Joanna turned on the water in the stainless steel sink for yet another hand washing. "It's okay. Not as profitable as I'd like, though. I brought you a couple dozen eggs."
"Oh, thanks." Lanita leaned her backside against the counter edge and crossed her arms. "If you aren't making money, I can't believe you're still doing this, Joanna. What a lot of work."
Joanna grinned, tore off some sheets of paper towel and dried her hands. "Tell me about it."
"Are you dating anyone now?"
Uh-oh. That question usually meant Lanita had someone in mind for Joanna to date. Intending to block her big sister's good intentions, she answered, "I'm through with men."
Lanita made an exaggerated sigh. "I guess you might as well take that attitude. Who would you date in Hatlow, even if you wanted to? What happened to what's his name from Lubbock?"
Joanna began to put away some of the dozens of items strewn over the countertop. "Scott Goodman? He moved to Fort Worth."
"Did you break up with him?"
"You might say that." Scott Goddman, a pharmaceutical salesman from Lubbock, was suave, good-looking and overcritical. Joanna had spent every weekend with him for six months, until she discovered he spent weekdays with someone else who lived in Lubbock.
"I didn't like him dating some chick in Lubbock while he was sleeping with me. I'm funny that way."
Lanita sniggered. "It's just as well. He'll never be anything but a salesman. Some new guys have come in to help Darrell coach and—"
"Lanita, does Darrell think it's part of his duty to force his unsuspecting staff to go out with his pitiful sister-in-law? That must be embarrassing for him."
"That isn't the way it is. They're new in town. They don't know anyone. You should enjoy the opportunity to get out and go somewhere."
"Forget it, Sister. I'm not interested. I've got too much to do to put up with some demanding man. That let's-get-acquainted dance is too much trouble. And I don't even like football."
Lanita heaved another sigh. "My God, Joanna. Have you looked in the mirror lately? You might still look great, but you're thirty-five years old. You're becoming an old maid."
Joanna had heard herself referred as to an old maid so often, she felt as if it were tattooed across her forehead. The label had hurt her feelings when she had first heard it, but she had grown a hard shell and become immune to it.
Lanita was nearly a head shorter than Joanna. She'd had three kids and hadn't lost extra pounds after any one of them. That and a soft office job put her on the pudgy side. Joanna wouldn't hurt her feelings by mentioning any of that. But she did stop her task to give her sister an indignant glower. "I like who and what I am just fine, thank you."
She turned to the cupboards, opened a door and found paper plates and large red plastic cups. Most people had glasses or some kind of china or pottery serving dishes in their cupboards, but not Alvadean Walsh. Joanna pulled down three of the paper plates.
"Let's eat on real dishes," Lanita said. "Me and the kids eat on paper plates all the time at home."
"Mom decided dishes that have to be washed are too much trouble," Joanna said.
Lanita frowned. "What does she mean? She's got a dishwasher."
Instead of replying, Joanna reached for three plastic cups and lined them up on the counter.
For the first time, Lanita looked at the cupboard contents. "So now she just has paper plates and plastic cups?" Lanita's question was laced with puzzlement and indignation.
"Afraid so. But she does vary the colors and patterns."
Lanita rolled her big green eyes. She and Joanna both had their daddy's eyes. "This is ridiculous," she snapped.
Joanna chuckled. "It's her house, Sister. She can do what she wants."
"I don't care. It's still ridiculous. I suppose we're going to have to eat with plastic forks, too." She yanked open the drawer where stainless-steel flatware had always been kept and found nothing but white plastic.
Now Joanna's chuckle evolved into a laugh. She had grown accustomed to her mother's latest effort to avoid keeping house. "Hey, you know Mom. But you don't live here, remember? And neither do I. To each his own."
"Where do you suppose she put all of the dishes we used to have?" Lanita asked.
"I think she packed them up and put them in the storeroom out back."
"Why didn't she give them to me? Or to you?"
"Well, of all the things I need, Sister, a set of cheap dishes isn't one of them."
"Well, I could use them. I don't even have a whole set anymore. The only ones I ever had were what I got as a wedding present. And the kids have broken half of those."
