“I’m sorry,” I said when I was drained of all bodily fluids, “but I just keep asking myself, whatever happened to the Summer of Love?”
“I beg your pardon?” Faith looked like she’d just been asked to explain the theory of relativity.
“You must think I’m some kind of nut, but it’s just . . . I don’t know, it’s just that I can’t take what’s happening in the world. I can’t take all these people getting shot. I can’t take this war. I just thought we were supposed to be better than that. I really did believe we were on the dawn of a new age.”
“The dawn of a new age?” asked Faith.
“You know, peace and love and . . .” My voice wavered. “Damn it,” I said, wiping my faucet of a nose. “Damn it, I am not going to cry again. I am not going to spend one more minute thinking about assassinations or Vietnam or race riots or how we’re polluting the world for our kids.”
The heat bore down on us through the lacy canopy of oak leaves. Faith swatted a mosquito feeding on her arm.
“What about poverty?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Well, you probably don’t want to think about poverty either. Or the threat of nuclear war, for that matter.”
I narrowed my eyes, regarding Faith, who looked back at me like a helpful, expectant salesclerk.
“Thanks,” I said, offering up a smile. “I needed that. It’s just so easy for me to get carried away sometimes.”
“I admire that you do. There’s a lot to get carried away about.”
“Please. Don’t get me started.” I lifted the back of my Brillo-pad hair and fanned my neck. I was PO’d that she looked so cool and collected, and I guess it came out in my voice. “Don’t you ever sweat?”
Faith smiled sweetly. “So now you want to pick a fight about perspiration?”
“Sorry,” I said, thinking I just should just take a dive out of the tree house and end this whole miserable day. We sat for a while in silence. Then, trying to salvage some sort of normal conversation, I asked, “You’ve really never been in a tree house? I would have thought you grew up playing in a miniature plantation nestled in the boughs of your magnolia tree.” I slowed my voice into a deep drawl and batted my eyelashes.
“You forget,” said Faith, “I’m from Texas. Where we have ranches, not plantations.”
“So you didn’t have a ranch house built to scale in your giant cactus or mesquite or whatever kinds of trees you build tree houses in over in Texas?”
“Hey, look,” said Faith, looking out the window. “I can see Audrey from here. Oh, my gosh—she’s sunbathing topless!”
“She is not,” I said, scrambling over to the window and poking my head out. “She wouldn’t—oh, my god, she is.”
Audrey was spread across the chaise longue like a studious centerfold, one hand pillowing her head, the other holding a book. Her long, pretty legs were crossed at the ankle, and one of her feet swayed back and forth, steady as a pendulum.
“Mommy, I’m ready!” said Flannery, emerging from the kitchen door in a swimsuit patterned with pink fish.
“Why don’t you run over by yourself,” I called down, “and I’ll see if I can see you from the tree house.”
“Okay!” said Flan. “Wave to me if you can!”
“I sure will, honey.”
“You can’t see my backyard from this tree house,” said Faith as Flan disappeared around the house.
“Come on, Faith, I’m on watch. I can’t leave my post.”
We returned to our surveillance.
“Have you ever sunbathed topless?” asked Faith.
A funny gurgle, almost like a burp, rose in my throat.
“No, although it wouldn’t matter. Everyone would think I was just an eleven-year-old boy whose liberal parents let him grow his hair out.”
Faith whistled as she looked across the yards. “As the boys back in school used to say, she is stacked.”
“I would have expected those southern boys to be more poetic than that—you know, saying things like ‘Her breasts hung pendulous, like ripe grapefruit from a tree that begged to be picked.’ ”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Slip?” said Faith. “I’m Texan. Texan doesn’t mean southern.”
“Sure it does.” I rearranged my legs under me. “There’s the classic, belle-of-the ball southern—you know, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama. Then there’s Mississippi and Arkansas, the hardscrabble South. Then there’s Louisiana, which is kind of a Gothic South onto itself. And finally we amble over to Oklahoma and Texas—the cowboy South.”
