The Future Homemakers of America (24 page)

I said, ‘Well, circumstances can change. A person might move away. They get their heart broken. Feel they have to start over. Or he might meet somebody, from out of state. He's still young. He could decide to up sticks and go. My only hope is, I don't think Grice is the marrying kind.’

‘No shit, Sherlock,’ she said. That was the kinda language she had picked up being married to Trent Weaver for five minutes.

‘Well,’ she said, changing the subject, ‘I found Sherry.’

She had been trying to track down Sherry Gillis, the two of them having been so close at one time, keeping the whole house awake with their giggling while she was staying with us. Betty had given her a number in Culver City, LA, but Sherry never seemed to be home.

I said, ‘And? She still in show business?’

‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘She was just up in Fresno at the Home Show. She was demonstrating a gadget cuts up potatoes and stuff into fancy shapes.’

I said, ‘She tell you she was on TV, as a tomato? She got a thing about vegetables?’

She was laughing. ‘More'n you know,’ she said. ‘Matter of fact, I think she's moved in with one. His name's Justin and he drinks his own urine.’

She swore that was what Sherry had told her. Said it keeps you eternally young. I tried it out on Lois next time we spoke.

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I think I heard of that. I think I read it in a magazine. He take it on the rocks? Twist of orange and a little grenadine, maybe? Tell you what, get Betty to try it out. If it works for her, I'll cancel getting my neck ironed. Hey, you get the Rudman Team Photo?’

As usual, Audrey's Christmas card had a family photo on the front and a newsletter inside, covering the past year.

Lo said, ‘Talk about their royal majesties. I'm predicting next year's card, they'll be sitting on thrones.’

I said, ‘Well, Audrey always was destined for great things.’

‘And what about those boys?’ she said. ‘You ever hear of a thing called body language? I got a book you should read. It's for if you're in business and you want to know if somebody's jerking you around.’

I said, ‘Lo, I deal with people in a very happy situation. They don't jerk me around.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But in
my
business we have a saying: buyers are liars.’

Lois had taken the tests, got her real estate salesman's licence. Soon as Kirk was through with school she wanted to move to New York and take the broker's test.

‘I tell you,’ she said, ‘I'm gonna go far. Anyway, you could still read this book. Then you'd understand, those Rudman boys are standing there, dressed up like a pair of crown princes, but what their body language is saying is GET ME THE FUCK OUTTA HERE.’ They just looked to me like nice clean-cut boys. According to Audrey's update, Mikey was all set for the Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, and Lance Jnr was aiming for the Brigade of Midshipmen at Annapolis, following in his grampa's footsteps.

‘Another hectic year,’ she wrote.

The OWC has kept me busy most days with fund-raisers and my volunteer hours at the thrift shop on base. Also, I must admit I'm now hooked on mah-jongg and try to play two or three times a week. We vacationed in Yosemite National Park this year, a great adventure for all. Saw bluebirds, chipmunk, black bear. As usual, I took along my paints but never got around to using them. One of these days! Unfortunately Lance put his back out unfurling the awning on the camper so he wasn't able to join us on all of our hikes. He's now recovered, thanks to an excellent chiropractor, so we're planning a romantic trip to Hawaii for our up-coming twentieth anniversary.

‘That's just Christmas-card talk,’ Lois said. ‘Those boys are ready to eee-rupt. The Big One! Coming soon to a perfect family of your acquaintance. You heard it here.’

I thought that was pretty rich coming from Lois Moon. I thought she had some nerve. Last I had heard, she wasn't even allowed in to change Kirk's sheets. What Sandie had told me that time, Kirk's room hadn't been picked up in years.

65

‘We're going to Spain,’ Kath wrote, ‘me and May. It's called a package tour. £20 all-in, and they reckon it gets so hot you can't walk on the sands in your bare feet.’

I called her.

I said, ‘I was hoping you'd be coming out here again.’

She said, ‘I'd love to, Peg, I really would. But see, that's a question of the time. I can take a week off, go to Spain and come back with a bit of a suntan. But I can't come to you for a week. By the time I got there it'd be time to turn round and come back.’

That was the hole we were all digging for ourselves. For years we had time and no money. Now we had money and no time.

