Better Luck Next Time

by Julia Claiborne Johnson

  “Still a win,” I said. “I’ll take it. But I don’t know where your mother is.”

  “She’s probably having a nap in her room,” Nina said.

  “She’s always asleep lately,” Portia said. “I wonder if she’s coming down with something.”

  “Oh, it’s pretty normal for our guests around about this time,” I said. “Their hearts need rest to mend, the way a sick person’s body does.”

  Nina swept a leg over Dumpling’s rump and slid to the ground. Portia followed her example.

  “Where have you three been?” I asked.

  “Nowhere in particular,” Nina said.

  “At the airport,” Hugh said.

  “None of your business,” Portia said. She gave Hugh the evil eye first, then me, then stomped off to the house, slamming the front door behind herself hard enough to make the windows rattle.

  “What did I say?” Hugh said. “Don’t they call that scrubby path by all the sheds and airplanes an airport? It’s hardly Lambert Field back home, but one must make do with what’s on hand.”

  “The truth is, Ward,” Nina said, “we did go to the airport. It hardly bears mentioning to anybody, but Portia wanted to see my airplane. I let her sit in the cockpit while it was parked in the hangar. Wings still tucked away. In case anybody should ask.”

  “Nina has been trying to get me to go up in that unwieldy beast of hers for years,” Hugh said. “No, thank you. Whereas Portia—”

  “My plane is not unwieldy, Hugh,” Nina snapped. “I’ve never crashed. Never even came close. How many times have you wrecked your bicycle? I can think of three grisly incidents, off the top of my head.”

  “Not as far to fall, my love. You don’t see me wearing a parachute, do you?”

  “More people are killed riding bicycles than—”

  “Look,” I said. “I was just making conversation. Portia’s right. Where you’ve been is none of my business. It is my business, though, if you run off with one of the horses without telling us. It throws everybody else’s schedule off. You ought to know better, Nina. You need to go fess up to Margaret.”

  Nina groaned. “How would she find out? You wouldn’t tell on me, would you?”

  “You know I’m not a snitch. But what do you think the chances are that where you got off to this afternoon won’t come up at dinner?”

  Hugh intervened with, “This whole kerfuffle was my fault, I’m afraid. There was a miscommunication. I meant to carry Nina to the airport on my handlebars. I didn’t realize there would be three of us going. The trouble is, I don’t drive automobiles.”

  “Doesn’t anybody in St. Louis know how to drive a car?” I asked.

  “Between the streetcars and the chauffeurs, there’s really no call for it,” Hugh said breezily. “Well, I’d better be getting back to town. Don’t want to get mowed down by a motorcar, riding my bicycle on a country road after dark. I love you, my darling Nina.” He kissed both her cheeks. When they pulled apart he smiled and touched the strand of pearls around her neck. “I see you’re still wearing the pearls I gave you,” he said.

  “Always,” she said.

  “I knew they’d suit you.”

  “Of course you did.”

  Hugh hopped on his bike. “Toodles,” he said, and cycled off.

  “Thanks, Hugh!” Nina called after him. He waved without looking back at her. Probably a good thing, because Nina was fingering those pearls and giving his retreating back a look of such naked longing that it was almost painful to see.

  Once Hugh was out of earshot, I couldn’t resist asking, “Why are you divorcing this one?”

  “None of your business,” Nina said. She hunched her shoulders and headed for the ranch house.

  When Sam got back from the trail ride that afternoon I explained who’d been behind Dumpling’s disappearance.

  “Figures,” Sam said. He kept nodding for a good long time after he said that. Once we had all the horses and the saddles squared away, he said, “I can’t help but notice that you’re looking rode hard and put up wet these days, Howard. What ails you, friend?”

  I hadn’t told anybody about my parents, but the sympathetic look Sam gave me, combined with the fact that he was calling me Howard, convinced me that he must have found out about their deaths somehow. “How did you know?” I asked.

  “It sounds like you’ve been killing hogs over there in your room every night. It’s too hot out to be killing hogs. Plus we got no hogs here to kill.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I’m worried about you, son,” he said. “Be careful. Like as not these rich ladies will toss you out like a used tissue when they’re done with you.”

