Contemporary Women's Fiction: Agnes Hopper Shakes Up Sweetbriar (Humorous Women's Fiction) (7 page)

I dropped the little cup into her wastebasket, but when I returned to Alice’s bedroom, she insisted she needed it. She crushed our cups, wrapped them in a tissue, then took our trash and added it to a small plastic bag full of similar wads leaking bits of green liquid. Instead of putting the bag back in a drawer where it had come from, she stuffed it into a narrow space between her chest of drawers and the wall.

She looked at me with a crooked grin. “As long as the big cat’s not around, the mice can play. Or drink Nyquil.”

“Uh, right. Think I’ll turn in now. See you at breakfast. Seven sharp.”

“Sharp indeed. Promptness is next to godliness. Just ask Miss Johnson. She runs a tight ship, that woman. Tight as a new hatband.”

“Tell me more,” I said. “I’m all ears.”

“A loose tongue will get you in trouble. You realize that don’t you? But ask me again. I might be ready another time. You never know.”

Alice was talking in riddles again, and I wondered if she’d ever had a straightforward thought in her life.

Even with an unsettled feeling, I hoped for a sweet, restful sleep. I crawled into bed with a sigh. But then, not knowing how long I’d slept, I awoke wide-eyed and listening. What was that? Where was I? Certainly not at home. Or Betty Jo’s. The small chest of drawers … the shape of a lamp on top … a lopsided rocker …

No, not home, but my room at Sweetbriar Manor.

All was peaceful until a shout split the silence. It sounded like it came from beyond this world. Unintelligible words were thick with sleep. Who was it? Could it be Smiley? Yep, I was pretty sure of it. Did his demons come from some battle he’d fought during the war, or from living in this place?

Then he screamed, pouring a nightmare into the hall, under my
door, and into the dark corners of my room. I sat straight up in bed and could’ve sworn the curtains at my window swished, though the window was closed, and the air conditioner under the window quiet.

Moonlight spilled across my bed. “What’s happening, Charlie?” Another voice now. Dim murmurs, and then Smiley’s voice gradually became subdued. I reached for my hearing aid and listened again, but all was quiet and still. Hopefully, it would stay that way. I fluffed my pillow and eased back under the covers. My heart pounded in my chest, and for a long time my eyes refused to close.

The next morning, my body ached like I’d been breaking hard ground with a hoe all night. The sky was dark and gloomy, my joints forecasting a storm, and I grumbled to my plate of runny scrambled eggs and cup of lukewarm coffee.

“Betty Jo could at least call to see how I’m getting along. Just dropped me off like a bag of garbage and not a word since. Not a word.”

Alice looked up while stirring sugar into her coffee. “Feelings worn on the sleeve turn into sour milk.”

I glared across the table at her. “Must be nice to always have a ready answer. You’re weird, you know that? Spouting off dumb stuff all the time.” My words hung in the air as everyone seemed absorbed in eating breakfast, but I wasn’t finished. “Matter of fact, you’re all strange. It’s like living in a mental ward. Can’t even sleep at night for all the racket—”

I caught myself, but it was too late. Looking over at Smiley, I felt terrible. His skin looked like wallpaper paste. Had he come to the table looking like that, and because I’d been feeling so sorry for myself I hadn’t noticed? Or had I caused it? His hands trembled as he raised the coffee cup to his lips.

Sorry for my cantankerous words, I couldn’t seem to say so.
Lord
, I prayed in silence,
forgive me. I’m not the only one who has troubles. It’s because of our troubles that we’re here.

The director’s absence during breakfast was the only bright spot in this day that already seemed too long. Not even eight o’clock yet. Someone said she was at Mission Hospital attending a meeting of some sort. Diamond Lil picked up her knife and pointed it toward me. “Don’t ever think she’s not around somewhere.”

Was she trying to warn me?

She added, “Sometimes she might not be seen for hours and then she’ll suddenly appear—be everywhere, inspecting rooms, bossing the cook around, and then disappear again. If she goes upstairs to her
private living quarters, and I’m in here or in the sitting room, I can hear boards creak overhead. Don’t you worry, she’s around.”

Lollipop said, “Sometimes she goes inside her office and locks the door. If I knock, she won’t answer.”

I didn’t say so, but I couldn’t blame her for that.

Trying to eat was useless, so I excused myself, mumbling to Charlie as I left the dining room. “At least my daughter could make a decent cup of coffee and knew how to fix an egg. Couldn’t cook anything else worth a flip, but she could do that much. What a mess I’ve gotten myself into. What a mess.”

Whenever my thinking gets all in a tangle, I turn to knitting. Seems while my fingers fly, draped with soft yarn, needles clicking, turning, darting, a rhythm of their own making, I can sort things out in my mind. Or at least smooth out my wrinkled feelings.

So around mid-morning, armed with one of my yarn bags—which held a nearly finished yellow sweater for Miss Margaret—I headed for the front porch. Distant rumblings promised a storm. This was a good place to be alone, to knit and think. Figured the porch would be empty, but it wasn’t. Smiley sat in a rocker near the front door.

“Nice day,” I said as I passed him, heading for the swing at the other end.

He still had that washed-out look, though not as pale as before.

“Yep,” he said, gazing at the sky.

I decided to sit in a nearby rocker in case he should want to talk, though it didn’t seem likely. While I busied myself getting settled, my red purse beside me, the sweater smoothed out in my lap, a skein of yellow yarn lying just right to feed my needles, thunder boomed overhead.

