Mama Gets Hitched (9 page)

I raced through a
yellow-turning-red traffic light on Main Street. A pothole loomed. I swerved to miss it. The Jeep zoomed past the Dairy Queen on the left; Pete’s Pawn Shop on the right. An
eeeeek
sounded from the passenger seat.

“My stars and garters, Mace! Would you please slow down? You know you’re not Dale Earnhardt, may he rest in peace.”

I eased off the gas. Mama had a point. I do love to go fast.

“Thank you.” She unclenched her hands from the dashboard and settled back into her seat. “Now, what do you think we should do about Alice?”

Mama had asked me to pick her up after work at Hair Today, Dyed Tomorrow, and then go with her to look in on Ronnie’s widow.

“I’m not sure there’s anything we can do, Mama. Her husband’s just been murdered. She’s going to need time to deal with that. The best we can offer is to let her know we care.”

Mama angled the rearview mirror toward her, so she could repair her wind-blown hair. As she fluffed and straightened, I said, “Trying to drive with no mirror is a lot more dangerous than going a few miles over the speed limit.”

“Try thirty miles. You were doing at least fifty-five when you blew through that red light, Mace.”

“Yellow light.” I turned the rearview back. “Why can’t you just use the mirror on your visor?”

She reached into her purse for her compact. “That stingy, cloudy thing? It won’t give me the full effect.”

I looked at her platinum-hued ’do. It was smashed on one side, swirled into some kind of circle on the other, and standing up in spikes on the top of her head. It looked like she’d come under attack by a badger bearing styling mousse and a teasing comb.

“Sometimes you don’t want the full effect,” I said.

Even though I slowed down, we still made it to Mama’s in no time. Downtown Himmarshee, such as it is, is only three miles from her house on Strawberry Lane. Pulling into the driveway, I could see the porch light on next door at Alice’s. It was just five-thirty p.m., and still sunny. The light had probably been burning since the police processed her porch last night.

The drapes were drawn in the front windows. The day had been hot, and Alice’s flowers wilted in their gaily colored pots. Mama’s gaze followed mine to her neighbor’s home.

“Looks sad, doesn’t it?” she said. “What is it about a house after someone dies? You can almost imagine that somehow it feels the loss, too.”

I wasn’t sure about that. But the house definitely looked empty. Alice’s car was likely still at the VFW. I hadn’t thought yesterday to look behind the hall to see if Ronnie’s truck was parked in the back near the kitchen. I’d have to ask C’ndee if she saw it when she rushed in late to meet us. Come to think of it, there were quite a few questions I wanted to ask C’ndee.

Mama’s compact clicked shut, bringing my mind back to the present.

“You ready, Mama?”

When we got to Alice’s front door, I knocked softly at first. We could hear the TV blaring, even though the windows were closed and the air conditioning unit hummed next to the porch. When there was no answer, I knocked a little harder.

“Nobody home,” a woman’s voice called from inside. “Go ’way.”

Mama and I looked at each other.

“Alice, honey, is that you?” Leaning forward, Mama yelled into the crack at the edge of the door. “I’m here with my middle daughter, Mace.”

A couple of moments passed. Then the TV volume went down. “S’open. C’mon in, Ros’lee.”

As soon as we stepped into the house’s dark maw, the smell of hard liquor hit me like a fist to the face. A half-empty bottle of bourbon sat on a high counter in a dim shaft of kitchen light. Alice slouched in a recliner in the living room, illuminated by the blue glow of an ancient rerun of
Law & Order
. The guy who played Mr. Big in
Sex and the City
was still a cocky young Detective Logan with the NYPD.

Alice let out a snuffling sob.

“Oh, honey!” Mama hurried to her side.

“I’m all right, Ros’lee.”

Mama hesitated just a second before she laid a hand on Alice’s shoulder. I had to credit her for not letting her face show the shock she surely felt at her neighbor’s appearance. Bits of brown-looking food and what smelled like bourbon made a trail of stains on Alice’s ratty pink robe. Her hair was limp and greasy. The bathrobe gaped open, revealing Alice wasn’t wearing anything but Alice underneath.

“Mace, honey, why don’t you go see if you can rustle us up some coffee?”

With Alice now staring blankly at the TV screen, Mama jerked her head twice toward the kitchen. I got the message.

