The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club: A Debutante Dropout Mystery

by McBride, Susan

  An honest-to-gosh smile threatened to crack on my lips, until I nipped that sucker in the bud.

  Well, at least I still had my sense of humor.

  It was either that or matricide, and I wasn’t all that keen on going to prison.

  Chapter 8

  By the time I got to Mother’s house on Beverly Drive in Highland Park, night had soundly fallen. The streetlamps cast a hazy glow as I slowed and turned into the circular drive. Windows gleamed through the dim and warmed the shadowed façade of the familiar two-story stucco as I approached, glancing up through the windshield to see light behind the sheers in Cissy’s sitting room.

  Good. She was awake.

  After I’d filled my belly with the take-out from Bubba’s, still warmly tucked in Styrofoam, I meant to have a heart-to-heart with Mother. She definitely had some ‘splainin’ to do, though I didn’t want to come down too hard on her. As upset as I was with her, I knew how much she hurt. In the words of my Paw Paw, “a powerful lot.”

  I parked smack in front of my old homestead, grabbed my keys, bag, and take-out, and hopped down from the Jeep. The night had cooled the air considerably, and I detected a faint whiff of fall on the breeze, though I knew it would still be months in coming, despite what the calendar said.

  A trickle of anxiety ran through me, but I swallowed it down and marched toward the front door and the two whitewashed terracotta lions that guarded it.

  I juggled my armload, freeing a hand to push the bell, though, like magic, the door pulled inward.

  Sandy Beck didn’t look at all surprised to see me, and she hustled me in. “I had a feeling you’d show up,” she said, “after I caught your mother on the phone when she should have been resting. Did she call you? I assume she did, as upset as she sounded. The part I overhead, anyway, which wasn’t much.”

  “No, she didn’t call, so it wasn’t me who upset her this time.” I set my bag down on the steps, keeping hold of the foam container, as she shepherded me into the kitchen. “But she probably didn’t have a chance to dial me up. She was too busy making trouble for Annabelle, who did happen to phone and nearly chewed my ear off. To make a long story short, Mother and I have an appointment at Belle Meade in the morning at nine, so I figured I’d spend the night.”

  “You’re that worried about Cissy, are you?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted, and she patted my hand. “I really am.”

  In a way that I hadn’t been since my father died.

  It had me rattled then, and it rattled me now.

  I tried not to dwell on my own shaky emotions and busied myself, getting my supper ready and wishing I’d brought something for Sandy, although she indicated she’d already eaten and had taken something up to Mother as well.

  My one-time babysitter and forever fairy godmother took a seat at the old oak table, while I retrieved a bottled water from the fridge and grabbed utensils from the drawer. Then I sat down with her and proceeded to eat straight from the container, using my fingers to snatch up a crispy-fried chicken breast.

  Light-headed with hunger, I buried my teeth in it, chewing and swallowing at a pace that champion eaters at state fairs across the country would surely envy. I’d gotten halfway through my meal before I realized how intently Sandy watched me.

  “What?” I mumbled and swiped at the grease on my chin with the back of my hand.

  Which prompted her to ask, “Would you like a napkin? Or would that be too civilized? I feel like I’m witnessing a leopard devouring zebra guts on the Learning Channel.”

  “I can’t help it, I’m weak with malnourishment,” I got out, after shoving a forkful of mashed potatoes down my throat. I hadn’t told her about losing my lunch in Sarah Lee Sewell’s azalea bushes.

  Sandy got up, went into the butler’s pantry, and returned with a pressed napkin.

  Linen, of course.

  Mother didn’t allow paper napkins in her house. A little la-di-dah, sure, but it was good for the environment, so I couldn’t fault her for it.

  “You are the strangest child,” she remarked, sitting down again. But there was such warmth in her voice when she said it, so I took no offense. I knew what she meant, though I preferred to think of myself as charmingly eccentric.

  When I’d finished and cleaned up, Sandy leaned back, hands in her lap. The comforting creases in her face puckered with concern.

  “So what did she tell you?” I asked.

