The Sisterhood of the Queen Mamas (17 page)

Why is it, I have to ask myself, that everyone around me is so good at making excellent points and I am so miserable about accepting them? The points, that is, not the people. David was right. Nothing I could say would persuade him to reveal anything more to me regarding what David knew about Morty Belmont. Nor would I try to persuade him.

But, oh, I
so
wanted to know what my husband knew!

“I just…” No. I couldn’t ask it of him. I traced a bead of condensation down the side of my iced tea glass, my lips pressed shut tight. I understood, truly I did, but that did not make everything easy for me. That’s part of the deal when you’re a Christian, of course. It’s not that temptations are easier to turn away, it’s that you will find the strength through Christ to do what you know He would do.

So that’s what I did. I didn’t push for more information from David. But that did not change my emotional stake in it all, and I let him know that by adding, quite softly, “Jan is my friend.”

“Since when?”

“Since I decided to meddle in her life and make things better for all my flea market foundlings.”

“She’s your friend because you decided all on your own to stick your nose in her business?”

“Yes. You’ve heard of bosom buddies?”

He nodded cautiously.

“Well, Jan and I are proboscis pals.”

He questioned that with the slightest shift of his eyebrows. Yes, we’ve been married so long we can communicate through minute facial muscle movements. Sigh. No wonder he doesn’t think he needs to listen to me. All the man has to do is sit across from me for a few seconds and he can read me like a book.

“Okay, forget bosom buddies and proboscis pals. When you get right down to it, we are, no matter what our conflicts, sisters in Christ.” I waited a moment for that to sink in, but not long enough that he could make the argument that Helen might also be considered a sister in Christ. Not because that wasn’t a valid point, but because—and I’ve already owned up to this—I don’t take valid points that clash with my opinions all that well, and because it would definitely take the discussion in a whole other direction. “I care what happens to Jan. I still want things to work out well for her. I think about her a lot, and I pray for her.”

His face softened, and lit with deep, admiring love. “That’s my girl.”

“I don’t do it because I am your girl, David.” I did not raise my voice or clip my words or frown and look cross at him. I just spoke my heart with calm and quiet conviction. “I do it because I am my own woman.”

His forehead creased. His mouth set in a thin line. His eyes seemed to grow dark, more perplexed than perturbed. “I’m not sure I know this woman you claim to be now, Odessa.”

“I’m not sure you do, either.” I couldn’t believe I’d said it. But there it was, out in the open, as plain as the pitcher of tea between us. “I’m not sure you have ever tried to know
and understand me, all of me, not just me as your wife or the mother of your children or your helpmate, but me, the person most like myself.”

“Wife and mother and helpmate, what more is there? Besides the cowgirl and…”

“You don’t even know about the tiaras, much less the Royal Service Hostess Queen partyware, do you, David?”

“Tiaras? Partyware? Are you saying you’re selling those self-burping container systems in your spare time?”

Oddly enough, I could sort of see where he got that. And I had to give the man credit for remembering that once upon a time Tiara glassware and Tupperware had both been sold by housewives in friends’ homes. It all made sense—though more in a Scooby-Doo way than a Nancy Drew one.

I patted his hand, and this time it was my turn to smile with indulgence and good humor. “No, sweetie pie. In my whole life, you and the boys were the only self-burping things I ever had to explain to any of my friends.”

He laughed and shook his head.

“I was referring to a set of serving pieces popular around the time we got married. They were made by a company called Royal Service, and I loved the black-and-gold Hostess Queen pattern.”

“Uh-huh.” I could tell he wasn’t following, but bless his heart, he hadn’t completely given up trying.

“I loved those pieces. To me, they symbolized a woman who cared about her home, serving her family, entertaining her friends and yet retaining her own individual style.”

“You got this all from a few dishes?” I half expected him to whip out a notepad and write it all down to study later. It was that new a concept to the man.

“I know it seems shallow, but, well, back in those days, the way a woman appointed her home was an extension of her personality. It was a form of self-expression. Was she elegant or whimsical or pragmatic or…”

“Self-burping?”

It was my turn to laugh. “Yes. I suppose so.”

“And you were?”

“A queen,” I said softly.

He took my hand. “My queen.”

I yanked my hand free. “Then why did you give away the few pieces of Hostess Queen partyware I ever owned to the church’s kitchen and then berate me as childish for asking you to get it back for me?”

His eyes got real big. Husband-realizing-he’s-been-a-jerk-big-time big. “I did that?”

“See? It didn’t even register with you, David. And it really mattered to me.”