I might have been resentful that she sent me on an errand while she got down to the business of comforting Alice. But the truth is I’m awful at emotion. Mama and Marty are the ones with the gift. Maddie usually manages to give offense when she thinks she’s offering comfort. And I just clam up, as tongue-tied as a fifth-grade boy trying to talk to his first crush.

Alice could definitely use some coffee, and I was happy to have something useful to do. Her coffeemaker was on the counter, and the paper filters in the cupboard overhead. As I hunted around the kitchen for cups and spoons, I heard Mama murmuring in the next room, urging Alice out of the chair.

“Honey, you’ll feel so much better once we get you into a shower.”

Soon, the coffee was brewing. Steps sounded from the living room. One set was light; the other heavy. I knew Mama was helping her into the bedroom, because I’d hear the two of them stumble slightly every so often. I probably should have assisted, but my face burned at the memory of that gaping robe. Seeing Alice emotionally naked was somehow even worse.

Her bathroom must have been right behind the kitchen. I was relieved when I heard the water running through the wall.

While I waited, I straightened up, trying to make myself useful. I washed a few dishes; tossed away a paper plate half-filled with brown, crusted-over franks and beans. Opening blinds and turning on lights, I headed back to the dining room where I’d seen the bottle of booze.

Alice was devout, and we’d always believed she didn’t approve of drinking. If she’d slipped, the fact that someone had butchered her husband was a pretty good excuse. I figured I’d put the bourbon away anyway, take away temptation. If she wasn’t accustomed to liquor, drinking the remaining half might kill her.

As I stepped up to the counter, my boot hit something solid. Three cardboard boxes were shoved underneath, lined up against the wall. I glanced toward the closed bedroom door.

Darryl Dietz’s voice replayed in my head, accusing me of being a nosy bitch. While I resented the second part of that description, I had to admit he had a point with the first. I opened the flaps on the closest box.

A brown-checkered sport coat lay atop a jumble of men’s clothing. I remembered Ronnie wearing that jacket last summer to a prayer breakfast at the VFW. The next box contained big, heavy men’s shoes.

I peeked over my shoulder. The door was still closed.

I opened the last box, crammed full of framed photos. Right on top was a picture of Ronnie and Alice, young and smiling. Their hands were clasped together on a gleaming silver knife, poised to carve the first slice from their wedding cake.

I laid the picture on the carpet. Quietly, I extracted another: Ronnie, fishing in Taylor Creek. The next one showed him at the counter of the Home on the Range Feed Store and Clothing Emporium, before his injury. He’d worked there until a pallet of feed bags toppled onto him. Beneath that picture was a cap-and-gowned Ronnie, shaking hands at a podium and holding a high school diploma.

Except for that one wedding photo with Alice, all the shots were of Ronnie. Cross-legged on the floor with framed pictures all around, I was pondering how one box can sum a man’s life. But what of the moments a camera didn’t capture? A box of those memories might reveal a different life.

“Finding what you need, Mace?”

Mama’s sharp voice made me jump. I tried to keep the guilty look off my face.

“What are you doing messing around in there?” Alice looked less drunk now than angry.

“I … Uhmmm.” There really was no excuse. “I just wondered what was in the boxes.” Alice stalked to the counter, and bent to close the flaps on the first two cartons. She held out her hands. “I’ll take those.”

“Sorry.” I gathered up the pictures and handed them over.

Mama shot me a dirty look. Alice slammed framed photos back in the box. I hoped the glass wouldn’t shatter with the force, just because she was mad that I was a nosy bitch.

_____

“My, that coffee smells good!”

Mama’s cheery words dropped like stones into the strained silence. We’d left the scene of my crime to sit at Alice’s kitchen table. I traced a border of morning glories on a blue plastic placemat. Alice stared at the refrigerator. Following her gaze, I saw she’d forgotten to pluck one last picture of Ronnie from underneath a magnet on the door.

“I’m …”

“Thank …”

Alice and I started to speak at the same time. Our eyes met, and both of us looked away.

“Honey, we’re guests in your home. Why don’t you go first?” Mama patted Alice’s hands, which were folded in the prayer position on her placemat.

“I was going to say thank you, Mace, for making the coffee.”

“And I was going to say I’m sorry for looking through your personal things. I don’t know what got into me.”

“I didn’t raise her that way,” Mama sniffed.

Alice sipped from the cup I poured, gave a little shrug.

