Contemporary Women's Fiction: Agnes Hopper Shakes Up Sweetbriar (Humorous Women's Fiction) (8 page)

She studied me a minute before answering. “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be, unless a person is in the middle of a war fighting for survival. Abraham Lincoln.” Alice’s eyes bore into mine. I felt like she was trying to tell me something. But what? Was the quote really Abraham Lincoln’s or hers?

“Are you happy here?” I finally asked, knowing it was a totally stupid question.

“God gives us strength to endure. Right?”

“Yes. Yes, he does, but you didn’t answer my question. I’d like to know how you really feel. God won’t fault you for that. Do you always dance around what you truly think?” The stitches on Miss Margaret’s sweater got tighter and tighter.

Alice fell into silence, our discussion apparently over. After a while, she reached over, touched my right hand, and smiled ever so slightly. I put my knitting aside, covered her hand with both of mine, and held it for a moment. We didn’t speak, but I wondered how her hand could be so cold on such a sultry day.

She went back to her scribbling. Lollipop leaned back and settled into a soft snore while my needles clicked along. This should have been a peaceful moment in time, but my anxiety was rising like an incoming tide that could drown a person if she didn’t move. I could never follow Abraham Lincoln’s advice. Make up my mind to be happy? Ridiculous. This place felt like a battleground, and I was smack dab in the middle of a war, wasn’t I?

The sound of heels striking the porch announced six o’clock was fast approaching. Our director stood as straight as a sergeant, as she did every day weather permitting, beside an iron bell hanging on a corner post. The bell was like those used on farms to call the field hands to supper. When pulled six times with vigor, the sound traveled up and down the streets of Sweetbriar. Henry told me that every day, when locking the door of his Western Auto, he checked his watch by that bell. That’s how accurate she was.

Even though expecting it, I jumped with the first clang. After the sixth one, the evening prayer began. With arms raised like she was parting the Red Sea, she said, “Dear Lord, thank you for letting us live yet another day at The Manor.” As she spoke, I looked around. Everyone’s eyes were closed. Lollipop was nodding off again, and it looked like Alice might be joining him.

A bumblebee hovered over Prissy’s head, touched her fingertips, and still she droned on, finally bringing her mini-sermon to a close. “… and bless the food we are about to partake to the nourishment of our bodies and us to thy service. Amen.”

The bee flew away and people began to stir, rising slow and deliberate. They say humans can adapt to most anything, even prisoners with a life sentence. How is that possible? I had only dealt with the same daily routines at Sweetbriar Manor a few days and could feel the pressure inside building as sure as a pressure cooker—one with a faulty regulator that was fixing to explode.

The food that evening seemed worse than usual, but I was hungry and ate quickly. My meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, and canned green beans were gone in no time. I even scraped my dish of instant chocolate pudding like it was Mama’s, made from scratch. The director wasn’t around, but I knew she hadn’t gone far.

“Where is she, do you think?” I asked Smiley.

“Who? Miss Johnson? Sometimes she helps feed and bathe Ida Mae. Gets her settled for the night so she won’t disturb anyone.”

“She does? Why?”

“Why? Ida Mae’s her mother. That’s why.”

“What? That wild woman is her
mother
?”

“Didn’t you wonder how someone that bad off could live here? Has her here for a reason, don’tcha know.”

Smiley finished his last bite of pudding and drank a full glass of milk. I started to ask what he meant, but when he put his glass down, he said, “Most people do the best they can, Sis. Miss Johnson might bend some rules now and then, but if she didn’t let people like Ida Mae—or me—live here, where would we be?”

I was shocked that Smiley put himself in the same category as Ida Mae. Speechless, in fact. Lollipop maybe, but not Smiley.

Finally, gathering my wits about me, I said, “You’re around Alice so much you’re starting to sound like her—talking in riddles. Soon you’re going to start looking like her.”

I was miffed, but thinking about what I’d just said—little hunched-over Smiley looking like lanky Alice—was ridiculous. They actually reminded me of Mutt and Jeff. That tickled my funny bone, and snickers gave way to giggles. Smiley joined in a little, probably just to be polite, but the rest of our table looked at me like I’d lost my last marble. Laughing and acting silly now and then is good for the soul, I always say.

When we were leaving the table, I leaned over and whispered in Smiley’s ear, “Do you know what they say about you, following Alice around like you do?”

He shook his head and looked puzzled.

I held back a grin and made something up on the spot. “They say you must be her bodyguard, sticking so close all the time.”

He studied me a minute, then his big eyes got even bigger. “Oh, Sis, you’re pulling my leg. You’re a mess.”

He left the dining room shaking his head and chuckling. He headed toward the small reading room where, each evening, Alice read poetry—usually Robert Frost or some of her own. Sometimes it was the Bible. She would read aloud to anyone who cared to listen. Smiley always did, along with a handful of others.

A larger group gathered in the main sitting room, and that’s just what they did—sit. I felt restless. Someone was doing a fair job on the piano with some old Baptist hymns. “Only Trust Him” followed me into the left hall where I stopped to read the large calendar posted for August.

