The Future Homemakers of America (33 page)

I said, ‘I'll bet they're over here. I told her she shouldn't decide anything till her boys had met Arthur. I hear anything, I'll let you know.’

‘Likewise,’ she said.

When I called Betty, it was Dawn who picked up. One of Deana's brats.

I said, ‘Your gramma there?’

‘Out,’ she said.

I said, ‘How about Carla?’ I figured to talk to a member of the Gillis family had its brain connected.

‘Carla's gone,’ she said. ‘We ain't speakin’.’

It was the day before Gayle's TV show before I got to speak to Betty.

I said, ‘This Zippa-da-lip you're selling must be hot stuff. You're never home.’

‘Lipo-Zipp,’ she said. ‘Did I send you a sample?’

She didn't even know I'd been calling. Dawn had never said. Hadn't written down my messages or anything.

I said, ‘What's the story with Carla?’ Then the tears started.

‘Peggy,’ she said, ‘I'm just about to the end of my rope. It's between Carla and Deana really, but course, I'm caught between them.’

What had happened was, Deana's eldest, Delta, had won first prize in a beauty pageant. Holiday for two in Florida. And Deana hadn't been backward at selecting herself to accompany Delta.

Betty said, ‘Carla said I should be the one to go with her, and there was a big fight between her and Deana.’

I said, ‘Darned right you should be the one to go. You're the one did all those pageants with her, dragging all over the state, sewing her costumes and all. Deana never lifted a finger.’

She said, ‘Well, I did it because I wanted to, but I never would have started it if I'd known the trouble it'd bring. Deana and Carla not speaking. Carla hardly even speaking to me because I said Deana should go on the trip. Gosh, Peg, I don't even want to go to Florida. Tell you the truth, I'm so tired I don't want to go anywhere.’

I said, ‘You still seeing Slick Bonney?’

‘He's my co-distributor,’ she said. ‘We're out every night demonstrating our products.’

I told her about Gayle. ‘My word!’ she said. ‘Did you ever hear the like?’

I said, ‘Ask me, she's taking folk for a ride. I gave her the benefit, but fixing teeth is way too far for me.’

‘Well,’ she said ‘God judges. But imagine us knowing a TV star. I'll get Deana to record it. She has one of these VCRs. Slick wanted to get me one, but I'd never fathom how to work it.’

I said, ‘You gonna make up with Carla? She's a good kid, Betty. You shouldn't let Deana freeze her out. Mother and daughter stop talking, that's a terrible thing.’

She sighed, ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And I don't hardly hear from Sherry neither. She's in New Mexico doing something. Always was the artistic one. Peggy? You still getting your visitor every month?’

I said, ‘God, no! I finished all that when I was forty-eight. Didn't you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I thought it'd finished. Then it come back.’

I said, ‘You take care now. I don't want you getting in the family way. You know Slick'd do just about anything to get you to the altar.’

‘Peggy!’ she said. ‘I don't want to hear that kind of talk!’

I said, ‘How did Deana get on in Florida anyhow?’

‘Oh, they didn't go yet,’ she said. ‘There's only certain times you can take up the prize.’

I said, ‘Well, promise me you'll make up with Carla.’

‘I will,’ she said.

‘And get some pills, so you don't have that, bother no more. Tell the doctor you already had the change. They can give you stuff.’

‘I will,’ she said.

‘And don't forget to watch Gayle.’

‘Oh, I won't,’ she said. ‘I'm gonna buy a tape now and get it round to Deana's.’

The Weelkes Wing opening went off okay. We had pan pipes music and we served jalapeño nachos and bitter chocolate and orange pyramids. The parrots were Grice's idea. He said he was hiring cute little green parakeets, wouldn't be any trouble, but when the woman arrived with them they weren't no parakeets. I'm no expert, but I know a big mean bird when I see one. The guy they hassled was Dr Mitchell Crocker, come all the way from the University of Michigan.

As Grice said, they may have picked on him because his hairpiece looked like some kind of fibrous vegetable matter. Or it could have been because his whiny voice excited them. Either way, we came close to disaster, so the birds got paid off early.

‘Okay,’ Grice said. ‘You were right. I was wrong. We should have gone for the tame llama after all.’

I said, ‘Take my advice. Keep all animals out of the equation.’

‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Know what we overlooked too? Human sacrifice. Damn! Well, there goes our Inca reputation.’

I went home with him to watch Gayle. First time I'd been inside his place, all the years I'd known him. It was neat and clean, no more than you'd expect from a nice boy like Grice. It didn't feel very cosy, though. More like a hotel room than a home, and I said so.

‘Well,’ he said ‘I'm not here too much, you know? It's kind of a place to sleep when I can't get down to Tucker's.’

I said, ‘You mean you got a room at his place?’ Crystal always reckoned he did.

‘Sure I do,’ he said. ‘I mean, the late hours we work, and you saw Miss Lady. Tucker can't leave her. So I have to keep a place in town.’

I said, ‘You make it sound like you're a married couple.’

‘If only,’ he said. ‘If only.’ Seemed like Crystal was right all along. Such a know-all.

The show started.

They showed Gayle and Lemarr at one of their healing rallies, like the one me and Betty had seen. Then they showed inside the mouths of some folks claimed God had fixed their teeth through the healing hands of Gayle. Finally we got to see Gayle close up. She was looking good. She was wearing her hair bigger, and she was dressed more tailored than before.

Grice said, ‘Is she younger than you?’

I don't know what he meant by that.

Whatever the interviewer asked her, she had a text for it. Romans 8; Isaiah 53. She just knew them all off the top of her head. Just shows what a person can learn if they only put their mind to it.

‘Why teeth?’ they asked her.

‘Many healers are now specialising,’ she said. ‘Mine is not to reason, but to do whatever work the Lord sends me.’

‘And do people have to come to you? Do you have to touch them?’

‘All they have to do is believe,’ she said. ‘People write me and they are healed. People telephone me and they are healed. People even can touch their TV screens and be healed, if they believe. “Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses,” Matthew 8:17.’

The interviewer said, ‘Do people pay you for this dental work?’

‘I'm no dentist,’ she said. ‘I make no charge for my prayers. But without the generous support of our friends the Lemarr Passy Tabernacle could not continue its work. Every gift, no matter how small, is good in the eyes of the Lord. “The poor widow threw in two mites,” Mark 12:42.’

I went out to the bathroom. When I come back, Grice was running the tape again, got his face right up to the TV screen.

I said, ‘You'll ruin your eyes.’

‘Never mind my eyes,’ he said, ‘I have a loose crown needs fixing. And I believe, Lord! I believe!’

87

‘I've got two things to tell you,’ Kath said. ‘I've kept trying Audrey's number, see how she's going on, and now she's been cut off. I'd take a drive out there again only I'm chocker with work. And the other thing is, we've got a marvellous programme on the telly now and it's called
Dallas.
I never miss it. I watch it like a hawk, keep thinking I might see you walking past in the street.’

I said, ‘They must have moved.’

All the times she had moved when she was married to the airforce, every one of us got a card with her new address.

‘Didn't pay their phone bill, more like,’ Kath said.

I said, ‘Audrey never left a bill unpaid in her life. Something's up.’

‘Oh, don't say that,’ she said. ‘She knows she can always come to me, if she's got troubles. And I will go out there again. I'll look through the letterbox, see if there's bills piling up. But it won't be this week. I'm booked solid.’

Kath wasn't the only one busy that summer. We created an Old-Fashioned party for Moody Pierce up by White Rock Lake and it was so fabulous the whole town wanted one. We decorated the terrace with masses of gardenias. Served fried chicken and potato salad and stuff like that. Everyone ended up in the pool and then we had girls, dressed like Roxy usherettes, bringing round Dixie cups of peach ice cream.

By September I had ate so much leftover ice cream I was having trouble closing my zippers. I called Betty, see about getting some more of her miracle fat-burner. Carla answered.

I said, ‘I'm glad to hear you're back.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I'm back. I guess you heard about Mom?’

Betty was in State, getting tests. Carla said, ‘They did a colposcopy and now they're doing a cone biopsy, tomorrow probably. She's got cancer cells and they have to look see how far it's gone.’

I said, ‘Is that bad?’

‘Could be,’ she said. ‘Problem is, Aunty Peggy, you can't get any sense out of her, how long this has been going on. You know what she's like, anything below the belt? It might not have come to light yet if Slick hadn't gotten so worried about her back-ache. He just about dragged her to the doctor's office.’

