A Life of Bright Ideas Read online

  “Maybe I’ll call Craig this week and see if he wants to go out. Maybe see a movie. Catch-22 is playing. That’s supposed to be good. I just don’t want to sit here and grow old while I’m still a teenager.” She sniffled against her hand. “I don’t know how you do it, Button. Living like this. No partying. No sex. No pot. I mean, seriously, how do you do it? Never mind,” she said. “I know how you do it. You do it by thinking about how happy life will get when Jesse comes back.”

  I felt defensive, unsure whether I should have felt that way or not. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have anything to say.

  Evalee fell asleep before her bottle was finished, so we brought her upstairs. Winnalee flopped on the bed. “I’ve gotta crash. That kid gets up before the birds. Go ahead and leave the light on if you want to read or write to Jesse. I’ll be out the second I hit the pillow anyway.” She rolled away from me, then after a bit, said, “If I still wrote in our bright ideas book, you know what I’d write? Bright Idea number ninety-nine and three-quarters: If you go to Woodstock and smoke pot until your brain is higher than ten kites, don’t encourage the guy you know you’re gonna screw within the hour to blow up his last rubber so you can play volleyball with the crowd. If you do, you’re going to end up with a kid you don’t even know how to bathe.”

  It was raining by the time Aunt Verdella left for the Community Sale on Saturday. Not a thunderstorm, just rain that kept up for the rest of the day. I put on the new flared skirt I’d been thinking about making since we’d stripped naked in Aunt Verdella’s kitchen, and finally had sewn (all but for the hem), and stood in front of Winnalee for at least the sixth time.

  “Jesus, Button. I told you. Your legs don’t look too skinny in it. And like I said, Freeda was right. The flared skirt makes you look like you have hips. But what difference would it make, anyway? We’re just sitting around here doing nothing today. And probably every other day for the rest of our lives.”

  Freeda and Boohoo had gone to the Community Sale last Saturday, just “for the hell of it,” and came back with a baby stroller and a Polaroid camera so she could take pictures of Evalee, who was changing every day. I guess Winnalee hadn’t heard her say to me, “We’ll snap a picture of you in a cute skirt, too, to send to that love-starved soldier of yours.”

  Love-starved. In Jesse’s last letter he’d mentioned that he put in for a three-day pass so he could go to Ulm, and I’d been obsessing about it since, sure that the “fun” he was talking about was sex with a German girl.

  Winnalee put her thumb on Evalee’s chin and made her mouth move as she said in baby talk, “Ooh-la-la, but you look sexy, Auntie Button. Really!” Then Winnalee said, “You’re not going to leave it that long, are you?”

  The truth of the matter was, I’d tacked up the hem at least four times, changing the length so often that the hem was filled with pinholes. I started rambling about the different length options, but Winnalee wasn’t listening anymore. She was leaning over the armrest of the chair and reaching for the curtain. “Is that Tommy?” she said, straining to see. The day was shifting from dusk to night, and with the living room light on and the sky darkened from rain clouds, it looked dark outside, though it wasn’t. I hadn’t even heard anyone pull in.

  Winnalee raced to the door.

  “Just checkin’ on the cows,” I heard Tommy say.

  “Well come in here for a second first, will you?”

  “Don’t call him in here!” I hissed, pointing to my naked legs.

  Winnalee turned. “If Fanny Tilman saw your bare tits and your ass, I think Tommy can see your legs from the knee down. Geez, Button, get a grip. I’ve got to get the skinny—no pun intended—on Craig. You know, if he likes me.”

  I was going to run up the stairs, but with Tommy’s long strides, I knew he’d catch me halfway up, and be able to see my skinny legs clear up to my undies.

  Tommy’s skin was dark amber from days spent working in the sun, and glossy from the rain. Even with the room dimly lit and his hair a frizzy smudge, I could see it was sun-bleached.

  Tommy stood just inside the door. He looked tired. “Yeah?” He saw me then, and his eyes went straight to my legs and stuck there like two bloodthirsty mosquitoes. “What?” I asked, my armpits going damp.

  “Nothing,” Tommy said, turning away.

  I slid to the chair and sat down, tugging my skirt as close to my knees as I could get it, which wasn’t close enough.

