Brightleaf Read online

  For the first time in days, Mavis smiles and says, “Who’s your friend here, Floyd? She’s a purty little thang.” She kneels down, scoops up the puppy, and rubs its head. “Hey there, darlin. Ain’t you cute.” The puppy is a ball of energy and cranes its neck to chew on Mavis’s hand.

  Terry stands with his arms crossed, looking especially fetching today. I haven’t told anyone about Terry’s proposal. I hardly believe it myself. We’d probably shock the pants off everyone because they barely saw us going out together. We didn’t. But good Lord, how my heartbeat picks up just looking at that man. I must avert my eyes.

  “Do you like her?” asks Terry, motioning to the puppy.

  Mavis smiles and says, “Who wouldn’t like a puppy?” She pulls the puppy close to her face and rubs her nose on its ear. The puppy licks Mavis’s cheek and mouth, hovering like a hummingbird over her face. She laughs and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. “You rascal,” she says and gives the puppy a squeeze.

  Terry sticks his hands in his pockets and says, “She’s yours…if you want her.” He gives Mavis an uncertain look like he’s attempting a trade and hoping she’ll accept.

  Mavis strokes the puppy but sets it down and says, “Ain’t no need. I ‘preciate the gesture. It’s cute and all, but it ain’t Floyd.”

  Floyd and the puppy set off, tearing all over the downstairs again, tumbling over one another.

  “No dog could ever fill Floyd’s shoes, dog-wise, but maybe a puppy could help make things a little better,” I say.

  Mavis purses her lips and shakes her head, turning towards her room. I admire Mavis for being the person who insisted on doing the right thing, giving Floyd back to his rightful owner. She loves him more than any of us. Except for Jeanine, that is.

  “Hello, hello!” A voice rings through the house.

  “Hello?” I say, looking at Terry, shrugging. I call, “We’re back here.”

  We hear a clicking of shoes across the wood floor until she comes into view.

  “Jeanine!” Terry says. “What are you doing here?”

  Speak of the devil. Jeanine is a small, tightly built woman, with short, dark glossy hair, and the greenest eyes I’ve seen in a while.

  I say, “Jeanine?”

  Terry says, “I apologize for not introducing you before now. Mary Beth, Mavis, this is Jeanine, my ex-wife.”

  I’m not really sure what to say. What do you say to a person who you know all about, but they know nothing about you?

  “We’ve heard so many good things about you!”

  “Well, thanks,” she says.

  “He tells us you’re a wonderful cook,” I add, ever so thankful that I thought of one of Jeanine’s virtues. For a few seconds, the only thing I can picture is Jeanine making coffee wearing lingerie. “Terry tells us that you make the best scallop lasagna in the world, and I’m so jealous because I can hardly boil water.”

  Terry says, “Jeanine is on a break from the Navy. She just came back for a brief period to find her dog.”

  This is new.

  “You didn’t tell us Jeanine’s in the Navy. That’s terrific,” I say.

  It’s bewildering to have Jeanine standing in my kitchen, in the flesh. In my mind, she’d almost started taking on folklore status. She was fast becoming The Legend of Jeanine. Here I was imagining Jeanine some big socialite and that she left Terry to go jet-setting with a European tycoon, and all along she’s been a military woman. It’s weird that Jeanine isn’t the glamorous lady I imagined. I mean she’s in good shape and pretty and all but just not the celebrity look-a-like I imagined, like Heidi Klum or Gwyneth Paltrow.

  If Terry hadn’t been here to identify her, I’d think she was a realtor. Realtors are always coming by, telling me how they’d love to sell this house.

  Terry says, “Will you guys excuse us for a minute?” He turns towards Jeanine and guides her a few paces away. “So what’s up?”

  “You mean, what took me so long to find you?” She sounds exasperated.

  “My cell is on. I haven’t been hiding from you, if that’s what you mean,” says Terry.

  Seeing Jeanine makes me feel like she’s someone I should have met before. And so should Mavis and Winslow and Jimmy, and everyone else. But then I think of Floyd. And think I’d let her sleep in the street before I’d let her take Floyd from Mavis.

