Anywhere But Here (73 page)

But that didn’t last. Pretty soon I couldn’t stand it anymore. After all the excitement of the war, the travel, the uniforms—you know, sometimes it was like one long parade, you were always sort of tired and excited and you were usually around so many people—Bay City just didn’t seem like much anymore. That first night when I was exhausted, it felt perfect, just the way you’d want a town to be. But then when I got some sleep it seemed too small. And here I was plunked back in the same house on the
same road. I was shampooing and styling again at the Harper Method Beauty Shop.

And one thing I can say for Jimmy, he knew how to take a girl out on a date. He always took me to a nice supper and then after we’d do something; we’d go to a club and hear music or we’d go dancing. And every couple of dates I’d get a corsage. I have them all here, pressed in the dictionary. And he always had a big crowd of friends and they gave parties. Twenty, thirty people over for fish fry or chicken bouya. And my parents never did that. We didn’t have as many friends.

So we went ahead and got married. We had the service at Saint Phillip’s. Jimmy was a Catholic, too, so that was never a problem. I think my mother and dad liked Jimmy, if they didn’t, they never said anything. And I was already twenty-eight. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t get any better.

And wouldn’t you know my little sister managed to ruin my wedding. She was a bridesmaid, with two others, my two best girl friends from the Harper Method. I wore Granny’s wedding dress. See, my mother never had one. It was a beautiful dress, that old-fashioned pearl-white satin with a long train. Adele walked behind me holding it up. I remember she had a white dress, too. I’d wanted the bridesmaids in pink or mint green, but no, Adele said it was either black or white. And so the others had to be white, too, they all had to match. She herself got married in a suit, I remember.

It was a small wedding, a hundred, hundred fifty people. We had the reception at my parents’ house, in the backyard. We had tables spread out with white tablecloths and white and green balloons tied up in the oak tree. My dad’s men from the mink had rented tuxedos and they stood behind the tables pouring champagne. There was champagne everywhere and trays of food. My mother had been baking for days.

She’d made the cake herself. It was a lemon cake inside, real moist and tart, with a beautiful, fluffy white frosting. Adele had decorated it that morning—and I have to hand it to her, it was beautiful, she covered the whole thing with sugared flowers, real flowers, violets and pansies from the yard, and with cookies in
shapes from those cookie cutters I brought home. She was always good at such stuff. But then, she didn’t want us to cut it. She made them take about a hundred pictures, before she’d let us touch it. We have more pictures of that cake than of the rest of the wedding put together.

I do have a picture of the women, when I threw the bouquet. I still had my big nose in the pictures, so we don’t put them out anywhere in the house, but we still take the book down and look at them once in a while. Jimmy says he liked my nose big, he says he didn’t mind it.

All Granny’s sisters were there from Malgoma and Granny, and all the neighbor women. My mother was wearing a peach-colored dress with a corsage. My dad had bought us each special corsages, he had them in the refrigerator when we woke up that morning.

Well, we didn’t have a balcony or anything, so I threw the bouquet from the porch. It was just those couple of steps. In the picture, the ladies are all standing on the grass in a line; the married women closest to me, with their hands at their sides, they’re not trying to catch it. My mother is the most beautiful one in the picture and you can barely see her, she’s standing behind two of the aunts. She really had a perfect profile, like that on a coin, so even, and her hair grew thick and nice. Even then when it was turning gray, it turned that beautiful silver white. And I think she was happy for me. All that day, I’d looked at her from somewhere, when I was going down the aisle at church, later, on the lawn during the party, and her face was so nice, she was glad for me. She’d worked so hard on all the food and the house. And her cake turned out so good.

In the picture, she’s got her hands behind her back and this big gorgeous smile. You hardly ever saw her smiling big like that. She was shy. She wasn’t a smiler. You know, of my mother and my sister and me, I was the only one with a regular wedding and it made her happy, I suppose. In the picture, the bouquet is blurred in the air. It looks like I’m throwing it to my mother.

