“Boys,” Elsie yelled from the front pew. “Stop it this instant! You will not ruin this affair with your juvenile antics! So help me Jesus, I’m telling you right now if you dare embarrass me tomorrow after all I’ve done, there will be hell to pay! My apologies Father,” she threw in, although Nan didn’t think the mea culpa was meant to cover her mother’s language. Just the boys’ bad behavior.
Reverend Flaherty nodded with a slightly bewildered expression and led a brief prayer for the following day. Truth be told though, he didn’t look all that hopeful as he said his amen.
Some time later, seated at the rehearsal dinner, Nan snuck a glance in her mother’s direction. Elsie sat on the other side of the plastic red-checked tablecloth and was preoccupied with studying her impeccable manicure. From the downturn of her lips though, she appeared to be thinking of anything else. What that might be, as usual, was a mystery to Nan, but she was relieved the focus wasn’t on her for a change.
Joe sat to the left of Nan’s mother and was engaged in boring the hell out of John and Michelle with some story about how much money he earned successfully defending a high profile client from a manslaughter charge. Nan’s stepfather was the only guy she knew who could get excited over a serial rapist showing up at his door if, of course, said rapist had deep enough pockets.
At the other end of the table, Arthur and Laura were seated across from Laura’s parents making small talk. Nan couldn’t imagine how Laura’s father and mother had felt when Elsie hijacked the wedding plans. Although they were the bride’s parents, they were of little means, which was exactly the turn of phrase her mother indelicately used when explaining to them why she and Joe were taking over.
Nan fiddled with her straw, swirling it aimlessly around her tumbler of soda. She listened to scraps of conversation, but joined none. CJ sat next to her busily stacking foil wrapped pats of butter into unsteady towers. As had been the case with her mother, he hadn’t said much to Nan after getting sick in the yard. She asked him if he was feeling better on the ride to the church and he’d quietly said yes. That had been the extent of their interaction. Watching his small hands, fingers still pudgy with baby fat, she wondered if a day would come that he would no longer remember her failings. Of course, that meant at some point she would have to stop failing, and after today’s episode with the cookies, that seemed like kind of a long shot.
Buddy, sitting to her left, whispered in her ear and the unexpected interruption of her thoughts made her jump.
“Wanna’ sneak out for a butt? It’s gonna’ be a while before the food gets here.”
Nan looked around the full dining room and thought that was a serious understatement.
“Right behind you,” she replied.
Buddy got up and left first. He was long beyond his mother’s ability to have her say and there was no need for him to make excuses to go out and smoke. Nan waited until he was out of sight before telling no one in particular she was going to the ladies room. CJ glanced up at her disinterestedly before going back to his butter. She resisted the urge to tousle his hair.
“Leaving already?” Joe asked. “The bill isn’t here yet you know,” he guffawed.
Nan rolled her eyes wondering for the millionth time why her mother ever married him. She looked at Elsie to see if she would say something in Nan’s defense, but her mother’s still dark and narrow eyes told Nan there would be no defending tonight.
She turned and made her way through the rows of closely set tables, begging pardons and issuing apologies as she bumped into the backs of chairs and cautiously skirted around waitresses loaded down with trays of fried seafood. As she entered the foyer she could hear Elvis singing ‘Love Me Tender’ through a sound system unable to pierce the noise in the dining room. Bubbling fish tanks full of pick-your-own lobsters ringed the room and a line of people waiting to be seated snaked out the door. Nan walked past them and stepped outside, wishing immediately that she’d worn something warmer than the thin white blouse and black knee length skirt she’d chosen. The day might have been unseasonably warm, but the brisk evening could not mask that it was autumn in New England.
“Over here Nana-banana,” Buddy called from the edge of the parking lot.
In the fading light her brother’s dark curls looked raven. Despite Joe’s constant stream of thinly veiled insults regarding beatniks and hippies, Buddy wore his hair on the long side just past his ears. For the occasion, he had given up his customary jeans and white t-shirt for a black turtle neck and tan dress pants, although still wore his signature black leather jacket. Buddy was handsome no matter his clothing and had no shortage of dates when he wanted them. But there was an edge to him that had kept any one girl from getting too close. Nan hoped that someday he’d finally let someone in and prayed that her own ordeal hadn’t sharpened his edges even more.
“Nana-banana?” Nan replied walking toward him. “Really Buddy? What are we, like twelve?”
“Haha. Better than ‘Fry-Pan-Nan’, ain’t it?” he asked, resurrecting one of the aggravating nicknames Arthur and John called her when they were kids in reference to her, at the time, flat chest.
“Only a bit Buddy-boy,” she said pawing through her purse. “A tiny bit.”
Nan found her cigarettes and Buddy lit one for her with a silver butane flip-top.
“So how are you?” he asked, cupping one hand around the flame as she inhaled. Buddy’s dark eyes, brown, not green like Nan’s, searched her face in the flickering light. The question wasn’t really a ‘hey, how are you doing’ check in, but a probing connected to the events that had brought Nan back to Portsmouth two years before. Events that Buddy was inextricably linked to. She sighed knowing he would have no idea how long something like what she’d been through stuck with a person and so wouldn’t really know when to stop asking.
