She laughed, soft as a summer’s breeze. “Remember, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And then it might kill you after all. Chief Featherstone.”
“Chief Featherstone?” I whispered to Smiley.
I started to ask him if she always talked this way, in quotes and riddles, never responding to a question with a direct answer. Instead, I watched his big eyes adore Alice like a lovesick schoolboy. Oh brother, Smiley’s smitten. Maybe she would become his next sweetie. But she seemed so lost in her own world, she probably had no idea.
“Charlie, how is it smart people can be so dumb?”
Charlie surely felt better since Smiley loved Alice. Eased my mind too. Maybe we could be friends if I stopped by Sweetbriar Manor to visit Pearl—friends with no worries of getting familiar.
But what if I ended up living too far away to visit? I no longer had my own wheels. Betty Jo wouldn’t interrupt her busy life to carry me here, and taxi service was entirely too expensive.
“What am I going to do, Charlie?” He didn’t have any suggestions. Not a one.
Self-pity is a terrible thing. Without warning, tears filled my eyes and spilled over. Smiley handed me a clean handkerchief out of his pocket that had become scented with his Old Spice. I managed to thank him and tried to smile, but felt like my life was coming undone. The tears kept coming no matter how hard I tried to stop them.
“Allergies,” I said as I blew my nose into his nice handkerchief.
“Confounded allergies.”
Chapter Five
Lemon meringue pie was the most edible part of the meal though I had trouble even swallowing that with the lump in my throat. Not homemade, but it was the same Winn Dixie brand occasionally brought home by Betty Jo.
Prissy rushed through the dining room and into the kitchen carrying a tray loaded with dirty dishes, like she’d been saving them in her room or wherever it was she ate. With ruffled eyebrows and lips clenched tight, she looked bound for a stroke before reaching forty. When she breezed through and out again, a cloud of perfume settled over our table and left me with a sneezing fit.
After dinner—I mean lunch—nearly everyone retreated to their rooms. Reminded me of groundhogs popping back into their holes as soon as they sensed danger. I lollygagged a little, not excited about spending any more time in any room this place had to offer. I stopped to read Alice’s poem.
A Dry Spell
By Alice Chandler
Here it is
the end of January
and the cold ground is
brittle dry
like the rusted hull
of Papa’s Jon boat
down by the water’s edge.
Granny says it’ll
take days of rain
before the ground
gives way to boot heels.
Miraculously,
the red berries
of the holly tree
grow more brilliant
and fat
with each rainless hour
as if to lay waste
any cardinal’s worry.
One of those berries
in a bird’s beak
is like a promising line
to a poet
long without a poem.
My goodness, that woman is in agony when she’s not writing. I would bet her dry spells don’t last very long though. I entered room number ten filled with sadness for any writer who could not write, no matter what the time. But more than that, my heart ached for my own dry spell that seemed to stretch out before me with no end in sight—like walking across a never-ending desert. I sighed and fought back more tears.
An afternoon fog settled over Sweetbriar Manor, except for a couple of blaring televisions. Even that noise became muted after awhile, swallowed by the quiet. Everyone was probably either napping or watching some silly soap opera. Never had the time or inclination for either. Besides, I had to get outside so I could breathe again. I put on my gardening hat, picked up my red purse, and eased the door shut behind me.
On my way to the rear EXIT, I felt compelled to stop and see how Pearl was doing. She wouldn’t even speak to me in the dining room. I tapped on her door, waited, then tapped harder. It moved slightly, so I pushed it far enough to stick my head in. “Pearl? Pearl, you in here?”
The thought entered my mind that I should come back later, but a painting on the wall caught my eye and drew me into her room. Awards, diplomas, and ugly-as-sin modern art surrounded this particular painting, making it stand alone—real, familiar, and beautiful. It was a watercolor of a hydrangea bush, shedding petals onto the sidewalk after a rain. I studied the painting for what seemed like a long time until I could no longer ignore my bladder and stepped into her bathroom.
