by Dan Dillard
***
Across the street, an older woman with short purple and brassy blonde hair left the safety of the sidewalk and crossed both lanes to the parking lot of The Admiral restaurant. She wore epically large sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt in shades of red, orange and green. Her legs were mostly covered by bright green capri pants and to complete her outfit, blue jelly sandals. Sheila Pendleton—her latest late husband’s last name—entered The Admiral and hugged an unsuspecting Sue.
“How are you, sweetie?” Sheila said.
Sue shrieked and whirled around in a panic. “You creepy old thing! You scared the dickens out of me.”
“Old? Well, when you’re right, you’re right. Where’s that daughter of mine?” she sang. She walked over to her favorite table, waving at a few familiar faces and smiling warmly at the unfamiliar ones. A family of tourists sat near the window and looked out over the water. They wore SMITHVILLE BEACH shirts from the island and gaudy swim trunks, but puzzled at her choice of dress and hair .
“She’s in the back. I’ll get her,” Sue said.
“Nonsense, Sue. Bring me a sweet tea. And put some vodka in it, please. Don’t be stingy.”
Sue chuckled, her round belly and breasts jiggling, and ducked behind the bar. Robyn peeked out from the kitchen door at her mother. “I thought I heard you out here.”
And thus began a routine they had played out a thousand times, partly due to Sheila’s theatrical nature and partly because it was all true. The routine started when Robyn was a teenager and her mother would burst into a room, full of energy and dramatic flair. It embarrassed Robyn to no end, but her friends enjoyed it. Eventually she grew into it and let it become a tradition which varied somewhat on the central theme. That day it sounded something like this:
“Heard me? I don’t know how you could’ve heard little ol’ me,” Sheila said, fanning herself in southern belle fashion.
“Everyone in town heard you, momma. You do make quite an entrance. And might I ask, what the hell are you wearing?”
“Why, these are my man-catching clothes.” She winked at the audience of eye-rolling locals and the table of shocked but grinning tourists.
“Well, are you looking for another man?”
“Nope. I wear them all out! Do you know I’ve buried three?” There was a round of giggling from the audience, each now turned to watch the show. Robyn took a bow and Sheila waved a hand as if she was a member of royalty. In that town, she was. Friends clapped while the tourist family spoke in hushed whispers, finally deciding it was worth a smile. Lunch and a show.
Sue set a glass of iced tea on the table with a lemon wedge floating on top and gave Sheila a nod. Sheila fished the lemon wedge out with a spoon and squeezed the juice from it into the glass, then plopped the wedge back in and stirred it to the bottom. She sipped it through the straw and smiled.
“Miss Sue, you do make the best tea. It must be that secret ingredient,” Sheila said.
“Anything else for you, hon?” Sue said.
“Not yet. I have some gossip to catch up on.”
Sue walked off to another table and took some plates away to the kitchen for washing. Robyn sat across from her mother.
“Did she put vodka in it?” she said.
Sheila sipped again, ignoring the question and said, “Your father was my favorite, did I ever tell you that?”
“Every time we have this conversation.”
“Well it’s true. Tell me more about young Rusty Clemmons, all grown up. Is he single, Squirt? What does he do?”
“He is single. He works in Chicago. I’m not sure what he does, but he was a marine.”
“No, dear. Is a marine. Top Kepler would slap the taste out of your mouth.” She looked around to make sure Top wasn’t eating his usual. He wasn’t.
“I know that. He is a marine.”
“Not retired of course…he’s much too young isn’t he?”
Robyn gave that a bit of thought, calculating the years in her head. “If he’d joined right out of high school, I suppose he could be retired, but no. He made it sound like he didn’t enjoy it much.”
“So…any sparks?”
Yes, definite sparks.
Robyn shook her head. “No. I mean I don’t know. We had a lot to drink last night. He was a gentleman.”
“Well, Squirt, you’d better change that. Gentlemen are boring.”
“I mean he didn’t hit on me or grope me or anything,” Robyn said.
“You’re just proving my point, hon,” Sheila said, grinning.
“He did ask if I would be his date to the reunion this morning.”
“And what did you say?”
“I didn’t really answer him. I’m not sure…I mean he’s only here for a week.”
“Sure, but he’ll come back if you give him a reason to come back. Maybe you and Kelly will end up out there in Chicago? Who knows? I’m not going to be around forever.”
“Slow down, momma. We’re talking about a date. Not even a date, it’s a high school reunion. It’s more like safety in numbers.”
Sheila shook her head at her daughter. She looked out the window and took a long draw off of her iced tea, making slurping noises with the straw. Frustrated, she held the glass up. Sue was there in a blink with a refill.
