The phone rang at just that instant, and the answering machine clicked on. “Ms. Dough, this is Palmeroy Times addressing your complaint regarding the articles about you.”
“Ha!” I said, jabbing my finger in the air toward the answering machine. Perfect timing, I was thinking. I couldn’t have planned it better. Now my family would know I didn’t want the articles or the publicity and like it or not, they would all have to eat crow.
“As I already explained to you,” said the woman, “since you placed that classified ad, you can’t really complain about our journalist writing a story about it. And as far as the python article goes, you were paid fifty dollars for that.”
Katherine gasped and her eyes rounded in horror.
“But that’s not true!” I shouted over the woman’s voice. Anything to drown her out. She was only making matters worse. “I only got paid for the title, not the story! I didn’t have anything to do with the story. And I didn’t run that ad; that woman is lying!”
“Yes, that’s right, Jane. Everyone is lying but you,” Nicole said with a disgusted shake of her head. “Come on,” she told everyone else. “Let’s go. There’s no point in wasting our time here. Jane will never care about anyone but herself.”
There was nothing I could do but let everyone walk out on me. Well, nothing except grab the plate of brownies that Marci was making off with, which I did.
My mother slid me a smirk, and I shoved two more brownies into my mouth just to show her I didn’t care what she thought. And I didn’t. I swear.
Chapter 10
It was close to three o’clock, and I had tons of work to do in the yard, so I pulled on a tank top and a pair of lightweight cotton pants that I could tuck into my rubber boots, smothered my face, neck, and arms with sunscreen, and doused myself with mosquito spray. Then I donned sunglasses, my big sun hat, and yard gloves. If a guy came about the position now, he’d run screaming from the neighborhood. Exactly what I wanted.
I loaded up the wheelbarrow with trimming shears, a long-handled lopper for cutting small branches, and a sheet of plastic, and wheeled everything about a hundred feet to what had once been a small orange grove. Now it was an overgrown mess. The trees were being choked to death by vines flourishing in the canopies. At least the sun hadn’t gotten through to nourish weeds, so the ground beneath the trees was fairly clear.
I worked steadily for a couple of hours, wiping away the sweat with my upper arm whenever it threatened to run into my eyes. The two items I hadn’t thought to bring were a roll of paper towels and a headband. Make that three things; I hadn’t thought to bring a barf bag either. Those brownies weren’t sitting so well now, and I was wishing I hadn’t wolfed them down.
It occurred to me that Mom might have planned the whole thing … making me feel guilty so I couldn’t enjoy the brownies, then making me mad so I’d eat a whole bunch and get sick. And fat. Was that something Mom might do? Yes, it was. She had played me like a piano.
While I was still pondering whether or not my entire life was a set-up by Mom, I saw a guy making his way toward me.
“Are you Jane?” he called out when he was about twenty feet away. He was around five feet nine, of medium build, with light brown hair that was parted on one side and worn short. His attire consisted of blue jeans, a Hard Rock Café T-shirt, and boots. Not cowboy boots, but not construction boots either. Something in between. He appeared to be a normal guy, so I figured he wasn’t applying for the ad.
I nodded.
“I’d shake your hand,” he said as he closed in the space between us, “but I don’t know where it’s been.”
I laughed.
“Really,” he said. He nodded at the plastic tarp that I’d been dumping my vine clippings onto as I cut and pulled the nasty things from the tree. “That’s poison ivy there.”
“That?” I asked. I craned my head to study the green vine that was wrapped around everything. I hadn’t even considered that a poisonous vine could be growing in my yard.
“Yeah, that. It can stay on your tools for months, so you should make sure you clean them real good. I’m Richard Crenshaw,” he said, “and I’m here to apply for the position. Is it still open?”
I tried to come up with a discouraging remark, but all I could think about was poison ivy. Was I starting to itch?
“I don’t even mind working around poison ivy as long as I take precautions.”
