Bingo (11 page)

I smiled, too, but for entirely different reasons. Mother waved at Regina and then me.

“See you later, Mom!” I hollered.

“If you’re lucky” came the reply and soon she was engulfed in conversation with Regina.

Georgette BonBon and Louise came out of the Curl ’n Twirl. Louise had her I’ll-buy-lunch look on her face. My family was certainly working over the Bonnevilles.

“Pewter, honey, it’s time to get down.” We were in front of the Pennsylvania side’s city hall. As I was going up the steps Mr. Pierre came down.

“Sweet love.” He kissed one cheek and then the other. “This is what’s meant by turn the other cheek.” Then he patted Lolly and told Pewter she was the cat’s meow. He thought that was wildly funny. “What riches might our city hall hold for you?”

“Have you been reading the papers?”

“Breathlessly.”

“Then you know we’re about to go through another zoning fight.”

“Oh, those zoning unpleasantries recur like malaria.”

“But the struggle is tougher on your side of the line. I don’t know why.”

“I do. We’ve got more rich people per capita than you do.”

“All twenty of them,” I remarked.

“And most of them Rifes, but they get what they want. Anyway, I don’t care if Rife converts the old shoe factory into a
mini-mall or whatever they call it. Those jobs went to the Third World ages ago. If it creates jobs, I’m for it. I wish he’d buy the old Bon Ton.”

“Me, too, except I don’t want a zoning variance that can be used again and again. It will be used like a law without ever being voted on by the public. Diz is smart enough to know what to do when he gets his foot in the door.”

“True.” Mr. Pierre’s eyes swept the Square. “But Diz isn’t going to ruin the Square.”

“Hope not. Anyway, I need to read those laws again.”

“Ah, there’s Julia.” He kissed me on the cheek again and dashed off.

Mr. Pierre and Mother were very matey. There was something conspiratorial about them.

“Put your back into it.”

“Aunt Wheeze, if you’d hold the light steady I could do a better job.”

She shined the powerful flashlight over the garden beds which I was mulching at nine-thirty at night.

“How come you haven’t written an editorial about Jim Bakker resigning from the PTL Club?”

“Because Charles Falkenroth says he smells a bigger story. He wants us to wait. John’s raring to go, of course.” “Sometimes I agree with John’s opinions.” “You do it to spite me.” I heaved the last load of mulch onto her pachysandra bed and spread it around. “Once spring is here to stay, this will be perfect.”

“Come on in. I’ll give you a cup of tea and a pickled egg for your labors.”

“Two pickled eggs.”

Aunt Louise’s house glittered with religious artifacts. I had long become accustomed to the suffering poses of Christ hanging in each room. The one I couldn’t abide was an enormous picture
of Jesus with his crown of thorns. The eyes opened and closed while the blood dripped from the thorns. The picture was electric, and when Wheezie turned on the lights you got the full, horrific effect. I’m quite sorry that Jesus endured the unleashed evil of the human race. Jesus suffered and was made man. I suffered and was made angry.

On this subject Aunt Louise and I differed. My aunt Louise hasn’t missed a tragedy since B.C. If she isn’t experiencing one herself or watching someone else she’ll read about historical tragedies. She loves suffering. I can’t decide if she does this because she wants to be a Catholic martyr or if she really likes pain. She’s the only person I know who will feel guilty about resting in peace.

Her pickled eggs bit into my tongue with the right mixture of vinegar and sugar.

“Better than Julia’s?”

“You know I can’t say yes.”

“But you know that I know it’s true.” She picked up a copy of the
Clarion
. A photo of the heavily mascaraed Tammy Bakker glared back at her. Tammy’s eyelashes must precede her into the room by five minutes. Wheezie put on her glasses and studied the photo. “If I looked like that my mother wouldn’t have let me go to church.”

“The woman’s tear ducts must be connected to her bladder. I’ve never seen anyone cry so much.”

“If they’d stayed within the True Church, none of this would have happened.”

