Still and all, I’m stuck with the conviction that men, as a general rule, can’t be trusted as far as you can throw them. And I speak from painful experience.
I raised my head as I heard Hazel Marie’s car pull in the driveway and, in a few minutes, she came through the back door, shrugging out of her raincoat. It was a wonder to me how much better she looked the older she got. Not that she was all that old, forty-something being an enviable age from my vantage point, but I’m talking about comparisions to what she looked like before she had the wherewithal to purchase suitable clothes and have her hair professionally done. Which was what she’d been doing that morning.
I smiled at her as she stuck her umbrella in the stand. “Your hair looks very nice, Hazel Marie.” And it did, the highlighted streaks of blonde on blonde shone in the overhead kitchen lights. “Velma is finally learning how to do it right.”
Hazel Marie pulled out a chair at the table and immediately began to fold towels, since I’d fallen down on the job. “Miss Julia, you’ll never believe what I heard at the beauty parlor.”
“There’s no telling. What?”
“Well, oh, I’m sorry, Lillian,” she said. “I didn’t even speak to you, which just shows how stunned I am. I’m so full of the latest gossip that I can’t think of anything else.”
Lillian laughed, her gold tooth flashing. “Gossip do that to you sometime. ’Specially if it real good gossip.”
“Well, this is as good as it gets.” Hazel Marie took a deep breath, trying to calm herself before imparting her news. “Miss Julia, guess who’s having an affair.”
“I don’t have any idea and, Hazel Marie, if you heard it at Velma’s, you ought to consider the source.”
“Oh, I do, but everybody’s talking about it. I mean, out loud and everything. This wasn’t something whispered and speculated about. It was told as a fact, because she’s been seen coming out of the Mountaintop Motel.”
“Well, my word,” I said, drawn into the story in spite of my natural aversion to gossip, having suffered considerable anguish myself from wagging tongues. “Who?”
Hazel Marie leaned across the table, smiling with the assurance that she was going to shock me good. “Miss High and Mighty, Norma Cantrell, herself.”
“No!” I reared back in my chair, suitably shocked. Norma Cantrell was our Presbyterian pastor’s secretary, and she ran his office like a third world dictator. I’d never had much use for her, but the pastor thought she hung the moon. “That can’t be true.” Then I thought about it, rubbing my fingers across my mouth. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be. It was Mildred Allen who saw her at the Mountaintop.”
“Well, I say.” That iced the cake for me, until I thought of something else. “And what was Mildred Allen doing there?”
“Collecting for some fund or another,” Hazel Marie said. “She had to go twice. They kept putting her off and still didn’t donate a thing. That’s a pretty ratty motel, from what I hear. A perfect getaway place if you don’t want people to know what you’re doing or who you’re doing it with. Of course, Norma didn’t expect anybody she knew to be there. Velma said that Mildred said she didn’t think Norma saw her because she hid behind a laurel bush when Norma came out of one of the rooms. And not once, but both times Mildred was there.” Hazel Marie stopped and thought about it. “I expect it was a pretty big laurel bush, considering Mildred’s size. But, anyway, Norma thinks it’s still a secret.”
“Well, now, Hazel Marie, there could be a perfectly innocent explanation, you know.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she has a sick friend.”
“At a place like that?”
“It does sound suspicious, and I’ll admit I’m not all that surprised. Norma’s always struck me as having more going on underneath than she lets on.”
“Yes,” Hazel Marie said, “but it’s hard to imagine that she’d get involved in a seedy affair since she’s so particular about everything.”
“Norma’s been divorced almost all her life,” I told her, as Lillian came to the table with cups and the coffee pot. She liked a little spate of gossip as well as the next person. “The way I heard it, she married right out of high school, but hardly a year later, her husband ran off with their next-door neighbor. Norma’s been living off sympathy ever since. People think her heart was broken and that she’ll never recover, but this just goes to show, doesn’t it? So who is she supposed to be seeing at the Mountaintop?”
Hazel Marie smiled. “You’ll never guess.”
“Just tell me, Hazel Marie,” I said. “I can’t imagine who’d even be interested in her. Her husband certainly wasn’t.”
