Miss Ruffles Inherits Everything (2 page)

After the moment of horrified silence that greeted Posie's proposal, an epic squabble broke out. The longtime club members were Honeybelle's loyal friends, but the younger generation wanted an end to Honeybelle's era of tyranny.

“We want to keep Lady Bird's memory alive!”

“With all this drought, we can hardly allot precious water to wild flowers.”

“The bluebonnet
is
Texas!”

Posie raised her voice to be heard above the hubbub. “Of course there's nothing
wrong
with bluebonnets, and we
all
love Lady Bird more than pecan pie. But it's time for a more environmentally friendly event. We should be encouraging our friends and neighbors to plant more ecological gardens instead of old-fashioned flowers that are a waste of water.”

“A waste of water!” Honeybelle cried.

“It's not your fault, Honeybelle.” Posie hastily tried to cover her unfortunate choice of words. “You've never set foot outside of Texas, so you don't know these things. The world has changed. It's time we all planted succulents and were more responsible about water.”

“The bluebonnet is a native plant! Since when does a prickly old cactus look nicer than a pretty bluebonnet?”

The conflict raged for an hour. On the refreshment table, ice in the pitchers of sweet tea melted and the lemon shortbread cookies grew stale, as ladies who had been friends from the cradle or dated each other's brothers or sons insulted each other. Stormy tears were shed, and plenty of shameful abuse hurled. Posie held her ground, though—a brave choice, because even a newcomer like me could see she stood to get herself blackballed if her effort failed.

Finally someone called for a vote, and Honeybelle just caved. She turned pale and sagged into her chair. Even her big blond hair seemed to deflate. For the first time since I'd met her, she looked her age. And while her friends waved smelling salts under Honeybelle's nose, Posie got herself elected president of the club by a narrow margin.

With the gavel in her hand, she settled the dispute with a bang that sounded like an auctioneer dropping the hammer on a final bid.

The Lady Bird Johnson Bluebonnet Festival was canceled.

Honeybelle wavered to her feet. She had recently taken a fall and hurt her knee, and she wobbled on the cane that she had previously used more like a prop than a walking aid. “If you don't have any respect for Lady Bird, it's clear you have no respect for me.”

Tearfully, she resigned her membership and walked to the rear of the social hall with her head high and an embroidered lace hankie pressed to her nose. At the door, she paused and looked back as if expecting her friends to follow.

But nobody moved. After all, without the garden club, some of those ladies had no social lives whatsoever—no reason to pull on pantyhose or powder their cheeks except for church and Wednesday night Bible study.

As her sob echoed in the room behind her, Honeybelle made her solitary exit. When she hobbled out of sight, Miss Ruffles let out a howl that shook everyone in the room. Then Miss Ruffles bolted after Honeybelle, me scrambling on the end of her leash as if keelhauled behind a powerboat.

A week later Honeybelle's private nurse, Shelby Ann—who had been hired to help after a previous tripping incident and stayed on for another year—insisted a dejected Honeybelle keep her Friday appointment with Estelle, her longtime beauty operator at the Ambiance Salon. Afterward, Shelby Ann left Honeybelle sitting on the front seat of her Lexus convertible so her hair wouldn't get mussed in the wind while Shelby Ann ran into Pinto's Pharmacy to fill a prescription. When she came back to the car, Shelby Ann said, she found Honeybelle slumped over her handbag, dead and gone. Miss Ruffles was chewing on the leather steering wheel, although Shelby Ann claimed the dog had been trying to blow the horn to call for help.

Shelby Ann, who had been an army nurse before she started working for Honeybelle, checked Honeybelle's pulse, then got behind the wheel and drove the body directly over to Gamble's funeral home, no muss, no fuss.

The news of Honeybelle's sudden death shook the whole town. The university dimmed its lights in sorrow. The town council voted to celebrate Honeybelle Hensley Week as soon as April rolled around. To relieve their guilt for sending Honeybelle to her early grave, the garden club members slapped together a special memorial service for a few days after the family's private funeral. There was a serendipitous opening in the church schedule on Saturday at First United Methodist—before Jessie Lee Markland's wedding to a nice medical resident from Houston—so the club grabbed it. They also planned a light luncheon for afterward, when the members intended to announce a scholarship in Honeybelle's name and to serve Honeybelle's recipe for lime and crushed pineapple congealed salad one last time.