“Bull, Wheezie. Catholics are wearing out sin same as Protestants.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but we have a system for forgiveness.”

“No, you’ve got a system for relieving guilt. You confess, get slapped with a few extra Hail Marys, and go out and do it again.”

She drew her breath in sharply. “I’ve done the Stations of the Cross in my time.”

“You know, I’ve been considering starting my own church. It
appears to be a growth industry. I’ll call it the Church of Your Redeemer Not Necessarily Mine.” I took another bite of delicious egg. “Or how about A Couple of Saints Cathedral?” I warmed up. “First Church of Christ Electrician.”

Louise chuckled despite herself. “You’re a blasphemer, Nickel.” She regarded me through her bifocals. “Your mind doesn’t work like a Hunsenmeir mind.”

“I’m grateful.”

“Don’t be smart. We haven’t done so bad.”

“Neither have I.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“I just mulched your flower beds. Don’t start your lesbian lament.”

Her hand made a dismissive sign. “I gave up on you years ago on that one. No, I meant you can be sarcastic and airy. Above it all.”

“I prefer to think of myself as detached. My profession encourages it.”

“You can’t live separate from people. Maybe you can be detached on the job but not off of it. You go around only once on terra-cotta.”

“Terra firma.” “That’s what I said.”

I knew Mother would kill me but I couldn’t control myself. “How was your date with Ed Walters?”

“Too, too wonderful.”

“Tell me.”

“Some emotions are best kept to oneself.”

“Now who’s being detached?”

“Nick, sometimes you can be too clever by half.”

As I drove away from the house, Louise turned out the light shining on the Virgin Mary in half a bathtub on the front lawn. Then she turned out the lights throughout the house and I could see her climbing the stairs. Who knows what dreams Louise had in her bed, the bed she’d slept in since her wedding day, June 14,
1918, when she’d been seventeen. Most of the people old enough to remember her wedding were dead, so she didn’t even have to lie and call herself a child bride. These days, seventeen is a child bride. The marriage worked. Whatever Louise’s faults, she accomplished something most of my generation couldn’t: a successful first marriage. Louise had lost her older daughter to death in a fire at age twenty-nine. She used the sorrow shamelessly but she survived it, even if I did still have to hear about it. Worse, in some ways, she’d lost her younger daughter, Maizie, to insanity. When Mother and I were feeling beneath contempt we would say to ourselves that she drove Maizie to it. Realistically, I think the problem was chemical and Maizie’s brain was like an alarm clock. In her forty-seventh year the bell went off and so did Maizie. Runnymede was a small town but Louise lived a full life. I’ll never know what her dreams are or were but I knew I couldn’t discount her as a contentious old lady. My aunt had more to her than that. The question has always been, which side of her would win out: the good or the bad. I never knew, but then I never knew that about myself either.

M
y desk sat in front of the big
Clarion
window. I could survey the entire Square. I started coveting this desk when I was fourteen years old and began working at the
Clarion
as a copy girl. Back then the reporter who occupied the desk was one Isaac Cooper. Apart from the papers covering the desk it was loaded down with Isaac’s cheap cigars. Isaac was drafted by the wire service to go to Vietnam. I was already in college when that happened. Unfortunately, Isaac never came back. People forget that a journalist will die to get the story. I keep a cigar in my desk drawer so I won’t forget. John says I’m grotesquely sentimental but he forgets I’ve seen his face when one of our profession is killed in Central America or Lebanon.

I didn’t get his desk for my very own until 1979. I can’t imagine not wanting to sit here and see the Square while the Square sees you but Charles has an inner sanctum, cherry wood, too, which is unusual, and he holds court in there so when the desk became free he gave it to me.

Michelle’s copy, much improved, rested before me. Michelle, however, did not rest. She paced by her desk. She made phone calls and paced some more. I couldn’t edit this copy fast enough for her. As I knocked out one adjective too many on the last page, I noticed Goodyear streak across the park. The local fury, Bucky Nordness, was in hot pursuit. Bucky was the northern side’s chief of police. On our side we had a sheriff, David Wheeler. Bucky
took his duties seriously. David got the job done but had fun while he was doing it.

