The Girl from Charnelle (21 page)

“You seem different to me,” Gloria said more brightly, as if she was about to compliment Laura, but before she could continue, Jerome came into the bedroom.

He winked at Laura. “How's it going, kid?” he said and then wrapped his arms around Gloria's waist and nuzzled his chin into her neck.

“Stop it. I'm dressing the baby,” she said, but her voice didn't say stop it.

He started tickling her, his fingers on her hips and waist and then his hand low over her stomach, and Gloria tried to wrestle away, but he held her tight, and then he turned her toward him, pulled her close so that her back arched. Her hair spilled over her shoulders. Gloria put her arms around his neck, and they kissed. It wasn't a chaste kiss either. It was long, and Laura saw her sister's tongue dart over Jerome's teeth. The baby lay on the bed, unfazed, his feet in his hands.

Laura stretched out her leg toward the baby so he wouldn't fall off the bed, and she tried not to look at her sister and brother-in-law. But she couldn't help it. She was disappointed. She felt like he'd intruded. And this seemed inappropriate, in their parents' room, in front of her. Showing off, a lack of courtesy at the very least. Yeah, they were married, but still. She felt her own irritation and distaste.

Why should she feel this way? she wondered. She had no right, but she didn't know Jerome that well (she'd met him only twice before he and Gloria eloped), and though he was nice enough, she thought there was also something insincere about him. She couldn't help but feel that he was on his
good behavior, especially in front of her father, saying “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” and laughing a little too much at their jokes, too eager to please, like that Eddie Haskell character on
Leave It to Beaver
. But when her father or Manny wasn't around, when it was just Laura, Rich, and Gene, Jerome seemed different, patronizing and inappropriate. She'd seen him touch Gloria casually on her butt and once, when he thought no one was looking, he squeezed her breasts. Gloria gave him a threatening glance and pushed his hand aside, and when he saw that Laura had seen what he'd done, he just winked at her and smiled in a way that made it seem like he was glad he'd been caught.

“Okay, enough already,” Gloria said and pushed Jerome away. “You go in there. You're embarrassing my little sister.”

He ignored her, knelt by the end of the bed, and grabbed Carroll's feet and roughly lifted him so that he was upside down. The baby giggled, and Jerome smiled. Men always roughhoused with babies too much, Laura thought. Like they were footballs.

“How old are you again?” he asked, not looking at her. “Seventeen?”

“Sixteen,” Gloria said. “I told you that. Don't be so rough with the baby.”

Jerome set Carroll down and then rubbed his military brush cut across the baby's stomach, and again the baby squealed with laughter. Jerome leaned over and put both of his hands on the bed, caging Carroll, and then he lifted his head so that his face was suddenly close to Laura's, too close.

“How are things?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” Laura asked.

“You got boyfriends?”

“Don't listen to him, Laura.” Gloria slapped his butt. “She's not going to tell you before she tells me.”

“God, it's hot in here,” he said, pulling away from Laura and standing up. “I forgot how goddamn hot it gets in the Panhandle.”

He pulled his T-shirt over his head and mopped his face with it.

“Jerome,” Gloria said, frowning.

“What?”

“It's not that hot. Put your shirt back on.”

“It's stifling.” He turned toward Laura, touched her foot with the end of his shirt. Intentionally, she felt. She pulled her foot back. “Do you mind?” he asked.

She shrugged, tried not to look. His body was muscled and hard and dark, with a dense black triangle of hair in the middle of his chest and bushy outgrowths from his armpits. His waist was narrow, and there was a thick tangle spiraling down from his navel into his pants. There was something hostile about his body. She decided that she didn't like him.

“I better get supper started,” Laura said.

“I'll be right there, honey,” Gloria said.

Laura pulled the door closed behind her. She didn't really want her father or anyone else to see.

 

“You know why they get the bedroom, don't you?” Manny said, a conspiratorial hush in his voice. They were in the backyard, Manny sitting in the swing with his head poking over the metal bar of the swing-set frame as Laura took down the clean towels from the clothesline. Fay was digging a bone hole at the far end of the yard. They'd finished dinner, and inside, Gloria bathed her kids while Mr. Tate, Jerome, Gene, and Rich played canasta.

“Privacy,” she said.

“So they can fuck,” he whispered and then bugged his eyes and obscenely wagged his tongue.

“Shut up!”

“You don't believe me?”

