"I'm fine," she said. "Don't worry about me." And she got up.
"Where are you going?" Aunt Cissy demanded.
"To the bathroom," Rowena said.
"Well . . . when you gotta go, you gotta go." And Aunt Cissy raised her glass.
"Me first!" cried Maralynne suddenly. Rowena stared as her sister, remarkably animated, leaped up and ran past her. She all but slammed the bathroom door behind her. Rowena stood awhile staring at the closed door. She wanted to tap on it and offer her sister some comfort, but wasn't at all sure what to say.
"I hope you can wait," Cissy said, and laughed, as usual, too loudly. She waved at Rowena like a police officer directing traffic, beckoning her closer. "Come back here," she said. Rowena came, dutifully. "Where was I," Cissy began. "Oh, yes--babies. Well, a woman can't complain, especially when the kids turn out well, but as with everything else, there's a downside. Several, as usual. All the work, the messes, the worry . . ."
"It isn't that bad," Rowena's mother managed to say. Rowena was sure this was to encourage the production of grandchildren rather than to state a personal opinion.
"And pregnancy itself. You know, I never quite got my old figure back. Never did. Looked good, but--not like before." She shook her head, wistfully. "No, motherhood doesn't do much for a girl's figure."
"Lots of women get their figures back," Rowena's mother sounded desperate. Rowena felt her mother should just be grateful that Maralynne, much more easily swayed by such an argument, was safely out of earshot.
"Some women," Cissy said. "But I never did. I don't know that anybody in this family did." She shook her head. "They talk about how beautiful motherhood is, but how many men will flirt with a pregnant woman? Hang onto your looks, I say."
Rowena's mother made a whimpering noise; Rowena tried to think of some way to reassure her without provoking her aunt. "Well, some--"
"Oh, God!" Cissy said. "Look what I've done! Spilled beer all over my dress!" Rowena, who for a just moment had thought Cissy had finally noticed her hostess' state and was about to apologize, shut her eyes briefly before getting up and fetching paper towels from the kitchen. While Cissy mopped herself up, Rowena snuck off to the bathroom they weren't supposed to admit existed, off her parent's bedroom.
Maralynne didn't come out of the hall bathroom until Cissy pounded on the door, threatening an accident. When she did emerge, she edged out, staring at her feet; she seemed relieved when Cissy dashed in and shut the door. Rowena guided Maralynne back to the living room, where their mother still sat.
"Don't let her get to you," she said. "There's--there's one in every family. Okay? It doesn't mean anything."
Maralynne hugged herself, not looking at her sister. "I--she's--she looked like me."
"That doesn't mean anything."
"She looked like me! If I--if I end up--oh, God."
"Maralynne--Maralynne, listen."
"And she's a Pisces!"
"Maralynne, don't let that get to you. Listen; you have forty years or so to--"
In the bathroom, Cissy began singing, her own version of "Anchors Aweigh." "Fare-well to college boys!" she roared. Maralynne hid her face. Rowena looked over at her mother, who sat flinching.
"Mom?"
"In this family," her mother moaned. "Aunt Cissy."
"Mom--"
"When I was a little girl I wanted to be just like her! Just--" And she hid her face too.
"Aan-chors-a-waaaaay!"
Rowena took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
"Here we all are," said Cissy, indicating a group shot in her album. "That's your grandma there, my oldest sister; there's your Uncle Jerry and Aunt Ann. That one there is me." She mused over the photo. "Look how serious Ann is! And your grandma--all she ever wanted to do was get married and have kids. She took care of all of us when she was young, and then she went and got some of her own to look after when she was grown up. And then grandchildren--no offense."
"None taken," said Rowena. Her grandmother had not exactly raised her anyway.
"What kind of life is that, though, just looking after other people? Never went anywhere, never saw anything, never did anything--just babies and a husband. Well, she doesn't have any babies now, but I expect she's just waiting for the next batch. And she's still never going to go anywhere or do anything."
"Well . . ." Rowena said.
"I couldn't stand for that," said Cissy. "Never." She shook her head emphatically.
"Here's our dog we had when I was little," she continued, bringing Rowena's attention back to the album. The dog in the picture was a long-eared, blotched mutt. "That's me holding him."
"What was his name?" Rowena asked.
"His name," Cissy said impressively, "was Pony."
"Pony?" Rowena said. He wasn't a terribly big dog.
"My father named him that because your grandma was pestering him for a pony at the time. Had been for years, actually."
"Oh, no."
"He was like that, my father. In his old age he used to forecast the weather by his arthritis. You've heard of people doing that?" Rowena nodded. "Well, Father did that, until one day he predicted fine weather and we damn near had a flood. Hadn't rained like that for ages. Well, what does Father do but go to Dr. Getler and demand to have his joints tuned." Rowena laughed. "He said, 'This arthritis hasn't failed me for years. Fix it.'"
"What did the doctor do?"
