Inez turned to Marcus and stared. Marcus grinned and nodded his head.
“Oh! Helen!” Inez kicked her feet against the counter and clapped her hands, making her bracelets clatter. “How exciting! A real-life, confirmed homosexual right here on our street! It feels so modern! Wait ‘til I tell Francine!”
“Now, Inez, don’t you go blabbing that all over town. That’s not really your business to tell.”
Marcus shrugged and took Inez’s jug of tea from the counter. He opened the refrigerator and stuck it inside. “I don’t care. It’s not as though I know anybody in this town. And it’s not really something I hide. I’m not ashamed of it.”
“Nor should you be,” Helen said and shook her finger at Marcus. “You be proud of who you are. You should make every day of your life one of those pride parades.”
“Well, listen to miss modern Gloria Steinem over here,” Inez said with a grunt. “Like you know anything about a gay pride parade.”
“First of all, I watch the Netflix. I know things. And you know good and well my grandson Skeet is a gay. He’s told me all about this stuff.” Helen opened her eyes wide. “Oh! I’ll have to introduce you two!”
“Good lord, Marcus. Now you’ve done it. Nothing in the world makes Helen Warner happier than getting in someone’s business and trying to play matchmaker.”
“Well, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.”
“You take that back,” Inez shot back at her. “I just want to know everybody’s business. I don’t feel the need to go messing in it.”
Marcus leaned his hip against the counter and crossed his arms. “Helen, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t really need anybody to play matchmaker for me, okay? I’m not planning on staying here long enough for that. And just because we’re both gay doesn’t mean we’ll have anything else in common.”
“I didn’t mean for you to date him. Good grief. He’s barely eighteen. And he’s leaving town in the fall to go to college. No, I just thought you might like to have a friend in town that has something in common with you.”
“Well, I appreciate that but—”
“No arguing.” Helen raised her hand to silence Marcus. “It’s settled. Tomorrow after the Do-Nothings meeting at Francine’s, I’ll drive you to Hank’s to get your car and I’ll get Skeet to meet us.”
“Oh, shit. I forgot to tell you.”
“Inez, language, please. Tell me what?”
“Francine’s done lost another cook. She’s going to have to work the grill tomorrow so she can’t be at the meeting. And Priss has a doctor’s appointment in the morning so she and I thought maybe we could all meet at the Tammy tomorrow instead of riding together.”
“Actually, that’s perfect. The Tammy is right around the corner from Hank’s. I can drop Marcus there and I’ll just have Skeet meet us.”
“Good. I’ll call the girls and tell them to meet there tomorrow. Ten-thirty?”
“Like always.”
“Well, I better skedaddle back home.” Inez pushed the stool away from the counter and slid off to her feet. “I need to finish planting that border grass and Elbert will be wanting his dinner. It was wonderful to meet you, Marcus.” Inez rubbed Marcus’s upper arm as she cocked her head to one side. “And I’m really sorry about your grandmother. I swear, I think about Eloise every day. Lord, I miss that woman.” Inez sighed and frowned. “Now I better go before I start bawling. Anyway, see you at the Tammy tomorrow.” Inez bustled out of the house. After the screen door had slammed behind her, she stopped and turned around. “I want that milk jug back.” She turned again and disappeared down the sidewalk.
“Well, that was…um…interesting.” Marcus said and chuckled.
“Marcus, honey, don’t let Inez get under your skin. She means well, but all those trips to New York have given her a filthy mind and a filthy mouth.”
“No. It’s fine. She’s funny.” Marcus climbed onto the barstool beside Helen. “But what the hell is the Tammy?”
“Oh, that’s the local diner that our friend Francine Jones owns. The Tammy Dinette. We all just call it the Tammy.”
“Tammy Dinette? Like Tammy Wynette?”
“Yes. Francine is obsessed with her. Uses that woman as a guide for living, which I don’t understand at all. I mean, it made a wonderful TV movie but… well, that’s neither here nor there. I thought we were going to have to bury Francine the day Tammy died. Of course, you’re way too young to know much about Tammy Wynette.”
