Fresh Eggs

by Rob Levandoski

  “Maybe I can get Marilyn to help,” she suggests to Calvin. “She does all the dance costumes for the Tuttwyler Tappers.”

  “I don’t want local people knowing about this,” Calvin says. “We let Marilyn Dickcissel in on this and we might as well take out an ad in the Gazette.”

  So Donna has to go it alone.

  She drives to Freda’s Fabric House in New Waterbury. She wishes she could buy polyester. It is so easy to work with. There are so many beautiful textures and prints. But synthetic fabrics are just soaked with formaldehyde. Formaldehyde gives her brain fog. Makes her cuticles itch like poison ivy. Rhea’s costume will have to be made of natural fabric.

  She sneezes the entire hour she’s in Freda’s. MCS is a bitch. It turns you into a convulsing zombie, alive but robbed of a full life. “You can’t imagine what it’s like,” she told Calvin on their second date, when they were sitting on a bench atop the dam at Hinckley Lake, watching some old man with a boil on his neck fish for bluegill. “There are chemicals in everything today. Everything we eat. Everything we wear. Take something simple, like going to a restaurant. First, the seat cushions make you itch. Then the ink on the menu makes you sneeze. The waitress’s perfume welds your eyes together and the MSG on the lettuce makes you puke. It’s like that constantly.”

  “Can’t you get shots or something?” Calvin asked.

  She told him that while shots and pills were helpful—and incredibly expensive—there were only three sure-fire ways an MCS sufferer could escape his or her misery. “And only one of them is permanent,” she said.

  “Death, you mean?”

  “Bingo.”

  “And the two temporary ones?”

  Donna hesitated. It was, after all, their second date. “Sleep and sex.”

  Calvin was intrigued immediately. “Sex?”

  “When you get—aroused—your endorphins override everything else that’s going on in your body—toothaches, gas, allergies, sore toe, everything, so you can—you know.”

  Donna watched Calvin’s face fill with blood, knowing it wasn’t from embarrassment.

  “So,” he said, “if there’s ever anything I can do to help you with this MCS of yours.…”

  They made love for the first time that night, on an itchy blanket made of synthetic fibers. And now after all these years of marriage they still make love twice a week and her endorphins are still kicking in just fine. But her eggs just won’t let his sperm knock down the door.

  She’s been married to Calvin for nine years and she’s only been out to the layer houses two or three times. She’s never been out to the old barn at all, all that dust and mold and decaying hay. She’s never once scratched the cats under their chins, or dug her fingers into Biscuit’s fluffy back. She just stays in the house, doing housework and doing the books. She walks around the lawn a little. Walks in the woods once or twice in the winter when the pollen balls are frozen. She’s as much a prisoner as Rhea is. As much a freak. She should have an exhibit on the midway, too:

  THE AMAZING DONNA—QUEEN OF KLEENEX

  SHE WALKS! SHE TALKS! SHE SNEEZES AND SNEEZES!

  SHE CAN’T GET PREGNANT NO MATTER HOW MUCH SHE SCREWS!

  Donna buys some cotton, some silk, several yards of flimsy linen gauze, a bag of gold sequins, beads of many colors.

  That night she spreads out what she’s bought on Rhea’s bed. “Any ideas about your costume?”

  Rhea shrugs. “I guess it’s got to show a lot of my feathers, huh?”

  Donna dabs her nose. “Well, yes. But we’re not going to make you look like some hoochie koochie dancer.”

  “Hoochie koochie?” Rhea asks.

  “Like a stripper.”

  Rhea laughs at this. “I could be totally naked. That would make us some money.”

  “I was thinking maybe something Egyptian,” says Donna.

  “How about a Grecian goddess?” asks Rhea. She playfully raises her arms as a Grecian goddess might.

  “Oooh, that’s an idea. How about a fairy tale princess?”

  “Or just a fairy,” says Rhea. “Sort of a Tinker Bell look, you know?”

  “Maybe something Indian,” says Donna.

  “India Indian or Pocahontas Indian?”

  “Pocahontas Indian. Buckskin skirt with fringe. Big headdress maybe.”

  Rhea’s head is shaking no. “I’m already a walking headdress.”

  Says Donna, “Well, then how about we go with the Egyptian thing?”

