Hung Out to Die

by Sharon Short

  A NOSE BY ANY OTHER NAME . . .

  I heard the voices, downstairs.

  I had choices, I thought. I could nudge open Mamaw’s bedroom window, jump out into the snow-covered junipers, and then—assuming that I didn’t break anything—take off, without so much as ta-ta, just like my mama and daddy had done.

  I could curl up under the quilt and hide.

  Or, I could satisfy my growing curiosity and go meet my mama and daddy for the first time in decades. Well, for the first time, really, in a way.

  No wonder my nickname’s Nosey Josie. Curiosity always wins out with me. I opened the door and stepped out to the top of the stairs . . .

  Dedication

  To my friends who are as family:

  Barbara Byrd

  and

  The Goddesses: Barbara H., Judy, Mary Tom, Kathy, Katrina, Mary Ann, Lucrecia, Sandy, Lee, Gilah, Crystal, Barbara D., and Jill

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Sharon Short

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  “Now, this square was cut from your Uncle Fenwick’s football warm-up jersey, after the 1970 season,” Mamaw Toadfern said, as she stared at the crazy quilt spread on top of her bed, which was itself covered in another crazy quilt. The mixture of colors and shapes in both of her homemade quilts was making me dizzy.

  As was her perfume—Estée Lauder’s Youth Dew, also vintage 1970. I briefly wondered if Mamaw had gotten the perfume at Maxine McNally’s estate auction, held the previous weekend. I’d gone and found on a card table—right next to a stack of lovely old linen and lace napkins and tablecloths—a whole box of Youth Dew. Riley—one of Mrs. McNally’s granddaughters—told me no one ever knew what to get her grandmother, so they just kept sending her Youth Dew. Turned out she was allergic to it, but she wore it anyway at Thanksgiving, just to make everyone happy, and finally confessed, a year before she died, not just to her allergy but also to her complete dislike of the scent.

  At least, said Riley, as I bought up the whole lot of linens—stains and all—that explained why her Mamaw McNally always sneezed through the entire Thanksgiving meal.

  Anyway. My own Mamaw Toadfern now reeked of Youth Dew and I suppressed a sneeze and wondered if I was allergic, too. I hadn’t seen Mamaw at the sale. But then, I hadn’t seen her other than at a distance since I was about seven years old . . . and that had been twenty-two years before.

  And now, here I was. At her house for Thanksgiving. Looking at a quilt that seemed to be comprised mostly of old sports clothes. And trying not to sneeze at her perfume.

  Mamaw poked again, with a hot pink sparkly fake fingernail, at the square of shiny silver fabric with the navy blue number 23. “Or maybe this square was cut from your daddy’s football jersey. I got their numbers mixed up all the time.” She tapped navy-on-silver 47 a few squares away. “Fenwick and Henry aren’t identical twins, but at least back then they looked a lot alike. Same build. You’d think the numbers would have helped me keep them straight, but with two other boys to keep track of too . . .” She shook her head. “Your daddy and your Uncle Fenwick were the stars that season. Henry set a record for interceptions and Fenwick for field goals, records that have yet to be broken in Muskrat history.” She was referring to the mascot of East Mason County High School and for a moment she looked really proud, as if she’d gone back in time to the season when they’d set the records. Then she looked suddenly despairing again. “Those two were always so competitive, you know.”

  No. No, I didn’t know.

  In fact, I had no recollection of my daddy at all, considering he’d run off from my mama and me when I was two.

  And yet, here I was, in his mama’s bedroom, as she droned on sentimentally about this quilt, and I held my breath, and heard somewhere in the back of my head a high-pitched whining sound that wavered to the melody of “Over the River,” as in “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go, the horse knows the way, to carry the sleigh, through white and drifted snow, oh . . .”

  At least I found the song cheery, if a bit ironic.

  Because this was the first, last, and only time that this particular Thanksgiving tale would be cheery.

  Oh, it included a river and woods, seeing as how I live in Paradise, Ohio, and Mamaw lives in the country, on a farm, on the other side of the Stillwater River. Her huge, two-story farmhouse sits in the midst of trees. The rest of the property is a cornfield, which she farms out.