Two of my bridesmaids are in the front, crouched and ready like football players. Their knees bent, their arms out, their eyes
are on the bouquet. They were both single girls and my age, they were ready, I suppose. Would you believe I don’t know who they are anymore? My two bridesmaids, and I can’t remember their names. And Adele is standing there, coy, her hands intertwined together. She is looking down at her shoe in the grass.

And she was the one who caught the bouquet. Seventeen years old and she caught the bouquet, sure enough, and without hardly trying. My dad was mad, he thought she was too young to even be in the line for it and he wanted me to throw it again. But she said, nothing doing. She wouldn’t give it back.

Then she pulled her real stunt: she locked herself in the bathroom and took a shower! Well, all those people drinking all afternoon and only the one bathroom in the house. Pretty soon they were lined up into the kitchen. Adele was in there humming in the shower. Oh, ye gods. She washed her hair and set it, and so she was in there a long time, hour, hour and a half maybe. And was I mad.

Some of the men walked up the dirt road and went in the field by the barn. But a lot of people just drove home. The party started breaking up. The neighbors ran down the road to their own bathrooms. My father stamped in and rattled on the doorknob—we were afraid he’d break the door down. That was their worst fight I ever saw. When he couldn’t get the door open, he went around to the other side of the house and yelled at her through the window. The next day, we went out and my mother showed me: he trampled her whole bed of lilies of the valley.

Well, it was a hot day and I suppose Adele thought she wanted to cool off. Can you imagine, a hundred fifty people, all drinking, and one bathroom, locking yourself in for over an hour? By the time she came out, most of the people were gone. Pretty much just Jimmy’s family and our relatives from Malgoma were still there. And the bridesmaids. My sister always did manage to get herself right in the middle of everything. Jimmy still blames her for ruining our wedding. We were planning to party all night! My dad had set up a record player downstairs, in the basement, and his Polynesian room was all set for dancing. But everyone had gone home already! My mother cooked for the relatives and Jimmy
and I went out with the bridesmaids and the ushers to a supper club, Jantzen’s. I remember we drank lime bitters.

Really, outside of the war, my life has been pretty much in the ordinary and I suppose that’s been okay with me. I don’t think I would have liked moving around and always having to look right and talk right, like your mother does. But you know, I wish I had gone to college. I listen to Adele and to you talk and you just say things so very well. You know how to speak nice, you do.

We went to Niagara Falls for our honeymoon, just the typical thing, but we had fun. I remember the first night, I suppose from the excitement of the wedding and the party and then traveling, my period came on. It wasn’t due then, it was over a week early. I told Jimmy and he said, okay, and said I should just put my hair up and do whatever I needed to do to get ready before bed. See, he knew, he had sisters. And we each got into our single bed and said good night. Every night then, when we came into the hotel room, he’d look at me and I’d say no, not yet. Then our last night before we had to go home, I winked and said, “Tonight.”

I don’t remember ever deciding to build right next door to my mom and dad, somehow we just knew that’s what we were going to do. The land was there already, so at least we had that. My dad helped a little with the foundation, but mostly Jimmy built this house by himself with one other fellow he hired. He was already in the water softeners then. Sullivan Water Softeners. All those years, it was us against Kinsley. That was the other brand. I remember once after we were in the house, I looked out the window while I was doing the dishes and there were all these silver water softeners, shining like torpedoes, leaning against the back of the house. Well, of course, we put in a water softener and Jimmy gave one to Mom and Dad one Christmas. Adele would have gotten one too, but she was never settled down long enough anywhere.

I suppose if I could do it again, I’d build farther away from my parents. It really was just too close. But then, who knows, if I did it again, if I would even marry Jimmy.

And it was a help to me those first years with Hal, to have my mother right next door. And then when Dad was sick. Your mother
was out in California at that time, doing something or other in school. We called and called and she wouldn’t come home. She was lucky; she barely made it.

When she finally did come, your dad was up here all the time with her. I liked Hisham, he was a nice fellow. Not responsible, well, you know that, but nice. And oh, he was a very handsome man. Tall and dark, with big, big white teeth. I remember him at Dad’s funeral. He didn’t like the open coffin. He thought that was such a barbaric thing. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, he fainted. He was with Adele and she bent down to kiss the cheek and I’m pretty sure he fainted. He was just appalled. The Muslims didn’t do that, see. Over there, they cremate them. I suppose maybe they don’t have the room to bury.

