The Sand Castle Read online

  “Aunt Wheezie says you are very materialistic but she’s spiritual.”

  Mother’s lustrous gray eyes narrowed, “Balls.”

  I neglected to point out that she’d uttered the very word for which I’d just been chastised. “That’s what she says.”

  “Goddamned religious nut is what she is. More Catholic than the pope. Of course he has a better wardrobe but she spends a bundle on clothes. Have you ever seen your Aunt Wheezie looking like anything but a million bucks?”

  “No, but you always look prettier.” This wasn’t idle flattery, because Mother was a wee bit flashier than her older sister.

  “Thank you, honey.” She just ate it up. “Let me tell you about my dear big sis. First, I love her to death. Second, she can be a Pharisee. If I’m the Philistine, well, she’s the Pharisee. She can be the biggest goddamned hypocrite. She’s plenty wrapped up in jewelry, cars, clothes. Her house. Do you know what her dining room table is worth? It’s a Hepplewhite. People know about Sheraton and Chippendale but this is as good, if not better, and the damned thing is two hundred years old and then some. Chairs, too. Sanctimonious twit. If I had those damned chairs, I could pay off the farm.”

  “How come she’s rich?”

  Mother sat down, took the little gardening hand shovel from my hand because I’d completed my task. “She married money. Pearlie,” Uncle Paul’s nickname was “Pearlie,” “wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth but his family had some money, and I have to give her credit, she helped him build the business.”

  “Is that why she’s in her office all the time?”

  Mother nodded. “She keeps the books, she makes the purchases, she calls clients, she puts the ads in the newspapers—we design those together. She works hard. She’s got a business head, always did.”

  Uncle Pearl owned the largest painting company along the Mason-Dixon Line from Hagers-town in Maryland to York in Pennsylvania, and it had a reputation for excellent work and fair pricing. Sometimes museums used him because he knew so much about old paints as so many of the houses he worked on had been built in the mid-seventeenth century and then enlarged, usually in the eighteenth century. Going through an old house with Uncle Pearlie on a job bid thrilled me. I’d already inherited the building and rebuilding bug from Mother, and Uncle Pearlie had taught me how to really look at a structure.

  Dad, not a driven kind of guy, still worked for his father, a man not known for generosity. But Dad would inherit the dry goods store someday so he dutifully kept at it, which drove Mother nuts. We also farmed and Mother did most of that work. She could drive a tractor better than the men.

  “You keep Dad’s books.”

  “Only the house. His mother will give up her bookkeeping when she dies. We’ll have to pry those double-entry account books from her frozen fingers, the old bitch.” She reached for her pack of Chesterfields, resting on top of the wide castle wall, the matches next to it. “Thank God for the Indian and tobacco.” She lit up.

  “May I have a puff?”

  The cigarette, lipstick already on the end, glowed as she breathed in. “Don’t inhale a lot, hear me? Just a tiny little intake and don’t let Her Holiness see you. Turn your back.”

  I bent over and she cupped her hands around the fag as I inhaled what to me was a little. Burning tendrils snaked down into my lungs. My eyes watered.

  Mother laughed, “Blow it out, kid, or you’ll bust a gut.”

  I exhaled more from relief than anything. “Jeez!”

  “Gotta learn to do it, and it’s not the smartest thing to do, I’ll grant you that.” She inhaled deeply, her eyes closed, bliss emanating from her body. “Ahhh.” She blew silver-blue smoke from her nose, which I loved to see. “Here’s the deal, kid: it’s a nasty habit. Colors your teeth so you have to go to the dentist more often, though brushing with baking soda helps. Turns your fingers yellow. Gotta chew mints because your breath will smell like an ashtray, plus it gets into all your clothes and the house smells like old smoke, all stale.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  She pulled her knees up to her chin, circling them with her arms, cigarette between forefinger and middle finger. “Relaxes me. Kind of gives me a little jolt at the same time. But mostly I can think better. You know, everyone will try to live your life for you. Here I am just about forty-seven and my big sister still tells me what to do.”

