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C E L E B R I T Y By Mary Brunini McArdle
It seemed our lives went in a totally different direction after that night in the spring of 1965. Because of what Mandy did. Mandy was my older sister--I had two other sisters too, but I was the lucky one to get to share Mandy’s room and listen to her day in and day out. She was a senior in high school, I a year younger. “I have Betty Grable legs,” Mandy would say, stretching out on her twin bed and admiring her trim calves and ankles. I hated to admit it, but she did have beautiful legs, along with honey- colored curls and lustrous brown eyes that were the envy of every girl at school. When she was little, she was always picked for the lead in ballet recitals and plays, while the rest of us had to be content with minor roles. Later on, she declined to practice or to learn her lines, so that part of her life wafted away. “I’ll be the one in this town everyone will remember, Allie,” she said one Saturday afternoon. She was sitting in front of the TV eating a bowl of plums. A whole bowl of plums. “Sure,” I said. “You’re going to Hollywood.” She looked at me slyly from the corner of her eye. Even with plum juice dripping from her chin, she was gorgeous. “Helen of Troy didn’t go to Hollywood.” “Somebody else might want one of those plums.” I got up in disgust and went upstairs. I pulled out a book and began reading, trying to put Mandy out of my mind. I sighed, and setting the book face down on my bed, looked pensively out the window. I am jealous of her, I thought. But I don’t think it would be so bad if she’d act nice once in a while. It wasn’t just that she was the image of a porcelain doll, either. Somehow, even in her red-checked seersucker shirt with a bowl of plums in her lap, she managed to look commanding. Which didn’t make sense, because she barely had a grade over a “C-minus.” I made “A’s,” but it was Mandy to whom everybody deferred. I heard the twins running down the hall. The twins and I took after our father, with hazel eyes and mousy brown hair. Shirley and Sheila had just turned eleven and were completely oblivious of the competition they were in for, being Mandy’s sisters. I could picture what was going to happen in a couple of years. My moment of restless solitude ended when Mandy came into our room and started rummaging in the closet. “I thought you had already decided what to wear,” I said. “Just checking to see if it needs touching up.” Mandy fingered the dusty blue dress with the square neckline. No sleeves--Mandy wasn’t about to miss showing off those shapely arms. The first week of May was hot, as hot and sticky as the middle of July. We would have been disappointed if it hadn’t been; the May Crowning was at the church at 5:30. Nobody wanted to cover up their new summer pastels with cardigans. Mandy wasn’t eligible to crown the Virgin Mary; that honor went to some girl with excellent grades who was active in religious organizations. (And who would have traded places in a minute to have Mandy’s looks.) I should explain that the May Crowning was really a social occasion--the first breaking out of party clothes for the end of the school year--especially for Mandy’s class. She had even selected her graduation dress. It was white with pale yellow daisies on the yoke. I heard Mama calling to the twins to get in the bathtub. “I don’t care who goes first, Shirley--you or Sheila. Just get started.” “Better hurry so you can have the bathroom next,” I said. “I’ll use Mama and Daddy’s.” I shrugged, knowing Mandy would get her way. I was happy with my own new dress, an apple-green chambray. We’d been working on our tans for weeks; we grew up before the scare about skin cancer. We used baby oil to draw the sun so we could start off with just a touch of red, the time carefully calculated to prevent peeling. It was something we did without question, a ritual of preparation f or the coming season. I picked up a hand mirror and studied my face. “My eyes are green,” I said. “They almost match my dress. “Your eyes are not green,” Mandy retorted. “They’re muddy hazel, just like Daddy’s.” “Mandy, they are not. They don’t have any brown in them at all.” I moved the floor fan my way a little. “Brown, yellow--what’s the difference? They’re still muddy. “Oh, shut up.” Mandy ignored me and went over to the window. “Look how windy it’s getting,” she said. “Now everybody’ll be fussing about their hair.” “You could wear a scarf to church if you’re worried.” “I don’t think I have to worry, but the rest of you do.’’ The wind picked up, a hot wind from the south, making the church muggy and uncomfortable. The adults paid close attention to the weather in Mississippi, stunned by the impossible tornado in 1953 that had wiped out downtown Vicksburg. Mandy and I had been too young to be affected, but Mama looked at the sky with apprehension. “I don’t like the way it feels,” she murmured to my father. “Well, tomorrow’s Sunday,” he replied. “No school.” Mama was reassured, but they both watched the local news at ten. Sunday we had to go to church again. The twins grumbled, but the teenagers looked on it as another opportunity to show off. I put back on my green dress, but Mandy chose a lavender print polished cotton. She had more clothes than I or the twins because of all the graduation parties coming up. “You’re going to sweat in that polished cotton,” I said. “Other people sweat, Allie. I don’t.” Mandy complained all the way to church that Shirley was wrinkling her skirt. “Make her move over, Daddy.” “Settle down, girls,” he said absently. The Old Testament reading was from the Book of Kings. “There appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven,” thundered Father Brady. A stained glass window rattled. Beside me Mama shivered. We had our dinner in the middle of the day. Nobody in their right mind cooked evening meals in the south back then. Supper would be casual pickups, sandwiches and fruit or leftovers.
