Read Mother Finds a Body Online
Authors: Gypsy Rose Lee
Mother Finds a Body (2 page)
My mother was fifty-nine years old when she died. She claimed to have no regrets; however, throughout her illness she kept saying that as soon as she was better she was going to write another book. We will never get to read that one, so we'll have to make do with the three we have, and consider ourselves lucky at that.
| Â | Erik Lee Preminger 2012 |
Contents
1
A TEMPERATURE OF ONE HUNDRED AND TEN, AT
night, isn't exactly the climate for asthma or murder, and Mother was suffering from a chronic case of both. She pushed the damp, tight curls off her forehead and tapped her foot impatiently on the trailer doorstep.
“You either bury that body in the woods tonight, or you finish your honeymoon without your mother.”
She meant it, too. I could tell from the way she fanned herself with the folded newspaper I'd been saving for my scrapbook. It wasn't a breeze she was after; a hurricane would be more like it. As the paper waved back and forth I could see the caption:
GYPSY ROSE LEE WEDS EX-BURLESQUE COMIC IN WATER TAXI
. Below, it read:
Biff Brannigan, hit star from
Rings on Her Fingers,
and bride plan honeymoon in trailer
.
The date line was a week old, August 13, Friday, to make it good. That has been my idea; it sounded romantic. The water taxi was my idea, too. I had romance mixed up with tradition on the last thought, but, as it turned out, it had been romantic. The water taxi was like an overfed gondola. A canvas stretched over the front half of it and wooden seats extended front to back. The captain was one we found in a waterfront saloon, and our best man we picked up on the way to the wharf. The Bible came from and all-night mission that served coffee and doughnuts with religion.
Even Biff was admitting that it was a wonderful way to get married, when the motor started up and we chugged out to sea. We sat in the back of the boat and I let my hand drag in the cool water. The moon was full and yellow.
“It's like a prop, ain't it?” Biff asked. His voice was low. I think he was awed. “Sort of a Minsky moon. I almost expect the tenor to start singing, âI'm in love with the daughter of the man in the moon.'”
“Yes,” I agreed tremulously. “Then the curtain pulls away and the chorus girls are posing in the sixteen-foot parallels in rhinestone G-strings. The one in the middle holds a flitter star.”
One of the longshoremen up front was singing. I couldn't catch all the words, but the song was about a lubber who ought to have his gizzard skewered.
It had been very romantic. But that was a week ago, before we landed in Ysleta, Texas, and found ourselves a corpse. It wasn't a very nice corpse, either. It was quite dead and it had a hole in the back of its head that was big enough for a fist.
“You can't leave a decayed body hanging around in this hot weather,” she said. “It'sâunhealthy. Asthma or no asthma, I can't stand the odor.”
Biff and I had been on friendly terms with corpses before, but even so we didn't refer to them as casually as Mother did. She thought of our latest one as a pound of hamburger or an opened can of beans; we couldn't leave them around in the heat, either.
I had to agree with her about the odor, but I might have pointed out that her newest asthma cure, Life Everlasting, was no bed of heliotrope. As smells go, it ran the corpse a close second.
Mother stopped to wheeze, and Biff used the lull to get in a few words.
“But, Evangie,” he said patiently, “when you find a body in your trailer you gotta call the cops. We've been able to stand the odor this long; we can put up with it for one more night and first thing in the morning I'll drive into town and tell the police.”
Mother's wheezing ended on a high note. “I'd expect a remark like that from you,” she said. “You don't care about my daughter's welfare. You don't care about her career. Go ahead and call the police. Let them drag her name through the newspapers. Let them ruin everything she has worked for all her life!” Mother's voice had reached the hysterical stage and her face was turning red.
Biff recognized the symptoms and rushed into the trailer for the asthma powder. While he was getting it I led Mother to a camp chair under the lean-to tent. As she sat down I tried to reason with her.
“But, Mother, someone sooner or later is going to find out about the corpse. One look and they'll know it's murder. Then they'll find out that he's our best man and . . .”
“How could they find that out?” Mother asked. Her mouth was a thin white line. Her jaw was set firmly. “After all, the man was a total stranger to you. I can't vouch for Biff, but I certainly know you never saw him before in your life.”
“Neither did Biff, and you know it. That isn't the point. The idea is we can't touch the body until we notify the police. There's a law about that.”
Mother sniffed. “Well, fiddle-faddle such a law. It's inconsiderate.”
Biff closed the screen door quietly. He tiptoed over to the table and poured a mound of Mother's asthma powder into a saucer. He touched a match to it. When the flames died down, a sticky-smelling smoke curled up. Mother put a Turkish towel over her head and buried her face in the volcano. Biff and I listened to her labored breathing until it sounded as though the worst part of the attack was over, then I spoke to him.
“Were they sleeping?”
“You mean the dogs, the monkey, the guinea pig, or our guests?” Biff asked. Then he laughed softly. “What a honeymoon! All we need is an olio and we got ourselves a first-class Chautauqua.” After a second he answered my question. “Yep, they were sleeping, all right. As usual, they took up the whole damn trailer.”
“Well, don't say it as though it's my fault. After all, Mandy and Cliff are your friends. If you want to play Joe Host to every comic on the burlesque circuit, don't blame me when you have no bed to sleep in.”
“Gee Gee and Dimples, those two beauties of the runways, are your friends,” Biff said pleasantly. Too pleasantly, I thought. “Should I have said no when they asked for a lift?”
