Runny03 - Loose Lips (16 page)

“Aunt Julia, I thought you were on my side.” Mary’s nose dripped along with her eyes.

“I am on your side, Mary. That’s why I have to agree with your mother—fifteen is too young to marry. You can marry Billy later.”

“When? She’ll do anything to break us up.” This was followed by a moan that could wake the dead.

“He has no prospects, no blood, no—nothing.” Louise swatted with the broom again.

“You don’t know him, Momma.”

“I don’t want to know him. You’ve let a handsome face turn your head. Marriage is more than that.” She paused, leaning on her broom. “What a pity Ramelle didn’t have a boy instead of a girl. That would be a match made in heaven.”

“All you care about is money.”

“Exactly,” Wheezie spat right back at her. “And when you grow up and have to pay your own bills it will finally sink into your thick head that I’m trying to do the best for you. A poor husband is not happiness, believe me. That love stuff wears off after a while and you’d better have more than that or you’re just another dumb woman who followed a dumb man!”

“I hate you!” Mary jumped off the chair and ran for the door.

“Mary,” Julia called after her, “come on back here. You two are like banty roosters. There’s got to be some middle ground.”

“Not with her,” Mary half squealed.

Louise bellowed back, “Listen here, little girl, if you think you can marry behind my back I can get it annulled in a heartbeat, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

“You don’t understand. You just don’t understand.” Mary blubbered again.

“Sit down, both of you. I’m tired of this wrangling. For Christ’s sake, you’re giving me a headache.” Juts pointed at the two chairs on the ends. She stood in front of the middle chair, her back to the counter and the mirrors. “Now, here’s how I see it and I want you both to keep your big traps shut.” She pointed at Mary. “You are fifteen years old. You can’t do a thing about your age.”

Mary butted in, “Why not, Mom does.”

“You little—” Louise leapt up to go over and smack her but Juts pushed her back in her seat.

“That’s enough out of both of you. I mean it.” They settled back down like ruffled hens in their broody boxes as Juts continued. “Mary, Extra Billy will still be here when you turn sixteen in January. What’s the rush? You can marry him when you graduate from high school.”

“Julia Ellen!” Louise bellowed. “Have you lost your mind?”

“No, I have not. Louise, she’s in love. She’s going to marry this kid whether you like it or not. Now, she can either run away and scare the bejesus out of all of us or we can make the best of it and
have a decent wedding here at home with enough time to plan it. She skipped a grade, so come June she’s out of high school and on her own.”

“You’re telling me to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” Louise shouted, the veins standing out on her neck.

“Mother!” Mary objected to being called a sow’s ear, although that wasn’t what her mother was saying, exactly.

“I am telling you to accept the inevitable. Hell, Louise, it might even be a good marriage.”

“Don’t make me laugh.” Louise slammed her fist on the arm of the barber’s chair.

“Will you be laughing when an out-of-wedlock baby appears?” Juts pointed a finger at her sister.

“What? What!” Louise shot out of the chair to stick her face in Mary’s face. “Are you—?”

“No!”

“Don’t you lie to me, you hussy.”

“I am not lying to you.” Mary wanted to smack her mother, but since she was pregnant her voice betrayed her.

“Julia, is she lying to me?”

Juts shrugged eloquently. She really didn’t know, but she suspected as much.

“I don’t want to be a grandmother,” Louise wailed. “I’m not old enough to be a grandmother.”

“All right, then, we’ll pass you off as Mary’s sister—her much-older sister,” Julia sarcastically replied.

“Will you shut up!” Louise, nostrils flaring, wheeled on Juts. “You’ve been feeding Mary this pap about love and sharing with a man and oh I could just puke. You don’t share with men, Mary. You don’t even think about it, my dear daughter—you tell men what to do. You organize their lives for them. You grab the paycheck out of their hand before they can spend it. You say what they want to hear. You let them think your ideas are their ideas. It’s a lot of work running a man but you have to do it because
they are so goddamned dumb!” She shocked herself by using the word “goddamned.”

