Tornado Weather

by Deborah E. Kennedy

  Rhae Anne twisted Marissa’s back hair into a clip and started braiding. “Wally, I mean Willa. You can’t just go around accusing people like that.”

  Tessa had left her chair and was hovering again, a mama bird ready to dive-bomb. “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave my daughter alone. She’s been through enough already.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Wally said, clearly doing his best to look remorseful. “I’m afraid I like gossip a little too much. One of the hazards of the job.”

  “That may be,” Tessa said, “but that doesn’t give you the right to pick on my daughter. Or her date. Or to make that poor little Mexican girl the target of your maliciousness.”

  Talk of Daisy depressed Rhae Anne beyond measure. It reminded her of Tina Gonzalez, which reminded her very simply of man’s inhumanity to man. She and Tina had never been friends—Tina kept to herself, focusing on work and family—but still, Rhae Anne had liked her, respected her. She couldn’t believe what was happening to poor Hector now and couldn’t stand to have Daisy be the subject of a bitch fight. So, since the one thing she’d learned in nearly two decades of hairstyling was that all it took to make one piece of gossip go away was to offer up another, she said the first thing that came to mind.

  “Josh Seaver’s cheating on Shannon Washburn with Brianna Pogue.”

  Una stared at Rhae Anne through parted hair and Tessa folded her arms over her chest, disapproving, as if to say, Two wrongs don’t make a right. Or maybe she objected to the subject matter. Cheating = sex and sex = dirty and her daughter had been through enough already. Wally’s face lit up as he sifted through a cabinet drawer for a pair of sharper shears.

  “Seriously?” he said. “How do you know?”

  Now that it was out, Rhae Anne wished she could take it back. She lowered her voice. “I’ve seen them together a few times is all.”

  “And they haunt the Udall place!” Una offered. Then she tried to hide behind her bangs again. “I mean, so they say.”

  “The old Udall place?” Wally asked. “Where that weirdo family used to make sausage in the bathtub?”

  “I haven’t told Shannon,” Rhae Anne said. “I should have said something weeks ago.”

  Wally let out a long sigh. Then he hacked an inch and a half off Una’s bangs, straight across. Face frame it was. “Well well well. Guess you and Shannon need to have some girl talk ASAP.”

  Una glanced shyly at her own reflection and at Wally. She seemed pleased in spite of herself. Tessa was still at Rhae Anne’s elbow, intently watching the milkmaid braid’s progress. Rhae Anne’s fingers felt suddenly clumsy and numb.

  “More customers, boss,” Wally said.

  He nodded toward Lauren Tewksbury and her mother, who brought with them the smell of the warm June day—mowed grass, peonies, French fries. They plopped down next to each other in seats by the window and pulled from identical quilted bags two iPhones, also matching. The strand of lights above them flickered like stars and went out.

  Marissa sought Rhae Anne’s eyes in the mirror’s reflection. “Do you need to do Lauren now?”

  “Don’t worry about them, sweetie,” Tessa said. “They can wait their turn.”

  Rhae Anne wondered if Tessa had said the same thing to Marissa when Daisy went missing. Don’t worry about her, sweetie. Focus on your studies. Everything will be fine and even if it’s not fine, it’s not your fault. That poor little Mexican girl can wait her turn.

  She shoved her other hand at Tessa, palm up. “I’ll take that gardenia now.”

  “Hold on.” Tessa grabbed her purse. “Let me find that lemon juice.”

  Rhae Anne gave Marissa a few more curls while Tessa fumbled through her bag.

  “It must be in the car,” Tessa said.

  Rhae Anne watched her walk outside, straight-backed and elegant. Her outfit—silk shirt, pencil skirt, suede ankle boots with wooden soles—probably cost more than Rhae Anne made in a week.

  “Do you think you could tease that side a little more?” Marissa asked. “I’d really like to be symmetrical tonight.”

  “Of course,” Rhae Anne said, but she didn’t oblige her right away. She gazed out the front window at the sidewalk in front of the shop, where at that moment Chuck Breeder was walking by with his lunch. After him came Pearl Butz pushing a poodle in a stroller and an off-duty Zane Bigsby smoking a cigar. A cheap one, judging by the stale smoke that drifted in through the cracks in the door. Just another sleepy Saturday in beautiful downtown Colliersville. The Tewksburys missed the parade. They seemed to be showing each other funny/cute/cat things on their phones.

