Miss Julia Takes the Wheel

by Ann B. Ross

  “True,” Sam said, nodding.

  “And then there’s possibly a termite problem—I got a hint of that this morning—and a mold problem, and maybe a crack in the foundation. It could go on and on, couldn’t it?”

  Sam, frowning, nodded in agreement. “It can get to be overwhelming.”

  “Yes, it’d almost be better to build something from the ground up, wouldn’t it?”

  “Something to consider, anyway.”

  I sat up straight, looked wide-eyed at Sam as if I’d seen into the future. “You know what would be the smart thing to do?”

  “No, what?”

  “Hold off and see how Don Crawford’s house goes. It’s got to be the same age as the others. It’s certainly in the same state of disrepair with possible termite infestation, too. It might be better to just sit back and see what kinds of problems he runs into, then make a decision as to what to do.”

  “Honey,” Sam said, “that is a wise course of action. I declare, you are a marvel—a smart businesswoman and good-looking along with it. I’m a lucky man.”

  I beamed, of course, and soon we were on our way upstairs to bed, both of us smiling—me, because my husband appreciated my talents, and Sam, well, I wasn’t sure why he was.

  * * *

  —

  “Oh, my goodness,” I said just as Sam and I sat down for breakfast the next morning, “I just thought of this, but wasn’t Lloyd supposed to come by in his new car yesterday?” I had completely forgotten about the big reveal that he’d promised, having been so taken up with real estate and construction questions the entire day.

  “Yes’m, he was,” Lillian said, straightening up from the oven with a pan of biscuits in her hand. “What if he didn’t get it? What if he wadn’t happy enough for Mr. Pickens?”

  “Oh, I can’t believe Mr. Pickens would go back on his word,” I said, although I was never quite sure what the man was capable of.

  “Has to be some other reason,” Sam said, agreeing with my assessment of Mr. Pickens. “Why don’t you call Hazel Marie later this morning and see what happened?”

  * * *

  —

  And so I did, learning from her that Lloyd had had a less than joyous afternoon the day before in spite of taking possession of his car.

  “As soon as he got home from school,” she told me, “J.D. and I took him to the dealer’s—we both had to go because J.D. would be riding back with Lloyd. So if he drove there, he would’ve had to leave his car at the dealer’s, and I would’ve had to take him back to get it. I tell you, Miss Julia, it’s like musical chairs trying to figure out which car goes where. Anyway, we came straight home because J.D. wanted Lloyd to change a tire before he started really driving.”

  “You mean,” I said, “it already had a flat tire and you’d just gotten it?”

  “No, it was fine. J.D. just wanted to be sure that Lloyd could take off a tire and put it back on. Just in case, you know.”

  And here I’d been thinking that a flat tire was the reason for having a cell phone, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Then,” Hazel Marie went on, “just as Lloyd got the tire back on—and by the way, he knew exactly what a lug wrench was. I was so proud of him. But anyway, about that time J.D. got a phone call and had to leave just as I was starting to feed the little girls. They were fussing and crying because they wanted to go somewhere in Lloyd’s car. Well, it just went from bad to worse, because by the time we were ready to come by and see you, it was dark and, of course, J.D. wasn’t back. So Lloyd got to drive only from the dealer’s back here to the house.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, but maybe he’ll come by this afternoon.”

  “I’m not sure,” Hazel Marie said. “J.D. still isn’t back. I was the licensed driver this morning so Lloyd could drive to school.”

  “That was good of you, Hazel Marie.”

  “Well, I had to go out anyway—the little girls had to go to preschool. We started out early, though, because it took us almost an hour to move two car seats from my car to his and get them locked in place. Anyway, all three of us rode with Lloyd in his car, and I took the wheel when we got to the high school. Or rather a block from it. Lloyd wanted to get out before we got there.”

  “Oh, my,” I said, feeling bad for the boy. “It might be old, but a boy’s first car should be special to him, and I’d hoped he’d be proud to drive up in his very own.”

