Queen Bee Goes Home Again (20 page)

Tommy glared at me. “Could we just sit back and enjoy it, first? Be present, instead of projecting the negative?”

“You're right,” I apologized.

Why did I
do
that? It didn't help anybody, least of all me.

“Hey, to celebrate,” I offered, “why don't I treat us all to supper at Red Lobster?” It was Tuesday, a slow night, so we might not even have to stand in line. And thanks to my commission, I had enough money to pay for both of them, plus order the Ultimate Feast for me—lobster, shrimp, and Alaskan crab legs. Yum.

Mama nodded her assent, still gazing at the house in pride. “Good idea.”

I dragged my stubborn self into the present. And into gratitude. We were there together, sober, clean, and in decent health, in this blessed moment of accomplishment. And Daddy was still alive. I sensed the spirit of the man he used to be there with us.

My mouth quivered with a mix of pride, grief, and resignation, and then the moment passed.

People with low blood pressure shouldn't stand stiff and look up for very long.

The heat pounced on me like a tiger, and my sugar took a nose-dive, along with my blood pressure. Suddenly swimmy-headed and feeling ten feet from my body, I promptly went boneless.

“Oh, Lord,” Tommy sputtered as he grabbed my waist from behind to keep me from falling, which hiked my dress above my panties as I slid down. I felt the air when they were exposed, but was too dizzy to do anything about it.

Oh, no! I could see the headlines:
MAYORAL CANDIDATE'S SISTER EXPOSES SELF ON FRONT LAWN.

Just when I thought things couldn't be any worse, Connor Allen drove by, a look of alarm on his face.

Oh, no! No, no, no!

Still reeling, I grabbed Miss Mamie's arm and struggled to regain my feet, jerking the hem of my dress back down. “Quick, let's go to dinner. Tommy can drive my car. I just need to eat.”

Adrenaline came to the rescue as I rushed them to my car. “Wait here while I get my purse. And whatever you do, do not speak to Connor Allen. I'd die of mortification.”

I snatched my bag from the apartment, then half tumbled down the stairs, tossing my keys to Tommy. “Go, go.” I opened the driver's side slider, then hurled myself into the seat. “Go.”

No sooner had Tommy backed out, then put my car into drive, than I looked through the rear window to see a bewildered Connor Allen push through the bushes and watch us go.

That panty thing was not nice, God,
I scolded, but I could feel Him smiling.

I'd appreciate some help, here.

The smile was all I got.

 

Twenty-eight

By the time we reached the Red Lobster, my blood sugar had leveled out, but I was so upset about Connor Allen's seeing my underpants—and my
thighs
—that I scarfed down every scrap of my salad, cheese biscuits, and Ultimate Feast, then added insult to injury by having a triple-chocolate dessert. We are talking at least seven thousand calories.

Bloated, but still embarrassed, I got out when we reached home, then scrambled up the stairs to the garage apartment, praying Connor Allen wouldn't call or come over to see what had happened.

Like the gentleman he was, he didn't.

In the South, when anyone with good manners sees anyone else in an embarrassing but non-life-threatening situation, aid may be rendered when asked for or needed, but the subject is never brought up afterward. The embarrassee, likewise, doesn't make the situation worse by bringing it up, either. This is common courtesy, the opposite of the Jerry Springer and YouTube degradations of our culture.

While Tommy went to meetings and stomped the campaign trail all over town, I spent the next few days finishing up the details in the house, and the nights online, finally finding us a “like new” metal detector you could push around on wheels, with a readout screen that worked on six AA batteries, for only $100 plus shipping. When I e-mailed the seller to find out if something was wrong with it, she told me it had belonged to her late husband, who had become so obsessive about it that he took the thing everywhere, embarrassing her. She was so eager to get rid of it that she said I could send her a check after I made sure it worked.

Sure enough, it arrived three days later by UPS.

I read the instruction booklet, loaded it with fresh batteries, then started scanning the yard in six-foot squares. Within minutes, I could understand why the guy was addicted. The possibility of a great find kept me going till Tommy came out and called me in for dinner.

