The Little Giant of Aberdeen County (16 page)
I licked the envelope and sent it, but maybe I said too much, for I never got a reply, and the next thing I knew, I heard that Marcus was in a hospital in Maryland, recuperating. I heard his leg got blown apart, and one of his hands, too, changing the whole shape of him, making it difficult for him to walk and even more difficult to write. Or maybe he just had nothing left to confess. Maybe the shell had taken care of that.
T
he morning of Aberdeen’s one hundred fortieth official May Day celebration, my sister woke up early, hobbled over to the flowered porcelain basin in her room, and threw up. Then she rinsed her mouth with Listerine, tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom, and quietly emptied the basin’s contents into the toilet. She gathered her flaxen hair into a bunch at the base of her neck and peered into the medicine cabinet mirror.
In the dingy square of glass, her eyes looked puffy and bloodshot. Her cheeks were pale, and her lips had a new fullness to them that had absolutely nothing to do with the beeswax lip salve she used at night. Her hands traveled over her clavicles and down to cup her aching breasts. You only had to glance at her to know how plump and round they’d gotten or to verify that her hips were spreading out on either side of her like a pair of misplaced wings. She sighed, pinched some color into her cheeks, and set her mind to the problem of how she was going to squeeze herself into her May Queen gown.
It had been ten weeks since her last period—long enough for her to know that it wasn’t likely to arrive anytime soon and long enough to know why. It wasn’t long enough, however, to have figured out what to do about it. I was the only one who knew, and every hour of every day, I could feel her problem whorled inside my own abdomen like a question mark. A baby was not what my sister wanted, I was aware. I pointed this out to her as soon as she told me, a week before the festival.
“Truly, I think I’m pregnant,” she said, her pretty hands twisting in her lap like a pair of kite strings. We were in Amanda Pickerton’s kitchen, which she had just repainted an avocado green. The color ricocheted off my sister’s cheeks and turned her hair into fairy moss.
“Are you sure?”
Maybe she’s just being dramatic
, I thought, but Serena Jane bowed her head and started crying. A baby, I knew, wasn’t going to get her a screen test in Hollywood or her face on the covers of magazines. A baby meant soiled diapers, and drool, and sour milk. It was the most unappreciative audience in the entire world. Of course, it was easy enough for me to think all of that. What did I know about the contorted physics of sex and love? Only that I was too big to enter into them. Every month my period came and went with the blank regularity of the moon, and if the dull cramps in my belly and back ever made me long for the body of a boy, all I had to do was look in the mirror to know that I stood about as much chance in that department as one of August’s racehorses winning the Kentucky Derby.
Serena Jane sniffled. “What am I supposed to do? Sal Dunfry had this problem last year, and a doctor in Manhattan took care of it, but I don’t have that kind of money. Besides, I would never get the chance. Amanda would have me crucified first.”
I hunkered in my chair and tucked my fist under my chin. “Is it Bob Bob’s?”
Serena Jane bit her lip and nodded. She placed the flat of one hand against her belly and pressed inward toward her spine. “He doesn’t know yet.” She sucked her belly in some more, as if trying to will herself back into her old shape, but it was no use. The evidence was there, as plain as day. Anyone with two eyes and a brain could look at her and know what was happening, and soon everybody would. Everyone except Bob Bob, that was. He didn’t have a clue. Every day at school, my sister stared daggers at him, but he never so much as turned in her direction. I imagined that after all this time it must be strange for Serena Jane to have Bob Bob ignoring her—a feeling like cutting off her hair or shedding the heavy weight of a winter coat.
“Why don’t you write him a letter?” I suggested, but as soon as Serena Jane seized the pen, the muscles in her palm cramped up. She took to tracking Bob Bob with the zeal of a bloodhound, pacing the edge of the baseball field during practice, and shadowing him on his route home from school. If August didn’t need me in the barn, I went with her.
We trailed him like listless ghosts, until Bob Bob startled both of us one day, turning on us with the savagery of a kennel dog. We were on the sidewalk outside of his house. I noticed that the picket fence needed painting but couldn’t imagine Bob Bob engaged in such a menial chore. Probably the Morgans hired people to do things like that, I thought.
