The Right Thing (13 page)

“Can I see it?” Starr asked. I fished my mother's lipstick out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Oooh,” she breathed. “It's so
pretty
.” In the dim light, the lipstick shone in Starr's hand like a piece of pirate's treasure, smooth and golden. She held the end of the tube higher in an effort to catch the light and make out the name. “It says, ‘Vixen,' Annie. What's a vixen?”

“It's a girl fox, I think.” Starr handed it back to me, and I took the cap off. The fiery red of the lipstick was every bit as warm and lush as a vixen's brush. I held it under my nose and closed my eyes, the fragrance conjuring my mother in the musty, slightly spoiled air of the garage. Putting the cap back on, I handed the lipstick to Starr. “Here,” I said. “Put some on me first?”

“Sure.” She took it from me with a smile and adjusted the rearview mirror. “Now hold still. You don't want to mess it up.” I made a pout and closed my eyes.

“What d'you morphadikes think you're doing?”

The loud, angry growl came from behind us, just inside the garage, as though a rabid dog had snuck up on Starr and me and was ready to bite. With a jolt of alarm, I knew that voice even before I turned my head.

The terror of Fairmont Street was wearing a raincoat, too—a camouflage one like the big boys in the sixth grade wore. In the dark of the garage, Buddy Bledsoe's shadowed outline loomed as huge as one of the blackjack oaks outside.

“No girls allowed!” He punched his fist into his palm with a meaty smack.

I wanted to scream, and Starr's face was white. We scrambled out of the front seat, nearly ripping our raincoats on the rusted springs in our haste, but Buddy advanced on the truck with his fists clenched and swinging. Cornered, we retreated until our backs were against the splintered wall of the garage.

Upon us now, Buddy's face was red and twisted. My sight grew blurry, my breath running fast as a rabbit through the tall grass. Beside me, Starr's hand groped for mine.

“What's that you got there?” Buddy demanded. Eyes narrowing, he poked Starr's shoulder so hard she staggered. “Give it!”

Her voice was quavering, but she spoke right up. “It's a lipstick. Boys don't wear lipstick.” My mouth went dry. I couldn't believe she'd talked back to Buddy Bledsoe like that, but she wasn't done. “Why do you want it, anyways?” Starr asked reasonably.

“Shut up! Give it to me,” Buddy said, “or I'll beat the shit out of you.” He grabbed Starr's left hand, squeezing her wrist. With a small squeak of pain, she let go of my mother's lipstick and it fell at his feet. Grunting, Buddy leaned over and picked it up. The sight of the golden cylinder vanishing in his big, dirty hand brought tears to my eyes: my mother was going to kill me even if by some miracle Buddy Bledsoe didn't do it.

But Starr folded her arms, tossed her straggling blond curls, and said, “You're nothing but a big ol' bully—picking on girls.”

“Shut up,”
Buddy roared and shoved her up against the wall.

Even then Starr didn't fold. “Stop it!” She pushed back, and when I saw his fist lifted to punch her, I finally found my courage and did something previously unimaginable. I kicked Buddy Bledsoe in the knee as hard as I could, which was considerable since I really was good at kickball.

“Yeah!” I shouted, sounding braver than I had any right to be. “You're a big old bully. Give it back!”

And in that next instant it was like we were a pack of two. Starr and I fell upon Buddy, swinging and kicking, shouting at him to give it back, give it back
right now
. Standing up for once was so exhilarating I wasn't afraid of getting hit at all. Oh, Buddy got in an awkward punch or two, but the close quarters were to our advantage and adrenaline drove us like a gasoline-fueled house fire. I smacked him a good one across his ear, and when he turned to pound his fist on my head, Starr got in a lucky kick to his groin. He fell to his knees on the dirt floor of the garage.

“Aagh,”
he moaned.

And then I saw the lipstick. It had fallen out of Buddy's hand and was lying next to the old truck's cement block standing in for a front tire. I swooped upon the golden cylinder as Buddy collapsed on his side with an agonized expulsion of breath, his hands cupping his testicles.

“Cheaters,” he gasped. “Two against one.”

“Run, Starr!” I cried. “I got it!”

