Just then, Annie’s phone rang. It was Sheila, again, canceling the crop that she’d called earlier to confirm. Vera Matthews’s mother was being operated on that evening. They would be in touch with her soon about rescheduling.
She turned the teakettle on and sat down in front of her computer. Maybe she could catch a little news before the boys woke up from their naps. She clicked on the local newspaper’s website and gasped.
Chapter 3
Vera sank into the hospital room chair; Sheila was in the other. Both listened intently as Beatrice explained to a police officer what had happened. The knife was still in her neck and she was lucid. The nurses were going to prepare her for surgery in about an hour.
Beatrice sipped water from a straw as the nurse held up a cup for her. She swallowed hard.
“I remember it being cold, and, oh, the eggs at the store, most of them were broken,” she said. “I thought it was odd. And then I noticed how crowded it was getting.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mother, what does this have to do with—”
“Was it unusually crowded?” the officer asked her.
“I think so,” Beatrice said, ignoring her daughter. “In fact, Mrs. Hawthorn pushed up against me.”
She remembered Betty’s deep, manly voice. “Oh, sorry, Bea,” Betty Hawthorn had said. “It’s so crowded in here. I feel like I’m tripping over myself. I guess it’s the funeral.”
“What funeral?” Beatrice had asked, almost embarrassed not be in on the latest funeral news. She was often the first person to know. After all, she lived wedged between the only funeral home in town and the largest church in town—First Baptist.
“You haven’t heard the news? It’s all over the place. That young woman? That Maggie Rae Dasher? They found her dead in the middle of the night. It’s awful, just awful,” Betty had said as she drifted away.
Well, now, Beatrice had thought, why don’t I know that name? And surely they wouldn’t be having her funeral today if she was just found. Betty must be confused.
Just then, she had felt someone else brush up against her, harder, and turned to see who it was. Was that someone’s elbow in her neck? She looked around and hadn’t seen a thing. Well, for heaven’s sake.
“Do you think that could be when you were stabbed?” the officer interrupted Beatrice’s recounting.
“It’s hard to say, really. I still can’t get over not really feeling it.”
“I need to make a call to the store to get a look at their security tapes. I’ll be back to talk more,” he said, and left the room.
The women sat quietly together.
Beatrice thought about being in Wrigley’s that day and tried to remember every little thing that could help the officer.
She remembered feeling tired and glad to be only four blocks from the Wrigley’s. She’d rather be at home—such as it was. No longer the grandest house in town, her Victorian pink-and-blue home used to be a beacon to the townsfolk. It’s where she raised her daughter, where she held PTO, church, and town meetings, and where her husband had practiced medicine for thirty years. It was once the largest place in town. Now, just a few blocks outside of what used to be Cumberland Creek proper, sat mansions on tiny lawns. It was absurd.
She remembered the cashier’s hands were adorned with rings on every finger and her nails were painted bright, fiery red. “Thank ya, hon,” she said, not even looking at Beatrice, who was still wearing her hat, scarf, and coat, never bothering to take it off. Eh, well, she was used to being ignored, and she didn’t even really care to be acknowledged by the brassy young woman. She looked at the woman behind her—she looked vaguely familiar. Beatrice managed a quick smile—just in case she knew her.
The cashier was involved in a heated discussion with the bagger about suicide. “It’s a sin,” she said. “That’s what my daddy always said.”
“Well, who cares what your daddy said,” said the bagger, whom Beatrice did not recognize. More and more people were moving into Cumberland Creek, and she had no idea who they were—or who their people were.
“My daddy was a preacher,” Beatrice overheard the cashier say as Beatrice grabbed her bags and walked off. Yeah, your daddy was a preacher, all right, Beatrice thought. He was also a prick.
She pushed her still mostly red hair up farther into her black knit hat and thought about the old reverend; he was always cheating on his wife with the youngest woman he could find, and she was always forgiving him some Sunday at church. There would be a spectacle. The parishioners knew they were in for a show when Michael started his sermon with “I stand before you a sinner. I am only a man.”
