Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (5 page)

Fossetta Sweet.

“No one’s as sweet as that woman,” Rhondalee thought. “She’s sweet enough to send me into sugar shock.” The Invisible Committee said nothing. “Have you seen her kitchen? She has the nastiest kitchen in this Park. She never lifts a finger. Look at her hands.”

But clearly, Fossetta had been working away at
something
that morning. Circles of sweat showed under the arms of the faded yellow rayon slip she wore, and splashes of water marked her apron. A woman in the 1950s might have worn that black and white gauzy thing to serve cocktails, but Fossetta wore it to do the dishes.

Rhondalee LaCour had a powerful voice, but even she couldn’t drown out a lawnmower. But she gave it a try. “TENDER! IT’S TIME TO GET READY FOR THE MEETING!” He didn’t hear, he didn’t falter. But when Fossetta held up one pretty little white finger, just one, and smiled, Tender stopped moving.

He was
glowing
.

Fossetta walked down her aluminum steps and into her verdant, overgrown patch of grass. Tiny steps in bare feet, reaching down here and there, plucking up something, putting whatever it was in her apron pocket. She always did that before her grass was cut, walked around, stooping, plucking, her face as calm as a saucer of milk, her pink tongue darting out to moisten her little rosebud lips, the white backs of her fat thighs showing shamelessly when she bent over. She always did this before Tender cut her grass.

Rhondalee watched as Fossetta walked over to Minah’s flower bed and shook out the pocket of her apron, emptying it of what looked like little green sticks. She fished through her apron pockets one last time and raised up her hands. A tiny green serpent writhed in each one. She laid these last two garden snakes among Minah’s petunia’s with great deliberation and tenderness, then moved in her unhurried way back to her door and went inside.

Tender commenced his mowing. He moved contentedly, carefully, pacing off the parameters of Fossetta’s unfairly large lawn. Rhondalee’s lipstick-laden lips clamped to a waxy line. She’d just
had
it. She marched up to her porch, kicked off her pink gardening clogs and shoved them into the rack by the front door. She turned to her husband and yelled as loud as she could. “IT’S TIME TO CHANGE CLOTHES FOR THE COMMUNITY MEETING!”

Unfortunately, Tender had cut the mower right before she let loose, and her voice positively echoed through the Park. Through an open window next door, Minah Bourne said “Thanks, Rhondalee. We’re all glad for the reminder.” Someone a bit further up the block called out something less polite. Rhondalee stood for a moment, gathering her dignity around her. Tender spoke with grace and kindness. “I’ll be in as soon as I rinse off the mower blade.”

How dare he be so kind.

She entered the kitchen and washed her hands with great care, running as much hot water as she could into the kitchen sink.

He could take a
cold
shower.

RHONDALEE STEPPED SMARTLY
out on the little porch thirty minutes later, as carefully arranged as a lunch packed in Tupperware. Fossetta also stepped out her door and lifted her white arms to welcome the beginning of an evening breeze. Her rayon dress, a threadbare remnant from the 1940s, fluttered and lifted in a way that made it clear that underneath that purple dress, Fossetta wore none of the satiny garments that floated on her clothesline like whispered suggestions. Nothing at all.

The idea made Rhondalee shiver.

Her evening invocation over, Fossetta lowered her arms. She turned and smiled at Rhondalee, smiling as if Fossetta wasn’t a living affront to all the basic Christian ideals of womanhood. Her graceful white hand floated a little wave of hello to her neighbor.

Rhondalee turned away, her jaw set. “Do you see?” she demanded of the Invisible Committee. “Do you see what I have to tolerate?”

The Invisible Committee ignored her.

Rhondalee looked down at her own hand, tracked with veins, tendons, and freckles that looked suspiciously like age spots. She gave herself extensive home manicures, but it looked like she’d glued ceramic nail tips on a buzzard’s foot. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her poplin shorts. Well, she thought, Some People have pretty hands because they do no work, no work at all.

Tender stepped out beside. “Nothing like a cool shower on a hot evening.” He’d changed into pressed Wranglers and a shirt she wasn’t sure she liked for reasons she couldn’t possibly articulate. He wore his favorite cowboy hat. She couldn’t bear to see his eyes looking out from under that cowboy hat, eyes as humid and silver as the winter sky over Tennessee. She knew any woman in the world would fall in love with his eyes. He smiled. “Ready, Rhondy?”

“I’ve been ready for a long time. Aren’t you forgetting something? Your boots, Tender.” He slipped them on. “You’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached.” He crooked his arm and she took it.

They started toward the clubhouse, following Fossetta’s unhurried and solitary progress toward the center of the Park. They had a clear view of the shift and sway, the bounce and jiggle, and the slow, steady steps of those delicate white feet in pink moccasins. And all the men working in their yards, tuning up their trucks, or just shooting the breeze over a Budweiser, all those men stopped to watch her pass. And all the men who were inside found a reason to drift out, let their eyes wander, follow her unhurried progress toward the heart of the trailer park.

But Tender saw none of it. His eyes never even strayed in Fossetta’s direction.

