Published Fiction

The following story won first place at the Virginia Highlands Festival.

Tarnished

Sharon Tabor Warren

I still have it, and it's as ugly today as it was then - over fifty years ago. Every time I deep clean, which means boxes for the Goodwill or Disabled Vets, I consider adding it to the stacks of old paperbacks, ugly vases and those clothes I'll never be thin enough to wear again.

I take it from the shelf and catch my distorted reflection in its curved metal sides. Other images are there too - dim and dusky figures from the past - Mama, Daddy, Maggie, Mary and Kathleen. Frank too, although he was always in the shadows the turbulent few days that culminated in our custody of Mary's prized possession. Memories wash over me.

When I was ten, my world was predictable - safe and routine, wholesomely boring. We lived in a little desert town, perched at the edge of California, a hundred miles from anywhere. Old-timers claimed the summer days were so hot you could fry eggs on the sidewalk and the thermometers would break if put in the sun. I never tried either. Eggs were expensive, trucked in from Los Angeles or Phoenix, sidewalks were only in the business district and we didn't own a thermometer except the kind for taking our own temperatures.

Winter days were not as hot, but often brought windstorms that whipped across the unresisting desert. Sand would blow through town, sting our faces and legs and leave a layer of fine grit.

Mary and Kathleen and Frank arrived in June, and like a sandstorm their visit bit into us and left a residue behind.

* * *

Early summer dusk is a lingering purple-hued twilight on the desert. Daddy was listening to Lowell Thomas' nightly news when a car's headlights danced shadows above his head and halted outside our white picket fence. Mama slung a damp dishtowel over her shoulder and walked to the door, switched on the porch light and peered into the deepening shadows. I was behind Mama, looking out too. Maggie tugged me from behind: "Sarah, let me see." Little sisters, especially four years younger, could be annoying.

A disheveled woman with wrinkled clothes and mussed hair walked unsteadily through the gate and up the walk. She squinted against the glare of the light and said, "Friel?"

I could feel Mama's hesitation.

"It's me, Friel. It's Mary. Mary Morton. Didn't you get my postcard?"

I remembered Mrs. Morton. Major Morton had been in the Army with Daddy. Mrs. Morton and Mama played bridge, shopped and went to fancy cocktail parties. That was at Fort Belvoir, before and right after Pearl Harbor. Later, the Mortons had been stationed with us again in Florida.

Mrs. Morton had been lovely. Her clothes were high fashion, molded to her body to show every curve, and she always had her hair fixed at the beauty parlor. Mama was okay looking, and not frumpy, but she was never as glamorous. Mrs. Morton smoked long Pall Malls, exhaled slowly like Lana Turner, jiggled ice in her glass and laughed with a sound that rivaled the tinkling cubes and she always wore silk stockings. Mama said Mary could get silk stockings when the general's wife couldn't. Daddy would laugh, "Maybe she knows a paratrooper." I remembered Mrs. Morton better than many of the other officers' wives because her daughter was only two years older than me and she and Mama would leave us with the same babysitter.

I looked again. Could this dowdy lady be Mrs. Morton?

Daddy joined us and took in the situation with a glance. He opened the screened door, stepped out, took Mary's hand and gave her a hug as she sagged against him.

"No, Mary, no card, but our mail service is slow, and it doesn't matter. You look exhausted. You're not alone, are you?" He looked beyond the fence.

"No, Kathleen is with me. And a friend - Frank."

Daddy eased Mrs. Morton over to Mama and walked toward the car. "Come on in, Frank. You must be hot and thirsty."

I pushed past Mama and Mrs. Morton to run to the car. With abandon, Kathleen and I hugged and danced underfoot. Maggie ran out to join us. I was so excited to see Kathleen, I brought Maggie into our circle, forgot my usual big sister attitude.

While the outside of me laughed and moved, the inside of me was aware it was not as easy for the adults. Daddy had his "no nonsense" look about him as he moved toward the car to help with luggage. Mama was flustered - shoved the dishtowel in the ample pocket of her apron and then seemed at a loss for something to do with her hands. She'd hugged Mrs. Morton and Kathleen, but she had no hug in her for whoever "Frank" might be.