  When Rhea’s costume is finally finished, Calvin sketches her in it. It takes three hours for him to get the sketches he needs. Then he spends the night—from midnight until well after dawn—transferring his best sketch to the remaining canvas in the barn. Then he paints it, his hands shaking the entire time.

  He is amazed by the finished portrait. It is beautiful.

  Twenty-three

  At dawn they leave for the Burgoo County Fair. It is the first fair of the summer, in Ohio’s flat western corner, where the cornfields blend into Indiana without anyone noticing.

  Rhea Cassowary is in the pickup with her father. The lunch Donna made them is in a grocery bag on the seat between them. Peanut butter and jelly by the smell. Joon Faldstool is behind them in his Gremlin. Joon has been recruited to sell eggnog-flavored snow cones.

  Both Joon and the snow cones were late additions to the county fair idea, both coming from Joon’s father about three weeks ago.

  “You know what,” Jimmy Faldstool said one morning when he and Calvin were having their morning coffee in the locker room. “I was looking through the classifieds in the Cleveland paper the other morning and saw this little snow cone wagon for sale. Completely equipped for $3,200. I says to Joon and the wife, ‘Good gravy, everybody likes a snow cone when they go to the fair—know that I do—and wouldn’t that be a way to make some extra money. For everybody concerned.’

  “‘I could buy that snow cone wagon,’ I says, ‘and set it up there by Rhea’s exhibit, and sell snow cones to the people coming out, or just walking by. And I could split my profits fifty-fifty with Cal.’”

  Calvin said, “Think you could make it pay? Every county fair I’ve been to there’s a snow cone stand every ten feet.”

  Jimmy was ready for his boss’ skepticism. “You sell cherry and grape and root beer snow cones like everybody else, you might not make much. But if you were selling egg nog snow cones—nobody else would be selling eggnog snow cones. And it would fit right in with Rhea being covered with feathers. And look at all the eggs we got. Good gravy, Cal. We paint up that little wagon fancy like you did those canvases and put it right there by the entrance and we’ll make money hand over fist.”

  Calvin said, “Our eggs belong to Bob Gallinipper.”

  Jimmy said, “True enough. But our family responsibilities belong to us.”

  And so Calvin gave Jimmy the green light. It was a cute little wagon with counters and windows on three sides. Jimmy painted it bright yellow with milky white trim. On the sign board on top Calvin lettered:

  ICE NOGGIES!

  EGGNOG-FLAVORED SNOW CONES

  MADE WITH FRESH FARM EGGS

  Above all three windows he painted portraits of Rhea, herself enjoying an Ice Noggie.

  And that’s why Joon is following in his Gremlin, pulling the snow cone wagon. Rhea can see in the pickup’s side mirrors that he’s sucking on a can of pop.

  The pickup itself is pulling a tiny house trailer. It’s an old one, a 17-foot sky blue Holly built in the late fifties. It has two beds and a kitchen, but no bathroom. So they’ll have to use the public toilets. The bed of the pickup carries the stage and the canvases, a plywood ticket booth, two cases of Rhea the Feathergirl tee shirts, and the high-back Victorian chair that old Henry’s second wife, Camellia, bought brand new from the Sears & Roebuck catalog. Calvin has painted the chair gold to look like a throne.

  When they get to Tuttwyler, Rhea is surprised when her father turns left and drives towards the town square. “I thoug
ht Burgoo County was the other way,” she says.

  “It is,” he answers. He is smiling easily.

  This time of the morning there is no one on the sidewalks and only a few cars on the street. Her father circles the square and turns onto South Mill Street. Rhea now knows where they are going. They are going to the cemetery. “Wait here,” her father tells Joon after they park.

  The grass is still wet. By the time Rhea and her father reach the row of Cassowary graves their feet are soaked. The strawberry plants circling Jeanie’s grave are tall and thick and shiny with dew. The berries are red and plump.

  It has been three years since Rhea and Calvin were there together, though he has come every year to tell Jeanie about the difficulties between him and their daughter. So Jeanie is up to speed about the feathers and that unfortunate plucking episode.

  “As you know,” Calvin tells Jeanie, “I’ve been a real schmuck. But everything’s okay now—copacetic as Norman would say. Anyway, things are okay, and Rhea and I are on our way to the Burgoo County Fair, to make the money we need to save the farm. You’d be proud of her.”

