“Paid off,” Mary Bliss said. “Of course, the book value on a ninety-eight minivan with eighty thousand miles on it isn’t much.”
“At least you’ve got your wheels,” Katharine said grimly. “What about insurance?”
Mary Bliss sighed. “I’ve got health insurance coverage for me and Erin through the school system. And there’s my life insurance policy through school too. Parker always said it cost too much to have us on his company plan. Although, he had Eula on the plan, of course. As vice president of the company. Cute, huh?”
“He’s a pig,” Katharine said.
“It’s just semantics now,” Mary Bliss said. “The company’s kaput. Anyway, his note said Eula was taken care of. So that’s something, I guess.”
“Don’t teachers get paid all summer, even though school’s out?”
“Oh yeah,” Mary Bliss said. “My paycheck might just cover this month’s light bill.”
“The weasel. The fucking weasel. What did you tell Erin?”
“Just that he was out of town on business. She thinks he’s in Dallas.”
“Any idea where he might really be?”
“The Lexus is gone. And he ordered two suitcases and some sport shirts from Land’s End. You know Parker, he hasn’t bought his own clothes since we got engaged. I checked with the mail-order people. He had the stuff delivered to his office. That’s about all the detecting I was up to this morning.”
An uneasy silence fell over the den. On the big-screen TV, Oprah was hugging a small, squirming wheelchair-bound child. Katharine’s finger-drumming stepped up. She cleared her throat.
“Another woman?”
“I don’t know,” Mary Bliss said. “It was the first thing I thought of. A man like Parker, he’s used to being taken care of. First Eula took care of him, then me, then Libby. Just at the office, though. But who? Who else could he have been carrying on with?”
She gave Katharine a searching look.
“You’d have told me if you knew something, wouldn’t you?”
Katharine looked hurt. “Are you kidding? Didn’t I just tell you about the water-retention thing? Wasn’t I the one who let you in on the fact that your ankles are just the teeniest bit beefy for capri pants? M. B., if I’d even suspected what the prick was up to, I would have been all over him like white on rice. But he was too damn sneaky. I didn’t have a clue. And I’ll tell you what. If anybody would have known, it would be me. I sense things. You know that.”
And Mary Bliss did. Katharine had an amazing ability to look at a man and know what kind of low-down behavior he was indulging in. Even with Charlie, she’d suspected months and months before she’d found the first shred of evidence.
Now they were both drumming their fingertips.
“You want my lawyer’s phone number?” Katharine asked, breaking the silence.
“For what?”
“For the divorce, fool.”
Mary Bliss lifted her chin, steely-eyed. She felt calm for the first time that morning. “No divorce,” she said. “I want him dead.”
Katharine patted her hand. “I know, shug. For what he’s done to you, and to Erin, and to women everywhere, I want him dead too. I want Parker McGowan hurt. I want him stoned and stripped, and dragged naked through the streets of Fair Oaks. And we can do that. My lawyer is the most vicious, ruthless woman you have ever met in your life. She even scares me. She will put an ass-kicking on Parker that he will never forget.”
“It’s not enough,” Mary Bliss said quietly. “Dead won’t even be enough.”
Katharine nodded again. She had felt this same way, the first time she’d seen Charlie get in that woman’s car outside his office. She’d even had a handgun, a little .22 that she’d bought after a couple of break-ins in Fair Oaks, in the car that day. It was right there in her Prada handbag. She’d gotten the pistol, clenched it in her fist, thought seriously about shooting Charlie, and his little slut, right then and there.
But she hadn’t been fast enough. And anyway, she’d never actually learned how to fire the thing. But the will, the intent, was there. After she’d found her lawyer, Gina Aldehoff, Gina told her lots of her clients wanted to kill their ex.
“But there’s no future in homicide,” Gina told her. “Divorce is better. No stains. Trust me, it’ll be just like that country music song.”
Katharine didn’t listen to country music, and she was shocked that her Harvard-educated lawyer did.
“What song is that?”
“I’ll get you the CD,” Gina said, grinning. “It’s called, ‘She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft.’ ”
8
Mary Bliss clenched her fists so tightly that she could feel her nails cutting into the flesh of her palms, feel the warm blood oozing from the tiny cuts.
