by Tamar Myers
The six pairs of eyes returned to Gretchen, who ceremoniously closed her menu, pushed the horn-rims back into place, and then cleared her throat.
“No,” she said.
The major has a clipped mustache, not unlike Hitler’s, except that a few hairs on each end are allowed to grow. He was twisting these furiously.
Gretchen held up a calming, well-manicured hand. “But Purvis can’t claim a no-return policy that doesn’t apply to everyone. Either he changes it, or we boycott him.”
Our leader had spoken. Everyone nodded, including Wynnell. Then everyone turned and stared at me, as if I was somehow responsible for Purvis’s bias.
“Don’t look at me,” I wailed. “Purvis has a crush on me, that’s what.”
Several mouths gaped. Mercifully Peggy’s was not one of them.
“It is not reciprocated!”
They continued to stare.
“All right, I’ll tell you everything. I went to see him this morning about the vendor of my silver, and he was really nasty. Then he came over this afternoon to apologize, and that’s when I asked for my money back. I was just as surprised as you that he cut me a deal. And I was even more surprised when he said he had a crush on me. I didn’t even have an inkling about it until then. In fact, I thought he disliked me. He always growls when I’m around.”
“That’s a sure sign of affection,” Bob growled, and he stole a glance at Rob.
Peggy swallowed the last of her quesadilla. “How long has this favoritism been going on?”
Our waitress appeared then, pad and pen in hand, but I vigorously waved her away. “It hasn’t! And just to show my solidarity with y’all, I’m not going to accept the partial refund.”
There were several murmurs of approval. I tried not to detect their sources. Few things can stand more solidly between friendships than twenty thousand dollars.
“I’ll bite the expense,” I wailed bitterly, hoping that someone would rush to my defense. No one did.
I tried to force a few tears to illustrate my anguish, but Peggy had moved the pepper out of sniffing reach. And while pinching myself in the soft spot behind my knee sometimes helps keep me awake, it did nothing to stimulate my ducts.
Gretchen tapped on her half-empty tea glass with her fork. “Enough business. Let’s order.”
“I’ll second that,” Peggy said, and ordered seconds.
The trip to Pennsylvania was still on. Purvis was getting the best care available at Mercy South. There was certainly nothing the four of us could do to help. His two sons, Jimbo and Skeet, could run the business for him until he was back on his feet—well, actually they couldn’t, but Purvis sure the heck wasn’t going to allow any of us to prowl around his auction barn in his absence.
Unfortunately, our supper at Applebee’s, as emotionally necessary as it was, had taken far too much of my valuable time. Dropping Dmitri off at Happy Paws Pet Motel was out of the question. It was already closed for the day, and Miss Kitty Blattner, the woman who runs it, never accepts “guests” before noon. Dmitri adores Miss Kitty’s establishment with as much fervor as he abhors every other kennel I’ve ever tried to leave him with. Since we wanted to leave Charlotte by eight, that meant my ten-pound bundle of joy was going to get his first trip north of the Mason-Dixon line.
I still had to drive down to Rock Hill and check on Mama’s house and the kids. A lot of folks prefer to take I-485 to I-77 south, but I find that it takes no more time, and is just as pleasant to turn left out of Applebee’s parking lot and take State Route 21 straight down to Rock Hill, where it becomes Cherry Road, the town’s main drag. Sure, there are some stoplights and a few stop signs between Carolina Place Mall and Rock Hill, but there is a lot less traffic. There is certainly more to see along the state route.
It was dusk when I got to Rock Hill and the bright lights of Cherry Road made my hometown seem much larger than it is. Rock Hill may have only forty-five thousand people, but it has everything a body could want. Howard Johnson’s, Denny’s, Holiday Inn, Shoney’s, Office Depot, K-Mart, Payless Shoes—you could have plonked me down in Las Vegas and it would have taken a couple of minutes to figure out I was somewhere else.
