Thicker than Water

by Rett MacPherson

  “Whatever. As long as it’s hot and greasy.”

  “I think I can fulfill that request,” I said and picked up the phone to call for delivery.

  We ate out on the back porch, amidst the hummingbirds that dive-bombed our pizza and the wasps that went about building their nests. “I need to get somebody out here to clean up this yard. Get rid of the wasps.”

  “This part of the house seems more neglected,” Stephanie said.

  “Yeah, Sylvia wasn’t much of a gardener,” I said.

  We ate some more, talked some more, and I was full after two pieces of mushroom and green olive pizza. Stephanie’s half had mushrooms, green olives, and pineapple. She was pregnant; I’d forgive her for putting fruit on a pizza.

  “Do you want me to come tomorrow?” Stephanie asked.

  “Oh, you don’t have to work on the weekend if you don’t want.”

  “No, I want to help. Besides, I know the Strawberry Festival begins tomorrow.”

  “Ugh,” I said and rested my head on the back of my chair. “I had forgotten for a while.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “No, it’s just very hectic,” I said. “But it’s great for the town. Except for the trampled lawns.”

  “Well, why don’t I come and work here at the house, while you’re … doing whatever it is you do at the festival.”

  “All right,” I said. “My mother-in-law arrives tomorrow, too.”

  “Oh,” Stephanie said and gave me a speculative sideways glance.

  “Don’t ask,” I said.

  Just then a man walked around the house into the backyard. He wore no shirt, his hair came down to his waist, and there were tattoos of dragons and demons all over his body. He had a ring in his nose, like a pig. “Yeah, I knocked but nobody answered.”

  I stood then, a bit wary. “The house is closed for tours until further notice.” Maybe he couldn’t read the sign, so I’d just tell him.

  “I’m not here for no bloody tour,” he said. “I need to set up for the gig tomorrow.”

  I gave Stephanie a panicked look. “Gig tomorrow? I’m sorry, there must be some mistake. We’re having a Strawberry Festival. Not a…”

  “A what?” he asked.

  “Well, not something you’d most likely play for,” I said.

  “Really,” he said and put his hands on his hips. “I like strawberries.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  My head was spinning. Who was this guy?

  “I’m with the Brown Jugs,” he said.

  The Brown Jugs! They were supposed to kick off the festival. I had hired them. Their Web page didn’t say anything about nose rings and tattoos. The old ladies in town would keel over. My grandmother would kill me. It was supposed to be Americana and oompah music. Not … not …

  “Are you Victory O’Shea?” he asked, a slight tone of exasperation in his words.

  “I am,” I said.

  “I’m George Clarke,” he said, extending a tattooed hand. “Brown Jugs.”

  “How do you do?”

  “I’m doing great. Thanks for inquiring. So where’s the stage?” He rubbed his hands together.

  Seven

  My alarm went off at four-thirty the next morning.

  The Strawberry Festival would begin in five hours. I had to help Rudy pick up all the jars of jam, jelly, and preserves and set up all the booths. There was no point in doing any of it the night before. We had done that once several years ago. My stupid idea, by the way. In the middle of the night somebody had come with a station wagon and stolen a hundred jars of jam and preserves. My stepfather had caught them on Highway P with a flat tire and all those jars in the back of the car.

  So, because of potential theft—yes, there are other idiots out there who would steal a hundred jars of jam—we wait and set up the morning of the festival. Sylvia had always been too cheap to hire a security guard to sit and watch the world famous jam overnight, but I was in charge now, and I was seriously rethinking the wisdom of such a decision, especially as I looked out the window to the pitch dark of night. There wasn’t even a moon.

  There was, however, a barge coming upriver. I could hear the engine through my open window. “Rudy, get up,” I said, and threw a pillow at him.

  My shower was quick, and it was more to wake me up than get me clean. I had barely slept. I couldn’t get my mind off the things I’d found in Sylvia’s house, like the sheriff’s report that Stephanie had shown me. I’d read through it, and the story it told wasn’t a happy one. Somebody had physically attacked Sylvia while she slept in the Gaheimer House. Of course, this had been thirty-odd years ago. I was just a small child at the time.

