Hypnotizing Chickens

by Julia Watts

  Chrys looked at Nanny. Her eyes were dry, but her mouth was set as if to keep her lower lip from trembling. “And what about now?”

  “Well, I don’t reckon you have to worry about nobody kicking you out of the family. I don’t know, the Bible says it’s a sin, but it says lots of other things is sins, too—some things people do all the time without even thinking about it. Since that day you went to church with me, I’ve been studying a lot on what you said—about how can just a few people in one little church go to heaven and everybody else end up in hell. I was praying on it, and it come to me that it’s not man’s job to judge other people. I can’t judge you for being the way you are, child. Only God knows what’s in your heart.”

  Chrys knew that this answer had been the result of a tremendous amount of thought on Nanny’s part, and while she knew Nanny wouldn’t be starting a branch of PFLAG anytime soon, it was still more acceptance than she’d let herself hope for. “Thank you, Nanny.” She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes.

  “Ain’t no need for you to take on thisaway. You’ve always been a sensible girl. Now does your mommy know what you just told me?”

  Chrys nodded. “Your daddy and your brother, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh,” Nanny said. “How come I was the last to know?”

  “Well…I was worried about how you’d react. I know how important your faith is to you, and for Free Will Baptists, being gay is about the worst kind of ‘backslid’ there is. Plus…” And here she started crying in earnest despite her nanny’s admonition not to “take on.” “I love you so much. You’ve always been my favorite, and I couldn’t stand the thought of telling you something that might make you not love me anymore.”

  “Now you’ve always been a smart girl, but that’s just plain foolish. You ought to know I’m always gonna love you no matter what.” She opened her arms. “Come here.”

  Chrys bent over Nanny’s rocker to hug her, but it wasn’t close enough, so she got down on her knees. She sat with her head in Nanny’s lap with Nanny’s arms around her, and for those few minutes the years melted away and Nanny was in her early sixties, strong and mobile and cancer-free, and Chrys was a little girl.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I want to talk to both of you about something for a minute,” Dee said.

  Nanny had just finished her session and was sitting in her recliner. Chrys was sitting on the couch next to Dee but making an effort not to sit too close. The more intimate she and Dee became, the stranger it felt when Dee was acting in her “official capacity” as Nanny’s physical therapist.

  “A colleague of mine recommended a care agency that might be a good choice for when you have to go back to work, Chrys.”

  Nanny looked at Chrys. “Well, I hate to think about you leaving, but I know you’ve got to get back to your life. You didn’t get all that education just to help old ladies use the toilet.”

  “It’s been an honor helping you use the toilet, Nanny,” Chrys said.

  “This agency operates out of Morgan. My friend says several of her patients use them, and all their reports have been positive.”

  “They don’t hire dopers that’ll come in and steal my pills?” Nanny asked.

  “They do a drug screening and a full background check on all their employees,” Dee said. “And they only hire certified nursing assistants and LPNs.” Dee passed a business card to Chrys. Their fingers brushed. “I already talked to the director, and she said there’s availability starting in mid-August.”

  “We’ll give them a call,” Chrys said.

  When she walked Dee to her car, Chrys said, “You know, there’ll probably be a time before too long when Nanny will need a higher level of care.”

  “She told you, then?”

  “You knew?”

  Dee nodded. “Well, I have access to her medical records. I’m required to keep things confidential anyway, but she was still really insistent that I not tell anybody.” Dee reached out and took her hand. “How are you doing with the news?”

  “I’m okay. I mean, she’s eighty-nine. I’d love to have her around forever, but I have to be realistic.”

  Dee smiled. “That’s her exact attitude, too. It’s funny, the two of you are different in the details, but when it comes to the important stuff, you’re a lot alike.”

  “Well, some of the important stuff. You won’t see me becoming a Baptist any time soon, and I don’t think Nanny’s going to start kissing girls. Speaking of which…” Chrys leaned over and brushed her lips against Dee’s. “I’ve been wanting to do that all morning.”

  Dee’s smile was shy. “And what if your nanny saw that?”

  “Well, she’d be shocked I was kissing you, but she wouldn’t be shocked I was kissing a girl.”

  “You told her? How did she take it?”

  “She was surprisingly cool. She said she loves me no matter what.”

  Dee touched Chrys’s cheek. “Actually, that’s not so surprising at all.”

  * * *

  Chrys had just finished her nightly phone conversation with Dee and was propped up in bed scribbling in the notebook she had bought for the purposes of planning her new project. Calling it a project was both more accurate and less intimidating than calling it her new book. It was in the earliest stages of development, and calling it a book would be like calling an embryo a child and putting it on the bus for elementary school.

  She was slightly startled by the scratching on her window, but she had learned by now to expect to see her brother’s face there, not a serial killer’s. “You want a beer?” he mouthed exaggeratedly, pointing to two PBRs hanging from plastic rings.

  She opened the window. “I’m in my pajamas.”

