Brightleaf Page 7

  “It’s okay, Mavis,” says Terry. “I need to be hitting the road. But thanks for the kind words.” And he walks out the door.

  “Well, Doyle,” says Mavis, “I guess that one came back to bite us in the butt.”

  14

  Not So Top Secret Entry

  June 20, 1990

  Dear Diary,

  There are kids around my age who live in a few houses on Main Street, but I haven’t felt like making friends with them yet. They pass me on their bikes like they are in some kind of gang that’s required to wear Izod. And I’ve seen a group of girls about my age smoking cigarettes in the City Park. It’s not like I’ve never smoked a whole pack of Virginia Slims all by myself. So 6th grade. Recently, I’ve become a real regular in the garage sale circuit. I used to think you’d always find nasty stuff, like somebody’s old false teeth or a half-used tube of Chapstick at garage sales. I was right. If you want that kind of stuff it’s there for the taking. Some people think it’s OK to sell anything. Once I saw some old person’s potty-chair with some real pee turned to brown syrup in the bowl. Right in the front yard. Like the people selling it were darn proud and really lucky to have this quality potty in their sale. Besides the gross stuff, there is a whole bunch of great stuff, too. Yesterday I bought a pair of hot pink Converse high-tops. They fit just right. I also found a really good pocketbook that I paid 2 dollars for, and it still had a bunch of change inside it. $3.47. The old records are the funniest. I bought one for 50 cents, just to see what was on it. Crazy Horses by Donnie and Marie Osmond. My mother wouldn’t be caught dead at a flea market. Not even tanked-up. And she would just die if she knew I was walking all over Brightleaf in the shoes of a stranger. It does not bother me at all, as long as I wear socks. The thing that bothers me more than contracting athlete’s foot from the last owner of these shoes, is watching Grandmother and her friends dance at their favorite restaurant every week. Smitty’s has polka on Friday nights. The band is a group of men with thick glasses and comb-overs playing horns and an accordion. There’s a dance floor if you want to dance. And I never do. I’m just there for the meatloaf because I can’t seem to get enough of it. As much as I like meatloaf, I would be completely mortified if any of my friends from Atlanta ever saw me walking into Smitty’s because everybody knows it’s a place old people go to flirt and carry on with each other, which is very disturbing to me....X

  15

  A Little Problem

  Mary Beth

  Somebody knocks on my bedroom door very early in the morning. The rising sun slowly seeps through the blinds, and I’d like to rest here between the sheets feeling the coolness on my legs and think about the coming day before answering that knock. It’s Mavis. She’s whispering to me through the door. She says we have no running water. I mumble for her to call the city and see if there’s a broken line.

  “Already done that,” she says. I haul myself out of bed, pull on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, and walk into the bathroom and try the faucet. Nothing. Next, I head downstairs to the kitchen. Eleanor is standing at the sink, attempting to fill the coffee pot with nonexistent water. Mavis says she’s going to check and see if Ned has water in the carriage house. Whether the carriage house has running water or not, I need a plumber. And I really hate plumbers. To me, they’re the same as auto mechanics. The plumbers understand that barely anyone has plumbing knowledge. The general public is at their mercy. Most of these pipes are underground or under the floorboards, in places no normal person would know to look or want to look. They could tell me anything, like: There is a giant slug trapped in the main line and we will need to excavate the whole front yard and hire an expert from Alaska. I promise you, I will believe them and pay them.

  “Ms. Green?” says the plumber. He’s just come out from under the house wearing a blue plumber’s shirt with a ‘Charles’ decal on the pocket. “It appears someone has removed your pipes.”

  “Could you please explain that?”

  “It’s as I said, your pipes are gone. Somebody probably stole them for the copper. Seen it before in an empty house and other buildings, but never in my life on an occupied home.”

  “What? I’ve never heard of that. Why would someone do that?”

  “Well, ma’am, stories like this have been all over the news, and it’s copper, and it’s worth something. Unless you have a rich enemy who did this out of spite, I suspect somebody did it for the money.”