“You’re an absolute angel,” Sheila said.
“Thank you, Miss Pendleton,” Sue said.
As Sue walked away, Sheila fixed her daughter with a look that said I mean the words I’m about to say so listen close. “Give him a chance, baby. Don’t end up old and alone like me. Dressing like a clown and talking to musical ghosts. Live!”
“Oh, momma. I envy your life. You have so many friends. You’ve got that house on the water…the kids at the theater.”
“That’s all nice, Robyn. And you’re right, I am blessed…but it’s still lonely. Most of the time, it’s lonely.”
Robyn’s heart ached a little, and she understood. It was lonely. With Kelly grown and starting her own life, she understood plenty. “I’ll move in. I’ve told you before I’d move…”
“No. Don’t get me wrong, you’re welcome if you want, but I want you to have your own life. That’s all I ever wanted. You’re doing great here and Kelly is doing great, but you could have so much more.”
“Maybe I don’t want more than this.”
Stop lying. She can see right through you.
Sheila grimaced and touched Robyn’s hand. “That’s me oozing out of your mouth. Stubborn and independent…and alone. Don’t be afraid to jump at an opportunity. Haven’t I always said that? It goes for work, for adventure, and for love.”
“You’re one crazy bitch,” Robyn said.
Sheila puffed out her chest. “Exactly.”
“And you’re smarter than you look.” She stood up and walked around the table to give her mother a hug, a hug which was reciprocated in full. “Can I get you some lunch? You’re going to be hammered at this rate.”
“Soup and sammie. You know what I like,” Sheila said.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Sheila watched Sue topping off drinks at the tourist table and grabbed Robyn’s arm. “How is she?”
Robyn looked at Sue and back at her mother. “Sue? She’s fine, why?”
“Fine? Horse shit. I mean after the incident with Travis?”
“What are you talking about?”
“From what I heard, he tried to rape her right there in his truck. Imagine, trying to have sex in a tow truck. Especially at their size? That’s something skinny teenagers would do. Those of us who are plump need some room to bada-boom.”
Robyn waved her off and got back to the business at hand. “Rape? Momma, where did you hear that from?” Robyn said, whispering.
“From her momma. She runs the lighting booth at the community theater for me.”
“I knew…I mean about the lighting. I had no idea about Sue. She never mentioned it.”
“Did she call in sick a couple weeks ago. T
ake a few days off?”
Robyn looked back at her friend and employee who was doing the waitress’s ballet from table to table, all smiles and sweet things to say. Sue had put the tea pitcher down and was filling coffee for an older couple. Familiar faces but not regulars. Then the light of understanding dawned on Robyn’s face.
“She did. She was out three days back a few weeks ago. It was all of a sudden, she told me she’d caught a bug was going around.”
Sheila shook her head. “There’s something going around. I don’t know what it is, but things aren’t like they used to be.”
Things are meaner. I knew it.
“You feel that too?”
Sheila nodded. She drank again from her glass. “Big Jacques feels it too.”
Robyn did a double take. “Big Jacques?”
“Yes. He comes around more often. I hear his music all the time now. Not only by the swingset like when it started. Now he’s everywhere in the house. It’s as if he’s trying to tell me something.”
“What do you think he’s trying to tell you?” Robyn said. She worried about her mother’s sanity, worried about the fact that she’d had two cocktails and it was just after 1:00 pm on a Friday.
“I don’t know, Squirt. I don’t know at all.”
“Why is it you think I’ve never heard Big Jacques and his ghostly fiddle?” Robyn asked. She wasn’t being snarky. It was a legitimate question and she hoped it wouldn’t hurt her mother’s feelings, if that was possible.
“Probably because you don’t visit your mother enough. I’ll waste away there in that house ending up like Norman Bates’ mother; I’ll be a skull sitting in the upstairs window in some god awful rocking chair with a bad wig on.”
“Now you’re being a drama queen. Stop it. I’ll come by tomorrow if it makes you feel any better,” Robyn said.
“It will. I will make it a point to feel better if you come to visit me tomorrow.”
“Done,” Robyn said. “I’ll even bring Kelly with me and we’ll sit on the damned swingset for some pictures.”
“That’s a deal. It’s rusty though, we’ll have to be careful.”
Sheila sucked more liquored-up tea through her straw and looked out at the water. “I’d like to see my granddaughter while I’m here. Is she working?”
Sheila looked at her watch. “She’s on in about an hour. I’ll leave her a voicemail and tell her to stop by. Let me get your lunch so you don’t have to stagger home.”
“I have staggered home from better places than this,” Sheila said.