The Sisters (19 page)

He took another drag on his cigarette, held the smoke for a long time, then blew it out, as if with his last breath. “Your mother says you’ve been having dizzy spells.”

Rainey laughed and leaned through the darkness to kiss his cheek. “Oh, Daddy, it’s nothing. It’s only happened a couple of times when I didn’t eat any breakfast.”

He didn’t turn toward her at all, just stared out the front windshield, the end of his cigarette glowing bright, then dim, bright, then dim. He let go of her hand, rolled his window down a couple of inches, tossed the cigarette onto the driveway, and lit another. “Your mother’s taking you to see Dr. Wolfe in the morning,” he said at last. “You’re not to argue about it. The cab’s coming at nine-fifteen, so you be ready by nine.”

He pushed his door open, dropped the second cigarette beside the first, and ground them into the gravel with his heel. Rainey stayed in her seat, watching her father limp up the steps to the house. She would do what he asked, of course, but what a nuisance. She’d hoped to have a chance to talk to Richard after class tomorrow, but she could look for him in the cafeteria on Wednesday.

*   *   *

Three days later, on Friday, Mother blocked the front door to keep Rainey from going to work. “I’ve called that Mr. Buchanan and told him you won’t be coming back anymore,” she said.

“Mother!” Rainey tried to push past her. “What are you talking about? Is this about the ride?” Her mother stood as firm as a tank in the door. “Please, Mother. Let me go. I told you I had that all worked out. Daddy won’t have to come get me after this week.” She tried to read her mother’s face—only anger and resolve. Not the reason for it. Rainey stepped back, took a deep breath, and tried again. “Please.
Please
, Mother. I’m going to be late. We can talk about it tonight—whatever it is.”

“You go back to your room right now and take off that uniform,” Mother said. “There’s not to be another word about it. Not ’til your daddy gets home.”

Rainey knew better than to keep battling when her mother was like this. She thought about waiting for her to go back into the kitchen, then slipping through the basement door—she could get down the steps and out the back before Mother could catch her—but a sneak escape would only make things worse. She’d just have to wait until Daddy got home to straighten everything out—a little over an hour—and then she could go on to work and explain to Mr. Buchanan that her mother had had some kind of crazy fit. She would go back to her room, she decided, but she wouldn’t take off her uniform. That would save time when Daddy finished telling Mother to stop her fussing.

Rainey expected her to start on Daddy the minute he got home, but she zipped her lip and waited all the way through supper—didn’t even say anything about how Rainey was still wearing her uniform.

Then, right at the table, over the dirty dishes, Mother said it: “This girl’s pregnant. Dr. Wolfe called this morning.”

For a whole minute, there wasn’t a sound in the room except the pendulum swinging back and forth inside the cabinet of the wall clock. They’d all stopped breathing. Then, without looking at Rainey or her mother, Daddy pushed up from the table, his arms shaking under his small weight. He might have been ninety. Slowly and painfully, he limped into the living room to his chair, his keys jangling in his pocket with every swing of his bad leg.

Rainey sat still, stunned, while Mother gathered up the dishes.
Pregnant
. How? How could she be?

The question had barely formed in her head when she realized the answer. Things Sally and other girls had said through the years converged with some drawings remembered from her junior biology book to make her at once ashamed of her own stupidity and angry at Mother for not having explained the simple facts. This was why Sally had been shocked when Rainey told her what happened on the baseball field with Carl; this was why Sally had told her to stop.

Her gushing tears couldn’t cool her burning cheeks. She looked toward Daddy, but he just sat in his chair, staring toward the dark screen of the television. In the kitchen, Mother was running steaming water into the sink and dropping the dishes in, one by one. Rainey ran into her room, slammed the door and flung herself on the bed, wailing as she had never done before. When at last she was quiet, she slid to the floor, her back against the bed, and hugged a pillow to her chest. Soon, soon, Daddy would come in as he always did, take her hand, squeeze it two times quick, and tell her everything was going to be all right.

The room grew dark, but Daddy did not come. Rainey turned on the lamp beside her bed so that, when he passed her door, he would be able to see she was still up. He didn’t come.

After a while, Rainey heard the sound of the television, but she couldn’t quite make out what the show was. She looked at her alarm clock. Just past eight o’clock—time for
The Life of Riley.
It was Daddy’s favorite. Hers, too. They used to watch it every week, until she started working nights. Together they would laugh at Riley’s clumsiness, raise their eyebrows at him when his wife, Peg, did, and they’d sing out his signature phrase along with him—
What a revoltin’ development this is
—right on the beat, while Mother would sit in her chair, doing her crochet, shaking her head and muttering about how an actor good enough to play Babe Ruth just like he was the real thing oughtn’t waste his time making such a silly program.

In the morning, Rainey heard Daddy stirring around in his room, getting ready for work. She heard him and Mother talking in the kitchen—just a word or two here and there—and then the sound of the car starting and the crunching rattle of the gravel under the tires. It was nearly noon when Mother finally tapped on the door and said, “Your daddy’s coming home early to drive you over to the college to quit. You need to be dressed and ready to go at three-thirty.”

Daddy didn’t say a word when Rainey got in the car. She wanted to say something, but all she could think of was that she was glad that nobody she knew took classes so late in the afternoon, and she was pretty sure he wouldn’t appreciate hearing about that.

Daddy didn’t offer to go in with her. She took the shortest way she knew to the office. “I have to leave school,” she said to the woman behind the window, but she’d said it so softly, she had to repeat it twice. The withdrawal form looked so much like the admission form she’d filled out just two months ago, Rainey nearly lost control, but she managed to keep pressing out her details with the pen—name, age, address—right up until she got to the line that said “Reason for Withdrawal.” She stared at it so long, the woman finally called to her, “Do you need some help, honey?” and so Rainey scribbled, “Moving.” She supposed it was true. Mother wouldn’t let her stay in the house now—not even if Daddy insisted.