  Enemies? I’ve never even thought I could have an enemy. Except when I thought the Jersey Guy was stalking me. It was silly of me then to think someone would single me out to harass. So I basically decide that I am not an enemy-prone person and that there must be another explanation.

  The plumber tells me PVC is cheaper, and they can start putting some in the kitchen today, so at least we can cook and brush our teeth by tonight. But he says it’ll take a while for the rest of the house because their schedule is full. Unfortunately, the carriage house has the same problem. I call around to the other plumbers, but they all tell me they can’t even get here for a week. Finally, I get on the phone with a port-o-potty company. I figure we can stick it in the side yard. The guys in the Greek revival will probably have a fit, what with a port-o-let marring their view, but what would they do in the same situation?

  “Mavis speakin.”

  “Hello, I’m calling for Mary Beth Green.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Am I on speaker phone?”

  “Maybe…who’s this?”

  “Bob.”

  “We don’t know no Bob.”

  “Just give me the phone,” I say.

  “He sounds slip’ry,” says Mavis, handing me the phone.

  Mavis loves using speakerphone, but I cut it off.

  “This is Mary Beth Green, how may I help you?”

  “Mary Beth, I’ve got great news for you!”

  “What might that be?”

  “Get ready.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “You’ve won a cruise for three to Bermuda!”

  “For three?”

  “Yes, three!”

  “Three is an awkward number,” I say. “What if I only bring one friend?”

  “Bring two friends.

  “Why can’t I bring just one friend?”

  “The offer will be void if you only bring one friend.”

  “This sounds like some kind of trick…to get me and two of my friends trapped on a cruise ship in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, where we might end up disappearing off the face of the planet. That’s too weird for me.”

  You can’t be nice to a telemarketer. It’s a fact they’ll take advantage of you, and it does not even matter if you tell them just today you had a leg amputated and your mother got run over by a backhoe. They’ll try to find a way to make you think that cashing in your retirement for a super-deluxe, one night, two-day stay at a motel with a hot tub is a good deal. So I started this trick in my mind: I tell myself telemarketers are murderers and rapists in prison for life, paying for all their wicked crimes by trying to sell stuff over the phone. This is one of the few times in life it’s okay to be rude.

  Bob says, “The whole Bermuda Triangle thing is silly. You’ll be safe, believe me; it’s a promotional cruise.”

  Bob’s voice sounds trusting. Maybe he’s in prison for something not so bad, like spray-painting mink coats or check kiting.

  16

  Marcelle

  I am just about finished getting the house in order for when my sister gets here. Marcelle is five years older and lives in Atlanta. Her favorite activities are working out at Gold’s Gym and tweeting. She sells Mary Kay cosmetics for a living and isn’t so bad at it. It takes a special type of person to be good at network marketing. She hasn’t won herself a pink car yet, but she did win a pink Vespa. She’s full of drive. Maybe too much drive, seeing she’s driven off tw
o very nice husbands. She lives far enough away for me to breathe easy, seeing that Atlanta is about a five-hour drive. She called me last week, saying she was coming for a visit, but I think she’s coming to spy on me and report back to Mother. Since my mother quit drinking, she’s become a paragon in her Presbyterian church, and she and Marcelle have been a little more than critical of my Baptist conversion. Especially since it happened when I was living with my father’s mother.

  Mother once said, “Next thing I know you’ll be playing the tambourine in the Winn-Dixie parking lot, selling flowers with the Branch Davidians.”

  “They’re all dead,” I told her.

  Both Mother and Marcelle are under the impression that Baptists are one step away from being a cult.

  I said, “Mother, just because we attend different denominations doesn’t mean we don’t have the same Jesus.” But she thinks her Jesus is more like a member of the British Royal Family—Prince Charles’s big brother, eating off Wedgwood with sterling, while my Jesus is the paper plate, baked bean, and snaggletooth one. Mother’s Jesus walks around wearing a gold crown with long, blond hair flowing over his shoulders.

