Miss Julia Stirs Up Trouble: A Novel (2 page)

Lillian and I began wrapping foil around bowls and bagging other ingredients for the supper she planned to cook in the Pickens kitchen.

“Oh,” I said, putting a plastic tie on the last bag, “I better let Lloyd know where we’ll be. I don’t want him coming home to an empty house.”

Pleased with my new knowledge of up-to-date messaging systems, I began to text to his cell phone. He had shown me how to do it, but I was not as dexterous as he and his friends were, their little thumbs flying over the keyboards. Still, with time and thought, I could send a message which I knew he wouldn’t get until the final bell rang. Checking his messages would be the first thing he did when students were allowed to access their cell phones, so I typed in:

GO TO UR MOTHERS AFTER SCHOOL. XOXO.

“There,” I said as I pressed
OK
to send it. “Quick, easy, and understandable. I hope. Although every time I type a message, I worry about the next generation’s spelling skills. Or lack of.”

As Lillian and I took bags and pots to my car, she said, “I forget to tell you, but somebody called Miss Hazel Marie right before she called.”

“Who was it?”

“He didn’t say. Jus’ ast for her an’ when I say she not here, he kinda grunt an’ hang up.”

“Somebody selling something, probably, or wanting her to donate to some cause or another. He’ll call back if it was important.”

When we arrived at the Pickens house and walked up onto the front porch laden with our half-cooked supper, we could hear James moaning. Well, not moaning, exactly—it was more like the steady, rumbling buzz of a thousand bees issuing from his throat. Hazel Marie had left the door open for us, so we walked into the hall where we heard the humming run up and down the scale. It never reached to a scream, just a rippling drone that let everyone know how miserable the hummer was.

“I hope he stop that pretty soon,” Lillian mumbled as we made our way to the kitchen.

“I expect he will,” I said, although the sound was putting my nerves on edge. “He’s still getting over the fright of falling and breaking a bone. You know how it is—he’s probably still in shock from it all. You want this pot on the stove?”

“Yes’m, jus’ put it on a back eye and turn it on low. You think we oughta go in an’ see him?”

“Yes, let’s do and get it over with. He’ll appreciate our concern, but, I declare, I never know what to say to someone who’s bedridden.”

So we walked back to the bedroom, the humming sound getting louder as we approached. Sam caught my eye as I walked in and smiled as he lifted James’s foot and pushed another pillow underneath, then carefully lowered the Ace-bandaged limb. Hazel Marie, looking more disheveled than usual, stood by the bed wringing her hands, while Mr. Pickens stacked more pillows for James to rest his arm on.

“You have to keep your foot and your hand elevated, James,” Mr. Pickens said, arranging the cast-clad arm and hand on the pillows. Only the ends of James’s fingers extended beyond the cast. “Look,” Mr. Pickens went on, “Lillian and Miss Julia have come to see about you. Come on in, ladies—visiting hours just started.”

Hazel Marie’s face lit up as we moved toward the bed. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you both. Can you believe this? Poor James, he feels so bad.”

And to prove it, James started humming again. His eyes were half closed and a look of strain wrinkled his face. He was pitiful in his misery.

“I’m so sorry this happened,” I said to him. Then, in an attempt to encourage him, I went on. “But look at it this way: It could’ve been so much worse. You could’ve broken your ankle instead of just spraining it. I mean, we have to look on the bright side, don’t we?”

“Can’t be no worse, Miss Julia,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m about stove up for good.” He turned his head away and began to hum again.

Then suddenly his eyes popped open and his head came up off the pillow. “My forms! My forms!” he cried, then fell back, giving up the effort.

“What’s he talking about?” I asked.

“No telling,” Mr. Pickens said with an indulgent smile. “He’s so full of pain medication, I doubt he knows.”

“Maybe he needs more of it,” I said, moved by his pathetic situation.

“He’s loaded,” Mr. Pickens assured me. “But he can have more later if he needs it.”

James looked up at him, frowning, his good left arm waving limply in the air. “I gonna need it real soon,” he whispered.

