by Cassia Leo
“But that’s great. She’s doing better, then?”
Beatrice’s face crumpled, her own mascara streaming from her lashes. “Not exactly, honey.”
Stella whirled around. When her feet hit pavement, she broke into a run. She’d known there would be a reckoning, just not that it would come so fast.
***
2: Visiting Grandma Angie
“STOP. Stop right there.”
Stella halted in the doorway to Grandma Angie’s house, footsore, wet, and hurting in forty-seven places. “What?”
Vivian, Stella’s mother, blocked the foyer. “You look like a whore on a bender. What were you thinking, walking in, makeup down your face, soaking wet—and where are your shoes?”
Stella tried to push past, but Vivian stood firm. “I’m serious, Stella. You are not going to upset your grandmother with your appearance. Surely you weren’t at work this way.”
“I got caught in the rain coming here.”
Vivian sighed. “Go home and fix yourself up. Grandmother doesn’t need to see you like this.”
“What’s going on? Why is she home?”
Vivian grasped Stella’s arm and led her to the kitchen. She snatched a paper towel and wet it at the sink. “It’s home hospice.”
“What does that mean?”
Vivian held Stella’s chin and began wiping her face like she was three years old. “So much mascara. Good God, child.”
“What is home hospice?” Stella tried to pull away, but her mother persisted, rubbing the rough cloth under her eyes and down her cheeks.
Vivian set the paper towel on the counter. “It means she’s come home to die.”
Stella turned to the kitchen table and sat on one of the straight-backed chairs that had been there since before she was born. She ran her fingers along several teeth marks in the wooden seat, left by her sister. “No one told me she was dying.”
“You knew she had cancer.”
“She seemed fine on the phone.”
“She didn’t want you to know.”
Grandma hadn’t told her. Stella hadn’t seen her for a couple of months, but still, she’d seemed mostly the same, well, maybe a little thinner. “Why isn’t she fighting it? Why aren’t they doing anything?”
“She’s been fighting. She lost.”
“Before she went to the home?” Her head buzzed. She’d been utterly betrayed. The home was supposed to be temporary, for her to do rehab and get strong again.
“No, she kept the chemo going. She was too weak to get around.”
“I would have taken care of her.”
“She knew that. She wanted you to live your life.”
Stella gripped the table, angry at herself. She should have taken Grandma’s car keys and driven there, talked to the doctors herself. She had been so stupid. She should have gone. “How long does she have?”
“A week, probably. That’s what the nurse said when they arrived.” Her mother wiped the counter absently. Dust coated everything. Not that it was clean before. Grandma felt people were more important than a spotless house. Stella was firmly in her camp on that.
“Where is she?”
“In the living room. The nurse is arranging her bed and an oxygen tank.”
Stella stood up, but Vivian stopped her again. “Your hair,” she said, trying to arrange the sticky strands around Stella’s face.
Stella pulled away. “She isn’t going to care.”
Vivian turned back to the counter. “She was always soft where you were concerned.”
Unlike Vivian. This was the longest conversation they’d had in a year, and that’s the way Stella liked it. She padded out of the kitchen and into the darkened living room. She couldn’t see anything for a moment, but the changes hit her anyway. The ever-present aroma of Grandma’s baking, lemon and vanilla and browning pie crust, had been replaced by something medicinal, antiseptic.
As her eyes adjusted, she saw a woman in pink scrubs bend over the controls of a metal hospital bed. A motor whirred, shifting the angle of the mattress, and Stella made out the form of Grandma Angie, slender under a thin blanket. Stella rushed forward and grasped a frail, chilly hand. Grandma’s eyes were closed, the thin lids fluttering.
Stella dropped to her knees and leaned into the mattress. “Hey, Grandma. You’re home.”
Grandma opened her eyes. “Stella, my girl.” Her voice was ragged.
“So we can go partying again, right? Now that those buzzards at the nursing home aren’t circling?”
