The Sisters Café

by Carolyn Brown

  “I am Candy Parker,” Marty said.

  “You read it too? I thought you were too busy chasing hot cowboys to read about them,” Trixie said.

  “You are who?” Cathy asked.

  “I don’t read it, Trixie. I write it. I am Candy Parker. I chose a pen name because I didn’t want to embarrass my sister. This is too rich for words.” Marty laughed.

  “Does that mean I don’t have to wait? I can read them before they go to the publisher?” Cathy asked.

  “Hell, no! You’d take a red pen to them and give me a complex. You have to wait until they are completely finished,” Marty said.

  Trixie started up the stairs.

  “Hey, you aren’t going to be mad at me, are you?” Marty hollered.

  “Yes, I am, and it’s going to last a long time.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I’ll think of something and it won’t be pleasant. I can’t believe you did that. I had to find out from that bitch’s mouth. You didn’t even come and tell me. Why, Marty?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Well, I’m not going to forgive you until you do.”

  “It’s going to be between us, isn’t it?”

  “Damn straight.”

  * * *

  If you can’t buy it at Walmart, you don’t need it, was another of Trixie’s mother’s sayings.

  She could almost hear her mother saying the words as she tossed things in her cart at the Sherman Walmart store. It had been the last time they’d gone out shopping and with very little help Janie could remember some things. That time she’d been herself right up until checkout time when she looked around her and started crying. She didn’t know where she was or who Trixie was and she was terrified.

  Trixie picked up a bottle of shampoo and turned the cart down the center aisle. A display of bubble bath on an end aisle took her eye and she didn’t even see the cart coming around the next corner until it rammed into hers.

  She looked up into Andy’s dreamy eyes.

  “I’m sorry. Oh!” the man said.

  “Hello, Andy.”

  “Trixie.” He nodded. “How are you?”

  “Just fine. You?”

  “Lonely.”

  “Break up with the new dispatcher or did she break up with you?”

  He took a couple of steps toward her and ran a forefinger down her bare arm. “I’m lonely for you. I always came back home to you, Trixie. What’s the big deal?”

  She didn’t feel a single tingle. No sparks. No extra heartbeat. Nada. Zilch. Should she tell him he was losing his charm?

  Hell, no! If she did, she’d have to put up with his whimpering because Andy couldn’t live without his sex appeal.

  She didn’t feel anger either. No visions of strapping him out spread-eagled in a fire ant bed and pouring honey all over his body.

  She felt nothing but indifference. Marty would be so glad that she was finally, finally moving on.

  She picked up his finger and dropped it. “But I’m bordering on crazy and I have a drinking problem and I read erotic books which is where I’m headed right now. I hear there’s a whole new shipment over in the romance books.”

  He looked into her eyes. “I bet I can do a better job than any of those men in books. You still got those black furry cuffs?”

  “I’m not sure you could get Anna Ruth to believe that line, and I gave the cuffs to Marty. You want to talk to her about them?”

  “Come on, Trix. You know I’ll never love a woman the way I do you.”

  “Poor baby,” she said and pushed on past him toward the book section.

  “I won’t wait around for you forever.” He raised his voice.

  “I can always hope.” She didn’t look back.

  She didn’t stop at the book aisle but went on to the toys where she bought two princess coloring books and a new box of crayons. Only eight. Any more confused her mother.

  After she checked out, she drove straight to the nursing home. If it was a good day, she wouldn’t need the coloring books, but if it wasn’t, they could color. That always calmed Janie down and sometimes it even sparked a little memory.

  Trixie hoped Janie was lucid that day. Her whole world was coming apart and she needed someone outside her tight little circle of friends to talk to. She needed her mother worse than ever. Did the whole town know that Andy was cheating behind her back? And the new thing with Marty voting for Anna Ruth—that stung. Granted, Trixie had said if she did get it, she wouldn’t ever put that gaudy jalapeño pin on her lapel or even on a ratty old T-shirt, but why would Marty vote for Anna Ruth? She didn’t even like her, so why would she want her, of all people, in the club?

