Chocolate-Covered Baloney

by KD McCrite

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Grandma said, and her eyes were hard as flint rocks, “you stay away from Ernie Beason. He’s a nice man and he don’t need the likes of you ruinin’ his reputation.”

  “Doo-dah, doo-dah,” Mimi sang, like she didn’t care a lick what Grandma had to say. She turned back to the stove and started stirring that gravy, but I could see by the look on her face that she cared more than she was letting on.

  Grandma looked fit to be tied, and then she just walked right out the door without saying so much as a “howdy-do” or “see ya later” to me. I don’t think she even saw me, although I was standing right there as big as life.

  I slipped out of the kitchen and found Mama in her bedroom, folding Eli’s baby clothes. I mean to tell you, she was folding them like she was in a fold-’em-fast contest where the prize was eight million dollars in gold. Her face was pink and her eyes were teary.

  “Mama?” I said softly.

  She glanced at me and kept folding.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. You need to finish your homework, honey.”

  “I’m almost done.” I reached over and picked up a soft, little towel. When I sniffed it, it smelled all sweet and cuddly, just like my baby brother. “Mama, isn’t it hard on you, having Mimi here?”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute, then said, “Not exactly. She’s not in the way. She’s helping around the house. She’s good with you children. What I’m having trouble with, April Grace, is my feelings toward her.”

  “Oh?” I felt almost grown-up, hearing Mama say such a serious, personal thing to me.

  She folded the last little sleeper, then took the towel from my hand and folded it. She put it on the stack of clean clothes, then she pulled me into her arms and gave me a nice hug and kiss.

  “Don’t you worry about things, sweetie. I’ll work it out. I’m trusting God because that’s the best thing I can do right now.”

  “Does it bother you when the two grandmas fight?”

  She gave me a slight smile. “They were rivals a long time ago, and I guess some things never change.” She let go of me and stepped back. “Now, you. Scoot back into the other room and finish your homework.” She felt my forehead. “Who knows? Maybe tomorrow you’ll feel good enough to go to school.”

  Oh goody.

  When Myra Sue ran in that afternoon, she was all grins and eye-sparkles, and she practically flew up the stairs. I had been sitting in Grandma’s little rocker in the living room when she whooshed by, and I wanted to tell somebody about Mimi and Grandma’s fight. My sister was not my first choice at all, but Melissa Kay Carlyle was not someone with whom I wished to discuss this event until she apologized for being such a dipstick and taking Mimi’s side against the rest of us. Honest to goodness, though, I had to talk to someone before I burst like a carnival balloon.

  “Get out of here, you creep!” Myra Sue screamed at me the very second I walked into the room.

  She was rummaging through her dresser drawers, and I saw some jewelry I’d never seen before.

  “Well, now it’s my room, too.” I took a step closer so I could look at that sparkly stuff, but she shoved everything in the drawer and slammed it closed.

  She narrowed her eyes at me and kinda pranced like she had ants in her pants.

  “Well then, you can have it! I hate this room, anyway.”

  “You’re not getting my room, Myra Sue Reilly! As soon as ole Mimi hits the road, I’m moving back in and you can have this room back. But you’re not taking over my nice, clean, very own bedroom. Where’d you get those fancy earrings big enough to choke two starving mules?”

  I plunked my backside right down on the bed where I’d been recuperating for the last three and a half days. She snarled at me like a rabid poodle.

  “I don’t have any earrings—”

  “I just saw ’em, Myra! Right there in that drawer.” I pointed at it. “So where’d you get ’em? Are you some kind of jewel thief?”

  “What? No! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Is that why you’ve been skulking around, acting weird? You’ve become a thief and you steal ugly jewelry? Where you gonna wear it, Myra Sue? No one around here wears gaudy stuff like that. Just on soap operas, and those people—”

  “If you tell me one more time that those people aren’t real, I’m gonna . . . uh . . . I’m gonna . . . I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I’m gonna do it, and you won’t like it!”

