A Life of Bright Ideas Read online

  “It’s not about being wrong, Winnalee. It’s about what hurts.”

  “Hurts? Hell, unless the guy’s really hung, what’s there to hurt?” Winnalee cracked up all over again.

  “Hearts, Winnalee,” Aunt Verdella said. “I was talking about hurting hearts. Somebody else’s if you’re cheating, and your own, if you’re waking up next to a stranger who’s treating you like one the next morning.”

  I stood up abruptly, and picked through the box of items for the Community Sale. I put my hand inside a crocheted-rooster toaster cozy to make him stand up. “Oh, this is cute, Aunt Verdella.”

  “Isn’t it? I just found that pattern. If you like it, Button, you take it. I’ve got plenty for the sale.” She was speaking to me, but her eyes were on Winnalee.

  I turned my back to Aunt Verdella, and stretched my eyes at Winnalee until my forehead hurt. “We’d better go. It’s late, and I’ve got a dress to finish in the morning.”

  Aunt Verdella looked at me and muttered a quick “Oh, that’s good, honey,” but she kept glancing at Winnalee, her wrinkles sunk deep with worry.

  “What?” Winnalee whined, as I yanked her to her feet.

  “Okay … okay …,” Winnalee said as we headed across the dark yard. “I guess I should have shut up about that stuff. Aunt Verdella’s a little old-fashioned.”

  “What do you expect, Winnalee? She’s sixty-eight years old! Who makes a joke about men who are ‘well hung’ to a sweet old woman who crochets and makes bunny pancakes?”

  “Well, she doesn’t seem old to me. In fact, you seem more like an old lady than she does. Aunt Verdella has sex, Button. S-E-X! It’s not like she was going to fall over dead because I said something she didn’t know.”

  Suddenly it felt like there were a hundred anthills trapped under my skin, but I was determined not to scratch in front of Winnalee. My jaw tightened. “What? Unlike someone else you know? Is that what you’re implying?”

  “You said it, not me,” Winnalee said as she crossed the porch.

  We headed straight upstairs, me following Winnalee, and the whole way I was telling myself that no matter how insulted I felt, I would not humiliate Winnalee back by telling her what Aunt Verdella found.

  Winnalee pulled down her hot pants and gave them a toss with her toe, then stripped off her shirt—she wasn’t wearing a bra, of course. She started digging through the heap of her clothes that were tangled on top of the dresser.

  I turned away and grabbed my nightgown from the window seat.

  “Bet you can’t change up here, in front of me,” Winnalee taunted.

  “I have to brush,” I said.

  “Man, Button, why you always have to act like such a prude? We’re two girls, for crissakes.”

  I wasn’t about to defend myself, just because I didn’t want thousands of people looking at my nipples, or because I didn’t want to show her my ugly, bulky, lumpy knees and stilt-skinny legs!

  Winnalee found her sleeping shirt and pulled it over her head, her head popping up from the neck hole. “All you want to do is sit around the house, cleaning and sewing, chasing after Boohoo, and sweating in your long pants. You might as well be ninety!”

  “I do not!” I said, my eyes stinging.

  “You do too. I’ve asked you how many times since I started working at the Purple Haze to come with me to see my artwork, but you haven’t. Even if I went to your job with you. You just stay home every night and write to some guy who isn’t even your boyfriend, because you’re too uptight to party. That’s being an old lady!”

  The invisible ants scampered along the length of my arms. “It’s not that I’m too uptight to party. I told you, I don’t want to sit in some bar and choke on smoke and be hit on by potheads and junkies. But I want to see your artwork. I really do. I told you I’d go in the morning sometime if we could get in.”

  “And I told you that it doesn’t look cool unless it’s dark and the black lights are on.” Winnalee’s hands were on her hips, the back of her hair still stuffed in her shirt. She opened her mouth to say more, then stomped to the closet instead. I could hear hangers clanking and I wondered what kind of mess she was making.

  She came out with the urn and marched over, ramming it against me and letting go, so that I had to take it or let it crash to my bare toes. “There!” she said. “Since you’re lugging your dead mom around with you every day anyway, you might as well have something pretty to carry her in. Your turn!”

