Brightleaf Read online

  “You look familiar,” he says. “Have we met, Ms. Green?”

  Finding my voice I tell him no, we do not know one another at all, but people often tell me I look like Reese Witherspoon.

  He blinks. “Who?”

  “You know, Legally Blonde?”

  “That could be it,” says Dr. Dorrie, looking at the ceiling like he hasn’t watched a movie in eons. “Where do you work? The Green Bean? Gourmet Gourmand? Grocery store, maybe?”

  He’s trying to place me. “No,” I say. “I rarely go to any of those places. Hardly ever.”

  He crosses his arms and nods.

  “I run a boarding house on Main Street, you know, rent out the rooms. I also open up my home during the day as a coffee house of sorts, and hold a meeting on Wednesdays. It’s just my thing.”

  I left out the part about volunteer preschool driver. Just in case he decided to ask, Oh really? Where’s your route? What kind of car do you drive? Have you seen a white poodle with nasty pink stuff around its mouth?

  “On Main Street?” He pronounces each word slowly, giving emphasis to the word Main. “I love those old Victorian homes.”

  “Mine isn’t Victorian.”

  “Not Victorian. Hmm. Let’s see, there are a few bungalows, Queen Annes, and Cape Cods. You look like a Cape Cod woman.”

  I shake my head with a smile.

  He continues. “A couple of Prairie Styles, a really neat Italianate, and then there’s the house somebody tore down and built a urology clinic in its place. Maybe you live there.”

  It takes me a second to realize he’s joking. “Yes, as a matter of fact I do live in the urology clinic. Great guess.”

  “Never a dull moment around the dinner table, I suspect.”

  “It’s a ton of fun,” I say. “On Chili Night we eat out of bedpans.”

  He doesn’t laugh. He just looks at me over his glasses. I can’t believe I said that thing about the bedpans.

  “How festive,” he says with a smile. “You must sleep on the examination tables there, too.”

  “That’s why I fell asleep in here. I feel right at home,” I say gripping the sides of the table.

  This time he laughs, and says, “Okay, lady. You gonna tell me where you live? Or do I have to look in your file?”

  “You’re going to have to look in my file.” I can’t tell him where I live.

  “Seriously?”

  He opens my file. Dangit. I didn’t think he would.

  “303? Is that near the top of the hill?”

  I nod.

  “Good-looking place. Someday I’d like to buy a home on Main. Great street with all the big trees and shady sidewalks.”

  “I doubt you’d have to try too hard to find a home there. Something is always for sale.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Most of those homes are just way too much house for one person. Not to mention all the work you gotta put into those things.”

  “Thankfully I’ve got swarms of people helping me out.”

  “You’re fortunate,” says Dr. Dorrie. “Out of curiosity…”

  “What?” I ask. Please, please don’t ask if I’ve seen a white poodle. Who’s now blue.

  “You don’t by any chance have the original plans to your home do you? I would love to get a look at those. I studied architecture at one time and still love to see the crazy things the old-timers drew into the plans. Hidden rooms and funky spaces.”

  “Well, I’m not sure,” I say, shivering in my gown and trying to suck in my chest as much as possible so Dr. Dorrie doesn’t notice how very cold I am.

  “You know,” he says, “they used to put the house plans in the banister post at the foot of the stairs. It’s true. Sometimes you can just lift up the finial, look down inside and pull them out.”

  I tell him I’ve never checked, but if I do I’ll let him know if I find the plans. I just want out of here.

  Dr. Dorrie gives me a nod. “Hey, when did you say that meeting of yours is?”

  Crap.

  “Wednesday nights. It’s boring, though. You probably wouldn’t like it.” See, I always feel guilty about excluding people from Share Group, so I end up inviting them, anyway. Even the very last person I’d want to come. “But you can come if you want.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Green. I just might do that.” He smiles and extends his hand for a shake. “Hang tight. Dr. Salander will be right in.”

