by Ann B. Ross
“No’m, nobody’s said anything, but Miss Irene’s sister went to the lawyer’s office right after she picked out a casket. I know, because I drove her there. And picked her up afterward, and all she talked about was getting that relative home so they could get things divided up. I think, Miss Julia, it’s exactly the way you said, that Miss Irene meant to do it but forgot it. Or just had second thoughts.
“But it doesn’t matter,” she went on as if the world had suddenly settled on her shoulders. “Whatever she did or didn’t do shouldn’t affect what I do, and I’ll go to her funeral out of respect.”
That, I thought to myself, was the voice of someone who’d been disappointed too many times.
“Well,” I said briskly, “we’ll count on you joining us sometime next Friday evening. Let’s check in with each other the day before, so we’ll know what time to expect you. And I’ll ask Sam to text you the address. You have our phone numbers. Now, Etta Mae, no matter what happens, I want to see you at that house on the beach. I will be mightily disappointed if you don’t get there.”
She laughed a little. “I’ll try my best, and thank you, Miss Julia. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it.” Then she added, “Man alive! A trip to the beach!”
After hanging up, I decided that I was going to see to it that Etta Mae had a vacation she’d never forget. Then, before I forgot about it, I went to tell Sam that we had another beachgoer, albeit one who’d be there only half the time, and that I hoped he’d meant it when he said to invite anyone I wanted.
He had, because he was delighted that Etta Mae would be joining us. “Oh, good,” he said, “I like Etta Mae.”
“Sweetheart,” I said, smiling at him, “you like everybody.”
—
“Hazel Marie?” I whispered when she answered the phone. I was in our bedroom upstairs, not too far down the hall from the office where Sam was working on his book. “Can you talk?”
“Yes, I think so,” she whispered back. “Why, what is it?” Then, as if suddenly realizing how odd my question had been, she said, “But, Miss Julia, nobody but me can hear you over here.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, speaking up. “I just don’t want anybody on your end to hear what you say.”
“Well, nobody’s around right now. Granny Wiggins and the little girls are out in the yard. She’s trying to tire them out enough for a nap. What is it, Miss Julia? Is anything wrong?”
“No, not wrong, exactly. It’s just something I’d prefer not to share with half the town.” I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Hazel Marie, I don’t have a thing to wear at the beach and, furthermore, I don’t even know what to buy. I need your help.”
“Oh!” she said, perking right up. “You want to go shopping?”
“Not particularly, but I have to. Will you go with me? I don’t even know what I’ll need, but I have a feeling it’s going to be nothing that I’ll want.”
She laughed. “Well, you’ll need sundresses or at least short-sleeved dresses, a couple of bathing suits, and some pants and shorts—”
“Stop right there. No shorts. And no sundresses or bathing suits, either. I don’t plan to go in the ocean or to expose myself unnecessarily. Think of something else, Hazel Marie.” What no one seemed to understand was that as age had crept up, certain areas of my body had crept down. I had no desire to make those areas open for public viewing.
But when it came to problem areas and helpful beauty aids of any kind, Hazel Marie had solutions for every situation. “I know just what you need,” she said. “And the look is quite fashionable now. It’ll be perfect for you.”
“I’m almost afaid to ask.”
“We’ll find you some capris. You know, they’re pants, but usually fairly loose and they’re longer than shorts but shorter than long pants. They’ll be perfect for everyday wear and for wading in the ocean. If you’re so inclined.”
“I’m not. But what do you wear with them? I tell you, Hazel Marie, I cannot wear those sleeveless, low-cut, tight-fitting T-shirts that I see all over town.”
“Well, you’re in luck there, too,” Hazel Marie said. “Everything is loose and flowing now, some even with sleeves. You can wear those on the beach and out to dinner, or anywhere. Another possibility would be some mid-calf leggings. . . .”
“No leggings, Hazel Marie.”
“Well, not leggings, exactly, but capris with narrow legs. Wear them with a tunic top, and all you’d need for a really good look would be a couple of pairs of sandals.”