Because my own mother's funeral still felt like an anvil in my heart, I had been glad not to be invited to the family funeral. But then Miss Ruffles stopped eating. After a first burst of enraged energy in which she chewed up the mail and left the bits for me to clean up, she did nothing but mope. The gleam in her gaze turned dull. I couldn't tempt her to chase a ball. Before my eyes, she began slowly fading away.

Before Honeybelle's death, Miss Ruffles had patrolled the house and property to protect Honeybelle from invaders. She traumatized the UPS man, lay in wait for the mailman. In perhaps her most important role, however, Miss Ruffles stood guard against Honeybelle's many gentlemen callers. From the moment potential suitors rang the doorbell at cocktail hour, Miss Ruffles growled and sniffed and bared her teeth and otherwise warned off any overeager man who showed his face. Some never made it up the front steps. Being permitted to step over the threshold was a major milestone for the brave men who came courting the widow Hensley.

Now that Honeybelle was gone, though, Miss Ruffles was bereft. In the morning, she crept downstairs to crouch dejectedly for hours under Honeybelle's desk. I was watching the indefatigable Miss Ruffles pine away. So off we went to the memorial service—probably my last act as personal assistant to Miss Ruffles.

As we stood at the front of the church in front of Honeybelle's urn, Miss Ruffles said her final, silent good-bye. Honeybelle's son, Hut Junior, cleared his throat to get my attention. Sternly, he pointed at the empty end of the front pew to tell us to sit.

Hut Junior was a well-fed Texan in a snug summer-weight suit. He looked every inch the new CEO of Hensley Oil and Gas, his mother's lucrative company and now, after her death, presumably his. His boots were shined, his face closely shaved, his crew cut newly trimmed. He bore little resemblance to his vivacious mother, but a lot to his father and Honeybelle's much-loved husband, the late, great college football coach Hut Hensley, who was buried in a massive tomb on the university campus. Hut Junior's bulldog face rarely cracked a smile, not even at his wife as Posie slipped past Miss Ruffles and plunked down beside her husband. She wrapped her arm around his, either staking her claim to the richest man in the church or hanging onto the person who might save her if Miss Ruffles went on a rampage.

The glare Posie sent me could have warned off a rattlesnake.

Their sixteen-year-old son, Trey, slouched on the pew with his nose in a cell phone game. His cowboy hat was tilted down to show a Junior Rodeo patch instead of his face.

Ten-year-old Travis Joe perched on Hut Junior's lap, wearing a bow tie and bouncing as if he'd skipped his morning Ritalin. At the sight of Miss Ruffles, though, Travis Joe let out a cry of dread and tried to climb to the higher safety of his father's shoulder.

With some of her old spunk, Miss Ruffles turned and fastened a hard, predatory stare on the boy.

“Sit down, Miss McKillip,” Hut Junior said to me over the band's music as he attempted to subdue his squirming son. “But if that animal becomes a nuisance—”

“I'll take her out, I promise.”

Meaning something else, Trey muttered under his breath, “I'll take her out.”

Posie slapped her son's arm. “Hush, Trey. Honeybelle loved that dog. Show some respect for your grandmother.”

Trey heaved an intolerant sigh.

I tugged the leash, and for once Miss Ruffles obeyed me. I eased down onto the pew, and Miss Ruffles flopped down on the cool floor at my feet, still glaring at Travis Joe.

Miss Ruffles and I both knew there wasn't any use trying to endear ourselves to Hut Junior. I figured he planned on sending me on the first bus back to Chagrin Falls as soon as the service ended. And I'd overheard what fate he had planned for Miss Ruffles.

I had accidentally eavesdropped while scrubbing one of Miss Ruffles's mistakes out of the rug on the second-floor landing when he and Posie came like a couple of carpetbaggers to Honeybelle's mansion two days after her death.

“Can you believe it?” he'd said to his wife while she stretched a tape measure on the marble checkerboard floor at the bottom of the graceful curved staircase. “Mama's nursemaid, Shelby Ann, declined to come to the memorial service because she's already on a world cruise! There's a reason half the town called her Moneybelle. Mama overpaid everybody.”

