Lunch at the Piccadilly

by Edgerton, Clyde

  “They need the sheriff down at Shady Rest. That’s who they need down at Shady Rest.”

  Carrie drinks from her can of Diet Coke, swats at a fly. “Did you go in Mr. Andrews’s room today?”

  “No. But I’ll tell you one thing: when he kick me, I kick him back.”

  “Somebody’ll write you up too.”

  Latricia finishes her potato salad. “I don’t care. Oh, listen. You know what Miss Avery told me?”

  “What?”

  “She told me the preacher man masturbated in front of her.”

  “Naw.”

  “She did. That’s what she said.”

  “You don’t believe it, do you?”

  “Why would she come up with something like that?”

  “She making that up. Something’s not right about her.” Carrie stretches her arms over her head. “I got to go in.”

  What about Carl?

  ANNA DOESN’T KNOW what to do. Rhodes has asked her to keep an eye on L. Ray Flowers. And L. Ray’s niece recently sent her a letter in support of institutionalizing L. Ray—something Anna has no control over. The niece, Gladys Jenkins, wrote about L. Ray’s changing his name to William Searcy before heading to the Midwest as an evangelist many years earlier. And she enclosed a photocopy of an old newspaper clipping:

  Searcy is being sought by authorities after Silvia Parsons’s husband filed a complaint yesterday. Parsons died after walking off a high stage while being “healed” by Mr. Searcy at a religious service in the Barry Winston Community Center on Saturday night. Searcy was slowly walking forward across a high stage with his hands on Mrs. Parsons’s head as she walked backward, when he stopped and stood still, the “miracle” finished. But she kept walking backward, off the stage, hit her head on the base of a flag stand, and died immediately. The drop from the stage was significant, about six feet, according to a videotape of the event obtained by WNCC. The station will play the tape on tonight’s news broadcast at 6:00.

  Because L. Ray brightens the lives of several of the ladies, Anna doesn’t want to bring Mr. Rhodes up to date about L. Ray’s past life. She doesn’t want to tell Carl, either.

  And what about Carl? He’s come back around to talk since the note and didn’t mention the note, but it had clearly hurt him. She should certainly talk about it, if he can’t. She wishes she hadn’t written it. And what about Danny? He wants to get married. He’s a proven father, and a good one. He has a steady job and has recently been promoted. And he’s commanding, in a way. She likes that. She imagines he’ll be very good in bed, but she’s not ready for that yet. Carl? In bed? He’d probably be looking at his hand the whole time. And she doesn’t want to hurt Carl any more. In fact, with him, there are probably possibilities; he is so faithful to his aunt. How could he not make a good father? If she could get promoted—a couple of times—she wouldn’t feel this strong need to get married, something she’s afraid she’s not ready for.

  And should she tell anyone what Darla Avery has been saying? No. Clearly, it didn’t happen.

  Fat from Shame

  “I DON’T THINK that’s any of your business,” little Maudie says to Beatrice. “I don’t think anybody ought to be asking me about my bank account.” She thrusts her head forward and gets her rocker going.

  I wish they wouldn’t fuss, thinks Lil.

  “Well,” says Beatrice, “we’re all in this together, and somebody needs to be asking some questions. If we’re going to travel with Mr. Flowers, then we’ll need a little money.”

  Lil thinks about the Everglades. She will be able to see all kinds of exotic birds, birds with such bright colors.

  “I’m not traveling with anybody,” says Maudie, “especially him.”

  “Look how tall those trees are,” says Beatrice.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says little Maudie.

  “Oh, look, Lil, there’s Carl,” says Beatrice.

  Lil is glad to see him but at the same time dreads a conversation about her driving. It’s bound to come. Maybe if she went ahead and told him about that boy from Tad’s first wife and how she feels betrayed—maybe he’d feel sorry for her a little bit. She doesn’t want to beg, to beg about anything, but giving up driving would be the first mile of a highway that leads to a permanent spot at Rose-haven, and there is no good reason she knows of that she can’t—in a few weeks, a month at the most—move back to her apartment and take up where she left off.