I turned left at Love’s Plaza and then made a right on Eden Terrace. Mama lives on down past Winthrop Stadium, near the intersection with Myrtle. It is the same house my parents bought after they were first married, and the place I was born. While it may be one of the more modest houses on the street, it is still a desirable address. Eden Terrace and Myrtle are the dwelling places of the Old Guard of Rock Hill. These are not necessarily rich folks—although some are—but people whose Rock Hill roots go back at least two generations. And because it is the South, it is generations, not years that count. Mama claims to have befriended an octogenarian widow who moved to Myrtle Drive from another part of Rock Hill and was very well received. When the silly woman revealed that she had been born in Michigan, and moved to Rock Hill as an infant, you would have thought that Sherman had been resurrected and was planning a second coming. Mama’s new friend had to sell her Myrtle Drive house and move to the Meadow Lakes II subdivision in shame.
That said, I was disturbed by the number of cars I saw parked along the street near Mama’s house. Folks on Eden Terrace are not given to partying during the week. Either someone died, or someone was about to. Then I saw that Mama’s driveway was not only filled with cars, but there was one parked on the lawn in her petunia bed. Of course I panicked. But the second I opened my car door I could hear, as well as feel, the pulsating bass of rock music.
So Mama had not run off to Dayton to become an Episcopal nun! I should have been that lucky. To the contrary, Mozella Hayes Wiggins had become a party animal. Her dramatic good-bye had been a ruse, the silver tea set nothing more than a balm to assuage her guilty conscience as she desecrated my father’s memory by turning their home into a den of iniquity.
I double-parked beside a Ford Festiva that had seen better days and strode across the lawn like an avenging angel. Had there been a stick lying around I would have snatched it up with the intention of driving the money-changers from my daddy’s temple. You can bet I didn’t ring the doorbell.
8
It was my turn to have a heart attack. Those weren’t Mama’s friends bebopping around her living room—not unless she had slipped further than I thought. My mother might be a bulb short of a chandelier, but she wasn’t so far gone that she would mess with jailbait. The lithe male body gyrating shirtless just in front of me was less than two decades old. I was on the verge of backing out quietly and then fetching the police, when I noticed that the attractive girl mirroring his undulations resembled my daughter, Susan.
First I prayed for patience, and then I flipped the light switch several times.
“Raid!” someone shouted.
There was an assortment of cries and a scuffling of feet as over fifty young people, unfamiliar with the layout of Mama’s house, stampeded for the back door. When the dust had settled, so to speak, only two delinquents remained.
“Charlie?” I asked, blinking in disbelief.
“Mama!”
“It isn’t what you think,” Susan wailed.
My hands took familiar positions at my hips. It was worse than I had initially thought. Never mind the cellophane cyclone that had obviously hit the room, spewing chips and nachos on every surface, only to have them ground into the couches and carpet by denim-clad buttocks and odiferous sneakers. Forget the smorgasbord of salsas and dips that followed the chips. Ditto for the soft drink cans. What really mattered was the flotilla of beer cans and the armada of cheap wine bottles.
I picked up a Coors Light can. It wasn’t quite empty and warm beer dribbled off my fingers and splashed on the floor. The suds on the rug more likely helped than hurt.
“Can you explain this?”
Charlie was as white as the inside of my elbow in January. “It was all Susan’s idea.”
“Bastard rat fink,” she hissed.
�
�Just like Adam blamed Eve,” I said to Charlie.
Susan took that as a sign of encouragement. “He put up half the money and made some of the phone calls. In fact, he wanted to hire a stripper, but I said no.”
Charlie turned the color of an uncooked shrimp. “Liar. I didn’t say anything about a stripper. That was Jason’s idea.”
“Children!”
My two college students snapped to attention, proving that it’s all in the tone of the voice—that, and an unspoken threat to call their father, Buford the Money Bags. I wanted desperately to sit now, but not desperately enough to act as a canvas.
“How long has this party being going on?”
