The Ladies Farm (33 page)

“Tony,” Della cried.

Hugh Jr., his body still twisted around so he could face Tony, couldn’t manage to punch back. The only thing that kept him from falling, Della saw, was Tony’s left hand, which had reached out to steady the boy by his shoulder.

She half-crawled, half-scooted over to the tableau.

“You asshole!” It was meant to be hissed or screamed, but Hugh Jr. could only mumble in Tony’s direction. “Your son hated you and your wife cheated on you!”

“That’s enough,” Tony said. The hand on Hugh Jr.’s shoulder pulled downward once more, and Hugh Jr. did not resist.

“Tony—” Della started.

“Hush!”

Della retrieved the fallen handkerchief and tended the bleeding lip. Tony squatted near Hugh Jr.’s head, a precautionary hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t you think we should take him over to the emergency room?” she asked Tony. “He might have banged his head, that second or third time.”

Tony studied Hugh Jr., whose eyes still blazed. “Let’s just sit still for a few minutes,” he proposed. “Let them get those cars moved.”

They sat for a few minutes, Hugh Jr. resting oddly against Tony’s lap, Della dabbing at the lip occasionally and helping Hugh Jr. with the glass of water someone had brought to them.

Della supposed Dave had called the wrecker that appeared so felicitously. Once the Thunderbird was dragged away, the Volvo could probably be backed into the drive, leaving the street clear for dispersing guests. Now, they milled around the street and hung over the porch. Della wondered if anyone had even sliced the cake that Rita had robbed of its ornament.

Della didn’t see Kat or Rita. Maybe they were comforting Tiffany or reassuring the guests that no one was seriously hurt.

The T-bird, except for its crunched-in middle, still gleamed in the sun. It’s a good thing Barbara went back to bed, Della thought. Telling her won’t be nearly as bad as her seeing it.

Hugh Jr. began to wriggle again as she smoothed his hair back and tried to feel for lumps on his head.

“Easy, now,” Tony repeated automatically. “Let Della look after you.”

“She slept with Uncle Richard,” Hugh Jr. choked out, wrestling free of Tony’s grip but still lying flat on the ground. “Your wife and Barbara’s husband!”

Hugh Jr. was coughing and spitting, but he finally stopped sputtering.

“Tony,” Della tried again. “Tony, it’s not true, at least not the way—”

“It is true,” Hugh Jr. spat out. “She’s a bitch, and when I tell Aunt Barbara, when Aunt Barbara—”

“Hush!” Tony commanded again.

That’s when she finally heard Flops howling. It took a second for Della to identify the sound, and another second to realize that it came from the house. They must have called the ambulance, she thought. He’s heard the siren.

Tony held her gaze and they waited, Hugh Jr. silent between them. There was no siren.

Della stood, awkwardly, and ran toward the house. She tore through the living room and down the hall, rushing past the Huttos, past Darlene and Tiffany and the shaken members of Dave’s Methodist choir.

Flops sat in the middle of the hall with her head lifted toward the ceiling, howling at a chilling pitch. “Oh, God!” said Della, not knowing if she whispered or screamed. “Oh, God.”

Chapter 21               

L
ydia emerged, ignoring the dog as she walked straight to Della and took both her hands. “Mrs. Morrison passed,” she said. “Her poor heart give out, I think. But she passed peaceful. Just lying quiet.”

“We have to call Dickie,” said Kat, who had appeared in the hall.

Della started and dropped Lydia’s hands. She thought she should turn around and push these people out of the hallway, maybe stand triumphantly on the porch while Hugh Jr. lay vanquished on the ground. Instead, she stepped forward and opened the door to the Babe Didrikson Zaharias room, closing it again behind her.

The blinds were drawn and the curtains closed. Della approached the bed, with its smoothed and straightened covers tucked neatly up under Barbara’s chin. She pulled the chair up to the bed and sat next to Barbara, looking at her bristly hair and her slack face. She didn’t know why people described the dead as peaceful. Barbara didn’t look peaceful. She just looked dead.

