The Future Homemakers of America (42 page)

‘Dad?’ Sandie said. ‘You okay?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Hey, I still didn't find a cookie for my little guy here.’

He jumped up.

‘Dad!’ she cried. ‘I'm sorry. Did I do wrong, bringing them here?’

‘No,’ he said. He was rattling around in the kitchen. ‘No, you did right. All of you did right.’

Herb brought beer to the table. Took Patrick on his knee. Put his arm around Sandie.

‘Dad?’ she said. ‘I can't be here, when Mom gets home. I can't be here if there's gonna be yelling.’

‘There won't be,’ he said. ‘Not from me, anyhow.’

Kath had followed the dog, gone looking for Kirk.

Herb gave me a resigned kinda smile. ‘How's Vern?’ he said.

‘He's good,’ I said.

‘Kirk's in the first room,’ he said. ‘If you want to see him. He won't harm you or anything.’

I crossed the landing and looked in through the open door, Kath was down on her knees, scratching the old dog behind its ears, talking in a real quiet voice. Kirk was sitting in a high-back armchair. Such a fine-looking man, with Lois's red hair. But he had someone else's curls, someone else's dimples. Someone else's hands, twitching, twitching. It was John Pharaoh, back from the grave.

‘… and then we went for boiled shrimps,’ she was saying. ‘Do you remember? After Gayle's wedding? We went for a dinner, and we sat outside, right down near the wetter, and you told me you were going to be a Marine when you grew up …’

She heard me move. ‘Kirk,’ she said. ‘Here's your Aunty Peggy come to see you as well. Two visitors in one day. Aren't you the VIP.’

I heard an outside door slam, real hard.

I whispered, ‘Kath, I think Lois is home.’

Herb and Sandie and the baby were still sitting at the table. And there stood Lo, in her business suit, face tight and pale. Her eyes blazed at me. ‘You happy now, Peggy?’ she said. ‘You seen him? Had your way? Barged into my home. Sticking your nose into my life. Anything else you'd care to do before you leave?’

Behind me I heard Kath came into the room. ‘Hello, Lois,’ she said. ‘Well, now … I was just saying to Kirk, I suppose this makes us family. Don't it?’

105

It was Lois took things the worst, for a while at any rate. Herb said he had guessed all along Kirk wasn't his boy. He said he might not be the sharpest knife in the box, but then he didn't need to be. Fact was, it had took him about five minutes to fall in love with the little fella and he sure didn't want anybody else raising him. This seemed to hit Lois harder than if he only just found out. I suppose it made her feel foolish as well as guilty.

She moved out for a while, stayed in town. But she missed the sound of his whittling and he missed her banging about and cussing, so they patched things up. They knew they had a tough row to hoe with Kirk. He was thirty-eight when he died, same age as his other daddy, John Pharaoh.

Kath's first worry was how she was gonna stay on and help Herb and Lois. ‘That's not like I can prove we're flesh and blood,’ she kept saying. ‘Your immigration people catch me, they'll throw me on the first boat that's leaving. I could end up in Panama.’ But it never happened, because Slick Bonney chased her all the way to New York and asked her to be his bride. She said, ‘All right, then, but I can't live in Texas. I've got to be near my boy.’

‘My boy’ was how she referred to Kirk.

Slick said, Well, I let one good woman get away. I'm not losing another.’

They were married in City Hall, San Antonio, in the spring of ‘82. Slick sold up Bonney's Farm Vehicles, and Kath sold her School of Motoring, and then they moved to Westchester County, New York, to be on the Kirk Moon support team.

Nineteen ninety-three there was a big breakthrough from the scientists studying Huntington's chorea. It meant they could take a blood sample of a person and tell them if they had the gene. Course, not everybody would want to know this, because if you have the gene, sure as the sun rises, you are going to get the disease. Still, Kath and Slick and Herb made it their business to track down Marisa and lay the matter before her. Cory was only fourteen years old at that time but, given his good looks and the human failing of closing stable doors after the event, Kath dedicated herself to helping him face the terrible facts. As she said to me, ‘It's a curse. That's like living with a time bomb. But that'd be a worse thing to find out after you'd had nippers and passed it on. It's all you can do. Just stop it doing any more harm.’

Herb and Lois tried retiring to Florida but Lo said it was one long bad-hair day, what with the humidity and all. They ended up back near White Plains, New York.

Lois said, ‘I have to look at it this way Peg. This is as near the city as Herb Moon is willing to be, and I owe him a few. If it turns out I can't stand it, I don't have far to go to hurl myself into the Hudson, put an end to it all.’

In 1999 Cory took the predictive test and got a clean bill of health. He's a fine young man. Good with his hands. Herb says he'd be a good wood-carver if he'd quit sitting at his computer all night long – and Sandie's boy too, ruining their eyes and ignoring the gifts God gave them.

Speaking of God's gifts, Gayle cut right down on her public appearances after Lemarr passed over. She said to me, ‘Peggy, I always thought it was Lemarr had the healing gift, not me. I thought it just rubbed off on me somehow. I can't explain. When I found out I could still do it, after he was gone, I was terrified. I nearly went back to the bourbon bottle. Actually, I did go back to it, and the first shot I poured, I tripped over the rug, and the whole lot went flying, brand-new bottle and everything. I took that as a sign. So I'm carrying on. I'm through with television, though.’

I said, ‘Honey, I got to tell you, I had the biggest trouble believing that stuff you did with teeth.’

‘Yeah?’ she said. ‘Well, God loves, is all I can tell you. God loves, I deliver.’