“No flip-flops.”
“Okay,” she said, laughing. “You can get plain sandals for the beach, but you’ll be amazed at how fancy sandals can be today. You’ll love them. But you’ll need a pedicure, Miss Julia, something up-to-date and colorful that you might not wear on your fingernails. You should go shopping first, then you’ll know what color to get.”
“They Lord,” I said with a roll of my eyes which she couldn’t see. Then, sighing in defeat, I asked, “Would you mind going with me, Hazel Marie? I don’t even know where to start.”
“Sure, let’s go first thing in the morning. I know just the shop you need, so it won’t take long to have you decked out for the beach. But go ahead and make a pedi appointment for tomorrow afternoon, and you’ll be all set.”
Set. Yes, I thought, but for what? I was not looking forward either to shopping for the beach or to the beach itself. But, for Sam and for our nominal grandchildren, I would brace myself and do as I always did under less than optimum conditions—grit my teeth and get through it.
—
“Oh, Julia!” LuAnne Conover wailed my name as soon as I answered the phone. It was late afternoon, not long before Lillian would call us to dinner, and I’d already planned an early bedtime to prepare myself for the morrow’s shopping trip.
“LuAnne? What’s wrong?” Not that I particularly wanted to know because LuAnne was forever finding molehills that exercised her out of all proportion.
“Oh, Julia, you won’t believe this. I don’t believe it, but I have to because it’s been thrown in my face. Oh, Julia, I have to talk to you. You’re the only one who’ll understand. Can I come over? I can’t talk about it on the phone.”
“Yes, of course. But, LuAnne, it’s almost dinnertime. Don’t you want to wait for a better time?”
“I can’t wait! I’m at my wit’s end. I have to talk to you, to somebody, anybody, or I’ll go crazy.”
“Well, don’t do that. Come on over and we’ll talk.”
She blew her nose, sniffed, then said, “I don’t want Lillian or Sam or Lloyd or anybody else you have going in and out of your house hearing it.”
I took a deep breath, blew it out, and said, “LuAnne, Sam lives here. Lillian works here, and Lloyd is always welcome. I can’t very well turn them out.”
“Oh, I know,” she said, offhandedly. “But I don’t want any of them to hear a word, although . . .” She broke down and sobbed. “. . . everybody already knows, and it’s killing me, Julia. It’s just killing me.”
And she sounded as if it really was. “Oh, LuAnne, honey, you want me to come to you? I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“No, don’t do that. I have to get out of here. I’m on my way, but, Julia, find a place where we can talk without anybody hearing us.”
LuAnne and her long-retired, game-show-watching husband, Leonard, had joined the downsizing fad a few years back and lived now in a cramped condo up on the side of the mountain. It had a view, but to my mind that was all that recommended it, especially since Leonard was underfoot all day, every day. Why, once when a criminal was on the loose and the sheriff issued a shelter-in-place lockdown order, Leonard was already in compliance.
The more I thought of LuAnne’s distress on the phone, the more disturbed I became. Knowing that it would take a few minutes for her to get into town and to my house, I hurriedly w
alked upstairs to let Sam know what to expect when she came.
“We’ll talk in the library, Sam, and I know she’ll want the door closed. So just go ahead and eat dinner if she stays that long, and—I hate to ask this—but you and Lillian better stay out of sight. LuAnne is really upset.”
Sam smiled. “I’ll sneak from room to room in my stocking feet. She won’t know I’m around. But, Julia, what do you think is wrong?”
“I don’t have a clue. But you know how LuAnne is—she can get upset over things that aren’t worth a hill of beans to anybody else. But from the way she sounded . . . well, I don’t know. I keep thinking of the boy who cried wolf, and I don’t want to ignore the possibility that LuAnne’s wolf might be real this time.”
Chapter 5
When I opened the door for LuAnne, my first thought was that this time the wolf was indeed real. She was a wreck, her face tear-streaked and stricken looking, her hands trembling, and instead of openly crying, she whimpered with each shuddering breath.
