The Sisterhood of the Queen Mamas

by Annie Jones

  “That kind of reasoning is a slippery slope, Odessa. Wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it was the kind of thinking Morty Belmont used when he first started climbing on the roof and gazing off toward his clandestine meeting place. Looking ain’t doing.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t compare me to that…that—” I could practically see David raising an eyebrow to let me know just how much I didn’t actually know about that situation “—that man, Maxine.”

  “Fine.” She snagged me by the sleeve of my billowy jersey fabric dress and tugged me along behind her toward the open gateway. “But I don’t take back that it’s that same kind of slippery-slope thinking. Looking isn’t doing. Dating a boy who does wrong is not doing, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to go in there and let our Chloe know that we are not happy with some of her choices.”

  That day, we did not dawdle. We moved swiftly through the stalls using our keen eyes and what Maxine likes to call “Queen-o-vision” to scope out any potential pieces of Royal Service partyware, of which we found exactly zero. Within a half hour of arriving at the market, we found ourselves approaching Bernadette’s booth, a place we don’t usually reach until around or just after lunch.

  Our timing was perfect. If we had taken even a few minutes longer, we’d have entirely missed the visit by the petite woman in the tan-and-brown uniform of the Castlerock Police Department. Redheaded and with her stick-straight hair caught back in a ponytail, the woman jotting something down in a black vinyl notepad wore no makeup to accent her fair skin and green eyes.

  “Oh, no. We are not marching up to that nice police lady and demanding she let you slap some lipstick on her and poof her hair up like a pan of Jiffy Pop popcorn gone hay-wire.”

  “Hush, Maxine, I’m trying to paint a picture with words here.”

  The fact was, the plainness and the petiteness of the police officer created a striking contrast to our tall, zaftig Bernadette, with her long hair curled and flowing and her eyes and mouth enhanced by subtle color.

  “Jake Cordell is nowhere in sight. You don’t have to sell anyone on how lovely Bernadette is, Odessa.”

  “Get out of my head, Maxine.”

  But inside my head or not, Maxine was right. She had summed it all up right there. The whole thought process of the night before was still fresh in my mind. How far should you go to get someone’s attention, and how long would it last? Not long, if there wasn’t something more beneath the pretty surface that first attracted the eye.

  That’s not just my thought process, skipping like a flat stone across water. That was me actually working out how much I had undersold Bernadette in the past. How much I had assumed that nobody else would see what I saw in that strong, capable, kind young woman. But now, seeing her standing there, right beside what most folks would agree represented the very icon of the strong, capable woman, I could clearly see that Bernadette would draw anyone’s eye. She commanded attention. She had not needed me, or her mother, or her grandmother, to do that for her.

  If Jake missed it, then that was his problem, not hers.

  Of course, if Jake missed it, his problem might be that he was blinded by his interest in somebody else. At that thought, I turned away from Bernadette and the officer and looked toward the health-food booth across the aisle.

  “Something different about Chloe today, don’t you think?” I whispered to Maxine.

  She summed it up succinctly. “Pink.”

  I watched the young lady hand a tiny paper cup of orange liquid to a woman pushing a baby carriage. “What?”

  “She’s wearing pink.” Maxine gave the girl a discreet wave and kept talking to me through the side of her mouth. “Took your advice and went a bit more feminine with her look, is all.”

  I sized up the pale green gauzy skirt with what looked like watercolor roses splashed along the ankle-length hem and the small pink denim jacket she wore over a white tank top. She hadn’t done that for me. She had done it for Sammy, and my gut told me it wasn’t to please him, but to protect him.

  “Her face,” I whispered again. “Something is off.”

  Maxine’s hand froze, her fingers still curved in mid-wave. She dropped her arm to her side and narrowed her eyes. “She has a split lip, Odessa. The girl has a split lip.”

  “And she’s not wearing her piercings,” I added, in my best objective-girl-detective manner.