As the noise continued, I glanced up. My hands remained idle in my lap, and I never took up my knitting. The angry clouds gathering over Sweetbriar looked like a heavy fisherman’s net pulled through rough waters, yet the ferns hanging around the porch never stirred. Birds taking shelter in a chinaberry tree didn’t sing. Lightning lit the air around us like a flickering florescent bulb, and thunder rattled the windowpanes. Mother Nature was outdoing herself. Usually, storms like this came in the late afternoon after enough heat has built up, but this was mid-morning. I looked over at Smiley. He seemed to be enjoying the show as much as I was.

Tiny pebbles of hail beat down on the porch’s roof, bounced on the sidewalk, thumped on the ground, and tore holes in red impatiens
lining the walk. Soon, the ground was white, thick with pieces of ice. The big thermometer nailed to an oak tree in the front yard, showed a drop of five degrees, then ten, and finally fifteen.

The rain came in great sweeping sheets. The air was light and cool, the smell of earth as strong as standing in the middle of a freshly-plowed field. I shut my eyes and took in a deep breath. Ahhh … such a comforting memory … a time when Charlie and I had just finished plowing. A sudden storm had popped up, much like this one, and we raced to the house and stood on the porch watching, drinking in the sweet smells, the air so alive the hairs on my arms tingled. And then he pulled me close and—

The front door flew open with a loud bang. “Get in here this instant!” Prissy yelled, her face red and twisted. “Don’t you people have any sense? If you catch pneumonia and die, I’ll be held liable.”

“Now wouldn’t that be a shame,” I grumbled to Charlie.

The hanging ferns now danced in the wind, and the blowing rain threatened to drench us at any moment. Neither of us had noticed. I was embarrassed, but more than that, I was mad as all get out. This confounded woman had ripped my daydream into shreds.

“Come on, come on.” She held the door open with one arm and waved us inside with the other. “Move quickly. You’re getting me wet.”

“Dixie” played on, but my chattering teeth sounded even louder in my ears. I was damp clear through, my petticoat and dress sticking to my legs.

The lecture wasn’t over. “Go. Go.” She shooed us out of the foyer. “Both of you. Go change your clothes before you get sick. Now. This instant.” She was sounding more and more like a warden.

It was as humiliating as the time in second grade when I’d peed all over myself, and Miss Mayes handed me underpants from her desk drawer—kept there for such emergencies. Heading to my room fast as I could, I didn’t say a word to Smiley, but I complained to Charlie. “I can’t tolerate that woman. And I can’t tolerate this place much longer.”

William stood in his doorway chewing on a fat cigar.

“What are you looking at?” I snapped. “A tootsie roll’d taste better than that nasty thing.”

Ida Mae, who’d gotten out of her room again, ran past me carrying a pink toy phone. She held the receiver out like she was frantic to deliver a message.

“Lord, have mercy, Charlie. Lord, have mercy.”

Alice maneuvered her walker toward me, its cloth pouch swinging back and forth under the plastic pansies. When she spotted me, she stopped and waited. I didn’t slow down, but that didn’t keep her from declaring, one hand in the air like a street preacher, “If you’re poisoned by frustration, the only antidote is action. Take action, Agnes.”

“I’ll remember that.” I waved as I rushed by. “That’s exactly what I intend to do.”

A
t lunch, I finally showed up as the last cow’s tail. Prissy was not there to see the mounds of tuna casserole or the rubbery orange gelatin left mostly untouched on our plates—except Lollipop’s. I was convinced the man would eat anything.

A good part of the afternoon was spent in my room, my thinking so befuddled I couldn’t even knit. I had called the number listed in the newspaper for Blind George’s apartment several times daily. All I got was a busy signal. I had to go there and check it out. When I mentioned this to Smiley, he said to be sure Miss Johnson didn’t see me walk off the property by myself. What would she do? Send that muscle-bound blonde nurse after me? I was going, but had to choose the right time.

I tried to read a juicy tabloid, but after I had read the same line five times, I gave up, flipped my radio to the oldies station, and heard Patsy Cline declare she was “falling to pieces.”

“So am I!” I shouted back.

Less than a week at this depressing place, and I was desperate enough to call Betty Jo to come get me, or at least bring me a vanilla shake from Begley’s Drug Store. But she wouldn’t have time for her mother now. She and Henry were busy packing.

By four-thirty, I couldn’t tolerate being alone in my sea-foam carpeted room a minute longer, so I took my purse and knitting and headed to the front porch again. Maybe I could casually drop the unfinished sweater onto the closest rocker and keep moving down the walkway that led to the street like I was going for a stroll. But as I passed Prissy’s office, there she was behind her desk, talking on the phone. She glanced up with a serious frown on her face. I scowled right back and kept moving.

The air, no longer cool, was warm and heavy with moisture. Little wisps of steam rose from the damp sidewalk. The tropical atmosphere caused my bad hip joint to cry out in protest and my sinuses to throb.

Despite the heat, the porch was nearly filled with residents. Smiley watched Alice worry over a poem. There was a pile of crumbled papers around her chair. Lil played solitaire on her wheelchair tray. Her diamond-filled hands flashed in the sunlight, and her forehead wore wrinkles of concentration as if her life depended on the outcome.

Pearl, spraying the hanging ferns with a bottle of blue liquid, hummed a tune of her own making until she burst out singing, “Pardon me boys, is that the Chattanooga Choo-choo?”

Lollipop sat hunched over with his hands on his knees. A sucker poked out of his mouth, and great slurping sounds erupted every three seconds. One, two, three, slurp. One, two, three …

I took a seat next to Alice, since the only other choice was beside the slurping fool. I settled into my knitting best I could after realizing escape was impossible.

Alice wadded yet another piece of paper into a ball and said, “Well, the words I need have taken flight. I’ll have to wait for their return.”

Over the rim of my glasses, I watched her calmly gather all the balls of paper and put them into her walker’s pouch.

“Aren’t you upset? Angry? At least frustrated?” I asked.