Tall Tail

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

“He has good days and bad days,” Penny Holloway said as Harry shoveled mulch for Susan from the back of her F-150. “Sometimes the medication agitates him, just sets him off, but he tries to stay upbeat. It’s better if his mind is occupied.”

Waiting for her mulch pile to grow bigger, Susan stood next to Penny.

Her grandmother had dropped by for a visit, needing a break from tending to the governor.

Penny smiled, looking up at Harry on the truck bed. “Harry, you will never gain an ounce.”

“No, but I will.” Susan laughed. “If I so much as look at a chocolate-chip cookie, a pound.”

“Oh, your mother always says the same thing. She kept her figure and so have you.”

Susan exaggerated her pain. “G-Mom, it’s so hard.”

“A woman must suffer for beauty,” Penny responded. “The French said that first, of course. You know, when Sam was governor, we met so many people when we traveled on government trips. Every time I was in Paris, the women had perfect clothes, perfect hair, perfect makeup, and, of course, perfect deportment!”

“That is irritating,” replied Susan, who knew Paris well.

Harry told on herself. “I’m safe. No one will ever accuse me of being fashionable.”

Susan compressed her lips, thought for a moment, then actually said, “Well, Harry, that may be the case, but you will always be the one with the best body.”

“Don’t forget BoomBoom.” Harry mentioned a classmate who was quite beautiful and with a tremendous bosom, hence her nickname.

Her given first name was Ursula.

Penny laughed, then lowered her voice. “Too much to carry.” She paused, then turned to Susan. “When I look at you, I see your mother at the same age. How the time goes and what fun we had. She’d canvass door to door when Sam would run for office and she swore she would never marry a politician. She didn’t.” She paused again.

“Daddy liked banking and Mom did, too,” said Susan. “I thought I was safe when I married a lawyer,” she forthrightly admitted. “Ned kind of slid into politics.”

“You get used to it.” Penny sighed. “I wish Sam and I could do it all over again, I wish we could correct our mistakes, accomplish more of what we hoped to do, but as you know”—she looked directly at Susan—“so much of that depends on who sits in our legislature.”

“Ned’s eloquent on that.” Susan smiled. “My ever-so-levelheaded husband can actually swear like a sailor—just to me, of course.”

“How do we know he’s not swearing at you?” Harry jabbed her.

“He doesn’t need to do that.” Susan sweetly smiled. “You’ll do it for him.”

Penny laughed out loud. “You two. Never ends. I remember one time when your father built a sandbox. Do you remember your sandbox?”

“Do,” Susan replied.

“We all called it the Taj Mahal. Never saw anything like it. Well, the two of you, such lovely little girls, were playing in there, building castles, and the next thing your mother and I heard was screaming. Out we ran, and you, Harry, had torn out a side of the sandbox. How a child of six could have done that I don’t know. Susan, being the lady she is, hit you over the head with her sand bucket. It took two adult women to separate you.”

Harry pointed her shovel at Susan. “Violent. I’ve always known you had a streak of violence.”

Ignoring this, Susan motioned to the ever-growing pile. “Well, let’s fill up our wheelbarrows.”

Hopping down from the truck bed, Harry said to Mrs. Holloway, “If you need mulch for your gardens, I’m happy to bring some over.”

“What do you charge?”

“Not a thing. I don’t charge Susan anything, and right now I like you better than Susan.”

They all three laughed.

“I will leave you girls to it,” said Penny.

“A quick question before you go.” Harry stuck her shovel into the large pile. “Is the governor really writing his autobiography?”

Penny threw up her hands. “Driving me crazy. ‘Honey, do you remember what LBJ’s oldest girl wore the first time we were invited to the White House?’ ‘Honey, whatever happened to that officious fellow who ran The Valentine Museum when I got elected to the state Senate for the first time?’ Yes, oh, my, yes, he is writing his autobiography. Thankfully, Mignon’s a treasure.”

Susan smiled. “G-Pop likes to talk.”

“These days, you can’t have one fact wrong or the media pounces on you.” Penny shook her head. “Sam and I were in politics when you could actually get something done. It’s so vicious now.”

“You all didn’t have the easiest time,” Susan said sympathetically.

“No public servant does. And sometimes one has to say and do things he doesn’t believe because if you don’t you won’t get elected or reelected. I always thought the trick to politics was knowing not what you can do but what people are ready to accept. Your conscience can take a real beating.”

“Neddie says one of the greatest moments of the last half of the twentieth century, speaking of conscience, was when LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act.”

Penny slipped her arm through Susan’s. “When it happened, Sam simply said, ‘There goes the Democratic Party in the South.’ And he was right. But so was LBJ. Of course, I couldn’t publicly say anything at the time, but I could to Sam. He didn’t see it then. He learned. But we all learn.” She pulled Susan to her, gave her a squeeze with her arm now around Susan’s waist. “Now what are you talking about, putting on a pound?”

