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Miss Julia Takes Over, Chapter One
Chapter 1 I declare, if it's not one thing, it's two more. Or, in my case, a half-a-dozen. Seems like everytime I turn around, there's something else to worry me half to death.
Feeling too antsy to sit still, I closed my checkbook and put it in the desk drawer. Who can balance a bank statement with troubles whipping around like the cold wind outside? March, I thought, with a shiver. We could do without it, if you ask me, yet the whole unpredictable month was still ahead of us.
I walked to the window and looked out at the gray morning, noticing the one, lone crocus poking up through the ice that lined the hedge along the side yard. If I'd had a poetic turn of mind, I might've seen it as a symbol of hope or of a brighter day coming or of some other such uplifting thought. But all I could do was wonder how the voles had missed it when they ate the rest of them.
I walked back to the fireplace and adjusted the flame in the gas logs that I'd had the good sense to put in after the last time we lost power in an ice storm. Be prepared, I always say, but nobody could be prepared for all the troubles and worries and problems that were piling up everywhere I looked. If we'd had a real fire, I'd've kicked a log.
Lillian stuck her head around the swinging door and called through the dining room. "You goin' to see Mr. Sam 'fore you eat, or after? I need to know 'fore I set lunch on the table."
"I can't be worried with him now. Lillian, I can't stand this. Where is she?" I threw up my hands, just about at the end of my rope. "And I don't want anything to eat."
"Uh-huh, I hear you, but I already got it fixed." Shepropped her hands on her hips and announced in that bossy way of hers, "An' I don't know anymore'n you do about where she is, but somebody better be doin' something about it."
I knew who that somebody was. Me. Lillian'd been pushing me to do something ever since she'd come to work at seven this morning, while I kept hoping Hazel Marie would show up with a decent explanation for her overnight absence. I declare, it's a burden when everybody stands around, waiting for me to make everything right. Lillian, though, had been with me for so long that she didn't mind telling me what to do and when to do it. Half of what she said usually went in one ear and out the other. But not today, because I was either going to have to do something or pull my hair out, one.
But she wasn't through giving me instructions. "Go on over to Mr. Sam's an' see what he say. He countin' on seein' you, anyway."
"What can he do, laid up like he is with a cast up to his you-know-what? Serves him right, is all I can say, out there in a trout stream in the dead of winter."
"What's done is done," she said, "an' no use rantin' around about it. Now, come on in here an' get your coat."
With a click of my tongue, I followed her into the kitchen. "Well, he deserves to suffer the consequences, and I don't mind seeing that he does."
"Mr. Sam, he just want your help to see 'bout that home nurse the doctor say he have to have. It won't hurt you to go over there an' be sure she know what she doin', since he can't hardly do a thing for hisself with that leg hiked up all the time. He need you to lighten him up a little."
She moved a pan off the stove, while I stood there, feeling pushed and pulled a dozen different ways. I didn't have time to be entertaining Sam Murdoch, frittering away my day when I had so much to contend with right where I was, what with LuAnne Conover pestering me to death, moaning about Leonard and the state of their marriage, which as far as I could tell, had never been a model of conjugal bliss in the first place. And there was Brother Vernon Puckett, Hazel Marie's uncle-the sorry thing-calling on Pastor Ledbetter, as I'd seen with my own eyes that very morning when his low-slung, maroon and white Cadillac pulled into the church parking lot right across the street from my house. Now, I ask you, what could a self-proclaimed preacher of the airwaves have in common with a seminary-trained Presbyterian minister like Larry Ledbetter? Well, that had an easy answer. They'd both give their eyeteeth for a way to get their hands on the estate left by my lately deceased husband, Wesley Lloyd Springer. But, thanks to Sam and the State of North Carolina, Little Lloyd and I had it safely in hand.
But, worse than any of those worries, Hazel Marie Puckett, Little Lloyd's mother, had turned up among the missing, and I was about to jump out of my skin, not knowing which way to turn. I'd called every hospital in three counties, asking if an attractive, forty-year-old woman with professionally dyed blonde hair and a full charm bracelet on her arm had been recently admitted. The calls had told me where she wasn't, which was some comfort, but they hadn't told me where she was.
Lillian said, "You better quit standin' there, bitin' yo' lip like that. Go on over to Mr. Sam's an' see 'bout that home nurse woman, an' ask him what we ought to be doin' to find Miss Hazel Marie."
