“I am not getting in the car with you after you’ve been to second base with a nasty old squirrel. You leave those children with me. I’m wondering about you, Pru . . . Dee. I know you’ve always loved animals and can remember you bringing lots of injured creatures home, but this takes the cake. You’re losing your mind.”
I thought about this as I loaded my revived rodent into the car, up front so I could keep an eye on it. “Mama, for the first time in two years, I’m actually getting my mind back.” The kids jumped in the car with me. Not because they loved me better but because they thought they had a shot at a pet if the squirrel lived.
“I love you,” I said, waving just like she did as I drove from the scene and toward the emergency vet’s office, not even thinking about how I would pay for this squirrel’s treatment. “Enjoy the long walk home.”
“Don’t ever call me again!” she yelled.
The news was good. And it was free. Other than a broken leg and a few missing teeth along with a case of shock, the prognosis called for a full recovery.
“It’s okay, Gracie,” I said to the squirrel. “Not many people have all their teeth, either.”
“Gracie?” Miranda inquired.
“Yeah. That’s her name, kinda like your middle name. She’s a girl the vet said.”
“Can we keep her?”
“We’ll see.”
***
When I got home there was a single message flashing on the answering machine.
Hey, Prudy. It’s your Aunt Weepie calling. I’m excited about seeing your dinky apartment. We’ll make it pretty, sugar. Listen here, hon. I’m going to a really sweet funeral tomorrow and I know the family in a distant but distinctive way because a long time ago I had love relations with the deceased’s second cousin, so I think we’ll be a shoo-in for going on over to the house afterward for all that scrumptious food. Call me, darlin’. I got a big surprise for you, too, hon. Aunt Weepie’s found you a man!
I settled the children with apple slices and fruit juice, grabbed a glass of tea and returned the call. It rang about a dozen times.
“Hey, Sweet Prude,” she said, drawling out the words slower than any human being with a heartbeat. She sounded sleepy. “I was having me a little nap up under my bed. It’s so nice under here and nobody comes and asks me to fix them a meal.” She literally sang the word “meal,” giving it three separate and distinct syllables.
“You said something about a funeral?”
“Oh, hon, it’s going to be some good eating,” she yawned. “I knew the old bat slightly. She was mean as hell. I went to high school with that cute little old second cousin of hers and got to know him in a way that—shall we suffice it to say—entitles me to chicken and a bit of all those yummy casseroles. It wouldn’t be a problem easing in and then getting a bite afterward. Your mama quit going with me. Said I embarrassed her to death a few months ago and got all uppity about it.”
I tried to remember what Mama had said about that particular funeral, but all my aunt’s antics had run together. “Are you sure you don’t want to come over here? I could make us a sandwich and we could rent a movie. I have $6.32 until I get a job.”
I heard a rustling sound, like a dog trying to get comfortable in its carrier.
“That’s why I keep getting married, Prudy—sorry, I meant to say Dee but keep forgetting. I keep myself married so I don’t have to get a job. When you gonna learn? Look, this is about the only funeral I can honorably make this week. I have scanned the obit pages through and through and can’t justify hitting any of the other services unless I drive over to Greenwood and that’s way too far, even for a good squash casserole or homemade pecan pie. You know there has to be a trace of a connection to the departed before I’ll go, and there’s no point attending the service if you don’t get the go-ahead to come on over for the food afterward. It’s just a waste of good mascara.”
Aunt Weepie refuses to wear waterproof because she said that defeats the purpose. “They need to see the grief and anguish on your face. Only then will someone feel bad enough to ask you to the covered dish.”
“Hmmm. Right.”
“Come on, go with me. Your mama acts too proud to crash funerals for the food. She oughta live with Tony. She oughta have to eat the things he serves that look like big old hairballs.”
We call Tony the saint behind Aunt Weepie’s back for what the man puts up with. “Sure, I’ll go. Might get my mind off things, like trying to find a job, which if I don’t do in a matter of 24 hours we’ll lose our roof.”
“To hear your Mama Lucinda tell it, it ain’t much of a roof.”
“It’s fine for us. I love it. Old charm. Old dirt. All it needs is paint and a few warm touches.”
“You can always come stay with me and Tony. I’ll sleep under the bed and you and the kids can sleep up on top.”
“So who’s this guy you’ve dug up for me?”
“That’s the surprise, honey. He’s a little fella from Tony’s garage who saw your picture and had a fit. He’s handsome, if you like the sort, and smart, too. Got him an associate’s degree in something or other besides brakes and mufflers.”
“What do you mean, if I like ‘the sort’?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’d say he’s on the odd side of the fence, but who isn’t? He jerks his long old body in a knot when he talks to attractive women and gets his words completely mixed up. But like I said, he’s got a degree or two and Tony bragged the station is just a stepping-stone for him. He’s got plans to do something I ain’t ever heard of and is enrolled in school again for what must be the third time. Look, I’m bringing him to the planting because he’s pole-cat skinny and could use a home-cooked meal.”
“You are setting me up at a funeral?” I couldn’t believe it. Or rather, I could.
“Better’n a bar, Prudy.”