  I should have listened to Sam’s advice. That’s the thing about advice, though, isn’t it? You only listen to what people tell you when they say the things you want to hear.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Surprisingly, Emily seemed more rattled by the idea of getting caught than I was. Or maybe she just reveled in the drama of our forbidden connection. Who can say? All I know is that it didn’t take much to spook her.

  “I crept into my room this morning, turned on the light, and almost fainted,” she told me one night in the bunkhouse as she lay across my naked chest. “There it was on my bedroom chair, just looking at me with its beady little eyes. You should have heard me shriek. It’s a wonder I didn’t wake the whole house.”

  “Good thing you didn’t,” I said. I wasn’t ready to lose my job before I’d given some thought to where I might go next. “What was it? A scorpion?”

  She sat up abruptly, pulling my sheet to her chest. “A scorpion? Is that why my bedroom is named Scorpion? Because scorpions live there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “How did you get along with all the coyotes living in your room back when you were sleeping in Coyote? Of course that’s not why your bedroom is named Scorpion. A scorpion is one of those things people think about when they think about the desert. Finish your story, please. What was looking at you?”

  “Bottom. His top, anyway. His head. I’d forgotten all about him. The way his glass eyes catch the light is terrifying. You would have screamed, too, I bet.”

  “I’m sure I would have,” I said, grinning.

  “Just you wait. I’ll show you, and when you least expect it. See if it doesn’t wipe that cocky smile right off your face.”

  So I shouldn’t have been surprised a few days later when I opened the stall door neighboring Dumpling’s and found Emily on the other side wearing boys’ pajamas, red varmint boots, and that donkey’s head. She was kneeling in the midst of a scrum of kittens frolicking around her with joyful abandon.

  I let out a yelp, then slumped against the stable door and started laughing. “Fine. Good. You got me. Congratulations.”

  Emily stood, holding a tortoiseshell kitten, and turned the donkey’s glinting marble-eyed regard on me. I remember noticing she wasn’t sneezing. That’s how it can go with your milder cat allergies—one cat will make you sneeze while another cat will not.

  “Nice touch, by the way, telling me you were going back to the house to take a shower and try to get some sleep,” I said.

  I started to feel uneasy when she didn’t answer. With good cause, as it turned out, since it wasn’t Emily inside Bottom’s head.

  “Portia,” I said after the kid dragged the thing off and glared at me. “I thought you were your mother.”

  “Oh yeah? Why’s that?” she asked.

  “You’re wearing her boots and her pajamas,” I said.

  “These are my boots now. My mother said I could have them. And what do you know about her pajamas?”

  “I help Margaret with the laundry,” I answered with a coolness I did not feel. “We pin everybody’s wash up with clothespins marked with their names so things don’t get mixed up.”

  “So I hear,” Portia said. “Tell me where I should I leave my boots so you can polish them.” She shouldered past, clutching Bottom’s head in one hand and the kitten
in the other.

  I followed her out into the breezeway. “Wait a minute there, miss,” I said. “Where are you going with that kitten? She’s too young to take away from her mother for very long. Best to leave her here.”

  Dumpling poked his head out over his half door and watched us with his ears pricked forward. The old boy was on my side, if you ask me, based on our long-standing relationship. Also Portia was holding the head of a decapitated equine.

  The kid focused on my boots for a good minute or two, considering.

  “Sorry about my boots,” I said. “You can smell them, can’t you? They got soaked with milk, and it went rancid. They stink the worst first thing in the morning. Margaret keeps telling me to go into town and buy another pair, but I haven’t been able to find the time to do it.”

  “Your boots aren’t all that stinks around here,” Portia said. She handed me the kitten, smirked, and said, “Have fun rounding up the others.”

  I realized she hadn’t been looking at my boots. She’d been watching the tortoiseshell kitten’s half dozen siblings make a break for it through the stall door I’d left ajar. She’d waited until the last one was on the lam before she handed over her hostage.

  By the time I made it into the house after chasing down all the kittens, some of the ladies were enjoying their second or fourth cup of coffee and a few had moved out to the porch for cigarettes. “It’s about time you showed up, son,” Sam said as he handed me the coffeepot. “I been busier than a three-legged dog locked in a smokehouse this whole entire morning.”