He followed Daddy through the gate with a swagger in his walk and wariness in his face. I felt his hesitation and instinct told me he was out of place - and he knew it. I didn't know what it was that gave him away. His clothes were crumpled and dirty but that was to be expected after a hot ride across the desert. He looked hardened in his tight white tee shirt with cigarettes rolled into the sleeve. But it was more than that - many of the valley people looked tough from hours in the sun and backbreaking labor. Perhaps it was the way his brown eyes didn't seem to focus and slid around, seeing everything from the side, without turning his head. He carried the cheap cardboard suitcase in a way I knew it weighed a lot. Daddy followed with another and directed him to the back bedroom as the rest of us trailed into the house behind them.

There were a lot of questions - mostly from Mama to Mrs. Morton. I had questions of my own.

""Where's your daddy, Kathleen?"

""He went to Taiwan two years ago and never sent for us. Now Mama says he's going to marry some Nurse Floozy over there."

"You mean he's divorcing you?" I didn't know anyone who was divorced except the mother of a classmate across the alley and Daddy called her a floozy too.

"Mama says we should have gone with Daddy right away, but he Army claimed Taiwan was no place for wives and kids. So Daddy went and Mama and I stayed in Evanston. It was home for Mama even though we don't have any family there."

""So what do you do there?"

"Mama lost her allotment from the Army and had to go back to work - the same bar where she worked when she was putting Daddy through college. We live in a little apartment over the bakery down the street from the bar. It's not very nice and there's no one for me to play with."

It didn't sound so good to me. I wouldn't want to live downtown over a store, especially anywhere near a bar. I pulled Kathleen into the kitchen.. "Mrs. Morton, may Kathleen sleep on the floor in the living room with Maggie and me?" I knew what the sleeping arrangement would be - guests always got our bedroom and Maggie and I slept on the floor.

"Yes, but on one condition. You must call me Mary not Mrs. Morton."

I looked at Mama. We were never allowed to call adults by a first name. Mama started to disagree but was interrupted.

"I'm not Mrs. Morton any more and I really prefer that no one calls me that. Friel, your girls may call me Mary. I insist."

Daddy joined us and Frank followed. Mama gave Kathleen, Maggie and me lemonade and allowed us to take the frosty glasses to the living room. That was a real treat - we were never allowed to have drinks in there. It told me loud and clear: Mama did not want us in the kitchen listening. I watched through the door and listened harder.

I saw Mary nod her head to Frank, and tilt it toward the bedroom. Frank excused himself, went out and came back with a half dozen bottles of liquor tucked beneath his arms and held a metal cocktail shaker. I figured that's what had been in the heavy suitcase.

Mary took over and shook drinks, jiggled the snowman-shaped shaker above her head and caused its tiny bells to ring as she wiggled across the worn linoleum. With the shaker in her hands, and the routine of mixing familiar cocktails, Mary became another person. She didn't seem tired , her dress didn't look wrinkled and worn; she was bright and witty.

Mama put us to bed on the living room floor with pallets of sleeping bags and blankets. The talk in the kitchen continued. Kathleen fell asleep immediately, probably exhausted from the long drive. Maggie slept soundly too. I stayed awake and listened. I wanted to know who Frank was but I never heard.

* * *

I woke the following morning to a murmuredconversation between my parents.

"Cliff, I don't like Mary and Frank sharing that room."

"Our house is too small, hon, there's nothing we can do. Even receiving the card in advance wouldn't have helped."

"I don't want Kathleen telling Sarah - things."

"Chances are Kathleen doesn't understand a whole lot herself."

I held my breath. I wanted to know what "things" Kathleen might tell me that Mama didn't want me to know.

I heard Mama sigh, the scrape of her chair across the floor and the sound of the metal coffeepot against her cup. Daddy's empty cup clinked against his saucer and his chair echoed Mama's. I turned my head to avoid flickering eyelids. Daddy had a way of knowing when I was playing `possum. Within minutes, I was asleep again.