  Winnalee dived to the bed and pulled the sheet over her head, snapping the light off and leaving me standing there holding the urn, a tear—one—slipping down a cheek that had gone as cold as window glass in winter.

  “I can’t believe you’d be so mean,” I said. My legs felt as hollow as empty pant legs, so instead of returning the urn to the closet, I reached behind me and set it down on the window seat. I must not have scooted it far enough back, though, because it caught on the edge and capsized. A tinny, rippling sound carried it across the floor, and I didn’t bother to retrieve it. Winnalee and I had had our first fight ever, and all I could do was stand there, helpless to stop crying.

  I guess our argument bothered Winnalee, too, because after a moment she called softly, “Button? I’m sorry.”

  She slipped out of bed, her white T-shirt and skin glowing in the moonlight. She came and wrapped her arms around me. She led me to the bed and sat me down beside her. “You’re a good person, Button. Better than me for sure. Maybe that’s why I got so nasty. But I’m sorry, okay?”

  We were quiet for a while, then Winnalee said, “Way to say it, and not scratch it, Button. I’m proud of you.”

  I ran my hand over the arm that was curved across my stomach. There wasn’t a hint of itching left under my skin. “Winnalee? I’ll go to the Purple Haze to see your artwork,” I said. “Not this weekend—it’s Marls’s shower—but next. Friday night. Even if I have to sit alone.”

  “Cool,” Winnalee said. “You’ll have a good time. Promise. And you won’t have to sit alone, either, because Brody’s been comin’ around most nights.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  BRIGHT IDEA #71: When people say don’t feed a stray dog because then they won’t go away, they’re telling the truth. Then your sister is gonna get mad because all the bologna is gone.

  One thing good about Dauber was the way people pulled together for their neighbors. Like when Ada set the donations jar on the counter at The Corner Store, a slit cut in the plastic lid so patrons could help out by dropping spare change or a dollar or two into it, to help families after someone died, or their house burnt down, or they were injured badly in an accident. Ma thought the whole ritual was cheesy. Especially the way people wrote their names and the amount they gave on notebook paper that sat beside the jug. I agreed with Ma at the time, yet when a check came to our house after Ma died, I looked over that notepaper carefully. Not to see how much anyone gave, but to see who cared about Ma.

  People came together for parties, too, whether it was a fund-raiser for someone who was sick or strapped, or a shower for a new bride or a new baby. It didn’t matter if they knew the person well. If they lived within a ten-mile radius, they joined the festivities simply because it was the neighborly thing to do. So I knew we’d have a good turnout for Marls’s shower.

  Aunt Verdella was rattled when Mrs. Bishop insisted on having Marls’s shower on a Saturday instead of a weeknight as she’d hoped for, since she reserved Saturdays for the Community Sale. “But that’s the week with the longest day in the year,” I reminded her. “The sale gets done at four, and the shower’s at five. There will be plenty of time before dusk.”

  “But I won’t be here to prepare,” she fussed.

  “We’ll get most things done the night before,” I said. “And I’ll see that everything’s done by the time you get home.”

  So I baked a double layer cake while she was at the sale, frosted it mint green, then sat staring at it like it was an empty lawn in need of ornaments.
Winnalee shuffled into the kitchen then, half asleep from her long night at work, and headed to the bathroom. “I don’t know what to do with this thing,” I said. “I should have just picked up some of those hard candy cake decorations. But I hate how, no matter how well you dampen the backs, you never can get all the paper off.”

  Winnalee held up her finger as she yawned, then grabbed her army purse from the counter. She pulled out two red stir sticks—why she’d saved them, who knew—and stuck them into the cake, one on each end. “There. Now run a string between them for a clothesline, and cut out little baby clothes. You must have some babyish-looking material laying around here somewhere.” Then Winnalee wandered into the living room, leaving me to marvel at her ingenious idea.

