The Future Homemakers of America (37 page)

Kath didn't say anything for a second or two. Then she said, ‘Has he got it all over?’

I said, ‘I don't know, Kath. Seems young for arthritis.’

Six a.m. my phone went. Kath said, ‘Did I waken you? Only I've lain here all night thinking and I've decided, I'm coming.’

I said, ‘Betty wouldn't expect you to do that.’

‘I know she wouldn't,’ she said, ‘but if I can come, I will. You have to say your goodbyes in life. I shall just need a few days to make arrangements for my ladies.’

I closed up my apartment and drove down. Grice said, ‘Go. I'll manage. Time Tucker found out what the worker ants do, anyway.’

Carla had explained to me, they were giving Betty another blast of rays but this time it was just to help with the pain. Palliative, they called it. I was dreading what I was gonna find. But I heard her voice as soon as I came through the door.

‘Let her come in,’ she said. ‘I'm not a bit tired.’

Some places she was all blown out, some places, like her arms, she had dropped a lot of weight. Her belly looked like she was expecting. She had the drapes closed because the sun had been bothering her. We sat in the shadows and I gave her iced water, like Carla had told me. She had one of Audrey's sea views on the wall opposite her bed.

‘Peggy,’ she said, ‘I just don't know what's gone wrong. I had the treatment like everyone said, but I just go from bad to worse. Carla never leaves my side hardly, and now they have a person come in at ten, sits here through the night. I don't like having a stranger sitting in my room.’

I said, ‘Well, Carla has to get her sleep. Maybe now I'm here we can get by without strangers. You settle for me sitting here?’

‘Why,’ she said ‘how long are you here for? Are you staying over?’

I was staying at the Pan American Motel, took the cheapest deal they had. I said, ‘I'll be around for a while. If you'll have me.’

‘I'd love it,’ she said. ‘And when I'm over this bad patch, we can go to the parks together. I haven't been to Southside Lions in the longest time. There's just the fifth I have to keep clear. What date is it today?’

It was July tenth. ‘Plenty of time, then,’ she said. ‘Opportunity Day is August fifth.’

It was some recruiting event for Nutro Labs. ‘Me and Slick have to get presented, up on the platform,’ she said. ‘It's to encourage people to sign on, when they hear our success story.’

I talked to Carla, after Betty had fallen asleep. I said, ‘You realise she's talking about going to Houston on August fifth?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘That's okay.’

I said, ‘But she's not gonna be there.’

‘Gives her something to aim for, though,’ she said.

I said, ‘It's just, we have Kath Pharaoh arriving next week, and maybe even Lois, and I don't see how we're gonna explain to your mom why folks are gathering to her bedside when she thinks she's getting well enough to star at Opportunity Day.’

‘Mom's playing it both ways,’ she said. ‘Last week she had Slick checking out hotel prices for Christmas dinner, said she was through slaving for everybody and never getting a word of thanks. Next thing, she made me go through all her ten-cent necklaces and stuff with her, had to be done there and then, deciding how the family jewels get divided up. She knows the score. She just doesn't always want to talk about it.’

I said, ‘Your dad been told?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I don't know what his intentions are.’

Gayle had sent a note that prayer teams had been mobilised, and a cheque for five hundred dollars.

Carla said, ‘We don't need money. Slick's generous, and anyways, night nurses don't cost that much. It'd just be nice for Mom if Deana'd take a turn once in a while or Delta'd show her face, bring the baby. It's eating her up she don't even know where Destiny Rae is. That's why I'm glad English Kath is coming. Have people around her. Save her having to look at my face all day long. No disrespect to Gayle, but a visit would have been worth more than any cheque.’

I said, ‘Do you know how you got your name?’

She said, ‘I have a horrible feeling it's connected with Princess Margaret or Jackie Kennedy Onassis.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘You were named for Gayle's first husband. We only ever knew him as Okey till he got killed in a B-47, crashed on landing at McConnell. Then everybody referred to him as First Lieutenant Carl Jackson. Your mom was expecting you and your dad was so cut up about Okey, you were named for him. He was a nice guy. Ask your dad about him, if he ever shows up.’