Me neither. Too bad I hadn’t taken them.
“Why don’t we go to the house so I can wash my hands?” I asked, surprised that my voice sounded so normal. What I really wanted to do was take off like a shot toward my house, strip naked in the backyard, jump into the shower, and scrub myself with alcohol. Would alcohol even help? Or maybe it was vinegar. I had read that somewhere, hadn’t I? It didn’t matter because I didn’t have either.
“You should shower and change your clothes,” Richard said. “The sooner you get it off your skin, the better off you’ll be. I’ll just hang out and look things over. How much of this is yours?”
I explained that my property stretched down the street to the last lot, which had a three-foot-tall vinyl picket fence around it, and then I hightailed it to the house. He probably wouldn’t be there when I got out of the shower, but I didn’t care. I’d had poison ivy once as a child. I remembered very little about it except that I spent most of the time wishing I was dead. Mom hadn’t been any help. She spent most of her time telling me I’d be horribly scarred for life. I neither died nor was horribly scarred, but I wasn’t looking forward to repeating the experience.
I showered, put on clean clothes, combed my hair, and skipped the sunscreen because it sometimes made my skin burn. Adding a burn to an itch seemed unwise.
I grabbed up a second sun hat and a different pair of shades and went back outside. To my surprise, Richard was still hanging out. He was cruising around the pond that wasn’t supposed to be.
“Did you know you have an alligator in there?”
“You’re joking, right?” I searched the scummy water but saw nothing unusual. If he wasn’t joking, I was going to scream.
“Wish I were,” he said with an apologetic smile. “At least he’s a baby—about four and a half feet.”
Four and a half feet? That was only twelve inches shorter than me. Twelve inches was only like a head and shoulders. For people who had a big head like me, it was only a head. So he was telling me I had an alligator living a hundred feet away and it was only a head shorter than me?
For a second I thought I might faint. If there’s one thing I’m really afraid of—more than snakes, that is—it’s alligators. And sharks. Sharks weren’t likely to show up in my yard, at least not yet. But the way my luck was running, who knew what might happen tomorrow?
“Four and a half feet doesn’t sound like a baby to me.”
“Yeah, maybe not. You can call Animal Control. They’ll send someone out to relocate it. He probably shouldn’t be this close to homes.”
No shit, Sherlock.
“Do you have any other bad news to tell me?” I asked him. “One more really bad thing—in the realm of poison ivy that might scar me for life or being eaten alive by an alligator, which would end my life—is about all I can take. So if you’ve got another one of those, just go ahead and lay it on me right now.”
He shook his head and showed me a crooked grin. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I can say I like your sense of humor. And I’m still interested in the position.”
Was I laughing? Or even smiling? I didn’t think so, but I decided to let that slide. I had missed my chance to tell Richard the position had been filled. I wasn’t sure what to say now.
“Why do you want the position?” I asked. “Honesty counts.” Especially since I wasn’t being so honest about the fact that there was no position.
Richard looked me straight in the eye, which was a good sign if one were looking for a sign from a prospective husband, which I was not.
“I’m n
ot sure. I think you’re getting the wrong end of the stick, and I pretty much root for the underdog. What they’re doing doesn’t make sense. Why would they call in a fine like that when they could give you time to get things turned around? The next person moving in could be worse.”
My thoughts exactly. I was relieved someone else found it odd. Not relieved enough to marry him though.
“So you go around agreeing to marry anyone who’s getting the wrong end of the stick?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t figure I’d ever get married. Not that I’m against marriage, but … I don’t know. I’m thirty-five, and if love was going to strike me, it would have hit by now. You need someone to help, and I’m willing to help. It didn’t hurt that I saw your picture either. Whether or not our arrangement goes beyond business will depend on how we take to one another, and I guess I’d like to know that before I sign on the dotted line. Because if I do actually go to the altar, I’d like a marriage that’s not just business.”
