by Leanna Ellis
“After I talked to you. And, well, before. When Mrs. Hoover called and said you weren’t acting … well, she said—”
“Sugar, you know you can’t believe anything Linda Lou says. She could kill somebody with that tongue of hers.”
Which is exactly my point. Mrs. Hoover usually has her facts straight. She could have been a police detective. Or a spy. But she prefers uncovering neighbors’ dirt to overseas travel. However, there’s no winning an argument with Mother, so I take a different tact. I am after all the peaceful mediator.
“And I spoke with Dad.”
Her eyes narrow, suspicion making her pupils contract to tiny pin pricks. “What did he say?”
“He asked for my help.”
She places a fisted hand on her hip. “Whatever for?”
“You tell me, Mother.” Direct confrontation, I learned at a young age, is never a good idea with my mother. This is as close as I dare. “It’s not like I show up unannounced on your doorstep every day. Why aren’t you asking me inside the house? What’s going on here?”
“In there? Why, it’s much nicer out here, don’t you think?” The constant wind is unable to ruffle my mother’s magically stoic hair, and the sun’s heat and my gaze don’t seem to wilt her defenses either.
“It’s hot,” I say, fanning myself with the sleeve of my airline ticket, well aware the hill country has been in a drought for the past few years. Even now, the evidence is clear with the dry, brittle grass of midsummer.
“Well, you’re just accustomed to those ocean breezes.” Which is true. The wind here brings only more heat.
A car door slams behind me. Mother glances toward the parked cars. She hisses through her teeth. “Hazel Perkins, of all people.”
Mother’s closest friend carries a white plastic cake container. Her purse dangles at her arm, knocking against her ample hip. She takes short steps, picking her way across the lawn, stepping carefully over a hose that snakes across the grass. She looks ten years older than Mother, who keeps up her appearance better than most A-list Hollywood stars.
Mother grabs my hand and squeezes my fingers. For the first time, panic registers fully in her blue eyes like a jackpot in a slot machine. “Don’t say a word.”
“What?”
“Smile. Be polite.”
I’ve heard those words most of my childhood. Nothing apparently has changed. But the obedient child in me nods, trumping the grown-up, mature me who is tired of games that are invented for appearance’s sake. Mother always aimed to keep a perfect house, a perfect family. This was her idea of ‘keeping up with the Joneses.’
“Hello, Hazel!” Mother gives a friendly wave.
Honor your mother and father, I remember, that your days may be long upon the earth. I better call Mike because my days are about to get decidedly shorter.
“My word,” the older woman with yellowing gray hair huffs coming up the steps, “it’s a scorcher today.” She’s wearing an orange straw cowboy hat, a tangerine orange top, and burnt orange capris. She even wears strappy orange sandals. “And it’s only the end of June. What will it be like in July? I don’t even want to think about August.”
“Too hot for decent folk,” Mother replies.
Hazel gives Mother a one-armed hug as she balances the cake pan in her other hand. “Just can’t believe it about Archie. Why, I only saw him two days—”
“Yes, yes,” Mother pats her friend’s shoulder. “These things happen. You remember my daughter, Suzanne.”
“Suzannah Lee! My word, it’s been years! How long has it been since you’ve been home?” She grabs me with a strong but flabby arm and hugs me close. She smells of Aqua Net and coconut. A second whiff tells me the latter is the cake. “You came! Betty Lynne said you couldn’t. Your husband needing you with all those important clients and lawsuits and such. But I knew you wouldn’t miss—”
“Hazel,” Mother interrupts, “we should get you inside before you pass out.”
Her eyes mist over, and she blinks profusely. She props the cake container in my hand while she pulls out a crinkled tissue from her shiny orange purse. “I’m so sorry about your daddy.” She blows her nose. “He was a good—”
“Hazel,” Mother’s tone is more forceful, “you better get that cake inside before this heat melts the frosting clean off.”
“You’re so right.” She squeezes my arm. “I see you’ve just arrived.” She glances down the porch at my suitcase sitting forlornly outside the door. “You need to get settled in, talk things over with your mother. There will be plenty of time for us to talk later, sugar. I wanna hear all about your fancy life out in California. You’ve been the envy of all the gals stuck here with their ranching husbands and lazy, good-for-nothin’ boyfriends.”
