Queen of the Cookbooks

by Ashton Lee

  “Mrs. Grant. And this is my daughter, Wendy.”

  “Happy to have you both with us this morning. Well, Mrs. Grant, I just love Wendy’s questions. It’s why I’m here,” Miriam added, her disposition as sunny as the weather outside. “It’s the curiosity that gets them reading in the first place, and that’s our ultimate goal. I’ve been very pleased with how all of you parents have responded to our summer reading program. Next week, I’ve decided to move from depiction of a nursery rhyme to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Mothers, I just know your children will have a lot of fun with it, and I’m sure you will, too. You’re welcome to go online and find out more about it.”

  Maura Beth and Jeremy were watching the proceedings from the back of the room, taking a short break from their guided tours. “Miriam really is very talented,” Maura Beth whispered. “She has the patience of Job. I knew I had the right person the second she walked in the door for her interview.”

  “And how did you know that?” he whispered back. “You mean before she even opened her mouth?”

  “Yep.”

  “This I gotta hear.”

  “Well, she showed up in costume as Mother Goose. She totally blew me away. None of the others thought to do something like that. They were all about street clothes and pointing to their résumés.”

  Jeremy gave her a thumbs-up. “Ah, I see. Very creative. She was living the part in the real world. She would’ve gotten my vote.”

  “All you need to do is look at those angelic little faces. They’re soaking it all up like sponges. I was never able to do anything on this scale in the old library because I just didn’t have the space or the time. Or the budget. Now, Miriam has her own little universe to play with.”

  He patted her on the shoulder. “And you’ll have a new generation of taxpayers to support the library somewhere down the line.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  * * *

  Bit Sessions had never liked the curly blond Garber twins—Lisabeth and Isabeth. It wasn’t just that their personalities were the most cloying in all of Corinth and possibly the rest of Mississippi to boot. Nor that they truly did mimic each other down to the fake beauty marks they applied to their right cheekbones with eyebrow pencil—a fact that had been embarrassingly revealed when they were once caught in a thunderstorm and the little dots had washed away, much to their horror. Nor even that their wardrobes were age inappropriate: They were now in their early twenties and dressed more like they were Shirley Temple moppets. Just way too cutesy for words. What sort of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? world did they live in?

  No, the real rub was that they were such fast friends with Gwen Beetles. Everyone knew that the Garber and the Beetles families were thick as thieves, and Bit had always regarded it as one unholy alliance for social and financial purposes. Thus, it was with great suspicion that she regarded Lisabeth and Isabeth approaching her food tent with the customary sickening smiles on their faces.

  “Oh, Miz Bit,” Lisabeth began in that syrupy way of hers, “we’re just dyin’ to try your ham and butterbean soup. Everyone back home always raves about it. They say it’s the best thing they’ve ever put in their mouths, and you know how picky people in Corinth are. They all swear by you.”

  “Do they?”

  “Why, yay-iss,” Isabeth added, sounding even more syrupy than her sister. “They really do.”

  Bit squared her shoulders, adopted her most distant demeanor, and pointed to the big steaming kettle on the table behind her. “Well, I’m charging a dollar for a cup and two dollars for a bowl. Which do y’all want?”

  The two turned away, huddled for a moment, and then said in perfect unison, “We’d like one cup. We’ll share.”

  Bit looked disgusted. “Do you two have to talk like that? Such an act! Anyway, I mighta known you’d be cheap about it.”

  Lisabeth batted her eyelashes and cocked her head. “Why, Miz Bit, whatever do you mean? We don’t wanna get too full at one tent. We have to pace ourselves. Besides, it’s not cricket for young ladies to stuff themselves. It’d be bad news for our girlish figures, you know.”

  “Never mind all the precious playacting and the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-your-mouth routine. That’ll be a dollar, please.” She held out her hand expectantly, her nose in the air.

  It was then that Lisabeth fumbled around in her purse and somehow managed to turn it upside down, dropping it to the ground and spilling all the contents everywhere. “Oh, no,” she said, clutching a hand to her shapely chest, “will you just look at what I’ve done? Come help me pick all this up, Izzy. I’ve made a big mess. We need to track everything down, or I’ll have to spend a fortune on cosmetics. Or borrow yours, and that would drive us both crazy.”

