The Sisterhood of the Queen Mamas (18 page)

“You don’t think it’s love?” I asked, then suddenly realized that the very question virtually rang with the kind of naïveté I am always professing that I don’t possess. Well, okay, so when it comes to love and the bonds between men and women, I am a regular doe-eyed dope. It’s not that I want Chloe to love Sammy. It was just the only explanation I could come up with for a young girl who could do anything, hanging around with a loser like that. And one who
hit
her.

“Go back over the properties of love listed in Corinthians, Odessa. Any mention of stealing or hitting in that passage?”

“I don’t mean that it’s real love, Maxine. I mean, don’t you
think she’s doing all this because she’s convinced herself she is madly in love with the boy?”

“No, I don’t.” Bernadette stopped drumming her fingers on the pole and grasped it with her hand until her knuckles went white. “I think if it was just emotional, we would all know it. Have you ever heard her talk about Sammy? About having feelings for him, or him for her?”

Once again, Bernadette, my little red-flag finder, had picked up on something the rest of us hadn’t.

“There is something else there, below the surface.” Bernadette pushed back her shoulders and narrowed her eyes. “And I don’t think we are going to reach her for the Lord,
really
reach her, until we know the truth. It’s going to take time and patience, but to help a friend, I really don’t mind.”

I studied her a moment, and realized that maybe I had looked at her all wrong in this respect, as well. Sensing the needs of others in order to serve them, to do whatever she could to help them, might not be her greatest weakness. Maybe, just maybe, serving others was Bernadette’s greatest
strength.

“Until then…” Maxine slapped her palm lightly on the glass, above the tiaras we had sported during our day manning—womanning?—the booth. “Is everything all right here? Did the lady officer have any insights into anything going on at the flea market?”

“Oh! Should I catch up with her and ask her for some input for the action council?” I craned my neck to try to catch a glimpse of her uniform in the crowd, moving away from us down the aisle.

“No, she only focused on the one complaint. Which the officer says they aren’t really taking seriously, because Helen
can’t say that no one else had access to her card, or something like that.”

“Hmm…” I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t sneak a sidelong glance at Maxine. I wanted to. But I didn’t. However, Helen Davenport herself had stood on this very spot and accused me of not doing my job as the chair of my action council by not keeping abreast of what all went on out here, so I had to ask, “So the officer was just asking about Helen’s credit card complaint? Nothing else?”

“Yes, what else would Mrs. Davenport have to complain about?” Bernadette scowled and shook her hair back.

I opened my mouth.

But before I could jump in and explain that I meant other complaints
like
Helen’s, not other complaints
by
Helen, Bernadette rolled her eyes and said, “Of course, given who we are talking about here, the list of things she could complain about are endless. Starting with me.”

“Why you?” My mouth was already open, and the question came out before I could stop myself.

“According to Mrs. Davenport, I am monopolizing the minister’s time with the ‘action council nonsense.’”

“Monopolizing his time, eh?” Maxine leaned in. “Is there something you haven’t told us about?”

“Nope. You were right there, actually. Somehow she knew about us coming out here on the day of the planned tour of the grounds. She even knew we’d been up in the balloon together.”

“Oh, really?” She could have learned about that from Morty, what with all of us showing up in his driveway and all. Or she might have been watching the rendezvous spot, waiting for a certain married man to show up, but he
couldn’t because, again, we were in his driveway. Or maybe the Reverend just told her about it.

“She thought when Jake got here she would pretty much be his social director and love-connection advisor, but it hasn’t worked out that way, and for some reason she blames me.”

“She’s a poker,” I said softly.

“A
what?
” Maxine’s whole face scrunched up. “Odessa, have you lost your mind?”

“Why do you always ask me that?” And before she could answer, I put up my hand. “Never mind. I mean she’s the kind who pokes you just before you are about to go on-stage to make a speech or have your photo taken in a large group and tells you something that’s wrong with your hair or outfit or what have you.”

“She does do that, doesn’t she? Sort of finds somebody’s soft underbelly, their most vulnerable spot, then…”

“Pokes it,” I murmured.

Bernadette cocked her head. “I wonder why anyone would do that?”

A few weeks ago, I’d probably have said that she probably honestly thought she was being helpful. But now…

“She doesn’t like herself.” Maxine stood across the booth from Bernadette, with her own head tilted at the exact same angle as the black-haired young woman.

“What?” I asked.

“She doesn’t like herself, and the only way she knows to feel better about herself is to bring other people down.”

