Every time she looked up and saw Miss Mary standing in a doorway, dressed to go out, purse over one arm, staring at her silently, not seeming to know what came next, she felt like it was only a few short steps from there to squatting in the side yard stuffing raw raccoon meat into her mouth.
A woman had died. She needed to take something by the house. Grace was right: it made no sense, but sometimes you did a thing because that was just what you did, not because it was sensible.
CHAPTER 6
Friends and relatives had dropped by the house all Friday and brought Patricia six bunches of flowers, two copies of Southern Living and one copy of Redbook, three casseroles (corn, taco, spinach), a pound of coffee, a bottle of wine, and two pies (Boston cream, peach). She decided that regifting a casserole was appropriate, given the situation, so she took out the taco one to thaw.
Carter had gone to the hospital early even though it was the weekend. Patricia found Mrs. Greene and Miss Mary sitting on the back patio. The morning felt soft and warm, and Mrs. Greene leafed through Family Circle magazine while Miss Mary stared at the bird feeder, which was, as usual, crawling with squirrels.
“Are you enjoying the sunshine, Miss Mary?” Patricia asked.
Miss Mary turned her watery eyes toward Patricia and scowled.
“Hoyt Pickens came by last night,” she said.
“Ear’s looking better,” Mrs. Greene said.
“Thank you,” Patricia said.
Ragtag, lying at Miss Mary’s feet, perked up as a fat black marsh rat streaked out of the bushes and dashed across the grass, making Patricia jump and sending three squirrels fleeing in terror. It dashed around the edge of the fence separating their property from the Langs next door and was gone as fast as it had appeared. Ragtag put his head down again.
“You ought to put out poison,” Mrs. Greene said.
Patricia made a mental note to call the bug man and see if they had rat poison.
“I’m just going down the street to drop off a casserole,” Patricia said.
“We’re about to have some lunch,” Mrs. Greene said. “What are you thinking about for lunch, Miss Mary?”
“Hoyt,” Miss Mary said. “What was his name, that Hoyt?”
Patricia wrote a quick note (So sorry for your loss, The Campbells) and taped it to the tin foil over the taco casserole, then walked down the warming streets to Ann Savage’s cottage, the freezing cold casserole held in front of her.
It was turning into a hot day so she had a little bit of a shine on her by the time she stepped off the road onto Mrs. Savage’s dirt yard. The nephew must be home because his white van sat on the grass, underneath the shade. It looked out of place in the Old Village because, as Maryellen had pointed out, it seemed like the kind of thing a child snatcher would drive.
Patricia walked up the wooden steps to the front porch and rattled her knuckles against the screen door. After a minute she knocked again and heard nothing but the hollow echo of her knock inside the house and cicadas screaming from the drainage pond that separated Mrs. Savage’s yard from the Johnsons next door.
Patricia knocked again and waited, looking across the street at where developers had torn down the Shortridges’ house, which used to have the most beautiful slate roof. In its place, someone from out of town was building an ostentatious miniature mansion. More and more of these eyesores were popping up all over the Old Village, big heavy things that sprawled from property line to property line and didn’t leave any room for a yard.
Patricia wanted to leave the casserole, but she hadn’t come all this way not to speak to the nephew. She decided to try the front door. She’d just leave it on the kitchen counter with a note, she told herself. She opened the screen door and turned the doorknob. It stuck for a moment, then swung open.
“Yoo-hoo?” Patricia called into the dim interior.
No one answered. Patricia stepped inside. All the blinds were drawn. The air felt hot and dusty.
“Hello?” Patricia said. “It’s Patricia Campbell from Pierates Cruze?”
No answer. She’d never been inside Ann Savage’s house before. Heavy old furniture crowded the front room. Liquor store boxes and paper bags of junk mail covered the floor. Circulars, catalogs, and old rolled-up copies of the Moultrie News spilled from the seats of every chair. Four dusty old Samsonite suitcases were lined up against the wall. Built-in shelves around the front door were crowded with waterlogged romance novels. It smelled like the Goodwill store.
A doorway on her left led into a dark kitchen, and a doorway on her right led to the back of the house. A ceiling fan spun lethargically overhead. Patricia looked down the hallway. There was a half-open door at the far end leading to what she assumed was the bedroom. From it, she heard the groaning of a window-unit air conditioner. Surely the nephew wouldn’t have gone out and left his air conditioner on.
Holding her breath, Patricia walked carefully down the hall and pushed the bedroom door all the way open.
“Knock knock?” she said.
The man lying on the bed was dead.
He lay on top of the quilt, still in his work boots. He wore blue jeans and a white button-up shirt. His hands were at his sides. He was huge, well over six feet, and his feet hung off the end. But despite his size, he looked starved. The flesh clung tight to his bones. The sallow skin of his face looked drawn and finely wrinkled, his blond hair looked brittle and thin.
“Excuse me?” Patricia asked, her voice a shaky rasp.
She forced herself to step all the way into the room, put the casserole dish on the end of the bed, and took his wrist. His skin felt cool. He had no pulse.