When Betty woke, she wasn't in such good shape. The treatment upset her insides and sometimes she had to have her sheets changed.

I tried to soothe her. I said, ‘Honey, it's nothing. That washer-drier you have out there, looks like you could send a man to the moon in it.’

I sat with her for an hour and we looked through some of her albums. ‘I want you to have these,’ she said, ‘when I'm gone. You can keep them, or you can let Crystal have them. She used to love them.’

I hated that kind of talk.

‘Know what I'm really looking forward to?’ she said. ‘Seeing Prince Charles a married man. I've waited long enough. And she's such a precious darling.’

I phoned Kath that night. I said, ‘Can you bring something with Charles and Lady Di on it? They got any souvenir mugs or anything?’

‘How many dozen would you like?’ she said. ‘Whole country's turned soft in the head. By the way, when you start looking for me at the airport, I've gone lilac’

95

Lilac was right.

‘That's meant to be a blue rinse,’ she said, ‘only they've got a new youngster at Pam's and she was so busy nattering about her boyfriend, I think she put the wrong shade on me. Still I quite like it. Makes a nice change. Jolly Dame, they've got the salon called now. It's French. That's been Pam's Place as long as I've been going there, but now she's gone all continental. Next thing she'll be going unisex. I'll tell you one good thing, though. I reckon Mrs Thatcher's going to get us out of that Common Market mess.’

Betty was having a good day. Kath sat with her all afternoon, talking about the old days back at Drampton.

Kath said, ‘Remember that time we all went to Ely market and they had tinned goods reduced, no labels?’

Herb Moon got a few surprise dinners outta that little excursion.

Betty said, ‘And you tried on a pair of men's pants, right there in public. There was hardly even a curtain to go behind.’

Kath said, ‘That was Dutch Redd's stall. He's still there. Course, that's all T-shirts and blue jeans now. He's still a dirty old bugger, though. Spying on you in your knickers.’

‘So long ago,’ Betty said. ‘And to us it was a foreign country. You didn't even speak the same language. And the weather! Oh Peggy, driving in that fog. And then there was the monster, was supposed to be hiding in the fens. My babies used to have such nightmares. What was it called, Peggy? We used to hear it booming, even when we were safe inside the base.’

Kath winked at me. She said, ‘I know the one you mean. I'll think what it was called in a minute. When it was out on the rampage, everybody stopped indoors, kept the bolt across. Terrible mouth they said it had on it. Lois! That was it! The Lois Moon. They reckoned by the time she was finished with you there'd be nothing left only a little pile of bones.’

Betty laughed. ‘Shame on you, Kath,’ she said. ‘Lois is a changed person. When she heard I had to go into hospital again, she sent me a satin peignoir set from Bergdorf Goodman, all in a box and tissue paper and ribbons and all. So beautiful. Get Carla to show you. I made her put it away. It's too good to wear.’

That evening, Deana showed up with three of her brats. Dawn and Danni and Dixie, the baby, as everyone thought of her, but she was going on fifteen and there was nothing babylike about her. They were driving an old rust-bucket. Deana was still in a neck-brace from the time she totalled her vehicle, lost a boyfriend and a trip to Florida and gained a son-in-law. Carla reckoned the neck-brace had gone from being a medical necessity to a fashion habit.

They kinda filled up the apartment. Betty sitting in an armchair in a nice fresh robe.

‘See all my lovely visitors?’ she said. ‘Now y'all tell Kath and Peggy here who you are and how old, because they don't know you.’

I seen Dixie rolling her eyes. Dawn and Danni were flipping through the TV channels.

I said, ‘Your neck still troubling you, Deana?’

‘It's the nerve in the bone,’ she said. ‘They say it'll never be right again.’

Betty said, ‘Kath has come all the way from Norfolk, England. You remember when we lived in England, Deana? You remember that cute little school you went to?’

Dixie said, ‘I'm getting a soda.’

Deana said, ‘Yeah. Get me one too.’

‘And Peggy's girl, Crystal, you remember her, Deana? She used to play dollies with you and Sherry. Crystal got married on a sail-boat. You ever hear of anybody doing that?’

