To Helen Back (5 page)

Chapter 9

S
HOTSIE SCOWLED AS
she stared down at the black dress laid out across the bed. It was as plain and drab as the Wal-Mart underpants Milt had bought her. No lace, no baubles, no frills.

She sighed, hardly able to imagine anything drearier.

Reluctantly, she snatched up the dress and stepped into it. She had to shimmy to pull it past her thighs and over her old half-slip. The shiny polyester briefly snagged on her safety-pinned brassiere before she could twist to zip it up. When she was done and lightly panting at the exertion, she turned to face her bureau mirror.

“Oh, geez,” she moaned, tugging at the ugly frock. “Look what you’ve done to me, Miltie! You know that black washes me out something fierce.”

She stared at her tired reflection and frowned, pushing out her lower lip.

This wasn’t how she’d figured things would end. Never in a million years. She’d had such high hopes when she met Milton. He’d been so different from the other men who courted her. Courted? Ha! More like who’d taken her for a pitcher of beer at the bowling alley in Alton or groped her at the drive-in movie, like oversexed teenagers.

Her dates with Milton hadn’t been like that at all.

He’d treated her like a queen in the beginning. She thought it was because he was so much older, and she’d been kind of tickled, getting involved in one of those May-December affairs. He’d sent her flowers. Okay, so they weren’t roses, but they were real nice carnations. He’d wined and dined her at the Outback Steakhouse and even drove her into St. Louis to the Muny Opera to see
The Music Man.

So maybe he was a little rough around the edges, but she’d found his earthiness endearing. When he popped the question during breakfast at IHOP—he’d had the waitress stick the ring in the center of a smiley-faced pancake—she’d said yes without a moment’s hesitation.

It wasn’t long after that Delilah had come calling. Her hair a bottled red and her face powdered and painted like a middle-aged Barbie, she’d had the nerve to remark, “So this is the best he could do the second time around?” She’d stood there with her mouth hanging open. “I hope you’ve got money of your own, Miss Whatever-your-name-is,” Delilah had gone on to say. “Because once you and Scrooge have tied the knot, you’ll never see another dime as long as he lives.”

She hadn’t believed her, of course, not then. It wasn’t until about six months after their “I do’s” that she began to realize Delilah hadn’t just been blowing smoke about Miltie being tight.

Shotsie glanced around her now, at the chipped furniture that crowded their tiny bedroom. Every piece was old as dirt, left to Milton by his father. She had seen better at garage sales. Her closet was full of clothes mended so often she felt like a walking rag-bag. This past year, she’d felt lucky if Milt had sprung for take-out chili at the diner once a month.

It never happened this way on TV. She knew all about trophy wives, how their husbands showered them with gifts like diamonds and furs, when all the first wife had gotten was stretch marks and dishpan hands.

She should have had it made, right?

So how come she felt less like a trophy and more like a paperweight?

Not that Miltie had ever been
bad
to her. He hadn’t beaten her or anything. Despite the fact that they ended up fighting like cats and dogs, he’d treated her okay. He’d given her stability, at least, something she’d never had in all her years growing up.

None of that mattered any more, though, did it, now that he was gone?

Tears flooded her eyes, and she brushed them away. She’d end up looking like a raccoon if she didn’t stop bawling.

Through the open window came the gentle chimes of the chapel’s carillon, the bells playing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

Shotsie checked the clock. It was nearly ten.

Time to get a move on.

She grabbed her purse and made sure it was stuffed with fresh tissues. Then she scurried out of the house she’d shared with Milt for five years. Stumbling over the gravel in her too-tight pumps, she headed for the quaint chapel, its steeple poking the morning sky just a couple blocks away. She quickened her pace, knowing it would hardly look good for the widow to be late.

The closer she got to the church, the more grim-faced townsfolk she bumped into.

“God bless, my dear.”

“Be strong, child.”

“Keep a stiff upper lip.”

“Chin up, young lady, Milton would have wanted it that way.”

Oh, yeah? Shotsie thought as she stared into one wrinkled face after another. What Miltie would have wanted was for her to give each one of them a swift kick in the pants.

She entered the vestibule and was instantly greeted by the minister, his square shoulders buried in the folds of a white robe.

“Ah, Mrs. Grone,” he said, and began describing the order of the service. He took her hands and led her toward the foremost pew. The nearer they got to the plain pine casket up front, the quieter Fister’s voice grew, until Shotsie could hardly hear him. She wondered if he was afraid that Miltie might somehow hear and disapprove.

She nearly told him to speak up, that he shouldn’t worry. Milton had never cared a fig about religion, not enough to eavesdrop.

