Contemporary Women's Fiction: Agnes Hopper Shakes Up Sweetbriar (Humorous Women's Fiction) (2 page)

“Might as well be going there,” I muttered.

Betty Jo smoothed her new straight hairstyle and glanced my way. “Did you say something, Mother?”

“Most people would kill for naturally curly hair.”

The silence felt as solid as ham curing in the smokehouse. We passed Gene’s Daisy Queen, recently converted into a Laundromat. Best vanilla shakes in the entire county traded for rows of machines that steamed up the windows and blew balls of lint across the floor. Perfect strangers now sat side by side on plastic chairs while their underwear twirled about for all to see. What a waste.

All of a sudden, Betty Jo swerved off the road and stopped. A funeral procession led by the sheriff’s flashing lights crept toward us and then turned between the iron-gated walls of Beulah Land Cemetery overlooking Sweetbriar. Headstones, some dating back as far as the time of Daniel Boone, lean peacefully under the shade of ancient oaks. Whenever I decorate Charlie’s grave, I sometimes linger in the old section.
Jake and Kate
, carved on one stone, is my favorite.
Together forever
.

As we watched the hearse from Snoddy Brothers’ Mortuary and the line of cars behind it, snake their way up the hill to the green tent flapping in the hot, dry wind, I said, “Floyd was a good man to put up with that Geraldine.”

Betty Jo’s eyebrows rose above her sunglasses. “Mother, you didn’t even know Floyd. Not really.”

We pulled back onto the pavement, but I had more on my mind. “And another thing. Don’t ever let those Snoddy boys get hold of my remains. Never did trust those fellows when they were growing up and still don’t.”

She didn’t answer, just reached and flipped the air conditioner on high. My shirt puffed up like a balloon, and I grabbed my shirttail. Soon
we turned onto Main Street.

I wondered whether Betty Jo considered the goodness of her own Henry. He owned the Western Auto and worked six days a week. Even on Wednesday afternoons, when he locked his door at two, he didn’t leave until he’d placed special orders and straightened the stockroom.

There was Henry now, in front of his store on Main Street, balding head bent and shining in the sun. He was fixing a nice display of bicycles and wheelbarrows on the sidewalk.

“Toot your horn,” I yelled, reaching across and giving the steering wheel a bang.

The car swerved. “Mother! You’re going to cause me to have a wreck.”

Henry must’ve heard the tires squeal because he glanced up and gave a quick wave before steadying a bright blue bike.

Two blocks further we stopped for a red light. I was beginning to feel like a bedsheet hung on the line in the dead of winter.

“Henry looks bad. Has he seen a doctor lately?”

“He’s fine, Mother. Just fine.” She glared at me and flipped the fan to low.

“He would be if you stayed home once in a while and cooked him some collards and cornbread. I would’ve been more than happy to fix him a mess of vegetables, but you wouldn’t let me near the kitchen.”

A martyred sigh, perfected over the years, filled the car. “Remember what happened to your place?”

“How could I forget?” I shot back. Not that she would ever let me.
Burn a house down, even if it was an accident, and people think you’ve come unglued.

Betty Jo pulled beside a tree-lined curb and cut the engine. We both sat staring straight ahead, waiting.

I noticed the sign above us:
Unloading Zone. Fifteen-minute limit.
“I hear the new deputy’s a stickler. Pull up a little so you won’t get a ticket.”

My daughter, her nose out of joint, ignored me as usual. She got out of the car and walked around to the trunk, talking the whole time. “I’ll carry your things to the porch and come back for you. Don’t try it on your own. You hear?”

I rolled my window down and stuck my head out. “Once I get settled, I’m coming back for Miss Margaret.”

Betty Jo leaned a shopping bag against the stone wall and walked back to the car. She took off her sunglasses and wiped at the beads of sweat that lined her upper lip. “Didn’t Henry promise you he’d take
care of that pig? At least until we move?” She turned, picked up two shopping bags, and headed for the wheelchair ramp.

I yelled out the window, “If she’s feeling sad or bored, she’ll nose the refrigerator door open. Eat ’til she’s sick. Miss Margaret’s sensitive. I’m the only one who understands her.”

It took three trips up to the porch to carry two boxes tied with string, five hatboxes, and two shopping bags stuffed with shoes. Gave me time to study this place my daughter called my new home. A two-story frame house, lavender and loaded with gingerbread trim, sat as the hub of two single-level buildings, also lavender, angled toward the back.
I sure hope my room is downstairs
.
If not, this place had better have an elevator.
Not that I planned to be here that long.

According to my daughter, each single-level addition held five modern bedrooms carpeted in sea-foam green with floral bedspreads and drapes. “Very tasteful,” she said, upon returning from her inspection tour when she placed my name on a waiting list. When they called to say they had space for me, you would’ve thought she’d won a free trip to the Grand Ole Opry. “Next week? We’ll be there.”

Sweetbriar Manor, formerly called Hampton Grove, was an old house with a past, but not the kind that would be recorded in any textbook. Gossip, romantic rumors, a visit from some Yankee general that left it and all of Sweetbriar untouched, was the buzz.

Years later, it was still a house of ill repute run by a woman named Dakota. When she died, it became a boarding house and then an antique shop. Now it was a home for old people and sported a large sign in the front yard:
Sweetbriar Manor, Winner of the Seniors’ Choice Award.

“Ha,” I mumbled. “We’ll see about that.”

When I spotted my daughter heading back down the ramp, I gathered my three bags of yarn I’d bought on sale at Rose’s and my best garage-sale purchase ever—a red, genuine-leather purse soft as a baby’s behind. That was back when I drove Charlie’s old pick-up,
Big Blue,
and went to garage sales every Saturday morning after circling them in the paper on Friday night to map out my route. Now I would be circling apartments and houses for rent. The first thing on my agenda would be to check out the little place I’d spotted on the way here. Not the best section of town, but it might work temporarily.
If only I still had Big Blue—and a license.