  “So then tell me where you got those earrings, and maybe Mama won’t find out you got ’em hidden in your underwear drawer.”

  She glared at me while her brain processed this information with all the speed of a three-toed sloth.

  “Leave me alone! I have . . . I want . . . I’m going to change out of my school clothes. I have homework and stuff to do.”

  “Go ahead and change your clothes. I’ve seen you in your drawers, and believe me, you ain’t much to see,” I informed that goofy girl. “But I’m not leaving just yet. I want to tell you something first.”

  She put one hand on her hip and gave me a look of complete eye-rolling boredom.

  “I can’t think of anything you’d have to say that might be important,” she sniffed.

  “It’s about Grandma and Mimi.”

  “So?”

  “So since you’re so buddy-buddy with Mimi, I thought you might be interested in their fight.”

  Now both hands rested on her hips like she was one of the lunch ladies in the cafeteria when boys are throwing peas at each other.

  “What do you mean buddy-buddy, pray tell?”

  Even though she hadn’t been following Isabel around like a pup lately, that woman’s way of speaking had rubbed off on Myra Sue like a black-walnut stain in the fall of the year.

  “I mean that I saw you and her going down Rough Creek Road the other day, whispering like two big, fat gossip machines.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about! We did not go off down Rough Creek Road, and we were not whispering!”

  I just stood there, waiting for her to realize what she just said. That girl is so dense, she can’t even catch her own fibs unless someone points them out to her. I didn’t bother.

  “If you’re not interested in what’s going on, then I won’t tell you,” I said, all lofty and mysterious. I expected her to get nosy, but she didn’t.

  Instead she said, “Good! I have too many things to do without having to listen to your childish stories. I will be so glad to get away from here.”

  Oh brother.

  “Fine, but you’re stuck here for a few more years,” I said, still feeling the need to talk and hoping she’d turn human, but she didn’t, and I wasn’t about to bare my soul to someone who is so all-fired uppity and prissy and uninterested.

  “Not soon enough,” she said, pulling a pair of jeans from a drawer. “Now, get off my bed and out of my room.”

  I am the first to admit that Isabel St. James would not always be my first choice of Someone to Talk To, but in this case, I figured she’d be better than anyone else, especially as she dearly loved Grandma and Myra Sue, and did not like Mimi, and all three of those people had me in a dither. I decided to go see Isabel.

  I grabbed my coat, making sure I had my warm hat and gloves. I sneaked downstairs quiet as anything, because I knew if anyone saw me going outside, they’d have a hissy fit and make me stay in. I was sick and tired of being sick, I can tell you that.

  You know what happened? I’ll tell you. I met Isabel St. James coming up the steps just as I was going out the door, and I was purely glad to see her. I thought maybe she was here to save the day.

  Oh, to Be Abducted by Aliens!

  Isabel St. James came trotting up the porch steps in those high heels of hers, but when she saw me, she stopped like she’d run into a brick wall.

  “Oh! Hello, April. How are you feeling?” she asked, then she pulled a tissue from her pocket and held it over her nose and m
outh as if I were contagious, infectious, and radioactive. She is the Biggest Hypochondriac you could ever hope to meet, but I was happy to see her.

  “Much better!” I said, cheery as all get-out, even if my voice still sounded rough as sandpaper.

  “Good! Then you’ll feel up to studying for the test next Tuesday. These are today’s handouts.”

  She handed me a stack of papers that seemed to me as thick as the Holy Bible itself. I eyeballed those papers full of dates and names and terms and wondered if I could get sick all over again. This was an assignment Mama hadn’t gotten from the teachers’ assistants when she called. After all, Isabel does not have an assistant. If Melissa Kay Carlyle had been any kind of a friend, she woulda called me as soon as she got home from school and told me about this development.

  “Boy, oh boy,” I said grimly. “Thanks a heap.”

  “Should you be outside in this cold?” Isabel said, pulling her coat closer around her.

