The Sisterhood of the Queen Mamas

by Annie Jones

  “I thought you planned to resign from that.”

  Well, what do you know? He had been listening—a little. “No, I said I intended to resign and give all the information over to Gloria Alvarez, but then all this came up and I didn’t. And now I sort of think that I won’t.”

  He took a long sip of tea before asking, “Why not?”

  “Because it would be irresponsible. I know I started all this for questionable reasons, but the fact is, I did start it, and there are real problems on the property, and somebody has to…” I finally paused to catch my breath and caught my husband smiling down into his tea glass. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice you trying to change the subject like that?”

  He chuckled.

  “But it isn’t changing the subject, really because all of this is tied in together, which is why I can’t walk away from chairing that action council.”

  “All right. Go on with your story.” He gulped down some tea and shuffled through the remainder of the paper spread out before him.

  “The thing about the credit card…It was declined, even though the cardholder said it should have gone through just fine.” I was careful not to mention Helen by name, even though that was a part of the whole story and I’d have to bring it up eventually. But given the man on the other side of this pretty much one-sided conversation, he’d probably have stopped listening by then. “That made me and Maxine wonder if maybe something was amiss at the flea market. You know, had a vendor overcharged the account or something like that, but not so much anymore because you will never guess who that credit card belonged to.”

  “Helen Davenport.”

  “Helen Daven…Oh.” It took me back a bit to realize that I actually had mentioned Helen’s name, and he had heard me, and he had put a little thought into the particulars of the story.

  He chuckled, but only slightly, because, you know, men don’t take pleasure in anything that even borders on gossip.

  “Yes, well, anyway,” I continued, “now we know Helen has conducted this whole secret life on the flea market grounds—which is clearly why Jan wants the place closed forever. At this point, neither Maxine nor I think she knows who the ‘other woman’ is, but she knows where they meet and so she wants it all torn down to both take away their trysting spot and to remove it from her line of vision. Of course, it isn’t actually in her line of vision unless she crawls out on the roof outside her spare bedroom. But neither she nor Morty can seem to resist doing that, so…” I gulped down a breath at last. Between the twin tendencies of David’s attention to drift off and my own mind to wander, I had to get it all out as quickly and concisely as I could. “So suddenly it all fits.”

  “This is where your feeling like Nancy Drew comes in, right?”

  It raised my spirits to know, once again, that he had heard something I said.

  “Actually, we felt like our favorite girl detective before this, but now that you mention it, this realization did make us feel awfully clever, too.”

  He gave me a wink. “I can’t imagine one minute of the day when either you or Maxine doesn’t feel like the cleverest gal in the room.”

  After all these years, the man still made me feel all mushy and melty and… “What if we are both in the same room? We can’t both feel like the cleverest one.”

  “Hmm. Good point. Let me mull that over and get back to you.” He started to push his chair back.

  “You stay right there, bucko.”

  “Bucko?” His silvery eyebrows shot up. I guess I should have taken a moment to describe my husband long before now, but I did say he was a retired minister, and I think most people who have met retired ministers already have an idea of what they look like. David fits that idea pretty well. Ruddy complexion. Round in face and belly, but not obese. Hair gone gray, what there is of it. Last time he went to have his driver’s license renewed, under the spot where it said hair color, he wrote the word pink, explaining that all they could see in the photo would be his sun-kissed shiny bald head. Oh, and his eyebrows, which have gotten a bit bushy with age and which shot up and stayed up when he asked, “Did you just call me ‘bucko’?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? The Reverend Cordell thinks I’m part cowgirl now.”

  “Cowgirl? Girl detective? Ninja church lady? Odessa, honey, I hardly know you anymore.” And he wasn’t all smiles and chuckles and winks when he said that, either.

  “Ha! Well, I know you, David Pepperdine, and you are not getting out of hearing the whole of my story quite so easily.” I waggled my finger at him. “The point I wanted to make was that Maxine read an article.”

  “Well, that settles it, then. She’s the clever one.”

  “Oh, stop it.” I nudged his knee with my toe. “She read an article that said that sometimes when people sneak around they build whole elaborate secret lives in order to cover their tracks. New bank accounts. Post office boxes to get bills, and credit cards exclusively for their rendezvous.”

  “And I thought people giving credit cards to kids was bad. But a credit card exclusively for your rendezvous…”

  “David! I am trying to tell you that Maxine and I now wonder if maybe Morty had something to do with running her card up to the limit. I mean, Jan said they were having financial difficulties. How else could the man afford a mistress?”

  “A mistress? Odessa, now you are the one who needs to stop it. That is far too loaded a term to throw around when you don’t know all the facts.”

  “I know what I saw. They were sitting in the grass, in each other’s arms, gazing into one another’s eyes.”

  “If that were all it took to be a mistress, then…then…Odessa, I am just not comfortable with all this.”

  “All what?”