  I interrupted, not very proper but I did it. “Dad doesn’t tell you what to do.”

  “He knows better.”

  “How can you can get Dad to listen but not Aunt Wheezie?”

  She sucked in another long drag. “Any woman worth her salt can get just about any man to do what she wants. Of course, the longer you’re married the more ingenuity it takes.”

  “How?”

  “Kid, that’s a subject for a later date. Back to fags.” She held up her cigarette between us. “Like I said, people will try to live your life for you. You gotta fight back. If this damned cigarette brings me a little pleasure, so what about the rest of it? Is it unhealthy? Well, I expect it is but I have to die sometime.”

  “You said you weren’t going to die.” A wave of panic hit me.

  “Not now,” she laughed. “Actually, I’d better not say that. Here today; gone tomorrow. But the odds are, I’ll be around for a long time. I fully intend to live long enough to be a burden to you.”

  “Maybe you’re a burden now.” I’d picked up some of Mother’s quickness.

  She choked from laughing. “You little shit.”

  “See. God’s punishment.”

  “Oh.” She rolled her eyes. “My own daughter. A religious nut. Christ, now we’ve got two in the family.”

  “Mother, I promise never to be a religious nut.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.” She dug in the sand with her toes, the red toenail polish calling attention to her dainty feet. “Just another bunch of people telling you what to do and how to do it. Nickel, that’s not the same as believing. They’re all a bunch of bullshitters and thieves.”

  “Not Aunt Wheezie.”

  “No, she’s just . . . ah, well, she’s gotten feverish about it. When Ginny first came down with the cancer Wheezie beat a path to her pew. She got calluses on her knees, though I can’t blame her. She prayed herself hoarse.” Mother’s eyes glistened. “Didn’t do a damn bit of good. God, how Ginny suffered. The first six months, well, it wasn’t so bad but those last two. Honey,” she lifted my chin with her left hand, “I hope you never suffer like that and I don’t want to suffer either. If God loves us we’ll die like Mama.”

  “God didn’t love Ginny?”

  “I don’t know. She was the sweetest kid I’ve ever known. I used to tease Wheezie that she couldn’t be her baby. Someone must have switched babies in the hospital. Course, Ginny was the spitting image of my sister.” She twisted her cigarette in the sand, extinguishing it. “Takes a long, long time. Everyone looks okay on the outside but on the inside, it’s there. That emptiness.”

  I jumped up and turned a cartwheel. “Does that help?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “It does.” She wiped them away then looked down at the Bay. “That is the longest Wheezie has ever been in the water. She’ll turn into a prune.”

  “Would fish really eat us?”

  “Sure. Not now, though. Conditions would have to be right or wrong. A shark or some kind of big fish would have to come in close and I don’t know why they come in sometimes and not others. I wonder if there are storms out in the Atlantic that we don’t know about or currents are running harder underneath the water. All I know is sometimes big fish come calling. I figure they’re always closer in around dawn and dusk. If you notice, most all creatures feed then except for the cattle and horses, they just keep walking and eating, walking and eating, all day. Anyway, you learn when to go in and when to stay out. But Leroy is in no danger from fish. Course, he’s in danger from Louise trying to send him into the priesthood.”

  “Won’t work.”


  “I think not.”

  “I wouldn’t want to wear that white collar around my neck.”

  “You’re safe.” She picked up the tools, knocking off the sand, and replaced them in the canvas bag. “You know, it looks pretty good.”

  “Are you hungry?” I’d learned not to ask for food but to politely ask if the other person needed some.

  “Getting there, which means you are.” She checked her ladylike wristwatch. “Go on down there and move those two along. It’ll take Wheezie twenty minutes to shower, remove every grain of sand from between her toes, put on espadrilles, and replenish her lipstick.” She exhaled loudly. “It’s a wonder she has a minute to call her own with all that primping.”

  “Aunt Wheezie says a woman must suffer for beauty.”

  “Actually, everyone around her suffers, too. Go on.”

  I ran down to the water’s edge. “Aunt Wheezie, Mother says it’s time for lunch.”

