Better Off Dead (6 page)

"You speak my language?" Hugo retorted.
"Then maybe you understand this: chupar mi chulupa." He grabbed his
crotch.

"Stop it," I warned as we approached the
front porch. "Save it for later. This lady has enough troubles as
it is."

Helen was hovering inside the front door,
frantic.

"Are you all right?" she asked Hugo,
brushing off his shoulders and checking his arms. For bullet holes,
I guess. "I was scared to death." She started to say something else
then stopped, ashamed, I figured, at her inability to come to his
rescue.

Hugo had seemed to grow progressively taller
as we neared the house. Now that we were inside, his whole body
appeared to swell. He went from being a timid kid crouched against
the shed to a full-grown man, confident and protective of his
woman. Having a dirty mind and all, I started to wonder how far his
relationship with Helen went. Was he plowing more than the north
forty around here?

"Why didn't you tell me who this dude was?"
Bobby complained to Helen. He had made himself right at home. He
plopped down on the couch and helped himself to a bag of potato
chips that he'd thrown on the coffee table earlier.

"I tried to tell you," Helen protested. "But
you ran outside too fast."

As improbable as it sounded, she was likely
telling the truth. Despite his girth, Bobby could move like
Nijinsky when he had to.

We stood in an accusatory line, glaring at
each other.

"Why don't we start over?" I suggested.
"Everyone sit down."

They obeyed, surprisingly enough, each
claiming a chair in the cheerful living room. We made a rough
circle. I was about to stand up and confess to being a sex and drug
addict when Helen spoke up.

"I'm not sure this is a good idea," she
said. "Maybe if I just ignore the—"

"Trust me," I interrupted. I was not letting
her back out now. "It's going to take us a while to get a good
system set up. Until we do, things like this may happen. I didn't
know Hugo was... armed."

"Armed?" Helen looked alarmed. Hugo looked
away.

"We're all armed," I explained grimly.
"Because you never know what might happen next."

As if to prove my point, a terrible crashing
echoed in the outer hall. It sounded as if a dozen cardboard boxes
full of silverware had just tumbled down the stairs. Everyone but
Helen jumped. She just glanced toward the hallway.

"What the hell?" I said.

"Mother?" Helen asked loudly.

Bobby started to get up, but Helen gestured
for him to sit back down. "Mother," she shouted calmly, "if you
don't stop moving those boxes of stupid props around, I'm going to
tell Hugo to throw them into the pond." Her tone was edged with a
steel I had not heard in her voice before.

"Go ahead," someone croaked from the
hallway. "Go ahead and destroy five decades of an illustrious
acting career. Go ahead and destroy what little remains of the
greatest actress ever to eschew Hollywood."

Oh, god, I thought, suddenly remembering the
mother whose unseen presence had so oddly colored my earlier visit.
Who the hell ever actually used the word "eschew"? Without people
replying, "Bless you," that is.

Hugo, who had clearly met the mother many
times before, tried to disappear into the overstuffed chair. Bobby,
who'd had no inkling of her existence until that moment, was trying
to catch my eye. I was avoiding his. So I had left out a few
details about this gig. Sue me. There was no way he would have
accepted the assignment if he'd known about the mother living
there.

"A mother?" Bobby asked into the silence.
"Whose mother?"

"Is there a man in the house?" a throaty
voice called out. "Do we have gentlemen callers? I would have
thrown on something more suitable had I known."

As the husky, drama-filled voice grew
closer, a strange tension filled the room. Helen and Hugo exchanged
a glance I could not interpret. The footsteps grew louder,
accompanied by a shuffling sound.

Just when I could not stand the suspense any
longer and was about to make a bad joke, Yoda wearing a Carol
Channing wig tottered into view.

My god. I had never in my entire life seen
an old lady who looked like Helen Pugh's mother. It was all I could
do to keep from running out the front door.