Grandma smiled. “Only if you brought the right tequila.”
“You hate the cheap stuff.”
Grandma closed her eyes again, drawing a shallow breath and letting it go with agonizing slowness.
“She might go out on you,” the nurse said. “Just started a morphine drip.”
“Is she in pain?” Stella clutched the fragile hand.
“Not now.” The nurse tugged a second blanket up over Grandma Angie, tucking it under her arms.
“Can I talk to her?”
“All you want.” The nurse patted Stella on the shoulder and left the room.
Stella leaned her head on the bed, her own breath coming in long shudders. “I broke your bracelet.”
Grandma squeezed her hand. “That’s all right.”
“I’ll find all the beads. I’ll fix it.”
“You’ll make something even more beautiful.”
“I’ll try.” Grandma had taught Stella everything about jewelry making. They’d started when Stella was just five years old, stringing pony beads on fishing wire.
Vivian walked into the room and scooped up a box labeled “Angelica Sutton” filled with pictures and knickknacks that had been at the nursing home. She clomped away, her flowered dress hitching up on one side, caught by the box. “Don’t tire her out,” she warned.
When she was gone, Stella asked, “Do I tire you out?”
“No, child.”
“You can’t leave me.”
Grandma fixed her ice-blue eyes on Stella. “My girl.”
“I’m expecting you at my wedding. So you better hang in there.”
Grandma’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“And there’s no one on the horizon. So it might be, like, twenty years still.”
A small smile. Grandma squeezed her hand.
Stella’s heart ached. She laid her forehead on the bed again. Why hadn’t she gone to Branson more often? What had been more important?
Grandma’s hand suddenly went limp. “Grandma?” Stella asked. “Are you okay?”
The nurse reentered the room and lifted Grandma’s free hand, fingers pressed against her wrist. “She’s asleep now. The morphine has kicked in.”
“Why are you putting her out like this?” Stella wanted to talk to her. She had so many things to say.
“She’s in some pain now, sweetie.” The nurse laid Grandma’s hand back on the bed and marked something in a notebook.
“What sort of pain?”
“The tumor is putting pressure on her lungs.”
Stella looked down at her grandmother, who now breathed in shallow gasps. It seemed like she was dying before her eyes.
“What will happen?”
“Well, either her lungs will fill with fluid, and that will end things, or she’ll get too weak from not eating.”
“She doesn’t eat?”
“Hasn’t for a while. Eating prolongs it. It’s hard, dying.”
Stella gripped her grandmother’s hand more firmly. “Hard on everybody.”
***
3: Good Scents Distraction
STELLA pushed through the door to Good Scents the next day, heavy and tired. She spotted bits of Beatrice through the glass shelves built into the counter that held the cash register. The boxes of high-dollar perfumes shifted around as her boss made room for new inventory. A half-dozen unopened cartons lay scattered across the store.
“Hey, Stella doll. How is your grandmother?” Beatrice
asked.
Stella shoved aside a velvet curtain that led to the storeroom and dropped her purse on a table. “I just left there. She’s mainly sleeping.”
“You sure you want to be here?”
Stella pushed a box toward the display wall. “I can’t really talk to her now. They have her so drugged up.” She picked up a box cutter and slid it along the line of the sealing tape. “I need something to do.”
As she opened the flaps, the perfumes inside wafted out. She sneezed.
Beatrice settled on the stool behind the counter. “The cheap stuff? That always sets off your allergies.”
Stella laughed through a cough. “My one true gift. Identifying crappy perfume.”
“Girl, you have many gifts.”
Stella sat on the floor, hoping to concentrate on work for at least a few minutes. She knew Grandma would not approve of moping, especially over her. She pulled a pink bottle from the box. “What is this junk you’ve bought? Something called ‘Eau de François’?”
Beatrice heaved herself from behind the cash register to weave her way through the pink-draped product tables. Today she wore a bright green pantsuit, much too flashy for her weight. She looked like a watermelon in a wig.
