“I haven’t said anything,” Mary Bliss said. “Randy’s got enough to deal with right now. Nancye’s squeezing him for more money, and his little boys are really having problems adjusting to the separation.”
“Are you sure you want to do this, Mary Bliss?” Katharine asked. “What if you find out something you don’t want to know?”
“I have to know,” Mary Bliss said. “I need to know what’s going on in her life. If she won’t tell me herself, I’ll just have to dig around until I figure it out.”
“And then what?”
Mary Bliss was on her belly, her head stuck under Erin’s bed.
“I’ll let you know when I know,” she answered, her voice muffled.
While Katharine went through Erin’s dresser, Mary Bliss searched her closet, her nightstand, and the mahogany hope chest at the foot of Erin’s bed.
She cleaned and straightened as she went, reasoning that she would tell Erin she’d cleaned her room because it was becoming a health hazard.
After three hours, the floor was vacuumed, the bed changed and made, all the clothes folded and hung up or put away.
“I got nothing,” Katharine said, sinking down onto the bed. “No diary. No liquor bottle. No rolling papers or roach clips. No condoms, nada.”
“Me neither,” Mary Bliss said, flopping down beside her. “I even looked in her backpack and her old purses. I didn’t even find a pack of matches.”
“The kid’s clean,” Katharine concluded. “Well, not clean, not in the neat sense of the word. She just hasn’t left us any clues. Can you think of anyplace else we haven’t looked?”
“Her car,” Mary Bliss said. “But it’s like her sanctuary. When she’s not in it, it’s locked. And I don’t have a key.”
“Hey,” Katharine said. “We went through something like this with Chip his junior year. He put me through the wringer, staying out all night, skipping school. His grades went down the tubes. I wanted to kill him.”
“You never told me about that,” Mary Bliss said, staring at her best friend. “I thought Chip was the model student.”
“It was humiliating,” Katharine said.
“What was he up to?” Mary Bliss asked.
“A little of everything. Some drinking, some drugging. He was sleeping with his girlfriend, who was only fifteen. Christ, he could have been arrested for statutory rape!”
“How’d you find out?” Mary Bliss asked.
“How do wives and mothers always find out what everybody’s up to?” Katharine asked. “His laundry. I borrowed the Jeep one day while the Mercedes was in the shop. His gym bag was in the back, full of nasty football clothes. I decided to be a good mom and clean it out and wash everything.”
“What did you find?”
“Not what I expected,” Katharine said. “Just like Erin’s room. No beer cans or anything like that. These kids are too smart for their own good. They watch too much television. All I found was a key.”
“A motel key?”
“The key to the lake house,” Katharine said. “Which he was not supposed to have.”
“Did you confront him?”
“Uh-uh,” Katharine said. “It’s like you said. At that age, they won’t listen.”
“What did you do?”
“I called the girl’s daddy,” Katharine said. “Told him what I thought was going on. The very next weekend, Charlie and I were supposed to go down to Jekyll Island for the state bar association meeting. I sent Charlie on down without me. And that Friday afternoon, Heather’s daddy and I took a ride up to the lake. Sure enough, there was Chip’s Jeep parked around back.”
“Oh God.” Mary Bliss covered her face with her hands. She could picture it all too clearly.
“I had my own key,” Katharine said. “So we snuck in real quiet like.”
“Oh God,” Mary Bliss repeated. She was playing the scene in her own mind as Katharine told it, only instead of Chip and Heather, the scenario starred Erin and Josh Bowden.
“They were in my bed,” Katharine said, still indignant over the memory. “The two of them, naked as jaybirds. On my good Ralph Lauren bedspread that has to be dry-cleaned.”
“Eew,” Mary Bliss said. She looked down at Erin’s comforter, which, thank heavens, was machine-washable.
“Did I forget to mention that Heather’s daddy picked up Charlie’s twenty-gauge as we were coming through the front door?” Katharine asked.
“No.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t loaded or anything, but Chip didn’t know that. Once Chip caught sight of me, and Heather’s daddy, looking down the sights of that shotgun, he was a changed man.”
“I’ll bet,” Mary Bliss said.
