Miss Julia Delivers the Goods (27 page)

“No, that’s all right. You probably already have plans.”

“Well, yessum, I do. It’s the last week of the tennis clinic, and school starts Monday. So we’re all planning to have lunch at the Grill, then go to the pool.”

“Then you go right ahead,” I said, pleased that he was enjoying the summer with friends. He was so inclined to be a loner, you know. “Just be sure and not go in the water right after you eat. I’d just thought that, if you were free, you might want to accompany me. But I can manage alone. In fact, it might be better to do it alone.”

I turned to leave, but he said, “Miss Julia? Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know what’s going on with Mama and J.D.? They’re sure not acting the way they used to.”

Oh, my,
I thought, looking at the concerned frown on the boy’s face. How in the world had we expected him not to notice the definite chill in the air?

“Well, honey,” I began, my mind running over all the possible answers I could give. Should I flat out lie? Should I tell him the truth, without telling the whole truth? Only one thing was for sure: Hazel Marie had to tell him something and not leave it up to me.

“Well, honey,” I began again, “it seems they may be going through a cooling-off period. But I think that when she’s feeling better, they’ll be able to sit down together and smooth away any differences. Right now, though, she’s still recovering her health.”

“Whew,” he said, a smile lighting up his face, “that’s what I kinda thought. I expect she didn’t want J.D. to catch whatever she had. I mean, we’re probably all immune since we’ve been around her the whole time. But he’s been gone a while, so he might could’ve caught it.”

I nodded. “That’s probably it. Now, you have a good time today, and I’ll see you when you get back.”

After he left, I went in to see how Hazel Marie was feeling. I found her up and dressed. Well, halfway dressed, for she was wearing a pink running suit or workout outfit or whatever those athletic things are called.

“Hazel Marie,” I said, “I believe you’re feeling better.”

“I guess I am, physically, anyway. I talked to Dr. Hargrove on the phone this morning, and he said I should begin to be up a little. Just as long as I don’t do too much. The only problem is I don’t know how much too much is.”

“Well,” I said, laughing, “I’m sure he doesn’t mean for you to go running.”

She smiled, then looking down at what she had on, she began to cloud up. “Look at this,” she said, as she pulled up the top to reveal the elastic waistband on the bottom part. “It’s all I can wear. Everything else is too tight. I can’t believe I’m already showing.”

“Oh, my,” I said. “We’re going to have to do something about that.” Meaning, of course, shopping for maternity clothes.

But she didn’t take it that way.

“I know we are,” she said, a stricken look on her face. “But I don’t know what! Miss Julia, I’ve got to get away from here. Somebody’s going to find out and then what would I do? Please help me, Miss Julia, and I won’t ask you for another thing as long as I live. Help me move away, because I can’t stay in this room forever.”

She was right, and I’d been putting off facing the problem long enough. Something had to be done before the whole town began buzzing with news of Hazel Marie’s sudden suspicious weight gain. The fact of the matter was that people wouldn’t be so much scandalized at the idea of Hazel Marie being pregnant as they would at what she’d been doing to get that way, especially since she’d recently been elected secretary of the Lila Mae Harding Sunday school class. And to my shame, I couldn’t help but think of what it would do to my own standing, for it occurred to me that the only disadvantage in being known for the proper forms of conduct and holding one’s self above the common fray is that people took such pleasure when you proved to be human. I wondered if it would’ve been better if I’d had a less spotless reputation.

I had to mentally shake myself. It would be Hazel Marie and Lloyd and those unborn babies who would suffer, and here I was, worrying about myself. What was I doing fretting over what a bunch of old biddies would say or think? Of course, those old biddies were all my contemporaries, which meant that I knew them well. And let me tell you, when I considered them one by one, I could truthfully say that I didn’t give a rip what they thought. Let them whisper and gossip and pass along rumors all they wanted to. What I had in this house in the form of Sam and Lloyd and Hazel Marie and Lillian more than canceled out any concern about being the number-one topic over a bridge table. I could hold my head up high, regardless of what Hazel Marie decided to do.

