“A John, Aunt Agnes.”
“I said what I meant,” Agnes told her.
“And what does Anna Ruth look like?”
“Darla Jean’s got her in the kitchen and she’s got a pretty red handprint on her cheek. She deserves it just because she made me put on my house shoes and rush over here. I was ready for bed already when I heard the screamin’ goin’ on.”
Marty threw up her palms. The great night was over.
She grabbed the doorknob and Anna Ruth ran out so fast that Marty had to step aside or get knocked down.
She pushed right past Marty without so much as an apology and said, “Forgive, hell! I’m not forgiving him and I’ll never forget this. He’s ruined my reputation. I thought he’d marry me. Aunt Annabel and I were already planning the wedding. Your friend in there can go preach to someone else. I’m not interested,” she fumed.
There wasn’t nearly enough light for Marty to see the red print on Anna Ruth’s face. Sometimes a woman just couldn’t catch a lucky break.
***
There was a method to the madness in Trixie’s room. Ceramics on the right side, paints organized on one side, brushes on the other. Scrapbooking on the left side of the room, spread out over a folding eight-foot table, but when Trixie wanted something all she had to do was reach and grab. That it was always right where she grabbed amazed Cathy.
She sat on one side of the bed with Trixie on the other.
“The poor woman doesn’t have friends and thinks just because we are in the club together that I’m her buddy,” Cathy said.
“It’s hard for me to feel sorry for her, Cathy, but I wouldn’t trade places with her. I can’t imagine how she must feel. When I found out he was cheating on me, I had you and Marty and Darla Jean.”
Someone rapped on Trixie’s door before Cathy could say anything. Trixie bounced off the bed like a boxer coming up off the ring. “If she’s back up here, I’m going to drag her inside this room and make her sit on the floor with all the mess. That’ll kill her dead in ten minutes.”
She swung the door open to find Darla Jean giggling. “I heard that remark. I reckon it would be murder by mess, but I don’t think it would be considered homicide. I’m not sure how God would write it up, though.”
Trixie left the door open and motioned for Darla Jean to come inside.
Darla Jean had barely settled into the rocking chair at the end of the ceramics table when Marty poked her head in the door.
“Agnes met me in the driveway and said I missed the show.”
Cathy moved down and Marty sat beside her. When Cathy finished telling the way it had really gone down, Marty slapped a pillow. “Dammit! I would’ve driven faster to see that.”
Trixie held up her arm. “See what she did to me?”
“What can I say? She’s a crazy bitch.” Marty turned toward Cathy. “Weren’t you supposed to be at Ethan’s tonight?”
“He had that campaign thing, remember? But he called to ask about the prenup.”
“Cathy, darlin’, you are thirty-four years old, and I realize your clock is ticking loudly, but you cannot sign that piece of trash,” Marty said. “Let me go with you out there. I’ll tell them exactly what we will and will not put up with.”
“You have to love him because I do and because he’s going to be your brother,” she said.
“He won’t be my brother. I hope he’s not even your husband. And I wouldn’t love that man if he was Jesus,” Marty said.
Darla Jean frowned.
“Well, maybe,” Marty said, “but he ain’t, so I don’t have to love his sorry old ass. Any man that would let a lawyer put that shit in a prenup should have to marry Anna Ruth.”
“I like it! Ethan and Anna Ruth,” Trixie said. “She even likes Violet.”
“That is absolutely perfect!” Marty giggled.
Cathy held up her hands. “I’m going to talk to Ethan tomorrow night at the Dairy Queen and we’re sitting down all alone. We’re going to settle all this. I’ll concede to a few things and he can do the same. It’s called compromise and it is supposed to work in marriage. And all of you are staying at home. It’s just the two of us.”
Marty threw her arm around Cathy’s shoulder. “No Violet?”
“No, and no Clayton.”
“You better take a condom. You might get a chance to sneak off and do some hanky-panky.” Trixie laughed.
Darla Jean giggled.
