how I'd manage without them. The doctor says I should think of putting him in a home, but I'm not having that. I've promised him I won't send him away. He understands. He's all seized up now, can't hardly move. But he understands.

I loved Kath's letters. There was always something new she was up to, in spite of her troubles with John. It was like she was waking up to life.

Audrey kept the letters coming too, always full of the brilliant achievements of the Rudman family. Lois preferred the phone. And all I ever got from Gayle was new addresses:. c/o The Coffee Can, Wallace; c/o Reba's Dinette, Haw's Run; c/o The Stay A While, Delco.

Nineteen fifty-nine Lance Rudman made lieutenant colonel and he got orders to Oxfordshire, England. Audrey was thrilled.

Lois said, ‘Well, that silver creamer of theirs never did look right in Wichita. They'll probably get a castle or something now.’

I wrote Audrey, asked her if Oxfordshire was near enough to visit Kath, find out just how bad things were with John. But we were too late. He died on January first, 1960.

All Kath wrote was:

I had him cremated. I do miss him. That's a lonely place to come back to when I finish work. I leave the telly on now, so the place sounds a bit cheerier when I come in. There was a bit of money left from the insurance so I've had the phone put in. First time it went off I jumped a mile high. I'm putting the rest in Premium Bonds.

She answered that telephone like she thought it might bite her. Then she screamed when she realised it was me.

‘What!’ she said. ‘All the way from America? What ever is that costing you?’

I said, ‘Never mind how much. Ain't this a miracle, that we can talk?’

‘That is,’ she said. ‘Miracle's about right.’ It was good to hear her funny old way of speaking.

I said, ‘I was so sorry to hear about John. You bearing up?’

‘Not too bad,’ she said. ‘I forget sometimes. I'm busy at work, I don't have time to think. It's when I come home it hits me. But life goes on. I shall be all right.’

I said, ‘I guess it just takes time, Kath. How long were you two together?

‘How d'you mean?’ she said.

I said, ‘Married.’

It was a weird conversation. I could hear a kinda echo of my own voice, and then I had to wait while her answer came back. I pictured my words going down a long tube on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Her answer took even longer coming back that time.

I said, ‘You still there?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I thought for a minute you asked me how long we'd been married. Must have been a crackle on the line.’

I called Betty after. I said, ‘Do you think maybe Kath and John Pharaoh weren't married?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I never saw her wedding album. Did you?’

I phoned Lois. Herb picked up. ‘Hey, Peggy!’ he said. ‘When are you gonna come up here and visit? You should come in the fall, see the leaves turn.’

He put Lois on.

I said, ‘John Pharaoh died. I don't suppose you heard?’

‘Who?’ she said. ‘Oh …yeah … I think I remember …’

I said, ‘Don't go through that charade for
my
benefit. I just thought you should know. You might drop Kath a line.’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

I said, ‘Pneumonia. But he had all that other business. Nerves and everything. Still, he was only thirty-eight, Lo. Makes you think, don't it?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Kath okay?’

I said, ‘She's a wonder.’

We talked about the kids and stuff. Sandie was in her school band, learning to play the cornet, and Kirk had been sent home — disruptive behaviour.

Lois said, ‘He's boisterous, that's all. It's natural in a boy. But his teacher is such a ‘fraidycat, so he gets sent home’.

I said, ‘Lo, you know John and Kath?’

‘Yeah?’ she said, kinda weary.

I said, ‘Did it ever cross your mind they weren't married?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘and who the hell cares?’

42

Christmas of 1960 I got two neat surprises: a card from Gayle, actually had more than a change of address in it; and a telephone call from Norfolk, England. Kath Pharaoh herself, gone international.

‘Peggy?’ she was shouting so loud she probably didn't need the phone line.

‘Peggy? My Premium Bond's come up. I'm in the money.’

She had won hundreds of pounds.

‘You know what this means?’ she said. ‘I shall be coming to see you.’

I said, ‘When?’

‘I don't know,’ she said. ‘I shall have to see when I can get the time off.’

So I told her about Gayle's news. I said, ‘Little Gayle's getting married again. Why don't you wait till she names the day? Come for the wedding?’

Gayle wrote she had met a marine, Ray Flagg out of Camp Lejeune. He'd come into the diner and she'd given him extra pie. Love at first sight.

‘I love him to pieces,’ she wrote. ‘We're getting married, soon as he's back from this extended float, and I want all you guys to be here.’