Patricia examined his face closely. He had thin lips, a wide mouth, and high cheekbones. His looks lay somewhere between handsome and pretty. She shook his shoulder, just in case.
“Sir?” she croaked. “Sir?”
His body barely moved beneath her hand. She held the back of her forefinger under his nostrils: nothing. Her nursing instincts took over.
She used one hand to pull his chin down, and the other to pull his upper lip back. She felt inside his mouth with one finger. His tongue felt dry. Nothing obstructed his airway. Patricia leaned over his face and realized, with a tickling in the veins on the inside of her elbows, this was the closest she’d been to a man who wasn’t her husband in nineteen years. Then her dry lips pressed against his chapped ones and formed a seal. She pinched his nose shut and blew three strong breaths into his windpipe. Then she performed three strong chest compressions.
Nothing. She leaned down for a second attempt, made the seal with their lips, and blew into his mouth, once, twice, then her trachea vibrated backward as air blasted down her throat. She reared back coughing, the man bolted upright, his forehead smacking into the side of Patricia’s skull with a hollow knock, and Patricia staggered backward into the wall, knocking all the breath out of her lungs. Her legs went out from under her, and she slid to the floor, landing hard on her butt, as the man leapt to his feet, wild-eyed, sending the casserole dish clattering to the floor.
“What the fuck!” he shouted.
He looked wildly around the room and found Patricia on the floor at his feet. Chest heaving, mouth hanging open, he squinted at her in the dimness.
“How’d you get in?” he shouted. “Who are you?”
Patricia managed to get her breathing under control enough to squeak, “Patricia Campbell from Pierates Cruze.”
“What?” he barked.
“I thought you were dead,” she said.
“What?” he barked again.
“I performed CPR,” she said. “You weren’t breathing.”
“What?” he barked one more time.
“I’m your neighbor?” Patricia cowered. “From Pierates Cruze?”
He looked out the hall door. He looked back at his bed. He looked down at her.
“Fuck,” he said again, and his shoulders slumped.
“I brought you a casserole,” Patricia said, pointing at the upside-down casserole dish.
The man’s chest heaved slower.
“You came here to bring me a casserole?” he asked.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Patricia said. “I’m…your great-aunt was found in my yard? And things got a little bit physical? Maybe you’ve seen my dog? He’s a cocker spaniel mix, he, well…maybe it’s better you haven’t? And…? Well, I so hope that nothing happened at our house to make your aunt worse.”
“You brought me a casserole because my aunt died,” he said, as if explaining it to himself.
“You didn’t come to the door,” she said. “But I saw your car outside so I stuck my head in.”
“And down the hall,” he said. “And into my bedroom.”
She felt like a fool.
“No one here thinks twice about that,” she explained. “It’s the Old Village. You weren’t breathing.”
He opened his eyes wide and closed them tightly a few times, swaying slightly.
“I am very, very tired,” he said.
Patricia realized he wasn’t going to help her to her feet, so she pushed herself up off the floor.
“Let me clean this up,” she said, reaching for the casserole dish. “I feel so stupid.”
“No,” he said. “You have to leave.” He wavered, his head jerking in little shakes and nods.
“It’ll only take a minute,” she said.
“Please,” he said. “Please, just go home. I need to be alone.”
He ushered her out his bedroom door.
“I can get a cloth and make sure it doesn’t leave a stain,” Patricia said as he pushed her down the hall. “I feel awful for barging in when we haven’t been introduced, but I could see you weren’t breathing, and I was a nurse—I am a nurse—and I was so sure you were ill, and I feel like a nummy.”
As she talked, he propelled her into the cluttered front room, and he had the front door open, and he stood behind it, squinting hard, eyes streaming water, and she knew he wanted her to go.
“Please,” she said, standing with one hand on the handle of his screen door. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you like that.”
“I need to get back to bed,” he said, and his hand was on the small of her back, and then she was through the screen door, standing in the hot sun on his front porch, and the door closed firmly in her face. Patricia hoped that no one had seen her go inside. If anyone else knew about her stupidity, she would just die.
She turned and jumped as the front of a large tan sedan nosed up into the front yard, right on top of her. Behind the sun’s glare on the windshield, she saw Francine, the woman who did for Ann Savage. Francine was older, with a face like a dried apple, and not many people still hired her in the Old Village because she had a vinegary nature.
She and Francine locked eyes through the glass. Patricia lifted one hand in the barest semblance of a greeting, then tucked her head down and scrambled up the street as fast as she could, mentally ticking off all the people Francine might tell.
CHAPTER 7
All the way home Patricia tasted Ann Savage’s nephew on her lips: dusty spices, leather, unfamiliar skin. It made the blood fizz in her veins, and then, overcome with guilt, she brushed her teeth twice, found half of an old bottle of Listerine in the hall closet, and gargled it until her lips tasted like artificial peppermint flavoring.
For the rest of the day, she lived in fear that someone would drop by and ask what she’d been doing in Ann Savage’s house. She was terrified she’d run into Mrs. Francine when she went to the Piggly Wiggly. She jumped every time the phone rang, thinking it would be Grace saying she’d heard Patricia tried to perform CPR on a sleeping man.
