The Ladies' Room (15 page)

I found shoe polish under the sink in the kitchen and with it
painted two perfect hearts on the windshield, so if Charity
came with him, their faces would be framed as they drove
through town. I used two rolls of toilet paper like crepe-paper
streamers coming off the radio antenna, tucking the ends loosely into the back doors. The final touch was writing Just
Hitched in black shoe polish on the white trunk lid in a lovely
scroll, with a cute little heart dotting the i in Hitched.

If Drew didn't come to get the car, I'd have it towed and sitting in his front yard when he got home the next day. Aunt
Gert's little thirty-year-old blue Ford Maverick-still in perfect condition, garage-kept, and rarely driven-would do fine
for me. It had a stick shift, and I might jackrabbit it around
getting used to driving it, but I'd get the hang of it again. Hey,
I wasn't "poor Trudy, bless her heart" anymore. I was a force
to be reckoned with, and if folks didn't believe me, they could
crawl inside that white Chevrolet.

The next morning at seven thirty I carried my coffee to the
porch, sat down in the swing, and waited. At a quarter to eight,
Drew, Charity, and Georgia pulled up in the driveway beside
my car. Drew and Charity got out of the backseat, and Georgia
drove away in Drew's Lincoln.

Drew stared at the decorated car waiting for him. "You are
certifiably crazy."

"She's not crazy! She's a certifiable witch," Charity said. "I
can't ride in that thing."

"Keys are in it. You could walk back to town, Charity, but
you'll ruin those cute little high heels." I watched as he helped
her into the slick passenger's seat. I couldn't hear every word,
but from the expression on her face and the way she threw her
hands around, she wasn't happy about the way the Vaseline felt
on her bare legs below her skintight miniskirt.

"You are crazy!" she screamed out the window when the
aroma of eau de sardines hit her nose.

I held my coffee cup up in a toast to her.

Drew quite literally slid into the driver's seat, and the words
that came from his mouth would have set a tropical rain forest
on fire. He slammed the door, started up the engine, and
quickly rolled down all four windows. Charity was gagging.
Guess she didn't like sardines.

Vengeance had been very sweet and left no aftertaste of
guilt. I giggled like a second-grade schoolgirl as they drove
away.

"Guess you and God served up some retribution," Billy Lee
said from the yard.

"Pretty childish, wasn't it?" I said.

"A whole lot childish but worth it, if it did one of those exorcism things on your heart. Was that sardines I smelled?" He
sat down on the swing beside me.

"Two cans full, and I didn't waste a bit of the oil. And, yes,
it purged my heart. I'm glad he took the car back, and I'm glad
God and I had a bit of revenge. It's over. You want some breakfast, or did you already eat?"

"I'd love French toast and hot chocolate," he said.

"From scratch?"

"Is there any other kind?" he answered.

"Guess not, if you want the good stuff."

He followed me into the kitchen, where we set about making breakfast.

Billy Lee gathered the apricots.

We'd finished stripping all the woodwork in the hall, the
banister, the stairs, and a gazillion little lathe-turned rails, not
to mention the newel post, which was intricately carved. The
electrician had finally finished. Air-conditioning was installed.
The man who would varnish the floors was scheduled to come
the next day. My body was worn to a frazzle with weeks of
hard work behind me, and there was plenty more on the way.

And Billy Lee gathered the apricots.

The small orchard behind the garage had one apple tree,
one peach, an apricot, a pear, and two pecan trees. Peeling
little-bitty apricots was not my idea of a fun evening after putting in a final hard day of getting everything ready for the
floor man. My fingers were stiff from using steel wool in every
little crevice on the banister rails. It was asking too much to
wrap them around a paring knife.

"Why in the devil are you gathering apricots this evening,
and what are we supposed to do with them?" I asked when he
brought them in the back door.

"Gert said last year that she had enough apricot preserves
to last ten years, so I reckon we'll just peel them, throw in
some sugar and Fruit-Fresh, and bag them for the freezer."

"And we have to do this tonight?"

"I reckon so. They're ripe, and they won't keep three days"

I must have looked puzzled, because he said, "Trudy, the
floor man is coming to do your bedroom, the hall, and the
stairs tomorrow morning, bright and early."

He set the bushel basket on the kitchen table, found two
paring knives in a drawer, and started sharpening the blades.
I'd never seen Drew sharpen a knife, but then, Drew had never
gathered apricots, either. It mesmerized me: the quick motions,
the way his rock-hard biceps tightened as he flipped the blade
back and forth across the whetstone.

"Would you get a big bowl of water to wash them in? Then
we'll each need two bowls-one to put the peelings in, the
other to slice them into. I'll get the plastic bags, sugar, and
Fruit-Fresh from the pantry. This won't take an hour with
both of us working. We can't let this fruit go to waste."

This had to be a ritual he and Gert had adhered to. Bring
in the apricots and either make preserves or freeze them for
fried pies. I'd never made a fried pie in my whole life. Maybe
Momma would have a good thirty minutes in the next few
weeks and could tell me how to go about it. I set two serving
bowls and a slightly bigger crock on the counter.

"Not a bowl like that. The white dishpan hanging on the
nail beside the back door is what we wash them in," he said.

"What's three days got to do with anything?" I fetched it
and filled it with water.

His look was one of pure exasperation. "I told you. The
floor man is coming tomorrow. Spar varnish is an old product,
but it's marine grade, which means it'll keep its shine even
when you mop it. It's a long time drying and a longer time
smelling. Everything will be wet for seventy-two hours," he
said.

I was glad he didn't roll his eyes, or I might have slapped
him.

"So?"

He grinned. I could have thrown an apricot at him or maybe
the paring knife.

