The Future Homemakers of America (12 page)

Betty was blooming, making lists and advising me on the correct way to clear a billet.

‘Start at the top and work down,’ she said. ‘You'd be amazed how dust does settle on drapes.’

Vern and the rest of them had drawn Temporary Duty to Smoky Hill, through April, then on to Wichita, training on the B-47s. It was all the same to me. Killing time till he come in off assignment. Killing time till he went back. Waiting for my life to start happening. I looked at it this way: at least I'd be waiting on the right side of the Atlantic, Ocean.

Most days me and Gayle'd meet for a Pepsi, and sometimes Betty'd come along too.

‘My, we're like the ten little nigger boys,’ she said. ‘And then there were three.’

She was down at the laundry all hours, freshening up her baby clothes and diapers even though she had months and months to go.

‘Peggy,’ she said to me one time. ‘Why don't you and Vern have another one? Be company for Crystal. I always think it must be a tragic thing to be a lonely only.’

There was nothing tragic about Crystal. She was out roller-skating in all weathers. Then she'd come in, all red-faced from the cold, and eat everything I put in front of her. She was like her daddy in that respect. He'd have ate skunk, as long as it was under a pie crust.

Come bedtime, she'd say her prayers like she'd learned in school and she'd settle down, her rabbit-fur mitts on the pillow next to her, and her skates where she could see them. She never gave me a speck a trouble, even when Vern was away. Not like the Gillis girls, always having nightmares and climbing in with Betty the minute Ed was gone.

I said, ‘No, Betty. I'm done with babies. Some day I'd like to do something with my life, instead of mopping the same patch of floor day after day. I have another brat now, that'll set me back six years.’

‘But you
are
doing something,’ she said; ‘You're caring for a highly skilled aviator. You don't take care of him, he can't do his job and next thing you know, those Russians'll be ruling the world.’

Funny enough, I'd been giving some thought to Vern not being able to do his job. Not the way Betty meant. Him losing his edge ‘cause he wasn't getting enough pie. Augering in because I couldn't get rid of the ring around the tub. I wasn't buying that. But his sinuses were causing him trouble. Change of altitude and he was in agony some days. He had swore me to secrecy, of course. Any doubts like that about a man, he can wave goodbye to promotion. So it'd started me wondering, if it really came to it, that he couldn't be of further use to the United States Air Force, how we'd get by.

‘Know what I do?’ Betty said. ‘Every morning when I look in the mirror to fix my hair, I say to myself, Betty Gillis, just think of that young Queen Elizabeth of England. She's pledged to put duty first, the rest of her life. Now you do the same.’

Two days before we were due out on the transports, I took Kath driving one last time. We saw swans flying in, low, come all the way from Russia, according to Audrey, to get away from the Russian weather. It was a sobering thought that there were worse places to spend November than Drampton. If you were a swan.

I said to Kath, ‘Do you know, all the places we've been posted, I never made a friend before. Somebody from outside, like you.’

She said, ‘What I've seen of that base you're on, you don't hardly need to venture outside the fence. You could live inside there and never bother with what's outside.’

I said, ‘I'm glad I did, though.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I'm glad you did too. And I hope we'll still be pals. Send Christmas cards.’

I said, ‘And who knows, maybe some day you'll come and visit? See how we do things.’

‘What?’ she said ‘In America?’

I said, ‘Sure. You'd love it.’

‘That's across the sea,’ she said. ‘I can't see that coming off. Not unless we come up on the Pools.’

I said, ‘You know Audrey's staying on? You might see her.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘she knows where to find me.’

I said, ‘Anything you'd care for from the commissary? Last chance for Almond Joys.’

‘No, thank you,’ she said, ‘but that was nice while it lasted. And I hope I didn't speak out of turn, about copper-knob. I mean to say, I liked her really. She had a bit of spark about her, didn't she? That's the thing, though. It's the sparky ones you got to keep an eye on. And you can't watch a man twenty-four hours a day.’

I said, ‘Kath, don't give it another thought.’

‘I won't,’ she said.

And that was how we parted. I would have liked to tell her how much I was gonna miss her, but you have to watch your step with the English, that you don't overstep the mark.

I kissed her goodbye.

‘Cheerio, then,’ she said. ‘And all the best. I hope you go on all right.’