  “The speculation. The spying on people. The speed with which you reach conclusions…”

  “None of that was intended to be unchristian, David. In fact, it was just the opposite. I was trying to be an instrument of the Lord.” I sat back and searched my heart for any signs of malicious glee at the misfortunes of the people I had been talking about. None was there. In fact, the whole thing made me ache through and through, and had been the subject of many prayers since we had happened upon the inappropriate couple. “But in all this, my deepest thoughts and sympathies lie with Jan. I know what it’s like to be a wife who raised her children and then wonders what use she is to anyone, most of all her husband, anymore. To have doubts and fears.”

  “I would never stray, Odessa. I never have.”

  “I believe you, David. But don’t you think at some point in their marriage Morty said the exact same thing to Jan?”

  A troubled look passed over his face. “Odessa, I…”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything, sweetie. I’m just saying that there is a lot of temptation out there, even at our ages. A lot of widows and divorcées just like Helen…”

  “So you blame Helen for this?”

  “No…I…Well, we all have to accept responsibility for our actions. But what I meant by that was that Maxine thinks Helen is divorced.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Myself, I thought she was widowed.” And off my brain went, sliding along down a new thoughtway. “We wanted to ask Jake, but he made it clear that he had no intention of discussing anything about what we saw, because Helen is a member of his congregation.”

  “Good for him.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I refilled my tea glass. “But pardon me for being a little bit disappointed.”

  David gave an indulgent smile that acknowledged my all-too-human feelings. “If a flock can’t trust their own shepherd to guard their privacy, who can they trust?”

  “Of course. You’re right. I told him it was exactly what you would do.” I drew the cold pitcher to my chest and slumped back in my chair. “It’s what you are doing right now, isn’t it?”

  “Right now?” He frowned, a bit too dourly. “Right now, I’m reading the paper. Or I would be, if I could just be left to concentrate on it.”

>   “No, what you are doing now is acting evasive and changing the subject and teasing me to distract me from giving in to gossip and becoming a victim of my own poor guesswork.”

  “Hmm, I must be the clever one in the room, then.”

  “Not if I figured out your plan.” I set the pitcher aside and flexed my suddenly icy fingers. “I should have thought of it. You served as pastor to Morty for so many years. You went to see him recently. You knew about this.”

  “If I did or if I didn’t, it’s not fodder for after-dinner conversation.”

  I sat up straight, opened my mouth, then shut it again. Elbow on the table again, I rested my cheek in my hand.

  Why is it, I have to ask myself, that everyone around me is so good at making excellent points and I am so miserable about accepting them? The points, that is, not the people. David was right. Nothing I could say would persuade him to reveal anything more to me regarding what David knew about Morty Belmont. Nor would I try to persuade him.

  But, oh, I so wanted to know what my husband knew!

  “I just…” No. I couldn’t ask it of him. I traced a bead of condensation down the side of my iced tea glass, my lips pressed shut tight. I understood, truly I did, but that did not make everything easy for me. That’s part of the deal when you’re a Christian, of course. It’s not that temptations are easier to turn away, it’s that you will find the strength through Christ to do what you know He would do.

  So that’s what I did. I didn’t push for more information from David. But that did not change my emotional stake in it all, and I let him know that by adding, quite softly, “Jan is my friend.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I decided to meddle in her life and make things better for all my flea market foundlings.”

  “She’s your friend because you decided all on your own to stick your nose in her business?”

  “Yes. You’ve heard of bosom buddies?”

  He nodded cautiously.

  “Well, Jan and I are proboscis pals.”

  He questioned that with the slightest shift of his eyebrows. Yes, we’ve been married so long we can communicate through minute facial muscle movements. Sigh. No wonder he doesn’t think he needs to listen to me. All the man has to do is sit across from me for a few seconds and he can read me like a book.

  “Okay, forget bosom buddies and proboscis pals. When you get right down to it, we are, no matter what our conflicts, sisters in Christ.” I waited a moment for that to sink in, but not long enough that he could make the argument that Helen might also be considered a sister in Christ. Not because that wasn’t a valid point, but because—and I’ve already owned up to this—I don’t take valid points that clash with my opinions all that well, and because it would definitely take the discussion in a whole other direction. “I care what happens to Jan. I still want things to work out well for her. I think about her a lot, and I pray for her.”

  His face softened, and lit with deep, admiring love. “That’s my girl.”

  “I don’t do it because I am your girl, David.” I did not raise my voice or clip my words or frown and look cross at him. I just spoke my heart with calm and quiet conviction. “I do it because I am my own woman.”

  His forehead creased. His mouth set in a thin line. His eyes seemed to grow dark, more perplexed than perturbed. “I’m not sure I know this woman you claim to be now, Odessa.”

  “I’m not sure you do, either.” I couldn’t believe I’d said it. But there it was, out in the open, as plain as the pitcher of tea between us. “I’m not sure you have ever tried to know and understand me, all of me, not just me as your wife or the mother of your children or your helpmate, but me, the person most like myself.”

  “Wife and mother and helpmate, what more is there? Besides the cowgirl and…”

  “You don’t even know about the tiaras, much less the Royal Service Hostess Queen partyware, do you, David?”

  “Tiaras? Partyware? Are you saying you’re selling those self-burping container systems in your spare time?”

