All the Single Ladies: A Novel

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  I had not even considered the will. The document that might put Suzanne on the streets. And me. Well, I was accustomed to my place of residence being fluid but Suzanne wasn’t. I knew she had to be worried about it. I looked in Suzanne’s direction and she slightly shrugged her shoulders.

  “It’s just going to be what it is,” she said privately later on. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “And I’ll help you. You know that,” I said.

  The only visitors to the wake besides us were Margaret and Judy and a few of the women who worked for Suzanne, and those employees gave Suzanne a hug, said a prayer, and left. But Judy and Margaret stayed for a while.

  “I’ll bet if Miss Trudie had a last wish it would’ve been to take your tomato pie and blueberry pie to heaven with her,” Suzanne said to them. “I can’t remember seeing her enjoy herself more than she did at your house.”

  “Except for . . . well, obviously her fall,” Harry said.

  “It was just an accident,” I said.

  Harry looked at me and nodded in agreement.

  “We just wanted to stop in and offer our condolences,” Margaret said.

  “She was such a sweet lady,” Judy said. “What happened?”

  “The doctor said her heart just stopped sometime during the night. She would’ve been one hundred years old in January,” Suzanne said.

  “Well, we’re awfully sorry. I know you were very close,” Margaret said.

  Suzanne’s eyes filled with tears and her sister Clio pursed her lips and shoved a box of tissues in front of her.

  “Thanks,” Suzanne said, pulled one, and wiped her eyes.

  There was an upright piano in the room.

  “What do you think?” Paul said. “Should I play some of Miss Trudie’s repertoire?”

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Suzanne?” he asked, looking for her permission.

  “Go for it,” she said.

  Paul took his place on the bench, ran scales up the keyboard and played “What a Wonderful World.” When that failed to bring a single tear to the eyes of Alicia or Clio, I just shook my head. Next he played “At Last,” “Stardust,” and finally “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” during which they began to discuss over the music where they wanted to go for dinner. Paul politely stopped playing and closed the cover on the keyboard.

  By the end of the funeral the next day none of us cared if we ever saw Suzanne’s sisters again. She had been right in her description of them. They were a difficult pair, and when combined with their husbands, they were practically insufferable. Harry was going to drive Suzanne to the lawyer’s office to be with her for the reading of Miss Trudie’s will. She was talking to her siblings by the grave site and we had walked a short distance away from them.

  “I don’t think she should have to go through reading the will alone,” Harry said.

  “That’s awfully thoughtful of you,” I said. “I agree.”

  “I keep telling you what a nice guy I am,” he said, and smiled.

  “Yeah, and weirdly, I’m starting to believe you!” I laughed and he smiled.

  Carrie said, “Well, the first thing I want to do is scour every trace of those ­people from Miss Trudie’s house. Lisa? Want to go back to the house with me and decontaminate the linens?”

  “Sure. I’d love to. Besides, I want to be there when Suzanne comes home from the lawyer’s.”

  Paul said, “Me too. Why don’t I cook dinner?”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said.

  “Mike? Why don’t you and I go to the grocery store?” Paul said.

  “Great idea,” Carrie said. “By the time Suzanne’s through with the will and Harry brings her home, we can have clean sheets on the beds and dinner on the table.”

  Paul said, “I’m thinking gumbo? Corn bread? Salad? Maybe some gelato from BeardCats? And I’ll swing by my place and pick up the baby.”

  He meant my dog, of course.

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” I said.

  “That sounds like a plan,” Mike said.

  “This is really nice of y’all to cook and all that,” Harry said. “Suzanne shouldn’t have to worry about supper.”

  “Let’s hope for good luck for Suzanne with the will,” Carrie said.

  “No kidding. Okay, then,” I said. “We’ll see y’all later.”

  I gave Paul a kiss on the cheek. Harry returned to Suzanne’s side. Carrie and I took Mike’s car and Paul and Mike took Paul’s car.