  “Come on out anyway. That’s the great thing about being in the country. Ain’t nobody out here to see you. You could come out here buck naked if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t think I’ll take you up on that,” Chrys said, climbing out of the window.

  “That wasn’t an invitation, just a statement of fact.” Dustin handed her a chilled can.

  They walked over to sit at the picnic table, the grass cool under Chrys’s bare feet. The black sky was sprinkled with stars. “I can never get over the night sky here. In the city you can’t see the stars as well.”

  “That’s too bad,” Dustin said, looking up. “Peyton always says the stars look like rhinestones in a tiara, but it’s always got to come around to princess stuff for her. I wonder if she’ll miss them.”

  Chrys knocked back her first slug of PBR. It was a brand she would’ve never touched in Knoxville, but she was beginning to develop a taste for it. “Miss what?”

  “The stars,” Dustin said. “You said you can’t see them so good in the city.”

  Chrys’s hand froze in its route to convey the beer can to her mouth. “Dustin, are you—”

  “I told Amber she could go ahead and take that transfer to Nashville. You’re the first person I told we’re moving.”

  “Really? What made you change your mind?”

  Dustin grinned. “Well, being the bossy older sister you are, I know you’d like to think it was you that changed it. But it wasn’t. It was Mommy.”

  This was strange news. Like most Appalachian mothers, Chrys’s mom was a hen who liked to keep her chicks close to the roost. “But I thought Mom would throw a fit if you even talked about moving.”

  “She probably will. Like I said, she don’t know yet.”

  “Then how—”

  “It was at the cookout last week. You remember how Mommy was talking about how she always wanted to be a nurse but never got to on account of getting married and having to raise us. You remember that?”

  “I do. That was the first time I ever heard her say anything about it.”

  “Me too.” Dustin took a swig of his beer. “It got me to thinking…twenty, thirty years from now, I don’t want Amber to be talking about how she wanted to be this or that but she never did ’cause she married me an
d got pregnant.” He grinned. “Well, not necessarily in that order.”

  “Wow, Dustin. That’s really thoughtful.” Her brother had been the likable but impulsive manchild for so long, it was startling to hear such a mature statement from him.

  “Didn’t know I had it in me, did you?” He fished a Marlboro out of his back pocket and lit it. “I was thinking about Peyton, too. I want her to know she deserves a shot at being whatever she wants to be.”

  Chrys smiled. “Even if that’s a princess?”

  “I reckon. Don’t know how much of a shot she’s got at that one, though.” He squinted through his cigarette smoke, a James Dean move he’d started practicing as a teenager. “To be honest, Sissy, I don’t know how much of a shot Amber has at making it in music either. But I know it’s the right thing to let her try. I’ve been going over to my buddy’s a lot to use his computer and look up jobs in Nashville. I’ve applied for a few of them. This quickie oil change place wants me to come in for an interview next week when me and Amber go up there to look for a place to live.”

  “You’ve been changing the oil in cars since before you could legally drive,” Chrys said. “You should be a shoo-in.”

  “I hope so. And I hope we can find an apartment we can afford that ain’t too much of a rat trap. It’ll be weird living in a little box stacked up against all these other little boxes full of people. It don’t seem natural.”

  “It’s not as bad as you make it sound,” Chrys said. “And if things go well, maybe you can move to a house in a year or two. And if things go really well, maybe you can live in one of those big tacky country-music mansions.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Dustin said, grinning. “Me and Amber’s talked a lot about it, and she wants to give this a try for a couple of years. If nothing happens, then she wants to go back to school. Maybe be a paralegal.”

  Chrys could easily picture Amber sitting in one of her English comp classes. “That’s a good idea.”

  “Well, I figure either way it keeps her from working at the dollar store for the rest of her life. And me, I ain’t exactly setting the world on fire staying here.”

  Chrys couldn’t imagine how hard it was for Dustin to be setting off on such a new path after thirty-eight years of sticking with the familiar. “I’m proud of you, buddy.”

  “I don’t know if you should be proud of me or not. I’m trying to do the best I can, but I’m scared shitless.”

  “That’s how it feels to be a grownup.”

  “Is it?” Dustin laughed. “Well, hell, no wonder I’ve been putting it off for so long!”

  * * *

  Chrys snuggled under the covers, drowsy from the beer. She felt good. Sure, it was more likely that Amber would end up typing briefs in a law office than starring in videos on CMT. But it was right for her to try.

  It was like love. It was possible that Chrys’s relationship with Dee would end in heartbreak just like things had with Meredith. But if she didn’t try, there was no hope at all, and what would be the point of that? Life was full of possibilities: heartbreaks and disappointments and setbacks and injustices. But there were wonderful possibilities, too, and the only chance you had to make them realities was to try, to hope, to love.

  She slept soundly.

  When the alarm on her phone told her it was time to wake, the screen was flashing “new message.” She dialed her voice mail: “Honeybun, you’ve got to call me as soon as you get this. Call. Me.”

  Given the hours Aaron kept, it was highly unlikely he would be up at seven in the morning, but the obvious panic in his voice made Chrys dial his number anyway.