She waddles down the porch with her cake and purse. Mother and I stand together, looking like a proper pair during a difficult time. When she enters the house, I turn on Mother and whisper, “You ready to tell me what’s going on? Or should I walk into that house and find out for myself?”
She gives a heavy, resolved sigh and crosses her arms over her chest. “I suppose you’re going to find out soon enough.”
She takes a breath, shifts her shoulders as if she’s not completely comfortable carrying this particular burden.
“I killed your father.”
“What?” The breath leaves my lungs, and I sit down hard on the swing, which wobbles and sways precariously. “But I talked—”
“Oh, not literally. Good grief, Suzanne. More … figuratively. He’s alive and kicking.” She purses her lips as if perturbed that she has to explain herself. “Unfortunately. The good Lord will have to take care of Archie in his own good time. Still, I killed him off in my own way.”
I try to grasp what she’s saying. My mind feels like my son’s dartboard, with random words thrown at it, jabbing into me. “What are you talking about, Mother? You’re making no sense.”
“As far as I’m concerned your father is dead. That’s what I’ve told everyone. We’re going to have a fancy, highfalutin funeral. Then I’ll be a widow—respected, envied even, with the rest of my life before me.”
It takes me a moment to process what she’s saying. I can hear my husband whispering in my mind, “Competency hearing.” I can imagine Daddy shaking his head in consternation. My good friend Vivien would say, “Prozac.”
The old, awkward, uncomfortable feelings come flooding back. As a child I felt like I was slapping glue on our family, trying to hold us together. Peacemaker was my middle name. I’ve stuck the pieces of my family back together before, and I can do it again. That’s why I’m here.
“But,” my voice wobbles like the wooden bench beneath me, “what about Daddy? Where is he?”
Mother lifts a narrow shoulder, her indifference as cold as ice. “He left town. He left me, if you want to know the truth of the matter. But to me, he’s dead as an armadillo stretched out on the highway.”
“Mother!” I reach for her, feeling her pain.
But she steps away. “Your father decided yesterday, after forty-six years of marriage, that he didn’t want to be married any longer. To me, I suppose. And he left.” She snaps her fingers. “Just like that.”
“But why? What happened?” My parents always argued. But no one ever left.
“Does it really matter? If he doesn’t want to be near me, I am not about to beg him to stay.” She relaxes her arms, then smooths out the wrinkles on her blouse, her attitude toward Daddy’s departure and the demise of her forty-odd years of marriage as inconsequential and irritating as a crinkling crease in linen. “I asked him what exactly I was supposed to do, what I was supposed to tell our neighbors, friends, folks at church. He said I could tell everyone he was dead as far as he cared.”
Her words hit me like a flat pancake in the face. The shocking heat gives way to a cold, clammy feeling. “He said that?”
“He said there’s nothing left in this town he can’t live without. He was leaving and moving far
away with …” She clamps her lips together as if trying to hold back a flood of emotions. “Well, let’s just say he plans to skedaddle and leave me here with all the disgrace and gossip. Isn’t that just like him? Leaving me here to clean up his mess! Like it’s a pair of dirty socks that needs washing. Well, I’ve cleaned up after him for forty years. Not this time. I just decided I wouldn’t do it. But it was his idea anyway. I am not about to be humiliated by his untimely departure.”
A cold, lumpy fear settles in my stomach.
Most of my friends worry about the teenage years, when their kids rebel and get into trouble. Oliver’s a good kid, and my worry is minimal. But I worry more about the geriatric years, the difficulty my parents will cause. Now I know.
Once again, I stand on a line between Mother and Daddy, not knowing which way to lean. Suddenly the wind ceases and I feel only the heat of the sun bearing down on me.
Before I can ask more, Mother says, “I refuse to be a divorced woman.”