  7

  The Totally Personal Diary

  of Mary Beth Green

  June 2, 1990

  Dear Diary,

  Hello, Brightleaf. Hello, blue room. I’m sitting here on the feather bed I sleep in every summer and promising myself to keep this diary so that when I grow up, I will remember what it’s like to be 12. Especially if I have a daughter who is 12. I will not be drunk and crying all the time with long strings of snot tangled in my pearls, or snooty when I’m sober, but instead bake lots of carrot cakes and meatloafs. Our house will always smell like cinnamon and garlic, and I will sit down with a cup of regular coffee every morning and eat bacon and raisin bran with my daughter. Yesterday was the last day of the 7th grade, and I left Atlanta at 8:04 p.m. on the Amtrak. I rode in a sleeper car with a bunk bed and a little toilet and listened to the mix tape Marcelle made. Marcelle never makes me tapes, and it is the best tape ever. Somehow Marcelle knows about music that none of my friends have. So I listened to The Pogues, They Might Be Giants, and The Cocteau Twins until ten. Then MC Hammer (who everybody knows). And later I switched to my New Kids On The Block tape. I tried staying awake all night, but the moving of the train always rocks me to sleep like a little baby. My train got to Greensboro at 4:43 in the morning, and Grandmother was waiting for me. It was still nighttime, and she was standing under a light pole wearing one of her outfits from the 1960s again.

  It took us a whole forty-five minutes to drive to Brightleaf in her prehistoric Roadmaster. I like it that Marcelle didn’t come this time, for the first time ever. I am plenty glad she decided to move into her summer school dorm early. Mainly because whenever a boy talks to me, like at the grocery store or the movies, she ruins it by stepping between me and the boy and saying something stupid just to get attention. But she knows what she’s really saying is, Look. Here is a prettier girl, a taller girl… a more sophisticated version of the one you are now talking to. With boobs! I am shocked that middle school boys notice that type thing. But it’s true. They do. I don’t even like boys, anyway, except two. I wish I could figure out a way to make them notice me. I thought about sending them secret letters so that they would have to guess which girl liked them, and they would look around real hard at all the girls they knew. That would make them look real hard at me. Like, was I the one who sent such a mysterious and exciting letter? But all I’m brave enough to do is call them on the phone and hang up. It is amazing how fast a 7th grade boy can run. I had to race one on field day last year. It was puny little harelip Huey French (he does not speak French). I was so sure I would beat him, but he just took off. Like the Roadrunner. Beep-beep. I never had a chance. He made me feel as slow as Judy Carmichael, who is slower than a sick turtle and has the tiniest teeth in the world. I would never tell another soul, but Huey’s speed shocked me so much, I got a crush on him. Sometimes I would watch him wearing his young Indiana Jones hat to school (which I used to think was pretty dumb) and had the private knowledge that he’s a lot stronger than he looks. His scarred lip made him more mysterious. Like a battle wound. If anybody reads this and dares breathe a word, you can guarantee I will put Nair hair removal cream on your eyebrows while you are in a deep sleep. And maybe even on certain spots on your head so it will look like your hair is falling out in clumps, and everyone will think you are dying….X

  8

  The Mind of Mavis

  My whole name is Billy Mavis Turnkey. Named after my daddy, Billy Mabry. My mama never would agr
ee to marry Billy Mabry, but she sure was crazy about him. She said that just knowin he was willin to get hitched was enough for her, but she didn’t never want to marry a man who had regular standing jail time from March to June. Daddy’s Spring Fever is what Mama called it. Anyway, Mama always called me Billy May, but all the children in town called me Turkey. Gobble gobble. When I left home at fifteen to run off with Cleavon, I started going by Mavis and kept the Turnkey part.

  The Goodwill had a book called The Poodle Almanac, and I bought it for three dollars. It tells me near everythang a girl could hope to know about a poodle. What all and what not to feed it. (Never, ever feed a poodle onions or chocolate.) I also learnt poodles is famous at fetchin stuff. I’m teachin Floyd here how to fetch. And I’m pretty much in charge of his groomin, seein that he don’t get the mange, and makin sure his roots is touched up. If that evil pervert wasn’t lookin for him, I’d let his dye job grow out. Don’t get me wrong, blue on a dog is purty, but too much beauty can be a dangerous thang.

