“Me and Mun-ro want va-nil-la,” Willie Lee said. “Cor-rine says dogs should not ev-er have choc-o-late.”
Marilee only then remembered the dog and looked down to see him already curled beneath Willie Lee’s feet, as if knowing that he would need to be quiet and unseen to remain.
Aunt Vella took a cursory look around the end of the counter, then said, “We surely can’t leave Munro out.”
“No, we can-not,” Willie Lee said.
“Is your choice chocolate, too?” Aunt Vella asked Corrine.
Corrine frowned in contemplation.
“I’ll give you another minute.” Aunt Vella went about lining up four dishes and making the sundaes—cherry for Corrine, it turned out. While doing this, she threw conversation over her shoulder, telling about the Rose Club meeting held the previous evening—“We had ten people!”—and how they had already voted as a first project to plant roses around the Welcome to Valentine signs at each end of town.
“Winston and I are goin’ up to Lawton tomorrow to buy bushes,” Vella reported, feeling increasing excitement with the telling.
She had been very pleased with the respectable turnout of people for the first rose club meeting, and felt a glow that her idea of a rose club had proven out. Especially after Perry had rather pooh-poohed the idea as frivolous. She almost had not pursued the idea, after his attitude, but it had turned out that a number of people, such as their mayor’s wife, Kaye Upchurch, had liked the idea immensely. While Kaye Upchurch could be on the frivolous side, she was truly knowledgeable about what was good for the town. Her enthusiasm for the Rose Club’s place in the community was heartening.
Vella was also becoming more and more excited about going up to Lawton with Winston. She had never been anywhere with Winston, outside of her own backyard or here at the store.
“We’d like to get the bushes in the ground soon. It’s already so late to be planting,” she added, bringing her thoughts back to the moment. “We could very well get a repeat of last summer and all that heat. Winston thought we could install some sort of watering system by the welcome signs,” she said, focusing on a plan. “If the city doesn’t want to pay for it, Winston said he would.”
In Vella’s opinion, Winston was a little free with his money, and this was both quite amazing and refreshing. Her husband Perry pinched a penny until it gave up the ghost. Vella thought she needed to take lessons from Winston in being more free and easy. She did not want to spend her remaining years being as controlled as she had spent her entire life to this point.
Marilee, only halfway listening to her aunt’s conversation, other than to observe that the Rose Club seemed to make her aunt very happy, watched the loose skin at the back of her aunt’s arm wiggle, while her biceps worked sturdy and strong. Marilee had lately been trying to exercise the backs of her own arms, which were the first thing to go on a woman; she was amazed that her aunt was so strong, though, despite the sagging back of her arm.
Then Marilee found herself looking over the counter, at the age-spotted long mirror, the shelf of neatly lined and glimmering tulip glasses, the modern licenses in dingy frames, and the yellowing menu with the Dr Pepper sign at the top. The drone of Uncle Perry’s television reached her from the back room of the pharmacy, where her uncle would be sitting in his overstuffed brown chair.
Aunt Vella brought a dish of ice cream around the end of the counter and set it down for Munro. “I didn’t think he needed whipped cream or a cherry,” she said, then stood there, watching the dog, as they all were.
“I sure hope this doesn’t give him a headache,” Vella said, as the dog began to lick the cold sweet ice cream with some eagerness.
“He likes it,” Willie Lee pronounced quite happily.
“Hmmm…”
Aunt Vella went back to put the finishing touches on the people’s sundaes; they definitely got whipped cream and a cherry. She then set the children’s sundaes on the granite counter, with a “There you go, sugars,” pronouncing the word as shu-gahs in a way that caused a particularly strong pull on Marilee’s heart.
As her aunt scooted a sundae across toward her, Marilee looked at it and suddenly realized she was sitting on the last stool at the far end of the counter, right where she had always sat as a child when she came running into the drugstore, dragging Anita by the hand. Aunt Vella would lean over the counter, dab at Anita’s tears and ask, “What can I get for my two shu-gah girls today?”