  Winnalee didn’t bother with small talk, like I would have. She just asked him straight-out if he knew if Craig was interested in her. “When we ran into you guys, he said he’d like to go out with me. But when I called his house Saturday night, his mom said he was home first, then said he wasn’t.”

  “He was at my place Saturday night. Him and some of the guys came over and we watched the draft lottery together.”

  “His number didn’t come up, did it?” Winnalee asked.

  Tommy gave me a quick glance—my legs, not my face—then looked back at Winnalee.

  “Not this time.” Tommy gave a couple of names of guys from town who weren’t as fortunate, and although I didn’t know them well, I worried that they’d be sent to ’Nam.

  Winnalee ranted for a bit about the war, then circled back to her original topic. “Well? Is he interested or not?”

  Tommy shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  Winnalee wrinkled her nose. “Guess I know what that means.” She hoisted Evalee up to her shoulder and headed up the stairs, leaving Tommy shuffling his feet by the door.

  Naked legs or not, I went to him and tugged him out onto the porch. “You know something, don’t you? You just didn’t want to say it.”

  “Yeah. Craig’s not interested anymore. He was, but then Brody started shooting off his mouth. She’s just not his type, Evy. Sorry.”

  I gritted my teeth. “You defended her, didn’t you?”

  “Defended her? How? By saying it’s not true that she sleeps with pretty much anybody?”

  “Oh yeah, he’s probably slept with ten girls just this week, but he’s going to judge her?”

  “Why would you say that?” Tommy asked.

  “Because he’s a guy!”

  “Not all guys are running around trying to get in the pants of every girl they meet, Evy. Craig’s not like that.”

  I was still steaming as Tommy walked toward the watering trough. “You can just tell that country hick Craig that Winnalee is too good for him anyway. She went to Woodstock, you know!”

  Later, Winnalee asked me what I got out of Tommy. “And don’t lie, either.”

  “Who said I was going to lie?” I asked, even if I was. I sighed. “Brody got to him. Craig was interested until then.” I expected Winnalee to get angry. Angrier than I was, even. Instead, she just looked hurt.

  Winnalee fell into a dead sleep by eight-thirty, and I sat on the bed, a pillow for my table, my good stationery waiting for me to decide what to write to Jesse, when pandemonium broke out. A car was in the drive, the horn honking every bit as intently as an ambulance siren. I barely had my feet on the floor when the door burst open and Boohoo and Freeda yelled up the stairs.

  “Evy! Winnalee! Come on!” Freeda yelled. Boohoo was whipping up the stairs. “We’re goin’ to Martian Graw to see the fireworks! You gotta hurry, though, ’cause they’re gonna start at nine!” Boohoo was talking about Mardi Gras, which is what Dauber called their Fourth of July celebration, even though nothing past the name resembled the festival in New Orleans. My insides started trembling; we hadn’t gone since Ma died.

  Winnalee stirred and Evalee whimpered.

  Freeda appeared in the bedroom doorway next to Boohoo. She was wearing the shorts she had on earlier that day, the ones that had a stain on one leg. She didn’t have any makeup on, and her knees looked dusty. “For crissakes,” she said. “How did none of us notice that it’s the Fourth of July?”

  Winnalee woke, and dazed with sleep or not, mumbled, “It’s the Fourth of July?”


  “Get your asses out of bed, and grab Cupcake. I don’t give a shit if you guys haven’t gone to Mardi Gras in four years, Boohoo’s gonna at least see the goddamn fireworks. Now come on. Move it! You’ve got thirty seconds to get down to the car. Thirty!”

  Freeda grabbed Boohoo’s arm and down the stairs they went.

  Winnalee shot out of bed, blinking down at the floor. She ripped off her sleeping shirt and grabbed the clothes she’d taken off. “How’d we not notice it was the Fourth? Man!” I picked up Evalee, who was fussing.

  “Shit, Button. Least you’re dressed. Can you grab her a bottle from the fridge, just in case?”

  “You go,” I said, while patting Evalee’s back as though she was wailing, though in reality, she was already beginning to doze back off.

  “I can’t leave you with—”

  “Yes you can, go,” I said. “I don’t want to go. Seriously. I don’t want to.” She started to protest, but I bent and grabbed her sandals and handed them to her. “Go,” I said. “Please.”

  . . .