"I guess you could ask her for them," Joanna said. "It won't hurt my feelings. And I think I'd be safe in betting a million she isn't going to use them."
Lanita shook her head, pursing her mouth and not attempting to hide her annoyance. "Oh, not today. I don't want to start something. I see the house is practically sparkling. At least she hasn't give up cleaning the house."
"That isn't entirely true, either. A Mexican woman named Lupe comes in on Saturdays and cleans. So you caught it at its best."
Lanita set the plastic utensils on the counter with a clack, her eyes wide. "Mom has a maid?"
"Yep. Every Saturday."
Lanita planted a fist on her pudgy hip. "Now that really pisses me off. Darrell and I have been sending her a hundred dollars every month because we thought she was having a hard time. Why, I don't have a maid myself and I've got three kids."
Joanna knew about the monthly stipend from Lanita and her husband. In some conversation at some point, Mom had let it slip. "Hmm," Joanna said. "I think that's about what the maid costs her."
"I can't believe this. I don't know if I should even tell Darrell. We've kept the kids from doing some things so we could send money down here." With jerky movements, she picked out three sets of plastic forks and knives. "A maid. My God. Our daddy would turn over in his grave."
"Lanita, chill out. It's what she wants to do. I doubt if Daddy would care. I'm sure he didn't marry her for her housekeeping skills. For that matter, I'll bet Darrell wouldn't care, either. But if it bothers you that much, stop sending it."
Joanna unwrapped the burgers and fries and onion rings and placed them on the paper plates, squeezed puddles of ketchup onto each plate, then filled the plastic cups with ice.
"Don't pour tea for me," Lanita said when Joanna dragged the pitcher of tea from the refrigerator. "Sweet tea has too much sugar. And too many calories. I'll just have water and lemon." She crossed to the refrigerator and looked in. "Well, there's no food. I suppose it would be too much to hope she would have a lemon."
"Yep," Joanna said. "Too much. If you don't want sweet tea, looks like your other choice is water. Without lemon." Joanna left her sister in front of the refrigerator, dug a cookie sheet from a drawer under the oven and arranged the three servings on it.
"I'm glad I don't live around here anymore," Lanita groused, closing the refrigerator door. She leveled a hard glare at the cookie sheet. "My God. That's not a tray. It's a cookie sheet. You mean she hasn't disposed of the cooking utensils?"
"Could happen any day, I suspect." Joanna carried their lunch toward the living room on the cookie sheet. "Set up one of those TV trays for me, okay?"
Lanita complied, unfolding two metal TV trays in front of the sofa and one in front of their mother's chair. Mom didn't eat at the dining table, either. It was covered with assorted beads, baubles and tools for her jewelry-making hobby.
Joanna distributed the food and drinks and they settled in to watch the rest of the movie while they ate.
"You usually eat out to Clova's on Sunday," her mother said.
"She's gone to Lubbock Memorial to visit Lane," Joanna replied.
"Humph. Looks like he survived after all," Her mother bit into her burger.
"I heard about his car wreck," Lanita said. "You know, I barely remember him from when we were kids."
"Well," Mom put
in, "he is nine years younger than you are, Sister."
"Mom," Joanna said, "Dalton Parker didn't call after I left the shop yesterday, did he?"
"Why would Dalton Parker be calling you?" Lanita asked pointedly.
"Because I asked him to. I left him a message about Clova and the ranch."
Mom dabbed a French fry into ketchup. "You might as well forget that, Joanna. He ain't gonna call."
"What is the deal with him? All of a sudden, he's like this phantom out there that everyone's speculating about. Why wouldn't he call and show some concern for his brother and his mother?"
"My God, Joanna," Lanita said. "He probably hates his parents. Don't you remember him when we were kids? How he used to come to school black and blue?"
Joanna thought back but couldn't remember that about him. She couldn't even clearly remember exactly how he looked. "I guess I don't. But then, I wasn't close to him like you were." She couldn't keep from giving her big sister an evil grin.
Lanita ducked the piercing look and dipped a French fry in the mound of ketchup on her plate. "If it was nowadays, the school would have to report parents who treated their kid like Dalton's mother and stepdaddy treated him. And CPS would take him away from them and put him in some foster home."
