Herman stood. He teetered, grabbing the arm of the Adirondack chair he had bought at a yard sale for only four dollars because there were two slats missing in the back. Herman was drunk and a little dizzy. He drank only with his friend Pete the priest, which meant he drank only once a week. The alcohol always went straight to his head. “Sometimes, honey, I wish this was still 1946—when it wasn’t so hard for men and women to figure out what was expected of them, I mean, genderly speaking.”
“I said 1946, Ljubavi, because that was the year we married. Of course, now that I think about it, it was also the year that most of us female factory workers got our walking papers.”
“How else were we veterans supposed to find jobs if Rosie the Riveter didn’t give up her — her what, Peter?”
“Her air hammer,” supplied the priest. He took a sip of his Schnapps and made a small vocal exhalation that sounded halfway between a satisfied “ahhh” and the release of steam from a metal riser. “Tell me, Jelena,” said Pete, “if you endorse what these women are doing — what it is that they — they — they stand for, why are you so fired up to go sit and watch—”
“And watch with your Jiffy Pop,” interjected Herman, settling himself back into his wooden Adirondack chair with the two plastic lawn chair replacement slats.
“Watch the pageant,” finished the priest. Peter Mullavey stared out at the dramatically sloping backyard and whistled, and then said, “You could break your neck cutting that grass, Herman. How do you do it?”
“I use a cylinder mower with an extra-long handle,” answered Herman, matter-of-factly.
“If you must know—” said Jelena.
“How do you — excuse me, Jelena. How do you keep from losing it, Herman? Losing the mower?”
“If you must know—” said Jelena with growing impatience.
“Sometimes I don’t. I’ve lost three. That’s why I stopped using an expensive gas mower and got me one of those old hand-propelled jobs from the Iron Age.”
“I am watching the pageant,” pursued Jelena in service to an answer whose related question had long been forgotten by her husband and his equally toasted sacerdotal best friend, “because there is a girl who’s competing this year who grew up with the cousin of a friend of mine. You remember Alana, who lived down the street from us in Overland Park? Well, she knows the girl — she’s met her. She’s in the pageant this year. She’s Miss Illinois.”
“Sit down,” said Herman, pulling his wife down upon one of the wide, flat arms of the Adirondack chair.
“I can’t. I have to make popcorn.” Jelena squirmed but she didn’t get up.
“It’s a beautiful night,” said Herman. “I feel like we live on the edge of the world. You should see the sunrises from this back porch, Petey. You’re never here for the sunrises. I know why all those Croatians came here with their Dalmatian dogs and their plum wine. They came for the sunrises and the — do you smell that, Petey? Do you smell that smell?”
“It wasn’t me.”
“No, no, Petey. It’s the smell of American enterprise. The smell of American meat. Of ground round and sirloin and brisket and chuck.”
Jelena pushed her husband away and rose from the chair. “I have to see how Alana’s friend does. I owe it to Alana after she volunteered to give me a kidney after the car wreck. My point is this: that there’s something about the pageant that seems a little old-fashioned in this day and age — with all the changes going on in the world. I’ll admit it. All those women being asked to parade around like—”
“Mooooo!” said Pete the priest and both men chortled and some Schnapps escaped from Herman’s nose.
Jelena ignored this. “And women have a right to protest it. Just as women have a right to participate, if they want to.”
The priest sat up in his chair. The chair wasn’t from upstate New York. It was a traditional rocking chair that stopped rocking after it was nailed down following an incident in which a visitor to the house — a neighbor with a restless nature — rocked herself off the porch and tumbled down the hill like Jill of the familiar nursery rhyme. “Excellent p-p-point, Jelena. But here’s what — what — what I want to know, if you’ll be so kind as to — there’s the Folly Theatre across the river. It’s a burlesque house and there’ve been religious groups — none of them Catholic, I don’t think, although I think I saw a nun with a sign. And — and — and they — they have been protesting. Which is apparently what people are doing this year. It’s the — the — the thing this year — all this protesting and th-throwing smoke bombs and people burning their — their — draft cards and burning their underclothes and what have you. And my question to you, Jelena, is this: a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body, with her — her life, does she not?”
Jelena nodded. She had begun to tap her foot again. She had missed her chance to pop her corn before the parade of states. Now she’d have to do it during a Toni Home Permanent commercial or the big spangled musical production number in which pageant host Bert Parks made his annual attempt to sing and dance.
Pete went on: “Even as she is being assaulted from all directions. By the women’s libbers with their — their — their anger, and the uptight evangelical Bible-huggers with their — their what?”
“Their anger,” said Herman, to be helpful.
Jelena nodded. “And the point is that no woman should have to answer to another woman for anything.” Jelena took a breath. “Or answer to a man either, for that matter” she concluded, eyeing her husband.
“What is this? Have I ever once told you what I thought you ought to be doing? The world may be in flames right now, but please note: nothing’s on fire in this house. We have a very good marriage, do we not? I may be a stick-in-the-mud sometimes — I’m sorry. That’s the way I was brought up. But I love you, and I respect you, and you wanted a house in your old neighborhood, and I agreed that you should have it, even though the smell of the meat coming from those packing houses — it used to make me—”
“Just a moment earlier you called it the smell of American enterprise.”
“I’m drunk. I don’t know what I’m saying. So listen now to what I’m saying—”
“My show’s almost on. I’m going to miss seeing Miss Illinois. They say she has a good chance of winning.”
“What does she do?” asked the priest. “For her talent, I mean. What’s her ta-talent?”
“She’s a trampolinist.”
“What is that?” asked Herman. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes, Herman. She jumps up and down.”
“Is she chesty?” asked Herman, looking up, a little expectantly, at his wife.
“For the love of Mike, Ljubavi! I’m going inside.”
“I’m coming in too. I want to see Miss Illinois jump up and down. This is what she wants to do and we will honor her choice. Are you coming, Petey?”
Peter Mullavey shook his head. “I think I’d like to sit here for a little — a—a — little while longer.”
“You sure you don’t want to…” Herman had stepped away from the doorway to give the priest room to come inside.
“Just for a few minutes. It’s nice out here.”
“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not. I mean, who do — do you think I’m thinking about?”
“You and I both know. Your Mrs. Davies. You’re thinking about the two of you, huh? Cozied up together on the couch with your bowl of Jiffy Pop, watching Bishop Sheen together.”
Pete looked out at all the twinkling lights of Kansas City, Missouri. One of those lights represented the rectory where the priest slept and ate and prayed and kept a chaste distance from the woman he had loved since the day she had come to be his cook and housekeeper. “I’d like to liberated someday.”