A Forever Thing (12 page)

“No, but the guy who teaches Sunday school with me was out
driving around and stopped by for a glass of tea. He shut Granny’s
door for me,” Fancy said.

“Marry that man. If he’s brave enough to do that, he can protect
you forever,” Gwen said.

“He’s a self-avowed bachelor now until his dying breath.” Fancy
giggled. It was good to hear her mother’s voice.

“Then you’re okay?” Gwen asked.

“I’m fine. Please tell me you are too,” Fancy said.

“I’m horrible, but I’ll be fine once this all settles,” Gwen said.

“Momma, why would a man blurt out of thin air that he’d been
married for six months and that he would never marry again?
Theron Warren, the man I told you about, the one who teaches
Sunday school with me, did that tonight.”

“That the same man who tried to arrest you for drunk driving?
The same one who wants you out of his Sunday school class? The
same one who didn’t hire you at the school?” Gwen asked.

“The very one.”

“He’s drawn to you, girl.”

“Theron? I don’t think so. It was just so strange. Maybe some
strange, eerie thing happened when he looked into Granny’s room
and made him say things he had no intention of saying out loud,”
Fancy said.

“Looking in there did the same thing to you, didn’t it?”

“I’ll have Tandy clean out that room,” Fancy mused aloud.

“Or burn the house to the ground. She wanted to be cremated.
We could do the same with the house”

“But then where would the ladies go for hair-fixin’ days? I
reckon we’d better sell it to a beauty operator they all like.”

“Good luck. Go to sleep. Isn’t tomorrow a workday?”

Fancy groaned. She’d forgotten that the ladies would arrive
midmorning.

“Thank you, Fancy,” Gwen said.

“I love you, Momma.”

Fancy shut her eyes but was wide awake at six o’clock. She
turned off the air conditioner in the bedroom and turned on the
one in the living room. She put on a pot of coffee and poured a cup
before it was finished dripping and carried it to the front porch.
Was it truly just twenty-four hours ago that she and the girls were
in Abilene shopping?

She wore a pair of red boxer shorts with white hearts on them
that Gwen had given her the previous Valentine’s Day and a purple
nightshirt with a big yellow smiley face on the front. Her hair hung
in sweaty strands around a face that didn’t have a drop of makeup
applied to it.

It was going to be another hot day. Already the thermometer on
the porch read eighty-five degrees, and the sun was barely over the
horizon. She made a mental note to go directly to the beauty shop
and get the air conditioner going so the ladies wouldn’t swelter.

She turned when she heard the crunch of tires on gravel. Theron
got out of his truck looking totally different than he had the night
before. He wore dark, western-cut dress slacks, a pale green shirt,
and a black and green paisley tie. His hair was combed back perfectly and didn’t have a bit of hay stuck in it.

“Good morning. I was on my way to school. You got another
cup of that?” He scanned her from toe to heart-covered boxers, up
across the smiley face, to the face with no makeup and the hair
that looked like she’d combed it with a hay rake. There was certainly nothing there to appeal to any man, so why was his heart
tossing in an extra beat and his mouth dry?

“In the pot. Help yourself,” she said.

“I hoped you’d be up and out here,” he said when he returned.

`And why is that?”

“I didn’t like the way we left things last night. I felt pretty silly
saying what I did.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to propose to you,” she said.

Theron actually blushed scarlet. “I didn’t think you were.”

“It was just the moment. Everything was a little weird last
night. Forget it. I won’t tell,” she said.

“Then we’re back to normal?”

“As in, you are obnoxious and unbearable?”

He smiled. “As in, you’ve evidently been lookin’ in the mirror
and describing the person you see there rather than me”

“You going to give me that Sunday school class?”

“You going to go to the nursery?”

“I’m not budging,” she said.

“Then I guess we’re back to normal. Thanks for the coffee.
Mind if I leave the cup on the porch?”

“Suit yourself.”

He set the empty mug on the porch and left without saying another word.