"What I remember mostly is that everyone thought he was cute," Joanna said.
"Oh, he was more than cute. He was sooo hot. He filled out a pair of Levi's in all the right places, if you know what I mean."
Joanna's wicked thoughts flew to what Shari had told her that Megan Richardson had said about Lane. Was that particular feature genetic?
"Lanita, stop that kind of talk," Mom said, continuing to mop up ketchup with an onion ring.
Joanna suppressed a grin as her memory zoomed back to when Lanita and Dalton Parker were seniors. Joanna was a sophomore and just starting to learn about boys and sex, mostly from Lanita. Her older sister had been a cheerleader and Joanna could still see her leaping and cartwheeling in her short pleated skirt, her long blond curls unfurling and bouncing.
"I wonder what he looks like now," Lanita went on, a distant look in her eye and a French fry poised in the air. "Me and every last one of my girlfriends used to practically cream in our jeans when he walked up the hall."
"That's vulgar," Mom said. "Don't be sayin' stuff like that. Why, what if somebody heard you?"
Lanita's full lips flattened. "It's a joke, Mom. Who's going to hear?"
Not liking hearing that someone she liked had been cruel to one of her children, Joanna said, "I can't imagine Clova beating anybody up. She's a gentle person."
"Oh, I don't think she whupped 'im herself," Mom said. "She just didn't do nothin' to stop Earl from it."
"I can't see that happening, either," Joanna said. "She treats Lane like he's gold. You know how much she's put up with from him. And she never even raises her voice to him."
"Joanna, you would o' had to know Earl Cherry. That man was ornery as a mad bull. And poor little Dalton, bless his heart. Even when he was a little boy, Earl worked him like he was a grown man. With all that Comanche blood Clova's got runnin' in her veins, you'd o' thought she'd o' found the nerve to stand up for Dalton. But she didn't. Lord, Earl had her cowed so bad, you'd o' thought it was him that inherited that ranch 'stead o' her."
The three of them sat in silence for a few seconds, as if they each needed the extra time to digest Mom's narrative. Then Mom added, "Course, if you'd o' knowed Clova's daddy, you might understand why she was like that. Wilburn Parker was a stern man who lived in another time. When Clova got pregnant, he yanked her out o' school and hid her away and nobody even saw her anymore. She didn't even go to the hospital to have Dalton. He was a big kid and walkin' before she brought him out in public."
Knowing Clova as she did, Joanna could imagine all of that. And it made her heart hurt for Clova, who for all practical purposes had to be viewed as an emotional cripple.
"Dalton was the loneliest boy I ever dated," Lanita said, her legs tucked under her as she studied her fingernails pensively. "Even though I was only eighteen, I could tell he carried a hurt. But it wasn't caused by some girl. It was from something deeper than that. My goodness, he could have had any girl he wanted. We were all the same. We wanted to take care of him." She sent Joanna a mischievous look from beneath her brow. "Well, I might have wanted to do more than that."
Mom frowned and sputtered. "Lanita Marie! Don’t talk like that in my house!"
"Mom, good grief! Do you think I don't know anything about sex? How do you think I got three kids?"
"That's different. Why, what if Darrell heard you say somethin' like that?"
Joanna turned her head and grinned. Mom dredged another onion ring through ketchup and popped the whole thing in her mouth. "Ever'body said Earl was mean to Dalton 'cause Dalton wasn't his, but I say Earl was just mean, period."
"Well, who is Dalton's father?" Joanna asked, curious now.
"Nobody's ever known," Mom answered. "Best-kept secret in Hatlow. Some said it was a college boy from up at Tech. Others said it was Mason Jergens. But if it was, Clova's daddy never done nothin' about it. Prob'ly 'cause Mason was married."
"I don't believe that," Lanita said. "Mason Jergens is uglier than a frog and he was back then, too. Dalton didn't look anything like him."
"Lane is Earl's kid," Mom went on as if Lanita hadn't spoken, "but Earl was mean to him, too. I 'member onc't when Earl went to the high school drunker'n a dog and dragged Lane out of a classroom, kickin' him and beatin' on him all the way to his truck. The principal called the sheriff, but nothin' ever come of it. Earl wasn't scared o' no sheriff."
