Flies on the Butter

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  “I got your message,” Rose said to Richard’s voice mail. She stared at a green Tahoe with North Carolina plates, which made her realize that she must be about through Virginia. “I can’t wait to see you either. And I think it’s time that we make some really clear choices.”

  He would know what she meant. And she had already decided there was no going back. Because going back would be far more difficult than continuing forward. Even if forward took her right off the edge of a cliff. What did Lilly know anyway?

  7

  Where are you now?” Charlotte asked in no fewer than ten syllables.

  “You’re as bad as ‘Are we there yet?’ But I’ve had a couple of interruptions on the way. I think I’m somewhere near the North Carolina border, though I don’t think anyone’s going anywhere.”

  “Well, you’re right about that. And we’re still missing a few people. But Uncle Talmadge and Aunt Norma just came in with Priscilla and Presley.”

  That meant the decibels at Mamaw’s house had just gone up by ten. Everyone in that family talked as though everyone else was deaf. “Have those children ever actually forgiven their parents for naming them such names?”

  She could tell Charlotte was taking a moment to check out the situation and see. “Well, by their expressions, I don’t think so. Oh, and Uncle Furliss just got in, and by the way his face looks, I’m certain he’s gone under the knife again.”

  “What’s that make, five, six?”

  “Seven, but who’s counting?”

  “So who else is missing?” Rose asked.

  “Oh, I think we’re missing Uncle Preston and Aunt Jewel. Charlotte paused. “Yeah, they’re still not here because there aren’t any deviled eggs yet. That’s all we let Aunt Jewel bring—her deviled eggs. We tell her it’s because they’re so good, but it’s because it’s the only thing that she makes you can actually keep down.”

  Rose laughed. And Aunt Darlin isn’t here yet either, and then who knows what cousins are coming. What?” Charlotte yelled into Rose’s ear.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I’m not talking to you. Aunt Norma’s screaming at me. This place is like a truckload of banty roosters let loose. Oh no, honey child, she’s walking this way with her arm stuck out. I think you’re about to get another greeting.”

  “Charlotte . . . no . . . please, I don’t—”

  “HI, DEAR.”

  “Hello to you too, Aunt Norma.”

  “WHERE ARE YOU, SWEETIE?” Rose turned down the volume on the car phone. “I KNOW YOUR MAMA CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU. SHE SAID SHE HASN’T SEEN YOU IN YEARS. NOW, SWEETIE, IT JUST AIN’T RIGHT NOT TO SEE YOUR MOTHER. BUT YOU BE SAFE, NOW, WITH YOUR DRIVING AND ALL. WE’LL BE HERE WAITING FOR YOU. IS JACK WITH YOU?”

  Rose’s pulse hammered. She hoped that if she didn’t say anything, maybe Aunt Norma would just ask another question.

  “ROSEY, DID YOU HEAR ME? IS JACK WITH YOU?”

  “Aunt . . . ma . . . break . . . up . . . hear . . . me?”

  “ROSEY!” Aunt Norma screamed. Rosey turned down the volume farther. “ROSEY, CAN YOU HEAR ME? ROSEY?”

  “He . . . Nor . . .” she tapped the phone with her manicured nail.

  She heard the clatter as Aunt Norma handed the phone back to Charlotte. “I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU YOUNG’UNS WASTE YOUR TIME ON THOSE CONFOUNDED CELL PHONES. YOU CAN’T EVEN TALK TO PEOPLE ON THEM ANYWAY.”

  “Rosey, are you there?” Charlotte asked.

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  She snorted. “You are pathetic. Anyway, you need to hurry your little self up. Besides, sanity is getting harder and harder to find.”

  “Isn’t Christopher there yet?” Rose asked. When it came to sanity, he was the only one she knew who actually had it.

  “No, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him or his bride yet. I hear she’s pregnant.”

  Rose’s heart grew heavy. “Yeah, she’s going to have a little girl.” She changed the subject. “Well, I’m on my way. I’ll be there eventually.”

  Charlotte’s tone changed. “You okay, Rose? Your voice, well, you just sound really tired.”