But night came and no one said anything, and even though she couldn’t meet Carter’s eyes at supper, by the time she went to bed she’d forgotten the way the nephew’s lips had tasted. The next morning she forgot about Francine somewhere between figuring out where Korey needed to be dropped off and picked up all week, and making sure Blue was studying for his State and Local History exam instead of reading about Adolf Hitler.
She made sure Korey and Blue were enrolled in summer camp (soccer for Korey and science day camp for Blue), she called Grace to get the phone number of someone who could look at their air conditioner, and she picked up groceries, and packed lunches, and dropped off library books, and signed report cards (no summer school this year, thankfully), and barely saw Carter every morning as he dashed out the door (“I promise,” he told her, “as soon as this is over we’ll go to the beach”), and suddenly a week had passed and she sat at dinner, half listening to Korey complain about something she wasn’t very interested in at all.
“Are you even listening to me?” Korey asked.
“Pardon?” Patricia asked, tuning back in.
“I don’t understand how we can almost be out of coffee again,” Carter said from the other end of the table. “Are the kids eating it?”
“Hitler said caffeine was poison,” Blue said.
“I said,” Korey repeated, “Blue’s room faces the water and he can open his windows and get a breeze. And he’s got a ceiling fan. It’s not fair. Why can’t I get a fan in my room? Or stay at Laurie’s house until you get the air fixed?”
“You’re not staying at Laurie’s house,” Patricia said.
“Why on earth would you want to live with the Gibsons?” Carter asked.
At least when their children said completely irrational things they were on the same page.
“Because the air conditioning is broken,” Korey said, pushing her chicken breast around her plate with her fork.
“It’s not broken,” Patricia said. “It’s just not working very well.”
“Did you call the air-conditioner man?” Carter asked.
Patricia shot him a look in the secret language of parenting that said, Stay on the same page with me in front of the children and we’ll discuss this later.
“You didn’t call him, did you?” Carter said. “Korey’s right, it’s too hot.”
Clearly, Carter didn’t speak the same secret language of parenting.
“I’ve got a photograph,” Miss Mary said.
“What’s that, Mom?” Carter asked.
Carter thought it was important his mother eat with them as often as possible even though it was a struggle to get Blue to the table when she did. Miss Mary dropped as much food in her lap as made it into her mouth, and her water glass was cloudy with food she forgot to swallow before taking a sip.
“You can see in the photograph that the man…,” Miss Mary said, “he’s a man.”
“That’s right, Mom,” Carter said.
That was when a roach fell off the ceiling and landed in Miss Mary’s water glass.
“Mom!” Korey screamed, jumping backward out of her seat.
“Roach!” Blue shouted, redundantly, scanning the ceiling for more.
“Got it!” Carter said, spotting another one on the chandelier, and reaching for it with one of Patricia’s good linen napkins.
Patricia’s heart sank. She could already see this becoming a family story about what a terrible house she kept. “Remember?” they would ask each other when they were older. “Remember how Mom’s house was so dirty a roach fell off the ceiling into Granny Mary’s glass? Remember that?”
“Mom, that is disgusting!” Korey said. “Mom! Don’t let her drink it!”
Patricia snapped out of it and saw Miss Mary picking up her water glass, about to take a sip, the roach struggling in the cloudy water. Launching herself out of her seat, she plucked the glass from Miss Mary’s hand and dumped it down the sink. She ran the water and washed the roach and the sludge of disintegrating food fragments down the drain, then turned on
the garbage disposal.
That was when the doorbell rang.
She could still hear Korey giving a performance in the dining room and she wanted to make sure she missed that, so she shouted, “I’ll get it,” and walked through the den to the quiet, dark front hall. Even from there she could hear Korey carrying on. She opened the front door and shame flooded her veins: Ann Savage’s nephew stood beneath the porch light.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said. “I’ve come to return your casserole dish.”
She could not believe this was the same man. He was still pale, but his skin looked soft and unlined. His hair was parted on the left and looked thick and full. He wore a khaki work shirt tucked into new blue jeans, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing thick forearms. A faint smile played at the corners of his thin lips, like they shared a private joke. She felt her mouth twitching into a smile in return. In one large hand he held the glass casserole dish. It was spotless.
“I am so sorry for barging into your home,” she said, raising her hand to cover her mouth.
“Patricia Campbell,” he said. “I remembered your name and looked you up in the book. I know how people get about dropping off food and never getting their plates back.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said, reaching for the dish. He held onto it.
“I’d like to apologize for my behavior,” he said.
“No, I’m sorry,” Patricia said, wondering how hard she could try to pull the dish out of his hands before she started to seem rude. “You must think I’m a fool, I interrupted your nap, I…I really did think you were…I used to be a nurse. I don’t know how I made such a stupid mistake. I’m so sorry.”
He furrowed his forehead, raised his eyebrows in the middle, and looked sincerely concerned.
“You apologize a lot,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly.
She instantly realized what she’d done and froze, flustered, not sure where to go next, so she blundered ahead. “The only people who don’t apologize are psychopaths.”
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires Page 6