Although Mama let us sleep in, we were up, fed and playing, long before Mary and Frank made an appearance. Without looking at anyone or saying a word, Frank filled a cup with coffee, lit a cigarette and went out to sit on the front step.

"Frank's not very friendly," Kathleen whispered. "He doesn't know how to act around people who live in nice houses."

"Our house isn't anything special, Kath, not even big enough to have another bedroom."

"It's special to me because it's pretty and clean and it smells good. I'm sure Frank never lived any place as nice as this. He's always telling Mama he may only have a sixth grade education and was just a corporal in the Marines but he'd never run off with a nurse either."

The thought of Frank with some woman in a white dress that crackled when she walked made me want to giggle. I couldn't picture him with the Mrs. Morton I remembered from Army days either; then I caught myself because this new Mary wasn't who I remembered at all.

Kathleen twisted her hair around her finger. "Mama says Daddy only married her so he could get through college; she was his meal ticket and now he has to keep his buttons polished if he wants to make Colonel."

I thought it took more than shiny brass to make rank but I didn't say it.

"Mama says I'm the one who's hurt by it all. She wanted to give me all the things she never had herself and thought it would be no problem. I don't care about those things but I miss Daddy. Sometimes I have this dream that he and Nurse Floozy will want a daughter girl and they'll send for me."

"Well, that could happen. Would you really want to go to Taiwan or wherever and live with them?"

"I don't know. Mama could do okay if she'd get rid of Frank but I guess as long as he's around she needs me with her."

Kathleen and I were playing jacks on the utility porch and Mary came out, "Hey, girls, let me play too." She loved to play and every morning during her stay, she'd finish her coffee and join Kathleen, Maggie and me at whatever we were playing. Paper dolls and jacks, Parcheesi and Monopoly, it was always more fun when Mary played.

Frank sat on the front porch, drank coffee and smoked until there was a pile of cigarette butts that would fill a coffee can. He reminded me of Stumpy, Maggie's Chuckawalla lizard. Stumpy lived in an old fish tank under the water cooler and did mostly nothing but watch. He would be so still I thought he was dead but he saw everything. That's how Frank was - always watching.

I liked to talk to adults and felt at ease with most of them, but Frank gave me the creeps. Kathleen avoided him.

Mama tried to keep the routine going - laundry, ironing, shopping, meals. Lunch was always at noon and Daddy came home from the office to eat with us. We'd squeeze around the tiny chrome-edged table and eat tuna or grilled cheese sandwiches. Mary and Frank never ate breakfast so it was the first meal for them and also time for the first drink. I watched Mama's face take on a pinched look. Daddy escaped back to his office.

The day after they arrived, Daddy brought home the wayward postcard, mailed two weeks before from Illinois and misdirected to a town with a similar name in Arkansas. He was driving out to the weir at the north end of the valley and asked Frank if he wanted to ride along and see some of the area. Frank said he had to change the oil in his car, but he spent the afternoon on the porch steps drinking and smoking. He didn't get within thirty feet of his car.

Mary drank and cried after lunch each day. Mama tried to talk with her but Mary didn't want conversation, she wanted an audience. Mama sent us girls off on made up errands, "Take this Ladies Home Journal down the street to Mrs. Hill."

I hated to go to Mrs. Hill's. Her house was dark and smelled of cat pee. One of her next-door neighbors counted twenty-seven cats there at one time. The windows stayed open and the felines came and went as they pleased. Some had litters of kittens we would have liked to watch but Mrs. Hill would scowl and look prune-faced and bark at us with bad breath. "You can't be looking and touching my kittens. The mama cat don't like it."

I never understood why Mama sent magazines because the Hill's living room had at least six stacks of them, each more than a foot high. There was also a Mr. Hill - the grownups always talked about him being struck. He seemed to be another stack in the living room, always in a big chair in the corner, surrounded by dirty dishes and a layer of cigarette ash. He looked at us with one eye and talked from the side of his mouth with sounds we couldn't understand. Maggie hid behind me as usual, but Kathleen studied everything with interest. As soon as we cleared the cluttered front porch I made a gagging sound. "That place makes me sick to my stomach."

