Unfinished Work #33

Page one of yet another temporarily abandoned piece . . .
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"Would you have a look at what that woman is wearing?" Mirian leaned toward her sister, motioning carefully with a gloved hand. "I tell you it’s just ridiculous; a girl that pretty all dolled up like some –"
"– Like some floozy," Josephine chimed in. "Like some little floozy, parading herself around for whoever wants a look."
"It’s just terrible."
"Terrible."
"You know, the poor thing’s liable to pop herself right out the top of that dress."
"Oh, that’s the least of it."
"And such fine skin too."
"Oh, fine skin yourself. I don’t see nothing but cheap snuff," Josephine fussed. "That girl’s looking to wind up in the back seat of some Mr. Bigshot’s wagon or knocked up over on –"
"– Josephine!" Mirian brought her sister’s quick tongue to a pause. "Please."
Indiana watched his mother as she eyed his aunt into an unwilling repose. Visibly slighted, Josephine began picking about at the ice in her glass with a tiny plastic sword. She swizzled the drink into a tinkling circus of crystal and purple spirits, and her eyes widened with a sense of propriety as she seemed to focus on some point in the center of the tiny whirlpool.
"I only meant it’s not decent," she said as she cleared her throat. "You know that."
Mirian picked up her knife and sawed through a medallion of pork loin.
"Yes, well," Mirian conceded, "I don’t think Indiana should hear things like that." Then pressing a mild smile across the table to him, "and I don’t think Indiana wants to hear things like that."
Indiana picked up his glass with both hands and lowered his lips to meet the straw. As he drank down the bottom of his third Roy Rogers, the boy pendulumed his feet underneath the table and studied his mother.
Her eyes were warm but very tired. Faint pouches drooped themselves above her smooth dark cheeks. The skin at the corners of her mouth was creased, bringing to the surface a tiny branching system of wrinkles resultant from years of affected smiling. The green felt-hat under which she had drawn up her wiry hair was less vibrant than he had recalled; the poinsettia on it’s face seemed deflated. It was as if the cloth flower was wilting; as if the inanimate bud was somehow succumbing to time. Indiana wondered how long she’d had the hat, for he could not picture her in public without it. The aged garment was her favorite hat; it was her only hat, and she wore it proudly.
"Oh, come off it Mirian," Josephine blunted. "The boy’s nearly ten years old. He’s bound to start a liking to girls soon and he should know what a decent girl is like." Turning to Indiana, "You should know what a decent girl is like."
The boy looked into his glass and watched as the last of the brown tonic disappear through his straw. He then set the empty glass alongside the others on the table.
"Shoot, Aunt Jo, I know what’s decent and what’s not."
"That’s right, he does," Mirian attested. "Because I’ve been raising him to be respectful."
"Alright, fine. Mirian, I won’t tell you how to educate your son," she said, prodding again at the ice. "Indiana, what makes a girl decent?’
"Josephine!"


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