Fruit Salad & Wings

Chapter 1 -- Two Oblong Melons

Step 1: Choose two ripe, oblong watermelons. Scoop and ball the first, reserving the melon balls in an airtight plastic container. Cut the second melon lengthwise. After scooping the contents, scallop the edges in a decorative manner…

Strawberries and peaches, grapes, cherries and pineapples were whirling across the gleaming countertop in a mad mazurka. The melon balls were staging a jailbreak from their airtight container to join the shenanigans. Elspeth was doing her best to ignore them all. She was wearing a pigeon-crowned chef’s hat, intent on scalloping a watermelon shell with a handy light saber. The edges had to be just right or the whole fruit basket would be a lopsided mess. She knew this from sorry experience. Obi Won Kenobi, dressed as Martha Stewart, gave her a reassuring wink.

Past the prime! Soft and faded and weepy… look at those wrinkles! An angry voice rasped through the open screen of her bedroom window. Elspeth dropped her light saber and frowned.

She is only rape, a lower voice reasoned.

Ripe? Rotten! I can’t make a fruit salad with that bruised mess! A cobbler maybe… but this is July! It’s too blazing hot for…

Is only rape!

Ripe? Ready for the worms! I can’t serve that to Corliss! the angry voice ranted.

Shut up, you bawling cow! The words raced through Elspeth’s torpid mind. For a heart hammering second, she chewed her pillow. Had she spoken the words or merely thought them? Five seconds ago she was dreaming up a harmless, if animated, fruit salad. Now her happy dream was vaporized. The one before had been so sad.

Shut up! The sun isn’t even up and you’re on your broom! A voice, very like Elspeth’s, shrieked from the next window.

Oh, Jeez! Elspeth stumbled to her feet and pushed her tousled hair out of her eyes. She pulled a seersucker robe over her late husband’s softball jersey, which now served as a nightgown, then stumbled down the hallway to defuse the situation.

Too late. The voice of Connie Dupee railed from the driveway below. Augusta Zaiser! A twenty-year-old girl who’s still abed at this hour of the morning is a disgrace! When I was your age, I had my own house, a husband and three babies to tend!

No doubt you delivered them yourself while plowing the south forty! Augusta shouted from her bedroom window.

Four swift, bare steps carried Elspeth across the room and to the window. She caught a tiny ball of dark-haired fury by the back of her nightshirt then slung her from the window seat, onto the double bed. Stay! Gusty! Stay! she commanded.

Connie Dupee ranted on, standing in the driveway below, shaking a diamond-studded fist at the Zaiser house. I’m sure there’s some housework you could be doing to help your poor, widowed mother. God knows, your grandmother is turning in her grave the way her house is being kept. There’s a garden out here needs some attention; might be a project for you and your lay-about sisters. So full of foxtail and spurge that it would shame a white person. Studded with heathen talismans and popish idols, a Christian would take a hoe and tear into that satanic mess…

Again, Elspeth caught her hell-bent daughter as she sprang for the window. She held her by her shoulders.

It was Augusta’s turn to rant. Mom! We didn’t get home from work until three. How can I sleep with that old bitch haggling over fruit? A husband and three babies at twenty? That’s nothing to brag about! Gusty tried to push past her mother.

Stay! Elspeth guided Gusty into an armchair then stepped to the open window. Give it a rest, Connie. That’s not an idol, popish or otherwise. It’s a statue of Mary. You know that. It was my mother’s. It’s been there for thirty years and it’s not going anywhere.

The commandments say…

We’ve been over this before. There seems to be some discrepancies between my commandments and yours. The statue stays. Elspeth crossed her arms.

What about that heathen fetish? The tall, steely-haired neighbor lady pointed to a quasi-scare-crowish, but decidedly female, effigy mounted on a pole, overlooking a weedy patch of tomatoes, peppers, floppy dill, bolted lettuce and parched corn.

Wearily, Mrs. Z. peered out of the upstairs window, taking in the family vegetable garden. She stifled a shudder and smiled politely. That’s Annie’s corn dolly.

It’s a slap in the face to the First Commandment! Connie Dupee’s voice cleared the pigeons out of the eaves.

