Bingo (32 page)

“Me too,” Mother said.

“Think about it. If you buy a Bentley Turbo for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars and you run it for thirty years—and I think I’ll live for thirty more years if I don’t have a night like last night again—well, that’s four thousand dollars a year for that car. If I live forty more years it’s—let me think a minute—it’s three thousand dollars a year. Just maintaining a piece of American junk will cost you that, plus think of the number of cheap cars we go through in our lifetimes. It’s more economical to buy the Bentley.”

“If you can get the money in the first place.” Mother wiped her hands. “That’s what gets me about the rich. They can afford to buy quality, so dollar for dollar they’re getting much more for their money than we are.”

“I have the best deal.” Louise sat back across from me. “My hubby knew what he was doing.”

“He did, but it’s not a Bentley, Wheezie.” Mother sat down too.

“What do you know about cars?”

“I know a lot about cars.”

“Oh, ha! Chessy wouldn’t let you near his machine. Not after your first driving lesson right up here at this house. She rammed into the porch, Nickel. The piano slid off the porch. Momma always put the piano on the porch in the summertime. The porch splintered up like a toothpick. Fannie Jump Creighton climbed onto the roof and shimmied up the pole. People flew off that porch like rats off a sinking ship.”

“You exaggerate.”

“I most certainly do not! You nearly killed me.”

“Don’t tempt me, Wheeze.” Mother’s foot wiggled.

I was trapped on the inside of the trestle table and couldn’t get out.

“Well, your sense of history seems to suit yourself.” Louise sniffed. “But you don’t know beans about cars. You turn on the ignition key and that’s it.”

“I remember Ev Most’s father had a Rochester Steam Runabout,” Mom said.

Ev Most was Mother’s best friend in childhood and throughout life. She died after a long illness in 1978 and since then Mother had drawn closer to me. Ev’s grandfather built the Yankee city hall. The Mosts contributed a lot to our town, and sadly, her son left for the big city, so there wasn’t one Most left in Runnymede.

“Steam engines were good. Don’t know why they didn’t catch on. There was a Hudson Steamer and the Stanley Steamer. Everyone knows about that one.”

“Make a bet.”

“What?” Louise rose to the bait.

“Set aside steamers. I bet I can name more cars that are no longer manufactured than you can.”

“That’s an easy bet. Ford Model T. Ford Model A,” she chirped, then paused. “What’s the prize?”

“Trip to Orioles game.”

“No deal. You like baseball better than I do and you have tickets anyway. Make it a gift certificate for”—she thought—“fifty dollars at Young Sophisticates.”

Young Sophisticates was on the Emmitsburg Pike and specialized in clothes that do well in areas where the population is overpoweringly WASP.

“You should go to Old Sophisticates,” Mother said.

“Don’t get fresh and don’t think you can throw me off the track by being snide, little sister. Either you take the bet or not.”

“I’ll take it.” Mother reached across the table and shook Louise’s hand.

“Wouldn’t this be easier if you weren’t allowed to name different models of the same brand? For instance, Ford Model A and Model T, Cadillac Fleetwood and Osceola,” I said.

“There was never a Cadillac Osceola.” Wheezie sounded dismissive.

“Yes, there was,” Mother said, “in 1905. I knew you wouldn’t win this game.”

“We haven’t started yet!” Louise snapped.

“Do you each accept those terms?” I persisted. “No model names, just brand names, and the cars must be extinct today.”

They nodded in unison.

“How many chances do I have?” Louise wanted to know.

“We should go until we run out. Order doesn’t matter.”

I assumed the task of being the referee. “No, doesn’t matter at all. Now I happen to have in my pocket a quarter. I’ll flip it and, Wheezie, you call it in the air. If you get the toss you go first. Okay?”

“Okay.” Wheezie’s excitement sparkled on her face. I flicked up the quarter.

“Heads!”

“Heads” it was and Aunt Louise had the ball.

She savored the moment by enjoying a sip of coffee. “I’m ready. Nickel, write these down.”

Pencils and pads of paper littered my house. A legal-size yellow pad rested on the window ledge. I picked it up, poised the pencil, and said, “Go.”