I said, ‘I know she was tired. And that family stuff was getting her down. You and Deana work out your differences?’

She laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that's another story.’

Apparently two nights before Deana and Delta were meant to be going on their prize vacation to Florida, Deana had a road accident. She had gone out to buy a six-pack for Bulldog, got shunted by a car didn't stop at a red, and ended up in the emergency room, neck injuries and suspected fracture of the skull. By the time they let her out of hospital the plane had left for Florida with Bulldog and Delta on it. Last they heard, Delta and Bulldog were living as man and wife in South Miami.

I said, ‘But Delta's only a child.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘as a matter of fact, she's sixteen.’

I said, ‘So Deana's on the warpath after Bulldog?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Deana blames Delta. I mean, forty-year-old guy runs off with his girlfriend's sixteen-year-old kid, stands to reason you're gonna blame the kid. So, to answer your question. Me and Deana still don't see eye to eye. It's just the reasons have changed. Meanwhile, Mom's quietly getting cancer.’

I said, ‘Know what frightens me? I thought these smear checks we get were meant to show up any problems? It spooks me to think something like this can still creep up on you.’

‘Aunty Peggy,’ she said, ‘you don't think Mom ever took one of those checks, do you? I'll tell you where those appointment cards went: straight in the trash can. You know Mom. She'd sooner get sick than take her clothes off for a doctor.’

I said, ‘You take care of yourself, now, Carla. And get your sisters to start pulling their weight.’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Only don't let's hold our breath till they do.’

Kath phoned me for my birthday.

‘I had a letter from Audrey,’ she said. ‘No address, not even a telephone number, but I took my magnifying glass to the postmark and I reckon that said Yorkshire. She says, I'll read it to you, “The gallery has been going through lean times, so we're having to tighten our belts. We've been lucky enough to borrow a dear little cottage …” See what I mean, Peg? I reckon he's gone bust. They've scarpered. I mean, what about that big house he had? And Audrey's money?’

I felt so depressed.

I said to Grice, ‘I'm fifty-two. My friends are all getting sick or taking leave of their senses. I neglected my mother. I hate my sister.’

‘Anything else?’ he said.

I said, ‘Yes. My daughter is too busy stuffing ferrets to remember my birthday.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Here are your options. I can take you out to Mountain Creek now, put heavy rocks in your pants and just throw you in. Or, you can get chop suey with me and Tucker and watch a Judy Garland movie.’

88

June of ‘79 I got a card announcing that Sandie Moon and her husband Gerry had finally got the little baby they had longed for, named him Patrick Herbert for his two granddaddies; and also a call from Betty to say that Delta had come home in the family way, whereabouts of Daddy Bulldog not known.

Betty was just about back on her feet after her big op. She had been on the table getting a radical hysterectomy.

I said, ‘Has she moved in with you?’

‘Well, where else is she gonna go?’ she said. ‘Deana won't have her within a mile of her trailer.’

Then, just as I was thinking I couldn't get left behind much further, Lois now a grandma twice over and Betty gonna be a great-grandma, I heard from Crystal that she was getting married to a boy called Marc Fry. He was the deputy editor of
Cranberry News.

I said, ‘You have made me a very happy woman.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ she said. ‘Just don't ask me to have ten bridesmaids and a three-room gift-display.’

They had fixed on late September, on account of Vern's place having a quiet spell then, while the wild nightcrawlers were being harvested.

I said, ‘Spare me the details. I suppose you won't be having it in a church?’

‘Correct,’ she said.

I said, ‘Well, a city-hall wedding can be very nice.’

‘It probably can,’ she said, ‘but we're not getting one of those neither. We're writing our own vows and we're gonna make them on a boat out in Penobscot Bay.’

I said, ‘Is that legal?’

‘Don't start,’ she said.

Grice squealed when I told him. ‘Look at it this way,’ he said, ‘at least you know exactly what to wear. Deck shoes, and something that tones with motion-sickness-green.’

Crystal and Marc were making all their own arrangements, which was kinda hard for me to take, having been in the business and all, but they weren't kids. I couldn't lay down the law. And it was just gonna be a small affair, everybody going for a mess of lobster and beer after this home-made ceremony.

I said to Crystal, ‘Can I buy you a washer-drier?’

‘Got one, thanks,’ she said.