Kathleen murmured, "It's not so bad, Sarah. I've seen worse places." I could not imagine any place worse than the Hills'.

We dawdled back down the street, but didn't go in by our front gate. Kathleen pulled us around the fence to the back yard so we could go in the house without passing Frank.

Mama and Mary were still at the kitchen table. Mama was mending; Mary was drinking and crying. Kathleen coaxed her mother from the kitchen to the small back bedroom and got her onto the bed. Then she sat with Mary, held her hand and patted her arm. The next day, after lunch, Mama made us take Mrs. Simons' clean Pyrex pie plate down to the church social hall. The church was across the alley from Mickey Bidewell's and Mickey was a fat little kid with a crush on Maggie. He was as dumb as a truckload of tires but he could always fool Maggie. That day he was in his bare dirt yard, shaded by the huge tamarisk trees, holding a cardboard carton. He convinced Maggie he had a puppy in the box. She was a sucker for baby animals so she walked over to look while Kathleen and I took the pie plate into the church kitchen. Reverend Jewel sidetracked us - he wanted to know where Kathleen was from, how long she'd be visiting, could he expect her at Sunday School? We finally made our getaway and found Maggie in tears under a tamarisk tree - the overturned box and a dead horned toad beside her. Mickey, ten feet away, looked smug and puzzled at the same time.

Kathleen turned on him in Maggie's defense. "You nasty little boy, you should be ashamed of yourself," but Mickey ran into the house through the sagging door with the torn screen. Kathleen hugged Maggie and walked home with her arm around her. Maggie would never have let me do that, but I would never have thought to yell at Mickey either.

Mama and Mary were in the kitchen; Mary was nearly incoherent. Kathleen took her mother back to the bedroom and soothed her again. Mary rested but was soon outside, in the shade of the cottonwoods, sitting with us and fantasizing with my Betty Grable paper dolls. Mary always seemed happiest when she played, happier even than when she was drinking with Frank.

That evening Mary and Frank wanted to go out. Mary said they needed some excitement The evenings spent playing Five Hundred with Daddy and Mama didn't count. My folks would not visit a bar - it wasn't done. I didn't know why, but knew they would no sooner go to one than to the illegal cockfights out along the river. Mary and Frank went alone.

"Gott in Himmel, Cliff, I hope they don't run into anyone we know." Mama had to be really upset to forget Hitler and the wars and revert to her childhood German.

"It's doubtful, honey, but if they do, they do." "I feel so sorry for her but there doesn't seem much I can do. The drinking's out of hand."

"It's pretty bad - wonder if it's been for some time - maybe before John went to Taiwan?"

"Everyone drank during the war - even us." He stood in front of Mama and wrapped his arms around her in the way I'd seen so many times. "We can't help Mary, Friel. She'll have to face her demons herself, or go down for the count. We can be friends, but that's all."

"It's all so sad - little Kathleen. Mary was such a beautiful person - still is - a heart of gold but that Frank's another story - I don't think I can have him here much longer..."

The refrigerator motor began to hum and I could hear no more of their murmured conversation.

Mama came in before long, told us to go to bed, left the light on in the bathroom as a guide for Mary and Frank, and she and Daddy went to their room. Some time later Mary and Frank came home. The car doors slammed and I heard their voices raised in anger.

"You can't treat me like this," Mary cried.

"I'll treat you any damn way I please."

"Oh, yes, and you have to play cards, don't you? That money you lost was to get us from here to L.A."

"We'll get to L.A., don't worry about that. No way we're staying in this hick town."

"But what about money for an apartment and food and gas?"

"Quit bellyaching, Mary, or I'll leave you and the kid right here and go to L.A. by myself."

"No, Frank, don't do that." Mary's voice was desperate. I hated it.