  She checked her own ladylike wristwatch, a much more expensive version than Mother’s, the face so tiny and square she had to bring it right up to her eyes to tell time. “Hmm.”

  I scampered back up to Mother.

  “What’d she say?”

  “Hmm.”

  Within a few minutes the two of them rejoined us, Louise handing Leroy a towel.

  “Wheeze, let’s go to the crab place.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one right on this side of St. Mary’s. That’s a good one,” Mother replied, saying St. Mary’s instead of St. Mary’s City.

  It wasn’t really a city in 1952 but the word added importance.

  “We have to leave our sand castle.” Louise looked protectively at their creation.

  “Sooner or later it will go.”

  “We built it far enough away from the water. High tide won’t take it.”

  “Louise, it’s made of sand. It gave us something to do.” Then, seeing that this tack wasn’t working, Mother said, “Remember that parable about the man who built his house on sand?”

  A dark eyebrow arced suspiciously, “You quoting Scripture?”

  “I’m not quoting, I’m remembering. You’re the one always rubbing the Bible off on people.”

  “Juts, I am not rubbing the Bible off on people as you so crudely put it. I am trying to live a life as He would wish.”

  “Well, He got hungry, too. There was a Last Supper. All I want is a good lunch.”

  This seeming blasphemy exhausted Louise’s reserves of Christian patience. “Don’t you dare talk like that in front of these innocents.”

  She put her hands over Leroy’s ears, a dramatic touch unappreciated by him.

  “Sis, give up the cross. Other people need the wood.”

  “You are impossible. Impossible. You’ll be languishing in purgatory for centuries.”

  “Balls.”

  “That’s it. I’ve had it.” Louise threw her stuff together, grabbed Leroy by the wrist and pulled him toward the car.

  Mother, hands on hips, whistled a few notes from the hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

  Without turning her back, Louise, straight as a stick, threw everything in the trunk, got in the driver’s seat and roared off.

  “Mother, what are we going to do?”

  “Wait until she comes back. She won’t leave us here.”

  “But I’m hungry.”

  “Me, too.” She sat down on her blanket, filled her hand with sand, then let it run between her fingers.

  She laughed with a start. “She drove off before she dried off and changed out of her bathing suit. Ha. The driver’s seat will be soaking wet and she has to drive home.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I drove here. We take turns. She has to drive back. Don’t you just love it?”

  “Do you love Aunt Wheezie?”

  “Not right this minute, I don’t.”

  “How come you love someone sometimes and not others? I hate Leroy especially when he’s a great big fat chicken. But I kinda love him.”

  “Oh, that’s just how it is when people are close. If you have a friend you see, say, once a week, or even your friend at school, it’s easier to get along with them than someone you have to live with day in and day out.”

  “Like Daddy?”

  She smiled. “Daddy’s pretty easygoing, thank God. Louise is not.”

  “Even when she was little?”

  “Well,” Mother thought for awhile, “she wanted to please a lot more than I did, and do. Even then she believed things, you know, believed people in charge. I might believe them and I might not. I had to think about it.”

  “You tell me to believe you.” I enjoyed giving her a little dig.

  “I’m your sainted mother.” She grinned. “You know that commandment that says, ‘Honor thy father and mother.’”

  “What about Dinny Morton? Her mama is a drunk and you can smell her, too.” My eyes widened with this bit of detail.

  “That’s hard. Hard.” She lit another Chesterfield. “But when Dinny gets older she’ll understand that Rachel”—she used Mrs. Morton’s first name—“has an affliction. Drinking is a terrible curse. Rachel’s father was a drunk, and his father too, and I guess they’ve always been drunks. Course, no one puts a gun to your head and says, ‘You will knock back this bourbon and branch.’ I don’t see how they can stand the taste.” Her lips turned down. “Just awful.”

  “I saw you drink champagne at Christmas.”

  “A sip. Champagne’s not so bad but I plain don’t like the taste and your father doesn’t drink much either. A cold beer in hot weather is about it for him. Tell you what, I thank Jesus for that. Being married to a drunk is pure hell.”

