Mrs. June 1987

Peach Lamb jabbed her wet fingernails into the fleshy, hard-boiled whites, trying to peel away the broken bits of shell. She had boiled the eggs a week ago and let them sit in the fridge to loosen the freshness of the hen, but it was no use. Her devilled eggs nested into her mother’s lime green Fiestaware atop the Formica counters like a set of chipped wedding china. Gaye Nell Lamb’s kitchen could have been ripped directly from a Sears and Roebuck catalog page.

The two women worked side by side, Gaye Nelle manhandling a giant aluminum dish pan filled with peeled and chopped potatoes ready to be turned into a salad. Guiding Light played on the black-and-white Zenith 13-in TV; the sound was turned all the way down, but Gaye Nell could still keep up. Her other daughter, Relia, was snapping a pile of green beans, tossing the strings into a rolled paper sack. With the motion of a machine, she filled a cook pot with perfectly formed bite-sized pieces.

“Uncle Waites is buying seven buckets of Kentucky Fried chicken. He swears nothing’s better than the Colonel’s recipe. If he wants to spend his money on somebody else’s cooking, he can go right ahead,” She added with a huff, “But he can’t stop me from making extra. Those buckets never have enough dark meat.”

Relia and Peach worked silently, exchanging knowing glances as they listened to their mother carry on. Since retiring from the mill, Gaye Nell’s main purpose in life was fretting over food.

“We should’ve reserved a picnic shelter for free out at the reservoir. But Waites’s kids from Atlanta are lawyers, so nothing would do but rent an expensive pavilion at Callaway Gardens.” Gaye Nell aggressively ladled spatula-sized clumps of Duke’s mayonnaise into the bowl.  “They even tried to have the entire thing catered. Can you imagine? Catering for a family reunion! Who are we? The Ewing family?”

Peach interjected, “Mama, that reservoir is nasty. A cesspool from what comes down the Chattahoochee River from Atlanta. Callaway is a good alternative.”

“Well, we had plenty of reunions and picnics there when y'all were kids, and you didn’t seem to mind skiing in that water.” Gaye Nell said.

Peach shot back, “Max got an ear infection last time we took the boat out. The pediatrician said it was from too much raw sewage in the water.

“Honey, children get ear infections. That’s a fact of life,” Gaye Nell said.

Relia, sensing an argument on the rise, spoke from her perch, “Well, if the shit and the cousins are both flowing downstream from Atlanta, maybe they should carpool. Aren’t they the ones worried about the gas shortage a few years ago? Daddy used to laugh about how they were all about Jimmy Carter until the energy crisis. Now they drive BMWs instead of a Volkswagen bug.”  

The three women howled at the thought of their hippie-turned-yuppie relatives riding a flotilla of their own waste out of the city.

“Oh, your daddy loved Jimmy Carter. We all did in the beginning.” Gaye Nell softened when she spoke of her deceased husband. “But we couldn’t abide by a man of God who talked about committing adultery in his heart.” Gaye Nell quickly stiffened, shifting back to the present day. “And now, filth has infiltrated our own family.”

“Which cousin was it, Winnie or Delaine?” Peach asked

“Winnie was the one that got the divorce; Delaine posed for Playboy.” Gaye Nelle explained with an air of pity that implied blame as if each action carried a similar balance of deviance.

“Your Aunt Nancy told me yesterday that she had to stop buying her gas out at the RaceWay by the interstate because they have that magazine just sitting up there behind the clerk, wrapped in plastic for everybody to see. Now she has to get her gas at the Quiksack down by the river and you know they charge more at those pumps. It’s just awful,” Gaye Nell rattled on as if paying an extra six cents a gallon for gas was the most pressing disaster.

Relia balanced the finished pot of beans on her swelling belly. She had felt the baby kick early this morning in bed. Ray had felt it first, the bump wedged between them. “That boy is telling you to get your lazy self out of bed and go to work.” Relia had joked. Ray had not turned around; he just chuckled and rose to dress to make it to the job site by 7 am. His muscled shoulders moved through the dark, pulling on his jeans and lacing his boots before sliding on a T-shirt.