  I should know. You may think I got it happenin now, but you shoulda seen me in my younger days. I was the belle of the bar. I seen good times and bad, like most ever’one my age. I know what it is to lose a child. When my Orin was born, I looked into his soft lil face and told him he’d be nothin like his daddy, that damn fool Cleavon, who liked to fight and start fires.

  When I first took up with Cleavon, it was love at first sight, only I didn’t realize he wasn’t too bright in the head, and come to find out he had the IQ of a worm, for real. That’s what that doctor told me after it was all said and done. By “said and done” what I mean is this: Orin was the spittin image of his daddy in every way, so handsome, but a pyromaniac from birth…and the boy didn’t live no longer than eight years. One of the few days his idiot of a daddy was supposed to be watchin him, the shrimp got into the matches and burnt down the trailer with his own self in it. How could I have stopped it? By not being so fool to think he’d be safe with Cleavon. The sadness at losin that boy was almost too much to bear, and I blame nobody but myself. But I have to believe he’s in a better place now, livin the life of an angel, far away from Cleavon, who’s in Hell.

  There’s no replacin a lost child, but you can always have other children to love on, which I never did do. Floyd is like a son to me now.

  Me and Mary Beth is here at the G.P. We gotta get some of this food home and into the deep freeze before it melts, so we’re speed-loadin the conveyor belt at the checkout. Frozen sausage links. Frozen fried chicken. Frozen corn. Frozen lasagna. Beep, beep, beep. Jumbo tea bags. Beep. Super-sized can of coffee. Beep. Hungry Jacks. Beep. Hungry Jacks. Beep. Hungry Jacks. Beep. Hungry Jacks. Beep.

  “Well, babe, looks like the last of ‘em. Go on now and pick up your magazine. I got it under control,” I says.

  Mary Beth don’t ever want to pay to read her magazine, seein she can cut to the article she’s most innerested in pretty fast and be finished by the time the food is bagged. Right now, she done found a story about movie stars who wear the same dress to the same party. For some reason that ain’t cool in Hollywood, but if I met someone with the same outfit on as me, Lord, I would love that. While I’m waitin for the cashier to finish ringin us up and baggin our stuff, I cross my arms and hold up my boobs.

  “Ah!” says a voice real close. “ I can see you are a no-nonsense type, who doesn’t follow trends. I can also tell that you are a person open to new ideas and experiences. A refreshing trait, indeed.”

  I turn around, and there’s a man with a teeny mustache and tinier lips. Cute as a caterpillar. His eyes is nice and wide apart, a sign his mama and daddy ain’t brother and sister. Even though one of his eyes drifts, I know he’s talkin to me cuz his good eye is fixed.

  Lord, he just read my mail. I’m shocked a stranger could figure that stuff out about me. So I says, “Do you have ESP or somethin?”

  Mary Beth sets down her People and looks at him. She says, “Mavis, why should he have ESP?”

  “Well, I want to know,” I says. “You ain’t that psychic who used to come on Oprah?” Law, I hope he is. Cuz I would love to have me a tarot card read or hear about all my different lives. I coulda been a damsel in distress or a grave robber. A princess would be easy, but I hear grave robbin is hard work. Either way I’d get me some good jewelry.

  “No, my dear,” says that man. “I have never met Oprah, although it would be a grand privilege. I’ll have you know that I’m not reading your mind, but I cannot help but have the pleasure of reading your groceries.”

  “I hope that ain’t like palm readin,” I says. “Cuz Mary Beth says that’s of the devil. Right, MB?” I glance over at Mary Beth.

  “That’s right. We don’t believe in that.”

  The little wanderin eye lands on Mary Beth while the regular eye looks at me.

  “I assure you, I’m no clairvoyant. I have only been gifted with the uncanny knack of understanding certain things about a person based upon their groceries and sundries. Even things they themselves may not be aware of. Not excluding how long a person will live.”

  “Well, don’t be readin mine that way,” I says. “I don’t want to know when I’m gonna die. I want it to be a surprise.”

  I look over at Mary Beth, who is lookin at this man, tryin to decide what to make of him. But I’ve made up my mind. He’s gifted is all. How else would he know I don’t follow styles?