Her gaze shifts toward the corner of the front porch. Way up high, nestled against the wall and ceiling is a mud dauber’s nest. It’s a brown-clay, cylinder-shaped lump. “Drat,” she says and goes after the broom. A minute later, she aims the wooden handle and whacks the nest, her anger now aimed at the poor defenseless insect.
The thwacking of broomstick against wood echoes along the porch. Several whacks and the home finally crumbles and falls at Mother’s feet. She flips the broom around, each movement sharp and precise, like a military exercise. Even as she sweeps the remains from the porch and into the bushes, I know she can’t sweep away the anger and hurt she is feeling and the devastation Daddy has brought to our family. This, I realize, is going to take more than a little glue; this might take a miracle.
Mother props the broom in the corner. Patting her hair, which still hasn’t moved, she takes a deep breath. “There. So it’s not my fault. It was your father’s idea. At least widowhood is respectable—”
“But, Mother, maybe Daddy said that in the heat of the moment.”
The front door opens. Mother stops the conversation with a hand on my arm. An old high school buddy of mine, Estelle Rodriguez, pokes her head outside. She looks the same, only plumper, her brown cheeks round, her long black hair glossy and full. “Mrs. Davidson? You doin’ all right out here?”
Did she hear the assault on the mud dauber’s nest? Or is the sound of my family falling apart so loud? The foundation of my life shifts, and I feel it crumbling beneath my feet.
Then she sees me. “Oh, my! It’s Suzannah Banana!”
As she rushes out the door, Mother pinches my elbow and whispers, “Be nice now.” That’s code for “keep your mouth shut.” So I smile, clenching my teeth. “We’ll discuss this later, Mother.” “There’s nothing to discuss,” she whispers back in an equally pinched way.
Then I’m engulfed in a hug by Estelle and swept up by my past. I’m not sure God heard my earlier prayer, so I toss up another quick S.O.S.
2
Honor. I need to look that word up in the dictionary and think about the implications. In the meantime, without my Webster’s or Bible handy, I’m winging it.
“This isn’t right, Mother,” I whisper while standing in her kitchen. Her guests are in the other room, milling about quietly as if an actual wake were in progress. Without looking, I know Mother’s pots and pans are stacked neatly and methodically in cabinets beneath the stove top, just as I know her counters have been cleaned and Cloroxed daily. Everything in its place.
Flower pots, vases, knickknacks, and bowls overflowing with peaches take up each corner and line the shelves above the cabinets. The bright colors and jumbled patterns à la Mary Engelbreit make me dizzy. Or maybe it’s this whole bizarre situation that has thrown off my equilibrium.
“This can’t work out, Mother. You have to tell the truth! I know you’re angry and hurt, but there must be another solution. Daddy’s not dead, and people are going to find out!”
“No, they won’t.” She glances over her shoulder as if she were nervous that someone in the next room might hear, yet her outward demeanor is calm and collected like a real-life deodorant commercial. “Now keep your voice down. I’ve taken care of everything.”
She starts to turn away, but I grab her arm, pressing insistently into her flesh. “But what if Daddy decides to come back?”
Mother pats my hand. “He won’t. Your father always does what he says.”
“He said he’d never leave you either. Wasn’t that in your wedding vows? ‘Nor forsake you’?”
Mother’s eyes narrow into tiny slits of anger. “He said he wasn’t coming back.”
I’m trying to make her understand how unrealistic this plan is. I know she’s wounded. She wants to save face, maintain her dignity. Maybe I can make her think this through and realize what a reckless idea it is. “What if he does?”
“He wouldn’t dare.” Her tone has a cutting edge, as if she would use her butcher knife with Julia Child’s precise and unflustered style if he did.
I reach for my cell phone. “Let’s call him.” My fingers tremble as I punch in the numbers. “We’ll talk about all of this. We’ll figure out another solution.”
A memory of Daddy sitting on the front swing draws pain like a nurse drawing blood. “Your mother,” he said, his voice resigned, “is one of those women that’s always striving, always trying to make things better than they are.”
“Makes it pretty icky for the rest of us though.”
“Sure ’nuff.”
Mother’s hand presses into mine, forces me back to the present. Her fingers are cool and firm as she takes my cell phone and closes it. “Stop this nonsense.”