Elspeth blew a sigh through her dark bangs. She spoke slowly. It’s an old Celtic custom. Annie researched it. It doubles the fruit of the plot it guards, and it does keep the jays out of the strawberries.

The girl says she’s a witch! Flat out owns to sorcery!

Elspeth managed a smile and a scoff. It’s a phase. She’ll outgrow it when she goes to college this fall. Look, the girls worked a double shift last night. Could you and Eleno take your transaction over to your backdoor? Gusty needs to sleep before she reads to Corliss at nine.

Six dollars an hour to sit in the shade and read? I call that taking advantage of a blind man. Connie shook her head. Not a single strand of her stainless steel bouffant was disturbed.

Corliss set the wage, Mrs. Z. replied, her smile stretched into a grimace; her arms still folded.

Girl told me to shut up, Mrs. Dupee grumbled.

Elspeth uncrossed her arms and put her hands on the window sill. The girl is short on sleep. She and Annie are taking all the hours they can get at the nursing home this summer. They’re saving for college. I’d rather have them sleeping late than help me around the house. Augusta will apologize to you this morning, when she comes over to read to Bozo.

Mrs. Dupee gave this some thought before taking her hands from her hips. She pointed to the backyard. I took your laundry down this morning… the cutwork table linens that your Aunt Gusty made; didn’t want the dew to spoil them. They’re folded and in a basket by the kitchen door. I picked a bowl of cherries for you last night. It’s in the jam closet. Corliss will never remember that it’s there. I made up a sauce to top your rice pudding. It’s in the refrigerator. Be sure to remind Corliss about that, too.

Oh, thank you, Elspeth said. I forgot those things were on the line when I went to bed last night. Thank you for the cherries. I was just thinking of doing a fruit salad for supper tonight… the one Mom used to make, in the watermelon shell. Do you remember it? I can’t find Mom’s recipe. If you have it, could I borrow it?

Connie pursed her lips. Well, that’s no wonder to me; there’s no rhyme nor reason in that kitchen of yours. I have the recipe. It’s the same as your mother’s, but I use a can of ginger ale instead of wine.

Yes, I remember that. Elspeth smiled.

I’ll leave it on the counter for you. I’m going to Meade today for a funeral. I’d thank you if you could give Corliss his lunch as well as his breakfast. You know how absent-minded he gets when he’s writing.

I have to go to Cimarron this morning, to the bank and to the library. Tell him to come over at twelve-thirty.

Connie nodded.

Elspeth turned to address the man standing in the back of a produce-laden pick-up truck. Buenos días, Eleno. ¿Hay sandías?

Buenos días Señora Zaiser. Mis sandías are nice. Very sweet. Very rape. También los duraznos. ¡Mira! He gestured to a pyramid of rose and amber globes, shooting an aggrieved look at Connie Dupee.

Connie was not having any of it. She dismissed the peaches with a wave of her hand then entered her house, slamming her screen door.

Elspeth ended the transaction. Entonces, dame dos sandías y una cesta media de duraznos. Te pagaré en sábado.

Hokay. Where I put she?

Por la puerta.

Hokay good, Eleno agreed, taking two watermelons to the porch and parking them on the top two steps. Next, he tucked six peaches into a plastic basket and settled them on the porch rail.

Gracias, Elspeth called after him as he pulled his faded blue pick-up out of the driveway that both houses shared.

She lowered the blinds and unknotted the lace curtains that framed the bedroom window. A small paper bag tucked into the window sash caught her attention. She opened the bag and dealt her second-born a scowl.

Firecrackers left over from the Fourth, Gusty answered, without being asked, all wide violet eyes and dark tousled hair.

Not firecrackers; cherry bombs. I’ll keep these, Elspeth said through clenched teeth as she rolled the bag shut.

They’re not even mine. I’m keeping them for some-one else… someone with a nosy mother.

Augusta, Elspeth began, not unkindly. Let me tell you a scary little piece of gossip that I heard the other day from Glenn Pfannenstiel at the Co-Op. It seems that there were some juveniles playing out at the sandpit this weekend. They were swimming out there, which everyone knows is illegal, not to mention plain dangerous. These misguided delinquents went so far as to make a big bonfire, which is especially stupid when one considers that there isn’t a tree, a house, a hill, or even a tall tumbleweed between here and the Sheriff’s Office in Cimarron.