“Michelle, answer my phone.” I shot out of my chair and was through the door before Pewter could raise her head.

“Goodyear! Goodyear.”

The black chow with his purple tongue shot over to greet me. So did Bucky.

“You know there’s a public ordinance about dogs being on a leash.”

“Well, Goodyear’s on the Maryland side now and so are you, Bucky.” I crooned this with buckets of good nature.

“I don’t give a damn, Nickel. We can’t have dogs doing as they please.”

“Goodyear’s not my dog.”

“I know that.” He thought. “I wanted to remind you, that’s all. You ought to print an update about the leash law in the paper.”

“I’ll take it up with Charles. I apologize for Goodyear. Mother probably forgot.”

“Forgot, hell. Julia flagrantly disobeys the law. She thinks the rules apply to everyone but herself.”

I didn’t appreciate this assessment of Mother’s character but there was a grain of truth in it. “I’ll take Goodyear over to the Curl ’n Twirl. I’m sure that’s where she is. Mind if I take him without a leash? Haven’t got one.”

“Yeah, okay,” he grumbled. “Nickel, someday those Hunsenmeir girls are going to push me over the line.”

I nodded sympathetically and Goodyear followed me to the Curl ’n Twirl.

Georgette smiled as we zipped through the door.

“Hi, George.” Mom was in the chair with a conditioning cap on. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Mr. Pierre. Bucky Nordness is ass over tit about Goodyear being in the Square without his leash.”

“From the waist down, Bucky Nordness resembles an umbrella.” Mr. Pierre was sly.

“Ha!” Mother put down the magazine she was avidly reading.

“Be that as it may”—and it was an apt description—“you can’t let Goodyear run as he pleases. What if Wheezie were coming around the Square in her Chrysler?”

“The vehicle of doom,” Mr. Pierre intoned.

“You’re right.” Mother held up the magazine for me to see. “I’m going to redo my living room just like this.”

This was one of those house magazines where the decoration job in every room cost about $150,000.

“Mother, the coffee table is made of marble. You can build an addition on your house for what it would cost.”

“Mr. Pierre and I have it all figured out. We’ll do a fake marble—”

“
Faux
, my precious,” Mr. Pierre interjected.

“And you can help me paint. I want pale apricot.”

The trapdoor in the pit of my stomach opened up. Not only would I paint, I’d spackle, put up drywall, sand, plane, and break every fingernail I had. Mother’s improvement schemes came out of my hide. By now I was experienced enough to start my own construction company and hated it. There are women out there who want to be electricians, plumbers, carpenters. Not Miss Smith. That butch crap just tears my ass with boredom. The fact that I never liked to get my hands dirty with anything but ink didn’t stop Mother from pressing me into service with bribes, guilt, or outright threats to my physical well-being. I was heartily sorry that she and Dad hadn’t adopted more children so I could spread this burden among my siblings. And when she was done with me, Louise would start up.

I left the hair salon with a heavy tread, remembered I hadn’t told Mom when I’d pick her up tonight, and whirled back through the door.

“Mother, we go an hour early to bingo tonight.”

The mouth that wouldn’t die was strangely closed. Mr. Pierre busied himself cleaning his spotless counter.

“Mother?” I spied the small glass ashtray in her lap. That old
trick. I came up behind her and smacked her between the shoulder blades. Billows of smoke poured out of her mouth.

“You little shit!” She coughed.

“If I’m a shit, you’re a liar.”

“
Tumulte.
” Mr. Pierre threw up his hands. That meant bedlam in French but I never knew if he was pronouncing the stuff correctly. I thought of French as the venereal disease of the tongue.

“Call your own mother a liar.”

“You promised to give up smoking.”

“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

“Not your flesh.” I relented. “If you smoke, you smoke. I just don’t like you being a sneak about it. And what are you doing in here so early anyway?”