Southern Living (27 page)

“I’m Lieutenant Crawford, Perry County Sheriff’s Department. This here’s Officer Piper,” he said, motioning to the uniformed officer beside him.

Suzanne leaned forward to get a closer look. “What do you mean scarin’ me like that?”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you, ma’am.”

“Well, that’s exactly what you did. You scared the daylights outta me.”

He bent down and picked up the Bracelet Buddy, which he handed to her. “When you didn’t answer the door I was just guessin’ that you were in the backyard gardenin’.”

“Well I wasn’t,” she said. “I pay someone to do that for me. What is so important that you just about had to kill me like that? I’m not parked in the street. It’s not the sprinklers, is it? I asked Virgil to fix the timer on those sprinklers.”

The accompanying deputy’s gold name tag said
S. Piper
. He looked to be about forty, with freckles, a thick head of red hair, and a Teddy Roosevelt mustache. He was close enough, just on the other side of the table, that Suzanne could hear the fizzing and gurgling sounds of blossoming hunger emanating from his stomach. “Do you mind if we sit down?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his shiny forehead with a white handkerchief. The detective turned and frowned at him.

“How long’s this gonna take?” Suzanne asked. “What’s this all about?”

“Do y’all have a dog?” asked the detective.

Suzanne rolled her eyes and exhaled in impatience. “What does this have to do with anything?” she said. “No, we don’t have a dog. I hate dogs.”

Eyes only, with chin locked in place, he looked at the deputy, then again at Suzanne.

“You know about the problems with the dogs in the neighborhood …”

“You’d have to be livin’ in a cave not to know about it. Why?”

The detective bit his lower lip and brought his hands to his hips, drawing back the lapel of his dress coat and revealing a gun in a black-leather shoulder holster. “Have you seen anything unusual in your yard?”

“Like what?” Suzanne asked.

“Well … any signs of somethin’ that might be hurtin’ those dogs.”

“Now how would I know what’s killin’ those dogs?”

He looked away from Suzanne for a moment, at a mockingbird warbling atop the gable of the garage. “Miz Parley—It is Miz Parley, right?—I’ll just be real straight with you, Miz Parley. There’s folks who say they’ve seen you shootin’ at dogs with a squirt gun at night.”

Instantly, a picture of Jodi Armbuster came to mind, peeking from the plantation shutters in that side bedroom that faced Suzanne’s house. If not her, then who? Suzanne had been so careful, shooting only after dark, always carrying a stack of envelopes with her so she could pretend to be scanning that day’s mail when cars passed, their headlights illuminating her in her floral Christian Dior bathrobe.

“Is there any law against a little squirt gun?” Suzanne asked. “No, ma’am.”

“Well then …” Suzanne began to gather and crumple into a ball the brown paper from the UPS package. “It’s no secret that the dogs of Red Hill Plantation are turnin’ my front yard into a toxic waste dump,” she said. “I’ve got a right to protect my property just like anybody else does. At least I’m not shootin’ ’em with a real gun.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And my husband knows I’m doin’ this. Dr. Boone Parley, the
neurosurgeon? Have y’all heard of Parley Road? That’s named after Boone’s great-great-granddaddy—he was the mayor of Selby.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Suddenly Suzanne remembered that she had not left the house that day, and she had no makeup on. She stood with the wad of paper beneath her arm, the bracelets and Bracelet Buddy in hand. “So if y’all don’t mind, I’ve gotta go inside now and get dinner goin’.”

The detective looked at the butcher knife and the untouched Waterford tumbler of whiskey and soda, which had started to sweat on the sides. “Yes, ma’am. Do you mind if we take a look around the yard?”

“What for?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know—anything. You never know what you’ll find. Me and Sergeant Piper been lookin’ in everybody’s yard.”

“Well don’t be trampin’ in my pansy beds.”

“No, ma’am.”

From the windows upstairs, racing from room to room, Suzanne followed their progress around the house as they poked in the mature boxwood and holly bushes along the foundation. Luck was with her that day; just one hour earlier, Suzanne had retrieved the green, plastic dog dish and brought it inside to refill it with the Alpo and antifreeze. It was now soaking in the stainless-steel sink in her utility room, the flecks of deadly, stinky food loosening and rising to the surface of the sudsy water.

