I'll Love You When You're More Like Me (15 page)

“See what you're
not
missing?” Mama said.

“I'd be a dynamite Moonie, though,” I said.

“You'll be a dynamite college graduate,” said Mama.

“I'll major in John Wadsworth Longfellow,” I said.

“Oh har har har de har har,” Mama said. “So they never taught Longfellow before the eighth grade, which was when yours truly split.”

“You did okay,” I said.

“I did hah? Do you call doing okay not being able to think of a bigger word than ‘stupid' during a Scrabble game? That's why I hate Scrabble.”

The telephone rang then and Mama knocked the Mallomars box off the deck scrambling to answer it. But it was just Charlie Gilhooley telling me he'd like to come by that afternoon to talk about some kind of dance contest Seaville held every summer.

“I hope you're not expecting to hear from Lamont again,” I said. “That's really gross.”

“I see you've picked up a new word,” Mama said. “Who wrote it for you?”

Charlie was there about an hour before Mama suddenly got up from the redwood chaise where she'd been pretending to read
Variety
but really listening to us talk. She was still wearing her pink-and-white latex bathing suit, which was tight on her because she'd gained weight as I had; she had on rope-soled platform clogs, with her reading glasses hung around her neck on a gold chain.

“I've got an idea,” she said, turning down the Jack Jones tape. “I happen to know a dance nobody will remember that'll put that contest on its ear!”

Mama looked down at her feet and hummed to herself for a minute, then she started doing steps. “This is a dance from the thirties,” Mama said, “when I was little enough
to come to about your knees, Charlie. I was in London, just getting started in vaudeville, when vaudeville was just petering out. I don't like to think I contributed to its demise.” Mama put her hands on her hips and laughed. Then she started doing more steps. “Da da da da dee dee dee,” she sang, moving in time with the rhythm, “deedle daddle daddle dee—me and my gal, doin' the Lambeth Walk!” She put one thumb over her shoulder as though she was hitchhiking and called out, “Hey!”

She said, “You either yell ‘Hey' or ‘Oi' at the end, I can't remember.”

I looked at my watch. I said, “We're on in a few minutes, Mama.” Mama never missed
Hometown
, even if I wasn't on it that day.

“This was in a fantastic show called
Me and My Gal
,” Mama said. “It was the hit of all England. Everyone was doing this Lambeth Walk. It's like a walk, too, I mean you practically walk. Get up here, Charlie, and I'll show you.”

“Mama,” I said, “it's almost four thirty. The scene where I visit my mother in prison is coming up.”

“You want to watch it, watch it,” said Mama.

“Me?” I said. “I hate myself on tape.”

“Charlie?” Mama said.

“That show was in 1938,” Charlie said, getting up from his chair, joining Mama in the center of the deck.

“Let's hear it for the boy genius,” Mama said. “Now follow me, Charlie: daddle daddle deedle dee, daddle daddle—no, your left foot points out.”

“Daddle daddle deedle dee,” Charlie said, doing steps.

“Deedle deedle daddle da,” Mama said.

“Me and my gal,” Charlie sang.

“Doin' the Lambeth Walk!” they both finished. “Hey!”

The phone rang again.

The smile on Mama's face wilted. She was balancing herself on one foot, watching me while I reached over to the windowsill to pick the arm off the cradle.

“I'm just about to become part of a funeral cortege,” Wally said.

Mama was making who is it with her lips.

I waved my hand at her and pointed to myself.

“It's a little dead around here, too,” I said.

“There's a party tonight. Would you like to go?”

“You and Harriet and Charlie and me?”

“You and me,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

“You have to start somewhere. Remember?”

“What'll I wear?” I said.

“Jeans,” he said. “Eight o'clock.”

“Is it for dinner?”

“At eight o'clock?” he said.

After I hung up, Mama said, “Is Wally coming by?”

“We're going to a party,” I said. “Tonight.”

“He told his father he isn't going to be an undertaker,” Charlie said. “I hear his father's barely speaking to him.”

“Is that okay with you, Mama?” I said.

“Is what okay with me, that Wally's father doesn't speak to him?”

“Is it okay with you for me to go out with him tonight?” I said.

“Honey, you're a big girl now,” Mama said. Then she said to Charlie, “Watch my feet carefully.”

I looked at my watch again. It was four forty-five. For
the first time in my memory,
Hometown
was on, I was in it, and we weren't watching.

“Daddle daddle deedle dee,” Mama started up again.

“Deedle deedle daddle da—” said Charlie.

I thought of a line one of the sorority girls in Clear City said about being asked for her first date: “I felt as though finally
I
was beginning, after so long of wondering if there was a real me somewhere.”

That was the way I'd felt when I went for my first audition. I thought about that and ate the rest of the Mallomars.

15. Wallace Witherspoon, Jr.

At the cemetery, while the mourners gathered around Legs' open grave, I sat in the hearse trying to answer Harriet's latest communication. Hector Hren had hand-delivered it to our house that morning. It was in response to a telephone conversation I'd had the night before with Harriet.

There were the usual black smudges on the paper. Harriet always made carbon copies. Even when she scribbled a quick note in class telling me she'd expect me at eight o'clock that night, she slipped carbon under it to preserve a duplicate. All of them were filed under Witherspoon with my answers, numbered and dated. Harriet said her mother had done the same thing when Harriet's father was courting her. For their first wedding anniversary, Mrs. Hren had organized them all into a leather-bound scrapbook; on the front in gold were the words
Remember, Remember!

