by Peggy Webb
“Come on here, sweethearts. Your Papa has been insulted. If he spends a red dime with that ole stuck-up fox I’m going to personally whip his fanny.”
The clerk stood open-mouthed while Quincy sailed off in the direction of the ladies’ department with her little trio--the Queen Elizabeth and three tugs, the littlest one asking, “What’s a stuck-up fox?”
Quincy jerked a handful of dresses off the racks and handed them to Elizabeth. “Aunt Quincy will tell you all about it, honey lamb. Mommy’s going to try on dresses.”
Papa put his hat and cane on a red velvet chair then sat down beside them.
“Where’re you going this time, Elizabeth?” he asked.
“Brad Pitt is taking me to dinner, and then I’m jetting off to Spain with Tom Cruise. The rain falls mostly on the plain there, you know.”
“You go, girl,” Quincy said, then launched into a long-winded, rollicking story about how the fox got stuck-up, while Papa sat tapping his toes and humming, “The Rain in Spain.”
Elizabeth always tried on the blue dresses first. Taylor had liked her in blue.
She stood in front of the three-way mirror. The woman she saw there was not an unwed mother weighted under the burden of financial stress and worry about the future, but somebody completely different. She was the kind of woman who had her nails done every Tuesday and a total body massage on alternate Thursday evenings. She had a secretary, male, handsome, size thirty-four boxer shorts, at her beck and call.
Elizabeth gave herself a mock bow then twirled around as if she were on a parquet dance floor. She almost stepped on an attractive dark-haired woman wearing the ugliest brown pants suit she’d ever seen.
“Excuse me.” Elizabeth stepped to the side. “I didn’t mean to be blocking your view.”
“This pants suit makes me look like a sack of potatoes.” The woman groaned, then laughed. “Quick, block my view.”
“Well, actually, you look ...” Elizabeth paused, casting around for something nice to say.
“Like a sack of potatoes. You, on the other hand, look great.”
“Thanks.”
“By the way, I’m McKenzie Matthews.”
“Hi, I’m Elizabeth Jennings.”
That’s how easy it was in the South. Spend five minutes with a woman in a public bathroom and you’d come out knowing her whole history and planning to call her if you ever drove anywhere near Macon, Georgia.
“I hate shopping for clothes,” McKenzie Matthews said. “Maybe you could help me. You seem to have such good taste.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Quincy is the one with the good taste. I just try on what she hands me.”
“Quincy?”
“My friend. She’s waiting outside with Papa and Nicky. Will you excuse me? They’ll want to see me in this dress.”
It was part of the ritual, part of their lovely day of let’s pretend.
When Papa saw her, he got misty-eyed. “You look just like your grandmother. She loved blue, too.”
Elizabeth loved it when Papa compared her to Mae Mae. She was smiling when she returned to the dressing room. The lady in the unbecoming pants suit was still standing in front of the mirror.
“I take it they approved?”
“Yes.”
“I guess you’ll be getting that one, huh?”
“Well ...no.” Elizabeth ducked into her dressing room to avoid further questions, but when she came out again in pink, the woman was still there.
“Can’t make up your mind, huh?” she said.
Sometimes when you meet a stranger you just know in your bones that everything is okay, that you can bear a bit of your soul and still remain safe. That’s how Elizabeth felt now.
“I’ll be honest with you, McKenzie. I’m not here to buy anything. We like to come down here sometimes and pretend we’re rich as kings and can buy anything we want. Nicky has fun playing with the toys and Papa gets all dressed up and acts like he’s fixing to buy out the store and Quincy just gets a kick out of the whole thing.”
“Hey, sounds like harmless fun to me. I guess if you had a million dollars you’d come down here and go on a real spree, huh? That’s what I’d do if I could find something to fit besides this tacky pants suit.”
