Glory Days

by Joyce Mandeville

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Romance

Synopsis

Wall Street crashes in New York and the world is reeling - but all Glory is worried about is the drunken priest and why fat Aunt Flo is always upset.

But when Glory goes into the woods one day with her best friend Pammy, something happens. Something terrifying, which leaves Pammy convinced that the Virgin Mary has saved them. Glory isn't so sure, but she asks the Virgin for a miracle anyway. And gets it: a pair of much-desired 'Mary Jane' shoes.

Soon miracles are happening two-a-penny: the drunken priest dries out, Aunt Flo gets her wish and her mother develops strange powers. But the story soon gets out and, once the dead town starts to thrive again, problems emerge . . .

Curious, quirky and magical, this is a novel of childhood, belief and love set in the heart of America.

Release date: January 1, 1999

Publisher: WARNER BOOKS INC

Print pages: 336

Sample

Slipping behind the kitchen door, she hoped Mama wouldn’t notice her. It wasn’t as much fun if they knew you were watching.


Glory knew that whenever Mama got real wound up, like she was right now, she started noticing everything. Sometimes she was
as lazy as a big cat, but when she was mad she seemed to develop super-senses like some kind of character in those comic books
that Pammy’s brother Little Beau was always reading. If she was wound up she could practically see through walls and hear
dust swirling up the stairs when things weren’t going the way she thought they should. The sensible thing would be to slip
out to the yard and wait until this blew over, but Glory wanted to hear what Mama had to say this time.


Not only did Mama have extra powers when she was mad, but she would say things a child from a nice home didn’t normally get
a chance to hear. She would say words that normally required mouth-cleaning with half a bar of Ivory soap and five minutes
of extra prayers, at least in most families.


When Glory told her best friend, Pammy Reynolds, some of the words her mama said, Pammy said it was impossible for a grown woman to say those things. Pammy said they just wouldn’t fit in a woman’s mouth. She said her tongue would get stuck
trying to shove those words out. Glory told her she was nothing but a pile of old cat shit and Pammy stayed away for the whole
of the next day. Glory had been especially pleased with her ability to upset Miss Pammy ‘I wear Mary Jane shoes and take tap
lessons’ Reynolds, but she’d been even happier when Pammy came back to hear more about what her mama would say.


She watched as her mama’s nostrils flared and it reminded her of the times she’d seen her look around the room and start throwing
things just because they seemed to be irritating her. She would shove at the furniture, kick the rugs, and once she even threw
one of Aunt Flo’s little ceramic shepherdesses with the real lace skirts right through the picture window that Uncle Hoyt
had worked overtime to pay for.


Aunt Flo had cried like a big blond baby that time and run out to the yard in her nightgown looking for the pieces of her
shepherdess. It took about twenty seconds for half the kids in the neighborhood to be out there watching her. She would lean
over to pick up some little bit of face or a tiny hand and one of those big things would pop right out like a giant water
balloon. She’d shove it back in her nightdress, but the next time she leaned over with a grunt the other one would pop out
like it wanted to have a look around like its partner had done.


All that boobie-popping upset Aunt Flo even more until she started yelling almost as loud as Glory’s mama. The louder she
yelled and cried the more things started jiggling and jumping until Aunt Flo looked like a hundred cats were fighting underneath
her thin cotton nightie. The neighborhood kids watched in complete silence, their curiosity about what the woman had moving
under her clothes finally satisfied as the cotton clung to her and hiked itself up around her waist. Vast expanses of white,
pink, and bluish flesh vibrated in the morning light, smacking against the air with little clapping sounds. Mama had always
said the woman would keep moving five minutes after she was dead and Glory now knew that this was probably true.


Many of Aunt Flo’s parts did seem to have a mind of their own. She was always slamming her behind into the doorways and then
looking surprised like she hadn’t known that big thing was following her around. Aunt Flo said she had a glandular condition
which was related to her not being able to have children. Her mama said the only glandular problem her sister-in-law had was
an inability to stop shoving food into that surprisingly small mouth of hers. She also said her brother probably couldn’t
figure out where to stick his thing, what with Aunt Flo having so many ripples and creases. This always made Glory laugh,
even if she didn’t have any idea what kind of thing Uncle Hoyt would want to stick into his three-hundred-and-sixty-pound
bride. Whatever the thing was, it had something to do with why Aunt Flo collected ceramics and didn’t have kids like the other
women.


Not that her mama was a small woman by anybody’s reckoning. Mama was so well formed and solid she almost looked like she had
sprouted out of the ground itself. She wore her heavy muscles and bone the way some women wear beautiful clothes. She wrapped
herself proudly in her thick flesh and stroked herself while others admired her fine-textured skin. Almost without pores,
it would gleam and her mama would smile, knowing the picture she presented to the world. She kept her light brown hair combed
to the back of her handsome head where she would twist it into a thick braid. She’d tie up the end of the braid with any old
piece of string she could find, making it seem like she didn’t know she had the most wonderful hair in the world.


