It's sweltering outside and Mrs. Hagberg barely has enough energy to walk to and from the mailbox, but she's been waiting on this damn Social Security check for a week now and like hell is she going to let Hootsy Bootsy or Dingbat get their grubby little hands on it first.
The sun reflects off just about every damn surface on their Brooklyn street—making her squint and scowl the entire way. She opens the mailbox door and is surprised to see a letter from her nephew. She thought he'd long forgotten about her—some days she has trouble remembering him.
That's not entirely true, she supposes. She remembers him as a young boy, a chubby little thing with more belly than anything else. He was so cute back then, but now he's an accountant or an acupuncturist or maybe an accordion player.
That's the problem with kids; they grow up.
She taught plenty of brats in her forty years at McKinley and most of them only got worse with age, but somehow she got stuck with the two biggest ones as her landladies.
The only reason she considers them her friends is because she doesn't have many others. Brad texts her now and then, but he's about to retire himself. That Parrothead Sandy's following Jimmy Buffet on tour since by some miracle he's still alive.
Her Social Security check is in the mailbox after all so she takes that with her too and leaves the rest for the homeowners to grab. She heads back inside and makes a mental note to put the check in Brynn's college fund. Then she writes it on a Post-It in case she forgets.
Feeling satisfied that will be enough of a reminder, she focuses her attention back on the letter. She contemplates taking a match to it right here and now, but she figures she owes her nephew at least one read.
"What's that?"
Mrs. Hagberg turns around to see Brittany looking at her—waiting for an answer to her question. "I won the lottery," she retorts.
"Jackpot," Brittany says, scouring through the fridge for something fattening that will never make Brittany fat. "What is it really?"
"Just those damn Mormons again," Mrs. Hagberg lies, hoping this time Hootsy Bootsy will buy it.
Brittany rips the wrapper off a popsicle and sucks on it a moment. "Do they want to marry you or…?"
Mrs. Hagberg huffs in frustration. "Do you ever stop being annoying?"
Brittany shrugs. "Depends on who you ask."
"That's it. I'm haunting you forever when I die," she says, making her way out of the kitchen.
"Tell me something I don't know!" Brittany calls after her.
Mrs. Hagberg goes into her bedroom and slams the door shut. It doesn't lock so she'll have to be quick before both of her crazy landladies come after her with their brat in tow. With trembling hands she opens the envelope from her nephew only to find that it's not a letter like she originally thought.
Instead it's a photograph with the words Gertrude and Gaynell — 1965 written on the back.
Brittany knocks on the door. "Would now be a bad time to tell you we hot boxed your car last night?"
The glare Brittany receives is the only answer she gets. At seventy-five years old, Mrs. Hagberg just doesn't have the energy to figure out Brittany's stoner talk anymore.
Santana walks into the room with the baby resting on her hip. "Britt, did the mail come yet?"
"Mrs. H brought it in," Brittany says.
Santana looks to her. "Did you bring it all in or just Good Housekeeping?"
These two are so perfectly annoying, Mrs. Hagberg thinks, wishing they didn't bother her so much, but then again the baby's not old enough to know she's stuck with two weirdos for mothers.
Brynn's in for a lifetime of hell.
"Get your own damn mail," Mrs. Hagberg says.
"That's not fair. We do things for you all the time… like when we pick up your IBS medication from the pharmacy," says Santana.
"It's no use. She's in one of her moods," Brittany tells her wife. "Pretty sure it's because she got something she doesn't want us to see."
"From the government?"
Mrs. Hagberg shakes her head no. Well, her check, but that's about the only damn thing she likes getting from those assholes.
Santana frowns. "Coach Sylvester?"
"Maybe your family?" Brittany guesses.
Damn.
Hootsy Bootsy is too intuitive for her own good.
Mrs. Hagberg hates that about her.
"Gaynell?" Santana asks.
They're expecting her to tell them something—anything. She doesn't. She hands them the picture and lets them run their grubby fingers over the image of herself from fifty something years ago.
Santana peers over her shoulder like the nosy little brat that she is. "She looks just like you."
"That's my twin sister, Gertie. She made a beautiful bride that day."
"You're both beautiful," Bootsy Britches—wait, that's not right, Hotsy Totsy—no, Brittany—says.
She hates dredging up the past for this exact reason. Looks fade after all. She's no longer the redheaded bombshell she used to be, that's for sure. "Just be glad you weren't alive back then. People were even less kind to lesbians than they are now."
"So who did your sister marry?" Brittany asks.
Mrs. Hagberg's expression turns sour. Just another reason why these two should stay out of her business. "Nobody," she spits, the words bitter as they leave her mouth. "Just a hard luck man."
