by Lesley Kagen
But if I thought that Mama could’ve been murdered, that would mean the sheriff might think the same. Not about Papa, but Sam. It would never in a million years occur to Andy Nash or anybody else in this town that my father would be capable of doing away with my mother.
Vera searches in her apron pocket and comes out with a pack of Pall Malls. She shakes one out, tamps it down on her thumb, and struggles two times to get a match lit. Picking a piece of tobacco off her tongue, she says, “Y’all better finish up and get back home. It’s gettin’ late.” Where’s Jane Woodrow anyway? Don’t think I’ve ever seen you two apart, Shenny.”
“She’s back at the fort. She was too weak from hunger to come with me.” The red glowing Coca-Cola clock is letting me know that it’s fifteen past nine o’clock. I’ve left my sister alone for an hour and a half and Vera’s right, I hardly go anywhere without her. Feels weird, but not completely bad. I love her with all my heart, I do, but being with Woody, it’s like spending every minute of every day inside a Mixmaster. “Would you mind makin’ me two of your famous egg salad sandwiches?” E. J. nudges me hard in the ribs. “Make that three. One with extra, extra mayonnaise. To go?”
Vera sets her cigarette into a slot on the gold metal ashtray and says, “Three sammies, one with x mayo comin’ up.” She bends to slide the sandwich fixings out of the Frigidaire, but her shoulders are shaking with the effort. Woody gets like that sometimes. I’ve always thought that means she’s struggling to keep something inside her and it’s struggling to come out. Like having a tug of war, with yourself.
“Vera?” She looks at me in the mirror behind the counter that she uses to keep an eye on her customers. She’s having a hard time holding my gaze. I want to reach across the counter and pat her on the back. It’s unnerving to see a woman with an Anchors Away tattoo inked into her bicep burst into tears. “Are you wantin’ to tell us something?”
She snivels, packs the sandwiches into a wax bag, and places them on the counter in front of me. “About your mama, Shen,” she says in a drawl thicker than one of her malts. “I’ve been meanin’ to . . .” She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. They’re at her neck, then her hair, and finally, she’s rubbing them together.
“Did your mother ever mention to you . . . did she tell you that she was plannin’ to . . . damn it all.”
Maybe Vera was the one who told the sheriff about Sam and Mama, and she wants to get it off her abundant chest.
“There’s something you need to know,” she says. “Evie . . . your mother . . . she was gonna leave your father.”
E. J. shovels a spoonful of vanilla ice cream into his mouth and asks, “Where?”
I already know that, but since his mother and father are so happily married, he doesn’t get what Vera means.
“When Mama . . . do you know if she was planning on asking Woody and me to join her when she left?” I ask Vera in the smallest voice. Even though she’s dead, it matters to me more than anything ever has that my mother wasn’t going to leave without asking her peas in a pod to come along, the same way she had that Easter in the garden.
“Your mother had been plannin’ her getaway for months,” Vera says, like she didn’t even hear me. “She had every little detail down pat. She was gonna take the steppin’ stones across the creek, and your mama, E. J., she was gonna borrow the Calhouns’ car and give Evie a ride to the bus station.” She’s trying to remove a napkin from the container to use as a hankie and it’s giving her a hard time. She finally gives up and uses her capped sleeve to wipe off her drippy nose. “I’ve gone over this in my mind a dozen times. I don’t know what the hell went wrong.”
I know how she feels.
“We all kept hopin’ that we’d hear from her,” Vera says.
The same way I was. Before I found out from my father that night in the woods that he was “sorry for the way things worked out.”
Even though I would have told my mother that I couldn’t leave Papa back then because I was a daddy’s girl, her asking again would’ve made all the difference. I ask Vera, louder this time, “Was Mama gonna ask Woody and me to come along with her?”
“A course she was, cookie,” Vera says, snubbing out her cigarette and patting my hand. “Didn’t you get her note?”
“What note?”
“Your mama was supposed to leave a note behind for you. A beautiful note. She knew how much you twins loved your father, especially you, Shenny, but once you read her explanation, Evie was sure that you’d . . .” She stops to faraway smile, the way you do when you’re having a nice memory. “I offered to take you girls to her when the time came, but your mother, she wanted Sam to do it. She thought it best that a family member bring you.”
