Rohn Federbush - Sally Bianco 02 - The Appropriate Way

by Rohn Federbush

  “I remember getting into a crash right here with Art, Sheriff Woods,” Sally said. “A northern bound car slammed on its brakes and spin into a pick-up truck in the oncoming lane. As if in slow motion, the pick-up slid sideways, slamming into my side of the car. My glasses and the windshield were broken.”

  “Were you injured?”

  “The other drivers weren’t injured and one of them helped me out of the driver’s side of the car. For some reason, I waited for the tow-truck in Burger Drugs with the driver of the pick-up. They had an ice-cream counter and booths back then. When I reached to push my hair away from my face, he asked me not to move. Then he picked a sliver of glass off my cheek.”

  John talked about the time required to get home with the roads the way they were. “The normal fifteen-minute ride might take an hour.”

  “What time is it now?” Sally pushed the sleeve of her winter coat up to find her watch. “Eleven thirty! I need to find an AA meeting at noon in Geneva. It’s not an open meeting.”

  “I could wait in the bar. Just kidding. I’ll get groceries. How long will you be.”

  “Usually not longer than an hour. It really depends on how many people are at a table and how long they need to share. St. Mark’s is on Franklin Street.”

  After they arrived at the address, Sally asked John to wait. “I don’t know which door is open.” After trying two back doors and even the front door of the church, she returned to the car. “Grace is going to have my head.”

  “Probably canceled because of the weather. Let’s go home and order pizza. I’m tired.”

  “You’re a safe driver,” Sally said, receding into a daydream of times past. Before she lost complete consciousness of the winter scene around her, she wondered, briefly, if it were true, one of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s was a tendency to nap at every opportunity.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  January, 1958

  “I see more glass,” the pick-up driver said. “Close your eyes.”

  Sally heard the driver, Terry Grove, call for help from the pharmacist. Terry gently laid a piece of scotch tape along her eyebrows. He showed Sally the miniature flakes of glass. Bobby Burger, the pharmacist’s son, came over with a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass. None of the glass penetrated her skin. Instead, the shower of shards peppered her hair and face. The tow truck carried off the wrecked cars, before Art and the helpful driver deemed Sally ready to travel to the hospital. The emergency room was thankfully empty. A young doctor gave her a careful eye exam before releasing her.

  Sally and Art took a taxi to the house on Dean Street. Instead of going in the front door, Sally asked Art to lift the garage door. She opened the kitchen door a crack before calling Daddy out into the garage. “I broke my glasses. I can use the old pair, until I replace them.”

  “We were in an accident,” Art explained.

  Sally’s father turned on the garage light. “Are you hurt?” he asked Sally and then Art. “Come on in, Marie, are there any of those Christmas cookies we can sample? Someone smashed into the kids.”

  “Art, call your mother.” Mother said, before raiding the cookie jar’s holiday stash.

  “I wrecked the car.” They overheard Art tell his mother. “No we’re fine. Sally’s glasses broke. “Sally, will you me drive home?” When she agreed, Art relayed the news. “No. I was not upset. We were stopped at the intersection, but two other cars could not and a pick-up hit Sally’s side of the car. Okay. Thanks, Mother.” Art sat down next to Sally at the kitchen table. His legs spread out halfway across the room. “My father’s upset. Sally told on me.” Art grinned. “I’m taking catechism lessons.”

  “A lot of wars were fought over religion,” Daddy said.

  “Even in this house.” Mother laughed as she refilled the glasses of cold milk.

  “Terry Grove was the guy who was knocked into us. He acted like a guardian angel afterwards,” Sally said.

  “He drove us to the hospital in his wreck.” Art agreed.

  “And he saved my eyes,” Sally said.

  Her mother stood and tipped Sally’s head back.

  Art tried to reassure them. “My windshield broke. Terry Grove and Bob Burger picked all kinds of glass off her face before Terry drove us to the emergency room.”

  Mother sat back down. “Sally only has one eye with enough vision to read.”

  “She’s okay.” Daddy repeated, as if to himself.