“Heather’s daddy had her transfer schools the next fall, to some fundamentalist Christian school out in Gwinnett County,” Katharine continued. “And Chip promised to straighten up. He promised never to take another drink, or smoke another joint, or mess with another underage girl, if I would just please not tell his daddy on him.”
“He was that worried about what Charlie would say?”
“Yeah,” Katharine said, gathering up the basket of dirty laundry she’d picked up in the closet. “Charlie’s a very moral man. He wouldn’t stand for his son having premarital sex.”
48
Bargain Bonanza had chicken breasts on special, eighty-nine cents a pound, in five-pound packages. On Thursday, after she finished handing out free cups of Mango-ade (“a sure pleaser for our Latin customers,” Imogene Peabody assured her), Mary Bliss loaded up a shopping cart with the chicken breasts, twin packs of Duke’s mayonnaise, bottled Italian dressing, and sour cream.
She winced when Mimsy Reed, the cashier, announced her total, $367.48. “You havin’ a party, hon?” Mimsy asked, gesturing toward the mountain of chicken on the check stand. “What time you want me over there?”
“It’s not for a party for me,” Mary Bliss said. “I’m doing a little catering for a wedding.”
“A little!” Mimsy exclaimed. “That’s enough damn chicken breasts to feed the Russian army. What all are you making?”
“Just chicken salad,” Mary Bliss said.
“That’s all? Just chicken salad? Sounds like kind of a boring party.”
“It’s for a wedding,” Mary Bliss said. “The real caterer is doing everything else. I’m just fixing my chicken salad.”
“Whooo-eee,” Mimsy said. She was tall and thin, with thick-lensed glasses; thick, dark eyelashes; and straight, blonde hair that fell in her eyes all the time. In her six weeks at Bargain Bonanza, Mary Bliss had learned to avoid long conversations with Mimsy, who tended to get into everybody’s business.
“That must be some world-class chicken salad if somebody’s hiring you to make it for a wedding.”
“It’s pretty good,” Mary Bliss said, loading the chicken as quickly as she could.
“My mama makes wonderful chicken salad,” Mimsy volunteered. “She uses pistachio nuts and sour cream, and them little canned Mandarin orange slices. Including the orange juice. That’s the secret to her success, the orange juice. What all’s in yours?”
“Oh,” Mary Bliss said, waving her hand vaguely, “a little of this and a little of that. I just tinker around with it, ’til I get it right.”
“Mama’s recipe was printed up in Southern Living,” Mimsy said proudly. “July of 1987. ‘Wonderful Ways with Chicken,’ that was the headline on the story. Listen! Why don’t you print up your recipe for me, and I’ll get her to send it in for you. She’s got kinda an in with them over there in Birmingham now.”
“I don’t have any set written recipe,” Mary Bliss said. She shoved the cart away from the check stand and headed for the door.
At home, Mary Bliss went out to the garage to get her mother’s old blue enamelware canning vat. It was the biggest pot she owned, so big that she normally stored it on a shelf above Parker’s workbench.
After she’d retrieved the vat, she glanced over at Erin’s car. The doors of the Hon
da were unlocked. Erin had come home early from work, complaining of menstrual cramps, and had gone straight upstairs to bed, refusing her mother’s offer of aspirin or ginger ale.
Mary Bliss set the vat on the garage floor and opened the Honda’s passenger-side door. The car’s interior was immaculate. She ran her hand under the seat and came up with nothing more than the flashlight Parker always insisted Erin keep there. She opened the glove box and found a map of Georgia, a package of breath mints, and a small box of tissues.
The driver’s side of the car was just as spartan. Mary Bliss could see at a glance that the backseat was empty. She bent down and pulled the latch to open the trunk.
But first she ran inside the house and tiptoed up the stairs. Erin’s bedroom door was open, and Mary Bliss could hear her talking on the phone.
She slipped back downstairs and out to the garage. Flipping up the trunk, she saw only the small “Roadside Emergency” kit she’d given Erin for her sixteenth birthday, and Erin’s soccer bag. She was about to close the trunk when she remembered Katharine’s story about her discovery in Chip’s gym bag.