"Dalton had a chance at football scholarships," Lanita said, "but when the scouts tried to talk to his mama and daddy, Earl practically slammed the door in their faces."
Of all the tales Joanna routinely heard, she hadn't heard this one. "So Dalton did what?"
"Why, he joined the army. Well, it was the marines, really. I guess there's a difference. He left the day after the high school graduation. I suppose nobody knows much of what's gone on with him since." Lanita shook her head. "It's a shame. Earl and Clova ought to be ashamed."
"Let's change the subject," Joanna said, uncomfortable with the conversation.
Lanita and their mother went on to yakking and bickering over other topics. As the afternoon waned, Lanita declared she had to get back to Lubbock and cook supper, putting heavy emphasis on the word "cook." To Joanna's amusement, if their mother noticed the dig, she didn't acknowledge it.
“C’mon, Joanna, “let’s straighten the kitchen before I leave,” Lanita said.
Standing at the sink washing the plastic cups and cutlery, Joanna had to ask her sister, “Did you fool around with Dalton in high school?”
“No. But I know someone who did,” Lanita answered, picking up a cup and drying it.
“No kidding? Who?”
“Carrie Ann Winkler. They did it for about six months. Carrie Ann even thought she might be pregnant once. I remember her saying how hot he was.”
“Hunh,” Joanna grunted.
“I would have,” Lanita went on, stacking the dried cups together. “I wanted to and one night after a ballgame, we had a perfect opportunity. But when he found out I was a virgin, he wouldn’t.”
“Wow. I wonder who that says the most about,” Joanna said, angling a look at her sister. “You or Dalton Parker?”
Lanita gasped and slammed a cup on the countertop. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Joanna giggled. “Nothing. I’m just teasing you.”
After Lanita left, Joanna, too, said good-bye to her mother and started back to the Parker ranch for the evening's egg gathering, her thoughts heavy with the notion of her friend Clova Cherry abusing her children
Chapter 5
At the Parker ranch, Joanna met Clova just as she was sliding out of her dusty pickup in front of the garage. Joanna parked her own pickup behind Clova's and slid out, eager to hear a report on Lane's co
ndition. "Hi. How's everything in Lubbock?"
Clova shook her head. "It don't look good, hon. Lane's in real bad shape. They still got him in that ICU place. I don't know what to think o' that leg. They got it screwed together with nuts and bolts. I just wonder if he's gonna end up crippled." She closed her pickup door quietly, a woman resigned to accept whatever fate handed her.
"Don't believe the worst,” Joanna said. “It takes a few days before they can tell what's what."
Clova looked off in a distant stare. "If he lives through this, I 'magine they're gonna charge him with drunk drivin'."
Joanna couldn't guess what memories that possibility aroused after Clova’s husband had died in a drunk driving accident. "Really?"
Clova nodded. "This ain't his first time, you know. I got to get him a lawyer. Can't afford to have him in jail. If it was our sheriff that was handlin' it, I wouldn't be so worried, but it's the DPS. Them state cops ain't gonna look the other way."
"I know," Joanna said, trying to appear sympathetic. But in truth, in her opinion, if Lane really had been drunk enough to hit a power pole and roll his pickup into the ditch, he had no business behind the wheel. Only blind luck had kept him from colliding with another vehicle. "Look, I’ve got to gather the eggs. Are you up to walking with me?"
"I'll walk a little piece with you."
Joanna ambled toward the egg-washing room with Clova beside her, her hands stuffed into her jeans pockets.
"Up to the hospital," Clova said, "I had to meet with a woman in the bookkeepin' department. When I told her Lane didn't have no insurance, she got testy with me about payin' the bill, and I said, 'What're you gonna do, kick him out on the sidewalk?'" Clova gave a humorless chuckle. "You'd think bill collectors would take Sunday off."
"How did you resolve it?" Joanna asked, knowing the last thing the Lazy P could afford was an expensive hospital bill.
"I told her I'd pay 'em when we sell the yearlin’s."
Joanna's brow arched and she blinked. Depending on how much Lane's bill was, that could leave Clova without funds to get through the winter.
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