  They did love her. Sally munched on another cookie. When did it happen? Then she understood, this was a performance piece for a prospective suitor.

  “What was the angel’s name,” Mother asked.

  “Terry, Terry Grove,” Art said.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  First Thursday in January

  When their Honda stopped in the driveway, Sally woke up to hear John ask. “I don’t understand why Tony Montgomery committed suicide. Tim’s been as rebuffed and none of us expect him to do away with himself.”

  “Tony was high-strung. Tim’s a lot older than Tony was at the time of his death, too. I think younger people suffer more than adults. They have fewer interests, less work to do, fewer responsibilities, certainly less experience in dealing with life. Everything passes and the Lord is a real help.”

  “I suppose Tony wasn’t religious.”

  “You’re right. But he was a lovable scamp. Part of the motivation behind his suicide was vengeance against Jill. He probably hated her by the time he died. I remember her at the time.”

  As they entered the house, Sally’s new husband struggled to hang up her coat while Ginger danced around him. The cleaning people had done their best to restore the house to a clean and orderly home after the reception. Her sister-in-law’s caterers had retrieved their serving utensils.

  Sally settled down on the couch in front of the fireplace, reached forward to flick on the gas flame, and tried to feel at home. She could hear John’s cheerful scolding of Ginger. Who were his parents? How did they compare to hers? She admitted marrying a man in her late sixties left her ignorant about important details throughout fifty years in his life. John said he didn’t marry because he loved her since high-school; but what or who filled his days? When he returned rosy-cheeked from the cold she asked him, sort of. “I’ve reminisced a lot about my parents since I returned. Do you miss yours?”

  He sat down and pulled his long legs up on the couch. Facing her, he scanned the open area behind the couch. Ginger leaned into the couch. John stopped petting her and pointed. “Both their hospital beds sat right there. They held hands most of the time. My bedroom television was situated against the wall of windows. They were bedridden with liver and ovarian cancer, within a week of each other. Dad called it their private falling satellite. He meant they were lucky to die together.”

  “You nursed them.”

  “No. We hired a male nurse to help. Dad died first. Mother said she was glad he didn’t need to live without her. She only lasted six more weeks. The doctor said they both gave up living.”

  Sally stroked his toes in his heavy winter socks. “What furniture did you remove from the room when their hospital beds arrived?”

  John rubbed his baldness. “A red rug, with designs. You know, from India.”

  “Persian?”

  “That’s it. James and Betty have the carpeting in their front room, now.” John surveyed the empty space behind the couch. “With the chairs that match this couch.”

  Case closed. The news certainly explained the failed decorating scheme. “Did James and Betty relieve your vigil?”

  “Sometimes.” Ginger laid her head in John’s lap, as if anticipating his sorrow. “Ginger saved my sanity.”

  “I’m sure she did.” Sally examined the fire. His lonely death watch made her cry.

  “Oh, don’t.” John scooped her unto his lap. “I’m happy. You’re here. We have work to do, a career in righting wrongs. I couldn’t ask for more.”

  As the fire and his secure embrace comforted her, Sa
lly’s mind returned to the days she spent as a teenager in St. Charles.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  July, 1957

  In the summer between Sally’s junior and senior year, Jill Wisnewski called early one Saturday morning. “Would you like to go horseback riding again?”

  “Wear a sweater,” Sally’s mother said, as if she really cared.

  Jill’s head start on riding techniques was due to a year’s riding lessons at the country club in Wayne. At the rental stables on Route 47, Jill rode a four-reined, roan horse. Sally’s white mare, Flicka, sported wide haunches. Not a pretty thing. When Sally first placed her hand on the mare’s neck, Flicka steadied her stance listening to Sally’s quiet introduction and request for permission to ride. Her father claimed genetic retention allowed Sally to copy Jill’s posting. Sally preferred the skimpy English saddle to the western saddles, which distanced her from the animal’s movements. Flicka easily accommodated herself to Sally’s gentle commands.

  There was one problem. Flicka didn’t like to be passed and Jill’s lean, high-stepping horse wasn’t happy until he was out in front of the riding group.