Still, the men seemed to linger somewhere on the southeast side, and Suzanne could not see what they were doing; her vision was blocked by the magnolia at the corner of the house.

She could not see Detective Andy Crawford on his hands and knees, pointing a powerful, yellow flashlight into the undergrowth of the shrubs. She could not see him reaching in, up to his armpit, firmly yanking as if to snag something free, then pulling out a small twig of holly. Suzanne could not see him hold it in the sun
for a better look, smell it, raise his eyebrows and nod at his partner, then pull out a Ziploc sandwich bag and stow the small branch safely in his breast pocket.

“Suzanne, honey, pass me that red.”

“What’s gonna be red?”

“This here’s a woodpecker. His little crown’s gonna be red.”

“I haven’t seen you do this one before.”

“I haven’t. It’s my first time.”

Known simply as “the cake lady,” Carol O’Neal was one of the few reasons north Selby women ventured south of Truman Parkway. There was nothing on this planet she could not replicate in the form of a cake, and for years Suzanne had watched and helped her mother as she painted with frosting, tiny squirt after squirt, works of art that were nothing short of pointillism. She could create images of roses and magnolias and dogs, babies and pheasants and deer and lovers sitting arm in arm on docks. Once she’d been asked by the Perry County Commission to do a portrait of Madeline VanDermeter, the executive director of the International Dogwood Festival, and though up close it appeared to be a yellow-dominant piece of abstract art the cake did take on a striking resemblance of the woman when seen from across a room.

This time, on a huge, rectangular sheet cake covered in white frosting she had sketched out with eyeliner and diluted black watercolor a scene of Georgia forest with resident wildlife.

Once a week, when her father was bass-fishing at Lake Oconee, Suzanne would drive down and work for half a day with her mother.

“Why don’t I come up there this week and let’s us have lunch together,” her mother had said on the phone that morning.

“Momma …”

“There’s a new Italian restaurant on Gibron Road. I saw the ad for it in the
Reflector
. I don’t think it’s too far from your house.”

“Really, Momma, I wanna come down there.”

“I clipped some coupons for it, Suzanne.”

“You know how I like helpin’ you do cakes.”

“You don’t like helpin’ me with my cakes, Suzanne. You just don’t want me comin’ up there.”

“Now that’s not true.”

“I’ve stayed away from your north Selby life like a good girl, Suzanne. All I’m askin’ is for you to have lunch with your momma in your own neighborhood.”

“But there’s somethin’ I wanna talk to you about, Momma.”

“We can do it over lunch.”

“I wanna do it at home.”

“Oh, Suzanne.”

“Please, Momma?”

Carol sighed. “You are the most determined girl on the planet, Suzanne. I swear you would’ve driven me crazy by now. Okay, but you gotta bring us lunch. I do not feel like cookin’ today.”

After eating the casserole Suzanne had plucked from her freezer in the garage—something called Mexican shepherd’s pie, which was written on the aluminum foil in black marker—they began the long task of filling in the woodsy landscape, creamy dot by dot.

“You do the trees,” Carol said. “Now be patient, Suzanne. Stay in the lines. Please. This is my first cake for this lady and I want it to be good.”

“Whose is it?” Suzanne asked.

“Her name’s Alison Riner. You know her?”

“I know her. She just painted her foyer the tackiest green I’ve ever seen.”

“Is she nice to you?”

“She’s not ugly to me. How much you chargin’ her for this cake, Momma?”

“Seventy-five.”

“Seventy-five! They’d pay a hundred and seventy-five in Atlanta. You gotta charge more.”

“How much do you think?”

“Charge ’em two hundred. Alison would pay that.”

“No, no,” her mother said, lightly swatting Suzanne’s wrist. “That part’s not supposed to be brown. That part’s black. Here. Here’s the black. Two hundred? Who’d pay two hundred dollars for a cake?”

“Any lady in north Selby would pay two hundred for your cakes, Momma. No one does ’em like you.”

Unaccustomed to such praise, Carol smiled. “Now what was it you wanted to talk about?” she asked.

“Has Boone called you?”

“Boone never calls me, Suzanne.”

“Well, he might be callin’.”

“Why?”