  And it included plenty of white and drifted snow. The day before Thanksgiving, we’d had a record-setting storm, which dumped almost a foot of glistening white snow throughout much of the Midwestern United States, including our little patch of the Midwest in southern Ohio.

  But in this tale’s case, there is no horse or sleigh, although a confused, derelict deer does figure into the telling—later on, anyway.

  And grandmother is my Mamaw Toadfern, not exactly the white-haired, apron-wearing, doting grandma the song implies. In her high-heeled mules, Mamaw was at best four feet eleven inches—a good four inches shorter than me—and weighed maybe a hundred pounds. The lines in her face were so deep and craggy they reminded me of the glacial grooves I’d once seen in a rock at the Museum of Natural History in Cincinnati, but still . . . she loomed as big and scary as she had the last time I saw her, which, as I said, was when I was about seven.

  I think she still seemed scary because of her piercing blue eyes. Or maybe because at seventy-six she wore tight black pants with those high-heeled mules, and a tan sweatshirt appliquéd with sequined turkeys, pilgrims, and Indians, and a big blond wig, and somehow managed to look pretty good.

  Mamaw was suddenly shaking me as she hollered, “Josie! Josie, are you okay?”

  My vision cleared, the melody drifted away, and I coughed as I peered down at Noreen Faye Wickenhoof Toadfern. The matriarch of my daddy’s family—a family I’d never known, except for a stray cousin or two, because long ago this woman had decided my daddy’s running off was my mama’s fault, and forbade everyone from talking to my mama or anyone in my mama’s family (which was much smaller, consisting of only a brother, a sister-in-law, and a nephew). Then when I was seven, my mama ran off, too, and Mamaw chose that time to instruct the whole family to cut me off.

  I stayed briefly in the county orphanage and then my mama’s brother and sister-in-law—Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace Foersthoefel, may they rest in peace—took me in and raised me like their daughter.

  “Josie?” Mamaw Toadfern demanded, her fingers digging so hard into my arms that I could feel her hot-pink faux nail tips bending backward. I jerked my arm away.

  “Yeah, sorry. Got a little light-headed, there.”

  “Well, pay attention, girl. This here is family history, and we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “That wouldn’t be my fault . . .”

  “What?” Mamaw snapped.

  “Uh, nothing. You were saying . . . this is a square from my Uncle Fenwick’s high school football jersey. Or maybe from my daddy’s football jersey . . .”

  “All of the squares in this quilt come from some fabric of importan
ce to the Toadfern family history. Besides the basketball shorts, there’s the paisley my poor old mama wore to be buried in—I snuck back in to Rothchild’s Funeral Parlor to cut off a square from the bottom of her dress . . .” I inhaled sharply at the image, and immediately regretted it. My head was starting to pound. I never get headaches, so I blamed it on the surreal scenario and the Youth Dew. “And there’s a square from Great-Aunt Fern’s wedding dress, from when she ran off for the third time to get married.”

  Okay, this was getting even more surreal. I had a Great-Aunt Fern? She got married three times?

  “The dress washed up on the shore but she never did and they never did find that rat of a husband of hers,” Mamaw went on. Maybe, I thought, Mamaw was just making this up. But from the expression on her face, I didn’t think so. “I was always her favorite kin, so I got what was left of her, the dress that is, and . . .”

  Oh, Lord. I could not imagine cuddling up for a winter’s nap under this quilt. Besides being light-headed from the perfume, I was hungry, too. My stomach growled and knotted. Dinner was delayed for at least an hour, until 2 P.M., because Uncle Fenwick and Aunt Nora, who were responsible for bringing the cranberry salad . . . and Mamaw said dinner couldn’t start without Uncle Fenwick, Aunt Nora, and the cranberry salad . . . had slid in their RV off the road into some of that fabled white and drifted snow. Last report was they’d just gotten towed out and were now on their way.