  An hour later, I asked Winnalee if she’d keep Boohoo occupied so I could peel eggs for potato salad and make sandwiches. After that first babysitting calamity, she hadn’t watched Boohoo in our absence once, but she had started playing with him now and then. She’d spot him through the window and drop what she was doing to dart outside and corkscrew the tire swing until it lifted a good two feet, then leap up to stand in the center, opposite of Boohoo and weeeee right with along with him. She drew Boohoo pictures with his color crayons now and then, too. Her hand whooshing over the paper to draw him in authentic Spider-Man costumes and heroic poses. She told outlandish stories about his adventures as she drew, until he was immersed in the fantasy as if it was as real to him as fairies had once been to her. Not that Boohoo never got on her nerves—he did—but when that happened, she’d stomp off and cuss a little, but a few minutes later, she’d be loving him up again. But not on the day of the shower. The day I needed her to play with him the most. So Boohoo continually trailed off and I had to go looking for him and drag him back into the kitchen, where he poked at the tiny clothes with grubby hands, smashed eggshells on the table, and asked me a million times if it was ten o’clock yet, because that’s when they were leaving for the Willow Flowage.

  Sixteen women showed up, most of them strangers to Marls. When Aunt Verdella saw the sweat glistening on Marls’s upper lip, she dragged the only reclining lawn chair we had away from the picnic table and stretched it out under the tree. “Come on, honey,” she said. “You’ll be more comfortable in the shade.” Aunt Verdella lifted Marls’s swollen legs and propped them on the plaid plastic. “Come on, some of you bring your chairs over here so Marls won’t be sitting alone.” So Mrs. Bishop sat beside her, her knees and feet pressed together. Two older Bishop relatives whose names I kept forgetting sat alongside of them, and Tammy, Marls’s best friend, a girl the same age as Marls from Eagle River, squeezed her lawn chair between Marls’s chair and her mother-in-law’s.

  June Thompson squealed with delight to see Winnalee again, and Ada hugged her warmly, then helped us carry out the food. Rita Dayne—a flutter of apologies for being late—showed up while we were eating.

  Rita was striking-looking and outgoing, just like her son. A true snowflake. She laughed good-naturedly when Verdella handed out pieces of Bazooka gum and asked the ladies to chew it, then form it into the shape of a new baby. And she celebrated as though she’d won a new car when Marls chose her gum-baby as the best, and she won one of Aunt Verdella’s rooster toaster cozies.

  “Your boy Jesse and Button are close,” Aunt Verdella told Rita after the games were over. “She writes to him every day, and waits for his letters.” I could feel my cheeks flush, and I hoped Rita thought it was from the sun, not her son.

  “That’s so nice of you, Evy,” Jesse’s mom said. “He doesn’t admit it, but I think he’s homesick since he left the country. But it won’t be all that long before he’s on leave again.” Ada asked about Jesse then, and Rita proudly told everyone how he was a part of a special division that assembled and kept track of missile parts. So high on the security list that they couldn’t travel into Berlin during their three-day passes. “They can go into the place where the nuclear heads are kept, but only in pairs. If a single soldier goes in himself, the guards are ordered to shoot.” The ladies gasped, and I swelled with pride for Jesse’s importance. Winnalee mumbled something sarcastic under her breath, and Rita said, “I’m just grateful that he didn’t get sent to Vietnam.”

  “My grandson wasn’t as lucky,” a woman I didn’t know named Mary said, and Winnalee sidled up next to her to discuss the horrors of the unjust war in ’Nam.

  Paper plates, weightless as dragonflies, fluttered in my hand. Last time Jesse’d written, he’d said, Maybe we can take in a movie when I’m in Dauber. But I warn you, I throw M&M’s in the popcorn box while the butter’s still hot. Amy used to hate that because they melted on the popcorn, but I love it. If that will bug you too, I’ll get you your own box. He’d asked me for a date—a date!—and in the handful of days since he’d mentioned it, I admitted to myself that although I’d always called Jesse my friend to others, in my heart I had been in love with him since the day we met. We were getting closer with each letter I wrote him—I could feel it—and while Winnalee was at work, I started playing “Make It with You” by Bread, sure that would end up being our song and we’d have it sung at our wedding.

  As if Mrs. Dayne might read my thoughts, I hurried to stuff the used plates into the paper bag brought out for that purpose. I carried the bag back to the burning stove, and stood with my head bent to the sun, my eyes pressed closed, and smiled because I loved how I felt when I thought of Jesse putting his arm around me at the theater, of us kissing while little kids giggled behind us.