“What is so funny? We aren’t having sex now, but we will eventually, and it will be really hot,” Cathy said.
“My thoughts had nothing to do with you and hanky-panky. I was thinking that maybe we should go stand guard outside the Dairy Queen. I can’t imagine Violet letting Ethan out of her sight. We might need to restrain Violet so you and Ethan can have some time alone. You bring the rope; Marty and I’ll bring the gag.”
The moment froze as if Cathy had pushed a pause button on life.
Friends! Sometimes they were kin and interfered like Marty. Some weren’t kin but looked out for you anyway like Trixie and Darla Jean. Sometimes they had shared so much it was hard to believe they weren’t kin.
Chapter 9
It wasn’t that Darla Jean liked Cathy better than Marty or Trixie. Cathy was just so gullible. She had a wonderful, kind spirit just like Jesus, but even the son of God couldn’t be pushed too long. He’d done some damage when he found out there was a big sale in the temple. And when the time was right, Cathy would take care of that prenup. Knowing that didn’t keep Darla Jean from worrying about her, though.
Darla Jean hummed the hymns she’d picked out for the congregational singing the next Sunday as she swept the sanctuary floor with a wide dust mop. Doing her own cleaning helped her think about her sermon, and living in the church wasn’t so bad. She had a couple of rooms behind the sanctuary that she’d converted into a bedroom and a kitchen/living room. She’d known building up the congregation in a church would be every bit as tough as building a clientele list in the escort business, so she hadn’t gone into it blind. She’d set aside four years of salary out of her savings and had given up her swanky Dallas apartment when she retired.
She scooted the dirt into a dustpan and sat down on the front pew. Her Christian church had come a long way in three years. An average of fifty people a week dropped in for services and twenty tithed regularly.
“Help me, please,” a voice said behind her.
Darla Jean turned, expecting to see Cathy. It had been Darla Jean’s business to know men and she’d been right about Ethan. His heart was kind, but his mother was strong. The prenup was going to stand, and Cathy could take it or fight. Too bad she’d gotten blessed with a soft heart instead of Marty’s temper.
But she wasn’t facing Cathy when she looked down the aisle. It was a small woman or a medium-sized teenage girl dressed in jeans with holes in the knees, barefoot, and a hooded sweatshirt.
Darla Jean held up both hands. “Whoa, now! This is a church. There’s nothing here worth killin’ over.”
The girl removed her hands from her pockets and held them up. One was empty. The other held a cell phone. “I need a place to hide.”
Darla Jean motioned her forward. “Take that sweatshirt off. It’s too hot to be wearing a coat.”
The woman shook her head, hurried forward, and sat down on the front pew and rolled up into the fetal position as racking sobs shook her body. “I can’t go back. He’s going to kill me.”
Darla Jean put her arm around the girl. “Nobody is going to kill you in my church. You are safe here, child.”
“My name is Lindsey. I’m not a child. I’m almost twenty; next month is my birthday.” She pulled the hood back to reveal a purple face, one eye swollen shut, lip split with dried blood crusting on the outside of the wound, and bruises the size of a man’s fingers on her neck. When she removed the sweatshirt her arms were a palette of purples and yellows, old bruises, new ones, and red marks where fresh ones would start tomorrow morning.
; Darla Jean was aghast. “Who did this to you? Your pimp?”
Lindsey shook her head. “I’m not a hooker.”
“Go on.”
“I got married six months ago. I thought he loved me and that’s why he was so possessive. But…”
“But it turned bad, didn’t it?”
She nodded. “If he thinks I look at a man too long in the grocery store, I catch hell. If the towel isn’t hung exactly even in the bathroom, that’s grounds for six lashes with the belt. If his supper isn’t on the table and everything perfect, then that’s ten lashes. If I talk to my girlfriends on the phone and he finds out…”
Darla Jean nodded toward the phone she held tightly. “That’s what happened tonight?”