She had a wide, taut face that was tanned a
deep brown and seemed mashed down on either side, giving her the
appearance of a leathery frog. Her skin had been surgically
stretched across her cheekbones, pulling her mouth out at the edges
and bestowing her eyes with a vaguely Asian tilt. Her lips were
wide and glistened with ruby red lipstick as she cast a beaming,
professional smile around the room, her chin tilting upward as if
the flashbulbs might start popping at any second. Her nose had been
bobbed and reshaped so often, there was little more than two
nostrils linked by a flesh bump left. Worse, this scapel-sculpted
parody of a face was topped with an improbably blond wig that
featured thick bangs and shoulder-length hair that curled under at
the ends.

Her outfit matched the disjointed
bizarreness of her face. She wore a loose gray cardigan over a
multicolored caftan that flowed in neon folds to the floor, nearly
obscuring bare feet. Her toenails had been painted to match her
lips—as had the fake nails protruding from each finger like talons
on a hawk. She was gripping a three-sided walker on wheels as she
tottered forward and barged into the living room with an expectant
"Well? Who the hell are these people?"

Bobby D. was so astonished that his mouth
dropped open and a potato chip plopped out on the carpet.

Helen Pugh looked bored. "You know damn well
who these people are," she said, sounding as if she simply did not
have the energy to play her mother's games.

I closed my eyes and wondered what had made
me accept this assignment without meeting the old lady first.

"This is my mother," Helen Pugh said grimly,
a statement made entirely redundant by the realization of everyone
in the room that no one would live with such a creature unless
there was a damn good reason. Like you had to.

The old dame fixed a piercing glare on
Bobby. "Stand up, you brute," she ordered him. "Have you no
manners?"

I thought she might spit on him. So did
Bobby, apparently. He stood hastily, looking like a little boy
who's been caught shoplifting Playboy magazines.

"Much better," the old woman purred, her
voice a trained instrument that could clearly run the gamut of
overacting from outrage to delight—in three seconds flat. "I am
Miranda Reynolds de Plessé." Before anyone could say anything, she
held up a hand to protest. "Yes, yes—the very one. I am still alive
and kicking, though producers and directors fail to grasp that
concept. Any woman over thirty is over the hill so far as they are
concerned. I am afraid my romantic lead days are over."

Over thirty? Who was she kidding? She looked
closer to three hundred. Over the hill did not begin to describe
this woman. She was over the moon and probably out of her head to
boot. They'd have to start digging to unearth a suitable actor to
play opposite her.

"Oh, Mother, put a cork in it." Helen sighed
and put her feet up on the coffee table. I suddenly liked her very
much. "Your name is Martha Crumpler. So cut out that phony French
name. That guy was your husband for what, ten minutes? Five decades
ago? And the 'Reynolds' part doesn't impress anyone, either. Half
the people in this state tack 'Reynolds' onto their name and it
doesn't mean a damn thing. You could call yourself 'Miranda
Reynolds Haynes Gray Roberts de Plessé, Queen of the World and
Ruler on High,' and it wouldn't make the slightest bit of
difference. You're still Martha Crumpler from Boylan Heights. And
your father was still a barber."

"You watch your mouth. My mother was a
Lanier," the old lady retorted. In another abrupt change of mood,
she rolled her walker into the center of the room and smiled at
Bobby in what I am sure she thought was a flirtatious manner.
Unfortunately, the effect was more like a gorilla in the zoo
peeling its lips back to grimace at the watching audience just
before it flings something nasty at the glass. I started to laugh.
I couldn't help it. Bobby looked so alarmed, it was comical. I
clamped my hands over my mouth, but it didn't help much, just made
it sound like I was having an asthma attack.

The old lady's reaction was remarkable. She
suddenly clutched her right side, grunted and slumped over her
walker. I jumped to my feet as she began to wheeze and moan: "Help
me, help me." She slid to the ground, grasping the edges of the
walker for support as she slowly crumpled to the floor. She lay at
our feet, moaning even louder, thrashing from side to side.

No one moved.

"She's having a heart attack," I yelled.
Bobby and I exchanged a glance that clearly told the other: "You're
the one doing the mouth-to-mouth."

Oddly enough, Helen Pugh still did not move.
She acted as if she did not notice what was happening to her
mother.

"Someone do something," I demanded as her
groans grew louder.

Hugo only hid his face behind his hands. His
shoulders started to shake. I was in a loony bin.

"Someone do something," I repeated.

"Get up off that floor!" Helen Pugh
snapped.

