The Ladies' Room (11 page)

She eyed me seriously. "My daughter doesn't stink, and she
has long hair. She married a man named Lonnie-no, that's
not right. Gert married Lonnie."

I reached out and touched her shoulder. "I cut my hair,
Momma"

She shrugged me away. "I've only got one daughter. Her
name is Crystal. She's going to college."

"I see. Well, maybe I'll come back tomorrow."

"You take a bath before you come back to my house. I'm
going to my bedroom now to take a little nap. '

She stood up and disappeared down the hallway toward her
bedroom. Lessie laid a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry.
Tomorrow might be a good day. She's about due for one" She
shook her head sympathetically. "You know, I used to clean
your Aunt Gert's house. After Lonnie died, she hired me to
work for her on Wednesdays. She never went into that room of
his again. She'd hand me the key and tell me to lock up after
I'd dusted it. Last year I had to give up my home and check
into this place because of my ailments, but I remember Gert
right well. She loved your momma"

"What else do you remember about Aunt Gert?"

Lessie smiled sweetly. "She was a fine woman in her day.
Looked like a million dollars walking around town. Held her
head up high and was always a lady. Then that fool of a man
talked her into marrying up with him. A sad day that was.
About twenty years ago she come down with the pneumonia
and spent three weeks in the hospital. Next month after she
went home, he died. She shut the door to his room and hired
me to dust and vacuum every week while she was ailing. I just
kept going even after she got well. We were pretty good friends.
I wish I could've gone to her funeral, but I can't sit that long
anymore in a hard pew with these old bones"

I touched her arm. "I know she'd understand."

Lessie shook her head. "I don't know about that. Gert was
outspoken"

"Well, I was there, and the church was full to the limit.
Every good recipe she ever used was at the dinner, and. . " I
paused.

"And most folks was just glad she was gone, right?"

I nodded honestly.

"Billy Lee Tucker was sad," I whispered.

"Oh, that boy would miss her, all right. He was the child
she never had. They was a good pair. I like Billy Lee. Most folks, they don't understand him. He's not strange. He just ..."
It was her turn to pause.

"He just doesn't care what other people think," I said.

"You got that right, girl. We'd all be better off if we had a
bit of Billy Lee in us. You go on now, and I'll see to it your
momma is in the right room. It makes me feel useful to have
someone to take care of. Body needs to feel useful. If they
don't, they soon wither up and die."

I hugged her and went back out into the heat. I stopped at the
grocery store on the corner of Main and Byrd Streets and purchased a Sara Lee cheesecake, a pound of bologna, a gallon of
milk, and a loaf of bread. It all fit very well in the basket of the
bike from hell. Then I pushed off toward the middle school, a
block off Main and half a block from the grocery store.
---- -- - - -- - - - - - -

When Momma was in school back in the sixties, the middle
school was the high school. I stopped pedaling and walked
the tricycle over to a big tree in front of the building. I sat
down beneath the tree and tried to imagine my parents when
they were young and in high school. Instead of seeing them
laughing and talking during lunch, though, I had a vision of
Billy Lee come to mind.

It
was
graduation
night,
and
he
wore
a
red
robe.
For
the
first
time he looked like all the rest of his classmates, until I looked
down and saw the legs of his striped overalls. He'd delivered the
valedictorian speech that night, but we'd been too excited about
getting out of school to listen to him. If I could go back, I think
I would have paid attention to what he had to say.

It was either get back on the bike or walk, so I hefted myself up and set off toward home. It would have been so much
easier to go back down to Drew's office, snatch that divorce
decree out of Georgia's little paws, and rip it to shreds than to
ride that stupid tricycle home, but I couldn't do it. I wouldn't
live with a man I couldn't trust.

Someone should have been waiting with a brass band, a
medal on a ribbon, or at least a round of applause when I parked
the three-wheeled monster in the front yard. I had conquered it.
I'd lived. I would never get on it again. I'd learned my lesson,
and I still might take the hammer to it before nightfall.

All I got was Billy Lee leaning against a porch post with a
silly grin on his face.