  “Probably not, but I gotta talk to someone, and I was coming to see you.”

  Now, I’m the first to admit that Isabel and I have never been the best of pals, but over the months we’ve developed an understanding of each other, and I like her pretty good sometimes. Other times, like when she gets uppity or snooty, I just want to stick a stamp on her backside and mail her right back to California where she came from. But it’s been a while since I felt that way.

  “Oh?” She looked surprised. “Why did you want to come and see me?”

  “Mimi. She is causing trouble.”

  “Oh, that dreadful woman! What has she done?” But before I could say a word, she said, “We must get you out of this freezing cold. Is she inside?”

  I nodded.

  “Well then,” she said, tucking a couple more tissues even closer around her nose and mouth. “Let’s sit in the pickup. It’s still warm from my drive here.”

  We hurried to the truck and got inside. That tissue around her breathing holes distracted me and drove me so crazy that I had to say, “Isabel, I’m not infectious. And besides, you’re teaching now, so you’re gonna be exposed to more sneezing, coughing, and puking germs than you can shake a stick at.”

  She nearly turned green when I said that.

  “Be sure you take plenty of vitamins,” I encouraged comfortingly. Before she could talk herself into having double pneumonia, I plunged right into the situation about Mimi and Grandma. I did not leave out a single, solitary detail of their encounter, either—not even the smell of the pork chops as they were frying.

  “I’m plenty worried that Mimi is going to turn everything so upside down here that we will never get back to normal,” I declared in conclusion.

  “Oh, that horrible, horrendous woman!” Isabel said, one scrawny hand spread across her chest. “I simply can’t bear that she’s trying to ruin Grace’s social life.” She closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against the seat. “What can we do, April? There must be something to stop this hideous creature from wreaking such havoc.”

  “If Mama would tell her to, ‘Hit the road, Jack,’ we’d all be better off.”

  “Of course we would, but your mother would never do such a thing.”

  Isabel shmooshed up her lips and her eyebrows dipped.

  “Hmm,” she said, like she was thinking and she had to make ugly faces to get the thought processes churning.

  I did not have to go through any such exercise. A good idea rolled right into my brain.

  “For some reason, Mimi thinks she’s now a major part of our family. She acts like she belongs with us, like she’s been here forever. Here’s the thing, Isabel: if she were to come and stay at your house, she might decide to go away.”

  Both of Isabel’s eyes popped open, and she lifted her head to give me the most panicked look you can imagine.

  “That woman in my home? My dear, you can’t possibly be serious!”

  I warmed right up to the subject.

  “Don’t you see, Isabel? Mimi is hanging around because she thinks she has a right to, just because she’s Mama’s mama. But she was such a rotten person that she wasn’t really any kind of a mama to speak of—so she shouldn’t be surprised that we don’t want her messing up our family.”

  “Yes, I fully realize how completely dreadful that woman is. Lily shared with me about her sad childhood not long ago, before Eli was born.”

  I felt my eyes get big.

  “She did? Mama never talks about that.”

  “One day we were talking about raising children and how rough our childhoods were, and her story simply came out. I think she was relieved to have someone with whom to share it.”

  Okay. Now I was speechless for a couple of reasons. Number one: Mama had told something to Isabel St. James that had always been such a Secret. Number two: Isabel had also had a rough childhood.

  I pulled myself together because now questions started popping into my brain.

  “I thought your father was a state senator.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “But you just now said that you had a hard time growing up.”

  Isabel blinked about twenty times. “My dear girl, being the daughter of a state senator has nothing whatever to do with having or not having a blissful childhood.”

  “Oh yeah?” I practically felt my ears grow, waiting for the details of her younger days. Somehow I never pictured Isabel as ever being a girl. For a couple of seconds I wondered what she looked like as a little baby, then kinda steered away from that. I just hoped she was a better-looking baby than she is a grown-up woman. Eesh.