Her hair only seemed to be brown, but up close it was as bright with colors as a grain of sand held up to the noonday sun.
In its braid it would twist and turn, showing about a hundred different shades from snowy ash to chestnut brown, all stirred
up with reflections of red, blue, and every other color. Mixed all up, it almost matched the color of her skin.


Glory knew that Mama’s skin was that rich color all over. Proud of her body, she would climb naked out of her bed or bath
and walk into the kitchen where Aunt Flo would have to look at all that richly colored flesh and compare it to her own marbled lumpishness. Sometimes she’d pretend to flick a bit
of lint off her fine skin and smile while she watched Flo reach for the cookie tin or the jam jar with a trembling frown on
her tiny mouth.


Glory had thought that nobody in the whole world could look like her mama until she saw the pictures of Teacher’s summer vacation.
There was a park somewhere in Norway, or Sweden, or maybe even Holland that was filled with statues that looked like Mama.
Big beautiful statues of women with broad faces and wide hips who swung stone children in the air and curled themselves around
stone men who looked almost alive with love for those statues. Stone men made alive by wrapping themselves around all that
solid beauty. In Teacher’s pictures they were only statues, but Glory had seen real men look like that, plenty of times.


Walk down the street with her and you’d see men look just like that. They’d tip their hats and say, ‘Morning, Miss Eva, Glory’,
and then they’d walk right past. They’d walk right past, but Glory knew they’d turn around and watch her mama walk away. They’d
smile goofy smiles and sometimes they’d shake their heads, but they always watched.


Sometimes the men would touch her mama too, but she wasn’t supposed to have seen that. Late at night she’d hear things coming
from her mama’s room, but she knew that she had to go to sleep and forget those sounds by the morning. The sounds were always
gone by then, but on those mornings Uncle Hoyt was usually really mad. Not that Mama cared. She’d drink her coffee and look
at her brother over the top of her souvenir mug from Mount Rushmore.


This was going to be one of those mornings. Glory knew it even last night before she heard the man-sounds coming from behind
Mama’s door. Things would just build up between the three big people in the house. They’d seem to growl and sniff circles
around each other for a day or two before the fighting would start.


‘Jealous, Hoyt?’ She’d stretched out her long legs and let her robe fall partly away from the brown skin as she smiled at
the man. Glory felt her shoulder-blades draw together as she recognised the dark shards of anger in her mother’s eyes.


‘Eva Gorman, you are a disgrace to this family. We used to be the best family in this town and now look at us. You whoring
around and having a bastard under our roof. What do you think Daddy would have said if he could see you right now? What would
he say if he saw you sitting there with your robe open halfway?’ He reached over in an effort to close his sister’s robe,
but she kicked him, square across his kneecap.


‘Hoyt, are we talking about the same Daddy who screwed his office nurse for twenty years? Are we talking about the same Daddy
who my girlfriends wouldn’t go see because his internal examinations always felt like something you don’t usually get at the
doctor’s?’


‘You’re the only one who ever said those things and I think you made them up. Daddy was the best-respected doctor this town
ever had.’ He rubbed at his knee, refusing to look at his wife or his sister.


‘Daddy was the only doctor this town ever had until he died. It’s easy to be the best when you’re the only one, Hoyt.’

‘He’d hate to see you like this, Eva. You were always his favorite.’

‘He’d hate to see me like this because even he drew the line at incest. I’m sure he’d be bitterly disappointed that he didn’t
have the privilege of my bed and body.’ She looked down the front of her robe and pulled it tighter across her chest. ‘Not
that he wouldn’t have thought about it.’


‘Glory, hon, better get ready for school or you’ll be late. Grown-ups say the dumbest things and don’t mean a word of it.’
Aunt Flo threw her bulk between Glory and the others. ‘You get along now and forget their trashy talk.’


She craned her neck to see around her aunt. All she could see was her uncle’s red face and the big old veins popping in his
neck. ‘I didn’t hear anything, Aunt Flo. I was busy thinking about what I’m doing after school.’ She smiled at the woman and hoped Aunt Flo wouldn’t figure out that she was lying. Lying
was a terrible sin, at least according to Pammy, but it wasn’t so bad to lie if you didn’t get caught. At least that’s the
way it seemed.


‘That’s my good girl. Since today is the last day of school you’ve got a whole summer of after school ahead. Don’t want to
be late, sugar. You hurry up now.’ Aunt Flo shooed her out of the room and closed the kitchen door behind her. Glory pulled
out her notebook and carefully wrote i-n-s-e-s-t. She wasn’t sure if she had it right, but she could check the dictionary
in the library during recess. It was terrible to be kicked out before things really got going, but at least she had a new
word. She figured every new word brought her a little closer to knowing why they were all so angry. Almost all the time. She
hoped that she’d have a better disposition than them when she was a grown-up.


