American Decameron

by Mark Dunn

  The top half of Mrs. Badeaux was swinging and bouncing wildly as she disappeared inside. It was as if Jake and I had been unknowingly cast in a comedy sketch from the burlesque-bawdy Benny Hill Show—the difference, of course, being that in the TV show the bobbling boobs of Benny’s sprinting sexpots were never fully bared. Nevertheless, Boots Randolph’s lively rendition of “Yackety Sax” played obscenely in my head.

  A moment later, Jake and I could both clearly hear her speaking, apparently into the intercom: “How was your nappy, Mr. Milkman? Now? Oh my good Lord, you are insatiable!”

  Almost simultaneously, I said, “We’re packing up and leaving, Jake,” while Jake said, “Fire me if you like, Tony, but I’m going in there. I can be just as good a lover as any son-of-a-bitch milkman.”

  As my coitus-crazed assistant made his move to the door, I threw myself upon him. In the ensuing scuffle, pavers were scattered, great areas of smoothed, leveled sand gouged out by our dancing heels. Flashing through my mind was the fact that our tussle had probably added another couple of hours to the job.

  If we were to finish the job. I knew now that I had just cause to stop work on the patio. And I had every right to charge Badeaux for all the hours we’d already put in (and for the cost of our materials), though being an extremely successful corporate attorney, Badeaux could have made it hard for Cortner Construction to prevail. Why had Mrs. Badeaux done this? For what possible purpose?

  Jake was still struggling as I grabbed the hand tamper to hold him in place on the ground. We remained like this, Jake lying breathless on the degraded sand foundation, me standing equally winded, trying my level best to bring him to his senses.

  “Uncle!” he finally cried. “I’ll go. Let me up.”

  I’d hardly had any time to consider whether or not I could trust him when the lady of the house stepped outside.

  She was now completely naked.

  “Why?” was all that I could bring myself to say.

  “Why not?” she answered, standing statuesque before us, something out of Greek antiquity in alabaster or marble. “It’s all my husband’s doing, you know,” she tossed out casually, seductively running her right index finger up and down the soft curve of her sunlit right thigh. Jake did a double take, just like a gawking cartoon scamp.

  “How can this possibly be your husband’s doing?” I asked, having turned my back to the woman so that I could converse with her without distraction.

  “Last month, Henry accused me of having been unfaithful—‘serially unfaithful’ was, I think, the phrase he used—he’s such a goddamned lawyer—ever since we married. The accusation was totally baseless. The trust is now gone from our marriage. If he thinks this is who I am, then this is who I will be. I am now officially open for business.”

  “Do you strip for all the men who come to your house?”

  Mrs. Badeaux shook her head. “I got the idea of coming out here like this from that Candid Camera movie that came out a few years ago.”

  “What Do You Say to a Naked Lady,” offered Jake. “I saw it more than once.”

  “I had fun. Did you have fun? Would you like to have more fun?”

  Jake looked at me. His expression seemed to say, “All of my future happiness depends on how I am allowed to answer this question.”

  I shook my head.

  The stunt was over, the prospect for further merriment dematerializing in that next moment. Mrs. Badeaux reached inside and drew out a bathrobe, which she promptly put on.

  I loosened my compactor hold on Jake, who immediately began to take deeper and more healthy-sounding breaths. “Get up, Jake. We’re leaving now, Mrs. Badeaux. If your husband asks why, I will leave it to you to explain it to him. I’ll put our bill in the mail next week.”

  Mrs. Badeaux looked disappointed to see us go, but didn’t try to stop us.

  As I was backing the company truck down the driveway, I noticed that the milk delivery van had been joined by a mail truck, sans mailman. “That crazy woman really is open for business,” said Jake. Then he sighed. “I came this close to getting myself a piece of that action.”

  I boxed his ear.

  Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I could not help swinging by the house to see to what additional lengths Mrs. Badeaux had gone to confirm her husband’s suspicions of her. The telephone repair truck in the driveway wasn’t overtly suspicious, but the pink Mary Kay Cadillac parked two days in a row sent Jake on flights of girl-on-girl fantasy that were hard to rein in.