  The three of them can’t possibly finish all the berries, so after eating all they can, Rhea leaves a few on the top of all the Cassowary gravestones.

  Calvin and Rhea are both crying as they walk back to the truck.

  “You miss her, don’t you daddy?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “We’re going to start coming again every year, aren’t we?”

  “You bet. I’m sorry I—”

  “It’s okay, daddy.”

  Calvin puts his arm around her. “I’ve never been able to figure that Bob Gallinipper out. He’s such a money-grubbing asshole. Yet he gave us that strawberry plant when your mother died. I told you how it was from his own grandfather’s grave?”

  “Some people are hard to figure,” Rhea says, trying to figure her father out.

  It’s midafternoon when they finally arrive at the Burgoo County fairgrounds. “Soon as we park the trailer, Joon and I will go over to the midway,” Rhea’s father says. “I think you should stay in the trailer—until we get the lay of the land.”

  Rhea knows what he’s saying. “Until we see if people are going to laugh?”

  “Nobody’s going to laugh, pumpkin seed. Anybody does, I’ll punch them in the nose.”

  “Get their dollar first,” says Rhea. They look at each other and giggle. They feel close. Father and daughter on a great adventure. Saving the farm together.

  Her father parks the house trailer in a flat field west of the fairgrounds. There are dozens of trailers and buses and RVs parked here, homes for the vagabond entrepreneurs who’ll be selling every imaginable enticement during the week ahead. “Joon and I’ll be back soon as we get things set up,” her father says. “Five or six probably. I’ll make hamburgers.”

  For hours Rhea sits at the small table in the front of the trailer, peeking through the venetian blinds that cover the window, watching people come and go. There are healthy girls with freckles and ponytails wearing 4-H tee shirts, pulling cross-eyed goats or carrying cages of rabbits. There are mysterious people with dark Gypsy skin, arms wrapped wide around cardboard boxes of stuffed animals. There are bowlegged farmers in bib overalls, arm-in-arm with pudgy women wearing shapeless dresses. There are skinny men balancing huge cowboy hats on their heads, toting toolboxes and long extension cords. When she turns and looks out the side window, she can see the midway rides, sticking above a row of closely planted evergreens. From the little window in the rear, she can see the animal barns, the long roof of the grandstand, the light poles surrounding the racetrack.

  She tries to nap but can’t. She tries to read from The Conference of the Birds. But the poems don’t sound the same without Mr. Shakyshiver and the hens there to listen. Without Joon there to listen. Joon and her father do not return until eight.

  “Sorry. Took a lot longer than I expected,” her father says. His face and hands are dirty. His hair is soaked with sweat.

  Joon sits across from Rhea. He doesn’t say a word. He is just smiling. Just happy to be there, apparently. He’ll eat with them, and work all day at the exhibit, but he’ll have to sleep in the back of his Gremlin. That’s already been decided.

  “Well, let’s get those hamburgers fried,” her father says. “One or two, Joon?”

  “Two if that’s okay.”

  “Two it is. Rhea, find the Fritos, and the paper plates. We’ll eat better tomorrow. Open a can of fruit cocktail or something. You like fruit cocktail, don’t you Joon?”

  “Sure.”

  “You locked the snow cone wagon, didn’t you? We don’t want anybody walking off with our eggs.”

  “It’s locked.”

  “These midway people are pretty spooky. You should see them, Rhea.”

  “I saw a lot of them from the window.”

  “You kept the door locked, didn’t you?”

  Rhea, tearing open the paper plate bag with her teeth, nods.

  Her father does a good job frying the hamburgers. The Fritos are a little stale. They watch the sky turn purple-black. Watch the midway lights come on. Listen to the hyena-like laughter seeping through the thin walls of the trailer next to theirs. At ten Joon gets the hint and goes off to sleep in the Gremlin.

  “Just remember that I’m proud of you,” her father says.

  “I will,” says Rhea. She puts on the cloak Donna sewed for her, pulls the floppy hood over her head. Donna said the hood was called a cowl. Her father helps her from the trailer. Locks the door. Makes sure it’s really locked. Makes sure that the doors on the pickup are locked and really locked. He takes a fat breath of the French fry grease air. “Let’s go make some money!” he says.

