“You’re going to phone him?” I wondered aloud.
“Well, I’m certainly not going to walk downstairs to get him.” She put her feet up into the air. “My size fives aren’t up to it.”
“Size
five
? Aren’t you thinking of your SAT score instead of your shoe size?”
“No, honey, that would be the score you got on your Civil Service exam.”
We both smiled at each other. Things must be all right if we were able to trade insults as usual. Maybe coming to stay with Bitty wouldn’t be so bad after all. If nothing else, we could annoy each other and save our friends and family a great deal of stress.
The next few days really tested that theory to the max.
First, I had truly forgotten what it was like to live in the same house with young people. True, it is an exceptionally roomy house, but unless the parlor moved to the next county, I could still hear every footfall on the stairs, every slam of the refrigerator door in the kitchen, and the
thump thump thump
of music in the basement vibrating the parlor floor. Bitty, who had insisted upon being carried upstairs to her own room at night and downstairs to hold court in the morning, aided and abetted the culprits.
I suspected her pain medications rendered her insensible to the irritations of loud noises at two in the morning, and after that first sleepless night, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Or hand, since my right arm was in a sling that made using the plural impossible.
“Brandon, Clayton, would you mind joining me for a moment?” I went to the kitchen door and asked. About six or seven young people sat at either Bitty’s small round kitchen table, or had pulled up a stool to the Corian worktop where Sharita Stone made her magic with flour, milk, and a Cuisinart. Unfortunately, kids were there and she was not. I crooked the index finger of my left hand at the twins.
They came immediately and went back into the parlor with me, the unsuspecting, trusting lads that they were. I gently closed the door, then leaned back against it so they couldn’t get out until I had finished.
“Boys, you know I love you,” I began, and they exchanged glances. I heard one of them mutter, “Uh-oh” but ignored that for the moment.
“However, you have befriended a herd of buffalo that stampede regularly up and down the stairs—stairs that are, coincidentally, very close to my head. Perhaps you can see how that might be irksome. Since being bounced down a hill in a box of metal and plastic a few days ago, I find I’m not as . . .
nice . . .
or patient as I normally am. My head hurts. My arm hurts. Everything between my toes and scalp hurts, actually, and I’m doing my best to stay away from mind-altering drugs. That poses a problem. Can you see where I’m going with this?”
“Yes, ma’am!” they said in unison. Such polite boys. Loud, occasionally inclined to forget, but polite. Bitty raised them well.
“We’ll tell our friends to hang out over at Heather’s place,” Clayton said. “She has the cottage all to herself, so it shouldn’t bother anybody.”
“Now that you’re here to watch over Mama, though,” Brandon said with a smile designed to charm and coax me into agreement, “we don’t need to be here
all
the time, do we?”
“Just make sure I have your cell phone numbers before you go.” I moved away from the parlor door. They charged it at the same time, bumping into each other in their haste to leave. “Boys?” I said right before they managed to get through it completely; “I expect you to answer when I call.”
Brandon turned and gave me an impish grin. “We’ll anther, Aunt Trinket, I promith.”
“Get out of here,” I said sternly, but wasn’t really perturbed at them mocking me. The prospect of peace and quiet was too alluring to get upset about anything so minor.
For the next two hours it was blessedly peaceful.
Then Bitty returned from wherever she had been. I heard them come in the front door, Jackson Lee laughing at something she’d said. I debated getting up from my cozy spot on the couch-bed, then decided against it. I was comfortable, and if they wanted me in on their private moments, they knew where to find me.
As luck would have it, Chen Ling found me first. So that was where Bitty had been, to Luann Carey's house of pugs to retrieve her dog. One more night was too much time away from her, apparently.
Jackson Lee was not far behind Chitling, and he had an armful of Bitty with him. I started to lift my eyebrows, remembered that it would hurt, and settled for saying, “I guess years of wrestling steers and cows have given you plenty of experience in carrying a two-legged heifer.”
“Aw, she’s just a little thing,” Jackson Lee said promptly. Bitty gave me a smug look that reminded me of her dog. Maybe that saying about people beginning to resemble their dogs really is true.