  When I got back to the front yard, Marls was explaining placenta previa, and how the doctor believed that her placenta would be moved completely aside by her next visit. The conversation slipped into an exchange of personal stories of morning sickness, ruptured navels, and childbirth. Stories that made the women nod and laugh, but made Marls’s smile quiver and my stomach feel a little nauseous. Winnalee was stocking the tub with fresh ice so I made my way over to her. “I think I’m gonna have a beer,” she said. She bent down and cranked her head toward me. “You want one?” Winnalee and I were eighteen now, old enough to legally drink, but I didn’t like the smell of beer, much less the taste. I shook my head, even though I worried that refusing would make me look like an old lady again.

  Winnalee straightened up, water from the can of Pabst dripping on her bare feet. “What are you all doey-eyed about?” she asked, grinning.

  “Nothing,” I said—even if I was thinking about what a great mother-in-law Rita would make.

  “You’ve been like this since the topic of Jesse came up. So …,” she said, cocking her head. “He isn’t just your friend, is he?”

  Winnalee was always asleep when the mailman came, so she never saw the way I slipped outside at ten minutes to ten, staring through the porch screen so I wouldn’t waste time running downstairs. She wasn’t there to see my disappointment when the mailman left nothing but flyers, or my elation when a letter actually came.

  “Button? Winnalee?” Aunt Verdella shouted. “Could you girls bring over a few more cans of pop when you’re done with the ice?”

  We were carrying them over to the table when Fanny Tilman pulled in at the end of the drive—the only place left to park but for the road. “Speaking of ice,” Winnalee said, and I dipped my head to giggle.

  Fanny was digging in her backseat when Tommy’s and Mr. Bishop’s pickups came along, boats bouncing behind them, Brody’s Mustang following like a caboose. They parked alongside the road, and as soon as Mr. Bishop’s truck stopped, Boohoo crawled out over Uncle Rudy’s lap and tumbled into the ditch. Dad slid out of the truck after Uncle Rudy. “I can’t believe Dad actually went,” I said to Winnalee.

  “I told him he had to … beats sitting on his ass alone all day,” she said.

  “Aunt Verdella! Evy! Winnalee! Look what I got!” Boohoo shouted, popping up from the ditch, lifting his arm in the air. He ran in zigzags behind Fanny, his towel cape tied under his chin. Winnalee leaned against me and whispered, “Oh look
, is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Spideyman and Spikeywoman.” I tipped my head against hers and puffed giggles into her hair. Boohoo stopped, concentrating on the tiny fish in his hand.

  “I’m late,” Fanny said, no sorry in front of it. “I had a headache most of the day, and had to lay down after I got back from the sale.”

  “Probably heatstroke,” Winnalee whispered, and I jabbed her and told her to shut up or we’d get caught being rude. Fanny scanned the crowd as she crossed the yard in a dark brown dress with gray flowers, a heavy sweater draped over her shoulders, even though the sun was hot enough to dry horseflies to jerky.

  Why Fanny Tilman ever dropped a quarter into the donations jar at The Corner Store was a mystery to me, but there was no mystery as to why she came to parties given for people she didn’t know: free food, and a chance to latch on to some gossip.

  “See? See?” Boohoo said, holding up his hand. He had the tip of his index finger jammed into the tiny gill of a four-inch perch—so he could carry it like men did a big catch, no doubt. He brought it to the table, stopping beside each woman and not budging until they raved, then he ran off to tag the guys who were lugging two buckets of dead fish into the backyard.

  “You men be sure and wash good with the hose after you clean those fish, or you’re not coming near this table,” Aunt Verdella called. She grabbed a plate to hand to Fanny, who stood clutching her purse in front of her, as if she expected someone to dish up for her. As Aunt Verdella did, Fanny harped. “No, that’s too much ham on that bun … I don’t care much for potato salad without a lot of mustard … no, no chips. Lands-sake, Verdella, what you trying to do, make me as fat as you?” She squinted at the crowd after her fat comment. Either to see if anyone was giggling, or maybe just to see who was there. “She’s a bitch,” Winnalee whispered, and I stiffened because I could tell June Thompson heard. June just rolled her eyes and said quietly, “Tell me about it.”