“Oh, no.” Marcus shook his head. “I know Tammy. ‘Stand by Your Man.’ ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E.’ ‘Golden Ring.’ I know them all. But I’ve always been more of a Patsy Cline guy myself.”
“I’m a Loretta Lynn girl.”
“Did my grandmother enjoy music?”
“Your grandmother loved music. She played that piano over there all the time. Mostly classical. Beethoven. Bach. But when she was with the rest of us girls, all she wanted to hear was stuff from the fifties. You know, doo-wop?”
“Bomp-shoo-bomp and that kind of thing?”
“Yes!” Helen began to giggle. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but who’s going to hear?” Helen looked around as if checking for an eavesdropper and then whispered to Marcus. “Her favorite thing in the world was to make the lyrics dirty.”
“What?” Marcus said and began to laugh.
“Yes. There’s a song called ‘Sh-Boom.’ Well, she always changed the lyrics from ‘hey nonny ding dong’ to ‘how long’s your ding dong?’” Helen threw her head back and laughed. “We felt so naughty singing that! Of course, compared to the things in music today…”
“Yeah. Kind of tame, but still funny.” Marcus walked to the piano. He chose a picture of his grandmother. In the photograph, his grandmother wore a flamboyantly patterned pantsuit in neon colors that clashed with her red hair. She was standing with a group of men in front of a grocery store holding a pair of oversized scissors over a red ribbon. “I wish I’d known her.”
“She would’ve spoiled you rotten.”
Marcus returned the photograph to the piano back and pointed at another. “Where did she get these pictures of me? Like this one. I don’t remember this.”
Helen walked behind Marcus and peered over his shoulder. “First of all, that picture,” Helen pointed at a black and white photo of a young man riding a horse, “is not you. That’s your daddy. But the other ones were sent by your mama. She would never bring you down here to see your grandmother and, frankly, I think that’s a crime. But every now and then, your grandmother would get a letter from your mama with a picture included. Eloise would bring the picture to the next Do-Nothing meeting and brag about what a cute baby you were, though I never thought so. She said she could just tell you were smart, too. She’d say your mama promised to come to town to see her if she would send her some money to help with the gas. We knew good and well all she wanted was the money, but your grandmother would just know she was going to show up this time. And she’d put the money in an envelope and send it off.”
“If she had an address to send the money, why didn’t she try to find us?”
“Oh, she did. One time she convinced me to drive all the way over to Eganville to look for you.” Helen tucked her hair behind her ear and frowned. “But when we got there, the landlord said your mama had packed up and left town in the middle of the night. Your grandmother felt so bad, she paid him the rent your mama had forgotten to pay.”
“Yeah, that sounds like my mama.” Marcus lifted another picture of himself. His much-younger face smiled out from the picture. In the photo, he wore tattered overalls and a plaid shirt and stood holding a balloon in front of a bronze statue of a gorilla. Marcus had no memory of the statue or the picture, though the overalls seemed familiar. He set it back carefully.
“Between you, me, and the fencepost, I don’t think Eloise cared much for your mama. I
mean she took her son away from her and then kept you from her, too.”
Marcus plucked up a picture of his father in a football uniform, kneeling and holding a football on his knee, and stared at it. He looked at his reflection in the mirror over the piano and then back at the photo. Other than differences in hairstyles, his father’s plethora of freckles, and the presence of sports equipment, Marcus could’ve sworn it was a picture of him. “I do look a lot like him, I guess.”
“Spitting image,” Helen said and placed her hand on Marcus’s shoulder. Making eye contact with his reflection, she added, “Well, except for that shiner you got there.”
Marcus shrugged her hand off his shoulder and put the photo back on the piano. “Yeah, must be from the wreck.”
“Honey, the wreck was today. That black eye is at least two days old.”
“No.” Marcus broke eye contact with Helen’s reflection and stepped away from her. “It must be from the wreck.”