  And Mamaw was taking this chance lull to present me with this quilt—at least that’s why I assumed she was showing it to me, pulling me from the mayhem . . . I mean, family bliss . . . going on downstairs in the tiny parlor and kitchen and dining room and family room.

  There were thirty-seven people (at least, I thought that’s how many I’d counted; everyone kept moving around) all crammed downstairs, all hungry. My cousins Sally and Fern were sniping at each other for reasons I didn’t yet fathom, and my back was starting to ache from giving Sally’s triplet five-year-old sons piggyback rides so they’d stop picking on Albert, Fern’s lonely only. Meanwhile, Uncle Randolph kept complaining that he was having a sugar low and no one really liked Nora’s cranberry relish anyway and why did we have to wait for Fenwick who was always late—the show off.

  But now, Mamaw was pointing at a pink square, with some unsavory purplish stain in the middle of it, and saying, “Josie, this right here is really why I wanted to show you this quilt.”

  I sighed. Great. First time I spend any time around my Mamaw Toadfern in twenty-two years, and I’m trying to hang in there despite the Youth Dew perfume, because I’m sure this is going to be a grand, sentimental moment in which she bequeaths me a quilt made of family fabrics, and what she’s really after is my stain expertise.

  See, I’m Josie Toadfern, owner of Toadfern’s Laundromat in Paradise, Ohio, and a stain expert. Self-taught and proud of it. Best stain expert in Paradise, Ohio. Or in Mason County. Or in Ohio. Maybe even in all of the United States.

  So, sure, I could tell my Mamaw how to get the stain out of her precious quilt. But that wasn’t exactly the Hallmark moment I’d been envisioning for the past week, ever since my cousin Sally came into my laundromat and ended up screaming at me, “Josie Toadfern, you’d better get your sorry ass over the river and through the woods to Mamaw’s house for Thanksgiving, or else your ass will really know what sorry is, after I give you a whipping you’ll never forget!”

  You can see, can’t you, how I couldn’t possibly turn down such an invitation?

  Anyway.

  I returned Mamaw’s sharp gaze with one of my own. “Just tell me what the stain is,” I said, “and I’ll be glad to tell you how to get it out.”

  Mamaw’s eyes went watery, as if I’d slapped her. Then she started blubbering. “I can’t believe you just said that. I guess you have more Foersthoefel in you than I thought—”

  “Now, just a minute here,” I started. “Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara raised me and I won’t . . .”

  But Mamaw Toadfern didn’t hear a bit of my protest. “I know just what that stain is and how it got there! Why, it’s from your baby blanket, and you’d erped up some smashed eggplant, as I was a-rockin you, right downstairs in my favorite rocker, and even though you made quite a mess, I kept that baby blanket and washed it out as best I could because it was the one and only time your daddy and that woman—” I reckon she meant my mama, but couldn’t bring herself to put it that way—“let me babysit you and so it has great sentimental value to me, and, and . . .”

  She broke down in sobs. And I went over to hold her, muttering, “now, Mamaw, it’s okay,” even as I rolled my eyes and thought, geez, woman, you’ve only had twenty-two years of living just across the river from me, during which you’ve maintained stone-cold silence, until now. It wasn’t like anyone had kept her from having a connection to me, except herself.

  But Mamaw Toadfern was seventy-six years old, and I’d come because Sally’d insisted Mamaw was about to keel over any moment from poor health—although you’d never know it from her appearance—and wanted to see me for some special reason.

  I’d guessed making peace with her kin before dying. But if this woman was anywhere close to dying, then the snow outside was also close to morphing into sand and turning the farmhouse and cornfield into a beach-side resort.

  Suddenly, Mamaw pushed away from me, making me stagger back. “I’m all right,” she said, pulling a tissue from her pants pocket. She blew her nose, then tossed the tissue into the trashcan next to her dresser. “It’s just . . . I’ve given away many of the quilts I’ve made. I stopped making them, you know, a few years ago, due to my poor arthritic hands—” she waved her fingers around, which, in addition to being hot-pink-tipped, were be-ringed on all fingers except her thumbs, and which looked pretty straight and limber to me “—and my failing eyesight—” she glared at me with her sharp, blue eyes—“but I could never bring myself to give that quilt away because it was the only piece of you I’ve had all these years.”