  Boohoo insisted on coming inside with Winnalee when they dropped her off sometime near midnight. I was still awake, downstairs digging for stamps for Jesse’s letter. Boohoo ran to me, wide awake with excitement, even though he was typically in bed long before now. “Hurry and tell her. Freeda and Aunt Verdella are waiting,” Winnalee reminded him.

  Boohoo had blue cotton candy glued around his lips, and chocolate ice cream dripped on his striped shirt. “Evy, Evy, you won’t believe it! There was fireworks—you ever see them? They were so cool. Red ones, green ones, blue ones, going off loud like bombs! The sparkles whistle when they come down, did you know that? It was really neat, Evy. And guess what? Guess what? I rode the Octerpuss with Winnalee. It spinned us really high and fast, didn’t it, Winnalee? And Aunt Verdella, she went on the tilterwheel with Winnalee and Freeda and me, and she screamed so loud she almost busted our ears. You can make it go faster if you lean to one side. I sat on Aunt Verdella’s side, ’cause I knew she’d make it spin real good. It was fun, Evy. Really fun!” The horn sounded downstairs and Winnalee told Boohoo he’d better go. “Okay, okay. Next time we’re gonna see a parade, too. They throw candy to the kids, right, Winnalee?”

  “Go, or Freeda’s gonna sit on you again,” Winnalee said.

  “Night, Evy. I love you. And I love the Fourth of July, too.” Boohoo wrapped his arms around my hips and gave me a quick squeeze.

  I turned away from Winnalee as she undressed, so she wouldn’t see my watering eyes.

  “Oh man, Button. You should have been there. It was so funny! They have this guy there who guesses your age and weight. He guessed Aunt Verdella at a hundred and seventy-four, and she got so excited that she jumped up and down and grabbed his face in her hands, and gave him a smackeroo right on the lips!” Winnalee paused to laugh. “She wouldn’t get on the scale afterwards, even though she could probably’ve won a prize. She didn’t even care, though. She said his guess was her prize. She was still yakking about it on the ride home, saying she must really look like she only weighs that much, him being a professional weight guesser and all.”

  While Winnalee stripped and yammered more about the carnival, I drifted into my sewing room to shut off the lights. Across the road, I saw Freeda and Boohoo’s silhouettes in the yard, their arms swirling lit sparklers, dropping sparks upon the grass. I leaned against the windowsill, my arms crossed, my eyes stinging for Boohoo because of all the things he’d been shortchanged on.

  CHAPTER

  34

  BRIGHT IDEA #34: If you tell your new teacher that she’s supposed to correct papers with a fat, green crayon because that’s what the teacher in your last school used, she’s probably going to tell you that you’re in a new school now, and in her room, she’s using red.

  “Oh, Button, you should see how nice your dad’s kitchen looks,” Aunt Verdella said the next morning (after she told me about her looking like she only weighed 174 pounds). “I finally got to go peek at it this morning—Freeda didn’t want me seeing it until it was done—and oh my, is it something! So bright and cheery. I can’t believe that she got your dad to help, but what was he gonna do? Ripping up those metal strips in the doorways isn’t exactly easy work for a woman.”

  Freeda had just come in from the garden and went straight to the bathroom to wash up. From the kitchen, I could see her lifting first one foot in the sink, then the other, as she said, “Ah, I could have ripped that shit up by myself in ten minutes, but I don’t have a problem playing the damsel in distress if I have to. It got Reece off his sorry ass, and he really got into it once we got going.” I looked down. Dad never helped Ma with anything around the house. What she couldn’t do herself, she asked Uncle Rudy to do.

  Aunt Verdella moved into the dining room to go back to her ironing, and I took the bag I was carrying and followed her. Freeda came and leaned against the doorway. “Ah, you’re wearing shorts,” she said. “Nice!” She spotted Winnalee out the window and leaned sideways to look. “What she doing?” she asked.

  I looked. “Showing Evalee the tree where we used to play. And her wind chime, by the looks of it,” I said. Aunt Verdella awww’d. Then she asked what I had in the plastic bag.

  I pulled out the bouquet of flowers for the back of Cindy’s dress and held it up. “I had to make them at least a hundred times. Do you think they look like flowers?”

  “Yes. And they’re beautiful,” Aunt Verdella said as she reached for the bouquet. “Look what she did, Freeda.”