  Rose glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror. Dark circles under her eyes had become more common over the last couple of years. The sleep she used to think she didn’t need and didn’t avail herself of now simply didn’t come at all. Her mind was too keyed up and fractured. And if she did fall asleep, she only prayed she didn’t wake up in the middle of the night. Because nothing had the power to get her back to sleep if she did. “I’m fine,” she finally said, pinching her cheeks, trying to produce some color.

  “Well, I don’t believe you, but you always were a pitiful liar.”

  “I take offense to that.”

  Charlotte laughed. “Take offense all you want, but you gave us away more times than I can count.” Rose could imagine her dressed in pink. Charlotte always wore pink. And she was probably leaning against the curve of the kitchen counter, twirling the long phone cord that stretched across the entire room. Charlotte refused to buy a cordless. Aunt Norma had convinced her they caused brain tumors.

  “I did it for our own good,” Rose assured her. “Or we would have ended up wretched.”

  Charlotte sucked her teeth. She probably had a toothpick in her mouth. “Most people think we hairdressers are wretched, the way we gossip.”

  “Well, most people think we lobbyists are wretched too. So I guess I didn’t save us from people’s perceptions, but maybe I saved us from ourselves.”

  “Uh-oh, we better hang up. Uncle Talmadge is headed this way now, with your mother tight on his heels.”

  “Bye,” Rose said.

  “I’ll call you later.”

  “Mamaw and Granddaddy are watchin’ The Price Is Right,” Charlotte informed Rosey from her perch on the top step of their grandparents’ porch. “They won’t know we’ve gone anywhere for a good hour.” She twirled her blonde ringlets while chomping on a piece of Hubba Bubba. Strawberry, to be exact. Because it was pink.

  “But where do we get them?” Rosey asked as she straightened the belt to her size 10 jeans. Her little legs were growing, though not quite fast enough. So her mother still had to hem all of her pants. At least her sizes were keeping up with her age. She would be out of juniors in four years. She hoped.

  “Christopher and Bobby Dean said that the gas station—the one you can see through the field—will sell them to us.”

  Rosey stared at the mischief maker beside her. “We’re ten years old! They’re not going to sell us cigarettes.”

  Charlotte stuck out her chest and straightened her own jeans. “We don’t look ten. We look at least twelve.”

  “So they’ll sell them to twelve-year-olds?”

  “Well, Bobby Dean’s only twelve and a half, and Christopher’s only thirteen and a half, so I’d think we stand a good chance.”

  Rosey picked up her purse. It was made with blue linen needlepoint and round wooden handles. It had been a gift for her birthday. “I’ve only got a dollar,” she said after rooting around for change. With bare feet she tapped the wood step below the one that she sat on. She never wore shoes unless forced.

  Charlotte picked up her matching purse, because she always had to get whatever Rosey had gotten. Except her purse was pink. “I’ve got fifty cents. But I don’t even think they cost a dollar, so we’ve got plenty. Now, come on,” she said, standing up and grabbing Rosey’s hand.

  Scout rose up from his resting position, where he had been twitching his ears against the periodic flies. “Scout can come with us!” Rosey said. She felt sin was accomplished better with multiple partners.

  “You think he’ll tell anybody?” Charlotte questioned.

  “He’s a dog, Charlotte. He ain’t gonna tell a soul,” Rosey assured her, though in her heart, it felt wrong. Away they tromped anyway, down the street and through the partially mowed field. Rosey regretted her idea to have Scout follow them. He was Granddaddy’s baby. And if her granddaddy
knew what she was doing, he’d be so disappointed. But if he knew that Scout had been party to their excursion, well, she had no idea what he would do. But she did know exactly what her mamaw would do. The tree with all the missing limbs, the one she’d labeled the switch tree, testified to what Mamaw would do.

  An acne-covered teenager stood behind the counter, with a wad of chewing tobacco sloppily placed in the left side of his jaw. By the looks of him, Rosey didn’t figure he would care if they had slapped a case of beer on the counter.

  Charlotte and Rosey fumbled over what kind of cigarettes they wanted. Charlotte thought the gold package looked sophisticated. Rosey just kept fidgeting with her jeans and elbowing Charlotte to hurry up. Finally, the experienced one behind the counter slapped a pack of Virginia Slim Menthol Lights in front of them. Obviously that’s what all the ladies ordered, the two girls convinced themselves.

