Miss Julia's Marvelous Makeover (3 page)

“Okay, I agree—no fighting. You want to do this?” He leaned over and took my hand. “Are you with me?”

“I'm always with you, and, yes, I do want to do it, because you're the best one for the job and,” I couldn't help but add, “it beats floating down the Rhine any day.”

He laughed, then said, “One thing you should be aware of—there'll be people who'll be working against us.”

“Like
who
?”

“Well, like Thurlow Jones for one.”

“
What!
Why, Sam, you are without doubt the best-qualified, the most experienced, the fairest, most honest, and best-liked man in town. How could anybody be against you? And Thurlow?” I waved my hand in dismissal. “Nobody pays any attention to him.”

“That's not exactly true, sweetheart,” Sam said, his voice taking on a serious tone. “Thurlow is the money behind the ones in office
now. He's the one who makes the decisions for the other party—he'll be against us. Not many people know it, but he pretty much runs this town.”

Well, that was a shocker if I'd ever heard one. Thurlow Jones was an unshaven, disgraceful, and disreputable excuse for a man who delighted in showing his contempt for women in general and for me in particular. If you didn't know him but happened to see him on the street, you'd think he was a tramp down on his luck. There was no way to tell from his appearance that he could buy and sell half the town.

And to think that
he
was the power behind the thrones of the county and the district—it beat all I'd ever heard. Until the mail came one sultry morning a few months later.

“Sam?” I called, tapping on the door of his office as soon as I'd scanned the letter in my hand. Hearing his response, I walked into my former sunroom—the one Deputy Bates had rented after Wesley Lloyd Springer left me a somewhat bereaved widow and before Deputy Bates married Binkie—the sunroom that I'd made into Sam's home office. I was loath to disturb him, because this was one of the few free days he'd had to work on his book since winning the primary the previous month. Of course, having been the party's only candidate, winning the primary had been a foregone conclusion. “If you're busy,” I said, though not really meaning it, “this can probably wait. We can talk later.”

“Never too busy for you. Come on in.” Sam had risen from his creaky executive chair behind the desk and pulled a wing chair closer. “Sit down and talk to me. I'm stuck in the year 1966, trying to decide how much to reveal about Judge Alexander T. Dalton. You may remember him better as Monk Dalton.”

“Vaguely,” I said, sitting down and trying to show a little interest in the history he was writing about the shenanigans of the local legal community. “Didn't he have two wives at the same time?”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, they had him on a bigamy charge until one of the women, the one he'd lived with for years, told him that if he'd make a hefty settlement on her, she'd testify that they'd never had an actual ceremony, and she'd move to Florida. He did and she did, and the charges were dropped.”

“Oh, well then. Tell it all, Sam. That's the kind of book people will buy. But listen, the mail just came and I need your advice.” I held up the letter—written in pencil on lined notebook paper—that I'd just received.

“Who's it from?”

“Elsie Bingham. You don't know her, but she's my half first cousin or half cousin, first removed, or something. Her father was my father's half brother.” I stopped and thought for a minute. “Or maybe his stepbrother, which would make her no kin at all to me. Wouldn't that be nice.”

Sam smiled at my sarcasm. “Not good news, then?”

“About as far from it as you can get. Listen to this.” I began reading.

Dear Julia,

Haven't heard from you in so long you might be dead as far as I know. But in case your not, guess your still living high on the hog like you always did.

I let the letter fall to my lap in disgust. “Wouldn't that just frost you! A nice way to start a letter to someone you haven't had contact with in forty years.”

“Kinda puts you off, doesn't it?” Sam agreed.

“I'll say. But she was always like that. Well, listen to the rest of it.” I lifted the letter and began again to read:

I know you remember the summer you spent with us on the farm which is gone now and good riddance I say, except we're on another one just as bad. Or worse. Anyway your mother was sick and died from whatever she had so that's why we had to take you and your sisters in and feed and cloth every one of you all summer long cause your daddy was to broke up to lift a hand for his own children.