  “Hello, are you new here?” Janie asked when Trixie rapped on the door.

  “Yes, I am. Do you like to color?”

  Janie clapped her hands. “Oh, yes, but my colors are all broken.”

  “I brought new ones. Do you mind if I color with you? I have two new princess books.”

  “What fun!” Janie patted the card table in front of her. “We can color right here. New colors?”

  “That’s right.” Trixie swallowed the disappointment as she brought out the books and the crayons.

  “I want the blue one. Cinderella’s dress is blue,” her mother said.

  “May I have the yellow one?” Trixie asked.

  Janie picked up the box, removed the yellow one, and handed it to Trixie. “What’s your name?”

  “Trixie,” she answered.

  Even hearing her daughter’s name brought no response.

  Janie opened the book and started on the very first page, just like she always did. Her coloring books were all beautifully done, but she never colored random pages. They had to be done in order or it upset her.

  “What’s your name?” Trixie asked as she colored.

  “Janie. My daughter wore a blue dress to the prom when she was a junior in high school. I sewed it for her and hand beaded the bodice. It was lovely.”

  “What was her name?” Trixie asked.

  Janie stopped for a minute. “I don’t remember. Could I have the yellow? Cinderella’s hair is yellow. My daughter married a man right out of high school. He had shifty eyes.”

  “We can trade,” Trixie said. “Was your daughter’s hair yellow?”

  “No, it was brown, like yours.”

  “Just one daughter?”

  “Yes, and she ran away. It was because she married that man who kept looking at other women, I think.”

  Janie looked up and there was light in her eyes. “Hello, Trixie! I’m so glad you came today. Did you bring me some beans and greens? I’ve had a hankering for some of Clawdy’s cooking lately. Oh, what I’d give for a big old heaping spoonful of her pepper jelly on a hot biscuit.”

  Trixie swallowed twice. “Hi, Mamma. I didn’t bring anything from Clawdy’s, but I’ll drive back to Cadillac and get whatever you want if you are hungry for that kind of food. You look pretty.”

  “No, just bring them next time you come see me.” She smoothed the front of her dress. “I still love this dress. I told them to get it out today in case you came. It’s what I wore to your wedding.”

  “Yes, it is,” Trixie said. “That was fifteen years ago.”

  “It’s still a good dress though, and you said I was pretty that day.” Janie stopped coloring and looked up. “You look happy.”

  “I am. Andy and I divorced.”

  “I’m not surprised. Why did you leave him?”

  “He cheated on me more than once,” Trixie said.

  “Well, then you should have left him.”

  “Mamma, why didn’t Claudia ever put your name down to be in the social club?”

  Janie smiled. “Honey, I never married your father, and I came from the wrong side of the track
s. The social club didn’t want me, but that was okay. I didn’t want them either.”

  “I left Andy because he was having an affair with a younger woman named Anna Ruth…”

  Janie went back to her coloring but butted in, “Anna Ruth’s mamma married the man that got her pregnant. When I got pregnant, I decided I didn’t love the man I was with, so I didn’t marry him.”

  Trixie kept coloring. “Marty voted for Anna Ruth instead of me to get into the social club. Agnes was on the ballot so she voted against her too.”

  “Agnes is always on the ticket. And don’t hold it against Marty. She didn’t vote against you. She voted against Agnes.”

  “But why? Agnes wants it so bad.”

  Janie smiled, but the light in her eyes was fading fast. “Clawdy says that if Agnes gets in the club, Violet is a dead woman. Can I please have the pink now?”

  Janie’s eyes went blank.

  “Yes, ma’am. But remember we were coloring the princesses and you were telling me Agnes and Claudia.”

