to our lips every day. Dirt brown. Hurricane Hazel Brown. The taste of Angus – three cream, no sugar. Last week when he finally came to see me, and I got brave enough to ask him what happened, he looked at the ceiling. When I started to cry, he stared at the floor, ‘For Chrissake, my sister died. That’s it. That’s all. Enough said.’
So, I can swallow that for the rest of my life or I can spit him out and start clean. I should have said, ‘Angus, you taste just like what you are – plain old country cow shit.’
Mumsie says nice girls don’t swear, but I no longer qualify. I’m about to be a married woman. And Walter, when he proposed at my bedside yesterday, his hand thumbing my knee, assured me that grown-up wives with aspiring bank manager husbands to instruct them don’t have to listen to their Mumsies (especially not to Maladroit Mummified Maters like mine).
GOOD OLD ROCK ’N’ ROLL
The drive that got us to the cottage that summer of ’69 was, much like the family in the Ford, a day late and tender short. It occurred uncharacteristically in broad daylight, on Saturday morning, the 28th of June. Had we followed the Departure Protocol, our car Tessie would have joined the Friday night diaspora of the last day of school. Ordinarily, MC rocketed around the house all afternoon, ordering Jordan about in a frenzy of cleaning and packing, both of them tripping over our springer spaniel, Balsam, who knew that barking makes women pack faster. We couldn’t waste a nanosecond. MC’s self-imposed countdown had us blasting off the second Dad engaged the screen door. But that night broke the routine. Jordan walked no farther than the triangle between couch, radio and TV, surfing our three U.S. stations. Mom’d start pouring cereal or powdered skim milk into mouse-proof jars, then find an excuse to join her.
‘What earth-shaking event had transpired?’ you ask. Not transpired, expired. Judy Garland – she died. A week of footage already: Judy dancing with Mickey, clanging trolleys and ringing bells. Judy singing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ after JFK’s assassination. Judy, Judy, Judy. Just get over the bloody rainbow and be done with it.
Apparently not. Friday was her funeral, so of course they played The Gizzard of Boz yet again. I had to listen to BS redeclare it ‘the number-one-all-time-best-possible-movie-ever-in-the-history-of-the-possible-world!’ I had to watch Little Miss Chubby Pigtails outwit a twister and a witch, lions and tigers and bears, only to discover what most of us already know. When a network bulletin interrupted to announce a riot after a police raid on Stonewall, a men’s bathhouse in Greenwich Village, and Jordan asked why didn’t they have tubs, Mom snapped the Gizzard off and told her to go pack something. But when Dad got home, he found the TV on and them side by side on the couch blubbering at some clicking ruby slippers, snotty Kleenex snowballs piled between them. When he got out the camera, MC put the kibosh on that blockbuster with one slam of a bedroom door.
Next morning, Jordan held three things safe in hand, refusing to consign any of them to Tessie’s trunk, especially not her Little Yellow Miracle. Last summer, on her thirteenth birthday, she got the usual, a little party and a little present: a bowling party for two, her standing request since nine, and her very own transistor radio. A Lloyd’s, sun yellow, the size of a deck of smokes but thicker. It had two gold knobs, tuning and volume, and a plastic wristband, also yellow. I’d be surprised if the parents laid out more than five bucks, but when she opened it you’d have thought it was a brand-new Pontiac Firebird. She squealed. She actually hugged them and they even let her. ‘It’s perfect!’ Queen for a day, she all but danced.
Later she told me it was the only time they got it right – that usually, after hours of deliberating (the kind of hours you have to spend when you’re only getting one thing), she’d give them a page from the Eaton’s catalogue with her wish circled or stand in the bargain aisle of Savette’s and point. Come the 23rd of June, however, deliberation counted squat. She’d inevitably unwrap a close second, something almost but not quite the real thing: a cheaper version, the wrong colour or size. ‘That’s me,’ she shrugged, ‘always silver, never gold,’
The sight of her clutching her Miracle that day elicited my first act of similar kindness that summer. I won’t say what kind. I leaned over Balsam, always plopped down on my half of the back seat as if he didn’t need to share it, flicked the side of Jordan’s head with my finger and whispered, ‘You love a stupid little yellow box more than anyone will ever love you.’
A dead moment. A shrug. She asked MC for the car thermos, full as always of watered-down grape High-C, and with no help from me, poured it straight down the front of her yellow pop-top into a puddle on her new white shorts. I laughed. I said she looked like a walking exclamation mark, like one of the Riddler’s henchmen. When we stopped in Manilla for ice cream, Dad moved to let her out, but MC reached back and locked the door. As we stepped away, we heard, ‘Hey, all you CHUM Bugs out there! Here’s your brand-new CHUM Chart, #648, Saturday, June 28, 1969!’ And when we got back, she was still singing. Dad filmed her through the window, glasses on her head, holding the tiny print of it under her nose:
THIS WEEK >> LAST WEEK >> ARTIST >> TRACK
1 >> 1 >> Desmond & the Aces >> Israelites
2 >> 6 >> Three Dog Night >> One
3 >> 1 >> Blood, Sweat & Tears >> Spinning Wheel
4 >> 12 >> Oliver >> Good Morning Starshine
5 >> 9 >> Paul Revere & the Raiders >> Let Me
6 >> 15 >> Joe Jeffrey Group >> My Pledge of Love
7 >> 5 >> Friends of Distinction >> Grazing in the Grass
8 >> 26 >> Jr. Walker & the All Stars >> What Does It Take
9 >> 20 >> Andy Kim >> Baby I Love You
10 >> 10 >> The Buchanan Brothers >> Medicine Man
11 >> 27 >> The Winstons >> Color Him Father
12 >> 3 >> Henry Mancini >> The Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet
13 >> 2 >> The Beatles >> Get Back
14 >> 8 >> The Classics IV >> Every Day With You Girl
15 >> 24 >> Tommy James & the Shondells >> Crystal Blue Persuasion
16 >> 18 >> The Young Rascals >> See
17 >> 25 >> Motherlode >> When I Die
18 >> 4 >> Elvis Presley >> In the Ghetto
19 >> 21 >> Tom Jones >> Love Me Tonight
20 >> 30 >> Kenny Rogers >> Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town
21 >> 29 >> Jerry Butler >> Moody Woman
22 >> 17 >> Bill Deal & the Rhondels >> I’ve Been Hurt
23 >> 0 >> Brian Hyland >> Stay and Love Me All Summer
24 >> 13 >> Marvin Gaye >> Too Busy Thinking About My Baby
25 >> 0 >> Booker T. & the MGs >> Mrs. Robinson
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