The washer in the laundry room buzzed Relia out of her daydreaming. Gaye Nell left her post to attend to wet sheets. The rotary phone on the wall rang, and Peach answered. It was their younger brother, Mason. “Mama, it’s for you,” Peach yelled.

Gaye Nell emerged with a full laundry basket and a homemade cloth bag with wooden clothespins. “Hi, baby.” Gaye Nell crooned into the receiver, shifting her wet load from one hip to the other while cradling the phone into her neck.

“Yes, Sunday at one o’clock. Just give them your name at the gate.” Peach and Relia eavesdropped on the one-sided conversation.

“Yes, we can swim,” Gaye Nell paused, “What? Honey, I don’t know who all is coming.” Her voice caught with realization, “Oh, good Lord, Mason. That woman is your cousin!”  Gaye Nell’s face grew red as she spoke. “No, they may not.” Her voice grew stern. “I am not cooking a bunch of food for outsiders. This is a family event. Not a strip club!” Her voice grew more exasperated. “Honey, I got to go put these clothes on the line, and I don’t have time for this nonsense. She paused, listening, "No, I have not, nor do I wish to see it.” Gay Nelle looked to her daughters for support, but both women were bent over, holding their sides in silent laughter.

“Just remember to pick up a few bags of ice on the way, like you promised. And it sounds like you may need an extra one for your lap, son. Goodbye.” Gaye Nelle slammed down the phone. “Your brother wants to bring his roommates to the reunion; the first time he’s wanted to come to since he could drive. It’s that damn Playboy spread. I swear.”

With that, she stormed out, leaving Peach and Relia to burst into laughter freely. “Have you seen it yet?” Relia asked Peach once the coast was clear. “What do you mean, ‘yet’?” Peach asked, “As if it’s something I ever plan to look at?”

“You're not curious?” Relia asked, “I mean, we did teach Winnie and Delaine how to jump off the dock when they were little girls. Remember? We were in high school?”

“I do not need to see that.” Peach threw down her words like a gavel.

“Well, Ray’s going to get a copy of it from the guys at work.” Relia offered.

“Of course, Ray is getting a copy. Peach responded, “And if Delaine is looking for a way to solidify her reputation as ‘skank,’ I’d say she’s done it.”

By afternoon, the food was prepped and put in the garage fridge. Housework with her mother and sister was a release for Relia. They were the only women who worked as hard as they gossiped. After she married Ray, Relia realized how boring keeping house without them was. She and Peach went to Gaye Nelle’s with the same regularity as most women went to Jazzercize or the beauty parlor. Like cardio and personal maintenance, housework felt better surrounded by kindred spirits.

Peach found her sister resting in their old bedroom. “I’m going to sneak that magazine to you. You and Jar Head should enjoy a little naughtiness together,” Relia told her, using the nickname she had called her brother-in-law since high school. Peach scratched her sister’s back, digging a bit deep. “Ouch, I was kidding, stop!” Relia squealed.

“Jarred and I need something,” Peach conceded in a long breath. “All we do is work and take care of Max, mostly just dodging his hormone-laden rants. It’s the foxhole stage of parenting: us against him. And after twelve hours straight, bedtime is for sleeping.”

Relia and Ray had barely been able to go longer than 24 hours without craving each other. When she met him, he lived in Kentucky, where he was training to be a welder. Within six months, he moved two states to be near Relia, and she pretty much did whatever he wanted, much to Peach’s chagrin.

That evening, when Ray arrived home, dinner was ready on the stove. He entered the kitchen in his work clothes and a Peterbilt cap, wrapped his arms around his wife’s belly and stood behind her at the stove. “Smells good in here. Y’all ready for Sunday?”

“I guess so.” Relia felt exhaustion in her feet and legs as she spoke. She ladled the soup and cut the cornbread while Ray cleaned his hands at the sink.

“Well, the boys at work sure want to know more about your gene pool after seeing your cousin Delaine spread out across a kitchen table wearing nothing but an apron.”