Rhondalee’s eyes could not look away. She saw those blonde waves rise and curl around that regal head like a natural crown, she saw the fabric of that old dress streak with the sunset’s rays of crimson, saffron, vermilion, aubergine. Somehow, Fossetta Sweet caught the sunset.

Rhondalee’s throat tightened. How does she do that? “How does she wear the sky?”

The Invisible Committee didn’t answer.

A CROWD MILLED
out in the courtyard, finishing cigarettes before stubbing them out in coffee cans full of sand. The Clubhouse was strictly a non-smoking edifice for insurance reasons. Rhondalee smiled and nodded, scanning the crowd. She was hot, waiting there, but Fossetta didn’t seem to be sweating at all, just occasionally fanning herself with a white hand. “Oh, she likes the dry heat,” Rhondalee thought. “In a wetter climate, she might rot.”

She watched as Randall Stagg approached Fossetta. Randall was near to graduating high school, just a child, really. Well, it was his second or third run at a diploma, but he was still too young to be talking to Fossetta. Rhondalee watched him lean toward Fossetta and smile. She smiled back, inclined that head of taffy curls his way. Took his arm. And what did they do? Did they enter the Clubhouse to attend the meeting? Did they join their neighbors to hear the issues, to discuss the controversies that would be put to community vote? No. No they did not. The two of them walked right back up the street towards Fossetta’s trailer.

Tender stood beside her, his silver eyes half-closed, as if he were suffering, aching inside. Rhondalee felt a strong need to slap her silent husband. Look at That Woman, she wanted to say, take a good hard look at her, you addled old fool. She’s a slut, nothing more, nothing less. “Well, I guess that young man is going be ruined tonight.”

“Oh, Rhondalee, calm down,” said Vonda Ridgeway. “At least she don’t do married men.”

Rhondalee felt a shamed blush move up her neck, over her ears, threatening to set her hair on fire. Was it that obvious, what she put up with? Was the whole park laughing at her love struck husband? And at
her?
“I THINK IT’S DISGRACEFUL!”

Tender put his hand to the ear nearest her and winced.

Oh, she’d just had it. What was WRONG with him? She gave his arm a shove. “Why did you wear that shirt? Why can’t you wear something
decent?
”

He looked down at his sleeve and frowned.

And this was the worst of it. There really wasn’t anything wrong with his shirt. It was one of those wallpaper-print cowboy shirts with pearl snaps. It was faded, but pressed. The shirt was respectable, but if she said so, she’d contradict herself. What she objected to was how
good
he looked in it.

“I’ll go change my damn shirt, Rhondalee.”

She watched him leave, his black hair swinging against the back of his neck, his legs moving in that easy, masculine stride that turned so many women’s heads. Just watching him walk made her furious. He had
no right
to walk like that. Her throat swelled with injustice, suspicion, and something else. Something like shame. Do you see what I put up with, she asked of the Committee, do you see how he does this?

The Invisible Committee had nothing to say in return.

INSIDE, MOST OF
the chairs were already taken. Rhondalee would have liked to sit at the dais table, but only Minah Bourne sat up there, even though there were always two chairs. But Minah’s handbag was so large that it required a seat of its own, so Rhondalee had to take a seat to the left of Jeeter Tyson. Jeeter was the stupidest man in the Park, and also the only resident stupid enough to attend the Church of the Open Arms. His wife Vonda sat to his right. Rhondalee didn’t
like
sitting by the Tysons, and it was all Tender’s fault that she had to, because he’d detained her outside.

Minah Bourne took a prefatory sip of Kool-Aid and gave a sharp tug on her wig. She followed with a sharper rap of her gavel. “I call this meeting to attention.” She peered over bifocals at the agenda before her. “I see we’re suppose to talk about Parking. All in favor of this discussion say ‘AYE’.” The AYE was rousing. Minah slammed the gavel. She reached into her tote bag and took out a mass of baby blue acrylic yarn. Her crochet hook flashed in and out as she spoke. “I thought we talked about using Space 13 for the overflow and guest parking, Rhondalee. I thought you were going to see about dumping another load of gravel there, but there seems to be a tenant there now.”

Rhondalee rose to her feet. “Well, yes. I let the space to some boys from over by Bone Pile.” These boys had showed up, five of them, needing a temporary spot for a travel-trailer. They had offered to pay in cash. Rhondalee LaCour and her shoebox had a fondness for tenants who paid in cash.

“Well, they fit right in at Space 13. And I don’t suppose that space will stay full for too long, anyway.” The tenants tittered, but it was a nervous titter. Space 13 was cursed. Whenever someone set their mobile home there, it succumbed to an electrical fire or some kind of structural collapse that couldn’t be shored up with jacks or cinderblocks. Minah continued. “I guess we don’t need to devote space all week long to parking, when it’s only on Sundays when we have all these parking troubles.” She looked over her half-glasses at Rhondalee. There was no mistaking the message in that owlish gaze. “Perhaps the answer is a little more simple than that. Perhaps what we
need
to discuss is whether or not we need to rent out our Clubhouse on Sundays to a church attended by folks who don’t even live in this park.”

A soulful baritone boomed out over the crowd. “Sister Minah? Might I address the brothers and sisters?”