“Marcus, sweetie, you don’t have to tell me what happened, but I’m not an old fool. Francine, that owns the diner, her second husband… well… when he had a few beers, he liked to get to swinging. Francine put up with it for God knows what reason, and, I’m ashamed to say, most of us just kept our mouths shut about it. She’d claim it was an accident, but we all knew.” Helen leaned closer and looked Marcus in the eye. “Finally, Inez had enough and she took one of Elbert’s shotguns over to Francine’s house. She told that good for nothing that if he touched Francine one more time, she’d shoot his thingy off. Then she turned around and shot the flag off their mailbox just to prove she could do it. Inez grew up hunting squirrels with her daddy since she never had any brothers. Of course, it didn’t really matter because he upped and had a heart attack about a week later. Which, thank God for small favors.”
“Helen, a man died. That isn’t a favor. God or no God.”
Helen dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Don’t be trying to change the subject on me. We aren’t talking about religion. We’re talking about that eye of yours.”
“No. We aren’t.”
“Fine. But let me just say that I hope whoever gave you that eye doesn’t feel the need to come around here.”
“He doesn’t know where I am.”
“Ah-ha! It is a he! I knew it.”
“Yes. It’s a he. But I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
“Fine. But if he shows up here trying to hurt anyone—”
“You don’t have to worry about him coming here and hurting anyone. He won’t.”
Helen stared at Marcus, as if waiting for him to continue. When he remained silent, she cleared her throat and glanced at her watch. “Well, it’s getting late. You better get some rest so we can get up and go see about your car tomorrow morning. Don’t forget to put that casserole in the fridge.” Helen crossed to the door and paused with her hand on the handle. “Oh, Marcus? I’m not worried about the person that gave you that shiner. Well, not worried for us. More for him. You are Eloise’s grandson, so you are an honorary Do-Nothing. We protect our own, and, frankly, I think Inez is still a little pissed off she didn’t get to shoot someone the last time.”
Chapter Three
Marcus woke with a start, sitting straight up in bed and looking about the room in confusion. After taking a deep breath, he flopped back on to the pillow and groaned at the stiffness in his neck and the throb of pain from the cut on his forehead. He swatted over toward the bedside table to hit the alarm clock and stop the music that had awakened him. As he fumbled around on the nightstand, he realized there was no clock. He sat up and looked around, trying to figure out where he was.
“My grandmother,” he mumbled and dropped back onto the pillow, which he discovered was damp with sweat. He lay staring at the ceiling and let the music wash over him as the fog of sleep drifted away. The ceiling fan sat still and, as Marcus pulled his sweaty T-shirt away from his chest, he wished he had thought to turn it on before tumbling onto the bed. By the time Helen and Inez had left him alone, he’d quickly realized just how exhausted he was. He had not bothered to eat anything or to clean himself up or to remove his bloody clothes. He had clapped twice to turn out the lights, wandered down the hallway to the bedroom, and dropped onto the bed. Sleep had tackled him almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. Now he regretted that decision, as his clothes had practically fused themselves with his skin. He was hot and uncomfortable, and his stomach grumbled loudly with hunger. Also, he seemed to be hallucinating a piano concerto.
Can a head wound make you hear music? Marcus swung his feet over the edge of the bed and onto the floor. His head spun at the sudden movement. He braced himself against the mattress, and the music stopped. He squinted his eyes and concentrated to see if that could make the music start again. A scale of notes made a flourish as if in response. God, what is this music? He looked around the bedroom again and realized the sound was coming from the living room. He stood, pulled the pink bedspread around his shoulders, and stumbled toward the sound of the piano.
He found an old woman sitting on the piano bench and playing. Her eyes were closed, and she rocked back and forth in time with the jaunty song she was banging out. The bench creaked slightly under her weight. Her long white hair, pulled back on her head and held behind her by a wide, zebra-print headband, swayed with each shift of her body.
“Um, hello?”
The old woman opened her eyes and looked over at him. She smiled broadly, nodded her head, and kept playing. Her bright white tennis shoes danced on the damper pedals in time with the music.