The minister left her in front, staring at the casket, and Shotsie started as a hand grasped her shoulder. She swiveled her head to find Helen Evans’s kindly face gazing into her own.

“Hello,” Helen said, and nothing more, something for which Shotsie was grateful. Less was plenty on a day like this, a few honest words better than a string of false condolences.

Shotsie looked past Helen at the rows behind her, every pew completely full.

Clara Foley, Doc and Fanny Melville, the sheriff and his buck-toothed wife, those whack-a-doodle bird-lovers Ida Bell and Dorothy Feeny, even that snotty Felicity Timmons from next door: all had shown up to pay their last respects to Miltie. What a bunch of two-faced phonies! Shotsie ground her lips together, thinking it was enough to make her sick.

The organ music started up, and Shotsie quickly faced forward. She looked over at the ancient instrument and the girl who manned it, Maddy Fister. Sounded like the minister’s daughter could use a lesson or two, Shotsie thought with a frown, sniffing as she listened to the halting touch of fingers on keys, feet pumping the pedals below.

Earnest Fister took his place at the carved wooden pulpit, an imposing figure with his brooding features and dark eyes, his arms draped in yards of white. He raised his hands, and the music stopped.

The entire chapel grew still.

“Good morning,” he said in his throaty voice, the tiny microphone amplifying his every word. “We’ve come together today, not to grieve, but to celebrate a very natural part of life . . .”

“Celebrate is right,” someone yelled from the back.

Shotsie stiffened and tightened her fingers around the handles of her purse. Oh, no, she thought, it can’t be . . .

She heard the clunk of the double doors closing and turned her head slowly to see someone standing in the shadows.

A woman stepped out of the dim and into the well-lit aisle. There, she stopped. Hands on hips, she stuck out her chest and shook her mane of bottle-bought red. From within a face powdered matte white, red lips grinned.

“What are you all staring at?” she said. “Can’t a girl attend her own husband’s funeral without getting the stink-eye?”

Chapter 10

“O
UT!”
S
HOTSIE’S SCREAMS
filled the church. “Get her out of here!”

Helen gripped the back of the pew, stunned by the turn of events. The hiss of lowered voices rippled through the rows, though no one dared to move.

“Make her go,” Shotsie pleaded, and when her cry went unheeded, she rose from her seat and strode up the aisle alone. She brushed past Helen, who noted her flushed cheeks and hands clenched into fists.

“Well, don’t you look the part of the grieving widow,” Delilah drawled, at which point Shotsie reached out and grabbed a hank of red hair.

“Ow! Hey, cut it out!” Milton’s first wife shrieked, the grip on her head forcing her to bend. “Hey, somebody, help!”

“Mrs. Grone, please,” the minister called in his unruffled tone. He came out of the pulpit, robes billowing behind him, approached Shotsie and took hold of her shoulders. “Please,” he tried again, “stop at once.”

With a sigh, Shotsie let go.

Her victim groaned as she came upright and raised red-tipped fingers to pat at her hair. “I’d hate to think this is how all your visitors get treated, Rev,” Delilah remarked, coaxing her ruined ’do back in place.

Fister waved a hand helplessly. “I’m truly sorry, Miss . . .”

“Mrs. Grone,” the woman replied, and glared at Shotsie. “But you can call me Delilah.”

“Grone?” The preacher blinked, glancing from one Mrs. Grone to the other. “But I thought . . .”

“She’s the old model,” Shotsie said with a smirk. “Now make her leave, would you? She wasn’t supposed to come in the first place.”

Helen had never seen Earnest Fister so flustered, but he was exactly that now. He rubbed at his beard before telling Delilah, “Normally, I’d welcome you into this house of the Lord, but in this case I feel that I must abide by the current Mrs. Grone’s wishes.”

Delilah’s powdered face crumpled. “Can’t I even stand here in the back? It’s not like I’m sorry about the old buzzard, but I wouldn’t mind sitting in on his send-off. Just to make sure he doesn’t rise out of his coffin and flip us the bird.”

Fister turned to Shotsie. “Mrs. Grone?”

She shook her head.

The minister faced Delilah again. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave.”

With a frown, Delilah tugged at her tight sweater and tapped a high-heeled boot. “All right, all right, I’m gone already,” she said. And with a final glance at the closed casket, she slipped through the vestibule’s double doors, exiting far more quietly than she’d come.