“But you—”

“It really mattered,” I whispered, choking back tears. I was not just talking about the dishes then, and he knew it. I was talking about everything in my life. All the new things I was experiencing. All the things in my life and the lives of the boys that had passed him by and could never be retrieved. All my hopes and dreams.
Me.

I was reminding the man who had loved me and lived with me for most of my life that standing before him was a woman who mattered.

I just hope he heard me.

That’s right, my marriage isn’t perfect. What’s more, my husband isn’t perfect. And most shocking of all? I am not perfect! Though I do strive to come as close to perfection as I possibly can in my hair and grooming.

But then I think of the people I know who try so hard to achieve at least the image of perfection—Jan Belmont, Helen Davenport, Bernadette Alvarez, and even, in her own dark and strange little world, Chloe Morgan. What had it gotten them, this trying to make everyone believe the impossible about them? They didn’t seem happy with themselves, or with their lives.

My life wasn’t perfect, but I had a wonderful friend in Maxine—and, of course, my David.

“All things considered…” I stopped by the chair where David had settled down to do his daily Bible reading the next morning and dropped a kiss on the top of his dear old bald head. “I still sure do love you.”

He kissed my hand.

I sighed.

“I love you, too, my sweet cowgirl queen,” he whispered, his way of both apologizing and showing me he had listened, even if he hadn’t known what to make of what he heard.

And as I headed out the door for my regular date with Maxine for Friday-morning flea marketing, I heard the love of my life call out after me, “Keep your eyes open. It’s probably old man Jenkins wearing a rubber monster mask trying to scare you meddling kids off so you won’t find his stash of—”

Clunk.
I shut the door. Hard.

I love him, but if he compares my efforts to do right by my friends to the repetitive plot of a cartoon dog detective one more time…well, I might just have to take an eggbeater to him.

If only the rest of the people I cared about could be whipped into shape so easily.

E
veryone is familiar with the saying “Be careful what you wish for…you just might get it.”

And I hadn’t just wished for something. I’d prayed about it. I’d worked toward it. I’d involved others in trying to make it happen. Maxine and David had both warned me about this drive to accomplish my goals. About thinking I knew better than the Lord what the Lord wanted me to do in order to comply with His will.

I admit it now, I was clearly too fixed on getting what I’d wished for.

I’d wished for attention. I’d wished to bring my flea market girls to the forefront and show them how much I believed in them. I’d wished…to shine like a diamond.

Maxine and David had told me to be careful, but maybe what someone should have reminded me of was this little factoid: The way to make a diamond is to take a lump of coal and apply a whole lot of pressure.

That morning, as Maxine and I approached the gate, Sammy did not call to us. He did not hurry over to thrust a flyer into my hand or try to charm me into taking a ride in his beautiful balloon. He didn’t even look our way. In fact, he made such a point of not looking our way that it made it almost impossible not to stare straight at him and practically dare him to make eye contact.

“Cut that out,” Maxine warned.

“I’m not doing anything,” I protested.

“If your eyes got any buggier, someone around here would throw a net on you and sell you for bait.” She held her pink pearlized reading glasses up to her nose, then moved them in and out, to demonstrate the way my eyes were bulging.

“Oh, Maxine, that doesn’t even make sense.” I knew what she meant, of course. And I could picture myself like some creature flopping around in a bait bucket, its eyes glazed and googy. That comparison, and my own guilt, put plenty of petulance in my tone when I justified my behavior to my observant-but-quaint-phrase-impaired pal. “I was just looking. Looking and doing are definitely not the same thing.”

“That kind of reasoning is a slippery slope, Odessa. Wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it was the kind of thinking Morty Belmont used when he first started climbing on the roof and gazing off toward his clandestine meeting place. Looking ain’t doing.”

“I’d rather you didn’t compare me to that…that—” I could practically see David raising an eyebrow to let me know just how much I didn’t actually
know
about that situation “—that
man,
Maxine.”

“Fine.” She snagged me by the sleeve of my billowy jersey fabric dress and tugged me along behind her toward the open gateway. “But I don’t take back that it’s that same kind of slippery-slope thinking. Looking isn’t doing. Dating a boy who does wrong is not
doing,
but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to go in there and let our Chloe know that we are not happy with some of her choices.”

That day, we did not dawdle. We moved swiftly through the stalls using our keen eyes and what Maxine likes to call “Queen-o-vision” to scope out any potential pieces of Royal Service partyware, of which we found exactly zero. Within a half hour of arriving at the market, we found ourselves approaching Bernadette’s booth, a place we don’t usually reach until around or just after lunch.

Our timing was perfect. If we had taken even a few minutes longer, we’d have entirely missed the visit by the petite woman in the tan-and-brown uniform of the Castlerock Police Department. Redheaded and with her stick-straight hair caught back in a ponytail, the woman jotting something down in a black vinyl notepad wore no makeup to accent her fair skin and green eyes.