"What could he do? He rubbed on a little liniment or something, thumped Father's knees with his mallet, and proclaimed the problem cured. And Father went right back to weather-predicting."
Rowena laughed again. She looked over at her mother, who evidently was not amused. Maralynne was gone, having jerked to a sudden awareness and charged abruptly out of the house when she saw Cissy leave the bathroom.
Cissy turned another page. "Here I am with my friend Maude. We used to play hooky from school, go spend the day looking for boys. Father was livid, but he couldn't stop me. I liked boys better than school." She laughed. "That Maude--her parents let her do whatever she wanted, let her run wild." Cissy took a long swig of beer. "Here I am again, at my high school graduation--barely got through, but I did it. And I went and got a job so I'd have my own money. My father didn't think it was proper; he raised the roof. And then a little later I quit the job and he said that I was flighty. There was no pleasing that man, and it didn't take me long to quit tryin'. Actually, I don't know that I ever did try." And she laughed again, loudly. Rowena didn't think this was funny. She looked at the picture of her graduating aunt, then at Cissy and Maude, smiling at the camera; two teenage girls with their lives ahead of them. "But the boys liked me just fine," Cissy said now. "They sure did like me, back then." She sighed. "I was a free spirit. And I had the looks. It was all I needed. I figured that'd take me anywhere, forever." She sighed. "Forever's not as long as it used to be, when you're old."
"And there we are on our honeymoon," Aunt Cissy said. Lambie, in the picture, looked proud and happy. "You'll never guess where we went."
"Where?" asked Rowena. The photo gave her few clues.
"Cleveland," said Aunt Cissy. And watching Rowena, she burst out laughing. "Well, we were wondering where to go; British Columbia, Mexico--all kinds of places. And then I said, `We'll be newlyweds; we'll be happy anywhere. Right?' And for no better reason than that we went to Cleveland." She laughed again, and Rowena joined in. "That, and the fact that neither of us had ever been there. Which was as good a reason as any, really."
"I suppose."
"We were crazy in those days," Cissy said. "Not crazy, of course; young. We had no idea how young we were; nobody does, almost, at that age."
Rowena regarded the picture. "Did you have a good time?"
"Of course." Cissy turned the page, showed Rowena what appeared to be more honeymoon shots. "We were so young. And we'd go dancing, and all the other young men wanted to dance with me. I'd tell them I was a married woman, but I'd do it just a little flirtatiously, you know what I m
ean?" She smiled. "I can still turn a few heads," she said. "When I can't do that any more, you can shovel me under, and I mean it. No point staying alive after you're done living." She sat a moment in silence, staring at the album. "But I'll never be young like that again."
"Well--"
"I was so beautiful," Cissy said. "I looked like your sister. Did you notice how much I looked like your sister?"
Rowena glanced at her mother, whom she'd almost forgotten; she honestly couldn't tell whether her mother, who sat staring at her own lap, was listening.
"Yes," Rowena said. "You looked a lot like her."
"I was so beautiful," Cissy said. "And I knew nobody else could . . . could fascinate Lambie; I knew no other woman was as fascinating. I couldn't cook or clean, but that couldn't possibly make any difference; I was . . . well, fascinating.
"Only after a while--after enough years--he just wasn't so fascinated. I had no reason to suspect him of anything; we just . . . we'd been married a long time. That's all." She trailed off, turned another page in the album, and then another. "Do you understand?" she asked Rowena.
"I think so," Rowena said.
Aunt Cissy nodded. "Good girl," she said. "But it's a shame." She regarded Rowena and her mother. "It's a shame what can happen to a good thing. To a marriage." She stared into what was left of her last beer, but did not drink. "And still caring for somebody, and knowing he still cares for you, and he may be a little boring after all this time but he's basically good." She heaved a deep sigh. "But there's no magic; there's no magic anywhere in your life, and you're getting old. You have everything you were ever supposed to want, everything you worked to get, and there's no magic anymore. And you don't know what to do and you end up messing with some young pip-squeak like Kevin even though it's not really what you need, but you know you want something; you have to have something. You have to." She looked up from her beer, gazed at her audience. "Don't you let it take you by surprise," she told Rowena. "Don't you let yourself get trapped. Don't trap yourself."
"I'll try," Rowena said. Her aunt regarded her.
"You're a bright girl, aren't you?" she asked. "I hope you're happy. I hope you have a good life."
"Thank you," Rowena said. "I'll see what I can do."
"Nobody warned me," Aunt Cissy said. She looked at Rowena's mother. "It's not too late for you, Babette," she said. "Make sure you do something before you go."
"Kevin?" said Rowena's mother querulously. Cissy looked at her a moment, then drained her beer.
Rowena woke the next morning with a feeling of dread. She had not slept well. Cissy had left soon after that last beer in search of a "night on the town," but Rowena had stayed with her mother for some time, trying to calm her. She did not like to think of Cissy's driving in such a condition, but her mother was quite enough to worry about. She sighed, now, remembering how she'd ended up telling her mother--as gently as she could--that, yes, it looked to her as if Cissy were cheating on her husband, but that Lambie probably knew; that he'd apparently thrown Cissy out, despite what Cissy had originally said. "It may not even be the first time, Mom," she'd said--utter madness, saying that to her mother. Rowena groaned.
