“He was a doll,” said Fanny. She had twisted the rose into her hair, although it was too large to be graceful there; she might as well have tucked a cauliflower over her ear.
“He was a flirt,” said Tracy. “I don’t see him as the kind of guy you can count on.”
“No?” said Fanny. “Then how about that statue? Don’t you think it speaks to his determination? I think Mike Barr is a man who will get things done.”
“I don’t know about his mother,” said Helen.
“I thought she was sweet,” said Claire, who always thought everyone was sweet.
“She could get that blood right out with a mixture of bleach and cold water,” Margo said. “I wonder why she doesn’t.”
“I thought she was demented. Roses and blood stains. Too Arsenic and Old Lace. I didn’t drink the lemonade,” said Helen.
Maggie Collins writes: “A hot lemon will yield twice the juice of a cold one. Heat your lemons before squeezing.”
Back in Magrit they got a jump on the Fourth by saluting the British, beloved enemies, treasured Allies, with a High Tea Day in the Kitchen. It was a noble experiment in crumpets and scones and lemon curd, which Irini managed to curdle. They played a game in Eau de Lune, which they won by a single run when Arlys stole home while everyone was watching Helen coach first. Walter had given her some new signals to use; they were unusually vigorous, but clearly effective. Maggie published a column entitled “Ode to Vinegar” in Women at Home, a piece that stressed the feisty little cider’s versatility as a cooking and a cleaning agent. “Add one teaspoonful to lard and the foods cooked in it will absorb less of the fat!”
They played in Shivering Trees and lost. Shivering Trees was far enough away from Magrit to be an overnight. It had a population of about thirty and no electricity or phone lines. But there was a bar, of course, you can’t do without one of those, and it had some upstairs rooms the girls could bed down in. After the game the girls were invited down, so that the town could stand drinks for those of them who were old enough, which meant Claire, Norma, and Fanny.
The Sweethearts were a rare treat in Shivering Trees. The opposing team had been made up primarily of the sort of people politely referred to as bachelor farmers. Presumably they had once had mothers, but the memory was dim. Perhaps they had all had the same mother—there was an eerie sameness to them. Redhaired and scrawny, wiry as chickens, they bathed seldom and caught sight of an actual woman only slightly less often. There was no way to determine their ages. They were awkward and shy, but not in a cute way. They couldn’t play baseball at all, which meant the loss could only be explained by poor coaching, or a reluctance on the part of the girls to get close enough to anyone to tag him out.
Fanny had expected burly lumberjacks. Perhaps they were in the bar. She accepted the invitation on behalf of the whole team and dressed in a dress with spaghetti straps.
In order to get to the Shivering Trees Bar the girls had to walk through the Shivering Trees Museum of Taxidermy. It was a gauntlet of frozen beaver, fox, weasel, and crow. The feathers were dusty, the fur dim. On the wall of the back room of the bar itself the theme was continued, heads only this time. The crowning piece was a moose, hung morosely over the cash register.
“Look how its eyes follow you everywhere,” Fanny complained. She had hoped for lumberjacks. She had gotten weasels. The opposing team was huddled on the other side of the room, under the moose, like adolescent boys at a high school dance. “Baseball is beginning to lose its charms for me.”
“I really don’t think its eyes are following you,” Tracy said. “I believe it’s looking at me.”
“You girls are pretty,” someone called from across the room.
“Who said that?” Fanny asked. There was no answer. There was no way to identify the speaker. All possible candidates were soberly examining their drinks.
“Walter, pretend you’re with me,” Fanny said, although she was in fact much bigger and tougher than he was. “That moose is really beginning to annoy me. Why should it look at me like that? Gee whiz. I don’t even hunt. Go look at Norma.”
“It’s nicely mounted,” Norma said. “I know you don’t appreciate that sort of thing, Fanny, but really. It’s a very nice job.” She raised her glass in the direction of the men. “Nice moose,” she said politely. Their faces showed the startled fear of trapped animals.
“Perhaps we could discuss the game,” Walter suggested. “Arlys, you could have gone for a double play in the fourth. Would have ended the inning. I wondered why you didn’t.”