“So …” I let it hang there. Too bad I wasn’t looking for a husband, and too bad I felt no attraction for this guy, because like Sue said, he might be the answer to my problem. Maybe even my dreams, except for the no attraction thing. Both Hank and Bryan had elicited a physical response, but neither was applying for the job. The non-existent job, I reminded myself.
I wasn’t even sure physical attraction would be a good thing. Physical attraction meant passion and passion meant arguments. Arguments would be okay as long as they weren’t so heated that they ruined the marriage. The non-existent marriage, I reminded myself. Dang. What the hell was I doing? Why was I even having this conversation?
“So,” Richard said, “if you’re willing, I suggest we see how things go. You have how much time left before the fine is levied?”
“Seventy-three days.” I was still talking, wasn’t I? Would it be too much to ask that I just be struck dumb?
“Okay. I’ll work with you until then, and meanwhile we can get to know each other and see how we feel about making it permanent. I do like you, and I think I’d like living here. I just want to know we can enjoy each other’s company before making it legal.”
So he was offering to help me fix everything up but then if we didn’t want to marry, we would just part ways? If that happened, what would he get for the time he spent working on my property? I had to ask, especially since I wasn’t marrying him, no way, no how.
He frowned and then chuckled. “You know, I never thought about that. I only thought about my feelings, if I’d want to stick around. Maybe we should sign a contract, that if I help you avoid the fine and then you don’t marry me, you’ll pay me for time spent.”
That would work, except if I could afford to do that, I’d do it without putting the whole husband thing into the deal. The husband thing that wasn’t in the deal, I reminded myself. Hello.
“You know what? Never mind,” he said before I could speak. Not that I was planning to. If I spoke, I might tell him the truth. No, that wasn’t gonna happen. Maybe I really was a psychopathic liar, just as my mother had said ten years ago. Although the term had never made sense—weren’t all psychopaths liars?—I’d been worrying that I was one ever since. I focused my thoughts back on Richard, who was still yapping.
“If I help you out with this and I think we get along well enough to marry when the time is up, I have a feeling you’ll stick by your word,” he said. “If you don’t, I wouldn’t want to marry you anyway. And if I do want to marry and you don’t, maybe at some point when you can afford it, you’ll pay me back for my time. Let’s not turn it into a big deal, especially since I can’t start for two weeks, and I know you need someone right away. Let’s just leave it at this: I’ll be here two weeks from today to start helping you if you still want my help, and when the deadline rolls around, we’ll see where we stand. How’s that? You can keep looking for someone else during the next two weeks, just in case.”
I didn’t know what to say for more than the obvious reason. The obvious reason was that I hadn’t run that ad and had no intention of marrying Richard whether things worked out or not, and yet I hadn’t said a word. That was deceitful. I’d lied about personal business, but I’d never done something outright deceitful. This was the kind of thing I criticized family members for, so how could I do this and look at myself in the mirror?
The unobvious reason was that the little voice in my head was saying something was off about this. The problem was, I seldom listened to that little voice because half the time it didn’t know what it was talking about. I had an icky feeling, but wasn’t that because I was being dishonest? No, my little voice said. I was being dishonest, but something else was off too. His story didn’t ring true. He didn’t seem desperate, and why would a guy agree to marry a complete stranger unless he was desperate?
Maybe he was one of those black widowers. Maybe he married women, stole everything they had, and then killed them. Except I didn’t have anything to steal, did I? It was a mystery, and since Richard couldn’t start for two weeks, I decided I’d take that time to figure it out.
*****
I peered at the clock on my nightstand. One thirty in the morning and I was still awake.
I was always reading that daily exercise and a good night’s sleep went hand in hand, and I always shrugged off the guilt of my sedentary ways by telling myself I’d rather lose sleep than be forced to exercise for it.