“They have a baby,” she protested weakly.

“So what,” he said. “Why do you think Julie's cot got moved to our room?”

“You are so crude.”

“Maybe, but it's true. It's a biological fact. Travel makes you want to fuck. I think it's rather big of the old man to give up his room like that, letting his daughter be defiled in his own bed.”

“SHUT UP!” she shouted and threw a dish towel in his face.

He laughed and then pulled the towel slowly over his face. He arched his eyebrows, and a dark curl flopped over his forehead. He smiled slyly, his imitation of James Dean.

“Don't you think it's
magnanimous
?” He enunciated this word slowly, and she figured he'd just learned it.

“Why are you such a jackass?” she said.

He threw the towel at her. It landed on her shoulder. “You listen tonight,” he said, leaning in the swing and then pushing off with his foot so that soon he was moving back and forth, higher and higher. “You'll hear the bedsprings squeaking,” he said as he swooped by. “Jerome is going to give it to her good.”

“You're an absolute idiot, you know that.”

“It's true. I swear to God.”

“Shut up. You don't know anything. And besides, I don't care.”

“Bullshit if you don't.” He laughed and then flew out of the swing and landed about five feet away. He twirled around and then bowed like an actor taking a curtain call.

“I
don't
care!”

“‘I
don't
care!'” he mimicked, then cackled again. He unsnapped his shirt pocket and pulled out his pouch of tobacco and papers, sat on the stump, deftly rolled himself a cigarette, and lit it.

“You want one?” he asked, holding the bag out to her.

“No.”

He smirked. “You sure?”

“Yes,” she said. She thought about the drags she'd had in the truck with John on the way out to Lake Meredith.

“Suit yourself.” He took a long drag, held it, and puffed white rings that jiggled in the air. That, too, seemed obscene to her, an extension of his earlier talk.

“I bet you don't talk to Joannie that way,” she said, taunting him.

“She's not my sister.”

“You wouldn't say that to Gloria.”

“What d'ya mean?
Who
do you think told me all this?”

“Liar!”

He just laughed. Could he be telling the truth? He and Gloria were close. Laura remembered when she was about twelve, Manny thirteen, Gloria almost sixteen, coming into a room to find them laughing, their faces bent close to each other, a joke between them, but when they spotted her, their bodies stiffened, their laughter abruptly stopped. She knew she wasn't wanted, wasn't welcome, wouldn't be privy to their talk. She was young then, and they were probably just protecting her, she realized, but still, they had always been close and even coarse with each other in a way she envied. He knew she would never ask Gloria herself, or if she did, then
Gloria might just cackle, realizing it was one of Manny's jokes. The fool. She hated him sometimes. He thought she was so naïve.

What would he do if he found out about her and John Letig? She had half a mind to tell him, just to show him, just once to see a look on
his
face that would satisfy her the way the looks of shock on
her
face evidently satisfied him. Like zapping him with the end of an electric wire or a cattle prod.
Yes,
she wanted to see him
jump
!

“You're not even glad they're here, are you?” she asked. She knew it wasn't true, but she wanted to accuse him of something.

“Are you kidding?” he said, blowing out another jiggling ring. “Of course I am. I think it's great that somebody's getting laid in this house. It's been too long.”

“You're disgusting,” she said and started away with the basket of towels, exasperated certainly, but there was also a slight smile at the corner of her lips. She knew he wanted to torment her, but she also wondered if he was as affected by Gloria and Jerome's being here in the house as she was, wondered if his obscenity and cynical attitude, his concerted attempts to rile her, were in his own way an invitation, a yearning to have again a sister with whom he could joke and pose outrageously. She felt a little sorry for him, for what he'd lost, but she also felt older, more mature, beyond his kind of teasing bluster.

“Tonight,” he called after her. “You listen, Laura. Squeak, squeak, squeak.”

 

That night she found herself half listening, against her will, for the bedsprings. She didn't want to. But she couldn't help herself. She remembered her father and that woman in his bed, the way the bed seemed like a trough, her father moving over the woman. Laura didn't want to think about Gloria and Jerome together in that way, in the way that John and she had been. It was too strange, seemed a betrayal, but she couldn't help that either. She hated how these thoughts, these images, would be there even though she didn't want them. When she finally did fall asleep, she dreamed of Jerome rocking above Gloria, his face leaning over her, him sucking her breasts, moving into and out of her, their bodies glazed in the thin, white, honey-smelling breast milk. Both of them looked at her and smiled ghoulishly.

