Hung Out to Die

by Sharon Short

  “And I could tell they needed a little time to themselves. I told them, hey, why not go get a cup of coffee and pie, over at Sandy’s? Guy had finally settled down for a nap.”

  My stomach clenched. I grasped the steering wheel harder. I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like what was coming, that something terrible—from the lilt in Mama’s voice—was about to happen in her story.

  “But he woke up when some friends of mine came by. They saw me hanging out on the porch. I heard Guy inside, starting to cry and scream. I reckon that was how he always woke up. I ran in and my friends followed me.

  “I guess his behavior made them nervous—and they started laughing and making jokes. That made him cry and scream more and start banging his head against the wall.

  “I should have held him. Or called over to Sandy’s, which is what Horace and Clara told me to do if there was a problem. But I panicked. And I didn’t want my friends to drop me. So . . . I ran off with them.”

  I gasped. “You left Guy all alone?”

  “Yes, Josie, I did,” Mama said. “Horace and Clara didn’t talk to me after that.” Her voice was thick with anger—whether at me, Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace, herself, or even Guy, I wasn’t sure. “I never saw Guy again until today.”

  Our silence again. Dolly was done with her song. A truck commercial—with a man screaming “deals for wheels!”—came on. I turned the radio down.

  “I always admired Horace and Clara for how they took care of Guy,” Mama said. The anger was suddenly gone from her voice. She just sounded weary. “And I admire what you’re doing for Guy. Some folks, Josie . . . some folks just aren’t cut out for taking care of kids.” Her voice got a little softer. “Not just challenging kids like Guy, but . . .”

  Go on, say it, I thought. Say you weren’t cut out for staying around, that it wasn’t anything I did, that I could have been as easygoing as Guy was challenging and you still would have taken off . . .

  “When you had me take those coins to the wishing well, what were you wishing for, Mama?”

  All the questions I had, and that’s what popped out? But it was the same question that had haunted me the night before, too.

  “Coins? I don’t remember any coins.” I could tell she was lying.

  “I know you must,” I said. “Whenever you’d get mad about Papa leaving, you’d say, that damned man, ran off and left us with a bag of worthless coins, can’t even use them at the laundromat, and then you’d . . .”

  My cell phone rang. “Oops, there’s your phone,” Mama chirped brightly.

  “It’s in my purse by your feet. Just fish it out and hand it to me—”

  “No, too dangerous to drive and talk,” she said, pulling my cell phone out of my purse. She flipped it open. “Hello. Josie’s cell phone, Josie’s mama speaking.”

  “Mama! Give me my phone—”

  She shushed me and swatted my hand away. “Sorry. Josie was babbling and driving dangerously, but she has both hands back on the steering wheel now. Who did you say this was?”

  I stared at the snow and road, fuming, while Mama said oh, and mmm hmm, and oh yes, of course I remember!, and we’ll be there as soon as we can.

  “Well, how refreshing. That was Cherry Feinster. She says she still remembers the joy it brought her and her family when she came home from our Ranger Girls meeting with all those glittery pinecone turkeys.”

  Cherry taunted me once at school that her mama had thrown those away since my mama was a tart. Not that I knew what that meant at the time.

  “And she remembers my yummy oatmeal cinnamon cookies.”

  Cherry hated those, I recalled. We all did. Mama always put in too much cinnamon.

  “And she wanted to welcome me back with a complimentary facial and manicure.”

  I glanced over in time to see Mama stretch out her hands and admire her nails. “Well, I just had my nails done before we came. Maybe she’ll throw in a pedicure. I do love foot massages. Wasn’t that nice of her?”

  “Very,” I said. I’d thank her later for taking my mama off my hands—and making it seem like it was something she really wanted to do for her old Ranger Girl leader.

  “Do you think we’d have time to pick up the ingredients for those cinnamon oatmeal cookies . . .”

  “No! Now, listen, while I’m glad—”

  “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s just that when my cell phone rings, I’d rather . . .”

  “Oh, listen, a newer song!”

  Mama turned up the radio. It was the country singer, Sara Evans, singing “Suds in the Bucket.” Mama sang with the chorus: “Now she’s gone in the blink of an eye, she left the suds in the bucket and the clothes hangin’ out on the line . . .”