After flushing, I was washing my hands when a voice out in the hallway sounded like a loud, yapping dog. I turned the water off, stood perfectly still, and listened.
“I’ve looked everywhere for her. Her daughter called. How could I say I didn’t know where she was? I’m responsible for you people twenty-four hours a day. Twenty-four long hours. That’s a load, I tell you, especially for what I get paid. If you see Mrs. Hopper, tell her to call her daughter. No, never mind. You won’t remember. I’ll put a note on her door.”
The yelling stopped, and Pearl came into her room mumbling something. The television clicked on. I stepped out of the bathroom as she eased into her recliner. Her eyes were almost shut, just as an actress screamed, “But I thought you were dead!”
“Knock, knock,” I said.
Pearl shot upright straight as an arrow, her eyes wide with fright. “What are you doing in here? This is my room. You’re in trouble. Big trouble.”
“Your door wasn’t shut. I—”
“Go back home.” Pearl’s face was white as a bedsheet. Her hands nervously worked her necklace. “She won’t like you coming here.” Pearl turned her back to me, walked over to the window, and fussed over a pot of red begonias on the sill.
I threw up my hands. “She who? Your mother? She was never around enough to know when I was at your house, or you were at mine. How can you remember something that didn’t exist and forget the things that did?”
The television queen sobbed. Pearl turned her face to me. “Go home,” she said, her bottom lip trembling.
I reluctantly went to my room and threw the note taped to my door in the wastebasket. I was in no mood to call anyone or even continue on my way out of this place. Where did I think I was going anyway, without a plan? Charlie always knew how to plan. That’s why he was a successful farmer. Not rich, mind you, but we managed to get along from one year to the next.
My garage-sale routes had always been mapped out from the newspaper ads, so why not do the same with places to live? I zipped down to the sitting room, rescued the Timely News from a wastebasket, and was back in a flash. Amazing how I can move fast when I need to.
I settled into the rocker that leaned to the left no matter how I tried to straighten it. After scrounging around in my purse, I retrieved a small spiral notebook, dog-eared and limp. I intended to flip over to some blank pages to jot down a phone number or location of a house or apartment, but found myself fingering through pages where I’d kept records of each year’s tobacco crop, from the number and cost of plants purchased, to the sale per pound of the golden burley. Our tobacco always brought top price at the auctions. Charlie would read over my figures in the evening, and his chest would swell with pride.
Why, Lord? Why did Charlie have to go and die on me?
With no more tobacco records to keep, there was no practical reason to hold on to the little notebook, but seeing my scribbling that I had written year after year spoke to me of Charlie. This was our life together. I leaned back, shut my eyes, and reflected on the times we worked side by side planting tobacco beds, suckering tobacco, stripping and housing it in the barn to cure, and waiting for the right day to haul it to market. Times of hard work when we’d fall into bed exhausted, but at the same t
ime …
My door opened and Prissy’s head appeared. “Well, well. I see we decided to spend some time in our room this afternoon. Rest time is important, you know. Not one of our written rules, but maybe one we should consider. What do you think?”
I didn’t want to tell this woman what I was really thinking, so I said nothing. The room suddenly felt as if the walls had moved closer and were squeezing the very life out of me. I picked up the newspaper that had slipped to the floor and shook it to straighten the pages. And shook it some more as I found the classified section.
Prissy waited. Instead of taking the hint and leaving, she cleared her throat and tapped her pointy-toed shoe. “I assume we’ve made a phone call? Your daughter sounded concerned.”
“She’s not home.”
“Well, if she calls again, I’ll tell her you tried. Dinner bell rings at six sharp on the front porch. Weather permitting, we gather there for the blessing. Enjoy your afternoon.”
Soon as she left, I made my list. Two-bedroom house on Locust Street, freshly painted. Was that too far from here? I wasn’t sure, so I wrote down the exact address and phone number. There was a one-bedroom apartment downtown over Blind George’s Pool Hall. Nice location, but probably noisy. Those were the only two listings, and they were in opposite directions. It was too late to get started and get back before dark. Besides, I was curious to see if the food was any better at dinnertime.