Serena Jane opened her mouth to tell him about the baby, to let the whole dilemma come pouring out of her like a stream of water, but when she tried to speak, her voice crackled and died. She just stood there, croaking like the enchanted Princess Bugaboo, until Bob Bob snorted in disgust and walked up the path to his house, leaving us on the pavement with the haunting aroma of vanilla seeping down the backs of our tongues. Serena Jane waited till he slammed his door, then leaned over the hedges and vomited while I held her hair.
Inside the Morgan house, the pale moon of Maureen Morgan’s face appeared at the parlor window, her mouth pursed into an O, her breath leaving a vapor trail on the glass. She frowned. Girls that age didn’t throw up out of love alone. In her experience, unrequited love never made anyone very sick, but requited love, well, that had its own, corporeal consequences, and it was pretty clear which type she was looking at now. Bob Bob’s fascination with my sister over the years had been no secret—his family teased him about it nightly at the dinner table—but the thing that surprised Maureen was that Serena Jane had finally given in, and Bob Bob had said nothing about it. That didn’t seem right. Maureen narrowed her eyes and let the swag of heavy curtain fall back into place. From behind folds of velvet, she watched me help my sister wipe her lips with the back of one hand. Maureen turned away. She’d seen what she needed to. She knew what had to be done.
No one in Aberdeen had been surprised when Serena Jane won a unanimous vote for the title of May Day Queen. After all, the crown had practically been hers since the day she was born. By age six, she’d even had the float ride down cold, a spatula cradled in the crook of one arm for a scepter, a tinfoil crown on her head, her right arm waving like a mannequin come to life. Now that the actual moment had arrived, however, I could tell that Serena Jane was finding it difficult to execute the maneuver. For one thing, the bodice of her gown was so stretched, the seams were beginning to pucker. And for another, fumes were frothing out of Dick Crane’s car with such vigor that even I felt sick. When my sister wasn’t looking, I saw Dick surreptitiously tilt the rearview mirror to get a good view of her magnificent calves. A girl like that was bound to go far, he was clearly thinking, his eyes raking the mirror. My sister probably hadn’t been born that blond for nothing. Women never were. He smacked his lips, peeling his eyes away from Serena Jane, anticipating barbecue.
Aberdeen’s May Day celebration was the oldest continuous festival in the state of New York, a fact that Dick loved to advertise. Each spring, he had another commemorative object manufactured to mark the occasion—a proud tradition that had led to decorative mayhem in Estelle Crane’s parlor. The official May Day platter of 1962 hung on one of her walls, the daffodils on it smeared owing to an uneven kiln temperature (the potter had been a friend of Dick’s over in Hansen). And there, plopped on the rocking chair, was the May Day needlepoint pillow of 1965, its bulk covered with butterflies so small and pale, they resembled moths.
The 1959 May Day teacup held pride of place on Estelle’s credenza, with the corresponding 1960 tea tray propped just behind it. There was an unfortunate gap between 1965 and 1967, but this year, 1969, was
almost
the start of a new decade. In spite of his wife’s protestations, Dick had had a phalanx of T-shirts printed up with beribboned maypoles emblazoned on the front, and on the back, in rows of big blue letters:
May Day Festival! The Oldest Party in New York! Still Going Strong!
Against better judgment
,
Estelle wore one of the shirts to the postparade picnic on the town green, but besides Priscilla Sparrow (who we all knew harbored an abiding affection for Dick that defied age, position, and common sense), she was the only one. Estelle squinted her eyes in Prissy’s direction and sniffed.
“Forget about her,” advised Cally Hind from the potato salad station. “Everyone knows she’s nuts.” She flicked her eyes over to where Serena Jane was seated majestically on her May throne, Dick hovering over her with a platter of spareribs. “I’d worry more about
her
.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snorted Estelle. “For one thing, she’d have to wrestle that plate of ribs away from Dick first, and for another, that girl has plans. If she’s going to give herself to anyone, it’s certainly never going to be to anyone from around here.”
Cally plopped a ball of potato salad onto Estelle’s plate and leaned forward for a quick heart-to-heart. “That’s not what I heard. Unless those plans include Bob Bob Morgan, an aisle, and a big white gown, that girl’s not headed anywhere anytime soon. The ring’s as good as locked on her finger. All she has to do is finish high school.”