  Mary Beth says, “You’re not from Brightleaf are you?”

  “Doyle Stubb at your service,” he says, holdin out his hand for a shake.

  I gotta say he has the most beautiful hands I’ve ever seen on a man. Such pale, smooth skin, like a baby’s, and fangernails so shiny and trimmed, you’d think he spends his days sortin through feathers and cotton balls. And believe me when I say I’ve seen fangernails on a man that would scare the shit out of Dracula.

  Doyle says, “I recently moved to Brightleaf from Phoenix, Arizona. My mother is quite ill in The Peaceful Future Nursing Home.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mama,” I says. “Phoenix, Arizona? Ain’t that all hot and cactusy?”

  “My dear,” says Doyle, “Arizona has a most pleasant climate. Though it can be hot, it is quite arid, which is marvelous.”

  Right away, I know this is a good man. He came clear across the country to be with his mama. So I says to Doyle, “Doyle, you got a place to stay? Cuz Mary Beth here owns a boardin house, and we could use an extra man about.” I look at Mary Beth and nod to her like we have twin minds and she’d agree to it, but her lips get real tight, and she’s givin me the look that says she don’t want me goin around offering no psychics a place to stay.

  Mary Beth says, “Well, Mr. Stubbs…”

  “Stubb…it’s Stubb. And please, call me Doyle.”

  “Okay, Doyle,” says Mary Beth. “Seeing I’ve only just met you, I can’t say I feel comfortable renting to you just yet. But I would love for you to come by the house for a cup of coffee or join us on Wednesday night for Share Group.”

  “I thank you kind ladies very much for showing concern for my well-being,” says Doyle. “But I already have a nice cottage not far from here. The invitation for coffee and whatnot is equally appealing. You shall see me soon,” says Doyle as he runs his finger over his mustache, and looks real hard at those bagged groceries in our cart.

  Mary Beth

  I felt like throwing a blanket over our groceries. I did not want him looking at them that way. It seemed almost like he could see through our clothes. Figure out all the combinations on our locks, our social security numbers, and even the secrets we keep from our own selves. Anyway how hard can it be to estimate how long someone will live by looking in his shopping cart? If someone has a buggy packed with beer and Twinkies it’s no mystery they probably won’t make it to one hundred. You don’t have to be magic to know that.

  9

  Manchild

&nbs
p; Mavis

  Manchild shows up at the house every day but Wednesdays—to dodge the sharin time. I told him I don’t want him comin around ever. He’s crazy about me, but ever since Cleavon’s been long dead I don’t wanna be worryin about no man. Sure, I have men friends that I shoot the breeze with here and there, have a smoke with and all. I don’t mind me some attention. So when I seen Manchild giving me the sly wink, I says, “Hey baby, ain’t you cute?” I wasn’t thinkin of being his girlfriend or nothin, just friendly flirtin is all. He’s twenty-seven, so I’m old enough to be his gramaw.

  That Manchild is hard to shake, though. Followin me from in front when I walk down the street to the Goodwill. Walkin backward, makin a fool of hisself, laughin like he’s so funny, but his eyes is sad. Some people always look sad, even when they ain’t. For some reason, he reminds me of my own little Orin. But his missin teeth tell me he don’t like to brush. Orin brushed.

  I’m missin teeth myself, on the bottom. I’ll be the first to say, but mine are gone cuz my mama got me dippin at a early age, to get me to calm down when I was fussy. I took up smokin at the age of twelve cuz it’s a lot easier to look glamorous for the boys smokin a cigarette instead of dippin snuff and lookin like you been chewin on cat turds all day.

  I might not be college educated like Mary Beth, but I’ve been around the block a few times, and I can tell that Manchild is bad news. I ain’t sure what all kinds of drugs he’s on, but he is on disability. I already had me a taste of that disability sugar with Cleavon. He was always gettin jobs on the sly and hidin it from the government, so he could keep two checks. Anyway, Mary Beth says her grandma told her that a man is like a Bible prophecy: Sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly. I ain’t sure exactly what that means, but I suspect it’s somethin like: Fun to kiss, but don’t get knocked up. That’s some good advice.

  10

  The Traffic Light