Faith hiked up her accent. “I had no idea a Yankee could have such a deep grasp of the land of cotton.”
She looked at me, all crisp and fresh in her lime plaid Bermudas and white sleeveless shirt, knotted above her navel, her hair neatly flipped and teased and ignoring the weather like mine could not. Faith and I had gotten to be pretty good friends, but sometimes I couldn’t help feeling that while I’d been invited onto her property, there were fenced-off places I wasn’t allowed to go.
Then again, not everyone is as comfortable as I am breaking down and bawling about the sorry state of the world.
“Oh, shoot,” Faith said, looking back out the window. “She’s gone inside.”
“She probably needs to get some more suntan lotion,” I said. “I imagine she goes through quite a lot.”
“What would you say?” said Faith, laughing. “A bottle a breast?”
“No . . . a jug.” I smiled. “A jug a jug.”
“A tube a boob.”
We laughed harder than the humor deserved, which goes to show you no matter your age, you’re closer to adolescence than you think.
The sun bore down like a solar vise, mosquitoes were holding a jamboree in the tree house, and I didn’t need a mirror to know that my frizzed-up hair was looking like something a carload of clowns would covet. But as we talked about wonderfully inconsequential things, like what I should make for the book club dessert or what we thought about the Glen Campbell TV show, the bad mood I felt I’d been entombed in cracked, and holy breath of fresh air, that felt good.
“Hey, you perverts, I’m coming up.”
Looking out the window, we saw Audrey begin her ascent up the tree trunk. She had put on her bikini top to make the trek from her backyard to my house, but there wasn’t much decorum gained; her breasts spilled out of the bra cups like bundt cakes trying to fit into muffin tins.
When she crawled through the door, the small space got even smaller.
“You know, I could have you arrested for window-peeping,” she said, and as she sat against the wall, her long tanned legs stretched across the width of the room.
“We weren’t window-peeping—” began Faith.
“You were peeping through a window, weren’t you?”
“Well, sure,” I said, “but a person’s allowed to look out their window. It’s when you look through someone else’s that you’re actually window-peeping.”
“I’ll check that with my husband. My husband the attorney.”
She glared at us for a couple of seconds, and then her mouth crooked up into a smile.
“Aren’t you afraid,” began Faith, “of other people . . . I mean people other than us seeing you without your clothes on?”
“Look, I like the feeling of the sun on my body, that’s all. Usually I don’t have to worry about nosy neighbors—old man McDermitt’s nearly blind, and then there’s my lilac hedges. How was I to know you were so desperate for kicks you’d climb a tree house just to eyeball me?”
“For your information,” I said, “I was up here reading with Flan and—”
“Oh, you’re not done yet either?” Audrey picked up the book we were to be discussing that evening.
“I’m just reviewing it,” I said.
“I’ve only got about twenty pages left,” said Audrey. “My mother-in-law took the boys to the kiddy pool, so I was sure I was going to have some time to finish it, but th
en”—here she put on an airy English accent—“my beautiful idyll was interrupted when I realized some perverts were spying on me.”
“We weren’t spying,” reiterated Faith as Audrey, propelling herself with her hands and feet, scooted over to the window.
“Hey, you can see a lot from here! Look—there’s Kari giving the mailman a hand job! Ha! Made you look,” she said as we squeezed in beside her.
I would have rather seen Kari in a compromising position with the mailman than what I actually saw.
“Oh, no,” I said, “there’s Leslie Trottman.”
“Who’s Leslie Trottman?” asked Faith as the Pastel Queen (wearing a pink gingham dress and matching headband) strolled down the sidewalk.
“The neighborhood do-gooder,” I said. “She lives across the alley from me.”
“Oh, yeah—the one who’s left all those leaflets in my door with a sorry-I-missed-you note attached. I guess I’ve never been home when she’s come around.”
“Lucky,” said Audrey. “We hate her. Not only does she color-coordinate her accessories to her outfits, she collects for the Heart Fund, the Cancer Fund, UNICEF—”
“And makes the rest of us feel like a bunch of slobs for not doing our share.”
