My Very Best Friend (27 page)

Do not hold yourselves accountable for Bridget’s sin. We have one girl, maybe two, each year who cannot resist their baser impulses and become pregnant by young men in the village.

May God be with you during this difficult time.

I am praying for you both.

In Christ, our love, our deliverer, our savior,

Father Angus Cruickshank

I put on my tennis shoes and ran. I ran and ran and ran. I stopped when I couldn’t breathe, when my sobs choked me, when thoughts of my sweet friend being attacked by this vile, Bible-thumping rapist were so overwhelming I thought I’d die if I didn’t lie down. I lay down by the fort that Clan TorBridgePherLotte built years ago

I hated Angus Cruickshank. If he ever appeared before me, I would kill him myself.

Later that night Toran and I talked about Bridget. We talked about her once a week, usually. It hurt too much to do more than that, and there was no new news, anyhow.

Not knowing where someone you love is, especially when she has soul-deep, talon-scraping problems and is not making safe choices, makes you pace at night.

That’s what love can do to you sometimes. It nearly kills you with worry. It makes you pace.

So we paced, together.

Bridget, where are you? Please come home.

Gobbling Gardens and Gab Group was held at Rowena’s house that night. As she told us when we arrived, “The Arse and The Slut have the kids for the next three days. Let’s see how Bubbles, The Slut, likes playing stepmom.” She cackled.

Rowena’s home, toward the center of St. Ambrose, around the corner from the fountain, was made of stone, possibly rocks from the cathedral, as it periodically crumbled over the centuries. It was, she told me, built in 1780. It had a light blue door and shutters. The interior looked like something that should be in a magazine. Scottish home meets modern color/design and four kids. Upstairs there were three bedrooms. The two girls shared a room, as did the boys.

Downstairs she had set up a place on her dining room table for her rock jewelry business. I loved the necklaces. I had bought four from her, the rocks wrapped in silver wire with bright beading lining both sides. They were earthy.

“I talked to The Arse, and he said he does not have enough money to give me child support again this month, so I’m going to sick that solicitor on him like a rabid dog. Four kids, he walks out, and leaves me with two hundred pounds. He and The Slut bought them all kinds of toys and books and clothes. The Slut has a beautiful home, courtesy of her last husband, and yet The Arse says he doesn’t have money for child support?”

“I hope his body is infested with pinworms,” Olive said, shaking the end of her knitted elephant scarf in frustration. The elephant appeared drowsy. I don’t think it was intentional. “I take care of my pigs. They don’t have problems like that, if anyone is wondering.”

“Thank you, Olive,” Rowena said, passing around tea in pottery mugs. “You are always on my side.”

“I hope he has an obscure medical problem that causes his tongue to swell and fill his mouth,” Kenna said. “As I am a doctor here, I won’t be able to treat him due to the fact that I think he’s a eunuch.” She clarified, “I would treat other eunuchs, however, immediately. I have nothing against eunuchs who aren’t The Arse.”

I offered up that I hoped there would be a scientific anomaly and gravitational forces would ebb around him and he would levitate, then fall off the earth. This wasn’t possible, but it was the intent behind it that counted, and Rowena appreciated my murderous thoughts.

“I’m the hostess, so I’ve picked the topic for tonight’s discussion,” Rowena said. “Today we’re going to talk about poisonous and bad plants.”

“In India we have plants that hide the poison inside. Secret poison. And kill,” Gitanjali said, smiling, gentle, her hands like doves in flight. “Many plants that causes a wrinkle.”

“A what?” Lorna asked, mouth twisting in disapproval. She twitched her oatmeal bottom in her seat.

“You understand.” Gitanjali scratched her arm. “Plants that cause a wrinkle.”

“You mean irritation?” Malvina asked.

We all froze for a second. Malvina spoke and she was not inebriated!

“Yes, you scratch like this”—Gitanjali scratched—“and it’s a wrinkle.”

“An itch!” Olive said, with triumph.

“Good enough,” I said.

“A itchy!” Gitanjali said. “Yes.”

Lorna rolled her eyes, impatient. Why couldn’t people speak proper English? She could hardly understand that Indian woman!

“I keep all bad plants away from my pigs,” Olive said. “Can’t lose any of them. I think Dr. Judith had a headache today. She may be in menopause.”

“Pigs can go into menopause?” I asked.