  “Just get her attention.” Mr. Spradlin, the stable owner, cautioned Sally. “Talk to her until her ears come up. If they’re down, someone’s gaining on her and she’s planning to kick.”

  The cool summer morning promised to keep the mosquitoes manageable. They let the horses walk comfortably through the first stand of trees to get to the riding path. Sally prompted Jill to describe her latest date with Tony. The non-stop chatter might include news of Tony Montgomery’s friend, Art Woods.

  Jill mentioned the movie, the hamburger, the romantic parking spot. At the most interesting point, when Tony tipped Jill’s head back for a kiss, Jill’s horse chose to speed up to be first on the trail. Adjusting her posting to the rapid trot, Sally failed to perceive the change in Flicka’s ears.

  Bang! Flicka kicked at Jill’s horse.

  They both pulled up their horses. Jill’s wooden stirrup was shattered by Flicka’s rude kick, but Jill was not injured.

  Sally never heard about the rest of Tony’s kiss. In fact, Jill quit riding at the rental stable, with a polite excuse about her trainer arranging for her to ride free at the Wayne club. So, Sally borrowed her father’s Buick when she wanted to ride Flicka. She relished returning to the country, even for an hour among other rented horses. She felt one with the peaceful, flat open spaces of yellow grasses bordered with straight rows of pioneers’ fencing, where patches of willows pointed patiently to the refreshing brooks. Claiming ownership of earth, sun and sky, Sally found a place to call home her last summer on Dean Street to replace the quiet Rossmoor farm.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  September, 1956

  During Sally’s junior high-school year, the family visited her brother at the Sacred Heart Seminary on Sunday afternoons, once a month. Just fourteen, Dick was the shortest boy in his class. Sally’s married sisters and their husbands also attended. The first grandbaby, beautiful and blonde, provided the entertainment. Bare banquet tables filled the seminary’s gym. Her mother’s apple pie, paper plates and napkins adorned their table. After her father swallowed his share of pie, he deserted the group. Cigarettes demanded his constant attention. Her sisters’ husbands didn’t last much longer.

  Dick seemed okay; not needing the female attention, trying to act grown up or bored with their non-stop questions. “Some of the guys wake me up at night crying.”

  A rush of hated at Mother’s shortcut for getting into heaven by handing over her children to God overwhelmed Sally. At least, Madelyn escaped her mother’s plan for a life spent in a convent praying for their salvation. “Remember when you made us get in the basement, the summer when the sky turned green?”

  “I do,” Loretta said.

  Madelyn contributed, too. “You dragged Sally out of the bath tub.”

  Sally’s father came back in to claim the last piece of pie. “I pulled them up out of the basement into the garage,” he told the husbands. “Mother made them quake in their boots. I showed them the storm sweeping right by the open garage door.”

  “You made us promise to be nuns and priests.” Sally grumbled at the direction of Mother’s cold, blue eyes.

  “Never happened.” Her blonde mother gathered up the plastic silverware and paper plates.

  Sally folded her paper napkin into an origami swan. Trying to remember the exact story about Mark Twain, she listened to Mother’s voice as she chatted with blonde Madelyn about a modeling job for a Junior League benefit. The loving warmth in Mother’s tone dissolved when her attention was drawn back to the rest of the family -- except for Dick, who was also blond. That was when, Sally witnessed real joy. She could almost hear Mother’s increased heart rate. Sally wondered if she would ever love a son too much.

  In the story about Mark Twain, Mrs. Clemens stood at the bottom of the main staircase listening to her husband’s string of riverboat curses, after his single-edged razor took a nick out of his ornery hide. Mrs. Clemens repeated every one of her husband’s swear words. He leaned over the banister and critiqued her performance. “You’ve got the words right but the tune’s all wrong.”