When Laura woke, she found herself sweating in the hot night. She felt
dispirited. Her head ached, but she didn't want to go back to sleep, not yet. Nor did she want to listen to the sounds in the house. She covered her ears and turned toward the window. The night was still, no wind blowing the willow in Mrs. Ambling's yard, which Laura could see from her bed. The long-leafed branches just hung heavy in the heat like still, slender fingers. She watched the tree, waiting for the leaves to rustle, but they didn't. It was as if the night had been embalmed.

By her bed was the bird sculpture John had made her. In the dark, all the colors disappeared, but if she closed her eyes just so that her eyelashes touched, the sculpture came alive, as if the hummingbird's wings were fluttering. She liked doing this trick, but she could only do it really well at night. The shadows helped create the effect.

She heard her father's door open; someone tiptoed to the bathroom. Manny rolled over and whispered, “What did I tell you?”

The jerk
. She didn't respond, just turned back to the window and to the bird and the flowers. She made the wings beat again and closed her eyes, but it was a long time before she slept, and then too soon the early-morning summer sun shone hot on her face.

A
ll the men and boys went fishing. Gloria, Julie, the baby, and Laura stayed in town. It was nice without the others in the house. Quiet, less chaotic. She was glad they were gone. She felt anxious and excited about having time with her sister, but she discovered there was no need for the anxiety. They lingered in the kitchen after breakfast, Gloria glad to be able to nurse at the table rather than hiding in the bedroom with a cloth diaper draped over the exposed part of her breast. Though Laura remembered the normality of her mother nursing Gene and then Rich, she was embarrassed when Gloria first started to nurse the baby, unhooking her bra, sliding the strap of her sundress over her shoulder, revealing her large breast (twice the size of Laura's), blue-veined, the nipple leaking the watery milk. Laura turned away.

“You can watch,” Gloria said. “It's okay.”

Her sister pried open the baby's mouth and then forcefully pressed his head against her chest. But something was wrong. Gloria winced, stuck her
fingers between the baby's gums and extricated her nipple, turned it up and examined it as if it were a bottle cap or some strange insect.

“Does it hurt?” Laura asked.

“Yeah, sometimes I'm sore for days. Plus, he's cutting a tooth.”

Laura winced. “Ouch.”

“It's nothing, really. Better than when he doesn't nurse. With Julie, I had a terrible case of mastitis. Like marbles in my boobs. So this is easy.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Oh, it's good for the baby. And I like it, most of the time. It's nice.”

Laura wanted her to say more about the sensation but wasn't sure how to continue the conversation. “What do you mean, it's nice?” she said after a minute of silence.

“When nothing's hurting, it just feels…nice. Also, it's a good form of birth control. My period didn't come back until I stopped nursing Julie, and when it did come back, I got pregnant immediately. I swear it's the best part about being pregnant and having babies. No periods, no cramps. Except for the lack of sleep and sore boobs—oh, and the labor pains—I feel great.”

Laura watched her readjust Carroll, and then she watched the baby suck, his eyes open.

“There you go,” Gloria cooed and flicked the side of his cheek playfully with her finger. “That's better, isn't it?”

He smiled, and the milk dribbled out of the corners of his mouth.

“Laura, would you do me a favor and cut an apple for Julie? If she doesn't have a snack about this time, she's a bear by lunch.”

“Sure.” She cut the apple and put in it on a plate, then took it in to Julie, who was coloring in the living room. “Here you go, sweetie.”

“What do you say?” Gloria called from the kitchen.

“Tank you.”

“You're welcome.”

Julie was a sweet girl, docile and able already to entertain herself. Not like the boys when they were young, not even like Jack or Willie Letig. Laura realized, with a dumb shock, that she'd never been around any little girls. Only boys. She liked her younger brothers and the Letig boys, at times seemed to love them all, though she wasn't sure she could trust her feelings about Jack and Willie; they were somehow mixed up with her feelings for John. Having Julie around, though, watching the way she climbed
into her grandfather's lap, watching her concentrate so intensely on the pictures she drew, reminded her of herself when she was that age and made her wonder about having her own little girl. Gloria wasn't that much older than Laura when she had Julie, even closer in age when she figured in the pregnancy.
No.
She had to stop that kind of thinking. Having her cute niece and nephew in the house could be dangerous, she realized.