Now, though, I had actually tried the exercise bit by working in my yard for hours, and I could honestly report that the saying was another one of those old wives’ tales that had somehow taken hold and been repeated as though it were truth. The fact that I couldn’t get to sleep didn’t bother me as much now that I realized exercising hadn’t helped. In fact, that knowledge made me feel pretty good. I could quit feeling guilty about not exercising. What a relief. Especially since I had so many other things to feel guilty about.
Like Richard and the fact that I planned to accept his offer, even though I’d be lying about my side of the deal.
I told myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was okay to lie in impossible situations if it really helped you out and it wasn’t hurting anyone else, and if my situation was anything, it was impossible.
But would it hurt Richard if he helped me with everything and wanted to marry me and then I said no? Sure, he said either of us could back out if we changed our minds, but did he really feel that way? And wasn’t knowing that I had no intention of keeping the agreement too dishonest even for my family values?
I pretended I was Katherine because if anyone could be self-righteous about lying, it was her. After a few seconds of mentally standing in her shoes, I still couldn’t quite pull it off.
I scratched my forearms and then forced myself to stop. My skin itched like crazy; I was just waiting for the poison ivy rash to appear. I dragged myself out of bed and trudged to the family room where I thought I’d left the calamine lotion. Once there, I studied the room. Something didn’t feel right in there. I took a more careful survey. Where was I looking when I had that thought? I wasn’t sure.
My gaze scooted along the entertainment center, the corner hutch, past the sofa and coffee table, the two easy chairs. Nothing. I went in the other direction, past the bookcases, the message center, and key hook. Nothing. Good grief. Maybe the uneasy feeling would be my constant companion until I figured out what to do about Richard.
I spied the calamine lotion on the bar that separated the kitchen from the family room and carried it back to my room. Once in bed I spread the stuff on my forearms and let it dry while I turned my mind to family. No, not family, because that would make me angry and tense. Was angry and tense better than guilty and uneasy? No, it was worse if you were trying to sleep.
My next book?
No, that wasn’t a good subject because I was afraid there’d never be a next book. Now I was depressed, and that wouldn’t help me sleep either.
Men, then.
That topic wouldn’t work bec
ause I hated men. Well, I didn’t hate all men, just the ones I knew. But that wasn’t true either. Mark was a really nice guy, but we were just friends. Which was probably why he was still a nice guy. Once you started sleeping with men, they turned into jerks.
Hmmm. I wasn’t sleeping with Bryan Rossi or Hank Tyler, but I could definitely imagine sleeping with either one. Or both. Even together. No, not together. That would be awkward. Hank would be all serious and sexy while Bryan would be trying not to laugh … though still sexy. I thought about Hank’s thoughtful brown eyes and then Bryan’s smoldering gray ones. Then I thought about my dirty toe covered by a lump of mud complete with its own grass-sprouting wart. That made me smile and then giggle, and I felt better.
*****
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, I was five years old again.
“Oh dear, whatever will we do about Jane?”
Mom was on the porch, fretting, and I was sitting under the porch in the crawl space with my best friend, Johnny, who was six. We were eavesdropping, as usual.
“It’ll be all over the neighborhood by supper time,” Mom went on. “What will people think?”
“What?” asked Katherine. “What’s Jane done now?”
“She stole a pack of Doublemint gum out of Mrs. Weaver’s purse. Right out of her purse! Can you imagine? Mrs. Weaver said she gave the other children a piece of gum but she didn’t give one to Jane because Jane wouldn’t play the game by the rules. So Jane stole the gum when Mrs. Weaver wasn’t looking.”
“It’s just like Jane to disobey the rules,” said Katherine. “And then to steal the gum too.”
“But why did she have to steal Mrs. Weaver’s gum? That woman is the biggest gossip on the block. Everyone in church will know about it. This is so humiliating. If it’s not one thing with Jane, it’s another. Sometimes I think God gave me that girl just to teach me patience. I don’t know what’s to become of her. She’ll never amount to anything.”
Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) Page 9