  “I changed my mind. Black. Prince Charming’s hair is black. I don’t have daughters. You must have me mistaken with one of the other girls here at the school. Some of them have daughters.”

  Black always meant that she’d retreated back into that dark world where she didn’t know Trixie. Not once in the past had she come out of the dark shadows once she had the black crayon in her hand.

  Trixie cried all the way back to Cadillac. Part of the tears were grateful ones for the tiny moment that her mother had been lucid. The rest were out of sheer frustration.

  * * *

  One of the two old rocking chairs on the front porch at Clawdy’s creaked out a song as Cathy kept the motion going with one foot. The night air was stinking hot, but she felt cooped up in the house. Cadillac was experiencing Indian Summer, the warm days just before real fall pushed summer out of the way. She wanted to plant something, but the pansies for the winter months were in the ground already and everything was in gorgeous repair.

  She missed a living room where family and friends congregated at the end of the day to watch television, play games, read, or just talk to each other. These days she felt like she lived in a hotel and worked in the hotel kitchen.

  The three upstairs bedrooms were equal in size and spacious enough for Cathy to have a love seat and a recliner as well as her bed and dresser, but she missed the way things used to be.

  She would have gladly shut her eyes to the clutter in Trixie’s room to have someone to talk to that evening. She would have even helped glue hearts and lace around pictures in Janie’s scrapbook. She wished she’d gone with her to the nursing home to see her mother. Cathy didn’t mind the nursing home. It reminded her of the reference section at the library. So much information and no one even bothered knocking the dust off the books. But she was in a cranky mood and Trixie’s sweet little mother picked up on the strangest vibes.

  Marty had gone to the Dairy Queen for ice cream. Agnes was watching NCIS on television and nobody had better call, drop by, or even whisper during that time. She and Leroy Jethro Gibbs had a standing date, and death would have to stand in line until the credits rolled. If Agnes ever did commit homicide, they’d never find enough forensic evidence to convict her after she’d watched that show for almost a decade. Violet was lucky she got away with only two black eyes.

  The squeal of car wheels coming to an abrupt stop put an end to the rocking chair solo. Cathy leaned forward and peered out through the crape myrtle bushes to see Anna Ruth get out of her little red car, slam the door, and stomp toward the house. Everything about her said this was not a visit to forgive Trixie but to pick another fight.

  “Evening,” Cathy said.

  Anna Ruth came to an abrupt halt on her way to the back of the house and stormed up onto the porch. “You are not my friend. One of us has got to resign from the club, because I refuse to be in it with you.”

  What a wonderful idea! No more meetings with Violet, especially after the breakup with Ethan. Anna Ruth could have it. Maybe she could sponsor someone else into the club.

  “I mean it, Catherine,” Anna Ruth said.

  “What did I do to get called by my formal name?” Cathy asked.

  “You are sleeping with Andy! I thought it was Trixie and then I thought it was the dispatcher, but it was you! How could one club sister do that to another? You are worse than Marty. At least what she does, she does in public and not behind a club sister’s back.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Cathy asked.

  “Don’t play dumb with me. Violet told Beulah who told Aunt Annabel. That’s why you broke up with Ethan. Not because he was in love with me. But you stood by and let me make a fool out of myself with him. I’ve always had a crush on him and then you went after him with your prissy ways. And that wasn’t enough, was it? You had to have Andy too. You are horrible.” Anna Ruth sat down on the top step, put her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, and wept like a child who couldn’t have a favorite box of cereal in the grocery store.

  “I did not sleep with Andy. I would never do that to Trixie.”

  “She’s not even in the club and you have more respect for her than you do me.” The wails got loud enough that a dog down the street joined her.

  “Anna Ruth, you know about gossip and rumors in a small town. Wake up, girl. If you love Ethan, go tell him.”

  “I did!” She cried and the dog howled louder.

  “And?”’

  She pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose loudly. “He said that he’d never thought of me as anything but a younger sister and a good friend. Can you even begin to imagine how humiliated I was?”