Rolling my eyes wouldn’t be nearly as painful as lifting my brows, so I did. I thought they were kinda cute, though. I mean, there’s Jackson Lee, a big Italian-looking guy, with petite blond Bitty held in his arms as carefully as if she was made of glass. Anyone can tell just by the way he acts around her that he’s crazy about Bitty. It’s written all over his face. He has no self-control when he’s with her, that’s plain.
When he had Bitty settled in the other chair with a pug on her lap, he sat on the wide, rolled arm next to her and smiled. “Now ladies, I took the whole day off just so I can be of service. What is your pleasure?”
“Jack and coke,” Bitty said promptly, and I cleared my throat and gave Jackson Lee the evil eye. He understood what I meant.
“Sugar, how ’bout something else? I know you don’t want to upset your stomach with all that stuff the doctors are making you take.”
“Oh honey, aren’t you the sweetest thing to worry about me? I’ll be fine, though. A little drink won’t hurt me at all.”
Jackson Lee paused. I recognized indecision in his face. I didn’t envy him. It would be difficult for him to refuse Bitty. He patted her on the arm and Chen Ling nearly took a plug out of him, so he jerked back.
“You just wait here, sugar,” he said, “and I’ll surprise you.”
“Make it a good surprise,” I said as he stood up, and he nodded in my direction. I had no faith that Bitty didn’t have him wrapped around her little finger so tight he’d do exactly what she asked. So it was indeed a surprise when he brought us both tall glasses of sweet tea.
He made up for disappointing Bitty by saying, “I know you wanted something else but I’m not about to risk your health even to make you happy, sugar. You’re too important.”
Now, that would make any woman happy, I thought to myself. It worked on Bitty, too. She beamed up at him and batted her eyelashes, ever the southern belle.
All of a sudden I felt like the third thumb or fifth wheel. It didn’t help that I felt so bad, and that my arm had been hurting like the dickens. Maybe I was being stupid for not taking a pain pill. So what if it made me crazy? Crazy was better than hurting.
“Where are the boys?” Bitty asked. “It’s awfully quiet.”
“They went to a friend’s house. We’re to call if we need them, but I gave them the afternoon off.”
I was proud of myself for not quite lying without having to confess that I had put them out of their own house.
“Well, that’s probably best,” Bitty said. “When they’re here we’ve got half of Ole Miss here as well. It does get tiring.”
I nearly fell off my bed. “Bitty, are you feeling all right? Is it time for another one of your pills?”
“Oh, I’m fine, Trinket. But I know you aren’t used to having young people around so much. I suppose I’ll feel that way when I’m older, too.”
If my right eye hadn’t already been swollen shut and my lips nearly the size of water balloons, I would have glared at her and blown a raspberry. As it was, I said, “Yes, I suppose my being six weeks older than you makes a big difference—in dog years.”
“Six weeks? Honey, you know you’re quite a bit older.”
“Eight weeks. Tops. But I don’t blame you for forgetting. I was so far ahead of you in school and all that it must have felt like I was much older.”
Jackson Lee threw himself into the breach. “Ladies, ladies—let us have civility, please.”
Bitty laughed. “Oh sugar, we do this all the time. See how much better Trinket looks now? She was real peaked when we got here, but now she’s all perked up.”
That was probably true. I hadn’t felt like getting off the couch when they arrived, but now I felt like getting up and thumping Bitty on her head. Since I had no intention of doing anything like that, I started laughing. It was silly, really, but Bitty could almost always get me out of feeling sorry for myself.
We were still laughing when the doorbell rang and Jackson Lee went to answer it. He seemed relieved to get out of the parlor, and I couldn’t blame him.
“You made everybody get out, didn’t you,” Bitty said to me like she knew the answer, and I started to nod.
“Yep.”
“Good for you. Don’t nod, Trinket. It looks like it hurts.”
“It does.”
“Take a pill,” she advised. “It’s better than being noble and suffering.”
“I’m not trying to be noble. I’m just trying not to be crazy.”
Bitty sighed. “Take a chance. If it makes you crazy, at least you won’t be in pain.”
“What makes you crazy?” Gaynelle Bishop asked from the parlor door. “Being an invalid? Can’t say I blame you there.”
“Trinket's always been a bad patient. She gets all mopey and irritable, and the rest of us have to put up with her. Have you been to see Rayna yet?”