  I knew that the day of reckoning would come, but neither Jake nor I was privileged to witness the denouement to the domestic drama (or comedy) in which we had both played small supporting roles. All I know is that in the end, Badeaux did pay us (though he apparently had to pay someone else, as well, to come in and finish the job), and that two years later we were, astonishingly, invited to put in a bid to convert the house’s catacumbal cellar into a modern rec room.

  “It might interest you to know that I have divorced and have not remarried,” he said. “My days of marital heartache are finally over. I get all the companionship I need from my younger brother, Chad, who moved in with me a couple of months ago.”

  Badeaux liked my bid and we won the job. I estimated three weeks to get it finished. We met Chad for the first time on Thursday of that first week. He came down the stairs bearing glasses of lemonade. He was wearing purple eyeshadow, a bright red kimono (loosely sashed), and embroidered mules.

  We knocked the job out in two weeks. I’m thinking of changing professions.

  1976

  THROTTLED IN ARKANSAS AND OKLAHOMA

  It was Dr. Key who first suggested the unthinkable: that the two fifty-something-year-old couples should drive to Oklahoma City together.

  In the same car.

  One sister in the front seat, one in the back seat.

  Ladella and Fay in closer proximity than they’d been in twenty-some-odd years.

  Ladella said that such a suggestion didn’t even deserve a response.

  Still, this didn’t stop her from delivering one: “I don’t like Fay. I don’t look up to her. She’s nasty and she’s selfish and I vowed after that awful Christmas when she went out of her way to put me down in front of our whole family that I would never see her again.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to see her in Oklahoma City, whether you like it nor not.”

  “I will go to Oklahoma and wish my mother a happy eighty-fifth birthday, Cleron, but I intend to avoid even placing myself in the same room with Fay. And I will not, in this lifetime or any other, trap myself in the same car with her for twelve ungodly hours.”

  Ladella and Fay’s mother lived with the sisters’ younger brother, Marcus, and his family near Tinker Air Force Base, where he served with the 2854th Air Base Group. Neither Ladella nor Fay had chosen to marry military men, though there was a tradition of national military service in their family going all the way back to the U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment, more familiarly known as the “Buffalo Soldiers.”

  Ladella and Fay, both nurses, wed medical men instead—both physicians and instructors at Meharry College in Nashville, the largest historically black medical college in the country. Ladella’s husband Cleron had won national recognition for his research into the pathology of sickle cell anemia. Fay’s husband, Truman, achieved equal recognition for his work in developing treatment protocols for childhood asthma. Each woman felt that her husband was more successful than her sister’s spouse, though the husbands themselves remained noncompetitive colleagues. Friends, even.

  The rivalry between these two feuding siblings extended itself into all areas of their lives. It was a tragedy that in one instance became an odd blessing when Fay learned that she couldn’t bear children. Ladella, who didn’t want children, was then released from having to bear and raise a “spite” child, though she had nevertheless given serious thought to going ahead and making the sacrifice for the sake of rubbing Fay’s nose in it. Ladella’s husband Cleron w
as forced to undergo a vasectomy to keep the peace.

  The rivalry extended itself into all areas of their husbands’ lives as well.

  While this non-starter conversation was taking place in a neighborhood north of the Cumberland River, which bisects the city of Nashville, a similar conversation was playing out in a neighborhood south of that river, near the college.

  “Cleron came by my office this morning with what I think is an excellent suggestion,” said Dr. Truman Nicholas to his wife. “He thinks that the four of us should drive to Oklahoma City together. I agreed and volunteered the Matador station wagon.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “It makes perfect sense to me.”

  “I’m going to schedule an appointment for you with Dr. Eastman.”

  “Dr. Eastman teaches psychi—oh. You’re very funny, Fay. You’re a laugh a minute, baby.”

