Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [98]
{15}
Moth Love
From where Lusa stood at her upstairs window, the front lawn looked like a bolt of deep-green velvet with just a few moth-eaten patches where the reddish ground showed through. Jewel and Emaline were setting up the lawn chairs while Emaline’s husband, Frank, and Mary Edna’s Herb carried the big walnut dining table outside. Lusa had invited the whole family for the Fourth of July, claiming she needed to make ice cream out of a month’s worth of leftover cream sitting in her icebox. Maybe it was just pity, but they’d all agreed to come—even Mary Edna’s son and his wife from Leesport, whom she’d met only at the funeral.
Mary Edna had arrived an hour early with a plate of deviled eggs in each hand (Salmonella waiting to happen, Lusa thought but did not say). Seeing the front hallway suddenly occupied by the Menacing Eldest in a burnt-orange pantsuit and sensible shoes had sent Lusa into a panic; she’d called out some instructions and flown upstairs on the pretense of finding a tablecloth. But of course Mary Edna would know that the tablecloths were in the cherry armoire in the parlor. Right now, in fact, she was outside sailing one of her mother’s linens over the table while the men hunkered down near the chicken house with their backs to her, stabbing beers into a tub of ice and opening up long-necked bottles of something homemade. Hannie-Mavis was trying to organize the kids into a labor pool for cranking the ice cream, but at the moment they were circling her like a swarm of bees threatening their queen with mutiny. Lusa stood with one hand on the back of the green brocade chair and looked down on all her in-laws from above, pondering their resemblance to the clucking, parti-colored flock of chickens that was usually scattered out over her yard. The hens had scrammed early to their roosts to avoid this onslaught of relatives. Lusa smiled a small, sad smile, wishing she could watch the whole evening from this window. Finally they were all here, conceding to be her guests. And she didn’t have the nerve to go downstairs.
She sighed and shut the window. It had rained earlier. The air had the fetid smell of mushrooms releasing their spores into the damp air. It was evening, though, so the men would be shooting off their fireworks soon, tinting the air blue with that acrid smoke. Having a program would help the evening go by. She glanced in the dresser mirror and ran a hand through her strawberry mane, feeling miserable. Her jeans fit too well, the black knit shirt was too low-cut, her hair was too red—the widow Jezebel. She’d chosen the black top for a drab effect, but it was no small task to look dowdy next to Mary Edna in her waistless polyester pantsuit, or Hannie-Mavis in a red striped top, star-spangled shorts, gold mules, and blue eyeliner. Lusa pointed her feet toward the stairs and made them go. It time, it’s time, too late to change now. A year too late.
She was right about the fireworks; there was already a movement afoot to begin. Hannie-Mavis’s Joel and Big Rickie were peering into a series of brown paper bags they’d set out in a row, arguing about some aspect of the scheme. Lusa was grateful for the rain—she’d been genuinely afraid they’d burn down her barn, and not brave enough to declare a ban on the fireworks (they were a tradition). But May and June had dumped such rain on Zebulon County that the air itself could smother a flame. Bullfrogs had wandered up out of the duck pond and carelessly laid their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms. Fierce snapping turtles no longer confined themselves to the ponds but wandered the lanes like highwaymen. In all her life Lusa had never seen such an oversexed, muggy summer. Just breathing was a torrid proposition.
“Hey, guys,” she called to Joel and Big Rickie, who nodded at her, smiling broadly like schoolboys. They were thrilled about this picnic. Lois the Loud,