  “Oh, the problem wasn’t with the car—I think he’s reconciled to that and understands J.D.’s thinking on it. No, the real problem was his sisters in the two car seats in the back that were sitting up higher than he was. He said having a family car was okay, but he wasn’t ready to have a whole family in it.”

  “Oh, my,” I said again, suppressing an urge to laugh. “That doesn’t sound like him. He loves his sisters.”

  “I know he does, and he’s already told me that when he gets his real license, he’ll take the girls to school for me. No, I think it was first-day jitters, not wanting any of his friends to laugh at him for looking like a family man. The cushion that J.D. told him to sit on didn’t help, either. But at least he can see over the wheel when he’s on it.”

  Chapter 16

  *

  In the midst of all that, Hazel Marie told me that she would be going to LuAnne’s condo the following morning to assess her wardrobe.

  “Can you meet us there?” she asked. “I’ve already called Lauren, and I think she’s coming. She had to think about it until I told her she could leave her children here with Granny Wiggins and my girls. So she said she’d try.”

  “She didn’t have to ask her husband?”

  “I guess not, although I expect she will.” Hazel Marie paused for a second, then she said, “You know, I just can’t imagine asking J.D. for permission to do something with my friends. Or to ask permission to do anything, for that matter—other than to buy something really expensive, maybe. He’d think I was crazy.”

  “I know. So would Sam if I did it. But I hope she’ll be there. It would show that she’s willing to at least listen to a few suggestions.”

  “I think so, too. But I’m not going to get into makeup tomorrow unless LuAnne insists. There’re some people, you know, who have a moral, or maybe a spiritual, problem with cosmetics. I don’t know what they have against them, but I wouldn’t want to put Lauren on the spot if she’s one of them.”

  “No, I wouldn’t, either. I don’t know if you knew Faye Cantrell or not—this was years ago, but she never wore a smidgeon of makeup and I never knew why. I mean, she went to First Baptist, so it couldn’t have been a religious reason.”

  “I knew a Dr. Cantrell,” Hazel Marie said. “He saw me when I thought I’d broken my arm when I fell off the monkey bars at school.”

  “That was her husband and it’s interesting that now we know two doctors’ wives who don’t—or didn’t—use makeup. Anyway, I remember somebody commenting that Faye was a beautiful woman without it, but she’d be stunning with it. Of course, Faye had more natural coloring than Lauren does, so she didn’t look washed out.”

  “Well,” Hazel Marie said, “I’m just going to stick with clothes tomorrow—what goes with what, and what LuAnne needs to fill out her wardrobe. You be thinking about it, too. You know, like what you’d expect to see if you had to go to a funeral home.”

  “My goodness, Hazel Marie, I’ve never even thought of something like that. I don’t know that I’d be expecting anything in particular. But,” I said, turning it over in my mind, “I guess that shows that most people have other things on their minds when they visit a mortuary.”

  “I’m sure they do, but if the receptionist happened to be dressed in something outlandish, they would notice. The fact that they don’t shows she was correctly dressed. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I guess so,” I said, “if you put it that way. So the tric
k for LuAnne is not to be unnoticed, exactly, but rather to blend in so well that she doesn’t divert a visitor’s attention from the purpose at hand—sad, though it may be.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Then you may have a problem. LuAnne is always well-turned out—whatever the event happens to be. But she has as many red suits in her closet as Nancy Reagan.”

  “I guess that’s my fault,” Hazel Marie said. “You remember several years ago when she asked me to do her colors? Well, we never got around to doing them, probably because she knew her favorite color was not her best color. She’s a warm tone, if there ever was one.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I said, “Why don’t you bring your scarves with you? You can do LuAnne’s colors and maybe Lauren’s, too—at least enough to show her what a little color would do for her.”