  Portia came down for breakfast directly. Emily was a no-show, so I pulled out a chair next to Nina for Portia. Instead of thanking me, the kid said, “Look what the cat dragged in,” and took her plate out to the porch.

  Nina looked up at me. “What’s eating her?” she asked.

  I shrugged. I could see Portia through the open window, sitting on the porch stairs and shoveling her breakfast in with one hand while waving cigarette smoke away with the other.

  “Where is that child’s mother?” Zep asked nobody in particular.

  “I think she’s sleeping in, ma’am,” I said. It might have been my imagination, but I felt like Portia’s fork paused midair when I said it.

  “Emily has been sleeping a lot lately,” Mary Louise said. “I wonder if she’s sick.”

  “Morning sick, if you ask me,” the Zeppelin said. “Smart play on her husband’s part if he means to hang on to her, which I gather he’s eager to do.” She rubbed a forefinger and thumb together, making the universal sign for money. “No woman wants to be on her own when there’s a baby on the way.”

  Nina looked up from her plate. “If he’s eager to hang on to her, maybe he ought to stop hanging on to other women.” She snapped a piece of bacon in two. “Emily isn’t pregnant. She’s having trouble sleeping in the heat. That’s all.”

  The Zeppelin made an exasperated sound and wiped her mouth with her napkin. Nina came close to aspirating her coffee when Zep said, “I know you think I’m full of hot air, missy, but not everything I say is wrong just because I’m old. I have a feel for these things, you know. I could list a dozen pregnancies I’ve diagnosed before anyone else was the wiser. Let’s see, there was my good friend Betsy Collins, and—”

  “Please don’t list them for me,” Nina said, as she plucked the last two biscuits from the platter I was on my way to the kitchen to refill. “I wouldn’t know any of them, and even if I did I wouldn’t care. Emily was my roommate until just lately. She had her monthly. End of story.”

  “Say what you will,” Zep said. “I’m usually right about these things.”

  “A stopped clock is right at least twice a day,” Nina said.

  The Zeppelin banged her palm on the table with such force that all the place settings danced. Mary Louise was so startled she spilled milky coffee down her front.

  “Would it kill you, Nina, to go a day without correcting me?” the Zeppelin asked.

  Nina looked at the ceiling as if she were giving the question serious consideration. “I’m afraid it might,” she said. Then she pushed away from the table, took her plate, and headed for the porch as well.

  The Zeppelin called after Nina’s retreating back, “Have some respect for your elders, you impudent hussy!”

  Nina tossed back, “Impudent hussy, huh? Who taught you that zinger? Marie Antoinette?”

  Mary Louise, who was dabbing at her blouse with her napkin, paused mid-dab. “Marie Antoinette?” she said. “I have a set of porcelain that serves fifty that used to belong to Marie Antoinette. The antique dealer who sold it to me said she was queen of France before the Great War. Do you know her?”

  “I’m not quite that old, dear. Here, let me help you with that.” Zep plunged her own napkin in her glass of water and started in on Mary Louise’s blouse.

  “Thank you,” Mary Louise said. “Why doesn’t Nina like you? You’re so nice to everybody.”

  “I think Nina doesn’t like me because she can see how alike we are.” The Zeppelin leaned back to examine her handiwork.

  Mary Louise tucked her chin to look down her shirtfront. “Did we get it all?” she asked.

  “Almost,” Zep said. “It’s more than that, of course. Nina’s so hurt and unhappy and mad at life. And young. I have been there. I would not be her age again, or yours. No, thank you.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t have let myself lose my temper. That wasn’t nice. What I was really doing”—she paused to dunk her napkin again—“was shaking my fist at my younger self for wasting so many years worrying about things over which I have no control.”

  Good old Zep. I ducked into the kitchen and came out with more biscuits, said, “Straight from the oven, ma’am,” when I offered her the platter, and asked if she’d like me to refresh her coffee while I refilled Mary Louise’s cup. The Zeppelin nodded as she blew on her fingers after dropping a hot biscuit on her plate.