Although we actually had little in common as far as interests went, LuAnne and I had been friends for as long as I’d lived in Abbotsville. She was a short, full-breasted woman who made it her business to know everything about everybody, and to tell it to anybody who would listen. Yet she was also kindhearted, the first one at the door of anyone who was ill or who had suffered a loss. I thought the world of her, but I will admit that a little of her company went a long way.
I reached out to her and drew her in. “Come in, LuAnne. Let’s go to the library.”
“Is anyone . . . ?”
“Don’t worry about it. Sam and Lillian are in the kitchen, and all the doors are closed.”
I led her down the hall, past the closed doors of the living room, dining room, back hall to the kitchen, and downstairs bathroom, and into the library. Then I closed that door behind us.
“Sit right here,” I said, aiming her for the sofa near the fireplace. I sat beside her and took her hands in mine. “Tell me what’s wrong. You look as if the world has come to an end.”
“Mine has,” she said, her lips trembling as the floodgates opened. I dashed across the room to the desk for a box of Kleenex.
Waiting as the tears streamed down her face, I saw her shoulders hunching over as deep sobs shook her body. I was moved in spite of myself. Not that I’m that skeptical or lacking in compassion, but I had been through too many of LuAnne’s agonies before this. And as often as not, just as I would begin to sympathize with her for whatever subject she was then exercised over, she would suddenly drop it as if it had never bothered her. I’d finally learned my lesson and had more recently taken her sudden upsets with large grains of salt. The more upset she became over some small slight or careless word, the less credence I gave her response to it.
But this. This was different. She was shaken to her core. Was she ill? Terminally ill? Or was Leonard? Had the vagaries of the stock market wiped them out? Was foreclosure looming ahead?
“Oh, Julia!” she wailed, leaning her head on my shoulder. “Only you will understand. But don’t tell anybody, please, please, don’t tell anybody. Except . . . except everybody already knows!”
“Knows what?” I took her shoulders and straightened her so that she had to look at me. “What does everybody know, because I don’t.”
She sniffed loudly and wetly. I handed her a Kleenex and when she’d used it, she said, “Well, maybe you don’t. You didn’t even know about Wesley Lloyd.”
“Wesley Lloyd? What does he have to do with it? He’s been dead and gone for years.”
“I know,” she said, sniffing again. “That’s why you’re the only one I can talk to. You’ve been through it, and although I thought you were crazy at the time, at least you survived. I don’t think I will.” And the tears started again.
Oh, my goodness. Was she telling me that Leonard, Leonard Conover, was doing what Wesley Lloyd had done and gotten himself involved? Impossible to imagine, even as I tried to visualize Leonard Conover in the throes of passion. And failed.
“Julia,” LuAnne said, dabbing at her face with the Kleenex, “I’ve always believed that the wife always knows. If she doesn’t do anything about it, it’s because she doesn’t want to know. But that’s not true, is it? You really didn’t suspect Wesley Lloyd, did you? I mean, even if he was losing interest in . . . you know. Because I thought Leonard was just getting older and, to tell the truth, it suited me fine. I mean, after a certain age, the less the better, don’t you think?”
“Well, I guess,” I said, hedging as I thought of my steady Sam. But she was absolutely right when it came to Wesley Lloyd Springer. I recalled the sense of relief I’d felt as his demands became less and less frequent. I had assumed that tapering off was merely the natural course of a long marriage. That’s the way it had been for me but, as I later learned, not for him.
“But, LuAnne,” I said, “I can’t believe that Leonard has, well, you know.”
“Well, believe it, because he has.” LuAnne was beginning to get over her spasms of grief. She sat up straighter, wiped her face again, and said, “I’d like to wring his neck. After all I’ve done for him—cooking and washing and cleaning and encouraging and going to church and keeping up with our social obligations and buying his clothes and paying the bills. . . . Why, Julia, if it hadn’t been for me, we’d have nothing! I mean, the man has no ambition, no get-up-and-go, no drive to get anywhere in life. You know that. Everybody knows it.”