Gee whiskers, Agnes, you have fiddled away the afternoon. Now I’d have to spend the night in this place. Drat. And double drat.
Right then I decided to get out of that crooked rocker and do something. I had to move because I could feel a hissy fit coming on, and that wouldn’t do anybody any good. This Johnson woman and this whole situation were irritating me to no end.
After slipping out of my room, I hurried to the phone on the wall near the front office, praying that Prissy would not be around to hear my conversation.
Betty Jo had tried to convince me to get a cell phone. I never had any use for one of those contraptions, but I decided my daughter, for once, might have been right. At least I had a plan. I would call about the little house first. Maybe it had a small yard that would be perfect for Miss Margaret.
I made several phone calls that afternoon without laying eyes on Prissy, for all the good it did me. The house had already been rented, and the other number for the apartment only buzzed busy no matter how many times I tried.
I groused and grumbled to Charlie and stomped back to room number ten that was beginning to feel like a prison cell. I entered and slammed the door so hard it shook.
If this was going to be, not my home, but where I slept until I found something else, it was time to set it in order. One thing I can’t tolerate is someone else’s dirt. A supply closet across the hall revealed all sorts of wonderful cleaning products, most industrial-strength, and by four-fifteen I had made my bed—the correct way I might add—and Lysoled, lemon-oiled, and Windexed everything in sight, plus I had turned the air conditioner off and raised my window. The air was humid, but a stiff breeze ruffled the lacy curtains and carried the scent of honeysuckle into my room.
My shoes, now emptied of candy and gum, lined the closet floor. My nightstand drawer held my stash of sweets along with Vick’s Salve, deep-heat rub, Geritol, Milk of Magnesia, aspirin, camphor, and Kleenex. Panties, bras, slips, hosiery, and socks, were stacked in the top drawer of the chest. A good nightgown I’d bought on sale at Rose’s—still in its tissue paper and kept back in case I should ever have to go to the hospital—lay in the next drawer along with a cotton sweater, a shawl I’d crocheted, and a navy dress purse hardly used because it didn’t hold all the necessary items like my red one.
In the next drawer were two new sweat suits from K-Mart, one purple, the other pink. Perfect for walking to nearby garage sales, which I planned to do as soon as I found a place to call my own. “Unpacking in this place is temporary. I’m not living here, Charlie. I refuse.”
He had no reply.
The last drawer held twenty-five tabloids called Hot Press. I’d bought them at a garage sale last Saturday. Didn’t matter they were almost five years old. That kind of news would be the same if it happened fifty years ago or ten years in the future.
I pulled one out, opened it to page twenty-eight, my birth date, laid a stack of bills near a story of Big Foot, closed the magazine, and returned it to its place. I’d always heard anything of value often disappeared in places like this, so I didn’t intend on leaving money where someone could help himself. The rest of my money was in my purse, which would be with me at all times.
“Can’t be too careful these days, Charlie.”
Settling down with another tabloid, my rocker felt worse than before, like it had been rode hard and put up wet. I’d have to ask Henry to take a look at it when he came to visit on Sunday, if I was still here. The headline read: Elvis Sings for Aliens. Before long my mind wandered. The little black words danced before my eyes, and my eyelids felt much too heavy.
Next thing I knew, a stocky young lady, white-uniformed with a mop of blonde hair, was in my room ringing a bell and calling, “Mrs. Hopper, wake up. You can’t sleep all day. Didn’t you read today’s schedule? Time for blood pressure checks in the sitting room.”
By the time I got up and walked into the hall, that blonde head was darting in and out of rooms like a humming bird.
“She’s going to wear herself out, Charlie.”
As I neared the main house, an old woman with wild white hair ran up to me and grabbed my arm. Dressed in a long flimsy nightgown, she smelled like sour milk, and her eyes were wide and bloodshot. “You know why our weather’s messed up, don’t you?”
I tried to pull away, but her grip was strong for a frail-looking woman. A trail of spittle dripped from the corner of her mouth when she threw her hands up in the air and shouted, “Lord-a-mercy! Lord-a-mercy!”