Her long raincoat flapping like a loose yellow tarpaulin in a monsoon, Starr leapt over Buddy, who was now groaning and rolling around in the dirt. Without a backward look, we ran, leaving our umbrellas and the terror of Fairmont Street behind us. Starr and I slid downhill through the leaves and charged down the railroad tracks in our muddy shoes. Giddy and breathless with victory, we turned uphill, clawing from tree to tree to the edge of the woods on Devine Street. The rain had slowed again, cold silver droplets falling from the bare branches overhead as we emerged from the trees onto the pavement.

Starr and I began to walk homeward in the rain, trying to catch our breaths, before I said, “D'you think he's going to come after us?”

“Nope,” Starr said. “We whupped him good.” She kicked a rock down a storm drain and grinned.

“What if he goes and gets his gang?” I worried. “What if he tells?”

Starr gave me a sideways look from under her wet hair and didn't say anything for a long beat. Finally, she said, “Don't you get it, Annie? Buddy Bledsoe can't ever say anything about this to anybody. He was trying to take a
lipstick
away from two little girls, little girls who beat the tar out of him.”

I thought about it for a minute. “You're right. And we can't tell either. We were supposed to be at Lisa's house, reading Bible stories.”

Starr nodded. “I'm going to get into trouble anyways, for losing the umberella.”

Pushing my drenched bangs out of my eyes, I thought for a minute. “Let's say we gave them to some poor people.” I warmed to my imaginary pair of umbrella-less beggars. “Let's say they were cold and wet and it was the Christian thing to do.”

“Maybe your folks'll buy that,” Starr said, “but my poppa won't.” By now we were at the corner of Gray Street where the rental house stood. We trudged down through the Allens' backyard, not speaking. The fence seemed higher than usual when I climbed over the wire.

“See you Monday.” I was shivering, ready to go indoors, return my mother's lipstick, and put this adventure behind me.

“See you Monday,” Starr said. She turned to go home, a little girl lost in a grown woman's long, yellow raincoat.

That was the last time I saw her.

 

When I got home, I was cold and wet, dirty and tired. I sneaked in the back door and slipped out of my muddy shoes. Methyl Ivory must have been busy in another part of the house because no one answered my subdued “Hello?” With a weary relief, I went into the kitchen. A pot roast simmered on the stove, filling the air with its good smell. There were snap beans in a colander by the sink, a paring knife and a bowl of red potatoes on the table.

My mother's purse wasn't there.

She must have gone out today after all. However was I going to get the lipstick back in her purse now? My stomach plummeted to the linoleum. The lost umbrella suddenly seemed like nothing compared to the trouble I was going to be in when my mother came home. I was too wrung out to cry, so I bit my lip, thinking hard.

The only idea I could come up with was to sneak into her bedroom, leave the lipstick on her dressing table, and hope she never found out I took it. It was a feeble idea—she never went anywhere without making up her face and so was bound to have missed it already—but it was the only idea I had. Lipstick in hand, I plodded up the stairs and down the long, dark hall to my parents' bedroom.

Their door was shut. I eased it open and poked my head into the room to the sound of someone singing in the adjoining bathroom behind the closed door. My parents must have been going out that evening because draped across the end of their massive half-tester bed was a Christmas-red chiffon gown and a black velvet wrap.

Next to the dress was my mother's purse.

Holding my breath, praying for grace, I tiptoed across the floor to the bed.

But in the bathroom, the singing stopped. There was the splash of water sloshing, the glug of the bathtub draining. Catching a glimpse of my face in the marble-topped bureau's mirror, white and dirt-smeared but determined, I opened my mother's purse and dropped the lipstick inside her makeup bag. I had just snapped the pocketbook shut when the bathroom door opened. My mother came out in a cloud of steam, her hair in a towel, belting her bathrobe.

“Annie!” she exclaimed. “You gave me a fright—and what are you doing in here? You're soaking wet and filthy. However did you get so dirty reading Bible stories?”

We had an early dinner that evening since my parents were going to attend a holiday cocktail party at the country club later on. While Methyl Ivory served the pot roast and mashed potatoes, Daddy asked me about my afternoon.

“What was your favorite Bible story, Annie?”

I told him I liked the one where Eve took the apple from the Tree of Knowledge without God's permission.

I could just see her—breaking the shiny red fruit from the hanging branch, knowing it was wrong but doing it anyway, biting into the crisp flesh, the juice running down her chin.

