The Ladies' Room

by Carolyn Brown

  Thinking about all those shirts I'd ironed and he'd worn while he flirted with other women infuriated me. I went through his closet like a wild woman, jerking them all off the hangers, wadding them up into tight little balls, and throwing them at the walls. Then I stripped the closet of his suits and slung them down the hall. After that I threw myself down onto the bed and watched my wedding ring make lazy circles around and around.

  I'd take nothing out of the house. There was precious little of me in the place, anyway. I looked at the clock: one thirty. Could it really have only been three hours ago that I was wiggling around in a pew? If I could go back and live in blissful ignorance, would I? No, I would not! I should have been told years ago, and my cousins should have been the ones to tell me.

  I opened the closet doors again. Wouldn't it be a hoot if I showed up in public in overalls? I didn't own overalls, but I could improvise. I chose a pair of faded denim Capri pants I wore to work in the flower beds, and a bright yellow shirt with a hole in one sleeve and a spaghetti stain right on the front. I picked out green rubber flip-flops and tied my hair back with a red and white University of Oklahoma bandanna. I was tempted to draw freckles across my nose with an eyebrow pencil and tie my hair up in pigtails but figured someone might call in the boys in the white jackets to carry me off to a mental institution if I went that far. I checked my reflection in the mirror and was content with the effect. Between my showing up in town looking like a bag lady and his losing enough money to buy more fancy cars for his bimbos, Drew should come close to having full-fledged cardiac arrest. I hoped he didn't die instantly but was fully awake when they socked those electric paddles onto his chest.

  I picked up my purse, walked out the front door, and took a long look at all I was leaving behind. Then I slammed the door hard enough to rattle the windowpanes and didn't even look back. In ten minutes I was at the bank, standing in Charity's teller line. She was a pretty little thing. Not even old enough to get into a bar without an ID. Blond hair cut in one of those multilayered styles that was shorter in the back and framed her delicate face. Neither cellulite nor gravity had attacked her body, and every inch looked firm and taut. Did she iron shirts and make two meals a day? She'd better learn if she didn't, because Drew Williams didn't pay for a maid or a cook.

  "And what can I do for you today?" she asked when I reached her.

  "Would you please check the total amount in my family's savings account?" I was proud of myself for not grabbing a handful of that blond hair and jerking her through the opening in the teller station. It wouldn't be difficult to send her sailing through the plate-glass front window like a giant Frisbee.

  "Your account number, please."

  I told her, and she poked a few buttons, then sucked air for a few seconds before she looked up at me again.

  "Mrs. Drew Williams? Do you have identification?"

  I flipped open my wallet and presented my bank card. "Right here. How much is in that account?"

  "Fifty thousand, four dollars, and twelve cents," she said.

  "I'll be withdrawing all but the twelve cents right now"

  "But, but ... oh, dear. I'll have to make a phone call." She reached for the phone.

  I slapped my hand onto hers and looked her right in the eye. "I want a cashier's check for fifty thousand, four dollars. And then you'll see what's in my joint checking account. I want to withdraw all of it except thirteen cents. Do you understand me, Charity?"

  "I think you'd better talk to the bank president. I can't authorize such a large withdrawal."

  I yelled at the teller all the way at the other end of the row. "Hey, Mindy, go get Horace, and bring him up here. I want to take money out of my accounts, and Charity can't take care of my business."

  Mindy nodded toward Charity. "Give her what she wants. That's Trudy Williams. She and her husband are among our best customers."

  Charity gasped as if she'd been tossed over the side of the Washita River bridge in nothing but her sexy little thong underpants and concrete shoes. It was ten minutes before two, and all bank business was concluded promptly at two o'clock. I'd made sure that my transactions would go into that day's business and she couldn't call Drew to warn him until the deed was already done.

  "Mindy, tell her to hurry up. I want these transactions done before the two o'clock business goes in," I said.

  "Get a move on it, Charity," she said.

  Charity handed me two checks just as the clock ticked off the two o'clock deadline.

