Folly (3 page)

She wished still for that time in her life with nothing to do. She heard the expression come out of Mary Lou, regularly. She had tried to tell her, don't go so quickly, wanting to fill that nothing. Live with it a little. Let it fill with yourself, with your joyful, baby self from when you didn't know there was anybody else in the world but you. Let that come back in you. Let yourself know you're something.

Fartblossom strode back by her machine, caught her off guard again and reminded her of the guidance counselor. She had felt guilty because she didn't know where Mary Lou went most afternoons after school. There was only so much she could keep track of. Her zipperfoot hammered away. For sure she was not going to make eighty-five unless she concentrated on getting more speed.

3.

Mary Lou had been by the store asking about her job for summer. Lenore wished she could have said, “You're on. It's all arranged,” but Peters had said he had to wait until he had all the vacation schedules worked out. Peters might have been the fastest bagboy in the South but, in Lenore's estimation, he wasn't worth shit as day manager.

“He's the molasses type,” Lenore had said to Mary Lou. “I reckon he's gonna take you on my recommendation but he's got papers piled up in there on his desk, he ain't got the first glimmer 'bout what to do with them.” Lenore packaged stew beef as she talked. She distributed a mound in each cardboard container, rounded it with cupped hands, then ripped off cellophane and wrapped. Mary Lou watched her hands.

“I'll try to pin him down,” Lenore said, “but I 'spect I won't get his attention 'til the first day he comes up short when someone goes on vacation. Then you'll be on.”

“Yeah,” Mary Lou said, “long as I get the job.” She frowned and that was when Lenore had wished she could've said it was all arranged.

“If you hang out 'til I get off we can go get a coke down at the diner.”

“I better go on. Ma's bitchin' at me. Maybe tomorrow.” Lenore nodded and Mary Lou turned and headed down the aisle. Lenore was sorry to see her looking so troubled. She wiped her fingers across her stomach on the big, white apron and watched her walk until she was out of sight. Then she went back to packing.

Lenore was the best butcher they'd ever had in that A & P. She was fast, neat, efficient, clean, reliable and courteous to customers. Besides the fact that she had it in her to be these ways, she made sure she worked her job fast, neat, efficient, clean, reliable and courteous because she couldn't stand people being shit on, and this way nobody had anything on her. Produce was a mess and Peters knew he could go on
over there whenever he wanted to be a bastard. Still, they had never gotten around to getting her a butcher's apron the right size. This one fit around her waist twice and ended up being tied in the front. Furthermore, she had to tie a knot in the loop that went around her neck; otherwise the bib would've started at her waist. The apron reminded her of home, of wearing Angie's hand-me-downs. They'd both always been skinny but Angie had been extra long-waisted, and Lenore had spent her whole life with a belt marking her middle. Way back in the first grade she could remember the waists of the dresses falling on her hips, her pulling them back up under the belt until they were in the right place. That left her with goddamn tucks around her ribs where it should have been flat. Jesus, how she had hated those tucks, how she would have liked to rip those dresses to ribbons. It had been even worse when her breasts had started to grow. Even though they never grew very big, they were there, but you couldn't tell with those tucks just below them. Made it look like they were in the wrong place.

When Lenore had complained to Peters about the apron, he'd said, “Ain't many lady butchers, you're probably 'bout the only one. They don't make 'em for no one small as you.”

“Yeah,” Lenore had said. “Well, if they'd make 'em, there'd probably be more lady butchers.”

Roland was her relief, and he was late again. It didn't much matter since Mary Lou hadn't waited, and that left Lenore thinking about her choices of what to do when she got off, and thinking about the choices was a whole lot easier than deciding, which is what she'd have to do when Roland got there. She could go to her room and fix herself some supper and finish her book, she could go over to the diner and hope that Sabrina would be waiting the counter and maybe it wouldn't be too crowded and they could talk, or she could take a package of hamburg and stop over at the house and make sure Perry got fed.