Deana said, ‘I'm getting the VCR fixed, ready for Lady Diana's wedding.’

Betty said, ‘Why don't y'all come round here, watch it live, keep me company?’

Deana said, ‘I ain't getting up in the middle of the night.’

‘Well,’ Betty said, ‘that's a pity, because I'd be able to tell you who all the royals are. I know them all. How about you, Dixie? You gonna come and watch the royal wedding with Gramma?’

Dixie sighed. ‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

I said, ‘You working, Deana?’

She gave me the evil eye.

Betty said, ‘Deana does great crochet. Carla, show Kath and Peggy the toaster-cover Deana crocheted.’

I said, ‘How about you girls?’ Dawn was nineteen, Danni was seventeen. They were old enough to be doing something more'n sit around all day chewing gum.

Betty said, ‘Danni wants to be a beauty therapist, if she can just get a start someplace. And Dawn was at Piggly-Wiggly, only they had to lay people off. Any news there, Dawn? Any sign of them setting on again?’

I never heard anything like it. A person is willing to work, they'll find something.

Carla said, ‘Deana, you gonna help out with the shopping this week? I wrote a list.’

Deana said, ‘Don't know that I have enough gas.’

I said, ‘I'll do it.’

‘Yes,’ Betty said. ‘Peggy could take Kath. She'd love to see what wonderful supermarkets we have here.’

‘Well,’ Carla said, giving me a meaningful look, ‘that'd be very kind of Peggy. I'd just hate Deana to feel she wasn't being allowed to help out. I'd really hate for her to feel I was running the whole show here, keeping her from making her contribution.’

Kath said, ‘That's right. And anyway, we've got supermarkets. We've got one in Lynn has ten checkouts.’

‘I'll do it next time,’ Deana said. ‘I'm waiting on a cheque.’

When they were leaving, Betty started scrabbling in her pocket-book. She put a roll of bills in Dawn's hand.

‘You give this to your mom, now,’ she said. ‘I can't see her going short.’

We walked out front to say goodbye. Deana had made chenille slip-covers for the car seats. Looked like she had used an old bed-spread.

Kath whispered, ‘Watch that suspension when they all get in.’ It was something to see. The car nearly bottomed.

‘What a crew,’ she said, as they pulled away. ‘There's not a spark of life in them.’

I said, ‘You're right. And yet when they were kids, when they used to come and stay with Betty, she used to do all kinds of stuff with them. Sewing for their dolls, having fairy tea-parties. I don't know what went wrong.’

‘Now, another thing I wonder about is,’ she said, ‘legs on them like that, why do they wear them shiny leggings that cling so? Don't they ever take a look in a mirror?’

I said to Carla, later, ‘Deana and her girls don't appear to understand how sick your mom is.’

‘Well, they've been told,’ she said. She looked so tired.

I said, ‘Now, me and Kath'll take your shopping list. I don't mean to let Deana off light, but Betty's right, Kath'd love to do it. Ten checkouts! Wait till she sees MajorMart.’

‘Thanks, Aunty Peggy,’ she said. ‘Deana would have wriggled out of doing it one way or another. She always waits till we're out of milk. Then she calls to say her engine's overheating.’

I said, ‘When do you expect Sherry?’

‘Don't know,’ she said. ‘Soon as the dream-catcher season slows down, I guess.’

Sherry had a small business in Santa Fe, selling blankets and Indian stuff.

Kath did love MajorMart. I lost her one time. Found her back in the breakfast-product canyon with a box of Froot Loops in her hand.

‘I shall have to bring my camera in here,’ she said. ‘If I don't take a picture, May'll never believe it.’

96

Slick had bought Betty a new TV, so she wouldn't miss the least thing of the wedding or be disappointed if she couldn't get a good picture. She wouldn't have a video recorder, in the house, even though it would have meant she could watch the wedding over and over. She thought it might give out harmful rays. So Slick got her the widest-screen set he could find. Took two men to carry it in and fix it up, and Betty had a chair put in the bathroorn so she could hide in there and they wouldn't see her in night-attire, as she put it.