Chapter 9
“I just love to shop,” Hazel Marie said as we left Abbotsville fairly early Thursday morning. We were on our way to that perfect shop in south Asheville even though I’d much rather have been in bed. “It’s my favorite thing to do.”
She’d come by for me driving that huge vehicle that looked more like a bus than a car—the very thing for a large family except there was no trunk. Long and wide and high off the ground, it had taken extreme exertions on my part to climb up into it. A step stool would’ve helped. Sitting up behind the steering wheel, Hazel Marie looked like a Barbie doll driving a long-haul truck, but I’d seen her zip that vehicle into a parallel parking space like nobody’s business.
“Well, it’s not my favorite thing,” I said, stifling a yawn and recalling with envy the sound of LuAnne’s snoring as I’d passed Lloyd’s room on my way downstairs. “But I appreciate your going with me. I just hope I can find something that’s not only decent but something that I’ll like.”
“Oh, you will. This shop has lovely things, but, Miss Julia, you have to be willing to try them on. They look a whole lot better on than they do on a hanger.”
“Whatever you say, Hazel Marie. I’m entirely in your hands, but I reserve for myself the final decision of what to buy.” Then I yawned again.
She laughed, then said, “You must not’ve gotten your nap out last night. Didn’t you sleep well?”
I took my time answering, because I could hardly contain what I’d learned about Leonard Conover—still remarkably unbelievable to me. LuAnne had made me promise not to tell anyone, while at the same time loudly bemoaning the fact that everybody already knew.
So I pondered what I should do and finally came down on the side of telling it. I reasoned that we would all be living together for some time, and with the way LuAnne was acting, questions were going to arise. And also, I will concede, I was dying to tell it.
“Hazel Marie,” I began, “have you heard anything, well . . . unsavory about Leonard Conover?”
She glanced at me then quickly back at the interstate on which we were risking our lives. “Mr. Conover? No, I don’t think I’ve heard anything savory or unsavory. Not lately, anyway. Why?”
“Well,” I said, then stopped to enjoy the thrill of telling something so incredible. “It seems that he’s been engaged in a long-running affair.”
“Oh, that. I heard that years ago.”
“You did? And didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t tell anybody,” she said, smiling. “Except J.D., of course. I tell him everything. But I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now. I mean, I just can’t imagine Leonard Conover doing such a thing.”
“Well, imagine it, because I saw it with my own eyes.”
“You did?”
I should’ve known better than to tell it while she was driving. I grabbed hold of the door handle as the car veered off the lane onto the wide shoulder. Hazel Marie quickly corrected our trajectory, and I started breathing again.
“You mean to tell me,” Hazel Marie demanded, gripping the steering wheel, “that you actually witnessed the . . . the act? Who with? I mean, who was he with?”
“That’s the big question.” And I went on to tell how LuAnne had been determined to find out, and how we’d huddled in a dark car for half the night just to get a glimpse of her, and how that hadn’t worked out even though the woman had walked right in front of us in full glare of the headlights.
Hazel Marie reacted to my tale pretty much as Sam and Lillian had. That is to say, she was more concerned about my part in LuAnne’s escapade than about our catching Leonard in the act. Or, more specifically, in the afterglow of the act.
“Don’t worry,” I said, waving off her concern, “I didn’t even get out of the car. I just went to keep LuAnne company. But the reason I’m telling you about it is that I’ve invited her to go to the beach with us—you know, so she can get away and clear her head. So don’t say anything to her.”
“Oh, goodness, no,” Hazel Marie said. “I wouldn’t bring it up for the world. And you know J.D. won’t. He forgets everything I tell him, anyway.”
She came off the interstate and after a few turns pulled into a shopping center, found a parking place, and stopped. “The shop’s right down there,” she said, pointing to the right.
After two hours of trying on, frowning at my image in a mirror, and discarding the very thought of wearing such things, Hazel Marie took over. She selected five outfits from the discard pile, told the clerk that we’d take them, then ignored my complaints. We left the shop with two shopping bags full, so that, like it or not, I had a beachwear wardrobe.
Then we went to a shoe store, and she’d been right—sandals came in every color and style you could imagine. The first pair she picked out had wedge heels higher than any dress shoes I owned. I could barely stand in them, much less walk. It took a while, but I finally agreed to two pairs, neither of which had any heels to speak of nor did they have straps that wound around my ankles. I was relieved to make the choices and be through with shopping.
“You’ll be better dressed than most of the people you see,” Hazel Marie assured me as we got in the car and started for home.
“I’m more concerned with being fuller dressed,” I said, with a tinge of sharpness. “Anyway,” I went on, “I do thank you for taking the time to come with me. You must have a dozen things to do to get ready.”
She laughed. “You wouldn’t believe what it takes to get ready to go anywhere with twins. Thank goodness we have the SUV, but even so we may have to put some things in your trunk.”
“Whatever you need,” I said. “And speaking of that, who’s going to ride with whom?”