“I will help you, Hazel Marie. I’ll do whatever you want. But first, let me talk to Dr. Hargrove. If you don’t mind, that is. I’d like to be reassured that you’d suffer no harm from a move, and I’ll also ask him to recommend some doctors wherever you decide to go. So, if you can put up with it a few days more, we’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

“Thank you,” she said as she reached for another Kleenex. “Thank you so much. I am such a mess, I can’t hardly think of what to do next.”

“One thing, Hazel Marie, you must do, and that’s to talk to Lloyd. The boy has noticed that things aren’t the same with you and Mr. Pickens, and he’s asking me what’s wrong. I can’t keep telling him half-truths and beating around the bush. You have to tell him something.”

Well, that about did her in. “I know it,” she said, collapsing in a chair as if she’d just lost the strength to stand. “I just . . . Give me a few days more and I will.”

“Good,” I said, patting her shoulder. “A few days more and things will be a little clearer.” And, in a few more days, school would start, making it harder for her to move Lloyd. That thought brought to mind the old dilemma: I didn’t want her to take Lloyd with her, yet I didn’t want her to be off by herself.

Sighing with frustration, I told her that I had one more errand to do for Sam and would be back soon. I left then, my mind roiling with all I had to do in that tiny breathing space of a few days more that she’d given me.

 

 

 

I drove to the Morningside Rest Home, parked in the shade of an oak tree, and looked around. From the outside, the long white building with azalea bushes along the foundation looked nice enough. As these things go, that is. But, Lord, I wouldn’t want to end up in one. Not to be selfish about it, but that was another reason to keep Hazel Marie with us. Once, in an embarrassing outpouring of gratitude, she had said that she’d take care of me until the day I died. At the time, I hadn’t fully appreciated her promise, unwilling to accept that I might be nearing the age of decrepitude. Now, though, with the thought of losing her forever looming in my mind, ending up in the Morningside Rest Home or another of its ilk became a real and disturbing possibility.

But, gathering myself to do this last errand for Sam, I walked inside and told the plump, little woman at the desk that I was there to visit Mr. Rafe Feldman.

“Oh, really?” she said with an inappropriate titter. “Well, that’s good, ’cause he doesn’t get many visitors. I think he’s in the sunroom. Let me call somebody to show you where that is.” She swiveled her chair around and yelled toward the hall, “Sally! I need you out here!” Then, turning back to me, she said with another giggle, “That’s our temporary in-house phone service.”

I nodded, not wanting to comment, and waited until a large, more than plump, woman in a white nylon uniform shuffled into the lobby. “What you want?” she asked the receptionist.

“This lady wants to see Mr. Rafe. Show her where the sunroom is.”

The woman—she couldn’t be a nurse with those black running shoes on her feet—smiled and motioned me to follow her. As we walked down a long hall, the sharp odor of Pine-Sol became more pronounced. As bad as it was, though, I knew it covered something even worse.

“You know Mr. Rafe?” Sally asked as her heavy body waddled along beside me.

“No, I can’t say I do,” I said. “I’m just visiting for, well, because it’s a nice thing to do.” I’d started to say I was making a call for my church, then decided it was better not to involve the church in a deliberate deceit. She didn’t need to know my reason, anyway.

“Well,” she said, “he’s having a pretty good day, but I’ll stay close by. In case he starts yellin’ at you. There he is, over on the settee.”

She pointed to a thin, white-headed man who was sitting stiff and upright on a floral sofa in the sun-filled room. His hands rested in his lap while, in spite of a few other patients watching a television game show, his eyes stared straight in front. A smile flitted off and on around his mouth.

I walked over into the line of his sight, leaned over and said, “Mr. Feldman? I’m Mrs. Sam Murdoch. How’re you feeling today?”

It took a second, but finally his eyes came to rest on me as I took a chair beside him. “Fine,” he said in a voice that was so soft I could barely make it out. “How’re you?”

“I’m fine, too. It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?”

His eyes searched my face. “You look like somebody I used to know,” he said mildly. “Came to town married to ole man Springer, stingiest man around. Handsome young woman, though.”

I stiffened.
Handsome?
Even when I was young? Well, some people are never pretty, and I should’ve been accustomed to it by my present age. Shaking off that half compliment, I was pleased that he seemed alert enough to answer a few questions.

“Mr. Feldman, do you remember talking to Sam Murdoch last year? Well, I’m here to . . .”

“Did somebody go to Walmart?”

