Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise (2 page)

"Herkmeier? Who is Herkmeier? What happened to Pastor Virgil?"

"He's dead."

"I'll be on the next plane, Charlotte. Don't bother coming to the airport; I know you can't drive—"

"I can too drive. I just—"

"Never mind that. I'll taxi out to your house."

I hung up the phone, oddly comforted that the one and only Lillian DeSalle was coming to visit.

L
ater that same day, my neighbor Midge from down the street came over with a chicken pot pie. "I thought it might help take the chill off," she said. It was in a pretty white casserole dish decorated with delicate rosebuds and smelled like celery and comfort. Midge was only a couple of years older than me but already a grandmother to three boys. She liked to wear polka dots and stripes and her blondish hair short like Doris Day's.

"Please stay," I said. "I think I still have Jell-O in the fridge for dessert."

"With fruit?"

I twisted my mouth. "Sorry, Midge, I didn't have the gumption to add fruit this time. It's just red."

"I understand. Do you have Reddi-wip?"

I shook my head no.

Midge and I ate chicken pot pie and talked about Herman and insurance policies until nearly nine o'clock. I walked her to the foyer, turned on the porch light, pulled open the door, and in tumbled my mother.

"Charlotte," she said after she regained her balance. "I had my hand on the knocker. Didn't you hear me at the door?"

"Mother, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were there. I was just seeing Midge home."

Midge peeked out from behind me and wiggled her fingers."Hi."

"Hello," Mother said.

I raised my eyebrows at Midge. "I'll see you later. Thanks for the pot pie."

"Thanks for the Jell-O."

My mother stood there looking at me like I had deliberately tried to make her stumble.

"I wasn't expecting you until the morning," I said.

"Took an earlier flight." She stepped into the living room while I retrieved her gray Samsonite from the front porch.

My mother and I sat in the kitchen for an hour or so, nervously avoiding conversation while engaging in small talk.

"Do you need anything, Charlotte? Did that bum leave you insurance?"

There, she said it. Lillian DeSalle had come to the point.

"Don't call him a bum. And yes, I think I'll have plenty of money to live on. Maybe I'll get a job."

"You? What can you do? I told you you'd regret not finishing secretarial school. I told you a career should come first but no, no, you were in love." She made a dismissive, wavy motion with her hand.

"Mother."

She looked into my eyes and then reached out with her thumb and wiped a tear from my cheek. "I just wanted more for you."

My mother had been a buyer for John Wanamaker Department Store in Center City, Philadelphia. She had loved her work and thought every woman should have a career. She had worked hard and collected nearly a dozen awards for a job well done.

"Husbands are a dime a dozen, but a good career for a woman is hard to find," she had said.

"I know you always wanted my best, Mother. But did I really do that terrible?"

"Terribly," she said.

And that was pretty much how things went until the day of the funeral, which turned out mostly nice. Pastor Herkmeier did a fine job. I smiled and greeted the mourners as best I could, while my mother stood by with her long fingers intertwined in front and a practiced funeral face.

It was good to have Midge with me. She wore a navy dress with a white collar, white shoes with dark blue buckles, and a little sailor hat tipped to the left on her head. I never asked why she had felt the need to wear a sailor hat and only told her how glad I was that she came. I dressed in black except for secret pink undergarments with white lace edging that helped me feel a little less dismal. My mother made certain that I carried a small flask of cooking sherry tucked inside my purse in case I felt faint. As I remember, I might have taken three or four sips.

At one point, Gideon's viewing room was standing room only, jammed to the jalousies with Fuller Brush salesmen from all over the region. I had never seen so many gray suits, polished black shoes, and fedoras at one time.

"My goodness," Mother said after she had shaken the hand of the thirteenth salesman, "but these men all look like they popped right off some assembly line. When I was buying for Wanamaker, I met many salespeople and—"

I had to touch her shoulder. "Not here."

She took a breath and sidled near Herman's coffin.

"I'm sorry about Herman, Mrs. Figg," said a tall, skinny man who introduced himself as the regional sales manager."He was one of our best." Then he slid an orange Fuller Brush letter opener into Herman's breast pocket. He smiled at me, plopped his gray hat on his head, and hurried out into the gray day.

By the time the funeral was over, Herman had been buried with twenty-nine letter openers in his pocket, his samples bag tucked at his left hand, and his gray fedora grasped neatly in his right hand. And there he was, Herman Quincy Figg, on his way to that final sales call in heaven. At least I hoped it was heaven.

Mother left that evening.

"My taxi is here," she said, looking out the window. "Now, you call me if you need anything. Anything at all."