Susan shrugged. “Just after my third period class, I guess. Grandma stopped by before that and told me she was leaving. Is that cool or what? My grandma the nun!”
“It’s as cool as a jalapeno in hell.”
My sarcasm was lost on Susan. “Does this mean I get to call Grandma ‘Sister’?”
“Speaking of your grandma, does she know about this?”
Charlie shook his head. “Susan made us wait an hour to make sure Grandma was on her way to see you.”
“Fink! Fink! Fink!”
“Liar! You said we wouldn’t get caught, Susan.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t get caught hours ago. It’s only because your grandmother is so well liked that you got away with it this long. The neighbors undoubtedly thought this had something to do with her. If they had known it was just you kids, they would have called the police right away.”
“Oh damn,” Charlie said. “The booze.”
“Ah, back to the booze,” I said, searching for a tone they wouldn’t tune out, “I am really very disappointed. In both of you.”
“I’m almost twenty-one,” Susan said, digging her toe into the crusted carpet.
“Your birthday is eight months away, dear. Charlie is just barely nineteen. Besides, that really isn’t the point. All those cars out there”—I waved my arms—“had North Carolina plates. Those weren’t Winthrop kids, were they?”
“Some were,” Charlie said. “My roommate was here. And my biology lab partner and her roommate.”
“We grew up in Charlotte,” Susan said, her eyes half-closed in defiance. “Where do you think most of our friends live?”
“So, they’re driving home now with a few beers under their belts? They could kill somebody, or get killed themselves, you know. How would you feel then?”
Charlie hung his head. Bless his heart, he has always been fairly easy to shame.
Susan opened her eyes. The muscles along her jaw were twitching.
“Then that’s your fault, Mama. You’re the one who scared them away.”
I took my own oft-given advice and counted to ten under my breath. I did it again in Spanish. Then I tried it in German but only got as far as five.
“Did Grandma give you permission to have a party?” I asked quietly.
Susan squared her shoulders. “She gave me a key.”
“I see. And what did she say when she gave it to you?”
“She asked me to water her plants and bring in the mail until you had a chance to get down here. And she said I could come over and chill out if I needed to. The dorm gets on my nerves.”
I remembered six through ten in German. “But she didn’t give you permission to throw a party, did she?”
“She didn’t say I couldn’t”
Charlie raised his head. “You said she did!”
My daughter’s eyes became mere slits. “I hate you, you spoiled little mama’s boy. I shouldn’t have even told you.”
“Shut your big fat mouth!” Charlie screamed.
They were seven and nine again. Their adult bodies sat in classes where Proust was discussed, and examined tissue samples under microscopes, but within the petri dish of the family, they were fighting over who broke the knob off the television and who ratted on whom. And here I was still moderating—no, make that facilitating—their fights.
I sat down on Mama’s newest sofa. It had originally been powder blue to harmonize with everything else in the pastel room. Frankly, the guacamole and salsa made it come alive. No doubt they would do the same for my khaki skirt. So be it. I was just too pooped to pop.
My disregard for my clothes amused Charlie. Susan was a harder nut to crack, but that didn’t matter. I neither wanted to amuse nor mollify them. There was a job to be done, and by golly, they were going to do it.
“Look for leaf bags in the garage,” I said to Charlie. “You,” I said to Susan, “get Grandma’s vacuum and bring all the attachments.”
They both stared, their mouths wide open.
Susan was the first to recover. “Is that it?”
“Don’t be silly, dear. You’ll be scrubbing and cleaning ’til the cows come home. The wild horses too.”
“Aren’t you going to punish us or anything?” Charlie asked.
“How? Send you to your dorm room?”
“You could tell Daddy,” Susan said warily.
I smiled. “I could. And maybe I will. But let’s see how this goes first. Telling Daddy isn’t going to get Grandma’s house back in shape.”
Charlie pointed to the couch and shook his head. “That’s never coming clean.”