  It’s not enough, Rhae Anne thought, taking it in—Chuck and his lunch, Pearl and her poodle, Zane and his cigar. The Tewksburys and their phones. This town, this shop, the job, shampooing, cutting, styling day after day after … Dai-sy. Hair. Nails. Eyebrows. Making ungrateful and often entitled women beautiful or marginally more so. And then home to the couch for frozen pizza wolfed down in front of Dancing with the Stars with a man who, when he farted in front of her, laughed and blamed the dog. They didn’t have a dog.

  It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

  “Shit.” Rhae Anne burned her right hand on the curling iron trying to extricate the thing from Marissa’s thick mane. She brought her fist up to her mouth and bit down to keep from screaming.

  “You okay, boss?” Wally asked.

  Gritted teeth. “I’m fine.”

  What she really wanted to say to him was, Do more. Get out and do more while you still can. Sing “Tonight” at the top of your lungs. Be as abnormal as you want to be. Go to prom but only if you want to, and never let someone leave you alone in the middle of the dance floor. Throw the fucking bushel basket out the window and let your light shine because what else is there, really? What else? None of us is getting out of this alive. Look at Tina Gonzalez. Look at my own mother and father. You can’t look at them. They’re buried under six feet of cold, hard Indiana clay.

  Marissa’s milkmaid braid was perfect—tight but not too tight—and the curls cascaded down her back in uniformly beautiful waves. Tessa had located both the lemon juice and the gardenia. She’d given them to Rhae Anne and sat down again next to the Tewksburys, who were waiting their turn. The flower was in Rhae Anne’s right hand, the plastic yellow lemon in her left. She let them fall to the floor. “Oh no,” she said, not bending to pick them up. “Oh dear.”

  “You don’t want the flower to sit too long down there,” Marissa said.

  “Let me guess,” Wally said. “It’ll wilt.”

  Marissa did not look at him. “They’re very fragile, gardenias,” she said to Rhae Anne. “And don’t forget the lemon juice. Mom really wants you to use the lemon juice.”

  Mom really wants you to use the lemon juice. The demand echoed in Rhae Anne’s head, a nasal mockery of Marissa’s real voice, which was low-pitched and sweet, despite the words. I’d really like to be symmetrical tonight. When she finally got home, when this endless day finally came to an end, Rhae Anne decided she would skip Dancing with the Stars with Larry and call Shannon instead. She would suggest that the two of them get together for a pitcher of beer at Sharkey’s and then, drunk and sentimental, Tom Petty on the jukebox, Rhae Anne would confess everything, beg Shannon’s forgiveness for not telling her about Josh and Brianna a long time ago, for being a terrible friend. She would plead. She would cry and get down on her knees if that’s what it took. She would say, Shannon Washburn, I think you’re the love of my life, because it was true. Nothing had been or would ever be more true.

  Rhae Anne stepped on the gardenia, crushed it underneath her heel. She did the same to the plastic lemon. It made a sad deflating-balloon sound, a sort of squeaky sigh, and the smell of citrus filled the shop. Marissa gaped at her. So did Una and Tessa and the Tewksburys. Then Rhae Anne put her empty hands on either side of Marissa’s pretty skull. She knew just how it all would feel when she shoved her hands in—the braid smooth as corn silk, the curls lightly spray
ed and buoyant—and what it would look like when she yanked it apart because she’d done it to her own hair as she ran away from the high school gym, crying and shedding shoes and panty hose and bobby pins.

  Wally winked at Rhae Anne and smiled at everyone in the shop, even Marissa, who was too busy staring at the ruined flower to understand what Rhae Anne had in mind

  “I feel pretty,” Wally said. “Oh so pretty. I feel pretty and witty and gay.”

  Your Sister’s Keeper

  (June)

  You never know about some people.

  That was the consensus of the Colliersville Baptist Church Saturday Afternoon Knitting Circle regarding the whole Helen Garrety business. Everybody said it was sad, how poor Helen lost her only grandson to the Iraq war. After all, Helen had raised Kenny from a baby and now the only things she had to live for were her herbs and her nutty daughter, Frannie, who, rumor had it, was swaddled away in some cult in Idaho and couldn’t care less about coming home to pay her respects. What kind of mother does such a thing? The Frannie Garrety kind of mother, that’s who. The kind who gets pregnant at fifteen and skips town when the kid needs her most.

