Lunch in the school cafeteria was a noisy, risky affair - especially if you were not one of the “cool kids,” who enjoyed the social status that afforded them their own table. It wasn’t that you couldn’t sit there; it was more like when they reserved the front pews in church for a wedding - seats were saved for the people who mattered most, and for the girls who wore ribbons in their hair and dimes in their penny loafers. You knew if you belonged, and Lily knew she didn’t. But perhaps today they would invite her to sit with them. Now that they knew what an interesting summer Lily had spent, they would probably want to hear more. And once they got to know Lily better, it wouldn’t matter so much that she was poor; maybe she could even invite Mary or Midge to come along to the farm next summer. In a year or two, getting invited down to the farm for the Orleans County Fair would be cooler than getting invited to Peggy Donnelly’s boy-girl party.
Lily stood with her tray, giving the rich girls enough time to notice her. But they just kept talking among themselves and didn’t even acknowledge Lily’s presence. She could just walk over there and sit down. It wasn’t like there was a rule or a law or anything that said she couldn’t sit with them if she wanted to. Why not? She could just walk over there and sit down.
“So how is everyone doing today?” she could say.
“Hi, Lily,” they would say. “We loved your essay about the farm, but it was so sad about that baby bull. Come sit with us and tell us more about what it’s like to swim in a real pond. By the way,” they would add, “LOVE your new shoes!”
“Take a seat, little missy.” The lunch lady placed her arm around Lily’s shoulder and directed her to her usual table. “Keep the aisle clear, now.”
Safely planted in a seat next to Barbie Hooke - a girl who had almost as many sisters as Lily had - Lily devoured her lunch, all the while torn between the desires to fill her belly and to savor the delight of a mouthful of soft dough, sweet tomato sauce, and chewy mozzarella cheese that you can only get from pizza. That was the bad part about having something really delicious to eat: before you knew it, it was gone and you didn’t have it anymore.
Lily got up from her seat to deposit her used but very clean tray, which now held only an empty milk carton, a paper straw wrapper, several tomato sauce-stained paper napkins, a plastic plate, and a set of stainless steel flatware. As she passed by one of the boys’ tables, she heard, “Moooooooo.....” She turned just in time to see William Nolan drawing a straw out from his milk carton, his index finger sealing the end of it to keep the milk inside.
“Hey, Farmer Lily!” William called. “Here’s your milk!” With that, William placed the straw into his mouth, pointed it at Lily, and blew, spewing milk all over her shoes.
As Lily bent over to wipe the milk up from in between the beautiful leather fringe, all of the items from her lunch tray slid off and fell to the floor with a resounding clatter. The children all erupted into applause. Refusing to look up, Lily collected her things, placed them back onto the tray and walked away.
“Moooo....” William repeated, to a chorus of adolescent boy laughter.
Lily watched her lunch tray as it was carried away on the conveyor belt, which was spattered and streaked with remnants of spilled pudding, applesauce, and creamed corn. At the other end, the tray disappeared past a rubber curtain behind which the secret inner workings of the school kitchen took place. She imagined putting William on the belt, and sending him through the curtain, where the kitchen ladies would take off all of his clothes and spray him with their dishwasher hoses. William’s screams would disappear into a cloud of steam and hot water, as the ladies scrubbed him with their steel brushes. Scrub that smirk right off of his face.
From: Iris Capotosti
To: Lily Capotosti
Sent: Wed, May 5, 2010 at 7:47 PM
Subject: The Farm
Dear Lily,
Where did you come up with that stuff? I know this is just supposed to be a story about our story, but we should probably try to get some basic facts straight.
First of all, I think you’re a little confused about how the whole farm “vacation” happened. The year Nancy and Bill came for a slice of Grandma’s birthday cake and left with two child slaves was the first time we went out to the farm. We got off easy with just a week that time, even though Mom and Dad probably would have been just as happy to ship us off for the whole summer. The year we were set up with those cows to show at the County Fair was the second time we went. And the last.