She said, ‘Then Audrey invited me as well, said they had plenty of room. So that'd be another week. I looked on the map, see where California is. I tell you, Peggy, that's such a big country. You could take a lifetime and never see half of it. I mean, I haven't hardly seen what we've got here, but I don't even know if I want to any more. I went to Great Yarmouth with May, on her Women's Fellowship outing, and that did nothing but blow and rain. Sitting in a wet mac all day, keep looking at your watch, hoping it's time to go home. I said to May, I can stop in Lynn and get rained on. Least I wouldn't get thrown all over place by a loopy charabanc-driver. The way he kept stamping on his brakes, that was terrible. So then May fetched the brochure about Spain, and that's where we're off to. You should see the pictures. Beautiful blue skies, smart hotels. Flamingo dancing. I don't know how they do it for the money. Hilda Jex says you wouldn't catch her going. All that oily food, and getting the runs. Course, Hilda always was a worry-guts. She'd get the runs sitting looking at her own four walls. Anyway, Peg, how're you?’

I could remember a time when it was hard to get a word out of Kath Pharaoh.

66

Summer evenings Grice'd make me a mint julep and we'd sit a while, wind up the day.

Grice's Guaranteed Mint Julep

Generous for two. Sufficient for three.

Fill the glasses with crushed ice until they are frosted. Strip the leaves from ten good sprigs of fresh mint. Using a pestle, crush them in a bowl with a large spoon of fine sugar and a jigger of club soda. Add six jiggers of bourbon and leave to stand for no more than five minutes. Strain into the glasses of ice, stir, garnish with extra mint.

Wear chiffon and sip through a straw.

We were in the early stages of the Jenneau-Carson wedding, and we already realised Mrs Jenneau was gonna be one of those make-or-break clients. For a start, there were twenty bridesmaids plus ten flower-girls and ten pageboys who had been matched for height; but they were flying in from all over so rehearsing them was gonna be a nightmare if not downright impossible. Then there were the butterflies. Rose Jenneau wanted a cloud of them, all the same shade, preferably pastel-lemon, released at the moment she and Robert E. Carson started making their vows.

Grice had his doubts it could be done. He said we should persuade her to go for doves, but I didn't like to think Peggy Dewey Weddings should be so easily beat.

He said, ‘Even if we can get them, I don't know that a butterfly can be made to perform. They're only a form of insect life, after all. Mood takes them, they might just fold their wings and stay put for hours. You can rely on a dove.’

The phone rang. ‘Or, how about this,’ he said,
‘silk
butterflies, on wands, waggled about by the junior attendants. Peggy Dewey Weddings, Grice speaking, how may I help you?’

He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Marie Hollick?’ he whispered. ‘Calling from California?’ He fluttered his hand over his heart. ‘I think we may be about to go inter-state!’

‘Hello,’ she said. She had a slow, dopey way of speaking, like she was pacifying a child. ‘Am I speaking with Mrs Peggy Dewey?’

She said, ‘I am calling on behalf of the Rudman family. I have been asked to let you know that the funeral service for Colonel Rudman has now been fixed for Friday next at 3 p.m.’

I could hear Grice, busy with something behind me, humming a little tune.

I said, ‘Excuse me? Are we talking about Lance Rudman?’

‘Colonel Lance Rudman,’ she said. ‘Is this Mrs Peggy Dewey?’

I said, ‘It is. Are you telling me about funeral arrangements? I didn't even know he had died.’

I heard her gasp. ‘Oh my!’ she said. ‘I am so sorry. We are working in teams here, to help out Audrey at this sad time, there being so many people to call, and I was given to understand you had already received the news of his passing. I can only apologise. I guess your name was checked off by mistake.’

All she'd say was, it had been sudden, which I had worked out for myself. All she wanted to tell me was the arrangements for parking, and that Audrey was not taking calls. ‘Messages can be left with the Adjutant's Office at any time,’ she said. ‘May I help you in any other way?’

I said, ‘Yes. Tell me who else you got checked off on your list.’ I knew if Betty had heard, or even Lo, they'd have called me for a pow-wow. But Marie Hollick, being military, was real cagey. Name, rank, number. That's all, folks!

I said, ‘Well, it's hardly classified information, is it? But okay, let
me
tell
you,
I don't believe Lois Moon or Betty Gillis has been informed either, because if they'd have heard, I've have heard. Probably neither has Gayle Jackson Flagg Passy. But I intend calling every one of them as soon as I'm through talking with you.’