  And that’s when I hear the patter of dog paws approaching. I realize it’s too late to think those kinds of thoughts anymore.

  Floyd stops cold.

  The puppy is feverishly using one of Floyd’s legs as a chew toy, but Floyd stands stock still, staring at Jeanine.

  This is the moment I’ve been dreading for weeks. I know Jeanine will know her dog, the way Mavis says. Mavis says you can look your dog in the eye and know it, no matter what color.

  Jeanine notices the dogs and freezes. We all freeze.

  Floyd stares at Jeanine and Jeanine stares back.

  This is one of those times when you hold your breath. The situation has finally reached a tipping point. And then something odd happens.

  Time seems to slow down. A peace settles over me. The light and colors of the room shift. Jeanine, Terry, and Mavis recede in my vision and the room fades to another moment in time: My mother standing right where Jeanine is standing, coming to drag me back to Atlanta with her for my senior year in high school. And Mazie putting her foot down and defying my mother to take me away. To pull me from this place, this house where I learned to play bridge and crochet; where I listened to old records and had slumber parties. Things other kids would call old fashioned I called safe. I was safe. All thanks to Mazie Lee Green.

  The voice of Jeanine breaks my trance: “What cute dogs! They are so adorable! And would you just look at that…”

  Look at what? What does she want us to see? How much the bigger blue dog, which obviously recognizes her, favors Champagne? The very dog she’s been searching for is right here on Main Street. Is that what she wants us to see? I can’t look. Terry is just as upset as me, but Mavis is resigned, despondent. Past being sad. Mavis just is.

  Jeanine says, “You can tell they love one another so much. Is that a mama and her baby?”

  No one answers her. The puppy takes a break from accosting Floyd and pees on the floor. Floyd is still staring at Jeanine.

  Jeanine bends her knees, holds out her hand, and says, “Hey there, sweet puppies. Come see me!” She smiles her biggest, expecting the dogs to come towards her.

  Floyd becomes unfrozen and starts walking towards Mavis with his tail between his legs. The puppy is unfazed and sticks to Floyd like a tick. Mavis bends down to gather Floyd, and he stands on his hind legs and pushes his way into her arms.

  “Well, look at that,” says Jeanine. “The mama dog loves her mama!”

  I’m dumbfounded. Jeanine needs glasses. Floyd is obviously a male dog with a penis. But Jeanine only sees a big dog and a little dog and translates it mother and baby.

  It’s clear that the choice was Floyd’s. He chose Mavis. Floyd the dog is no fool. He knows not only the hand who feeds him but the one who loves him best. That’s how I see it.

  At this moment, I lose all guilt. I feel like if I handed Jeanine a billy goat and said, “We found Champagne,” she’d put it on a leash and proudly walk it around the block. She might even enter the billy goat in a poodle competition.

  I am a free woman.

  Mavis nods and says, “You a good girl, ain’t you, Floyd?”

  Terry says, “Whatcha need, Jeanine? Laundry detergent or something?”

  “I came by to give you the keys,” she says, jangling the keys to his house. “As much as I’ve loved every millisecond of Old Home Week, I need to get going. If my dog returns, call me ASAP, pretty please.” Jeanine bats her eyelashes at Terry, but I look up at the ceiling so that he doesn’t see me seeing it.
/>   Looks like we’ve got two dogs now.

  41

  The Ned Wrap-Up

  Detective Metz calls the house the next day. He is talking all official and calling me Ms. Green and thanking me for handing Eleanor over to him. Basically acting like the scene he made at his house didn’t happen, and that’s fine by me because this is the way I like it: by the book and professional. He tells me Eleanor is being evaluated by the court-appointed psychiatrist and that Jimmy will have to do forty hours of community service for not cooperating with an investigation, but I already knew all that because Jimmy told me.

  Then he says, “For the record, you were right, Ms. Green. Mr. Hillman’s cause of death was cardiac arrest. We checked his video game console and found Berzerk. We also conferred with Mr. James Riddle about the dosage of yohimbe he was taking. The yohimbe alone wasn’t enough to kill Mr. Hillman. Looks like he never touched the spanakopita.”

