Honey, Baby, Sweetheart (15 page)

“His hair was too long,” Harold said. “He looked like a hippie.”

“Cute dog, though,” Peach said.

“Lovely little dog. It escaped and tinkled in the upstairs hallway.” Miz June sipped her tea. “Beauty had never seen such bad manners.” Beauty was Miz June’s cat.

“He was nervous. All these new people,” Anna Bee said. Her little white socks had dragonflies on them. You could see them when she sat down, along with a peek of thin, pale leg where the socks stopped.

“I heard about that,” my mother said. “Fowler felt terrible.” She dived for a change of topic. “I’m going to be bringing Ruby for a while. She’s having boy trouble.”

“Jeez, Mom,” I said.

“Ah.” Miz June set her cup down. “It runs in the family, then.”

“So what are we, her punishment?” Harold winked at me.

“Punishment, fine. Just don’t expect us to do the wise-old-person routine. I hate that,” Peach said.

“I don’t mind sharing my experience,” Anna Bee said. She took a seat on the settee. She sat down very slowly, as if unsure whether her butt would land in the direction she was aiming.

“I find that most old people aren’t wise, they’re just old,” Miz June said.

“We’re as screwed up as everyone else,” Peach said.

“Speak for yourself,” Harold said.

“And sweet. They think you’re sweet just because you’re old. For Christ’s sake.”

“I’m sure you don’t have that problem,” Harold said.

“Keep in mind this,” Peach shook her finger at me. “If an old person is sweet, they’ve probably always been sweet. If they were wise, they were probably always smart. Nobody changes that much.”

“Well, every
body
changes quite a lot.” Miz June sighed.

“I keep thinking that my neck resembles the skin of a lima bean if you popped the bean out with your finger,” Anna Bee said. She lifted her chin so that we could see. She was right.

“You should see the butterfly tattoo I got on my keister years ago. It’s now down on the back of my thigh,” Peach said. “Like it flew there.”

The doorbell interrupted that image, thank God.
Harold went to the windows, peeked out. “It’s only Mrs. Wong.”

“It’s a miracle. She’s only fifteen minutes late,” Miz June said.

“What this time?” Anna Bee said. “Car trouble?”

“Be nice,” Mom said.

“Her arm got stuck in the mailbox. A bunch of sheep were flocked in her driveway and she couldn’t back out her Mercedes,” Peach said.

“Her nephew came down with mengue fever and was near death on her doorstep,” Harold said.

“Dengue
fever,” Anna Bee corrected.

“That’s what I said.”

I heard a
thunk, thunk, thunk
up the porch steps, and then the doorbell. “Sorry, sorry,” Mrs. Wong said as she bustled in. She waved one hand around. She was dressed chicly in black and white, her wrist circled with gold jewelry. Mrs. Wong’s accent was still very heavy. “There was a little problem at the Golden Years Rest Home. Grandfather Wong hit his neighbor in the jaw.” She slugged the air in demonstration. “He thought the man was stealing his magazines. I had to go calm him down.”

“Ninety-year-olds shouldn’t be getting
Playboy
anyway.” Peach chuckled at her own joke.

“I don’t bring him that filth. Let me tell you, he would like a
Playboy,
too,” Mrs. Wong said. “I bring him
Reader’s Digest.”

“Grandfather Wong should have paid the guy to steal them then,” Harold said.

“Good God, take him something with a little substance,” Peach said.

“How many amazing recoveries from disease does anyone care to read about?” Harold said.

“You know who has the
Playboy.
Mr. Wong, that’s who. He hides it whenever I come home. I am sure of it,” Mrs. Wong said. She took off her dress shoes and put on a pair of old red slippers she’d taken out of her bag.

“I hear a car,” Miz June said.

Harold scooted back toward the window, peeked out again. “It’s them. Delores today.”

“Who’s Delores?” I asked my mother.