Those idiots just grin at her like there's more to the story than that.
"We want details," Brittany says.
"Yeah, you never tell us anything about your life before McKinley," Santana says. "And I've snooped through your room a thousand times. I got nothing."
Truthfully there isn't much to tell. She grew up on a farm in Nebraska, moved to Ohio in 1972, and now she warms up bottles for her pseudo granddaughter and changes the litter box for an obese cat with a human-food only diet.
But even though there isn't much to tell about her life, Hootsy Bootsy and Dingbat will pry it out of someone—so they might as well hear it from her.
"His name was Jack," she says fondly.
At nine years old, she was as different from Gertie as apples were to oranges. They were easy to tell apart because of the way they dressed and while Gertie preferred dresses and skirts, Gaynell wore her brother's hand-me-downs although it took a hell of a lot of convincing her mother to let her go out in public like that.
A few months later a new family moved in down the dirt road- a mother, a father, and a boy her age. A little boy named Jack.
She remembered how he would always hide from his folks whenever he was trying to avoid his responsibilities at home. She always found him since Gertrude was allergic to just about everything and therefore never ventured far from the house.
"Can I tell you something?" he'd asked the very first time she found him jumping off the highest hay bale in the loft and landing flat on his face.
She nodded. She was way better at keeping secrets than Gertie.
"You look like a boy in them overalls. You should put some girl clothes on."
"He sounds like a prick," Santana interrupts.
"Yeah, overalls are totally cute," says Brittany.
Santana only owns a thousand pairs of them so it's no wonder that Brittany thinks they're God's gift to womankind, but Mrs. Hagberg ignores them in favor of continuing her story. "His parents were so damn mad when they found out he'd run off, but they always knew where to find him from then on out."
"What's that noise?"
Jack looked at her and then at the ground. "Nothin'," he said.
It was never nothing with Jack. He was likely to get her into trouble too, since she was usually named as his accomplice whether or not she helped him. "It sounds like the cows got out of your pasture."
"That's probably 'cause I let 'em go."
She sighed. Jack never showed any signs of having a lick of sense in the four years that she'd known him. "Mama says you can't sleep in the hayloft every time you get in trouble."
"Then stop ratting me out," Jack replied.
"Gertie's the snitch. Not me."
They heard a car screech to a halt outside the barn and the color drained from Jack's face.
"Get your ass out here, son!"
Jack knew better than to hesitate so he scurried down the ladder and she scrambled after him.
"It's time you learned to wrangle, boy," Jack's father said, tugging him along by his shirt collar once his feet touched the ground.
Jack waved goodbye to her and she waved back knowing the next time she saw him he'd be black and blue all over.
"That's not fair," Brittany says, her bottom lip trembling.
"Those cows were their livelihood," Mrs. Hagberg replies. The way Jack's father treated him wasn't right, but that's the way it was. These yuppies are just far too sensitive to understand and Mrs. Hagberg doesn't expect them to. "What's going to happen when you two disagree on how to raise your kid?"
"We won't," Santana insists.
There's nothing as sweet as Brittany's smile on a day like today, the nostalgic kind of smile that makes Mrs. Hagberg want to vomit. Of course they'll disagree. They'll argue and make empty threats and eventually come up with a compromise that won't really be a compromise since it will most likely just be Brittany's idea from the beginning.
"Yeah," Brittany chimes in, "Brynn is the best thing that's ever been ours."
Mrs. Hagberg hasn't thought about Jack in a long time, but those words sure do make her wistful.
"My daddy don't never need me at the dairy, Gaynell."
"He's got nobody else to give it to."
Jack shrugged. The dairy was of no concern to him. "I'm going to college. You should come with me."
The thought of going anywhere with Jack was enough to make her blush. At seventeen years old, she was still naive when it came to such things and Jack loved teasing her about it. "Please," she'd laugh, "the only thing you've ever kissed is a cow!"
But his idea got her thinking. "Do you really think I could go to college?"
Jack began to encourage her when suddenly they were interrupted by Gertrude. "Nellie, have you seen my—Jack! What are you doing here?" she asked.
Gaynell wondered how surprised she could possibly be since Jack was always here. Gertie was just always too preoccupied to even notice, but he smiled in an awful familiar manner. "Hello to you too, Miss Prude."
"I told you to quit calling me that!" Gertie said, swatting at him playfully.
"I'm sorry. I thought you asked me to stop. I don't remember you telling me."
It was disgusting to watch and she began to realize that maybe Gertie wasn't as preoccupied as she thought.