  Little Maudie slips forward in her chair and slowly stands, reaching for her cane.

  Carl is carrying a small paper bag of apples, which he hands to Lil. “I brought you a little something. Get you off them Tootsie Rolls. Hey there, Mrs. Lowe.”

  Maudie stops, turns, and speaks. “Afternoon, Carl. I’m going in. I’m tired of hearing about the preacher man.”

  The automatic front door closes behind Maudie, then opens, and a couple of aides emerge, headed home. Mrs. Talbert eyes their shoes, relieved that they are wearing white lace-ups. The other day, one came in wearing some kind of flip-flop things, and she’d rolled her chair all the way in to the admissions office and complained. And they said they’d do something about it too.

  “Carl,” says Beatrice, “have you heard Mr. Flowers’s idea for a new song?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  One of the best things of all, thinks Lil, is that Carl is interested in playing music again.

  “He’s going to tell you all about it, I’m sure,” says Beatrice. “It’s the funniest thing. Here, sit down. He was sitting at our table last night. Maudie don’t like him. He’s started sitting at our table, and I’d cleaned my plate, and I says, ‘My mama and daddy made us all clean our plates every meal we ever had, because they didn’t want the first morsel to go to waste.’ Because it’s true, see—they did. All of us. And I’m not what you’d call thin. Never have been, really. So I looked at my plate and said what I always say. I said, ‘I guess I’m just fat from shame.’ And Mr. Flowers about died laughing, and, well, I want you to know he said he’s going to get you to write a song called ‘Fat from Shame.’ I told him it could say, ‘Fat from shame, my mama is to blame’!”

  Lil thinks about her own upbringing. It was true in her house too. She notices that Clara has arrived.

  Clara says, “That’s Mr. Flowers’s song he’s going to get you to write, Carl. He’s a something. I’m glad he’s here, because this is one hell of a boring place. I had to stick myself with a needle to get something going around here yesterday.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Clara,” says Beatrice. “It’s unbecoming.”

  Clara slowly lowers herself into the seat Maudie has just left. “I was in my bathroom and saw something shiny down on the floor and come to find out it was a straight pin. So I says to myself, I can’t just leave that there. I’ve got to get it up. I held on to the back of the commode and bent down, but my fingers won’t work worth a damn half the time, all knotted up like they are. So I tried first one thing and then the other. I tried dropping a blouse down on it and then picking up the blouse, but that didn’t work.”

  I would have got down on my knees and back up again, thinks Lil.

  “So then I realized that if I took that commode extender off the commode seat and sat down on the commode, I could bend over and reach it while I was sitting down, and not hurt my legs so much. So I did that. But I still couldn’t reach it, because I’d pushed it away. But then I was so low to the floor, sitting down, I couldn’t get up, and I knew I was going to have to pull that damn cord.

  “Then I decided that I wouldn’t pull the cord until I got the pin up. Which was a mistake. Had I been thinking, I’d pulled the cord first. So anyway, I started working on it again. Then I got my idea: Step on the goddamned thing. Get it up that way. I got them thick-ass calluses on the bottom of my feet.”

  “Clara!” says Beatrice. “My stars.”

  “So that’s what I did—worked my foot a little bit, and here comes the pin, stuck in
that big callus, but not deep enough to hurt, see. What the hell am I going to do now? I says. I can’t reach my foot. That’s when I pulled the cord. And nobody came. Which is why I should have done that first. I pulled it again, and finally somebody comes and gets the pin out of my foot, and they want to know how in the world it got in there. I didn’t even bother to tell the whole story.”

  “My goodness,” says Beatrice, “you were in a real predicament. Why didn’t you just pull the cord for them to come get the pin up off the floor?”

  “Well . . . because I wanted to do it myself. That’s what’s wrong with so many old people. Or just people. There’s more laziness around here than birds.”