  One day I am going to write Mother a letter saying Jesus might even be a black man. What if Jesus looked exactly like Don King? Jesus probably was kind of tan, seeing he was Middle Eastern and all. I’m not even sure my mother has any idea our savior is Jewish. This reminds me of the time that Mavis did remember Jesus’ ethnic and religious origins two Christmases ago. She went to the G.P. and bought a bunch of Manischewitz wine and made matzo ball soup. She said we were gonna celebrate Jesus’ birthday the way his own mother would. The soup was delicious, but cheap kosher wine has a distinct flavor, almost identical to grape NyQuil. When we tasted it we all set our glasses down and pretended the moment was too sacred to empty our glasses. One sip made us holy. Mavis served the remains of the kosher wine at Share Group the next night, right next to the iced tea, and Jimmy gulped it down. Anyway, Marcelle should be here soon enough. That means on time for Share Group.

  Mavis is wearing a new t-shirt today that reads, Ass, Grass, or Gas—No One Rides For Free. I tell her people will make all kinds of assumptions about her based on that shirt.

  “I don’t mind people thinkin I own me a car,” she says.

  When the doorbell rings, Mavis goes to answer it. Marcelle’s voice immediately echoes through the house, complimenting Mavis, saying how the colors of her shirt set off her eyes. I reach the foot of the steps and say, “Hey, Marcelle. Glad you made it. Do you have any more stuff in the car?”

  Marcelle tells me she just has the one bag.

  “What happened to your eyebrows?” I ask.

  “I went ahead and had them bleached. Don’t you think it makes me look like a natural blonde?”

  “It looks real natural, all right,” says Mavis. “Kinda reminds me of my albino ferret, King Tut. He was a rascal.”

  “Well, he sounds just adorable,” says Marcelle, widening her eyes. Now Marcelle will probably go out and buy herself an albino ferret, so everyone will say how cute they are together—almost like brother and sister.

  I lead Marcelle to her room. “Dangit, I almost forgot! Our pipes got stolen.”

  “Pipes?” she asks. “I was unaware the Rapturous Rest owned an organ.”

  Marcelle thought it was a dumb idea to give the house a name. She said it sounded like I was running a funeral parlor or a brothel. But older siblings can be ugly like that. When I’m eighty and Marcelle is eighty-five, she’ll still treat me like I’m three.

  “I mean the plumbing. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you before you came.” I’m kicking myself for forgetting to tell her. She most likely would have stayed home. At least I can guarantee she’ll leave soon. “You’ll have to brush your teeth in the kitchen. And, so sorry to say, we have a port-o-let set up outside for the rest. As far as bathing goes, you can take a sponge bath, use the shower at the homeless shelter, or check into the Holiday Inn.” I turn to go downstairs and say, “Otherwise make yourself at home, and don’t feel like you have to join the Share Group if you don’t want to. Participation is purely voluntary.”

  “I wouldn’t miss your little meeting for anything,” she says.

  Mavis and I have the Wednesday supper ready. We’ve got a rectangle folding table here loaded down with two chicken tetrazzinis, an extra large broccoli-cheese casserole, a salad, and a pile of Hungry Jacks with a tub of I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter! We’ve also got three one-gallon jugs of sweet tea, and the drip coffee maker is huffing away. Floyd is staked out under the table.

  Terry and Doyle are the first to arrive. They let themselves in and begin pushing the furniture against the walls and pull out the folding chairs for the circle. Then they drift over to the buffet and pick up paper plates.

  Terry hasn’t really spoken with Doyle since the grocery reading. The situation makes me uncomfortable. What would cause Terry to be so upset that Doyle might spill the beans? People have things they just want to keep private, I guess.

  Terry inquires about Marcelle.

  “She may or may not come down,” I say. I hope she’ll take a Valium and stay in her room tonight.

  Our usuals are here. We’ve got Ned, who’s no longer boarding in the carriage house. He moved after the pipes got stolen. He found himself a new apartment over the Greek restaurant and says Mr. Stavros, the owner, lets him eat all his meals for free, plus the rent is cheaper. His clothes have become so steeped with the aroma of Greek food that whenever he comes to Share Group, I can’t help but think he’s got fat wads of moussaka or souvlaki stuffed in his pockets.

