Hot Fudge Sundae Blues

by Bev Marshall

  “Perfect!”

  “So are you,” she said. She checked the clock in the kitchen.We had an hour to kill before we were due at the DA’s office. “We’ve got time for breakfast.You want some cereal?”

  I knew if I ate anything, it was sure to come back up. “No, do you?”

  “Maybe some coffee,” she said. But when she walked over to the counter where the empty pot sat beside a roll of paper towels, she turned back around. “Maybe not.What I’d really like is a shot of bourbon right now.”

  “There isn’t any in the house. Papaw poured it down the drain,” I said. But I knew there was a bottle in the house—the one I’d found beneath the sink and hidden in the cabinet over the refrigerator. I didn’t know then why I’d kept it, why I hadn’t poured it out, but I knew why now.“Wait! I think I know where there might be some left.” I scooted a kitchen chair over and climbed on it to open the seldom-used door. There was the half-empty pint of Old Forester, and when I reached for it, the Ace bandage around my breasts slipped down. “Whoops,” I said, jumping off the chair. “I’ll have to remember to keep my arms down or my boobs are going to pop out like jack-in-the-boxes.”

  Mama didn’t laugh, but she smiled and took the bottle from me. “Holding out on me, huh? Don’t worry. I’ll just have a tiny bit to steady the nerves,” she said.

  My nerves needed steadying, too, didn’t they? I remembered how good I’d felt after the first couple of glasses of champagne at Mama’s party. “Can I have some? My insides are rattling like castanets.”

  Mama took two glasses out of the cabinet.“Why not? We’ll just have one,” she said.“One won’t hurt you.” She made it a ceremony, setting the bottle between us, lining our glasses in front of it; then she carefully measured three swallows into each glass. Passing mine to me, she lifted hers and held it up for a toast. “Here’s to freedom,” she said.

  We clinked our glasses and threw back our heads, filling our mouths with hope.

  “Remember to brush your teeth,” Mama said. “If old Abadella thought I was feeding you whiskey for breakfast, he’d lock me up just for being a bad mother.”

  “He’ll never know,” I said, throwing back the last drops.

  We brushed our teeth together, something we’d never done before, and then we picked imaginary lint from each other’s dresses, fussed over an errant curl behind Mama’s barrette, and finally, when we could think of nothing else to distract us from our dread, Mama put her arms around me and said, “It’s time to go.You ready?”

  I hugged her tightly. “Almost,” I said,“but there’s just one more thing I need to do.”

  “What?”

  “I’m scared. I need to say a prayer.Would you say one with me?”

  Mama didn’t answer, but she followed me to my room and knelt beside me. I don’t know what she said to God, or even if she prayed at all, but with her shoulder brushing against me, I opened my eyes and saw her folded hands on the bed beside mine. On this morning we’d drunk whiskey and brushed our teeth together for the first time, and now I was sure Grandma was watching us share something else we’d never done before.

  When we lifted our heads in unison, I laid my hands on top of Mama’s folded ones.“I’m ready to go,” I said.“I’m not scared anymore.”

  Chapter 33

  GRADY ABADELLA WASN’T IN HIS OFFICE WHEN MR. ALBRIGHT ushered us in, so I had some breathing time to look around the room. It wasn’t near as nice as Mr. Albright’s office, and it was nearly as messy as our house.There were stacks of books, loose papers, files, and folders piled on the desk, the floor, and on top of the credenza beside a photograph of four little girls dressed in Halloween costumes. The princess looked to be about ten years old, the witch about eight, Red Riding Hood (I assumed as the hooded cape was red) was probably six, and the littlest one, around three years old, was a pumpkin.

  Mama sat in the middle chair of the three chairs lined up in front of the cluttered desk. I sat on her right, Mr. Albright on her left. Mama kept tapping her purse as we waited, and I knew she wanted a cigarette. Mr. Albright tried to make light conversation to calm us. “Did you see in The Lexie Journal that a rodeo is coming to Magnolia? I was thinking of going. I haven’t been to one since my grandfather took me when I was a little boy.”