“I say, feed and clothe us! That was the worst summer of my life. And I happen to know that Papa sent money to Uncle Posey
to take care of all our needs. What he actually did with it is another matter because we ate a lot of corn bread and buttermilk and you wouldn't believe the amount of beans. And as far as clothing us is concerned, by the time we were sent home we'd outgrown everything we owned. Papa had to send Pearl downtown with us to buy school clothes. You should've seen what we ended up with, but Elsie's right about one thing. Papa was out of his mind with grief and not responsible, which was when I as the oldest began to take over.”

“And did an excellent job of it, I'm sure.”

“I don't know about that,” I mused, recalling the problems of a young girl taking charge of a motherless home. “Did the best I could, I guess, although my sisters wouldn't think so.” I sighed and took up the letter again, reading aloud:

Anyway, when things get binding
families
do what
families
ought to do. There is such a thing as
family
ties and
family
responsibilities and so on you know, which is the reason to remind you of what my
family
did for your
family.

“Can you believe this!” I demanded, waving the letter.

Sam smiled and shook his head. “She wants something.”

“She sure does and you won't believe that either.”

Anyway living out here in the sticks our Trixie don't have a way to meet nice people and learn that a high-school dropout wont do more than pump gas the rest of his life and not even that with all the self-serving stations we got nowadays. She's Doreen's girl, but Troy and me had to take her and raise her long after I thought I was through with all that and I wont the best for her. So Im
sending her to you for the summer so she can get spruced up and polished and learn what high living is like and meet somebody willing and able to support her like you did. I thought you'd never get married but you finally did pretty good at it.

“The
nerve
of the woman!” I exclaimed. “Does she think I run a finishing school? But, listen, Sam. It gets worse.”

So don't tell me you cant do it because I happen to know you took in a woman
no kin to you
and one who had done you dirt to boot. Trixie has never done a thing to you and she wouldn't for the world—shes real sweet and good company cause she dont talk a lot and worry you half to death. And Julia dont tell me you cant afford it. I happen to know you married above yourself with that little banty of a man that owns a whole bank by hisself so if you got the money to take in his floozie then you got the money to feed and cloth your own kin for a few months like we did you. And your sisters to. We had a good time playing under the scuppernong vine that summer.

“Sam,” I said, closing my eyes and leaning my head back against the chair. “I am simply speechless. I don't know how she knows anything about me—she doesn't even know that Wesley Lloyd Springer is dead, and she doesn't know about you. But she obviously knows about Hazel Marie.”

“Where does she live? Way off somewhere?”

I turned the envelope over and read aloud. “Route one, Vidalia, Georgia. That's near Savannah, I think, but too close as far as I'm concerned. But you haven't heard the worst of it yet.” I read the next paragraph to him:

So Im putting Trixie on the Greyhound real early Thurs. morning and she will get there about noon for you to meet her. You want have no trouble with her. Shes good as gold and likes chickens if you keep any she will look after them for you and earn her keep. Just tell her what to do and she will do it without a lot of backtalk.

“They Lord!”
I cried. “Does she think I keep chickens? The woman is crazy. What're we going to do, Sam?”

“Looks like we're having a guest for the summer. She'll be company for you while I'm out campaigning.”

“You're taking this entirely too complacently. Besides, I intend to campaign with you and I already have all the company I want. I won't have time for any more.”

“Well, maybe we can introduce her to some young people around town—keep her busy and entertained that way.”

“I don't
know
any young people, and I heartily resent the high-handed tone of this letter. She doesn't even
ask,
just tells us she's sending this Trixie!” I had to grit my teeth to calm myself down enough to read the rest of it to him:

Anyway you can send her back at the end of the summer when I especk her to know all the ends and outs of all that la-de-dah living you do. I dont want her marrying a gas-pumper or a farmer like I did. I give you credit Julia for picking a man with money even if he don't look like much. You cant eat looks anyway. Take care of Trixie. Shes a real good girl. Your cousin, Elsie Bingham.

