Blueberry Hill: a Sister's Story(8)

Instead of giving way to the hurt, she moved in with Mama and Daddy and resumed her roller skating carhop job. She also went back to late-night drinking and smoking. But there was one change: she now pulled herself out of bed every morning and took care of the baby.

You might expect that she’d be a terrible mother, but you’d be wrong. Donna was not exactly orthodox in her manner of handling things. There was no set schedule, no dinner on the table at the dot of six, no eight o’clock bedtime. But she held little Charlie so close to her heart it was as if they were one person.



A year later Donna told me she was getting back together with Charlie and they were planning to be remarried.

I gasped. “You’re kidding! Why would you do that? He’s a terrible father, he lies, cheats—” I caught myself mid-sentence and stopped.

Donna eyed me with a puzzled look. A look that questioned why I’d say such a thing. She didn’t even answer.

“I’m sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn,” I said, “but you’re so special. You deserve so much more. Is this really what you want?”

I stopped talking when I noticed Donna nervously tapping her fingers on the table and fingering the pack of cigarettes in front of her.

A long minute passed before she shook one loose, lit it, and pulled a long slow drag.

“Yes, it’s what I want,” she answered. “I really love Charlie.”

That was the end of the discussion.





The Madness of Marriage




Seven months after the second courthouse marriage, Donna gave birth to a daughter. By then she’d given up her roller skating carhop job.

Charlie’s mother, who at one time praised her son for being what she called an entertainer, now looked down on his pastime with disdain.

“You’re a married man with two babies!” she said. “It’s time to settle down.”

She withdrew a considerable amount of money from her savings account, bought a house two blocks from where she lived, and then handed the keys to Charlie.

“I’m not expecting rent,” she said, “but I am expecting you to give up that trashy job!”

Charlie did. For a while. He took a day job and began work as an assistant administrator in a local college.

At first it was good. Caring for the two babies brought out a softness I’d never before seen in Donna. Charlie, not so much. He grew restless, itchy to do something more than hurry home to a pot roast dinner and watch television.

“Why don’t you take the kids to the playground?” Donna would ask, but his only answer would be a look of incredulity.



After a few years of working a day job Charlie pulled his guitar from the closet and began plucking at the strings again. At first it was a casual thing, but in time he went back to joining the group.

“Tony’s got a broken arm,” he told Donna. “They need a fill-in.”

“For how long?” she asked suspiciously.

“A week, maybe two.”

A week turned into a month and a month into several more, and when Donna reminded him of his promise to leave the band Charlie fell back on the pretense of needing money.

“The car needs a new radiator,” he said. After that it was the back fence that would need to be replaced and an extraordinarily high heating bill. When he piled the financial needs on top of one another, Donna volunteered to get a job and she did.

No longer interested in being a roller skating carhop, she began to search the newspapers for a job close to the house so she’d be there when the kids needed her.

One morning as we sat with steamy cups of coffee and searched the want ads, a smile lit up her face. “Here’s a great one,” she said. “Bank teller.”

Bear in mind that Donna was a high school dropout. While others her age finished high school and moved on to college, she was skating from car to car with overloaded trays of root beer.

~

I glance at the ad then look back at my sister. “This says college graduate. No experience required.”

Donna laughs. “Well, I don’t have any experience!”

“You also don’t have any college,” I remind her.

“That’s probably something they’re flexible on,” she says. “Anyway, this job is perfect for me. It’s close by; I can get the kids off to school and be home an hour after they are.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try,” I say, “but I wouldn’t get my hopes up because of the college thing.”

“Wonder what I should wear?” Donna muses. The next day she calls me, and I can practically see her smiling over the phone.

“I got it,” she says.

“You did?” My surprise is obvious. “How’d you get around the college requirement?”

“I told them I went to school in California, but the building burned down and the records were lost.”

“You’re kidding,” I exclaim.

She assures me she’s not. “I was kind of nervous when they asked me the name of the college.”

“What did you say?”

“Well, I remembered there was a college near where Aunt Jean used to live, and it really did burn down.”

“That was nine years ago.”

“Yeah, I know. I said when I went there it was called Chico College, but since then they’ve changed the name and I’m not too sure of what the new name is.”