Stella passed her the bottle, shaped roughly like a heart. A sparkly topper covered the spray nozzle.
Beatrice aimed a light spritz into the air. She sniffed. “Ugh. This is the four-dollar stuff, right? For teens?”
Stella cut the invoice from its plastic sleeve. “Yep. $3.89 per. Retails at $8.99.”
“It’s a cute bottle.” Beatrice turned it over in her hand. “Make a little display with that pink tissue paper with glitter in it. We’ll sell it to the kids.”
Stella wrinkled her nose. “People will buy it, and I’ll have to smell it.”
Beatrice set the bottle back in the box. “We haven’t talked about yesterday.”
Stella walked to a shelf, moving a case of bath beads aside for the new display. “Nothing to talk about.”
“You. Water tower. Rain.”
“Just an impulse.” Stella rapidly pulled out pink bottles, calculating how many would fit.
“You still planning on blowing out of Holly?”
“And leave you?”
Beatrice paced the store, adjusting the perfumes lined up on the window displays. Her ample silhouette was almost eclipsed by the glare of the light. The floor-to-ceiling glass ran the entire front of the shop, the morning sun setting all the colored bottles aglow. “You’re the best salesgirl I’ve ever had.”
Stella picked up the box, now partially empty, to carry to the back. “You’re lucky to have me. But I’ll stick around a bit. I can’t leave Grandma Angie now.”
A motorcycle roared up to the curb, and they both turned. The man wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. His jeans were tight, and the belt stood out as definitely not from Holly, black with silver spikes. He pulled off his helmet, and his profile was masculine—sharp jaw, scruffy beard. He didn’t buy into the current trend of rattails or boy-perms. His black hair was traditionally cut, with a wave in it, but gelled into submission to be sleek, almost wet.
He swung a leg over the bike, hooked his helmet over the handlebars, and strode toward their door. Stella perked up, but Beatrice waved her on back. “Go find the pink paper. I’ll handle this one.”
Stella frowned, but shrugged. The last thing she needed was a complication. Grandma Angie was the only thing holding her here. She certainly didn’t need a man.
But another glance at him as she passed through the curtain to the stockroom changed her mind. A stranger. A dangerous-looking one. She set the box on a table and tiptoed back, pushing the red velvet aside just enough to watch the man with Beatrice.
“So tell me about the girl,” Beatrice said, eyeballing his outfit, sizing him up for a price range. She could separate the big spenders from the cheapskates. And not everyone was as obvious as you’d think. Sometimes the high rollers in fancy suits wouldn’t spend much at all. And a teenager might bring in a fifty to impress some girl. Beatrice always knew, and Stella was pretty good at pegging them by now.
The man shrugged. “Kinda flashy. Wears lots of color.”
Beatrice reached beneath the glass counter at the register and pulled out Beautiful, Obsession, and Opium. Mid-range stuff. The man fingered the boxes, and his strong, dark hands kept Stella rapt. She could already imagine the places they would go.
“Passing through or new to Holly?”
“Just got in town a few weeks ago.”
Stella wondered where he had lived before. Something about his nose seemed familiar. Maybe somebody’s cousin.
“Where from?” Beatrice asked as he pushed one of the boxes toward her without smelling any of them.
“Texas. Near Houston.” He leaned on the counter, his butt jutting out. Stella gripped the curtain a little tighter. She definitely needed to learn more about this one. She didn’t care about the girlfriend. Half her exes had already been in possession of girlfriends. She did, though, leave the married ones alone. She wasn’t that kind of home wrecker. But otherwise, she figured she was showing the other girls the true colors of their men, ahead of the white dress and diamond ring. They could take that knowledge or leave it.
The man fished a wallet out of his pocket and paid for the Obsession. Not a half-bad choice for someone unwilling to sniff the actual product. Beatrice didn’t carry a whole lot of junk, though, other than the kiddie scents.