  "Thank you for your help. Now you can call Drew on his cell. Tell him he's a lucky man. I only wiped out what I could. The two bits I left are for you. Seems fittin', don't it?"

  The ringtone on my cell phone let me know Drew was calling when I crawled into the car. Miss Two-bit Charity hadn't wasted much time. The cat was out of the bag now, and there was no turning back. If I regretted my hasty decision in ten years and found myself living in a tar-paper shanty on the Washita River, my newly found hot temper would be to blame. I tossed the phone out the window.

  The bank president at the other bank in Tishomingo met me in the foyer and ushered me into his office. "Trudy Williams, I was hoping you'd come here after the funeral."

  He was new in town, and his instant warmth scared the bejesus out of me. What if Drew had called him with instructions to keep me there until the mental institution could send a helicopter to take me to a padded cell in Norman?

  He motioned toward one of the leather chairs. "Please have a seat, Mrs. Williams"

  I didn't want to even think about the name Williams, much less be called it. "Trudy. My name is Trudy."

  "Thank you. I'm hoping you will want to keep your business here. Gertrude was one of our bank's biggest customers, but I know you and your husband keep your affairs at the other bank in town."

  I laid the cashier's checks on his desk. "I'm going to keep everything right here from now on. I've got a couple of checks, and I'd like to open a checking account and savings account in this bank"

  He smiled. "That is wonderful. Just wonderful. I've prepared a list of Gert's assets just like she told me to do"

  I wondered why he'd be so eager to keep Aunt Gert's miserly amounts of money in his bank. She'd barely made it on her Social Security income. Worn secondhand clothes and jewelry. Used coupons at the grocery store. Wouldn't even put in a window unit for air-conditioning.

  "I'm not here to move anything," I assured him.

  The papers he shoved across the desk were inside a manila folder. I opened it carefully, expecting to find a hundred dollars in her checking account and half that in savings. What I saw almost stopped my heart. What I'd brought from the other bank was a mere drop in the ocean compared to the figures before me.

  "As you can see, your Aunt Gertrude was a very wealthy woman. Her folks had money, invested well, and left it all to her. She and her lawyer came in here a few months ago with instructions that I was to hand you this report after she passed and the will was read," he said.

  I was in total shock. I pinched my leg. It hurt like the devil, so I wasn't dreaming.

  "The interest off the money should provide a healthy monthly income. Will you be selling the house on Broadway Street?"

  I was surprised I could even utter a sensible word. "No, I'm moving into it tonight."

  "Good. I'm sure that would make her very happy. She hoped that you might ... let's see if I can remember her exact words ... come to your senses and face what was right in front of your eyes and do something about it-though I'm not sure what she was talking about."

  "I am"

  "Good. Then I've passed on a message from her. You'll be drawing on the money to repair the old place?"

  "Yes, I will. And thank you for your help today. You'll take care of these two deposits?"

  "Yes, I surely will. I'll take care of them personally. How do you want to handle this?"

  "I can write checks on Aunt Gert's account starting right now?"

  "Trudy, you could have written chec
ks on her accounts six months ago, when she found out about the cancer. Everything was taken care of then"

  "Then put them both into a savings account"

  He pulled paperwork from a drawer in his desk and showed me where to sign. Then he took the checks to a teller window and deposited them into the new account. He brought back a deposit slip and handed it to me along with his business card. "Thank you again for keeping your business here. We will do anything we can to be of assistance to you. Feel free to call anytime"

  I nodded toward the folder as I stood up. "Thank you. I can take this with me?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Gert came in here on the first day of every month for a folder like that. You'll probably find them all stashed somewhere in her house, filed neatly and labeled by the year. She was a stickler for keeping good records."

  I shook his hand. "That sounds like Aunt Gert. Thanks again."

  I must have sat there sweltering in the broiling heat with the car windows rolled up for ten minutes before I turned the key to start the engine as well as the air conditioner. I actually shivered when the icy cold air rushed over all the sweat on my arms and face.