Gusty sighed one of those weary, eye-rolling sighs that so vex a mother’s heart. Elspeth wanted to holler. She did not. Hannah, Gusty’s older sister, was sleeping in the same room. The last thing Elspeth needed was Hannah awake and growling.

Any way, these juveniles were cooking hot dogs and hamburgers at this bonfire. Rumor has it that they were not drinking soda pop. Rumor also has it that these juveniles had stolen a box of watermelons off one of the Doemler’s produce trucks.

There was another frustrated sigh.

Elspeth continued. When Deputy Simmons went out to the sandpit to investigate, some brazen juvenile bombarded her with cherry bombs from the top of the dredging tower. When Deputy Simmons tried to give chase, the child dove from the tower, swam the pit, and disappeared: a very illegal and flat stupid thing to do. Elspeth paused to deal Gusty a look that she hoped was disconcerting.

Gusty returned the stare with a chilly one of her own.

Elspeth leveled her forefinger. Deputy Simmons could only describe this juvenile delinquent as small, female, weighing one hundred pounds or less, dark-haired and one hell of a swimmer. Until this very moment, I, like the rest of the county, have been wondering who that delinquent female could be.

Mom! That’s high school stuff! I’m in college!

Elspeth took a seat on the edge of the double bed, and folded the bag of fireworks in her hands. You’re good; very convincing. You never confess. You never deny. I especially admire your tone of righteous indignation. Your father would have fallen for it in a heartbeat. I, on the other hand, am convinced that you are the mad bomber. Only the fact that I would have to cover fines and court fees prevents me from calling Chief Khorf and ratting out your unrepentant and incorrigible little fanny. I’ll keep these. She shook the bag.

Mom, you don’t have any proof...

Elspeth pulled the sheets back and motioned Gusty to bed. I don’t need proof. I am your mother. I urge you to remember last summer when I paid out… let’s see – the tow bill, MIP, the diversion, court fees, and legal fees to Dupee and Dupee, Attorneys at Law – at a special rate, thanks to Tre Dupee, who has always had the hots for me – five hundred seventy-two dollars and six cents; money I had to pull out of Grandpa’s CD…

Gusty slugged her pillows in disgust. One fell to the floor. Put away the keys, Mom. I’m not going on your guilt trip. It’s your fault… for moving us here, to Wodan, Kansas – the shit-kicking, cousin-humping, yee-haw capitol of the world. Why couldn’t we have stayed in Chicago Heights?

Elspeth picked the pillow off the floor and plumped it. I couldn’t afford the house in Illinois after Daddy got sick. You know that. We had to move here.

Why couldn’t I stay in Emporia for summer school?

I can’t afford your apartment rent this summer, not with Annie starting college next month. You know Daddy’s medical bills… Elspeth tucked the pillow behind her daughter. "Look, you are putting me on a guilt trip for something that I can’t help. When you go to read to Doctor Dupee, you will apologize to his mother."

Gusty slumped back against the pillow, the picture of shock and outrage. Didn’t you hear what that horrible woman said? She said that I’m ripping him off. I’m never going over there again.

Corliss asked you to read. You can’t renege on your agreement to spite his mother. He needs that research, the books are old and faded, and his eyes can’t take the strain. You’ll have to stick it out.

I hate that woman. She’s the nastiest person in Gray County.

In Western Kansas, Elspeth corrected. But you can’t hate her. Mrs. Dupee and your grandmother were neighbors for forty years. She’s still grieving for Grandma, just like we are. Grandma wouldn’t want us to be rude to her. Mrs. Dupee means well. She just doesn’t realize how she comes off.

She’s so prejudiced.

Elspeth patted absent-mindedly at her daughter’s knee. "Mrs. Dupee didn’t used to be this... grim. She was always nuts, but not mean-spirited, not like this. Then she became a zealot. Wild-eyed fundamentalists are never pleasant company. Annie’s herb garden is getting a bit bizarre. A couple of saner citizens have mentioned it."

She hates everybody! For Christ’s sake, she says Disney is undermining our moral values! Disney, Mom?

Elspeth nodded. Small town people tend to be xenophobic.