Her mother and sister couldn't believe such a person could be related to them.
Rowena sometimes felt the same way about them.
She went into the kitchen and fixed herself a cup of tea. They'd heard all about Cissy's Admirers (past and present), Cissy's grandchildren, Cissy's opinion of Rowena's and Maralynne's jobs (compared to those of Cissy's own children, one of whom was a doctor, and one of whom had made "such good money!" as a stripper). Everything Cissy did, Cissy felt was the only thing to do and everything Cissy did drove Rowena's mother to despair. "You got a job doing what?" "What do you mean, your husband won't eat casseroles? I wouldn't put up with a husband like that!"
And as far as Rowena's mother was concerned, everything Cissy did served as a bad example for Rowena and Maralynne.
Rowena sipped her tea. Today she was supposed to go over and get herself dragged back into all that; the day after, she would go back to work, to begin what she was sure would be a very long week.
She tried not to think about it. She finished her tea, had some breakfast, took a shower, and tried not to think about Cissy and her mother.
When she showed up at her mother's house, she found her mother and Maralynne in a state--though it wasn't quite the state she'd been expecting.
"Oh, Rowena! Did you get my message this morning?"
"Message?" asked Rowena. "No."
"You'll never guess," her mother said. "You'll never guess what happened to Aunt Cissy!"
"Never?" asked Maralynne archly.
Rowena glanced around the room, failed to find her aunt. "What?"
Her mother clasped her hands in front of herself. "Aunt Cissy got arrested last night for drunk driving."
Remembering the state in which her aunt had left the house, Rowena was glad it wasn't worse. "Where is she now?" she asked.
"She got arrested! They locked her up! She was drunk! And she called Uncle Lambert to come and get her and he did." Rowena's mother opened her eyes very wide. "And he took her to a motel and this morning they came and got her things and now they're on their way back home."
"Oh," Rowena said.
"He took her back!" her mother said. "After all that!"
"Well--" Rowena began.
"I would never do that," said Maralynne with satisfaction. "Driving drunk."
Rowena looked at her. Somehow, she suspected that Maralynne already had done this, but she kept her mouth shut.
"And that hair of hers!"
"And that makeup." Maralynne gave a fastidious shudder. "I don't see how she can."
Rowena wanted to say something.
"Imagine my calling your father `Lambie,'" their mother said. "Or, `Wildy,' in his case."
"Wildy!" Maralynne burst out laughing. "Wildy!"
"She dresses much too young," Rowena's mother said. "At her age, it's a disgrace." She shook her head. "You couldn't pay me," she said.
To say that what Cissy was now didn't change what she'd been before.
Maralynne laughed again. "You don't suppose she really is a Pisces, do you?" she asked. "There musta been some weird conjunction or something goin' on when she was born."
That Maralynne didn't have to end up the same way.
"Weird is right!" their mother said.
"And ordering people around like that," Maralynne went on, clearly relieved at having been rescued from Fate. "I don't believe she's a Pisces. I bet she doesn't even know what she is."
But she knew they wouldn't listen.
"Maybe she was born in-between or something," their mother said.
"That is so pathetic, not even knowing what sign you are. How unaware can you get?"
"Oh, well," her mother said. "There's one in every family. Isn't that right, Rowena?"
"Right," Rowena said.
Rowena Gets Domestic
Fiction by S. D. Youngren
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Rowena took a breath. "Dinner?" she asked her sister. "At your place?"
"It'll be great," Maralynne said. She added, significantly, "You won't even have to do any cooking."
"No?" Rowena asked.
"I'm gonna cook for you!" Maralynne yelped happily. "For you and Sammy and Chester--I'm gonna cook for everybody!"
"Well!" said Rowena. "That's very--"
"I'm gonna do everything myself!" Maralynne announced. "Everything! Isn't that great?"
"Terrific," Rowena said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. "Maralynne, I'm so happy--"
"I know everything I need to know," Maralynne said. "Everything."
"Well, that's--"
"Can you come by a little early, like, two o'clock?"
"Two o'--"
"And bring a mop and a bucket and your vacuum cleaner, so we can clean up?"
&nbs
p; Rowena took another breath. "Anything else you need?"
"Well . . . what do you use when you clean up?"
"If you're sure you wanna go," Rowena told Sammy.
"Hey," Sammy said. "You gotta take a few risks in life."
"Great," Rowena told him. "Mind if I don't quote you on that?" Sammy laughed, reached over and patted her hand. They were in a restaurant, eating proper food.
"It's more Chester's risk than ours," Sammy said. "Theoretically, he could get stuck with her cooking every night."
S.D. Youngren - Rowena 6 - Rowena Moves In.txt Page 4
