The Future Homemakers of America (28 page)

Connie said, ‘She's on Vicksburgh, if you're going.’

I could feel the soles of my shoes kinda sticking to the rug as I left.

‘She starts up about folk stealing her money,’ Connie said, ‘pay no attention. The doctor up there told me, it's a very common thing that a old person believes they've been robbed. They hear it all the time.’

Bobby Ear got to his feet when Crystal was showing me to the door. ‘This furniture is all mine,’ he said. ‘And the TV.’

‘You look like you're doing okay,’ Connie said.

It crossed my mind to leave her a few bucks, conscience money. Then it crossed my mind that it wouldn't be wise to give her and the sea lion expectations.

I drove along by Topperwein High on my way to State, made myself feel real melancholy thinking of how the years fly by. Thinking of Jim Sparks, cut down in Korea, and Slick, still going home every night to a lonely bed and his tractor catalogues, and me, that used to be the star of the Softball team, got stiff ankles and hot flashes and a daughter learning to stuff muskrats.

73

The nurse said, ‘Mrs Shea? Yeah, she'll be in the day room.’

I said, ‘I've been out of town.’

She said, ‘Well, she won't know that. She don't know what day it is. You family?’

I started trying to explain how come my mom had been there seven months and I only just found out. Blaming Connie. Blaming pressure of work. Trying to explain to this nurse, young enough to be my own daughter. Like she could care.

She said what happens is, bit by bit the brain closes down and eventually it stops altogether. She said they did what they could with them, isometrics twice a week and bingo and Spot That Tune.

I walked down to the day room, just followed my nose. Mainly they were in wheelchairs. Mainly they were asleep.

I went around and looked at all the old ladies that were about the right size. Mom was five ten, in her prime. Then, allowing that shrinkage does occur with the passing years, I went around again. She was wearing day clothes. A caramel-colour dress. It seemed like they kept-her nice.

She was kinda dozing, facing towards the TV, but not watching. I said, ‘Mom? It's Peggy.’

She didn't even look at me.

I said, ‘I'm sorry I didn't come before.’ I
was
sorry, too.

She had a pocketbook she kept opening and shutting, didn't seem to have anything in it. I touched her hand and it felt like paper.

I said, ‘I didn't know. I come in from Dallas to see you and I didn't even know. Connie should have called me. I'd have come.’

Her face was lined so deep. Creased with all those years of frowning and complaining.

I said, ‘Crystal sends her love. You remember Crystal? She's grown up so beautiful.’ I took a photo out of my bill-fold, but she just looked in the empty pocketbook some more.

I said, ‘Mom? Is there anything you'd like?’ But she had closed her eyes again. I just sat for a while, feeling awkward. Watching
The Flintstones Comedy Hour
in a room full of the living dead.

I said, ‘If you think of anything, you just ask the nurse to give me a call? And I'll come again. I'll come again soon.’ Then I tiptoed away.

I left my card with the nurses’ station. As I explained to them, I had a long drive ahead of me. And as I explained to myself, on that long drive, my mom didn't know me any more. All my life I'd been waiting for her to take an interest, waiting for her to mellow, but she was holding out on me to the very end. I couldn't ever remember being with her when there wasn't a stupid TV show playing.

74

I started sending flowers and soft-centre candy. Once in a while I'd phone State and get told there was no change in her condition. I'd promise myself to visit her, next weekend, next month, but I always found some welcome reason not to do it, and the only person I owned up to was my darling Grice.

I said, ‘I always complained about my mother's stony heart. Turns out I'm built just the same.’

‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Beat yourself up a little.’

I said, ‘You never talk about your mom.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I just hatched out of a giant white egg.’

We were looking through candle catalogues, trying to find something unusual for the Fisk-Melly wedding. Carrie-Ann Fisk wanted everything to look real ancient and holy.

Grice said, ‘Tell me something good about your mom.’

It took a while. I said, ‘She used to smell of Blue Fern dusting powder.’

‘That's nice,’ he said. ‘Let's hold on to that thought.’

I said, ‘I lie awake. I think about when I get old and Crystal leaves me parked in some old-age rest home. Never comes to visit. It'll be my punishment. My mom always said, “What goes around, comes around.”’

‘So did mine!’ he said. ‘Don't you hate that?’