“I don’t want to love like that,” Mary determinedly said.

“Juts, I lay this at your door. You and your mooning over Chessy. He’s barely got a pot to piss in.” Louise pointed her finger in her sister’s face. “You’re full of those cockeyed ideas.”

“We live in a nice house.” Juts held on to her rising temper.

“You wouldn’t have a thing if it weren’t for my castoffs—or Celeste’s. It’s a sure bet Mother Smith wouldn’t give you a moldy loaf of bread.”

“Louise, I am taking into account the fact that you are overwrought—”

“Overwrought? I am ready to
kill.”
She inhaled slowly, then blew out the air with violence. “You’re not a mother. You can’t understand how I feel.”

Julia had heard that one too often, but this time she wasn’t going to take the bait. She didn’t know if her niece was in trouble or not. She didn’t want Mary to run off, though. Nor did she want the kid to have to battle her mother the rest of her life. Louise needed to bend to keep her daughter’s love and keep her family together. Juts had lived for fourteen years as wife to a man whose mother made certain, every day, that she was found wanting. It wasn’t a great feeling. At first you ignored it. Then you got angry. Finally, you went dead on that score, but the bad thing was that you started to go dead about other things, too, other people. It spiraled out of control, that numb feeling.

“Louise, you’re a good mother—”

“Well, thank you,” Louise mocked.

“Momma birds push babies out of the nest. Mary’s ready to fly from the nest. Everything you taught her will stay with her. Don’t worry so. She’s picked a boy you don’t like. But Wheezie, he’s good-hearted—” She caught her breath. “—I hope. Half the time the kid didn’t get enough to eat and you know that’s the truth! That little boy started working for food when he was seven
years old. If you don’t know anything else about him you know he’s not lazy. He’s found Mary and she’s found him. Let the Lord work His wonders. After all, He brought them together.”

Involving the Lord was Julia’s masterstroke.

Louise puckered her red lips. Nothing came out of them, not even a slow hiss before speaking.

Mary, too, was speechless.

Finally Louise recovered her voice. Although her sister had reached her with a compelling argument, she had to know the truth. In a calm voice, she asked, “Mary, before I can make any decision, I have to know. Are you pregnant?”

Mary burst into tears. Louise had her answer.

Juts patted Mary’s hand. “It’s okay, kid. You’re not the first.”

Louise, deflated, began to cry. “Oh, Mary, how could you? After all I have taught you.”

“That won’t help now.” Julia faced the two women, who were exploding in tears. “All the training in the world can’t change Mother Nature.” Before Wheezie could marshal her moral objections, Juts continued. “Mary, you weren’t wise. You have to recognize that you did something that can’t be undone. Even if it all turns out right, you have changed your whole life without letting us all sit down and think it through—your future, I mean.”

“I know,” Mary bawled. “But I love him.” A gust of emotion overtook the tears.

“Louise?”

Pale, Louise croaked, “I can’t believe she’d do that to me.”

“She didn’t do it to you, Sis. She did it to herself. How much did you think about other people at fifteen? The kid’s in a jam. Like it or not, we’re her family. We have to help.”

Steadier now, Louise asked her daughter, “Does he know?”

“Yes. He asked me last week to marry him.”

“Last week!”

Juts held up her hand. “He did the right thing. Let’s not quibble about time.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you.” Mary sobbed anew.

Julia, in a clear voice, said, “Give them your blessing. Give her a proper Catholic wedding. Pearlie will have to counsel Billy on his obligations. Chester can help too. That’s between men. Between us, we can welcome him into the family.”

Louise fought back the tears. “I don’t want her to get hurt.”

“She’s going to get hurt anyway. She might as well do it on her own terms.”

“What do you mean, Aunt Juts?”

“She means Billy will run around on you.”

“He will not!”

Julia held up her hands for silence. “I said no such thing. I don’t know what will happen. All I know is every now and then Life sticks his boot up your ass. You live through it. Louise, don’t put words in my mouth. Mary, if your parents do this for you, then you have to finish school before getting a job.”