I don’t know where you were when you drank from those frosty pitchers of sweet iced tea you mention. The only thing I remember drinking was thick milk poured out from those aluminum jugs (you’re right about farmers and aluminum), and it was way too fresh for my suburban palate. It tasted exactly the way the barn smelled, and it was never cold enough. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember even opening the refrigerator in Nancy’s kitchen. Maybe we weren’t allowed. But I do remember coming home starving from afternoon chores, and asking Nancy what was for dinner. She always gave the same answer: “Shit on a stick.”
As for the cows, they made a heck of a first impression on us, thanks to the way they stood and stared belligerently when we tried to get them to budge, the way they looked as though they would trample us when they finally did move, the way they nonchalantly defecated on us whenever we were within range. It wasn’t until you fell in love with little Toro the following year that you had any sympathy at all for the beasts. Which brings me to the next point. As soon as “Campbell Soup Bill” clued you in as to the untimely fate that awaited Toro (funny how you remember the Muppet monikers he bestowed upon us, and I the derogatory ethnic terms of endearment), you came down with one of those stomachaches that so conveniently got you out of situations you didn’t want to be in.
You weren’t being of any help moaning and groaning all day, and Nancy sure as heck didn’t want to be stuck nursing a sick child, so she called Mom and told her to come and pick you up. When she caught me packing my blue valise, she went and called Bill, and he summoned me out back for a walk. I remember him towering over me, and chewing on a stalk of grass while he lectured me on the meaning of responsibility, the importance of duty, and basically doing his darnedest to make me feel guilty about all that time he and Nancy had invested teaching us how to prance our heifers around the ring. Needless to say, I got stuck staying until after the fair, while you got to go back home. For the record, I really worked hard with Betsy and Masie for that show, and that’s why I came away with a red ribbon (not a blue one). Still, I felt bad you didn’t get one, so when I spotted the box where they kept them, up by the judge’s stand, I decided to sneak into the arena while everyone else was over watching the greased pig contest. I fished a ribbon out of the box to bring home to you, but you didn’t even seem to care. That’s how it ended up in your underwear drawer.
By the way, the day after you left, I was so upset I started crying out there in the hen house while I was gathering the morning’s eggs dipped in poop and plastered with feathers, that I must not have latched the door properly when I left, because Misty broke in afterwards and massacred at least a dozen hens. Bill said once a pointer tastes chicken blood, it keeps going back for more. So he took out his shotgun and killed him, right then and there.
The thing that still really irks me was that after they finally let me go home, I looked up Miltonville in that atlas I kept under the bed, and I realized it was within spitting distance of Lake Silver. And the only place they let me swim was that stinking mud hole.
C’est la vie, I guess.
Love,
Iris
P.S. What was a priest doing talking to a class of fourth graders about homosexuality??
From: Lily Capotosti
To: Iris Capotosti
Sent: Thu, May 6, 2010 at 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: The Farm
Iris:
Honestl
y, I know there are holes in my memory, but at least I admit them. The simple fact that you even remember so much in such great detail and are so completely sure of how things transpired is a little suspect, don’t you think? Who remembers the events of 40 years ago with such precision and clarity?
Anyway, I am sure of the main points that I do remember. I remember getting sick, but it was because I had a stomach bug, not because of what Bill told me about Toro. I threw up all afternoon once I got home, and I felt terrible that they made you stay - I never even would have let Mom come and get me if I thought for one second they wouldn’t let you come, too. Why did you let Bill make you stay? Did Mom know he was making you stay against your will? I thought I was providing the perfect excuse for both of us to get the hell out of there. In your vast record of the facts, do you happen to remember why you didn’t say anything?
“For the record” - I do remember “shit on a stick” and that awful warm milk with brown streaks in it, and how Nancy poured us a full glass at dinner and wouldn’t let us up from the table until we drank it all.