Lindsey nodded. “One of them gave me a burn phone. He found it. I waited until he went to sleep and snuck out the back door. I can’t go back. He said if I left him, he’d hunt me down and kill me.”
“Are you from here in Cadillac?” Darla Jean asked.
She shook her head. “Up near Denison. I hitched a ride, but this is as far as I got, and I don’t have money, and I’m terrified of him. Leaving him is instant death. It’s written on a piece of paper and taped to the mirror in our bedroom.”
“Family?” Darla Jean asked. “I’ll take you to them.”
“I went home the first time it happened and showed them the belt whelps on my legs. He followed me and told them I’d fallen down the stairs. They believed him. He’s very charismatic.”
“I’ve got a place I can take you where you’ll be safe. What is his name?”
Lindsey whispered, “Walter Cranston.”
“That is the last time you’ll have to say that name. Monday morning, you’ll become Lindsey Jean. I know some people who will take care of things for us, and we’ll get you a brand new driver’s license along with new credentials. What kind of work skills do you have?”
“I was studying early childhood development at college at night and working at an oil company, but when we married I had to quit school and work. He was just so jealous,” Lindsey said.
“What made you come to my church?”
“A light in the window and I’m so tired.”
“I’ll lock the door and we’ll go out the back way. You are going to my sister’s place in Blue Ridge. Ever heard of that town?”
“No, I grew up in Durant, just over the river in Oklahoma.”
“Well, Blue Ridge isn’t nearly that big.”
“I don’t even know your name, and you believed me and you’re helping me.”
“It’s Darla Jean. No middle name and Jean is my last name. There were six Darlas in my school so they had to do something to know which one was which. I been Darla Jean ever since.”
Lindsey’s phone rang.
She held it like it was a poisonous snake, out from her body. “It’s him. He talked my friend into giving him the number,” she whispered. “What do I do?”
Darla Jean took the phone from her, slammed it down on the floor, and stomped it to bits. Then she swept up the remains in the dustpan and put them into the small trash can behind her podium.
“You are through with that phone and with him.” She held a hand out to Lindsey.
***
The imagination is both a wonderful and a cruel thing, and some things are just better left unknown. For years, Betty Jean had worried about her younger sister, Darla. What kind of job paid the kind of money she made? Was she into drugs, or was she living in sin with a rich sugar daddy?
Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer, her mother had often said, so she didn’t ask. And then, praise the Lord, Darla had come to Blue Ridge three years ago and announced she was starting a church in Uncle Joseph’s old service station building.
Darla’s birth had been a difficult thing for Betty to accept. She was twenty and her mother forty-two that year, and a new baby in the family should have belonged to Betty, not her mother. But Betty’s fiancé was killed in Vietnam, and she had a sister instead of a wedding and a baby of her own. She figured she’d wind up raising the girl, but her mother had lived long enough to get Darla through high school and packed off to college in Dallas before she died.
Betty had been antsy all day, so she wasn’t surprised to hear from her sister that evening. “I thought you might come by today or call,” she said.
“I was about to hang up. It rang four times.”
“I was talking to Lottie about the clothes closet duties. Are you coming down here tonight? I made a cake,” Betty said.
“I’m on my way. But I’ve got this big favor.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t even let me tell you what it is.”
“I don’t care what it is. If you need help and I can provide it, the answer is yes. How far away are you?”
“Five minutes.”
“I’ll put the coffee on,” Betty said.
Betty could not ever remember her sister asking her for anything. She’d gone to college right out of high school but never finished. And then she got a really good job in Dallas that she never discussed, but she was always generous with her money. So if she needed help, Betty would do what she could. She filled the Mr. Coffee and met Darla on the porch.
“It’s a big favor.” Darla bent to hug Betty, who was six inches shorter than Darla and fifty pounds heavier. Her salt-and-pepper hair was cut in a bob and her face was as round as a pumpkin. She wore a caftan with bright red roses on a black background and her house shoes.
