The Future Homemakers of America. Laurie Graham
and a pumping station, supposed to keep the river moving along. It was called The Drain and it ran higher’n the roadway, which didn’t seem natural to me. I hoped and prayed that pumping station never broke down. Been me quartered there, I’d never have dared turn my back on it. I wouldn’t have slept nights for fear of waking up drowned.
Where they were, looked like one house but it was two, back to back, holding each other up but only just. Every house out there had that look about it, sagging in the middle, crouched down, like the sky was too much for it. They had a whole lot of sky in Norfolk, England.
Audrey and Lance were in one side of this broke-back house, Gayle and Okey were in the other, and oh how Gayle longed for a baby. A baby, and quarters, with steam heating and a Frigidaire.
‘Next year,’ Okey said, ‘next year.’
They seemed like a pair of skinny kids, playing house. Her with her ponytail and her bobbysocks. Him with his crewcut.
Gayle put on the coffee and Audrey fetched a kitchen stool from her place, Gayle and Okey not having much in the way of seating.
‘Right, this king?’ Lois said.
‘The king.’ Betty put her straight.
‘Whatever. They’ll have a fancy funeral for him, right? With a big parade and everything. And it’ll be in London, huh? Because he’s the king.’
‘Well, I guess.’
‘And where exactly is London?’
Audrey said it was in the south-east. Fact was, though, none of us had seen the sun since the day we landed, so that didn’t help much. Get to the base gate, we still wouldn’t know whether to turn left or right.
‘Anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?’ Lois was looking excited, jiggling Sandie up and down on her knee. ‘We go, girls. We go. Find London, see the parade, then have some fun. See a new movie, or a show. Find ourselves some top-hole toffs, what-ho, treat a girl to dinner, dontcher know.’
Betty said much as she’d love to go and pay her respects, Ed’d never allow it. For starters, who’d look after Sherry and Deana? ‘And Crystal,’ she said to me, ‘who’d mind her?’ She was looking to me to stop her building up any silly hopes. When it came to playing the mommy card, showing how you just had to rein yourself in once you had kids, Betty always turned to me for back-up because you sure as hell couldn’t rely on Lois.
Gayle said, ‘I will.’ Her love of children extended even as far as Deana Gillis. Deana was in third grade. Sherry, Betty’s youngest, was in first grade, same as my Crystal. Well, they should have been, except nobody ever heard of grade school in England. In elementary school there they just had names like Miss Boyle’s Class, Mrs Warley’s Class, Miss Jex’s Class. Crystal’s reading and writing seemed to be coming along okay. Still, every night I prayed we weren’t ruining our child’s education. Wrecking her future just so’s her daddy could save their English asses from the Red Menace.
‘And what about little Sandie?’ Betty now felt she had a watertight case. I could tell because she wasn’t furrowing her brow quite so deep. ‘You can’t drag a tiny tot thousands of miles,’ she said. ‘Not even knowing where you’re going to. Do you realise, they don’t even have enough food out there? I’m sorry, Lois, but it’d be just too crazy for words.’
Audrey said, ‘Well, I guess that’s the kinda attitude opened up the West.’
She never had a lot of patience with Betty. Besides, even I knew nothing’s thousands of miles away in England. You keep going, it won’t be long before you run outta country.
Then Gayle piped up. She said, ‘I’ll look after all of them. I don’t mind not going. I never even heard of this king.’
Betty said, ‘No. It’s a wild and irresponsible idea.’
‘Hey…’ Lois was pepping up her coffee from the bottle. Those little red patches were breaking out over her cheekbones. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I could care less. You’re the royalty freak. I can go to London any damn time I please.’ And everything went quiet, ’cept for Sandie, crying with the hot-aches, thawed her little fingers out too fast against the wood-stove.
Gayle said, ‘Okey’s Mom mailed me the new McCall’s pattern book. Anyone want a look at it? There’s a real easy pattern for a bolero.’ And she ran upstairs to get it. I whispered to Audrey, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’
‘Mm-mm,’ she said, ‘and the dressmakers.’
I took Sandie on my lap, tried to rub her hands better, and Betty squared away the bottle of Jim Beam behind a cushion; hoping Lois might forget it, I daresay.
We were just finishing up dinner, Crystal wriggling in her chair, wanting to get down and play, Vern waving his fork around, last piece of fried potato getting cold while he told me about some new Pratt & Whitney turbojet that could take you to over 1,000mph, when the phone rang. It was Betty.
‘Now, listen,’ she said. ‘Here’s the latest. They’re taking the king to London on Monday, along the railroad, travelling real slow, so folks can pay their respects. And here’s the best bit: it’ll be going right by here, no more’n a few miles away, and Ed says I can go, just as long as I’m home in time for the girls. So, could you drive down, tell Gayle and Audrey, and I’ll call up Lois? I thought I’d throw a coffee tomorrow, so we can plan what we’re gonna wear?’
I said, ‘Betty, that’s easy. Unless there’s a sudden change in the climate I’ll be wearin Vern’s duck field-jacket and his five-buckle snow boots. Heck, I might just see if we still got an Alaska-issue comforter. Get myself sewed up inside it.’
‘Peggy Dewey!’ she said. ‘Shame on you! The queen’s gonna be looking right out of that train, and Princess Margaret. We have to do this thing right. I think just a touch of mourning. A little black hat, maybe, or a pair of gloves. Jeepers, we’re gonna be seen by royalty.’
Vern thought I was crazy. He was all wrapped round me, after lights out, trying to keep me warm and get what he figured he was owed seeing he was gonna be three nights away, standing the duty.
‘What you wanna do that for?’ he said. ‘Standin’ out there, ketchin yer death. Be a bunch a breeds there, too. You seen some of them locals? Bunch a freaks. Now, you gonna get outta that passion-killer so we can mess around a little?’
Messing around was Vern’s main interest in life, after his baby, with her static thrust of 3,750lb. And Crystal, of course. He loved throwing her up in the air till she screamed. Arm-wrestling with her, pretending to let her win.
‘Did you know kings and queens bunk down in separate quarters?’ I got to thinking about that again, after we’d messed around.
‘Jeez, Peg,’ he said, ‘I was just dozing off.’ He made himself cosy again, hogging all the covers. ‘Who cares?’ he said. ‘Bunch a throwbacks, sitting round in robes.’
First time I saw Vern he was dancing with a girl, couldn’t have been more than four feet ten. She was looking him in the belly-button and he was giving me the eye over her head. He did look cute in his Blues. Still, I should have known better. My sister Connie married the army and that was a five-minute wonder.
Soon as Vern knew I had fallen with Crystal he done the decent thing and my folks were happy to see the back of me, twenty-two and still no sign of any Hollywood screen-test. We were married in August, in the chapel on the base, his folks come down from Costigan, first and last time they ever left Maine, and we had an arch of sabres and shrimp hors-d’oeuvre and the whole nine yards. November he got orders to Ladd Field, Alaska.
Crystal come along in a big hurry, waters busted in the mall at