We did something around here that my dad had started and all the neighbors took it up, too. When a baby was born, you planted some kind of bush. If it was a boy, you planted a bush that would have berries, if it was a girl, a bush that flowered. With Hal, we planted raspberries, with Benny, currants. Those raspberry bushes are still here, they’ve spread. The idea was for the kids to be independent. When they were children they could go outside and eat the berries and pick the flowers. My father always thought of things with big ideas; he thought if worst came to worst someone could live on nuts and berries. And then when someone died, we planted a tree. I don’t know why a tree. For my father, my mother wanted two; a hickory and a birch.

When my father died, he left money in his will for me to get my nose fixed. He wrote a letter with it that said he had had a big nose all his life and he’d never done anything about it, but that he’d been the one to give it to me and he wanted me to be able to get mine fixed.

And I did. Here I was already married and with a five-year-old son and I went on the train to Chicago alone to have the surgery. There wasn’t anyone who did it in Bay City. It was sort of a scary thing. I thought I’d better have a picture to give the doctor an idea of what I’d like; at the Harper Method we’d always told people to look through the magazines so they could show us what they had in mind. So I had my photograph folded up in my purse. It was a
picture of Katharine Hepburn. I thought if I was going to get a new nose, I may as well go for something really good, huh? Why not.

Well, I went and it was really awful. Chicago seemed very different from what I remembered of it during wartime, and I was just alone and out of uniform. I couldn’t just go anywhere like I did then. And I suppose, I was older.

I remember the night before, I ate dinner in my hotel room because I had no idea where else to go. Then, I still didn’t know what to do, I had the whole night ahead of me, so what did I do, I sat down and wrote a letter to my mother. Oh, I was such a goody-good. I really was. I was really too good.

Then the next morning I woke up and I was so scared. All of a sudden, I liked my nose, and I thought, what if I end up with something worse? But I had the appointment already, the doctor was all lined up and I didn’t know if I’d even have to pay him anyway, if I didn’t come. So I left the hotel and on the way to the hospital, I walked by such an arcade. They had one of those booths where you put in a quarter and it takes your picture four times and they come out in a strip like an up-and-down cartoon. I took my picture. I decided I wanted four pictures of my nose. I still have them. It really wasn’t too great a nose.

The funny thing about the operation was that the doctor put me under, but I could still hear him working—I wasn’t completely asleep. I heard crunching noises, like the way my dad ate chicken, he cracked the bones with his teeth and sucked the marrow. Then I heard a clipping, like with a shears.

I’d given him the picture beforehand and he said he’d do his best. He told me he had to work with what was there. And I think he did a good job. I’ve always been glad I did it.

Still, I’ll never be pretty like your mother. She has those long legs from Granny. And one thing I have to say for her, she always did keep up her figure and dress herself nice. She has a knack for that, anything with colors. She has that and my mother and Granny had it, too, but I never did. I’ve never been good that way. I never could just put things together the way they do. I’ve always had to buy the whole outfit.

And Adele always did the exciting things, too. She’s been all over, she mixes with the real rich people. She’s never been happy with just the ordinary. I don’t think she ever really liked Bay City.

She called once when she was in California and said she was going to a party where she was going to meet George Cukor and Katharine Hepburn. Jimmy talked to her, he answered the phone. We didn’t know who George Cukor was until she told us, but we knew Katharine Hepburn.

“Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn!” Jimmy was yelling. I think he’d already had his gimlet. “You know your sister has her nose!” Adele remembered the story, too. And she called the next day and said, yes, she had met Katharine Hepburn and that she was a very icy person, real aloof, and all night she’d sort of stood apart, but then Adele had gone up and said, Excuse me, Miss Hepburn, but I wanted to tell you that my sister has your nose. Adele told the whole story, about me working at the Harper Method Beauty Shop and taking in a picture and all and she said, for the first time that night, Katharine Hepburn smiled. So thanks to my sister, somewhere out there Katharine Hepburn knows that a Carol Measey in Wisconsin has her nose.