Betty didn’t even hesitate when she nodded. The young girl with Darla looked like she’d barely survived a car wreck, but Betty knew what had caused all that damage and it had nothing to do with an automobile. She’d seen it before and she’d helped a couple of women escape men who did such things.
“Let’s go to the kitchen and have some coffee. Are you hungry? I made Mamma’s vegetable soup for supper. We could heat some in the microwave,” Betty said.
“That sounds wonderful. This is Lindsey and this is my sister Betty.” Darla made introductions.
Betty was already bustling around in the kitchen. “Darla, you get the crackers and slice some cheese. There’s a lemon Bundt cake under the dome. I was hoping you would come so I made your favorite. Lindsey, darlin’, just sit down there at the table. We’ll have something to eat ready in no time.”
Darla Jean told the story, keeping it short.
“Well, darlin’,” Betty laid a soft hand on Lindsey’s shoulder, “you’ll be safe with me. And in a few weeks, if you want, you can move over next door in Mamma’s house. It’s been settin’ empty for years and I can’t bear to rent it out, but I’d just love to have a neighbor.”
Darla Jean hugged her sister again and whispered, “I’ll send money to help and come around to check on things every week.”
“You always have,” Betty whispered back.
***
Ethan could give a passionate speech that would bring tears, or he could incite an audience to chanting his name and waving tiny red, white, and blue flags. But going into that Dairy Queen to talk to Catherine about the prenuptial agreement was just downright aggravating. It shouldn’t be happening. She should have signed it the first day and not made such an ordeal about it. But he would take the thing home signed that evening. He could control a group of people with his words, so surely he could sweet-talk his fiancée into signing the papers. He even had the pen in his shirt pocket, ready to do the deed.
Hopefully when it was done, his mother would stop carrying on like someone had died. And Clayton would lose that horrible scowl.
She was waiting in the back booth in the nonsmoking section with the folder in front of her. He slid into the opposite side before he remembered that he should have kissed her first. It was too late to go back to the door and start over, so he laid a hand over hers and squeezed.
“Been waiting long, sweetheart?” he asked.
“Only a few minutes. I ordered coffee.” She pointed. “You wan
t something?”
He shook his head, took the pen from his pocket, and laid it on the folder. “Please sign those papers so we can get on with our marriage plans. This is frustrating Clayton and worrying Mother. We need to get it settled, Catherine.”
She picked up the pen and handed it back to him. “Yes, we do.”
That was definitely not a good sign.
“Why won’t you sign it?”
“Because I’m not going to give up my part of Clawdy’s or my mother’s old Lumina. I like that car, and I like to work.”
“But both make me look bad,” he said. “I will buy you a new Caddy, and you can help Mother with all the charity work and fundraising. That will get some of the pressure off her and give you something to do.”
“Do you love me?” she asked right out of the blue.
He hesitated. “I asked you to marry me, didn’t I?”
“If you love me, you will throw this in the trash and trust me.” She tried to remember the last time he’d told her that he loved her. A frown worked its way across her brows but no memory came. She tried to remember the first time. Was it when he proposed? No, he’d said she made him happy, but he hadn’t said he loved her. Was he saving that for their honeymoon too? What if he didn’t say the words? She didn’t want to live her whole life hearing her husband tell her that he cared deeply for her or was fond of her. She wanted to hear the three magic words every single day of their lives.
“I can’t do that, Catherine,” Ethan said.
“It’s going in the trash, Ethan. Either you do it or I do.”
“Which means?”
“Well, look who’s out and about this hot, hot evening.” Anna Ruth slid into the booth beside Ethan. “I just ordered a big old hot fudge sundae to celebrate getting all my things out of Andy’s house. I’ve moved in with Aunt Annabel until I can find a place of my own. I’ve been thinking about finding an apartment in Sherman. It’s closer to Bells where I teach anyway. I’m ready for a change, to get away from small-town politics and into a big city.”
“Does that mean you’re not going to be in the club?” Catherine asked.
The Blue-Ribbon Jalapeño Society Jubilee Page 13