  “Ha-cha-cha!” Freeda said. “Damn, Button, that’s gorgeous!”

  Boohoo came racing through the house. “What’s that?” he asked, reaching for the bouquet with grubby fingers. Aunt Verdella whipped it above her head and handed it to me so I could tuck it back in plastic.

  The second Winnalee and Evalee got inside, Aunt Verdella gasped with an idea. “Freeda, why don’t you take the girls over to see Reece’s kitchen? Cupcake can stay with me while you run. Uncle Boohoo will help me watch her, won’t you?”

  “Yeah, she likes me. I made her laugh for the first time, didn’t I Aunt Verdella?” Aunt Verdella looked up at us with a sly smile. “Yep. You did,” she told him.

  Boohoo wanted to hold Evalee, so Winnalee went into the living room to get the pillows propped.

  “Yeah, you take the girls over, Freeda. Button won’t believe it!”

  “I, I have to get back to my sewing,” I said. “I’m giving Cindy Jamison her final fitting tomorrow and I still have to attach this and stitch on the ribbons.”

  Freeda redoing Ma’s floor was a matter I’d forced myself not to think about, because every time it was mentioned, it felt like someone was taking a seam ripper to my stomach. I didn’t want to go, but Winnalee was eager to go anywhere, and called a yes into the dining room for us both.

  “I’ll get my keys,” Freeda said. Freeda didn’t say anything about me not going to Mardi Gras when Boohoo brought it up again, but I feared if I gave her eye contact, she might. Just as I feared that she might try to get Dad and I to actually say something to each other when we got to his place.

  “He’s probably sleeping,” I said when we pulled in.

  Freeda gave the horn three long bleats. “Not anymore,” she said.

  Winnalee ran ahead, Freeda close behind her. I lagged behind. I didn’t want to go into that house—I hadn’t even gone to dust Ma’s bells since Freeda had started hanging out over there. I didn’t want to see Dad, either.

  “Hurry, Button!” Winnalee called from the kitchen when I got inside. “This is so cool!”

  But I didn’t budge. Couldn’t budge. Because there, inside the door, was a cardboard box stuffed with Ma’s old magazines, ready for the burning barrel. There was a wad of coffee grounds sitting on top, and some scrap window trim was wedged in the side.

  I reached down and picked up the short stack of magazines sitting on top, shaking out the grounds. I shuffled through them, stopping when I came across a Re
dbook issue I remembered. It was sitting on the coffee table the summer the Malones lived in Dauber. I remembered Ma paging through it one evening, while I was spread out on the floor, coloring in my ballerina book and imagining what fun things Winnalee might find for us to do the next day.

  I ran my fingers over the very caption Ma read aloud: The Delightful World of Caroline Kennedy. First-hand report on the First Family’s biggest little problem. Ma chuckled softly to herself after she read it, which confused me. So when she went to add more ice to her tea, I got up and tiptoed to the ottoman where she’d set it. I wedged my hand on the page she was reading, then closed the magazine so I could see the cover. The picture was of the president of the United States, JFK, holding his daughter up in the air, one hand steadying her at the belly. Caroline was laughing and clutching her dad’s hand. I studied the picture carefully, trying to understand the president’s pride, and trying to understand why that girl made my ma smile. Everybody went on and on about her like she was Winnalee-pretty, even though she was as ordinary looking as me (only with a nicer hairdo). I could hear Ma banging the metal ice cube tray against the sink, so I didn’t have time to read through all those words to find out why Ma thought it was cute that Caroline was a problem, when she didn’t like girls who weren’t well behaved.

  I’d heard the freezer door close, and set the magazine down just the way she’d left it. I scooted back to flop before my coloring book, and with my yellow crayon, I colored Caroline-length wavy hair over the dancing lady’s slicked-back bun.

  “What’s she doing in there?” I heard Freeda ask.

  “Probably dusting Jewel’s bells,” Winnalee said. “She always does that, since Uncle Reece doesn’t. Jewel loved those bells.” I heard Freeda mumble something, then call out my name. She called out to Dad, too.

  I rotated the magazines with shaky fingers and the last one on the stack was Good Housekeeping. And another cover photo of the Kennedys. The article was on a book written about the president. I searched for the date to see if it was printed before or after his death, and I pressed my fingers over my mouth when I found it: August 1966. The month and year Ma died.