  “You know,” says Beatrice, “I don’t honestly see how you can see so good.”

  “My good eye is one hell of a good eye. That’s how.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  No, not that, thinks Lil.

  “Sure,” says Clara.

  “. . . Never mind.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. I forgot.”

  “So,” says Clara, “when are you going to take us shopping again, Lil?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She looks at Carl to see if he has heard. She doesn’t want any driving talk. “I would like to go shopping again, though.” She does not want any driving talk. “Maybe we can find that flag.”

  “I might get me another lawn chair,” says Clara. “I can fold them up and put them in the closet until all my nieces and nephews come at the same time. Except if one did happen to show up, I’d be so surprised I think I’d drop dead.”

  INSIDE, LIL SITS in her La-Z-Boy and Carl sits in the Kennedy rocker. He glances at the steady wobble of her hand.

  “Now, how much money did you say I have?” Lil asks.

  “Around ninety-five thousand dollars total, when you cash in those war bonds.”

  She stares at him as if she were working on a puzzle. “And how much rent do I have to pay?”

  “For here?”

  “No. My apartment.”

  “I don’t know. It’s drawn automatically from your checking account. I can’t remember. Around eight hundred a month, I think.”

  “It’s more than that here, isn’t it?”

  “Considerably. Yes.” He thinks about getting some kind of power of attorney, but since she can still sign her name and has her wits about her, more or less, he figures there’s no need to rush it. All that could be embarrassing to her. It was to his mother.

  “Ninety-five thousand?” she says, frowning at him as though she can hardly believe it. Her wig is a little bit off to one side.

  “You need to straighten your wig. Turn it this way just a little. No, the other way. Good. Yes ma’am. Five CDs with ten to fifteen thousand in each one, and the bank says those bonds are worth about thirty thousand, and then about five thousand in your checking account.”

  “That’s not so bad, is it?”

  “No ma’am, it’s not.”

  “Thank goodness for Tad’s pension.”

  “Yeah, well, the government does that. I think the post office is pretty good to its people. How long did he work there?”

  She looks at him with a kind of frown, and says, “Did you bring my Tootsie Rolls?”

  “No, you’ve got Tootsie Rolls over there. I brought a few apples.”

  “Will you bring me my file box from the apartment?”

  “I forgot about it. I sure will.”

  “I need to go through it. Don’t you want an apple?”

  “Sure, I’ll take one.”

  “How about that ‘Fat from’ . . . what is it?”

  “Shame.”

  “Are you going to write another song?”

  “I guess, as long as L. Ray keeps collecting ideas.”

  “Collecting items?”

  “Collecting ideas.”

  “IDs?”

  “Ideas.”

  “Oh . . . collecting ideas. For what?”

  “For songs.”

  “I guess he is. Would you put that box of Kleenex over here? Wonder who invented Kleenex.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did I pay for this wig?”

  “About forty dollars. Why?” Carl wonders why she’s so talkative. Have they given her some kind of medication?

  “I want to give Reverend Flowers some money for his new religion.”

  “Has he asked you for money?”

  “Oh, no. No. But Clara thinks he’s on to something with his new religion, or whatever it is. And I do too. Once he gets it started, we might get a chance to travel a little bit, and I want to help him out. Clara thinks he hung the moon and we’ve been talking about ways to help him out. That little Maudie don’t like him. You’ve met him, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, of course. We were just talking to him. Just now out on the porch. We’ve been with him out there several times, and he’s teaching me to play bass guitar—or taught me. You know, all the songwriting?” Carl notices one of her eyelids is drooping. It hasn’t been like that, has it? A tiny stroke?

  “That’s right. That’s right. Yes. I remember. Well, he’s so ‘determed,’ like Uncle Sorrell used to say, and sincere, and well grounded. What do you think about him?”

  “I think it’s going to take a little more to start a world religion, or movement, or whatever it is, than just a few people. I think he may be a little bit off his rocker, actually. On that, anyway.”

  “Well, I admire somebody who goes after what they want. Hand me my checkbook.”