As if half the population didn’t know what was going on already. Poor Sarah would stand up, awash in tears and humiliation, and forgive him in front of everyone. Beatrice always wondered if they went home and made passionate love after the emotional spectacle—not that she even wanted to think about that.
Beatrice held on to her bags and coughed a little as she made her way to the door. Poor Sarah. Always so worn-out from her children and from trying to be a good preacher’s wife. In his final days, he left her, anyway. Beatrice grinned. It was probably the younger woman who killed him. He couldn’t keep up with her.
She had always felt sorry for Sarah; though now the widow seemed happy alone. Her children and grandchildren were always around. Her house was always full.
As Beatrice walked out of the grocery store, she turned left and walked toward her house. These walks were a part of her sanity and helped her keep in decent shape. But they were getting harder to take, especially in the dead of winter. She was glad for the spring, even if it was a cooler than usual one. She looked across the street to the school—under construction—a group of tiny children, faces peeking out of their coats, hats, and scarves, were being led across the street by a group of adults. One child pointed at Beatrice and said something she couldn’t quite understand.
“Hmm,” Beatrice said. “I wonder if that child saw the knife.”
“What child, Mama?”
“I decided she wasn’t pointing at me, but maybe she was. On my way home, she kept pointing at me, but she was across the street and I couldn’t hear her.”
“Where was that?”
“Right past Dolly’s, across from the school.”
Dolly’s Beauty Shop, on its last legs, but still the same women’s faces were looking at her through the windows and smiling as she waved. None of them, it seemed, looked hard enough at her to see the knife jabbed into her neck. Women were loyal to Dolly and her beauticians, but last month she announced that she just could not compete with the Hair Cuttery and the new mall beauty shop. She’d be closing in a few weeks. The thought of it made Beatrice’s eyes sting with tears. Old fool, I am an old fool.
The weight of her bags seemed to be getting heavier. She looked across the street at the church and saw plenty of cars in the parking lot, people going in and out. A good many cars in the neighborhood. Something was definitely going on, but it wasn’t a funeral. At least not yet. She stopped in front of her iron gate and looked farther down the road at the sign out front of the Greys’ funeral home. No names appeared on the announcement board. She wondered if Betty Hawthorn had been mistaken. She slipped her hand through one of the bag handles and reached up for her newspaper.
“Mother!” said her daughter, opening the door. “Where’ve you been?”
“What are you doing here?” Beatrice answered Vera.
“I came to check on you,” she said.
“Well, Lord, Vera, I just talked to you this morning. I told you I’m fine.”
Beatrice could not stand the way Vera preened over her at times, the way she tried to treat her like a child. How does she think I got to be this old, by being stupid and frail?
Vera grabbed her bags. “Mom, you don’t need to walk to the store, especially on cold days. Such a cold spring. I’d be happy to pick a few things up for you on my way home.”
Beatrice ignored her, taking o
ff her coat and her hat.
“Mama, what’s that you have stuck on your hat?”
Vera pulled her hat off. “Nothing.” She looked incredulously at her daughter, whose brows were knitted.
“Turn around. Let me see what’s going on back here.”
Bea smiled. It might have been worth it—just to see the look of horror on Vera’s face.
“Well,” said the officer as he walked back in her room, with heavy steps, the jangling of keys, and the sound of leather squeaking—was it his gun in the holsters against his regulation belt? Or could it be his new, shiny shoes? “The Wrigley’s security cameras were on this morning. I am going to head over there and check out the tapes. We’ll get your man, Mrs. Matthews.”
Chapter 4
After the squeaky police officer left the hospital room, a team of nurses came in. One took Bea’s pulse; the others were poking her with an IV needle.
“Guess, I’ll be going to sleep now,” Beatrice said. “When I wake up, I’ll be a new woman—sans knife.”
Vera harrumphed. She should have known her mother would agree to the operation when Vera said it was fine not to do so.