  Mama stared at him as if he had been speaking in German or some other language she didn’t know. It was up to me to fill the silence.“I like to watch the bull riders. It’s so scary to see them fall off and run just before the bull’s horns get them.”

  When the door banged open, all three of us jumped at the noise. “Good morning,” Grady Abadella said, as he shook Mr. Albright’s hand. Then he turned to Mama. “Mrs. Ebert, and”—he nodded at me as he walked around to his desk—“Layla Jay.”

  Mr. Abadella was fat. His stomach reminded me of Santa Claus’s, but his smile was missing. He didn’t waste any time at all. He shifted his glasses up on his bulbous nose and said, “I can impose a sentence of imprisonment for up to ten years. I’m offering five with the possibility of parole and time off for good behavior.”

  Five years! I’d be nineteen years old when Mama got out! I felt all the blood leaving my head; I was so weak I doubted I could stand up. I held on to the arms of my chair and stared straight ahead at the tiny window behind Mr. Abadella’s head.

  Mr. Albright cleared his throat.“We’re asking for three months, probation with no time served.”

  Abadella reared back in his chair, the squeaking of its base sounding like a scream.“No way. Mrs. Ebert has recklessly caused a life to be taken. She has to serve some time for that. Voluntary manslaughter carries a mandatory sentence of incarceration in this state. My hands are tied.”

  Mr. Albright pulled his chair closer to the desk. “Grady, Frieda and Layla Jay are here to tell you what happened. I think once you hear the whole story, you’re going to want to reduce the charges because you’ll see that this woman doesn’t belong in prison.”

  Mr. Abadella looked at Mama, who was gripping her purse like it was about to fly out of her hand if she didn’t hold on to it. “Okay, let’s hear it, Mrs. Ebert. What exactly went on in your bedroom that afternoon?”

  Mama looked at Mr. Albright for support I guessed. He nodded his head. Mama licked her lips. “Well, can I start at the beginning?”

  “Start anywhere you like, Mrs. Ebert.That’s why we’re here.”

  Mama talked for a long time. She began by describing Wallace when she first met him, recounting how he mesmerized the Pisgah Methodist congregation, how he professed to be a man of God, charged by the Lord Himself to save sinners and bring them to His fold. “I was one of those lost sheep. A sinner,” Mama said, “and I thought that marrying Wallace was going to change my life. I believed him when he said his love would save my soul.”

  I was glad I’d heard Mama practice her lines or I might have looked surprised that Mama hadn’t been enjoying sinning when she met Wallace. Mama didn’t look down even once like most liars do, and I shifted my eyes onto Mr. Abadella’s face, but I couldn’t read his reaction to Mama’s story.

  She went on telling about how Wallace had turned out to be a Jekyll and Hyde. “He made me do things I can’t even say out loud.” Mama bit her lip, looked down, and whispered, “Sexual things no woman should be asked to do, but I loved my husband and I thought God wanted me to please him.” Wallace had said that. That loving him was like loving God. I looked back at Mr. Abadella, but his face was still as expressionless as Mervin’s gnomes. Finally, Mama got around to my part. “Wallace was always wanting to take Layla Jay somewhere, be with her alone. I thought he was just trying to be a father to her. She’d never known her real father who died when she was a baby. I know you have little girls, so you understand how important a father figure is for them.”

  When Mr. Abadella glanced over at the photo of his girls, a little hope began to surface inside me. Mama had sa
id his having all those girls was lucky. Maybe she was right.

  Mama squared her shoulders and sat up straighter. “Can you imagine how I felt when I found out that Wallace had raped my baby girl?” She shook her head. “No, you can’t. No one can know who hasn’t had something so unthinkable happen to them.” She opened her purse and withdrew a little embroidered handkerchief and daubed her eyes. “I felt like the worst mother in the world when I found out. Of course, I’d asked Layla Jay why she tried to avoid being with Wallace alone, but she was so scared of him, she couldn’t tell me the truth.” Mama looked over at me and squeezed my hand. “She wanted to tell, I know. Bless her heart. We’d never had any secrets between us before, and I know that it was just killing her to keep it all inside.”

