Too Weird for Ziggy (6 page)

As soon as he hung up, it rang once more. It was Ross Silver again. “LeeAnn. LeeAnn?” This time there was an odd catch in his voice. “I know you're there, darling, I've been trying your cell phone, please pick up the phone. Jesus, LeeAnn, I just found out—some jerk of a journalist from
Brats in Hats
or
Saps in Chaps
or whatever the fuck that magazine is called left a message on my voice mail just now while I was on the line to you. I called the police to check it out. Look, LeeAnn, stay where you are, don't move, I'm coming over. Love you, darling. I'll be right there.” After a brief beep, the
phone rang again. She heard her cell phone trilling a quiet background accompaniment from the kitchen table where she'd left it. She ignored them both, and stayed staring at the mirror, past the surface of her face and into the lines, recently plumped out with collagen, which now looked deeply corrugated and so disconnected somehow from the rest of her that LeeAnn felt sorry for them. And finally she cried.

She cried even harder on the flight back home. The cute young steward in first class, who crouched by her seat and solicitously held her hand, and the sweet blonde stewardess who leaned over and dabbed triangular white damask napkins at the mascara rivulets trickling below her dark glasses, figured, as they would have, that she was weeping for her mother, but LeeAnn was weeping for herself. She did not want to go but her manager said she had to. “LeeAnn,” he said, “I know how you feel, but your country audience is not going to understand if you don't. For Christ's sake, LeeAnn, she may have been a Bible-bashing child-abusing bitch but she's your mother. And anyhow, don't you want to make sure that she really is dead? I'm not saying you have to stick around and sing at the memorial service—although come to think of it that's not such a bad idea; shame it's not summer or we could have maybe done some kind of outdoors tribute concert… .” Her ex-husband, the country singer “Big” Willie Bean, had left a message on her machine just a few moments before, suggesting the very same thing and volunteering his support, onstage and off.

She could just picture it: a giant photograph of Mother on the video screens, LeeAnn and Willie Bean in matching
fringed white jackets with black sparkly armbands, his arm tight around her, she weeping on his shoulder, back together, united in grief, on her new song, “Rhinestone Tombstone Blues.” Maybe they could turn it into one of those county fairs with an outside barbecue—hot roasted Momma, straight off the spit, just a dollar fifty. “The media are going to go for a story like this like vultures,” said Silver. “If you give them the chance, LeeAnn, they'll rip you apart.”

A couple of dozen photographers and some TV news cameras were there to meet her when she landed. So was Beth, her favorite sister if she had to choose one, all creasy-eyed and anxious. Her big, stiff, lacquered hair looked out of proportion with her small, droopy face. Four other sisters were at home with their father, the seventh had just boarded a flight out of England. Beth hugged LeeAnn as the cameras flashed—self-consciously, as if she were the winner of a “Dream Date With” contest. They didn't say anything. LeeAnn gripped Beth's hand, her long red nails gouging half-moons in her flesh, and together the two women walked solemnly to the exit through the path the airport staff cleared.

Home was an hour's drive away, and as Beth relaxed behind the wheel, the barriers came down. She talked nonstop—about their father, about the funeral arrangements, who was coming, the coroner's report, all the minutiae of their mother's death. She talked about her kids and her husband and her sisters' kids and husbands, brought her up-to-date on where they were all living and who was doing what. She told her how incredulous and then proud her oldest boy had been when she told him his aunt wrote a song for Shoot 2 Kill, his number one band.

As they drove through their hometown, Beth—who really should have been a gossip columnist; back less than one day and she'd already found out everything worth knowing—pointed out to LeeAnn what had changed and what had stayed the same. Doreen Swensen had been cured and let out of the madhouse; she was helping out at her cousin's hardware store and now she could hold a screwdriver, “allegedly,” without using it on some girl's eyeballs. The guy who ran the pharmacy had been jailed last year for swallowing the entire contents of the place and running down Main Street with his dick out. Barbie, who was in LeeAnn's class, came back from New York with an out-of-work actor who can't be more than half her age and they bought old Proctor's place up on Vermont. The son-of-son-of-son-of Sex Dog—his great-grandfather, a horny Airedale-retriever mix they used to call Sex Dog, would terrify the sisters with his attentions when they were young—had had to be put down when he tried to mount the deputy sheriff's baby boy. Lorrie Phillips, who owned the diner and was once LeeAnn's boss, married a young guy from the religious right that she met on the Internet; they set up a website, Hymens4Heaven.com, to save young girls' sexuality for the Lord. Their last posting—before the church put a stop to it—recommended anal sex as a means of preserving a girl's virginity: “Be a virgin in front and a martyr behind,” said a bubble coming out of a picture of Lorrie's zealous, smiling face, “and the angels will sound their horns on high.” The diner closed down long ago, the fast-food chains had taken over.