  Yeah, she sure did, I thought. And then I reminded myself to resist the temptation of bitterness. It helped to remember all the times I’d hung out the wash with Aunt Clara, or helped Uncle Horace at the laundromat—even if I had to awkwardly wipe my eyes with the back of my gloved hand.

  12

  “No, this is your mama, here,” Mrs. Beavy said, pointing to a picture on a page opposite the one I’d been gazing at.

  I looked at the black-and-white photo, just above the tip of her slightly trembling index finger.

  It was a junior-year picture—a young, fresh face, an early 1970s long shag haircut, wide hopeful eyes, loop earrings, and a mischievous curve to the smile.

  I double-checked the name. Sure enough. May Foersthoefel.

  This was the last face I’d have picked from the pages as my mama, even though I saw in it where I got my nose, where I got the curve to my chin and eyebrows. It was just so hopeful, confident, eager.

  I looked up at Mrs. Beavy. She’s one of my regular customers—at least for rugs and throws and bedspreads, which I do for her in the big drum washers. She’s eighty-something, and it’s her grandson, Chip, who works for me on a semiregular basis.

  In fact, about a half hour after I dropped Mama off at Cherry’s, and went back to my laundromat to stew over my column—there were, as I’d known would be the case, no customers—Chip came by the laundromat and said his grandma would like to see me. I didn’t ask questions; I just left my laundromat, still open, and customerless, except for Chip, who had a load of jeans to do. I walked through the snow one street over to Plum Street and Mrs. Beavy’s little Cape Cod–style house.

  Mrs. Beavy—who I think of as being like a great-grandmother to me—is the head of the Paradise Historical Society. She used to store much of the society’s holdings in her second story and in the converted garage out back and even throughout her house, but now the historical society had inherited the old Breitenstrater mansion and was in the process of converting it over to a local museum. The grand opening would be not that Christmas, but the following one.

  Getting the society’s holdings out of Mrs. Beavy’s house had made it more spacious and comfortable to be in. In fact, if for reasons as yet unknown to me I hadn’t been looking at the old high school yearbook from when my mama and daddy had attended East Mason County High School, I’d probably have enjoyed sitting next to Mrs. Beavy on her doily-covered settee and drinking hot chocolate. (She was sipping ginseng tea.) As it was, my drink had gone cold and mostly untouched.

  “It took Chip all morning to find the right box with the old yearbooks—which of course will be shelved in the library at the Paradise Historical Society’s new home, but he finally did it.”

  That, I thought, explained the dusty jeans and shirt on top of Chip’s load.

  My gaze strayed back to the photo of Mama. There was nothing angry or penetrating about those eyes. The photo, I thought suddenly, must have been taken before the awful incident with her friends at my Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace’s house . . . or had it? Did I just want to believe that?

  “Why are you showing me this?” I asked. I knew there had to be a pretty good reason. Showing me the photo seemed, somehow . . . cruel.
And I knew Mrs. Beavy was anything but cruel.

  “Luke Rhinegold called this morning,” Mrs. Beavy said lightly. “He suggested it might help you to, well, get to know your parents better if you knew something about their past.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Why do I get the feeling that there are lots of people in this town who know things about my parents that I should have known all along? Why doesn’t someone just tell me whatever it is?”

  Mrs. Beavy’s smile was that of someone who has learned patience over time, but didn’t really expect younger people to understand. “It’s not that simple,” she said. “I don’t know of any one thing you need to know about your parents. I don’t think anyone else does, either. But twenty-some years ago, they were quite the talk of the town. Maybe that matters, with all that’s happened since their surprise return to town. Maybe not.”

  Since Uncle Fenwick’s bizarre murder, I thought, with a shudder.

  I glanced down at the picture of Mama, did some quick mental calculating. “This is from when Mama was a junior in high school?”

  “She’s sixteen in the picture,” Mrs. Beavy said. “One of my children was a grade above her and your papa’s grade. The school pictures were taken in early fall, and I remember your mama. She was such a pretty, sweet thing. Not a close friend of my daughter’s, but sometimes she’d drop by on the way home for a glass of lemonade or cocoa.” Mrs. Beavy paused. “Your mama always seemed a little reluctant to go home,” she added quietly.