At least Eve got to eat the apple.

“L
ook on the bright side: you didn't get any of that paint in your hair. Bleachy like you got it, you'd of had to cut the red straight out.”

Starr and I are crammed into Buddy's—I mean Bette's—prehistoric-pink little bathroom in the Airstream, trying to get me out of my clothes without smearing paint everywhere. My jeans are in a garbage bag on the pink bath rug, and my boots are outside in the cramped hallway. I'm shivering on the fuzzy pink toilet seat cover, crouched under a gilt filigreed shelf just over my head. There's even a pink crocheted toilet paper cozy on the extra roll of pink paper up there. Somebody likes pink. A lot.

“Bright side, my scrawny ass,” I mutter as Starr carefully peels me out of four hundred dollars' worth of red-stained, dirty green cashmere. Some of the paint has soaked through the sweater, and so my bra's ruined, too. I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom's dollhouse-sized mirror, and a fright looks back. In the yellow glare of the overhead light, my hair is sticking up all over my head, my winter-white skin is broken out in goose bumps as big as mosquito bites, and I'm sitting here in my oldest underwear and ratty Hot Sox.

“The bright side,” I complain, “is Buddy Bledsoe not beating the crap out of me. And I'm
freezing
.”

Starr grabs a pink towel embroidered with swans and drapes it over my shoulders. “Buddy's Bette now, honey,” she reminds me. “Try to remember—it means a lot to her. Think on what it's been like. Year in, year out, knowing she was a woman on the inside but having to act all macho because she had the wrong plumbing!” The bra and sweater join my jeans inside the black garbage bag. “That's why Bette was so hateful, back before she got the surgery.”

“Like he's not hateful now?” I snipe, running my fingers through my hair to make it lie down.

There's a timid knock at the bathroom door. “I got it, Starr,” Buddy says in a muffled voice.

Starr slides the door open a crack and trades the garbage bag for my new black dress that was previously hanging in the back of the Beemer, taking it from the hot-roller-wearing former terror of Fairmont Street.

“Here, Bette,” Starr says. “Take this. Just put the keys in my purse. You might as well stick that garbage bag right in the dumpster. Annie's clothes are toast.” She shuts the door and, with a little difficulty, turns around to face me again. This bathroom's not really meant to hold two people at the same time, especially not if one of them is pregnant. I don't like the way she's looking at me, as though I'm the one who's done something awful.

“What?” I demand.

Starr's mouth is determined. She says, “Look. Bette's real sorry, Annie, for tonight and all the trouble she gave us back when we were kids.” She strips the plastic bag off my low-cut, off-the-shoulder dress. “You want some help getting done up?”

I take the dress from her. “I think I can handle this by myself, thanks.” Then, knowing I sound snotty but unable to stop myself, I say, “Why don't you get back to ‘catching up' with your old friend out there in Trailer Land.” I can't look at Starr after that, so I fuss with getting the dress off its hanger instead.

“What the hell's the matter with you?” Starr asks. She tries to put her hands on her hips and bangs her elbows into the plastic shower door and the plastic wall of the bathroom. “Ow.” She rubs her arms.

I finally get the dress off the hanger. “Why didn't you tell me who
Bette
really was when I asked you?” I demand in a lowered voice. “I'm the one who's just driven to New Orleans, lied to Du, and risked an ass-load of trouble! You couldn't tell me the truth? That Buddy Bledsoe is your best friend?”

Starr raises an eyebrow. “She's not my best friend, Annie. You are, or were. Okay, so I've been knowing Bette was really Buddy ever since she and Jesús—that's Bette's boyfriend, Jesús Ortega, he's a jockey—started in to living here year-round. They go to visit Jesús's family in Miami for the summer while the Fair Grounds is closed. Bette put the money on that horse for me at Gulfstream Park. We both made out pretty good.”

“How nice for you. And Buddy.”

Starr goes on like I haven't said a word. “Me and Bette first met up when I was working the Clubhouse, cocktail waitressing. I recognized who she was when she and Jesús got into it after he started flirting with me—not that he meant anything by it, those Latinos, they'll come on to a bucket of spackle if it's wearing a skirt—but Bette got mad as a snakebit hog. Seeing that red face and those eyes going squinty, it all came back to me then. ‘Buddy?' I asked. She drank down her mai tai in one gulp and busted into tears. I felt so sorry for that big ol' gal, Annie. Bette asked me not to tell anyone about how she used to be Buddy Bledsoe. She's an equine acupuncturist now, calls herself Bette Swann.”