Sam patted James’s foot and said, “You ought to try to rest now. Take a little nap if you can. We’ll all be here if you need anything.”

James’s eyelids fluttered as he spoke in a voice so weak that Sam had to lean over to hear him. “A TV might he’p take my mind off the hurtin’.”

Sam smiled and smoothed the sheet. “Well, we’ll see, James, but you won’t get good reception. There’s no cable connection in this room.”

James moaned, whether in pain or disappointment, I couldn’t tell.

Lillian turned on her heel and headed out of the room. “I got to get supper on.”

Lloyd arrived before long, coming straight to the kitchen wanting to know the reason we’d all gathered for a meal on a weeknight. “Is it somebody’s birthday? If it is, I sure forgot it.”

“No, honey,” Lillian said. “We over here ’cause that sorry James tripped over his big feet and fell down the stairs.”

“Fell down the stairs!”
Lloyd was aghast. “Is he all right?”

“He pro’bly better’n he actin’ like,” Lillian pronounced. She had little use for James.

“Oh, Lillian,” I said, thinking to temper her words, although I was inclined to agree with her. “He’ll calm down after a while. He’s still getting over the fright of falling.”

“Mark my words,” she said as she stirred the gravy, “I been knowin’ James for years an’ he gonna milk that cask for all it’s worth. He gonna have everybody high-steppin’ to his tune.”

“Well, one good thing—he’s Mr. Pickens’s problem, not ours.” I caught her eye and we smiled at each other.

“Can I go in and see him?” Lloyd asked.

“Yes,” I said, “go on in and tell him that we’ll have supper ready soon.”

And by the time supper was ready, we were all frazzled. The babies had to be fed, and with two high chairs and Hazel Marie in the kitchen, Lillian and I hardly had room to move. Mr. Pickens came in twice to refill James’s water glass, and just as we were ready to sit down at the table, James needed help to go to the bathroom. That took the combined efforts of Sam and Mr. Pickens, with Mr. Pickens declaring that he thought a sprained ankle would heal quicker if it had a little excercise. Then James discovered that he wasn’t at all adept at feeding himself with his left hand, so Sam sat beside the bed and hand-fed him while his own supper grew cold.

“We need to think about this,” I said as we sat around the table after eating. “James is going to need more help than we can give him, at least for the next few days.”

“Oh, we don’t mind,” Hazel Marie said. “He’s such a good old thing, we can look after him. Can’t we, J.D.?”

Mr. Pickens frowned, but before he could say anything, Sam chimed in. “It’ll be too much for you, Hazel Marie. You have enough to do already, and with Pickens gone, you won’t be able to handle it all.”

Hazel Marie’s eyes widened as she looked across the table at her husband. “Gone? You’re going somewhere?”

“To Birmingham,” he told her. “You remember, I’ve got that insurance case down there.”

“I thought that was next week.” Hazel Marie’s face had a stricken look. “Oh, my goodness, J.D., you can’t go off now.”

“Have to, honey. But don’t worry, we’ll figure out something. I’m not going to leave it all on you.”

Hazel Marie obviously was not comforted by that promise. She never liked having her husband away in the best of times, and this was far from the best. He, however, was on retainer with a big insurance firm as an investigator of possible fraud cases and had to go when they called.

“What about this,” Sam said, and I knew before he said it what it would be. “I’ll stay with him until he can put his weight on that ankle, which shouldn’t be but a day or so. Didn’t you say the sprain is not that bad?”

Mr. Pickens nodded. “That’s what they told me.”

“Okay, so when he can walk, he won’t need anybody. He can go back to his apartment and be pretty much on his own. Except for meals. He won’t be doing much in the kitchen until that cast comes off.”

“Wait, Sam,” I said. “I’m not sure your staying over is a good idea. Let’s call Etta Mae Wiggins. She’ll know how to care for him.” And, I thought, with her expertise as a home-health-care visiting semi-nurse, know how to keep him straight, too.