  I thought about that. With the estrangement between her brother and her parents, and the apparent heavy-handed judgmental attitude of her parents, that wasn’t too surprising.

  “Do you have the yearbook from her senior year?” I asked. “I’d like to see her senior-year picture, too, after I look at Daddy’s senior-year picture in this one.”

  Mrs. Beavy looked at me evenly. “Your mama didn’t have a senior-year picture, Josie. She dropped out of school before graduating. She . . . had to.”

  I sucked in a breath. I understood what the euphemism meant. But Mama had been in her early twenties when she had me. So that meant I had a brother or a sister. Oh my God.

  My breath went out of me with a sudden heaviness. Surely Mrs. Beavy had to be wrong. I studied her face.

  Mrs. Beavy was right. I swallowed, wondering how her parents—my grandparents—must have reacted. And I knew right away. Given how they’d reacted to Horace’s son, they would not have been very loving about their only other child, their only daughter, getting pregnant out of wedlock.

  Mrs. Beavy gently turned pages and pointed out other pictures to me. My daddy and Uncle Fenwick, side by side in their senior-year pictures. Both of them looking handsome and full of promise, too, both of them looking proud and tough in the East Mason County High School football photograph—never mind that West Mason County always managed to beat our high school.

  And then the homecoming court photo. There was Mama and Daddy. But they weren’t with each other.

  “Who are they with?” I asked. “Mama always said she and Daddy were high school sweethearts.”

  “And they were. But not in the fall of that year,” Mrs. Beavy said. “Your daddy is with my daughter, Sue Ellen.”

  I looked up at Mrs. Beavy, startled. But Mrs. Beavy was smiling pleasantly. If my daddy had broken her daughter’s heart, Sue Ellen must have recovered quickly. Mrs. Beavy didn’t look troubled by the memory of my daddy and her daughter at all.

  “And your mama is with Lenny Burkette,” Mrs. Beavy said.

  “They dated,” I said flatly. Effie Burkette had been insistent that Lenny and my mama had been just friends.

  “They didn’t just date. Lenny worshiped your mama. I think he thought they would get married someday.”

  I swallowed. No wonder it had seemed awkward to Effie when Rachel had me over a few times to their house . . . and when I went over there on Thanksgiving. That explained why Lenny looked at me so oddly, commented about how I looked like my mother, kept staring. Lenny had never married. I wondered if he’d ever gotten over his broken heart.

  Next Mrs. Beavy pointed to a picture from a Christmas dance that showed the East Mason County High School gym festooned with tinsel and garlands.

  “Turn about dance,” she said. I looked at the picture of my mama and daddy dancing, their eyes locked, clearly oblivious to the photographer and the other kids.

  “Your parents started dating just after homecoming,” Mrs. Beavy said. “My Sue Ellen cried for a whole night after she and your daddy broke up—and promptly started dating Tommy Groves.” She chuckled. “Lenny took it a lot harder. Probably that was in part because his grandpa died that year, and his daddy took off. His parents were already divorced, but I think it bothered him a whole lot that his dad didn’t stay in touch.

  “Of course, it wasn’t unusual for Lenny’s dad to take off. Everyone in Paradise knew Junior Hedberg to be a mean drunk who abused Effie and Lenny,” Mrs. Beavy said, sounding scornful—a rare attitude for her. “But when he was gone long enough that fall that it appeared he was never coming back, and word got around that Lenny had gotten a letter from him to that effect, we were all relieved.” She shook her head. “Lenny took it hard, though. But a few years later, of course, his mama remarried Rich Burkette, and . . .”

  “My parents,” I said, trying to refocus Mrs. Beavy on them. Otherwise, she’d go off in a tangent about the Burkettes—and I already knew all about how hunky-dory everything had gone with them. I’d spent months lying on the roof of that storage shed hearing about it from Rachel Burkette.