  Isabel stared out the windshield at nothing. Her face turned soft and sad, and her eyes seemed to look at sights from long ago. After a little while, it was like someone shook her shoulder and woke her up.

  “I don’t wish to talk about those days, or even think about them right now. What was it you asked me? Oh, yes! You want me to take that awful person into my home.”

  “Would you do it for Mama?” I pleaded. “And Mimi is not quite as obnoxious as you might think. And she cooks and cleans.”

  She looked at me so long without speaking, I thought maybe her brain had gone hard or her lips had frozen together. I put all the hope I could gather into my expression and looked right into her dark brown eyes.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said at last. “I must talk to Ian first, of course. Oh dear! There are so many disturbing possibilities of things that woman might say or do.”

  I sighed, a little disappointed, but I knew there was a chance she’d agree.

  “Okay,” I said. “But if you can think fast and talk to him soon, that would be good.”

  “I thought Grace was acting as a buffer of sorts,” she said, “but if Sarah—”

  “Her name is Sandra,” I said. Ole Isabel has never been any great shakes at remembering names. She called my mama Lucy for the longest time.

  “Pardon? Oh, yes. Sandra.” She waved one hand, like the name business annoyed her. “Well, if she is attempting to bait your grandmother into some sort of fight, it’s better that Grace stays away. You mother abhors bickering and quarrels. For now, I shall go inside with you and give Lily a little more support. You mustn’t say a word to anyone about your request, though.”

  I nodded.

  “And I can’t stay long. I must get Ian’s dinner on the table, and I have handouts to put together for Tuesday after the test. Definitions, April, of muscle groups, and names of choreographers from the 1950s. Learn those definitions and names, and be prepared to use them in a sentence.”

  I stifled a groan that nearly erupted from my mouth anyway. Considering that Isabel was going into the house with me to give Mama a break, I thought it best to smile at her instead. So I did. And I prayed Ian would say, “Sure! Bring Mimi right on over here.” My plan would not get Mimi off Rough Creek Road, but it would get her out of the house, and maybe Mama would feel better about the whole thing. I figured it was kinda hard not to think about that old woman if she was righ
t there where you could see her most of the time.

  “Those are the last handouts. After next week, we’ll start learning steps. I have such plans!”

  Sometimes Isabel’s plans did not bode well. I heard this announcement with a considerable sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “Oh?” I said weakly.

  “I am going to incorporate my junior high dance classes with my senior high theater classes,” she said with all the enthusiasm you can imagine. “We will be performing a musical at the end of the school year, complete with singing and dancing!”

  Just when I thought nothing could get worse, it did. Boy, oh boy, where was an alien abduction when you needed one? Maybe if I went out in the woods tonight, the mother ship would be looking for red-haired people to take to the home planet.

  “Wait a minute,” Isabel said just as I opened the car door. “I want to ask you something.”

  I closed the car door to shut out the cold that whooshed in.

  “It’s about your sister,” she said.

  “What about her?”

  “Is she all right?”

  I shrugged. “Ole Myra is always goofy, Isabel.”

  “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk,” she said in her teacher voice.

  “Sorry,” I murmured. “I don’t know about Myra. She’s been hanging around the mailbox a lot, which I think is goofy.”

  “Well, darling, she’s probably eager for her magazines to arrive. I gave her a subscription at Christmas to Today’s Theatre, and I know she enjoys those teeny-bopper magazines.”

  Okay, then. That made a little sense, because Mama would not want her having a bunch of those dumb magazines, so maybe my sister was hoping to get them out of the mailbox before Mama found out. That’s probably why she was hiding them under the bed.

  “April, I’m concerned that the darling girl has distanced herself from me, and I don’t understand why.”

  “I know. I’m not sure about everything, but I do know she thinks she embarrassed you by the way she botched the Christmas play, and she hasn’t gotten over it.”

  Isabel huffed. “I’m not in the least embarrassed. As I explained to her that very night, her nerves simply got the better of her. If she’s going to be on the stage, she must learn to deal with jitters.”