“A kitchen table? Oh, no!” responded Relia, her face flushed. The heat of jealousy at her husband looking at another woman embarrassed her. They were a couple who typically talked easily about anything.

“There’s one where she’s pouring milk down the middle of her…” Relia’s glare stopped him mid-sentence. Was she protective of her young cousin, whom she barely knew, or insecure about her own body? Pregnancy hormones, maybe, but she burned picturing Ray and those boys ogling that magazine.

Ray then hooted in a way Relia suspected was typical of the grease monkeys he worked with. His garage was plastered with centerfolds from vendors who sold Ray head gaskets and catalytic converters. Relia pictured herself years earlier on the rocks by the creek with beaded rivulets rolling down her concave naked belly as they traced their way around her thighs to the blanket that she and Ray shared in those early summer days. She knew better than to scold Ray. He would scoff and insist that she was the sexiest woman he knew. But she knew she could only pray that this rounded body would snap back to the one they both remembered.

Ray pushed against his wife gently, “It was actually a pretty hot spread,” he whispered. “You want to peek?”

“Not right now. But we can warm this soup up later if you have something else in mind,” Relia teased, worried her voice lacked confidence. She wanted to put the magazine out of her mind.

~

Peach was in her kitchen the day before the reunion, drinking her first cup of coffee, when her son Max emerged from his bedroom. Now taller than her, he entered the kitchen clumsily, knocking against chairs. His lanky frame had come on so quickly that he reminded Peach of a boy working a piece of heavy equipment, still trying to figure out how to make the levers move it around.

“You want some chocolate milk this morning?” Peach asked.

“Mom, I don’t drink chocolate milk anymore. I have breakfast at school now… with the basketball team. We have our own table.”  Max avoided eye contact, a common occurrence since turning 13.

“You got your shoes for practice?” Peach asked.

“I packed them last night,” Max replied. The front entryway had become an extension of her son’s locker room and smelled about as bad with sweaty socks and shorts from various gym bags he carted back and forth, too lazy to wash.

Peach watched him clamor around with his backpack and belongings as the school bus's air brakes bellowed on the street. She wrestled a hug as he grumbled and darted toward the red stop sign flying out from the yellow bus. Her house quieted at last; she picked up the phone to call her sister.

“Did you know Winnie and Delaine aren’t our blood cousins?” Peach asked as soon as Relia picked up. “Mama told me the other day while we were folding sheets. Aunt Nancy had them before she married Buddy; he raised them from when they were little.”

“That explains a lot,” Relia replied.

~

The Lamb family reunion had three remaining elders: Gaye Nell, Nancy, and Waites. The siblings’ aluminum folding chairs were arranged in a semi-circle on a beach of trucked-in sand where fishing boats out beyond swim buoys created an occasional lapping wave. Aunt Nancy’s white hair wisped from beneath a red cap with blue and silver rhinestones. Uncle Waites wore his Veteran of WWII cap, khaki shorts with beige socks and Brogan ankle-high work boots. Gaye Nelle, last to arrive, speed-walked to greet her siblings, leaving her daughters and their husbands to unload coolers from the two cars they had arrived in.

“Listen,” she whispered breathlessly to her daughters as she hugged and kissed everyone filing by with food. “Apparently, there was a big fuss. The Atlanta cousins didn’t want Delaine around their kids and asked her not to come. When Winnie found out, she got mad and told her mom she wasn’t coming either,”

Peach and Relia exchanged glances while hugging everybody and trading niceties. Max found his uncle Mason, who hollered, “Heads up, big man,” and the two took off for a Frisbee game in the sand. The husbands shook hands with other relatives, saying things like, “I haven’t seen you since our wedding.”

Relia spotted Aunt Nancy glowing from her throne. Her white teeth and perfectly applied red lipstick as much a beacon as her cackling laugh. “Relia, you come sit next to me so I can rub that belly.” Relia gravitated toward Nancy’s warmth as she unloaded herself into a chair letting others set up the food.

“How is it that you never age?” Relia asked her favorite aunt.