Fancy almost felt like she’d won an argument but had to admit
that it was more like a tie. She went inside and turned on the air
conditioner in the shop, ate cold chicken casserole out of the pan
for breakfast, and took a long, warm shower. The whole time she
wondered what Maria Warren-if that was still her name-looked
like. Was she Latina? Or maybe Italian? Could she cook? Was she
tall and beautiful?

“I don’t care,” she declared as she wrapped a towel around her
body and stepped out into the hallway.

Fight-or-flight mode took effect immediately when she saw a
shadow cross the hallway opening into the living room. If Theron
had come back again and waltzed right into the house like he
owned it, she intended to give him a royal piece of her mind. She
did a tiptoe dance to her bedroom, threw off the towel, and left it
lying on the floor. She dug through her suitcase for underwear, a
pair of cutoff jean shorts, and a tank top and dressed hurriedly.

When she stomped into the kitchen, she found Kate sitting at
the table eating some of the same chicken casserole she’d had right out of the pan. “Well, good mornin’, sunshine. I heard the shower
going, so I let myself in. This is pretty good even cold.”

“Thank God it’s you. I had a speech prepared if it’d been Theron
eating my casserole,” Fancy said.

“Why would he be here?” Kate didn’t wait for an answer. She
wrinkled her nose and said, “Go dry your hair. It looks horrible.”

“I’m going to braid it today, so it doesn’t matter. I’m fixing the
ladies’ hair, remember? This is Wednesday.”

“But Hattie died. Aren’t you going to wear black and sackloth
and ashes for at least a day?”

“Hattie made the rules. No funeral. No memorial. Get on with
life. That’s what I’m going to do “

“You tell your momma that?” Kate asked.

“I did. We went into Granny’s room, and it freaked her out. She
said she couldn’t stay here,” Fancy said, and she went on to give
Kate a play-by-play of the whole night’s events up to and including
Theron’s visit both the night before and that morning.

Kate laughed. “That man must have a thing for you, Fancy Lynn.”

Odd, her momma had said much the same thing just the night
before. “You remember what I said about a Greek god who promises me a forever thing?” Fancy said.

“Well, as Sophie said, the name Theron could be Greek, and he
could give you a forever thing.”

“I don’t think so. Didn’t you hear the part about his being a
bachelor until his dying breath?”

“Methinks the man doth protest too much,” Kate paraphrased.
“So the ladies are coming around for hair-fixin’ this mornin’?
That must mean it’s all right for you to go to the party on Friday,
where I’m going to meet my knight in shining whatever from Australia. You won’t be in mourning, will you?”

“I wouldn’t miss the party for the world. Who knows? Your
knight in shining whatever from Australia could have a friend with
a forever thing in his pocket,” Fancy said.

Fancy arrived at the party on Friday night in her hip-slung tightfitting jeans, boots, and the white sleeveless shirt with pearl snaps.
It should have been the day she attended her grandmother’s funeral, not gone to a barn-dance party. But she’d had to ask the
preacher’s forgiveness and say that she and her mother were following Hattie’s wishes: no funeral.

Everything in her steady world had turned topsy-turvy since she
left Florida. She’d figured she would be going to Texas for a year of
boring life with a barbed-tongued grandmother. Life in Albany had
been anything but. Fancy stopped inside the big barn doors and
looked around. A bar was set up in one corner. Waiters in black slacks
and white shirts were everywhere at once. The buffet table was laden
with barbecued ribs, chicken, brisket, and pork loin, along with potato
salad, baked beans, chips and salsa, corn bread, hot rolls, and desserts
of every kind imaginable, including turtle cheesecake.

Sophie crossed the barn floor and looped her arm through Fancy
Lynn’s. “You’re here! Kate and I were worried you’d chicken out.”

“I almost did,” Fancy said honestly.

“It’s all right for you to have a good time. Hattie didn’t want any
mourners.”

“What do I do with the ashes?” Fancy asked as she let Sophie
lead her across the barn to the table where Kate waited.

