Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem (46 page)

She stopped herself. I am not going to indulge in any thoughts about my husband living on the road and slipping from bed to bed like an old coyote slips from trashcan to trashcan, looking for something to eat, she told herself. I am better than that.

And the Invisible Committee knew it.

Through her open window, she heard a clatter, and an unfamiliar, musical voice shouting “Merde!” Merde? What on earth did that mean? She peered out the window and into Fossetta’s, to see the unmistakable sight of Fossetta Sweet moving with haste through her own house, holding an armful of, what? It looked like laundry.

What on earth was going on in Space 48?

Oh, the other women of the park had all liked Fossetta, just because she didn’t do married men. It wasn’t for a lack of trying on the part of the menfolk, however. And That Woman could always change her ways. How would all these stupid wives feel about her, then? What if she just started letting the married men climb all over her fat body in wanton displays of animal sex and loose morals? THEN these women would understand the viper in their midst.

Rhondalee pulled a recliner over to the window with a great deal of dramatic yanking. She squinted up her eyes and peered out the window to watch. She watched Fossetta move things around, throw things to the floor.

She watched Fossetta Sweet pin up her hair.

Rhondalee’s mouth fell open. “What is she DOING?” she demanded of the Invisible Committee.

A long dark car glided smoothly into Fossetta’s drive. Three men got out, scanned their surroundings through dark glasses, took positions fore and aft. Though they differed in age, race and size, their shared professional bearing rendered them almost identical in affect. They all spoke constantly into cell phones. They communicated through questing nods. One waited by the car while two approached Fossetta’s metal screen door.

A sharp rap. An opened door. They entered.

What was this? Who were those men? And what on earth was That Woman up to now?

The Invisible Committee had no idea.

Rhondalee waited, speculated, and she was finally rewarded with the sight of That Woman exiting her trailer in the company of two strangers in dark suits.

It was a moment of supreme dislocation.

Fossetta’s mismatched eyes hid behind a pair of cat eye sunglasses. She had on a smart navy suit from many decades past, and her hair was tucked up in an artful chignon. Strangest of all, her tiny feet were tucked into actual shoes, a pair of 1940s brushed suede platforms in an appealing shade of dusty rose. Those precious little pumps took such delicate steps down the aluminum steps of the trailer, across the gravel to the waiting car. All she carried was a vintage Samsonite makeup case.

“She’s not really leaving,” Rhondalee informed the Invisible Committee. “She’s not leaving. She’s not. She can’t.” Rhondalee demanded an answer. “Could she have given up this easily?”

The Committee, as always, was silent.

One last flash of those plump legs as she swung them into the car. One last tilt of that blonde head as she caught Rhondalee’s eye. One last flash of those mismatched eyes, so full of life and amusement. One last dimpled smile. One last wave of a gentle white hand.

Fossetta Sweet was gone.

RHONDALEE REMAINED AT
the window, watching the road, worrying a nail. A curious flatness had settled over her. It didn’t feel like relief. It felt like, well, disappointment, and a certain loss of purpose. When you’ve spent years imagining the worst, only to have something so much less likely happen, what’s left?

Well, she decided, I am not going to worry about this any longer. I am the manager, here. I have a purpose. I will go to work with my head held high.

She walked to the clubhouse with the determined air of an Amway representative preparing to show the plan to a group of derisive co-workers. She didn’t see the sun on the sundial, the soft glow of the pop machines, the delightful way the sun glinted off each individual fiber in the Kelly green indoor-outdoor of the courtyard. Rhondalee’s mind was elsewhere.

Why was the Clubhouse door open? Despite her best efforts, her heart leapt up and crouched in her throat like an over-eager Pomeranian. Hope made her betray herself by calling out, voice shaking, heart hammering. She entered the air-conditioned dimness. He wasn’t at the piano. “Tender? Are you in here?” She moved to the door to the office, and it, too, was slightly open. “Tender?” She peered in. He wasn’t asleep at the desk with his handsome head in his arms. “Well, I guess I got a little forgetful with all the various stresses and strains of this particular week,” she squeaked out loud to the Invisible Committee. “I guess I left things unattended to for once. Well excuse me.”

The Committee said nothing.

It was time to work. She sat her narrow behind down in her twirling desk-chair. She looked her small stack of letters to the Fashion Filly, feeling downright appalled at just how fashion-uninformed some people were in the Park.

A WEDDING. A
marriage. And finally, a divorce.

She lay her palms on the desktop to steady herself, and noticed that that lower left-hand drawer was slightly ajar. With a shaking hand, she pulled it the rest of the way open.