  “Is that important?” Maxine wrinkled up her nose and squinted all the harder, just tempting me to scold her about looking too hard, the way she had me. “You did ask her to take all but her earrings out when you did her makeover.”

  “Yeah, but you know she put every last stud and ring right back in the second she flew out that door.”

  “I don’t think she did. Did you see the look on her face when she caught her reflection in the mirror that day? And the way she sparkled when we all fussed over her?”

  “What are my Tiara Madres buzzing about over here at the edge of my booth today?” Bernadette leaned gingerly across the glass display case as the officer moved back into the aisle and, still looking at the pad in her hand, began walking in the direction of the health-food booth.

  Maxine only had to lift her eyes to indicate Chloe.

  “Ahh.” Bernadette stood straight and folded her arms. “You noticed it, too?”

  “The new wardrobe?” Maxine asked.

  Bernadette shook her head. “Her face.”

  “See, I told you there was something about it.” I had moved around to put my back to Chloe, so it wouldn’t be so obvious we were standing there scrutinizing her and talking about her behind her…behind my back. “And not just the cut lip, either. She’s not wearing her piercings.”

  Bernadette nodded to a passerby, then met my gaze. “She can’t.”

  “Why not?” Maxine, who had admonished me about making bug eyes at Sammy when he wasn’t even looking at me, planted both feet firmly in the aisle, put her fists on her hips and stared right at the girl.

  “That one side of her face is all puffy.” Bernadette swept her fingertips over the top of the display case, as if she’d suddenly discovered a film of dust on the thing. “She couldn’t get her eyebrow piercings in if she wanted to.”

  Maxine scowled and clenched her hands, and even her voice grew tight as she said, “Oh, I wish there was a sinner handy right now.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “So they could spew all the cusswords I can’t permit myself to at that no-good girl-beater Sammy.”

  Bernadette raised her head to say something, but then her eyes shifted in Chloe’s direction, and suddenly she gasped.

  At that point, I had to turn to look.

  Redheaded Officer Ponytail—of course, she had a real name, but I didn’t know it and I did know about her hair-style, so that was my name for her—the officer stopped dead center in front of Chloe. She flipped back a couple pages in her notepad, then one forward, not speaking.

  Chloe retreated one step, then another. She set the tray of paper cups down behind her. If she could have, I think for sure she would have crawled backward, up over the table with all the health-food packages and samples on it, and hidden like a spider in a small, dark corner of the booth itself.

  Maxine reached across the display case and grabbed Bernadette by the wrist. “Did you tell that lady officer about Sammy?”

  “No, the officer is following up on a routine report by Mrs. Davenport. There’s a reporter from the newspaper around, too, trying to figure out if there’s a story here.”

  The officer closed her notebook and pointed to a paper cup.

  Chloe reacted, and I think—though I am probably making this up because, like imagining Morty and Helen having a torrid affair as opposed to an inappropriate friendship, it made for a better story later—her hand shook as she handed the police officer the mysterious brew.

  The officer lifted the cup, the way they do in the movies when offering a casual toast, then tossed back the drink.

  I wi
nced.

  Maxine grimaced.

  Bernadette muttered, “Yuck” and stuck out her tongue.

  The officer, upon tasting the cup’s contents, did the same. Wince. Grimace. Yuck.

  “If we ever get a second chance with that girl, let’s make over those concoctions she peddles,” I suggested.

  “It’s prepackaged,” Bernadette said. “The person who actually owns the booth has a franchise or distributorship or whatever they call it. They get the stuff in by the boxload, and Chloe, or whoever is hired to run the booth, just mixes the stuff up with hot water.”

  “You’re kidding.” Maxine clucked her tongue in classic for-shame-for-shame fashion. “And they sell that as health food?”

  “I think they call it a dietary supplement. That covers a multitude of sins.”