“Oh, I wish we could ask her,” Hazel Marie said, looking distressed. “She’d be perfect, but we talked on the phone yesterday and she told me her boss is on a rampage about so many of her nurses wanting extra time off. Etta Mae thinks it was really aimed at her for staying so long with me when the babies were born. So,” Hazel Marie went on, looking apologetic for having required so much help, “I don’t think she can do it. And keep her job, too, I mean.”

“Well,” I said, resigned to turning elsewhere, “we can’t expect her to lose her job for us. So, Sam, maybe it’ll have to be you at least for a while.”

Sam reached over and put his hand on mine. “It’ll just be a couple of nights, and after that, James shouldn’t need any help getting around. It’ll be all right, honey. I’ll sleep on a cot in his room.”

“No need for that,” Mr. Pickens said. “I’ll be here tonight and tomorrow night.”

Sam laughed in his good-natured way. “You don’t know James. Somebody’s going to be up with him every thirty minutes or so. Believe me, it’ll be easier for me to stay with him than for you to be up and down the stairs all night. Besides, James would do it for me.”

“I’ll stay with you, Mr. Sam,” Lloyd said. “I can sleep on the sofa in the den and you can call me when James needs to go to the bathroom.”

After a few more minutes of arguing back and forth, Mr. Pickens subsided, knowing that he and Hazel Marie would be up with the babies at least once during the night and for good by 5
A.M.,
when the babies thought the day started.

“I’ll check on you when I have to be up anyway,” Mr. Pickens said.

So it was decided, at least for the next day or so, but I knew the arrangement had to be temporary. Sam would be worn to a nub if he had to do twenty-four-hour nursing duty for long.

“Law me,” Lillian sighed as she unloaded an armful of pans on the kitchen counter at my house. I put the leftovers in the refrigerator, then looked at her. We’d both been silent on the way over from Hazel Marie’s, thinking, I suppose, about the problems that one little slip on the stairs now posed for us all. I shuddered to think what we’d have faced if James had toppled headfirst instead of tripping halfway down, to say nothing of how much more banged up he would’ve been.

“Miss Julia,” Lillian said, turning, as she put the last pan in a cabinet, “this not gonna work. Miss Hazel Marie can’t tend to them babies an’ James, too. He gonna run her ragged and she too sweet to tell him no. An’ Mr. Sam, he got no bus’ness liftin’ an’ pullin’ on him, gettin’ him in an’ out of bed. It jus’ too much.”

“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “And it’s too much for you to be going back and forth, cooking for two families.”

“No’m, I don’t mind. It kinda like havin’ a ox in a ditch, just so long it don’t
stay
in the ditch.”

“No, Lillian, we’ve got to come up with a better solution. Neither of us is getting any younger and we don’t need a double helping of work. To tell the truth, I’d been counting on having Etta Mae, but with her out of the question, I’m at a loss. Can you think of
any
body who’d come in and cook a couple of meals a day and help a little with James?”

“I been rackin’ my brain, but I can’t think of a soul I’d want in a kitchen. Everybody any good already got jobs. But here something to think about. What if I cook enough for all us, maybe two or three days a week, an’ Miss Hazel Marie fix samiches or hot dogs or open a can of soup or something like that the other days? Lloyd can eat with us like he most always do anyway, an’ the babies got their own food, so it won’t be like anybody goin’ hungry.” She stopped and thought for a minute. “’Sides,” she went on, “if James get hungry enough, he’ll get well faster.”

We looked at each other and started laughing. “Oh, Lillian,” I said, “that’s low. But you may just be right.”

After Lillian left, more than an hour later than she usually did, I locked the doors and went up to our newly refurbished bedroom. I wasn’t quite ready to retire for the night, but with an empty house and no one to talk to, there wasn’t much else to do. So I prepared for bed, crawled in, and propped myself up to study the situation in which we found ourselves.