“Well, I’m not sure if it’s a good way to meet a man. First date and all.”
“Oh, it’ll be great. He can’t make it to the funeral, sug. Y’all gonna hook up at the graveside. I can’t think of a better way. You’ve got food, people all around on their best behavior, mood music—you know I’ve always felt the death songs the organ ladies play have a sexual undertone to them if you’re in the right frame of mind while listening.”
“They don’t have organs at gravesides.”
“Wrong you are. The family is insisting on it. Going to wheel it out on a truck and play three selections. The old woman had a will listing about 12 songs to play at her great send-off and no one would sit in a church for that long hearing organ music. It’s too hard on the digestive system when you got your mind on a honey-glazed ham and yeast rolls.”
“This guy . . . does he know he’s gonna meet a strange woman at the funeral?”
“You ain’t all that strange,” Aunt Weepie said, laughing, snorting into the phone. “I swannee, girl. Just meet the fellow. He has a clean criminal history ’cause Tony ran a check on him before hiring him at the station. Only thing on his record was a rash of indecent exposure charges at an elementary school, but that was two years ago.”
“aunt weepie!”
“Hon, I’m only kidding. Relax. You’re gonna like him. And even if you don’t, that old dead woman’s people make the best fried chicken in the Carolinas.”
Where my mother’s anger at Bryce was the bandages, my aunt’s humor was the balm. Going to a funeral with her couldn’t be all that bad. Might expedite the recovery. Hard to be down about one’s personal maiming when the woman staring face up from her satin pillow, the stiff figure slathered in pancake makeup and pursing beige lips, was in a far worse fix.
Of course, that is debatable.
Chapter Three
Rise and Shine, Pru-DEE: Work brings profit; Talk brings poverty. If you love sleep, you will end
up in poverty. Stay awake, work hard and there will be plenty to eat. Proverbs 14:23 and Proverbs 20:13
Mama’s Moral: I know you like to sleep and wallow in your misery, but my dime’s about up and you need to get some kind of employment pronto. I’m not going to cook another meal for you until you produce proof of valid employment that doesn’t involve nudity, liquor or a compromise of morals.
A letter postmarked from Charlotte, where Bryce is incarcerated, with no return address lay like a flat weapon in the mailbox first thing this morning. With shaking hands and a stomach threatening to empty, I ripped it open, thinking it had to do with Bryce’s sentencing or fearing it would contain the word Parole.
A heat spread over my entire body, and I sat on the porch steps and fanned my face before unfolding the plain piece of white paper inside the official prison envelope. Why had I even bothered getting the mail? It had been three days since I last checked the box, and it contained the usual “Welcome to town” coupons and fliers for a variety of home improvement services and restaurants.
The letter was typed but I couldn’t focus on the words just yet. I folded it and placed it back in the envelope, thinking instead of Mama’s words about employment, anything but what that letter might contain. I wasn’t mentally strong enough to face what I figured it held: word about good behavior and a reduced sentence or transfer to another prison, one even closer to us. Surely they wouldn’t consider paroling a man who came so close to killing his wife.
In the kitchen on a kitty-cat note pad, I scribbled out a To-Do list, something I never started making until last week. Unless I put it in writing, I figure it won’t get done. First, I planned to put on all my makeup and a decent dress, Spanx included. Next, after dropping off the kids, I’d show up at two places of potential employment and wow them. Or at least beg. And third on the list, I’d call Claire whatever her last name is now and see if she’d like to go . . . what? What is it people do together who don’t have husbands or play bridge or tennis? How does a woman reintroduce herself into a world that tried to take her out, reacquaint herself with former friends or the very sex that wanted her dead, the dating pool that never gave her much more than swimmer’s ear and lungs full of water?
Why hadn’t I said yes to all the good boys and men I’d dated? I could have been happy with any number of them, and yet I chose Bryce, thinking he stewed in goodness, all because of his lavish courtship and stance at the pulpit. All because I thought he could banish my secret sin. If only I hadn’t let my parents’ opinion steer me from the one great love of my life, my high school sweetheart, Croc Godfrey.
Amber didn’t lure the psychos. Lucinda didn’t collect psychos. Aunt Weepie didn’t get psychos. Where did I go wrong?
Maybe I could invite Claire to come over for some coffee and catching up . . . no, not at my apartment until I made it more presentable. I remembered only mismatched coffee cups, one that says Mission Hospitals on the front, a little souvenir from my eleven weeks in Intensive Care. I made a mental note to figure out where all the thrift stores are in this town and the local Goodwill so I can scrabble some necessities together and open cans without using a hammer and table knife. You’d think I’d have more nice things, being a minister’s wife, but while I was clinging to life, Bryce had his family members wipe us out, clean out the parsonage as if no one would ever return. Guess they thought the only décor item I’d ever need again would be a headstone.
Mama had given me dishes and flatware, but for some reason, no coffee cups or a can opener. Just when I prepared for domestic duty, I’d boil the pasta and realize I had no way to grate the cheese.