P. S. Troy says to tell you not to spruce Trixie up to much. He dont wont her coming home with her nose in the air like you always had yours. But I say if she finds herself a decent husband up there she can get as stuck up as she wonts to.

I let the letter fall to my lap and leaned my head on my hand. “This is too much, Sam—too much to ask of anybody. Not that she's asking. I don't know this girl. I never knew her mother—this Doreen—and barely remember Elsie herself. I am just not going to do it.”

“Well, call her up and tell her it's not convenient at this time . . .”

“Actually at
any
time,” I mumbled.

“Anyway, as Elsie is prone to say,” Sam said, “it doesn't seem to have occurred to her that you might have plans for the summer.”

“That's the truth.” I stood up, folded the letter, and put it back into the envelope. “Thanks for listening, Sam. I'm glad you agree that we can't do this. I'd better go ahead and try to get Elsie's phone number from information—you'll notice she didn't give it in the letter. I'm going to tell her not to put Trixie on that bus.”

“Julia,” Sam said as I turned to leave, “what day is it?”

“Thursday, why?” I suddenly stopped in my tracks, snatched the letter out of the envelope, and scanned it again. “
Thursday!
That girl's been on a bus all morning! And it's almost noon when she'll be here.” I couldn't believe Elsie had so effectively trapped me. Because without a doubt in this world, she'd planned her letter to arrive just as it had—too late to keep Trixie at home. It was just as I remembered Elsie—sly, crafty, and determined to have her way.

But I wasn't yet outmaneuvered. With a glint in my eye, I said, “Sam, about that trip down the Rhine—it would pretty much take up the whole summer, wouldn't it?”

Well, of course it was too late to plan a summer voyage on the ocean or a river, but, believe me, I regretted having been so adamant about staying home. Now, of course, Sam would be too busy campaigning to go anywhere, but Elsie didn't know that and neither did Trixie. I drove to the Greyhound bus station on the edge of town, still simmering at the high-handedness of them both. I'd already decided that as soon as that girl stepped off the bus, I was going to put her right back on.

Actually, I'd probably have to wait with her for the next bus going south, but I was determined not to leave the station with Trixie in tow. Fuming, I decided that I'd sit there with her if it took all day for the next southbound bus to come in. Let her surprise her grandmother instead of me by showing up out of the blue. And it would be a surprise because I'd been unable to get a phone number for Elsie—either because she didn't have one or her last name was no longer Bingham even though that was the way she'd signed her letter.

She could've just signed it that way, I mused, so I'd know who she was. But then again, she'd mentioned Troy, so she was still married to the same man she'd started out with—Troy Bingham. Maybe, I thought, they used only a cell phone like a lot of people were doing. In which case, their number wouldn't be listed. The possibility still existed, though, that they simply didn't have a telephone—Troy hadn't been that good a catch to begin with.

I let the car idle at a red light, remembering the handwritten wedding invitation we'd received from Elsie the year we'd both turned twenty-one—the year I'd resigned myself to spinsterhood. But not Elsie. She'd been looking for a husband since she'd been sixteen, and apparently Troy Bingham had been the first one to
take her up on it. The invitation had been no more than a long boastful dig because she was getting a husband and I wasn't.

Of course she changed her tune a few years later when Wesley Lloyd Springer came into the picture. Although she didn't want him—and I didn't much either—he
was
a financial catch, as no one knows better than me. Well, Sam and Binkie know, but that's beside the point.

When that invitation had come, Elizabeth, my youngest sister, said, “I wouldn't go to her wedding for all the tea in China.” And Victoria had added, “I still have nightmares about that summer. How Papa could've sent us to that family is beyond me.” Then they reminded me of the time that Elsie's mother had chased down a chicken, wrung its neck, and fried it up for Sunday dinner. She'd put a wing on each of my sisters' plates, looked at me, and said, “Too bad hens don't come with three.” Then put the boney back on mine. Elsie had come by her meanness naturally.