“Vera, you better get down to the studio. Don’t you have a class to teach this evening?” Beatrice managed to say.
“I put a notice up on the door,” Sheila said. “It’ll be fine. Don’t you worry,” she said more to Vera than to Bea. “I’ll go get us some coffee.”
“Hey,” said Bea. “If anything happens to me—”
But Sheila kept walking. “I won’t hear of it, you old bat.”
But she caught her daughter’s eye as Sheila walked out. “You know where all my papers are,” she said.
“Yes.”
Was that all it had come to? Vera’s stomach churned. Her life, her life with her mother, her mother’s life? A box of paper in a fireproof safe? Hidden in the basement closet? Was she not going to speak to her of love? Of the past? Of her father?
Her mother’s face suddenly softened, the lines almost fading. “I’m an old fool,” she said. “And where is your father? I cried about the beauty shop. It’s closing.... Things have a way of changing before you know it.... I do love you, Vera, even if you are getting fat.... Ha! My fat little ballerina ... ,” she said, and seemed to fall asleep.
Vera laughed. “I love you, too, Mama.”
Vera had made up her mind to stop dieting last year. She decided to become a better role model for her students—and there was just no point in starving herself any longer. She would never be a ballerina. She had been on a diet for more than thirty years—after her dance teacher made a remark about her thighs when Vera was ten years old. Forget her. I am not starving anymore.
It was so freeing.
The first thing she ate—really ate with abandon—was her mother’s blackberry cobbler. Not a piece of cobbler, but the whole thing.
She sat at her mother’s 1950s chrome-and-turquoise Formica kitchen table set—the same table from which she had eaten almost every meal when she was a girl—and ate a piece while it was still fresh out of the oven.
“Do you have any vanilla ice cream, Ma?”
“Huh? Yeah, sure,” answered Beatrice, who was visibly taken aback by her daughter’s sudden love of blackberry cobbler.
“I have always loved it, Ma,” Vera said, as if reading her mind. “I just was always watching my weight. And I figure, well, what’s the point?”
Vera then ate a slice covered with vanilla ice cream. Real ice cream—for her mother never bought anything low fat or low carb or low sugar. She almost fainted at the creaminess, the mixture of textures and temperatures in her mouth. The next piece was covered with a dollop of whipped cream, while her mother tried to look busy wiping off a nonexistent crumb from the teal-speckled Formica counter, not wanting to stare at her only child as she seemed to be enjoying a private moment with the cobbler.
As Vera relished each bite—the mixture of the gritty and gelatinous mingled with sweet, juicy berries, covered with a light but substantial crust—her mother gave up her stance and watched intently. Her mouth hung open after Vera’s fourth piece.
She handed her the pan. “Here, baby, this is the best way. Have at it,” she said, and left Vera alone with the blackberry cobbler. Later she explained that she felt it was the only proper thing to do.
After all, Vera had not touched cobbler, pie, or cake since she was ten years old.
So Vera had put on about twenty pounds. But it was a good gain. She had more breasts and hips and thighs than ever before. And she loved her body. It was hers, and it did everything it was supposed to do, and more. She rewarded it often with good chocolate—preferably fresh and artisanal. She was still a graceful woman and dancer, even with the extra twenty pounds, and she was a happier person.
Vera caught a view of her blond hair in the mirror above the sink in her mother’s hospital room. Maybe it’s too blond this time, she thought. But she loved the way it looked with her bright fuchsia lipstick and blue eyeliner. Maybe next time, she’d go red. She loved her red hair with the blue eyeliner. She never left her home unless completely made-up—and then some.
Sheila could use some color in her hair. Vera tried to sway her for years to go blond or red, but Sheila wouldn’t hear of it.
“I don’t have time to keep up with such nonsense,” Sheila would say.
“It’s all about priorities,” Vera often said back. “I want to look good, don’t you?”