And bringing down a woman like Jan, the very picture of small-town perfection, would have been her ultimate triumph. It didn’t explain everything, but it sort of made a sad kind of sense as to how she could carry on with an
other woman’s husband and still show her face in church. She had to have convinced herself somehow that she deserved Morty and Jan didn’t. Well, I know that God hates divorce, and my prayers have been for Jan and Morty to reconcile, but if ever there were two people who did deserve each other…

And even as I thought that, the still, small voice plucked at the hardheartedness of the very thought. I folded my hands together and shut my eyes. “You know, when you put it that way, I kind of feel sorry for Helen Davenport.”

“No!” Maxine grabbed me by the upper arm.

“What?” I directed my attention to the place where her dark fingers were sinking into my flesh like a baker’s hands in fresh dough. Mental note here—get to a gym and start lifting weights as soon as possible. Not only will it improve my muscle tone and the appearance of my body, it might even keep Maxine from manhandling me.

“Odessa, we are not going down that road again.”

“What road? The one to the gym?”

“The—? No, the one that leads to you deciding for both of us that we need to try to
help
somebody that you feel sorry for.”

“Oh!” I pursed my lips for just a moment. Honestly, all things considered, we really couldn’t take on another foundling at this point. Besides, I did happen to know that David and Jake had Morty and Helen covered for the time being, so Maxine and I would only be interlopers there. There are lots of things I would do if led by faith, but I think I can safely say no one wants me to be an interloper for the Lord. Not
yet,
anyway.

“So, speaking of people I feel that I should be…uh…checking up on…” I began.

“Nice save,” Maxine muttered.

“…how is Jan working out?”

“Fine.” Bernadette smiled. Actually, she offered a fleeting facial twitch that she clearly wanted to be taken for a smile. “She really is quite thorough.”

“But?” Never let it be said that Maxine let a facial twitch keep her from getting to the bottom of things.

“
But,
I have a hard time writing out a paycheck to someone who has made it her goal in life to shut down a vital part of my business. If she succeeds in closing this place…” Bernadette ran her hand over the case with the tiaras in it. “If she succeeds in closing this place, it will probably save me a couple grand this quarter alone.”

Maxine went directly for the clarification. “Did you say
save
you a couple grand?”

“You two took over for a day. You know the kind of business I do here. If you add up rental fees, gas, meals, and my time away from my office, and the fact that I rarely actually make any sales or viable contacts out here, I’m losing money almost every weekend.”

I looked at Maxine, gave an exaggerated shrug, then turned to Bernadette again. “We did okay.”

“Oh, that’s right.” She touched the spot just between her eyes, as if she were pressing a button to retrieve some information. “Y’all did pretty good. I meant to ask you—what is your secret?”

Well,
that
was just the question Maxine and I had been waiting all of our lives to hear!

“You have to sell to the people who are here to buy. Peo
ple don’t show up at a big old flea market to plan their weddings and formal celebrations. They come for fun.”

I chimed in with “And Royal Service Hostess Queen partyware.” I chimed in.

“Bernadette, you have to sell more fun.”

“Luckily, that happens to be Maxine’s and my specialty.” I gave the girl a wink.

Maxine headed straight for the display case.

“The secret to getting away with wearing a tiara is not just sticking it up on your head and plastering on a big, phony smile. No, ma’am.” Minutes later, I was practically standing in the middle of the aisle, doing a pitch that would have made a carnival barker proud. “To really pull off the look, you have to have the attitude to match. It’s about sparkle. It’s about elegance. It’s about knowing you deserve queenly headgear and all the attention that goes with it.”

“And you know how we know all that, ladies and gentlemen?”

“Tell them, Maxine.”

“Because we were not born yesterday!” she shouted to everyone’s delight.

“And we are not quite ready for the junk heap yet,” I called out in response.

“Because, friends, sisters and troublemakers…” Maxine held out her open hand to me.

I happily added, “And you know who you are!”

“…we are all wonderfully and fearfully made.” Maxine raised her hands and cocked her head to make her tiara glint and glimmer in the summer sun.

“And God don’t make junk!” we both said, laughing.

“Well, His children sure do!” No, it wasn’t me or Max
ine that shouted that above the laugher of the onlookers gathered around Bernadette’s bridal-supply booth. It was Jan Belmont, malcontent. “And that might not be so bad if they didn’t drag their junk out here and create a giant eyesore, health risk and breeding ground for criminal activity when they do.”

The crowd mostly stood there stunned until Chloe broke through and began to applaud. Then, here and there, a few people joined in.

“I don’t think there would be even that much support for her if they knew she aimed to close this place rather than just clean it up,” Maxine muttered.

