Authors: Lorena McCourtney
I was heading back to Eric and Tasha’s place when I saw the mail-lady coming my way. I hadn’t yet received any mail here, but today she apparently had something for me. Now was my chance to find out what she knew about the unauthorized occupant of my house.
“Hi,” I said as she stuffed a couple of envelopes in my box. “I’m Ivy Malone. I lived here for years, but the house was rented while I’ve been away. But now I’m back.”
“Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Charlene. I would say, always nice to come home. This is my first day back after two-weeks taking care of my grandkids, and I’m
really
glad to be home. But it looks as if coming home wasn’t so nice for you.” She jiggled a shoulder toward the burned relic of my motorhome. She was fifty-ish, with wiry gray hair, but she had great legs showing beneath her postal-uniform shorts. Maybe a benefit of all the walking she did on her postal route? “What happened?”
“Propane explosion. The cause is still under investigation,” I added, though that was undoubtedly an overly optimistic statement, considering what Officer DeLora had said. “I wanted to ask you, were you delivering mail here last winter or spring? A woman about my age lived here then. I’m hoping maybe you knew her. I found her body in the upstairs bathroom. She’d been dead quite a while.”
“How awful!”
She shook her head. “No, I started this route just a couple months ago, after old Luke Morris died, and there’s never been any mail for this address while I’ve been delivering here. She just . . . died in your bathtub?”
“No, she was murdered.”
“My goodness, I leave for two weeks and come home to explosion and murder?”
“Madison Street is different than it used to be.”
“It must be. I’m hearing a rumor that all the houses around here may be razed before long too.”
“Some outfit called Radison Properties is trying to buy up everything. No one seems sure what they intend to do. You’ve probably delivered mail from them to people here?” I tossed out hopefully, thinking she might have some inside information.
“I, uh, really can’t discuss mail I deliver.”
“Of course. Well, it was nice meeting you. Thanks for the mail.”
She walked on to the next house on her nicely-toned legs, and I pulled my mail out of the box. I felt a little let-down. In the mystery and detective books I read, the clever sleuth always snags some vital bit of information from someone no one else thought to talk to. What did I snag? The information that I might have better legs if I walked more.
But I perked up when I looked at the mail. The two larger envelopes were from my mail-forwarding addresses, but the other one was from grand-niece Sandy. Back in my bedroom at Eric and Tasha’s, I ripped her envelope open first.
Hey, Aunt Ivy, you’re going to love this!
Sandy had written.
You can put them anywhere, but the round one will fit just right around your belly button! Send me a selfie! Love, Sandy. P.S. Mom told you I’m writing a teen news column for the newspaper now, and I keep getting these lovelorn questions asking for advice. So maybe I’ll have to ask
you
for advice!
Yeah, right. As if I were
experienced on lovelorn subjects. Then – oh, no! – I realized I’d been right about the ominous possibilities of Sandy’s gift. Here it was: belly button adornment.
Maybe big in Sandy’s age group, not so much in the LOL world.
But the envelope was flat, not lumpy. What did she have in mind for my belly button? I shook out the contents.
Stick-on tattoos.
No, I did
not want a tattoo on my bellybutton or any other portion of my anatomy. I’d just toss them and tell her— Then I looked at the tattoos more closely. Nothing ghastly. Just fluttering butterflies and cuddly kittens and cheerful daisies. I balanced the packet in my hand.
It wasn’t as if a stick-on tattoo would be attached forever. The instructions said they’d come right off with rubbing alcohol or baby oil. And it wasn’t as if anyone would actually
see
it.
Why not?
I opened the round one and followed instructions, positioning it in place and pressing it with a damp washcloth. A couple minutes later I removed the stick-on sheet and craned my neck over to see what I’d done.
Hey, it worked!
I felt an unexpected giddiness. No, I was not going to send Sandy a selfie. I’d heard all about how selfies sometimes mysteriously wind up plastered all over the internet, and an LOL with daisies decorating her belly-button might become Laugh of the Day. But now I was a woman walking around with a secret. Maybe even a woman of mystery. It gave me an unexpected bounce of confidence. I had a ring of daisies around my belly button!
