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Ruby Lemons
- University of Georgia Press
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Ruby Lemons "Ruby lemons/7 Jack gushed all at once, turning from his typewriter. "High ruby lemons/7 He smiled his crazy smile at Mr. Mason, shaking his head up and down. The monkey leaped from his lap to the top of the china closet without seeming to touch anything else. Three plates with pictures of churches on them were balanced on top of the closet and, leaning precariously against the wall, rolled back and forth as the monkey paced in front of them. "Pesky, get down here!77 Aunt Dodo cried. "He means high bilirubins. Jack has always had a high bilirubin count and they don7 t know what to do about it.77 They all turned to Jack; he looked down and shuffled his feet. "He never gets it right,77 continued Aunt Dodo, while Aunt Lottie and Aunt Gussie smiled at Jack and he smiled hugely back. "But it always comes out like real words. He's a poet, is what he is.77 Jack all but nodded his head off his thin shoulders. "Poetry,77 he said. "You know what Jack calls Miss Pennyfeather? Mrs. Ferry Weather!77 said Aunt Gussie. The three gray-haired sisters laughed and Jack joined them with an explosive snort. "Ferry Weather!77 he said, and turned back to his typing. Mr. Mason tried to smile, too. The monkey swung back down and settled in Jack's lap again, leaving the cups in the china closet swaying in unison on their hooks, like a line of chorus girls in hoopskirts. Two of the sisters had been chorus girls, if only briefly, and Aunt Lottie had been a lead singer in 23 The Piano Tuner church groups and little theaters; they all were musical, even in their sixties and seventies. They liked nothing more than to gather around the small black spinet and sing the old songs again, with Aunt Lottie playing and Jack providing a surprisingly good, if erratic, male tenor. Jack suffered from cerebral palsy, but for some unknown reason music seemed to clear the blocked roadwaysof his brain and he couldfollow along with them, though he had a tendency to go on after the others had stopped, repeating, soulfully, "alive alive-o" at the end of "Cockles and Mussels'' four or five times before realizing the music was over. They lived in a tall gray skinny house in St. Paul, somewhat isolated because of vacant lots on either side and a practice field in the back that belonged to nearby Hamline University. In the summer severalhuge lilac bushes gave it a festive air, but in the long winter the wind bangedthe house so hard that its curtains blew as if the ancient windows were open. There were three small bedrooms upstairs, one for each sister; the downstairs was a classic example of shotgun architecture: from the front, four rooms lined up in a row— the living room (with the piano), dining room, kitchen, and, in the back, Jack's bedroom. He liked to sit at his window and watch the college girls run back and forth, flailing their field hockey sticks at the bounding ball. "Hole!" he would shout when one of the girls scored, as elated as she was. Jack was twenty-seven and his interest in girls was as much a topic of conversation in the house as the high number of bilirubins in his blood. In fact, Uncle Frank used to say,when he caught Jack watching the girls, "Bilirubins a little randy today, eh, Jack boy?" The sisters were more sedate and circumspect, though they tried to interest someof the girls in coming to play checkers with Jack, because he enjoyed their company so much, and the sisters thought it was healthy, someone close to his own age. But one of the girls had got frightened, over nothing at all, and this had 24 [3.87.133.69] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:08 GMT) Ruby Lemons brought Miss Pennyfeather and the shadowy disturbance of the State into their lives. Aunt Gussie, at sixty-four the smallest and youngest of the sisters, worked as a part-time librarian at Hamline, and the last girl she had brought home, a petite brunette sophomore named Thelma Freese, had been nervous from the start. Gussie had explained about the cerebral palsy and how Jack loved to play checkers and needed the company of young people, but his appearance had clearly startled her and, to be honest, Jack...