It had only been two days since she'd had the last fight with her ma and she'd said, “Get out. You don't belong here no more. You split, now you stay outa my way.” Swinging the bottle around in the air—“You leave me and Perry alone. We get along okay.” And Perry holding her hand and squeezing it tight but sounding real cool in her voice, saying, “You better go on, Lenore.” And knowing that meant—if you make her any madder she'll beat up on me—and turning away, dropping Perry's hand, dropping down the steps, knowing not to step on the places where you'd go through. Then driving out Route 15, the tears burning in her eyes. She knew the road. She had walked it before she had been old enough to drive. She went a long way out from town
trying to clear her head of the mixed up fury about her mother. She caught herself thinking . . . if mother would die, if something would happen to her, then Perry could come to live in my room, and I'd take good care of her. Then she'd felt almost sick, goose bumps had run down her back as she'd pictured Perry standing beside the grave site, her eyes staring into the earth and her lips held in a tough pout. That took her back to when she was Perry's age and Angie was eleven, and it was one of those days her mother declared they were going to have fun. “A hot time in the old town,” she would say, and if they were downtown she'd take them in the thrift shop and tell them to pick out her “dancing duds” for her, and they'd find some frilly, shiny dress off the super, super bargain rack and all trot home. Then she'd try it on and prance around and say all the lines she could remember from the movies she'd seen, with her thrift shop cigarette holder clamped between her teeth and Lenore and Angie would roll around on the floor laughing, laughing till they were so sore they had to say, “Wait, stop, wait, my stomach.”

That was back when she still worked at the diner and she'd put on an extra thick Southern drawl and imitate herself telling off the customers. “So you think you like the looks of this here package, honeychile. You got your eyes wide open and your tongue's hangin' out and it ain't but breakfast time . . . . Oh my goodness, I'm sooo sorry I dropped them grits on your pooo little lap.”

After a while she'd point at Lenore or Angie and say, “Okay, your turn,” and whoever it was would get-up in the clothes, their ma's high-heeled shoes and all. Lenore and Angie took to imitating whichever of their teachers they didn't like, and their ma would sit at the dinette table and roar. When they were each done with their shows, they'd put on music and all dance together, and Lenore and Angie thought they had the best, funniest mother there ever was to have in this world.

That was when she only drank beer.

When Lenore had quit school her mother had said she was a wise ass, and she was sorry she'd ever laughed at all those teacher jokes, that was what had made her a wise ass. Lenore had tried to tell her that wasn't the reason.

“They put me on full time at the store,” she had said, “and I can bring home the money. You and Perry and me, we can have more things.”

“Big deal,” her mother had said.

“Angie quit school,” Lenore said.

“Angie didn't know no better. Angie was a dumb fool gettin' herself pregnant. Besides, Angie didn't take to school.”

Somehow that made Lenore mad, the idea that just because you were good at something you had to keep doing it. “No reason to go,” she said.

“Who do you think you are, girl?”

“Nobody special.”

“That's for sure.”

They had stood then with their eyes locked in a stare down until Lenore had dropped hers. Her mother could have left it alone at that but didn't. She had picked up the bottle on the table and turned it upside down to demonstrate how empty it was. “Okay hot shit with all the money and the steady job, go on out and buy me a bottle of whiskey.”

Lenore noticed her mother hadn't combed her hair yet that day. Nor had she gotten out of the old terrycloth robe and the slippers that flapped on the linoleum when she walked. “No,” she said.

“You ain't too old to be beat,” her mother said.

“I am too,” she said. “But not old enough to buy at the liquor store.”

“Shut that smart trap.”

Then they had both gotten louder and nastier, and Lenore had ended up telling her ma all the real reasons why she had to quit school, including that she was part of this family in which the mother was a mess of a drunk, Perry wasn't getting taken care of, and them being on welfare made her stomach knot up. Then she had run out the door before her mother could see she was crying and walked and walked down Route 15 and hated her in a way that stung.

Three months later she had walked out and gone to Mrs. Henry's and rented a room with a kitchenette. At least Perry had been there and seen her ma go to get the strap, and Perry knew that the reason she had to leave was because she couldn't let anyone ever beat up on her again, least of all her ma.

Roland came in whistling and caught her with her mind way off loitering in her troubles. He was tying his apron, and she noticed out of the corner of her eye how it was the right size for him. He didn't mention his lateness, but they both knew the clock had noted it.

“See ya tomorrow,” she said and went in the back to drop her apron in the laundry bin. As her card clicked in the time clock, she made her decision. She went home to read the book that Betsy had sent her from Alaska.

4.