  “That’s a good idea. So we’ll see you at LuAnne’s tomorrow about ten?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  * * *

  —

  A car turned into the driveway that afternoon and parked by the back porch.

  “Lloyd’s here!” Lillian called from the kitchen, and Sam and I hurried to see our little boy all grown up behind a wheel.

  The three of us rushed outside, taking in the huge gray machine filled with Hazel Marie, the twin girls in their car seats, and Lloyd, looking too small and too young to handle all that horsepower.

  He grinned as we approached, and it seemed to me that it was a prideful, yet self-effacing, grin—trying to appear suitably grown-up yet being as thrilled as a child at Christmas.

  “Come see my car, Mr. Sam,” he called as he opened his door so we could see inside. “Look, it’s got a radio and a disc player—J.D. put that in for me. They weren’t standard from the factory back in the old days.”

  The “old days” to us, of course, were just yesterday, but to Lloyd they were part of a vast cloud of events that may or may not have occurred before he was born.

  As Sam leaned over to look at the dashboard, Lloyd unlatched his seat belt and slid off the air-cooled mesh cushion he’d been sitting on. “Get in, Mr. Sam, see what you think of it,” he urged.

  Sam did, and the two of them began talking horsepower and tachometers and air pressure and the like while I walked around to Hazel Marie’s window to speak to her and the little girls.

  Leaning over, I whispered, “How’s his driving, Hazel Marie? Do you feel safe with the girls in the car?”

  “As safe as can be,” she said. “He’s an excellent driver.” Then with a smile, she whispered, “He hasn’t gone over fifteen miles an hour yet.”

  Sam and I did our part in admiring the ancient vehicle, and so did Lillian. She told Lloyd that if he ever wanted to trade up, she’d be open to letting her car go.

  Of course we invited them all in—it was too cold to linger outside—but they had to get home for supper. The three of us stood watching as Lloyd got back in, adjusted his cushion and his seat belt, then cranked it up, smiling broadly as the engine responded with a satisfying roar. Then with an arm across the back of the seat and his head turned sharply, he slowly began to drive in reverse, zigzagging only once on his way out of the driveway. I held my breath, but he adroitly missed my boxwood hedge by inches, only to bounce across the curb onto the street.

  Grinning with success, he waved to us, then shifted into drive and took off at a sedate speed.

  “My goodness,” Lillian said as we returned to the kitchen, “it’s cold out there! But don’t Lloyd look all growed up, settin’ there behind the wheel like he been doin’ it all his life. I declare, seem like jus’ yesterday he was hoppin’ on a bicycle, an’ now here he is, drivin’ a great big car.”

  “Uh, Lillian,” I said, smiling at her, “it was just yesterday that he was hopping on a bicycle.”

  Then, turning to Sam, I asked, “What did you think?”

  “I think Pickens did good,” he said, nodding for emphasis. “He risked disappointing the boy, but he’s put him in something that will protect him as well as anything but a Mack truck. But,” Sam went on, barely suppressing a smile, “Lloyd is not completely reconciled. He told me that he still hasn’t driven up to the school—he said he really didn’t mind driving his sisters around, but he doesn’t want his friends to see him sitting on a cushion. He said it makes him look like a little ole family man with hemorrhoids.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I said, laughing. Then on further thought, I said, “It seems to me that you and Mr. Pickens could figure out how to jack that seat up so he won’t have to sit on a cushion.”

  Sam nodded. “Maybe so. I’ll see.”

  But I wasn’t through. “Did Lloyd say anything about all those girls and the school dance?”

  “Not a word and, to tell the truth, I didn’t think to ask. He’ll come up with something sooner or later.”