As she released her, Susan glowed. She had worked to lose extra weight a few years ago and she worked even harder to keep it off. Oh, how those pounds want to sneak back.

As Penny drove away in her Subaru Outback, which she adored, the two women watched her go.

“I hope G-Pop has time to finish his autobiography,” Susan said. “Leukemia is a terrible disease. You know it’s not going away ever.”

“Right, but aren’t the drugs better now? People can last longer.”

Susan nodded. “What I notice about terminal diseases is how up and down people’s health seems to bounce. Some of that is getting the medication right. Pill A can create problems with pill B. But he’s ninety-six, frail, and he really can’t have too long.”

“Guess not. What I’ve noticed about terminal diseases, since we’re on this dismal subject, is, well, have you ever noticed that sometimes before a person dies they’ll have a really good day? A day where they’re up and about, happy, talking to everyone, or if they’re in the hospital, they sit up and seem just fine.”

“Odd.”

“Know what else is odd? When Eddie first got elected he was conservative, of course, but more middle of the road. Now he can’t run to the right fast enough.”

“Plucks my last nerve,” Susan growled.

Harry shrugged. “Maybe these days no one can be middle of the road.”

Susan nodded. “Much as he irritates me, he has done some good things. He tried so hard to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. He squared off against the Committee for Courts of Justice.”

“Yes, he did.” Harry remembered. “And he hasn’t backed down on it, either.”

“I will hand it to him when it comes to medical issues, he’s far-sighted. His oversight of the Virginia Board of Pharmacy and the Drug Control Act is pretty tough. So he’s not completely knee-jerk on this right-wing stuff.”

“Mmm. Do you think he cares about those issues or is he courting the older citizen vote or those people with medical conditions?”

“Harry, of course he is, but I actually think he cares, too. Cares about education, as well. What it comes down to is I’m not being one hundred percent fair. Eddie and I have never seen eye to eye.”

“Maybe we’re all a mixed bag.”

“Or just mixed up.” Susan laughed.

The two worked for forty-five minutes in Susan’s garden spreading the mulch. The temperature in the mid-eighties, not bad for August, felt worse because the humidity hovered at sixty-five percent. The two felt this keenly since this unusual, glorious summer the humidity remained in the fortieth percentiles and for a few days even dipped down into the thirties.

“Whew. Done.” Susan wiped her brow with a bandana. “Come on, let’s go have a Co-Cola.”

“Be in in a minute. Let me put up the shovels.”

By the time Harry joined Susan, two tall glasses filled with ice and Co-Cola sat on the kitchen table. A plate of quartered tuna-fish sandwiches and egg-salad sandwiches sat in the middle of the table.

“I’m starved.” Harry plopped down in a chair, but she waited for Susan to sit before reaching for all the delicious food.

“I can’t wait to see all the photos when G-Pop’s book is done,” said Susan. “I love photos of people when they were children, then young adults.”

Stuffing her face, Harry nodded, swallowed, then asked, “Did you see the news this morning?”

“No, why?”

“Oh, a brief interview with Eddie. He was attacking the current governor for not doing more to aid economic recovery.”

“It is slow, but Ned says jobs are creeping back. He also says it will never be like it was before the crash. So many small businesses were put down, so to speak, and the coal industry, others, destroyed by a Congress offering no alternatives.”

“Eddie mentioned that.” Harry reached for another sandwich. “These are really good.” She then returned to the subject at hand. “Eddie fired off facts and figures. He said that in 2007 there were sixty-four jobs for every one hundred Virginians over sixteen. But now it’s fifty-nine jobs for every one hundred Virginians over sixteen. Gotta give it to him, he can argue effectively. When he was sent to Taft, he got such a good education. From Taft to Yale and then UVA School of Law. He did his homework. I just wish he weren’t so right-wing about some issues like race, immigration, that stuff.”

“Taft changed him,” said Susan. “Be like you or I going to Madeira or Westover. It’s so different from high school, public high school. Speaking of jobs, if I were young today, I’d try to work my way up in these research institutes. I’m willing to bet you that the figures Eddie Cunningham used came from the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. Everybody uses them, and the real brains there belong to Laura Goren.”

“Never thought of that, of research. I admit that I do take notice if a senior officer or analyst or someone running for public office is a woman.”

“Me, too. Doesn’t mean I agree with them.”

“Susan, you don’t even agree with yourself.”

The two laughed uproariously.

Then Harry asked, “Where’s Owen?”

Owen was Susan’s corgi, brother to Tucker.

“With Ned. He took Owen to town with him today. Said he misses the dog. Didn’t say he missed me.”

“Men.” Harry smiled.

“What did our mothers say?” Susan reached over to poke Harry.

In unison the two chanted, “Men, you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them.”