  “Look, it’s gone everywhere, Lizzy. And your lipstick rolled all the way over there by the table, and I think I see your mascara nearby. You may even have to crawl underneath on all fours. It’ll take us forever to track everything down. Can you please help us, Miz Bit?”

  Bit was extremely aggravated but reluctantly decided to pitch in. The sooner she got rid of them, the better. Truth to tell, she didn’t even want to be seen in their company, she was that disgusted by them both. Plus, her foul mood, which was certainly showing up on her face, couldn’t possibly be good for business. Nothing turned customers away like a scowl.

  After a few minutes of scouring the grass, bending over, and a little unladylike grunting here and there for good measure, the three of them finally got the job done, but Bit’s annoyance continued to flare. “Do you two still want the soup, or are you both too pooped to pay up?”

  “Why, of course we still want it,” Isabeth said. “Don’t you want us to vote for you as the Best Appetizer? There’s no way we can do that if we don’t have a little sip, you know.”

  Bit’s laugh was loud and derisive. “Give me a break, honey. Like you’re gonna actually vote for me. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. Listen, you two, I’m halfway convinced that Gwen Beetles sent y’all over here, though I don’t know why. I’m sure you know we’ve never been the best of friends, so my suspicion is she’s prob’ly up to no good.”

  “Why, no indeed, she didn’t send us, Miz Bit,” Lisabeth added. “We came over here of our own accord. We’re just tryin’ to cast an objective vote this afternoon after we’ve made the rounds of all these food tents.” She raised her hand as if she were swearing an oath on the Bible. “Honest.”

  Bit managed to restrain herself, offering up a skeptical smile. “Now that’s a likely story if I ever heard one. Just go ahead and gimme your money, and I’ll give you your cups a’ soup. There are other customers milling around, and I don’t want to lose them by taking up all my time with you two.”

  After that testy exchange, the twins paid up, and then it happened. They held their cups of steaming soup high in the air and poured the contents onto the grass below, sticking out their tongues in unison as a finishing touch. It was childish choreography of the highest order.

  “You little smart-ass prisses. I knew you were up to no good. You’ve wasted my time, and more to the point, you’ve wasted some of my precious ham and butterbean soup.”

  “Ham and butterbeans mushed all together? How common, and how disgustingly chunky!”

  “You better git outta here with your mischief, you two!”

  As they began backing away, Lisabeth had the smirk of all time on her face. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Bit was getting angrier by the second. “I’ll tell you one more time. Get on back to Corinth where you came from.”

  “We will. All in good time,” Isabeth said, elbowing her sister as they scurried off full of high-pitched giggles.

  Bit was worried now. She could definitely smell Gwen Beetles all over their obnoxious little visit.

  * * *

  Maura Beth and Jeremy had just finished a tour of the Tech Services Room where Agnes Braud had held forth for about ten minutes on the subject of processing b
ooks and getting them ready for the shelves. Though her presentation had been a bit on the dry side—particularly when she had ventured into a detailed explanation of MARC records—she had livened it up by showing the small group how a scanner worked on the bar codes. “In today’s technological world,” she had told them, “most people are fascinated by things that light up and go beep.” For the topper, Agnes had let some of the patrons scan for themselves, much to their delight.

  “The more y’all understand the inner workings of the library,” she had continued, “the more you’ll want to support us all year-round.”

  “The tours couldn’t be going any better,” Maura Beth said to Jeremy as they headed back into the central hallway.

  No sooner had she said that, however, than Renette came racing over to her, flushed and out of breath. “Miz McShay, you and Mr. Jeremy need to go over to the tents real quickly. Someone just came in and said they’re shouting at the top of their lungs at each other out there.”

  “Who’s shouting at each other?”

  “Two women by the food tents,” came the reply. “I don’t know what their names are, but they’re supposed to be really mad at each other.”