“One of Lillian’s daughters. Nadine is the other one.” Lillian was a neighbor of Peach’s and a recent newcomer to the group. Her daughters brought her, Mom told me later, as a part of a “stimulation program” they had developed to help improve Lillian’s condition after her stroke.

“That sports car is ridiculous,” Harold reported. “The poor nurse is jammed in the backseat with the wheelchair.”

“The nurse is a bimbo,” Mrs. Wong said.

“All skull and no brains,” Peach said.

Harold sat down quickly, opened the book they were reading on his lap as if he were a character on stage taking his place. “Delores is a bitch,” he said.

I wondered how anyone would be able to get a person and a wheelchair up Miz June’s porch steps, but it apparently wasn’t a problem, and when the trio came into view from Miz June’s living room windows, I could see why.
Lillian’s hair was as white as the wicker chairs on Miz June’s porch, and she probably weighed about as much as one of them too. Delores was short but square and strong, with hair sprayed to attention and a blue-and-white shirt with a faux nautical feel. Ship ahoy! She and Nurse Bimbo had no problem lifting Lillian and setting her bones in the wheelchair. Delores dripped authority—you got the sense that Lillian’s stroke had now settled an old score between them, altered the playing field in a way that spelled victory for Delores. There was a slice of glee in the way she situated Lillian’s wheelchair in the circle of book club members and placed the Whitney book,
Life Times Two,
onto Lillian’s lap. One thing was for sure: Delores would always have the last word now. The stroke had left Lillian speechless except for an occasional sound, and her left arm and leg were dead at her side. She looked as unbearably silent and weary as the trays of pansies at Johnson’s Nursery left too long without water—drooped and limp, there not by will but only by nature’s thin strings. Lillian was so wispy that my heart wanted to break, the way it does when you see fragile things. Nurse Bimbo waited out on the porch, cracked open a can of Diet Coke that magically appeared in her hand. She must have known that Delores would be busy for a while playing Good Daughter in front of us, so she first slurped at the top of the can, then tipped back her long neck and drank that Diet Coke at leisure.

“It was very kind of you to indulge Mother this way,” Delores said. She placed a folded afghan over Lillian’s
legs. It was too hot for an afghan. Even Lillian’s crane fly legs didn’t need that blanket, probably made by Delores, in red, white, and blue yarns. A patriotic afghan, which was pretty hilarious, if you asked me.

“You mean the book?” Mom said. “It wasn’t just for Lillian. We all wanted to read it. A Charles Whitney is always worth reading. I’d highly recommend it.”

Beauty, Miz June’s white cat, sauntered in and rubbed herself against Delores’ legs. Little white hairs clung to her navy polyester pants.

“Mother is the reader in the family, as you know.”

“I remember you said that she met Charles Whitney long ago. That must have made a lasting impression,” my mother said.

“I shook Neil Diamond’s hand once, and I wouldn’t wash it for a week,” Delores said.

Delores left and took Nurse Bimbo with her. I could see Delores brushing the cat hair off her pants, her big butt pointing upward, round as the top of a breakfast muffin. Nurse Bimbo crushed her Diet Coke can with one hand with power-lifter strength as they went down the steps.

“Lillian met the author of the book?” I asked.

“Lillian is not an umbrella stand,” Peach said. “Ask her. She understands everything perfectly. Don’t you, dear?” Lillian’s eyes looked out at us without blinking. They were a bit like a baby’s eyes, keen and alert and watchful on the other side of that window of nonlanguage. For a second, the baby seat in the back of my father’s van
flashed in my mind. The baby, a sister, took on a moment of realness. A baby who saw things, reached for things, listened to the rhythm of my father’s voice and knew whose voice it was.

I did as Peach said. “Did you meet the author of the book?” Lillian looked at me with those same eyes, then nodded. I started to think about how Lillian had once done all kinds of things—watered plants and fed babies and cooked a holiday meal. I learned later from Mom that Lillian had been bringing Whitney’s first book,
The Present Hours,
to every meeting since she first came.

“She more than
met
him, if you get my drift,” Peach said. “No one can convince me otherwise.”

