Fine Spirits [Spirits 02] (19 page)

      
My mouth fell open and I spoke before thinking. “Billy! That's too much!”

      
“No, it's not.”

      
He stared straight at me as he said it, and my heart hurt as if talons were digging into it. I pressed a hand over my bosom, and didn't know what to say. When he re-corked the bottle and held it out for me to take, I shook my head slowly. “Oh, Billy.”

      
“Yeah,” he said. “It's a rough life.” Then he let his head fall back against the pillows, still gripping the bottle.

      
Without any more fussing, I went to the bed and took the bottle from Billy's grasp. It was empty. After staring at my husband for several seconds, wishing there was something I could do for him and knowing there wasn't, I gave up and put the bottle back in the dresser drawer. Leaving Billy to recover on his own, I put on my robe and slippers and trudged to the kitchen, feeling disheartened and hopeless and full of rage at fate.

# # #

      
I guess I've had worse days--well, I know I have--but I sure hope I never have to go through another one as tense as that first Sunday in December, 1920. The weather didn't help. Fog had rolled in overnight and now blanketed our neighborhood. Well, I thought, as I had many times of late, why not? Might as well add dismal weather to what was certain to be a horrid day. It lived up to my expectations, too, with a few bright spots.

      
Suffice it to say that I managed to sneak downstairs to confer with Marianne before heading for church. She was in a blue mood, which I appreciated and understood although I think I might have been a bit short with her. I'm not sure about that.

      
She'd always sort of reminded me of one of those long-eared, baggy-eyed basset hounds, even when she wasn't scared for her life and safety. There were good reasons for her sadness, but that morning I was bone tired and inclined to be snappish. I find helpless women difficult to tolerate, probably because I've never been allowed to be helpless.

      
In an attempt to redeem myself, I reminded her about the coffee cake. If anything will make a discouraged person perk up, it's Aunt Vi's cooking. “Wait until we're out of the house,” I said. “Then eat all you want.”

      
“Thank you.”

      
I guess I'd intimidated her, because she didn't say another word, and she stared at me as if she expected me to rustle up a bullwhip and flay her alive. I sighed heavily and climbed back up the basement stairs.

      
I also succeeded in getting in touch with Harold Kincaid, discovering in the process that Harold isn't an early riser. I apologized abjectly for telephoning him so early on a Sunday morning, and he agreed to consider the Marianne problem and get back with me later on in the afternoon.

      
Surviving breakfast with my family turned out to be easier than I'd anticipated, mainly because there was an interesting article in the
Pasadena Star News.

      
“By gum, will you look at this!”

      
We couldn't look, because Pa was the one holding the newspaper. But we all asked him what he was reading.

      
“A fellow named Marconi started a radio broadcasting station in England!”

      
“Really?” Billy was always interested in new inventions. He and Pa had been gabbing about radio-receiving sets for months. “I read where they broadcast a football game in Texas a while back.”

      
“A football game?” My fork stopped its path to my mouth, and the piece of coffee cake I'd speared fell off. “How'd they do that? Do they tell you when the ball's in the air and stuff like that? Would you like to listen to ball games on a radio set?”

      
“Sure! I think it would be swell.” Billy chewed a bite of bacon enthusiastically.

      
His eyes were bright, too, and I knew he wished he could still play football and baseball. Failing that, he'd have liked to watch some games. I had a hard time featuring how entertaining merely listening to somebody talk about football would be. Perhaps my state of exhaustion accounted for my failure of imagination.

      
“Gosh, Billy,” Pa said. “Just think about it. If we got a radio-receiving set, we could listen to all sorts of events. And the news. By God, we could get the news first-hand instead of waiting until it gets from wherever it's happening to us here on the west coast.”

      
“I don't know,” I said, contemplating the nature of recent news events. “Do you really want to know who the rum runners are killing every day?”