  Which is good because if castor bean killed Ned, that would make Eleanor a murderer. “Thanks for letting me know,” I say. “I still want your recipe for coq au vin. I admit I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  Detective Metz pauses then says, “I bought it at The Gourmet Gourmand. They’ll sell you one with two sides for twenty dollars.”

  42

  Double Finesse

  August 27, 1990

  Dear Diary,

  Last Wednesday at the soup kitchen, I cooked my first dish, a broccoli and cheese casserole. It was a gigantic hit with the foodless (Harriet told me to stop calling all of them homeless). Grandmother has also been dragging me around to deliver Meals-On-Wheels. I swan, that woman never stops. “I swan” is my grandmother’s saying and my new saying. It’s old fashioned, but I’ve been using it a lot lately when I play bridge with the old ladies, which is getting to be pretty dang fun, except for the dummy hand part. I am all signed up for school. I am not crazy about not going home and not seeing my friends for a while. It’s depressing to start the 8th grade with no friends (and even more depressing to know all the Lawrence Welk dancers by name). But my mother isn’t home, Marcelle is at college, and Daddy hasn’t lived at home in years. There would be nobody there to help me celebrate my 13th birthday next month. Brightleaf isn’t actually so boring anymore. I talked to one of the cigarette girls the other day. She told me they all quit, cold turkey. Come to find out they were in the 6th grade like I thought. I almost wrote Huey a letter telling him he really did see a rat head that day, but I might put it off for a few more years, after the statute of limitations runs out or something. I feel I owe it to him. Still, sometimes when I’m in my bed in the blue room, I think about Huey holding that package, sealed with the lipstick kiss, and wonder what he was thinking right before he opened it. I can’t help but start laughing all over again....X

  43

  The Anti-Hippie Faction

  I wrote a letter to Ned’s mother, telling her all the wonderful things about her son I never had the opportunity to say face-to-face. I included the clippings from the Brightleaf paper on his death, something I deliberated doing, but in the end decided she might want them. A week later, I get this letter from her:

  Dear Mary Beth,

  Your letter meant so much to my husband and me. Swallowing the fact that Ned is gone seems impossible, but to hear that others loved him as much as we did is a comfort. You mentioned Ned’s athletic abilities, particularly his breakdancing. We are aware of his talents, especially since he’s been active in the sport since high school and was part of a dance team which toured the nation. It was thoughtful of you to include the newspaper clippings from your local paper. It’s sad reading them, but they are an important part of Ned’s memory. You mentioned the photograph with George W. Bush—I’ve included a newspaper article with the story behind the photo. Another reason we were proud of our son. Thank you again for your love and concern. We hope to meet you next time we pass through Brightleaf.

  Sincerely,

  Elizabeth Hillman

  I unfold the newspaper clipping.

  Bomb Plot Foiled Blocks from the White House

  December 17, 2003, Washington, D.C.— A stir was caused at MCI Center during a concert by the band Phish when police attention was drawn to a group of conservatively dressed women who have come to be known as the Bradley Bombers, named after the Vera Bradley bags they carry filled with explosives. A lone man noticed them and alerted security.

  “They just weren’t cool, man,” said Ned Hillman, the person responsible for notifying security. “Here it is, right after nine-eleven and you’ve got this group of uptight women pushing their way to the front with these preppy backpacks. Those moms were totally sending out a ton of negative energy.”

  When the women were confronted by MCI Center security and their backpacks searched, they confessed to being part of an anti-hippie faction with their spokeswoman saying, “The greatest problem with our nation is the visionless youth proliferated by the hippie attitudes of 1960’s America, whose values continue to erode our society. If our deaths prevent future doctors and lawyers from getting derailed by drug addiction and a slovenly lifestyle, causing them to become pizza deliverers and live with their parents until they’re 50 years old, then we will have saved our country.”

  I remember this story. Everyone remembers it. And I remember the women saying that they didn’t like being called the Bradley Bombers. They referred to themselves as the Victims. Ned never said anything about any of this to us. He saved all those people, and just a few blocks from the White House. And it actually says “anti-hippie faction.”

  There’s a hand-written comment on the bottom of the story by Ned’s mom:

  FYI: The Brightleaf police had this information and originally thought Ned’s death was in retaliation from this group. The FBI got involved.