“A lift,” I said, “is around the corner or up the block, not clear across the country. Furthermore, you don't have to be sarcastic about them. They may not be the beauties you've been working with in
Rings on Her Fingers
, but I'd like to see one of those four-forty legitimate dames do the bumps the way Gee Gee does. Or do Dimples's quiver for that matter.
Biff was on the verge of answering me when we heard the scratching of the screen door. Bill, dachshund, and proud father of four sons, wanted out. His front paws clawed on the wire mesh. He was standing on a white arm. It was Gee Gee's Graham's arm. That was her night to sleep on the floor, and she was sprawled out in front of the door. Her red hair was wet with sweat and she was curled up like a child, with her freckled nose buried in her other arm. When I opened the door for the dog, she gave him a push that sent him rolling down the steps.
“Nice thing,” Biff said. “Tossing our watchdog out on his pedigreed rear. Come here, Billy Boy.”
Bill waddled over and allowed himself to be petted. Biff rubbed one floppy ear, then the other. The dog whined happily when Biff talked to him.
“He's a busy guy, keeping an eagle eye on his corpse, isn't he? On account of he found it he feels it's sort of personal property, doesn't he?”
Bill wiggled around saying yes.
Mother poked her tousled head out from under the towel. “Please don't forget that
I
found the body,” she said. “And as soon as I get over this attack we'll bury it, or I'll take the first train east.”
An angry voice from the trailer yelled, “Shut up!” It sounded
like Cliff (Corny) Cobb. He was Biff's very good friend and the only comic in burlesque I really disliked.
“If he's got your place in the bed again I'm going to drag him out of it by his big, ugly nose,” I said.
I didn't try to keep my voice down; I wanted Cliff to hear me. He had been my pet beef since he joined us in Yuma. And I had my reasons for beefing, too. First of all, he invited himself; moved in, bag and baggage, even after I'd told him how crowded we were. He said he would help Biff with the driving. In the thousand-some miles we had traveled, he hadn't touched the wheel. He was supposed to pay his share of the groceries, too, and so far I hadn't seen the color of his money.
“He's a dead beat, that's what he is.”
Biff tried to shush me.
“Oh, shush yourself,” I said irritably. “Three weeks now, and he hasn't slept on the floor once. If everyone else can take turns, he certainly can. I told you what it would be like before we left Yuma, but oh, no, you know so much! He's
your
friend. He gets cleaned out in a crap game so he's gotta move in with us. It isn't like he's changed any, either. He was the same selfish, inconsiderate lout when he was on the road with us, too. If there's a good spot in the show, your friend Corny Cobb gets it. He's always grabbing the best makeup shelf, grabbing all your scenes, grabbing everything but a check. No wonder he's the only one who winds up with a buck in the bank at the end of the season. He never paid for anything in his life!”
I must have been screaming, because Mother heard me even though she was still under the towel.
“Gypsy's absolutely right,” she said, her voice muffled.
Corny yelled from the trailer again. “Shut up, dammit. Where the hell do you think you are? In a boiler factory?”
I shut up. Not because Corny had requested it in his individual way, but because I had worn myself out. Biff can be so aggravating at times. Instead of putting up an argument when I have one of my fits, he just sits there quietly until I get tired. Nothing infuriates me more and I usually get so mad I want to
cry. Instead of crying this time, I started to giggle. The whole picture was suddenly funny to me. A trailer full of people, including one dead one, and me beefing about a comic because he didn't pay his share of the groceries.
Biff wasn't sure that my giggle was his cue. He waited for me to speak.
“We haven't enough to worry about,” I said, “I have to make a scene about Corny! I'm sorry, honey.”
Biff walked over and kissed me on the nose. He might have done better if the Turkish towel hadn't stirred. Mother could sense emotions even when she was under a towel. After a moment she emerged, red-eyed but businesslike.
“Oh my,” she said, “that certainly was a bad one.” She folded the towel carefully and placed it on the back of her chair. Then she put out the last of the asthma powder by smothering it with the top of the Life Everlasting container.
“Now we get busy,” she said. “You and Louise get a shovel to dig the hole. While you're getting it, I'll go look for a nice burial place.” As she walked toward the woods she hummed a little tune: “
I know a place where the sun never shines, where the fou-u-r leaf clovers grow
.”
She stooped over and picked up something. She walked back into the light of the kerosene lamp, examining the pieces of grass she held in her hand.
“See, children,” she exclaimed happily, “a four-leaf clover. My little song never misses. That's a sign for you to leave everything to Mother. Everything.” Without a backward glance, Mother tucked the four-leaf clover into her curly hair and walked back toward the woods.
“Biff!” she sang out a moment later. “Ask Louise to tell you about the time I found the seventy-one four-leaf clovers.”
We both listened to Mother's little song as it became fainter and fainter. Then Biff turned to me. There was something strange in his expression: not exactly fear, but close to it. As though he were puzzled about something that would frighten him if it were true. He waited so long to speak that I became uncomfortable.
“That's true,” I said. “About the four-leaf clovers, I mean. She really did find seventy-one of 'em once. On Mother's Day. We were making our jumps by car and, believe it or not, we had five blowouts! While we were waiting for the tow car, Mother started singing her song and before we knew it, there was Mother, with a fistful of clovers.”
“Five blowouts doesn't sound very lucky to me,” Biff said. He was still staring into the woods. Mother was out of sight, but he kept peering into the darkness.
