The Girl from Charnelle (20 page)

He'd fixed up a corner of the barn nicely, with a layer of soft blue carpet, a thin mattress with a gold bedspread that looked like it had been around for a while, and a splintery end table. They'd take turns bringing something for lunch—sandwiches, cheese and crackers, or fruit.

Back in May, about a week after she recovered from the flu, she called to thank him and Mrs. Letig for the food and the sculpture of the hummingbird. He answered the phone, said that he was dying to see her, that he needed to meet her the next day. He took her to the barn, and he gave her a box of chocolates, which they ate together, and he told her how badly he felt about what had happened, that he'd been thinking about her ever since he'd dropped her off that day after Lake Meredith, hoping he'd have a
chance to tell her again how sorry he was and that he wanted to keep seeing her. She asked him if they
should
keep seeing each other, if it was worth it.

“Yes,” he said urgently, “you're worth it.”

It didn't take much to convince her, even though she wondered briefly but uneasily at her inability to say no to him. He kissed her and held her for a while, and then they had to go. He asked if they could meet for lunch in a couple of days, and by then he had cleaned out the barn and fixed it up. There was an ice bucket with some root beer in it and fruit, crackers, and cheese. He'd even set out some flowers in a vase and turned on a transistor radio, so that Patsy Cline crooned softly in the background.

He was very tender with her at first—nervous, almost—slowly touching her, kissing her, his lips softly on her neck and breasts and stomach. And then, when they made love again, it wasn't like before. He was gentle, didn't rush her, slow, controlled.

Her favorite part was afterward when he would sometimes fall asleep. “Just let me rest my eyes for a minute,” he'd say, and he'd lie there, heavy and vulnerable. She'd examine his body, his arm crooked over his face. She'd trace her fingers along his jawline, over his mustache and his red, cracked lips, slightly parted, his two middle teeth slightly overlapping, as if hugging. She'd kiss him softly and trace her fingers over the stubble of his neck and into the blond-brown hair of his chest, a light fuzz covering his skin, his nipples small and round and smooth like a child's, and over his rib cage, and down his stomach to the thick brown nest at the crook of his legs, where his penis lay limp and wrinkled, a skein of dried semen over it. She was surprised that her hand could cover it. Sometimes it would grow in her cupped palm, and she'd look up and he'd have that goofy, boyish grin on his face.

“Come here,” he'd say, and she would.

And then they would leave, her on the floorboard, talking, telling stupid jokes to make him laugh. He'd drop her off behind the warehouse, bending over to kiss her good-bye, and then he'd be gone, and she'd wait several minutes and then walk home in the bright summer heat, or to the Charnelle pool, where she'd swim and hang out with Debbie and Marlene, playing Ping-Pong or Foosball, yearning sometimes to tell them what she was up to, to see their stunned faces when she made her confession. She felt loyal to them, felt in fact a vague need to repay them for their compassion after her mother disappeared (she had cried one long night at Debbie's
house while Marlene rocked her like a child), and to show them as well that she'd gotten over that grief, that she could navigate through an adult world they could only dimly imagine. But she kept her mouth shut about John, as she knew she must, smiling as she swam through the chlorinated water with her friends, laughing confidently as she beat them at Ping-Pong, shouting as she spun the little painted Foosball men, gunning the ball triumphantly in the hole. At the end of those afternoons, she would head home, get the boys from Mrs. Ambling's, make supper and clean up—moving in a light-spirited haze.

“What are you so happy about?” her father asked her one of these evenings, pleased by her good humor.

She simply shrugged her shoulders, smiled innocently.

 

The family drove to the Greyhound station in Mr. Tate's truck, Manny following in the Ford. Gloria and her family were supposed to arrive on the four-thirty bus from Dallas, but it didn't get in until almost six-thirty. Everyone was hungry, but they didn't eat, because the plan was to take everybody to the Ding Dong Daddy Diner. Finally the bus arrived, and the five of them got up from the outside bench. They could see Gloria in the window. She waved and smiled and turned away for a minute, and then a little blond-haired girl appeared next to her, peering out. Gloria spoke to her, pointed toward the family, and they all jumped up and down and blew kisses.