  Sandy shook her head. “Not much. If you hadn’t tattled about the stolen mail and her threats to Annabelle, I wouldn’t have had any idea what’s going on. Once I got her to talk at all, she didn’t do much beyond describing everyone she’d seen at the church, what they were wearing, and, of course, who had Botox and who’d gone under the knife for real.”

  Normally, I’d find that reassuring.

  “What do you think? You know her better than anyone. Does she strike you as a little . . . off? Compared to the usual, I mean.”

  She let loose of my hand to tug at her brown cardigan, toying with one of the tiny pearl buttons. “I’ve gone through loss with your mother before, Andy, and she generally locks up her emotion where no one can see it. She’s very private that way. Then she’ll throw all her energy into a project, usually a charity fundraiser.”

  I kept quiet, listening.

  “Anyway, I offered to draw her a bath and bring her something to eat, but she waved me off. She told me she was tired and wanted to be alone for a spell. She didn’t mention anything about the funeral or what happened afterward, not at first.” Sandy paused, and a frown fell over her face. “But you had me worried enough that I fixed a tray with soup and that crusty bread from La Madeleine that she loves. She did sit down at her desk and picked at her food while she filled me in on the memorial service. Then I beat around the bush for a minute, before I got up the nerve to ask a few simple questions, to see if she was thinking straight.”

  I leaned my arms on the table and waited.

  “I said, ‘What year is this?’ And she said, ‘Why, Sandy, old girl, if you’ve forgotten the date, there’s a calendar right here on my desk.’”

  I bit my cheek to keep from grinning and had to remind myself this was serious business.

  “So next I asked, ‘Who’s the current president?’ She gave me one of those looks and said, ‘You know good and well who he is, and I’ll take the Fifth rather than remark upon his character, except to say he has a lovely mother.’”

  “Oh, boy,” I choked out. That was quintessential Cissy.

  Sandy shrugged. “I don’t know what’s going on with her, Andy, but she’s perfectly sane.”

  Or as sane as Mother got.

  “Thanks for trying.”

  She nodded. “She’s unexpectedly lost two dear friends, Andy. It’s rough on her, and it’ll take quite a while for her to get over it. That kind of thing throws even the strongest of us for a loop.”

  “I’m just so used to her being a steel magnolia.” With a spine full of rebar.

  “She is, Andy, but she’s also human.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe she just needs our love and support,” Sandy suggested, sage as ever. “Just bear with her, until this passes, like everything else.”

  That’s exactly what I’d advised Annabelle.

  Though it didn’t make it easier for any of us—or for Mother—in the meantime, did it?

  I scooted my chair back, causing a squeal across the floor. “I’m going up,” I said, but Sandy grabbed my arm.

  “Oh, honey, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. She may be sleeping. We shouldn’t disturb her.”

  “She’s not asleep. I saw the light on in her sitting room when I drove up.”

  “Well, all right.” Sandy released me, but didn’t look any too happy about my plans. “But if she is awake, please don’t keep her long.”

  “Don’t get her worked up, you mean.” I met her gaze, seeing precisely that warning in her eyes. She was afraid I’d start an argument. Pick a fight. Whi
ch might very well happen, if I got on her case about Annabelle. “But I really do need to discuss this situation with her . . .”

  “No, not tonight.” Sandy’s voice was soft, but firm enough that I knew not to contradict her. “Any serious conversation can wait until morning. She’s been through plenty today already. Let her be for now, Andy. Let her be.”

  My mouth opened instinctively, only I didn’t have another “but” left in me.

  She was right. Which stunk to high heaven. Unlike my mother, I had this primitive urge to get things out in the open, debate a point to death, until I felt some kind of closure.

  Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen here.

  “Okay, you win.” I sighed. “I won’t bring up Annabelle or anything else involving Belle Meade or Bebe or Sarah Lee. I’ll just go say goodnight, if I may.”

  “You certainly may.” Sandy smiled and cupped my chin in her palm, shaking gently. “That’s my good girl,” she said, as if I were a child.