Except for several preprinted birth announcements from Elsie—for which I'd sent gifts that had never elicited thank-you notes—that wedding invitation had been the last personal contact between us. Until now.

—

When I reached the bus station, I pulled in and parked. Then just sat there deciding how I'd tell Trixie that she wasn't welcome. I could tell her that we were facing a terribly busy summer with plans to go abroad—I couldn't flat-out lie and say we were definitely going—and her grandmother hadn't given us enough time to change our plans. And besides, I didn't have room for a guest. With all the remodeling I'd done—changing the sunroom into an office and the downstairs bedroom into a library—the only room available was the small one next to Lloyd's room that Lillian and Latisha used when the weather was too bad for them to get home. It just wasn't right to give their room to Trixie even though a snowfall was highly unlikely in July.

I glanced at my watch—a few minutes past twelve, but I'd
called the station and the bus wasn't due until twelve-thirty. Another thing Elsie had been wrong about.

Gritting my teeth as I thought about dashing a young girl's hopes for the summer, I determined to be kind but firm. We just could not have her, that's all there was to it. I'd have to be strong even if she teared up with disappointment—I was sure that Elsie had filled her head with unrealistic visions of my la-de-dah living, as she'd called it, so the girl was probably looking forward to a round of parties, teas, and dances all summer long, ending up with an engagement ring. Well, if that was the case, she might as well cry with disappointment now as do it at the end of the summer when none of that had come to pass.

Wonder,
I thought,
if every family has some Binghams around somewhere on the outskirts of their lives. Probably so,
I decided,
they just don't let on about it.

Then I began to wonder what Trixie looked like and how I would recognize her. Sam had said that with a name like Trixie, she was probably an outgoing, perky little thing. “The only Trixie I've ever known,” he said, “was a cheerleader.” But the name conjured up a different association for me. I rubbed my neck where the only Trixie I'd ever even heard of had almost pinched my head off. Lillian, however, when I moaned to her about unwanted guests, said, “The onliest Trixie I know is my neighbor's ole dog that sleep under the porch. The girl got to be better'n that.”

Looking at my watch again, I got out of the car and went into the small bus station. It was almost empty—only a few tired-looking travelers sitting in the rows of plastic chairs. I sniffed at the sight of ticket stubs and candy wrappers littering the floor and walked over to the ticket window.

“Could you tell me, please,” I asked of the man behind the grate, “when the next bus to Vidalia, Georgia, comes in?”

He smoothed his thin mustache as his eyes traveled up and around the window—thinking, I supposed. Then he cleared his throat. “That would be your Jacksonville bus. Twelve-forty-five.”

“Really!” I exclaimed, pleased beyond words that I could put
Trixie on a southbound bus as soon as she stepped off the northbound one.

“
A.
M.,” he said, and I had to hold on to the ticket shelf to steady myself.

More than twelve hours to wait
. I couldn't believe it. Well, nothing could be done about it—I'd have to take her home, give her dinner, and bring her back in the middle of the night.

I turned to walk away, disappointed and about half angry, wondering if I could put Trixie on a plane or hire a car service—anything to get her on the way out of Abbotsville.

The roar of a heavy motor and the screech of brakes announced the arrival of a bus. I walked outside to see a cloud of black smoke issuing from the rear of the bus as it pulled in and parked. When the door opened, passengers began to descend the steps to the platform—mothers with babies, a soldier, two unkempt men with paper sacks rolled up under their arms, an old woman with a scarf around her head, a heavyset girl with a shopping bag, and two attractive young women who didn't seem to be together.

I walked over to the most likely one, smiled, and asked, “Trixie?”

She gave me a scornful look and said, “I don't talk to strangers, especially in a bus station.” And walked away.