He said he didn't think Crystal would abandon me. ‘Not Crystal,’ he said ‘She'll stick around. She'll be looking to mount you on a polished walnut plinth.’

She was gone a month before she called me. I was starting to think the whole School of Taxidermy thing was a front and she'd been kidnapped. Sold into a life of prostitution.

I said, ‘I suppose they don't have telephones yet in Bend, Oregon.’

‘That's right,’ she said. ‘Matter of fact, they haven't caught on to the wheel yet neither. They just pile their stuff on to sleds and
drag
it home from the mall.’

I said, ‘Well, a girl takes off into the wilderness and doesn't call home in four weeks, what's her mother supposed to do? I was this close to calling the FBI. Are you the only female taking these classes?’

‘I believe so,’ she said. But there's a couple of guys here have got bosoms bigger'n mine.’

So far she had done a ground-squirrel, two duck, an antler mount and an elk foot — might be suitable, she said, as a novelty base for a reading lamp.

I said, ‘Give me time. I may get used to the idea.’

She had also got a commendation for her fish. ‘I've done a two-pound yellow perch, and a seven-pound walleye,’ she said. ‘You have to be real careful with the fins. You have to ease them out, spread them out wet on to balsa wood and just let them dry naturally.’

I said, ‘Why are you doing fish? I thought you were intending to stuff poodle dogs?’

‘I am,’ she said. ‘But fish can be a taxidermist's bread and butter. Fish, and game heads. Anyway, you sign up for a course, you can't arrive and start picking and choosing.’ The kind of money she was paying, I'd have thought that was exactly what you could do.

She said, ‘I'm here to learn technique, Mom. If you have good technique, you can mount anything. I'm just starting on a cougar. Female, so she's not very big, kinda pale buff with black tips to her ears. Cute little thing. Could you call Dad?’

I said, ‘Excuse me?’

‘Dad,’ she said, ‘I think he'd appreciate a call. I gotta go, that was my last quarter. Bye.’

Grice was writing out cheques for me to sign. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Tell me how she is, but I don't want to hear anything about eyeballs or entrails.’

I said, ‘She sounds happy. God alone knows why. She asked me to tell you, did you know the best thing for getting skunk-scent off your clothes is tomato juice.’

‘Well, I'm obliged to her for that,’ he said. ‘Peggy? You don't think she's going to come home with a snuff habit or anything, do you?’

I didn't call Vern right away. We'd stayed pretty civil, over the years, but we weren't given to casual phone calls. Way I looked at it, if he wanted to talk to me, he knew my number. The only thing I could think was, he needed money. Only thing I could think was, the bottom had fallen out of worms. But I couldn't imagine he'd come running to me.

A week went by, then I got a postcard from Crystal. Picture of the Cascades, and all she had written was ‘You called Dad?’

He picked up. ‘Vern's Vermiculture.’

I said, ‘You must be a proud man. You hear about your daughter getting a gold star for mounting fish?’

‘I did,’ he said. ‘She told me they have a twenty-five-pound chinook salmon in the ice chest they might let her loose on. Well, if you've spoken to her, I guess you've heard about our troubles?’

Martine was in Bangor, awaiting surgery. She had found a lump. I said, ‘They can do wonders these days.’

‘Yup,’ he said.

‘They catch these things early, they can really root it out. Give a person a clean bill of health.’

‘Yup,’ he said.

‘And there's different causes,’ I said. ‘Woman finds a lump, don't mean to say it's cancer.’

‘Yup,’ he said. ‘But it is. So she's in there, getting it all took away some time this week. Probably be Thursday. I'm going over there. Old man Beebe's coming over, give Eugene a hand with the worms. Martine's gonna be laid up a while, won't be able to drive, or even brush her hair … Then we just have to wait and see …’

He was near to crying, I could tell. ‘She's only fifty-one, Peg,’ he said.

I told him I'd send flowers. Didn't see what else I could do. They had Mom Dewey living with them, never was afraid of hard work, and from what I heard she had had a new lease of life, after Pop Dewey electrocuted himself. And they had neighbours would rally around and help. When I was married to him, I heard often enough about the neighbourliness of Maine folk.

‘Peggy,’ he said. He just caught me before I put the phone down. ‘Tell me to mind my own business, but I hope you know about all that checking women are supposed to do. You know what I mean? They told Martine she should have been checking herself all along, but she didn't know that. Nobody ever told her.’