  Chapter 17

  *

  I parked the next morning in a visitor’s slot near Helen’s condo that was now leased to LuAnne. The Arboretum was well named for it was a small cluster of aging condominiums in the midst of mature trees that provided protection from street noise and neighbors collecting for some worthy cause. Hardly anyone knew the condos were there, or maybe they had been there so long that they’d been forgotten about. There were no gates and no gatekeepers, but the place had been ideal for Helen Stroud—it was quiet, out of the way, and affordable. Which also made it ideal for LuAnne—both of them had shed husbands who had deeply disappointed them by their way of living and/or their ability to provide.

  Helen had recently come up in the world by contracting with Thurlow Jones when he fell off the roof of his house and banged himself up. None of us could help but wonder just what that contract involved. I mean, when a woman moves into a man’s house, takes over refurbishing said house, and takes control of his checkbook, what is one to think? The worst, in my opinion, except for the fact that Thurlow, with two broken legs and a misaligned hip, could no longer walk, much less run after a woman. Whatever the arrangement between them was, it seemed to work for both of them—Helen was given a free hand in updating an aging mansion and Thurlow got a nurse, a manager, a housekeeper, and an interior designer all in one. Although he probably hadn’t bargained for quite so much, the alternative would’ve been long-term care in a sparsely staffed nursing home.

  So when Helen moved out of her condo, there it was for LuAnne to lease—the perfect answer to her dilemma of what to do about her husband of thirty years who’d been having an affair for twenty of them—unbeknownst to her or to anybody. Who, I ask you, could conceive of such a bland nonentity like Leonard Conover being able to conduct an undercover assignation as he had done for so long? It’s the quiet ones you have to watch—you never know what’s going on in their heads.

  LuAnne met me at the door, welcomed me in, and started talking. “I saw you drive up. Come on in the bedroom. Hazel Marie is already pulling things out of the closet, and I’ve just started the coffee and put a coffee cake in the oven.” LuAnne was going a mile a minute, and before I could reply, she went on, whispering this time. “Lauren Crawford came with Hazel Marie, and she seems so nice. But, Julia, she’s the one who really needs help. Have you ever seen anyone—that age, I mean—who looks so behind the times? I could do wonders for her if she’d just let me, and I hope she learns something from all of us today. How does she expect to hold on to her husband—and him a doctor—when there’re all these sexy-looking women around? That girl needs to do something.”

  I nodded in agreement and, in a warning whisper, said, “I think so, too, but don’t say anything to her. Hazel Marie wants to ease her into trying some makeup without making a big deal of it.” Then, handing my coat to LuAnne, I said in a normal tone, “I’ve been looking forward to this, especially after looking through my own closet yesterday. It’s full of things I hardly ever wear.” />
  “Tell me about it,” LuAnne said. “I know how that is, because when I moved here, it was the perfect time to get rid of a lot of things. I just hope I don’t regret that second trip I made to Good Will.”

  “Well, you know what they say: You should move every five years just to clear things out.”

  At LuAnne’s invitation, I walked into her bedroom, where Hazel Marie was sliding coat hangers along the rod in the closet and Lauren Crawford was watching from an oversized chair in a corner. I am not being critical when I say that LuAnne’s furniture overwhelmed the two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath condominium that was now her home. I would’ve had the same problem if I’d been reduced to a smaller place with smaller rooms and had had to fill them with the furniture I already owned. But I have to say that a mahogany breakfront in a dinette looks slightly out of place, as does a canopy bed that touches the ceiling. I felt I should walk sideways just to get through the rooms, but LuAnne had the things she loved around her, as I would have had as well. You don’t just throw out a Sheraton sideboard with fruitwood inlay because you don’t have the perfect place for it.

  “Oh, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie said, sticking her head out of the closet as I entered, “I’m glad to see you. I’m pulling everything out and sorting them by color.”

  “What can I do to help?” I said, then turning to Lauren in the corner, I said, “It’s so good to see you again. How are you this morning?”

  Lauren smiled and murmured something that sounded like “Just fine,” but I wasn’t sure. Hazel Marie responded to my question by saying, “You can go through that pile of dark colors. I may have put some navy in with the blacks.”