Bingo (25 page)

“Horse’s dubers” was another name for hors-d’oeuvres.

“For a minute.” Louise nestled in.

Mother noticed this and hurried behind her. She kept her hands in her apron, jingling the money.

Louise, irritated, reached around and grasped Julia’s wrists. “I can’t hear the numbers.”

“Who cares. You aren’t playing.”

“Ed is.” Wheezie’s voice contained a reverential ring.

“I think I’ll pass around the tidbits.” Mr. Pierre abandoned his card.

I sat down and took it over. “I’ll split the winnings with you if this card is a goody.”

He smoothed his hair. “I just love the way us girls stick together.”

“Mr. Pierre!” Louise reprimanded.

“Ah, the voice of the Virgin Mary. Or is it Divergent Mary?” Mr. Pierre winked at me.

A martini preceded bingo for Mr. Pierre. Tonight I sensed he might have indulged ever so slightly and downed two in quick succession.

“Don’t talk like that in front of Ed,” Wheezie scolded, the voice of propriety.

“It’s better than hearing you blab.” Mother remained behind Ed and Louise.

“I don’t mind.” Ed smiled at Mr. Pierre. “I wasn’t born yesterday. But can I ask you a question?”

“Anything you want.” Mr. Pierre’s hand circled his head with a flourish.

“Did you ever—uh—were you ever with a woman?”

For a moment the people around our makeshift table became quiet.

“When I was twenty-one I was violently in love with Theodora Weigle—we called her Teddy. One evening I knew it would be
the
evening. Naturally, I would have married Teddy, you understand. This was not a superficial attachment. When the time came to—came to—” He paused, collected himself. “When the time came to, I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything as undignified as lie on top of her.”

With that he skipped into the kitchen, leaving Ed to ponder this story. Wheezie was crimson. Mother smiled and jingled her money as she prowled behind other tables.

“Bingo!” Millard Huffstetler shouted.

Millard rarely attended bingo. I was glad to see him. You can spend too much time with your orchids, and Millard did. He’d brought corsages for Mom and Louise and a tasteful arrangement of hot coral tulips. Mother inclined to bright colors. Sometimes a little too bright. Her shoes, for example, were see-through jellies, pink, and she wore mint-green socks too. The colors were muted but then she threw on the vibrating pink apron, and with the magenta streaks in her hair I thought it was a bit much. Mother was Mother, though.

Other than that short flurry between Mom and Louise, the evening unfolded pleasantly. I have often thought that if I live to be as old as my aunt Louise what I will remember is the laughter. When I was a kid, Daddy, Mom, and I would laugh at breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well as in between. Tonight was one of those nights when everyone was in a great mood; one joke followed another; one good crack was topped with another. The big surprise was when the game was over. Mother gave me the profit.

“Mom, I can’t take this.”

“Sure you can,” Mutzi yelled. “And David Wheeler says if he could have come tonight he’d have tossed in fifty bucks just for you.”

“Why?”

“We want you to get the
Clarion.
” Verna smiled.

“How else will I write my column? Did you all know that
Nickel is giving me my own column? Just like Cholly Knickerbocker and it’s going to be called ‘Looking Over My Shoulder,’ so you all better watch your P’s and Q’s around me.”

Aunt Wheezie had changed the name of her column again. On the basis of this imaginary column she foresaw a great literary career.

“That’s enough, Sis.” Mother cut her off at the pass because Louise had gulped another mouthful of air and would have continued in her journalistic fantasy.

“You’re not a bad boss.” Roger folded up his bingo card.

“I notice Michelle is conspicuously silent,” I teased.

“Tough—you’re the meanest thing to adjectives I’ve ever seen—but you’re fair,” Michelle replied.

“Thank you.” I turned to Mother. “Was this your idea?”

