The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (33 page)

“Christ, yes.” Avis laughed. “More than a few. We were all batty.”

Avis and Mumma were making too much noise, talking back and forth across me, for Fred not to know there was a party going on. But he kept his eyes on the road.

“Are you ladies enjoying yourselves?” he finally said.

“Oh, yes, immensely.” Mumma giggled. It was the kind of giggle I’d only heard from her in two places—at Cousin Ella’s wedding reception, where everyone got tipsy from champagne, and on Saturday nights in the kitchen when she and Daddy had whiskey and water and played cards with the Martins. I looked at her now. Her cheeks and nose were as flushed as radishes.

“And you, Avis? Are you enjoying our little jaunt?” Fred stared straight ahead.

“Oh, Freddie, it takes my breath away. Truly.” She wiped her brow with a hankie. “Whew. It truly does.”

Her lipstick was smeared up over her top lip from the cider bottle. I pointed with a finger to my own lip, to give her a clue. She took her compact from her purse, opened it, and burst out laughing.

“I look like I’ve been kissing a gorilla.”

“Let me see.” Mumma leaned over. “Why, Avis. It looks like you’ve been kissing two gorillas.”

“Well, one of ’em wasn’t Edward.”

“That’s not necessary, Avis.”

“And one of them sure wasn’t me,” Fred said.

Mumma and Avis both got quiet. They looked at each other, raised their eyebrows, and sat back. Mumma started fiddling with the cork on her bottle of cider and looked out the window. Avis wiped her mouth and reapplied her lipstick. I watched Fred’s eyes in the mirror. We rode along in silence.

“This last stretch is pure country, ladies. Hold on to your hat, Avis.” He jerked the car onto a gravel road. We bumped and jostled along in the back, not saying anything. A flurry of small stones flew off to the sides as the tires gouged through ruts and gravel, making tinny little spitty sounds against the hubcaps.

Suddenly there was a loud pop.

“Jesus H. Christ.” Mumma held on to her bottle as the contents exploded. Cherry cider, foaming and red, shot up to the roof of the car and splashed all over the seat, the carpeting, Mumma, and me.

“Holy Mother of God!” Aunt Avis exclaimed as cider sprayed her face.

“Will you look at that.” Mumma was incredulous.

Fred slowed and stopped the car. His hands were gripping the steering wheel. Finally he turned and stared at us. All my beautiful polka dots were smeared in a cherry background. The pale brushed leather of Fred’s seats took on the color of blood as cherry cider seeped in. The beige carpet under my feet was red, too. Fred got out of the car.

Aunt Avis and Mumma opened their doors and got out. Mumma kept dabbing at her splotched blouse with her fingers. “We need a little seltzer water.” She was flustered. I sat in the middle of the seat, using my dress to mop up cider.

Fred stuck his head right into the back and reached across my lap, feeling the stickiness of the seats and the wetness of the rug. He took his white handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it against the cushion till it soaked through. He stood up. “Get in, both of you. Just get in.”

Mumma and Avis quieted down and closed the doors. Fred got behind the wheel, turned the car around without a word, and took off. I don’t know which of them was laughing first—full-out, nonstop laughing. It started with snickers between them and kept escalating. Fred and I were both silent.

“Poor Fred,” Avis wheezed, but she didn’t sound too upset. “Poor Barbara. Look, look at the dress. Her cherry dress.” But she was laughing. “I’m going to pee, I’m going to wet my pants,” Avis said, barely able to speak.

“Oh, don’t, Avis, please don’t.” Mumma gasped for air. “We’ve done enough.”

The whole time Fred was driving lickety-split. He drove directly to a little town we’d passed through a few miles back. When he got to the main street, he pulled up in front of a small grocery store and pointed to a sign that hung above the door. It said BUSSTOP, and there was a picture of a greyhound poised mid-lope over the door.

“This, ladies, is the end of the line. I’ve been taken for a ride, and now the ride is over.” He got out, opened the back door next to Avis, reached in, and helped her climb out of the car. “And take your cider with you.”