  Jimmy shows up with some of his employees, or under painters. They’re looking a little hangdog tonight, but then again they always look that way when Jimmy makes them come to Share Group. Jimmy’s under the impression that if they can open up and share together, they will have a stronger painting team. It was my idea, really. I said, “Jimmy, instead of taking those boys out drinking and carousing after work, why don’t you bring them here to relax and get some things off their hearts and minds?” Jimmy’s two employees are Phil and Baby George. They’re both in their twenties.

  “Hello there, Baby George,” I say.

  “Ma’am,” says Baby George.

  “It’s nice to see you, Phil.”

  Phil nods. He looks a little like Gary Busey, if he were a house painter.

  We sit around with paper plates, chatting and eating until seven; then we cover all the food and start getting settled for Share Group.

  About that time, Eleanor walks in with a bundle of shopping bags and heads for the stairs. She bumps into Marcelle, who’s on her way down, wearing perfectly ironed jeans, a low-cut blouse, and shiny black flats. I wish she’d change that blouse.

  “Oh, my Lord!” shouts Marcelle. “That’s a Dundy’s bag!”

  “Yes it is,” says Eleanor. ”I was just there and bought up half the store.”

  Marcelle says, “Our grandmother used to take me and Mary Beth there every summer. As soon as we’d arrive in Brightleaf, we’d head straight to Dundy’s for new swimsuits and sundresses. Mr. Dundy had this huge bowl of candy on a table in the middle of the store. I loved that candy bowl. Mary Beth was never allowed to have any. She always did have to watch her weight—”

  “Marcelle, I was allowed candy.”

  But Marcelle ignores me, saying, “Just look at you!” Marcelle motions to Eleanor, who is a real-life anorexic. “Don’t you have a cute little figure?”

  Don’t tell her she’s got a cute figure, I think to myself. We’ll have to go ahead and make funeral arrangements if she gets any cuter.

  “Marcelle!” I say her name loudly to make her clam up. “I’m glad you came down. Come and join the circle if you want.”

  Winslow arrives. He apparently jogged to Share Group again. He’s wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, which do
esn’t do much for his stringy arms (we all can see his gray, frizzy underarm hair poking out), with long patches of sweat soaking his back, chest, underarms, and some nasty patches below the waist. Winslow immediately notices Marcelle and makes a beeline for her, taking the opportunity to extend a warm welcome to a new female. He takes both her hands in his and says, “You are just as gorgeous as your sister.”

  “Thank…you.” Marcelle is visibly taken aback by Winslow, but she snaps out of it real quick and says, “You know, you’ve got one of the longest ponytails I’ve ever seen on a man.” She politely pulls away from his grip and wipes her hands off on the sides of her jeans.

  “Thank you, my dear,” he says, stroking his hair.

  Marcelle finds a chair, and Winslow picks the one next to it.

  “May I offer you a cigarette?” Winslow asks, shamelessly scooching over until their chairs touch.

  “No, thank you. I’ve quit.”

  Marcelle has been smoking on the sly since she was twelve. Most people didn’t even know. I doubt our mother even knows.

  “All right,” I say. “Time to prepare our hearts and minds to share. For those who are new to Share Group, please remember to keep your hands to yourselves, no laughing at anyone or insults allowed.” Baby George and Phil begin making obscene gestures at one another like they’re fixing to break the rules.

  I glance at Marcelle, but she isn’t listening because she’s so distracted by Winslow, who’s resting his arm on the back of her chair, giving us a gaping view of his underarm, like a giant tarantula wet from a swim. Marcelle is doing everything in her power to prevent that drippy underarm hair from touching her blouse. Even though Winslow is totally breaking the rules, I pretend I don’t notice. I look at my wall scripture about the strangers maybe being angels. There are no strangers here tonight. We begin.

  “Mary Beth done won a cruise to the Bermuda Triangle,” says Mavis.