She swept her hand across the room. “We came up with it together. Mr. Pierre and Wheezie and Georgette and Ed and I were over at Mojo’s for lunch and one thing led to another. Verna gave us the food for the party, and Millard, the flowers. Peepbean wouldn’t come but then what else is new? He never will like you but”—she beamed—”everyone else does. So you get that paper, honey.”

My throat hurt. “Thank you all very much. I’ll try to live up to your confidence in me.” That was that. I couldn’t get out another word.

“Okay, let’s play Crap on Your Neighbor!” Mother gleefully announced.

The card decks were smacked on the table. Mr. Pierre cruised through with another round of food before the game. Crap on Your Neighbor is a card game whose rules defy explanation. Suffice it to say you can cheat; if you see someone’s card you can holler it out to everyone else; you can bribe your neighbor to get up and spy on other hands. Anything goes.

As Jesus was sleeping in his tomb, half of Runnymede stayed up until one o’clock in the morning. That’s late for us. The shouting
rattled the rooftop but since everyone on the block was also at the party, no one called David Wheeler to complain of noise.

I didn’t get back to the farm until two because I stayed to help Mother clean up. Apart from anger or good humor, Julia disdained extravagant displays of emotion. I had thanked her and the others—that was enough. As far as she was concerned the thanks was in the work itself. I’d damn well better do a good job with the
Clarion
.

Exhausted, I emptied pockets on the bird’s-eye maple dresser that was Grandma’s. The bingo pot was $372.49, a lot of money to everyone playing bingo and a lot of money to me. I took off my clothes, didn’t hang them up, and collapsed in bed. Before falling asleep I decided the first day I ran the
Clarion
under my own masthead, I’d run an ad thanking everyone who was at Mother’s tonight.

“… now we need a fence crew. You don’t have to be big and brawny, merely willing to get dirty.”

Regina and I started whispering to each other and Ursula snapped, but in that polite make-you-want-to-gag tone: “Nickel, I don’t think you take our annual Delta Delta Delta horse show seriously because you haven’t any children.” Ursula’s tinted lenses, emerald-green, clouded over. “We do this every year for our scholarship and every year you obstruct the show.”

There are dumber ways to raise money than a horse show but right at this moment I can’t think of any. Our alumnae chapter rents an indoor riding ring. The participants van their horses and ponies to the show, pay a stall fee if they come in the night before, and then spend the day combing, braiding the manes, and spiffing up their animals, only to have the beast roll in the dirt immediately before its class. Owners of light-colored horses especially suffer. Little girls flood horse shows along with their parents, a species devoted to their offspring and hostile to show judges. Given that Ursie organizes the show, she also determines what kind of classes we sponsor. Events are cleverly arranged so that Tiffany and Harmony win some kind of ribbon, even if it happens to be for the chug-a-Coke race. This race has the children lined up. They ride to the other end of the ring, dismount, chug a Coca-Cola, mount up, and ride back to the finish line.

As long as Ursula Yost was president of our sorority alumnae association, we’d endure the horse shows.

“You’re the strongest, Nickel. You can man the fence committee.” Ursula bared her fangs on the word
man
.

She had tried to prevent me from joining the alumnae association on the basis of morals: mine. She cast upon me the dirtiest jobs, hoping to drive me out even after fifteen years of membership. Ursula believed one could not be a Tri-Delta and a lesbian. How wrong she was, but then Ursula never did have a sense of fun. Her heyday was the early 1960s, the years of Tuesday Weld and Sandra Dee. She was a woman who took Ralph Lauren seriously. She also insisted that women should wear derbies in the hunt field. What could be classier than a derby and what could offer less protection? Besides, what we wore was up to Regina as M.F.H., not Ursie. I wore a hunt cap. One more strike against me in Ursie’s book. And then, dear old Kenny was a paint, and Ursie turned her nose up at any animal not the “right color.” Perhaps tradition made her feel secure.

“Okay, I’ll run the fence committee but only if you remember not to start the classes until I get out of the ring.” Last year she set out a child along the course, and I hit the dirt as 16.2 hands of animal bore down on me.