Her heart pounding, she unzipped the bag and quickly unloaded it. A pair of mud-caked cleats wrapped in a plastic bag sat on top of a pile of neatly folded clothes. Shorts, T-shirts, socks; she set them on the floor of the trunk. Under the soccer gear, she found a white plastic grocery sack. Her hands shaking, she reached inside. Her fingertips touched a froth of silky fabric. A black lace teddy. Not exactly standard-issue soccer equipment. There was more. A brown paper sack. Inside it, a box of condoms. The package had been opened. Mary Bliss wanted to scream. There was something else in the bag. A small vial of KoKo-LoKo coconut-flavored massage oil.
“Are you happy now?”
Mary Bliss whirled around. Erin stood in the doorway from the kitchen. She wore an old flannel nightgown and threadbare white socks. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail. She looked about twelve.
“See what you wanted to see?” Erin asked. Her voice was icy. She stalked over to the car and slammed the trunk shut, missing Mary Bliss’s hand by a millimeter.
“Just a minute,” Mary Bliss cried. “We need to talk about this, young lady. I won’t have you sleeping with boys at your age. You’re too young.”
Erin stomped over to the side of the car, produced her keys, and locked the car with a flourish.
When she turned around, all traces of the twelve-year-old had vanished. Mascara was smeared under her eyes, which were lined with dark circles, and her chin had a hard set to it. “Sleeping? Mama, it’s not about sleeping. It’s about fucking. Yeah, I’m fucking. So what?”
“You’re too young,” Mary Bliss protested, grabbing for Erin’s arm. “You’re not even out of high school. It’s immoral. It’s wrong.”
Erin laughed bitterly and brushed her hand away. “Immoral? You’re calling me immoral? That’s a good one. You telling me you didn’t screw Daddy before you were married? What a bunch of shit! Meemaw told me all about it. She told me you and Daddy had to get married, because you were knocked up. So don’t go giving me that immoral shit, Mama.”
“I was twenty-one,” Mary Bliss said. “Out of college. Your father and I were engaged. We were old enough to take responsibility for our actions. You’re not even old enough to make your bed in the mornings. You’re a child!”
“You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?” Erin said, taunting her now. “You’d like to keep me in knee socks and little dresses, keep me locked up in this house. Keep telling me my daddy’s dead? Well, fuck you, Mama. I’m all grown up. Grown up enough to know the truth. Grown up enough to know what a hypocrite and a liar you are.”
Her eyes narrowed to small slits. Mary Bliss could almost feel the heat emanating from them.
“I fuckin’ hate you!” Erin screamed. She whirled around, unlocked the Honda, and slid inside. The echo from the Honda’s little engine seemed deafening. The automatic garage door slid open and the Honda shot backward, out and down the driveway, tires squealing as Erin threw the car into drive and sped down the street.
Mary Bliss’s hands were trembling. For the first time, she noticed she was still holding the paper bag containing the oil and the condoms. She twisted the bag closed, walked outside to the garbage cans, and tossed the bag inside.
She picked up Nina’s canning vat and took it inside. She ran hot soapy water in the vat and scrubbed it until her hands were red and raw.
When it was clean, she set it in the dish rack to dry. She got a jug of Clorox from the laundry room, filled a dishpan with warm water and bleach, and proceeded to wipe down the kitchen counters, the stove top, and even the floor.
The kitchen smelled like an indoor swimming pool.
Mary Bliss thumbed through her recipe file box until she came to the card for Mamie’s Chicken Salad. She set the dressing ingredients out on the kitchen table. Then she started opening the packaged chicken breasts. She could fit ten pounds at a time in the kettle. She filled the vat with water to cover the chicken, added her seasonings, and turned the stove top on simmer.
She finished poaching the chicken breasts at ten o’clock. Her head throbbed and her back ached. The phone did not ring. Erin’s car did not reappear in the garage.
While the chicken cooled, Mary Bliss mixed the marinade. Every fifteen minutes or so, she walked to the front door and looked out. The lights were on at the Bowdens’. She would march right over there and let Randy in on what their kids had been up to. Maybe take the condoms over there so that he could fathom the seriousness of the situation. She would give Josh a lecture on the evils of premarital sex, cite statistics on teenaged pregnancy, appeal to his basic decency to break off this dangerous relationship with her daughter.
