The Wedding Gift (4 page)

Chapter 5

When we got to my house,
Daddy was home which, to be strictly honest, he usually was unless
he was down at Downey’s Bar planning to fix the country up. Mama
said they was really just a bunch of useless middle aged men who
just loved to hear themselves talking, but she always laughed when
she said it. She didn’t really care that Daddy didn’t work; we had
enough and she loves him fiercely no matter what. Everyone loves my
daddy, even Jessie, and she pretty much hated everyone or she
always says she does anyway.

When Jessie and I walked
in, Daddy was watching one of his old football tapes and screaming
curses at the screen as though he did not know every single second
of what had happened a million times over. Daddy had played one
season for the Sooners before he hurt his knee and had to give up
forever his dream of being a professional football player. My
brother Randy had played for Dalton for three years and had made
all conference running back in his senior year, but he had never
played for a college or the pro’s, so daddy was still the only real
football star in our family.

Jessie stepped right up in
front of the TV and started to do a fake cheer.
“
Who the man? Charlie is. Charlie, Charlie
he’s our boy, if he gets up off the couch, he’s gonna
destroy!
” Daddy started to laughing so hard
that I had to pat him on the back so he didn’t choke to death on
his Coors.

“
You little
hellion,
” he hollered at Jessie.
“
Why, if I do get off this couch you won’t
be able to set down for a week
.” Jessie
just looked at him in that way she has where she raises up one of
her black eyebrows real high, until he settled down, and just shook
his head grinning at her.

“
What are the two ugliest
girls in Dalton up to today?
”

Daddy always called us
that, the two ugliest girls in Dalton, and it was hilarious on
account of us being the prettiest girls in Dalton and everyone
knowing it. Jessie launched into the story of the poor old
scoreboard and how we had been picked to go ask George Sr. for the
money, and daddy’s face got real dark red, the way it always did
when anyone mentioned the Willets, who he hated and who he blamed
for Charlie Junior's death.

All these years he had kept
this old clipping from the paper where Mr. Willets’ lawyer had
basically blamed what happened to Charlie and Donny on them, and I
guess he up and did it again at Charlie’s funeral when Mr. and Miz
Willets came to pay their respects.

People said that it took
four men to keep daddy held back from punching Mr. Willets in the
face. I had been hearing the stories from Daddy all my life about
“
how that rich piece of shit George
Willets had paid off the sheriff and his little dog too, to cover
up the death of Charlie
.”

But Mama had always told me
to never mind what Daddy said. She said that it was just an
accident and that God had wanted Charlie to be with him a little
sooner than she and Daddy had been ready for on account of what a
good boy he was. So I didn’t really hate the Willets even though
daddy surely did.

After all, the way I saw it
was that Charlie and Donny were trespassing that day, and why they
decided to climb up that old tree, I don't know, but I was pretty
sure that no one had forced ‘em to do it. Daddy always said that
Charlie’s face had been all torn up on the left side. He said that
someone had scratched him up real bad and then pushed him out the
window on the third floor.

But Donny always maintained
that they had never even gone in the house at all that day. He said
that they had just climbed up the tree to look in the window; then
the branch broke and they fell down into the empty pool
below.

When they landed, Charlie
hit his head and Donny broke his legs. Donny said that if Charlie’s
poor face was all scratched up, why then it must have been from the
branches hitting him on the way down. That’s what Donny said, and I
always believed him; after all he was there. But daddy never
believed his story. He always said that more had happened that
night, but that Donny just couldn’t or wouldn’t remember because he
was too afraid.

I usually always agreed
with my daddy about important stuff, but not about that. I knew
that Donny Readle wasn’t afraid of anything in this life or the
next, and you can take that to the bank! So if he said it was an
accident, then that is just what it was …a horrible accident, like
everyone said, and it must have been, like Mama said, that Daddy
“
could find a conspiracy in a beaver
dam
.”

Chapter
6

Together Jessie and I got
Daddy sweet again, Jessie most of all by saying that the best way
to get even with the Willets family was to make them pay through
the nose for everything that went wrong, and Daddy was nodding like
that was just right. After a little bit, he put on his old
sheepskin coat and headed off to Downey’s to “
sink a few
”, and Jessie and me went
up to my room, which is the prettiest room in the whole
house.

Mama had made a lavender
silk canopy for my bed and matching lavender Priscilla’s for my
window. I loved lavender and even the walls were that color. Jessie
always said it was like being inside a stomach, which was so stupid
that I didn’t even bother to fight with her about it anymore; after
all, who was she to talk? She had painted her own bedroom pitch
black. Jessie sprawled out on my bed checking out her toenail
polish while I brought out my mint green dress and asked her if she
thought this would be good for seeing Mr. Willets in.

She made a face at me.
“
Christ on a crutch, Leeann, a sleeveless
cotton dress in November? You’ll look like an idiot. Just put on a
sweater and let’s get this over with
.” She
gestured down at her jeans and said “
It's
not like we're going to church, for God’s sake; just over to old
man Willets’ to ask him for money. Just wear your new jeans;
they’re way too tight so he can stare at your ass. That’ll make him
happy enough to write a check for sure
.”

Well that made me so mad,
her saying that. My new jeans were not too tight and, even if they
were, a girl’s best friend is supposed to lie to her about such
things.

So, just to be contrary, I
put on my short green dress with no stockings, which was okay,
because I had been tanning, and I slipped on a pair of high green
pumps and did not add a sweater. Jessie was right … I would freeze.
But she was wrong too, as I did not look like an idiot. I just
shook my head at her when she started to say something, and she
shrugged as we headed out the door. Jessie drove because I didn’t
have a car.