  Mr. Abadella interrupted her. His double chin quivered as he turned his head toward me.“Layla Jay, maybe we need to hear what you have to say before your mother continues. What happened between you and your stepfather?”

  My heart was on fire, flames roared up into my mouth and I couldn’t speak. I gripped the chair harder. “Water,” I finally managed to say. “Could I please have a glass of water?”

  While Mr. Abadella yelled out the door to his secretary to bring water, Mr. Albright leaned over Mama and whispered, “You’ll do fine, Layla Jay. Just tell him exactly what you told me.”

  After a few sips from the paper cup of cool water, I took a deep breath and began the tale I’d practiced so many times. “When my stepdaddy married Mama, I was real happy to have a father at last. I talked to my daddy up in heaven all the time, wishing he hadn’t died, wishing that I had a daddy like all my friends.” These snippets of truth were easy to tell and gave me confidence to ramble on. I recited Wallace’s interest in my underwear, the leering looks, the aftermath of my first date, which I said wasn’t really a date since Mrs. Albright drove us to and from the dance.When I came to the made-up portion of my story, I hesitated, but Mama reached for my hand and squeezed her strength into me. “Then one Sunday on the way home after church, my stepdaddy pulled off the highway.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to look at the man who held so much power over our lives.What if he didn’t believe me? I imagined an antenna sitting on his head like the one on top of our TV set that could pick up the static of my lies.

  “Take your time,” Mr. Abadella said.

  I was a little comforted by his saying that and the voice inside me whispered, “Thank you, Jesus. Give me courage.” It flitted through my mind that I shouldn’t ask for God’s help to tell a lie, and quickly added, “And forgive me for what I’m about to do.” I don’t know if it was God who led me through the details, but it seemed almost as if someone else had taken over my mind and my mouth as it moved up and down telling about Wallace’s threats, his overpowering me, my fear, which was real enough. I must have been speaking softly, because as I neared the final scene on the day of the real attempted rape, I noticed that Mr. Abadella and Mr. Albright were both leaning forward out of their chairs. And when Mama passed her handkerchief to me, I knew I’d begun to cry, whether from shame or true emotion I had no idea. I wiped my eyes. “On the last day, when my stepdaddy had a fever, Mama asked me to stay with him to be his nurse.”

  Mr. Abadella held up his hand. “And you didn’t protest?”

  This wasn’t a question we had rehearsed, but the answer came easily. “No, she would have asked me why I didn’t want to be alone with him, and I couldn’t tell her the truth. I was too scared of what my stepdaddy would do to me if I told.”

  He wrote a few words on the pad in front of him. “Okay, go on,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

  I related the events of the day in chronological order and came to the part where Wallace asked for the soup and 7-Up. “The soup was all gone, so I took him some crackers on a napkin and opened the bottle of Seven-Up, and he ate all of the crackers, but he didn’t finish the Seven-Up and I put it on the table beside the bed.”

  “You put it there?”

  “I . . . I think so. He may have. I don’t remember for sure.” Mr. Albright had said it was good not to know everything perfectly, that our memories were often faulty, and I didn’t want to sound too rehearsed. I could feel Mama’s body shifting beside me. She was remembering to follow the same advice. “Anyway, then he asked me to fluff his pillow like I had for Mama after her accident.” Oh shit, I said to myself. I wasn’t supposed to remind him of Mama’s drunk-driving accident. I hurried on. “So when I reached behind him, he grabbed my arms and I fell on top of him, and then everything happened so fast, I don’t remember exactly what all he was doing. His hands were on me. He pulled off my shorts and panties. I was fighting, and I think yelling at him to stop, and crying. I know I was crying. And then Mama came in and she was yelling at him, too. And I saw the bottle in her hand, and he wouldn’t let go of me, and then he fell off of me, off the bed.” I was shaking, my teeth chattering like I was freezing in the hot room. I was seeing it all again. Each time I’d practiced telling this, it had just been words, memorizing words like the poems we recited for English class. But this time, in this setting, it seemed like it was happening at this very moment, and I shook my head, “He was, he was, blood everywhere, his eyes staring at me, he was, he was dead, and Mama grabbed me and we rolled across the bed far away from him. I was so scared, I ...”