  For a town with no secrets, this one sure seemed to have a lot of secrets. I didn’t remember this event. If there was talk of it when I was a child, it had slipped through the fingers of my memory, and nobody ever mentioned it to me otherwise.

  I turned off the water and grabbed my towel.

  The sheriff’s report had gone on to say that she had been taken to the hospital. At the bottom somebody had penciled in the date she was released, along with a list of her injuries. I suspected that was Sylvia’s doing. Her injuries had included a fractured skull, fractured tibia, lacerations on her hands and arms—defense wounds, I’m certain—multiple bruises, and psychological trauma. She had not elaborated on the psychological trauma; she had only written beside it, “the desire to bury my head in the sand and never come out.” Why she had requested a copy of this report and why she had kept it was beyond me.

  That was what I had to lull myself to sleep with last night. In actuality, I’m not sure I ever really went to sleep. Not real sleep, where my guard is down and I rest peacefully. It was more like that kind of sleep where my mind is lost between REM and consciousness and so I never really rest.

  Great. I had thousands of people to deal with today, including my mother-in-law and the Brown Jugs, and all I was armed with was deep purple circles under my eyes—and frizzy hair. We were out of conditioner.

  Colin knocked on the door twenty minutes later and curled up on the couch and went to sleep. He was babysitting for Rudy and me. I can’t tell you how surreal that was, to see what was once my arch-enemy curled up and drooling all over my crocheted pillows, babysitting my three children. I was going to change his name. He was going to be Grandpa with the Badge Who Drools in His Sleep.

  Rudy and I drove to Virgie Burgermeister’s house in silence. His desire not to speak was brought on from lack of caffeine. My desire not to speak was from anger. In fact, other than to bark an order or two, I don’t think I’d spoken to him in forty-eight hours. Chuck Velasco, my husband’s best friend and the owner of the best pizza place within a hundred miles, was waiting at Virgie’s to help us load up the bazillion jars of jam and preserves. Virgie was awake and perky, as if she’d been up for hours awaiting our arrival. Chuck, with his muddy hiking boots and his pillow head, looked more like I felt.

  When we had everything loaded, we drove down to the two-block section of town called Strawberry Center. Six booths with red and white awnings were set up in the middle of River Pointe Road, waiting to be stocked. We all unloaded the goodies, and then Rudy and Chuck left me with the job of putting all the jars into the booths while they drove Chuck’s vehicle over to get the jelly from Krista.

  By this point the sun was coming up over the Mississippi and bringing with it the warm temperatures of a June day in the lower Midwest. “You hungry?” I heard a voice and turned to find Helen Wickland standing there with a bag of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The closest Krispy Kreme I knew of was up in south St. Louis County.

  “Did you drive all the way up to Lindbergh for those?”

  “No, the bakery in the grocery store has them now,” she said, dangling the bag in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Just set them down. I need to get this stuff unloaded.”

  “I’ll help,” she said and set the doughnuts down. “Do you have the schedule ready for nex
t weekend?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll let you know which booth you’re at later.”

  “Just making sure you’re not overwhelmed,” she said.

  We worked side by side, Helen telling me the latest exploits of her granddaughter, who, I might add, made Mary look like a saint. By the time we had everything in order, the tourists were lined up at the entrance. The only thing that kept them from stampeding down River Pointe Road was the two deputies stationed there.

  The town had come alive. Shops were open, people were in the booths, cotton candy was rotting teeth just from the smell, Kettle Korn was hot, and the funnel cakes made the whole world seem rich tasting. It was time for me to give the signal. I walked down and spoke to Deputy Miller. “Let ’em in,” I said.

  He nodded, and the tourists spilled into town, reminding me of a much milder version of running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. As long as I could keep the tourists off of the lawns of the private homes, I would consider the day a success. If I could keep George Clarke’s shirt on while he sang, I’d consider it a triumph.