Marilee would be choking back tears but would manage to get out quite calmly that she and Anita would like chocolate milk shakes, please. Her Uncle Perry always called Marilee a little lady because she never yelled or screamed or cried. There were so many times when she wished she could yell and scream and cry.
Now, as then, she took up the long-handled spoon and smoothed the chocolate syrup around on the vanilla ice cream. She liked to let the ice cream get a little soft and then mix it with the chocolate syrup. She would have to admit to being addicted to chocolate, but after having taken tranquilizers for too long after her heartbreak with Stuart, she thought chocolate a fairly harmless aid to getting along in turbulent times. Chocolate tasted good and felt good going down, and it did not make her brain so fuzzy as to spin out of the world.
As she spooned the chocolate and vanilla ice cream onto her tongue, she looked across and caught hers and Corrine’s reflections in the wide old mirror. Corrine’s dark eyes, for a moment, met hers in the mirror, before looking down at her sundae. Marilee watched Corrine’s reflection, the bend of the dark head, the way she tilted it slightly, looking for all the world like her mother at that age.
Marilee’s gaze returned to her own reflection. It struck her quite hard that here she was staring at middle-age and still employing the same coping skills she had employed as a ten-year-old girl.
“You’ve been workin’ way too hard,” Aunt Vella said. “You just need a little boost. You should take a potent mixture of B’s for three months, and it wouldn’t hurt for you to start taking calcium…you need to start thinkin’ about keepin’ your bones. Every woman’s bones start to fade after thirty-five.”
Marilee had followed Vella over to the pharmacy shelves, where her aunt perused the bottles of vitamins and herbs, while the children occupied themselves twirling on the stools at the counter. Actually, it was Corrine being twirled by Willie Lee. She held on to the stool with her thin little hands, while Willie Lee got a kick out of spinning her around. Corrine was always so patient with Willie Lee. She displayed strong mothering instincts with him, and very often she did things for him that he was capable of doing for himself. Willie Lee allowed this, in the pleasing way he always went along with people.
“You worry about them too much. They’ll be fine. They have God, just like you do. He cares for you. Trust Him.”
At her aunt’s statement, Marilee looked over to see that the older woman had noticed her wandering attention.
“Then who looks after the children who are abused and forgotten all over the place?” Marilee asked, more sharply than she had meant to.
“I don’t know,” her aunt answered in the same fashion. “I’m not smart enough to know that. I only know what I know, that there is a God who cares for us, and that worrying never solved a thing. Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and leave off worrying. It just wears you out.”
Marilee sighed, her mind skittering away from a discussion she didn’t wish to get into.
“I couldn’t stand it anymore,” she said. “I took them out of school for the rest of this year. Corrine looks like she’s going to face the firing squad each day she goes to school, and Willie Lee just keeps runnin’ away. Maybe I’m not even addressing the true problem…. I know I’m not…but it just seemed the one thing I could do.”
“Good. You changed something. And there aren’t enough days of school left to worry about it, anyway.” Vella was peering at the labels on the vitamin bottles through her reading glasses at the end of her nose. “Do you have the kids on
vitamins?”
“Dailies.”
“Not enough.”
Marilee watched her aunt set about deciding which vitamins would be sufficient for the children. She felt an anger well up inside.
“Can vitamins fix a brain damaged by birthing?” she asked. “Or a heart broken by an irresponsible mother who prefers to drink rather than take care of her daughter?”
Vella’s dark eyes came up sharply. “No one prefers to drink. Anita is sick, Marilee, just like your daddy was.”
Marilee could not address this. She felt guilty for feeling so angry at her sister. Even as she thought about being angry, the anger began to ebb and slip into sadness and guilt, which she hated worse. The guilt threatened to consume her. She kept thinking there ought to be something she could do to help her sister, but everything she had tried had failed. She could not look at it anymore.
“Mrs. Blankenship thinks Corrine needs a therapist,” she said, the words falling out almost before she realized.
“Half of America needs a therapist,” Aunt Vella said, “but where do you find a sane one?”