“Just fine,” she replied. “Really,” she insisted when Buddy’s expression stayed blank. “How are things on the waterfront?” she asked, trying to deflect Buddy’s inquiry.
Buddy was Assistant Port Director on the same docks their father had worked for years. Although he’d started in the warehouse with Sam before the accident that took Sam’s life, Buddy hadn’t been satisfied to remain a dock hand forever, or even for a while. He worked hard for his promotions and after the second of many, Nan remembered feeling a little glad that their father had already been gone. She thought Sam might have been humiliated to see Buddy soar past him in a matter of just a few years.
“Same circus, different clowns,” he said in a voice and tone reminiscent of their father. She conjured up images of garishly painted faces and found the creepy factor apropos to describe his cohorts. The nature of his job required Buddy to sometimes look away as certain things shipped in and out of the port, but that side of the business was as old as the business itself. She understood that it was this underbelly of the beast that allowed her brother to help her the time she needed it the most. Nan did not believe herself in any position to judge.
“And how’s she been,” Buddy asked cocking his head toward the restaurant.
“Oh just peachy,” Nan replied rolling her eyes. “Let’s just say the sooner she and Joe get out of town after this thing, the happier I’ll be.”
“Yeah, I hear you. Sunday, right?”
“Yup. With any luck, they’ll be gone before I get up. You’ll come and have dinner with CJ and me one night, won’t you?” she asked.
“Course. Just don’t be makin’ any shit on a shingle.”
Nan laughed. Creamed chipped beef on toast had been a staple in their childhood but after their mother married Joe, it was a thing of the past and an unimaginable proposition now.
“I’ve been thinking about getting a job,” Nan surprised herself by saying. Although she had been toying with the idea for weeks, it was the first time she said it aloud, at least to anyone other than her reflection in the mirror.
“I did pretty well as a cashier you know,” she continued at Buddy’s cocked eyebrow. “I’m
good with numbers. Maybe Newberry’s would hire me back.”
“That should go over well,” Buddy replied sarcastically. Their mother had only worked a short time in her life, just long enough to land Joe, and now that money was no object the idea of a woman working when one didn’t have to was something Elsie couldn’t wrap her arms around.
“I have to do something Buddy. I’m going crazy in that house. I mean, I love spending time with CJ, but mama’s driving me nuts. I want to save up some money, you know, maybe save enough to get a place for me and CJ.”
“Really?” he replied. “You think you’re ready for that?” His tone told Nan that he was unconvinced.
“Jesus Buddy, how long can I keep going like this? I feel like I’m fading away. Some days it’s like I barely exist and that a good strong wind would send pieces of me scattering in all different directions. And as long as mama’s around CJ all the time, I don’t stand a chance.”
“I know it ain’t easy Nan. Ma’s a hurricane at times. But no matter what, she loves CJ. That bein’ said, maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time to start thinkin’ forward for a change.”
Now that the wisp of her daydream had been given voice, and Buddy seemed to support it, Nan thought maybe it could actually happen. But then, just like that and without any malice intended, Buddy threw ice water on it.
“As long as it ain’t too far forward,” he said.
He didn’t have to say more for her to understand his meaning. Getting a job, maybe building some kind of life with CJ was okay. But only with CJ. Anything, or anyone, more would be unthinkable.
“Oh for Christ sake, I get it,” Nan snapped. “I do,” she said a little more softly at Buddy’s surprised expression.
“Look little sista’,” his tone softened. “I don’t want you to be unhappy. You gotta’ believe me. But things are different now. You know that. I’m only trying to protect you and CJ.”
Nan wanted to ask if that was all. If maybe there wasn’t a hint of self preservation at play here as well. The thought made her feel instantly ashamed. Buddy put his life on the line, still had his life on the line for her, and always would. If he was mildly interested in saving his own skin, wasn’t that a very small price for her to pay and worthy of her gratitude?
“I know,” she sighed. “I’m sorry for snapping at you. All I’m thinking about is a job and a place so maybe someday I can be a real mother to CJ. Nothing else. I swear.”
He flashed a smile at her before loping his arm around her neck and giving her a quick noogie on the top of her head.
“Buddy stop!” she yelled, pulling away and trying to fix her hair.
“You’re going to be a-okay,” he said, letting her go. She jumped, a little spooked. Those were the very first words he uttered when he came to her rescue in Portland. She asked the same thing now as she had then:
“How do you know?”
“Bower power Nan. We know how to fight and we know how to win,” he replied in an unexpectedly solemn voice. This had also been his response two years before.
It was a reminder to her that no matter how much time passed, some moments lived and breathed in one’s soul as true and real as when they transpired. Some were treasures and some were trials, but together they defined reality. The question was, did she have enough strength to move beyond them and forge on with her life, or would they continue to keep her standing still? She didn’t have the answer to that yet.