  Mama’s arms were around me. “It’s all right, honey. It’s okay. It’s all over.You’re safe now.”

  I breathed in her perfume, burying my nose against her chest. “I know,” I said. “But it, everything, just all came back like he was here.”

  Mr. Abadella wasn’t at his desk anymore. He was back at the door, calling his secretary again for more water. “Let’s take a minute,” he said, as he handed me a new paper cup. I saw the crumpled one on my lap and offered it to him. He threw it in the trash can beside his desk and sat back down. “Maybe it’s best for you to talk for a while, Mrs. Ebert. I think I’ve got a good picture of what happened from your daughter’s point of view. Now I’d like to hear yours.”

  As Mama talked in a soft voice, my mind wandered away from the memory to June to Jehu to Grandma to Gaylord’s dog. I couldn’t remember her name, and then I thought of Mervin and me naming one of his dwarfs. Murphy.That was the name we gave the little figure with the pointed hat that drooped over the side of his head. I looked over at Mama; she was shaking her head like it was on a spring. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I don’t even remember sticking the glass in his throat. The only thought I remember having was that I had to protect my baby. Save her from this demon. We both were in shock. I don’t even remember calling my father, and I don’t know why I dialed his number instead of the police. I guess no matter how old a daughter gets, she always looks to her daddy when she’s in trouble.”

  Mama hadn’t practiced that last bit about Papaw, and I wondered if she really did think about him whenever she was upset.

  Mr. Abadella asked her a few more questions about the party at Lake Dixie Springs. He read bits of Bonita Garza’s statement out loud. “Did you say you’d shoot your husband, Mrs. Ebert?”

  “Of course not! That’s just ridiculous, and even if I had said such a thing, saying it and doing it are horses of two different colors. Bonita’s always been jealous of me, but I can’t believe she’d stoop so low to hurt me.”

  Mr. Albright cut in and said, “Grady, you’ve heard all the facts that matter. What do you say? Dismiss the charges.You know Frieda didn’t mean to kill her husband. She and Layla Jay were Wallace Ebert’s victims. If he hadn’t died, he’d be the one you’re prosecuting.”

  Mr. Abadella twirled his pen in his hand, looked down at his pad, then said,“I can’t dismiss the charges. A man is dead and she is responsible for that death.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Shhhh.” Mama laid her hand on my arm and pressed it against the chair.

  “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll reduce the charge to
involuntary manslaughter, sentence of two years, eighteen months probation, serve six in the county jail.”

  “Three,” Mr. Albright said.“She’s got a daughter here with no other parent.”

  Mr. Abadella looked right into my terrified eyes. “Okay, three, but one slipup and she serves total time in prison. I’ll draw up the papers. Send them over later today.”

  “She won’t slip, and you’ll sleep better tonight, Grady, knowing you did the right thing this morning.”

  Mr. Abadella grinned. “I sleep just fine.You’re the one who’s got to worry about all the criminals you’ve put back on the streets come Judgment Day.”

  Judgment Day for Mama was over, and Mama had won the day. Or had she? Three months living with criminals wasn’t going to be easy. And where would I live now? What would happen to me?

  Chapter 34

  MAMA LIT UP A LUCKY AS WE WALKED TO THE GALAXIE, which bore a parking ticket on the windshield. “Crap,” Mama cried. “I’ve already broken the law. Maybe Pop can get it fixed.” She tossed her cigarette on the street. “Let’s go home,” she said. We were both so exhausted from lack of sleep and wrung out emotionally from the hour we’d spent in Mr. Abadella’s office, we cried all the way back to the house. One minute Mama was crying, saying she was a convicted felon now, and the next she was laughing hysterically through her tears saying she wasn’t going to prison after all.

  “It could have been a lot worse, Layla Jay,” she said, unbuttoning her dress as she headed down the hall to her room.“Three months isn’t such a long time really. I’ll be out before Christmas, maybe Thanksgiving. I’ve got so much to do. I’d better make a list,” she said, disappearing into her room.