I nodded, because I did know it. Leonard Conover was the epitome of a nonentity. The only social skill he had was showing up on time when he was supposed to be somewhere, and that was because LuAnne got him there. I had often wondered at the differences between the two of them, but had assumed that his silent fade into the background was because LuAnne more than made up for it with her outgoing and relentless personality.
The tears had begun streaming down LuAnne’s face again as tremors shook her body. Between sobs, she said, “I’ve given my whole life to this marriage, and, Julia, this is how he treats me. I can never hold my head up again. Everybody will be laughing. At me! Not at him. Oh, no, they always laugh at the one who’s hurt, not the one who does the hurting. Oh, Julia, I don’t know what to do!”
“Well, wait, LuAnne,” I said, trying to make some sense of her predicament. “Let’s look at this reasonably. First of all, are you sure? It could just be gossip with no truth to it at all.”
“I wish!” she shrieked, making the hair on my head stand up. “He told me, Julia! He admitted it! Just came right out and said he needed solace! Can you believe that? He throws me away for solace!”
That was a new one on me. As many reasons as there might be for looking beyond one’s own bedroom, solace, comfort, or consolation wouldn’t normally head the list. Unless, of course, a dull, ineffectual man was married to a whirlwind like LuAnne.
“Go back to the beginning, LuAnne. Did he just come out with this announcement, like, over breakfast? I mean, what brought the subject up?”
“He told me because I asked, that’s what happened and, no, it was over lunch—which I, as usual, had made for him. And served it to him on a TV tray so he wouldn’t miss reruns of Cops on Spike or whatever he was watching.” LuAnne mopped at her face, blew her nose, and went on. “It started with a phone call. I answered as I always do, and this woman whispered, whispered, Julia, in a hoarse-sounding voice, ‘Why don’t you let him go? He’s no use to you. He gives it all to me and has for years and years.’ Then she hung up.” LuAnne sniffed, loud and long. “I was stunned. I couldn’t believe I’d heard it right. But as I stood there with the mayonnaise knife in my hand, I knew I had heard it right. So I marched right into the living room and told Leonard. And I laughed! Can you believe that? I laughed because I didn’t believe it and thought somebody was playing a joke. Or had gotten a wrong number. Or something.”
“What did he say?”
> “He just mumbled something like, ‘She shouldna done that.’ And I just stood there and said, ‘What? What!’ Because it hit me then that he knew who’d called and wasn’t all that surprised. He said, ‘I’ll tell her not to call again.’ Now doesn’t that just beat all? And I said, ‘Who? Who’re you going to tell not to call again?’ And all this time he’d not taken his eyes off the television, but then he glanced up at me—he was still in his recliner and I was standing over him—and he said, ‘A friend. Just a longtime friend.’ And I screamed, ‘Longtime? How long? And how much of a friend is she? And what does she give you that I don’t?’ That’s when he said solace. And sorta tacked on at the end that it had nothing to do with me, and he’d make sure she didn’t call again. Oh, Julia, I am devastated. Just devastated. How am I going to live with this? He didn’t say anything about giving her up, much less offering an apology.” She blotted her face again and went on. “Not that I would’ve accepted it, but the gall, Julia. The gall! It was as if he expected me to just go along with it because, I guess, I had one job—feeding and looking after him—and she had another. And never the twain should meet. Or something like that.”
By this time I was almost as shaken as LuAnne. Who would’ve suspected such complacent arrogance from Leonard Conover? I couldn’t wait to tell Sam. He’d be shocked.
It was time for me to say something but, I declare, I was barely able to think. In some ways, I was reliving the shock to my system when I’d learned of Wesley Lloyd’s faithlessness, recalling how I’d regretted that he was where I couldn’t get my hands on him. Dead and buried, maddeningly safe from the slings and arrows of a spurned and humiliated wife.
But Leonard was still around, and outrage and indignation for LuAnne’s sake welled up in me. “You can’t just live with it, LuAnne,” I said. “I mean, now that you know about it. But one question: When does he see her? As far as I know he’s pretty much of a homebody.”