“But she’s the type of person who doesn’t want anyone doing their share. Because it detracts from her doing her share. Remember how mad she got at you, Slip, when you went door-to-door campaigning for Kennedy?”
Audrey’s words became a finger just ready to switch on another sobfest, but I clenched my jaw like a soldier and nodded.
“See, Leslie’s above politics,” I said. “She leaves the political fund-raising to her husband, Mr. Young Republican. Natural disasters are her specialty—she prays for natural disasters so she can get out and collect for the Red Cross.”
“And she’ll make sure you know how many blocks she’s walked and how many blisters she’s bandaged, but by golly, it’s her privilege to do her part for those poor flood victims in Argentina—”
“Or the tragic earthquake victims in China—”
“Or the doomed hurricane victims in Haiti. Just find her a victim, and she’s happy.” Audrey picked up an acorn and lobbed it in the direction of Leslie Trottman, who, not having any luck in front, was approaching my back door.
“Viva las víctimas!” I said, and my thrown acorn hit its target: Leslie Trottman’s sprayed and shellacked hairdo.
“Ouch!”
We dove to the floor, but the pink-ginghamed do-gooder had figured out her assailants were up in the tree house.
“Flannery, I’m going to tell your mother.”
“I hate a tattletale,” I whispered. Grabbing a handful of acorns, I flung them over the top of the tree house.
“Ow! Watch it!”
Not about to let me fight the enemy alone, my comrades in arms grabbed handfuls of nuts and threw them over the plywood wall.
“Ow! Stop it!” cried Leslie as a shower of acorns rained down on her. “Damn it, Flannery, wait till I get my hands on you!”
“Did you just threaten my child?” I asked, rising from the giggling heap to stick my head out the window. “Threaten her and use the d-word?”
“Marjorie! If you think it’s funny to throw walnuts at people, well, then you’ve got another thought coming.”
“They’re acorns, Leslie. Walnuts come from walnut trees. Acorns come from oaks.”
“I don’t care if they come from rosebushes! I could have lost an eye!”
Audrey’s concerned and solicitious face joined mine at the window. “We would have helped you find it, Leslie.”
“Honestly, don’t you two have better things to do than assault people?” asked the irate fund-raiser, kicking aside the shrapnel of acorn shells.
“Actually, we thought you were one of those teenagers from your side of the block,” said Audrey. “They’ve been spying on us all afternoon, just because we like to do a little topless sunbathing.”
“What?” asked Leslie, echoing the same question I whispered as I sat back down with Faith.
Audrey unhooked her bikini bra, and before you could say “Free the mammaries,” she stood up, rising above the four-foot walls and giving Leslie an unsolicited peep show.
“Oh, my stars,” said Leslie in a hushed voice.
“Would you like to join us?” Audrey asked sociably. “The milkman and the mailman certainly seemed to have a good time up here.”
Faith sat crouched with her hand over her mouth, laughing her head off.
“Say, how many people have you got up there?” asked Leslie.
“Along with the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker? Well, there’s Slip and Faith—”
“They’re not topless,” said Leslie indignantly.
Faith told me later she had no idea what came over her, but suddenly she was unbuttoning her blouse and unhooking her bra and standing up, baring her breasts to the great and muggy world. Holy exposed flesh, I felt like I was looking up at the prow of one of those Viking ships with the nude Valkyries carved into it.
“Oh, my goodness,” said Leslie, bringing one hand to her agitated brow to shade the sun. “This is obscene.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said, wriggling out of my own top and double-A cup and jumping up. There we stood, as Leslie gaped up at us, looking like the illustrations of body types in a high school health book.
Then, like pioneers scoping out the unsettled prairies ahead, we gazed ahead for one beautiful, unrehearsed moment until Leslie declared she didn’t find what we were doing one bit funny.