Estelle crinkled her brow and watched with relief as Dick returned to the grill for refills, leaving my sister propped alone in her enormous decorated chair, placid as a doll someone had tucked back up on a high shelf for safekeeping. Estelle’s face went soft. Maybe she was thinking of the early years of her own marriage, how bewildering it had been to be suddenly left alone in a strange house for the entire day, with nothing on her hands but a pile of laundry and a ticking clock. “That’s a shame,” she murmured. “After all, she’s still just a girl.”
“She probably found old Tabitha Morgan’s shadow book and put it to her own use,” sniffed Madge Harkins, observing the sheen of sun falling on Serena Jane’s hair.
Cally Hind shook her head. “Not hardly. From what I hear, she could benefit from a little witchcraft, if you know what I mean. She’s in a bit of a situation.” Cally rolled the words off her tongue like gumdrops. Estelle and Madge turned their heads toward my sister, resplendent in her satin and taffeta, and sure enough, there in the tight seams of her dress, in the heavy droop of her bosom and the fatigue pooled in her eyes, was all the proof they needed. They remembered what babies did to you right from the start and how it was downhill from there on out.
Madge clapped a hand over her mouth. “The poor thing. What on earth was she thinking? Of all the kids in this town, I’d have thought for sure she’d be one to get out. She just had that look about her.”
Estelle jabbed her fork into her potato salad. “Does Amanda know?”
“Lord, no,” Cally snorted. “What do you think? Her husband’s the vicar, and besides, as far as she’s concerned, that girl’s a real-life princess.”
Madge’s eyes went dreamy. “She’ll make a beautiful bride.”
“Assuming he’ll marry her.”
“Oh, he will. His folks will see to that. After all, the town doctor can’t very well have his own son paddling girls up a creek and stranding them there, can he?”
“Not unless he wants to be the one to take care of the situation.”
“Oh, Bob Morgan would never do that, would he?” Madge’s eyes widened.
Cally sighed. “No, but I wouldn’t put that kind of thing past his son. It’s a good thing
he
doesn’t have his medical license yet. God help us when he does.”
Estelle nodded. “Yes, there’s something I’ve never liked about that boy. Once, he rode his bike right over the petunia beds in my garden when I was standing next to them, and he didn’t so much as bat an eye.”
Madge flapped a hand at her. “Oh, Estelle, that was ages ago. I’m sure he’s grown up ever so much since then.” Her gaze shifted and caught the enormous shadow of me hovering on the edge of the food stations. “Now
there’s
a hopeless case,” she said, rolling her eyes toward me. “Not even witchcraft would do the trick with her. She’s a definite candidate for modern medicine.”
Cally pulled her eyes off of my sister and turned them in my direction. “It’s almost hard to believe they’re related.”
“Living out at the Dyerson place hasn’t helped matters much,” Estelle added. “The poor thing. Earl wouldn’t take her to the doctor, and the Dyersons can’t. They barely have enough to eat on.”
I shifted my weight from hip to hip and practiced blending in with the trees behind me, like a boulder in the shade. I stood so still, I could have planted myself in the middle of the town green, along with the statue of Aberdeen’s founder, or in the graveyard with all the other frozen souls, inviting open opinion without getting a single feeling hurt.
“She looks like she eats plenty to me,” Cally gibed, but Estelle quieted her with a frown.
“It’s not her fault she’s built like a Sherman tank. Besides, maybe in her situation it’s better. Look at Serena Jane. Beauty only landed her in a rat’s nest of trouble.”
The three women fell silent then, staring into their empty plates and ruminating on the paradoxical connection between opportunity and loveliness that Serena Jane and I presented. Without beauty, I knew, life’s possibilities might pass me up, but too much loveliness was clearly a liability. It was like a train wreck, pulling in trouble. So in the end, maybe it really was me who was better off, I thought. I was ugly—no one was going to dispute that—but I was also so big that nothing in life was going to slide past me. And if it did, then maybe I was smart enough to let it keep going.
As Mayor Dick Crane officially announced the 1969 May Queen with salivary glee, I sweltered politely along with the town, applauding when appropriate, the backs of my thighs stuck to a wooden folding chair. I was alone in the very last row of seats set up on the grass and could see the back of Bob Bob’s head three rows up. He was perspiring for different reasons. I watched him watch my sister assume her throne on the little dais with her usual grace and a greenish tinge around her lips, and then I saw him reach into his pocket and finger the emerald-cut diamond ring his mother had given him that morning.