The Wedding Gift (15 page)

The downstairs had a living
room, and a library, and a dining room for about fifty and
something called a mourning room which is a place that I believe
rich folks put their dead family members into until they are
buried. I knew all about that 'cause me and Jessie had to watch
this PBS show one time. George laughed at me, though, and told me
it was a morning room, for people to sit in in the morning. I think
he was wrong, though, because I never did find any old afternoon or
night time room, but I didn’t correct him 'cause, truth to tell, I
was feeling a little overwhelmed by the scope of the
house.

There were three or four
other fancy little rooms and then the kitchen which was the size of
my whole house, and it was not cheerful either like kitchens are
supposed to be. For one thing, the tile on the counters was this
real ugly aqua with black shot through it, and I decided the first
thing to be changed was this room.

The other downstairs rooms
were real beautiful and grand, like in a good hotel, but they were
stiff, and didn’t have much color to them, mostly ivory and gold. I
was real glad to see that George had already had the flat screen
plasma TVs that we had picked out at Best Buy installed in just
about every room. It sort of brought the place into this
century.

Upstairs there were nine
bedrooms … that’s right, nine! The master bedroom was huge, and it
even had another sitting room off of it where, thank the Lord,
George had installed two more TVs, one for the sleeping area and
one for the sitting room. The bed was one of those old fashioned
canopy things that George said his granddaddy had bought in some
place called Florence, and had brought over to America. Looking at
it, I thought it could be pretty if Mama made a new canopy and
spread for me; maybe using some flowered lavender fabric I had seen
down the fabric store a couple weeks earlier. Then we walked
through three more real fancy bedrooms, all with big antique beds
and furniture, which I immediately set about planning to have
updated in brighter colors.

I thought living in the
house was going to be all right, except that it would be a little
like living in some fancy bed and breakfast alone. I should say I
thought it was all right, right up until I saw the other five
bedrooms that is.

Each one of them was a
kid’s room and not just like a, you know, small bed with pastel
painted wall, like in a regular little kid’s room. Oh hell no,
these rooms looked like any minute the kid who lived in them might
just walk on in the door.

There were two boys' rooms.
One had bunk beds and a telescope, and all these books about space,
and there wasn’t one spot of dust in that room. The other boy’s
room had a mural on the wall with desert cactuses and all these
cowboy pictures. There was even a little straw cowboy hat resting
on the made up lower bunk, as if some little fellow had dropped it
there after getting home from school on his way out to the back
yard. His tennis shoes were still under the bed.

There were two girls' rooms
too. Both were the kind of rooms any little girl would just die to
have, which I apologize for saying as I do realize that is a poor
choice of words in this situation, but it’s just an expression. One
room was all pink, and the other (ugh) was all done in my favorite
shade of lavender, and that one had a skirted dressing table to
match the bedspread on the small canopy bed just like my room at
home did.

I was already feeling sick
at heart by then, when I walked into the last room ... a nursery.
Someone had done it up real pretty in white eyelet
‘”
once upon a time
” but this was one room that didn’t look preserved in time.
The white eyelet was gray now. On the wall there was this
embroidered plague that said “Our baby George”. I was feeling
shocky but I was curious too. I had thought there were only four
children. I asked George and he told me in a real sad voice that
the family had asked the paper back at that sad time not to mention
the baby; it was just too much for them he said to have people
reading and thinking about a poor little murdered baby.

That did it. I backed out
into the hallway, ran down the left side of the fancy staircase and
out into the driveway, George hot on my heels. When he caught up
with me, I was halfway down the drive; I would have got further but
I was out of shape from being hospitalized, so he caught up with me
when I was leaning over to be sick on the gravel. To his credit, he
knew how bad it was, especially that nursery. He started trying to
explain, talking quickly, and sounding nervous as hell.
“
Leeann…oh Sugar, I am so sorry. I
shouldn’t have brought you here until all that stuff was taken out.
The workers are off this weekend. Monday morning they’ll be here
first thing and it’ll all be gone. See, Sugar, what happened is
that Daddy would never let Mama have that stuff thrown out on
account of it being all that was left of his baby nieces and
nephews, but I can see how it would seem real creepy to you. Hey,
I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do, lets go on down to Dallas for a
couple days till that stuff is all gone. What do you say?
”

I was way too hysterical to
be pawned off that easy. I was all screaming and red faced, when I
asked him how he thought seeing that nursery had made me feel right
after losing my baby. And I think I asked him if this was his damn
mama’s idea of a joke, so I would kill myself or something. George
was real good, though, about it; he just shook his head and
explained again that it was his daddy who had insisted on keeping
the stuff. He said that he had overheard his mama and daddy arguing
about it over the years, his mama saying that she thought it was
“
sick and morbid
”.

Well who knew? It looked
like Miz Bethany and I did have something in common after all …
what a surprise. George could see he was going to have to up the
bribes considerably if he ever hoped to get me back in that house.
I’ll tell you what, he sure did it. He got on his mobile and called
up Jessie and explained what had happened and told her that he was
coming by to pick her up, that she and I were going off to Miami
Beach to the Willets Petroleum condo in the sky there. He said she
and I were going to stay there a couple weeks so as I could
recuperate from all my traumas … just me and Jessie … me and Jessie
on my honeymoon.

I heard him say to her
“
No, no girl, don’t you bother packing.
You and Leeann just buy whatever you want when you get there -
everything’s on me
.”

