The Ladies' Room (5 page)

I was surprised I could even utter a sensible word. "No, I'm
moving into it tonight."

"Good. I'm sure that would make her very happy. She
hoped that you might ... let's see if I can remember her exact
words ... come to your senses and face what was right in
front of your eyes and do something about it-though I'm not
sure what she was talking about."

"I am"

"Good. Then I've passed on a message from her. You'll be
drawing on the money to repair the old place?"

"Yes, I will. And thank you for your help today. You'll take
care of these two deposits?"

"Yes, I surely will. I'll take care of them personally. How
do you want to handle this?"

"I can write checks on Aunt Gert's account starting right
now?"

"Trudy, you could have written checks on her accounts six
months ago, when she found out about the cancer. Everything
was taken care of then"

"Then put them both into a savings account"

He pulled paperwork from a drawer in his desk and showed
me where to sign. Then he took the checks to a teller window
and deposited them into the new account. He brought back a
deposit slip and handed it to me along with his business card.
"Thank you again for keeping your business here. We will do
anything we can to be of assistance to you. Feel free to call
anytime"

I nodded toward the folder as I stood up. "Thank you. I can
take this with me?"

"Yes, ma'am. Gert came in here on the first day of every
month for a folder like that. You'll probably find them all
stashed somewhere in her house, filed neatly and labeled by
the year. She was a stickler for keeping good records."

I shook his hand. "That sounds like Aunt Gert. Thanks
again."

I must have sat there sweltering in the broiling heat with
the car windows rolled up for ten minutes before I turned the
key to start the engine as well as the air conditioner. I actually
shivered when the icy cold air rushed over all the sweat on my
arms and face.

It was only five minutes from the bank to Aunt Gert's house
on Broadway Street. Her parents had built the two-story house
somewhere around 1910, right after statehood, and back then
it was one of the more prosperous homes in the area. But in
the sixties things started falling apart, and she ignored them.
For fifty years very little maintenance had been done on the
place, and it showed.

I parked in the gravel driveway and stared blankly at my
new home. For a minute I almost wished the helicopter bearing those boys in the white jackets would appear on Gert's
overgrown lawn. A padded cell, whether in a state-run facility
or a private one, was looking better by the minute. I left all the
paperwork I'd been given that day lying on the car seat and
opened the door to a blast of summer heat. If the end of May
felt like this, then what would July and August be like with no
air-conditioning?

I marched stoically across the unkempt yard and had barely reached the porch when everything began to look like the special effects in a movie running in slow motion. I'd fainted one
time in my life, back when I was first pregnant with my daughter,
so I recognized the symptoms. I eased down onto the porch steps
and put my head between my legs. It was midafternoon, and
I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I'd gotten rid of the coffee, soft
drinks, and my ignorance in the ladies' room at the church.

When I raised my head, Billy Lee Tucker was sitting beside me.

"Still moving in here sometime in the future?"

"I'm moving in right now, and I hope she's got a can of soup
in the pantry, because I'm hungry."

"When are the movers bringing your things?"

"No movers. I've got a purse and a bunch of papers in the
car, and that's it."

He raised an eyebrow and held out his hand. "Here's keys to
the place and her car. I was going to bring them out to your
house this evening, but I saw you drive up, so I came on over.
You all right? You're as white as a ghost"

"I'm just hungry. Thanks for bringing over the keys. This
house is a mess, isn't it?"

"It is right now, but it won't be for long. I've been hired to
redo the house from top to bottom if you decide to move into
it, so I suppose we'll be working together real soon," he said.

"Who hired you?" I asked.

"Gert. Gave me an envelope I was to open only after she
died. She said I was to remodel this place if you moved in. If
you didn't, then I could count on getting what was inside as
my inheritance for being her favorite neighbor."

"Well, thank you" I found enough strength to get up and
cross the front porch. I had to keep my body and soul together
long enough to spit in Drew's eye and get even with my two
cousins.

He followed me to the door. "Foundation is good. House
was built right in the beginning. It's got the potential to be a
real beauty"
- -- -- - -- --- -- - - - -

Inviting him inside would be stretching my depleted supply
of manners entirely too far. Being nice had netted me misery beyond description. Besides, I'd already been nice enough to
leave my cousins alive that day. Plus the prissy little bimbo
down at the bank still had all her blond hair and not a mark on
her face. That was enough "nice" for one day.

I stopped at the door. "I'm glad to hear it, Billy Lee. Come
around in a few days, when I've had a chance to think, and
we'll talk about it."

He nodded. "My phone number is on the refrigerator. Let
me know when you want me to go to work. I'll outline what
I've got in mind for the exterior. I think we can make this look
like it did in its heyday. I'm glad to have you for a neighbor,
Trudy"

He whistled as he left. I wanted to slap him. No one should
be happy when my world was in shambles.

Not one thing had changed since the last time I'd walked
through the front door of Aunt Gert's house. Every square inch
of the place was covered in mismatched furniture and cheap
collectibles. Every table sported a lamp sitting on a crocheted
doily. None of the lamps were plugged in, because there were
very few electrical outlets. Ceramic ducks, cows, and lots and
lots of birds surrounded the lamps. Chairs and sofas had mismatched hand towels pinned to the backs and washcloths on
the arms.

I walked right past it all without even a shudder. Whoever
said that a person, especially an overweight one, could live for
weeks with no food had rocks for brains. I was about to join
the ranks of the recently departed if I didn't find something to
put into my mouth. When I reached the kitchen, I was amazed
at the contents of the refrigerator. Milk, still inside the expiration date. Lunch meat. A whole loaf of bread. Lettuce.
Tomatoes. Cheese. Real mayonnaise that was even my favorite brand.