Posie made a noise of agreement. “She's been taking care of that crazy voodoo cook of hers for ages, and that ancient butler, too. They should have been sent away years ago.”

“And I can only imagine what salary she gave the glorified dog walker.”

Posie shushed her husband and told him to hold the other end of the tape measure. “We have to make sure my grandmother's rug fits here. If it doesn't, we're going to take it to Dallas to get trimmed right away, because I want it here for my baby sister's wedding.”

Hut didn't remark upon the wedding, which I knew had been a big bone of contention in the family. Posie wanted her sister's lavish nuptials to be held in Honeybelle's beautiful rose garden and had pushed hard for it. But at the time of her death Honeybelle still refused to give permission. With Honeybelle out of the way, though, I supposed Posie intended to throw a big society wingding, after all.

Sounding strained, Hut Junior said, “We don't have to move in here right away, do we?”

“Why not?” After a pregnant silence, she said, “Oh, sugarpie, don't get all weepy again.”

He blew a honk into his hankie. “I have a hard time thinking about her being gone, that's all.”

“I know, I know. But your mama has been hiding your light under a bushel for too many years. You're gonna be the big boss now. And you deserve this house. Besides, after her wedding, my sister's going to need a home, and I promised she could have ours. Don't you want to live here? You can smoke all the cigars you want on the terrace, and the boys will love the pool. And the rosebushes! At last I'll get to enjoy the roses. We'll make the place even more beautiful than it is already, you'll see.”

Hut didn't respond to that. After a moment, he said more quietly, “If we're going out of town for a rug, we should take that dern dog with us. I hate that dog. We could drop it off at a pound somewhere.”

“Get rid of it?”

“Do you want to be the one to start walking that wild animal? She's dangerous. Not to mention obnoxious and … and … you know it's the reason my mama kept falling. I ought to have insisted she get rid of it a year ago.”

“Oh, Hut, don't get upset. Honeybelle loved you more than Miss Ruffles.” Posie dropped her voice, too. “I hoped maybe she hired the dogsitter so she'd have more time for you and her grandchildren. Now we'll never know, will we?”

The dogsitter. She meant me.

The prememorial band music came to a climactic close. Reverend Jones appeared like a magician through the hidden door behind the church's altar. Miss Ruffles lifted her nose and gave a growl. The reverend had visited Honeybelle's house regularly, and Miss Ruffles loved to torment him. She nipped at his shoes until he danced on Honeybelle's fine rug. Seeing him appear so suddenly in the church, she sat up and barked. The sound must have carried the length and breadth of the sanctuary, because another frisson of silence passed over the congregation. I grasped her collar, but she fought me—eager to get free and dash up onto the altar to get herself a bite of the reverend's tasty socks. About to speak, Reverend Jones hesitated as if stayed by the cautious hand of God.

Hut Junior and Posie froze me with identical glares.

“I'll take Miss Ruffles outside,” I whispered.

“Yes, you've made your point.” Posie fanned herself with the memorial program.

Suddenly I didn't care that we were going to miss the service. I could see the trip to the church had already served its purpose. Miss Ruffles looked her old self again, full of vinegar and eager to make trouble. She had said good-bye to Honeybelle and was ready to rumble.

So we made a dash for freedom—not the way we'd come in, but by the side door that put us out on the parking lot side of the church.

As we stepped outside, a whole crowd of people looked up at us from where they hung around their vehicles—pickup trucks and dusty cars that had clearly come from the outlying cotton farms. There were no fancy ladies in department store hats here, no distinguished town leaders. These were Mule Stop people who had come to pay their respects to Honeybelle but hadn't found places for themselves in the church.

At the sight of Miss Ruffles, the men removed their hats. A few ladies took out their hankies. One couple stepped forward. The woman bent down to pat Miss Ruffles.

The man held his hat to his chest and said to me in a strong voice, “Miss Honeybelle loaned me seven hundred dollars back when we needed it bad. She drove it out to our place in her convertible and pretended like she owed me poker winnings so our kids didn't know the truth. She didn't have to do that, but it saved our family, got us back on our feet. She was a real lady. We're gonna miss her.”