He stopped on the verandah to shelter his eyes from the lowering sun so he could see me. “What's that?”

“Our metal detector, with a screen.”

“Where'd you get it?” he asked.

“On the Internet. A widow sold it to me for only a hundred dollars, because it had a lot of bad memories from her recently deceased husband.”

Tommy laughed. “So, you bought us a haunted metal detector.” He started down the wide stairs. “Find anything?”

I turned it off and rolled the gizmo toward him. “Just the septic tank and the water line and the gas line. So far.”

Tommy eyed it with alacrity. “Well, it's a big yard.”

“You can try it out in the morning. The haul-away people left the Big Blue Bag under the attic window, so I plan to start cleaning up there at five in the morning, before it gets too hot.”

It probably wouldn't hurt to scan the attic, too, but this model was way too big to get up all those stairs. I resolved to find another, smaller version for inside the house. Maybe I could borrow one from somebody Mama knew.

Buoyed by the prospect of finding Daddy's treasure close to home, I linked my arm with Tommy's and dragged him toward the house to wash up. “Down, boy. It's time to eat.”

I was done in. We could deal with the metal detector tomorrow.

Tommy escaped my grasp to rescue the metal detector. “Better keep this thing inside, or somebody's liable to steal it.”

He had a point. “Good idea.” Mimosa Branch was still Mimosa Branch, but the days when we could safely leave any equipment unattended in the yard had passed away with the advent of cocaine and crystal meth.

Leaning it back, Tommy slowly pulled the machine up the stairs, one at a time.

I heard Miss Mamie's crystal bell ringing insistently from deep inside the house.

“We're coming!” I hollered, causing Tommy to flinch.

“Sheesh, Lin,” he chided. “You know she can't hear you.”

He was right. I was wrong. Again. “Sorry. I didn't think.”

“That's one of our slogans in AA,” he said benignly as he parked the detector beside the foyer fireplace. “Think.”

Apparently, I hadn't been doing much of that since I came back. I just kept reacting on autopilot, despite the tools I'd been given by my enabler's recovery group. Why was I at my worst in my mother's domain?

I hadn't been to a meeting in weeks. Maybe I needed to get back to my program. Call my sponsor. Read my literature. I knew these things, but something inside me resisted.

That was the clincher: I definitely needed a meeting.

But not tonight. Tonight I needed food, then a long shower, then sleep.

On my way inside the house behind Tommy, I sent up an arrow prayer.
Lord, it would be really nice if we found the Krugerrands in the house or the yard. I mean, it would save us all a lot of time and expense.

Again, I sensed God smile.

Sometimes it's not such a good thing when God smiles. You might just be in for a lesson.

 

Twenty-nine

At dinner, we told the Mame about the metal detector, and she wanted in on the new toy, too.

“Talk to Tommy,” I said. “I'm starting on the attic at five
A.M.
, and not quitting till it gets too hot. Then I'm taking a long, cool shower in Zaida's bathroom and heading back to bed.”

Zaida had been our second mother and housekeeper till she retired at seventy to live with her daughter in California. She'd finally escaped this town, but I'd had to go back, a fact Zaida found hilarious. We kept up by e-mail, but I resolved to call her later from my apartment and tell her what was going on. She'd love to hear it.

“You've more than earned a long shower,” Miss Mamie said, chipper, then turned back to my brother. “Ladies first, Tommy. As soon as we finish breakfast tomorrow, I want you to show me how to work that thing.”

At five the next morning, I took a ten-pack of cold bottled water in a small, soft little cooler up the three flights to the attic, then put on my allergy mask and worked in bare-bulb, blessed silence till eight, when the air began to get hot and stuffy. So I turned on one of the General's giant construction fans that roared like a jet engine but put out a
lot
of air.

Box by box, broken toy by shattered chair, I sorted the trash of my heritage from the possible treasures, then threw what was definitely worthless (as in, twenty-seven cans of dried-up paint remnants, etc.) out the window and into the Big Blue Bag below.

My stomach went with it every time, but I couldn't help watching.