"Oh I get it," Santana, looking smug as ever, says. "You had it bad, girlfriend."
"Had what?" Mrs. Hagberg asks.
"The love bug," Brittany says.
Those chickenheads know all about falling in love at an early age, even if it did take a few years to iron out all the details. Mrs. Hagberg still thinks that Santana's a drama queen for breaking up with Brittany in the first place, but Brittany's over it so that's all that matters—although she did hear one story about that nutjob lighting every picture of someone named Dani on fire.
Mrs. Hagberg would be lying if she said she hadn't thought of disowning her sister once Gertrude and Jack started dating. She thought maybe the long distance would tear them apart with Jack going off to the University of Nebraska and Gertie staying at home, yet somehow it only made their relationship stronger.
She knew she'd find him here. She always found him here. "Jack, the service is about to start," she called up into the hayloft.
He ignored her—which she hated—so she climbed the old wooden ladder in her bridesmaids dress. "Hey, dummy! I know you heard me."
Jack sighed. "I know, Gaynell, I just wanted to tell you something in private."
"Okay…" she said, waiting to hear him say this was all a mistake. Waiting for him to tell her he rushed into this and that he's calling off the wedding.
"You look a lot better in that dress than you ever did in those boy clothes."
She slugged him on the shoulder as he laughed. "Gertie's gonna kill you for gettin' it dirty," he added.
"Nellie! Jack! What are you doing up there? One of you's supposed to be marrying me and the other's supposed to be holding my bouquet," Gertrude hollered at them.
"It's the only place there is to hide from you, Gertie," Jack called to her. "Since you haven't climbed up here a day in your life."
"You poor thing," Brittany says.
It's supposed to comfort her, but that shit happened fifty something years ago and what's done is done.
"What year did they get married again?" Santana asks her.
"Spring of '65. Why?" Mrs. Hagberg wants to know.
Santana shakes her head. "So even though you knew he was totally into your sister you followed him to college anyway?"
And even helped him pass all his classes.
"I stuck around for grad school and then as a junior professor while Jack took over the dairy back home. He had plans to sell it as soon as his father passed away, but his stubborn old man refused to go despite some serious health problems he developed later in life."
She raised the megaphone to her mouth. "What do we want?"
"Women's lib!" the people chanted in unison.
"When do we want it?"
They raised their signs. "Now!"
"What on God's green earth are you doing?"
"This is a peaceful protest, asshole," she replied, spinning around when she recognized that voice. "Jack!"
"You sure you're one to talk about peace? Because last time you really hit me hard," Jack teased.
"Homecoming isn't until next week. What are you doing here?" she asked.
He looked worried.
"Is it my mom? My dad? Your dad?" she pried, hoping for none of the above.
"It's Gertie. She's pregnant."
Santana smirks. "I knew it. Your sister didn't waste any time."
"Unlike someone else we know," Brittany says, giving Santana a nudge.
"That was...that was the push I needed to move on," Mrs. Hagberg tells them. "Shortly after I met Frank Hagberg." She stands up and walks over to her desk and pulls a book out of a drawer and opens it to a page near the back. She pulls out another photograph and shows it to the girls. A man in uniform looks back at them, his face frozen in time.
"Huh, I never thought to look in there," says Santana.
Brittany grabs the picture from her. "What a hottie."
"He was the real love of my life besides teaching." Crap, now they're getting all teary-eyed. Mrs. Hagberg is too, but watching these two girls get all weepy at something as lame as her life story kind of means a lot to her. Even if they are a pain in her ass 99% of the time. "He was drafted in 1969. So was Jack."
"Vietnam, right? You covered it in our World History class," Brittany says.
Mrs. Hagberg is impressed. "You remember that, but you can't parallel park to save your life? At least I taught you something."
"What did you and Gertie do while your husbands off at war?" Santana asks.
"Danced naked in the cornfields, mostly," Mrs. Hagberg retorts. "What do you think? Gertie stayed home with Jack Jr. and I kept teaching. Then my Frank came home in '71 with one leg and a bullet still lodged in his shoulder, but he was alive."
Brittany hates sad stories, but at least her favorite character still sits here in front of her. She's also glad that Mrs. Hagberg's one true love made it home, even if he's no longer around. She would've liked to meet him. "But where is Jack now, Gaynell?"
"His name is etched into a wall in Washington D.C. As for his body…it was never recovered."
Dredging up the past is exhausting which is why she suspects those dingbats made her do it because it's just about time for her afternoon nap. Still, it makes her think that maybe she should give Jack Jr. a call since she hasn't visited Gertie's grave in a while either.
That's the problem with people; they die.