She’d been reciting scripture to herself all the way over to the Fair Oaks Assisted Living Facility, trying to keep herself calm, trying to figure a way to make Parker’s mama tell her what she knew.
“Keep sweet,” she kept telling herself. “Just keep sweet.”
Now, Eula McGowan was lifting the lid of the CorningWare casserole, frowning down at its contents, as though she had not seen the same food hundreds of other times.
Oh no. Now, unbelievably, she was holding it up to her nose, sniffing, actually sniffing, like an old bloodhound. Come to think of it, Eula’s fleshy, wrinkled face did remind Mary Bliss of a bloodhound.
Mary Bliss smiled at the notion. Eula, a bloodhound. The old bitch.
She found it weirdly amusing that Eula gave herself credit for Mary Bliss’s cooking skills.
Eula had made it clear from the start that Parker had married beneath himself.
Eula had taken it upon herself to educate Mary Bliss about the fine points of cooking. She had drawn up a list on the back of a brown paper sack. Duke’s mayonnaise. Heinz ketchup. Luzianne tea bags. White Lily all-purpose flour. Swan’s Down shortening. Chicken of the Sea chunk white tuna. Martha White grits. Dixie Crystal sugar. Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup. These were the keystones of any good southern cook’s kitchen, according to Eula.
Not that Eula could cook. Not on your life. That was Lena’s job. In Eula’s time, no white woman of means did anything more in the way of cooking than an occasional trifle at Christmas, or maybe some peanut brittle, something like that.
Mary Bliss watched while Eula stared down at the banana pudding, trying not to look too eager. The old woman frowned down at the meringue, as though she could smell something…off.
“How am I supposed to eat all of this,” she fussed, waving her liver-spotted hand at the banana pudding casserole. “Think I’m some kind of field hand or something?”
Mary Bliss forced her lips into a smile but knew it was more of a grimace. Her jaw muscles ached from the effort of smiling and trying to be pleasant.
“The nurses can put it in the refrigerator for you, Meemaw. Then you can have some whenever you like.”
“Hah!” Eula said, snorting. “They keep urine samples in Dixie cups in that icebox. I wouldn’t eat anything out of there if they paid me.”
“All right,” Mary Bliss said slowly. “I’ll leave the pudding and your dinner in this little cooler right here. Maybe you’d like to share with Mrs. Caldwell next door, or some of your other visitors.”
Other visitors, Mary Bliss thought. What a laugh. Eula was such a nasty old witch, she had no visitors other than family. The other women in her bridge club down in Griffin were either dead, in a nursing home themselves, or relieved at not having to put up with Eula McGowan anymore.
“Verlene Caldwell has the worst gas in the world,” Eula was saying. “Smokes like a chimney too. Give that woman bananas and there’s no telling what might happen. This whole place could go up in a cloud of smoke.”
Be nice, Mary Bliss repeated to herself. You’ve got to be nice to Parker’s mama. Be nice, and she’ll tell you what she knows. But Mary Bliss wanted to throttle Eula, wanted to conk her over the head with the goddamn banana pudding dis
h. Wished she’d put ground-up glass in with the bananas.
Or poison. Ant poison. She’d read about a woman over in Anniston, not far from where Mary Bliss had grown up in Alabama, who’d killed off most of her family with Ant-Rid. The woman had killed her first two husbands, her stepmother, her mother-in-law, and a second cousin. Mary Bliss thought the lady had put the Ant-Rid in with some home-canned chow-chow. Or maybe it was watermelon-rind pickle.
Forty-two hundred dollars a month. That’s what it cost to keep Eula McGowan in a private bedroom and bath at Fair Oaks Assisted Living. Another six hundred a month for all the medicines keeping her shriveled old heart beating. Mary Bliss had no idea what the doctor’s bills came to. Parker’s insurance company always paid those bills.
Now there was no company. And Parker had vanished. Just like the Home Depot stock and the Vanguard mutual fund.
Mary Bliss spooned a mound of pudding into the flowered china dish she’d brought from home and handed Eula a spoon.
The old lady didn’t miss the slight tremor in her daughter-in-law’s hand. She dove into the food, shoveling it into her face as fast as she could, inhaling the fumes of home cooking and counter-ripened bananas.