The television still droned in the next room. But in the kitchen, it was so quiet I could hear a clock shaped like a blue teapot ticking on the wall. Air whooshed from a ceiling AC vent, rustling blue-checked curtains above the sink. Mama’s spoon clinked against her cup as she stirred her coffee. Finally, Alice gave a long sigh.

“I suppose y’all are wondering why Ronnie’s things are packed up.”

Mama’s eyes met mine over our coffee cups. “Well, now that you mention it, honey.”

Alice raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I know it’s strange, but then everything has seemed strange since Ronnie died. This morning, when I came home from your place, Rosalee, I saw him everywhere I looked in here. The more I saw, the more I remembered how he died.”

She rubbed her eyes. “I got those boxes from the shed, and started throwing in anything of his I could find. The more I drank, the better an idea it seemed.”

“What idea was that?” I asked.

“That if I could only get rid of all those reminders, maybe Ronnie wasn’t really dead. Maybe his murder was just a dream.”

She lifted her face to us, eyes brimming with tears. “It didn’t work, you know?” Her voice was as small as a child’s. “I filled three boxes and Ronnie’s still dead.”

Alice’s tears splattered onto
her placemat, watering the morning glory border. I felt like a heel. Not only had I invaded the poor woman’s privacy with those boxes of clothes and pictures, I’d brought on another round of crying.

“I thought maybe you were mad at Ronnie. I remember after I caught my old boyfriend Jeb with another girl, I packed up all the souvenirs I’d saved of him riding rodeo and tossed them in the trash.”

“That’s hardly the same thing, Mace.” Mama sneered at me. “You’re comparing a lying boyfriend to a murdered husband. Did you misplace your manners somewhere in that crazy drive over here?”

I hadn’t told Mama yet about Darryl, or his stepson’s claim that C’ndee jilted him for a caterer in Himmarshee. I was trying to find a roundabout way to discover if Ronnie had been cheating on Alice. Even I knew asking a new widow such a bald question was out of bounds.

To my surprise, Alice’s face softened into a smile. “It’s all right, Rosalee. I can tell you both that Ronnie wasn’t perfect. He slept on the couch a time or two over the years. Then again, I’m no angel, either. Aside from a few spats, though, I’d say we had a pretty good union.”

Mama patted Alice’s hand. “Honey, every marriage has its ups and downs.”

“She should know,” I said to Alice. “Sal will be Mama’s No. 5.”

“Ronnie was my one-and-only. We were just kids when we got married.”

I flashed on that picture of them cutting their wedding cake, eyes shining with youth and happiness. What an awful end to what began with such promise for Alice and Ronnie.

The dreamy smile still lit Alice’s face. But between the
café con leche grande
from work, and now this cup at Alice’s, I needed to use the facilities. Urgently.

“Could I please use your bathroom?” With stellar timing, I barged into what might have been Alice’s only happy thought of the day.

Mama glared at me as Alice’s smile slipped away. “Help yourself.”

I didn’t want her to think I was snooping again, so I avoided her bedroom and master bath. Plus, I didn’t relish the thought of them sitting and sipping coffee as I was answering nature’s call on the other side of the kitchen wall. I found a dark hallway to the guest bath.

When I finished up and opened the door, bright light spilled into the hall. Some pictures were grouped on the wall, with lots of faded spots where Ronnie’s photos must have hung. I wasn’t being nosy. I was just passing by.

Alice posed for one photo in front of a flat, rural landscape with a silo on the horizon. No puffy clouds or sabal palms. It didn’t appear to be Florida. There was another of her with an elderly couple dressed in worn work clothes. The man looked stern, and the woman, tired. Her parents? The picture next to that was of Alice on her wedding day. She’s a plain woman, but she was radiant that day, like all brides. I leaned in to see if I could spot any tulle on her dress, now that I know what it is.

That’s when I noticed the frame was too big for the picture. Alice stood in a side view, smiling and extending her arms. But a jagged rip down the center of the picture cut off her hands at the wrists. Mama had made me stare at enough wedding photos in magazines that I recognized that side-angle shot. The right half of the photo was gone, the position that always belongs to the groom.

For the moment, I decided to just tuck the sight of that mutilated photo away in my mind. I returned to the kitchen just in time to hear the end of a question from Mama.

“… do about Ronnie’s business?”

I hoped she wasn’t asking Alice if she’d be up to feeding one-hundred-fifty guests by Saturday.

When Alice didn’t answer, Mama quickly said, “Of course, you don’t need to decide anything yet, honey.”