They were in the house and silent as they crossed the living room and went into the bedroom. The argument continued but their voices were muffled behind the closed door. I heard a sound from Kathleen. I thought she might be crying but I didn't know what to say. I wanted to hug her as she had hugged Maggie or pat her arm as she did for Mary, but I sensed it might embarrass her. Finally, I slept again.

* * *

The next morning Kathleen's eyes were red and puffy. Mary's looked worse and there was an ugly blue mark high on one cheek. Frank took his coffee to the porch but drank quickly, set the cup down beside the pile of butts, walked out to the sagging Studebaker and took off. Mary played Monopoly for a while but had to be reminded when it was her turn and she kept forgetting to collect her rents.

Daddy didn't come home for lunch that day - he had a Rotary meeting - and Frank didn't come either. Frank finally came back while we were eating dinner. Mary looked at Mama in a fearful way, excused herself and followed him into the bedroom. Daddy and Mama kept talking with loud stiff words while we pretended not to hear the angry voices and occasional swearing. My eyes met Maggie's. We never heard Daddy and Mama argue and never heard swearing either. Kathleen kept her head lowered while she pushed her meat loaf back and forth in the pool of catsup on her plate. Mary came back to the kitchen and didn't finish her meal but fixed a fresh drink. Frank grabbed a beer and went back to his spot on the porch step. Daddy turned on the nightly news while Kathleen, Maggie and I cleared the table and took the paper dolls to the utility porch

"We'll be leaving in the morning," Kathleen whispered.

"How do you know?"

"Because that's how it is. We've stayed with people all across the country and there's always an argument and a fight and then we leave."

"What're you going to do in L.A.?"

"I don't know. Frank talks like it's some kind of Oz - streets paved with gold or yellow bricks. Mama will find a job. She says in her kind of work, there are always jobs and L.A. is booming."

"What will Frank do?"

Kathleen pulled a funny face. "He claims he can do most anything mechanical and he talks about hiring on with one of the aircraft factories. Maybe if he gets a good job, he won't have time for the other things."

"Wouldn't you and your mama be better without Frank?"

"I think so, but she'll never leave him. He might leave her but I know she won't walk away, that's just how she is. Frank isn't the first one."

I thought life without Frank and his lizard eyes and endless cigarettes, his drinking and his gambling, his raised voice and swear words and even a mean fist, would be okay. I thought of Mary's big heart and her drinking, and of Kathleen who often was the mother while Mary was the child. In spite of my boring life and naiveté I sensed Mary could no more be without a man than a boat could be rowed without oars. And that she would always choose the wrong man.

* * *

The following morning everyone was up early before Daddy left for work. Kathleen ate breakfast while Mary and Frank drank coffee and smoked. Mama fixed a Thermos of coffee and put cold lemonade in a Miracle Whip jar for Kathleen. Frank loaded the car, climbed behind the wheel and smoked more cigarettes.

Mama and Mary clung to each other in the kitchen. Frank began impatient taps on the horn while Kathleen and I hugged and cried and hugged some more. Maggie clung to Kathleen too. There was a longer blast of the horn and Kathleen said, "I have to go before he gets really mad," and dashed out with her jar of lemonade and shiny eyes.

Mary walked through the house with slow deliberate steps. Mama followed but stopped at the front door. Her eyes were wet, tears slid down her cheeks and fell unheeded on her dress. Maggie and I hung over the fence while Daddy walked Mary to the car. Mary pulled something from the back seat and handed it to Daddy. He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on her tear-stained cheek, spoke a few words to Kathleen and then again to Mary. Maggie and I watched the car disappear in a cloud of exhaust and dust.

We followed Daddy back in the house and saw him hand the cocktail shaker to Mama.

"What is this, Cliff, a thank you gift?"

Daddy laughed. "No, Friel, it's collateral - on a loan."

* * *

We were out twenty dollars, enough to buy a week's groceries, and had, instead, a tarnished cocktail shaker. It is three stacked spheres, with bells on the upper one, topped by a tall wooden handle. Carmen Miranda could have put it to excellent use. We never did.

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