Within a two-block space LeeAnn counted a Carl's Jr., a Bob's Big Boy, a Top Burger, and a big, gleaming new
drive-thru McDonald's. “On opening day,” Beth said, swinging onto tree-lined Richmond Avenue, “they ran a photograph of its first customer in the local newspaper. Who do you think it was? Tommy Moorhead! He looked
awful
. There's a man if ever I saw one with grounds for a lawsuit against God. And they ran this little interview with him where he told them who he was—who he was married to, in other words—and he stunned them all, reeling off all these fascinating facts about McDonald's, how it opened on April fifteenth, 1955, in Des Plaines, Illinois, the Chicago suburb now ‘better known as Burger Bethlehem,' I quote your ex-husband, and how the first Big Macs were fifteen cents but
he
only ever ordered Chicken McNuggets, because he was, in his own words, ‘an individual.' I am so
sure
.”

They were still laughing when Beth pulled into the forecourt of the Chapel of Rest. They stopped abruptly, looked at each other uncomfortably. The ease and familiarity seemed to have been switched off with the engine. “You go ahead,” Beth said. “I have to go to the office and call the others and tell them we're here.” LeeAnn fumbled in her handbag for her cell phone. “Here, use this,” she said awkwardly, proffering it to her sister.

“You do it. I don't know how to use those things.”

“I don't know the number,” said LeeAnn pathetically. Her sister tutted and sighed.

“It's been the same one for forty years.” She recited the numbers and LeeAnn pushed the buttons. When she heard one of her sisters answer, she thrust the phone at Beth. Beth glared at her. “Hi, Ruthie,” LeeAnn said. “We've just gotten to the chapel.” States of well-being were checked and
arrangements were made. “Ruthie says they'll all be here in fifteen minutes. Except for Evangeline, who's staying home with Pop.”

“How
is
Pop?” LeeAnn asked for the first time. “How the hell do you think?” said Beth, still angry though she couldn't for sure say why. “The one blessing is I don't think he even knows what's going on. No need to do that,” she said as LeeAnn automatically checked that her door was locked. “We're in God's country now.”

“And He's fucking welcome to it,” muttered LeeAnn under her breath.

The Chapel of Rest was wood-paneled, cool and spacious, and dimly lit, with a few tasteful china ornaments dotted about. It reminded LeeAnn of the stately home that she visited with “Big” Willie Bean when they were in England together on tour. Only the stately home didn't have a fucking great coffin in the middle of the room. She knew she had to look in it sooner or later, she just preferred later. LeeAnn stayed glued to the reproduction antique chair while Beth stood over the coffin, stroking something—she guessed it was their mother's hair—talking softly to whatever was in it, and whatever was in it LeeAnn really did not want to know.

A wave of nausea rolled up in her solar plexus. She hadn't felt this sick since she was twelve weeks pregnant with Tommy Moorhead's baby, the baby she aborted the second she ran off to L.A. and the butchers fucked up her insides so bad there was no way she would ever get morning sickness again. But it sure felt like it now. Figuring this was not the best spot to recycle her airline food, even if it
was first-class airline food, LeeAnn stood up. The nausea drained to the floor. She walked over to Beth, wobbling like her legs were made of Play-Doh, and stood behind her sister, her hands on her shoulders. She felt Beth sob. But still LeeAnn didn't look down. Her sisters arrived, came over and hugged her, bent down into the coffin and kissed their mother, rearranged her hair and dress, trying to make her nice, like she was their little girl whom they were getting ready for a party and not 140 pounds of God-fearing, stick-wielding, Bible-quoting, burnt old meat.