  “You realize the will could be devastating to Suzanne’s stability, don’t you?” Carrie said in the car as we headed toward the connector bridge.

  “She says that, but I don’t think Miss Trudie would have left Suzanne in desperate straits, do you?”

  “I don’t know how much money is involved. I figure the house is worth a million because of the location, but beyond that, I don’t have a clue what other assets there might have been.”

  “Well, we’re going to find out soon enough,” I said.

  When we got back to the house I said, “I’ll wash all the sheets and towels and run the vacuum.” I paused for a moment and added, “Gosh, I miss Miss Trudie already.”

  “Me too. The house is so empty without her. Okay, so I’ll do the bathroom and give the kitchen a good wipe-­down so the boys can come in here and wreck it,” Carrie said.

  “Isn’t that always the way? That sounds great.”

  I pulled all the sheets and pillowcases from the beds where Clio and Alicia had slept with their husbands and put them in the washer, setting the load to hot water and extra time. I wanted to boil their DNA out of the linens. If you want to find out which of your relatives are crazy, have a funeral. Then I went looking for Carrie with a question. She was in the living room, standing with a roll of paper towels, a bucket of cleaning supplies, and her jaw dropped.

  “Look,” she said to me, and pointed to the piano. “It’s open. I haven’t seen it open since I’ve been here. Ever.”

  “Well, maybe Clio or Alicia played it or one of their husbands did.” I closed it. “There’s no point in inviting dust into it.”

  “Oh. My. Goodness. I sure didn’t think much of them, did you?” Carrie said.

  “You know, it isn’t very polite to say this, but no, I didn’t think much of them at all. One thing is for sure: they weren’t particularly broken up over Miss Trudie’s death.”

  “Not even a little bit. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like them.”

  “It would be a good reason. You know, I haven’t told you or Suzanne this, but remember I told you my daughter was in town last Saturday? What I didn’t know then was that she had a husband.”

  “What? A husband! Oh, dear. You don’t look very happy about this.”

  “He’s a perfectly dreadful overgrown child and I said some terrible things to both of them. Paul was with me and so were my parents.”

  “What did Paul say?”

  “He said he didn’t blame me and I haven’t even spoken to my parents about it yet. I’m sure my mother’s been in bed on Xanax ever since that night. Basically I can’t go back to The Water’s Edge for a really long time. I think we made an awful scene.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Sure.” I told Carrie how the whole disaster unfolded, starting with the story of Marianne’s business, which I’d only told Suzanne. She seemed like she was going to cry. “Don’t get upset, Carrie. This is my cross to carry. Just pray that we find a way to bring my daughter to her senses.”

  “Oh, Lisa, you are such a wonderful woman. You certainly do not deserve this nonsense.”

  “Thank you and thank God Miss Trudie died without knowing all of this. You know, Paul was the one who told me that Marianne’s decision to go into her crazy business had nothing to do with me and I was beginning to see it that way. But what mother
doesn’t want to be a part of her only daughter’s wedding? Since Marianne was just a little girl, I’ve had this fantasy of attaching a beautiful white veil to her hair. Now I never can.”

  “Oh, honey, come on now. I wore white and a veil in at least two of my weddings. And I wore a white pillbox hat à la Jackie Kennedy with John the third and flowers with Mike.”

  “Jeez, really? Well, I was there for the flowers.”

  “Yes. Lisa, I’m not saying I hope there’s a divorce. I’m just saying there might be other opportunities.”

  “Yeah, like he could drive his Ducati off the side of a mountain. Look, here’s what I don’t understand. How could my ex-­husband be so heartless to steal that tiny reward from me? Why didn’t he pick up the phone and call me and tell me what was happening?”

  “Because he’s thoughtless and irresponsible and he knew you wouldn’t approve of Bobby. Then he’d be the bad guy for supporting the marriage.”

  “Mark is the bad guy.”

  “I agree. He probably thought you’d try to stop them. And if you stopped them from getting married, Mark might look weak to Marianne. She’d think a lot less of him, his judgment. Everything.”