  “Honeybun, where were you last night? I called and called.”

  “You must’ve called when I was outside with my brother. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay, but you’re not gonna be when I tell you this. Are you sitting down?”

  Chrys’s stomach tightened. “I’m still lying down, actually.”

  “That’s even better. So guess who came to see me for a massage?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Meredith.”

  “That’s weird. She has a regular massage therapist she sees at her club.”

  “Honeybun, she didn’t want me to wring her muscles. She wanted to wring me for information. About you.”

  Her anxiety was matched only by her confusion. Why would the dumper suddenly be interested in the dumpee? “Oh-kay.”

  “She asked if she could have your phone number, and I said I was pretty sure she was the reason you changed it. All this is while she’s naked on the table, by the way, with me working on her, so you can imagine the awkwardness.”

  “Thanks for the visual.”

  “She asks if you’re living with me, and I say no and that you’re away for the whole summer. She’s quiet for a while after that and I’m finishing up the massage and she finally says, ‘Kentucky. That’s where she is, isn’t it?’ I neither confirm nor deny it, which, of course, is pretty much confirming it. So I screwed up. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay. You were blindsided.”

  “And now I’m trying to keep the same thing from happening to you.”

  “Did she give any indication what she might have wanted to talk to me about?” Chrys thought of the expensive gifts Meredith had given her over the years: the Tiffany jewelry, the high-end laptop, the surprise vacations to Europe and the Caribbean. Did Meredith want the stuff back? She couldn’t return the vacations, of course, but anything else Meredith could have back. It was just like Meredith, to place conditions and an expiration date on her gifts…and her love.

  “She didn’t give me a fucking clue,” Aaron said. “All I can tell you is that the way she said Kentucky and strode out of the salon, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a visitor sometime soon.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chrys fed the chickens. She dumped out a bucket of potato peelings and past-its-prime buttermilk for Porkchop. She went back in the house and refilled Nanny’s coffee cup and started on the breakfast dishes.

  She hadn’t eaten any breakfast herself. Her stomach was too full of anxiety. Was Meredith going to show up on her doorstep, and if so, when? If she knew Meredith’s take-charge-of-the-situation-right-now mentality, then it would be sooner rather than later. But what situation was Meredith trying to take charge of anyway?

  She could head things off by calling Meredith herself, but no, that would just be making things easier for her. If Meredith wanted to see her, let Meredith put in the effort, even if the will-she-or-won’t-she waiting game was going to put her in what Nanny called the nervous hospital.

  After lunch (which she didn’t eat any of either), Chrys jumped when the doorbell rang. It turned out to be the UPS man delivering a housecoat and some pig salt-and-pepper shakers that Nanny had ordered from the Harriet Carter catalog.

  “Listen, they oink when you shake them,” Nanny said, admiring her new purchase. “Ain’t that cute?”

  “It is,” Chrys said distractedly.

  “Child, is something the matter with you today? You’re as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers.”

  Chrys had always liked that expression and let herself smile at it a little. “I am jumpy, aren’t I? I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” It was partially true. She didn’t know why she was such a wreck. Even if Meredith was coming, it wasn’t like she was coming to kill her.

  “Maybe you’re coming into the change of life. That makes some women take on funny.”

  “Well, I’ve definitely been going through some changes, but I don’t think I’ve started that change yet.”

  After Nanny had settled in to watch Wheel of Fortune, the phone rang. Chrys picked it up and carried it away from the sounds of the overzealous crowd cheering the show’s title.

  “Chrystal, that ex”—Chrys’s mother paused—“friend of yours just came to the door asking about you. Your daddy says if you don’t want her coming around he’s got ways of making sure she don
’t do it no more.”

  So here it was. “Tell Daddy not to shoot her. Where is she right now?”

  “Standing on the porch.”

  Chrys sighed. “Tell her to come on over here. She drove all this way. I might as well find out what she wants. Thanks, Mom.” She hung up the phone and said, “Nanny, I’m going to have company for a few minutes. Someone from Knoxville. We’ll talk out on the porch.”

  “You’uns can talk in here if you want. I can go to my room.”

  Chrys had no desire for Meredith to invade the peacefulness of Nanny’s little house. “Thanks but no. Whatever this is going to be it’ll definitely be an on-the-porch kind of conversation.”

  Nanny looked at her hard. “Child, is this something I ought to be worried about?”

  “Not all. You don’t need to worry about anything except how stupid these contestants on Wheel of Fortune are.”

  There was a knock at the door. Chrys took a deep breath and went to answer it.

  It was easy to forget how good-looking Meredith was. There was a butchness to her looks, but it took on the air of a beautiful boy rather than a handsome man. Her jawline was defined but still soft, and she wore her hair bobbed like an effete young gentleman’s in an Evelyn Waugh novel. Today she was wearing a button-down shirt and khakis that were impeccably ironed and, Chrys knew, of high-quality but not flashy brands.