All the years I was married to Vern Dewey he never showed me that kind of consideration. When I was carrying Crystal, he didn't want to know any of the details and neither did any other man I ever met. Now they even see their babies getting born, which as far as I'm concerned is not a good idea. A man sees a woman in that kind of disarray, it could change the way he feels about her. But it's all the fashion. Men learning about labour pains and women standing in bars, cussing like rednecks. Everything turned topsy-turvy, men acting like women and women acting like men, and, to prove it, I had a daughter up in Oregon hadn't worn a skirt in years.

I was touched, though, him mentioning such a thing. He must have been dying of embarrassment.

I said, ‘Sure, Vern. And you take care of yourself too, you hear?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘course, it's a woman's thing Martine has got. But thanks for the thought.’

75

Crystal was back by late November. I was afraid they'd get some kind of weather up in Oregon and she'd be there for the duration, but she showed up on my birthday with a picture portfolio of her achievements, the head of a mule-deer buck mounted on a plaque and a black bearskin rug lined with plaid Scottish-style material.

I said, ‘You really shouldn't have.’ Turned out she really hadn't. She never was good at remembering birthdays.

Grice was taking me to the Blue Bayou Cocktail Lounge so Crystal come along too. I never did care for strong liquor. The waiter picked me out something real nice, looked like pale-blue milk, tasted fruity, but the younger generation were trying to drink each other under the table with Texas Twisters. We had a reservation at the Gardenia for eight o'clock and darn it if we didn't nearly lose it they made us so late with their messing around.

I said to her, ‘You seem happy to be back.’

She said she hadn't had too many laughs in Bend, there being just nine males and herself and them being the kind of guys to keep a respectful distance from a girl unless she had her picture in
Rustler
magazine.

She said, ‘Are you okay? You're so quiet. Am I butting in, ruining your evening?’

It wasn't that. I loved having her there. Although of course, when you're the only one who's stone-cold sober words like ‘Wickiup’ and ‘duck-plucking’ and ‘mail-order tongues’ don't seem so humorous. I guess I just wasn't in the mood to have a birthday.

I said, ‘Gramma Shea is in hospital, doesn't know who anybody is. If I ever get like that, you're to put a pillow over my face.’

‘What?’ she said. ‘And go to jail?’

I said, ‘I'll put it in my will that you had my permission.’

‘Don't bother,’ she said. ‘I still won't do it. It's hard enough chloroforming a pigeon.’

It was just the two of us for Christmas. Grice was away to his good friend Tucker's for a few days.

I said, ‘The hell with cooking.’

She said, ‘I'm with you, all the way.’

We ate corn chips, watched
Jaws
and
The Omega Man,
then we moved on to Pet Cherry Ice Sandwich and
Love Story.
In between I called England.

Kath said, ‘I've got May here. We've just had a beautiful piece of fruit cake, shop bought, and now we're putting a dent in a bottle of Double Century. First of January we're cutting down, though. We're both going on diet biscuits, otherwise they'll never let us on that airyplane to Spain. They'll be charging us excess baggage.’

I said, ‘You get a card from Audrey? She's in Chicago.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I did. But she says she can't settle, bless her. She'll be turning up at my door again, I shouldn't wonder.’

Crystal had a word, told her about Oregon, then she put me back on.

Kath said, ‘See? I told you she'd turn out lovely. How you moithered about her, and now you've got her there. You're a lucky woman, Peggy.’

On the twenty-sixth we drove out to the Palace of Wax and the Grand Prairie Craft Village. There was a car broken down, had caused several other cars to shunt into one another, and traffic backing up on the freeway.

‘Oregon's real beautiful, Mom,’ she said. ‘You get on a back road up through Deschutes Forest, drive for an hour and never see another vehicle.’

I said, ‘You're not thinking of going back there by any chance?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I was just saying.’

Before she had gone away to train for her new profession she had as good as had her first customer promised to her. A lady with a elderly shih-tzu dog, regular customer at the grooming parlour. Unfortunately for Crystal it was not to be. The animal upped and died the week after she left for Oregon, and the bereaved owner got tempted away by the new Pet Cemetery that had opened in Cedar Hill. What I had read, the prime sites, with lake views, were getting bought up fast.