So what was I going to do with this sudden boost of confidence?
Chapter Seventeen
Tackle the Braxtons, of course. What was this business of Drake’s that kept him so busy he didn’t even go to his mother’s birthday barbecue? Although not too busy to barbecue my motorhome, of course. Yes, his business definitely needed further investigation.
And I was going to do this how?
That upbeat confidence plunged into a nose-dive. I didn’t have any great ideas. I didn’t have a computer. I didn’t even have wheels.
I still had feet and a phone, although at the moment I couldn’t think what to do with either. I was alone in the house. Eric was working out at the gym today. He’d taken the bus to get there, because Tasha needed their one vehicle for her assignment checking out reaction to her old-woman persona at a trendy clothing boutique. They were taking a load of Eric’s junk creations to a flea market at the fairgrounds tomorrow.
I opened my envelopes of mail from my forwarding boxes. An ad for hearing aids. A newsletter from a church I’d gone to while I was on the road. Mailings from a couple of charities I occasionally donate to.
A couple of political pleas for money. Hardly worth the bother.
The eyes of the mannequin head watched me as I tossed the mail. Hey, hadn’t I turned her face to the wall? But here she was, looking at me again. Okay, I’d give her something to look at. I flashed my belly button daisies at her.
About midafternoon, I heard the front door open and, after making sure my t-shirt covered my newly-enhanced mid-section, I went out to see who had come home.
Tasha plopped on the sofa and struggled out of her sturdy shoes. She finally got one off and flung it across the room. “I’m tired of being an old lady,” she muttered.
Aren’t we all.
“My back hurts and my feet hurt, and some teensy-tiny, size-two salesgirl turned up her nose and told me they never carried anything for my size or age group. And then she tried to rush me out the door before anyone – heaven forbid – thought I was an actual customer there.”
She reached under her clothes and withdrew her bulging belly pad, plunked her heels on the bare floor, and stretched out with an I’ve-had-it whoosh of breath. I felt a moment of envy. It would be nice to be able to simply yank off some of my sags and bulges.
“But, you know, being old myself, even if it’s only temporary, makes me think.” Tasha kicked another shoe across the floor and eyed the baggy stockings. “It’s depressing, being old.”
“We’re all going to get old. Unless we die young, of course,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, right. We get saggy and baggy and tired and stiff. Everything hurts. Nothing works right. Your eyesight goes dim and your hearing wonky—” She paused and dug a wad of cotton out of one ear. “Sometimes it seems, when I’m in old mode, I can’t even
taste
right.”
“It’s not that bad,” I protested. I have no trouble tasting, although I’ve had some older friends who grumble that everything tastes like that flour and water paste we used to make when we were kids. With my glasses, I see okay. Although my hearing may be a smidgen questionable. Mac’s too.
Sometimes we have odd conversations. He asks me a question. I, having heard, “Let’s feet shout tonight,” answer with, “Okay, but how do we get our feet to shout and why would we want to?” He gives me a strange, blank look because what he’d said was, “Let’s eat out tonight.” But eventually we get everything straightened out and laugh about it.
“And then after all that bad stuff, what happens?” Tasha answered her own question. “You top it off by
dying
.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“It makes you wonder what comes after.” She slumped farther down on the sofa. “If anything.”
“The afterwards part bothers you?” I asked.
“I’ve never thought much about dying. I mean, it always seemed so far off. But now, like this—” She yanked off the wig and dangled it in front of her face as if looking for answers in its mousy-gray depths. “It doesn’t seem so far away. What happens then, Ivy? Don’t you worry about that?”
With the obvious implication that I was old; I should be worried about death and afterwards. I could take the question as demeaning to my age, but I knew Tasha didn’t mean it that way. She was truly troubled.
“No,” I answered truthfully.
“No?”
“No,” I repeated. “I don’t look forward to what might be an unpleasant process of dying, but I don’t worry about what comes afterward. Jesus came and died on the cross so we could move on to a forever life with him. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,’” I quoted from John 3:16.
