by Anne George
“Get up, Mouse, the sheriff’s here.” Mary Alice’s voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. “You’re drooling again.”
I wiped my mouth and sat up straight. I couldn’t believe, given the state of my nerves, that I had fallen asleep.
“You okay?” I asked. Mary Alice was white as a sheet; her eyes were bloodshot, and smeared eye makeup made them appear sunken.
“I am now. The mantra and the Tums both failed me. I lost my lunch in the dumpster.”
“You want some gum?”
She held out her hand while I rummaged in my purse, finally coming up with part of a stick of Freedent. She picked the foil off while I groaned my way up from the ground.
“The sheriff’s already gone in. He wants to go over the damage with us.”
“Us? I don’t know anything about that place.” My voice sounded like Prissy in Gone With the Wind, squealing, “Lordy, Miss Scarlett!”
“I don’t know anything about it, either. There’s an inventory somewhere.”
“You should have been more businesslike about this whole thing,” I grumbled. “Leaping and then looking. Just like always.”
I regretted it the minute I said it, but Sister seemed not to notice my harsh words.
“It’s nice out here, isn’t it?” she said. “Fly McCorkle says his wife’s church group usually picks these apples for the Jimmy Hale Mission; wanted to know if it would be okay. I said sure.”
“This orchard belongs to you?”
“I think so. Come on,” she said, helping me brush my skirt off. “Let’s go talk to the sheriff.”
The inside of the Skoot ’n’ Boot was as bad as I had thought when I first saw it. Sheriff Reuse and a deputy were walking around examining the devastation, the sheriff had his notebook out, of course, and Fly McCorkle sat at the bar with a bottle of beer. I couldn’t imagine where he had found an unbroken stool to sit on and an unbroken bottle of beer. The place looked like a bulldozer had been in it. The sheriff saw us and picked his way through the mess.
“Ladies, would you like to sit down?” he asked.
We glanced around. Fly seemed to have found the only seat in the whole place.
“The kitchen isn’t too bad.”
We followed him into the kitchen I had admired so much just two days before. He was right. Drawers had been pulled open and utensils scattered around, but it was not the total wreck the rest of the place was. Maybe because kitchens are just sturdier. Or maybe the vandals had been tired when they got to it. At any rate, there were unbroken stools by the Corian counter. We sat down.
“Why on God’s earth would anybody do this?” Sister said. She wasn’t really asking the sheriff; she was thinking aloud.
He answered, though, with another question. “Maybe looking for something?”
“They could have looked without tearing everything up, couldn’t they?”
“It depends.”
“I mean, I’m always looking for things like my reading glasses or the mate to a shoe. And, Mouse, when I was over at your house looking for my Gucci scarf you borrowed and didn’t return, did I tear up your house? No. Ask me, this was pure vandalism. All this destruction. And why?”
“You were looking through my house for your scarf?”
“Just in your dresser, and see? You couldn’t even tell.”
“But if something was hidden,” the sheriff insisted.
“Nothing was hidden in the wineglasses and the bottles of liquor. They didn’t have to break all those.” Sister motioned around the kitchen. “And look at the pots and pans and the cuts in the counter. It doesn’t make a grain of sense.”
“Neither does setting forest fires, but we see it all the time. There are more sick people out there than we like to admit.” Sheriff Reuse opened his notebook and scanned it. “I know there’s an inordinate amount of damage, but I still think they were looking for something. From what I’ve seen, there was a fairly methodical pattern to their search. The stuffed chairs, for instance. They didn’t miss a single one of them. If they had just been vandalizing, two or three would have sufficed. I think the glassware was an afterthought. Maybe they didn’t find what they were looking for and were mad. Or maybe they wanted it to look like vandalism.”
“You went through my dresser drawers?” I asked Mary Alice.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Patricia Anne. You should have returned the scarf.” She turned back to the sheriff. “You think they’re looking for drugs?”