Mary Bliss folded her hands in her lap, willing herself to be calm.
“Meemaw,” she said slowly. “Where’s Parker?”
Eula turned the spoon over and licked it with a huge pink tongue that reminded Mary Bliss of cured fatback. She wanted to gag.
“Gone,” Eula said, pudding spilling out of her mouth.
“I know that,” Mary Bliss said. “He left me a note. Did he tell you where he was going? I’m really worried about him, Meemaw. This isn’t like him.”
“Worried about money, I ’spect,” Eula said, enjoying Mary Bliss’s misery.
Mary Bliss’s face reddened. She’d been trying so hard. So very hard.
Slowly, she stood up from the molded plastic visitor’s chair, and she closed the swinging door that led to the hallway.
She knelt down on the linoleum floor beside her mother-in-law’s wheelchair. Her face felt hot, and her breathing was rapid. She put her face very close to Eula’s, and she took Eula’s skull and held it tight between her two hands. Now the shaking had stopped. She could feel the little bird-bones beneath her fingers.
Eula’s cataract-milky eyes bulged, and on the purple-tinged network of veins on her forehead, one throbbed crazily. Mary Bliss put one thumb on either side of Eula’s temples, and she asked Jesus Christ, her personal savior, to keep her from doing this terrible thing she felt driven to do. Failing that, she asked the Lord to keep her from getting caught and thrown in prison, sodomized by girl gangs and prison guards, and then being given that lethal injection they talked about on the news.
Georgia, as Katharine had already reminded her, was full to bursting with lesbian girl gangs, and after all, this was a death penalty state.
Pausing from prayer, Mary Bliss felt moved to speak.
“Old lady,” she whispered in a hoarse voice. “My house note comes due in two weeks. Erin’s first-semester tuition is due in a month. Your sorry, no-account, spineless she-goat of a son has milked us dry and disappeared into thin air. There’s no money left. He’s cashed in his life insurance policy and taken off somewhere. Now. If you don’t tell me exactly where Parker is, right this New York minute, I’m going to squash you like a mealy bug.”
Eula wheezed like a pawnshop accordion.
Mary Bliss kept her grip tight and tried to remember the name of Katharine’s lawyer, just in case Meemaw stroked out, just to spite her.
“Island,” Eula gasped.
“What was that?” Mary Bliss asked, leaning closer. She let her thumbs rest loosely on the tips of Meemaw’s ears.
“Some island,” Eula said, sucking in air as quickly as she could. “That’s all I know. That’s all he told me. An island.” Her hands clawed for the nurse’s buzzer, but Mary Bliss clamped her own hand down on top of Eula’s.
“You better be telling me the truth,” Mary Bliss said. “I’m friends with every nurse and aide over here. There’s not a one of them who wouldn’t hesitate to do me a favor. Any favor. You understand what I’m talking about here, Meemaw?”
Eula nodded once.
“All right, then,” Mary Bliss said. “Enjoy your dinner. And if you hear from Parker, I better hear from you right quick. It’s not only me he’s abandoned, you know. There’s your granddaughter too, you know. Erin. If you don’t care about me, you might think about her. She’s the only grandchild you’ve got. The last McGowan.”
Eula winced as the door to her room slammed behind her departing daughter-in-law.
Somehow, after leaving Meemaw’s room, Mary Bliss managed to pull herself together. She’d checked with the Fair Oaks Manor business manager, and Parker had been truthful about that, at least. Meemaw’s bill was all paid up for two more years.
When she got home, Mary Bliss checked the answering machine, poured herself a Diet Coke, and listened. There were two messages from bill collectors, one from Katharine, and one from Nancye Bowden.
“Mary Bliss,” Nancye had said. “You’ve got to call me. Right away.”
The last person she felt like talking to was Nancye Bowden. Besides, Erin would be home from work by six o’clock. Mary Bliss fixed her daughter’s favorite supper, chili-roni and tossed salad with bleu cheese dressing, and a pan of corn bread.
She herself could not eat. But she found a half bottle of chilled white wine in the refrigerator, which she swigged out of the bottle while dialing Katharine’s number.