“Oh, no. We are
not
marching up to that nice police lady and demanding she let you slap some lipstick on her and poof her hair up like a pan of Jiffy Pop popcorn gone hay-wire.”

“Hush, Maxine, I’m trying to paint a picture with words here.”

The fact was, the plainness and the petiteness of the police officer created a striking contrast to our tall, zaftig Bernadette, with her long hair curled and flowing and her eyes and mouth enhanced by subtle color.

“Jake Cordell is nowhere in sight. You don’t have to sell anyone on how lovely Bernadette is, Odessa.”

“Get out of my head, Maxine.”

But inside my head or not, Maxine was right. She had summed it all up right there. The whole thought process of the night before was still fresh in my mind. How far should you go to get someone’s attention, and how long would it last? Not long, if there wasn’t something more beneath the pretty surface that first attracted the eye.

That’s not just my thought process, skipping like a flat stone across water. That was me actually working out how much I had undersold Bernadette in the past. How much I had assumed that nobody else would see what I saw in that strong, capable, kind young woman. But now, seeing her standing there, right beside what most folks would agree represented the very icon of the strong, capable woman, I could clearly see that Bernadette would draw anyone’s eye. She commanded attention. She had not needed me, or her mother, or her grandmother, to do that for her.

If Jake missed it, then that was
his
problem, not hers.

Of course, if Jake missed it, his problem might be that he was blinded by his interest in somebody else. At that thought, I turned away from Bernadette and the officer and looked toward the health-food booth across the aisle.

“Something different about Chloe today, don’t you think?” I whispered to Maxine.

She summed it up succinctly. “Pink.”

I watched the young lady hand a tiny paper cup of orange liquid to a woman pushing a baby carriage. “What?”

“She’s wearing pink.” Maxine gave the girl a discreet wave and kept talking to me through the side of her
mouth. “Took your advice and went a bit more feminine with her look, is all.”

I sized up the pale green gauzy skirt with what looked like watercolor roses splashed along the ankle-length hem and the small pink denim jacket she wore over a white tank top. She hadn’t done that for
me.
She had done it for Sammy, and my gut told me it wasn’t to please him, but to protect him.

“Her face,” I whispered again. “Something is off.”

Maxine’s hand froze, her fingers still curved in mid-wave. She dropped her arm to her side and narrowed her eyes. “She has a split lip, Odessa. The girl has a split lip.”

“And she’s not wearing her piercings,” I added, in my best objective-girl-detective manner.

“Is that important?” Maxine wrinkled up her nose and squinted all the harder, just tempting me to scold her about looking too hard, the way she had me. “You did ask her to take all but her earrings out when you did her makeover.”

“Yeah, but you know she put every last stud and ring right back in the second she flew out that door.”

“I don’t think she did. Did you see the look on her face when she caught her reflection in the mirror that day? And the way she sparkled when we all fussed over her?”

“What are my Tiara Madres buzzing about over here at the edge of my booth today?” Bernadette leaned gingerly across the glass display case as the officer moved back into the aisle and, still looking at the pad in her hand, began walking in the direction of the health-food booth.

Maxine only had to lift her eyes to indicate Chloe.

“Ahh.” Bernadette stood straight and folded her arms. “You noticed it, too?”

“The new wardrobe?” Maxine asked.

Bernadette shook her head. “Her face.”

“See, I told you there was something about it.” I had moved around to put my back to Chloe, so it wouldn’t be so obvious we were standing there scrutinizing her and talking about her behind her…behind
my
back. “And not just the cut lip, either. She’s not wearing her piercings.”

Bernadette nodded to a passerby, then met my gaze. “She can’t.”

“Why not?” Maxine, who had admonished me about making bug eyes at Sammy when he wasn’t even looking at me, planted both feet firmly in the aisle, put her fists on her hips and stared right at the girl.

“That one side of her face is all puffy.” Bernadette swept her fingertips over the top of the display case, as if she’d suddenly discovered a film of dust on the thing. “She couldn’t get her eyebrow piercings in if she wanted to.”

Maxine scowled and clenched her hands, and even her voice grew tight as she said, “Oh, I wish there was a sinner handy right now.”

“What for?” I asked.

“So they could spew all the cusswords I can’t permit myself to at that no-good girl-beater Sammy.”

Bernadette raised her head to say something, but then her eyes shifted in Chloe’s direction, and suddenly she gasped.

At that point, I had to turn to look.