While Reverend Monroe began the prayers, I reread what Harriet had written:

Dear Wally,

We could have made a real go of the Witherspoon Funeral Home, but that's beside the point. (I even thought of naming the Slumber Rooms. It seems so impersonal to have them I, II and III. I thought of The Adieu Room, The Au Revoir and The Arrivederci.) I
think you are letting a good thing slip through your fingers because your head is turned by a certain Prize Narcissus and I don't mean the flower.

I am not going to wait while you go to college and figure out what you do want to be. I would be Tuenty-two. My mother was married when she was nineteen, and had the ring already for a year.

Hector is right, you will never find someone like me again who is interested in helping the man she marries, as my mother helps my father. (I would have liked to create a special room for guests under eighteen. Death among the young is becoming even more common, particularly suicide: Statistics will bear me out on this.)

Wally, in a rash moment (I hope) you have smashed a family tradition and broken your father's heart. Who is he to turn to now to entrust with his family's future security?

If you could do something like this to him, what could you do. to the one you asked to be your bride?

Okay, maybe you will change your mind, and then (if it is not too late) I will consider taking up where we left off, but for now I must say we can't see each other anymore, and the engagement is off.

Here is something my father likes to quote from the famous George Bernard Shaw, since you are so fascinated by words and sayings: “When a prisoner (which you claim you've been, Wally) sees the door of his dungeon open, he dashes for it without stopping to think where he shall get his dinner outside.” Think about it!

So Wally, good luck if you really mean what you
said, but count me out. (I would, however, be interested in knowing if this is a definite decision.)

Sincerely (I mean that!),

Harriet

P.S. Any ideas included herewith for the Witherspoon Funeral Home may be used if so desired. (I had a lot more, too!) HH.

My letter back to Harriet reminded me of the one Lauralei Rabinowitz had written me after she began wearing Maury Posner's bar mitzvah ring around her neck and wanted me to stop calling ten times a night to hear her voice and hanging up. You know the kind of letter I mean, all about how you still respect the person and would really like to remain friends, blah blah blah blah, but while you felt love you weren't in love, blah blah, and although you wouldn't trade the memories of the two of you together for anything in the world (except Maury Posner, I told myself bitterly when I read Lauralei's little masterpiece), this was the end. “
The definite end
,” I wrote,
“to us and to my ever considering being an undertaker again.
(I'll find someplace to get my dinner outside, don't worry.)

And so, Harriet, adieu, au revoir, and arrivederci! WW.”

I'd no sooner finished than someone from the Seaville American Legion stepped up to Legs' grave with a trumpet and played taps. The woman Legs had been playing around with (her husband was being held without bail) dropped a bouquet of white roses from Slade Florist into the open grave, and Legs' mother lifted the veil from her own face and spat at her. My father moved up behind Mrs.
Youngerhouse with his hands fidgeting nervously, while Reverend Monroe called for another prayer. There was no further incident.

On the way back from the graveyard, my father rode with Mr. Trumble, who was diminished and feeble looking behind the wheel of the flower car. I parked the hearse in front of the Hrens' with the motor running, and left the letter for Harriet with little Hedy Hren. Then I stopped off at Current Events to print up a shirt for Sabra saying “Grab the Reins!”

I expected Monty to make some crack about the fact I'd parked the hearse outside his store. Monty was putting in September issues of magazines and pulling out Augusts that hadn't sold. Martha and Lunch were nowhere in sight.

I said, “Don't tell me you're minding the store for a change?” I grabbed a black, small T-shirt, and picked out silver letters to steam onto it.

“Hello, Wally,” said Monty (I think it was the first time he'd ever just called me by name, without interjecting some insult, which gave you an idea of his bad mood). “How goes it?”

“Okay,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Am
I
all right?”

“Yes.”

“Why wouldn't I be all right?” Monty said. He didn't wait for an answer. He slammed some old August
Town & Countrys
on the floor and said, “You can't tell her to stop ordering ten of these things a month. I've been telling her that for six years and she goes right on ordering ten of these things a month!”

I positioned the letters and plugged in the steam press.

“Let him learn for himself,” Monty was muttering.

“Are you talking about me?”

“I'm talking about him. Have you seen him?”

“Who?”

“Some jackass lathe operator,” Monty said. “She's having coffee with some moronic lathe operator who totes lending-library books around in his spare time.”

I held the press down and watched the minute timer. “I haven't seen him lately,” I said.

“He must have a lot of brains if he's falling for Martha,” Monty said.

I didn't hang around to hear more. All my mother needed to hear was that our hearse was parked on Main Street while I fooled around in Current Events. Things were bad enough around our house without that.

The night before at dinner I felt as though I was eating at Monty and Martha's. My father kept saying to my mother or A.E., “Ask him to pass the salt,” or “Tell him I'd like the butter.” He refused to say my name or direct any conversation to me. To make matters worse, he'd received a postcard from Uncle Albert that day, which he read aloud at the table.

No longer entertaining at Hiz 'N Herz. (You can't win them all.) Moving along to Florida for the winter, where I'll be holed up at The Sunny Haven Motel. Could use about ten sawbucks until I accept another position, whereupon I'll scoot them right back to you. Well, how's everything with you and the folks? No regrets, Albert.

“You can't win them all,” my father said. “How many times has Albert written to say you can't win them all!”

“Ten sawbucks, my
eye
!” said my mother.