“Mrs. Grone, are you okay?” Reverend Fister drew Shotsie back to the front pew. When she nodded, he returned to the pulpit. He raised his hands to quiet the murmuring congregation. “As I was saying,” he began, picking up where he’d left off, “death is but a completion of the human cycle, a rebirth of the soul.” He paused, his gaze traveling over his audience. “It’s with this thought in our hearts that we say good-bye to Milton Grone.”

Shotsie burst into tears, sobbing so noisily that Fister was forced to cease his oration yet again.

Helen slipped out of her pew and slid into the seat beside Shotsie. Reaching into her purse, she withdrew a neatly folded handkerchief, as Shotsie had managed to dump a mess of tissues from her handbag to the floor. Helen blotted at the trail of tears dripping down the woman’s cheeks before pressing the damp kerchief into Shotsie’s nail-bitten fingers.

Shotsie seemed calmed by the attention, and her loud sobs turned into hiccups. She quieted enough anyway that Fister was able to continue.

He cleared his throat and shuffled his notes. “What might one say about Milton Grone?” he asked rhetorically, though the question merely stirred up another round of whispers. “Was he a giving man? Was he filled with compassion? Was he well-loved?”

A smattering of coughs erupted, and Helen was afraid someone might shout out, “Hardly!” But no one did, and the coughing finally stopped.

“No, my friends,” Earnest Fister said, shaking his head and clutching at the edge of the pulpit. “Milton Grone was none of those things. Yet above all, above everything he might have appeared to be, he was a human being with faults and foibles just like the rest of us. He was one of God’s children, as deserving of our Good Lord’s saving grace as you and me.”

As the pastor droned on, Helen kept an eye on Shotsie, who lifted her trembling chin and stared hard at the pastor, clearly affected by his words.

Helen turned her focus to the minister as well, taking in the bearded face, cheeks flushed with passion, his eyes as fiery as she’d ever seen them. Beyond him hung an enormous wooden cross, the shape seeming to mimic his own form as he lifted his arms, his robe falling gracefully from each limb, his head and neck as straight as a shaft.

The whine of the organ cranking up sounded not unlike a mournful cry as a subdued Madeline Fister set her feet again to pumping, her fingers poised above the yellowed keys, waiting for the right moment to start up.

The girl hadn’t donned her uniform of tight skirt and navel-baring shirt this morning, Helen noticed. Indeed, Maddy was dressed demurely in a plain navy shift. Her dark hair wasn’t sticking up from her head as though she’d stuck her finger in a socket. Instead, it had been pulled away from her face with a headband. Without an inch of makeup, she appeared younger than her seventeen years and less world-weary, fragile even.

Helen knew the girl had been through a lot in her young life, losing her mother and being raised by a single father, a minister to boot.

Helen wondered how Earnest had managed to keep Maddy under control, what with her penchant for dressing like a hooker. But then, Helen had seen enough TV to know that girls these days sorely lacked for decent role models. It was no wonder, she decided, that so many of them were acting out and having sex before they’d acquired their driver’s license.

“Amen,” Fister said, his voice a deep rumble, and Helen shook away her thoughts, making an effort to pay attention.

The pastor signaled to Madeline, who pumped her feet faster, her fingers tiptoeing their way through “Nearer My God to Thee.”

It was the same tune the band had played when the
Titanic
was sinking, Helen mused with some irony as she picked up her hymnal to sing along with the others.

When the hymn had reached its final chorus, Fister came down from the pulpit and walked up to Shotsie, taking her hands.

“Bless you, my dear,” he told her, his bearded countenance so solemn. “Someday you’ll see that what’s happened was for the best. Let God take care of him now.”

“Sure, he can take care of him,” Shotsie said, and her voice shook. Her eyes were fixed on the coffin, her fingers clutching nervously at her purse.

She looked like she wanted desperately to escape, Helen thought.

But Shotsie would have to wait a while longer to do so, as she was soon surrounded by a swarm of townsfolk, whispering words meant to comfort and patting her back.

Helen eased away from the huddle, making her way through the pews to the aisle on the chapel’s far side.

That’s when she noticed that Madeline Fister had risen from the organ bench to take a hesitant step across the dais toward the casket. One foot moved forward and then the other. Her hands brushed at her wrinkled dress then laced together at her belly.

“Be brave, Shotsie . . . If you need anything, please call . . . It will get easier, I promise . . . Time heals all wounds, you know . . .”

Helen listened to the singsong of voices, turning briefly toward the thinning crowd enveloping the widow Grone. Then she heard a loud thump, and for a moment thought the heavy cross had come unnailed and fallen.

Instead, she swiveled around to see Madeline Fister crumpled on the floor near the casket, apparently out cold.