“Then I guess y’all are going to have to save up your spending money and buy her a new one.”
“No fair,” Susan said, and then clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Clean!” I ordered.
They got back to work. Four hours later Mama’s house looked like it had been hit by Hurricane Hugo, instead of fifty college-age kids. It was a definite improvement. The rest of the job just had to wait until I returned from Pennsylvania.
Before I kicked the kids out and locked the door, I told them each that I loved them. I added that next time I would not hesitate to call the Rock Hill police. Then I pocketed the key.
The midnight phone call began as part of my dreams. It was a call from Mama. She said she was calling from Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. She had both kids with her. Susan and Charlie had been recruited by the Mafia to infiltrate the blackjack tables, posing as dealers. Somehow, at a given signal, my children were to rob the casino and escape in a hot air balloon shaped like a woodchuck. In the meantime Mama was going to distract everyone by doing a striptease act to songs from the forties. Did I want a piece of the action?
I only briefly considered it and then remembered that Caesar’s Palace had been torn down. The dream rapidly dissolved into a realization that a real phone was ringing beside my bed, and since it was so late, something awful had surely happened.
“What’s wrong?” I practically shrieked into the receiver.
“Abby, we need to talk.”
“Greg?” I glanced at the clock. “It’s one-thirty in the morning!”
“Oh, did I wake you?”
There was no time for sarcasm. “Is it the children? They promised—”
“No, and it’s not your precious mama, either. It’s us.”
“Us? You woke me up in the middle of the night to talk about us? Do you have any idea how frightening it is to wake up to a ringing phone?”
“That’s part of the problem, Abby. If everything was like it should be, I’d be there beside you. I wouldn’t need to call.”
“We’ve been over that a million times, Greg. I don’t want to sleep with you until after we’re married.”
Actually, I did want to sleep with him. I had never desired anyone as much as I did Greg, and that included Buford back when I was a walking collection of collegiate hormones. My urges, however, were going to wait until after that plain gold band was officially slipped on my finger.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been thinking that maybe you and I need to take a little break from each other. I have a lot of vacation saved up, so I thought maybe I’d head on down to the Keys and fish for grouper.”
I sat up in bed and turned on the light. This was not lying in the dark kind of news.
<
br /> “What does that mean?” I asked.
“Grouper is a kind of fish, Abby. They’re—”
“I know what a grouper is,” I snapped. “What do you mean about us needing a break? And what about our honeymoon to Jamaica? We can’t go if you use up all your vacation time.”
I hate to admit it, but I was both hurt and excited. How dare the man need time away from me? But since he did, he could hardly object to my jaunt up to Pennsylvania.
“Jamaica will use up just a week,” Greg said. “And Abby, you know that we’ve been missing more than hitting lately. I think that being apart might give us a new perspective.”
“I see. Well then, if you’re going to be deep-sea fishing in the Keys, you won’t have any objection to me taking a trip to Pennsylvania.”
In the ensuing silence the population of India doubled and Michael Jackson learned to sing bass.
“You’re not going to Hernia, are you?”
“It’s a quilt-buying trip, Greg. Wynnell and the girls are coming with me.”
“Abby, keep your nose out of police business.”
“I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. You just make sure you keep your nose in a bait bucket.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? And when are you taking this trip? Is this something you’ve been planning all along?”
“I started planning it yesterday, and we leave”—I glanced again at the clock—“in just over six hours. So, dear, I really have to get off the phone.”
“When were you going to tell me? Before or after I worried my head off and got the SWAT out there to break down your door?”
“Don’t ever worry your head off, dear. It’s too cute. You’d be hard put to come up with a quality replacement. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really have to go back to sleep.”
I hung up. Then I did something I’d never dare do before—I unplugged the phone.
I assure you that I set my alarm clock. It just didn’t do any good. Somehow I managed to shut it off and I was sound asleep when the doorbell rang promptly at eight. I didn’t hear that either.