  * * *

  Actually, I was pleasantly surprised by the Brown Jugs. Their music was sort of like a bluegrass version of the Ramones, which was fine with me. However, the appearance of the band—and all the members were a variation on the theme of George—was quite disturbing to most of the generations who could remember the Korean War. Except my grandmother, who was seated in her usual front-row-center seat in her lawn chair keeping time with the music. She just scoffed and said, “So they look like idiots. They’re just wanting attention.”

  I was on my way to the Gaheimer House when Eleanore Murdoch found me. Now, I love Eleanore, but I could kill her at least twice a week. She’s the biggest gossipmonger in town. In fact, she writes a little column in the local paper about the goings-on of the townsfolk. She’s large and top-heavy, and she wears clothes and jewelry in colors that I don’t think occur naturally in the universe.

  “Torie! I cannot believe you let those … those…”

  “Musicians?” I said and kept walking in the direction of the house.

  “Demons perform at our Strawberry Festival.”

  “If you don’t look at them, Eleanore, their music is actually pretty good.”

  “Yes, but you have to look at them.”

  “I thought music was best appreciated when listened to with one’s ears,” I said.

  “Torie! Torie O’Shea, you look at me right now.”

  I stopped walking and faced her finally. She was dressed in red-and-white gingham—I’m assuming to match the strawberry decorations—and a green hat with matching green jewelry. She really was a giant strawberry. And she was worried about the Brown Jugs’ appearance? “What, Eleanore?”

  “Sylvia would never have stood for this,” she said.

  Her words struck me hard and unexpectedly. “Well, Sylvia is not here, is she?”

  “So you’re just going to let our town go to hell in a handbasket?”

  “Look, Eleanore, they’ve only got a few more songs to do and they’re off the stage. But when you go back down there, I want you to look at the audience. The younger generation is really digging it. No, I would not have hired them if I had known what they looked like, and you know what? That would have been my loss. Because I think we just guaranteed that about two hundred people under the age of twenty-five will be back next year. And those young people just might learn to listen to music they might not ordinarily have tried.”

  To that, Eleanore had nothing to say. Her eyes bugged out of her head, and her nose instinctively angled up in the air. I expected her to cross her arms and say, “Whatever.” But she didn’t.

  “They aren’t using profanity. They’re not having sex onstage. They’re not even suggesting sex onstage. They’re not even drinking, for crying out loud, which is more than I can say for the old farts at the bingo booth. Anything else?” I asked. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  She leaned in to me then and pointed a finger at me. “Don’t make an enemy of me,” she said.

  I couldn’t help it. I blurted out laughing. I was being threatened by a giant strawberry. “I would hope that the years we’ve known each other would count for something, Eleanore. One little band is going to make you my enemy?”

  “Oh, it’s one little band now,” she said. “But what will it be next year? And what about the Pickin’ and Grinnin’ Festival? Huh? What then? Are you gonna hire that … Osbourne Osmond fella? Or, oh, I know…”

  “We couldn’t afford Ozzie Osbourne.”

  “Black Sunday!”

  “That’s Black Sabbath, and they don’t exist anymore.”

  She snapped her fingers. “That serial killer guy! What’s his name?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” I said and opened the door to the Gaheimer House.

  “Look, you will always be the owner of the Gaheimer House, and probably always the head of the historical society. But I can get the position of chairman of festivities taken away from you,” Eleanore said. “The mayor doesn’t like you, you know.”

  “Duh,” I said. “Do what you have to, Eleanore.”

  I shut the door and raced to the soda machine and got a Dr Pepper. Stephanie came out of the kitchen and watched as I drank half the can without breathing.

  “Bad day?” she asked.

  “No, pretty average, actually,” I said.

  “Torie!” A voice shrieked through the living room of the Gaheimer House like a crow that had been caught in a fan. My hands began to tremble, and my eyes grew wide. Stephanie’s expression owed as much to humor as it did to curiosity. “Torie O’Shea!”