“Well, nobody knows for sure, but the Honorable Clifford Beebee was mentioned. Can you believe that?”
“My word,” I said again, mumbling it this time as I tried to absorb this turn of events. “If this gets out, Clifford Beebee’s political career is over in this town. To say nothing of his marriage, because I don’t believe Gladys’ll put up with it.”
“Sound like to me it already got out,” Lillian said, as she stirred sugar into her coffee. “But that man been mayor so long, he pro’bly think he b’long there.”
“You’re right about that, Lillian,” I agreed. “Nobody’s been willing to run against him for ever so long, so he probably thinks he can get away with anything.”
“Well, not this time,” Hazel Marie said. “Because I heard that Bill Denby’s going to go up against him in the primary this spring. You know him, don’t you? He’s the service manager at the Chevrolet dealership. Somebody said his campaign slogan’s going to be ‘Fix It and Run It,’ which is what he says the town needs, just like a car. Mayor Beebee just might get taken down a notch or two, considering how high-handed he is.”
“I should say, high-handed. Why, it’s gotten so that none of the commissioners dares do anything without his say-so. At least, that’s what I hear. I’m not all that politically minded, myself. But what I want to know is why the mayor’s name is being linked to Norma’s? Did Mildred see him, too?”
“No, but she saw his car,” Hazel Marie said, her eyes dancing with the image that produced. “You know that big ole thing he drives? You can’t miss it, and everybody knows it. It was parked right outside the room, and Velma said that Mildred said that she waited as long as she could after Norma left to see if he’d come out of the room, too. But she had to go to the bathroom real bad and couldn’t wait any longer.
“But,” Hazel Marie went on, a smile playing around her mouth. “You haven’t heard it all yet.”
“I don’t think I can stand much more. What else are they saying under the hair dryers?”
She put her hand on my arm and said, “Now, I’m not sure I believe this, but here goes. When Velma was combing me out, she whispered that there’s talk going around about
Emma Sue Ledbetter.
”
“
What!
With the mayor?” I was stunned, having no idea that the mayor was man enough for two women plus his wife.
“No, no,” Hazel Marie said, patting my arm. “I’ve changed subjects.”
“Well,” I said with some relief that our preacher’s wife was not linked with another man. “Thank goodness.”
I knew that Emma Sue would no more make herself a topic of this kind of gossip than she would fly. Although, as I thought about it, she had been trying out her wings a little here lately.
“Besides,” Hazel Marie went on, “Norma’s got the mayor all tied up. At least, I guess she has. A few other names were mentioned in connection with hers, so nobody knows for sure who all she’s catting around with. But what I wanted to tell you is that Velma said that Emma Sue made an appointment to have a complete makeover. And I’m talking hair color, makeup, everything.”
“No!” I scrunched up a bath towel in my hands, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Hazel Marie, that is more unbelievable than Norma Cantrell traipsing around in a motel room. Are you sure?”
“Velma showed me her appointment book because I couldn’t believe it myself. And there it was, Emma Sue Ledbetter, Thursday at seven P.M. Velma’s doing her a favor by taking her after hours, so nobody’ll be there with her.”
“Pour me some more coffee, Lillian,” I said, holding out my cup, more shaken with this item than I’d been to hear about the preacher’s secretary. The preacher’s wife, on the other hand, was known far and wide for her outspoken views on the value of a woman’s natural beauty. Which to me meant the way you look when you first get up in the morning, and as far as I was concerned, every woman in the world needed a little help.
“Why?” I asked. “Why would Emma Sue suddenly want to make herself over? Why, Hazel Marie, you remember when she criticized you for wearing eye shadow? And I’ve heard her say many a time that since there’ll be no Avon or Mary Kay products in heaven, women ought to get themselves prepared to do without down here. And she can get downright vicious on the subject of lipstick.” I stopped and smoothed out the towel. “Wonder what’s come over her?”
“Velma thinks Emma Sue may be having an affair, herself,” Hazel Marie said, which nearly shocked me out of my chair.
“The preacher’s wife! Hazel Marie, what a thing to say. No, not Emma Sue Ledbetter, no way in the world would she do such a thing.”
“Well, all I know is that when a woman’s thinking about it, the first thing she does is buy new underwear. And getting a new look may be along the same line.”