Her question was answered by the deputy standing in the door. “I just found this, Sheriff,” he said. He held out a tiny plastic bag with some white powder in it. “It was in the toilet-paper holder in the ladies’ room.”
I wondered if it was the holder I had fixed the day before with my Swiss army knife. If so, my fingerprints would be all over it. “Oh, my,” I said, putting my forehead down against the cool kitchen counter.
Eight
Haley came to supper that night. Usually I try to fix something special for her. Alan has his wife and children, and Freddie seems to find girlfriends who like to feed him, so I know there’s nourishing food on their tables, but Haley is alone and stops by the pizza shop too often on her way home. She’s an RN, working in open heart surgery, spending the day unclogging other people’s arteries and the night clogging her own. She swears this is not true, but I know better. So on Haley’s supper visits, it’s veggies, every color. All beta carotenes and antioxidants.
But after Sheriff Reuse had got through questioning us and had us walk through the Skoot, just as he had done the day before, to see if we saw anything different (stuffing out of chairs didn’t count), and Mary Alice had talked to Fly McCorkle about the repairs (yes, indeed, she had decided she was going to open back up!), and she had to stop at Hardee’s for a peach milkshake to settle her stomach and wondered why I was mad at her since I left the key out there in that plastic rock, anyway, for anyone to come in my house, and she had seen an advertisement for a dog turd that you hid a key in that would be a lot better than that old rock, a fake dog turd, of course, and she would order me one, and why wouldn’t I talk to her, that she hadn’t done anything but look in my dresser and it hadn’t been very long since we had had one dresser for the two of us, had I forgotten?
“Fifty years ago,” I said.
“See?”
“You always had the top drawers.”
“That’s better, Mouse. Now we’re communicating.”
By the time she let me out at home, I barely had time to go to the store. I grabbed a slice of ham steak, a can of green beans and an angel food cake. With the applesauce I had made that morning, it would do.
Haley and Fred came in at the same time. I am always amazed at how Fred’s features became so beautifully feminine on Haley. She looks just like him, but she is lovely. No one would ever call her Mouse. Like Mary Alice, she had received the gift of beautiful olive skin from some unknown progenitor. Combine this with reddish-blond hair and brown eyes and you have a knockout. The only way anyone would know I was in the delivery room is that she is small.
“Hey, you two,” I said.
They both gave me a hug.
“Ham?” Haley looked over my shoulder. “You’re giving me meat to eat?”
I popped the ham steak covered with a raisin sauce into the oven. “Don’t get used to it.”
“I’m just impressed. You want me to set the table?”
“Please. I’ve been out to the Skoot ’n’ Boot with Sister. You wouldn’t believe all that’s happened out there.”
“Something else happened today?” Fred stopped on his way out of the door.
“No more murders, thank goodness. Go get cleaned up. I’ll tell you all about it at supper.”
“I’m not happy about you being out there, Patricia Anne.”
“I know, honey.”
“Your sister is a dingbat.”
“I think so, too, honey.”
Fred nodded solemnly as if we had reached an important agreement. Then,
clutching the evening paper under his arm, he headed toward the bathroom. Haley and I grinned at each other.
“Have you heard all that’s happened?” I asked her.
She opened a cabinet door and took out the plates. “I stopped by Debbie’s to see the babies. She told me. Good Lord, Mama, an execution-style murder! Does Aunt Sister know anything about this man? Debbie says she bought the place on a whim. What a thing to get mixed up in!”
“They found drugs there today.”
“At the Skoot?”
“In the toilet-paper holder in the ladies’ room. When we got there, someone had torn the place up, obviously looking for it.”
Haley put the plates on the table and reached into the silverware drawer. When she turned around, her mouth was pursed exactly like Fred’s. “I think Papa’s right, Mama. This sounds like a place to stay clear of.”
“It’s a real neat place.” I found myself defending the Skoot. “Or at least it could be. It’s the kind of place your Aunt Sister would have a wonderful time with. You know how she likes to be the world’s hostess and ply everyone with food and drink. She would be in her element there.”