  It was only five minutes from the bank to Aunt Gert's house on Broadway Street. Her parents had built the two-story house somewhere around 1910, right after statehood, and back then it was one of the more prosperous homes in the area. But in the sixties things started falling apart, and she ignored them. For fifty years very little maintenance had been done on the place, and it showed.

  I parked in the gravel driveway and stared blankly at my new home. For a minute I almost wished the helicopter bearing those boys in the white jackets would appear on Gert's overgrown lawn. A padded cell, whether in a state-run facility or a private one, was looking better by the minute. I left all the paperwork I'd been given that day lying on the car seat and opened the door to a blast of summer heat. If the end of May felt like this, then what would July and August be like with no air-conditioning?

  I marched stoically across the unkempt yard and had barely reached the porch when everything began to look like the special effects in a movie running in slow motion. I'd fainted one time in my life, back when I was first pregnant with my daughter, so I recognized the symptoms. I eased down onto the porch steps and put my head between my legs. It was midafternoon, and I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I'd gotten rid of the coffee, soft drinks, and my ignorance in the ladies' room at the church.

  When I raised my head, Billy Lee Tucker was sitting beside me.

  "Still moving in here sometime in the future?"

  "I'm moving in right now, and I hope she's got a can of soup in the pantry, because I'm hungry."

  "When are the movers bringing your things?"

  "No movers. I've got a purse and a bunch of papers in the car, and that's it."

  He raised an eyebrow and held out his hand. "Here's keys to the place and her car. I was going to bring them out to your house this evening, but I saw you drive up, so I came on over. You all right? You're as white as a ghost"

  "I'm just hungry. Thanks for bringing over the keys. This house is a mess, isn't it?"

  "It is right now, but it won't be for long. I've been hired to redo the house from top to bottom if you decide to move into it, so I suppose we'll be working together real soon," he said.

  "Who hired you?" I asked.

  "Gert. Gave me an envelope I was to open only after she died. She said I was to remodel this place if you moved in. If you didn't, then I could count on getting what was inside as my inheritance for being her favorite neighbor."

  "Well, thank you" I found enough strength to get up and cross the front porch. I had to keep my body and soul together long enough to spit in Drew's eye and get even with my two cousins.

  He followed me to the door. "Foundation is good. House was built right in the beginning. It's got the potential to be a real beauty" - -- -- - -- --- -- - - - -

  Inviting him inside would be stretching my depleted supply of manners entirely too far. Being nice had netted me misery beyond description. Besides, I'd already been nice enough to leave my cousins alive that day. Plus the prissy little bimbo down at the bank still had all her blond hair and not a mark on her face. That was enough "nice" for one day.

  I stopped at the door. "I'm glad to hear it, Billy Lee. Come around in a few days, when I've had a chance to think, and we'll talk about it."

  He nodded. "My phone number is on the refrigerator. Let me know when you want me to go to work. I'll outline what I've got in mind for the exterior. I think we can make this look like it did in its heyday. I'm glad to have you for a neighbor, Trudy"

  He whistled as he left. I wanted to slap him. No one should be happy when my world was in shambles.

  Not one thing had changed since the last time I'd walked through the front door of Aunt Gert's house. Every square inch of the place was covered in mismatched furniture and cheap collectibles. Every table sported a lamp sitting on a crocheted doily. None of the lamps were plugged in, because there were very few electrical outlets. Ceramic ducks, cows, and lots and lots of birds surrounded the lamps. Chairs and sofas had mismatched hand towels pinned to the backs and washcloths on the arms.

  I walked right past it all without even a shudder. Whoever said that a person, especially an overweight one, could live for weeks with no food had rocks for brains. I was about to join the ranks of the recently departed if I didn't find something to put into my mouth. When I reached the kitchen, I was amazed at the contents of the refrigerator. Milk, still inside the expiration date. Lunch meat. A whole loaf of bread. Lettuce. Tomatoes. Cheese. Real mayonnaise that was even my favorite brand.