  “But what about all those years that I limped through life without his support? The sacrifices I made?”

  “Honey? Don’t you know they don’t matter to him because he didn’t see them happen.”

  “Great. Now he’s got a reality show and a private jet? And he allows our daughter to enter into holy matrimony with an Elvis impersonator as the officiant? What’s the message there?”

  “Girl? He’s the same man you divorced for good reason.”

  “It’s too much, Carrie. It’s really too much.” I leaned against the wall and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Oh God. Do you know where the vacuum cleaner might be?” I looked at her and I knew she could see the enormous heartbreak in my teary eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Lisa. This will get better, I swear. The vacuum is in the hall closet upstairs. I’ll be in our bathroom. Some men totally suck.”

  “They sure do.”

  At that moment I loved that she still called the bathroom ours even though she was now married to Mike. It always struck me as funny that it took us a while to let go of ownership of a thing or to get used to new positions in life. Some changes made us very sentimental and we clung however hopelessly to the past.

  Soon car doors were slamming in the driveway and I knew the boys were back. I put the vacuum away and I hurried downstairs to throw the sheets in the dryer. I pushed the towels into the washer with extra soap and hot water.

  Paul and Mike bustled through the door and down the hall to the kitchen carrying four bags apiece.

  “Y’all need a hand?” I said.

  “Nope, we got this!” Paul said.

  An hour or so later, the table was set, the towels were folded, the sheets were back on the beds, and dinner was ready. Still, there was no sign of Suzanne.

  “Let’s open a bottle of wine,” Paul said.

  “Good idea,” Mike said.

  Paul opened a bottle of something white from New Zealand, filled four glasses halfway, and handed one to each of us.

  “Want to sit on the porch?” he said. “We sure earned this glass.”

  “I’ll say,” Carrie said.

  “Sure,” I said, “there’s a nice breeze.”

  “Wait! Let me get the boiled peanuts,” Mike said. “We stopped at the GDC in Mount Pleasant and bought a ­couple of pounds. You know that guy who sells them in the parking lot out of his truck?”

  “Yeah,” Carrie said, “but do you know how fattening those things are?”

  Paul said, “What else is new? All the good stuff makes you fat.”

  “You’re not listening to me,” Mike said. We all stopped and looked at him. “He takes MasterCard.”

  “Come on! You’re kidding! That guy?”

  “That’s the high-­tech world we live in, y’all,” Mike said. “Yep. A guy doing business out of a Styrofoam cooler takes MasterCard. I liked to have died laughing.”

  I said, “Next thing you know he’ll have a website!”

  “Truly,” Carrie said.

  After we had settled into rocking chairs on the front porch and devoured many boiled peanuts, Harry’s car pulled up next to ours. He and Suzanne got out looking somber and I noticed Harry sort of struggling with the weight of a cardboard box.

  They came up to the porch and I said, “How did it go?”

  “Anybody want to help me with this box?” Harry said. “Champagne’s heavy!”

  Suzanne started to smile and high-­five us.

  “Miss Trudie left me the house,” she said. “And all her furnishings. And all of her cash except for twenty thousand dollars that she gave to my miserable sisters. She left her silver and turquoise jewelry to Lisa because she knew you liked it.”

  “Oh my goodness!” I said.

  “And she left her land yacht to Carrie. The will said that Carrie was the only woman she knew who was theatrical enough to appreciate it.”

  “Oh my!” Carrie said. “How sweet! But how did it end with your sisters?”

  “It was a little rough, to say the least. In her will, Miss Trudie said she was leaving her worldly possessions proportionate to the loyalty and affection reflected in her family’s behavior. That popped their party balloons. They literally sank in their chairs because they knew right then she had left almost everything to me . . . when they had told me earlier that they were getting a third of everything. They left without saying good-­bye. Let’s hope time will heal the wounds.”

  “How terrible!” Carrie said.

  Paul said, “Wow. Amazing. Well? Are y’all ready for some dinner?”