It was a revelation to ponder the importance of each member of our family, such as it was. Oh, of course if it had been Sam who was laid up in bed, broken and sprained, or, heaven forbid, Hazel Marie—what with those babies—there would’ve been untold consequences, disturbing and distressing the balance of us. But James, whom I would ordinarily consider the one of least value to our overall well-being, had completely upset our little apple cart.

A sudden thought jolted me upright. It wasn’t James who was of least value to the serenity of our days. It was me. If I were bedridden, the only disruption to our daily activities would be the bringing of trays upstairs three times a day. Everything else would stay the same. That was an eye-opener to say the least, and put me firmly in my place. James immediately rose in my estimation.

But now, with him laid up in bed, what in the world were we to do? My deepest concern was the preparation of meals for the Pickens family. I assumed that in a few days James would be able to be up and about, maybe needing a little help with buttons and the like, but with only the stubs of his fingers free of the cast, he certainly would not be able to cook. And even if Hazel Marie were the best cook in the world, she couldn’t fix three meals a day, take care of two babies, and wait on James, too. And, believe me, she wasn’t the best cook in the world. The last time she decided to cook a meal, she’d burned the bottom out of a saucepan and started a fire on the stove. The truth of the matter was, she wasn’t safe in a kitchen.

Lillian, bless her heart, would willingly cook for two families for weeks on end if I asked her to, but I couldn’t do that. Like me, she was getting slower and needed to sit down more often to rest her feet. Her corns had gotten so bad that she’d sliced up her shoes until they looked like homemade flip-flops. So it was too much to ask her to double her work, even with double the pay.

I mulled over the possibilities, even to the point of getting out the phone book from the bedside table to look up catering services. There weren’t any.

I thought of arranging food deliveries from various restaurants in town, but who could eat pizza or hamburgers every other day? Well, Lloyd probably could, but not while I was around.

Gradually, though, another idea began to form in my mind, so I thought about it and looked at it from one angle to another, and decided that it just might work. It would entail talking Hazel Marie into using a babysitter for a couple of hours maybe once or twice a week, but she wouldn’t actually be leaving the babies. She’d still be right there with them, just not having to drop everything to tend to them.

It could work, I thought, as I turned off the lamp and slid down in bed, and if it did, it would kill two birds with one stone—teach her some cooking skills and put some decent food on the table at the same time.

By the time I got downstairs the next morning, Lillian was already there and so was Sam. I stopped in my tracks when I saw how tired he looked. He was sitting at the table, nursing a cup of coffee, his face drawn and pale from his long night of nursing.

“Oh, Sam,” I said, going to him, “did you get any sleep at all?”

“Very little,” he said, smiling, “but I knew I wouldn’t, so that’s no surprise. Pickens relieved me a little while ago, told me to come home and go to bed, which is just what I’m about to do.”

“Not ’fore you get some breakfast,” Lillian said, setting a plate of eggs and bacon at his place. “You didn’t hardly get to eat a thing last night, an’ you can’t go to bed on a empty stomack. That James kept you up all night, didn’t he?”

“Just about,” Sam admitted, picking up his fork and digging in. “I think that pain medication perked him up instead of putting him to sleep. He dozed off and on, but mostly he wanted to talk.” Sam laughed. “And talk and talk. I heard all about his mama, his sisters, his first job, and on and on. And every time he nodded off, he’d start mumbling about his
forms,
then couldn’t remember a thing about them when he was awake. I expect he’ll sleep all day, just like I will. Oh, and by the way,” Sam said, looking up from his plate, “remind me to take James a couple of pairs of my pajamas. I don’t know what he usually sleeps in, but he needs more of whatever it is.”

“They’s no tellin’,” Lillian muttered.

“What about Lloyd, Sam?” I asked. “Why didn’t he come with you? He could’ve had breakfast here before school.”

“Pickens is cooking, which is why I came home.” In spite of his fatigue, Sam’s eyes sparkled with his usual good humor, or maybe at the thought of Mr. Pickens in an apron. “Might be a good idea to get some cold cereal for them, Julia, after Pickens leaves. I guess I never realized how hectic it is in a house full of wet and hungry babies. There’s no way Hazel Marie can fix a hot breakfast when they need to be changed and fed.”