The clouds began to build in the afternoon. By three the air in our rambling two-story house had become oppressive. Nobody complained. Even if the temperature was 100 degrees outside, Daddy wouldn’t turn on the attic fan until we went to bed. The twins wanted to go to the movies, but Mama objected. “I don’t want you in a theater in this weather,” she said. “What weather? The sun’s out,” Shirley said innocently. “It’s much too hot. I think there’s going to be a tornado watch.” I knew Mama was remembering Vicksburg where so many kids were killed at the movies. “Then can we go over to Linda’s?” Sheila asked. “I suppose so, but don’t you girls go off anywhere else without telling me.” They called to inform Mama they had been invited to stay for supper. “All right, but if it gets bad, I’m going to pick you two up in the car.” I was outside on the porch around five studying, safe from Mandy who was painting her nails in the dining room. Daddy was watching a ball game; I could hear the TV from the den. There was an uneasiness to the atmosphere; the wind was high and it looked like the clouds were moving in different directions. I thought about pointing this out to Mama, but she was already so agitated I kind of hated to make it worse. I didn’t know if she was downstairs or not, but I peeped in the den and saw that Daddy had fallen asleep on the sofa. I went into the kitchen to fix a peanut butter sandwich. Taking it out to the porch, I resumed working on my book report. I became so absorbed I didn’t notice the shadows falling across my shoulders or the rustling of the trees in the front yard. Mama broke the spell when she joined me. “Allie, look over there.” She motioned to the southwest, where the horizon had turned a dead black. “There’s bad weather coming. I’m going to pick up the twins. Where’s Mandy?” “She was in the dining room a while ago. Is Daddy still asleep in the den?” “Yes. If he wakes up, tell him where I went. And tell Mandy I said to stay home.” “Sure.” I wondered if I should go in and look for her. In a minute, I decided, and picked up my school work again. The sound of the phone startled me. I had let a full half hour go by, and now I could see lightning in the fast-approaching black cloud. It was Mama calling. “I’m going to stay here with the twins until this weather passes, Allie. There’s tornado warnings all over the place. Tell your father for me, please. The three of you stay downstairs.” I went inside, struggling with the screened door. It felt like it was being pulled away from me. Daddy wasn’t on the couch. Maybe he’s making a sandwich, I thought. But he wasn’t in the kitchen, either. I started for the staircase only to run into Mandy. “Why do you have on your graduation dress?” I asked, although it wasn’t unusual for Mandy to spend a whole afternoon trying on clothes. She smiled, made a little curtsy like in dancing school, and continued down the stairs. “Breaking in your shoes? Mama says don’t go anywhere.” Mandy walked placidly through the front hail and out to the porch. Her hair looked greenish in the strange light from the bare bulb overhead and the black sky behind trees that had begun to bow to the ground. “Mandy?” “Just looking at the storm.” “Do you know where Daddy is?” “Uh, uh.” “Well, I’m going to go find--” I stopped in mid-sentence. Mandy had left the porch steps and was heading down the walk to the gate. She raised both arms as if in a greeting. “Mandy! What are you--” The white folds of her dress billowed as she twirled around. Then she began to skip-—and opened the gate. I heard something like a jet plane coming from far away. Lightning outlined Mandy’s slender frame as she skipped down the sidewalk toward the next street. I gasped when I saw the lowering funnel; Mandy raised her arms again and I began to scream for Daddy, banging helplessly on the door and struggling into the house.
Mama cried f or hours the day Mandy would have graduated. “Arid where was your father?” she moaned over and over. “Shut in the upstairs bathroom with his magazines where he couldn’t hear a thing.” I didn’t think Mandy was worth the tears that flowed for months, but I did my best to comfort Mama. I knew she would recover, and that next year she would buy me the pastel party dresses f or my graduation and that I would probably be valedictorian. The twins were resilient, although Sheila got quite angry when she heard people talking--which of course they were going to do. Most were sympathetic--the poor, poor girl, they would say. What could she have been thinking? Mrs. Pettus from next door remarked that there had always been something peculiar about Mandy; then she included me in her assessment by adding I was ~cold as an icicle.’’ Mama slapped the older woman’s face right in the middle of the grocery store. But I wasn’t cold-—I was confused. I would lie awake night after night, trying to figure it all out. If I could understand it, maybe I could get over it. Maybe I could cry too. If only I had gone in the house sooner. . The answer popped into my mind suddenly, without warning. Mandy was an egotist, wasn’t she? She simply carried her egotism as far as it could go. She was a lot like Helen of Troy, come to think of it. A foolish Helen, who was having too much fun to go home and thereby started a long and bloody war. I’m the one in this town everyone will remember. Yes, Mandy. Even if you had to die to prove it. The End
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