  She sniffled.

  I forced myself not to eye roll, and waited, silently.

  Which, after a while, made her a bit uncomfortable, and she started shifting from foot to foot. I took note of that. You never know when such insight into a person’s character will come in handy.

  “So, anyway,” she said, “I wanted you to have this quilt, but there was also something I wanted to tell you.”

  Suddenly, she stopped shifting, narrowed her eyes, and stared at me. She waited, silently.

  Which, after a very short while, made me a bit uncomfortable, and I started shifting from foot to foot.

  She smiled—revealing the pearliest white set of dentures I’d ever seen—when she knew she had me.

  “I need to tell you a secret, Josie.” Suddenly, she clasped her hands to her chest. “Something I’ve never told anyone . . .”

  And at that moment, we heard a momentous crash outside the front of the house.

  We both ran over to the bedroom window.

  There, on the front lawn, amidst all the many cars parked here and there, was an RV and a cherry-red sports car, right by the clothesline still tied up between trees in Mamaw’s front yard. And the vehicles’ front ends had vee-ed into one another.

  A tall, elegant man in a tan wool coat emerged from the driver’s side of the sports car. He looked like he was laughing and cursing, all at the same time. And a petite, elegant woman in a fur coat popped out of the passenger’s side.

  Mamaw’s hand went to her mouth. She looked at me. “Oh, my Lord. My Lord . . .”

  Mamaw’s bedroom door flew open and Sally rushed in. “Mamaw—they’re here . . . Uncle Fenwick, Aunt Nora, and . . .”

  Sally’s voice trailed off, as she stared at me. Mamaw nodded at her.

  “And . . . your mama and daddy, Josie. They’re here, too, in the sports car . . .”

  That’s all it took, on top of my hunger, and Mamaw’s emotional histrionics and Youth Dew perfume. I passed out, cold.

  Al
though I vaguely remember glaring at Sally as I crumbled and saying, “Sally, I’m gonna kill you.”

  2

  All right, I didn’t really mean I was going to kill Sally.

  After all, as she said the Sunday before Thanksgiving, she was just trying to help.

  And Sally, besides being my cousin, is one of my best friends . . . now.

  Of course, back in junior high, she often made fun of me—chanting with the other kids my hated nickname, “Nosey Josie,” which I got only because I am what I like to call curiosity-gifted. And she gave me wedgies at volleyball practice. And pulled me into the boys’ restroom on several occasions to dunk me in the . . .

  Well. No need to elaborate on those details. That was sixteen years or so ago. Water down the drain, so to speak. I’m over it. Truly.

  Anyway, somehow or another she and I have become good friends, partly because she is the only Toadfern cousin (besides Billy, but he ran off to New York, and that’s a whole other story) who has had anything to do with me since Mamaw Toadfern declared twenty-two years ago that I was “dead” to the family. And no one dared to go against Mamaw’s proclamation, except Billy and Sally.

  In Billy’s case, I think it was because he was already the black sheep of the family.

  And in Sally’s case . . . I’m not sure why. We’ve never really talked about it. I like her and feel sympathy for her since her ex, Wayne-the-No-Good-Bum, left her alone to raise their now five-year-old triplets, Harry, Barry, and Larry. But I never tell her I feel sorry for her, because I think the old Sally might come forth and give me more than a swirly.

  I love her sons, my cousins-once-removed, with a partiality for Harry, who is much quieter than Larry and Barry, and who has a real love for books and drawing.

  I admire how she balances as best she can raising them with running the Bar-None, a bar and restaurant that her ex-mom-in-law (who also calls Wayne a no-good-bum for ditching Sally and the triplets) sold to her for a very low price when she went into semiretirement because, she said, the busy Friday and Saturday nights were killing her. Sally’s mom-in-law still helps, though, running the bar Monday through Thursday night, and keeping the triplets on afternoons and Friday and Saturday nights so Sally can work.