I saw the red rising up his neck.
He threw the car door open and got out. “Excuse me,” he said, brushing past the man. He walked over to the pop machine and lifted the lid, putting coins in the slot before jerking out a bottle and using the opener attached to the machine to pry off the cap. When he started back, the man turned and hurried inside the station, leaving his helper to finish up. After my brother was back in the car, I asked him if he was fixing to punch that man in the nose.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I hadn’t quite decided.”
The boy picked up a pop bottle of vinegar water and a crumpled page of yesterday’s news to clean the windshield and then opened the front door and swept the carpet with a whisk broom that was worn down almost to the handle. When he looked back at me and Vonnie, I noticed he was double cross-eyed, both eyes pointing toward his nose. He wore glasses that magnified his eyes, making them the one thing on his face you had to look at, especially if you tried not to. I stared back because I didn’t get to glance away before he caught me watching him. If I looked away, he’d think it was because of him being cross-eyed. I got out of it when Mother came back from paying for the gas and passed around a pack of Black Jack gum.
Vonnie told me later she thought the boy was kinda cute. I didn’t mention about his eyes.
That was just between me and him.
After settling in at the tourist home, we ate lamb stew with the family that lived there. That was something we didn’t eat at home. I was willing to give it a try, but Vonnie, always a picky eater, wouldn’t eat a bite. Grandma said she guessed it wouldn’t hurt if she skipped the meat this once, but Mother said she at least had to taste it. “Just one bite,” she said, holding out a fork with a little piece of meat on it. Vonnie refused to open her mouth. Mother, not wanting Vonnie to show herself at the people’s house, let her get away with it.
Vonnie started singing under her breath, “My sister ate a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, My sister ate a little lamb . . .”
Grandma gave her a look and she stopped.
We took Hursey back to his dormitory before curfew, while we slept in four-poster beds so tall we had to use steps to climb in and out.
Romney had a football game the next afternoon. My brother was on the team and this was the first game he’d played. The weather had turned from fall crisp to winter cold overnight. Vonnie and I wore undershirts and scratchy wool sweaters layered under heavy coats, and two pairs of socks. We folded scarves into triangles and tied them under our chins. We looked like the round Russian dolls someone had given me, the little wooden ones that fit inside each other. I lost a glove climbing up the bleachers and had to keep my hand in my pocket to keep it from freezing. Vonnie told me to use one of my socks as a mitten, and that helped.
She gave me a quick once-over.
“You look queer as a clown. Put the other green sock on so you’ll have matching hands instead of one red and one green. Thank goodness no one I know is here to see you right now because if a one of them did I would simply die.”
According to my sister, I spent a good deal of time trying to embarrass her.
Hursey, smaller and younger than many of the other players, sat on the bench most of the time. Toward the end of the game he was sent in to kick the extra point after Romney tied the score. He lined up behind the ball and kicked it wobbling toward the goal where it hit the goalpost and fell short.
Romney lost the game.
Hursey, overly sensitive and impulsive, never played football again.
There was to be a dance in the Romney gymnasium. Since Mother had volunteered to chaperone, she said Vonnie and I could go, although Grandma was dead set against it. I promised myself I would pout for a whole month if Grandma talked her out of letting us go.
“Kathleen, you go on ahead and leave the children with me,” Grandma said. “I’ll see to it they have their baths and get to bed on time. They don’t have any business being around a bunch of teenagers wiggling to music that’s not fit to be heard anyway.”
I held my breath.
Mother turned from helping me with a broken shoelace and looked straight at Grandma. “They can walk through the doors of this school or their own anytime they’re open,” she said, “and it doesn’t matter what for, be it a ballgame, school play, or a dance where everybody there is wiggling. That’s the end of it so far as I’m concerned.” She went back to tying my broken shoelace together and putting it back in my shoe.
Grandma didn’t say one word.
It wasn’t in her nature to fight losing battles.
“Come back over here and let me fix your hair so you don’t embarrass your brother,” Mother said. “You look like you been wallering around on your head.”
I was always getting accused of embarrassing somebody.
Hursey got all spiffed up in a new olive-drab suit. The cuffs of his white shirt shot past his jacket sleeves to show off gold-colored cufflinks with onyx stones. His tie was a paisley of gold and blue and black. Just like our father had done, he wore his belt buckle skewed off to the side and the face of his watch turned to the inside of his wrist. When Mother noticed, she