  Though I guess I was, wasn’t I? Forever, no matter how much I grew up. I could be ninety years old, and I’d always be somebody’s baby.

  I left her there in the kitchen, making those homey noises that took me back to the days when I’d lived within these walls. I heard her humming, the whoosh of water coming on, the clink of dishes as she rinsed them, and the thwacks of cabinet doors and drawers being opened and shut.

  The sounds grew softer as I wandered off, toward the front stairwell through a paneled hallway.

  Sometimes I forgot how big the house was, after living in such close quarters. My condo wasn’t quite a thousand feet, small enough to fit in my mother’s living room, but it was plenty large enough for me.

  Scooping up my tote bag, I climbed the stairs, the slap of my flip-flops hushed on the Oriental runner, though the wood beneath serenaded me with its familiar groans and creaks.

  My free hand slid up the carved banister, the scent of orange polish drawn in with my every breath. I hadn’t lived in this house in a dozen years—and had always thought of it as Mother’s, not mine, when it came down to it—and still the subtlest nuances of the place clutched at me whenever I came back.

  As I emerged on the second floor landing, I turned my head instinctively toward my father’s den, wishing every time I passed that he would be in there, behind his big old desk, that I’d hear the rumble of his voice, calling out, “Is that you, pumpkin?”

  If I imagined, I could hear it still.

  I pushed my legs onward, toward the room that had been mine. Walking through the opened door, I crossed the silk rug to drop my bag on the bed, not bothering to switch on the light. The moon cast a pale glow through the windowpanes, though I could’ve worked my way around with my eyes closed and not bumped into a thing. I had every nook and cranny imprinted on my brain.

  The room appeared as it had always been: nothing moved, nothing changed. I knew that if I opened the closet door, I’d find the clothing I’d left behind, uniforms for Hockaday and glitzy rags for formal events, including a white Vera Wang gown in its zippered bag. The dress I would have worn at my debut, eternally preserved in plastic.

  Instead, I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders and tugged at the hem of my T-shirt, telling myself, “no arguments, no discussions of Belle Meade,” as I crossed the hallway to Mother’s closed door and knocked gently.

  I didn’t wait for her summons, but cracked open the door and stuck my head in. The light still burned in the sitting room, and one was on, as well, in the bedroom just beyond the dividing threshold.

  Except for the tick-tick of a clock, there was silence. Not a note of Mozart or the canned chatter of the TV.

  I went on tiptoe to peer through the graceful arch that separated the rooms of her suite. With only her bedside lamp glowing, I glanced about her antiques-appointed room, seeing no one, at first, and about to call out to her.

  Then I spotted her, still dressed in her mourning outfit—or most of it, anyway—curled like a child atop her pearl-pink duvet. It was unusual for her to have fallen asleep with the lights on, considering she always did everything in the proper order and had instructed me endlessly to “hang up your clothes before you rumple them.”

  “Mother?” I whispered and moved forward, rounding the great posts of her bed.

  She had taken off her shoes, which lay discarded on the carpet, and had removed her jacket, draped over the back of a chair. As I crept up to her side of the bed, I noted that she still wore her skirt and silk shell, the gray pearls draped around her neck, several beads of them resting in the hollow at her throat.

  Her blond hair fell untidily upon her pillows, and her hands were tucked up beneath her chin into fists.

  Despite its soft wattage, the lamp on her night table shone tellingly upon her, revealing what she hid so well in her every waking moment, her human-ness, her vulnerability; all the frailties no one glimpsed when her animation and the strength of her personality overrode any effects of time or heartbreak.

  If I had ever seen her so exposed, I could not recall when, and it struck a chord in me, hard and deep.

  Let her be, Sandy had told me, and I meant to do just that.

  I reached for the tasseled throw at her feet and pulled it from its folds and over her, softly, so as not to wake her.

  Bending to the lamp, I glanced once again at her, to the fingers curled tightly beneath her chin, and I saw something there, the glint of silver.

  It puzzled me until I looked down at the night-stand and realized something was missing. A scant few seconds passed before I realized what it was: a small Sterling frame that held my father’s picture from when he was a young man, handsome and fresh-scrubbed with a full head of hair.