And of course Jamie.

Della reached a hand out to touch Barbara’s brow.

She had identified Jamie’s body herself. The police had come to the house while Tony was down in Sydonia helping Hugh with his failed copy shop. Della could have waited for Tony, but she didn’t. She went straight to the hospital, where her son was still connected to
pumps and monitors that would preserve his organs while she signed papers giving them to someone else.

Barbara still felt warm. Della reached under the blanket and touched her fingers. “They covered Jamie so I wouldn’t see he was crushed,” Della told Barbara. “But his face was okay, except for the tubes. And he wasn’t cold yet.” Della clutched the fingers a little tighter. “It’s not the way Hugh Junior said, you know. Jamie never hated us. He was just a teenage boy and he was angry about the car. So he took it when he shouldn’t have, that’s all.”

Della shook her head. “I don’t know why Hugh Junior said that, except to hurt Tony. He wasn’t even friends with Jamie. Not like Dickie.”

She squeezed the hand a little, but that just gave her a sense of the weight of it. Even the hand of a friend grew heavy in a dead body.

“Tony was so angry, he thought—I don’t know, maybe he still thinks it—Jamie really did hate us. But Richard knew. Richard was the only one who could talk to Tony. Or me.”

There was banging at the door, then it opened. “Della?” It was Kat.

“Just give me a minute,” Della said, calmly. “Then you can stay with her.”

“Stay with her?”

Della sighed. “Just a few minutes,” she said again, but Kat was already backing out of the room.

“It may take Kat a lot longer to make her peace,” she advised Barbara. Then she sat for a moment, holding Barbara’s hand under the covers.

“I shouldn’t have done it. But after Tony and I split, there wasn’t anyone I could talk to about it. And then, Richard came to me to help Pauline, and I learned that you can make yourself feel better—feel whole and powerful—if you throw yourself into helping someone else. Richard showed me that. And he was the only one I could talk to.”

Della shook her head, leaned forward. “And then, then it was … he was what I had, Barbara. Richard on a weekday night; Richard
for a weekend out of town; Richard on the phone, Richard in a restaurant. But you were the one, Barbara. You were his wife. His one and only wife.”

It’s all out now, Della thought. Tony and everyone else know about Richard and me. They know about Barbara and Hugh. They know everything. And nothing.

It was all jumbled together in her mind: the Huttos and the Ladies Farm, Tony and Hugh Jr. The only thing that seemed clear was the remembered comfort of Richard’s embrace and the feel of Barbara’s velvet pouch full of diamonds being handed over in the dark night beside the Nolan.

“He never gave me jewelry,” she assured her friend. “He never gave me diamonds.”

She gave a final squeeze to Barbara’s hand.

Lydia must have undressed Barbara right after the wedding ceremony, for she wore a pastel gown that did not flatter her arms and neck. Della saw this because she drew back the covers. She looked at Barbara’s white legs, stick-like as they extended from the bulk of her body. The skin on her arms and neck was slack and yellowish, and there was a great deal of it.

“Tony and I have a date next week, if he’s still talking to me.” She looked at the amethyst ring on Barbara’s hand and started to smile, but she could not. “So maybe,” Della leaned down close to Barbara and whispered, “maybe I got away with it.”

She was on her knees now beside the bed, resting her head on the mattress next to Barbara’s hand. “Maybe,” she whispered, “that’s why it feels so rotten.”

She heard steps beyond the door and the drone of insects outside, but she stayed that way, with one ear pressed to the mattress and her eyes opened, staring at one small section of Barbara’s body.

Finally, Della shook her head and pushed herself up. She stepped over to the dressing table and plucked a heavy bottle from the top.
“Here,” she told Barbara, unstopping the bottle. She tipped it over on her finger, then dabbed the perfume behind Barbara’s ears, along her collarbone, and between her breasts. The scent of Gucci filled the room.

Della leaned forward to stroke Barbara’s face. “That’s better,” she told her friend, touching the bristly red hair and watching it spring back as her hand passed over it. “Much better.”