Redheaded Officer Ponytail—of course, she had a real name, but I didn’t know it and I did know about her hair-style, so that was my name for her—the officer stopped dead center in front of Chloe. She flipped back a couple pages in her notepad, then one forward, not speaking.

Chloe retreated one step, then another. She set the tray of paper cups down behind her. If she could have, I think for sure she would have crawled backward, up over the table with all the health-food packages and samples on it, and hidden like a spider in a small, dark corner of the booth itself.

Maxine reached across the display case and grabbed Bernadette by the wrist. “Did you tell that lady officer about Sammy?”

“No, the officer is following up on a routine report by Mrs. Davenport. There’s a reporter from the newspaper around, too, trying to figure out if there’s a story here.”

The officer closed her notebook and pointed to a paper cup.

Chloe reacted, and I think—though I am probably making this up because, like imagining Morty and Helen having a torrid affair as opposed to an inappropriate friendship, it made for a better story later—her hand shook as she handed the police officer the mysterious brew.

The officer lifted the cup, the way they do in the movies when offering a casual toast, then tossed back the drink.

I winced.

Maxine grimaced.

Bernadette muttered, “Yuck” and stuck out her tongue.

The officer, upon tasting the cup’s contents, did the same. Wince. Grimace. Yuck.

“If we ever get a second chance with that girl, let’s make over those concoctions she peddles,” I suggested.

“It’s prepackaged,” Bernadette said. “The person who actually owns the booth has a franchise or distributorship or whatever they call it. They get the stuff in by the boxload,
and Chloe, or whoever is hired to run the booth, just mixes the stuff up with hot water.”

“You’re kidding.” Maxine clucked her tongue in classic for-shame-for-shame fashion. “And they sell that as health food?”

“I think they call it a dietary supplement. That covers a multitude of sins.”

“I think there are much better ways to have your sins covered.” My focus went from the officer’s sour expression to the gritty residue in the cup she threw into the trash bag by Chloe’s side. “And speaking of which, if we really ever do get a second chance with that girl, we need to talk to her about the Lord.”

“She’s hearing it,” Bernadette murmured.

“From…?” I shut my eyes.
Please don’t say Jake. Please don’t say Jake.

“Abner, for one.”

“Oh, yeah. Abner.” My eyes popped open again. “I kind of like him.”

Bernadette smiled. “Actually, so do I.”

I turned to look at Chloe again and tried one of David’s tricks—redirection. “Does Chloe like him?”

“She listens to him,” Bernadette said.

I smiled. You don’t have to be older than dirt like me and Maxine—

“Hey!”

—like me and people who graduated high school the same year I did, got married as many years ago as I did, had kids the same general age as my kids, served as a minister’s wife for the same number of years as I did and basically lived a parallel life to mine—

“That’s better.”

—to know that finding someone who listens to you is a blessing in its own right.

“Is Abner also talking to her about Sammy?” I brushed my fingertips over the side of my face.

“When it comes to Sammy, Chloe shuts down.” Bernadette paused long enough to ask a browsing couple if they needed any help, which seemed to scare them clean away.

“Maybe if the three of us talked to her…”

“We’ve done that.” Maxine put her hand on my arm. The thing about Maxine—well, one of many “things” about Maxine—is that she has this amazing sense of timing where people are concerned.
And
where making smart remarks to her best pal is concerned, but that’s another “thing.” Anyway, Maxine would never suggest we ignore a problem like Chloe’s, but unlike me, she is very astute about how to approach individuals. She wins people over through consistency and love, not by my preferred methods—pushing and pulling and the less popular but sometimes effective hair-poofing. Chloe had balked when we tried to talk to her about Sammy, but had at least feigned interest when we spoke about what women should expect from the men who love them and about our own experiences with love. If that opportunity ever presented itself again, I knew, Maxine would jump right in the middle of it with both feet.

“I don’t like seeing her hurt any more than you do. But the fact that she has gone to great lengths to hide it tells me she’s not ready for us to march up and start in with our advice. It might just drive her away from us and closer to that…that…”

“Snake,” I said.

“I wish he were a snake. Then I could go after him with a shovel.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

“Odessa, you
can’t
be advocating violence.”

“No. I’m just saying maybe if Chloe won’t listen to us, we should be going after Sammy.”

“With a shovel?”

Another thing about Maxine is, she can have a one-track mind. I cocked my hip and exhaled all in a huff. “With our advice and Christian love.”

“I bet the boy would rather we use a shovel.” Maxine grinned.

If we had had coffee cups handy, we’d have clinked on it and sealed the deal for poor old Sammy.

Meanwhile, Bernadette was strumming her fingers along a metal pole that supported the canopy over her booth and sighing. “I wish I knew what kind of hold Sammy has over her.”