Just as the public address system came to life, announcing, “Bus for Asheville, Knoxville, and points in between now loading at Gate Three,” I approached the other teenager, who was struggling with a large suitcase.

“Trixie? Are you Trixie Bingham?”

“No, ma'am,” she said, hefting the suitcase from one hand to the other, “but I wish I was. I need help with this thing.”

Hope sprung in my breast—maybe Elsie had changed her mind and kept Trixie home. Turning away, I started for my car, thinking that I'd done my part by meeting the noon bus. It wasn't my fault that Trixie wasn't on it.

“Uh, ma'am,” a voice said to my back. “I'm Trixie.”

It's a good thing that I'd had so much experience in handling sticky social situations—you know, the kind that embarrass or
shock you, but which have to be managed without letting your true feelings show. This was one of those situations that demanded careful control of my face and voice, because Trixie turned out to be a short, stocky, almost muscular, and not-so-young woman with stringy hair and a sweating face that flushed bright red when I turned to look at her.

“Trixie?” I said, almost strangling on the word.

She ducked her head and clutched a wrinkled Target's shopping bag closer. “Yes'm, that's me.”

Lord,
even if I'd been looking forward to giving the girl a social whirl in Abbotsville society—such as it was—this was impossible. I glanced down at her hairy legs and large toenails—painted purple—sticking out of dusty sandals, taking in her bitten fingernails on my way, and realized that this situation called for every iota of self-control and social poise that I possessed.

“How do you do, Trixie,” I managed to get out. “I'm Julia Murdoch. You may address me as Miss Julia while you're here. But speaking of that, let me say that I'm sorry that you've made such a long trip in vain. Ordinarily, we would be happy to have you, but unfortunately, it seems that our plans for the summer call for us to be away. I'm afraid your visit will be an abbreviated one, and you'll have to return home tonight.”

She shrugged her shoulders, mumbled, “Okay,” and looked from side to side—anywhere but at me.

Well, that was easily done,
I thought, as she seemed unruffled by the prospect of a quick round trip. To be sure that she understood, though, I went on. “Yes, as much as we'd like to have you, our summer is completely taken up. But you'll have dinner with us, then I'll bring you back about midnight. I expect you can sleep on . . .” I stopped as the girl shifted from one foot to the other, then bent over, shuddering ever so slightly. “My goodness, are you all right?”

“I got to pee real bad.”

“Oh,” I said, my eyes widening. “Well, run into the station. There'll be a ladies' room there.”

“Meemaw said they's nasty people in 'em. I can wait till we get to your house.”

Meemaw?
That, I supposed, would be Elsie, but, I declare, I could think of half a dozen more acceptable names for a grandmother—Nana, Grandmommy, Grandmom, Grammy, even Granny—but Meemaw? Thank goodness, I didn't have the problem, having had no children. Therefore, no grandchildren.

“Well, come on then. Let's get you home.” I led her toward the car, wondering why she'd brought up the subject if she was able to wait. Then, stopping, I said, “Your luggage! Is it still on the bus?”

“They's a suitcase somewhere,” she said, making no move to retrieve it. Then she swung the shopping bag around. “My good stuff's in here.”

“That's all? For the
summer
?” I couldn't help the surprise in my voice.

Never meeting my eyes, she mumbled, “Meemaw said I'd need different clothes up here, and you'd know what to buy.”

“Get in the car then,” I said, opening the door and thinking that her Meemaw probably expected me to buy the clothes, too. “I'll see about your suitcase.” Walking back to the bus where the driver was emptying the baggage compartment, I found Trixie's huge, Samsonite suitcase—the kind with no wheels—among several others. When I tried to drag the thing to the car, the bus driver took pity and put it in the trunk for me.

With that done, I rounded the car to the driver's side, steeling myself for several afternoon hours of Trixie's company, while looking forward to the time I could put her on that midnight bus to Georgia.