True Colors

As she stood there, the clouds overhead thinned out a little and the shadows lifted. By eight o’clock the rest of the vendors had shown up, waving at Winona as they passed, in a rush now to get their stalls ready by noon, and by nine o’clock the stores were beginning to open. All up and down the street one could hear the tinkling of bells that meant doors were opening.

Memorial Day Monday had always been the start of the week-long celebration. The same street vendors showed up year after year, selling the same things: homemade scones with jam, churros, fresh lemonade, oyster shooters, barbecued oysters, and the ever-popular Conestoga wagon hand puppets. All day long, throngs of people would fill this one street, walking from booth to booth, eating food they didn’t need, and buying junk they didn’t want, and come nightfall a bluegrass band would set up in the Waves Restaurant’s parking lot, position speakers in the corners, and everyone from five to seventy-five would dance. It was the unofficial start of summer.

She walked down the street and bought herself a latte. By the time she got back to her booth, Vivi Ann, Noah, and Aurora were there. No doubt Vivi Ann was afraid to leave her delinquent son home alone.

“We’re ready to help,” Vivi Ann said, smiling.

“I was hoping you’d show up,” Winona said.

“Hoping?” Aurora arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow. “I know an order when I hear one. What about you, Vivi?”

“Oh, she definitely ordered us here.”

“I don’t know why. You two are total bitches.” Winona grinned. “Thank God you’re cheap labor.”

Aurora studied the booth and frowned. In her trendy low-rise designer jeans with stiletto-heeled sandals and a fitted white blouse, she looked more like a celebrity than a small-town doctor’s ex-wife. “I can’t believe you put pictures of the flag all around your banner. Rectangular shapes are bad for women; everyone knows that. And your slogan: Vote Grey. Seven years of college and that’s your best shot?” She turned to Vivi Ann. “Fortunately originality isn’t valued in a politician.”

“I suppose you could do better,” Winona said.

Aurora made a great show of thinking. She frowned deeply, tapped one long, acrylic-tipped nail against her cheek. “Hmmm . . . it’s difficult, I’ll agree. I mean, your name is Win. But how, oh, how could you use that?”

Winona couldn’t help it: she burst out laughing. “How could I miss that?”

“You’ve always been a see-the-trees, miss-the-forest gal,” Aurora said. “Remember when you took your first driving test? You were so busy looking ahead to the stoplight and calculating how many feet it would take you to stop at that speed and wondering when to hit your turn signal that you drove right through a four-way stop?”

That was the thing about family. They were like elephants. No one ever forgot a thing. Especially a failure, and a funny failure was as durable and reusable as plastic.

She was about to offer to get coffee for everyone when she noticed Noah going through her purse. “Noah,” she snapped. “What are you doing?”

He should have looked guilty, but that was the thing about Noah: he never behaved as you expected. Instead, he looked angry. “I need a pen to do my homework.”

My ass, Winona thought, but said, “How very enterprising of you.” She plucked a pen off the table and handed it to him, then retrieved her purse.

For the next eight hours, she and her sisters handed out brochures and buttons and gave away candy. Sometime after three, Aurora disappeared for half an hour or so and came back carrying quart-sized margaritas in Slurpee cups. After that they really had fun. Winona wasn’t exactly sure whose idea it was, but after they’d given away all the promotional items, while the other business-oriented booths were shutting down for the night, the three of them ended up standing in the middle of the street, arms slung around shoulders and waists, doing the cancan and singing, “Can can can you vote for Win?”

Laughing, they walked back to the booth, where Noah sat like a little black rain cloud.

“Could you be more weird?” he said to Vivi Ann, who immediately lost her smile.

It pissed Winona off. The last thing her sister needed was an angry, maladjusted kid to hurt her feelings. “Could you?” she asked Noah.

“Who wants another drink?” Aurora said quickly. “Everyone? Good. Come on, Noah. You can help me carry them back. It’ll be good practice for senior year.”

After they were gone, Winona went over to Vivi Ann, who was standing by the banner’s stanchion, looking out across the crowded street. Through the colorful, moving blur of people, Winona knew what her sister was staring at. The corner of the ice-cream shop and the start of the alley.

Cat Morgan’s house was long gone, of course; now that clean, well-tended alley led out to the Kiwanises’ park. But no matter how many signs they erected or ads they placed in the newspapers, to the locals it would always be Cat’s alley.

“Are you okay?” Winona asked cautiously.

Vivi Ann gave her one of the Teflon smiles she’d perfected in the past few years. “Fine. Why?”

“I heard Noah got in a fight again.”

“He says Erik, Jr., and Brian started it.”

“They probably did. Butchie’s kid has always been a bully. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“I gave Noah the benefit of the doubt the first few fights, but now . . . I don’t know what to do with him. Even if he’s not starting the problem, he’s finishing it, and sooner or later he’s going to hurt someone.”