Just as Gayle was quitting show business, Deana was starting up. I had kinda lost touch with Betty's girls. Carla moved to Bethesda, Maryland, to be a cancer nurse, and I always get a Christmas card from her, but she never mentioned the rest of the family. Then I tuned into
Rikki Lake
one day and there was Deana. The show was called ‘My Daughter Stole My Man’ and Deana was the star exhibit because it had happened to her twice. Delta running off with Bulldog I knew about. But lightning had struck again and Dixie had stolen the heart of an ageing biker called TeeJay, meant to be Deana's one and only.

Deana put her bad luck hanging on to husbands down to an unsettled childhood as a military brat and a long series of tragedies in her life, from car-crash injuries to nursing her dying mother night and day. Then they brought on Dixie and TeeJay and Deana offered to break Dixie's neck for her, then and there.

I said to Crystal, ‘I wished I known she was gonna be on. I'd have taped it.’

‘Mom,’ she said. ‘Just keep watching those shows. I'll bet you a dime to a dollar Deana's gonna appear of every last one of them.’ She was right.

Crystal and Marc decided they were too old to have a family the regular way so they adopted. They started with a white Labrador-retriever, been abandoned on the road between Waterville and Bangor. Then they got a pair of cross-breeds, only had seven legs between them. They had belonged to an old boy who had to go into a rest home. Also a low-slung terrier type of dog, needed insulin injections twice a day.

I said, ‘Crystal, what is it with you and cripples? Why do you have to fill your life with trouble?’

‘Because Marc doesn't give me enough of it,’ she said. ‘And by the way, I don't care for the word “cripple”.’

I said, ‘Sometimes I think you saddle yourself with all these creatures just so you won't be able to visit me.’ ‘No comment,’ she said.

They stayed on in Maine. I guess they'll be there for ever. Marc had the opportunity to edit
Fruit Digest,
the non-citrus section, but he turned it down. Said he wanted to sleep nights. Wanted time to go bird-watching and all that stuff him and Crystal like to do.

Audrey I haven't seen since 1976, but we write. She stayed with Arthur until he found another widow with money, then she came back Stateside and we picked up where we left off. She does her little paintings, birds and ocean views and stuff. She even sold a few. Mikey told her she could ruin his credibility in the world of installation art, whatever that might be. He has the HIV disease. Lance Jnr has a chain of juice bars, gone national, thinking to franchise them or something. I guess he's practically a millionaire.

Vern and Martine retired up to Belgrade Lakes. They thought they'd be taking Mom Dewey with them but she decided to stay on and plague Eugene a while longer, make sure that foreign wife of his didn't allow the yellow peril to infiltrate Vern's Vermiculture. She died in her ninety-second year, from complications of a broken hip.

Of course, she was a juvenile compared to Miss Lady. She hung on to one hundred and three and she didn't give in till the very end. Her last day she had Tucker wheeling her, round her flower beds, then kept him up till 2 a.m., playing piquet. She went in her sleep.

After that, Grice moved to Corinth, all above board. I was out there one Sunday. They had invited me for afternoon tea and a new game they had, called darts. Just throwing arrows at a target. I had seen it before, in England. Turned out I was pretty good at it.

We were sitting out, under one of those tall old hickories. Tucker was complaining the tomato sandwiches were cut too thick. Grice was complaining they had to have them at all, except as some kind of memorial to Miss Lady.

I said, ‘You two are like a regular married couple. Arguing about a sandwich. I'll be glad when it's the cocktail hour.’

Grice sighed. ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I'm so bored. I'm a prisoner in paradise.’

He got up, started running up and down the lawn, stripped off his shirt.

‘A prisoner, I tell you! I'm stifled! It's all just too damned perfect. I need knots in my wood. I need grit in my shell. I need somebody to coach me at darts.’

The help was carrying out a fresh jug of iced tea. Never missed a beat.

Tucker smiled at me. ‘I don't know if you ever thought of moving from the city?’ he said. ‘But we do miss the womanly tapping of a walking stick around here.’

Miss Lady's Correct Tomato Sandwiches

Have your help cut fresh white bread into rounds the same size as the tomatoes. The bread must be spread thinly with Hellmann's mayonnaise. The tomato must be sliced thin and allowed to drain before the sandwich is assembled. I detest a soggy sandwich. The Shelby County Hooses have been known to add cayenne pepper. This is the kind of behavior gets a family discussed.

Six women, their loves, laughter and life-long friendship

The Norfolk fens have never seen anything quite like the girls from United States Airforce Drampton. Overpaid, overfed and over here. While their men patrol the skies keeping the Soviets at bay, some are content to live the life of the Future Homemakers of America – clipping coupons, cooking chicken pot pie – but others start to stray, looking for a little native excitement beyond the perimeter fence. Out there in the freezing fens they meet Kath Pharaoh, a tough but warm Englishwoman. Bonds are forged, uniting the women in friendships that will survive distant postings, and the passage of forty years. Filled with warmth, wit and wisdom,
The Future Homemakers of America
takes us to the heart of female friendship.

‘Dazzling. A joy to read.’

Maureen Lipman on
The Ten O'Clock Horses

‘One day soon Laurie Graham is going to be a household name … her voice is evolving into something absolutely original. I laughed until I cried. And then I cried.’

Nicolette Jones,
Independent on Sunday
on
The Dress Circle

Other titles by Laurie Graham

Fiction

The Man for the Job

The Ten O'clock Horses

Perfect Meringues

The Dress Circle

Dog Days, Glenn Miller Nights

Non-fiction

The Parent's Survival Guide

The Marriage Survival Guide

Teenagers