  In spite of the fact that Dr. and Mrs. Nicholas and Dr. and Mrs. Key would both be headed to the very same place, taking a mostly straight-shot route from Nashville, Tennessee, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; in spite of the fact that they would be leaving at roughly the same time on the morning of Thursday, July 29, and arriving at roughly the same time early in the evening of that same day; in spite of the fact that both relatively law-abiding brothers-in-law intended to flout only minimally the double-nickel speed limit leveled against the American motorist by the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act signed by President Richard Nixon on January 2, 1974—in spite of each of these things which strongly argued for a carpooling solution to the problem of how best to transport two women equally fearful of plane travel due to a certain excessively turbulent flight they’d shared in their youth, the two couples set out in their own cars, and that was that.

  But it really wasn’t. Because fate was to play several mischievous tricks on Fay Nicholas and her slightly younger sister Ladella Key on that trip. The first came at a West Memphis, Arkansas, truck stop both husbands had visited on earlier road trips. Both the Nicholases and the Keys had decided independently of each other to stop there so their vehicles’ drivers, in each case the husbands, identically possessive of their respective steering wheels, could quaff down a couple of hasty cups of coffee to keep the late morning drowsies at bay.

  It was Truman who noticed his brother-and sister-in-law from across the crowded truck stop dining room and acknowledged them with a friendly wave. Truman and Fay were seated in a booth, Cleron and Ladella at a table across the room.

  “Well, look who’s here!” marveled Dr. Key to his wife as he waved back. “Fancy seeing the Nicholases so far from home.”

  “You aren’t the least bit funny,” muttered Ladella, hiding her face behind her menu.

  At the booth across the room, Fay flinched. “I’m going to the bathroom. Knock on the door after they’ve left.”

  At the table, Ladella said nearly the same thing.

  The upshot was that both sisters entered the restroom at almost the same time, Fay having kept her eyes front and center upon her approach, and Ladella having kept her gaze largely focused upon the vinyl tile floor.

  Left alone for the time being, the two husbands gravitated toward one another in the no man’s land between their respective dining stations.

  “Funny how things turn out,” said Dr. Nicholas to Dr. Key. “How long do you think it will take them to realize they’ve wound up in the bathroom together?”

  Cleron chuckled. “We should lock them in there and not let them out until they both promise to be good little girls.”

  In the ladies’ restroom, Ladella had sequestered herself in a stall only a moment before her sister entered. They were the only two women in the room. It quickly became apparent to each that the other was sitting in the neighboring stall, Ladella recognizing Fay by her “Evening in Paris” perfume, which Fay had worn for years, and Fay recognizing her younger sister Ladella by her comfortable, slip-resistant Nurse Mates shoes.

  Both sat for a long time in mortified silence. Eventually Ladella said, “All right. I’ll go first.”

  “Yes, go,” answered her sister curtly.

  At the Stuckey’s store outside of Conway, Arkansas, Ladella munched on a pimento cheese sandwich as she strolled through the aisles containing pecan rolls and boxed peanut brittle and pecan divinity. Ladella had pulled the sandwich from the ice chest, which sat on the funky Levi jeans–upholstered back seat of the couple’s 1973 Gremlin. Ladella’s husband, Cleron, like his counterpart, Truman, liked American Motors cars for their value and a little for their placement a few rungs below the top three automaking giants. Being men of color who had overcome the powerful forces of prejudice and orthodoxy in the medical field, both Cleron and Truman respected companies that tried to break down barriers. The Gremlin, being a funny little car with a sawed-off rear end and blue-jean upholstery, was especially iconoclastic.

  Cleron ate a hamburger at the roadside chain’s snack bar. Through the window he could see the Nicholases’ station wagon pull up. “Katy, bar the door,” he said to himself.

  A moment later, Ladella joined him. She had finished her sandwich and was holding several boxes of Stuckey’s brand confections she wanted to buy, along with a cedar plaque that read, “I don’t swim in your toilet, so please don’t pee in my pool.” (She and her husband had just put in a swimming pool the previous spring.)

  Ladella had been standing very near the front door when her sister and brother-in-law entered the store. One of her candy boxes had slipped from her nervous hands and hit the floor with a loud thwack. She had looked at Truman (trying her very best not to give her sister the courtesy of even a brief glance) and said somewhat exasperatedly, “Truman Nicholas—you had to have seen our car in the parking lot. Why didn’t you keep on going?”