That was the trouble with a marine. If you didn't catch him before he got deployed, you could have an awful long wait. In the end it was a close-run thing between Gayle and Deana Gillis. First boy to say a kind word to her got more'n he bargained for. A shotgun wedding and a child bride. Deana was sixteen. Dwayne was nineteen, a first-termer from Lackland AFB.

It was a quiet affair at City Hall, then back to Betty and Ed's for a home-cooked spread. Betty was passing the photos around at work like it was an occasion to be proud of. Deana looked like beaver with bangs. Dwayne looked like he was in shock.

I said to Betty, ‘You'd have hoped these kids had learned something from us. Finish school; get themselves a life before they start saddling themselves with brats. And I'd have thought Deana never wanted to smell jet fuel again as long as she lived.’

She gave me one of her old-fashioned looks. ‘There's nothing wrong with marrying a airman and having babies,’ she said. ‘Deana's always been a homemaker. It's what she's cut out for. And if Dwayne gets an unaccompanied tour, she can just homestead here. It'll be great having a baby in the house again. Maybe we'll get a boy this time.’

I wanted to make sure the lesson wasn't lost on Crystal. She was starting to show some interest in boys herself. Just hanging round the jukebox Saturday afternoons at Grunder's Soda Fountain. Nothing serious. Plus, she hadn't filled out much yet, and she still kept lizards in her bedroom and gave them names. But, better safe than sorry.

I said, ‘Well, there goes Deana's life.’

‘Mom,’ she said, ‘Deana is such a dope. You know what Sherry told me? Deana stayed home, pretended she had cramps, so she wouldn't have to take the class about how you get babies. She said she kinda knew already, but I guess she didn't.’

I said, ‘They teach you all that in school?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘In freshman year. I already know, though, so don't worry. I read it in
Complete Home Encyclopaedia of Health
. And I told Sherry, but it's a secret. She says if her mom found out she knew about all that stuff, she'd die of shame.’

I said, ‘Well, reading it in a book is one thing. Remembering what you read when you're wrestling in the back seat of a car is something else.’

‘Mom!’ she said, come over all bashful.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘you remember Aunty Gayle?’

‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Why, she pregnant too?’

I said, ‘You wanna come to her wedding?’

‘Do I have to wear something dumb?’ she said.

She wanted to know how we were getting to North Carolina. ‘On the bus?’ she said. ‘With Deana's mom and that brat? No way. I'll bet she gets sick.’

It was true, Betty had done a thorough job of training Deana and Sherry to throw up in moving vehicles, and there was no reason to think Carla would be any different.

‘Is Aunty Gayle the one makes you laugh?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘That's Lois.’

43

Kath asked for three weeks’ vacation from the office she was working in, so they fired her.

‘I didn't ask them to pay me for all of it,’ she said. ‘I know I'm not entitled to that. They said just because I could afford fancy holidays to America, I needn't think I could lord it over everybody at Harrison's. I've never tried to lord it over anybody, Peggy. I tell you, I've come up against a lot of ugly feelings since I had my win. But I'm not going to let it stop me enjoying myself. Blow Harrison's. I'll find something to do when I get back. I've always found work. I've never been a slacker.’

She was flying into Idlewild and then on to Fort Worth. She was so excited, I was getting wardrobe updates in my mailbox every day. ‘I've bought a new roll-on and I'm breaking it in at night, while I watch telly’; May Gotobed says I should get a pair of slacks for travelling, but I don't know as that's the done thing’; ‘Will two cardigans be enough, do you think?’

I was excited too, only Crystal was raining on my parade. She had gone to bed one night a normal kid and woke up the next morning with a disrespectful attitude. Her skin had broke out, too.

All I was asking was for her to give up her room for one week. All she had to do was sleep on the couch till we went to Gayle's wedding.

‘She's your friend,’ she kept saying. ‘You sleep on the couch.’

I said, ‘Or you can double up with me. Was a time you loved climbing in beside me.’

‘Oh
please
!’ she said.

Once she had turned fourteen, it was hard to get a civil word out of her, and any time I said anything she'd threaten to run away to Maine and live with her daddy. I bit my tongue a few times over that.

By the time Kath landed she had been travelling more than thirty-six hours. First thing she wanted was to get out of her corset. Second thing she wanted was a cup of strong, hot tea, but she settled for iced.

She had loved the flight. ‘I was frit when it started up,’ she said. ‘It was going faster and faster and I thought that'd never get off the ground, but once you're up there, you can't hardly feel you're moving. And they come through, give you dinner and everything. It was like the Ritz.’