      
I'd been hell-bent on Prohibition before it went into effect. And really, when I thought about it on a personal level, I was still glad the country'd hopped aboard the water wagon, mainly because I was afraid Billy'd take to drink if he could--instead of taking to morphine, I guess. But the illegal liquor trade was becoming more vicious by the day, and I wasn't so sure any longer that country-wide Prohibition was even possible, much less a good idea.

      
“There's more to life than bootlegging,” said Billy dryly. “I think it would be swell to be able to listen to ball games on a radio set.”

      
Okay. After I brought Billy's dog home and bought a new motorcar, I was going to get the family a radio-receiving set. That depended, of course, on whether I could find one in Pasadena. Since Los Angeles had become the center of motion-picture activity in the nation, I didn't suppose it was too farfetched to believe it would also become the radio capital of the world.

      
We hadn't talked radio to a standstill before we had to leave for church, so we were still yakking about it as we walked through the thick, cold fog to the First Methodist Episcopal Church, North, where perhaps the most miraculous occurrence of that day took place considering all the loose ends cluttering up my life: I remembered the alto part to “I Want a Principle Within.” What's more, I sang the whole song without falling into a coma, which I think demonstrates remarkable determination under the circumstances. It's a truly boring hymn. Don't tell anyone I said so. I think it's some kind of sin to hate hymns.

      
During the church service, I kept an eye on Billy, unable to shake the vague horror that had bothered me since I saw him finish off that bottle of the morphine concoction Dr. Benjamin prescribed for him. I had a good view of the congregation from the choir stall behind the minister's pulpit. Generally I used the boring parts of Mr. Smith's sermons to take in the ladies' fashions and decide what I should sew next (I might not be able to cook worth a darn, but I could sew like a champ). Not that day. That day I stared at my husband and tried to spot signs of drug addiction. Since I didn't know what signs to look for, my scrutiny didn't serve to bring me to any conclusions on the matter.

      
My word, but he was a handsome man. He'd been tall, my Billy, and slim. That was before he'd been confined to a hospital overseas and then in Los Angeles for months after he'd been shot and gassed in France. When he came home to me again, he was a stoop-shouldered, skeletal wreck.

      
As I sized him up that day, I decided he looked more gaunt than slim nowadays. The hollows in his cheeks hadn't been there before the war, nor had the slouch to his posture. He found it difficult to sit up straight since the mustard gas had ruined his lungs and any exertion brought on fits of painful coughing.

      
After a while of watching Billy and becoming more dismayed as the seconds dragged by, I gave it up and vowed that the next day I'd pay Dr. Benjamin a visit. I had a few hard questions to ask the good doctor, although I feared the answers were going to be as hard as the questions.

      
When we got home after church, I saw that some of the coffee cake was missing, although I'm sure I was the only one who noticed it. We Gumms and Majestys don't generally keep close tabs on our leftovers, but I paid special attention to the cake that day because I was worried about Marianne and wanted to be sure she ate. She had some weight to make up for in order to regain her full vigor--or her health, if vigor was too much to ask. She'd never struck me as the robust type on the few occasions I'd seen her before her escape from her father's house.

      
What I wanted to do then was take a nap, but I couldn't. Since I was already dressed in a nice, sober-hued Sunday dress, hat, and shoes, I said, “Gotta go up to Mrs. Bissel's house. Be back as soon as possible.”

      
“Have your lunch first, Daisy,” said Aunt Vi. “No sense rushing around and not eating.”

      
“I'm not very hungry.” Even as I said the words, I knew they wouldn't work. Nobody in Aunt Vi's life ever got away without eating a meal, and I'd already forgotten to eat once that week. The dear woman would be watching me like a hawk for days to come, forcing food down me any time she caught me.

      
As far as I was concerned, I could, and undoubtedly should, go without eating for a week or two, since the prevailing mode in fashion was for a boyish, slim-hipped and -bosomed, straight-as-a-string figure. Mine didn't qualify. I wasn't fat, but I had more curves than were strictly fashionable. I bound my breasts, but that didn't help much. I'd have fit right in during the Victorian epoch. But Queen Victoria had died in 1901, a year after my birth, and people had skinnied down since then.