We, on the other hand, did. We laughed as we watched her race around the house and to the sidewalk, her body as rigid and sanctimonious as the class tattletale I’d bet money she used to be. I could have spent the rest of the afternoon up in that overheated plywood playhouse, laughing like hyenas after a kill, but then Audrey saw her mother-in-law’s car, returning with her boys, and Flannery came running across the street yelling something about a towel, and our responsibilities were the wet blanket thrown on that odd but definitely exhilarating party.
July 1968
Dear Mama,
I wish you could have seen us, flashing our titties to the world—it’s something I could see you doing. Come to think of it, you did do it; remember, the new Baptist minister had come to MawMaw’s house to try to recruit us and at first we were all being nice to him but then he pointed at me and said, “This young girl needs church more than anyone I’ve ever seen,” and you said, “Oh, really?” and I think you were right to take offense, I mean he was pretty self-righteous, but to take so much offense that you’d pull up your shirt and say, “More than me, Pastor? ’Cause I’ve got an awful bad flashing habit I can’t seem to get rid of.”
Oh, Mama, thank you for letting me remember that—I’m laughing now, although I remember at the time being so shocked and mad at you I could hardly breathe. MawMaw laughed, though—I knew she didn’t want to, but she did. Good for her. I like to imagine how much we would have laughed if you hadn’t drunk so much.
On the local news front . . . I went shopping with Slip downtown. It was sweltering outside, but the air-conditioning in Dayton’s was cranked up—probably a sales tactic, as they’ve got all the fall clothes out. I felt sort of embarrassed for Slip—we had to shop for her clothes in the girls’ department.
“If reincarnation is true,” she said, looking into a three-way mirror, “I’m coming back with Brigitte Bardot’s face and Wilt Chamberlain’s height.”
“Now there’s a picture,” I said.
I bought a midiskirt, but I think I’ll take it back—Wade said, “What’s the point of having good legs if you wear the kind of skirt my great-aunt Reevie wore?”
I finished painting the upstairs bathroom—in my swimsuit, it was so hot!—and I have to say, it’d take first place in any prettiest-bathroom contest. The walls are a dusky blue and the ceiling is navy—Merit came over and asked me how I came up with the idea for those colors. I told
her I’d be happy to help her choose some paint for her own house.
“And speaking of paint, aren’t you glad Audrey finally got the outside of her house painted? My gosh, I thought it was going to be condemned by the city!”
Merit laughed. “Oh, it wasn’t that bad. I just don’t think Audrey cares how her house looks.”
“Well, that’s obvious,” I said. “Now, about your house—how about a nice crimson for the dining room or an apricot for your kitchen?”
“Oh, my gosh,” Merit said, “Eric would never agree to anything like that! Off-white is about as bold as he’ll go.”
On the way downstairs, she stopped to admire the portrait I had taken of me and Wade and the kids, and she commented on how much Bonnie looks like me but how Beau didn’t really look like either me or Wade, and then she asked, “Do you have any pictures of your parents? Maybe he takes after your mother or Dr. Reynolds.”
I tell you, Mama, I almost s-h-you-know-what my pants.
“Most of my pictures are back in Texas, packed away in Wade’s parents’ closet,” I said, the lie rolling off my tongue as if it had every right to. “I have just got to have them sent up here.”
Merit nodded, as if that was a perfectly logical explanation.
It got me to thinking—maybe Beau does look like my father, but the sad thing is I’ll never know. I remember asking you as a little girl if you had a picture of him, and you said, “I don’t, and I’m glad I don’t because I hope I never see his ugly chicken face again.”
What’ll I do when my kids climb on my lap and ask me about you, Mama? I’d like to think that the lies stop in my own house, but I’ve told Wade only a fraction of the truth, and by fraction I’m talking slivers, not chunks. It wasn’t until a week before our wedding that I confessed that not only was my daddy not a doctor, but I had no idea what he was, as I’d never met him before.
“Baby, I don’t care about your family,” he said, taking me in his arms. “I only care about you.”
He makes it easy for me not to share stories about you, Mama; he gets so mad and upset at you anytime I tell him anything that I find myself defending you and resenting his anger. I can be mad at you, but Wade can’t.