30

Me and Crystal were back in Converse, Texas for Thanksgiving of ‘52, in the bosom of my loving family. I wish I could say it was a happy occasion, but my sister Connie was there, always got some hard-luck story, and there wasn't no killing of the fatted turkey on my account. Matter of fact, it was Swanson's TV Dinners all round, and Crystal, being cussed, had to start with dessert, burned her mouth on the apple pie.

She was having a tough time of it anyhow from her Gramma Shea. My mother, who had never showed a ounce of interest in her only granddaughter, said she couldn't understand a word the child said since she'd been away among foreigners. I don't think Mom or Connie had the first idea where we'd been. If it was east of Texarkana, they just shook their heads.

I stayed down there through Christmas. It wasn't what I wanted, but there was no quarters ready for us up in Kansas and the Sheraton penthouse suite was already took. Vern blew in on a four-day pass, looking for a little action, seeing as we'd been apart so long. It didn't deter him I was on the couch and Crystal was right there, in two easy-chairs pushed together.

‘Tell your Mom we gotta have the other bedroom,’ he said. But we couldn't. Connie had to have that, for her bad back. Ask me, the only problem she had with her back was getting it up off the mattress.

It felt like we were sleeping in Santa's Grotto, all the glittering stuff my mom liked to deck the place with. Anything that didn't move got tinsel. Connie sat around so much I wouldn't have been surprised to come in and find her covered with twinkling lights.

Christmas Eve, I said to Vern, ‘I wonder how Lois is doing. She's due any day now.’

‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘Meant to tell you. It's a boy.’

I'd have loved to call her up, but of course friend husband didn't know where she'd be. If she was back at her cousin Irene's, that was no help, ‘cause I didn't have an address or even Irene's name. And if they'd gone up to Herb's folks, I doubt they even had the telephone there.

I said, ‘Everything go all right?’

‘I guess,’ he said.

I asked how much he weighed and Vern said how the heck would he know. I asked did he have a name yet.

‘Yup,’ he said. ‘… It'll come to me.’

I said, ‘Herb happy?’

‘Like the cat that got the canary,’ he said. ‘You wanna mess around?’

After Christmas Vern was back at Smoky Hill on instrument training. We were promised quarters at Wichita within the month.

I said to him, ‘I don't know I can stand another night on this couch. I might see if I can get a rental.’

‘You stay where you are,’ he said. ‘You think we got money to burn? What's wrong with you anyhow? Wives like going home to see their mom.’

So most days me and Crystal roamed the mall. There wasn't anything we needed and there wasn't much we could afford, but it beat sitting indoors listening to sister Connie's catalogue of woes.

She used to say, ‘Everything always went your way, Peggy. I'm the one had all the bad luck in this family. Only way I can look it at it, though, if my failing health hadn't brung me back here, Mom'd be all on her own.’

Meanwhile Mom was working on the loose-meat counter in Avery's, setting her cap at anything in trousers that showed signs of life.

I ran into Arlene Wilday one time. We were getting malted milks, Crystal perched on a stool seeing how much racket she could make drinking through a straw, when I heard someone say, ‘Peggy Shea? Is it you?’

I used to hang out with Arlene sometimes when we were in elementary school, but by the time we got to eighth grade we had come to the parting of the ways, she being a keen member of Sewing Club and me having sporting ambitions.

She said, ‘This your little girl? My, she's cute!’

Crystal never left off making gurgling sounds with her straw.

Arlene had married Ted Pickett. I remembered the name, but I couldn't picture the face. She said he was in hardware now.

‘You remember Junior Chorus, Peggy?’ she said. ‘You remember standing next to me?’

I didn't remember that. She sang a little of ‘Burro Bells in the Moonlight’ and then it kinda came back to me.

She told me Jim Sparks never came, home from Korea, which I didn't know, and the Siro twins were both still single, living at home with Mrs Siro, which didn't surprise me.

I said, ‘You keep up with Betty Glick?’

Arlene and Betty had been leading lights of Future Homemakers. Used to do food sales, Saturday mornings outside the Glad Tidings church. She was thrilled to hear all about Betty's exciting life. Gave me her address and made me promise faithfully to pass it along.

She said, ‘You tell her, I expect pictures-of her little family.’

Arlene and Ted had had a boy. Lost him with poliomyelitis in the summer of 1950. I didn't rightly know what to say, after she told me that.