  “You cooked? Paul! You didn’t have to . . .” Suzanne looped her arm through Harry’s and we all went inside.

  Throughout dinner we would get up from our seats to hug each other and to toast Miss Trudie. Champagne corks kept popping, and for the remainder of the evening we laughed and told sweet stories about Miss Trudie that she would’ve loved to hear. This night was the wake Miss Trudie should have had. We were like her chosen family. Maybe chosen family was better, more reliable. It was surely something to ponder.

  “The only thing is,” Suzanne said, “she didn’t really have a huge amount of cash. Running this place comes with a big overhead.”

  “Raise your prices!” I said with conviction. “Seriously! Do it!”

  “She’s right,” Carrie said. “And Mike and I have been talking, Suzanne, and we were hoping you’d consider renting Miss Trudie’s rooms to us until we can find a bigger apartment.”

  “Basically,” Mike said, “I have a three-­hundred-­and-­fifty-­square-­foot box with one closet. It’s so small I get on my own nerves.”

  We laughed our heads off at that.

  “That’s a great idea!” Suzanne said.

  I was seized with worry again because Miss Trudie’s death meant it was time for me to move too. It must’ve shown on my face.

  “What’s the matter?” Carrie said.

  “What, me? Oh, nothing. I mean, I guess it’s time for me to try and find—­”

  Reading my mind, Suzanne said, “I don’t want to hear a word of that kind of talk! Real friends don’t let their friends live like Blanche DuBois, relying on the kindness of strangers! We are going to keep things just as they are, and Mike, you’re welcome to be here anytime and so are you, Paul, and Harry is too.”

  “This is truly excellent news,” said Harry, who had yet to spend one night in the house.

  “As Miss Trudie would’ve said, the neighbors are going to think you’re running a cathouse!” I said, and we all laughed.

  Suzanne said, “Let them think whatever they want.”

  Chapter 18

  Guess Wh
o’s Coming?

  On Thursday I went back to work. I had the eight-­to-­four shift. As soon as I got to the nurses’ station Margaret said she had a message for me.

  “Marilyn Brooks was over here first thing this morning. She says she has something important for you.”

  “Really? Well, that’s awfully nice. I’ll go see her when I’m done handing out my morning meds.”

  By ten thirty I put my cart away, took a walk over to The Docks, and knocked on Marilyn’s door.

  “Hey!” Marilyn said, all smiles. “Come right in!”

  “Thanks! Well, don’t you look snazzy?”

  “Thanks! I got this outfit at Anthropologie downtown. And, thanks to you, I’m doing just great! Would you like a glass of iced tea?”

  “Thank you. That would be great. It’s as hot as the dickens outside, but what else is new?”

  She walked toward her kitchen to get our drinks. I knew enough about her pride to let her handle the task alone.

  “Well, at least now it’s starting to cool off a bit. It is late September after all. I think I’m going to take that trip to Asheville in October with some of the other residents here.”

  “Yes! I saw the sign-­up sheet for that. Asheville is so gorgeous when the leaves turn.”

  She came back into the living room with two tall tumblers filled with iced tea, and mint sprigs too. I took a glass from her.

  “Cheers!” I said.

  “Cheers! Sit, sit! Marcus and I used to go there every year for at least one weekend. Poor Marcus.”

  I made myself comfortable on her very cool midcentury sectional, took a sip of the tea, and placed my glass on a coaster on her Lucite coffee table.

  “How’s he doing?” I said.

  “Not great. I’m afraid he’s not long for this world. The disease has stolen him from me completely now. It’s so sad.”

  “I know, and I’m so sorry.”

  “What can I do? Anyway, the reason I wanted to see you, other than to say hello, was because I took a book from the library and I found something inside of it. I didn’t know what to do with it. And I know you better than the other nurses. I had not read Gone with the Wind in a thousand years, so when I saw it there on the shelf, I said to myself, Why not? It’s a nice big saga that will keep me busy and out of trouble for a few days.”