About half the fights with Uncle Hoyt were about men and the other half were about the house. Grandpa Gormon had left the
house to his two children. Uncle Hoyt said he’d done that because it was fair, but her mama said it was because the man wanted
to look up from Hell and see his children fighting and screaming. She told Glory it was so the old man didn’t need to feel
too homesick. Aunt Flo said Grandpa Gorman had gone to Heaven the day he died and was an angel these days. She said he wore
wings and spent all his time praising God. Her mama had shook her head and laughed when Glory told her what Aunt Flo had said.


Whatever his reason for leaving the house to his children, he’d left them the biggest, finest house in the whole town. It
was the only house with two stories and it was set back on a lot that was big enough to hold three or four houses. Grandpa
Gorman’s own daddy had won the house in a poker game. He’d never lived in it because he’d been shot on the way home from that
same poker game.


His young wife had moved herself and her son into the house a few hours after she’d buried her husband. There’d been some
grumbling about it at the time because she’d cut short the funeral lunch as she was so anxious to move into the grand house
with its ten rooms, wraparound porch, and indoor privy.


The grumbling didn’t stop when the young widow started putting on airs. Most of the people in the town remembered when she’d
come to town with her late husband. Neither one of them had been too ready to talk about where they were from. When asked
about who their people were, the young couple would come up with one or two names that didn’t mean anything to anyone who
heard them. Some people in the town suspected they were no-accounts and hadn’t been afraid to say just that.


For a while the grumbling got pretty loud. The Widow Gorman issued invitations, but they were always politely, if firmly,
refused. She joined the Presbyterian Church and even started singing in the choir. This was a cause for concern until Easter
morning when she sang ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ and there was hardly a dry eye in the pews. Most people realised that a woman
who could sing like that must be a good Christian and a fine mother. People began to notice what a fine job she was doing
with her young son and how nice the yard looked at the big house. The townspeople came to realise that what had appeared to
be putting on airs was merely a reflection of the young widow’s true nature.


She was a hard worker and her boy was the best-dressed child in school. She saw to that by sitting up late into the night,
carefully sewing his smart yet sturdy clothes. Within a few months, what with the late-night sewing, which she did in front
of the window that looked onto the street where people would see her doing it, and singing in the choir, which she did better
than anyone could ever remember, she became a respected member of the community.


Her invitations were accepted and she found herself sitting in other people’s homes and attending lectures on high-minded
subjects when the Chautauqua League provided speakers four times a year. She was asked to oversee the cake booth at the town
festival and two mothers asked her to give singing lessons to their young daughters.


Singing lessons turned out to be the one thing most mothers wanted their daughters to have. Some of the mothers were surprised
because they’d never known how much they wanted their daughters to sing until someone else’s daughter started warbling out
Stephen Foster or short bursts of Gilbert and Sullivan. Pretty soon it seemed as though the whole town was reverberating with
songs about black veils, cockles and mussels, three little Japanese girls, and home on the range.


With this flood of mothers and daughters running through the big house it was only a matter of time before attention was turned
toward the young widow’s son, Joe. His head of thick hair was noted and his quick smile and ready wit resulted in positive
comments. As his mother still spent many hours on his wardrobe, his clothes were a point of admiration. Along with singing
tuition, the Widow Gorman taught her pupils the love of Joe.


Even his teacher succumbed to his charms. Though he was not the brightest boy in her charge, she none the less convinced herself
that his beauty and wit were combined with great intellect and high purpose. She graded him well and urged him to aim high.
This was fine with Joe, but his interests were of a different sort. His inclinations turned him toward the earthier pursuits
of the flesh.


Being raised by a high-minded woman with artistic tendencies and surrounded by young women from good homes gave him ample
time to observe the female of the species. He studied the walk, the smell, the eye movements, the breast-heaving, and the
speech patterns as diligently as an anthropologist in darkest Africa or far-off Fiji studies head-shrinking or missionary-boiling.
He quickly understood the pleasure women obtained from the touch of silk and the whisper of lace. He practiced on himself
and on his mother’s elderly tabby the movements of his fingers that could barely be felt. In anticipation of the real thing, he kissed the inside of his own wrist so often he chapped
his lips.


His mother instructed him in dancing, teaching him to waltz and foxtrot without ever so much as brushing against one of her
calfskin boots. Even though he was holding his mother in his arms he quickly saw the possibilities inherent in dancing. He
became an excellent dancer.


The teacher, a plump spinster in her mid-forties, gave him a slim volume of Tennyson to read. She insisted he read it aloud
and Joe noted the look of longing in her short-sighted eyes. He began to memorise short stanzas and allowed his hair to grow
into Byronic curls which rested against his collar. His artistic sensitivity was commented on by mothers and daughters alike.