This prospect was not appetizing but Mary nodded in agreement.

A long, long silence ensued. Outside they could hear the crunch of feet as people walked past the store. Every now and then Julia waved at someone.

Finally, Louise half whispered, “Well, Mary, it is your life. I’ve had my chances. I guess you have to take your chances.”

Mary scrambled over to her mother and hugged her. Then they indulged in a joint cry.

Juts, tired after this rake and scrape-up, cut the overhead lights. She thought being an aunt was hard work; being a mother must be hell, and yet look at them now.

M
om, I can’t find my bouquet.” Maizie frantically wrung her hands.

“You will find it!” Louise ordered.

“But Mom, I can’t remember anything.” The young girl, hair in a shiny pageboy, leaned against the church room wall.

“Don’t wrinkle your dress. That dress cost almost as much as your sister’s bridal gown. I don’t remember prices being this high when I got married.”

“She gets to wear your veil. That ought to save some money,” Maizie replied, the first signs of teenage rebellion brewing.

Ignoring this, Louise, worn out and fresh out of patience, grilled her younger child. “Where have you been in the last twenty minutes?”

“I went to the bathroom.”

“Well, did you leave the bouquet in there?”

“I don’t know. There’s always someone in there.”

“I’d start there.”

“What if it isn’t there, Mom?”

“Then think of the other places you’ve been.” Louise checked her watch. “And work backward.”

“All right.” Maizie wobbled off in her high-heeled shoes toward the bathroom.

“Everything looks perfect in the church.” Juts hurried past
the retreating Maizie. “Aunt Dimps is up at the organ with Terry Tinsdale—just in case.”

“Father O’Reilly said if we didn’t use our own church organist it would break her heart.” Louise exhaled. “Personally, I don’t think Terry Tinsdale can carry a tune with a bucket. And now Maizie can’t find her bouquet. I think she’ll break her ankle thanks to those high heels.”

Juts came over and put her arm around her sister, who was so frazzled she could barely draw breath. “Everything’s going to be fine, Sis.”

“It better be, because there’s nothing else I can do about it.” Louise’s head snapped up again. “Celeste’s car! I forgot to pick it up this morning.”

“Done. It’s sitting right out in front of the church.”

“Where’s Momma?”

“Plopped in the front row.”

“What about fur-face?” Louise said sourly, referring to Hansford.

“He’s there, too, with a pink rosebud in his lapel.”

“Juts, Juts, I forgot the satin cushion for the rings!”

“Father O’Reilly has it and he had the satin cleaned, just like you requested. Now, take a deep breath and count to ten. This is going to be a beautiful sunrise wedding. Your husband looks as handsome as the day you married him. He’s upstairs with Mary. She needs a rope to keep her from floating into the sky, but Pearlie’s in charge up there. The best thing you can do is to give yourself a few minutes of rest.”

What Juts didn’t say was that the speed of the wedding had tested her organizing skills as well as Louise’s. The fact that Mary insisted it be at sunrise added to the exhaustion. She wanted an original wedding.

Louise’s eyes filled with tears. “Juts, I want Mary to be happy.”

“Then smile, because she is today. The future will take care of itself.”

“I guess.” A ragged intake of breath garbled the “guess.” “Are Billy’s people here?”

“His mother. His father hasn’t been home for three days, so she says. Chessy is with him, saying whatever men say to each other in a situation like this.”

“Chessy’s a good egg.” Louise folded her hands together, trying to compose herself. “I guess we aren’t the only people in Runnymede with a worthless father.” Juts didn’t reply, so Louise continued. “What time is it?”

“We’ve got about ten more minutes.”

“I really should see Mary one more time.”

“Look!” Maizie burst in waving her bouquet.

“Where’d you leave it?”

“With Mary.”

“How’s she doing?”

“She’s giggling a lot. Ha-ha,” Maizie sarcastically said. “And I still don’t see why I have to be on the end of the line. I’m her sister.”