Nan followed Buddy back through the restaurant to the table where Elsie had taken center stage. She was vivaciously sharing the story of that morning’s trouble with the movers and painted a picture of heroism against unrelenting waves of ineptitude that threatened her very being. As she took her seat, Nan found Elsie’s exaggerations irritating yet entertaining and she wondered nervously whether or not her mother would go so far as to include the cookie incident. With Elsie’s penchant for dramatic flair, Nan would undoubtedly be skewered. Before it could get that far though, Arthur abruptly interrupted.
“Hey…oh hey!” he blurted. “I forgot to tell you who I ran into this week!”
“Arthur George,” Elsie said with irritation. “I wasn’t finished!”
In a way that was uncustomary for Arthur, ever the respectful one, he went on as if he hadn’t heard their mother’s reproach. He looked from Buddy to Nan with an excited grin.
“Charlie Parker!” he exclaimed. “Remember him?”
Nan’s thoughts spiraled back to a place in time when her father was still alive and the house was the tired clapboard structure of her childhood. She pushed away dusty memories buried far below her bad times, all the way back to her eighth year. There were thousands of things she wanted to say, but all she could muster was:
“Of course I remember…”
Chapter 3
“FIRE! Nan wake up, there’s a fire!”
Arthur shook her frantically. Nan opened her eyes and briefly registered the panic in her brother’s face before he ran from her bedroom. She leaped from her bed, fear blowing away the last wisp of whatever dream she’d been having, and without thinking she grabbed the shoebox full of her paper dolls from under her bed. It was all she could think of to save.
Heart pounding, Nan ran as fast as she could down the stairs. Did her mother get out? What about Buddy? Her mind raced frantically and it wasn’t until she rounded the corner of the living room where Arthur and John were doubled over in laughter that Nan realized she’d been had.
Her mouth fell open and she began to sputter when her brothers shrieked,
“April Fools!”
“I’m telling!” was all she could muster before bursting into tears and running off to find her mother.
Elsie was in the kitchen cracking an egg when Nan stormed in. In her distress, Nan didn’t notice the circles under her mother’s eyes or the slight tremble in her lip.
“What’s the matter?” Elsie asked. “Are you hurt?”
“Arthur and John said there was a fire!” Nan cried, indignation creeping into her voice. “They scared the daylights outta’ me! I…I think they mighta’ gave me a heart attack,” she said clasping the box of paper dolls to her heaving chest.
Elsie sighed and pressed her lips. She smoothed her apron with flour covered hands and Nan thought her mother was going to get the wooden spoon. Elsie never hit them hard with it, but deliberate enough to let them know that she could make it hurt if she wanted to. Most of the time she just waved it around for effect, but every once in awhile the paddle found its target. Good, Nan thought. I hope they both get it for real. But Elsie didn’t reach for the spoon.
“Boys!” she shouted instead. “Come in here, now!”
John and Arthur skulked slowly into the kitchen, eyes glued to the floor and identical cowlicks bobbing.
“Yes ma’am?”
“What on earth were you thinking scaring your sister like that?”
“C’mon ma,” John said. “It’s April Fools Day. We were just havin’ a little fun.”
“This is what you call a little fun?” Elsie said, gesturing toward Nan’s wet cheeks. “Well your fun could very well cost Nan her life someday.”
Neither of the boys said a word. At first, Nan had been mostly glad her brothers were in trouble, but a niggling worry started to blossom. This situation had payback potential written all over it. No matter that her brothers started it, if their mother came down on them too hard, Nan would most definitely pay for it later.
“I’m okay now mama,” she interrupted. “They were just being stupid. See? Look, my heart’s just fine now,” Nan said, tapping her chest.
“Nan,” Elsie replied, her stare still fixed on the boys. “What your brothers did was beyond irresponsible. What if there really is a fire someday and you don’t listen to them because you think it’s a joke? What if you die because of it?”
Uh-oh, she thought.
“Okay you two,” Elsie said, dropping the hammer. “I think that a month in your room will give you plenty of time
to think about just how careless your behavior was. Thirty days, beginning right now.”
“But…but…but…,” Arthur sputtered. “It was just a joke! It’s…It’s…It’s April Fools Day!”
“A month? Ma, you gotta’ be kidding!” John chimed in. “Baseball starts in a couple of weeks!”
“Mama,” Nan said, moving in to defend her brothers in earnest. Self preservation was still a motive, but she also didn’t think her mother needed to go bananas. Even a quick whack with the wooden spoon would have ended it right then and there, but a whole month and missing preseason was over the top.
Elsie smirked.
“April…Fools,” she said dryly.
It took a minute before Nan realized her mother was kidding.
“Holy smokes ma,” John said. “Whew, a month…that was a good one, that’s for sure,” he said, laughing unsteadily.
“You better believe it, my boy,” Elsie replied. “Now get out of my kitchen and behave yourselves. Go upstairs and tell Buddy breakfast will be ready soon.”
The boys ran off and Elsie turned to Nan looking serious.
“You know Nan,” she started. “Gullibility is a woman’s worst enemy. For goodness sake, use your senses and don’t run off half cocked without knowing your situation. If you had spent one second taking stock this morning, you would have realized that there was no smoke, and where there’s no smoke, there’s no fire. And if there had been a fire, your rash behavior could have led you right into the middle of it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Nan's Story Page 3