Daddy started the car the instant Rainey closed the door. Instead of turning for home, he drove through town and out past the county line, not seeming to be going anywhere. It wasn’t like him at all; he didn’t like to drive. After a long, silent time, he looped toward town again and finally turned down the road to the high school, where he stopped the car in the parking lot. She’d never seen Daddy full out cry, but she thought he might now, his eyes were so wet. He dug his handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

Who?
she almost said, but she caught herself in time.

“If you love him and you want to marry him, whoever he is, I’ll see it gets done,” Daddy said. “If you don’t, then we’ll manage.”

He didn’t say how they would manage.

“You have to tell me the truth now, Rainey.” He looked at her, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Do you love him?”

Did he want her to say yes? Would everything be all right then—would Daddy think that made everything all right? Would he stop looking at her that way, all the little pieces of his heart swimming in his eyes?

She
had
loved Carl—had been
in love
with him. She remembered now hearing people talk about how the
in love
feeling went away after a time, and then there was just ordinary love, love without the churning stomach and the giggles inside every breath. Ordinary love—not much of a feeling at all, just something you knew was there.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said. “Yes, I do.” And when she said it, her love rushed back to her, not quite as strong as it once was, but she could feel it.

Daddy took her hand and squeezed it. Two times quick. Everything was going to be all right.

T
EN

Ice

September 1964

McAllister, Ohio

ALMA

A
LMA REFILLED THE CANAPÉ TRAY,
refreshing the parsley edge and counting out equal numbers of sandwiches—watercress, herbed butter, egg and anchovy, deviled chicken—framing these with shrimp puffs and angels on horseback. She consulted the colored sketch she’d made days ago, having precisely measured the finished size of the sandwiches, and, satisfied that she had replenished the tray to its original glory, she set it on the counter behind her and reached for the sketch of hors d’oeuvres. This morning, when Gordon noticed the sketches, he said drawing food was a waste of time, but they had been her salvation. Her husband’s preliminary list of tidbits for the party—including a large order for crudités, cheese, crackers, nuts, and olives—was overwhelming. The drawings had helped calm Alma, making her confident that she could manage the grand party Gordon expected. Besides—along with her shopping list and her schedule for washing, cutting, cooking, and storing—the sketches would slip right into her notebook for entertaining, and if she made a few modifications, she could use this menu again.

Alma was proud of what she’d done, proud that Gordon had allowed her to recognize she could do it without the hired help she’d asked for—a sweet girl she’d met at the grocery who waitressed at Raquel’s, the only restaurant in town where the staff understood it was proper to serve from the left. Or so she’d been told. Alma had never been to Raquel’s, having to stay home to look after Milton—Gordon didn’t approve of sitters—but Gordon had occasionally been invited to dine there with the Powells.

Yes,
she thought, gazing at the pleasing array of colors and shapes on the tray—
yes,
she’d done all this herself. Mother couldn’t have done it—not that she would ever have occasion to give such a party. No, had Mother been here, she couldn’t even have helped. She would have screwed up her mouth in mockery to cover that she didn’t know what a canapé was, or how it was different from an hors d’oeuvre. Mother wouldn’t have been able to stock a praiseworthy bar that assured every guest would have precisely the cocktail he or she preferred.

Alma picked up the canapé tray and pushed carefully through the swinging door into the living room. The guests, only a few of whom Alma had met, were clustered in threes and fours, talking, smoking, gesturing with their cocktails. Alma glided from group to group, offering the tray, hoping at least to be able to catch someone’s eye long enough to smile warmly, introduce herself, and perhaps toss off a witty remark, but they were all so engaged in their conversations, they didn’t notice her, only the tray.

“Shouldn’t we ask the O’Connors?” she had said to Gordon last Tuesday evening while she addressed the invitations from the list he’d given her. “Or the Ketchums?”

Gordon was watching
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
“This is a different crowd,” he said, not turning his eyes from the television.

Alma certainly knew that. Bruce Powell held some important office in the Chamber of Commerce, and most of the other men on the list were city officials, but she still couldn’t see why their coming should preclude inviting their usual guests—Gordon’s acquaintances from the Kiwanis Club and hers from the Ladies Auxiliary. “But surely some of the men know Jack O’Connor,” she said. “Wasn’t he treasurer of Kiwanis once?”

“These fellows are Rotarians,” Gordon said. When Alma asked what difference it made which civic club they belonged to, Gordon folded the paper roughly, rolled his eyes at her, and said she knew nothing about economics. She supposed she didn’t, really—at least not more than she had come to understand while running a household budget—but he still hadn’t answered her question. His desire to impress these men and their wives couldn’t just be for the sake of business. After all, since he had completed the purchase of Dr. Weigel’s practice, he was the only podiatrist in McAllister—indeed, the only podiatrist in a hundred miles—so it wasn’t a question of building up his clientele. Perhaps he was thinking of running for City Council, but she couldn’t imagine how he could make the time for that.

Having made one circuit of the room, Alma set the canapé tray on the buffet and nudged a few cucumber lilies and radish roses into a more appealing arrangement. Now perhaps she could mix herself a Tom Collins and join the party for a few minutes before checking the food again.

She felt a light pressure on her arm and looked up to see a fiftyish woman with frosted blond hair smiling at her. “Such a nice party,” the woman said. “You’re Gordon’s wife, aren’t you, dear? I’m Claudine Powell.”

Alma offered her hand, but Mrs. Powell suddenly turned to nod toward Gordon at the bar and said, “When he was round to dinner last week, Gordon told us all about the new kitchen. You must show it off to everyone.”