“That’s it, Jan,” Bernadette called out. “You are
fired.
”

Jan set down her sign made of yellow poster board stapled to a picket. A picket she had probably bought right here at the flea market, because where else do you get protest sign pickets in Castlerock, Texas? She turned to Bernadette. “If you thought about this for one second, you would know I was doing you a favor.”

Of course, Jan was doing
herself
a favor. Maxine and I knew that. But everyone else—and people had now begun to converge from all corners of our five fabulous acres—only knew what they saw. They hadn’t heard the whole story, and given the situation, they weren’t likely to pay attention to anything but the big showdown it seemed was coming.

And it was.

If only Jan hadn’t been carrying that big ol’ sign that, when she lowered it to yell at us, obscured her face and upper body, then Morty and Helen would have seen her kicking up a ruckus in the last place on earth they ever ex
pected her to be—which I’m sure is why they chose it as their meeting spot—as they came strolling arm in arm down the aisle. If only Helen hadn’t filed a police report about her credit card and followed up by calling the local paper to complain about the oversight committee not doing our job, the lone photographer for said paper would have been off shooting pictures of prizewinning goats. If only Maxine and I hadn’t stuck those tiaras on her heads and then acted as if we had a reason for them to be there by putting ourselves in the middle of the fray, we would have been elsewhere when the camera flashed.

If only…

Yes, be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. And if you happen to have on a tiara or be carrying on a tryst or trying to tear down something many people love because you are desperate to fix your own failings, there may be a photographer from the local paper there to record it all on film. And, along with everyone else in town, you may come away with a not-so-pretty picture of yourself.

T
hey say there is no such thing as bad publicity. Do me a favor, will you? Next time you see the “they” who said that, kick them in the shins for me, will you?

Now y’all know I am not really advocating violence here. But I want to make myself perfectly clear, because it seems that—much to my dismay—in the town of Castlerock and most especially in the vicinity of the Five Acres of Fabulous Finds Flea Market, I have become something of a role model.

Yes, I meant to say
role,
as in a part that one might play in the greater whole. Not
roll,
as in jelly or “Pass me those homemade dinner…” or “Shake, rattle and….”
Me.
Odessa started-out-all-of-this-with-good-intentions-just-trying-toget-a-nice-girl-a-shot-at-a-date-with-a-single-minister Pepperdine. A role model.

And apparently not a very good one.

That’s the way my David tells it.

And a handful of our former parishioners agreed. At least half a dozen of them took the trouble, after that photo ran in the paper, to contact David and ask him what was going on in our home that I would pull such a stunt. He assured them the problem was not in our
home,
it was in his
wife,
or rather the woman who looked like his wife but had begun to act, to his way of thinking, like a perfect stranger. It was the first time in our married life that David had ever told another person he thought I was perfect.

I’ve tried saying that a couple different ways, but it always comes out just a little bit sad.

The phone rang some over at Maxine’s house, too. Reverend Nash told the callers that he thought it was quite a nice likeness of his wife and thanked them for taking the time to call. He found the whole deal pretty funny and told Maxine she ought to not just buy that tiara but wear it around town so people would stop her and ask for her autograph.

He said—and the letters to the editor tended to support his line of thinking—that we had shown the world we still had a lot of fire in us. Yes, Maxine gave him the lecture about not using the word
still.
He said it was the world’s word, not his. When folks saw us, they needed to be reminded that we
still
were a force to be reckoned with, and lots of them could learn from our example.

He even suggested we open our own booth at the flea market, dispensing advice and breaking up the occasional catfight.

I would have liked the idea, if I had thought I would have anything worth saying to anyone ever again.

“Hey, Mrs. Pepperdine! Mrs. Cooke-Nash! Come to take on all challengers for the title of Queen of the Lady Flea Market Wrestlers?” I suppose that Sammy thought he was being his usual charming self, but his appeal was lost on me now.

I shied away from looking at him, and at everyone else Sammy’s teasing had alerted to our presence.

“Now, that ain’t one bit funny, young man,” Maxine called out, putting her hand protectively on my shoulder. She laughed under her breath. “We are trying to keep things low-key here. We certainly do not want to draw attention to ourselves as the ladies y’all saw in the newspaper kicking behinds and taking names the other day.”

With every word, her voice grew louder, her shoulders went back a little further and her head rose higher.

“Are you kidding?” Sammy sort of loped along sideways to keep abreast of us. His flyers flapped with his every move, and he wore a big ol’ grin. “C’mon. That was wicked awesome, the two of you right in the middle of things! I was right about you, Ms. Pepperdine, you’ve still…you’ve got fire in you!”