"You a glutton for punishment? I figured you'd be moaning
about sore muscles this morning," he said.

"I didn't know how far it would feel to bike to town or to
the nursing home, or I would have taken the car," I huffed.

"Had a little fit and decided to humiliate Drew, did you?"

He knew me too well after only a few days. How had that
happened?

"The divorce papers have been signed and delivered. It's up
to the court to put the seal on it. I brought bologna and cheesecake, so we won't have to go out for lunch. Thought I'd throw
a roast into the Crock-Pot for supper tonight. Are the window
people on the way?" I changed the subject.

"They'll be here in thirty minutes to start work. It'll take
them three or four days to finish. The electrician is coming by
this afternoon to give you an estimate." He carried the two
bags of groceries into the house for me.

"I don't care about an estimate. I want this place rewired so
we can put in central heat and air, and we need plugs in every
single wall. I don't care what it costs," I said.

We? My conscience picked up on that word so fast, it made
my head swim.

He leaned on the doorjamb into the kitchen. "You ready to
start removing paint?"

"I am" I lied so well, I almost convinced myself.

We climbed the stairs, each carrying a bucket filled with
putty knives, a can of paint remover, and sandpaper.

"I'm really surprised you aren't sore," he said.

"Who says I'm not?" I asked.

"Well, at least you aren't a whiner." His tone held respect.

After that, how could I say a word? In Billy Lee's eyes I
wasn't a whiner. I'd worked all day, then gotten up the next
morning and ridden the monster tricycle to town and back. It
might not be a lot in anyone else's opinion, but right then I
needed a champion, and I'd gladly take Billy Lee.

He set his bucket down. "Way this works is that we pour
the remover into one of the buckets, paint it on a foot at a time, let it set for a few minutes, and use the putty knives to take off
what we can. It'll probably take several applications to get
down to raw wood"

"So we're not going to get this room completed today?"

He'd already begun to pour some of the smelly liquid into a
bucket. "You in a hurry?"

"If I live to the promised three score and ten, I figure I've
got about thirty years. Same as you. So I don't reckon I'm in
a big hurry. Can't promise I'll be lucid the last ten, though.
Momma started losing it at sixty. Think we can get this room
done by then, so I can enjoy it for a few days before I have to
check into the nursing home?"

"Trudy, you are not going to that place," he said seriously.

"And what makes you so sure?" I asked.

He quickly changed the subject. "I'll open the windows and
get some ventilation in here. Fumes get pretty strong after a
while. Hey, the window people just pulled up."

He raised the windows. One looked over the backyard and
his little frame house next door, and the other overlooked
Broadway Street with all its killer potholes.

.,You are the official contractor on this job, so would you go
show them where to start?"

"Wow, I get a title." He grinned.

"Want me to make you a fancy name tag?"

"Sure." He nodded on his way out of the room.

Two men and Billy Lee were back in a few minutes with a
window. I'd expected them to measure, rub their chins, measure
again, and do all the stereotyped things men do when they're
discussing a job. But Billy Lee had already given them measurements-of every window in the house, and they went right to work.

Billy Lee showed me how to apply the paint stripper, and I
found out really quickly that it could make fat cells whine and
cry like little girls. I dropped a chunk of saturated paint off
the putty knife onto my bare leg, and it dug in like a leech and
in seconds was burning so badly, I thought for sure I'd see bone
when I wiped it off. But there was barely a red mark. I sucked
up the screaming and saved the whining until later, when I was
all alone.

One of the men asked Billy Lee how his business was doing
with the economy in trouble, and he brushed the guy off with
an evasive answer. My curiosity alert went into high gear. Just
what kind of business did he have? I figured he lived on some
kind of inheritance his grandparents had left him and doing
odd jobs like this one when he could get them.

"You'll have a nice place here when you get done. I'm glad to
see you restoring rather than just remodeling. By the way, I'm
Roy, and this is Melvin." The window man made introductions.

I nodded toward them. "Nice to meet both of you. I've got
this idea in my head about how I want things to look when it's
all done. I love the warmth of wood and bright colors. Billy
Lee is my contractor, but I'm helping where I can."