  Detective Metz knew all this. I’m starting to doubt the dream journal was even a part of the official evidence. I’m positive he knew about the castor bean spanakopita from the get-go. The fact that he totally made me think he was letting me in on top-secret police business makes me feel really dumb. Dumb as a box of rocks.

  It’s the end of another Share Group. I fold up the newspaper article with the letter from Ned’s mother. Everyone was pretty fascinated by it all, especially the part about the FBI being called to Brightleaf to investigate. Meanwhile, Ned is probably up in heaven, breakdancing and keeping it real, oblivious to all the hullaballoo that’s going on down here surrounding his death. Terry, Winslow, and Jimmy start pushing the furniture back into place and setting the folding chairs in the hall closet. Normally Eleanor would be here. She’d be rushing around, making sure everything was exact, all the knick-knacks and photographs repositioned on the coffee table, the wing chairs in their exact spots. I miss her some. She wasn’t all bad.

  Winslow says, “Hey, Doc, feel good having your own house back again?”

  Terry says, “It feels good, but there’s no place like the Rapturous Rest.”

  When Terry finally moved back to his house after Jeanine was packed and gone, he found all his boxer shorts ironed and hanging in the closet with his shirts. Also, his shoes were shined and his fridge sparkling clean. Jeanine made several scallop lasagnas and left them in the freezer with a note saying, These are so you won’t starve fending for yourself. He brings them over to Share Group and tells Mavis he likes her lasagnas better, even though they’re Stouffer’s. The notion that Jeanine thought he would be helpless once she left makes me wonder—it’s as if Jeanine imagined Terry being all alone, eating her lasagnas, like some old widower, sadly chewing and digesting the last morsels of his wife’s existence. Even if Jeanine is a little cracked, I have to admit that those lasagnas are first-rate. And hopefully castor bean-free. Nobody’s died yet.

  “Don’t you think it’s strange that she thinks you’re so needy?” I say to Terry.

  “I am needy,” he says. And he leans in to kiss me.

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nbsp; Epilogue

  Mavis Beams Us the Hell Outta Here!

  First off, I’m gonna say I ain’t jealous of nobody goin on a cruise. Havin my two feet planted here on dry land is plenty adventure for a girl my age with two rascally dogs to look after. Lord, Mr. Sulu already done chewed up two pairs of Mary Beth’s shoes and one of my sneakers. Top that off, he gnawed a hole clear through one of the sofa cushions. I keep tellin Floyd he needs to be a leader, show Mr. Sulu the way gentlemen dogs is s’posed to behave. Floyd, he just stands there watchin Mr. Sulu commit one crime after the next.

  Doc and MB ain’t no help, neither. Them two got hitched last Saturday at the Wendy’s church. The whole Share Group was there, some of Dr. D’s doctor friends, and so was Marcelle and her mama and daddy. I was the Matron of Honor, and honey, the Goodwill ain’t never gettin that dress back again! MB told me I could pick out whatever I wanted, so I did, and baby, it’s the one I’m gettin buried in. But that ain’t nothin. You shoulda seen the bride and groom walk up to the Wendy’s counter, where the preacher was standin, in them Star Trek leotards. When it came time for the rings, I whistled for Floyd, and he scampered up to Dr. D, fur on his head all slicked back like Elvis, and lets him pull the ring outta a little pocket on a bowtie collar we got for the occasion. My Floyd, a ring bearer! Now they’re off on a Star Trek Celebrity cruise. I think Doc and Mary Beth is gonna be happy together. They’re movin out to the carriage house when they get back, so MB can still run the Rapturous Rest, but so’s they can have some privacy, too.

  I know what you’re wonderin. What ever happened to that Cruise for Three that Mary Beth was promised way back? Mary Beth changed her mind about lettin the Share Group draw straws; instead she turned it into a raffle. You could buy as many tickets as you wanted for fifty cent apiece. She donated the money to the soup kitchen. Anyway, Baby George, he probably bought near to seventy-five tickets, and he won all right. He picked Jimmy and Phil to go on the cruise with him. And we was all wonderin why he’d pick them two bozos instead of some ladies or somethin.