Well now, as Mama would
say, this was a horse of a different color; two weeks with Jessie,
in Miami. Shoot, I’d forgiven him already. While George and I were
driving to the airstrip, this time in the Jaguar, he explained to
me that, when I got back, all the rooms would just be plain white
rooms, and I could decorate them however I wanted to. I was pretty
mollified by the time he got done talking, but deciding to press my
home court advantage, I asked him if I could have Jessie come and
live with us. Now that we had graduated, I knew Jess (who had got
her old job back at Tully’s) would be itching to get out of
Delilah/Susan’s house right quick, and I figured that if Jessie was
with me, I would never feel scared in that house. Why hell, Jessie
was scarier than any ghost all by herself.

George didn’t like the idea
much, I could tell, but he said yes anyway. I think he knew that
hearing yes was about the only thing that was going to get me to
ever settle down.

Chapter
22

Jessie and I had the time
of our lives in Miami Beach. That town is something - crazy fun and
the fancy sky condo, which Miz Bethany had done up all modern, was
the coolest place I had ever been.

Jess and I drank margaritas
all day and spent thousands of dollars of George’s money on bikinis
and short shorts. We just had a ball. The only thing that made it
not perfect was that Jess said no to moving in with me and George.
It turned out she and Mark had already rented a little studio
apartment above the Piggly from Britney’s daddy.

When I told her that was
just so stupid and, what the hell, she could move Mark in too, she
just shook her head and said she guessed that Mark wouldn’t like
that, that he needed his own place where he was the
“
man of the house
”. When I asked her if she wasn’t worried about getting bit by
all the rats that I was sure lived in the Piggly building on
account of the dumpster, she just laughed and said she had always
wanted a pet, and since she and Mark couldn’t afford a dog,
“
what the hell, Willard could be her
ghetto dog
.”

I did have to laugh too,
but I was real disappointed, and since I confided everything to
Jessie, I told her about my feeling of the house still belonging to
Robina.

She didn’t laugh or make
fun of me; Jess totally believed in all that stuff. As a matter of
fact, in sophomore year, she went through a period where she
believed she was a witch. Due to Jessie’s personality other people
sort of believed it too. So she got real serious and told me that
as far as she knew, ghosts couldn’t really hurt anyone. Also she
said that when we got back she would “s
age
the house
”. That sounded so stupid, I asked
her if she was going to rosemary the house and thyme the house too.
She punched me, and I punched her, and we got to laughing so hard
that I pretty much forgot about the house that day and for the rest
of our trip too, till Friday, when it was time to go
home.

When the limo pulled up to
the house this time, I was alone in back, and I waved Jack the
driver back when he came around to open the door for me. George
couldn’t meet my plane, because he was in Dallas with his daddy on
petroleum business. He had told me on the phone, that my mama had
come by and stuffed our refrigerator, so not to worry about fixing
dinner (which I surely hadn’t been), and that he would be home
around seven that night. So I just sat there for a while in the
back of the car, looking at my house.

It sure was a beauty with
its white paint gleaming in the hot sun. There were roses all
around the house that had been kept up all these years by the
Willets’ gardener. And in total violation of the water use laws,
this lawn was as green and perfect as any golf course. I smiled a
little thinking of my daddy’s brown lawn, because you could only
water twice a week now. So I had a pretty good idea about what he
would say about this lawn.

“
Those rich assholes have
nicer lawns in their empty G.D. houses than the rest of us who live
in our houses do
.”

I guessed I was one of
those rich assholes now myself; thinking about that made me smile,
so I gestured to Jack that he could go on ahead and let me out of
the car and bring in my five new Louis Vuitton bags too.

I had bought those
suitcases ‘cause I had to have someplace to hold all the new
clothes I had purchased when I was in Miami. And while I was at it,
I had bought Jessie a set too. Jessie hadn’t been all that excited;
she had just laughed at the price of them and said she guessed she
and Mark would use them for tables but she was sure that they would
give their place “
some real
tone
”.

I did purely love my no
limit (no matter what) black card. I was planning to buy Randy and
Sarah Beth a new living room set for their anniversary next week as
well as getting my daddy the biggest, flattest plasma TV set that I
could lay my hands on.

I inhaled a real deep
breath, pulled up my shoulders and then I was ready to go
inside.

I followed in after Jack,
and I told him to just take the bags upstairs to the first room on
the left and leave them there. He looked around and whistled real
low and said “
Whooee, Miz Leeann, this is
sure some place, ain’t it?
”

I had gone to school with
Jack’s younger brother, Rooster, who had been a star basketball
player at Dalton High, so it wasn’t like I was going to start
acting all high and mighty with Jack just because I was married to
his boss’s son. I did feel real proud though all of a sudden that
this palace was my house now. I said to him “
I know, right? Can you believe this place? Hell Jack, I can’t
get over it myself; shoot it’s bigger than those houses on
cribs.”

He said it sure was, and I
was one lucky girl, but if he didn’t mind me saying so, that Mr.
George was still the lucky one, and I said I didn’t mind him saying
so a bit.

As Jack was going on up the
stairs, from out back of the house came this little bitty Hispanic
lady. I am not too tall myself, but I had a good six inches on her.
She was smiling real wide and holding out her hand to me. I took it
and smiled back at her confused. She told me that her name was
Maria, and that “Meester George had hired her to work for us five
days a week, to clean, and do laundry and get dinners ready. She
told me if I did not want to cook, she’d be happy to do it. She
said that her sister worked for “
Mees
Bethany and that her mama had even worked here in this house a long
time ago too
.”

Well I was pleased as can
be at this news. I had wondered if George had expected me to keep
up a house the size of a hotel by myself. Besides, I knew I liked
Maria right off, and having her here meant that I would not be
alone during the days while George was at work. I know she was real
startled when I gave her a big hug, and told her that I couldn’t be
happier to hear about her working for me.