“Why, thank you, Fred. How thoughtful,” Avis said as he handed her the bottles one by one. Mumma was scurrying to get out by herself on the other side.

Fred turned and pointed across the street. “If you catch one going in that direction, it might take you all the way back up to Canada.” Then he took his wallet from his pocket and selected a bill. He leaned into the car toward me, grabbed my hand to help me out, and pressed the bill into it. “That is for your supper, miss. I’m sorry I won’t be joining you. Get whatever you want on the menu. And get yourself a new dress besides. You’re a lovely young girl, Barbara, a flower among the few.” Then he winked at me for the last time, touched his hand to his hat, and closed the door. “I hope you don’t have too long a wait, but you seem to amuse yourselves nicely.” Then he started up the car and sped away.

“That shithead.” Avis watched him go. “Well, now I can have a cigarette.” She put her bottles of cider at her feet, fished one out of her purse, and lit it.

Mumma just stood there holding two bottles in each arm, looking in the direction the car went. “Well, I’ll be damned.” She turned to Avis. “You do get me into the darnedest predicaments.”

“But we amuse ourselves nicely.”

It was a fifty-dollar bill in my hand. Mumma tried to whistle when she saw it, but she couldn’t. We had to use some of it for bus tickets. Mumma and Avis had spent their cash on the cider. Avis took the bill from me and went into the grocery store. I refused to go in because of my dress. I was pretty miserable, inside and out. Mumma stood with me. In a few minutes Avis came back out with three hot dogs and the bus tickets.

“It’ll be coming through in a little over an hour. We can wait right here.” She pointed to a patch of grass. “At least we can sit. I got us some grub.” She laughed. “Figured we already had something to drink.” We sat on the grass and ate steamed hot dogs on soggy buns. Avis and Mumma passed a bottle of cider between them. Avis dropped mustard on her collar, a blob that smeared more when she wiped it with a dry napkin.

“Well, good. Now we all look right out of a slop pail,” Mumma said.

“Not quite what we expected, by way of dinner.” Avis stretched her legs out in front of her and lit a cigarette. “But I’ve had worse.”

“Oh, yes,” Mumma chimed in, “much worse. Some you’ve cooked yourself.”

Avis laughed. “We could still be with Fred.” The cigarette was between her teeth.

It was more fun being with just them. “Could I have some cider?” I asked, smiling for the first time in hours.

“Take it slow,” Avis said, opening a bottle and handing it to me. “Don’t jiggle the contents.”

We sat quietly together, watching people come in and out of the grocery, and waited. Mumma said good afternoon to whoever noticed us, like we were perfectly normal, having a picnic. The bus finally came, and we straggled on board. The driver looked curious when he saw my poor dress and then alarmed when he saw the bottles Mumma and Avis were carrying. We were down to six.

“Don’t worry,” Avis said to him, with a sly smile. “We’ve had our fun for the day.”

We went to the very back of the bus. It wasn’t crowded. We sat in the last seat, the one that goes all the way across, so we could be together. We lined the bottles along the floor in front of us and kept them steady between our feet. I sat in the middle.

“We’ve certainly had our fill of buses today, Barbara,” Mumma said, leaning back against the seat. “But I’m glad to get on this one.”

“I’m sorry about your dress, Barb.” Avis fingered the limp mass of material. “But there’s plenty of money left over for a new one. Old Fred saw to it, got to give him that much. We’ll go downtown tomorrow and do it up.”

She reached over and put her hand on my knee. “A flower among the few,” she said, smiling. “He got that right.”

Mumma looked down at me. “He did,” she said. “He surely did.”

 

Of course, Avis never saw Fred again after that. And his aunt stopped coming to the beauty salon.

Aunt Avis had other boyfriends, lots. I met some, heard about others. Fred must have looked pretty good to her, in retrospect, if she ever thought about him. Avis didn’t have too good a track record.