I made a sandwich, devoured it, and made another. I finished
the second one and had a tall glass of milk before I went out to
the car to get the paperwork. I carried it to the house and wondered why Aunt Gert had let things go to rot and ruin with all
that money in the bank.

I climbed the stairs and laid the papers on the bed in the guest room where I planned to sleep that night. The second
floor had three bedrooms and a bathroom. When the house
had been built, the bathroom was down the back path toward
the rear of the lot. According to Momma, the family modernized the place after her grandfather died. The heat was oppressive, so I opened a window and begged for a breeze, but
there wasn't a bit of wind between me and the Gulf of Mexico.

The sweat pouring off me had as much to do with nerves as
the weather. A cool shower might keep me from melting into
a puddle of lard on the floor. I opened the bathroom door and
almost cried. The wall-hung sink was listing to the front. The
toilet was crazed and cracked. The tub was as old as God and
pitted. There was no shower above it. This would definitely be
the first place I started when Billy Lee and I sat down to talk
about remodeling.

When I finished bathing, I wrapped a towel around my body
and wandered through the other rooms. Aunt Gert's bedroom
was cluttered with more stuff than the rest of the house. Knickknacks and old pictures. The guest room where I'd left my paperwork was clean but smelled unused and slightly musty.
Then there was Uncle Lonnie's room, with a padlock on the
outside.

I didn't remember there being a lock on the door the last time
I was in the house, but then, that was probably back when Lonnie was still alive. Why had Aunt Gert closed up the room,
and how long had it been locked?

Aunt Gert was a few inches taller than I, but her elasticwaist jeans and shirts fit me fairly well. The nightgowns in her
dresser drawer looked inviting, but it wasn't time for bed. I
had a lot of reading to do to understand what all Aunt Gert
had left behind.

I dressed in a pair of Aunt Gert's pants and a faded T-shirt,
made a pot of coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table to read
through all of the paperwork. But the lock on that bedroom
door kept bugging me. Why had she put a padlock on the outside of a bedroom? What was in there that she needed to
protect?

I sighed and tried to mentally rehearse what I would say to Drew when he got back to town, but my curiosity got the better of me. I went to the foyer table where I'd tossed the keys
Billy Lee had given me. Sure enough, there was a padlock key
on the ring.

No chilly air brushed past me as Lonnie's ghost left the
room when I opened the door. Nothing jumped out from under the bed to scare me. The hair didn't stand up on my arms,
nor did any scary music play in my head. It looked exactly as
I remembered from back when I was a little girl. Which was
completely out of place. All the other rooms in the house were
filled with junk, but this room was stark and plain with a
nightstand on each side of a full-sized bed. No knickknacks
anywhere. A calendar dated the year he had died back in the
nineties was the only thing hanging on the walls. Plain white
curtains framed the single window overlooking the front yard.
A rocking chair with a worn red plaid pad in the seat stood
nearby. Uncle Lonnie's polyester pants and jackets still hung in
the closet along with cotton shirts, his wing-tipped shoes and
bedroom slippers lined up neatly on the floor.

The room was spotless, not even one lonesome old dust
bunny hiding under the bed. Why would Aunt Gert clean the
room on a regular basis and then put a padlock on the outside?
But just in case there was a ghost in there that only came out
at a certain time, I snapped the padlock shut when I left. By
the time I got back downstairs, the phone was ringing.

"What the devil are you doing?" Marty asked when I answered it.

"Taking a look at my inheritance," I answered.

"I don't mean that. Why were you in town looking worse
than the garbage collector?"

"That is none of your business."

"Drew is going to kill you. I heard you went into the bank
and made a big withdrawal from his accounts and then went
to the other bank to deposit it. Is that true?"
- - -- - -- - --- - - -- -

I stretched the phone cord, but it wouldn't reach to the kitchen,
so I couldn't see if there was any rat poison under the sink.
"Doesn't the town have anything else to talk about today? They
could be discussing dear old Aunt Gert."

"It's your funeral they're going to be discussing when Drew
comes home"

"I'm sure you and Betsy will console him after he kills me.
Maybe you can make him some hot chicken salad like Lori
Lou did."

Dead silence on the other end of the phone line.

"Are you still there, Marty?"

"What are you talking about?"

"He might not be too choosy, especially if the affair with
Charity goes south. And it will. She'll get tired of him. Maybe
you can make him some hot chicken salad, and he'll buy you
a new car. I think you have to be about Crystal's age to get a
Thunderbird, but then, I might be wrong"

Nothing felt better than listening to her gasp when I hung
up the phone.

They've been talking about you," Momma whispered when
I stopped at the nursing home on my way to Durant the next
morning. I'd slept poorly. Different house. Different bed. I
needed it to be a good day with Momma.

"Who has?" I asked.

"You know who. They said you moved into Gert's house.
She's dead, you know. She won't be there to keep you company."

"I know, Momma. I went to her funeral yesterday, and she
left me the house. I'm going to remodel it and live there."
--- -- - - --- - - -- -- - -

We were sitting in the little garden behind the nursing home.
A dove flew up, alit on the low branches of a tree, and cocked its
gray head toward us. The thermometer on the side of the
porch post that morning had read eighty-five degrees, and
the weatherman had said it would be in the high nineties before the day was finished. A soft, warm breeze flowed through
the garden, and Momma lifted her head to catch the sun's rays.
She still had a lovely complexion, and the home's beautician
kept her hair dyed the same shade of dark brown that she'd had
when she was a young woman. Her eyes were the same shade
as Crystal's, that lovely summer sky blue. She was a perfect
size four before she married Daddy, and she'd maintained that
size all her life.