Chapter 13 #2
“But Lucy dug her heels in. Did she ever. She had no intention of marrying Vernell. She was dead set on finishing school. I’m sure she will. She was a bit of a cactus, I know, but I admire that kind of spine.”
“And how exactly do you know all this?”
She shrugged and smiled. The porcupine, maybe feeling the sun even through the mothball coat, shifted inside me. I patted my belly, trying to soothe it. For all I knew, it liked the sun.
“Well,” I said, “if you can’t tell me how you know so much, I’m going to assume you’re making things up.”
“Assume what you like, dear.” She exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Would you read me an article about Korea?”
It didn’t take long to find an article on Korea, but it was all bad news.
Just a few months earlier, things had been going well, with the UN troops and the South Koreans pushing the North Koreans way back up.
But now China was involved—the article said that Chairman Mao had just sent around half a million seasoned Chinese troops down to Korea, with a million more reinforcements at the ready.
The US didn’t have anywhere near as many soldiers over there, and President Truman was saying if China kept it up, he might be forced to use the atomic bomb.
In six months of fighting, over thirty thousand American soldiers had been killed.
The article quoted the exact number, and when I finished reading, I stayed quiet, running my fingertip over that number.
All I felt was the smoothness of the page.
“I suppose you’re worried about your man,” Carol said. “The soldier who stopped writing.”
My mind whirred. I stared at her face, at her dark glasses, her twitching grin.
Then I knew, or at least I guessed. I turned as best I could and looked over my shoulder, to the left of our chairs.
The pine tree closest to the house was the same one I could see through Mrs. Kilgore’s office window.
Next to it, in the slushy snow, I could still see the imprint of where Carol had carried her chair.
“You listen?” I hissed. “You sit there and listen to our sessions?”
“There’s no need to whisper.” She exhaled another stream of smoke. “She’s only there in the mornings. It’s like a scheduled soap opera, only relentlessly sad. I doubt any advertiser would sponsor it.” She grimaced and affected a shiver. “All the immorality. All that immaturity.”
“You should be ashamed. That’s an invasion of privacy.”
“Oh please. I don’t even know your last name. Or if Nora is really your first. And even I can’t guess where you’re from. My God. It’s driving me batty. Ohio? Is that it? I’ve got this theory that Ohio is the miniature of the entire country, with everything pressed in together.”
“I’m not telling you where I’m from,” I said. “I’m not telling you anything. It’s wrong, what you’ve been doing. You better stop. You’re lucky I don’t go in and tell on you right now.”
“Not luck, dear. I’m an excellent judge of character.
And you’re not the tattling kind.” She lifted her chin and smiled.
“At least you’ve got some fire in you. At least you speak your mind.
And even if Matron Kilgore doesn’t believe you, please know that I, for one, am entirely convinced that it was lust for young Leonard, and not grief for your mother, that brought you here. ”
I dropped the paper by her boots and stood, waving away her smoke. “Is that why you asked for me? So you could laugh at what you know about me? Are you going to ask each of us out here, one by one?”
She shook her head, no longer smiling. “No. I only asked for you.”
“Why?” I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering.
I couldn’t believe she knew Leonard’s name, and that she thought the whole thing was funny.
Or any of her business. I wanted to haul back and slap her.
Add that to my list of wrongs, I thought: slapping a blind pregnant girl who was sitting down.
“Because I like you.” She shrugged. “I’m not due for another three weeks. I thought your company might make it more bearable. I know you all pretty well.” She shrugged again. “You’re my favorite.”
It seemed like the truth, or like it might be. I couldn’t think of any other reason why she would have asked for me in particular. And I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had said one good thing about me. I pushed my hands in the pockets of the coat.
“You don’t look like you have three weeks left,” I said. “You look like you’re about to pop.”
She used the toe of her boot to nudge the newspaper toward me. “Once I do, you’ll never see me again. So sit down and read me the obituaries. Please?”
I looked back at the house. It was too late to go into the lesson. The volunteer would be getting ready to leave. “Why do you want me to read the obituaries?”
“Oh, I love them,” she said. “My mother and I have a game. We read all the nice things someone said about the deceased, then try to guess what they were really like.”
I almost told her that sounded mean, but I made my own argument against that opinion.
Those dead people had been loved enough, and respected enough, to get an obituary in The New York Times.
And now they weren’t feeling any pain. Meanwhile, Carol and I were stuck at Shaded Acres, our due dates looming.
Somebody dead would have to be petty to begrudge us a little fun.
I sat down and found the obituaries. Carol’s guesses about departed souls being braggarts, shoplifters, or habitual arsonists soon got me laughing. I eventually made my own attempts, and to my satisfaction, I got her to laugh, too.