And then they were off the bus. First Jerome, wearing his air force uniform, carrying the baby in one arm, a suitcase in another. He was tall and thin-faced, with a dark complexion. He set the suitcase down, smiled uncomfortably, and then turned back and held out his hand to the little girl, who wore a yellow dress and tights. Even though Mr. Tate knelt and called to her, she clung to Jerome. Gloria followed them, carrying a bag. Her dress matched her daughter's and was buckled at the waist with a black belt.

Although only twenty, Gloria seemed like she'd aged. The baby fat from her teen years was gone, and her cheeks were hollow, too thin, a little severe. Her hair was done up in a beehive, held together precariously by hair spray and bobby pins. There was a moment of silence, as Gloria and her family stood by the bus and the rest of the Tates stood at the railing. They studied each other as family members who haven't seen each other in
a while will do, trying to align the person standing before them with the image in their memories—the little girl, the father, the sister, the brother—and the realignment sometimes takes only a few seconds, sometimes much longer, but that period of adjustment is always there, always a little disturbing, as if time itself were abruptly declaring its passage.

Gloria's family made their way past the railing, where they could be properly greeted, hugged, squeezed, and kissed. There was a moment of polite solemnity as Mr. Tate shook Jerome's hand, held it longer than normal. Mr. Tate nodded and smiled grimly to let the young man know that, though the pilot had stolen his daughter, all was forgiven—though not forgotten—and now that the pilot had provided him grandchildren, he could be counted as a bona fide member of the family. The uniform gave Jerome a regal bearing, and all the kids and even Mr. Tate looked at him with respect. They knew, from Gloria's letters, that though he'd never fought in a war, he'd risked his life many times.

Gloria wrapped her arms around Gene and Rich and Manny and Laura, kissing and hugging them tight.

“Laura? My God,” she said, holding her at arm's length and then twirling her. “Look how you've filled out. I keep thinking of you as this skinny little stick. But you're not anymore, are you, Miss Monroe?”

“And Manny. I remember you as this runt I could beat up,” she continued. “Good thing I got a soldier to protect me.”

“He's just an air force man.”

Jerome cocked an eyebrow. “Those are fightin' words, buddy.”

“Rich. Can you talk now?”

“Yes,” he said shyly.

“I knew that. You come here, you little booger.” She knelt down, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her neck, and she kissed both his cheeks, and he hugged her again and wouldn't let go. Gloria lolled her tongue out and crossed her eyes. “He's strangling me, he's strangling me!” she said, and Rich laughed and let go of her.

“And Genie. Oh, Genie. The only sweet one in the bunch.”

“You haven't seen the tire tracks in his underwear,” Manny said.

“Shut up!” Gene squealed.

“Well, I'll skip that part,” she said, mussing his hair. “I have enough diapers to tend to.”

Jerome and Manny gathered the suitcases that were in the luggage
compartment and returned to the rest of them cooing over the baby, Mr. Tate holding him in his arms and crouching down to his knees, smiling at the girl who now clung to her mother.

Mr. Tate said, “Come here, darling. Give Grampa some sugar.”

“Go on, honey,” Jerome said.

“It's okay,” Gloria urged.

She wouldn't budge. Mr. Tate said, “Come tell me who this little guy is.”

“Cawo,” she muttered.

“Your big brother?”

“Nooooo!” she protested. “Itto brudder.”

“Am I holding him right?”

“No,” she said and pointed to her grandfather's other arm.

They all laughed.

“Just like your mother,” he said, handing the baby to Laura. “You think you know the right way to do everything.” He reached out for her. “Come here and give me some sweet sugar.”

Julie finally obliged him.

Then there was the moment that had been delayed, by design perhaps, maybe anxiety, but there it was, the reunion of father and daughter. The prodigal returning to the forgiving parent's arms, the runaway come home. Everyone sensed the decorum appropriate to a ceremony. Gloria's eyes moistened. The rest cleared a path for them, and in the silence that followed, they all could feel the absence of their mother. Laura closed her eyes and could see her clearly, as in that fever dream in May, in her blue-and-red-flowered dress, the sheer red scarf, her mother kissing her and then turning away, disappearing through the tattered cobwebs. At homecomings, Laura thought, the dead or missing always hover like ghosts.

“Welcome home, morning glory,” Mr. Tate said. His old name for her.

She walked slowly to her father and put her face against his chest. And they could see her shoulders relax into a sob. He put his arms around her back, and neither of them said a word. Laura's eyes clouded over. She had trouble swallowing. She placed her lips against Carroll's head and smelled baby shampoo.