Gone. It was gone, the secret shoebox, the box that held her dreams, her plans for the LaCour family to rise above this trailer park tragedy and reclaim their rightful place on the stage once more. Gone. Who took it? Who? Was it That Woman? Did she make away with the money and leave behind the man that Rhondalee had always assumed she wanted? But Rhondalee had watched Fossetta leave. She’d never left the trailer.

A horrible noise echoed through the office, a sick, bawling cackle. Rhondalee used her feet to make her chair go around. Spinning. She spun until all laughter stopped and a sickening dizziness sent her head between her knees.

TENDER STEPPED OUT
his front door with a suitcase in one hand, a guitar case in the other. The banjo case was tucked under his arm. He was clean and shaved and dressed all but for his boots, which were nowhere to be found.

Great God in Heaven, he was happy to be alive.

He’d been relieved that he could pack in silence, but he knew he’d have to face her. He looked around for the last time at the lanes, boulevards and avenues of the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park. All Roads Lead to Rome, thought Tender, and every thoroughfare in this park leads to the Clubhouse. He looked at it shining in the sun, heat devils rising off the asbestos covered roof. He gazed in wonder at the aluminum siding in a bright barn red, the freshly painted white trim, the double doors that could be thrown wide in welcome, the cactus garden, the courtyard paved with indoor/outdoor carpet in a brilliant Kelly green. He’d always loved that Clubhouse.

Tender paused in the center of the courtyard and stood by the sundial. He let his hand linger on the bit of shiny metal fuselage, kept polished by the fingers of pilgrims. This carpet smells like it could use a good cleaning, he thought to himself. Must have been a dog loose around here.

Tender’s heart beat ever-so-slightly faster. He opened the front door, stepped into the air-conditioned darkness. The meeting room sat dark and empty. “Rhondalee?” he called. He could hear her in there, probably working on that newsletter of hers. “Rhondalee?”

She stepped into the meeting room. Rhondalee was a vision in stirrup pants, done up and tricked out, embellished and emblazoned, painted and proud. He let his silver eyes wash over her as if it were the last time he’d ever see her.

“I’m here, Rhondy,” he said, his voice as soft as his name. She opened her mouth, eyes round, ready to let loose. He raised a hand to hush her. “I’m tired of this misery. I’m leaving.”

It was time for a fit. A fit had always worked in the past. When she fell to her knees, it brought him to his, begging forgiveness, taking care of her. She started her emotional swoon, her hand to her chest, her knees buckling, but he failed to rush to her side. His back in the doorway, that’s what she saw on her way down. She was going to fall and he was not going to be there to catch her, to soothe her, to cradle her through her unspecified time of being overcome with the injustice of this world.

Her swoon was real. So was her solitude.

ANNIE LEIGH WALKED
back to Space 47 and into the living room with her boots on. She was half expecting the sting of a slap as she did it, but of course, none came. “I wonder how bad I’ll get, now that no one will hit me,” Annie thought idly. “Pretty bad, I bet.” She looked forward to finding out.

She might have changed, but her room looked the same. The twin princess bed. The dresser full of stuff she hated to wear. The closet full of more stuff she hated to wear. The door that her grandmother often locked to keep her in, the window through which she’d left anyway. Her whole life had been spent trying to get out of this room.

She shoved a few things into a pillowcase, leaving behind all the frilly dresses and scratchy nighties, and most of the underwear. She slung the pillowcase over one shoulder, and reached under her to grab the neck of that huge black guitar. Carrying both, she skipped out the door and scuffed up the road in her new boots to the air-conditioned darkness of the Clubhouse.

Her grandma sat cross-legged on the floor of the clubhouse with her head on her knees, folded up like the very crooked attempt at origami Annie had done in Head Start. “Gram?” Annie waited. “Gramma, you okay?”

Rhondalee lifted her head and glared at Annie Leigh.

Annie Leigh was used to her grandmother’s anger. It had been the steady undertone of all her years. “I came to say good-bye, Gramma. We’re heading out.” She loved those words, ‘heading out,’ loved the shivery feeling she got from saying them. “Won’t you be glad I’m not around here bugging you anymore? I think you’ll be happier.” Gramma wouldn’t speak. “Aren’t you gonna tell me good-bye?” Silence. “Gramma, I know you have hurt feelings. But I just want you to know that I appreciate all the stuff you done for me.” She had to think hard, then, about what meant the most. “All the tunafish sandwiches and Bible-thumpings and whuppings and stuff. And how you made me wash up real good. Everywhere.”