  Before Truman could attempt an answer, Fay shot back, “We have every right to stop here too. You don’t own Stuckey’s.” Fay had said this without looking at Ladella, and then brushed roughly past her to peruse, with serious purpose, a row of roasted nut products.

  “What was I to do?” Truman whispered in an apologetic tone to Ladella after his wife passed. “She likes this place just as much as you do.”

  At her husband’s table in the snack bar, Ladella recounted what had just happened. Then she subjoined, “I am going to make my purchases and then go and sit in the car. Finish your hamburger, and don’t keep me waiting.”

  Ladella strode over to the cash register and bought her confections and the plaque with the funny saying on it and then went out to sit in the Gremlin and stew and fume. Her husband Cleron followed a few moments later. He passed Truman on the way out. The two men shook their heads and shrugged. After walking out of the store, Cleron turned and walked back in and then said to Truman by way of afterthought, “I’ve been meaning to ask you what you think about the curriculum changes for the fall, but we’d better not do it with the women around, or they’ll think we’re talking about them behind their backs.”

  Truman nodded and sighed.

  After they’d gotten back on I-40, Fay said to Truman, “What was it that Cleron said to you in the Stuckey’s?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “You’re lying. You men are conspiring in some way. I just know it. And we aren’t stopping anywhere else between here and Oklahoma City. If you get hungry, you can eat these pralines.”

  Truman had every intention of not stopping again, but the gas gauge took that decision out of his hands. Plus, he was hungry—hungry for something in the meat family. Unlike Cleron, he hadn’t eaten a hamburger at the Conway Stuckey’s. There was another Stuckey’s in Checotah, Oklahoma. They could get gas there, and he could grab a sandwich. The Nicholases hadn’t packed a cooler like the Keys. Truman Nicholas didn’t believe in filling a car up with food from home; that’s what roadside eateries were for.

  Ladella was sitting at one of the plastic laminated tables in the snack bar section of the Checotah, Oklahoma, Stuckey’s store eating pretzels when they arrived. She wat
ched with unmitigated horror as her older sister and her husband got out of their brown Matador and started across the parking lot. “If that doesn’t beat everything!” she said aloud.

  She had hardly finished the word “everything” when a piece of pretzel slipped into her windpipe. She began to choke. Very little air was getting through. Her husband was in the restroom. There was a white couple sitting at the table next to her. They watched, horrified, as she quickly began to claw at her throat. “Help her!” the woman called to the short order cook behind the counter.

  “You want me to call a doctor?” he replied stupidly.

  Ladella couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe. She was becoming lightheaded even as the adrenaline of fear pumped throughout her body.

  Fay saw what was happening as she entered the store. She saw Ladella clutching at her throat with a woman standing helplessly next to her and a man slapping her futilely on the back.

  Fay ran toward her sister. She knocked over a display of old-fashioned fruitcake to get there. She pushed the man out of the way, grabbed Ladella, wheeled her around, and placed both of her arms around her sister’s waist. With her right hand, Fay made a fist and pushed it against Ladella’s abdomen just above her belly button. She grabbed the fist with the other hand and began to make a series of strong upward squeeze-thrusts into the abdomen. On the fifth thrust, Ladella coughed. The piece of pretzel flew from her mouth.

  Fay sat her sister down. There was a long silence. Then the man, who had now been joined by Fay’s husband Truman, said, “How did you learn to do that?”

  Fay didn’t answer. She had sat down across from Ladella and was gently patting her sister’s trembling hand.

  Truman turned to the man and said, “It’s a procedure developed by a Dr. Henry Heimlich. He published it a couple of years ago in Emergency Medicine—that’s a medical journal.”

  Cleron was out of the restroom now. He hadn’t heard any of the commotion and was startled to find his wife and sister-in-law sitting at the same table, looking tenderly into each other’s eyes. He turned to his brother-in-law Truman. “Did Jesus just come back?”