Katharine picked up on the first ring. She’d had caller ID installed on her phone when she’d first suspected that Charlie was fooling around on her. It was how she’d discovered that when Charlie called to tell her he was playing a round of golf with a client, he was really calling from that bitch-whore Tara’s apartment.
“What did you find out?” Katharine demanded. “Did she tell you anything?”
“Meemaw’s playing senile,” Mary Bliss reported. “I threatened to rip the nitroglycerin patches right off her arm if she didn’t tell me what she knew, but I don’t think she believed me.”
“Didn’t she tell you anything at all?” Katharine asked.
“Island. He told her he was going to an island. Or so she claims.”
“The prick,” Katharine said. “I could kill him myself.”
“Not if I get to him first,” Mary Bliss said. She thought she heard a car in the driveway. “Listen, Erin’s home. I’ve got to go. Remember, not a word to anybody. I mean it too, Katharine. Not anybody.”
“As if I would,” Katharine said. “Anyway, nobody would believe it. Parker McGowan running away from home. And at his age.”
9
She was peering out the window, watching a black sedan with tinted windows pull into her driveway, then back out and leave, when the phone rang.
“Mom?” Static on the line. Erin must be using her cell phone. “Just wanted to let you know I’m going to the movies with a couple of girls from the store. Then we’ll probably go to Starbucks afterward. I’ll be home around midnight. Okay?”
Mary Bliss looked at the chili-roni casserole on top of the oven. “But I fixed dinner already. Your favorite. Anyway, didn’t you just go to a movie last night?”
“Mo-om. It’s summer. There’s nothing else to do. Anyway, just put dinner in the fridge. I’ll take it to work for lunch tomorrow. Is that cool?”
“I guess,” Mary Bliss said. “What are you going to see? Not another of those horrible slasher movies, I hope.”
Erin giggled. “I’m nearly eighteen, Mom. Too old for Disney. It’s the new Mel Gibson movie. Don’t worry, there’s hardly any slashing at all. And I won’t be late. Did Daddy call?”
Mary Bliss gulped and thought about what to say.
“Haven’t heard from him,” she said, her voice gay, even carefree.
“Well, did you figure out where he went? Did you ask Libby?”
&n
bsp; Mary Bliss’s throat constricted. “No, uh, Libby was out of the office all day.” Which was true.
Erin sighed. “What a rat. Daddy was supposed to take me to buy tires for the Honda tomorrow. Guess it’ll have to wait for next weekend.”
“Probably,” Mary Bliss said. She added new tires to the growing list of expenditures in her head. She’d have to find the money for the tires somehow. Couldn’t have Erin running around Atlanta on bald Firestones.
“Drive careful,” she said, and Erin promised, and they hung up.
Mary Bliss went into Parker’s office and got the big atlas down off the bookshelf. She took it back to the kitchen table, got the bottle of white wine out of the refrigerator, and filled up an iced tea glass with it.
She was running a finger down the map index, paused at the Azores, when someone rapped smartly at the back door.
Mary Bliss whirled around in her chair and saw a tall man in a white baseball cap standing there. The door was unlocked, of course. She was so used to leaving everything unlocked. Maybe that was where she’d gone wrong. Maybe she should have locked up tight, kept Parker at home where he belonged, instead of taking off for some island somewhere. But the door was unlocked, her husband was gone, and suddenly she felt incredibly vulnerable.
“Mary Bliss?” The man’s voice was apologetic. “It’s me, Randy Bowden. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Randy,” she said, her voice giddy. “Of course you didn’t scare me. My mind was just a million miles away is all.” Literally.
Her cheeks flaming, she got up and opened the door for her neighbor.
“How in the world are you?” she asked, her voice high and squeaky, taut with nervous tension.
Randy was in a bad state and they both knew it. There were deep circles under his eyes. His graying blonde hair was shaggy under the cap, and his shorts and T-shirt hung baggily on his already lanky frame. He’d lost at least five pounds since Memorial Day weekend, when she’d last seen him at the country club.
“I’m all right,” Randy said. It was his stock phrase. People didn’t know what to say to somebody whose life had gone to hell. “How are you?” he asked, for lack of anything better to say.
Little Bitty Lies Page 4