I could still picture Charlie’s truck in the side yard beside the porch covered with strings of morning glories. It sat at the end of our lane
where he and I tended to our tobacco farm, located about five miles outside Sweetbriar, and not a stone’s throw from where we grew up. We loved it there.

Betty Jo opened my door, which gave me a start and interrupted my sweet memories. For good measure I added, “Why are you and Henry selling your place and moving into that shoebox anyway. Are you afraid I’ll want to come back?”

“It’s a townhouse, Mother, perfect for just the two of us. You know Henry’s thinking of retiring and … oh, for heaven’s sake, we’ve been through this enough. Let it rest.”

I stumbled getting out of the car.

Betty Jo grabbed my arm. “Mother, be careful. Fall and break a bone and you’ll really be in a fix.” She snatched my bags of yarn.

“It’s these confounded bifocals.”

I snatched my yarn back, ignored the wheelchair ramp, and proceeded to climb the three stone steps that led to the front walk, then up three wooden steps that led to the porch—my grumpy child close behind. Not a far piece, but in the stifling heat, sweat trickled between my breasts, down my back, and gathered around the waist of my new Fruit of the Looms.

White rockers lined the massive porch. We headed for two near the front door and flopped down, gasping for breath. I fumbled around inside my purse for my Cox Brothers Funeral Home fan but couldn’t find it, so I took my hat off and tried to stir the air.

“Well, here we are,” Betty Jo said. “That’s a fact.”

Looking out across the lush lawn, my thoughts traveled back to the day of the fire. It had been a sunny day, much like this one, when my whole life got tangled in a knot. Miss Margaret and I went outside to pick turnip greens, and I left a big pot of pinto beans on the stove—on high. With the window open next to the stove, a breeze must have flicked my yellow-checked curtains against the red-hot pot. It looked like nothing but a lot of smoke until my kitchen window took on an orange glow. I ran back to see what could be salvaged and quickly called 9-1-1.

The volunteer fire department came as soon as they got the call, but my purse, my grandmother’s Bible, two racks of shoes, and boxes of hats were the only things I could get to.

I was busy throwing things out the front door until a nice young
man took my arm and led me away from the house, clear down to the oak tree where I watched my house burn to the ground—the place where Charlie and I had lived our whole married life of forty-nine years. To add insult to injury, I failed my driver’s test the next week and was told I couldn’t get a new license. Just like that I became homeless and dependent on others. And I’d never depended on anyone before, except myself, Charlie, and the good Lord.

Finally, I stood. “Reckon if we sit here long enough we’ll melt. Best get this over with.”

With my hands full, I tromped over to the front door. A sign next to a wall-mounted mailbox said in big, bold letters,
ABSOLUTELY NO PETS ALLOWED.

“Humph, we’ll see about that,” I said under my breath. Pushing the door open, I stepped into the air-conditioned coolness of the front foyer of this former house of ill repute.

T
he beveled-glass door shuddered as it broke free of the doorframe, and a tinkling tune of “Dixie” filled the air
.
As if in competition, “When We All Get to Heaven” screeched from another room, piano and voice in desperate need of tuning
.
Of course, my hearing aid went berserk and, besides all that, the air conditioning fogged my glasses. I turned my hearing aid off and blindly followed Betty Jo towards a room off the foyer. Finally, my glasses cleared, and I could see an office door propped open with a huge iron bulldog, but no one appeared to greet us.

Tiny, with shades drawn across the windows, the room’s only light came from a small desk lamp. Well, that and a lava lamp on top of a filing cabinet containing a red glob that floated upward as it changed shapes. Some poor soul probably bought that thing at a garage sale. It gave me the creeps. The walls were absolutely bare. Not one picture. Not even a calendar from Henry’s Hardware.

Betty Jo leaned towards my good ear. “Did you notice those beautiful gladiolas when we came in? Don’t look real, do they? Didn’t you used to raise glads?”

I retreated a few steps into the entry hall and gazed at a vase of long pink and yellow flowers on a round mahogany table. I had never planted a glad bulb in my life. Reminded me of funeral flowers. Betty Jo joined me in the foyer.

“Snapdragons,” I said, “next to the peonies. Snapdragons, not glads.” A gilded mirror that hung from floor to ceiling reflected a sunlit crystal chandelier. I thought of this place in its prime, a woman named Dakota, and my daddy, Paul Tyson Feinster.

“You know, when I was a child, I always wondered what this place looked like on the inside. Pearl and I used to hide in the bushes and watch the men come and go. Even saw my daddy one time. Your granddaddy.”

Betty Jo frowned and pulled on her ear—her signal I was talking too loud. I turned my hearing aid back on.

“You feeling all right?” I said. “You look pale. How about a peppermint?” I rummaged in my purse, knowing I had dropped a handful in there after our dinner last night at Captain Tom’s.

Betty Jo declined my offer and glanced at her watch. “Miss Johnson said, ‘Ten sharp’ on the phone. It’s already quarter after.”

Something was wrong with my daughter. It wasn’t like her to leave home without makeup and lipstick. Maybe she was having second thoughts about dumping me off like a stray that’s worn out its welcome.

“Why don’t you run get your purse from the car and freshen up? You look awful.”

Onto the front porch she went in a blur of blue print, her behind jiggling and her flip-flops slapping against the wood floor. The front door slammed and “Dixie” started up again, but thank the good Lord the piano remained quiet. I adjusted my hearing aid and decided to look around. An open staircase with spindles rose opposite the tomb that passed as the administrator’s office. I peered up the steps but could see only as far as the landing.