  Once she was out the front door, it came as no surprise to Maura Beth to see even from a distance that the two women engaged in a shouting match of epic proportions were Bit Sessions and Gwen Beetles, and right in front of Bit’s tent with a crowd gathering quickly by the second. Maura Beth and Jeremy could not get there fast enough to break it up.

  “. . . and I can’t help it if your food’s gone bad!” Gwen was shouting, wielding one of her foot-long, andouille sausage hot dogs—her Fourth of July specialty—in her hand like it was a sword.

  “It’s no coincidence that people started throwing up not long after those nauseating Garber twins left here. Admit it, you sneaky, miserable, old hag. You had them put something in my soup, didn’t you? You’ll prob’ly never admit it, but I just know you were behind it.”

  Gwen brandished the sausage high above her head, causing widespread snickering among the onlookers. “You are paranoid beyond belief, Bit Sessions . . . and you can’t prove it anyways . . . I’d like to see you even try. What are you gonna do . . . call the police?”

  “Ladies, please,” Maura Beth said, stepping between them as soon as she could. “This is no way to act in public, and I’m sure you are not endearing yourself to your customers with all this fighting. You’ve drawn a crowd for all the wrong reasons. Let’s end this right here and now.”

  Bit pushed her aside and glared at her rival. “This is between the two of us, Miz McShay, if you don’t mind. What did you have them put in my soup, Gwen? I’ll bet you anything it was syrup of ipecac. Why else would some of my customers come up to me after buying my soup and tell me they were throwing up right and left? You think that was a coincidence? I know you’ve sabotaged me. I thought there was something fishy about that purse-dropping foolishness. That’s when they did it, wasn’t it? When I was helping them look for things on the ground, one of ’em slipped it in, sneaky as you please. I just know it, sure as I’m standin’ here. I shoudda known better than to let those little Barbie dolls into my tent.”

  “You are talkin’ nonsense . . . and you well know it, Bit. I didn’t even know the Garber twins were here today. . . . You musta left your soup out in the sun too long, that’s all. Ever heard of botulism? But then, I wouldn’t put it past you to grow some germs in your swill.”

  “How dare you call my delicious food swill. It is always properly refrigerated, and my kitchen is spotless to a fault. Why, you could eat off my floors, and for God’s sake, stop swingin’ that obnoxious hot dog around before I haul off and hit you upside the head!”

  Jeremy tried his luck as the conversation escalated. “Ladies, we don’t want to have to call the security guard on you now, do we?”

  “I’m tellin’ you sure as I’m standin’ here, she started it,” Bit said, sounding every bit as juvenile as Miriam Goodcastle’s story hour audience. But perhaps nowhere near as well-behaved.

  Then, before Jeremy or Maura Beth could do anything further, Gwen rushed past the two of them, ripped the sausage out of the bun, and gleefully rapped Bit on the head twice with it with as much force as she could muster.

  “Take that in the name of all that is holy, you four-times-married sinner!” she shouted, puffing herself up triumphantly.

  Bit’s jaw dropped and remained wide open in disbelief. “You holier-than-thou heretic. You’re always sermonizing, and you’re a fine one to do it. You can’t baptize people with sausage. The very idea is sacrilegious.”

  “I wasn’t baptizing. I was exorcising. You’ve always had the very Devil himself in you!”

  Then in what was a magnificent blur, Bit hurried over to her ladle, scooped up some of her soup, and flung it in Gwen’s general direction. Her aim was way off, however, and she ended up splashing some of the crowd gathered around instead.

  Gwen made a monstrous face, brandished her sausage high above her head, then lowered it in the most classic of fencing moves, and shouted, “En garde!”

  “Don’t you dare come at me with that nasty-lookin’ thing again, Gwen Beetles. Why, the very idea!”

  “I’ll put it down if you’ll stop stirring that cauldron you’ve got back there on the table, you witch!”

  “Go run real quick and get the security guard, Maurie,” Jeremy said, pointing toward the library with urgency. “Mr. Peters will earn his keep and put an end to all this nonsense.”