One of the things Elizabeth had wanted to forget was suddenly there, staring her in the face. Pretending to be somebody she wasn’t lost all its appeal. Elizabeth wanted nothing more than to gather her family and carry them back to the safety of their little house on Vine Street, but she wasn’t about to spoil the fun for everybody else. Quincy hadn’t tried on shoes yet and Papa hadn’t traipsed up and down the jewelry counter deciding what he might have bought for Mae Mae. If she’d lived. If things had been different.
“Look, I’m finished here,” Elizabeth said. “Why don’t I leave these things for you to try on? I won’t be needing them.”
“Headed home, huh?”
“Eventually.” Elizabeth was through telling strangers her business.
“Hey, me too. I’ve got to get home so I can kick my brother’s backside.”
McKenzie Matthews smiled at her, and even reached over and touched Elizabeth’s hand. “You take care of yourself, Elizabeth.”
The strange encounter stayed on Elizabeth’s mind as the rest of the Good-time Gang frolicked through Goldsmith’s. She didn’t believe in chance. Like her grandmother before her, she believed that every encounter was arranged by cosmic forces.
“If you’re open to possibility, you’ll meet many an angel, unaware,” Mae Mae used to tell her, but Papa would always smile and say, “Now, Elizabeth, your Mae Mae meets angels going and coming, but I’ve met a devil or two, myself, and I want you to know the difference.”
Elizabeth was trying, but more often than not she failed. What she needed was the wisdom of Solomon and the sleuthing expertise of Sherlock Holmes. She had an elusive millionaire to find.
o0o
Elizabeth liked cleaning other people’s houses. She enjoyed polishing the silver and imagining what kind of people would gather around the mahogany table for Christmas dinner. While she waxed floors she fantasized about the kind of parties that would be held in the house, the kind of clothes the people would wear, the kind of shoes that would dance over the shiny hardwood.
In the midst of her dusting and waxing and mopping she was privy to the secret lives of others. She would see the gold sequined shoes lying under the bed, forgotten. She’d find an ostrich-plume boa trailing from the pocket of a three-piece Brooks Brothers business suit. Or she might come unexpectedly upon a worn and well-loved teddy bear hiding in the folds of a child’s blanket, and she’d snatch it from certain death in the washing machine.
The people whose houses she cleaned had birds in fancy Victorian cages, dogs with names like Fifi and Randolph and Winstead Wilkins, the Third, and cats who slept on satin pillows and disdained to eat anything except gourmet cat food served on china plates.
Nicky loved the stories she made up starring the various pets and their owners. His favorite was of the suspicious cat Snurly Burly who followed her all over the house spying while she cleaned. Sometimes he would jump out at her from closets or pounce at her from behind potted ferns. Other times he would perch on the highest shelf in the bookcase and twitch his tail in anger while she dusted the book jackets.
Tonight, though, she wouldn’t come home with any stories. She would be cleaning the bank on Lamar. And if the fates were with her, she would be doing some sleuthing.
She buttoned her uniform, then went into the kitchen to say goodbye to her family. Swathed in an apron as big as he was, Nicky stood on a straight-backed chair at the kitchen counter watching Papa measure flour into a wooden mixing bowl his daddy had carved from a lightening-struck oak on their Delta farm.
Fred Lollar hovered nearby.
“Thomas is teaching me to make biscuits,” he boomed when Elizabeth came in. “He thinks he’s Betty Crocker.”
Not to be outdone, Papa shouted, “If old
honey-bun breath here had a lick of sense he’d turn into Mrs. Pillsbury.”
Nicky clapped his hands. “Can I be the doughboy?”
Elizabeth liked Fred. Full of courtly manners and funny stories, he’d won both her and Nicky over on his first visit to their house.
But more than that, she was delighted that after all these years in Memphis Papa finally had somebody his own age to talk to.
“You two behave, now.”
She wrapped her arms around Nicky and lifted him off the chair for a big hug.
“Give me a bye-bye kiss. That’s my boy. You be good, and mind your Papa.”
“Uncle Fred, too?”
“Yes, Uncle Fred, too. He’s an adult and it’s called respect.”
Papa jabbed Fred in the ribs, just in case he hadn’t been paying attention.