Gaynelle came in and sat on the small sofa against the wall. “I just left there. She said she’ll go nuts if she has to just sit around all the time, but Rob is fussing over her like she can’t do a thing for herself. She said she sends him to the store just to get him out of the house for a while so she can get something done.”
That sounded like Rayna. She’s one of those people who has to stay busy all the time.
“Here.” Gaynelle produced a folded newspaper from her purse. “Y’all got a write-up in the Memphis paper about the accident.”
“We did?” Bitty sat up a little straighter, but I reached over and took the newspaper from Gaynelle's hand. If it said something tacky, there was no way I’d let Bitty read it. My patience would not deal well with her reaction.
Fortunately, it was a brief paragraph next to a photo of Rayna's crunched SUV, and said only that Holly Springs’ police were investigating the accident. It listed our names and ages—a practice I personally think should be abolished since giving out a woman’s age is not always polite—and that we were all from Holly Springs. I gave it back to Gaynelle, who handed the paper to Bitty.
“Look at this,” Bitty exclaimed a moment later, “they put our ages in here! That is outrageous! I have a good mind to call up the editor and—”
“Here you are, Miss Gaynelle,” said Jackson Lee, and he handed her a tall glass of sweet tea. “If you take lemon, I’ll get you some.”
“No, this is fine, Jackson Lee, thank you.”
“Who are you calling, sugar?” Jackson Lee asked Bitty, and she sat there for only an instant with her mouth still open before she shook her head.
“Oh, no one. I was thinking about Rayna's car. I guess it’s totaled, isn’t it.”
“Not even the door handles can be salvaged. Too bad. You know they have pretty good insurance on it, though.”
“I imagine so,” Gaynelle said. “Not having insurance these days is foolish. Or downright stupid. You never know what might happen.”
As we launched into a discussion on the dozens of different evils that had befallen the uninsured, Bitty’s doorbell rang again. My head clanged along with it, so I decided to take Bitty’s advice and a pain pill. If it made me crazy here, no one would ever notice. I’d fit right in at the Six Chimneys Lunatic Asylum.
My plastic bottle of pain medication had a long name with letters like X and Y in it, and I shook one of the round pills onto my lap since I was working left-handed. It said in the directions not to half the pill as the medication was time-released, so I popped the entire pill into my mouth and swallowed it with sweet tea. Delicious. Soon, I should feel much better. Or at least, bearable.
Jackson Lee returned to the parlor with a thick envelope. It looked like FedEx or UPS had delivered it instead of the post office. That probably meant Bitty had ordered more toys or clothes for Chen Ling. That dog has her own chest of drawers upstairs, an antique Bitty keeps stuffed with outfits from rain slickers and snow boots to designer doggy sunglasses and bikinis. It’s ridiculous what too much money can buy.
“Hm,” Jackson Lee said, looking at the envelope, “this is from the senator’s law firm. Want me to open it for you, sugar?”
Bitty waved a hand. “Heavens, yes. They’re always sending me stuff to sign since Philip died, loose-ends that need tidying up, I suppose.”
For a moment Jackson Lee paused in opening the envelope. He looked down at Bitty with a frown. “Sugar, you do bring everything you get from his lawyers to me to look at before you sign anything, don’t you?”
“Why, most of the time. Unless it’s a check.”
“Have you gotten any checks recently? Other than the alimony checks?”
“Yes, I think I did. A dividend or settlement check or something like that.”
Jackson Lee drew in a deep breath. “Settlement check? Do you still have the paperwork?”
“Of course I do. I put it with the other things to be taken to your office. You know I don’t come by there every day, so I put things in a basket to bring to you. Sally is always real nice about reminding me once a month to bring in stuff. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m about to find out, I have a feeling,” said Jackson Lee as he finished opening the thick envelope and took out a sheaf of papers thick enough to choke a mule.
As he scanned the cover letter, then flipped it over to read the next page, I saw his face turn colors. He normally has a nice warm complexion given him by heredity and the Mississippi sun, but it began to turn an unhealthy gray. Uh-oh. This may be unpleasant.
After a moment he looked up at Bitty with a grave expression. “We need to talk privately, I think.”
“Privately? You can speak freely in front of Trinket and Gaynelle.”