  “Sorry,” Cathy said.

  “You could have had it all. Why did you break it off with him? The wedding was going to be beautiful and Aunt Annabel was so excited about making that cake. And he doesn’t looove me,” she moaned.

  “Hush that carrying on. The neighbors are going to call the police to come see if I’m killing you. Truth is, I figured out that I didn’t love him enough to sign the prenup and that I’d rather be reading a book as spending time with him. It didn’t seem fair to marry a man that I wouldn’t give up my job and my car for. But I didn’t love him enough to do it. He’s a good man and he deserves someone who’d love him that much.”

  “I’d give up my soul for him.” The weeping stopped as if on cue, and Anna Ruth sighed loudly. “And you really did not sleep with Andy?”

  “I really did not and I really will not. I can’t stand the man after what he did to Trixie, and he did it with you.”

  Anna Ruth managed a weak smile. “But he told me they were as good as divorced and he would have already left her if he could. I’m glad that you didn’t sleep with him. But I still think you need to resign from the club after what your aunt did to Violet.”

  “Is that legal? I thought a person had to die or move out of the county to get their name taken from the books.”

  Anna Ruth stood and tilted up her chin, said, “Then do one of those things,” then pranced out to her car.

  At least she didn’t burn a thousand miles off her tires. And the dog had stopped howling. Cathy started rocking again. Why hadn’t she thought of resigning from the club? Bless Anna Ruth’s heart. She’d come up with an ingenious idea even if it had come from a wailing tantrum.

  * * *

  Teenagers were the reason that Marty never taught high school. Everything adults said to them slid off like fried eggs out of a coated skillet.

  The Dairy Queen was filled with them that night. Life was good at that age. The world revolved around them. Too bad that once they graduated, reality was going to hit them smack between the eyes.

  She sat in a back booth alone and imagined her mother sitting across from her.

  Mamma, I would have promised you anything that day and I’ve kept m
y word. But it’s killing me to see the pain in Trixie’s eyes. I don’t think you realized that keeping my word would hurt our friendship.

  “Mind if I join you? The kids have taken over the place tonight. Jack is off to work, and I didn’t want to cook,” Beulah said.

  Marty motioned for her to sit down across the booth from her. “Guess this warmish weather has got us all wanting to hang on to fall and not let winter come around.”

  “Jack is moving out in the next few days. What did I do wrong?” Beulah blurted out.

  She was a large woman with short gray hair that she had permed into a curly-do popular thirty years ago. Her pantsuit was bright red and her lipstick matched it. Other than the extra bit of weight around his middle, Jack had gotten nothing from his mother. He was the image of his father, who had died right after Marty’s mother.

  “I know he is moving, Beulah, but it has nothing to do with you.”

  “It’s the house that Cathy wanted. Do you think Jack is in love with her? Is he buying that place just so he can ask her to marry him when she gets over the Ethan thing? I’m just scared to death he will.”

  Marty dipped into her hot fudge sundae. “Would that be a bad thing?”

  Beulah nodded. “Yes, it would. Violet would have a conniption if Ethan got thrown over for Jack.”

  “Violet has too much power,” Marty said.

  Beulah leaned forward and whispered, “Maybe so, but there’s no way to take it away from her.”

  Marty reached across the table and patted Beulah’s hand. “Jack, Cathy, Trixie, and I are best friends, darlin’. Jack might get married someday, but it won’t be to one of us three, so don’t worry your sweet head about it. Just be happy for him.”

  * * *

  Trixie drove into the driveway and sat in her car. Darla Jean was either going over her sermon or else she was cleaning. God might strike Trixie graveyard dead if she interrupted the sermon process.

  She had to talk to someone and right now she was mad at Marty. She dug around in her purse for her cell phone and called Darla Jean. When she answered she blurted out, “Can you come over to Clawdy’s? I’ve got to talk to someone and…”