"Thank you for coming, Mother. I'll be fine. I have everything I need."

She stood near the front door while the driver took her bag to the cab. She looked into my face like she was drilling for oil with her eyes. "Whatever happened to that feisty girl who climbed trees and could throw a baseball better than any boy?"

"She got married."

Mother pointed at my heart. "She might still be in there."

"Call me when you get home." I kissed her cheek.

"By the way, I couldn't help but notice your dish towels could use a splash of Clorox, and don't put chicken bones in the disposal, dear. Not good for the blades."

Once the taxi was out of sight, I went into the house, locked the door, and cried.

Three days later I met Lucky.

I opened the front door at around eight in the morning and in bounded the ugliest, hairiest mutt I had ever seen. He had wiry whiskers and eyebrows, and he looked for all the world like Nikita Khrushchev. His white paws reminded me of little girl anklets. With only a gnarled thumb—about the size of a Vienna sausage—for a tail, he went straight for Herman's chair, sniffed first, and took advantage of its cushiony comfort. He sat on his haunches, with his tongue lolled out, and panted like he had won a marathon.

My intruder barked once with a bark that seemed to emanate from deep within his bowels and then barrel through his stomach, up his throat, and out his snout. I stood there in a quasi state of shock with my hand still on the opened door. I thought Herman had come back to me in a dog's body but chalked it up to imagination.

The dog let go a second blustery bark.

"How rude," I said. "You can't just barge into a person's house like this and . . . and sit in her chair and . . . and bluster like her dead husband. Now go on home."

The dog scooted outside, but he camped in the yard for three days. Every so often I heard one of his barks and I felt sorry for him. So after some consideration, I invited him in and gave him three shampoo baths in a galvanized bucket in the backyard in the cold. I wore one of Herman's suit jackets because I didn't want to get my own clothes wet and soiled with dog grime. I dried him off with one of my good Egyptian cotton bath towels, which I subsequently dubbed Lucky's towel. About halfway through the drying I smiled when it occurred to me that if Herman had witnessed this he would have yelled something awful at me for sacrificing one of our good towels to the dog's cause.

I named him Lucky and bought him a black collar with purple rhinestones. It had been the first real financial decision, besides choosing a solid oak casket, I had made since Herman's surprising demise.

"There you go, Lucky." I clasped the collar around his skinny neck. "Guess this makes it official." He licked my face.

I found it easy to talk to Lucky, and I appreciated his affection, but I still felt like I was banging into walls with no direction. Kind of like a pinball but without all the bells and whistles and music and points.

Then one day Lucky came home with the neighbor's mail.

"Bad dog, Lucky," I said. "You mustn't steal mail. It's a federal offense, you know."

Lucky looked dejected at first but then he wagged his preposterously stubby tail and all was forgiven.

I rifled through the small stack bound with a rubber band that held the advertisements inside an RV magazine called
Road Tripper.
My eyebrows lifted. "I didn't know the Parsons had a recreational vehicle," I told Lucky. "I've never seen it, but Evie and Lewis do seem to be gone for long stretches several times a year."

Out of curiosity, I thumbed through the periodical and stopped when I saw a small block of type with bold letters pierced by a canine incisor that read:

For Sale, Nice-looking double-wide.

Contact: Fergus Wrinkel, Paradise Trailer Park.

A small image of a light gray trailer with wide windows and awnings with hanging baskets of pink and purple trailing verbena caught my eye. The sun setting in the distance painted ribbons of orange and lilac across a sky the color of my favorite copper-bottom frying pan. I was filled with a sudden burst of wanderlust.

My heart beat as fast as the mashed potato setting on my Mixmaster. "Paradise." I said the word with a come-hither tone. Not that I had planned it. It just came out that way."Imagine that, Lucky. We could move to"—I took another breath and exhaled the word—"Paradise." I rubbed my arms. Just the thought of living in a place called Paradise gave me goose pimples. But I closed the magazine, banded all the mail together, and dropped it on the dining room table.

"Charlotte Louise Figg," I said right out loud. "What are you saying? You can't up and move to Paradise. What would Herman think?"

I made a cup of tea, sat at the dining table, and stared at the rolled-up magazine. I kept touching it and knocking it around. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore and opened to the page with the beautiful little trailer and nearly swooned over the verbena.

That afternoon I purchased the trailer, sight unseen, from Fergus Wrinkel, manager of The Paradise Trailer Park.

Six weeks later Lucky and I set out for our new home. I sold my house to a nice young couple—Jorge and Olivia Gonzalez. Jorge had just gotten a job as a produce supervisor at the Save- A-Lot supermarket, and Olivia was six months pregnant with their first child.