  “Oh, yes, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Beavy said. “Well, you see, later that school year, your parents had to get married. Your mama dropped out of school. After high school, both your Uncle Fenwick and your daddy got jobs as helpers in the C. J. Worthy Plumbing Company. Your parents tried to make a go of it, but it was hard. Your daddy, especially, just couldn’t seem to settle down. And your mama would try to get back at him by flirting with Fenwick. This was before he married Nora, by the way.

  “Fenwick loved the attention from your mama because he knew it drove your daddy nuts. Those two just couldn’t get past their competitiveness.

  “And then, your mama lost the baby. She was so torn up. I still remember seeing her around town, her face all swollen from crying. Henry tried to be a good husband. But they were still young and didn’t have a clue how to handle grief, and no support from their families, who didn’t want them to get married in the first place. Henry would have an affair, May would get mad and flirt, they’d break up, get back together, and the whole cycle would start again.

  “Until May got pregnant again. This time, with you. After that, they stayed settled down again, but then Henry just up and disappeared, and well . . .”

  I nodded. “I know the rest of the story.” Well, I didn’t know the real why’s of Daddy and Mama’s disappearances, or how they’d reconnected. But Mrs. Beavy couldn’t tell me any of that.

  But there was something else she could tell me.

  “You said Daddy had affairs and Mama flirted and maybe had affairs. Do you know with who?”

  “Does it matter?” Mrs. Beavy asked.

  “It must. You wanted me to come here, to tell me all of this. My daddy’s in jail for murdering his brother. Maybe he did it. Or maybe someone else did, and it has nothing to do with him, but they want to blame him. Or maybe someone else did and it has everything to do with him.”

  Mrs. Beavy sighed, rubbed her eyes little-kid fashion. She was getting tired. “I don’t know if it matters or not. It might. It’s just . . . I know they both supposedly broke a lot of hearts.”

  I thought about what Luke Rhinegold had told me at the Red Horse.

  “I don’t recollect now all the details. But a lot of folks would resent them coming back—even if they weren’t the ones behind FleaMart. I’m not sure how your Uncle Fenwick is mixed up in their past—or if he is. But I just wanted you to be aware, honey. Your parents were in over their heads
and had very little support from their families. They did the best they could at the time—maybe not the best you could have hoped for, or that I would have hoped for for you—but their best. And when it got to be too much for them . . . they were at their worst. A lot of folks saw it as a blessing when they each left . . . and a blessing for you, too, considering that your Aunt and Uncle Foersthoefel took you in.

  “Now that your parents are back . . . who knows. There may be a lot of folks who don’t want old secrets revealed—folks who thought their secrets went with them when your folks left town, and who were relieved to see those secrets go.

  “I’m not saying your uncle’s murder has anything to do with those secrets or with your parents’ return. I don’t know. I’m just saying . . .” Mrs. Beavy paused, and gave me a long, hard look. “I’m just saying I’m always suspicious of the easy explanation of coincidence.”

  I took in what she was saying. The solution to my uncle’s murder—not just the fact someone wanted my daddy blamed for it—might rest in my parents’ past. And the only way to find out was to dig into their past. I shifted uncomfortably. Was I really ready to do that?

  Mrs. Beavy’s serious look suddenly disappeared, and she gave me her usual sunny, childlike smile. “More hot chocolate, dear?”

  13

  I stood just inside the doorway of Cherry’s Chat N Curl and stared at the scene before me, unable to believe what I saw.

  Was that really Mama, in Cherry’s styling chair, preening as she gazed into a hand-held mirror, admiring her new ash-blond do—shorter, but spiffier?

  Was that really Cherry and her assistants, Carson and Darlene, gathered around Mama, extolling her beauty? Telling her that her new makeup and hair really brought out the angles in her face? Which, by the way, round-faced me hadn’t inherited?

  And there was Mrs. Arrowood, who still manages the Happy Trails Motor Home Court, where Sally and her boys live. Mrs. Arrowood was laughing, too, something I’d never seen her do. Yet here she was, in one of her shapeless, baggy housedresses, and her thin graying hair pulled back in a stringy ponytail, telling my mama that the Sassy Salmon nail color she’d chosen for her manicure looked just perfect with her skin tones.