“Can I, um, help you?”
The woman just smiled again and kept banging away on the keys. Marcus listened. It would be rude to interrupt her, but then again, maybe he should call the police. As she ended the song with a run up the keyboard, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she stood, Marcus noticed her rainbow-striped T-shirt was inside-out. She closed the cover over the piano keys and turned to Marcus to smile again. Behind her thick, pink-framed glasses, her eyes shone like the eyeglass chain that dropped from her temples. She lifted a shaky hand and patted him on the cheek. Then she crossed to the front door and walked out of the house; the screen door slammed shut behind her.
Marcus stood with his mouth agape and watched her walk down the sidewalk until all he could make out was her bright fuchsia jumper. When she turned to the left on the road and disappeared from sight, he rubbed the heel of his hand in his eye and pulled the bedspread tighter around his shoulders. “What the hell was that?”
He stood staring out the open door until an urgent need to pee brought him back to the world. As he turned to go into the bathroom, he heard a voice call through the open door.
“Yoo-hoo!”
“God! I should install a revolving door.”
A pudgy woman stood in the doorway on the other side of the screen. She cupped one hand over her eyes as she attempted to peer through the screen and held a brown paper grocery sack by her side in the other. Though she stood barely five feet tall, her hair, white with a bluish tint, floated so far above her head in a frizzy puff it nearly doubled her height.
“Can I help you?” Marcus asked as he crossed toward her.
“Marcus?” the woman asked as she pulled the screen door open and stepped into the room. The heavy-looking pewter cross on a chain bounced against the chest of her simple dress with each movement. “You must be. You look just—”
“Like my father. Yes. We’ve covered that.”
The woman looked him up and down and frowned. “Is that what you are wearing to the diner? It looks like you slept in them.”
Marcus spread the blanket open and looked at his wrinkled, bloody clothes. “Well, I did.”
“Goodness, they’re all bloody. Well, that’ll never do. I know it’s just the diner, but you really don’t want everyone’s first impression of you to be what mine is. You loo
k like a hobo, bless your heart.”
“Well, I don’t have much choice. My clothes are all still in my car, I hope. Also, I was exhausted last night, you know, what with being in a wreck and all.”
“Young man, there is no need to get huffy. I’m simply suggesting that you might want to get cleaned up before we head to the Tammy. Here.” She thrust the paper bag toward him. “I brought you some old things out of the church’s clothing donation bin. Helen said you might need some clothes. And please hurry. Helen gets so uppity if we’re late.”
Marcus took the sack from the woman and glanced inside. He could see a brightly patterned Hawaiian shirt and some plaid pants. He grimaced at the clash of patterns and colors. He looked back at the frowning woman. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be rude, but I just woke up and I’m a little confused. Also, my head is pounding and I really need to pee.”
The woman crossed her arms and glared at him. She looked at the kitchen counter and gasped. Her chubby cheeks, swathed in bright pink blush, wobbled as she shook her head. “Did you leave that casserole sitting out all night?”
“Guess I did.” Marcus shrugged and shifted from foot to foot. The pressure in his bladder was increasing.
“Good heavens. Are you trying to get the ptomaine or something?” She crossed to the counter and read the name scrawled on a piece of masking tape stuck to the bottom of the dish. Her eyebrows, already painted on in an arch of permanent surprise, shot farther up toward her bouffant. “Helen Warner made this? Well, it is God’s grace you didn’t eat it. It might’ve killed you even without sitting out all night.” She removed the foil from the dish, stepped over to the trash can beside the island, and dumped the contents out of the dish. “Well, why are you just standing there staring at me like a scarecrow? We need to get a move on.”
“Look, I walked in here to find some strange woman—I have no idea how she got in my house—sitting there playing god knows what on the piano. Then she just smiled and walked out. Never said a word. And now another strange woman is standing in my house insulting my clothes.”
Lunch with the Do-Nothings at the Tammy Dinette Page 4