‘Well, I'm obliged to you,’ she said, ‘And I'll certainly make a note of that. And may I know whether you'll be attending?’

I said, ‘I'm thinking about it.’ I was staring at my schedule, trying to remember Lance's freckled face. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I'll be there.’

Grice had made a butterfly shape out of Kleenex and Scotch-taped it to the end of a coat-hanger. He flitted round in front of me and flapped it a little. ‘Or,’ he said, ‘here's another idea. We issue the guests with bubble pipes and little tubs of liquid soap. The bride and groom make their vows, the guests start blowing and
voilà,
hundreds of pretty bubbles float up into the sunshine. Well? What's up? Are we going to San Francisco?’

I called Vern first. He said, ‘He must have been near retirement. What'd he get? Coronary arrest?’

I said, ‘Don't know. I don't suppose you'll cross the country for his funeral?’

‘You kidding?’ he said. ‘Like Rudman would have come to mine?’

Lois didn't think Herb would either. She said, ‘Jeez, Peg. Folks have their lives to get on with. Herb's place has a big dining-set event on, stock clearance. I doubt he could get away, and anyway, him and Lance were never close.’

I said, ‘How about you? Audrey'd appreciate it.’

‘Hey, kid,’ she said, ‘don't make me feel bad about this. I can't just drop everything, fly out there. Audrey'll understand. People go their ways, you know? It's not like it's family.’

A foreign person answered the phone at Gayle's. Said Pastor Passy and Mrs Passy were at the radio station. She gave me the number, but the secretary was as far as I got. She said Gayle and Lemarr had appointments all day, but that she would be sure to pass on the sad news. She did call me back later, too. ‘Gayle asks me to tell you Colonel Rudman and his family were remembered in her prayers today, and will be again on Friday, 6 p.m. Standard Time.’

I said, ‘She won't be coming then, to the funeral?’

She said, ‘Lemarr and Gayle have preaching commitments in Charlotte and Hickory, Friday through Sunday.’

I knew it was one of Betty's late days at K-Mart. Still, I thought it was worth a try. I was dying to talk to her. Course, Deana picked up. I said, ‘Tell your mom, Lance Rudman died. Tell her, call me the minute she gets home. How're you doing these days?’

‘Yeah, pretty good,’ she said. ‘Delta won two pageants.’

I said, ‘I'm surprised you're home, this time of day. You still not working?’

‘I do crochet,’ she said. ‘Pillow covers and stuff. I got somebody might be interested in selling them.’

Betty called me that evening. ‘It had to have been his heart,’ she said. ‘Or an aneurysm. That's like a tyre blowout, only inside your body. You can walk around, never know you have got one till it blows. Carla was telling me.’ Carla was doing her nurse training at State. Looked like she was gonna be the only one of Betty's brood to lead a normal life and pay taxes.

Betty said, ‘Audrey must be in shock. They tell you how she was?’

I said, ‘They told me nothing. You know the score. You'd think it was NASA launch, not some little old funeral. I think we just have to go there, see for ourselves.’

‘Well, I can't go, Peggy,’ she said. ‘They're laying people off here. I go missing for a day or two, I'll be one of them.’

I said, ‘Can't you use vacation time?’

‘No, I cannot,’ she said. ‘I have to conserve that, so I can take Delta to her pageants.’

67

They had a service for Lance in the base chapel at Beale, but I just flew in for the burying, Golden Gate National Cemetery being situated just along the freeway from the airport. I took flowers, from me and Kath.

Mikey Rudman was greeting people as they arrived. Last time I had really seen him, he was still in diapers. There had been the photos every year, of course, but it was still weird to see him standing there in a dark overcoat, six foot tall, just like his daddy.

Lance Jnr was taking care of his mom. He had his daddy's features but not his build. In fact, he was quite a delicate-looking bloom for somebody that had been white-water rafting and all those manly things expected of a Rudman boy.

I didn't get to speak to Audrey till the buffet lunch afterwards, at the Geary.

‘You came all this way? she said. ‘How kind. People are so kind.’ She seemed a little hazy. I guess they'd given her something, help her through the day.

‘The whole gang wanted to be here, Aud,’ I said, barefaced liar that I was, ‘but we're so scattered now. It's hard for people to get away at short notice.’