“We’ll think of something later, but tonight you are here to have
a good time, not fret about things you had no control over.”

“Is that the voice of experience I’m hearing?”

Sophie nodded. “It truly is. Now, come and meet Kate’s Aussie,
whose armor isn’t shiny enough to keep her attention.”

Fancy giggled under her breath. “Only Hart Ducaine will ever
do that.”

“We know that, but she has to figure it out on her own.”

Sophie introduced her to Edward Sussex, a tall, dark-haired
man with twinkling blue eyes. A waiter asked if he could get anything special for Fancy, and she shook her head.

“So I hear you’re the one who came from Florida,” Edward said
with his clipped accent. “Sophie hails from Arkansas, and Kate
here with the deep-South accent from Louisiana. How did you girls
ever get to be friends?”

“We went to high school together; then we were scattered to the
three corners of the world, or so it seemed at the time, but we’ve
kept in touch,” Fancy said.

“I see. Well, oh, my, there’s Maud. I must see her about that bull
I bought. Will you girls excuse me?”

“You’re letting your Aussie leave without a fight?” Fancy asked
Kate.

“I am. No chemistry. If I close my eyes, his accent is nice, but it
doesn’t give me the chills I thought it would.”

“I think it’s because Edward didn’t offer to kiss her feet or go all
goggle-eyed over her black hair and her long legs,” Sophie whispered.

Kate replenished her pint jar from the pitcher of beer. “Stop it. I’m
not that vain. I just want someone who can’t see anything but me. At
least at first. After twenty years or so he can let his eyes wander”

“If you say so. Are y’all ready to hit the buffet? Dancing starts
in thirty minutes,” Sophie said.

“Yes, chere. And I’m not sitting out a single dance. Could be my
knight will arrive and sweep me off my feet yet,” Kate said.

“I’m starving. I haven’t eaten anything but a slice of pizza all
day. The ladies brought a pie and two desserts to the shop. It was
their personal memorial for Hattie in the shop they’d all loved so
much. They each said a few words about her,” Fancy said.

“What did they say?” Sophie led the way to the buffet table.

“Leander said that Hattie was a good listener. Viv said she
knew how to tease up hair really well and that it was hard to find a
hairdresser these days who still knew how to make a hairdo that
didn’t lie flat on top of the head. Things like that.”

“Strange eulogy, wasn’t it?” Sophie said.

“Hattie was strange. She wasn’t your normal, bake-the-cookies
grandmother, was she?” Kate picked up a plain white platter and
commenced filling it with food.

“It’s still all so surreal,” Fancy said.

Sophie’s Aunt Maud joined them in line for food. “Hello, girls.
I’m glad you could come to the party.”

“Thanks for having us. We didn’t buy a bull or even come to the
sale,” Fancy said.

“You’re the window dressing” Maud laughed. She was a tall, thin
woman with chin-length gray hair she wore straight and parted in
the middle. That evening she wore jeans and an electric-blue satin
western-cut shirt with bright red pearl snaps. Her red boots were
round-toed, and her earrings were carat-sized rubies.

“Like in the old Las Vegas days when they hired showgirls to
dress up a party? I always wanted to be a showgirl in feathers and
those big old headdresses,” Kate said.

Maud smiled. “Something like that. I’m sorry to hear about
your grandmother, Fancy Lynn. But I stand by the idea that we old
people should finish up the way we want, not the way society says
we should. So if Hattie didn’t want people crying over her dead
body, then they shouldn’t do it. Have some of that chicken, Fancy.
It’s absolutely scrumptious. The caterer is out of Abilene, and they
use mesquite for their smoking process.”

“I’m glad they can use it for something. It’s a nuisance, isn’t it?”
Fancy said.

“Keeps me young. I’ll go to my grave fighting mesquite out of
my pastures,” Maud said. “How’d you like the Aussie, Kate?”

“Like his accent. The man doesn’t appeal to me”

“Still honest as the day is long,” Maud said.

“Don’t know any other way to be”