“We are not discussing the game, Walter,” Fanny said. She spilled some of her beer into her cleavage. It glistened there and she dabbed at it with her fingers. Someone across the room stopped breathing. He’d been breathing through his mouth, so the silence was audible. “Do you want to know why?” Fanny asked, as if she hadn’t noticed. “Because the game is over. Let’s discuss the schedule instead. We should never have been scheduled for Shivering Trees. What is the possible publicity value of this?”
“So Sweetwheat sales boom in Shivering Trees,” Irini agreed. “So what?”
“You know?” Fanny put her empty glass onto the table and stood up. “I’m feeling the need for trophies. Something to remember this occasion forever. A little memento from the war.” She held out her hand. “Something like a couple of eyes. Norma, I’m going to need a knife. Someone create a diversion.” She walked toward the moose. The men parted and scattered to the other side of the room where they regrouped, watching from behind their drinks.
“Does anyone want to arm wrestle?” Cindy asked them. She was especially pretty tonight. Her hair curled; her cheeks were pink. The freckles gave her a natural charm. “With Irini?”
“I can’t risk my arm,” Irini said quickly.
“Or dance? Who would like to dance with Irini?”
“Look out the window,” said Fanny. “Is that a bear?”
Margo stood up. “You know, you don’t really need a special product to keep your—your—”
“Corpses,” said Claire.
“—corpses clean. A soft brushing would do the trick. With an ordinary hairbrush. Come back into the museum with me and I’ll show you.”
The men did not respond. They did not appear to have heard.
“The thing is,” said Margo, “to treat them the same way you would if they were still alive.” She looked at Fanny, poised under the moose with a knife hidden behind her back. “Sort of.”
SNAPPING TURTLE PIE
À LA SHIVERING TREES
Step One: Let the turtle bite a sturdy stick and then slowly pull the head forward.
Cut it off.
25
Maggie Collins writes: “An old-fashioned popcorn popper makes a wonderful tool for roasting wieners out of doors.
“A good pie crust always greases its own pan.
“For a safe and sane Fourth, limit the family to those fireworks which do not leave the ground or move. A good time can be had sans risk with fountains, cones, the Ground-Blooming Flowers, and the Egg-Laying Hens.”
And then it was the Fourth of July for real.
The Fourth must have been particularly fervent in those days just after the war. Irini’s father laid in a record supply of fireworks with fortune-cookie names, like Tiger in the Mountain, Golden Snake of Desire, Forbidden Temple of Water Lilies, Tree Bursts into Blossom in Winter, Mountain Explodes at Dawn. He would be celebrating in style, but cautiously. Everyone took a moment to remember Geb Floyd and his annual Battle in the Clouds display.
Irini had spent her money on sparklers. These, along with the Screaming Meemies, were her favorites. It was, like her preference for vanilla ice cream, too bland and boring to do her credit, especially not in the midst of such riches. But she fancied the way the wands left a lighted snail trail in the air, liked the cold burn of the sparks on her skin. You could use the sparklers to cast spells, conduct orchestras, write poems.
Maggie published a recipe for a red, whi
te, and blue pie—blueberries and strawberries and a whipped marshmallow topping that might have been the world’s first Cool Whip, if Margaret Mill had been just a little more perspicacious. Henry seems to have had an almost unblemished record when it came to missing the boat.
Although the phrase “easy as pie” is universally acknowledged as a dastardly canard, the Old Glory Pie was even more complicated than it sounds. In order to keep the berries segregated and their colors pure, they had to be cooked separately first, then gelled. Only a handful of girls in the Kitchen had successfully avoided the color purple. The resulting pie was served cold.
Second only to the fireworks, Magrit looked forward to the mill picnic, an event attended by everyone, mill employee or not, and Henry’s swim across the mill pond on Upper Magrit, which was more selective. He had begun the swim in his sixties, an annual demonstration of good health due to good diet. “It’s not just the cereals,” he told the girls in the Kitchen. “I try to avoid fried foods. Frying destroys vitamins and digestion. And I’ve cut back on potatoes. Starch is for shirts.”