“I taught her everything she knows.” He waved a floury hand toward the door. “Shoo. Go on. Get out of here before you’re late. I’ve got biscuits to make.” He jabbed Fred again. “And so have you.”
“You do the cooking,” Fred said. “I’ll do the cleaning. We’ll be the odd couple.”
“You’re going to cook or my name’s not Thomas Jennings.”
“What will your name be, Papa?”
Fred winked at Elizabeth. “Let’s think of one, Nicky. How about Elmer Fudd?”
“Who’s Elmer Fudge?”
Elizabeth waved goodbye to the lively trio. The sounds of their good-natured bickering drifted through the screened door as she climbed into her Valiant and headed to work.
Quincy was waiting for her at the bank.
“Ready to shake, rattle and roll, girl friend?” Quincy yelled.
“You bet.”
Five foot nine in her stocking feet, with hands the size of Virginia hams and a heart the size of Texas, Quincy never spoke in anything less than a sustained shout. She had eight grown children and fifteen grandchildren. She’d buried more husbands than she could keep track of, or so she said, she was older than the Tennessee hills, also her saying, and she’d given Elizabeth a job when nobody else in Memphis would.
Not only had Quincy rescued her, she’d befriended her. Quincy was boss, mother, grandmother and friend to Elizabeth.
After tonight, all that could end.
Quincy showed the security guard her identification, as if she needed to. Nobody who had ever seen her was likely to forget Quincy.
As Elizabeth followed her inside, she felt like Judas.
“Hmmmunh, it smells like money in here.” Quincy laughed, flashing her gold teeth. “If I wasn’t as honest as old Abe himself I’d be on easy street.”
Elizabeth began to gather her supplies. “What would you do if you were on Easy Street, Quincy?”
“Get me a TV so big you could see it from here to the Arkansas state line, stock my refrigerator with Michelob Light and watch the sports network till my eyes bugged out.”
“You must really love sports.”
“It’s not sports I’m interested in, honey. It’s all the hunks in their tight-fitting pants.”
Elizabeth thought of the million dollar check lying in the bottom of her cookie jar. If she cashed it, she could make Quincy’s modest dream come true.
And Papa’s. Although he would die swearing he didn’t want a farm, she knew that every day of his life he missed his land. She could see it in the way he looked at the trees in other people’s neighborhoods. She could see it in the way he would stand in the back yard after a rain, sniffing the air as if the water-soaked earth carried messages that only he could understand. She could see it in the secret stash of brochures he’d collected from John Deere, slick color layouts that featured tractors he must have dreamed about years ago when he was plowing his patch of Delta earth with a mule.
Then there was Nicky...
It would be so simple to solve all their problems, give them their dreams. All she had to do was cash the check. Then she would be on easy street, herself.
But at what cost?
“What’s the matter, hon? You look like somebody’s walked over your grave.”
“I’m just fidgety, I guess, Quincy. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”
“You want to talk about it?”
Quincy was the balm in Gilead and Elizabeth, the open, aching wound. Like any woman worth her salt she longed to bare her soul to this big-hearted woman who would not only listen without judging but would smother her in a life-affirming hug that would lift Elizabeth’s spirits for days.
But how could she tell her best friend that she was planning to do something that might land them all in jail? She couldn’t, of course, so she did the next best thing. Pretend. A defense Southern women had elevated to an art.
“I’ll come over to your house sometime and we’ll have tea, just like the Queen of England,” Elizabeth said. “Meanwhile, the music is playing and Dancing with the Stars is calling me on the phone.”
She waltzed around with her mop till Quincy was laughing so hard she had to lean against the bank vault and hold her sides.
“Quit that. You’ve made me wet my britches. I’m gonna have to make a detour by the bathroom before I tackle the president’s office.”
Quincy left and the door to opportunity swung wide open. Or was it the door to destruction?
Alone in the cavernous room with a terminal sitting on every desk, Elizabeth broke out in a nervous sweat. She’d never in her life done anything illegal, not even drive over the speed limit or slide through a traffic light that was just turning red. And here she was in the bank contemplating a life of crime.