There's that timid knock at the bathroom door again.

Oh, please. “Little girls, little girls, let me come in or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll beat your brains in,” I say under my breath. Starr gives me another exasperated look, and I feel like a jerk.

On the other side of the door Buddy says, “Annie? You want some coffee? I've got some whole-bean Jamaica Blue Mountain and a French press. It won't take but a jiffy to make you a cup . . .” This is going to drive me crazy: that wistful voice still reminds me of somebody. I can almost put my finger on who it is.

“Go ahead, Bette—she'd love some coffee,” Starr says loudly to the closed door. Then, turning to me, she hisses, “You going to act nice, or you want to go back to waiting in the car? Look, if you'd have come in when I asked the first time, you'd have never sat in that paint. You and Bette could have had a chance to get reacquainted.”

I think this over while I'm maneuvering myself into the black dress. It's tricky because the dress is so tight and the bathroom's so small. With a fair amount of difficulty, I manage to get it over my head, banging my own elbow into the shower, almost upending the little gilt shelf with the toilet paper cozy and assorted bottles of lotions and gels. However does the lummox lurking outside ever get in that shower? I wonder. With a crowbar and a vat of Vaseline?

“Zip me, will you?” I ask, lifting my hair off the back of my neck. Without a word, Starr zips up my dress. “Okay.” I sigh as our eyes meet in the mirror. “It's not like I'm going to tell him to go to hell because of what happened over twenty years ago. Sometimes I used to wonder where he ended up, and now I know.”

“You sure do,” Starr says. “It's kind of a big deal.”

Knock, knock.

“You girls need anything?”

I finally realize who Bette's voice reminds me of: Cher, with a honking head cold.

“We'll be right out,” Starr answers. Without waiting for me, she opens the door and steps out. Reluctantly, I follow her into the cabin of the Airstream and tug my high-heeled boots on over my Hot Sox. I feel skanky, got up in the short black dress and boots, but that's what I've got to wear if I don't want red paint all over the Beemer's upholstery. I sure can't do eighty-five on the way home now: if I get pulled over dressed like this, I might get mistaken for a working girl.

While we were busy in the bathroom, Bette has removed the curlers, applied fire-engine-red lip gloss, sprinkled some Shalimar in her cleavage, and changed into a teal velour sweat suit. Except for the bunny slippers, she looks really pulled together, like she could go shopping at Wal-Mart. As Dolly, my saleswoman at Maison-Dit, says, you should always look your best because you never know who you're going to run into.

Earlier this evening when I stumbled inside the trailer howling about the paint and near-assault, I didn't exactly take the time to have a good look around. Now I see that the Airstream's kind of homey, with armfuls of crocheted afghans covering the built-in sofa. The lightbulbs in the Tiffany-shaded lamps are pink—the better to see your complexion in, my dear—and every surface that isn't covered by tatted doilies has a swan on it: a whole flock of porcelain swans, glittering swans of Swarovski crystal, carved wooden swans, swans in snow globes, framed holograms of swans in flight, swan wind chimes, swans painted on velvet, plush stuffed baby swans, and a life-sized, painted cement swan standing guard at the door.

Now before you think I'm being judgmental, you should know that, much against her family's wishes, Du's grandmother lives in a double-wide and her trailer décor is strikingly similar to Bette's. Old Mrs. Sizemore's icon of choice is bullfrogs. Every available space is cluttered with green amphibians in various weird vignettes, but my favorite is the bullfrog got up like a matador, swirling his cape before a pawing bullfrog wearing a big old pair of horns. When it's our turn to go to Tupelo for Christmas, I always get a bang out of stopping off at Miz Estelle's trailer down in Noxubee and getting the lowdown on the latest additions to her collection, so I'm not a trailer snob, okay? I'm just not used to them.

And I'm glad to see Troy Smoot hasn't run off while I was occupied in the bathroom. He's sitting on the sofa amid a pile of swan-embroidered throw pillows, looking little, lost, and hairy. At the sight of me, Troy wags his whole body in recognition, so I think he's happy to see me, too.