“Don’t let her tease you, Lillian,” Anna Bee said.

“She had his picture on her nightstand!” Peach said. She scooted to the edge of her chair, trying to get her point to us more quickly.

“So you said a hundred times,” Harold said.

“Maybe it just looked like him,” my mother said.

“She had his
picture
on her
nightstand.”
Peach settled back on her chair again. “I saw it there, didn’t I, Lillian?” Lillian nodded. “She was selling an old television, and I went to look at it. We didn’t see each other much, did we? I’m sorry I wasn’t a better neighbor. You always seemed to like to keep to yourself.”

“What did you need another television for?” Anna Bee asked.

“It wasn’t for
me.
Mark and Justine had just gotten married,” Peach said. “I was trying to be helpful. They
ended up getting a good buy at Costco. Anyway,” she said to me. “The next time I was there, to see her after her stroke, it was gone. Poof. Replaced with a photo of Walter on their wedding day.”

“Well, Charles Whitney was no doubt a lot nicer to look at,” Miz June said. She had put on her reading glasses and was giving the photo on the jacket cover a good look.

“Woo woo,” Mrs. Wong fake-whistled her appreciation.

I leaned over and looked at Harold’s copy. I didn’t know what the fuss over his looks was about, but keep in mind, the guy was eighty. Charles Whitney looked both sweet and wise. His eyes were smile-crinkled though his expression was serious, his white beard was rough and like a sea captain’s in a children’s story. He was shown standing on a cliff at the edge of the sea, hand toward the brim of his cap, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow.

“The picture she had was in a
frame,”
Peach said. “And it
disappeared.
I’m surprised Delores and Nadine let her bring that Whitney book with her every time. I’m surprised it didn’t
disappear.
I don’t know why no one believes me that there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

I knew why no one believed her. We’d been hearing the stories for a long time. Once Peach had convinced the group that she saw a dead body in her neighbor’s yard. My mom even called the police. The dead body turned out to be a garbage bag full of old lawn chair cushions, and Mom says the policeman she talked to still winks and smiles whenever he sees her. And then there was the time
that Peach had the group convinced that Adolph Vonheimer, an old library patron, was a former Nazi. There was his name, for one thing, but more importantly there was the swastika tattoo on his leg, which later turned out to be a particularly bad case of varicose veins, according to Miz June, who saw him in shorts at Tru-Value.

“I saw them try to take that book from her once,” Mrs. Wong said. “Nadine took it from her lap. Lillian clawed her arm like a cat with her good hand.” Beauty, speaking of cats, had settled on Mrs. Wong’s slippers.

“Lillian has strong hands. All those years of playing the piano.” Peach moved her fingers along imaginary keys in the air.

“Bravo for you,” Anna Bee clapped her hands in Lillian’s direction.

“You should have told us about this,” Miz June said to Mrs. Wong. “We need to keep our eye on Lillian. We have a responsibility as her friends.”

“Damn right. I would have given that Nadine something she’d remember,” Harold said. He put a fist in the air.

“Smell that manly power,” Peach said. “Bam, boom.”

“We should have known this, though,” Anna Bee agreed. “It
is
a little suspicious.”

My mother let out a little groan. Our eyes met, and she rolled hers at me.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mrs. Wong said. “Next time I will let you know. I will watch like a hawk.”

“I hope Neil Diamond washed his hand with Lysol after touching that Delores,” Harold said.

The Whitney book was a thick one—it seemed right that a life of eighty years should not be easily held in your hand—and my mother and the Casserole Queens had agreed to read it in quarters. That day the group discussed the first section: seeing Charles Whitney through a childhood with a demanding mother who’d turned to bookmaking and husband-hunting to get by; his stint with the merchant marines at the start of World War II; and the big band dances and bouts of drunken fights and women at various ports around the world during the war. All these explosions, of one form or another, and Charles Whitney’s discovery that writing was one way of ducking for cover. I wanted to go home and read it right away.