Alice stared into her coffee. “I never wanted Ronnie to start Pig-Out Barbecue and Catering. Just because you love to eat doesn’t mean you should open a restaurant, I told him.”

I slid into my chair. “Ronnie surely did love food,” I said. “I remember him at that prayer breakfast last summer. Before we discovered Mama was in trouble, he was eyeing that buffet like a beggar at a banquet.”

Alice’s dreamy smile resurfaced, which made me feel good. “Remember how big he got after he got hurt at the feed store?”

“ ‘Fatter than a fixed dog,’ I think is how Ronnie put it,” I said.

“And then he managed to take off all that extra weight,” Mama said. “Maybe Maddie should try whatever diet Ronnie went on.”

Alice shook her head. “Maddie wouldn’t want to do that. Ronnie’s weight dropped from sheer worry over that catering business. I tried to tell him we could get along fine with him collecting disability, but he wouldn’t listen. He thought all that new money moving into Himmarshee Links was going to make him a millionaire.”

“So that’s why he started the business?” I asked.

Lining up her spoon in the center of a napkin, she nodded. “And proceeded to pour nearly everything we had into it.”

“So Pig-Out wasn’t a success?” Mama asked.

Alice’s laugh was short, mirthless. “Hardly. Ronnie was at his wit’s end. Pig-Out was running through money like green grass through a goose.”

I thought back to what Carlos had said about Ronnie not being what he seemed. Could the failing business be what he meant? I knew Mama thought Ronnie was a success: She’d told me often enough she and Sal were paying a premium price for the best. And, according to Darryl’s stepson, C’ndee had also believed Ronnie to be a prosperous businessman.

Who else had been misled about Pig-Out? And how had they taken to being lied to?

_____

The crickets tuned up for their evening concert. The sun sank low on the horizon, painting the dusk with fingers of purple and rose. It had rained while we were inside at Alice’s, and the grass and the leaves on the oak trees glistened.

I took a deep breath of the fresh-scrubbed air. It felt good to be out of that house, with its dark rooms and reminders of death. It felt good to be alive. Why is it in the sympathy we feel when someone dies that there’s also a tiny voice inside that says “Thank God it’s not me?”

“Mace, you’re ringing!”

“What?”

Mama pointed to my purse. “And try not to be rude. You’re already on a losing streak.”

I fumbled, found the cell, and answered just as I imagined voice mail would be picking up.

“Yeah?” I said, unsure if there was even a caller there.

“Telephone manners!” Mama hissed.

“Is this Mace Bauer?” The voice on the phone was pure Ivy League.

“It is. Who’s calling …” And then, for Mama’s benefit I added “… please?”

“Anthony Ciancio.”

I’d thought as much, but I liked to hear him talk. He was the culture to his Aunt C’ndee’s clash.

“Tony!” Eyes on Mama, I put a big smile in my voice. “How nice to hear from you. Everything okay with the Ciancio clan?”

Mama lifted an eyebrow. I listened, and then repeated what he said to get her goat.

“So you think Mama and your aunt have gotten off on the wrong foot. They’re so alike, you say, that they’re really two peas in the same pod?”

Mama’s face darkened.

“You want to take all of us out to dinner? Well, isn’t that nice.”

Mama’s head ricocheted from side to side. She mouthed an emphatic
No!

“Oh, yes. I agree. Dinner
is
the perfect way to get C’ndee and Mama back on the right track.”

Now Mama was grasping for the phone. I ducked and wove, keeping just out of her reach.

“You’re absolutely right, Tony. We’re all going to be family; and there’s nothing more important than family. In fact, my mother’s here with me right now.”

Mama put a pretend gun to her head, dramatically pulling the pretend trigger.

“Oh, no, we’re just shooting the breeze. You’re not interrupting.” I listened. “Well, if you don’t mind me suggesting,” I said sweetly, “then the Speckled Perch probably serves the best dinner in town.”

My mouth watered at the thought of fried fish with grits, hot dinner rolls, and collard greens. Mama mimed tying a noose around her neck.

“Well, she’s a little tied up right now. But I’ll tell her you extended a personal invite. Oh, yes, we’ll be ready. You’ll pick us up at Mama’s house. In an hour? Great!”

Mama made like she was tightening the rope, rolled her eyes back in her head, and stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth.

“Oh, yes,” I told Tony. “Mama is definitely looking forward to it. In fact, she’s grinning from ear to ear right now.”