“Who's hungry?” Mr. Tate said, smiling. Even
his
eyes seemed misty.

Gloria pulled away and laughed as she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“I'm starving,” said Jerome. “Hungry, sweetie?” he asked Julie.

“Uh-huh.”

“Hope you haven't been spoiled by all that European cuisine,” Mr. Tate said as he leaned over and grabbed one of the suitcases.

“Ha!” Jerome laughed.

“I don't know, Dad,” Gloria said. “I may have to ask Ike to ship me a couple of boxes of U.S. Certified Beans and Wienies while I'm here. Can't go a whole week without 'em.”

Mr. Tate smiled. “Well, we'll see what we can do, honey. But right now La Palace de la Ding Dong awaits our dinner party.”

Laura figured he'd been working on that line all day.

H
er father relinquished his room to Gloria and Jerome. Julie was to sleep on a small portable cot by their bed, unless Gloria and Jerome wanted her to sleep with Laura. A week earlier, her father and Manny pulled Rich's crib out of the cellar. It had been through five children and twenty years of use. They repaired the legs. The mattress was ripped and stained, and when they slapped it, a cloud of dust rose from it and choked them so badly that they had to climb from the storm cellar, gagging, coughing, red-faced. Her father sanded the crib, repainted it bright blue, and bought a brand-new mattress, which stunned all of them. The expense! He never would've done it just for them. Rich, who hadn't been out of his crib for very long, now wanted to return to his refurbished bed.

They had vacuumed, dusted, and aired the house. Old boxes of magazines and newspapers were thrown out. Slipcovers were placed over the cigarette scorches and stains and tattered holes in the couch and the recliner. They cut fresh flowers and placed them in vases. The house had not
been this clean in…well, not since her mother had lived with them, even though Laura worked hard to keep the house relatively tidy. It was really the first time they'd had visitors come and stay with them in she couldn't remember how long, at least since Aunt Velma stopped coming, and that was several years back. There was her father's poker game last spring, but that didn't really count, because the men didn't give a damn what the house looked like, nor did her father care if they cared.

She liked the new anticipation in their home, the desire to impress, or at least not be embarrassed. It galvanized them all. Dresser drawers and closets were organized to make room. Old clothes and unused toys were placed in boxes and taken to Jensen's Thrift Shop. Manny mowed the yards, and he and her father and Gene repainted the trim on the house, and they all pulled the weeds from the garden and around the foundation. Laura gave old Fay a bath. She hadn't been bathed in—what was it now?—a year; the dog seemed so grateful for the attention that she licked and licked Laura's neck and face, which made Laura decide to brush the dog's teeth with baking soda. The poor thing. She surely didn't have many years left. After the incident with Greta, Laura's father had Fay spayed, though at her age it probably wasn't necessary. She felt sorry for the dog, and perhaps it was pointless to give her a bath anyway. There'd be too many people in the house to bring her inside. But we all need some attention, Laura thought. Even a dirty old dog.

By the time they left for the bus station, the house was as clean as it had ever been, and it was sad, in a way, to leave it. They all just wanted to stand there and admire their hard work. They were more than a little disappointed when they arrived back home, after dinner at 4-D's, and Gloria's first words were “I don't remember the house being so small. How on earth did we all fit in here?” Which seemed ironic to Laura, given what Gloria had said about the cramped base housing.

A nervous, resentful silence thickened the air, and Laura exchanged worried glances with Manny. They both eyed their father—a blush rising from his neck, the corner of his lips twitching. She felt his shame, and her own. She thought of something her father had once said years ago when he'd taken them all to see the new courthouse extension he'd helped build. It seemed like any other structure: ordinary, governmental, nothing that ornate or impressive. “Good work is never recognized and must be immodestly pointed out, or it goes ignored.” She came home and wrote it in her diary, impressed by the surprising wisdom of her father.

Laura suddenly saw the house through her sister's eyes, not as their home, the place where they'd all been raised, but as this relic from Gloria's past, a shabby, ramshackle dump in a “dusty, provincial village” (Gloria's phrase) in the Panhandle, something that she, with good reason, could make fun of with the other wives on the bases, in that sharp, clowning way of hers: “You'd never believe the shoe box I grew up in!”