  While Maura Beth hurried off, Jeremy did his best to keep the two women separated until help arrived; but it was anything but easy. Gwen kept threatening further bodily harm with the sausage, but she was pressing and twisting it so hard in her hand that it began to fall apart, leaving nothing but a squishy, greasy mess. Meanwhile, Bit kept trying to break Jeremy’s substantial grip so she could reach her kettle and return with more soup to pour upon the scalp of the enemy. The reaction of the mesmerized crowd varied depending upon who had been splashed and sullied with hot soup and who had not.

  Finally, the beefy, scowling security guard arrived with Maura Beth and read them the riot act. “Ladies, as long as you are part of this event, you will behave or leave the premises. I won’t be telling you this twice. I’ll call the sheriff’s office and have you both hauled off to jail to cool down. Is that how you want to spend the rest of the Fourth?”

  Bit recoiled. “You wouldn’t dare treat me like that. Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “I do not, ma’am. But I would dare to put you in jail if you don’t calm down right this minute. Just try me.”

  A shrill woman toward the front of the crowd pointed a finger at Bit. “She threw that butterbean soup on my dress. It’s brand-new, too. Can you arrest her for that? Can you at least make her pay for my dry cleaning?”

  The guard continued frowning and shook his head in her general direction. “You’ll have to take that up with her, ma’am, but I don’t think throwing soup on someone is a biggie with law enforcement these days.”

  “You mean it’s not considered disturbing the peace? I mean, she was definitely doing that.”

  Mr. Peters smirked. “That may be true, but it’s certainly not assault with a deadly weapon. It’s more like making dirty laundry for someone. If you want my opinion, I think it’ll all come out in the wash.”

  Maura Beth followed up the guard’s stern words with some of her own. “Mrs. Sessions and Mrs. Beetles, the library appreciates the effort you both made to come all the way from Corinth to participate in our Grand Opening. You both came to my old library to make sure you qualified, and we’re sure the food tents are adding a lot to our celebration. But the library simply cannot endorse your outrageous behavior, and there does appear to be some hanky-panky going on between the two of you behind the scenes. I’m not going to get in the middle of it any further, except to say that I have made the decision to disqualify both of you from the Queen of the Cookbooks competition. Fra
nkly, I don’t think either one of you will be getting that many votes after this exhibition. Do you have any idea how you’ve come off to all these people? You should be ashamed.”

  “That lady with the soup won’t get my vote,” the shrill woman added. “No way, no how!”

  Another female voice joined the shouting. “Mine, neither. She spilled butterbeans all over my cowboy boots. My brand-new Spurs ’R’ Us boots. I just bought ’em ’cause they’ll be coming to town soon!”

  “And I got some ham along with the soup. And this was one of my best cowboy shirts!” a masculine voice chimed in loudly.

  “Hmmph!” Gwen practically spit out the word. “The only reason I came was to make sure she didn’t win.”

  “You see?” Bit answered, herself red in the face. “She’s just practically admitted that she sabotaged me. There’s the proof.”

  “I did no such thing. What I meant was . . . I came here to make sure she didn’t win by offering my superior food, that’s all. Everybody says I’m the best cook in Northeast Mississippi.”

  “And when was that survey taken? That’s a mighty big piece a’ real estate to be braggin’ about,” Bit countered with her hands on her hips. “The truth is, you’re just a legend in your own sad little mind.”

  Maura Beth drew herself up and spoke with great authority. “Neither of you is going to win anything because I have disqualified you both, as I just said. Please pack up your things and leave as soon as you can. I’ll ask the security guard to keep an eye on you to make sure you do. I’m sorry to have to be so harsh, but that’s my decision. I will not allow you to ruin our Grand Opening with these petty antics. We’re here to celebrate, not fight with each other.”

  “Well, see if I ever come back to use your library,” Bit told her with searing indignation.

  “You have a perfectly good one in Corinth to use,” Maura Beth reminded her. “I strongly suggest you do so.”

  * * *

  Out on the perimeter of the crowd, Ana Estrella and Maribelle Pleasance had been watching the tail end of the proceedings with a great deal of interest, if not disbelief. They simply had been unable to resist leaving their tents for a few minutes to discover what all the commotion was about and had displayed their BACK IN A MINUTE signs that the library had graciously provided for their tables.