  “I think there are much better ways to have your sins covered.” My focus went from the officer’s sour expression to the gritty residue in the cup she threw into the trash bag by Chloe’s side. “And speaking of which, if we really ever do get a second chance with that girl, we need to talk to her about the Lord.”

  “She’s hearing it,” Bernadette murmured.

  “From…?” I shut my eyes. Please don’t say Jake. Please don’t say Jake.

  “Abner, for one.”

  “Oh, yeah. Abner.” My eyes popped open again. “I kind of like him.”

  Bernadette smiled. “Actually, so do I.”

  I turned to look at Chloe again and tried one of David’s tricks—redirection. “Does Chloe like him?”

  “She listens to him,” Bernadette said.

  I smiled. You don’t have to be older than dirt like me and Maxine—

  “Hey!”

  —like me and people who graduated high school the same year I did, got married as many years ago as I did, had kids the same general age as my kids, served as a minister’s wife for the same number of years as I did and basically lived a parallel life to mine—

  “That’s better.”

  —to know that finding someone who listens to you is a blessing in its own right.

  “Is Abner also talking to her about Sammy?” I brushed my fingertips over the side of my face.

  “When it comes to Sammy, Chloe shuts down.” Bernadette paused long enough to ask a browsing couple if they needed any help, which seemed to scare them clean away.

  “Maybe if the three of us talked to her…”

  “We’ve done that.” Maxine put her hand on my arm. The thing about Maxine—well, one of many “things” about Maxine—is that she has this amazing sense of timing where people are concerned. And where making smart remarks to her best pal is concerned, but that’s another “thing.” Anyway, Maxine would never suggest we ignore a problem like Chloe’s, but unlike me, she is very astute about how to approach individuals. She wins people over through consistency and love, not by my preferred methods—pushing and pulling and the less popular but sometimes effective hair-poofing. Chloe had balked when we tried to talk to her about Sammy, but had at least feigned interest when we spoke about what women should expect from the men who love them and about our own experiences with love. If that opportunity ever presented itself again, I knew, Maxine would jump right in the middle of it with both feet.

  “I don’t like seeing her hurt any more than you do. But the fact that she has gone to great lengths to hide it tells me she’s not ready for us to march up and start in with our advice. It might just drive her away from us and closer to that…that…”

  “Snake,” I said.

  “I wish he were a snake. Then I could go after him with a shovel.”

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

  “Odessa, you can’t be advocating violence.”

  “No. I’m just saying maybe if Chloe won’t listen to us, we should be going after Sammy.”

  “With a shovel?”

  Another thing about Maxine is, she can have a one-track mind. I cocked my hip and exhaled all in a huff. “With our advice and Christian love.”

  “I bet the boy would rather we use a shovel.” Maxine grinned.

  If we had had coffee cups handy, we’d have clinked on it and sealed the deal for poor old Sammy.

  Meanwhile, Bernadette was strumming her fingers along a metal pole that supported the canopy over her booth and sighing. “I wish I knew what kind of hold Sammy has over her.”

  “You don’t think it’s love?” I asked, then suddenly realized that the very question virtually rang with the kind of naïveté I am always professing that I don’t possess. Well, okay, so when it comes to love and the bonds between men and women, I am a regular doe-eyed dope. It’s not that I want Chloe to love Sammy. It was just the only explanation I could come up with for a young girl who could do anything, hanging around with a loser like that. And one who hit her.

  “Go back over the properties of love listed in Corinthians, Odessa. Any mention of stealing or hitting in that passage?”

  “I don’t mean that it’s real love, Maxine. I mean, don’t you think she’s doing all this because she’s convinced herself she is madly in love with the boy?”

  “No, I don’t.” Bernadette stopped drumming her fingers on the pole and grasped it with her hand until her knuckles went white. “I think if it was just emotional, we would all know it. Have you ever heard her talk about Sammy? About having feelings for him, or him for her?”

  Once again, Bernadette, my little red-flag finder, had picked up on something the rest of us hadn’t.