She did fetch the paper bag out of the trash. And she squared her shoulders, marched herself across the street to the Bowdens’ house, and rang the doorbell.
Randy answered the door himself after a few minutes. His hair was tousled. He had a sleeping Jason, dressed in Spiderman underpants, draped across his shoulder.
“Hey there, neighbor!” Randy said, his thin face lighting up with a smile. “I was just putting this little guy to bed. Go on in the kitchen and pour yourself a drink, and I’ll be down in a minute.”
Randy’s kitchen broke her heart. Or maybe her heart was just permanently in a fractured condition. The dinner dishes still sat on the Formica kitchen table. Yellow plates smeared with bright-red spaghetti sauce, glasses half full of milk, a small dish with carrot sticks and cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes.
Mary Bliss ran water over the dishes and loaded them in the dishwasher, which was already nearly full. She put the burned spaghetti pan in the sink to soak, and for the second time that day, she set about cleaning a kitchen.
“Oh no,” Randy said, coming into the room. “Now you think I’m just a big jerk slob.” He took a plate out of her hand. “You don’t need to be doing that. I was going to clean up after I put the boys to bed.”
“Here,” he said, pulling out a chair for her. “At least now you have a clean place to sit.”
“I don’t mind,” Mary Bliss said quietly. All the fight had gone out of her.
He went to the refrigerator, looked in, and frowned. “All I’ve got is some apple juice. Looks like Josh drank all the Cokes. And I’ve quit keeping beer in the house. You know, with him home alone most of the day, I don’t want to put temptation in his way.”
“Yeah,” Mary Bliss said. “That’s probably a good idea. About the beer.”
How? she wondered. How would she tell this decent man that she was pretty sure his son was sleeping with her daughter?
“So. What’s up with you?” he asked. “We missed you at the dance.”
“Maybe next time,” she said. “I know it’s late. I just saw your light on, thought it might be a good time for a little visit. I can’t stay, though, I’m in the middle of a big project.”
He poured two glasses of apple juice. Then he raised his own glass and clinked it
next to hers. “To friends,” he said.
“To friends.”
They chatted aimlessly for a while. He filled her in on the gossip from the dance. Who left with whom. Who fell off the wagon, who was wearing a toupee and thought nobody knew.
“The kids sure must have had a good time that night,” Mary Bliss said. “I wanted to kill Erin for coming in so late.”
Randy blushed. “I had a talking-to with Josh. He knows he’s not supposed to stay out that late. I hope he didn’t get Erin in trouble.”
“Erin gets herself in trouble,” Mary Bliss said. “She doesn’t need any help from Josh.”
“You two getting along any better?” he asked, sipping his juice and searching her face for answers.
“No,” Mary Bliss said. Short and sweet. “How about you guys? Does Josh talk to you?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Not very often. He’s always been a quiet kid. We talk about music. He really knows a lot about music. And not just rock and roll. He’s into progressive jazz and funk. And sometimes we talk about school.”
“Do you ever…talk about the heavy stuff?” Mary Bliss said, hesitating.
“Like what?”
“You know. Sex. Drugs. Booze.”
“We’ve talked about it. He knows where I stand. And he knows my rules. He may not agree, but I think he respects me.” Randy looked down at the kitchen tabletop. He scrubbed at a spot of spaghetti sauce with his thumbnail. “He knows about Nancye. He knows his mother’s sleeping around. He won’t talk about it, but I know he knows. Hell, everybody in town knows. The poor kid. It’s just eating at him.”
“It’s a small town,” Mary Bliss said. “How did that song go? It’s just a little Peyton Place?”
“I remember that one,” Randy said. “Peyton Place. Fair Oaks. Not much difference.”
49
By her own estimates, Mary Bliss had shredded seventy pounds of poached chicken breast. Foil trays of the finished chicken lined her kitchen counter, because she’d run out of room in her own refrigerator, and the old refrigerator in the garage where they kept beer and soft drinks.
Little Bitty Lies Page 25