“Well, as soon as Lloyd learned that Latisha was going, he said he wanted to ride with you and Mr. Sam and her.” Hazel Marie laughed. “Apparently she entertains him better than the twins do.”
“That brings up a problem. I doubt that LuAnne will want to ride with anybody but us, and she may wear a sack over her head even then. She’s been hiding from Sam for the past twenty-four hours as it is. So I was thinking Latisha could go with us—there’s plenty of room in the backseat for the two of them, and LuAnne won’t have to hide her head. Latisha won’t know or care what’s going on with her husband.”
“Well, be prepared for a fuss about that,” Hazel Marie said. “I’m pretty sure she’ll want to ride with Lloyd. We can put them in the third seat back there.” She waved toward the back of the car, I mean bus. Or truck, or whatever it was. “So what about this: we’ll take both children plus the twins, and LuAnne can go with you and Mr. Sam. That way, if you don’t mind, we can fill up the rest of your backseat with baby stuff.”
“That’s fine with me, if it is with Mr. Pickens. He may not appreciate driving what amounts to a school bus.”
Hazel Marie laughed. “Don’t worry about J.D., Miss Julia. He’s pretty well domesticated by now. He can tune out crying, fussing, wet diapers, and you-name-it.”
She took the Abbotsville exit, as visions of an afternoon nap danced in my head. But Hazel Marie had other things on her mind. “I kinda hate to bring this up,” she said, “but is LuAnne going to be hiding from us the whole time we’re there? It could really put a damper on everything if we have to tiptoe around to avoid seeing her. Or her seeing us.”
“Believe me, I know it. But I think when we get down there, she can do whatever she wants and so can everybody else. Which, for me—if she keeps acting like that—will be to just leave her alone.”
“Okay,” she said as she turned onto Polk Street and approached my house. “I just wanted to know what and what not to do. I wouldn’t want to say the wrong thing and make matters worse. I’ll have to warn J.D., too, because the first thing he’d say to her would be, ‘What’s Leonard up to? Didn’t he want to come?’”
“Oh, Lord,” I said, “don’t let him do that! She’d probably tell him exactly what Leonard is up to, and tell it in great detail and we’d never hear the end of it. Believe me, he’d get sick and tired of hearing it. Which is just about where I am, but, Hazel Marie, I do sympathize with her. It’s such an upheaval, you know, of her whole life. As hard as we find it to believe, it’s even harder for her. I mean, she knows even better than we do that he’s not God’s gift to women, so it’s hard to get her head around the idea that somebody thinks he is.”
“I understand,” Hazel Marie said, nodding as she pulled to the curb in front of my house. “Well, here we are. I’ll help you carry things in, and I want to see every one of those outfits on you during the next two weeks.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, smiling, relieved to get off the subject of wandering husbands. Hazel Marie and I had a somewhat unnerving history in which such extramarital gamboling had changed our lives. For the better in the long run, I might add, but it was a subject that we generally stayed away from. So I changed it.
“Hazel Marie,” I said, stopping halfway out of the car, “would you mind calling Binkie and telling her about LuAnne? I mean, so neither she nor Coleman will ask about Leonard?”
“Oh, sure, I’ll do that,” Hazel Marie agreed. “But don’t forget, you have a pedicure appointment this afternoon. You want me to go with you?”
“Thank you, but no. I can manage on my own. No telling what color I’d come out with if you went with me.”
She laughed, gave me a hug, which she was often wont to do, and helped me carry the bags of beachwear and sandals into the house.
After crawling up into Janelle’s Spa-Pedicure chair, I was finally able to make up for some of the sleep I’d been missing since 3 a.m. The chair was like a recliner, only higher, more mechanized, and perfectly adjustable to one’s sleep-deprived body. I stretched out on it and gave in to the long, rolling massaging action that ran from the back of my neck to below my knees.
Janelle Woods, who’d been doing my nails for years, was her usual soothing self. “Just lie back and enjoy it, Miss Julia,” she said. And when she lifted one foot after the other and lowered each one into a pan of perfectly heated water, tension oozed out of me from one end to the other.
As my feet soaked, I vaguely heard Janelle ask, “Do you know what color you want?”
“Oh, anything suitable for sandals,” I murmured without opening my eyes. “Something colorful, maybe, that I wouldn’t wear on my fingernails.” And I was out like a light for the following thirty minutes or so.
Take my advice: don’t ever fall asleep while a pedicurist is working on you. I couldn’t believe what I saw when Janelle woke me.
“Purple!” I exclaimed, aghast at the sight.
“Well, not exactly, but kinda,” she said. “Don’t you like it? It’s a favorite OPI color. It’s called Do You Think I’m Tex-y.”
My eyes rolled back in my head, but I didn’t have time to have it changed. At least, I thought as I looked down at my purple-tipped toes, one pair of sandals will cover them, and maybe, very likely in fact, Sam will appreciate the name if not the color.