  Scout followed the girls back into the field and toward two large oak trees with expansive trunks that sat on the edge of the property. This spot was far enough away from the store and yet also shielded from the street and the homes nearby.

  Rosey sat down, wedging her behind into a niche between protruding tree roots and resting her back against the trunk. Scout plopped himself beside her. She watched as Charlotte got all giddy pulling out the cigarettes from the brown paper bag. Then Rosey realized their oversight. “We can’t smoke these. We ain’t got no matches.” Fortunately, Charlotte never thought of everything when it came to their mischief, and Rosey felt a mixture of disappointment and relief.

  But a knowing little smirk covered Charlotte’s face, and she pulled out a lighter from her purse. Well, maybe there were surprises left in the world. “I stole it from Bobby Dean. Here, put some of this on,” she said, handing a tube of pink lipstick to Rosey.

  Rosey frowned. “What do I need lipstick for?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “It’s what the movie stars do. They have really bright lipstick, and it leaves these rings around their cigarettes. If we’re gonna do it, we need to do it right.”

  Rosey just stared at the pink tube. Poisonous Pink. She figured the name suited perfectly because hell was poisonous too, and that’s where they were headed after this anyway.

  Charlotte suddenly grabbed the lipstick from her hand. “Well, I’ll do it if you don’t wanna.”

  Rosey watched as Charlotte painted the pink all over her lips. She didn’t have a mirror, but that fact didn’t seem to bother her a bit. Rosey became convinced that if the cigarettes didn’t kill them, when someone got ahold of Charlotte with her Jezebel lips, they could pretty much call it done.

  “My side, you’d think they made these things childproof,” Charlotte said, tugging ineffectually at the cellophane encasing the pack of cigarettes.

  Rosey snatched them from her hand and yanked the wrapping off herself. As soon as she finished, the knot in her stomach tightened. But she just kept her eyes on Charlotte and her lips steady, trying not to reveal her fear. Rosey looked at Scout. The old hound seemed to be studying Charlotte too. Rosey rubbed the top of his head, as if trying to apologize to him with each stroke.

  “Well, it’s about time,” Charlotte said, jerking the pack back from Rosey.

  Rosey had never seen the inside of a cigarette pack. Now, chewing tobacco she knew. Her granddaddy had cropped tobacco since he was a teenager, and most of his boys still had a hankering for the stuff. Her mamaw had even been a snuff dipper back in her day, but when she found salvation, all the tobacco left the house.

  But cigarettes had never been a part of Rosey’s world. Salvation had hit their house before Rosey was born, so the stuff had always been banned. She watched as Charlotte lifted the small cardboard top to expose the aluminum-foil wrapping. Behind that was a line of what looked like the bottoms of white crayons.

  Charlotte fingered one out carefully.

  “You act like you’ve done this since you were a child,” Rosey surmised.

  Charlotte ignored her. Her lips pursed as she balanced the narrow world of sin between her two scrawny fingers, nails encrusted with dirt from their earlier project of mud pies. Christopher had shown them a new technique—adding milk. Unfortunately, about that time Mamaw caught them with her milk jug. That’s why Christopher and Bobby Dean were still at the house. They had been punished with a full hour of The Price Is Right.

  Charlotte brought the white stick up to her pink-covered lips. She flicked the lighter. It blew out. “C’mon, you silly goose.”

  Rosey wouldn’t have been surprised if Charlotte had cussed, except that Charlotte’s mother had overheard her last go at profanity and washed out her mouth with soap. Charlotte must’ve learned to tame her vocabulary.

  Rosey inwardly prayed the lighter wouldn’t work at all, but then the flame caught the end of the cigarette. Obviously she hadn’t prayed loud enough. Because she was certain by the “all pray” at her church that the louder you prayed, the better God heard. At least she figured that was the reason they all prayed at the same time. Maybe that explained why most of her family talked so loud too.

  Her thoughts came out aloud. “You reckon God hears louder prayers?”