She poured herself and Gloria a cup of coffee, and they both spooned in heaping ovals of sugar.

“It's been so busy around here we've hardly been able to talk,” Gloria said. “So how are you?”

“Good.”

“Short answers, little darling, are not going to be satisfactory. I'm hungry for some girl talk.”

Laura wondered what she could say. She preferred to hear Gloria talk. Carroll had nodded off, his head still cradled against Gloria's breast.

“Daddy said you were really sick a couple of months ago, stayed in bed for over a week.”

“Yeah.”

“No one knew what was wrong?”

She hesitated, thinking for a moment about all the complications leading up to her sickness, but said, “Just the flu.”

“But you're all better now?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, stirring her coffee. “It's hard even to remember what it was like.”

Gloria nodded and looked back down at the baby. His eyes were closed, but his mouth worked rhythmically.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Not really.”

“I know what ‘not really' means. Sam Compson's little brother? What's his name? Come on, give me details.”

“Dean? No way! He's got a face full of zits. And he's a bad kisser.”

“Aha.” Gloria raised an eyebrow and smiled. “How would you know what kind of kisser he is?”

Laura took a big sip of coffee and burned her tongue.

“Doesn't Glenn Thomason have a boy your age? He'd be a good catch. Get 'em rich. Let 'em pamper you.”

“Like you did?” Laura said.

“Watch it, smart-ass. I married for
looooove
.”

They both laughed. Carroll startled awake, crying. Gloria quickly attached him to her other breast, and he closed his eyes and sucked.

“Nobody,” Laura said, shaking her head.

“I don't believe you. You're this gorgeous doll. Boys must be drooling over you.”

Her sister raised her eyebrow again and smiled mischievously. Laura liked that Gloria was talking to her as an adult—a friend, another woman. She had the urge to confess. She could feel the impulse, an itch in her mouth. But then she stopped herself, shook her head, laughed like it was a joke.

“I don't believe you,” Gloria said again. “Tell me who the boy is.”

“No one.”

Gloria squinted, cocked her head, and then smiled suspiciously. “Well, I'm sure you're breaking hearts right and left.”

Laura turned away. It wasn't true. In school the boys didn't seem to pay much attention to her. Sure, she'd had fun with boys at dances and gone with groups to the drive-in and had even made out with some guys at parties, playing spin the bottle, but no one had asked her out, except for Dean (who didn't count). Marlene and Debbie told her that people knew Manny Tate was her brother and that Zeeke Tate was protective, didn't like his youngest daughter dating. And Laura had intuited the rest of the gossip. Hadn't her older sister eloped with some war hero? And didn't her mother go nuts and disappear? Where'd she run off to? Some other guy, probably. You don't want to mess around with Laura Tate. Her father's still angry. He might take a welding torch to you.

“I can't get over how much you've changed,” Gloria said, sipping her coffee. “I guess we all have. But you, you seem like a different person. You were just a skinny little tomboy when I last saw you, and in my mind you remained that tomboy. Now look at you. You've got some curves. It's scary how pretty you are. It makes me wonder if I've changed that much, too.”

“Sort of.”

“What does ‘sort of ' mean? Do I look like some old married hag?”

Laura laughed. “No, no. You don't look that different.”

“What does that mean?”

“Still beautiful.”

“Good answer. Very…shrewd! You may proceed.”

“It's just strange to see you with kids.” She didn't know where she could go with this. She wanted to say something about Jerome, but she was afraid her dislike of him would surface if she talked too much. “You look a little tired.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean. I
am
tired. I didn't expect this to be so hard. I'd helped take care of you and Manny and Gene and thought it couldn't be that difficult—not really. But it is! It makes me sleepy. And yet I can't sleep. When Jerome is gone, I swear I'm a nervous wreck. It's awful. Don't marry a pilot if you can't sleep alone.”

Gloria gazed out the window, lost for a moment in her own thoughts.

“Do you like it over there?” Laura asked. “Your letters are so funny.”

“I like writing the letters. It's not real, I guess, unless I write it down. And then the experience takes on a shape. It's like I get to see my own mind. That's sounds weird, doesn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know. On the bases, it's not that different than here. For the most part, it's boring. I like writing the letters. It makes things interesting—and it calms me. I sometimes make copies for myself, like a diary, when I have time, so I can read them again, and then I know what I did or thought. Maybe it's all this lack of sleep. I have trouble remembering things.”