  Oh, Mother.

  The sight had me blinking back tears and reminded me that I was hardly the only one whose day had sucked royally.

  I reached for the framed photograph, to remove it, lest she roll onto it in her sleep. But I retracted my hand before I got to it.

  Let her have it, if she needed it. Needed him.

  Just leave her be.

  I shut off the lamp and beat a hasty retreat, flicking off the lights in the sitting room as well, before closing Mother’s door. I leaned my back against it, my heart beating as if I’d run the fifty-yard dash. I nibbled on my lower lip, something tugging hard at me from inside.

  It was a pang right in the middle of my chest, and it wasn’t heartburn from my fast-food dinner.

  The ache stayed with me as I went back to my old room to get ready for bed, and I figured it would be with me in the morning . . . and the morning after that, until this craziness was finished.

  I wanted things to be back to normal, for Mother to be her old self again. I wanted someone to set things right.

  Though I couldn’t do anything except worry.

  No wonder Mother missed my daddy. He would fix this, if he were here.

  But that wasn’t going to happen, no matter how hard we both wished it.

  So I brushed my teeth and washed my face, removed my contacts, tugged off my jeans, and climbed into the same canopied bed I’d crawled into a million times before (most of them when I wasn’t yet old enough to vote). The ruffled spread tickled my chin, so I pushed it down, adjusting the stack of pillows in their lace-trimmed sleeves comfortably behind my back.

  The ceiling light off, I used the lamp on the nightstand to read, opening up Stress and the Single Girl to the next chapter. I had to hold it so close the pages bumped my nose, as I’d forgotten to pack my glasses.

  I thumbed past the second tip for lowering my stress quotient, which involved snapping a rubber band on my wrist whenever I felt anxious. That sounded painful and no better than grinding my teeth. Besides, wasn’t that what smokers were supposed to do when they craved a cigarette? It wasn’t like I was fighting an addiction to nicotine.

  Tip number three seemed tamer, more up my alley.

  The gist of it was this: “Take a deep breath and repeat an empowering statement
like ‘I feel calm’ ten times, until you believe it.”

  Surely I could handle that.

  I set the opened book on my chest, deciding to give it a whirl. I drew enough air into my lungs to fill a flat tire, my inflated rib cage pushing the book into a tent. Then I let it out slowly, bit by bit, telling myself all the while, “I feel calm, I feel calm, I feel calm,” and I nearly did.

  Until my cell rang, and I jumped out of bed, knocking my self-help tome to the floor as I snatched my phone off the table.

  “Oh, thank goodness, it’s you,” came out of my mouth far too quickly when I spotted Malone’s cell phone number on the tiny screen, but I didn’t care.

  “You’re really at your mother’s, aren’t you?” he asked. “Because I tried the condo first.”

  “I am.”

  “My God, what’s wrong? And be straight with me, Andy.”

  Because he knew for damn sure I’d be home otherwise, sleeping in my own bed, even if he wasn’t there.

  “Um, okay, do you have an hour? I can hardly begin to explain,” I said, then proceeded to do just that, spilling everything that had happened since he’d left: the memorial service for Bebe Kent, the oddly cheerful reception at Belle Meade, Cissy finding Sarah Lee, and Mother’s fears that her friends had been snuffed prematurely.

  When I’d finished, he was so quiet that I thought I’d lost him again.

  “You there?” I asked. “Brian, hello?”

  “Whoa, Andy.” I could imagine him nervously pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Is Cissy okay?”

  “I’m not sure, and it scares me,” I whispered into the receiver. “I think it’s too much all at once, you know? A shock to her system and all that.”

  “I wish I were with you,” he said, and I felt another pang in my chest, a variation on the ache I’d felt before. “You need me, and I’m gone until Wednesday.”

  “What do you mean, Wednesday?”

  He was supposed to be back the next day. He’d told me so before he left. Was someone upstairs deliberately messing with my karma? Playing me for kicks? Because it wasn’t very funny.