  “What about communion. That’s wine.”

  “A sip. Pretty awful, too.”

  “Do you really think it’s the blood of Christ?” I had heard from Aunt Louise about transubstantiation, her own breathless version of the sacrament, which sounded like cannibalism to me.

  “No.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “To keep the peace. Sometimes, honey pie, you have to go along to get along. The trick is knowing when and where you can get away with just being yourself.” She thrilled a long, deep drag. “Tell you something, my little chip off the old block, being yourself is the greatest luxury of all.”

  “Here she comes.” I jumped up as the Nash stopped by the beach’s edge.

  “Told you. She can’t live without me.”

  “Better not tell her that.”

  Mother rose, gathering her things, handing some to me to carry, “You have a wise old head on those young shoulders. Sometimes you surprise me.” She tossed the short towel around her neck. “Just act as if nothing happened. Get in the back seat and shut your trap. She’ll want to simmer a bit and she wants us to fully appreciate the depths of her forgiveness.”

  I did as I was told. Leroy kept quiet, too. The biggest surprise was neither sister spoke to the other until we reached the restaurant, a weathered clapboard shack with the ubiquitous white sign, a big red crab on front of it, swinging from a yardarm. Wooden picnic tables were neatly lined up outside under awnings and most were filled, as was the crushed shell parking lot.

  Once she parked, Louise got out of the car, opened the trunk, pulled out her smaller towel, neatly folded it, and put it on the driver’s seat. She then retrieved a little carry bag.

  “I’m going to change. You can order for me.” Louise started for the bathrooms.

  “Okay. I’ll change when you get back.”

  “What about me?” I asked because I hated sitting around in my bathing suit even when it was mostly dry.

  “Let us go first then you can fix up.”

  When the rest of us were sitting down at a table in the back, under some nice trees, Mother picked up the rock on the table and handed us menus that had been underneath. Both Leroy and I could read a menu if it was simple. If it contained French words we were lost. This one, however, a mimeog
raphed sheet run off daily, stuck to the basics: crab, sand dabs, clams, oysters, fried chicken or hotdogs for those who didn’t like seafood, and cole slaw, fries, and hushpuppies.

  “Little crabs eat one another. When they grow up they eat dead people,” I helpfully informed Leroy.

  “Do not.”

  “Pluck the eyes right out of their head, then they eat the nose and take big bites out of their cheeks. They just love dead people. So tasty.”

  “Nickel.” Mother said simply.

  “It’s true.”

  “Is it true, Aunt Julia, is it?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t emphasize people but yes, crabs and lobsters are the Bay’s cleanup crew.”

  “So they do eat dead people?” His voice was hushed.

  “Now, Leroy, how many dead people do you think are in the Chesapeake Bay?” She hoped to lighten his mood.

  Again, I proved helpful. “Thousands. Millions. We don’t know how many Indians drowned in there before we came.”

  “Nickel, will you shut up?” Mother rarely used “shut up.” She turned to Leroy. “Don’t listen to her. Your cousin never heard a war story or a shipwreck tale she didn’t like. She has a penchant for violence.” She cut her eyes and I understood that if I continued on my wayward conversational path the violence would be directed against myself.

  Louise appeared, all smart in her halter top and pressed white shorts. Her soft yellow espadrilles matched her halter and she’d tied a navy blue bandanna around her hair.

  “My turn.” Mother left us.

  “Has the waitress come yet?”

  “No, Ma’am,” I answered. “It’s pretty busy.”

  “The best places always are.” Louise studied the mimeographed sheet, the ink a soft purple. “I’m having softshell crabs, fries, and the world’s biggest Co-cola. What about you all?”

  “Hotdog.” Leroy said quietly.

  “That’s it?”

  “He’s afraid to eat a crab,” I volunteered.

  “Why, Leroy?”

  “I am not. I don’t like crabs.”

  “He knows they eat dead people.”

  “Not the ones you’ll be eating,” she replied glibly.

  “How can you tell?” Leroy truly was fretting over the image of a crab plucking out eyes.