Laura leaned across the table, closer to her sister. “They're great letters. We read them over and over and over. Dad was so excited about you coming home. We all were, but he wanted the house looking perfect. It's never been this clean, if you can believe it, at least not since Momma left.”

Gloria seemed to flinch at their mother's name. Laura leaned back, suddenly sorry she'd mentioned it. Julie came into the room and said she was sleepy. Laura volunteered to put her down, took her niece's hand and led her to the kids' bedroom, let her lie on her bed. Laura started reading her a story, but by the end of the first page, she was asleep.

“How is he?” Gloria asked when Laura returned to the kitchen. Laura knew that she was talking about their father.

“Good, I guess,” Laura said. “He works a lot. And he's thinking of opening his own shop soon.”

“I know all that. I mean…how…
is
he? How did he take it? Does he see other women? Does he talk about Momma? Now that I'm here, I feel her all the time. Like she's around…watching us.”

“We don't talk about her much.”

“Don't you find that
strange
?”

“I don't know. I guess so, now that you say it.”

“No one
ever
talks about her?”

“We do and we don't,” Laura said, sitting back down at the table. She grabbed an apple and rolled it around nervously in her hands. “Right after it happened…I mean, right after Dad came back from looking for her, he seemed paralyzed. We all waited for him to get out of the truck and tell us what happened. But it was like he couldn't answer the most basic question, and Manny finally screamed at him, and Dad hit him, and Manny fell down and just started crying. And then Dad bent down and held him. Pretty soon they were all crying. But after that, I don't know…. We got used to it, I guess.”

Laura saw a melancholy shadow cross Gloria's face.

“How about Gene and Rich?”

“Gene just reads all the time, comics and tons of books. We have to go to the library two or three times a week. Everywhere he goes, he has a book. You ask him a question and he doesn't answer half the time, he'll be so lost in the book. Dad says, ‘Just let him be,' so I figure it's his way of dealing with it. Rich cried a little afterward and slept with me or Dad for a long time, but he doesn't seem to remember much about her.”

“And what about Manny?”

“He's meaner than he used to be. He told me a couple of months after she left that he was glad she was gone.”

Laura expected Gloria to flinch at that, but she just nodded her head like she understood.

“He said he hated her anyway, which I knew wasn't true. He knew I knew. But there's this hard shell that seems to be around him. He's not the same.”

“Huh,” Gloria said. “He doesn't seem that different to me. Just bigger and hairier.”

She smiled. Laura smiled, too, but she didn't like it that Gloria defended him. What did Gloria know? She hadn't been here.

“We don't get along that well. And I don't see him much. He works at
the gas station. He's got his friends. And there's Joannie, too. So he's hardly here.”

“Are they serious?”

“Seems so.”

“You think they'll get married?”

“I don't know. I feel sorry for her.”

“I bet he's nicer to her. Boys are different when they're alone with their girlfriends.”

Laura thought for moment about Jerome. And then about John. “Still,” Laura said, “he's a jerk sometimes.”

Gloria just smiled and shook her head, then eased Carroll from her breast. He was asleep, but his mouth puckered in and out, even after the breast was gone. Gloria put him against her shoulder and patted his back, sniffed his head. Suddenly he belched.

“Does Dad ever go out on dates?”

“No,” Laura said, shaking her head. She thought of mentioning the woman he brought home but thought better of it. It was a secret. She didn't want Gloria to think badly of him. Besides, it was so long ago, nearly two years now.

“That relieves me, to tell you the truth. I suppose it would be good for him to see someone, but I'm glad he's not. I couldn't stand the thought of another woman in this house. Some wicked stepmother. It's selfish of me, I know.” She paused, patting Carroll's back gently. “He seems so much older, though,” she continued, “like he's aged ten years since I left. He's going gray, his wrinkles seem deeper. He looks thin and sad.”

“You think so?” Laura thought he seemed younger lately. Happy, even. Gloria hadn't been around a year or two ago, when he really looked ragged and distracted, unshaven and glassy-eyed, as if he'd been drinking secretly or was on the verge of tears that would never fall. He'd snapped out of it, as she supposed they all had. Gloria had missed all that. She didn't know, and there was no way to explain or describe it. You had to be here to understand, to really
know.