Little things. Don’t make a big deal out of little things, my therapist kept saying. Too many people get knotted in vines of misery because they let stupid minutiae such as not owning a can opener or getting a new stain on the carpet bother them. Who cares if a person possesses a fleet of ugly coffee mugs? This is solvable, I said to myself. All these small things can be taken care of. It’s the big stuff worth the sweat and concerns. Jobs, children’s well-being, the return of joy and meaning in life. These are the biggies.
If I just do what normal people do in life, then the sun will have set on a positive day. “Baby steps, Prudy,” my therapist said. “One at a time, and before you know it, you’re walking back into the world of functioning women. You’re strong. Take a step. Keep stepping.”
I reached again for the prison letter sitting on the table like a stick of dynamite, feeling it like a ticking bomb in the palm of my scarred right hand, the one I used to shield the blows from Bryce’s screwdriver. I still dared not read the words.
I wondered what in the world the prison system needed to reveal at this stage in the nearly two-year ordeal. I should have placed such a letter aside, knowing there remained more important matters to tend, such as beseeching corporate heads for employment opportunities that I’m certain I don’t directly qualify to receive, given my degree in psychology, given the fact I didn’t go ahead and get a master’s to go with it.
Standing in the kitchen, wondering if I should light the gas and try to make pancakes, I tapped the letter on the table, stared off into space and thought about how in the world the prison system found us here. Who would have given out the address of this run-down but secure haven I’d found?
I checked on my still-sleeping children and rubbed a hand across each one’s brow. Jay frowns as he dreams. Miranda laughs in her sleep. If this sorry prison system thinks it’s going to ruin my day and chances of providing my children a roof, decent clothes and the occasional Happy Meal, they’re wrong. Baby steps. Just keep moving. “You’ll get there, Prudy,” the therapist promised. “You will but only if you remember and release the pain.”
I shoved the letter in a drawer, awakened the kids and fed them Rice Krispies with sliced bananas, then perked a half a pot of coffee and was dressed and ready to go in less than an hour.
In the car, I stared at my children from the rearview mirror and was jolted into reality by the condition of their clothing. Certainly they were clean, the clothes fresh from Mama’s washer and dryer. But my brood didn’t look as well cared for as they did last year when Mom and Dad and all the aunts and uncles loved all over and up and down them, buying every new dress or pair of slacks on the racks. Now that it’s been awhile, the gifts stopped, but the kids kept growing and needing, creating a vacuum of never-ending tending.
They were like furnaces on a train. One continually has to shovel coal to keep running.
Jay needed a haircut, the hem of his jeans was not only frayed but rose an inch above the tops of his Nikes, part of the rubber curling from the shoe itself. Miranda hadn’t fared much better. She had refused to let me comb her hair for a week, screaming wildly at the very sight of a hairbrush. Her dresses had grown tight around the middle, and her tops barely covered her navel.
As we drove across town, past these ancient houses made of enormous stones or featuring thick Corinthian columns, and toward the newer neighborhoods, I sipped the bitter coffee from my hospital mug and tried to figure out which bills would arrive first: the phone, electric, gas, cable, water? I couldn’t remember which ones were already included in the rent, but it wouldn’t look good to have bill-paying trouble during the inaugural stage of one’s new life as a renter, and I’d promised my family I was ready to reenter the world and workforce.
All the more reason to hightail it to WUSC radio station and convince them I can type 100 flawless words a minute. Mama would be a bit dismayed at my secretarial “career” but she’d have to get over it or we’d end up back in her home, penniless.
An acquaintance from high school worked as the assistant general manager and morning show host, and I thought he might put in a good word or two once he heard my fingers dashing like Mozart’s across a computer keyboard.
Next, I’d go to the nursing home where I’d worked in my younger day
s and apply for a job doing whatever they needed: mopping, serving meals, even giving enemas if that’s what it took to get my foot in the doors of a medical career.
Before I met Bryce, I had qualified and passed the test as a certified nurse’s assistant, though I’m sure this eligibility had expired. I’d worked in the local hospital, taking care of the elderly, most of whom had incurable cancers and diseases. I had also enrolled in night classes to become a registered nurse, but quit soon after I married.
After dropping Jay off at school and promising him a trip to the Discovery Museum with my first paycheck, I stopped by Mama’s and reminded her she was supposed to sit for Miranda while I attended business and later the funeral with Aunt Weepie, which I was dreading, knowing about my aunt’s wild shenanigans from my mother’s outrageous recountings.
“Don’t forget I’m going with her to the funeral as a favor to you, Mama, because you swore up and down you’d never go again as long as you drew breath.”
She sipped coffee, and I could tell by the open packs of Sweet’N Low she was on her third cup, which meant she would be crazed with caffeine. “Your aunt is a mess, and I told her she’d taken this funeral attending thing way over the top. You should see the drama. It’s downright beyond embarrassing. You’ll see. And all for a free piece of cold chicken or lump of green bean casserole. What that woman will do for a meal she doesn’t have to cook is nothing shy of prostitution. Going to funerals of people she doesn’t even know, for heaven’s sake. I can’t wait till she gets caught. Hope they tote her off to jail, arrest her for Larceny of Macaroni Pie. Soliciting Food from the Dead.”
Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle Page 5