“What? Oh, I’m not sure. I’ll try to find out for you. But, Mr. Feldman, I wanted to ask if . . .”

He chuckled deep in his throat. “Never did know what that woman saw in him. Money, I guess, since he made it hand over fist. She was a looker back then, but stuck-up? You wouldn’t believe how high she’d stick that nose in the air.”

I didn’t think I could get any stiffer, but I did. “That, Mr. Feldman, is called holding your head up high, which I had every reason to do. But, listen . . .”

He turned his guileless eyes toward me. “Did she go to Walmart?”

“Uh, not yet, I don’t believe. Could you just think back to last year and . . .”

“What’d you say your name was?”

“Why, I’m Julia Murdoch, formerly Julia Springer. You said you knew me years ago.”

His faded eyes roamed over my face, then he said, “You sure got old in a hurry, didn’t you?”

“At about the same rate you did,” I said with some asperity. “Now, look here, Mr. Feldman, I didn’t come here to be insulted. Put your thinking cap on and tell me . . .”

“Did she go to Walmart yet?”

“I declare, I don’t know! Are you talking about Sally? Maybe she went. If you’ll just talk to me a minute, I’ll get her over here and you can ask her.”

Well, I guess that did it, for a low humming noise rose up from his throat and grew in intensity while he sat there, perfectly still, until it became an eerie and frightening scream. I scrambled to my feet and backed away. Sally came to the rescue, thank goodness, and began to croon comforting words to him.

Clutching my pocketbook, I hurriedly turned and left, apologizing for creating a problem as I went.

 

 

 

 

Lord, I thought as I sat trembling in my car, is that what I have to look forward to? I was sorry that I’d upset him, but he’d done worse to me. Rafe Feldman hadn’t known who I was, even though he claimed to have known me in the past, and who was supposed to go to Walmart and what had he wanted from there? Sam had been right, we’d get nothing from him. It had been a wasted trip.

But maybe not so wasted, I thought as I ran back over my unproductive interview. That hair, for one thing, if I could overlook the laughter my clue had elicited from Sam and Mr. Pickens. Rafe Feldman had a thatch of white hair so thick that it had stuck up like tail feathers from the back of his head where he’d rested it against the sofa.

I cranked the car and headed for home, but I couldn’t rid myself of the memory of that poor man sitting so still and proper while a scream of epic proportions emanated from his throat. It had terrified me in more ways than one.

“Lillian!” I called as I hurried into the kitchen, intent on making an end run around the possible onset of Rafe Feldman’s condition. “Where’s the newspaper? You haven’t thrown it out, have you?”

“No’m,” she said, looking up from the sink. “I don’t never th’ow it out till the next one come. It’s in there in the livin’ room. They’s nothin’ in it, though.”

“Yes, there is,” I said as I pushed through the swinging door into the dining room. “I’m looking for the crossword puzzle.”

After an hour of fiddling with the crossword puzzle, I put it aside until I had time to use Lloyd’s dictionary. There was no use going overboard in pursuing mental acuity, anyway. Besides, the puzzles at the end of the week were always difficult, and I had Hazel Marie to deal with, which was enough excercise for anybody’s brain.

I walked out into the kitchen, thinking to discuss matters with Lillian, and the first thing I saw was the box of Godiva chocolates on the counter.

“Lillian, what’s this doing here?”

She tore off a paper towel and dried her hands. “Miss Hazel Marie, she say she want it outta her sight. She say for me to eat it up or give it to somebody or th’ow it away, she don’t wanta look at it no more.”

“Well, my goodness,” I said, disappointed that the gift had not softened her heart. “I thought maybe she’d appreciate it, as well as the giver. Did she eat any last night?”

“No’m, not a piece. All us did, though, but she say the thought of it make her stomick turn over.”

“Maybe it did. As queasy as she’s been, I doubt that chocolate candy would sit very well. Oh, Lillian,” I said, sitting down with a sigh that could’ve easily become a sob, “I don’t know what to do. She’s bound and determined to have nothing to do with Mr. Pickens, and he, for goodness sakes, won’t unbend enough to court her. And that’s all it would take, I’m convinced of that. She needs help so bad that I think she’d jump at the chance to marry him, even though she wouldn’t touch his candy.”