  “How much do you want to give him?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you ought to have some idea.”

  “I’m just not sure about giving him money.”

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “I do.”

  “Well, give me a number.”

  “Ten dollars?”

  “Oh. Okay. Write it out and I’ll sign it.”

  Carl writes the check. She signs it very slowly, then asks Carl to pass it on to Mr. Flowers. “And listen,” she says, “I been aiming to ask you to bring me that metal file box in the bedroom closet and let me look through it. I’ve about forgot what all I got in there.”

  “Okay. We just decided that.”

  “And I want to look at my will. Did I tell you my will leaves everything I got to you?”

  “No ma’am, you didn’t. I appreciate it.” Carl thinks about what he might do with sixty or seventy thousand dollars. New truck. But she might keep living and run out of money. At the present rate she’ll run out of money in just a few years. And she can easily live that long. If he completely neglects her, she won’t live as long as if he keeps looking after her. Now where in the world did that come from? he thinks.

  “You’ve been good to me,” she says. “I always wanted a child of my own, but it never worked out that way. Now I’d like to give some money to Mr. Flowers.”

  “We just did that.”

  “Oh. Okay. How much?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Well, we’ve already written the check. See?”

  “Oh. Margie Lee’s husband forgot just about everything he ever knew and ended up driving to Traveler’s Rest that day, and she had to go get him. You remember that?”

  “I sure do. And look, that reminds me: we need to talk about this whole business of driving.”

  “It was such an awful thing. Nobody knew where he was.”

  Carl notices that she’s looking at the door, not at him. She turns her head, looks at him, and frowns. “Carl, you know good and well I can drive as good as you can. The government gave me my license and hasn’t seen reason to take it. I want you to let me drive out in the country some, where there’s not so much traffic. Out to the lake, maybe. Can we do that one day? You’ll be with me. I don’t like driving in a parking lot, for goodness’ sakes.”

  “Well . .
. I don’t know.”

  “It’s the saddest thing, and I’m so glad Mr. Flowers is looking into all that.”

  “Into what?”

  “Getting some help for old people. People, visitors, come in here and won’t even look at you. I thank the Lord for you every day.”

  “Well, I’m glad to do what I can.”

  “And I want you to get some kind of safe in here—a little safe with a combination, because I’m missing some Tootsie Rolls and a pen. So see how much a little safe costs. Now, I think I need a little nap.”

  “Well, we don’t . . . you don’t have to give up on your apartment right yet. You know, we said we’d see what the doctor says. You get you a nap, and I’ll see you soon.” There is some way he can’t name in which he doesn’t want her to give up. But in another way he does.

  AS HE LEAVES, Carl finds Mrs. Talbert in her wheelchair, sitting just outside the front door, as usual. He thinks of concrete lions set onto the stoops of courthouses. Where is the pale lady, the one usually by the wall?

  Mr. Rhodes, just out of his big black car, parked beneath the drive-under, is coming toward him. “Mr. Turnage, can we sit here on the porch just a minute, if you have time?”

  “Sure.”

  Mr. Rhodes leads Carl to two rockers.

  “Now, Mr. Turnage, in my business, controversy hurts—big-time. I don’t mind our assisting Mr. Flowers, but Mr. Flowers now knows where I stand and so that’s that. You may or may not be aware of his past troubles.”

  “No, I’m not. I—”

  “Mr. Rhodes?” Mrs. Lowe’s niece, Emily, has walked up. “My aunt would like to get—oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?”

  “No problem,” says Mr. Rhodes, standing. “What can I do for you?”

  Carl stands and steps away. He doesn’t like Emily. She’s too gushy. She reminds him of his high school chemistry teacher, who dressed the same way: long, loose purple, orange, or blue skirts and blouses and substantial clay jewelry. Chemistry is where he used to go to sleep all the time, because she didn’t care. What was her name? He’d wake up, and drool had run down his desk and left a big wet circle on his shirt. That was some good sleeping.