"Lord, Lillian, I'm of two minds about that. Sam always has good advice, but the doctor said not to worry him with anything. Make sure he gets his rest and don't agitate him."
I tapped my foot, thinking of how everytime I needed Sam Murdoch, he'd go and do something unforeseen and, in my eyes, just plain reckless. Take the time Wesley Lloyd passed so unexpectedly, and I was left with wills and bills and so-called financial advisers and grasping preachers and, as if that hadn't been enough, Wesley Lloyd's bastard to boot.
And where was Sam? Retired, that's where. And right when I'd needed his legal expertise the most. And here, history was repeating itself, since I'd have to bite my tongue about my current problems and be pleasant, of all things.
Well, give Sam credit, I thought, though at the moment I hated to. He'd come through for me, straightening out Wesley Lloyd's two wills so that neither Little Lloyd nor I had been stranded without a nickel to our names. Far from it, in fact.
And, to give Sam more credit, he'd handed me over to Binkie Enloe, as good a lawyer as any hoary-headed regular-type lawyer in town, and better than most. I can't help it if she carries on with Deputy Coleman Bates with no legalization of the situation anywhere in sight. I've gotten where I don't let things like that bother me. As long as she does my taxes right and gives me advice I can live with, I'm just not going to say anything about her private life. Although I do mention it, on occasion.
"Lillian," I said, as I reached for my coat, "I've tried my level best not to worry about what Hazel Marie's doing. I know, I know," I held up my hand to stop what I knew she was going to say. "You think it's none of my business. But it is. As long as she's living in my house, out of the kindness of my heart, I might add, I feel responsible for her. I think I have a right to know where she is, especially when she stays out all night long.
"Now, I don't think she'd do anything wrong, well, I mean, criminal. Well, I don't know what I mean." I stopped, remembering that Hazel Marie had lived in sin with my husband for ever so long, and it might've been a crime as well, for all I knew.
"The thing about it is," I went on, "Pastor Ledbetter's been instructing her in the catechism, since she wants to be a Presbyterian instead of a foot-washing Baptist or whatever she was, and now she stays out all night long with a man whose family nobody knows. Word will get around, Lillian, and that bunch of old men on the church session may refuse to write for her letter. It won't matter that she's never done anything like this before, or that she's doing it with a church employee, if that's what you can call Wilson T. Hodge." I sniffed at the thought.
Nothing would do but Pastor Ledbetter had to bring in an out-of-town fund-raiser to rouse the congregation into a pledging frenzy, since he couldn't raise any funds from me. And for what? Why, to get that family activities center built, that's what. You know, the one the pastor recommended I underwrite out of Wesley Lloyd's estate, seeing, as he'd said, that I needed some Christian financial guidance? Well, I'd put a lid on that as soon as he brought it up, not three days after the funeral, since I knew exactly where he'd guide it to. I didn't have any need for a gymnasium or a running track or a basketball court, nor did anybody else when all they had to do was join the YMCA. I ask you, how many times would I go over there and dribble a ball or lift weights?
"Lillian," I went on, with a sinking heart, "what am I going to tell that child when he gets home from school?"
"Well, I been wonderin' 'bout that, too," Lillian said, coming to the counter and leaning on it, "I thought his mama'd be in 'fore this or least, call an' say when she be here. It's gettin' on toward middle of the day, an' not word one from her. I thought maybe they be jumpin' the gun a little, havin' a early honeymoon like some folks do. But I don't know, Miss Julia, look like she have enough of it by now." Lillian looked up at the clock on the wall.
"You would think so. How long does it take to have dinner and see a show, even if they did drive to Asheville to do it? They've had more than enough time for decent people to do what they need to do. And I don't mean what you're thinking. They've been gone all night and half the morning, and I know something's bad wrong. We both know it's not like Hazel Marie to go off and stay gone, with neither hide nor hair of Wilson T. Hodge to be found, either. I've called his apartment so many times I'm sick of doing it, and he's not at the church, either, where he's supposed to be working."
"Yessum, an' that little chile just gonna be sick about it when he come home, an' she not be here. He know she don't have no sick friend like you tole him this mornin'."
"Well, what was I to do? You know how hard it is for me to out-and-out lie, and it was the only thing I could think of at the time. Should I've told him his mother was out all night without benefit of matrimony? She did that long enough with the child's father, which he doesn't need to know at this tender age.