I moved away as fast as I could manage, but she was beside me again, her mouth spouting like a fish.
“That moon shot. Men walking around up there. It’s unnatural. Whole world’s gone haywire.”
Everything in me wanted to say, “Lady, you’re the one’s gone haywire.”
She ran ahead and turned to face me. “Why does it thunder in dead of winter when ice is hanging on the trees? Why? Why?”
I frowned at her and shook my head.
“Didn’t think you knew,” she sneered. She grabbed me again and put her mouth next to my ear. Her breath was hot and foul. “That moon shot. Messed everything up. Whole world.” Her arms did a spastic dance as she pushed me away. Two women residents carefully kept their distance as they skirted past us.
Finally, the blonde blood pressure nurse came, and I was glad to see her. She led the crazed woman away, speaking to her soft and low. “Now, Ida Mae, you mustn’t come out of your room and frighten people, or we’ll have to restrain you again. You don’t want us to do that, do you?”
That set me to thinking. Restrain her? Maybe in Ida Mae’s case that would be a necessary thing, but this is a retirement home, not a nursing home. She didn’t have enough mental faculties to choose this place, so who put her here and how was such a thing allowed?
Better lock my door when I turn in tonight.
When I entered the main house, a man stood in the doorway watching me—the same man who had helped me up at lunch. What was his name? Bill? Will? Maybe William? His large lips held a long, unlit cigar. He removed it, blew imaginary smoke, then stuck it behind his right ear and winked. Winked, of all things. I could feel his eyes follow me as I passed by.
“What kind of people live in this place, Charlie? Who would believe me if I told them what I’ve seen in just one afternoon? No one, that’s who.”
I hadn’t called Betty Jo, but apparently she hadn’t called back. Well, first things first, which did not include blood pressure checks. I headed toward the front hall and the telephone to try Blind George’s number again. I was lost in my thoughts when som
eone with the strength of Samson grabbed my arm and spun me around.
Chapter Six
Heavens to Betsy, it’s no wonder my blood pressure shot up higher than the rooftop, the way that nurse manhandled me. Miss Johnson called Betty Jo straight away, who called old Doc Evans. He had delivered my daughter as well as most of the babies in Sweetbriar. Said I had to take some pill every morning without fail and settle down in my new home.
My new home?
I promised, but my fingers were crossed at the time so it didn’t count. I finally got away from that nurse—who must lift weights or have a black belt or some such thing—and made more phone calls to inquire about the apartment, with the same result.
“Their phone must be out of order, Charlie. By the time I get out of here to go check, it will be gone too.”
Somehow I made it through nearly a week of days at Sweetbriar Manor, without escaping any further than the boxwood hedge out back, because Prissy seemed to pop up out of nowhere just when I thought the coast was clear.
The nights were far worse than the days. I felt hemmed in like a stray cow in a canyon, the only way out leading to the slaughterhouse. My anxious thoughts grew into monsters and swallowed my prayers, until one night I dreamed I fought old Lucifer himself—and lost.
Earlier that evening, Alice Chandler had poured Nyquil’s thick green liquid into tiny paper cups taken from her bathroom dispenser and said, “Make you sleep like a princess. Forget all your troubles—even this place—for a little while. Better than Jack.”
“Jack?” I said, watching her push the bottle back into the farthest corner under her bathroom sink.
She stood, took hold of her drink, and handed me mine as she stepped back into the bedroom. “Jack Daniel’s. Tennessee’s finest whiskey. Comforts the ache in any heart. But this will have to do.”
We made a solemn, silent toast. I excused myself into her bathroom, poured mine down the sink, flushed the toilet, and ran some water down the drain. I didn’t fault Alice for taking it if it helped her forget this place, but I could hardly tolerate the smell or taste even when feeling awful with a miserable cold. Now if we could fix us a real hot toddy, that might be different.
Contemporary Women's Fiction: Agnes Hopper Shakes Up Sweetbriar (Humorous Women's Fiction) Page 4