“Up there flapping our wings and playing harps?” She gave a desultory arm flap of her own.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know what eternal life will be like, but I know we don’t turn into angels with wings, and I doubt the Lord would ever assign someone with my minimal musical talents to play the harp.” Though I’ve always had this secret yearning to make a soulful wail with a saxophone. Maybe I can do that in eternity? “But the good news is that there will be a meaningful, even joyful, existence with him.”
“For all of us?”
“Life with the Lord comes for those who’ve accepted Jesus as Savior.”
She snagged a stocking with the toe of her other foot and dragged it off. “Eric’s folks sent him to Sunday School some when he was a kid, but mine never did.”
“Going to Sunday School and church isn’t going to get you into eternal life with the Lord. And not going won’t keep you out. An eternal life with the Lord isn’t something you can
earn.
It’s our acceptance of Jesus as Savior.”
“That seems really, uh. . .”
“Preachy?”
“I was going to say
narrow
-
minded.
It doesn’t seem like that should be the
only
way to get there. ” She pulled off the other stocking. “Is it?”
“The Bible is pretty definite about that, so yes, the only way. It also has some pretty good ‘stuff’ for while we’re living too. The Bible and prayer have helped me through some bad times over the years. My son’s disappearance and my husband’s death were the worst.”
She gave me an interested glance but didn’t pry for further information. “My folks splitting up when I was eleven was my worst. My dad got married again and had some more kids and I guess just forgot about me.”
“Our heavenly father never forgets about us. You can talk to him yourself, you know.”
“Me? You mean
pray
?” She said the word as if there might be something underhanded about it, like insider trading.
“Sure. You don’t need a special code or password.”
“Actually, things are pretty good now for Eric and me. Nothing awful that we need to pray about anyway.”
“Then you should be thanking God for that.”
“Though sometimes I feel as if we’re . . . I don’t know . . . missing out on something? Sometimes I wonder if spending your life pretending to be someone else has any value. Because when you get to the bottom line, that’s what acting is. Pretending.”
“You can talk to God about things like that.”
“He cares about that kind of stuff?”
“Sure. I talk to him about most everything.”
“Really?” She glanced at me as if looking for some new and improved communications equipment, but there wasn’t any, of course. Prayer, blessedly, doesn’t take any high-tech equipment, and even if your hearing goes wonky and your eyesight fades, you can still pray. “Well, I’ll think about it.”
Not exactly a life-changing acceptance of the Lord, but maybe a start. “If you and Eric ever want to come to church with Mac and me, we’d be glad to have you. Or if you want to talk to me about any of it, that’d be fine too.”
“I’ll think about it,” she repeated. She stood up and extracted another blob of padding. “Right now I’m going to go take all this stuff off. Then I need to make something for the potluck and barbecue tonight.”
“Eric hasn’t come home yet. He won’t miss the barbecue, will he?”
“After his workout he was going to help with a training session at the gym for the little kids. I have to go pick him up at five. We still have to get stuff loaded for the flea market tomorrow too.”
Tasha went to her bedroom to undo being an old lady, and I went to mine where I had no choice but to continue being one. Still, as I’d told her, it wasn’t as bad as she seemed to think.
Not bad at all, in fact. I don’t wake up in the morning feeling as if all that’s left in life is worn-out leftovers. But life would also be a whole lot better if I could just banish the Braxtons from it.
I hadn’t any way to do that at the moment, however, so I plastered on another tattoo. Which gave me the unexpected thought that I’d gotten a purple butterfly on my ankle before Beth Braxton did, and I hadn’t had to beat Grandma Braxton at chess to do it.
Hey, yeah, sometimes there are unexpected benefits to being in the older generation! And just to take further advantage of this particular benefit, I put a blue kitten on my other ankle.
I didn’t have any peaches to make the cobbler I’d planned, so I baked a pan of brownies while Tasha went to get Eric at the gym. When she got home, she made a macaroni and cheese casserole. I hadn’t heard from Mac all day, but when we trooped over to Geoff and Magnolia’s back yard, he was there. With a nice platter of deviled eggs. I wondered if he’d notice my fake tattoos.