Laura felt suddenly angry, and then depressed and hurt, as if the fault were somehow her own. How could this compare to the places Gloria had been, the exotic countries and famous cities? How backwater they all were. Hicks. She had never really thought about it, didn't really wonder about it, until now, when the slightest expression on her sister's face could confirm their worthlessness.

“We been cleaning it all week!” Rich shouted.

Gloria smiled and said, “Well, I can tell. It looks marvelous! Maybe you should come to my house. It could use a good cleaning.”

“You can say that again,” Jerome scoffed. Gloria slapped him on the arm, and Gene and Manny chuckled.

“Looks like you repainted,” Gloria said.

Mr. Tate said, “Well, yeah, we did some touch-ups.” Laura thought,
Dad doesn't get it
.

Laura watched her sister carefully, studied her movements, the way her eyes darted over the rooms. She felt weak, dependent on Gloria's silent judgments and evaluations, her unspoken disappointments and reproaches.

“It's strange coming home again,” Gloria said. “It's very strange.”

 

Soon enough, though, the house was just the house, and by that evening, once Gloria and Jerome and the kids spilled into the place with their bags, the polish they'd all given it seemed inconsequential.

But Laura's fascination with her sister did not wear off. She'd almost forgotten what it was like to have another female in the house. Old Mrs. Ambling had been in it, looking after her when she'd been sick, and Mrs. Letig, too, that night near the end of her illness. And that woman her father had secretly brought over after he'd gone dancing, a while after their mother left. But that was so long ago.

Laura had never, that she could remember, had a friend spend the night. (Where would Debbie or Marlene sleep?) It simply hadn't been a
possibility, or she had never thought of it as such, though maybe she'd known, on some level, how shameful it would be to have her friends see where she lived, all of them crammed into this house like sardines. It
was
shabby. It
was
embarrassing.

But she had grown proprietary. Now, with her mother and sister gone, this place, in an important way, was
her
house. She cleaned, shopped at the Piggly Wiggly, cooked most of the meals, and did the lion's share of tending to Rich and Gene. While Gloria had once lived here, too, and done what Laura had done, though to a much lesser degree, she no longer had the same rights of ownership that Laura now possessed. And Gloria seemed to acknowledge Laura's status, asking her where things were, asking for permission to make a meal. She didn't have to do that, but Laura liked it that she did.

Laura had spent so much time thinking about her sister that it was weird to have her here in the flesh. In some ways, Gloria was the same as she had always been. There was that high-pitched, cackling laugh of hers when she thought something was really funny. She'd start giggling, and then the sound would trill in her throat, and then there'd be a snort on the end of the laugh, which made you worry slightly for her, but it was also infectious and could make you giggle like a child until tears streamed down your face and your stomach hurt. And she had an animated way about her, acting out an anecdote or story, assuming the attitude and character of whoever was talking. She'd always been good with accents, and she'd acquired some new ones, a thick Viennese one she called Freud, and a ditsy, high-pitched yodel she called the Swiss Miss, and the sultry-eyed, shoulder-wagging arrogant one, with pouty lips and condescending eyes, with a voice like the actresses in
Gigi,
which she called the French Artiste. When she told stories, she was dynamic, her arms and hands graceful, and it seemed so easy and natural for her. Laura both admired and envied her sister, and she knew she'd remember these things and rehearse them herself, as if these ideas and characters were her own, and she'd try them out on Marlene and Debbie, playing Monopoly at their houses, or maybe even with Dean Compson, and most certainly with John, to make him laugh.

When she wasn't the center of attention, telling a joke or a story, Gloria watched them all. Laura caught her observing others—their father, Manny, Gene, Rich, her own children, Jerome, even Laura herself. Gloria carefully scrutinized everything that was happening, and Laura remembered this as
well, how it used to unnerve her, as if Gloria was looking for something to mock you with, and Laura had always been careful to stay in Gloria's good graces. She didn't want to be the one teased and tormented. And Laura was aware of this hard, cynical, even selfish part of Gloria, which she both admired and feared. It was what had given Gloria the courage to elope, to defy their parents, to do something so drastic. You needed to be selfish in order to do such things. Gloria was bold, but there was also (wasn't there?), in the boldness, the careless disregard of others and of consequences.