The old lady stopped moaning and began to
laugh in great whooping gulps. I backed away, appalled.

"Fooled you, didn't I?" she said, still
laughing as she scrambled to her feet with the agility of a younger
woman. "I'm going to be famous again, I'm telling you. I'm going to
get the right part one day soon and become the next 'Help me, I've
fallen and I can't get up,' lady."

"Oh, do shut up and sit down," Helen Pugh
ordered. "Mother is a re-enactor now," she snapped at me. "She
appears in all those cheesy shows that restage unsolved crimes and
stupid mysteries."

"I bring dignity to those roles," her mother
interrupted. "They are lucky to have someone of my caliber and they
know it."

Helen Pugh rolled her eyes. "She's been
mugged, she's been murdered, she's been afflicted with every
disease known to man. But what she really suffers from is terminal
overacting."

I was still staring at the old lady, my
mouth open.

"Close your mouth, dear," the old bat said.
"You look indescribably stupid with it hanging open like that."

I closed it, determined not to retaliate.
Helen Pugh could not be held responsible for her mother, nor should
she have to pay a price any greater than the one she had no doubt
already paid.

Miranda abandoned her walker and marched
over to confront Bobby again. "Stand up again, young man. There's a
lady in the room who wants to get a good look at you."

Oh yeah, I thought. A lady in the room?
Where?

Bobby lumbered sheepishly to his feet once
more. The old lady inspected him from his fat head to toe, as if
she were evaluating a slave on the block.

"I like a husky man," she finally declared.
I laughed. Calling Bobby "husky" was a little like claiming the
Grand Canyon was a mighty big rock quarry. She glared at me, then
sat down on the sofa, arranging her robes. She patted the cushions
beside her. "Sit, sit. Let's get acquainted. Tell me all about
yourself. Are you married? Helen, dear, we need refreshments. I'll
take a Sea Breeze."

Helen, dear, ignored the command.

Bobby sat beside the old lady, his poundage
cowed by her imperious manner. His sudden weight on the sofa caused
her to roll toward him. She had planned it all along, I was sure.
She tumbled against him, then pushed off his chest with playful
hands, giggling in a ghastly parody of a Southern belle several
centuries younger than she was.

Helen Pugh's eyes had a glazed look, as if
she were many, many miles away. Perhaps this was how she tolerated
being confined to her home so well. She had years of experience
tuning out the present and finding another dimension as haven. With
a mother like that, who wouldn't?

Bobby's face had slowly turned from pale tan
to pink to red to purple, like a pot being brought to boil. He
looked like he was having trouble breathing, and no wonder. The old
lady's hand was crawling like a disembodied claw up his thigh as
she attempted to engage him in inane conversation about the dangers
of being a big, strong man who carried a gun and walked into
perilous situations.

I bit my lip. Any danger Bobby might
accidentally stumble into was nothing compared to this dame.

Just when I thought it could not get any
worse, the doorbell rang.

Bobby's reaction was immediate. He looked at
his watch, flushed even deeper, jumped to his feet and dashed to
the door—blatantly cutting off anyone else's attempts to answer
it.

I heard a flurry of muttering punctuated by
a familiar burst of cooing. Of course—Fanny, Bobby's girlfriend,
had arrived. He had called her after all.

Fanny could save the day if anyone could. As
the epitome of a Southern-bred woman, she could converse with a
fence post and be civil to a pedophile, if the situation called for
it. She'd be the perfect one to handle Helen's mother.

I joined Bobby at the door, before he could
warn her away. He tried to block me by shifting a massive hip in my
way, but I wiggled around it and stuck my head out the door.

"Casey," Fanny chirped. "Why, you're here,
too. This must be a most exciting assignment."

"You have no idea," I told her. I grabbed
one of her plump arms and dragged her inside. "Do come in. We were
just about to have a drink."

"Oh," Fanny squealed in delight. "I wouldn't
mind a stiff one myself."

Well, who among us wouldn't? I thought.
"After you." I waved her inside.

"A little drinkie-poo never hurt anyone,"
she added as she trundled past. There you have it: breeding shows.
Fanny was hardly in the door and already she grasped the essential
component of surviving the unfolding scene: get drunk soon.