“Yes,” Olive nodded. “And I think that Faith Sue may be gay.”

“A gay pig?” Rowena asked.

“About ten percent of the animal population is gay,” Kenna said. “I remember learning that in medical school. Not in medical school exactly, but when we were drinking at night at the pubs.”

“I think we should talk about summer flowers,” Lorna said. Malvina shrunk beside her. I would try to talk to her tonight. See if she spoke coherent English as she did when we were younger and in school together. Back then she was fun and chatty, super athletic.

“I think we should also talk about how my friend Lulu called me and said that The Arse and The Slut are at Molly Cockles tonight,” Rowena said, tapping a foot, shaking her red hair out.

“I thought they had the kids,” Olive said.

“They did. But they left them at home because tonight is their anniversary.”

“Their anniversary?” I asked.

“Probably their anniversary of their first fuck,” Rowena said. “Look at me. I said the f word. I apologize, ladies. It’s the anniversary of their first shagging.”

“No problem,” Kenna said. “When I told one of my patients today he was going to have an operation on his appendix, he said, ‘By fuck, I won’t let you take it!’ and I said, ‘By fuck, if you don’t, you could die,’ and he said, ‘Bollocks. Fuck it, then. Go ahead and cut it out.’ ”

“Can we move right along to a discussion of summer flowers?” Lorna humphed. “Every year I watch my zinnias bloom. I have them in neat beds, in rows, all in order. I even color categorize.” Lorna droned on. And on . . .

Rowena paced the room. Caged tiger woman, ready for blood.

Olive said, “Let’s not get arrested. The only person who can take care of my edible pets is me.”

“If there’s blood, I will be medically required to help,” Kenna said. “I am warning you of that, Rowena.”

Gitanjali said, “I think there be revenge tonight. I center myself first. Calm. Bring peace. Serene. Rowena, hold your hands out to me.”

“Summer flowers are a gardener’s delight,” Lorna bit out. “If everyone can focus—”

I noticed, once again, that Lorna rarely looked at Gitanjali. Don’t look at her, she’s not there, no one
different
should be in the room. Wrong skin color, wrong origin, wrong religion.

I had grown to strongly dislike Lorna.

“That’s it. I’m done.” Rowena turned on her heel and grabbed her purse, her red hair a pissed-off mane behind her.

“Where you going, peaceful friend?” Gitanjali said, standing up. “I coming!”

“You know where I’m going. To take revenge on The Arse and his slut.”

“Come on, everyone! Let’s support a fellow gardener,” Olive hollered. She grabbed her bag. It had a pig on it. “Together against weeds, together against cheating husbands.”

I grabbed my bag and drank the rest of my wine. Going to the pub would certainly be more fun than staying here with Lorna. “I’m in.”

I noticed that Malvina laughed and scurried on out right behind me.

“Hello, Malvina.”

“Hello, Charlotte! Can I ride with you?” She snuck a glance back for her sputtering mother. “This will be so exciting!” She darted ahead and climbed into my truck.

I shut and locked the doors of the truck before Lorna could waddle in, her thick body thunking down the steps. She was yelling at Malvina, “Get out of that car this minute, Malvina!”

Malvina giggled. “Hurry, Charlotte, go!”

Molly Cockles Scottish Dancing Pub was filled with people and a rock band. The rockers wore kilts and black T-shirts with cutoff sleeves. Most of them had tattoos and Mohawks.

“They are sexy, aren’t they, Charlotte?” Malvina giggled and grabbed my arm. “I read about men like that in my books. I love books.”

“Not bad.” I preferred my own Scot. The Scottish Warrior who may only love me as a sister. How depressing.

It did not take long for things to become troublesome. On my watch, five seconds.

Rowena charged right up to The Arse, hips swaying, high heels tapping, sitting at a table with The Slut, and said, “Bald man, arse, I need my child support money.”

The Arse was shocked. He said, “Rowena, what are you doing here?”

Rowena said, “I’m here to plant a sunflower on your scrotum. What else would I be doing? Give me the money.”

“I don’t have it.”

Rowena glared at The Slut and said, “Slut, you’ve taken my husband and he won’t pay up for his kids.”

“Don’t call me Slut,” the woman protested, flushing red. She had white-blond hair and a lot of makeup. Her cleavage was out and about. She might as well have taken her bosom off and put it in the middle of the table next to the salt for all to admire.