  Then there was a terrible snafu at the casualty notification office and Helen, Kenny’s true next of kin, heard about his death on CNN.

  “They called Frannie instead, and Frannie, idiot that she is, didn’t even think to call Helen,” said Shellie Pogue. “Can you imagine?”

  The women shook their heads.

  “It’s almost enough to make one question one’s faith,” Shellie said.

  “Almost,” Peggy Norquist said.

  Everyone was there except Helen—Ruby Rodgers, the mayor’s wife, in her broomstick skirt and peasant blouse; Una Prokus, who was fifty-two but you’d never know it to look at her; Peggy, with her purple needles and granny glasses; and Shellie, who held Kenny’s obituary from the Colliersville Record crumpled in her hand. She’d cut it out that morning along with coupons for Tide, Kraft Singles, and Moon Pies.

  The women shared the church’s largest basement room with Alcoholics Anonymous, who met there every Tuesday. The orange carpet smelled of twenty-year-old cigarette smoke, bad coffee, and off-brand men’s cologne. One whole wall was given over to an illustrated poster of the Twelve Steps and another to a poem a local member had written about her struggle for sobriety. The poem seemed to be about rainbows, Asian carp, Riesling, and God. Shellie read it to herself sometimes when the conversation lagged, wondering why it didn’t rhyme.

  At the request of Ruby, they were knitting hats for the Mexican children, who, Ruby said, spent most of their mornings shivering away in that Bottoms apartment complex that flooded every spring and summer and was pretty much wall-to-wall poison mold. Shellie made her hat somewhat grudgingly. What about the poor kids who were born here, tried and true? And what was the suffering of a few illegal kids in the face of Kenny Garrety’s death? Kenny was a real American. Kenny was a friend. Kenny was one of the heroes. Well, had been.

  “Helen found out about Kenny while she was drinking her morning coffee,” Shellie said. She placed the obituary on the table in front of her and smoothed out its wrinkled corners. “Not so much as an ‘Are you sitting down?’”

  This war was awful, just awful. It had to be fought to teach the terrorists and Saddam Hussein a lesson, but bloodshed was always regrettable, and Kenny had been such a nice boy, polite, shy, handsome if you ignored his wing-flap-like ears and the acne on his cheeks. He would have been a good husband, an attentive father. Pastor Rush had sermonized, and they all agreed, that Kenny was just the kind of young man they would have liked to lead the youth group even though he hadn’t been to church since Helen had gone weird and spiritual on them and told them to shove their knitting needles up their fat asses. They forgave her in their way, because they were good Christians and that’s how they’d been raised, to turn the other cheek and be their sister’s keeper, but it was difficult, watching one of their own stray so far from the fold.

  “I just wish she didn’t set so much store by that ginko balboa and meditation stuff,” Shellie said, passing the obituary around. “It’s like she thinks she’s an Indian or something.”

  “You mean Native American.” Ruby pulled her red thread tight and crossed her legs. Her skirt rustled.

  “Call them late for dinner for all I care,” Shellie said. “I think we all know that Helen’s as German-Irish as the rest of us.”

  Ruby drew in her breath. “There really is something to meditation. Dr. Nelson recommended it for me. It’s really calmed me down.”

  Shellie stifled a groan. All this Middle Eastern nonsense. “Meditation, sure, because we all have time to just sit in a dark room and think all day. I’ll leave that to Helen, thank you very much.”

  Then Peggy said, “I’ll leave that to Helen, too, thank you very much,” because that’s what she did, repeated what the last person said. She’d never really had an original thought in her life, unless you counted those toilet brush cozies she made everyone last Christmas.

  Shellie glanced at Una, who was reading the obituary to herself, her thin lips moving with each word. “I hate to sound suspicious,” Shellie said, “I truly do, but isn’t it a little strange? I mean, here he is, dead a week, and there’s no mention of a funeral or even a viewing? I know Helen’s gone around the bend a bit, but still. You’d think she’d give us all a chance to mourn.”

  Needles clinked in the quiet.

  “I mean, it’s unchristian, isn’t it? Not having some sort of ceremony,” Shellie said.