  Mother said all the correct, charitable things to the brunettes in the family; to Sally, Loretta and Daddy, but the song was out of key. The dulcet tones of love shied away from her tongue when speaking to them. Would she recognize love, if ever she was loved? How did it feel to be truly loved by a mother?” Sally tried to draw Dick’s attention into the conversation but he was off chasing his little blonde niece, lost in Mother’s dream of sainthood.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  May 1958

  For the last day of high school, Sally wore black silk bell-bottoms with a wide cummerbund waist. Her yellow blouse with buttoned sleeves above the elbow caused the sleeve to puff up at the top of her shoulders. Her hair, for once, behaved into a pageboy curl, resting symmetrically near her neck. In front of the mirror, she thought she looked as perfect as possible. Smiling at herself, she felt oddly confident. But the day turned harsh. Jill asked what she was all dressed up for, instead of returning a good-bye hug. Two of her classmates, Alan and Greg, acted as if she were a stranger instead of a member of their small study-hall group. As she left school for the last time by the side exit, Art Woods and his buddy, Tony Montgomery, stood outside on the steps. They were home from college for Jill’s graduation. Sally stopped short, her hand on the door.

  “There she is,” Art said to Tony. “Watch this.” Art held the door open, smiling into her eyes. “How’s Sally?”

  “Fine,” she managed to whisper. Her heart seemed stuck on one of her ribs, swelling to a warning beat.

  Six-feet-two inches of Art brushed against her as she stood transfixed by his stare. Her face was red with embarrassment, but Art’s eyes stayed locked on hers as he passed. Then his gaze burned a path down her upturned throat, over her rising chest, into her stomach, heating the blood all the way to her knees. At the open door, a breeze from the school’s ancient oak tree blew away the hall’s stale odors. Breathing in the shadow’s coolness, Sally restored herself to some semblance of order.

  In the corridor behind her, Tony expressed his awe to Art. “I thought she was going to faint.”

  Before the door closed, she also heard Art’s boastful reply. “I told you!”

  Sally walked dejectedly away. She would miss school, not the kids and their idiotic games. Instead, the smell of new books and the opening of new ways of thinking would be missed. She yearned for those continuing pathways, new avenues for her brain to embrace. The prejudices taught at home, by Daddy, who hadn’t graduate from eighth grade but provided an answer for everything, and Mother, who lived within narrow religious confines, were proven wrong. They were not mean-spirited, just ignorant of a wider world’s perspective.

  She counted the schools she attended as she numbered her steps down Dean Street. First grade in Huntley, second grade in Algonquin, third
grade in Crystal Lake, fourth grade in Wayne, fifth, sixth and seventh in Plato Center on the Rossmoor farm, and eighth grade was spent at St. Patrick’s. The family moved nearly every year until Daddy stopped managing farms for other people to start house painting. His hot temper wasn’t fit for steady employment. If he left a customer as a house painter, the family could at least stay put in the same community. As a consequence, Sally endured a friendless existence. She was most comfortable talking to strangers. The entire world was filled with interesting people.

  Her middle name was Alice, and as Lewis Carroll said of his brave Alice in the journey through the Looking Glass, she found in her world, “Everything happened so oddly she didn’t feel a bit surprised.” She certainly couldn’t control much. The family’s extras went to support her brother in the seminary. No one encouraged her to apply to college.

  As she was growing up, her older sisters and Dick, four years younger than Sally, were spirited away to school or worse. In Algonquin when her mother fell down a haymow in a suspicious accident, they were at school, her father in town. The farm’s crop failed to turn a profit. Their unpaid wages were deemed a further investment in their share of the land. Her father contacted a lawyer, which only added fuel to the dispute. The family was asked to vacate the premise in the middle of the school year, so her mother’s convenient accident solved their lodging problem. An aunt opened her home for Mother while her broken pelvis healed. Madelyn and Dick accompanied her. Loretta and Sally were shipped off to grandmothers; first Daddy’s and then Grandma Kerner gave them a home.

  Nearing the end of Dean Street, Sally thought she could taste an apple pie. The factories behind the house smelled of rust and oil. Maybe there would be no pie tonight. No siblings either. One sister lived five blocks east; the eldest across Main Street, six blocks away. Dick was still tucked away in the Seminary.

  Art Woods was playing games with her to entertain his buddy. What was it with guys? Jill probably presented her fantastic stories for the same reason. Sally stopped before opening the front door. They were more immature than she was.