  Oddly enough, I could sort of see where he got that. And I had to give the man credit for remembering that once upon a time Tiara glassware and Tupperware had both been sold by housewives in friends’ homes. It all made sense—though more in a Scooby-Doo way than a Nancy Drew one.

  I patted his hand, and this time it was my turn to smile with indulgence and good humor. “No, sweetie pie. In my whole life, you and the boys were the only self-burping things I ever had to explain to any of my friends.”

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “I was referring to a set of serving pieces popular around the time we got married. They were made by a company called Royal Service, and I loved the black-and-gold Hostess Queen pattern.”

  “Uh-huh.” I could tell he wasn’t following, but bless his heart, he hadn’t completely given up trying.

  “I loved those pieces. To me, they symbolized a woman who cared about her home, serving her family, entertaining her friends and yet retaining her own individual style.”

  “You got this all from a few dishes?” I half expected him to whip out a notepad and write it all down to study later. It was that new a concept to the man.

  “I know it seems shallow, but, well, back in those days, the way a woman appointed her home was an extension of her personality. It was a form of self-expression. Was she elegant or whimsical or pragmatic or…”

  “Self-burping?”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Yes. I suppose so.”

  “And you were?”

  “A queen,” I said softly.

  He took my hand. “My queen.”

  I yanked my hand free. “Then why did you give away the few pieces of Hostess Queen partyware I ever owned to the church’s kitchen and then berate me as childish for asking you to get it back for me?”

  His eyes got real big. Husband-realizing-he’s-been-a-jerk-big-time big. “I did that?”

  “See? It didn’t even register with you, David. And it really mattered to me.”

  “But you—”

  “It really mattered,” I whispered, choking back tears. I was not just talking about the dishes then, and he knew it. I was talking about everything in my life. All the new things I was experiencing. All the things in my life and the lives of the boys that had passed him by and could never be retrieved. All my hopes and dreams. Me.

  I was reminding the man who had loved me and lived with me for most of my life that standing before him was a woman who mattered.

  I just hope he heard me.

  That’s right, my marriage isn’t perfect. What’s more, my husband isn’t perfect. And most shocking of all? I am not perfect! Though I do strive to come as close to perfection as I possibly can in my hair and grooming.

  But then I think of the people I know who try so hard to achieve at least the image of perfection—Jan Belmont, Helen Davenport, Bernadette Alvarez, and even, in her own dark and strange little world, Chloe Morgan. What had it gotten them, this trying to make everyone believe the impossible about them? They didn’t seem happy with themselves, or with their lives.

  My life wasn’t perfect, but I had a wonderful friend in Maxine—and, of course, my David.

  “All things considered…” I stopped by the chair where David had settled down to do his daily Bible reading the next morning and dropped a kiss on the top of his dear old bald head. “I still sure do love you.”

  He kissed my hand.

  I sighed.

  “I love you, too, my sweet cowgirl queen,” he whispered, his way of both apologizing and showing me he had listened, even if he hadn’t known what to make of what he heard.

  And as I headed out the door for my regular date with Maxine for Friday-morning flea marketing, I heard the love of my life call out after me, “Keep your eyes open. It’s probably old man Jenkins wearing a rubber monster mask trying to scare you meddling kids off so you won’t find his stash of—”

  Clunk. I shut the door. Hard.

 
I love him, but if he compares my efforts to do right by my friends to the repetitive plot of a cartoon dog detective one more time…well, I might just have to take an eggbeater to him.

  If only the rest of the people I cared about could be whipped into shape so easily.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Everyone is familiar with the saying “Be careful what you wish for…you just might get it.”

  And I hadn’t just wished for something. I’d prayed about it. I’d worked toward it. I’d involved others in trying to make it happen. Maxine and David had both warned me about this drive to accomplish my goals. About thinking I knew better than the Lord what the Lord wanted me to do in order to comply with His will.

  I admit it now, I was clearly too fixed on getting what I’d wished for.

  I’d wished for attention. I’d wished to bring my flea market girls to the forefront and show them how much I believed in them. I’d wished…to shine like a diamond.

  Maxine and David had told me to be careful, but maybe what someone should have reminded me of was this little factoid: The way to make a diamond is to take a lump of coal and apply a whole lot of pressure.

  That morning, as Maxine and I approached the gate, Sammy did not call to us. He did not hurry over to thrust a flyer into my hand or try to charm me into taking a ride in his beautiful balloon. He didn’t even look our way. In fact, he made such a point of not looking our way that it made it almost impossible not to stare straight at him and practically dare him to make eye contact.

  “Cut that out,” Maxine warned.

  “I’m not doing anything,” I protested.

  “If your eyes got any buggier, someone around here would throw a net on you and sell you for bait.” She held her pink pearlized reading glasses up to her nose, then moved them in and out, to demonstrate the way my eyes were bulging.

  “Oh, Maxine, that doesn’t even make sense.” I knew what she meant, of course. And I could picture myself like some creature flopping around in a bait bucket, its eyes glazed and googy. That comparison, and my own guilt, put plenty of petulance in my tone when I justified my behavior to my observant-but-quaint-phrase-impaired pal. “I was just looking. Looking and doing are definitely not the same thing.”