This
thing
—LeeAnn still didn't look down—once ruled their lives with terror and turned their father into a pitiful wreck long before the Alzheimer's finished off the job. She used to line the girls up, kneel them all down in a row, and if the hems of their skirts failed to brush the ground she'd beat them. She'd make them recite the Scriptures and if they got one word wrong she'd beat them. She'd make surprise raids on their bedrooms in the middle of the night to see what they were up to and, whatever they were up to, she'd beat them. LeeAnn got the worst of it, being the oldest and an example and all. When LeeAnn's first period started, and she was scared shitless and hurting, and had no idea what was going on, and after two days finally got up the nerve to tell her mom she was bleeding, she beat her stupid. She was a woman now, her mother said, so she had better get on her knees and pray to God. Menstruation was God's monthly reminder that a woman's body is a piece of dirt that must be cleansed by the blood of Jesus, until her husband purifies it with the gift of birth. A woman's body, she said, belongs to
her husband and her soul belongs to God. Then her mother left her praying and went out. Fifteen minutes later she threw a packet of thick white pads and an elastic belt on her bed.

LeeAnn was surprised to find herself trembling. This is crazy, she thought, being scared of a goddam shish kabob. And finally she looked down.

It was both better and worse than she'd expected. Her mother looked like a voodoo doll that someone had dressed up in their grandma's Sunday best. Like one hell of a slab of jerky. Like a strange effigy made out of dried brown animal skin by some Indian tribe with an arts grant. She looked smaller than she expected too—reduced, like a shrunken head. But she was still utterly terrifying. LeeAnn gingerly lifted her mother's thin, leather hand. Someone had taped her worn-out old wedding ring to what remained of her finger. LeeAnn thought of the song she wrote for her third husband, Lee Starmountain, the only one she'd really loved. “‘
He wore out his wedding ring
,'” she sang gently to herself, like a lullaby “‘
on the steering wheel
,'” and hot tears plopped into the coffin.

The women piled into two cars and went back to the house. Evangeline was at the door before they'd even pulled up. She'd been out watching the local cops get the press and TV video crews to move back to the other side of the street. There were still some people milling around outside—local women mostly, middle-aged, in leisure clothes with gold appliqué flowers and animals and incongruously teased hair—hoping to get a look at their prodigal star. Some of them, unashamed, had cameras poised and ready. Others waved and said, “Hi, LeeAnn. Welcome home.” She gave
them the barest acknowledgment and went inside with her sisters.

The place was much as she remembered. Stifling, claustrophobic. Knickknacks everywhere, kitschy decorations, crosses in every shape and size and substance. Hanging china plates with homilies and verses from the Bible lined the walls. Her grandmother's framed sampler, “As Ye Sow So Shall Ye Reap,” took pride of place above the fireplace where the mirror ought to have been, only Mom would not allow a mirror in the house. Even now LeeAnn retained her ability to put on her makeup without one. In spite of all their cleaning, the place did not smell good. Evangeline gestured upstairs and said that Rick from the garage was coming by later with his pickup to take the mattress away. The police had offered, but their father had refused to let it go. Maybe he was sentimental. Maybe just mental. Maybe he wanted to worship it as the one thing on this earth that had ever shut her up. He didn't say. He couldn't say. Then again, he never could.

“How long are you staying?” Evangeline asked her in the kitchen as she helped with the dishes. “I'm going back tonight,” said LeeAnn.

“Tonight? What about the funeral?”

“I'll fly back again,” said LeeAnn. Adding, suddenly conscious of such a display of conspicuous consumption in the family home, “I've got some commitments. Work. You know. I can't stay.” They carried on in silence.

It was just before she left for the airport, while the taxi purred outside the front door, that Evangeline took her to one side and gave her the envelope. She'd found it in her
mother's dresser drawer while she was going through her things. It was a plain white eight-by-four with “For LeeAnn Moorhead, in case of my death” written neatly on it—her married name, her first marriage, the only one her mother recognized. “You know, Mother was really fond of you,” Evangeline confided. LeeAnn snorted. “I know it wasn't always easy, but maybe—” LeeAnn stood there silent, dumb, clutching the letter. “I guess she felt she had something she needed to say to you,” said Evangeline sweetly. “You know, maybe make up?” LeeAnn stuffed the envelope into her bag. They went back and joined the others. She kissed them all good-bye—all except her father; she couldn't; he just sat there staring and dribbling like a dirty old man on a park bench—and then she was out of there.