Not merely contemplating. She was going to do it. She had to do it, for Nicky’s sake.
The million-dollar check had come from this bank. If she could hack into the computers and discover the identity of the donor, she could confront him and find out why he had sent the check to her.
Setting aside her mop and bucket, Elizabeth slid into the desk that belonged to Marjorie Mullins, according the nameplate. A graduation picture of a pretty girl in a cheap red plastic frame stood beside the nameplate. Elizabeth could tell by her smile that she knew everything there was to know about life’s possibilities and not the first thing about its disappointments.
She turned the picture face down, then powered up the computer. Her fingers flew over the keys. She’d known her way through cyberspace since she was eight years old and had been allowed to tinker with the computer at Tunica Baptist Church while her mother vacuumed the gold carpet that had split the congregation in two. The old timers held out for wood floors while the newcomers lobbied for carpet. The newcomers had won. They had the most money on their side.
Sweat beaded her lips as all the Tunica Baptists rose up to haunt her. Every Sunday Miss Bethany Cliburn would herd the six-year-olds into class and pronounce in a voice that sounded like Doom, “Avoid even the appearance of evil.”
Conscience-stung, Elizabeth jerked her hands off the keyboard and glanced around to see if anybody was watching. Not a soul was in sight. A moon the size of a hoop of cheese shone through the glass double doors. The sidewalk outside the bank was empty. Not even the stray cat that liked to prowl around when she and Quincy came to clean was in sight.
What were the laws concerning hackers? Severe, she was certain, and getting more so every day.
A vision of herself sitting in a prison cell while Nicky cried himself to sleep at night and Papa hung his head in shame floated into Elizabeth’s mind. She was going to become a convict at the age of twenty-four. Nicky would not only be laughed at in school, he’d carry the extra burden of having a mother who was a jailbird.
Elizabeth got so dizzy she laid her head on the desk to keep from fainting. With the computer screen still glowing, she went to the nearby fountain and splashed her face with cold water.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered.
She would turn off the computer and get her mop and do the job she was hired to do, and when she got home she would tear the check to pieces. With
her hand on the power button, she paused.
All of a sudden one of those memories that scars the soul and causes the heart to bleed revisited her. She’d been in the ice cream shop on Poplar with Nicky and Papa. Going there was a Saturday ritual for them, a small pleasure that lit Nicky’s face and didn’t do major damage to Elizabeth’s pocketbook.
Standing on tiptoe he’d pressed his face against the glass display case in big-eyed wonder. Then he moved from one end to the other saying wow in his little awe-struck voice that made Elizabeth feel young again, young and so full of exuberance and anticipation she felt that she might be air-borne at any minute.
Leaving fingerprints and nose prints on the glass, he’d turned a shining face their way. “What are you having, Papa?”
“I can’t decide. Why don’t you help me, then you can have a bite of mine.”
“And you can have some of mine.” Nicky jumped up and down, a marionette boy on strings. “We’ll share.”
“Good boy. All right. What will it be?”
“Stwabewwy, Papa. I want stwabewwy.”
Neither of them had heard the shop bell tinkle. Neither saw the woman in designer sunglasses and the little girl in blue shorts staring at them. But everybody heard what the child said.
“That kid with the ugly lip talks funny. What’s wrong with him, Mama?”
The mother could have said I’m sorry then quietly ordered her ice cream. She could have shushed her child discreetly then gone about her business. She could have ignored the comment that hung like lightning between them, the stench of burning still in Elizabeth’s nostrils.
Instead she brayed with laughter that nearly two weeks later still echoed in Elizabeth’s dreams.
“Kids,” she’d said. “They’re so honest.”
And so very cruel.
With his face pinched white, Nicky ordered his ice cream while Papa muttered for Elizabeth’s ears only, “Somebody ought to teach her some manners,” meaning the mother, not the child.
The only mention Nicky ever made of the incident was that evening after Elizabeth read his bedtime story and prepared to listen to his prayers.