January fifteenth, me and Crystal were on a transport out of Randolph AFB up to Wichita. Betty was there ahead of me, got quarters right across the road from us. Ed had driven her down from his folks’ place in Indiana. Eight hundred miles with Deana and Sherry getting sick and Betty needing the bathroom and Ed holding a bad opinion of every other driver on the road. Took more than that to get Betty Gillis down though. By the time I hit town, she was waddling around, size of a house already, putting up nice fresh drapes.

Wichita was just another cinderblock row, but life was sweeter, being back in the world. We had a base school and a brand-new laundromat and a great commissary, and if there was something else we wanted, drug store, movies, all we had to do was drive into town. Made me realise what a wearing thing it had been, getting posted to a backward country. Audrey was welcome to stay on at Drampton. Heck, Kansas wasn't much, but at least folk there smiled and stood tall.

Gayle arrived the day after me and got quarters next door. She was so thrilled to have good dry American closets and wipeable counter-tops. I'd never seen her looking so happy. I don't believe she was drinking at all. There was a letter waiting for me from Lois.

‘We decided on Kirk,’ she wrote.

Kirk Herbert. I was only in labour two hours, but then I got after-pains and milk fever, so I've paid my dues. My child-bearing days are through. We're on a transport February third, so start getting the tickertape parade ready. Been in Hoosick since December, so I'll be the one wearing the strait-jacket, in case you forgot what I look like. Also, Herb's mom believes in two weeks’ lying-in and a stack of maple syrup pancakes three times a day to make up for iron-loss, so I have SPREAD. You could land a B-36 on my rear. Then she had me churched. That's another story.

31

Betty insisted on organising the Hail ‘n’ Welcome for Lois.

I said, ‘Just a coffee'll do. Lois won't expect home-baking.’

But she was already under way, flour in her hair. It would have been like trying to stop a Cunard liner. She sent me round to see if Herb needed a hand. Their boxes had come and he was meant to be turning a house into a home.

‘If Herb's anything like Ed, all he's done is rigged up the TV and filled the icebox with Schlitz,’ she said.

Of course, Herb Moon wasn't anything like Ed.

He'd made a rocking crib for Kirk and a little rocking horse for Sandie. I helped him unpack a few pieces. Plates and stuff. Lauhala mats from the time they were at Hickam Field. A hula doll. The carved giraffe-type dachshund.

‘Can't wait to get my little family all together again,’ he said. ‘Where I know they're safe. You hear about Drampton?’

I hadn't heard anything. I'd been in Betty Gillis's kitchen watching her make refrigerator cake.

‘Floods twenty foot deep,’ he said. ‘Ten dead. Ax Bergstrom's missing.’

Lo was looking great in spite of her incarceration with the in-laws. She come round to Betty's as soon as she'd fed the baby, Sandie clinging on to her leg, peeping round at us, like she'd never seen us before.

‘My, how she has grown!’ Betty said. ‘That country living has done her good.’

‘Yeah,’ Lois said. ‘She's learned the difference between an elk and a moose. And her Uncle Ivan's taught her to
hawk
real good …’

I said, ‘Anybody heard about the sea flooding in at Drampton?’

Lo said, ‘Yeah, Herb told me. Hundreds dead.’

Gayle said, ‘Not Americans, though.’

I said, ‘Herb told me Bergstrom was missing.’

‘Now, now,’ Betty said, ‘we don't want to spoil the party. Nothing we can do. And I'm sure the CO will have everything under control there.’

Lois said, ‘… And when I've unpacked my bags, remind me to let you have Herb's mom's recipe for fried squirrel.’

I said, ‘What about Audrey and Lance, and 366? What about Kath and John Pharaoh? You guys sure have short memories.’

Betty said, ‘Peggy! Well, what do you expect us to do? If there's news, I'm sure we'll hear it. Now, clear a space on the table, because those pigs-in-blankets are ready to eat.’

‘You found a good bowling alley yet?’ Lois had kinda hit the tarmac running, baby or no baby.

Betty said, ‘You should be resting. Childbirth and travelling and setting up home again. You don't get some rest, you'll regret it.’

Lois said, ‘If I rest any more, I'll take root. Besides, I'm worried if I stand still, Herb'll put me on carved rockers.’

I held Kirk in my arms a while, smelled his milky, soapy little head. Watched his little fingers weaving dreams.