Marilee had to chuckle at this, said so seriously. She gazed at Corrine, who was now twirling Willie Lee on the stool. “I think a therapist is worth trying, but I just don’t know how I can afford it.”
“Children have an amazing ability to survive. Don’t discount it.”
“That’s another question,” Marilee said, her gaze coming back to her aunt. “What’s goin’ to happen if Corrine gets really sick? How will I pay the doctor bills? My doctor charges sixty dollars a visit.” The limit of those could plainly be seen. “She isn’t my daughter, so I can’t put her on my insurance.”
“Oh, my heavens, don’t go makin’ up worries that likely won’t happen.”
Marilee looked at her aunt.
Her aunt looked back and said, “We’ll help you, Marilee. You know that.”
“I know it, but how far can we all go? You know perfectly well a catastrophe could bankrupt us all without insurance.”
Aunt Vella said very quietly, “Have you thought about adoption?”
“I’ve thought about it.” Marilee felt guilty for admitting what seemed a very bad thought. “But I don’t think Anita would willingly go along with it. I could press it. I could take her to court and prove she isn’t able to care for Corrine, but what would that do to her?”
“You can’t take on Anita’s burdens for her, Marilee. She has to own up to being responsible for her own actions. If she’s going to be a drunken sot, she’ll have to take the consequences. You don’t help her by letting her off. Maybe if you pressed, Anita would have more reason to try to get herself straight.”
Marilee clamped her mouth shut. Discussing this was making her too depressed. She did not have faith in Anita, certainly. And now she was having doubts about having faith in herself. She was sinking into a full decline when the bell above the front door rang out.
It was Fayrene Gardner entering the store. She came swiftly toward the pharmacy counter and presented Aunt Vella, who stepped forward, with a prescription. Fayrene, sniffing loudly, was clearly distraught.
“We’ll get this straight away,” Aunt Vella said and immediately stepped through to the back room, calling, “Perry…we need this filled. Perry!”
Fayrene noticed Marilee, who just then found she was staring, feeling connected by her own distress.
“Are you all right, Fayrene?” Marilee asked, feeling the need to say something, and hoping Fayrene wasn’t about to confess to having fallen victim to some horrible disease.
“Men,” Fayrene said vehemently. “I wish they’d all drop dead.”
Marilee wasn’t certain what to say to that, and became more uncertain when Fayrene’s face crumpled and she went to crying into a tissue. Feeling comfort was required, and needing to give it, Marilee reached out a hand to possibly take hold of the woman and provide what assistance she could.
But Fayrene pulled herself up tight and called, “Vella, I’ll be back to get it after lunch,” then pivoted and strode out of the store, again holding a tissue over her mouth to block a sob.
“Well, mercy,” Aunt Vella said.
“I don’t think I have ever seen Fayrene in such a state,” Marilee said.
“I haven’t, either.”
“What was the prescription? Is she really sick?”
Vella stepped back to the pharmacy area, then returned and said, “Tranquillizer. A good one,” she added with approval.
Marilee felt quite fortunate in that instant. Or perhaps it was more accurate that she no longer felt quite so alone, after having witnessed another person in despair. It reminded her that life was difficult, and this was a plain fact that, once recognized, made living if not smooth, at least not quite so shockingly distressing. It pointed up that people did continue to live on, no matter how often the will to live seemed to be challenged.
And at least she herself was within the control of chocolate. Her eye fell to a Hershey bar in front of the prescription counter, and she quickly grabbed it and threw it in with the vitamins Aunt Vella was now sacking.
“I might need that tonight,” she said. She thought maybe she ought to take a chocolate bar over to Fayrene.
When they came out of the drugstore, Corrine went skipping over in the direction of the florist next door. In fact, to Marilee’s eye, it seemed Corrine was drawn to the tubs of colorful spring flowers on display outside as if by a cord. But when just a foot away, the girl suddenly stopped and turned back to Marilee, in the manner of correcting a wrong action.
Marilee, who had herself entertained a first thought that flowers were an unnecessary extravagance, said with purpose, “Would you like some flowers? I think I would.”