      
The whole family was in the kitchen, Ma and Pa sitting at the small kitchen table, Billy angled in between the ice box and Ma's chair. He looked better than he had earlier in the day. Of course, he would, after having downed all that morphine. I wished it was Monday, so I could run right over to Dr. Benjamin's office and confide my worries to him.

      
“Come on, Daisy,” Billy said. “Mrs. Bissel can wait until after you eat.”

      
True, but I might not be able to. I had a mental image of me falling asleep behind the wheel of the Model T and crashing into an orange tree. I'd die there, battered to death by autumn oranges. Nevertheless, I gave in. “Okay. I guess I can eat something.”

      
“Humph,” snorted Aunt Vi. “I should say so, Daisy Majesty.”

      
“Are you feeling well, dear?” Ma felt my forehead as I took a chair next to Billy.

      
God bless my family. At that particular moment, I wanted them all to vanish, but I knew I was only grouchy because I was tired. They were the best family in the world, really. “I'm fine, Ma. Honest. Just a little tired. I didn't get much sleep last night.”

      
“Did you have any luck getting the ghost out of that lady's basement?” Pa grinned at me.

      
“Sure did.” I winked back at him. “It was a cat. I forgot the darned trap again, but I managed to catch it and let it out down the street from our house.”

      
“You ought to have brought it home, dear. I'm sure we could use a cat.”

      
“I don't like cats,” Pa said. “A dog, now . . . well, dogs are different. I like dogs.”

      
That was merciful, considering I expected to bring one home that very day. I said, “I'm not much of a cat person, either. But I'm sure someone will adopt it.”

      
On my behalf, I must state here that, had the cat been real and not imaginary, I probably would have brought it home. I'm not terribly fond of cats, but I'd never have allowed it to wander all alone in the big, cruel world with no one to care for it. I'm like the rest of my family in that regard.

      
I expected Billy to say something sarcastic about me having spent the night chasing ghosts and catching cats in somebody else's house, but he didn't. When he did speak, I almost wished he'd used his breath to scold me.

      
“Sam's coming over in a little while,” he said. He took the plate Vi handed him and smiled at her. “We're going to spend a gloomy afternoon playing gin rummy. He claims he's going to win his fifteen cents back, but I doubt it.”

      
Billy had a wonderful smile. It used to make my heart go pitty-pat and my knees turn to jelly. That morning, it made me want to scream and throw things. If there was one person on the face of the earth I wanted to see less than I wanted to see Sam Rotondo-especially with Marianne Wagner hiding just under his big flat feet in our basement-I couldn't think of who it could be. “How nice,” I said weakly as I, too, took a plate offered by Aunt Vi.

      
“You eat every bite of that sandwich, young lady,” Vi told me sternly.

      
I saluted her. “Yes, ma'am.”

      
She flapped her hand at me. “Go along with you, Daisy Majesty.”

      
Whatever that meant. Aunt Vi always said it when somebody did something amusing or annoying, so I guess it was an expression that covered a lot of bases.

# # #

      
Pa cranked the Model T to life for me after I'd finished my lunch-every bite of it-so at least I didn't have that chore to accomplish. The Ford groaned a good deal as it chugged up Lake Avenue, but I wouldn't let it quit. The fog had burned off by then, and I thought it was kind of a shame when the sun came out and shone benevolently down upon us. The ghoulishly groaning motorcar would have added a ghostly note to an already-creepy atmosphere. It sounded out of place on a sunny day. I'd just about decided to buy an Oldsmobile by the time I got to Mrs. Bissel's house.

      
Mrs. Bissel and her entire household staff were awaiting me at the sun room door when I parked the old Model T in the circular drive. They all looked happy. Even Ginger had a grin decorating her face. I bowed my head for no more than a couple of seconds as I thanked God that at least I'd earn a puppy from this wretched job.