HE SHOT THE DOG?! Did that really happen? How can it be that I never heard about this until now? I can no more believe that you would make it up than I can believe that I would forget hearing about it.
I know I shouldn’t insist that I “won” that pathetic white ribbon, but believing that I did is still more appealing than the idea that you put it in my dresser drawer. Seriously, if you were going to steal a ribbon for me, why the hell would you steal me a third place one? All during my childhood, it was one more reminder to me that I wasn’t as good as you were. I can convince myself of that all on my own, but thanks anyway.
Lily
PS: Father Delaney was a pervert. I still remember his lectures on masturbation before I even knew what it was - let alone that it never even occurred to me to try it until he gave me the idea.
15. Iris
Iris’s chin was tilted to the sky, her right arm raised and elbow bent in military fashion, her hand sliced across her forehead to shield her bespectacled eyes against the glare of the midsummer sun. The lower the plane descended, the higher her excitement soared, until at last, through squinting eyes she was able to discern the lettering on the fuselage of the orange aircraft as it approached for landing.
“That’s it, Mom!” she cried. The crescendo of emotion, now uncontainable, jettisoned her several inches off the concrete floor of the open air observation deck. “I saw the letters!” she said, hopping in place. “A capital B and a capital I, just like you told me!” As the Braniff International flight from St. Louis touched down in a high-pitched whir of speed-arresting maneuvers, she cupped her hands over her ears, until it slowed to a roll, then finally screeched to a halt.
“Yay! Grandma’s here! Grandma’s here!” Lily cried. She and Iris joined hands, encircling their mother, as they jumped up and down, giggling with joy.
“Girls! Girls!” their mother said, as Iris and Lily skipped in circles around her as if she were a maypole, chanting “Grandma Whitacre! Grandma Whitacre!” It wasn’t clear to Iris whether their mother’s softly pronounced words were intended to scold or encourage them, but the smile on her lips told her she was happy, too.
Although Grandma Whitacre’s visit meant that the two youngest Capotosti girls were forced to relinquish the meager claim to privacy their bedroom afforded, remove all their clothes from their closet, and sleep on a mattress on the sunroom floor, Iris and Lily had been counting the days until her arrival. Just between themselves, the girls confessed to rather liking the idea of camping out in the sunroom, which was their favorite spot in the whole house, with its uninterrupted row of windows, its record player, and its separate exit complete with stoop for sitting and talking while watching the comings and goings of life on Chestnut Crest. To sweeten the deal, their parents had ruled that access to the sunroom would be restricted exclusively to Iris and Lily for the duration of Grandma Whitacre’s stay. Sacrificing their room also gave the girls more bargaining power to obtain special privileges, like being the only ones allowed to come to the airport. Who could say what other benefits they might reap, if they played their cards right, as Auntie Rosa would say.
The only contact they had with their maternal grandmother between visits was on their birthdays, when she mailed them one of those fancy store-bought cards. The cards she sent the boys always had pictures of dogs or cars or horses on them, but the cards she sent the girls always had pictures of the flowers they were named after on the front, and wishes that rhymed like poetry on the inside. It was already a huge treat for Iris to receive an envelope addressed to her personally, but when she saw all those extra postage stamps, and weighed the card in her hand, a thrill always shot through her. It was hard not to be excited, knowing that behind the pretty picture of a purple iris, the real Iris would find four quarters taped to the inside of the card. Even if it only came once a year, birthday money was better than weekly allowance, because the amount never varied, no matter how old you were, or how well you performed your chores, which Grandma would never be able to keep track of anyway, way down there in Independence.
Grandma Whitacre entered their lives with a flair again at Christmas, when she sent the Capotostis the biggest box of Russell Stover chocolates Iris ever saw. When their mother ceremoniously lifted the lid and removed the white sheet of padding, unveiling the neat rows of chocolates, some dark, some light, sitting in their fluted brown cups, the divine smell was almost too much for a body to bear. As Iris’s eyes lingered over the tantalizing assortment of goodies in the box, she was inundated with mouth-watering expectations of crispy, nutty, and caramel fillings, yet always a bit wary when she recalled how easily those expectations might be crushed, when the one chocolate you were allowed to pick out each day turned out to be filled with maple cream or jelly. Sometimes, when her mother opened that box, Iris wished time would stand still, and the chocolates could remain untouched forever, allowing her to remain suspended in a state of blissful anticipation and non-disappointment.
