The Future Homemakers of America (2 page)

‘Anyone else thinking what I'm thinking?’ Lois was looking excited, jiggling Sandie up and down on her knee. ‘We go, girls. We go. Find London, see the parade, then have some fun. See a new movie, or a show. Find ourselves some top-hole toffs, what-ho, treat a girl to dinner, dontcher know.’

Betty said much as she'd love to go and pay her respects, Ed'd never allow it. For starters, who'd look after Sherry and Deana? ‘And Crystal,’ she said to me, ‘who'd mind her?’ She was looking to me to stop her building up any silly hopes. When it came to playing the mommy card, showing how you just had to rein yourself in once you had kids, Betty always turned to me for back-up because you sure as hell couldn't rely on Lois.

Gayle said, ‘I will.’ Her love of children extended even as far as Deana Gillis. Deana was in third grade. Sherry, Betty's youngest, was in first grade, same as my Crystal. Well, they should have been, except nobody ever heard of grade school in England. In elementary school there they just had names like Miss Boyle's Class, Mrs Warley's Class, Miss Jex's Class. Crystal's reading and writing seemed to be coming along okay. Still, every night I prayed we weren't ruining our child's education. Wrecking her future just so's her daddy could save their English asses from the Red Menace.

‘And what about little Sandie?’ Betty now felt she had a watertight case. I could tell because she wasn't furrowing her brow quite so deep. ‘You can't drag a tiny tot thousands of miles,’ she said. ‘Not even knowing where you're going to. Do you realise, they don't even have enough food out there? I'm sorry, Lois, but it'd be just too crazy for words.’

Audrey said, ‘Well, I guess that's the kinda attitude opened up the West.’

She never had a lot of patience with Betty. Besides, even I knew nothing's thousands of miles away in England. You keep going, it won't be long before you run outta country.

Then Gayle piped up. She said, ‘I'll look after all of them. I don't mind not going. I never even heard of this king.’

Betty said, ‘No. It's a wild and irresponsible idea.’

‘Hey …’ Lois was pepping up her coffee from the bottle. Those little red patches were breaking out over her cheekbones. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I could care less. You're the royalty freak. I can go to London any damn time I please.’ And everything went quiet,’ cept for Sandie, crying with the hot-aches, thawed her little fingers out too fast against the wood-stove.

Gayle said, ‘Okey's Mom mailed me the new McCall's pattern book. Anyone want a look at it? There's a real easy pattern for a bolero.’ And she ran upstairs to get it. I whispered to Audrey, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’

‘Mm-mm,’ she said, ‘and the dressmakers.’

I took Sandie on my lap, tried to rub her hands better, and Betty squared away the bottle of Jim Beam behind a cushion; hoping Lois might forget it, I daresay.

2

We were just finishing up dinner, Crystal wriggling in her chair, wanting to get down and play, Vern waving his fork around, last piece of fried potato getting cold while he told me about some new Pratt & Whitney turbojet that could take you to over 1,000mph, when the phone rang. It was Betty.

‘Now, listen,’ she said. ‘Here's the latest. They're taking the king to London on Monday, along the railroad, travelling real slow, so folks can pay their respects. And here's the best bit: it'll be going
right by here
, no more'n a few miles away, and Ed says I can go, just as long as I'm home in time for the girls. So, could you drive down, tell Gayle and Audrey, and I'll call up Lois? I thought I'd throw a coffee tomorrow, so we can plan what we're gonna wear?’

I said, ‘Betty, that's easy. Unless there's a sudden change in the climate I'll be wearin Vern's duck field-jacket and his five-buckle snow boots. Heck, I might just see if we still got an Alaska-issue comforter. Get myself sewed up inside it.’

‘Peggy Dewey!’ she said. ‘Shame on you! The queen's gonna be looking right out of that train, and Princess Margaret. We have to do this thing right. I think just a touch of mourning. A little black hat, maybe, or a pair of gloves. Jeepers, we're gonna be seen by royalty.’

Vern thought I was crazy. He was all wrapped round me, after lights out, trying to keep me warm and get what he figured he was owed seeing he was gonna be three nights away, standing the duty.

‘What you wanna do that for?’ he said. ‘Standin’ out there, ketchin yer death. Be a bunch a breeds there, too. You seen some of them locals? Bunch a freaks. Now, you gonna get outta that passion-killer so we can mess around a little?’