When he hit his eighties, Ada started to worry. Not so far upstream was the spot where old Mr. Kinser, Claire’s grandfather and Magrit’s reigning dry-fly king, had died in 1941 in a fishing tragedy. When found he was wrapped in his own fishing line like a bug in a web, like a pole on May Day.
Or so they said on the Magrit school grounds. And no one knew how this could have happened. “Vengeful fish,” Irini’s father suggested when Irini came home and asked him about it. Old Mr. Kinser had been a child of seventy-two at the time.
Each year Henry’s progress across the middle, where the water was swiftest, was more suspenseful. Seen from the shore, his thready arms would cycle faster and faster with less and less effect. Each year he seemed to ride a little lower in the water. Each year he landed a little farther downstream. Ada wanted to lay a rope beneath him, across that place where the pond narrowed prior to spilling into the falls. Just under the surface, she told him—it needn’t even be visible. She had had Walter bring the rope up. This was not as easy as it sounds. It was a large, heavy coil, big enough for someone to sit in. Walter had to roll it on its side.
Ada also wanted Norma Baldish to swim along with Henry. I don’t know if they had the phrase “situational ethics” in those days, but I do know Henry was against them. Visible or not, Henry argued, a rope would have stood witness to a wavering of faith in breakfast cereals in general and Sweetwheats in particular. Norma had enough to do on the Fourth as fire marshall. He could not allow it. Ada spent the whole morning in tense and unhappy anticipation.
Not Irini. Irini had a yellow-striped bathing suit and a matching ribbon for her hair, which had taken on its usual golden summer highlights, even more this year because she had been outdoors so much. For the last two weeks, she had been sunning in her backyard and up at Upper Magrit, trying to write over her baseball tan with something more elegant and Caribbean vacationish.
Since she was still playing baseball, she was only marginally successful. But she had managed to acquire two vivid white lines criss-crossing her back and a gentle sunburn across her shoulders. The burn felt good, hypersensitive to the air and paradoxically cool. It gave her a slight fever, just enough to make her light-headed and a little daring. The day was close and humid enough to keep the backs of her knees and her neck continually damp. She dressed in slacks and a bandanna top that tied at the neck and left her back bare. Although the heat was keeping the mosquitoes at bay, her skin was smeared with insect repellent. She had a sharp smell like kerosene on top of her usual peppermint soap.
Prior to the war, the picnic had been a potentially romantic affair. The girls at the mill had packed baskets for the boys to bid on. The baskets were auctioned off publicly at Nedd’s tower and eaten in the privacy of the woods. In the old days, at the Fourth of July picnic Thomas Holcrow would have had to declare himself once and for all. Bidding on a girl’s basket was a serious matter and often led to marriage. Holcrow had returned to Magrit just three days ago. “Couldn’t stay away,” he was reported to have told Tracy, who took it personally. “Magrit is becoming just like home for me.”
In the old days Henry had rigged a tent every year to shade the young mothers and their babies. There were no babies at the picnic this year. This was, of course, the echo effect of the missing men. Without the war, several of the Sweethearts would probably have been mothers by now. There might have been little Tarkens, little Moodeys, little Floyds. You could feel bad about this, or you could look at it another way.
The picnic was also a political occasion. Every year the Mays and the Leggetts and the Kinsers responded to Henry’s triumphal swim over the prostrate body of Upper Magrit with whispered outrage. In the weeks preceding they would compare it to Attila’s romp over Europe, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Sherman’s march to the sea, Hitler’s invasion of Poland. On the day itself, they would sit all together, gnawing bitterly on their breasts of fried chicken and their ears of barbecued corn, viciously forking the potato salad. They would speak to no one else, refuse to participate in the sack and egg races, and leave with ostentatious iciness some time before the big swim, always reappearing later for the fireworks. “Mr. Henry takes his chances,” they would mutter to each other, meaning nothing for themselves, a sulk was really all they were up to, but no one could discount the dead hand of Madame Nadeau. The Nadeau boys had all been drowned, after all. It didn’t take a genius to know where they were.