  “There is something else there, below the surface.” Bernadette pushed back her shoulders and narrowed her eyes. “And I don’t think we are going to reach her for the Lord, really reach her, until we know the truth. It’s going to take time and patience, but to help a friend, I really don’t mind.”

  I studied her a moment, and realized that maybe I had looked at her all wrong in this respect, as well. Sensing the needs of others in order to serve them, to do whatever she could to help them, might not be her greatest weakness. Maybe, just maybe, serving others was Bernadette’s greatest strength.

  “Until then…” Maxine slapped her palm lightly on the glass, above the tiaras we had sported during our day manning—womanning?—the booth. “Is everything all right here? Did the lady officer have any insights into anything going on at the flea market?”

  “Oh! Should I catch up with her and ask her for some input for the action council?” I craned my neck to try to catch a glimpse of her uniform in the crowd, moving away from us down the aisle.

  “No, she only focused on the one complaint. Which the officer says they aren’t really taking seriously, because Helen can’t say that no one else had access to her card, or something like that.”

  “Hmm…” I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t sneak a sidelong glance at Maxine. I wanted to. But I didn’t. However, Helen Davenport herself had stood on this very spot and accused me of not doing my job as the chair of my action council by not keeping abreast of what all went on out here, so I had to ask, “So the officer was just asking about Helen’s credit card complaint? Nothing else?”

  “Yes, what else would Mrs. Davenport have to complain about?” Bernadette scowled and shook her hair back.

  I opened my mouth.

  But before I could jump in and explain that I meant other complaints like Helen’s, not other complaints by Helen, Bernadette rolled her eyes and said, “Of course, given who we are talking about here, the list of things she could complain about are endless. Starting with me.”

  “Why you?” My mouth was already open, and the question came out before I could stop myself.

  “According to Mrs. Davenport, I am monopolizing the minister’s time with the ‘action council nonsense.’”

  “Monopolizing his time, eh?” Maxine leaned in. “Is there something you haven’t told us about?”

  “Nope. You were right there, actually. Somehow she knew about us coming out here on the day of the planned tour of the grounds. She even knew we’d been up in the ball
oon together.”

  “Oh, really?” She could have learned about that from Morty, what with all of us showing up in his driveway and all. Or she might have been watching the rendezvous spot, waiting for a certain married man to show up, but he couldn’t because, again, we were in his driveway. Or maybe the Reverend just told her about it.

  “She thought when Jake got here she would pretty much be his social director and love-connection advisor, but it hasn’t worked out that way, and for some reason she blames me.”

  “She’s a poker,” I said softly.

  “A what?” Maxine’s whole face scrunched up. “Odessa, have you lost your mind?”

  “Why do you always ask me that?” And before she could answer, I put up my hand. “Never mind. I mean she’s the kind who pokes you just before you are about to go on-stage to make a speech or have your photo taken in a large group and tells you something that’s wrong with your hair or outfit or what have you.”

  “She does do that, doesn’t she? Sort of finds somebody’s soft underbelly, their most vulnerable spot, then…”

  “Pokes it,” I murmured.

  Bernadette cocked her head. “I wonder why anyone would do that?”

  A few weeks ago, I’d probably have said that she probably honestly thought she was being helpful. But now…

  “She doesn’t like herself.” Maxine stood across the booth from Bernadette, with her own head tilted at the exact same angle as the black-haired young woman.

  “What?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t like herself, and the only way she knows to feel better about herself is to bring other people down.”

  And bringing down a woman like Jan, the very picture of small-town perfection, would have been her ultimate triumph. It didn’t explain everything, but it sort of made a sad kind of sense as to how she could carry on with another woman’s husband and still show her face in church. She had to have convinced herself somehow that she deserved Morty and Jan didn’t. Well, I know that God hates divorce, and my prayers have been for Jan and Morty to reconcile, but if ever there were two people who did deserve each other…