Messing around was Vern's main interest in life, after his baby, with her static thrust of 3,750lb. And Crystal, of course. He loved throwing her up in the air till she screamed. Arm-wrestling with her, pretending to let her win.

‘Did you know kings and queens bunk down in separate quarters?’ I got to thinking about that again, after we'd messed around.

‘Jeez, Peg,’ he said, ‘I was just dozing off.’ He made himself cosy again, hogging all the covers. ‘Who cares?’ he said. ‘Bunch a throwbacks, sitting round in robes.’

First time I saw Vern he was dancing with a girl, couldn't have been more than four feet ten. She was looking him in the belly-button and he was giving me the eye over her head. He did look cute in his Blues. Still, I should have known better. My sister Connie married the army and that was a five-minute wonder.

Soon as Vern knew I had fallen with Crystal he done the decent thing and my folks were happy to see the back of me, twenty-two and still no sign of any Hollywood screen-test. We were married in August, in the chapel on the base, his folks come down from Costigan, first and last time they ever left Maine, and we had an arch of sabres and shrimp hors-d'oeuvre and the whole nine yards. November he got orders to Ladd Field, Alaska.

Crystal come along in a big hurry, waters busted in the mall at Topperwein and my mom grinding her teeth every time I got a pain, telling me how this was only the start of my troubles. Nine pounds eleven ounces, she weighed, and she was the living image of her daddy, only he didn't get to see her till she was nearly four months old.

We landed at Elmendorf and while I was waiting for the transport up to Ladd, looking for a place to warm the baby's bottle, a girl come up to me, little newborn scrap in her arms and another one at foot, and she says to me, ‘Why, Peggy Shea! It
is
you. I'm not usually wrong about a face, but you're carrying a few extra pounds these days.’

Last time I remembered seeing Betty Glick was when Future Homemakers catered a Mother-Daughter Spaghetti Supper for the Class of ‘42, and she was in charge, in her sweetheart apron, giving her orders, little piggy eyes and a real homely face.

She already knew Ladd. They'd been on the base nearly a year and she'd just been back to Texas for the birth of little Sherry. So we were a marriage made in heaven, me not knowing what in the world I was going to and Betty never happier than when she was showing somebody the ropes.

Four years of marriage and motherhood had left its stamp on her. She'd lost her puppy fat and got herself a permanent too. She seemed real grown up, compared to the way I felt, but then, I think Betty was born grown up. And she was so proud of her Ed. I never thought he was all that. Everything about him was kinda hard and square, even his head. Lois reckoned he was made outta sheet metal.

‘I swear,’ she used to say, ‘Ed Gillis was not born of woman. I think they just punched in a few rivets and rolled him off the line at Boeing.’

Me and Vern were okay, when he was around — which wasn't much. They were putting in long hours, training on the Superfortress, and then when he did get a 96 he liked to go off fishing. Now I think back on it, we didn't hardly know each other.

‘Love ya,’ he used to say, when he was drifting off to sleep. ‘Whoever y’ are.’

So I started hanging out with Betty Gillis, née Glick, picking things outta the Sears catalogue and clipping recipes for tuna bake and generally raising hell. Summer nights up there, when it never gets dark, if Vern and Ed were standing the duty, I'd go round to her quarters, tuck Crystal in with Deana and Sherry, and we'd sit out front, drink iced tea and wonder what became of all those other big shots from Topperwein High.

Audrey I met later on, when we rotated through Kirtland. She rang my doorbell, told me there was a coffee klatsch at the Officers’ Wives’ Club and signed me up for the Blood Drive. Wouldn't take no for an answer on either score.

You could go to some of those wives’ clubs not knowing another soul and come away in the same condition, none of the in-crowd being inclined to get off their backsides and welcome a newcomer. But I'll say this for Audrey: she had an open and friendly way about her. She'd stride across any room in her white bucks and make herself known to lonesome strangers.

She was married to Lance Rudman and they made a handsome pair. They were the kind of people knew where they'd come from and where they were going. Lois called them the Class Presidents.

Lo came on the scene while we were stationed at Kirtland too. She was married to Herb Moon. He was kinda dopey-looking, seemed slow on the uptake, except when he climbed into the cockpit of a B-50. Up there, so I heard, he was one cool customer.