I do not like to place blame when people divorce. There are many valid reasons to shut a marriage down, but what should not happen is a third party deliberately trying to take a husband or wife away. Like Breasty Bubbles here.

Rowena put her hands on the table. “I’ll do what I want, Slut Bubbles, as you did what you wanted when you took my husband.”

“The marriage was over,” The Arse said.

“I didn’t know that,” Rowena said. “All I know is that you’re a combination of a narcissist and an insecure little boy. You’re selfish and unthinking. Your brain is flat, your personality drivel and drabble, your character nonexistent.”

“If you don’t like him, why are you mad we’re together?” The Slut protested. “Why so jealous?”

“You can have him, Slut Bubbles,” Rowena said. “But don’t think you can make my life miserable while yours is so perfect. Don’t think you can cause my kids pain that they will never recover from and walk away. Don’t think you can break up a family and then trot off on bonking vacations and tell each other what a miserable and pathetic person I am who you feel sorry for in the midst of your bonking joy. Don’t think you can cause devastation, then walk away and be free of all responsibility to start a new bonking life.”

“This man is having a midlife crisis. He wants to be young again,” I said, trying to be helpful. “In two years he’ll be pasty, potbellied, and more hairless on top than he already is. Rowena, once you get over your anger, and you will, you will realize that The Arse leaving is a gift. You don’t want to have to take care of this weak man as he grows old, his aches and pains, his complaints because he never became who he wanted to become, his lack of appreciation for you, his poor performance in bed.”

“I don’t perform poorly in bed!” he protested.

I studied The Slut for the truth. Her head was down.

“Yes, you do!” Rowena roared. “That was one more thing I had to put up with. Limp penis.”

She tipped the table and The Arse’s and The Slut’s food—the lobster, the garlic bread, the salads, the wine that The Arse said he could never afford for her—went sliding right . . . into . . . their . . . laps.

I hate being laughed at. I was laughed at in school in Seattle for having a Scottish accent and for being impossibly socially awkward. Laughing at someone is mean.

Then I thought of how Rowena had told me how she was barely making it, her payment to the bank for her house was overdue, she had twenty-one pounds in her purse, hadn’t paid the electricity bill or gas bill in two months, and her husband wouldn’t send the money he owed her.

Couldn’t help myself. I laughed.

Olive said, “I believe that was deserved, due to past behavior.”

Malvina gushed, “I never knew that Garden Ladies Gabble Gobbling Group was going to make me an accomplice to mini-assaults.”

Kenna said, “Cheating on your wife, if you study the research, has very poor health results, balding ex-husband. You’re at a higher risk of heart attack and high blood pressure.”

Gitanjali said, palms upward, “Apologies can heal wounds. You should reach out with your shadow, no not shadow, that not right word, reach out with your sorrow—”

“You . . . You . . .” The Arse started, all huffed and puffed up. I noticed he had a bump of a gut.

“How did you handle that bump gut when you were married, Rowena?” I asked. “It can’t have been sexy, that thing rubbing up and down on you.”

The Arse’s mouth dropped open as he gaped at me, then he put a hand to his gut.

“It wasn’t,” Rowena roared again. “It was like being rolled by a rolling pin.” She then tilted her head back and mimicked the sounds her husband made during sex—gasping, groaning, moaning.

The Slut said, “Why, I never! You bitch!”

Do not call the wife of your boyfriend a bitch.

It would be fair to say that Rowena won the fight when The Slut flew at her with all that cleavage out and about. Rowena, who is strong and was pissed, knocked The Slut across the table next to them, as the first table was already tipped, and landed on her. That table collapsed and Rowena laid flat on The Slut.

The Slut struggled and swore. Rowena managed to grab a lobster off the floor and held it on The Slut’s face.

Gitanjali said, “Take but a moment for spirit centering—”

Olive said, “I would have eaten that lobster.”

Malvina said, “Go get her, Rowena!”

There was screaming and swearing. I dare say the women were the center of attention. The Arse tried to separate them, but Rowena sat on The Slut’s stomach and clocked The Arse in the face. He fell back.

After a delightful minute, allowed for revenge purposes only, I grabbed Rowena, along with Olive, and The Arse grabbed The Slut, who came up kicking, blouse undone, the bosoms out. They were fake.