“Is the girl local?” Beatrice was asking, stealing a glance at the curtain. She knew Stella was there.
“Yeah. Name’s Darlene.” He stuck the change in his wallet, tossing the coins in the little dish by the register.
Beatrice took her time wrapping the package. “Darlene Woods or Darlene Pittman?”
“Woods.”
Stella grimaced. God, she hated that girl. Good-for-nothing. Back-roads whore. What was this guy doing with the likes of her?
“And you are?” Beatrice handed him the pink box.
“Dane. My brother works down at Joe’s. They needed a bike mechanic. So I came up. Seemed like a good change.”
“Holly’s a nice little town. You treat that homegirl right, you hear?”
Dane laughed a little, the gentlest hint of color crossing his cheeks.
The image of him and Darlene going at it made Stella’s stomach burn.
He turned and walked out of the shop. His motorcycle fired up again, his chiseled jaw disappearing in the helmet.
“You done gawking?” Beatrice asked.
Stella stepped through the curtain. “That one was worthy of the gawk.”
“Agreed. But taken.”
“No one stays with that two-bit floozy for long.”
“She’ll hang on to this one, if she knows what’s good for her.”
Dane circled out of the spot. His thighs filled the jeans just so, black boot perched on a silver bar. She had to track that boy down and get him out of Darlene’s clutches. “Her bleach jobs last longer than her relationships. And she’s a gold digger.”
Beatrice stuck the duplicate of the sales receipt on a silver spike. “She grew up poor. That can do it to you.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly rich.”
“You always had food on the table.”
Stella moved back to the curtain. She ran her hands along her hips. “Too much, maybe.”
“You’re a skinny little mite, and you know it,” Beatrice said. “Talk to me when you’re my size.”
Stella passed through to the stockroom, searching the shelves for the pink paper. That would never happen.
As she unfolded lengths of the sparkled tissue for the display, she thought about Dane again, and how they might meet. Grandma always seemed pleased when Stella met a new man, saying, “You never know which piece of coal is a diamond in the rough.” Maybe talking about it would make Grandma come to a little, give her a little spark.
He worked at the garage. Certainly so
meone had a car that needed a little service.
***
4: Prepping for Dane
“I think this is a super-bad idea. One of your worst.” Janine capped the hot-pink nail polish and blew on her fingers.
Stella snatched up the bottle and shook it. “You’re just not as adventurous as me.”
“Nor as stupid.” Janine flung herself back on the bed, holding her hands in the air. “Darlene is going to attack with fur flying if you go after her man.”
A floorboard squeaked outside Stella’s door, and both girls silenced. Janine propped herself up on one elbow and whispered, “Your mom?”
Stella nodded. That stretch of hallway had saved her more than once. Vivian was an eavesdropper. “Hot pink is a great color on you.”
Janine sat up. “You doing your toes?”
Stella opened the bottle and applied a brush of color on top of the old chipped version below. “Yes, I like them pink.”
The floor squeaked again. They paused, waiting.
“She’s gone,” Stella said.
“You totally have to move out.” Janine stood to look through the makeup on Stella’s dresser. “You’re too old for mama to be hovering.”
“I couldn’t save money as fast if I got a place on Renters’ Row. I don’t want out of this house. I want out of this TOWN.”
Janine spritzed herself with Obsession. Stella grimaced. “That’s the stuff he bought for Darlene. Don’t come anywhere near me with it. I don’t want to smell like her.”
Janine pointed the bottle at Stella threateningly. “Then promise you won’t leave me.”
Stella set one foot on the floor and started on the other. “You know I can’t do that.”
Janine stepped forward again, aiming the nozzle at Stella’s throat. “What am I supposed to do in this town without you?”
“Your boyfriend.”
Janine set the bottle back on the dresser. “Thank God for him.”
“Y’all going to get married?”
“Eventually. Mama says we might as well wait. Plenty of time later to get sick and tired of him.”