There was a softer side to Gloria as well. She had always been capable of great generosity. She had once bought Laura a brand-new dress at the Amarillo Woolworth's with the last of her money because she felt that her little sister needed some “cheering up.” (Laura still had that dress; it didn't fit, but she wasn't about to give it away.) And when she and Gloria and Manny swam across Lake Meredith, Gloria insisted that Laura could make it, even though Laura doubted the outcome. Both during and afterward, Gloria had been tender and encouraging, making her feel triumphant, heroic. Laura could see that her generosity had ripened, with motherhood, perhaps, or being Jerome's wife, into something akin to patience, rough edges smoothed over—the soft nuzzling of the baby, the easy way she tended to Julie, not like when she was younger and had to care for Laura, Manny, and Gene.

There was also, just below the surface, a layer of melancholy. Perhaps it had always been there. Laura could remember her sister crying in bed about this boy or that one (Billy Sidell, in particular), and there had been the anxious quality to her before she eloped, but Laura was looking for the sadness that had come through in the letters—a darker, richer vein of feeling, which made Gloria real in a way that she had never been before. Laura thought she could detect this sadness. She could see it sometimes in a look her sister exchanged with Jerome, the way she deferred to him when he spoke, stayed quiet and a little on edge, which made Laura wonder if Gloria was happy with him or if there were times when she regretted what she had done, felt that this life she'd chosen had now enclosed and trapped her. Laura was looking for the young, pregnant wife walking in the Berlin fog, or the woman who couldn't sleep at night and dreamed of her husband engulfed in flames, or who screamed at her children and wondered if, like their own mother, she would or could abandon them. Those details in the
letters had unsettled Laura and stayed with her, like shards of colored glass—dangerous, painful, mesmerizing.

By studying Gloria, she hoped to find answers to her own questions, though what those questions were, Laura wasn't quite sure. She had the feeling that Gloria's being here was somehow meant to teach her something, to show her a direction, a possibility. But it was more complex than that. What people teach is more elusive and indirect and strange, without motive or intention, like the variations and complications of light and shadow during the course of a day. What was there to
learn
in that? You just watch it, absorb it, admire it.
Fall into it.

 

In their father's bedroom the next afternoon, Gloria placed the baby, naked after its bath, out on a towel on the bed. Laura lay on the bed and watched her. She wanted Gloria to herself, for a few moments at least, and she was glad that everybody else was outside or in the kitchen, playing cards or listening to a baseball game on the radio.

“Do I seem so different to you?” Gloria suddenly asked.

She'd washed her hair, and the beehive was gone. Her hair now hung around her shoulders, flipped out at the bottom, and she wore an orange-and-white-flowered sleeveless summer blouse and bright orange capri pants that reminded Laura of a picture she'd seen recently in
Life
of Senator Kennedy's wife in a similar outfit—pedal pushers and bright sleeveless blouse and dark sunglasses. Laura wondered if Gloria had seen that picture, or seen Mrs. Kennedy in one of the newsreels, wondered if the similarity was deliberate, if Gloria admired the senator's wife the way Laura and Marlene and Debbie did. Maybe it was just the way women dressed in Europe. Mrs. Kennedy was, she'd heard from Marlene, half French and had lived in Paris. Maybe every European woman wore sleeveless blouses and pedal pushers rather than T-shirts and cuffed-bottom jeans.

“Sort of different,” Laura said, but didn't elaborate.

“You keep staring at me. I can feel your eyes all the time. Are you disappointed?”

“No.”

“It's odd having me here, isn't it?”

Gloria diapered the baby and asked Laura to hand her a little green jumper from the suitcase.

“No, it's wonderful,” Laura answered, handing the outfit to her sister. “Kind of strange. But wonderful. Is it weird being back?”

“A little. With Momma gone.”

Gloria glanced quickly at Laura and then down at the baby. This was the first time anybody had mentioned their mother, and they both were embarrassed by it. Gloria busied herself, squirting lotion on her hands, rubbing them together. Then she spread it slowly over Carroll's stomach and arms. Laura felt as if this routine, the deliberateness of each stroke, was somehow connected to the memory of their mother.

“But I'm glad I'm here,” Gloria said, raising her head, a melancholy smile on her lips. “Maybe it's just the fact that we're in their room. I don't know.”

Carroll squirmed a little on the bed, his mouth puckering. Gloria grabbed the pacifier and eased it between his lips.