  They enter the midway. The rides are just beginning to crank up. Calliope music is oop-poo-pooping. They pass one exhibit where the world’s smallest horse can be seen for a dollar. A colorfully painted semitrailer promises the world’s largest collection of exotic snakes, featuring Big Liz, a thirty-foot anaconda from the jungles of Brazil. They pass a tiny dark-skinned old woman sitting in a lawn chair, beneath an enormous green-striped umbrella, selling useless carnival junk: tee shirts with cheeky sayings, baseball caps with fake women’s breasts on the brim, fuzzy brown monkeys and shiny pink pigs dangling on sticks, Mylar balloons in the shape of Bugs Bunny and Tweetie Bird, Dayglo sunglasses and cheap jewelry.

  They reach their exhibit.

  “Daddy, your paintings look great,” Rhea says. She saw the canvases when they were hanging in the barn a hundred times. But now, here in the sunlight, surrounded by the colors and sounds and smells of the county fair, they look bigger and brighter. She takes a shy look over her shoulder to see if her father’s artwork is luring any of the fairgoers. None yet. But a few heads are turning.

  They slip under the chain that hangs across the entrance like a smile. Rhea’s father turns on the music. Blimmm … Blimmm.… Blimmm … Blimmm.… the first mournful notes of Pachabel’s Canon in D Major. “Donna decided we should try the Pachabel first,” her father says, turning up the volume. “We’ll go to something peppier if enough people don’t come in.”

  Come in. If enough people don’t come in. The reality of what she’s agreed to do slides up and down her spine like a pizza-cutter. She feels the feathers on her neck sticking out. In just a few minutes her father is going to remove that chain and people are going to hand him dollar bills. They’re going to shuffle around the corner of the canvases and start their gawking and their stupid questions. And this will go on all day, until eleven tonight. And then tomorrow. And then all summer.

  “Well, pumpkin seed,” her father says, “time to get the show on the road.” The wobble in his voice tells her he’s feeling the reality of this thing, too.

  Rhea throws back her cowl and unties the shoe-knot on her cape.

  Joon Faldstool watches the cowl fall away. He focuses on the delicate golden circlet that rests on the back of Rhea’s head like a halo. He has se
en her bare head before, the tiny white feathers cascading in neat rows toward her neck and shoulders. But he has not seen much else of her. And if the painting on the canvas is correct, then he’s about to see quite a bit.

  Rhea finishes untying the knot at her throat. She takes a huge breath and lets it motor-boat from her pursed lips. She peels the cape from her shoulders and then swings it around and jumbles it into a ball and hands it to her father.

  Though he’s standing a good six feet away, Joon’s nostrils have captured Rhea’s seeping breath. He fills his lungs with it and then lets it escape through his own suddenly rubbery lips. The costume is beautiful. She is beautiful.

  Without the baggy sweatshirts and overalls she wears at home, she looks much smaller, thinner, more petite. Petite. That’s the word. The costume is sort of ancient Egyptian. Sort of Olympic figure-skater. It is made of yellowy gold silk. The neckline is high. A V of blue, green, red and silver sequins extends nearly to her waist. Low on her hips is a wide belt of white and gold plastic pearls, clasped by an oval blue stone the size of an Easter egg. The pleated skirt is neither too full nor too snug. It ends just above her knees.

  What Joon looks at most are her feathers. The costume is sleeveless. So he can see her plump upper arms. He can follow the feathers down to her narrow elbows, and down her slender forearms to her wrists, where they fray like frilly cuffs. His eyes drop quickly to her legs. The feathers ruffle over her knees, then descend smoothly over her shins and calves to her ankles where, without the slightest ruffle, they disappear into satin ballet slippers.

  “Wow,” he says without thinking, “you look so cherry.”

  Rhea, embarrassed, explains to her father that cherry means cool.

  “I know what cherry means,” Calvin Cassowary says.

  Yes, Calvin Cassowary knows what cherry means. Knows that Joon didn’t mean cool. Knows that feathers or no feathers, Rhea is a fourteen-year-old girl and Joon, big ears or no big ears, is a sixteen-year-old boy. He remembers the night on Blanket Hill, at Kent State, when he popped Jeanie’s cherry, and his cherry, too. And now he’s got to deal with a sex-crazed boy selling Ice Noggies just three feet from his half-dressed daughter, twelve hours a day, all summer long. Oh, he knows what cherry means.