I got a new dress the next morning that was more expensive than anything I’d ever had. It was a beautiful dark blue material with a certain shine to it. Avis said it was the cat’s meow. I loved that dress. Daddy never noticed that I came home wearing a different dress from the one I’d left in. He never heard a word about our ride in the country.

For years afterward, though, whenever Mumma and Aunt Avis and I were together, one of us might look up and say, “Oh, I do wish I had a nice glass of cherry cider. It would be so refreshing.” And we would all three start giggling. Daddy would look up from his newspaper or his supper plate and shake his head—or even leave the room—knowing that he was being kept out of another secret between the two of them, those sisters. But this time I knew what they were laughing about. I knew. So I stayed in the room and laughed with them.

June 1956

 

“Christ, I got to get back to the garage. It’s after two.” Edward was fastening his watch back onto his wrist. Iris had somehow gotten it off him with her teeth. There were tooth marks in the leather. How’d he explain that to Idella? He pulled on his pants, flicking off bits of twigs and pine needles. “I got a customer said he was coming by later. Lookin’ for a trade-in. I hope there’s no ants crawling around in these legs.”

“Oh, Eddie, let’s not go yet. What’s the rush? People always say they’ll come back to the showroom, and you never see ’em again.” Iris was sitting cross-legged on the ground picking at a pinecone with those long nails of hers. She was wearing nothing but Edward’s sport jacket around her shoulders. Her clothes were scattered across the ground behind her.

He and Iris never even made it into the camp today, onto one of the camp beds with the lumpy mattresses—like rolling around on cottage cheese, Iris’d said the first time he brought her up here. Today she wanted to “do it” outside, hidden by the trees, to celebrate spring. She’d made him lie down on the ground behind the picnic table, tree roots jabbing into his backside no matter where he got, and wait till she took everything off him. It drove him crazy, wanting to grab onto her bare behind and roll over on top of her and grind her into the leaves. He’d barely held on, till she finally lay down on top of him and started pushing her tits into his mouth. God. Nothing like Idella’s little sacks. Nothing.

“Let’s get those bathing suits out of mothballs, Eddie, and go for a swim.” Iris had been through every drawer in the camp.

“I’m not going to bother them things Idella’s got packed. We’ve moved things around in there enough.” Edward carried his shoes and socks over to the picnic table and sat on a bench. Iris had wild ideas. It was damn cold on that ground, and one of them little bush things had prickles. There were scratches all up and down him.

“She’ll just think it’s kids breaking in, using the place in the winter. Let’s get the suits and take a swim.”

Iris had laughed and laughed that first day, when Edward told her the walls of the camp were knotty pine. She’d thought he’d made the joke on purpose. “We’re sure being naughty,” she’d said laughingly, and that’s what she called the camp now, “Naughty Pine.” Edward smiled thinking of it.

Iris gathered all the pieces of the pinecone she’d picked apart and threw them into the trees. “There. Scattering seeds, Eddie. Next year there’ll be a tree with my name on it.” She stood up.

Edward saw that his jacket came down to her knees. She looked little, with just her legs sticking out, and the jacket covering all them soft curves and them big tits. Like lobster buoys, the way they bobbed around in her sweaters and stayed firm. Iris’s body had so many places you could squeeze and hold on to. Idella was all bones—bones and bird legs.

“Come on, Eddie, let’s go into the water.”

“Jesus, Iris, it’s barely June. You see anybody else swimming?”

“Just a little dip? To say we did?”

“Iris, I got a customer coming. That bastard Murphy’ll take him right out from under me if the guy shows up and I’m not there.” Iris sat down next to him on the bench, pulling his jacket open a little so her tits were showing. “He sold three cars last week, and two of ’em were mine. I spend a whole morning with some guy, give him the sell—”

“Eddie, your hair’s all mussed.” Iris took his comb from his inside coat pocket. “Look straight ahead.”

“I give them the sell. . . . They say they got to go think about it, check out another showroom. . . . What can I do?”