Running the fence committee consists of browbeating your more muscular friends to help you actually pick up the bars, standard posts, logs, and cut brush and move them. The brush is put on the tops of some jumps to give them the appearance of what one might have to clear in the hunt field. The classes are divided between those outdoorsy obstacles and the show-jumping courses: painted rails, in-and-out jumps, and the like. Often pretty potted plants are placed in front of some of these jumps. Not only does the fence committee have to alter the course completely under the direction of the course designer, we must also rapidly raise the fences as each class becomes more difficult. If you forget to wear gloves, your hands get full of splinters and cuts. If your partner, in moving a log or coop—a triangular-shaped jump—drops his end before you drop yours, there goes your back.

Any animal that strays into the ring is my responsibility to
catch and remove. As everyone brings their Jack Russell terriers, I offer to the public the spectacle of myself being outwitted by a dog.

The best part of being on the fence crew is driving the tractor. The soft loam in the ring needs to be raked between divisions. There are usually three classes to a division, and if a class is particularly popular—e. g., 180 entries—then I would rake even between the classes.

Driving the tractor is
très
butch and I can’t resist playing into the stereotype. I always put on my Baltimore Orioles baseball hat and wave to the spectators. Of course, I wear my earrings and lipstick too.

This year our illustrious Master of Foxhounds, Regina, was the course designer. We’d gone over the plans. She laid out a tough course. I had a feeling we’d have spills aplenty and I suspected Regina hoped Tiffany and Harmony might provide us with a few.

“Last year we experienced regrettable delays due to slowness of the fence crew.” Ursie stared at me. “This year I want course changes to run like clockwork. Nickel, you bring your people out before the show for a dry run.”

“Come on, Ursie, it’s hard enough to get there for the show,” I protested.

“You have wonderful powers of persuasion.” She flashed a false smile. “Clockwork! Clockwork! Clockwork!”

Regina piped up: “Don’t get crazed with this. Nickel doesn’t persuade people, she bribes them. You’ll bankrupt her.”

The other alums laughed.

Ursie did not. “I refuse to endure the number of complaints I did last year. Nick, a rehearsal. Don’t try to elude your responsibilities to our chapter. Remember Jonah and the whale.”

“What’s a big fish got to do with it?” I wanted to know.

Her voice was clipped. “Stop obstructing this meeting. I’ve said all I’ve got to say on the subject.”

I shut up, not because I agreed but because I didn’t feel like a
fight. I’d ridden an emotional roller coaster the last few days and I had no emotions left for Ursie.

I fidgeted because I wanted the meeting to be over. I also couldn’t wait to tell Ursie that my friends who owned Kalarama Farms in Kentucky had offered to sell me a gelding by their great stud, Harlem Globetrotter. Harlem is a saddlebred. Hunter-jumper people call them shaky-tail horses but a saddlebred is a sturdy, multipurpose animal. If I worked with this boy I was hopeful I could turn him into a real hunting horse. They provided me with generous terms but I still didn’t know if I could do it, given my financial situation. Then, too, how was I going to board two horses? But I wanted that gelding. He exuded a dark glamour and a sweet disposition.

“Is that it?” Regina demanded of Ursie. She wanted to play tennis even though it stayed cool.

“Yes. Meeting adjourned.”

The ladies, ranging in age from twenty-four to sixty-nine, romped for the buffet while Regina and I sped for the door. Driving over to the barn, I excitedly told her about the saddlebred and we schemed to come up with money.

After our three sets of tennis we sat in the little cottage. Regina packed turkey sandwiches and Perrier.

“Another year on the fence committee. Who are you going to press into service this time?”

“Guess I’ll round up a crew at the last minute.”

“If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.” Regina polished off her sandwich.

“That’s what Wheezie says.”

“That’s where I heard it.”

My face must have registered how I felt because Regina said, “What’s wrong with you?”

“I feel sick.”

“Gee, the sandwiches taste good to me.”