It wasn’t until early fall that the McCurdy sisters got back into their usual routine. One evening Sal was up in the bedroom with her drawing board, working on one of her inventions, when Maudie, who had been ironing down in the kitchen, came up and started searching for something in Father’s chest of drawers. Sal paid her no attention until Maudie asked, “Have you seen the dibble?”
“What the hell’s a dibble?” she demanded.
“The pointy wooden thing with a ball for a handle, for making holes for planting bulbs.”
“You mean the bulb planter,” said Sal. “You always have to call a spade a shovel.” She made her thumb and forefinger into a monocle and, looking at her sister through it, said, “ ‘I say, have you seen the dibble, old thing?’ No, I haven’t. And I don’t think you’re going to find it in Father’s bureau.”
Maudie gave a patient little laugh. “No, I’m looking for his housewife, that khaki roll-up thing they gave him in the army for buttons and needle and thread. I recall he had a needle threader. My eyes won’t do the trick anymore. Anyway, the looking made me remember looking for the dibble yesterday and not finding it.”
“Well, don’t look at me,” said Sal. “I haven’t seen it since we planted those bulbs last week.” Then she added, “You’re back reading that damn dictionary again.”
Maudie moved her search to another drawer. “I may read what I choose,” she said coolly. “And if I choose to add to my vocabulary, it’s nobody’s business but my own.”
“Giving something a fancy name doesn’t change anything.”
“Mr. Noah Webster’s dictionary is a rare goblet where all may come to sip the adamantine water of orthography.”
“I guess that means spelling, right?” demanded Sal. “So how do you look up a word to see if you’re spelling it right if you don’t know how to spell it?”
“Mr. Webster was a great scholar,” insisted Maudie. “Imagine collecting all the words there were and putting them together without missing a single one.”
“Yeah?” said Sal. “Remember what Father told us about collateral for a loan. There were the tangibles, the things you could touch. Then there was the talk, the words. Blue sky, he called it.”
“The dictionary is the bright palette we use to paint our hopes and dreams,” said Maudie, closing the drawer and moving on to the next.
“Blather,” said Sal. “Blather doesn’t change anything about the here-and-now. And the hereafter is blue sky. Father would have called Noah Webster a blather monger, a piffle merchant. And Mother, why she never used a word in an argument if there was a piece of china handy.”
“Not just china, dear,” Maudie corrected her. “Mother threw Spode. A name. A word.” (In her fights with Father, Mother would have considered it beneath her Halverson blood to throw anything less than Spode or Minton, as if daring Father to tell her not to so she could call him a low, bean-counting bastard.)
“Father would have considered Mr. Webster a Renaissance man,” continued Maudie. “In addition to giving us the dictionary, he gained fame as a lawyer and a statesman. He served his country in the Senate and in Presidential cabinets.”
Sal looked at her with narrowing eyes. “Hold on a sec.”
But Maudie wouldn’t be interrupted. As she pulled out the bottom drawer she said, “In fact, back in his home state Mr. Webster’s skills as a lawyer were so respected that legend had it he once defended a man who’d sold his soul to the Devil, and Mr. Webster beat the Devil himself in legal argument.” Maudie looked up, baffled by the sputtering sounds of her sister pretending to suppress laughter. It was a moment before she realized she had confused Noah Webster with Daniel. Her cheeks burned with shame and her ears turned red.
Sal’s body shook with laughter. She pointed at her sister’s face and, laughing, said, “Oh, that’s rich. That’s rich.”
Maudie began to shake with anger. She would not be mocked! She would not be humiliated!
“Oh, Father would have loved that one,” said Sal, turning away and covering her nose and mouth in a tent of fingers.
Maudie’s anger became fury. “No, he would not!” she shouted. “Shut up! Shut up!” Here her trembling fingers found the scar on her throat. Her eyes grew large with wild discovery and she whispered, “You think you can wring my neck like I’m a chicken.” Her hand dropped from the scar to her father’s service revolver, which lay in the corner of the bottom drawer as if he’d placed it there for her for just this moment. Snatching it up, Maudie pointed the heavy thing at the back of her sister’s head, averted her eyes, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet creased Sal’s skull. They couldn’t get the doctor. Old Dr. Lohman, who’d had a crush on their mother, might have turned a blind eye. But the new young doctor would’ve had to report the bullet wound to the police. Sal was in bed for a week with a terrible headache. Maudie nursed her night and day. The wound healed, but it left an ugly scar.
When Sal was up and around again she and Maudie sat talking earnestly together for hours on end. There were no pats or tears or handholding now, only facts to be faced. They both knew that something had to be done.
Maudie and Sal crept toward each other in the circular flowerbed, their weeding almost done. After a while Maudie looked over at her sister as if about to ask something of a delicate nature. “Do ‘granny fannies’ count?” she whispered, looking back over her shoulder to see if she was being watched from behind. Last fall they’d had their hedge trimmed for the first time since their father died. But it still stood high enough to give them privacy on all four sides.
“I’d allow that,” said Sal. After all, Maudie had allowed her the pink plastic flamingo. On their separate walks the McCurdy sisters competed to see who could spot the most lawn decorations. The granny fanny, the painted pine cutout of the rear end of a fat woman leaning over, working in a flowerbed, had been appearing in front yards on the way to Chatham. But Maudie’s sighting was the first within the town limits.
“Then that makes my count thirty-nine,” said Maudie. “Five geese, nine goslings, four sheep, six lambs, three pheasant (two cocks and a hen bird), four mallard whirligigs and one Woody Woodpecker ditto, three cows (two Holsteins and a Jersey), and five cement gnomes, three freestanding and one each fishing in Mrs. Crowley’s wishing wells.” She laughed. “So I’m one ahead. And I suspect tomorrow I’ll find your plastic flamingo.” Pleased with herself, Maudie went back to work.
“We’ll see about that,” said Sal.
When they were almost side by side Maudie exclaimed, “Well, look at this, will you? Here’s where it’s been all the time.” She reached into the central clump of Thalia daffodils and pulled out the sharp spike of polished wood with a ball for a handle. “It’s the...” She caught herself. “It’s the bulb planter,” she said.
Sal understood. “No, honey,” she started to insist. “It’s the dib... It’s the dib...” But when she couldn’t get her tongue around the silly word she started snorting with laughter. After a struggle she seemed to get control of herself. With her face a wobbly deadpan, she tried again. “Dib... dib...” Finally she had to give in to the laughter. Waving her hands apologetically, she roared until the tears came to her eyes.
Maudie watched, at first quizzical, as though she couldn’t understand what her sister was laughing at. “Please stop, dear,” she said gravely. But Sal couldn’t help laughing. The blood rose in Maudie’s face as she remembered the humiliation of her Webster mix-up. “Stop, dear,” she warned. But Sal laughed on. It seemed to Maudie that she heard her father’s voice join in the laughter.