“The Morris Electric—”

“No fair!”

“We agreed no steamers. We didn’t say anything about electric cars.” Wheezie grinned like the Cheshire cat.

“Mother,” I intervened, “as there are so few electric cars, I think you’re safe.”

Mother wasn’t having any. “How do you know?”

“A hunch.”

“I say it’s out of bounds.”

Louise leaned back in her chair, a superior air wreathing her face. “I knew you’d crawfish out of the game. I know more about cars than you do.”

“Bullshit. Keep your old electric cars. Go on, bigmouth.”

Wheezie nodded to me and began anew. “Nash, Rambler, DeSoto, Kaiser, Hudson, and hmm, the car invented by that poor man they drove bankrupt.” She placed her finger to her temple. “I know, Tucker, and LaSalle.”

A long silence ensued.

“Running out of gas?” Mother smirked. “You keep thinking. I get a turn now.”

“I won the toss.”

“Yeah, but you’re taking too long. It’s my turn.”

“Aunt Wheeze, you have been quiet for a few minutes.”

“Can you believe it?” Mother tormented. “The last thing to die on Wheezie will be her mouth.”

“You always say that. Be original.” Louise glared.

“My turn.” Mother inhaled and rattled off names, “Pierce-Arrow, Willys Jeepster, Studebaker, Packard—”

“I said that!” Louise trumpeted.

“You said it at the kitchen sink. You didn’t say it in the contest.”

“You slutbunny!”

“Where’d you hear that one, Aunt Wheezie?”

She lifted one shoulder. “Overheard Ursula Yost’s daughter Tiffany at Mojo’s. And I say Packard is mine.”

“You didn’t name it during the contest. I’m sorry,” I said.

“You take her part. You two are ganging up against me!”

“I am not!”

“Why not?” Mother turned on me now.

“I’m not going to referee if you all act like this. I made a ruling that I think is impartial.”

They stared at each other.

“Since Julia is wasting time, let me go.”

“I’m not finished. We had to settle a dispute. Don’t get so slick.”

“Go right ahead. Be my guest. Probably only know two more cars, anyway, and I know a hundred. Hundreds.” Her voice rose on the second “hundreds.”

“Opel.” Mother clenched her teeth.

I held up my hand. “Made today.”

“No, it isn’t. The Opel Admiral was an old car.”

“Mom, there’s a car on the road today called an Opel.”

“It’s not the same people.”

“They were bought out, Juts, so it doesn’t matter because the name is alive. I’m taking a turn. You shut up and suffer.” Louise folded her hands. “Reo Flying Cloud. Bet you don’t remember that one. In the twenties.”

“I was going to say it next.”

“Tough.” Louise continued. “Cord.”

“Auburn!” Mother shouted.

I wrote down her entry but warned her: “Aunt Wheeze has the floor.”

“Thank you, Nickel.” Wheezie pressed forward. “Duesenberg.”

“That’s not an American car,” Mother said.

“Who said anything about American cars? Anyway, it is an American car.” Louise lifted her hands to heaven.

“We’ll be here all day. Remember Celeste’s Hispano-Suiza and the old Rife sisters’ big Graf-whatever it was called? We better stick to American cars. Bugatti. Hey, I saw one once in the early thirties in Baltimore.”

“I’ll go along with you, Julia, in the interests of time but I want it clearly understood that if we included foreign cars I’d still win.”

“Oh, la!” Mom tossed her head.

“Pencil to paper,” Louise ordered. “The Essex Four.”

After this came a short pause, and her eyebrows knitted together.

“I’m going.” Mom dived in. “The Stutz Bearcat. The Franklin—there were a lot of those around when I was a kid. Saxon and the little Imp.”

“Doesn’t count. That was a cycle-car.”

“Count it.” Mother pushed the pencil in my hand. “We didn’t say word one about how many wheels the machine could have.”

“Maxwell and the Brewster,” Louise shouted.

By now a quiet hung over the table. Both were straining.

“Oakland,” Mom said.

Another long silence.

This time Louise broke it. “White, and Peerless.”

“Damn,” Mother muttered under her breath.

More silence.