"Don't know how you got him to work for you, lady, but
you got the best there is. I'd gladly pay him double top wages
to remodel my house. I didn't know he'd come out of his shop
building for anyone. How'd you do it?"

I raised an eyebrow at Billy Lee.

He blushed. "Gert was my friend, and she asked me to do
this."

"I'm your friend. When you get finished, will you work for
me?" Melvin asked.

Billy Lee shook his head.

"Is that a no?" Roy teased.

"That's exactly what it is," Billy Lee said.

"Can't blame a man for trying. These are going to be beautiful framed out in oak," Roy said.

I stopped long enough to wait for the stripper to do its job.
"I hope so."

"So you like the ... What did you say? The warmth of wood?"
Billy Lee asked.

I wiped sweat from my forehead with a paper towel and
nodded. "I didn't realize how much until these past few days.
I'm a country girl at heart, not a modern one. I want a house
full of color and laughter."

"That's the way you were when we were little. You liked red
and yellow and blue when we colored out on the back porch,
and you were always laughing," he said.

"You remember me as a child?"

"Sure. Y'all used to visit Gert, and I'd sneak through the
hedge. Your mother always had a bag with crayons and two
coloring books, and Marty and Betsy got one, and you always
colored with me"

Talking about it jarred my memory. "And you colored so
perfectly, you made us girls look bad"

"But you made everything so much fun. You colored hair
purple or blue, and sometimes the sky was green. You've always
loved color, Trudy. I'm glad you're going to keep the wood
natural and use bright colors in the house. It'll be you."

"I may dye my hair purple or blue next week to prove the
real Trudy has been resurrected"

"Please don't do that. Leave it brown. It's you just like it is
now.,,

"And who is me?" I asked.

"You are Trudy Matthews with kinky, curly hair and a beautiful smile."

"Flattery will get you out of lots of explaining," I teased.

At noon Billy Lee and I washed up side by side in the
kitchen sink. Our hands touched in the basin as we rinsed off
paint speckles and dirt. There weren't any tingles, though, and
the floor didn't wiggle a bit. I wasn't surprised. I never expected
to feel anything romantic again.

"Mayonnaise?" I asked.

He pulled paper plates and napkins out of the cabinet. "Mustard, please."

"On bologna, lettuce, and tomatoes?"

"And dill pickles. Ever try it?"

I shook my head and left the mayonnaise in the refrigerator;
might as well do something different to celebrate my freedom.
"Is it good?"

He opened the bread wrapper and took out four pieces. "If
you don't like it, I'll eat yours and mine. Here, I'll make them"

"What kind of chips and soda do you want?" I asked.

"Barbecue is good with bologna. And I'll have sweet tea if
you have it made up."

I took a bag of mesquite-barbecued chips from the pantry, put them on the bar, and fixed two glasses of sweet tea. By
that time he had the sandwiches finished.

He dragged a bar stool around and sat down across from
me. "We ready? You saying grace or me?"

"Go ahead."

His prayer was very brief. He thanked God for good friends
and the health to enjoy them. Then he thanked Him for the
food and a beautiful day. When he said "Amen," I looked up
to find him with his sandwich headed toward his mouth. I did
the same and was amazed. Pickles and mustard were meant to
go together.

"Where'd you learn to make a sandwich like this?" I asked.

"Gert always made them with mustard. Mayonnaise was
for ham and cheese. Mustard for bologna."

"Wise old coot, wasn't she?"

"That she was." He nodded and kept after the sandwich
until it was gone. Then he made himself two more.

On occasion I've let myself have two sandwiches-like
when I'm upset enough to chew up railroad ties and spit out
Tinker Toys-but not too often. Not with my propensity to
pack weight onto my hips and thighs.

He took in the whole house with a sweep of one hand. "You
still want to strip all this wood?"

I nodded and swallowed. "Did Gert really leave you enough
money to work that long? I can pay you, Billy Lee. She left me
well-fixed for life. I can pay whatever you charge. Just give me a
bill once a week, and I'll write you a check"