“It sounds like an element is already there that you and Aunt Sister don’t need to get mixed up with.”
“You may be right. According to Bonnie Blue Butler, though, and even Fly McCorkle, there’s never been any trouble. Sheriff Reuse admitted he hadn’t had a call to the Skoot in over two years, and that was somebody backing into the Swamp Creatures’ van and leaving.” I finished chopping up a small onion, dumped it into the beans and put the pot on to simmer. “You want some corn bread?”
“Bonnie Blue Butler?”
“She works out there. Wonderful person.”
“Fly?”
“An old hippie who’s going to fix the place up. Wonderful person.”
“Sheriff Reuse?”
“Seems competent.”
Haley reached for the glasses. “I’m almost afraid to ask this. The Swamp Creatures?”
“The band. I haven’t met them yet.” I put the lid on the green beans. “Hey, you want corn bread or not?”
Haley shook her head. “It’s too much trouble.” She put the glasses down, came over and hugged me. “It’s just that I worry about you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, patting her shoulder. But I knew she would. Tom’s sudden death had taken from Haley the sense of invulnerability that is the blessing of youth. Until his death, the patients in the operating room were people she didn’t know, sick people she cared for professionally; their families were strangers. Now she was one of them. Anything could happen to anyone at any time, and did. The knowledge had come to her too soon.
“I’m going to make corn bread, anyway,” I said. “You can feed Woofer for me. I’m sure he’s feeling neglected.”
Haley opened the pantry door to get the dogfood. “Debbie told me about Henry Lamont, too. I remember you talking about him.”
“Debbie was just a font of information, wasn’t she?”
Haley laughed. “I have an idea Debbie hasn’t even scratched the surface.”
I reached over her for the cornmeal. “You’re right,” I admitted.
At supper I told them everything I knew, including about Fly McCorkle’s pickup with the monarch butterfly on it and the old apple orchard behind the Skoot. I told them about Ed’s tattoo and the stuffing torn out of the chairs and the cocaine in the toilet-paper holder. They ate and listened. I opened a can of peaches and sliced the angel food cake and told them about the Swamp Creature sign and the lights that ran around the outside sign like the marquee at the Alabama Theater. They ate and listened. I told them about Henry, though I didn’t tell them about his wife. Finally I poured coffee, sat down and said, “That’s it.”
Haley and Fred both put exactly a half teaspoon of sugar in their coffee and stirred. If the Olympics had a synchronized coffee-stirring event, these two would have been gold medalists, I thought. They looked from the coffee to me, coffee to me. Their expressions were so alike, it was eerie.
Fred finally raised his cup to his mouth. So did Haley.
“You’re right,” Fred said, his words blowing steam across the cup toward me. “That’s it.”
Haley nodded.
Fortunately, just then the phone rang. Haley reached behind her to answer it. “It’s for you,” she said, handing me the receiver.
“Who is it?”
“Some lady.”
“I’ll get it in the den.” I picked up my coffee cup and left the kitchen. Fred and Haley watched me silently.
“Patricia Anne? It’s Bonnie Blue.”
“Hang the phone up,” I yelled to Haley. I heard the click.
“Hey, Bonnie Blue, how are you?”
“I’m okay. Just wanted to know if you’ve heard from Henry.”
“He came by here this morning.”
“I mean since they found the dope at the Skoot.”
“No. How’d you hear about that?”
“Fly McCorkle told his wife. AT&T ought to snap that woman up. She could teach them some shortcuts. Anyway, I’ve been trying to get Henry, and I can’t find him.”
“You worried about him?”
“Just wanted him to know. Thought the sheriff might be calling on that child again.”
“Oh, my God.” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought about such a logical course of events. “You’re right.”
“Henry tell you all that’s happened to him?”
“Yes.”
“Bless his heart.” Bonnie Blue sighed mightily. “Patricia Anne, I think we need to do some talking. Can you have lunch tomorrow?”