Mom jumped up. “Columbia.”

Louise fired off. “The Henry J and the Frazer Manhattan. I win!”

I tallied up the cars during the next long silence.

Louise spoke again. “I win, Julia.”

“But I know there were more cars.”

“So what? You can’t remember them. I told you I know more about cars than you do. But you never believe me. You think you know everything.”

“Oh, shut up.” Mother desperately wanted to think of more cars. Nothing came to mind.

“Mother, do you concede victory?”

“Not yet.”

“Juts, give up. I win fair and square.”

Mom grabbed the tablet. Louise’s column was longer than her own column. “You win,” she grumbled.

“Gimme my fifty dollars.”

“I don’t carry that much money on me. I’ll write you a check Monday.”

“Cash. You might get spiteful and cancel the check.”

“Wheeze, I wonder how your mind works. I wouldn’t even think of doing such a thing.”

“Oh, la.” Louise imitated Mother.

“Cash. Monday.” Mother hated to lose at anything.

“Fine. Money earned is good but money won is sweet. And, Julia, I’ve been meaning to tell you those falsies look dreadful. You might be fooling Ed Tutweiler Walters but you certainly aren’t fooling anyone else.”

“Watch it.”

“Well, you’ve been sticking to him like a lamprey. I suppose wiggling one’s bosoms might be considered sexy in some circles.”

“Do you want your fifty dollars or don’t you?”

“Trying to help. I mean, experience doesn’t seem to teach some people anything and you’ve had plenty.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I scanned the horizon for a way out of the nook.

“Oh—nothing.”

“What experience?”

I admired my hanging ferns. I like ferns. Their fuzziness reminds me of split infinitives, and I like split infinitives because they make me laugh.

“I do recall, Julia, that in 1960 you wore an inflatable bra to that party Verna gave.”

“You stuck me with my corsage pin.”

“Purely by accident but I should think you’d learn not to waddle around with big—bosoms.”

“Ladies, I feel one hundred percent better. I’m just marinated in sociability. Why don’t we walk outside?”

“I don’t want to walk outside.” Louise dipped close to a deep alto register.

“I do.” Mother hopped up and sped into the mud room before Louise could protest.

“She can’t stand to lose. She even cries sometimes, as old as she is,” Louise whispered. “She’s running away. If she stayed here there’d be a big fight. What a baby.”

A reply would have been like taking nitroglycerin over the
mountains. I weakly smiled and shot out the door myself. The dogs shot out with me.

Mother was strolling through my flower beds. I caught up with her.

“You’ve been working out here.”

“Yeah.”

Mother stopped at my tulip bed. “She can be a real nosebleed.”

“Ignore her.”

“Can you?”

“Mmm, sometimes.”

Grandma’s tubs, scrubbed and bright, showed little tips of flowers ready to greet me in May.

“I’m so sorry you never had a sister—or a brother, too, for that matter. You’d know what I go through if you did.”

Mother and Louise had two brothers. One died of spinal meningitis as a baby. He was born in 1897. The other lived into his teens and was killed building a house. He fell off the roof and died of internal injuries.

“I never think about it. Anyway, seeing you and Aunt Wheezie makes me kind of glad I don’t have a sister. You fight constantly.”

A big grin crossed Mother’s face. “I love the way she brings out the worst in me.”

W
orld War II raged in front of us. Jackson and Diz used their tennis racquets like bazookas. The match started in a gentlemanly fashion. Diz wore his Fila outfit and Jackson appeared in Tacchini. At South Runnymede Tennis and Racquet Club white prevails, so while there were splashes of color on both men, they were more white than not. The match was on grass too.

At first, those of us in the gallery thought: another rout by Jackson. He skunked Diz for the first set. The second set teeter-tottered but Jack kept his serve and took that 6–4. The third set, a brutal tie-breaker, was won by Diz. The fourth set also went to Diz in another squeaker. The fifth set was neck and neck.

Those lessons in Manhattan must have paid off because Diz shortened his backswing to compensate for the speed of grass. You haven’t got the time for a lovely preparation arc as you do on clay. His serve also was much improved and twisted into Jackson’s body or skidded away on the outside corner.