“Sure. I’m clean. My hair is combed, most of the time. Sometimes I put a little lipstick on. But to have to run back and forth all the time to get my hair colored, you know, to keep up with it? Nah.”
Sheila always was that way. Vera remembered all through high school, Sheila never wore a bit of makeup. But then again, she was an athlete and a budding young artist, and just had a different sensibility than Vera had. But they knew each other since before they could walk—their mothers were good friends and neighbors.
When Vera thought of Sheila’s mother, her heart sank. If she thought hard enough, she’d sit here and cry. Poor Gerty died a horrible death, racked with cancer, which started in her breasts. She wondered if Sheila had gotten over the anger she felt about that.
“The old fool never had a mammogram in her life!” Sheila had spat through tears. “She refused. So, of course ... it’s too late.”
Too late. Beatrice had mouthed those same words to her as she exited Gerty’s hospital room, tears forming in pools in her gray eyes. Suddenly Vera saw her mother’s age, her deep creases around her eyes and mouth and on her forehead. Most of the time, Beatrice’s age hardly showed at all—or at least not that Vera had noticed.
Funny how people’s looks changed, sometimes almost momentarily. For an instant, today, Beatrice’s face looked almost childlike, and Vera had caught a glimpse of her own mother’s vulnerability.
Chapter 5
“Why don’t you go out, anyway?” Mike said to Annie as they were clearing away the supper dishes.
Annie leaned against the counter and crossed her arms. “I’m not sure where I’d go.”
She thought momentarily of the mall. It would be nice to shop without the kids along—but it would also be nice to shop if she had more than fifty dollars in the bank. Movies? Nah, nothing she wanted to see bad enough to spend the money on.
Just then a crash came from the other room—where both of the boys were. Annie and Mike ran into the room to find the boys were into the box of pictures that she so carefully gathered and labeled. Pictures were scattered across the carpeted floor and the furniture. Ben looked sheepishly at them, while Sam danced around with the box on his head.
Annie’s stomach twisted. She worked on gathering and organizing those photos for weeks. “Ben! Sam! Damn it!” she roared, lurching forward and gathering the crumpled pictures, with tears falling from her as if someone had died. She knew she was overreacting. A part of her seemed to be watching herself. She gathered the pictures, sobbing. “I can’t believe it,”
she cried. “Look at this!”
Mike rounded up the boys and took them into their room. Annie saw her hands shaking as she lifted her treasured photos off the worn couch. She took a deep breath. How did the boys get the box? She had left it on top of the TV stand. Then she saw the chair behind the stand. As she placed the pictures in the now-disorganized box, she turned to face her husband.
“Hey,” he said, with his dark eyebrows lifted, “you need to take a deep breath. You scared the boys half to death.”
“I’ve been working on this for weeks.”
“I know, but still, you lost your temper.”
Next she was in his arms, sobbing. What was wrong with her? The boys were always into everything. This was really nothing new. What was different? She was disappointed at not getting to go out. Then she read the awful online report about Maggie Rae—a woman she saw around town a few times and had hoped to get to know better. A stay-at-home mom, like she was.
Maggie Rae was always alone with her kids. When Annie first glimpsed Maggie Rae, she wondered if she even had a husband. She was surprised later on to find out she did. It was jarring to read about her, so alone in this town, and driven to kill herself. God, she lived just down the street, and Annie never heard a gun go off, never knew her neighbor was in such emotional turmoil.
What could make a person do it? She looked up at her husband and took another deep breath. “Being a stay-at-home mom is harder than I thought it would be.”
Her eyes met his watery brown ones.
He gently stroked her hair. “I know.”
“Maybe I should go out for a walk,” she said. “Or better yet, I’ll go to the hospital to see how Vera’s mom is doing. I’ll bring flowers.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Mike said. “But first—” He placed his lips on hers and held her firmly; then he cradled her chin in his hands. “Mmm. I love you. That woman, that Maggie, if you ever feel—”
Scrapbook of Secrets Page 3