“Sure.” There was a tone in her voice I had not heard before, a tightness. It made me anxious. “You are worried about him, aren’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Just tell me where to meet you,” I said.
“Shoney’s on Eighteenth at eleven-thirty suit you?”
“I’ll be there. You going to call Mary Alice?”
“I want just you and me to talk.”
“Fine. Bonnie Blue, if I should hear from Henry, you want me to have him call you?”
“Sure do. He knows my number.”
“I don’t, though.”
“You got a pencil?”
I did, wrote the number down and put it in the side compartment of my purse before I went back to the kitchen.
“Who was that?” Haley asked.
“A lady from the church wanting me to make a cake for the Christmas bazaar.” Lie detectors aren’t necessary for people like me; my voice gives me away. Fred and Haley both looked at me disapprovingly. “You want some more coffee?” I asked.
During the night, I got mad at Fred. He was lying there snoring lightly, twitching occasionally just like Woofer does when he dreams he’s chasing rabbits. I wondered who Fred was chasing, and the more I thought about how well he was sleeping and dreaming in the pajamas I had bought and washed for him, digesting the supper I had cooked for him, the madder I got.
I punched my pillow and tried to get comfortable, but I couldn’t. What made him think he had the right to tell me what I could and couldn’t do? Make me have to lie to him? Telling me I could do this and I couldn’t do that and Mary Alice was a dingbat. Which she was, but he shouldn’t have said that about my sister, and Lord knows what he would do if he knew she had come into our house and gone through my dresser drawers, which was another matter, but damn!
I got up and put on my robe and slippers.
“You okay?” Fred mumbled.
“You’re not the boss of me,” I said.
I went into the kitchen. It was three o’clock. I got a glass of milk and a cookie and took them into the den. It was cool, so I lit the gas logs. Haley, too, I thought. Even Haley bossed me around just like her father and aunt did. And the boys weren’t much better. Alan trying to tell me how to invest my retirement money. I had enough sense to invest my own money, thank you. And a nice little
income I was getting from it, too. I didn’t have to listen to Fred or Sister or anybody. Or solve anybody else’s problems. I was an independent woman. I might even move down to Gulf Shores, never cook another supper, just sit on the beach. With a lot of sunscreen, of course.
Woofer scratched on the back door. I got up and let him in. “You can go with me,” I told him, rubbing his ears back. “You don’t boss me around.” When I let him go, he went straight to the coffee table, gobbled up my cookie, then pranced into the kitchen and looked expectantly at the box of cookies still on the counter.
“You just knocked yourself out of a life at the beach,” I told him.
I woke up to the doorbell ringing. For a moment I was confused, and then I realized I was on the den sofa and that the slant of the sun against the wall was mid-morning bright. I could hear Woofer barking in the backyard. Fred must have let him out.
The doorbell rang again. I ran my fingers through my hair and went to see who it was. They were going to be in for a shock, I thought, when they saw me.
I looked through the peephole and saw a florist delivery man getting into his truck. I opened the door, and on the porch was a large gardenia bush full of blooms. “Ohh,” I said, bringing it inside, burying my face in the fragrance. “Ohhh.” It was suddenly May. Graduations and proms and dances and kisses and weddings. I couldn’t believe it.
I carried the plant to the kitchen table and circled around it, admiring it. This was October! Somebody had spent a fortune on this!
I opened the card, knowing what it would say. Something like, “Enjoy! Mary Alice.” What I got instead was one of the dearest surprises of my life. The card said simply, “I love you. Fred.” I sat there smiling. How about that? I guess I would have to take the old bastard to Gulf Shores with me.
Bonnie Blue was waiting for me when I got to Shoney’s. We both ordered the Senior Soup and Salad Bar and went to get our soup. She was wearing a dark nylon wind suit and looked neither as large nor as formidable as she had seemed at the Skoot ’n’ Boot. In fact, she seemed subdued today.
“Cream of broccoli,” she said. “Hmm. My favorite.”