Willie Ray leaned back. Point made. No reason now to bring up how relieved he and Vera had been every month things stayed on schedule for quite some time before he'd left for Korea. It embarrassed Vera to remember that, even after they'd been married for fifty years.
The fact remained that Eleanor had pegged one thing right. Missy was more like the Hudson women. Which meant…
He didn't believe that he was the only person still alive in Grantville who had been surprised when Eleanor Newton actually settled down and made John Jenkins a good wife. She had been as wild as they came when she was a girl. And if she continued to make a nuisance of herself, he wouldn't hesitate to remind her. He'd appeal to her better nature first. But if that didn't work, he wouldn't hesitate at all to remind her that she would probably prefer not to have Missy asking a lot of questions. He couldn't be the only person who remembered the stories and Missy would find one of them who was willing to talk, eventually. She was bound to, as tenacious as she was.
"Was it true, Mom? What Gran said-well, implied-about Aunt Aura Lee? I've learned to take some of the things that she says with a grain of salt." Missy pulled her feet up onto the glider.
"The summer of '74?" Debbie asked. She tapped her fingernails on the porch railing a minute while she thought about her mother-in-law and the way she tended to put things. "That's thirty years ago. Your Gran was telling the truth if she simply told you that Aura Lee and Joe were already an item the summer she was sixteen going on seventeen. As Elaine Bolender said then, he was cradle robbing, a bit. But there wasn't anything anyone could have done about it. Not short of locking one of them up. Or, more likely, locking both of them up, with guards posted twenty-four hours a day."
"I took it from Pop that he and Nani didn't lock her up?"
"Joe hitchhiked over from Fairmont when he got back on leave that Saturday, dropped off at Stevenson's Groceries, went in, said 'Hi, Boyd, where's Aura Lee?' Boyd said, 'in back stocking canned goods.' Which is where they went public, so to speak. A fast hug, her head on his shoulder, him saying he was on his way to his ma's and what time was she off so he could pick her up, she saying that she was driving Pop's old Studebaker and he'd have to follow her out home so she could drop it off and get her weekday curfew extended an hour or two. With enough interested spectators to get the report circulating." Debbie grinned. "And enough nicely chosen words in it to make plain that there was nothing going on behind her family's back. She hadn't spent several years as a politician's daughter for nothing."
"I suppose," Missy said, "that it's at least some comfort to learn that the Hudson women weren't dumb. Which Gran managed to skip over. Whatever else they were."
Debbie leaned back against the porch banister. "If she implied.. . or tried to imply… that Aura Lee ever had any interest in anyone except Joe, you can forget it. Things went on from there. The next day, Sunday, your Pop and Nani left for Fairmont right after lunch. Political reception. Ray was out in the barn, banging on something mechanical. I stayed behind with a napping Anne, curled up in an easy chair in her bedroom looking through WVU orientation stuff. I heard Joe pull in-it was pretty impossible to miss the noise of his ma's car-and didn't hear anything more. I'm sure they didn't know I was home. Aura Lee had gone outside before we decided not to wake Anne up."
"How does that song go?" Missy asked. " 'The sound of silence?' "
"Close." Debbie smiled. Well, sort of smiled. "About an hour later, I looked out the back window. They were in the back yard, lying on a sleeping bag. Not, at that point, even touching. She was on her back with her arms up over her head; he was propped up on one elbow, lying on his side, looking at her. I couldn't see his face, his back was toward me, but I could see hers. The first thing that I thought was practically blasphemous. You know that hymn? 'Have thine own way, Lord, Have thine own way. Thou art the potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me, After Thy will, While I am waiting, Yielded and still.' Okay, that's how she was looking at him. Even if they hadn't done anything irrevocable yet, it was clear that they would. It was a done deal. Sooner or later. She was just waiting for a cue from him.
"It didn't last that long. In a couple of minutes she said something that made Joe start laughing, they both sat up, and he grabbed her around the shoulders for a regular 'kiss and cuddle' session. They were clearly enjoying themselves, so I went back and finished reading my orientation materials."
Missy frowned.
"Yes," Debbie continued. "I did just decide to ignore them. When Anne woke up, I took her out the front door and down to the run. I thought about letting her go out to the sandbox and bounce up and down on them. 'But that would be wrong,' to use a quote from that era. Funny as could be, but wrong."
"Did Nani and Pop catch them at it?"
"When Mother and Pop got back, the car made enough noise that by the time they drove around to the garage, they found the two of them sitting on opposite sides of the sleeping bag, their hands around their knees, looking thoughtful. Like those statues of monkeys contemplating a skull. Not that I expect our parents believed that they had spent the afternoon discussing Darwin."
"I can't believe that Nani and Pop just lived with this!" Missy exploded. "You and Dad wouldn't have. Ah. You still won't, really, even though I'm nineteen."
"I'm not my mother. Joe and Aura Lee got up, rolled up the sleeping bag, tossed it back in the closet on the back porch, and said that they were going to meet friends for pizza. Much to Mother's relief, I think. She sure didn't want to be put in a position where she almost had to invite Joe to stay for supper. She had been willing enough to see that Don and I were… very close. Not even really upset that I quit high school to marry him. She didn't want to see Joe. As long as she didn't acknowledge that she saw him, somehow he wasn't really there. So she didn't invite him to stay for supper. Any more than she would invite Ron to Easter dinner. Not even though, if she had, Aura Lee would have been right under her eyes all evening, instead of wherever they ended up. It went that way for his whole leave."
"Why?" Missy asked.
"I can't read your Nani's mind, Missy. As for Pop… He said once that there were worse possibilities in Grantville than Joe Stull, lots worse, even as rough around the edges as he was then."
Missy shook her head.
"So things kept going," Debbie continued. "Once, when we were at WVU, Chad came to pick me up one Friday evening. He came into our little hallway and asked, 'What's with the lifelike VE Day double statues in the corner?' I said, 'I'll tell you later.' Once we got out into the car, I explained that when Joe came in and dropped his duffel bag, they did that. Just stood there for a while with their arms around each other's waists, not moving. You could sort of multiply 'how long has it been since we saw each other' times 'how much of a hassle have things been since we saw each other' to get an answer as to whether this would last ten minutes or a half hour.
"Eventually, though, they would let loose and Aura Lee would say something on the lines of 'Pop sent ground venison and I'm making stroganoff' or 'I bought stuff for a cheese omelette with green peppers.' Food was always their next thought, once they were reassured that the other one was still really there. At least it was Aura Lee's next thought, and Joe's not one to refuse a meal.
"And the last thing they did before he left was go to the laundromat. On Sundays, when Chad dropped me off again, I'd come back to a big pile of clean towels and sheets, all folded with military precision.
"To be perfectly honest, I don't claim to understand Aura Lee and Joe. Like when she had that cancer diagnosed. Joe was like a rock for her and the kids, the whole time, but if she hadn't beaten it, I think he'd have gone under."