The decision to attend the state college with the intention of studying medicine was greeted with a mixed response. Even women
well past the years of longing found themselves thinking about what it would feel like to have young Joseph Gorman palpitate
their abdomens or cradle their twisted ankle in his long white hand. The younger women and girls, not averse to medical attention
at some point from such a man, grieved when they looked to the months and years ahead with nothing but farm boys and men from
the mill stretched out in a rough, strong-smelling line.


College was difficult, but help was usually available from fellow students who hated to see such a fine young man struggle.
He joined a fraternity and his fraternity brothers took turns tutoring him and preparing him for his exams. Their kindness
and concern was repaid with the assortment of young women who flocked to any party where Joe was present. Never greedy, he
graciously handed out the gin-soaked maidens with the largesse of a young lord, always reserving the most deserving of the
girls for himself.


After his graduation, medical training was continued at the same school. Although the course work was difficult, Joe quickly
realised he’d made the right choice. The velvet touch he’d perfected for the seduction of girls proved invaluable in the practice of medicine. Patients in the charity ward where
the student doctors were first allowed to attend to live bodies responded to his gentle ministrations with gratifying speed.
His brighter but ham-handed fellows were in awe of his ability to deal with the most frightened and difficult of patients.


His mother, and the other women of the town, eagerly awaited his return. The Widow Gorman, as ever concerned for her son’s
welfare, had the good sense to die and leave him a small inheritance in addition to the fine house in the same month he graduated
from his training. When some alterations had taken place he proudly hung up his shingle outside the house and began his career
with gusto and enthusiasm.


Within days, he’d hired a nurse to assist him in his duties. Maggie Jute was the daughter of a local farmer. As the oldest
of fifteen children, marriage and motherhood held no charms for her. Maggie saw nursing as her ticket out of endless child-bearing
and vegetable-canning. She donned her white starched uniform with the joy of a novitiate nun, happy to forsake the dubious
charms of hearth and home for a higher calling.


Her delight was only increased when she discovered that Dr Gorman didn’t expect her to forsake the pleasures of the flesh
for her career in nursing. On the contrary, Dr Gorman was more than happy to help her enjoy the stress-relieving properties
of regular sexual intercourse. Not only did it relieve tension and stress, he told her, but it was excellent for bowel regularity
and the enhancement of the complexion. Dr Gorman not only explained about the careful use of condoms to avoid the more obvious
complications of healthy living, but he recommended that the treatment be taken every day during her lunch break.


Dr Joe and Nurse Maggie soon fell into a comfortable routine of health-giving daily intercourse at noon, sometimes interspersed
with the addition of coffee-break fellatio or tea-time cunnilingus. It was understood by both that health treatments could
be given to others as long as medical confidentiality was scrupulously maintained.


Almost ten years of enhanced complexions and regular bowel movements passed before Evangeline Hoyt moved to town to live with
her married sister after completing her studies in Boston. Evangeline’s sister was married to Judge Faber. Judge Faber was
the Circuit Court judge as well as being the only partner in the law firm of Faber, Faber, and Faber, the two previous Fabers
having been lost in the Jonestown Flood, or so it was thought. Some thought they’d just taken the Flood as an excuse to start
over someplace else. Many had.


Dr Gorman was introduced to Evangeline Hoyt the second day she arrived in town. Her sister and brother-in-law had arranged
a musicale to which they invited some of the leading citizens in order to welcome Evangeline to the community and in the hopes
that they could marry her off as soon as possible. They were by no means an ungracious couple, but times were not easy and,
judging by her clothes and luggage, Evangeline seemed to have grown used to the finer things while studying in Boston.


Joseph thought she looked as though she fed on an exclusive diet of champagne and orchid hearts. She moved as easily as a
vapor through the dark rooms of the Faber house. When their hands touched during introductions he was certain that he’d felt
a small jolt of electricity in his loins. His head began to buzz in a not unpleasant manner and he was relieved when the guests
were urged to sit down for the musical entertainment.


He attended several musicales a month as they were the primary form of entertainment at the time. The evening stumbled along
at a predictable pace, altered only by the opportunity to study the back of Evangeline’s fine head and the delicate curve
of her exquisite neck. Mrs Faulkner was finishing her forgettable, but oft-repeated, rendition of ‘Greensleeves’ when he found
himself drifting off to sleep. A movement caught his half-closed eyes and jolted him upright when he saw Evangeline stand
and approach the front of the room.


She sang something. She sang something about fields, or maybe it was stars. She sang so sweetly that he almost cried. Her
beautiful breasts rose and fell with the notes and her perfect lips … Enough to say he knew they could accommodate anything
he might think of. For the firs. . .