"So where is your bathroom?"

"Oh," I gasped.

The only bathroom was upstairs, off the landing, which
would be wet for three days. Why hadn't I thought about that?
But what did that have to do with the kitchen, where we could
put up apricots whether the stairs were wet and smelly or not?

"That's right. You've got to clear out of this place for three
days each time the floor man puts down varnish."

"Every single time?" I heard the whine in my tone and
couldn't do a .thing about it.

His lightning hands sliced the small fruit into the bowl.
"Maybe not when he does Lonnie's room ... I mean, your
office ... or Gert's old room, which will be a guest room. We
could shut the door and chink it with pillows to keep the smell
out of the rest of the house fairly well. But when he does the
downstairs, yes, you'll have to leave."

Where was I to go? Momma's house had been sold years
ago. Crystal hadn't returned any of my calls this past month.
Marty and Betsy thought I'd caught a terminal disease, possibly from Billy Lee. All my old friends and acquaintances had
avoided me like I had the plague. I'd attended church on Sundays, but I didn't know anyone well enough to ask if I could
sleep on their sofa for three nights.

"Where do you have in mind?" he asked.

"Got a spare room over at your house?" I said before I
thought.

"Yes, I do, but I've got another idea. I should have told you
before now. I just figured you'd already made some kind of
plans. Like a big shopping trip or off to see your friends.
You've been awfully busy this past month. You might like
three days to visit family."

"Friends and family are overrated. I'll check into the Western Inn motel," I said bluntly.

"I need to make a run to Dallas to pick up some specialty
lumber, and there's a little town over by the Louisiana border
that's pretty neat. Want to go with me?"

Could I go away for three days with him?

"I threw my cell phone into a ditch and haven't replaced it.
I don't have a way for Momma's nursing home to get in touch
with me other than this landline."

"Give them my cell number in case of emergencies, or go
down to the dollar store and buy one of those prepaid GoPhone things."

I tried to think of the last time I'd been away from Tishom ingo on an overnight trip. We'd gone to see Disney On Ice
when Crystal turned seven. Then there was a trip to Washington, D.C., the year she was caught up in American historywhen she was eleven. After that she didn't want to go anywhere
in the summer. She'd wanted stay home and swim in her own
pool with her friends.

He went on. "I thought maybe we could stop at the Galleria
Dallas before we pick up the lumber, if you'd like to shop a
little. Jefferson, the town I mentioned, is only a little over two
hours east of Dallas, so we could drive there, stay a couple of
nights at a nice B and B I know, and drive home on the Fourth
of July. Probably get here in time to go see the fireworks at the
football field. Yes or no?"

"Yes," I said quickly.

"Then let's get these apricots done so we can pack."

By the time we washed up the knives and bowls, I was getting plumb giddy at the prospect of going out of town on a
three-day jaunt. When we finished, we went to the dollar store
and bought a disposable, prepaid cell phone that included
three hundred minutes with the purchase. Billy Lee brought
over his laptop and took care of programming it. I didn't even
know he was computer-literate, but then, there were lots of
things I didn't know about him.

He went on back to his house once he had the phone working; he'd told me to be ready bright and early the next morning. The floor man would be there by eight, and we'd need to
be ready to leave right after that. I didn't tell him that I'd probably wake up every hour all night long to check the clock.

I was in the tub, bubbles up to my chin, thinking that I
might have time to run to a salon at the Galleria and have my
hair trimmed, when suddenly I remembered I'd left my old
house without a suitcase. All I had was a multitude of plastic
grocery bags. But I'd use them before I gave up a shopping
trip to Dallas.

Surely somewhere up in the attic I could find a suitcase. It
might not be a seven-hundred-dollar Samsonite Black Label
like the one I'd left behind, but it would hold enough clothes
to last two days. I jumped up from the bathtub. I dried quickly so I wouldn't leave footprints on the sanded floor and raced to
my bedroom, where I pulled on underpants and a nightgown.

I should not have opened that attic door after dark. There I
stood, barefoot, waving a hand back and forth, searching for
the light cord, when a mouse ran across my toes. My screams
sent it scurrying down the steps in a blur. I jumped straight
up and tried to Velcro my hands to the ceiling. Gravity sucked
me back down to the floor with a thud. Adrenaline sent me into
a second jump, which is when I found the light cord. The light
came on, but the old cord broke, and -I fell on my butt.

I let out a string of words that could have blistered the paint
off the woodwork, then checked to make sure I hadn't sprained
an ankle or broken anything. If a rotten mouse kept me from my
trip, it would be a sorry varmint when I caught him. Everything
was fine except for my dignity, so I started up the steps, only to
walk into a spiderweb that stuck to my face like superglue. No
amount of grabbing at it dislodged that hateful web. In desperation I grabbed the first thing that came to hand, which was an
old pillowcase, and wiped the gunk from my face. The grocerystore plastic bags were looking better by the minute. Who
needed a suitcase, anyway?

But I was there, so I figured I might as well try to find one.
Everything was covered in white canvas, and I could almost
hear the theme music from a scary movie playing in my head
as I carefully peeked under each tarp. There were lamps, rolltop steamer trunks that would be perfect to house some of my
quilts, and gorgeous small tables for the living room, but not a
single suitcase.

I was about to give up the search when someone pounded
on the front door. It was nearly ten o'clock at night, and no one
even came to see me in the daytime, so who on earth would be
beating down my door at that hour? I reached for the cord to
turn out the light and realized it had broken. I unscrewed the
hot bulb by holding the pillowcase in my hand and hurried
down the attic steps on tiptoe. I ran through the bedroom,
grabbed up a housecoat, and yelled that I was on my way from
the top of the stairs.