Once that was done, I started working through the ancient cardboard boxes, luggage, and military duffel bags that remained. Most of the boxes held aged-out paperwork or old toys, clothes, and junk that were beyond hope. But at least I managed to cull out the junk and organize the rest for further attention.

Please, Lord, help me find what we need to find. For Mama's sake.

I didn't find any Krugerrands or deeds, but I did find a lovely cameo between the floorboards and discovered an airtight strongbox crammed with ancient correspondence and documents reaching back to the late seventeen-hundreds, including an ancestor's citation for bravery in the Revolutionary War, signed by George Washington, and my great-great-grandfather's oath of loyalty to the Union after we lost the War Between the States. Miss Mamie would love going through those.

I found military uniforms from the mid-eighteen-hundreds to Vietnam. And in Tommy's duffel from his two years in that horrible war, I found a stash of what looked and faintly smelled like marijuana, so I took it down to Zaida's bathroom and flushed it, too.

Not only were the microbes in the septic tank drunk on moonshine, they were now high.

As for the holiday decorations, most were ruined and went into the big bag, but I did find the sturdy red, white, and, blue bunting Daddy had always put around the verandah's railings for the Fourth. The reds were darker now, but other than that, they seemed fine. Perfect for Tommy's election day!

I organized the salvageable things by type and era near the narrow stairs, to be gone through, cleaned, inventoried, then repacked in clear plastic bins.

Drinking bottled water in the heat, I made it till nine-thirty before I started seeing tiny meteors of light dance at the outer range of my vision, a signal that I needed to go downstairs.

Quittin' time!

I carefully negotiated the narrow stairs to the third floor, then took a cool shower in Zaida's renovated bathroom.

Only when I came out of Zaida's room, fresh and dry in the clean clothes I'd left there, did I hear the rattle of the metal detector in the yard. I stepped out onto the third-floor balcony and looked down to see Miss Mamie parading back and forth across the yard with the metal detector, her posture perfectly straight, as if she were modeling in the annual women's club fashion show, the wheels rumbling in the dried-out turf of our lawn.

I didn't see Tommy till he came down the front stairs and confronted our mother. “That's it, Miss Mamie,” he said over the small racket of the metal detector's wheels. “Your arms and your forehead look like grilled salmon. You've got to come inside. I'll finish the rest.”

I wasn't sure how much of that was genuine concern and how much Tom Sawyer's pal wanting to paint the fence, but the Mame poked a white imprint on her forearm and gasped, then hustled inside.

As my brother rattled on with the detector, I heard Mama slam the door on her way in and grumble up the stairs to her room. “Ninety years old,” she scolded herself, “and you forget to put on sunscreen? Mamie, you are getting senile. That's all there is to it.”

I could tell from her tone that she didn't really believe that.

I waited till she closed the door to her room to head for the kitchen and some eggs to top off the ones I'd had at five.

One glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and four shiny scrambled eggs later, I was debating whether to give the attic another brief stab when my cell phone rang in the pocket of my cotton chef's apron (only a dollar each at the Dollar Tree).

“Hello?”

“Ms. Scott?”

“This is she.”

Of course, Mama chose just that moment to enter the kitchen, ears perked.

I turned my back to my mother.

“Hi. This is Susan from the testing center at the university in Athens. We've had a cancellation. Would you be available to come in this coming Monday morning at eleven?”

Would I! Only three days away. I jumped at the chance to escape the attic.

The trip would take me almost two hours, half of it cross-country to access Highway 316, so the time was perfect. “Great. I'll see you this Monday morning at eleven in Athens.”

I could sense my mother leaning closer, ears sharp.

“We'll e-mail the directions to your personal account,” the girl said.

“Thanks.” I'd need directions. The UGA campus in Athens was a maze of one-way streets and limited access.

When I hung up, I turned to find Miss Mamie perched like a turkey buzzard over a roadkill possum. “So. What was that all about?”

No way was I going to tell her about my weird deficiencies. “Just some final placement testing before I start school,” I fibbed. “No big deal. But I have to go to Athens.”