E. J.’s mouth drops practically down to the counter alongside mine. Sam? A family member? Why would she say something like that? What is wrong with . . . oh, poor thing. Working these long hours at the lunch counter. Those deep fryers can get awful hot. Vera probably has a severe case of heat exhaustion. Bootie Young told me there was this one time that his dairy-farming daddy was working too long under the sun and his mama found him trying to milk one of the bulls.
“Now, Vera,” I tell her in the voice you use when dealing with the sick or maimed, “a little rest and relaxation is what you need.” I’ve gotten up off my stool, taking care not to make any sudden moves. I’m going to walk over to the pay phone and call Doc Keller to come over here quick as he can. “You know Sam is our friend and not a relative, right? You just got mixed-up.”
“Well,” she says, throwing her hands into the air, “like they say in the Navy, the torpedo is outta the tube now. No sense pretending it ain’t.” Vera comes from around the counter and steers me back to my stool. “You’re gonna want to be seated when I break this to you. Me, too. Move over, E. J.” She gets situated between us. “A long time ago, when Beezy was just a girl, she worked for your grandfather cleaning his house, Shenny.”
What could Beezy have to do with Sam being a family member? Vera is getting more confused by the second. She really does need help. Is Doc’s number Hopkins 4563 or 4653?
“She hadn’t married Carl yet so she wasn’t called Beezy Bell back then,” Vera continues. “She was poor and pretty Miss Elizabeth Hortense Moody, and Gus Carmody was a rich and a very handsome young man.
I’m not sure what this has to do with the price of a cup of coffee either, but she’s saying the truth. That old coot wasn’t always uglier than a pig snout. Gramma Ruth Love has lots of pictures of him pressed into a photo album that has THE GOOD OLD DAYS stamped on its cover. As much as it pains me to admit it, Vera’s right—Grampa was a looker.
“I’ve heard customers remark many times that Gus was quite the charmer,” she says.
“You heard that wrong,” I say back, gruff. “My grandfather’s about as charming as a funeral.”
“That may be true now, hon, but back then? They say that your grampa could talk the sweet off a sugar cube.”
I’m trying to alert E. J. to Vera’s rapidly deteriorating condition by leaning behind her back and vigorously tapping my temple, but he’s too busy hanging on her every word to notice. Being a mountain man, he’s fond of tall tales.
“Then what happened?” E. J. asks on the edge of his stool.
“That depends.” Vera looks back and forth between us, her curls bobbing. “I don’t know much about kids. Are the two of ya old enough to know how babies are born?”
“Yeah,” E. J. and I say. He’s got a goat that he delivered babies to and I watched.
Vera pauses, like she’s about to change her mind, but then says, “When Beezy was young, she was desperately in love with Gus Carmody.”
“What?” I say, aghast. That’s proof positive that the woman has lost her mind. I have never in all my days heard something more harebrained.
Vera ignores me. “And when two people get hot and bothered like that, they . . . uh . . . they do it.”
“Do what?” E. J. asks.
&nb
sp; “Shuck the oyster,” Vera says like she’s reciting the soup of the day.
E. J. looks as confounded as me.
“They zalleywhack. Play the game of twenty toes?” Clearly, Vera’s not getting the reaction from us that she expected. Exasperated, she says in a voice that echoes up the drugstore’s empty aisles, “Beezy and Gus fornicated.”
Root beer comes squirting out of E. J.’s nose and I jump up off my stool, “Oh, that’s so disgustin’ and . . . and . . . unappetizing and . . . Vera! What is wrong with you? Beezy wouldn’t shuck with Grampa. You’re her friend, you know how much she hates him. You’re the one that’s hot and bothered. I’m calling Doc Keller right this minute.”
Vera puts me back in my place. “You mean Beezy hates your grandfather now. Back then was different. Hear me out.”
She seems so convincingly upset, I grit my teeth and say, “Go on,” but the second she’s done, I’m rushing to the phone.