"Oh, me, Lillian," I stopped and leaned my head against the door, overwhelmed with disappointment. I'd risked my name and reputation to take in my husband's paramour and the then nine-year-old result of their secret relations, and just look what had come of it. Two full years of my close supervision and exemplary influence didn't seem to've made a dent. "I declare, I thought Hazel Marie had given up such loose ways. I thought I'd shown her a more decent way of living and now, she's fallen right back into the gutter."
"You don't know that for a fact. Maybe they have a flat tire."
"Even I know it doesn't take this long to fix a flat, much less make a phone call." I straightened up, confirmed again in my first, unimpressed impression of Wilson T. Hodge, the man Hazel Marie'd chosen to have her first legitimate happiness with. I declare, I couldn't say much for her taste in men, and that included Wesley Lloyd Springer, too. But, if Wilson T. Hodge was her choice, I was trying to be happy for her. Even though I'd had my doubts about him from the first time he'd put a foot in my living room, smiling and standing too close and flattering me with compliments on my house, my furnishings and my own gracious self, as he smoothed that smudge of a mustache with a ring-laden finger. I don't trust people like that as far as I can throw them. He had thin lips, too.
I wouldn't've trusted him even if I hadn't known the line of work he was in. Lord, I didn't think it was right to pay somebody good money to raise more money. Something's wrong with the whole system when Christians have to be begged and pleaded with and finangled into pledging more than they can afford in order to build something they don't need in the first place. That'd been the reason I'd voted against hiring him, sight unseen, but they'd done it anyway.
"Maybe they have a wreck," Lillian said. "That car might be in the middle of Briar Creek, and nobody found 'em yet."
"Lillian! Don't say that! Besides, I've already put the Highway Patrol on alert and, besides that, Briar Creek is so shallow, you couldn't hide a go-cart in it, much less a full-size car. No, it's something else that's holding them up; I just don't know what it could be."
Hearing a gust of wind rattle the windows, I wrapped a wool scarf around my neck, readying myself for the icy blasts.
"I'd better go, if I'm going, but I won't be long," I said, picking up my purse and car keys. "If Hazel Marie comes in, give me a call, will you? But don't say anything to her."
"You don't have to tell me that. Not none of my business to say anything to that sweet woman." She turned away, folding the dishrag and hanging it on the faucet. "'Sides, you do enough for both of us, and she don't need to hear it twicet."
I rolled my eyes and opened the door. Stepping out on the side stoop, I wrapped my coat close against the wind and scrunched up in it. As I walked the few steps to the garage, I glanced out at the street and across to the church parking lot. With a start, I stopped, gasped and tried to catch my breath which had been snatched away at the sight.
Hurrying back to the door, I slammed it open and called, "Lillian! Do you know what he's done?"
"What? Who you talkin' about?"
"That preacher! That idiot preacher! Have you seen it? Come out here and look."
She came around the counter to the door, her run-over shoes flapping on her heels. "What in the world goin' on out there?"
Following me out, she squinched her eyes as I pointed to the church parking lot. There, directly across the street from my front porch, was a huge rectangle outlined by stakes and string. Little orange flags fluttered from each stake.
"You see it?" I demanded. "You see what he's doing?"
"I see it," Lillian said, "but I don't know what it mean."
"It means he's going to build that blamed building that's been on his mind ever since Wesley Lloyd passed, that's what it means. And look, Lillian," I said, grabbing her arm and pulling her along with me, "he's got it laid out right along the sidewalk over there. Do you know what that means?"
"No, I don't know what it mean, an' I'm freezin' out here."
"Well, just look! If he puts a wall along that string, what do you think we'll look out on from every window in the front of the house? A brick wall, that's what!"
"Yessum, but you have the street in between."
"I don't care about the street! He's putting that brick wall right in front of my eyes! It's vengeance, Lillian, that's what it is! I wouldn't build that building for him, so he's getting back at me by putting a wall right out in front, blocking my view, isolating me from my church." I was so mad, I could've wrung the preacher's neck if he'd been standing there. "I'm not going to have it! I tell you, I'm not. I'll have that vindictive man's head on a platter, along with the session's and every member of the congregation, see if I don't!"
"Well, jus' 'member you one of them members, so how you gonna do that?"
I jerked around and headed for the garage. "I'll think of something or, even simpler, I'll stop being a member. I'm going to see Sam, and I'm not going with nice, pleasant things to say to him, either. I don't care what the doctor ordered."
—From Miss Julia Takes Over by Ann B. Ross. (c) July 2001, Viking, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc. used by permission.
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