Treat Us Generously by June Everett

Author:June Everett [Everett, June]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781532631306
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2017-10-23T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Uncle Lou was living in New York . . . He had become a true New Yorker to me. The New Yorkers all seemed to live in small apartments, and yet they were always bragging, and acted like they knew everything. And they never stopped telling you the price of everything they bought. ‘I paid $25 for this shirt, $3000 for my brand new automatic Chrysler, and we ate at the Tavern on the Green, and the niece of Ethel Merman was at the party the other night,’ and . . . well, you get the idea.

My uncles were away that afternoon. Uncle Dave, probably in Chester Basin or Mahone Bay. And Uncle Irving. I’m not really sure. He hadn’t been home in a couple of days. Uncle Irving was nothing but fun. We liked, that is, he liked to go swimming. And he would close his shop a couple afternoons a week, and drive down the LaHave River, where he knew a spot that was truly his, a place a little away from the highway. Sometimes his pal would join us, but, mostly I sat on the bank while he swan across the river and back, and I tried to tan up a body much too blond for such ambition.

Or often at night, he would join his buddies at the local Legion Hall. My grandmother couldn’t take this. He had won a scholarship to Dalhousie University, when that school rarely gave away the right time, and yet he had still wanted to join the Army. And did.

And now he just loved life with no orders.

My guess was that he got friendly with the cosmetic representative that stopped by Atkins Department Store that week. She had an exciting territory to us, Nova Scotia, and New England like Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine.

She was a bleached blond, not a common sight in our parts (that was only in the movies), before Clairol and California made it okay, and accepted . . . And she wore lots of makeup. I saw them walking along the riverbank by Uncle Irving’s store, but my uncle saw me even faster.

“Jilly, don’t say a word at the house.”

Of course, he didn’t have to tell me or attack me with the truth.

He often left the store, hardly locking its door, during a slow day. And there seemed to be a bunch. Went for a cup of coffee at the restaurant next door, or visited Roger, who owned Henderson’s, the family shoe store across the street. But Roger had help and was continually busy. Satisfied with a few sales, Uncle Irving considered the flooring business ‘hard work’.

I never knew how old my uncles were back then. Of course, they were probably quite young, maybe late 20’s, or even 30, I imagine. In my eyes and even still, they were all knowing. They had been in the War. Five distant years ago.

So I said nothing.

And his Dodge stayed parked in our yard all that week.

So my quiet

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