“How do you like it?” Bette asks, throwing her arms wide in an encompassing gesture that just misses a swan mobile.

“You, ah . . . certainly have made the place . . . ,” I begin and then stop, stuck for words.

“It's as sweet as can be.” Starr gives me a discreet poke in the back, pushing me toward the dinette, where three coffee cups and saucers have been laid on scalloped rose-colored placemats. The china pattern is, naturally, swans on a pale-blue background. I really don't want to believe I'm going to sit down and have coffee, but I slide into the booth anyway. This black dress is so much shorter than I'm used to that I have to tug it down my thighs or risk having it climb up around my waist. Starr sits next to me on the outside so I can't bolt, and Bette joins us. I can't help but stare at her in a kind of sick fascination as she squeezes into the opposite side of the booth, the banquette's plywood groaning.

Oh, if anyone ever finds out about this, you are finished, do you hear me?
It's the rosebush voice weighing in.
Get out
now.

Another helpful observation. Listen up, Annie, I remind myself. You've sat down at barbeques and Ladies' League meetings with Bobby Shapley's uranium-plated bitch of a wife, Julie Posey Shapley, and you can get through this, too, hear? And besides, Julie's mean little eyes never betrayed a desperate need for acceptance into the girls' club. She didn't pour me a cup of coffee with hands that shake ever so slightly, setting the cup and saucer to a dainty jangle of bone china. I feel myself thawing like ice cubes in a pitcher of just-brewed tea, and taking a sip of the very good coffee, I tell that stupid rosebush voice to shut up and go wait in the car if it can't act like a lady.

“Can I get you gals anything to eat?” Bette asks. “I've got a batch of cookies that just came out of the oven.” She smiles, an awful hope glowing in those bearlike brown eyes. Oh, Lord, those have got to be false eyelashes and she's
fluttering
them at me.

“No thanks,” I say hastily, looking down at my cup. “This coffee's perfect. We've got a long way to go tonight.” I give Starr's foot a kick under the table.

But Starr ignores me and kicks me back. “Did you make your snickerdoodles? You know I just love them. I could eat your snickerdoodles all night long.”

Bette's toothy smile is as big and bright as a lit-up carnival ride. “I'll go get us some. Y'all just hold on.” Prying herself out of the dinette, she lumbers to the spotless countertop and grabs one of several gaily decorated cookie tins. “Let me see,” she says. “I think they're in this one.” She opens it and shakes her head. “No, that's the brownies.
Here's
the snickerdoodles.” She rummages in a cabinet, pulls down a plate, and arranges some cookies on it.

“Bette's a big baker,” Starr tells me, her pale eyes wide and guileless. “She makes a sinful pan of brownies.”

Bette giggles delightedly, shrugging an oh-shucks gesture. “I made the special fudge brownies last night 'cause I just had to have 'em,” she confides. “I get so down these days, and baking's about the only thing I've got to look forward to when I get home from sticking horses all day. I'm all on my lonesome until Jesús comes back from Miami, so I've got nobody to cook for.” She brings the cookie-filled plate over to the dinette and the snickerdoodles look scrumptious indeed. Starr reaches for one, but I sip my coffee instead.

“Y'all dig in!” Bette beams.

“Mmm-hmm.” Starr's mouth is full of cookie. I'm not going to succumb to temptation, not this time, not again. “Annie says she's not eating anything until Friday,” Starr informs Bette. She takes another cookie. “Annie's got issues with food, big time.”

Before I can tell her to knock it off, Bette says, “Now Starr, don't pick on her, honey.” She smiles at me from across the table, her eyes glowing in that thicket of false eyelashes. “You look
fabulous,
but then you've always been a china doll. I used to envy you the most, Annie.” She pops a whole cookie into her red, glossy mouth and chews enthusiastically. I can't take my eyes off her because I would really love a snickerdoodle right now, but I tell myself to forget it and have another sip of coffee.

“I was there,” Bette reminds me, “when you made your debut at the Snow Ball, remember?” She licks her fingers one by one and takes another cookie off the plate.

“Um, not really,” I say. I force myself to look away at a porcelain swan tissue dispenser sporting a Kleenex tail on top of the television set behind her.