Gusty scoffed. "Xenophobic? Wodan is the actual setting of ‘The Lottery’. Shirley Jackson had car trouble here, in the early forties…"

Elspeth cut this diatribe short with a stern finger. Okay! Here are the facts: I’m in debt. I owe a hospital in Chicago more money than I make in a year. I own this house free and clear. I have a teaching job here. This is my hometown. As tough as they are on outsiders, they always take care of their own. It’s a tribal kind of thing. This is our home now and Connie Dupee is our neighbor. We will respect her! Don’t wake your sister. I cannot deal with two of you at once. She added this because Hannah had made a soft moan, rolled onto her back, flinched at the milky sunlight filtering through the east window, and thrown her arm across her lightly-freckled nose.

Gusty whispered. Mrs. Dupee is always on Hannah’s case, too. She tells her she had better stop loolygaggling and get a job. What the hell is loolygaggling? I can’t find it in any dictionary.

Lollygagging; one o, two ls. Mrs. Dupee may have a point. Graduation seems to have unhinged Hannah. When those college loans come due…

Hannah pulled her pillow over her head.

I’m sorry. Did I wake you? Mrs. Z. whispered wryly, tugging the pillow to ensure that her firstborn had a breathing passage.

She’s plain brutal, Gusty observed.

Oh, no, Sweetheart; she may be irritable but she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Tenderly Mrs. Z. patted at Hannah’s Hollywood- bronzed shoulder.

Not Hannah. Mrs. Dupee. She’s so negative, Gusty explained.

Elspeth shrugged. Negative doesn’t touch it. Connie Dupee is a hard, bitter old woman. In my day, old people were supposed to be bitter. We expected it of them. When Connie Dupee was your age, hard work and scolding were what made the world go around. Western Kansas in the thirties…

American Lit. 303 – The Dust Bowl, Gusty groaned, eyes cast heavenward.

Mentally Elspeth tucked away her lecture notes and stood to leave. Regardless of how annoying, abrasive, and plain goofy Mrs. Dupee is, you will apologize before noon.

But Mom…

Why are you sleeping in here, anyway? You have a bedroom across the hall where you almost can’t hear Mrs. Dupee.

It’s an oven in there. We need air conditioning!

Need and afford: two vastly differing concepts. Why didn’t you sleep on the back porch with Annie?

She creeped us out with her Wicca… and Walter. Gusty ran her fingers through her straight, dark hair.

It’s a phase. Elspeth took her fingers through her own straight, dark hair.

That’s right, Mom. Look the other way.

Mrs. Dupee is right. The garden is a mess. You can hoe it after you read to Corliss. That gives you about two hours to sleep.

Taking up her pillow, Gusty stomped, barefooted, out of the room and down the stairs to the back porch.

Elspeth shook her eldest daughter’s shoulder. Hannah, Tennyson says she will put your resume on floppy disk this evening, if you have it ready to type. I’ll buy extra stamps and envelopes today when I go to town. Did you look at those ads I brought home? Elspeth peeked under her daughter’s pillow. The summer after graduation is such an exciting time. Daddy and I stayed here with Grandma and Grandpa. We took all summer to weigh our prospects. Do you remember that? Tennyson and I took you and Shorty to the wading pool in Cimarron every day. Elspeth knelt down so that she could speak face to face with her daughter. This was not easy because her daughter’s face was squished into the chenille coverlet.

Elspeth sighed and tugged at the coverlet, rolling it down and folding it at the foot of the bed. Hannah slumbered on. Elspeth shook her head in wonder. She went to fetch her husband.

She returned carrying a studio portrait of a long haired, bearded, tie-dyed, college senior. She held the photo up to better enhance her late husband’s view, all the while speaking in a conversational whisper: So, Jay, do you remember the two a.m. feedings that went on for a year? The screaming nap scenes? The bedtime hassles that we always lost? Take a look at this new development. Your daughter has been sleeping since the twenty-sixth of May. It has me beat. You give it some thought. I’ll get back with you.

Elspeth settled the portrait into the bookcase in the empty headboard that had once held her husband’s westerns. Oh, and keep an eye on these, too. I can’t afford another lawless summer. She tucked the bag of fireworks behind the picture frame.