Lenore picked up the mail and went inside. She tucked the fat letter from Betsy under her arm to open the door and left it there while she went to the refrigerator, took a beer, then settled into the deep old chair with the stuffing hanging out the bottom that Mrs. Henry had proudly furnished with her room. It was one thing to anticipate a letter that hadn't yet arrived. Lenore knew the disappointment that could lead to so she had set herself a policy of not expecting Betsy's letters, not allowing herself to stand around at work thinking maybe one would come that day, but it was another thing once the letter was there—in the box, in the quiet of her room, in her armchair. She made herself open it slowly, read it slowly. She held her gratitude, her eagerness, under a type of control that would lengthen the pleasure of the experience.

Dear Lenore,

I got your letter and just when I needed it. It came on a day when I was feeling pretty discouraged about being here. I was out on the job and this guy, Buster, was up on the truck lifting and throwing down these big iron mothers. He's part of my crew so I figured I should help him out. They were too heavy for any one person to lift alone so I called up to him—Buster, you sure got a high estimation of your own strength. How'd you like a hand for lifting those damn two-tons. He mumbled back about how it would take four girls to lift one of them. I said I doubted it. So he said he'd do half and leave the other half for me to do by myself. Big shit. No deal, I said.

So he thought he'd proved that women shouldn't be up here on these jobs. I said I wasn't crazy
or
dumb. I said—a brain Il take up a lot of slack in your muscles, Buster.

Willy, the one I share my lodging with, she and I had just been talking the night before about how these guys get to you. There are a whole bunch of them I'd like to beat the shit out of Willy and I decided the best thing was to just ignore them, not let them know if you were getting razzed. Anyway there I was the next day telling this jerk off. Then I got your letter and I said to myself-you wouldn't catch Lenore taking any shit off these guys. I didn't know how Willy would be because she's kind of different from anyone I ever knew, like she makes up rules for herself, things like getting up earlier than we have to for making it to work in the morning. To me it's glory not to have my pa making up the rules. She comes from a real classy family. Her father's a doctor. I don't understand what she's doing here. Anyway we'd sort of made the rule together that we wouldn't let these guys razz us, but when I told her about Buster, she laughed and said she'd wished she'd been there to see me tell him off.

I'm learning so much being away from home. I guess you did too when you moved out from your ma's but for me it's really something to be so far away. No family to fight with. You wouldn't believe how strong I've gotten. My muscles feel like steel, and I really like this feeling in my body like there are no soft spots. Willy says by the time this pipeline is finished, we'll be in shape to start the women's army. She says she thinks I have a soft spot here and there. She means for you.

How are you? I miss you very much. I lie in bed at night and I try real hard to imagine you with me and there are times when I think I can feel you in my arms. There's nothing else that was ever as good in my life as finding you to love. Willy and I talk about you and Robin, that's her lover in Oregon, all the time, sometimes late into the night when we should be sleeping. I can't imagine if Willy wasn't a lesbian. Then I wouldn't be able to talk about you. I feel pretty lucky. Lots of the other women up here are probably lesbians too, I think, but I don't know for sure. Willy just came right out and said it, so maybe the rest of them will too when they get to know me better. What I haven't figured out is whether they seem like lesbians because of the jobs they do, or whether they know jobs like welding and stuff because they 're lesbians. Get it?

I was thinking maybe it sounds weird to you since I never said the word or anything back home to hear me calling myself a lesbian. I just know I could never go the other way so why not. The other reason was because of reading that book I sent,
Sappho Was A Right-On Woman
. Did you read it yet? You probably did, you're such a good reader. Can you imagine me reading a whole book in a week? You must've been a
good influence on me. Anyway it sure wasn't like any book I ever had to read in school. When you finish tell me what you think. I'll send you more if you want them. The woman who gave it to me, she's the only other one I know for sure is a lesbian, she comes from San Francisco where there are gay people all over the streets, and she has friends who send her lots of odd books and things, and she says when we're finished with them, we should pass them on to someone else, and then that person should pass them on, too, sort of like a chain letter. What I want to know is who in the world are you going to find in Victory that you can pass that Sappho book to? (Ha, ha.) Got any ideas?

How's Perry? I hope things have been going okay. I know how that tears you up. How are things at the store? Write to me soon. It makes me real happy to get your letters. Be taking good care of yourself.

Love,
             

Betsy
    

P.S. What do you think of me changing this way? I suppose Victory is getting along just fine without me but I don't know if it'll be ready for having me back.

P.S.S. Willy says hello. She feels like she's getting to know you.