Lillian started laughing then. “Law me, I never heard the like.”
“One thing’s for sure, though,” Hazel Marie said, “if she starts using makeup, she’s going to have to do something about all that crying she does. Her face’ll be a mess if she starts overflowing. Can you imagine?”
“I certainly can,” I said, recalling Emma Sue’s tendency to cloud up and cry whenever she got her feelings hurt, which seemed to be about all the time. “Well, Hazel Marie, I don’t know what’s going on in this town, but we’d do well not to repeat any of this.” I thought about it for a few minutes, then went on. “Of course, I’ll have to tell Sam, and I know you’ll tell Mr. Pickens, but that’s all. Lillian, you won’t tell anybody, will you?”
“No’m, I’m right bad to listen, but I don’t do much passin’ on.” She got up and checked the cakes in the oven, then came back to the table. “Sound like to me, though, that they a awful lot of people not real happy with what they got an’ they out lookin’ for what they like a whole lot better.”
=
Chapter 2’
Well, wasn’t that the truth. Which is exactly what I said to Sam as I told him the latest beauty parlor news when he made his usual visit that night. It had become our custom to retire to the living room after supper while Lillian and Little Lloyd watched television upstairs. I could occasionally hear their laughter floating down the stairs, a matter of comfort to me when Sam became exceptionally amorous. Not that he was anything but a gentleman, but there was always the unnerving possibility that things would get out of hand.
I mention that we had the living room to ourselves because we had in effect displaced Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens. Before Sam had come up with the idea of marriage and begun showing up at my house everytime I turned around, the living room had belonged to Hazel Marie and that black-eyed Mr. Pickens. If I let myself think about it, I expect I would’ve had to replace my Duncan Phyfe sofa.
But now that we had claimed the sofa, Hazel Marie and Mr. Pickens had to find another courting place. I think they went to his house where they could have some privacy. But I never asked, not particularly wanting to know what they did nor where they did it.
“Well, what do you know,” Sam said, momentarily side-tracked from inching across the sofa to where I was sitting. “Norma and Clifford. Hard to picture that.” He shook his head, smiling at the thought. “Who’d ever guess those two would ever get together. Total opposites, I’d say.”
“So would I. But, Sam, it might not even be the mayor. From what Hazel Marie heard at the beauty shop, it could be somebody else Norma’s been meeting. All we have to go on is the big baby-blue Cadillac parked outside the room she came out of, although there’s not another one like it in town.”
“I’d say that pretty well confirms it,” Sam said, a lazy smile on his face. “Although, who knows, Clifford could’ve been discussing campaign tactics with her. Maybe he’s going to offer her a job.”
“In a motel room? No, there’s only one reason anybody would sneak around in such a place as the Mountaintop. The only question is who she’s sneaking around with. Although, far be it from me to engage in speculation.” I rested my hand on the sofa between us to preserve a little space. “I wonder if the pastor knows what she’s up to.”
Sam put his hand on mine and said, “I doubt he’d believe it if he saw them himself. He thinks Norma’s the perfect secretary because she’s a good organizer and runs interference for him all the time.”
“She certainly does that. Hazel Marie called her particular about things. I’d call her downright peculiar. Everything has to be just right and in its place. I mean, just look at that hair of hers. Not a strand out of place and teased within an inch of its life. I just can’t imagine her in the throes of passion enough to mess it up.”
“Not like us, Julia,” Sam said, picking up my hand so he could slide a little closer. “We don’t mind getting messed up in the throes of passion, do we?”
“Now, Sam . . . ,” I said, trying to get back my hand. If the man thought our sedate courting constituted the throes of passion, he was in a bad way.
He laughed. “Everybody says we were made for each other. And speaking of hair, nobody’s turned a single one since we got together.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call us together, if you’re comparing us to what Norma and the mayor, or whoever, are up to.” I scooted closer to the arm of the sofa. “You won’t catch me going in and out of a motel room with a married man. Or an unmarried one, for that matter.”
“Oh, come on, Julia,” he said, cocking his head to one side. “You wouldn’t go in and out of a motel room with me? Of course, if I ever got you in one, you might not ever get out.”