Chapter 2 -- Six Chilled Sherbet Glasses

Elspeth walked downstairs to the kitchen, which she still thought of as her mother’s kitchen, because it had been decorated by her mother in the sixties and had never been updated. The colors were white and aqua, almost overbearingly bright at summer daybreak. Now, stacked to the brim with dirty dishes, it was especially jarring. The place had been semi-spotless last night.

Someone had made a cake – a yellow cake with chocolate frosting – not a box cake, but a top-of-the-line cookbook cake. Exhibit A: a top-of-the-line cookbook stuck tight to the kitchen counter.

Under her great-grandmother’s cut glass cake dome, she found a good quarter of the cake. It was a bit lopsided. The layers were pinned together with enough toothpicks to reconstruct a small tree.

In case a confession was not forthcoming, there was a happy abundance of chocolaty fingerprints from pantry to oven to counter to china cabinet to dining room table. A few inches of lukewarm lemonade – flamingo pink – languished in the cut glass pitcher that matched the cake cover. The dogwood patterned luncheon plates and sherbet glasses were stacked in the kitchen sink next to the melted remains of the sherbet box. Aunt Gusty’s cutwork tablecloth – white moonflowers on a sky blue background – covered the dining room table. A lagoon of flamingo pink pooled in the center of the cloth.

Elspeth swore long and hard. Her father had been a Marine and she had learned to swear at his knee. What had possessed them to take down the Depression glass and the antique linens?

She stormed onto the back porch. What possessed you to take down the Depression glass and the antique linens? Wasn’t it enough to screw the entire kitchen without starting on the dining room?

Technically she was addressing both girls, but since Annie slept like a graven image, it was Gusty who, once again, caught the flack.

We wanted to do something special together before the summer ends. We might never be together for another summer, Gusty explained, putting down her novel and the peach she was munching, speaking very slowly and carefully, so as not to vex the obtuse.

How do you figure that?

Hannah has her BA. She’s going to get a job and move away.

You have more confidence in your sister than I do.

Annie will be starting college in a few weeks.

You will be at the same college! Hello!

She’ll be in the dorms. I have an apartment.

I do hope you drop in on each other from time to time.

Really, Mom. This month marks the end of our childhood. Who knows when we three shall meet again?

Elspeth rolled her eyes and raised a weary hand. Please! Don’t bedazzle me with Shakespeare before breakfast. Would it have killed you to wash the dishes?

Mom, Gusty began again, with all of the patience of one trying to bring Christianity to the Hottentots. You told us never to wash the antique stuff without you. You made us promise after that goofy looking thing with the legs…

But… Mrs. Z. began. A mental image of Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe washing up her great grandmother’s cut glass compote stopped her cold. Instead she walked across the cool linoleum floor to the rollout where both girls reclined. She scooped a Sunbonnet Sue quilt from the floor, quietly folded it then tucked it into an armoire. I used to nap under this when I was a little girl. It was an antique then.

You say that every time we take it down.

Next Mrs. Z. straightened the powder blue sheets that covered the girls’ legs and plumped each of the four pillows that Gusty was using to prop herself and her book. She picked a peach pit from the windowsill and switched off the window fan. The breeze slipping through the tall windows was still chilly on this side of the house. Annie was prone to summer colds; there was no sense courting one.

Gently Elspeth coaxed her leggy baby into a more comfortable position, wound her cascade of curly bronze hair into an almost manageable tail and tucked her pillow under her head. Her hand touched something peculiar. She withdrew a small wreath of withered vegetation and stood blinking at it.

She’s wortkenning, Gusty said, not looking up from her book.

What?

Wortkenning. That’s the verb. Wortcunning is, of course, the noun.

Wart? W-A-R-T?

Wort. W-O-R-T.

What?

Gusty gave her a breezy wave then returned to her novel. A phase, Mother; a harmless phase. Put it in her amulet.

Mrs. Z. looked around the back porch then gave a helpless shrug.

The yellow flannel bag in the armoire. Top shelf.

Mrs. Z. stood on tiptoe to check out the top shelf. Sure enough, there was a small, yellow, hand-sewn bag, tied with a silver cord and embroidered, very badly, with a silver A. Mrs. Z. held it for a moment, palpitating it squeamishly. Eye of newt? Hair of frog? she muttered.

No Shakespeare before breakfast, Mother.