‘Life's a bitch,’ she said, when she found out we'd done a tour in Alaska. ‘Herb woulda loved that. All that rugged scenery and weather and stuff. ‘Stead of all those cans of Dinty Moore I been feeding him, he coulda bagged himself a whole caribou. But no. He just had to go an’ draw Hickam Field, Hawaii. Heaven on earth, girls. You ain't had a rope of Hilo violets hung round your neck, you ain't lived. Papaya juice. Pineapples. Mangoes. I tell you something. Herb may not be no dreamboat, but that man took me to paradise, no mistake.’

‘Well, she'll have to trim her cloth a bit different now.’ That's what Betty said when Lois fell pregnant with Sandie. But she was wrong. Took more'n a little baby to slow down Lois Moon. They took her straight from the Aztec King Bowling Alley to the General Landers J. Hooverman Mother & Baby Unit and not a minute to spare. I heard language that night I couldn't even begin to spell.

Course, didn't matter what Lois said or did, Herb thought the sun rose and set by her, and seems like nothing since has made him change his mind. They were a pair a love-birds, in a manner a speaking, even though they didn't always fly in formation.

Gayle and Okey were the real pigeon pair, known each other since the day they were born, near enough.

First time I saw Gayle she was hanging around in the laundry room at Drampton, didn't know how to work the driers and too scared to ask. I thought she was somebody's brat, till we got talking. I took her under my wing a little, after that, specially when Okey was away on assignment. There are lonely times when you're married to the military. You gotta hope you can click with a few girls on your post, hang out with them. You gotta get through the days as best you can, waiting around for friend husband to come home from the pad.

Audrey used to pass her some of her story books, but Gayle was no reader, nor much of a homemaker neither, though Betty did try giving her a few lessons. I reckon Gayle lived on potato chips and Dr Pepper, and when Okey was home, they just lived on love. Planned on having a houseful of kids and living happy ever after. On an LT's pay, best of luck was what I thought, but I never said it.

3

Gayle didn't come with us that day. She said she'd sooner Stay behind in Lois's nice warm quarters and mind Sandie than wave off some old king, and that suited Lois just fine. ‘I'd go and watch for a freight train to go by,’ she said. ‘Anything to get off this God-forsaken base.’

I wasn't so sure, myself. It was a raw morning, misty too, and there was some creature out in that fen making a unearthly noise. Vern reckoned the whole place belonged under the ocean. He used to say, ‘They took this place from the water, and one of these days that water's gonna come and take it right back.’

He left me to answer the tricky questions from Crystal, such as would it come higher'n our house and how could fishes breathe?

Me and Betty took our girls to school, and I don't know who was more excited, Deana and Sherry’ cause they got a extra Milky Bar in their lunch-pail, guilt candy from mommy, or Betty because she was getting out from under.

Then we picked up Lois and Audrey and there were sharp words, on account of Lois wearing a red windbreaker and Betty suggesting she could have showed more respect. I drove and Betty sat up front with me, and she never stopped yammering.

‘The Duke of Windsor,’ she said, ‘he's come sailing in from New York. He's got some nerve, I must say, running off with that home-wrecker, leaving everybody in the lurch. Ask me, he as good as killed his poor brother, and the queen, of course, the old queen, she's not been seen. She's at … hold on, here, let me get this right…’ She'd brought her newspaper clippings with her. ‘Marlborough House, that's where she's at. Must be heartbroken …’

Audrey, being no slouch, had been following all of this, but she said, ‘Whoa, Betty, just back up, would you? You just lost me. I thought the old queen was gonna be on this train we're heading to see?’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see where you're getting confused. Okay. At this time, they have
three
queens. There's Queen Mary. She's the one at Marlborough Castle. Then they have Queen Elizabeth, who was married to the king, just passed away. She's the one we'll be seeing.’

I said, ‘What about Queen Mary? Didn't she get a king?’

‘Of course she did. He was King … something, I'll remember it in a minute.
Then
, there's the new Queen Elizabeth …’

Lois said, ‘Are we seeing her?’

‘No, no. She's gonna be meeting the train when it gets to London. See, she'll have had to stay there, attend to affairs of state an’ all. We're gonna see, okay, the old Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. And they are … ?’ She gave us time, see if we could come up with the right answers. We couldn't… the mother and the sister of the new queen!’

Betty should have taught grade school. She was a natural.