  Charlotte crinkled her nose at Rosey. “Why are you going and talking about God when I’m trying to smoke here, Rosey?” Charlotte opened her pink lips wide and placed the cigarette between them, pressing tightly around the end. Then she took a big ol’ puff off that cigarette. Rosey watched as Charlotte’s eyes widened and smoke came rolling out of every orifice except her eye sockets.

  She hacked and coughed and hacked and coughed. Scout sat up and was about to pat her on the back himself when she finally straightened up and said, “Wow, that was amazing! Here, you try.” She stuck the cigarette out in front of Rosey. The shade of green Charlotte had turned caused Rosey more than a moment of concern.

  Rosey tried to scoot back, but the tree resisted. “I’m not letting that stuff come out of my nose like that! You looked like a train! Plus, didn’t you know you weren’t supposed to inhale?”

  “What’s inhale?” Charlotte asked, her eyes now watering.

  Rosey shook her head and took the pink-smeared stick from Charlotte’s hand. “It’s what you just did. Breathing it all into your lungs and stuff. You just put it between your lips and suck it into your mouth and blow out lightly.”

  “How do you know?” Charlotte challenged.

  “I’ve seen Christopher do it, out by the lake. Like this,” she said.

  Rosey could taste the waxy lipstick. She breathed a little smoke into her mouth and then blew it right back out in Charlotte’s direction. Rosey figured she looked like a pro on the outside. But she felt horrible inside.

  “That’s amazing,” Charlotte offered.

  “Well, that’s how it’s done.” And Rosey handed the cigarette back to Charlotte to allow her to die in her sin.

  Charlotte placed it carefully back between her fingers. “You remember when we had to go to the nursing home to see Aunt Neiva, and that old lady in the wheelchair thought we had stolen her snuff ?” Charlotte snorted as she puffed and then blew out lightly.

  “You did steal her snuff,” Rosey stated matter-of-factly.

  “But it was funny watching her yell at us, because she didn’t have a tooth in her head.”

  “Maybe that’s why she liked the snuff.”

  Charlotte nodded at the reasonableness of the evaluation. “Yeah, maybe that is why she liked it. She could just gnaw it.”

  Rosey’s stomach churned at the thought. But she just sat there and watched as Charlotte finished off the cigarette all by herself, never seeming to care that Rosey didn’t partake again. She even reapplied her lipstick a couple of times during the process. Finally, Charlotte put out the cigarette at the base of the tree, and then they found a safe place to hide their stash underneath the Jacksons’ back deck. Rosey would pray for rain, and before night was over she’d tell Christopher. She always told Christopher.

  On the return home, Charlotte’s
green face kept getting greener. “I think I have cancer,” she said as she stopped by a tree and threw up. “I read you can get it from these things,” she said with her head still between her legs. Rosey patted her on the back.

  Charlotte finally straightened up to finish their journey home. “Yeah, I’m sure I’ve gone and given myself cancer. My mama’s gonna kill me.”

  Rosey was pretty certain it was all true.

  8

  Rose had her car cleaned once a week, whether it needed it or not. A mobile car-washing service came to her house and detailed it for the pleasant sum of a hundred dollars. Others paid a hundred and fifty, but she was a loyal customer. A loyal yet particular customer. They couldn’t use anything that was greasy or had an odor. She liked the smell of the new leather and didn’t want anything taking away from what her money had afforded her.

  After all, she had worked hard for it. During the first few years of their marriage, she and Jack struggled while she made a name for herself in Washington. But his promotions within the Department and her steady rise within her own company made the Cape Cod seem too small. Rose wanted a new, more substantial home. She didn’t like struggling. Nor reminiscing about it. And she didn’t like messy.

  So when the blackbirds that passed over the interstate deposited remnants of their lunch on her car, she wanted to cuss. But she was a lady. And ladies didn’t cuss. That’s what her mamaw told her anyway. Plus, she had met her quota before she even made it to the interstate. She was grateful her mamaw didn’t know some of the other things she did now as well.

  She hit the washer-fluid button, and the wipers immediately came on. They failed to rid the windshield of every trace of the bombers, but she wasn’t completely frustrated about it. After all, it did take her back again to Billy Monroe.