“Well,” she says, “after he got what he wanted from her, Gus turned his back on Beezy. Threw her right outta his house despite her condition.”
The condition Vera means is that Beezy was feeling sad and stupid about something he did to her. Grampa puts me in that condition, too. But this still doesn’t explain her earlier loopy remark about Sam.
Vera spins her stool my way, leans in close, and says, “You’ve got a lot on the ball, Shenny. You musta noticed the resemblance between your father and Sam. Their hooked noses, those same caramel eyes. How they both got an interest in law enforcement?”
I’m afraid she is giving my powers of observation too much credit. I’ve never noticed anything of the sort.
“What I’m tryin’ to tell you . . . what I mean to say is—” She breaks off like she’s having second thoughts.
“What, Vera?” I ask, curious now what her over-fried brain is trying to get at. “For God’s sakes, spit it out.”
“Just a second.” Vera digs into her apron pocket and slaps three rolls of Rolaids onto the counter before gushing out, “Sam Moody is the bastard child of Beezy and your grampa’s old-time love affair. Sam . . . he’s your uncle, Shenny.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Vera told us if we’d wait while she closed up the store, she’d give us a lift back home. I told her thank you for the offer, but we had to make a stop, and then E. J. and I ran out of Slidell’s before she started getting into the blow-by-blow account of how Sam came to be my uncle.
Half-uncle, really.
Now I know why Beezy hates Grampa as much as I do. She’s the gal they’re talking about in one of those “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned” situations.
How come I haven’t put this together before? I should’ve figured this out. One time when we were driving home from church the Mudtown way, we slowed down in front of Beezy’s place. Woody and I stuck our arms out the window and yelled, “Mornin’.” My grandfather turned to Uncle Blackie, who hardly ever goes to church because he doesn’t have a conscience that needs cleansing, that’s why I remember this trip. “Ya see that, son,” he said. “There ain’t much left of her now, but that nappy used to be fine. Legs like a nutcracker. Hardy har har.” Grampa saying something that nice about a colored person was so out of the ordinary that Woody and I talked about it later. She decided he must’ve been paying Beezy a good-at-lifting-furniture compliment since he’d just come from Mass, and that sounded about right. But that wasn’t what he meant at all.
Then there’s how Woody and I feel naturally close to Sam—that was another hint. And the way Beezy treats us like we’re her family. I thought her special kindness towards us was just a holdover from when she worked up at Lilyfield taking care of us when we were teeny-tiny, but it’s so much more than that. Woody and I are sort of her grandbabies.
I’m not angry at Beezy for not letting my sister and me in on all the spit swapping she did with Grampa Gus. I know why she never told us on one of those sultry nights on her porch when all sorts of secrets come out. She was afraid that Woody and I would think poorly of her. I confess, I do a little. Shucking oysters with our grampa shows a real lack of taste on her part. He probably tricked her. Did the same exact thing to Beezy that Blackie did to Louise Jackson. Those men seem to know just what to say to a girl to get them to do what they want, especially Grampa, who has years more experience being a horse’s ass. Gramma refers to our town as Sodom and Gomorrah, and I’m beginning to see her point. Does she know about this long-ago dalliance between Grampa and Beezy? Or like all the other skullduggery that involves the Carmody men, has my grandfather managed to keep it buried?
Man laughing and jukebox music, the sound of pool balls hitting against one another and the tantalizing smell of burgers is coming out of the open door of Elmo’s Bar as E. J. and I scurry by.
I’m so hungry my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut, which means Woody’s must, too.
I wouldn’t feel right eating without her, so I pass E. J. his egg salad sandwich and keep the other two in the sack. “We gotta make this quick,” I tell him as we turn the corner onto Main Street.
E. J. says, “Are you all right? Ya know, about what Vera told us about your grampa and Beezy and Sam?”
“I guess I am.” I’m miffed that Sam didn’t let us in on the secret and I’m shocked, but it’s a good kind. I’ll get a huge grin out of Woody when I tell her. Maybe she’ll even start talking again, that’s how thrilled she’ll be. I bet E. J. is feeling swell about our newfound relative as well. When he marries Woody, Sam will be his uncle, too. He doesn’t look so happy right now, though. I say to him, “A penny for your thoughts.”