This nonsense? Maybe the hurt has so colored her vision that she can’t see the ramifications of her charade. But if she were to admit the truth now, then everyone would be understanding.
“You can work things out, Mother. Maybe you and Daddy could see a marriage counselor together.” Or a psychologist. Or psychiatrist. Whichever prescribes medication. Serious medication.
“I am not going to go spill my dirty laundry in front of some stranger. Or worse, someone here in town.”
I know for a fact that there are no mental health professionals in Luckenbach. Although medication in the form of liquor is offered on a daily basis. But Fredericksburg … surely there’s a professional counselor or trained medical personnel who could help.
“But, Mother, this is wrong.” Not to mention irrational and insane.
“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe not.”
“It might even be illegal.” Maybe the threat of jail will scare her onto the straight and narrow. “Have you thought of that?”
“I’m not breaking any laws. I didn’t actually kill Archie. That would be breaking a holy commandment. But believe you me, he sorely tempted me.”
“Isn’t lying one of the Ten Commandments?” Surely she can’t argue with God on that one.
“God understands that I’ve been wronged.” Her emphasis on the last word resonates like a misplaced note. She turns her back, folds a dish towel in half, then again, and a third time, leaving a fat lump on the counter. “But if you feel that way, then maybe you should go back to California. I wouldn’t want you to be a part of anything illegal.”
“Mother—”
“But if you stay to help me through this difficult time of loss”—she pauses for effect, neatly sidestepping my question like Savion Glover—“you can help me write the obituary.”
At that exact moment, the kitchen door swings open, and Mrs. Hoover barrels in. She has a pug nose, perfect for sniffing out things that aren’t her business, and tiny lips pressed into a perpetual pucker. “Am I intruding?”
I’m sure there is nothing better she’d like to do than overhear a private conversation or intrude in a family matter.
“Yes,” I say at the same time Mother says, “No.” We glare at each other for a moment, a tiny standoff. I can feel the blood pumping through my temples.
I squelch the irritation I’ve always felt toward Linda Lou Hoover. Because her snooping could be, this time, our salvation. If she does overhear that my father is alive, then no doubt Mother will have to alter her plan.
Mother is the first to break the awkward silence with a trilling laugh. “Maybe you can help us, Linda Lou.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Hoover accepts the invitation and moves farther into the room. She wears a full blue-jean skirt with a wide conch belt around her bulging middle. She leans forward slightly, walking as if sniffing out the scent of gossip lurking around every corner. Her beady-eye gaze bounces between us as if she’s hoping for the inside scoop, some morsel of discord to go with a side of ice cream.
“We need help on the obituary.”
I lean back into myself, watching Mother, letting her set her own trap if she won’t listen to reason.
“Why, of course. I’d love to help.” Mrs. Hoover bustles around, opening and closing drawers, and finally gathers a pad of paper and pen. “You know I’ve done many for the paper. I am, after all, a professional writer.”
She pushes the kitchen door open and goes into the dining room, holding the door for us. Reluctantly I follow Mother. The friends and neighbors gathered in the living room pause their conversations and watch us as though a funeral procession were passing.
“Maybe we should go back in the kitchen,” Mother suggests.
Estelle Ramirez scolds her twin girls. They both remind me of Pippi Longstocking, but with dark brown hair that sticks out in too many directions. One girl stands on the couch like it’s the prow of a ship. The other twirls in the middle of the living room, wobbling off center like a top about to tilt.
“Or outside,” Mother adds.
I start to mention the stifling heat, but Mrs. Hoover says, “Oh, this’ll be just fine.” She pats the back of a dining chair, obviously content to be in the middle of the action where she won’t miss a thing. “We can all gather right here.”
“Watch it.” Josie Bullard, another friend from school, puts a hand out to keep one of the twins from stepping on her pointy-toed shoe. She sits with her legs crossed, her black skirt way too high on her tanned thigh for any occasion other than sitting on a bar stool. She’s running her finger around the top of her coffee cup, as if she wished it were something more potent. I’m beginning to feel that way myself.