The sky threatened a storm. The air was charged with static. Irini’s hair made little wet coils at her neck. She was sweating in all those places where her body folded. “Well, that’s that,” said Ada hopefully. “I simply cannot understand all this fuss over an Independence Day that happened so long ago, when there’s India, just about to celebrate its first Independence Day ever, and the papers can hardly be bothered to cover the event.” She was eating a vegetarian box lunch—salted radishes, briny cucumbers, raw tomatoes. A herd of ants sketched themselves in unmolested, fluid lines over her blanket and plate. “And he can’t possibly swim if there’s going to be lightning.”
In case she was right, Irini hurried into the woods with Margo and Tracy to change into her bathing suit and get a dip in before the rain. “Don’t you go in now, girls,” Mrs. Gilbertsen called to them. “You need to wait an hour after eating,” but if the rain wasn’t waiting, neither was Irini. Her bathing suit revealed what the slacks had not—that her left leg was bruised in stormy gray and blues all the way from the hip on down. She gave it an unhappy look, then draped her towel over an arm to hide the worst of it. She had damaged and redamaged it sliding into base. Margo had the same bruises and carried her towel in the same way.
The lowered clouds turned the day into a sauna. The girls walked back over a hummock of sand, through the coarse, khaki grasses and mature cattails to the water. At the edges the millpond was green and still and relatively warm. A fog of gnats moved over the surface. In the middle of the pond, the water became a dark, napped blue. Toward the other side it foamed white. It was posted on both sides with signs forbidding swimming.
Irini waded in up to her ankles. The bottom was covered with rounded, furry rocks she could step on if she was careful, from one to the next to the next. Her feet were cold and her shoulders hot. It was an adventure in three dimensions, her feet down in Upper Magrit with the sunfish, her hands and face above with the dragonflies. She could feel exactly that point, that moment where the hem of water bisected her, but it wasn’t always exactly the same spot. The surface twitched. Water striders floated away on the delicately bucking skin of water.
Irini walked farther out, three more steps, until she hit the hole where Jim Nedd, years ago, had set his first stick of dynamite One more step with no bottom to it, a step off a cliff. She leaned forward, breaststroked out to the vanished roof of the Nadeau house, out in the gentle beginnings of the current. A layer of insect repellent swirled from her arms and floated downstream in a rainb
ow. She paddled upright, her arms and legs moving to get warm. “It’s wonderful,” she said in the age-old tradition of those who are in cold water to those who are not. “It’s not cold at all.”
“Don’t go out any farther,” her father said. His dark face had its customary brooding look. Ever since that afternoon in Glen Annie Creek, he never liked to see her submerged. Besides, he was quite right. Past the Nadeau place, the current was deceptively strong.
She dove and breaststroked down instead of out. The water was hung with flecks of gold so that visibility was poor. But off in the distance, Irini could see the dark streaks of shadows, a row of ghostly posts that allowed her to imagine a drowned city. It wasn’t Upper Magrit, though. It was something much, much older; the architecture was dream Doric. If she tried to get closer it would disappear. A flock of minnows pivoted before her with military precision, even their mouths opening in unison. She came up with her hair in her eyes. “Don’t go farther out,” her father said again.
There was a shriek and a splash. Someone had thrown Tracy in. Another splash. Thomas Holcrow surfaced several feet away, spitting water through his teeth like a Roman fountain. Irini was starting to shiver. She kicked back to the warmer, shallower water. Holcrow seized her foot as she went past. “Miss Doyle,” he said. And then let her go.
Tweed appeared on the bank, standing next to her father, barking at the sight of Irini in the water, shifting her weight from leg to leg to leg to leg. Irini stood to show Tweed the water was only up to her waist. Irini was happy. Her shoulders were already warm again, the clouds simmered above her, the water below, lunch behind, fireworks ahead.
Tweed started in toward her, stepped into a small hole, and scrambled out again, shaking. A large perch hung suspended in the water near her leg, rippling its fins. Far upstream a loon dove without seeming to resurface. “Miss Doyle,” Holcrow was saying, slowly, teasingly. Tweed shook loose a halo of drops. Irini could feel exactly the place, exactly the moment this all touched her. Now, Irini thought. Now. Now.
The Sweetheart Season Page 22