Lenore put out her cigarette and closed her eyes. She left the letter lying in her lap and tried to picture Betsy. Having never been out of North Carolina it was impossible for her to imagine Alaska other than as a cluster of igloos and penguins and Eskimos eating hunks of fat as they'd been shown in the school books. She could see Betsy lying in bed, one arm up with her hand propping her head and her dark underarm showing. That was a soft spot. Betsy lying there in her bed on a Sunday morning while she was at the counter pouring the coffee. Betsy looking at her that morning after the first night they'd spent together when every time Betsy had looked up and caught her eye, Lenore's heart had tripped, the feeling of missing a stair in the dark. It had been her first night ever sleeping with a woman and she had wanted to think out what was happening to her, but she couldn't because each time she would look in Betsy's eyes, she would get this warm feeling as if it were the perfect day with a clear sky and just the right amount of breeze, and she was all shook up with excitement but calm at the same time, and this smile would break away on her face that she couldn't have stopped if she'd tried.

“It seemed pretty natural, didn't it?” Betsy had said, speaking of their love making.

“Yes, oh yes,” she'd replied in a soft voice which she hardly recognized as her own.

“Have you ever slept with a man?” Betsy asked.

“Once. It wasn't like this at all. He was big and heavy, and I didn't tell him, but it hurt. It sure wasn't what it's chalked up to be . . . . Have you?”

“Yeah. I'll tell you some other time. Let's just be alone now.”

Lenore remembered nights when they lay side by side on their backs with all the lights out and talked until real late with maybe just their feet and their arms touching. She wondered about how the lodging up in Alaska was arranged. Did Willy and Betsy sleep in the same room? When they talked into the night were they already in bed or sitting up at a table somewhere? She imagined them in narrow beds arranged on opposite sides of the room. Somehow that seemed most likely. She tried to fix that picture in her mind so as to avoid having to think about them being any closer. True, it was good that Betsy had someone to talk to and could talk about them, but that didn't make anyone for Lenore to talk to, much less give the book to.

Lenore's room was actually a sun porch with the addition of a small kitchenette at one end. A counter marked the boundary between the kitchenette and the remainder of the room which contained the chair with the stuffing hanging out, a bookcase, a step table, and the bed. Two walls of the room were made up of jalousie windows. Everything in the room belonged to Mrs. Henry right down to the sheets and the glass dancing figurine that had been set out on the corner shelf in the kitchenette for decoration.

Lenore got up and pulled the blinds down to block herself from being on view to the outside. Doing so relieved one tension at the same time it brought on another—she would be making herself suspicious by being invisible. At the store Lenore was hardly ever conscious of herself the way she was in her own room. Alone, blinds down, it was as if she developed a shadow, a double. The doer did. The watcher watched. Her eyes lit on Mrs. Henry's dancing ballerina. She didn't want it on her shelf. The doer got up and walked to the shelf, took it in her hand and fingered it while holding it behind her back. Thin legs. Easily breakable. The watcher watched Mrs. Henry coming up to the jalousies during the day, shading her eyes from the sun, squinting, straining, searching for the ballerina. Lenore put the ballerina in an empty drawer in the kitchenette, one she had not yet found anything else for. The ballerina rolled
over as she slid the drawer closed. She went back to her chair and looked at the shelf. A simple shelf; it was more like her.

Lenore had run to this room in a rage from her mother's house. She had gloried in the aloneness at first even though the raw, hollow pit in her stomach had burned and burned and called for someone, when there was no one, to soothe it. She had toughened herself against all the feelings that came with her being there, except for when Betsy had come along and touched off this other Lenore that she hadn't even known was inside her.

She didn't like the idea of Betsy calling herself names, but in spite of not liking the idea, she was drawn to the word:
lesbian.
She was not sure why, but it seemed as though the word had strength to it. Betsy sounded proud of using it. She read the letter over again. Her mind kept going to the part about Betsy and Willy talking into the night. She wished Betsy would've said something about what Willy looked like. Stephanie Pritchett was about the only one she had ever known who had a doctor for a father and she was sure Willy didn't look like Stephanie Pritchett, just as she was sure that Stephanie Pritchett would never have gone to work on the Alaskan pipeline.

Willy says hello. Lenore didn't like that. It made her feel like someone peeping in between the blinds. She got up to make her supper. She figured she would answer the letter after she ate, but she wasn't about to say hello to some complete stranger.