As she spoke, she walked to the tubs of mixed bouquets that a few weeks ago Fred Grace, Jr. had begun setting out in front of his florist shop.
“If it works for Wally-world, it’s sound,” Fred told everyone, referring to the big Wal-Mart chain of stores. Within a week he gleefully reported that impulse buying had doubled.
“Which ones do you like?” Marilee asked the children.
Corrine, not quite meeting Marilee’s gaze, shrugged her small shoulders. Her eyes slid again to the flowers.
“I need some daisies,” Marilee said, reaching for a bouquet. “Absolutely need them.”
One thing she intended to teach Corrine was a hard-learned lesson she herself had experienced, and that was that beauty was a necessary part of life. She felt society in general had forgotten this, and that fact might just be a major cause of wars. Often, against every cell in her body that told her to be frugal, she would buy flowers or a pretty picture, because she felt her very life might depend on it.
“You can both choose a bouquet for yourselves,” she told the children as she examined the bouquet she had chosen, peering at little purple things that looked suspiciously like weeds.
Willie Lee wanted Marilee to pick him up so he could see better, which she did, and he gleefully pulled a bouquet of red carnations from one of the tubs.
“Cor-rine, you like yel-low,” he said.
Corrine chose very slowly and reverently a bouquet of yellow daisies and white carnations.
“Oh, those are lovely, Corrine.”
“Mun-ro needs flow-ers, too.”
“He can enjoy ours,” Marilee told her son.
Her son sighed heavily and bent to let the dog sniff his flowers.
Pulling a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse, she had Corrine help her figure out the total cost of the three bouquets, which Corrine did with amazing speed. Then Marilee handed the bill to Corrine and told her to go inside and pay Mr. Grace.
Corrine hesitated, and Marilee wondered if she had asked too much of the painfully shy girl, but Willie Lee spoke up and said, “Mun-ro says he will go with you, Cor-ine,” and indeed, the dog stood ready at the girl’s side.
Corrine turned, and Marilee watched her niece’s oh, so slight figure disappear into the
store. She felt like hurrying after her, to be there beside her, guarding for any type of hurt that might come her way.
Then, peering through the window while trying not to appear to be peering, Marilee saw Corrine walk up to the cash register and hand up the money to Fred Grace. Munro stood right at Corrine’s leg, his head next to her knee, looking upward, too. Fred handed down Corrine’s change, and then out Corrine and Munro came, a smile playing at the girl’s lips.
“Thank you, Aunt Marilee,” she said softly, depositing the change in Marilee’s hand.
“Thank you, Corrine. And Munro.” She and Corrine grinned at each other.
The three of them, accompanied by the dog, started down the sidewalk. Marilee, seized by a warm happiness, felt certain they were all walking straighter and marveled at the power of a handful of colorful flowers. The few people they passed along the way smiled, and one man tipped his ballcap.
The colorful flowers gave way to a spontaneous idea.
“Let’s grow our own.” Marilee looked at the children. “Let’s have a garden.”
Willie Lee gave back an enthused, “Yes,” and Corrine raised an eyebrow, as if wondering if it could be done.
At the temporary plastic greenhouse set up at MacCoy’s Feed and Grain, they ran everywhere at once, picking out flats of pansies and the biggest marigolds in the world. Corrine liked the blue cornflowers. Then the tomato plants looked so perky, and the idea of sweet homegrown tomatoes seemed so inviting, that Marilee got a half dozen of them.
The revolving stand of crisp and colorful seed packets caught Willie Lee’s attention. When Marilee went to pull him away, she selected several packets.
Into the back of the Cherokee went containers of perky little plants, seed packets, bags of fertilizer, a new shovel for Marilee, and two small-size shovels for the children, all paid for with the ease of a card. Felt like she wasn’t even spending money.
They sped home, where the first business was to get their cut flowers into vases of water. Marilee, determined to make everything a learning opportunity, showed the children how to cut the stems slanted to soak up the water and taught them as much as she knew about how flowers took water up their stems.
Cold Tea on a Hot Day Page 7