  “I’m going to change my shirt,” Mary Louise said, picking up her coffee and hesitating long enough to kiss Zep on top of her head as she passed by. We only had a dozen or so people at the ranch at one time, guests and staff included, but we had enough cups to serve fifty, à la Marie Antoinette, as our ladies left them everywhere. Margaret claimed not to mind their carelessness. It transformed a humdrum day of housekeeping into an Easter egg hunt, she always said.

  It was just the two of us in the dining room after that, Zep and me. I moved around the table, gathering up abandoned plates, while she buttered her biscuit lavishly. Then she erupted with, “Zeppelin! Ha!”

  For a horrible moment I wondered if I’d called her by her nickname without realizing I had done it.

  “That’s what she calls me, you know,” she continued.

  “Who does?” I asked, feigning innocence.

  “Nina. Who else? Let me tell you something, Ward.” Zep wiped her face with her napkin. “I’d rather be a dirigible than a bag of bones. Slender women shrivel up like raisins as they age. I don’t find that withered look attractive. Do you?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, and pushed through the swinging doors with my armload of empty plates. In the safety of the kitchen, I wiped my brow with one of the used napkins I’d harvested from the table. It wasn’t the last time I would regret my immature unkindness, always mentally referring to that pneumatic, good-natured woman as “the Zeppelin.” A score of years later, when I was finally able to buy my parents’ house back for the future generations of Bennetts I never ended up having, Zep was one of the people I most wished I could tell. Take that as a lesson, will you? In this life there will be those you may dismiss on first meeting who you’ll grow very fond of eventually. Given that, it’s wise and best to treat everyone you come across with equal measures of kindness.

  Through the kitchen window that opened onto the porch that fateful morning, I could see Nina leaning against a column, holding her breakfast plate in one hand and wiping her cheeks with her napkin. Sweat? Tears? I didn’t have the unwavering courage of my con
victions that Zep had, so I couldn’t have said for sure.

  When I was back in the dining room gathering up the last of the plates, I heard the roar of an engine pulsing up the ranch house drive. I looked out the dining room window again in time to see Nina straighten up, smile, and wave. “Ahoy, Hugh!” she called out.

  Her smile, I noted, didn’t make it all the way to her eyes.

  Somehow, somewhere, Hugh had acquired a motorcycle with a sidecar. Also a pair of goggles, and a gauzy scarf he’d tied over his boater to keep it from blowing off his head. “It is a noisy cuss, compared to my bicycle,” he said to Sam and me when he was showing it off to us. “But I suppose that doesn’t matter so long as I’m not trying to sneak up on anybody. It is somewhat wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “Somewhat,” Sam said.

  “Go on,” Hugh said. “Give it a straddle.”

  “Oh, no,” Sam said. “Not for me. Although I would like to try that bicycle of yours out sometime.”

  “We’ll have to make that happen, won’t we?”

  Hugh was waiting for Nina and Portia while they gathered up their things for their day’s adventure. Emily stumbled out onto the porch in her pajamas before they emerged, her curls in mad disarray and a sleep mask perched on top of the tangle like one of those ridiculous little pancake hats the British call a “fascinator.” She looked like a woman out for blood.

  “I had finally, finally fallen asleep,” she said. She cast an indignant upraised palm at Hugh and the motorcycle. “Is this what was making that infernal racket?”

  Hugh’s face fell. “Oh, dear,” he said. “So sorry. I hadn’t thought it possible that anybody might still be sleeping at this late hour. I promised I’d take Nina and Portia out to the airport today, and alas, a bicycle built for three is not to be had in all of Reno.”

  “The airport?” Emily asked.

  “Did I say ‘airport’? Ah. My mistake. When I think ‘Nina’ the word I think of next is ‘airport.’ I meant ‘desert.’ We’re off in search of the route of the Pony Express. Nina and I whiled away many an afternoon in my tree house when we were young’uns, reading aloud to each other from dime novels that described those brave and lightweight fellows’ acts of derring-do. Both of us were desperate to ride for that service, but I believe at eleven we were both already too tall to qualify for the job. I was always one to remind Nina that they wouldn’t have taken her anyway because she was a girl, until one day she shoved me out of the tree house. Nothing broken, luckily, though I did end up with some painful bruises. Ah. Here come my ladies now. Nina. Portia. Your chariot awaits.”