Texas Bowling
It was the night before Christmas and my brain was not stirring. I failed to see 15 words in the December 24, 2023, NYT Spelling Bee puzzle. All 15 words are included, in bold type, in this story. The missed words, in alphabetical order, are as follows: Apian, Apnea, Append, Appended, Daphne, Dapped, Epee, Headpin, Neap, Ninepin, Peahen, Pend, Pended, Penned, and Pepped.
Southwest Flight Number 511 from Chicago hit the runway at Dallas Love Field right on time. Within 30 minutes, the two sisters were hugging each other and exchanging enthusiastic and genuine “You look greats!” Martha, who taught medical illustration in Chicago where they’d grown up, was tall and thin with straight dark hair and the kind of pale skin you get when you live beneath gray skies half the year. She was wearing boots and a sweater with a black puffer coat tucked under her arm. It was mid-March. Jenn, four years younger, had on some long, bouncy blonde hair with hot pink jeans and cute sandals. Still, they looked a lot alike if you could see further than their outfits. In addition to being sisters, they were friends, but the pandemic had kept them apart for more than a year.
Martha could not help but notice that Jenn was fairly jumping up and down with excitement, which was not, Martha surmised, due to her arrival. “What’s got you so pepped up, a new love interest?”
“No,” scoffed Jenn, “well, sort of, but it’s not a man, really, it’s bowling!” she giggled. “Please, please, please can we go? It is my birthday, after all.”
“Your birthday’s not for two more months. I’m just here to spend a quick couple of days catching up with my little sister before my flight credits expire.” Martha winked.
“I know,” Jenn persisted, “but can we go bowling anyway? I’m obsessed. And I brought you some socks. Just in case.”
“I’ll go if you promise to tell me what, or who, ‘really,’ got you into bowling,” Martha agreed.
At the far corner of the airport parking lot, they reached Jenn’s yellow Smart car with the black convertible top. “Bet you create an apian buzz in this little ride,” Martha laughed as she opened the passenger door. “An apnea buzz?” Jenn puzzled. “What do sleep apnea and convertibles have in common?”
“Cute car,” Martha answered, and tried to ignore Julie Brown in her head, “’Cause I’m a blonde, yeah, yeah, yeah.” They drove straight to Bowlski’s on Abrams.
About halfway through the first game, when Martha was beginning to have that “are we there yet” feeling, Jenn began to press her older sister for even more bowling. Jenn wanted to drive that afternoon all the way to Bexar County to check out a ninepin bowling extravaganza and see a concert by someone called Flat Top Jones in an attached dance hall. “C’mon, Martha. Ninepin bowling was Martin Luther’s favorite!” she coaxed. “Some kind of Lutheran you are.”
“Methodist. Henry was Methodist, not Lutheran,” Martha retorted as she approached the foul line for her first throw in the seventh frame. “And he was ten years ago,” she added, just as the ball somehow managed to topple the headpin and take out only two more pins behind. She’d be lucky to break 50 at this rate.
Jenn got a spare.
Annoyed with her own ineptitude at a game she thought ridiculous for anyone above the age of eleven, Martha was grumpy. “Look, I know you’ve got some inexplicable bowling fixation this month, but I don’t care if Travis Scott himself invited us to bowl at a private ninepin lane installed in his Houston mansion, I’m not riding down to Bexar County to go bowling!”
“Since when are you a Travis Scott fan?” Jenn asked, and then appended her question with “Houston is in Harris County, not Bexar County, anyway.”
“I’m not a Travis Scott fan,” Martha protested. “I saw him on Saturday Night Live one time. He was, um, vocalizing, and a band was playing and all the while there was some girl off to the side, looking vapid and draping herself this way and that on an inanimate horse. So, I Googled him. He’s one of yours. Texan, I mean. And he put a bowling alley in his house.”
“Okay, then, if you won’t drive just four little hours down to San Antonio for some weird-ass German bowling, what about stopping by the Arboretum when I’m done trouncing you here?” Jenn bowled another strike.
“The Arboretum?” Martha repeated. “My little sister, the landscape architect, has grown quite an interest in horticulture!”
“No puns! My interest was in growing new friends in Dallas. After six months of volunteering at the Arboretum, I’ve met a lot of cute old ladies who want me to join their quilt guild. Anyway, I wanted to show you the pretty daphne shrubs they have there – the ones you say you can’t grow back home. But now that you’ve gone and said horticulture, you know what’s coming.”
“Jesus Christ, Jenn, just whip out your epee and run me through with it instead.”
“You can lead a whore-to-culture, but you can’t make her think!”
“Stop bringing that up already! I only teased you with it that one time and we’d had a whole bottle of wine. Besides, it’s just so wrong.”
“I know, but tell Dorothy Parker. You wouldn’t believe how often I hear it when I tell people I’m a landscape architect. They think it’s uproarious fun. One lawyer I met at a party actually fed me the Dorothy Parker line about horticulture followed by two more choice tidbits, one about a horse and, um, a pussycat, let’s say, and the other about making a hormone. You can figure it out.”
“That’s so hot. How’d you keep your hands off of him?” Martha asked, grimacing.
“He was there with his wife,” Jenn chuckled, shaking her head. “Who cares? Hey, the Arboretum is right next to White Rock Lake, remember? While we’re over there, I want to show you the peahen who lives at my friend’s house near Flagpole Hill. Maybe the peacock will be with her.”
Martha had to admit that the lake – really just a big holding pond – was indeed beautiful. “It’s a neap tide today so we might not see as many birds as with a spring tide,” Jenn warned. Martha tilted her head in confusion at her younger sister’s easy discussion of tides, but sagely said nothing. Besides, Jenn’s worries about any lack of wildlife were unfounded. Loons and herons dapped at the water’s surface. Thrashers and mockingbirds sang from the tree branches. A wood duck with its creepy red eye paddled by. The pastel light was made for all those dead French Impressionists and the clouds were just plain showoffs.
“Martha, when we get home tonight, remind me to show you this book by a textile artist who lives nearby. She walks at the lake almost every day and started taking photos with her iPhone. She makes it look like a national treasure.”
“You did say she’s an artist. But seriously, Jenn, I get it. I’m glad you brought me. Beats slush and snow flurries.”
Later that evening, they decided on Gloria’s for dinner. When the server set down two margaritas, rocks, extra salt, Martha sighed, “I could not have penned a more perfect Texas day with my little sister.”
“Funny you should choose that word,” Jenn replied heatedly with a fistful of sarcasm. “This morning while I was waiting in the cell phone lot, I saw that I missed the word “pend” in yesterday’s Spelling Bee. Not p-e-n-n-e-d, but p-e-n-d. I got “append” but not “pend.” Have you ever read or heard the word “pend” used in a single sentence?”
“Pend? What about pended?” Martha complained, equally aggrieved. “I didn’t spot pend or pended. Pended is what happens when someone can’t decide what to do with your claim or application, I learned. You get pended while they check you out.”
“Like if St. Peter can’t decide if you belong in Heaven? You get pended in Purgatory?” Jenn mused.
“Huh? St. Peter? You Catholic now?” asked Martha.
“What ever happened to that Methodist guy anyway? Henry, you said his name was?” Jenn picked back up where they had left off at the bowling alley. “It was two years ago, not ten. You didn’t like teaching Sunday School?”
“No, no, no,” Martha countered. “You never told me what sparked your interest in bowling. What does he look like? What kind of music does he listen to? Please tell me he has a job.”
The sisters laughed as they ordered another basket of chips, this time with queso instead of guacamole. They had catching up to do.