“Lord, child, I’m too busy to age. My Young at Heart Club has me going all the time. Last week, we went to Westville outside of Columbus and watched them make pottery out of mud dug right out of the Chattahoochee River! And I have my stretching class at the Methodist Church every Tuesday.” Nancy yelled over her shoulder, “I’m trying to get your mama to go with me.”

Nancy winked toward Gaye Nell, who shooed the comment away with her hand as she unwrapped a tray of glazed chicken thighs. “The way I see it, that’s a good way to break a hip at our age.”

“Your mama doesn’t know what’s good,” Nancy shot back, smiling at her pregnant niece. Then, she stood up, kicked her right leg up like a wrinkled Rockette, and clapped her hands under her thigh. She winked at Relia and said, “Girl, that’s what you got to look forward to.” Her veiny legs encased in a red polyester skort.

Uncle Waites shook his head at Nancy, “And you wonder where Delaine gets it from.”

Oh hell, Relia thought, that only took about five minutes.

“That’s what you get for being a women’s libber,” Waites taunted.

“Waites!” Gaye Nell shrieked as if he had pulled a rattler out of the igloo cooler next to his chair. “If working two jobs to feed my babies when their daddy left, then finding a good man to grow as old as the good Lord allowed before taking him home makes me a women’s libber; well, honey, sign me up!”

Nancy continued, “I’m not proud of what she’s done, but she’s still mine.” Then she glared at Waites, who sat frozen with his drink halfway to his lips. “And as for you, old man, if you’re so concerned with my children, maybe you need to go sit with those highfalutin’ kids of yours who don’t even visit you but twice a year.” She raised her chin high and lowered her body back into her chair.

Waites looked crestfallen. “Nancy, I didn’t mean anything…” but Nancy waved her hand to stop him.

“Don’t worry about it.” Then, changing the subject, “I hear you had another bout with gout. Are you still eating those chicken livers?”

“Yes, he is, and he made sure they filled at least half of one of these buckets with nothing but those.” Gaye Nell made a face over a red and white striped bucket she had just opened with steam coming out. The three siblings then proceeded to argue over a man’s inability to order food for a crowd. Relia watched as Aunt Nancy’s face danced. With or without a man, the Lamb women were all fire. Relia knew that her own spark was still there. Even if it were stuck under a bushel basket of a baby, she would be fine.

Gaye Nell hollered to the crowd, “Alright y'all, let’s eat.”

The entire clan lined up to fill oversized plates. Finding spots of shade, they forked mouthfuls of food and offered compliments between inhalations. Peach noticed the influx of male cousins gathered like crows on a line, making small talk with each other about whose football team was any good and where the best hunting would be this fall. In a polo shirt and khaki shorts, Jarred worked the crowd, asking who might join him for golf later.

~

Later in the day, Peach carried a cooler with leftovers to the car. They would inevitably be tossed, but she dared not throw away food in front of her mama. When she opened the hatch of her minivan, she saw a brown Winn Dixie grocery bag, the top neatly folded down, labeled “Peach” in her sister’s scrawl. Inside, Playboy June 1987.  Delaine had made it to the reunion after all.

Peach glanced at the beach; her family was all preoccupied in one way or another. She quickly crawled into the minivan’s third row. Delaine was on page 63 in various poses as a vixen housewife. Peach arched her back, attempting to mimic the pose, then laughed at her body’s reluctance to bend that way.

Where might Delaine and Winnie be this summer afternoon? She imagined them sunbathing on the Gulf of Mexico in designer sunglasses, sipping margaritas, topless, waving and laughing at speed boats circling in for a closer look.

Close as it was, Peach had only been there once. Grandma Betsy drove her and Relia to a panhandle beach, back when their legs were short enough to prop up on five-gallon water jugs in the floorboard. “Florida water is not fit to drink,” they were told.

She remembered the sun falling into the horizon that day, leaving her alone in the sand. She reached for Relia, but her sister had already rushed to the water’s edge to feel the waves in her toes. Grandma Betsy was hollering for Relia not to go out too deep, or the undertow would pull her out. Peach, not as brave, sat in stillness, watching the light fade as the sun drifted to the other side of the world so someone else could now enjoy that day.