I managed a weak smile at that, but kept my gaze fixed on the gate ahead.

“My boss said to tell you, if I ever saw you back at the flea market again, I should tell you that you’ve earned yourselves a complimentary tethered balloon ride.”

“Said it before and I’ll say it again. Not enough hot air in all of Texas—including what’s spouting out of you right now, young man—to lift me off the ground.” Maxine held her hand up, and her bracelets went bouncing all the way
down to her elbow. “But Odessa here, today just might be her day.”

I glared at my friend. A one-eyed glare, with a mean set to my mouth.

She laughed.

“Y’all think it over. We can send you up any time you ask.” Sammy went back to handing out his flyers.

It was hard to stay mad at the boy—particularly with Maxine chuckling about it all like that and him saying I had fire in me. Hmm. Having fire in you, at my age, is usually a problem. In fact, whole aisles in the drugstore are dedicated to fixing that problem. So I had a hard time now thinking anyone on these premises or anywhere in the town would think that was a good thing. But Sammy certainly did.

He was wrong. But it was sure sweet of him to say it.

Maybe there was hope for him still.

I lifted my eyes to the balloon billowing overhead. There was always hope, right?

I needed to believe that.

It had been two weeks now since we’d dared to show our faces at the flea market. No, that’s not really the case. It had taken two weeks for
me
to get up the nerve to return to the scene of the crime—or the scene of the
crown,
as Maxine now likes to call it.

By then I had to do it, because it was the last weekend Bernadette planned to have her booth out here.

“I can’t believe she’s closing up shop,” I said a short time later as I pointed to the sign in front of the At Your Service booth that read Everything Must Go.

“She’s not closing up shop, Odessa. Just the opposite. She’s expanding her hours and getting a real store down-
town, not trying to run it out of her house any longer. And you know who she has to thank for that?”

“Abner the tattoo artist?” I glanced over my shoulder, trying to catch Chloe’s eye.

That girl stood handing out samples at the health-food booth, in her usual place. But not in her usual attire. Today she wore a fresh green T-shirt, a denim skirt and a wide embroidered belt. The only color in her hair was the color
of
her hair and—I promise you, this is not just wishful thinking on my part—it had a little height to it in the back. She looked just darling.

I gave her a quick wave.

She smiled. Her whole face lit up, just a smidge.

Maybe I hadn’t messed up everyone’s life entirely. I sighed.

“What about Abner?” Bernadette’s face didn’t light up, but she did lift her eyes at the mention of the name.

Feeling a tad better about things, I ran my fingers along the top of the sign and said, in as upbeat a voice as I could, “Oh, I was just commenting on how nice it was of him to let you know about the space opening up in that building downtown.”

“Wasn’t it, though?” Bernadette pulled out a roll of small round neon-orange stickers and slipped it onto her wrist like a piece of costume jewelry. “He even offered to give me a discount on tattoos!”

I gripped the corner of the sign I had been touching. “Bernadette, you’re not thinking of—”

“Not for me!” She peeled a sticker off of the roll and stuck it onto a small white photo album. “The discounts are for my customers. You know, to commemorate their wedding, or whatever.”

“Sure.” Maxine nodded. “Nothing says forever like a flaming skull on your shoulder blade.”

“For
me,
I think I could convince Abner to do a tattoo for free.”

“Bernadette!”

“I just said that to see the look on your face, Odessa.” Her eyes sparkled. I didn’t know when I’d last seen Bernadette Alvarez’s eyes sparkle. Usually they darted back and forth and had a dark quality about them, sheltered, anxious, cautious. This was not the same girl I had spoken to weeks ago about the arrival of the single minister. This was not the woman who’d thought Chloe Morgan was too hard-boiled for us to reach. “And it was worth it, too.”

I rolled my eyes. “Nice to know I’m worth something to somebody.”

“You’re worth the world to me,” a soft voice said over my shoulder.

I knew the voice immediately, even if the volume and the message seemed exceptionally out of place. “Jan!”

“I can’t believe you’re out here, after—” Maxine just blurted it out, and she couldn’t seem to stop herself until she literally slapped her hand over her own mouth.

Jan didn’t flinch. “Well, what could I do? Hide in a cave? Act as if everything was just hunky-dory? I tried doing
that,
without much success, from the first day I realized my husband was climbing onto our roof to talk on the phone to another woman.”

“That’s what he was doing when he fell?”