Our family did okay with
Mama’s shop, but the money did not go far enough to pay for another
car. Jessie’s daddy worked on the pipeline up in Alaska, so she had
got a new truck last year on her sixteenth birthday, and since that
time she and I had ruled the road. Jessie having a truck was almost
as good as me having one since we were always together anyway. When
we got in the cab she looked over at me, shook her head, but
because she is my best friend she cranked up the heat to high
anyway.

As always, Jessie had to
pull right up in front and park in the handicapped spot. A year ago
she had driven her grandma to Tulsa for a doctor's appointment and
she had stolen her handicapped sticker and, ever since then, Jessie
being Jessie, it never failed to give her a kick to park in
handicapped spaces using it. And me being me, it never failed to
make me mad, but I had given up trying to make her see how wrong it
was. That day, though, I was just awful glad that we didn’t have to
walk across the street because it was freezing outside and I nearly
turned blue before I got inside the Willets Building.

The Willets Building was
real fancy inside. Miz Bethany had decorated it herself, and she
had based the whole design on a plastic surgeon's building in the
Turtle Creek section of Dallas, so it was all pink marble and fake
antiques and pictures in them fancy gold frames like museums have.
Jessie looked around at the lobby and sneered when we walked
in.

“
Where the hell does that
woman think she is - Beverly Hills?
” I
nodded like I agreed with her, but secretly I thought it was
beautiful. We crossed over about two yards of pink marble to get to
the fancy desk of the receptionist and, as luck would have it,
there was Miz. Bethany Willets in the flesh. She was talking to the
receptionist in this real snotty voice and telling her some boring
story of how her new Escalade was in the shop and that her
replacement Escalade wasn’t an LS series, or something.

She was wearing a full
length black mink coat, and though it was maybe forty outside, it
wasn’t near cold enough for that kind of coat. I nudged Jessie and
whispered that maybe the crappy replacement Escalade didn’t have
heat in it. Jessie was cracking up and, just then, Miz Bethany
turned around and saw us. She knew who we were, everyone in Dalton
knew who everyone was, and besides, my mama had worked for her
part-time when I was little, before the dress business took off.
But being Miz Willets, she had to pretend like she didn’t know our
names, and just gave us this snooty puzzled look and tilted her
head.

She said,
“
Girls, can I help you? You look lost. You
know we don’t have public restrooms in here
.”

Well Jessie just doesn’t
take that kind of crap, so she gave Miz Willet a real puzzled look
in return, and said “
Oh shoot … well
that’s all right, I’ll just pee outside. I have to go real
bad
.”

The receptionist behind Miz
Willets was trying so hard not to laugh that I figured I would have
to pat her down like I had with Daddy earlier. This happened a lot
around people and Jessie, but Miz Willets, she looked like she had
swallowed a snake.

“
What? What did you say? I
know you, don’t I? You’re that little girl of Jerry Sands and his
drunken whore of a wife, aren’t you?
”

Oh my God, I could not
believe my ears. I had never heard or met an adult who would talk
like that to a kid. I mean, yeah, Jessie had a mouth on her, but so
what? She was just a kid …we both were. How could anyone say that
about her mother to her face?

Jessie got real pale and
said in this little tiny voice “
Leeann,
you go on ahead and talk, I don’t feel good. I’ll wait in the
truck. Take as long as you need
.”

I turned to follow her, but
she was already outside. The receptionist was just staring down at
her desk then, her mouth all pursed up, and Miz 'Bitch of the
Century' Willets just stood there with this little puzzled look on
her face, like what did I say?

If I had been older, or
just different, then I would have gone up and hit her, but all I
did was walk by her like she was invisible and ask the receptionist
if Mr. Willets was in. Miz Willets looked like she wanted to ask
what I was there for, but I just looked her in the eye and damned
if she didn’t look away first. Then she just shrugged like it
didn’t matter, like I didn’t matter, and looked past me at the
receptionist and said “
Alice, you tell Mr.
Willets to be on home by six, you hear? We are having the Steppes
over for dinner and I don’t want him to be late. I hope his
important appointment with this young lady doesn’t keep
him
.”

She smiled at me all
proudly like, and I just smiled back and didn’t say nothing. To be
strictly honest, I sort of felt sorry for her then. It was
embarrassing to see a grown-up trying to impress a kid, 'cause
talking about who you’re gonna see and what you’re gonna do in
front of other people, that’s stuff like I do.

Also, if she was gonna name
drop, she shoulda picked someone’s name better than them sorry old
Steppe family to brag about. I don’t know about the grown-ups in
Dalton, but if you were a kid like me, then saying you was gonna go
to Audrey Steppes’ house would a been the kiss of death socially
speaking. Maybe she knew that, though, old as she was, 'cause she
looked real awkward for a minute there; then she gave this little
one shouldered shrug and walked outside without saying goodbye to
the receptionist.

I just looked at the
receptionist and she shook her head. “
Yeah, ain’t she something? Well, I’ll tell you, Honey, this
is about the only job in town that has dental insurance, and my boy
is going to need all the help I can get him. I just try real hard
not to think between nine and five, you know, and then I pray about
it a lot. I’ll ring upstairs for Mr. Willets for you. I’m sure
he’ll see you right away, Honey. I happen to know he isn’t doing a
thing right now and, hey, can I get your little friend a coffee or
soda or something? She looked kind off peaky. I don’t mind taking
it outside to her
.”

I just thanked her for
asking, but I said no, not to bother. I told her Jessie would be
fine. I thought that Jessie might be having one of her rare
episodes where she let go and cried, and Jessie would have killed
me dead and then murdered me, if I sent a stranger out to see her
like that.