Suzanne set her pastry bag on the table and nervously began to twist her diamond engagement ring. “Oh, Momma,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “Boone thinks I’m pregnant.”

Carol lifted her pastry bag from its spot over the cake and looked at her daughter.

“Now how can that be?”

“It can’t, Momma. You know that.”

“What on earth have you done, Suzanne Denise O’Neal?”

“Oh, Lord … I don’t know.” Suzanne then pounded her fists on the table—the very same foam green Formica table she’d pounded her fists on as a child. “I was just so tired of him bein’ mad at me all the time, Momma. And then I had too much to drink one night at the Forsyth Room and it just came runnin’ out of my mouth like water.”

“Suzanne, Suzanne, Suzanne. What on earth are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know. I’m supposed to be three months pregnant, and I’m sure not.”

“You gotta tell him, Suzanne.”

“I can’t! He’s told his whole family. Evelyn keeps callin’ the house, wonderin’ why I’m not gettin’ a nursery ready. She’s even
named the baby already! You know, Momma, that woman’s gonna drive me crazy. She hates me. She’s always hated me, and I sure don’t know why.”

“My Lord, Suzanne. Get ahold of yourself, girl. You’re shakin’ like a rattlesnake. There’s no other way outta this. You’ve got to do the Christian thing and tell the truth.”

Suzanne wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “If I told Boone the truth he’d leave me,” she said. “And then I’d be right back where I started.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“If Boone calls, Momma, you gotta say I’m goin’ to your doctor.”

“I’m not gonna lie for you, Suzanne. I just can’t do that.”

“You’ve got to. I’m your daughter.”

“Suzanne.”

“Oh, Momma, please.”

“Oh, Suzanne. What is it you want out of life, girl? I sure wish I understood that.”

Usually, when the little girls came with their mothers to pick up a cake, they stayed in the car or close to their mother, and they would look at Suzanne over their shoulder as if she were a dangerous temptation. From afar, Suzanne would admire their silk hair bows and patent-leather Mary Janes, and sometimes one of these girls would soften and melt away from her mother’s thigh and enter Suzanne’s world.

“What’s your name?” Suzanne asked.

“Alison.”

“My name’s Suzanne. I like your shoes.”

The little girl looked down at them. “You wanna try ’em on?”

“Can I?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you can put
mine
on!” Suzanne said, already standing on
one leg, pulling off her slip-on, white-and-pink sneaker with a smiling Garfield on the heel and dirt and blue and yellow frosting stains on the tops.

When the mothers walked into the living room, the girls were sitting on the carpeting, leaning against the back of the couch with their legs straight ahead of them. Each gazed at their feet as if they were foreign objects, and indeed each little girl at that moment had fled into a daydream where such shoes could be worn at will.

“Mary Alison!” the mother exclaimed. “What on earth are you doin’?”

“She’s just tryin’ on my shoes, Momma. And I’m tryin’ on hers.”

“Well you get your own shoes back on right now—and I mean right now. Those shoes are brand new! Your daddy works real hard so we can buy those nice shoes, and you do not need to be lettin’ every stranger in the world try ’em on.”

As Suzanne drove home from her mother’s, she wondered if Alison Riner had matched the Suzanne of 243 Kottrell Avenue with the Suzanne of 2146 Red Hill Drive. She tried to imagine the two of them now, happy on chardonnay, doing the same thing on the floor of her living room in Red Hill.

Suzanne fled northward, uphill, back to the higher part of town, unconsciously leaning forward in her seat and depressing the accelerator further with each quarter mile until she was zipping down Pio Nono Road at sixty miles an hour, unable to shake the feeling that if she did not drive fast enough her black Lexus would creep to a stop and begin rolling backward, slowly at first, but then faster and faster, returning her to the world below.

W
ho’s your friend, Donna?” asked Betty in bakery.

Donna carried beneath her arm the fruit of her labors from the previous night at home, a six-foot-tall Super Okra Man, which she had cut out from rigid, white cardboard and washed with light-green watercolor. With an exaggerated, toothy smile and oversized pupils, he was reminiscent of the giant, talking cigarette from the Doonesbury comic strip, which Donna had recently discovered, and enjoyed, on the editorial page of the
Reflector
.