As Lillian set a plate before me, I got up to get a pad and pencil. “You better eat,” she said.

“I will, but I want to start a grocery list. What kind of cereal do you think they’d like? Maybe get a couple of different ones. And milk, they’ll need that. And maybe a coffee cake and bread. There’s no reason in the world why James can’t put a slice of bread in the toaster with his left hand.” Sitting down at the table, I turned to Sam. “He’ll be able to get out of bed today, won’t he?”

“Probably,” Sam said, nodding, “but I wouldn’t count on him moving around much. Maybe get him up to sit in a chair and watch television. That ankle is about twice its normal size, so he won’t be walking on it. Well,” he went on as he laid his napkin beside his plate, “I’m going to have a shower and hit the hay. But that was just what I needed, Lillian. Thank you.”

I walked with him to the foot of the stairs, where he put his arms around me and kissed me. “It’s going to work out all right, honey,” he said. “Don’t worry so much.”

“I can’t help but worry,” I said, running my hand across his shoulder. “I know James means a lot to you, but I don’t want you to wear yourself out taking care of him. Why don’t I stay with him tonight?”

Sam laughed and tightened his hold around me. “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard, sweetheart. You two would kill each other. But,” he said, holding my face with his hands, “if James begins to malinger, I’ll tell him you’re coming. If that doesn’t get him on his feet, I don’t know what will.”

We laughed together, then I watched as he trudged upstairs to bed. Sighing, I turned back to the kitchen, wondering if the idea I’d had during the night would help matters or make them worse.

“Lillian,” I said, taking my cup to the counter for a refill, “what’re we going to do? Sam can’t keep this up for long. He’ll make himself sick—then where would we be?”

“It worry me to death, Miss Julia. I called some friends las’ night when I got home, see if they knowed anybody could he’p us out. But nobody know a soul. ’Specially to he’p out James. They all like Miss Hazel Marie, but they say nobody put up with James.”

“My goodness,” I said, sinking down at the table, “that’s a terrible commentary. Of course,
I
don’t get along with him, but I didn’t know others felt the same way.”

“Oh, they don’t, really. I mean, he a lot of fun ’round church an’ get-togethers, an’ folks like him pretty good. It jus’ they know nothin’ ever good enough for him. Nobody be able to please him with they cookin’ or cleanin’ or anything.”

“Well, that’s ironic,” I said, laughing, “because he can’t please me with
his
cooking and cleaning and so forth. Still, we have to come up with something to help Hazel Marie—she’s the one I’m concerned about. I expect James to be able to take care of himself in a day or so. It just has to be before Sam tires himself out.”

“Mr. Sam don’t need to be waitin’ on James hand an’ foot like he doin’,” Lillian said as she joined me at the table.

“I know it, but maybe one more night and James will be able to go back to his apartment and be on his own. It could be weeks, though, before he’s able to work in the kitchen, so that’s what hangs heavy over my head. By the way,” I went on, “Sam said that James is still mumbling about his
forms,
as if he’s really worried about them. Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“Huh,” Lillian said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they was some of them men’s corset forms. You know, the kind what holds men’s stomacks in. James likes to look good for the ladies.”

We sat without speaking for a few minutes, studying the situation, while an image of James pulling a corset on around his middle floated in and out of my mind.

Then Lillian, who was apparently not having the same vision, offered again to cook enough for two families. “We can have ’em over here, or we can take meals over there, whichever be easiest.”

“No, Lillian, no. If it were only for a few days, even a week, I’d take you up on it. But for weeks on end, it’s too much. We might have them over, say, once a week and maybe take supper to them another night, but to put all their meals on you with no end in sight is too much.” I got up and brought the coffeepot to the table. While I refilled her cup, I went on, “Besides, I have an idea that’s been swirling around in the back of my mind for a while now, and this may be the time to put it to work. Tell me what you think of this.” And I started telling her.