  “Now it’s a bad day,” I said.

  My mother-in-law had arrived.

  Eight

  I plastered a smile on my face and turned to greet the senior Mrs. O’Shea. Before I had the chance to say anything, she put her hands on her hips and sneered at me. Her gray eyes narrowed, and I gulped. “Are you responsible for that band out there?” she asked.

  “It’s lovely to see you, Mrs. O’Shea,” I said.

  “Nice to see you, too, dear. Are you responsible for that band?”

  “Well, yes and no. Yes, I hired them—based on a demo of their music,” I said. “The Web site had no pictures of them.”

  “Oh, the Internet,” she said and curled up her nose as if she’d smelled something putrid. “Should have known. Nothing but perverts on the Internet. Guess you learned your lesson, huh?”

  “Well, uh…”

  “Do you have a restroom?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Down the hall.”

  “Oh, is this the house that old lady left you?” She looked up at the ceiling as she headed for the restroom. “Kinda old and creepy, isn’t it? But you know, Granite County has never been known for its money. All the houses down here are depressing like this.”

  I just shook my head as she shut the restroom door behind her. I must have stood there studying my soda can for minutes, with Stephanie watching me, but it seemed like only seconds had passed before my mother-in-law emerged from the restroom, still talking. “It also has the lowest employment rate in all of the state. It’s really quite a depressed area. Why anybody would want to stay here is beyond me,” she said. “Of course, I suppose there are those who get roped into living here because of elderly parents and … spouses that won’t leave.”

  Do I need to translate that? I got her meaning loud and clear. “I don’t think that Rudy feels trapped,” I said.

  The ghost of Scarlett O’Hara suddenly appeared as Mrs. O’Shea made her eyes huge and got that insipid look on her face and said, “Well, now, I never said anything about Rudolph. Don’t go putting words in my mouth. I was just talking.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Well, now that you have all that money, you can finally get out of this place,” she said. “Must be terrible knowing you can’t leave a place like this. Especially when everybody around you has wanted to leave for years.”
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  Meaning Rudy.

  “I trust Rudy has taken you to the house and helped you settle in?” I said.

  “He put me in this very small room. I guess it’s Matthew’s,” she said. “By the way, Matthew looks exactly like his father. In the pictures you sent you can’t really see how much he resembles Rudolph. Why, in person he’s just adorable.”

  “This is my sister, Stephanie,” I said, suddenly remembering she was standing there slack-jawed.

  Mrs. O’Shea looked her up and down. “Sister? Thought you were an only child,” she said.

  “I…” I could have sworn I told her this story in the last letter I sent.

  “Oh, yes,” she finally said. I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that she’d pretended not to remember I had a sister, just so the moment would be awkward and make me look bad and make my sister feel bad. Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly something I could call her on, or Scarlett O’Hara would reappear and I’d look like an idiot. “I remember now. Nice to meet you.”

  That was literally all she said. She turned and headed back out of the Gaheimer House, leaving Stephanie and me to stare after her. “The woman is…” Stephanie groped for the right words.

  “Don’t bother,” I said.

  * * *

  “I haven’t seen the woman in four years and all she can do is … spew hateful things!” I said. “And hateful things that aren’t even true. Those statistics she uses about Granite County are twenty-five years old!”

  Rudy stood in our kitchen with his arms crossed, backed up all the way against the sink. He looked sort of pasty, but there was a defiance to his expression all the same.

  “Now, I want to know—and believe me, Rudolph Henry O’Shea, you’d better tell me the truth—did you tell your mother you felt trapped here in New Kassel? Tell me now. Because there’s the front door, buddy. I’m not ‘keeping’ you here one second longer. But I’m staying.”

  Rudy swallowed and then gave me that expression that I could never quite pinpoint. It was part dismissal, as if I were overreacting, and part rage, because I’d hit a nerve. “Calm down.”

  “Explain how she got the idea that you weren’t happy here,” I said, trying very hard not to scream.