  Then Una, who had a tendency to mumble, said quietly, “I miss her.”

  “Speak up, Una,” Shellie said. People were forever having to ask Una to speak up. “Who do you miss?”

  Una also had trouble making eye contact. When she talked to you she usually talked to your hairline, which made Peggy self-conscious about her widow’s peak. Now Una was staring at her half-done angora hat. “Helen,” she whispered. “I miss Helen.”

  That was just like Una, Shellie thought. Sentimental little fool. Wasn’t it Una, after all, who insisted they give that cat that used to haunt the church a full funeral when they found it, stiff as a wooden paddle, lying in the Rodgerses’ pew? Una needed to learn to let go. Shellie, who’d divorced two husbands and buried one, and who’d dropped her daughter off at the drug treatment center more times than she cared to count, could teach Una something about saying good-bye or, better yet, giving up on people. That’s what it took. Losing hope they’d ever change. Brianna was a perfect example. Born an angel—pretty, smart, sweet—and now look at her. Up to no good, Shellie was sure, and wasting away to practically nothing. The last time Shellie saw her, nearly a week ago now, she tried to engage Brianna in the most superficial of conversations—“Sleep okay?” “Seeing anyone special?” “Did you hear about little Daisy Gonzalez?”—but it was a nonstarter, a no-go. Brianna simply grabbed a Pop-Tart from the cabinet, said, “See, Mom? I’m eating, I’m fine,” and left, a huge canvas purse over one arm. Anything could be in that bag. A change of clothes, booze, makeup, instruments of torture. Shellie had no idea, and she was equally clueless as to how Brianna passed her days or where she spent her nights. This very morning, when Shellie snuck into Brianna’s room and found it empty, again, bed still made, she even considered having Brianna declared a missing person, but who would care? All anyone talked about was Daisy Gonzalez, finding her and bringing her home safe to her heartbroken father. Shellie was fond of the girl, in a way. She’d often watched her after school, when Hector was busy with something he clearly considered more important than cafeteria work. Not the day she’d disappeared, though. Not that one.

  Cleaning up after Daisy, under the impression she was “helping,” had become part of Shellie’s routine. Annoying and futile like everything else she did on a daily basis, but sort of sweet, too. And she felt for Hector, who had done his best to continue teaching in Daisy’s absence, but who’d been put on what Shellie’s co-leader, Bets, called “
administrative leave.” “Basically time off with pay,” Bets explained. “We could be so lucky.” The leave came after Hector treated his sophomore history class to a tirade about Colliersville’s supposed racist beginnings. Several students objected to his calling their founding fathers “genocidal maniacs” and told Principal Tewksbury so. Shellie wondered how Hector spent his time now. She’d heard from Bets he was basically out of his mind with guilt and grief.

  That was understandable. That was pitiable, but what about Shellie’s grief, huh? What about her little lost lamb? Would the newspapers, the TV channels, give one column inch or a single hot minute to Brianna Pogue, thirtysomething junkie/loser who sometimes lived with her mother and other times preferred to stay out all night with God knew who? Not a chance.

  A knot formed in Shellie’s yarn. “I don’t miss her,” she said.

  “Who?” Ruby asked.

  “Helen.”

  “Oh Shellie, how can you say so?” Ruby’s hat was almost done. A red number with a jaunty orange flower on one side, it would look good on someone’s eighty-year-old grandmother. “She was your best friend.”

  “Was being the operative word in that statement.”

  For a while no one said anything. The only noises came from overhead, where Pastor Rush’s wife, Delilah, was leading a line-dancing class.

  “Maybe,” Una ventured, setting down her hat on the table in front of her. “Maybe…” she said again, then trailed off, staring out the small, mud-spattered window at the lilac bush all bloomed out and the playground beyond that Ruby insisted be handicap accessible, mostly for little Daisy, who’d gone missing before she even had a chance to use the special swing.

  Bleeding hearts, Shellie thought. Just a bunch of bleeding hearts in this knitting circle.

  “I think I know where you’re going, Una, and frankly I agree,” Ruby said. “We should go pay Helen a visit. She’s all alone out there, after all. She’d probably like the company. We can try to persuade her to let us do something for her, maybe hold a wake here at the church. It’s what Jesus would do.”