She lowered her head and fidgeted with the large plastic container in her hands. “That’s what he was doing when I
popped my head out the window that day and asked him what he was doing.”

Maxine and I closed in around her. I wanted to…
do
something. Pat her back. Lay my arm around her shoulders. I just…I just didn’t know if she would accept that from me. I didn’t know if that would be the thing that pushed her over the brink and caused her to break down here, where she had already borne so much indignity.

“In the hospital that evening, he confessed everything. The phone calls. The meetings at the flea market, where they thought I’d never see them and where they would remain in public so they wouldn’t be tempted to…” She drew a shuddering breath and did not look at any of us.

I bowed my head, too, only not from shame or pain, but to say a prayer for her and her marriage. I just didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know of any other way to be of any help.

“An emotional affair, he called it,” she whispered. “As if that somehow would make it all hurt less.”

“Oh, Jan.” Bernadette chewed her lower lip. “You didn’t have to come out here today if you…”

“Yes. I did. Every person has to face the truth about their lives at some point. Either I’m a woman of faith and conviction, who relies on the Lord for her hope and strength, or I’m a big fat phony. And y’all know how much I would hate being a big
fat
anything.” She set the plastic container down on Jan’s counter and mustered up a smile. “And I brought brownies!”

“Aren’t those for the church booth?” I asked.

“I already made my contribution there.” She waved toward the booth across the way. “These are for us.”

“Us?” Maxine had that look about her. That “you mean there is a chance I will get chocolate out of this deal?” look.

“I asked Jan to pitch in out here today.” Bernadette pried the lid from the brownie container, and the moist aroma filled the air. “I’m anticipating business will be brisk.”

“It’s picked up?” I asked, raising my voice above the din of the shoppers pushing past.

“It always does when you slash prices to the bone. All those people who could have kept your store afloat with a few small sales along the way just love to stop by and tell you how much they hate to see you go. Then they finally buy something—only it’s seventy-five-percent off.”

Maxine, who already had a brownie halfway to her lips, lowered it and crinkled her freckled nose. “I feel a twinge of guilt comin’ on, Odessa. How about you?”

“Eat your brownie. The guilt will pass.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean you two.” Bernadette spread her hands out. “In fact, I would like to make a gift of those tiaras you both admired and modeled so, um…
distinctively.
It’s my way of saying thank-you for all you’ve done.”

“All we’ve done? Like what?” I covered my eyes with my hand, my head down. “Closing down your business? Embarrassing Jan in front of everyone?”

“You didn’t embarrass me, I embarrassed myself.” Jan spoke in a voice that was hushed and hoarse with emotion. “Big time. And I deserved everything I got, too.”

“No, I don’t believe that,” I murmured.

“I deserved everything I brought on myself,” she corrected. “As for the rest of it…”

She didn’t have to say the rest of what. We all knew she meant Morty and Helen and the problems in her marriage.

“As for the rest of it…I won’t say I’m not angry and hurt, but…I’ve known that man since I was a kid, really. I have loved him and lived with him and fought with him and failed with him and I am not ready to let go of him.” She began to weep softly. So softly that a passerby who could not see the tears on her cheeks might not have known it at all except for the subtle shake of her shoulders and the catch in her breath. “We’re seeking counseling. We are going to try to work through it.”

I opened my arms to her without thinking. I just…I just wanted to draw her close and let her know how very sorry I was about everything that had happened and how much I cared for her. “I will pray for you every day, my friend.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “It’s been so long since I felt that anyone was on my side. You don’t know what it means.”

But I did. In that split second, I knew exactly what it meant. I knew then why I had so cherished my friendship with Maxine. It wasn’t because we shared a love of bacon, or a common background, or even because we both wanted to collect the entire set of Royal Service partyware, the Hostess Queen pattern. It was because, after too many years of being the minister’s wife, of often having to raise our children on our own, of knowing anything we said or did or got photographed and stuck in the paper wearing would be subject to scrutiny. In a life where we felt like the people we cared for the most could, in an instant, turn against us, we had found someone to be on our side. No matter what.

And that was what, in the end, we had given Jan. And…I turned and looked at my Bernadette, who was aglow with a new kind of confidence. We had been on her side, too, when the people she had done so much for not only pushed
her out of the way but wanted to keep her out of the running. For anything worth running for.

And then there was Chloe. I don’t think anyone had ever been on her side. Sammy, maybe. Or maybe he had charmed her into thinking so, for his own reasons. That might have been why she felt the need to protect him. He was the one she thought would stand by her, even when she did not think she deserved it.

I blinked and suddenly realized my eyes were damp.