  I made a sandwich, devoured it, and made another. I finished the second one and had a tall glass of milk before I went out to the car to get the paperwork. I carried it to the house and wondered why Aunt Gert had let things go to rot and ruin with all that money in the bank.

  I climbed the stairs and laid the papers on the bed in the guest room where I planned to sleep that night. The second floor had three bedrooms and a bathroom. When the house had been built, the bathroom was down the back path toward the rear of the lot. According to Momma, the family modernized the place after her grandfather died. The heat was oppressive, so I opened a window and begged for a breeze, but there wasn't a bit of wind between me and the Gulf of Mexico.

  The sweat pouring off me had as much to do with nerves as the weather. A cool shower might keep me from melting into a puddle of lard on the floor. I opened the bathroom door and almost cried. The wall-hung sink was listing to the front. The toilet was crazed and cracked. The tub was as old as God and pitted. There was no shower above it. This would definitely be the first place I started when Billy Lee and I sat down to talk about remodeling.

  When I finished bathing, I wrapped a towel around my body and wandered through the other rooms. Aunt Gert's bedroom was cluttered with more stuff than the rest of the house. Knickknacks and old pictures. The guest room where I'd left my paperwork was clean but smelled unused and slightly musty. Then there was Uncle Lonnie's room, with a padlock on the outside.

  I didn't remember there being a lock on the door the last time I was in the house, but then, that was probably back when Lonnie was still alive. Why had Aunt Gert closed up the room, and how long had it been locked?

  Aunt Gert was a few inches taller than I, but her elasticwaist jeans and shirts fit me fairly well. The nightgowns in her dresser drawer looked inviting, but it wasn't time for bed. I had a lot of reading to do to understand what all Aunt Gert had left behind.

  I dressed in a pair of Aunt Gert's pants and a faded T-shirt, made a pot of coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table to read through all of the paperwork. But the lock on that bedroom door kept bugging me. Why had she put a padlock on the outside of a bedroom? What was in there that she needed to protect?

  I sighed and tried to mentally rehearse what I would say to Drew when he got back to town, but my curiosity got the better of me. I went to the foyer table where I
'd tossed the keys Billy Lee had given me. Sure enough, there was a padlock key on the ring.

  No chilly air brushed past me as Lonnie's ghost left the room when I opened the door. Nothing jumped out from under the bed to scare me. The hair didn't stand up on my arms, nor did any scary music play in my head. It looked exactly as I remembered from back when I was a little girl. Which was completely out of place. All the other rooms in the house were filled with junk, but this room was stark and plain with a nightstand on each side of a full-sized bed. No knickknacks anywhere. A calendar dated the year he had died back in the nineties was the only thing hanging on the walls. Plain white curtains framed the single window overlooking the front yard. A rocking chair with a worn red plaid pad in the seat stood nearby. Uncle Lonnie's polyester pants and jackets still hung in the closet along with cotton shirts, his wing-tipped shoes and bedroom slippers lined up neatly on the floor.

  The room was spotless, not even one lonesome old dust bunny hiding under the bed. Why would Aunt Gert clean the room on a regular basis and then put a padlock on the outside? But just in case there was a ghost in there that only came out at a certain time, I snapped the padlock shut when I left. By the time I got back downstairs, the phone was ringing.

  "What the devil are you doing?" Marty asked when I answered it.

  "Taking a look at my inheritance," I answered.

  "I don't mean that. Why were you in town looking worse than the garbage collector?"

  "That is none of your business."

  "Drew is going to kill you. I heard you went into the bank and made a big withdrawal from his accounts and then went to the other bank to deposit it. Is that true?" - - -- - -- - --- - - -- -

  I stretched the phone cord, but it wouldn't reach to the kitchen, so I couldn't see if there was any rat poison under the sink. "Doesn't the town have anything else to talk about today? They could be discussing dear old Aunt Gert."

  "It's your funeral they're going to be discussing when Drew comes home"

  "I'm sure you and Betsy will console him after he kills me. Maybe you can make him some hot chicken salad like Lori Lou did."