Betty Jo had called earlier, sandwiched between a garden club luncheon, a town council meeting, and carting off loads of stuff that wouldn’t fit into her new place to the Salvation Army. I tried to sound cheerful. We talked about Miss Margaret, the weather, how I dearly loved my new room, and, yes, how Pearl and I were reliving old times. I didn’t tell her about Prissy’s—I mean Miss Johnson’s—antics or Ida Mae, completely loco, living in a room not far from mine, or Pearl not remembering our growing-up years, or even me, in the least bit. Nor did I tell her about Smiley’s big brown eyes or his frequent nightmares. Or the little house that had already been rented. Or the call to check on the apartment after all the hoopla about the danger of high blood pressure and promising to behave. No need to tell her the house with a perfect yard for my precious pig was no longer available. Or Blind George’s phone being out of order. No need.

According to the calendar, every Saturday afternoon at two o’clock in the dining room, Sweetbriar’s women’s club hosted bingo. While wondering if my daughter would have time to be one of the volunteers, I heard a voice humming a lullaby. When I turned around, my eyes were drawn to Ida Mae’s room. The door was ajar, and Prissy was sitting on her mother’s bed, holding and rocking her like a small child.

Both women, their eyes closed, looked like a picture of peace, of calm. Was this the same crazy old woman and her snippy daughter?

“Charlie,” I said, “does this mean the director is actually human? Her heart isn’t a frozen catfish? She isn’t as mean as a cottonmouth?”

A staff person walked past me carrying sheets smelling of fabric softener. She entered Ida Mae’s room and shut the door. After a moment, I turned back to the calendar, but my mind wasn’t on upcoming events. If Miss Johnson was doing the best she could, like Smiley allowed she was, then how on this earth could I justify thinking of her as a monster, an ogre, a cold woman with no feelings … or even as Prissy?

Clearly, she loved her mother, and I could find no fault with that.

I had hardly finished that Christian thought when I heard someone crying in Ida Mae’s room. The crying soon turned to sobbing. Sounds of distress rose higher as if a frightened child had encountered a monster.

Chills traveled clear down my spine, and I froze in place.

L
ater that night, sleep wouldn’t come. The nurse had rushed out of Ida Mae’s room holding an empty syringe. After waiting until fairly certain she wasn’t coming back, I tiptoed to the door and listened, but heard nothing. Miss Johnson never appeared, and I finally went to my room and dressed for bed, trying to get the incident out of my head. I had not actually seen anything but had heard plenty.

Around midnight I tapped on Alice’s door, poked my head inside her room, and called, “Alice, Alice. Do you have more of that Nyquil?” I didn’t actually plan to drink any, but I needed an excuse to be visiting in the middle of the night. Somehow, I didn’t want to be alone.

The only answer was a long snore as loud as Charlie’s tractor on a cold morning. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I tiptoed over to her bed and told her anyway. “Going in your bathroom. Might take a sip of your Nyquil. Can’t sleep.”

After flipping on her bathroom light, I bent over and looked in the cabinet under the sink where I’d seen her push the large bottle of green liquid. It wasn’t there. On my knees now, I searched the dark space and knocked over a bottle of White Rain that knocked over a box of bubble bath.

Alice stirred noisily in her bed, then resumed snoring, thank the Lord. I managed to get back on my feet and do a quick search with my eyes across the countertop. Dang, just when I’d convinced myself there was nothing wrong with taking a wee bit of Nyquil every now and then, it was gone.

Back in my room, after deciding if I couldn’t sleep I could at least enjoy a Milky Way, I opened the drawer to my nightstand. I was
stunned. It was completely bare except for two packs of Juicy Fruit and a box of tissues. No Vick’s Salve, no deep-heat rub, no Geritol, Milk of Magnesia, camphor, or aspirin. Not even a Sugar Daddy or a Baby Ruth. I thought maybe my eyes had failed me, so I ran my hands over the flowered drawer liner, stirring up nothing but sweet-scented dust, which made me sneeze.

“I’ve been robbed, Charlie,” I said between sneezes. “Robbed!”

Thinking of the money hidden in the bottom drawer, I pulled out the tabloid with the headline of
Big Foot Spotted in New York City
and opened to page twenty-eight. My garage sale money was all there. Small bills—ones, fives, tens—totaling five-hundred and fifty dollars. Now I’d have to use some of the money to replace the items stolen by a no-count scum. And I’d have to find another hiding place for the new candy bars and medicine.

In my little notebook, I flipped to the ten or so empty pages at the end and wrote:
Friday, August 8
. I frowned at the date and scratched it out. It was after midnight. It was now Saturday, August 9. Saturday already? One day had melted into the next until I could hardly tell one from another. I didn’t know at the time, of course, that I would never forget this Saturday—ever.

I continued writing.
What is this world coming to? Someone came into my room recently, though I don’t know exactly when, and took everything from my nightstand drawer. Everything except two packs of Juicy Fruit and one box of tissues.
Then I listed all the items I could remember, adding one last note:
Who? Why?

Back in my bed, I tossed and turned and tried to pray. This was one of those times Jesus would have to do my praying for me. The last look at my illuminated Baby Ben showed it was after two a.m. Even though my sheets were twisted into a wad, I slept a little, but by five thirty I was dressed and ready to talk about the robbery to anyone who might be awake enough to listen. After breakfast, I planned on reporting the incident to—whom? Miss Johnson? Certainly not. But if not her, then … who?