Iris always wrote to Grandma Whitacre to thank her when the gifts arrived, and sometimes at other times of the year, too. She thought there was something quite exotic about having a grandmother in Missouri, and the idea of corresponding with someone so far away stirred a sense of adventure in Iris. She found letter-writing especially satisfying when her mother allowed her to use a sheet of her boxed stationery and a matching envelope, instead of the ruled paper Iris used for school and one of the long white envelopes her father used for paying bills. The joy she felt weeks later upon opening the latch of the mailbox at the end of the driveway, and finding a reply, with the name “Miss Iris Capotosti” in her grandmother’s spidery scrawl on the envelope was every bit worth the money she used to buy the postage stamp.
And now she would get to see Grandma again in person! A stair was wheeled to the side of the jet, the door hatch was opened, and even before she could spot her grandmother, Iris could smell the sweet cloud of White Shoulders perfume that trailed her everywhere she went. Iris strained her neck to catch a glimpse of the stewardess standing at the top of the stairs, looking sharp and sophisticated in her trim blue dress and matching pumps. Iris was fascinated that a woman could pursue such a career instead of being a teacher or nurse, a nun or a mother. Though Iris hoped one day she might fly on a plane herself, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t want to be a stewardess, unless maybe Lily was one, too, and they could travel together to some of those places they saw in the atlas.
Until recently, Iris had thought she would be too terrified to ever fly, but after the school’s spring field trip to the county airport, she had started thinking it might not be so scary, after all. The day before the outing, the students had been informed that they would be simulating a real departure on a plane. Iris could hardly sleep that night, and when she got off the bus at the airport with the rest of the class and followed Sister Brigida to the departures wing, her heart was thumping so hard she was sure everyone could hear it.
By the time she presented herself at the check-in desk with her blue valise and was assigned a seat, she was flushed and sweaty, but before she could chicken out, she had boarded the plane, and a smiling stewardess with bobbed blond hair greeted her saying, “Right this way, Miss Capotosti,” and showed her to her seat. She was just starting to feel at ease, when the stewardess came by and showed them how to fasten their seat belts, like the announcement instructed them. Iris felt butterflies in her stomach and a sweaty itch in the palms of her hands, even though she knew no one was going to take them anywhere in that plane, not even across the street to the frozen custard stand. The stewardess must have picked up on Iris’s state of agitation, because when she came by with a tray full of individually wrapped pieces of gum, she winked at Iris and told her she could take two sticks, one for takeoff, and one for landing.
The taste of a fresh piece of Juicy Fruit exploding in her mouth worked wonders to chase away her anxiety, and by the time the pilot came sauntering down the aisle, Iris wished she could stay on the plane all day. She would certainly trust such a nice man in such a nifty uniform to pilot the plane safely, she thought, as she observed him stopping now and then to exchange a few words with the students. He was a bit taller and slightly younger than her father, but not much, with eyes as blue as the sky. His white shirt with pilot’s stripes on the sleeves set off the deep tan of his muscular arms and square-jawed face, making Iris wonder where he had spent his winter. Maybe he had flown to Florida or California, or even as far away as Hawaii. She was dying to ask him, but wasn’t sure whether questions like that were allowed, or even polite. Besides, when he approached Iris and smiled one of the brightest smiles Iris had ever seen, and touched the rim of his cap and nodded as if she were a grownup lady, and to top it all off said, “Good morning, Miss!” right to her face, her tongue got all wrapped up in the Juicy Fruit, and all she could do was stare back at him like a nincompoop.
The Complete Series Page 24