“Don’t got a penny.”
I’d explain, but I’m worn down right to my tread. “What’s on your mind?”
“Your mother.”
“Me, too.” I wish I could’ve read that note she left for me and Woody. Vera said it was beautiful. I’ll look harder for it as soon as things settle a little. That note must be the one Sam keeps asking me to keep an eye out for.
“What if the sheriff begins thinking that Sam had something to do with your mama’s . . . ummm,” E. J. asks as we make the turn into the alley that runs behind the shops on Main Street.
He means her death. It surprises me more than snow in August that he figured that out. I might underestimate our sidekick sometimes. “He’d need proof of wrongdoing.”
E. J. follows me as I turn into the narrow alley. “Like what?”
I think back on some of the cases that I observed in my father’s courtroom and on Mannix. “Like maybe something that belonged to Mama being found over at the Triple S. Something that would point to foul play.” That gives me the quivers. “But that’s not gonna happen. Mama was Sam’s best friend.”
I come to a halt and tell E. J., “Here we go.”
The bottom half of the moon is aglow with the nicest smile, but it’s not shooting off enough light to help us make our way through the junk that’s scattered in the backyard of What Goes Around Comes Around. I got to switch on my flashlight. A mangy cat is giving himself a bath on a cushionless divan. A bunch of chairs are stacked on top of one another and leaning against the pile are rusted signs that folks find on the highway and bring to the owner of the shop, Artesia Johnson, who is a soft touch. By the wink she gives me at Mass, I know she leaves the back window of the shop unlocked so I can come look for Mama’s stuff from time to time. A real generous heart beats beneath Miss Artesia’s blubber. (She’s heavy set. She’ll tell you it’s her glands, but all you got to do is share a blanket with her at the church picnic and you’ll know right off it’s her mouth.)
“Cup ’em,” I tell E. J. I shake off my sneakers and place my foot in his hands.
With one good boost, I’m halfway through the back window and I wriggle the rest of the way through.
The shop is much spookier at night than during the day, when it already gives me the willies. It’s the mannequins. They don’t have faces. One of them’s wearing a nice red, white, and blue jacket. Besides
a scarf of Mama’s, I think I’ll get that jacket for Woody. She’s going to be so excited when I inform her that we got a big new relative. She’ll probably make me sing some stupid show tune to celebrate. Or a patriotic ditty, now that we got our very own uncle Sam!
There are tables upon card tables of discards set willy-nilly around the shop. Egg beaters are mixed in with mohair sweaters. Beaded purses are lying on top of typewriters with missing keys. Miss Artesia’s got the antique jewelry and more valuable items set out in a display case. There’s one of Clive Minnow’s Confederate buttons that he found with his metal-detecting device. I missed his funeral when Woody and I spent all that time up in the fort grieving Mama. I’m going to borrow this button, too. Miss Artesia won’t miss something this small. Once everything calms down around here, I’ll take it to the cemetery and push it into Clive’s mound. He’d like that.
A selection of scarves is hanging on a coat hanger right above the jewelry case. The third one from the left, that’s one of Mama’s. I never took them home all at one time because having them sitting in a pile in the fort felt too final. By leaving them here, I could pretend, the same way I was doing about everything else, that someday Mama and Woody and me would come by to pick up the rest. I slide the scarf off the hanger and hold it up to my nose, but the scent of her is long gone. The pink chiffon smells like spaghetti and meatballs now. Miss Artesia’s favorite. Woody won’t care. She’ll just be glad to have something of Mama’s. And it is Italian.
“Shen!” E. J. calls through the back window. His mouth sounds full and like he’s saying, “Then!” He must’ve already started eating
It’s probably Miss Johnson remembering she forgot to put out the goose lamp above the cash register when she closed up. That’s all right. I don’t care if she finds me rifling through her wares. It will give me the opportunity to thank her for her patience and understanding. There’s a jingling, then a rattle at the back door. Like she is having a hard time fitting the key into the lock, but then the door opens and closes hard.
