Contemporary Women's Fiction: Agnes Hopper Shakes Up Sweetbriar (Humorous Women's Fiction) by Carol Heilman Read Free Book Online

grumbled to Charlie and stomped back to room number ten that was beginning to feel like a prison cell. I entered and slammed the door so hard it shook.
    If this was going to be, not my home, but where I slept until I found something else, it was time to set it in order. One thing I can’t tolerate is someone else’s dirt. A supply closet across the hall revealed all sorts of wonderful cleaning products, most industrial-strength, and by four-fifteen I had made my bed—the correct way I might add—and Lysoled, lemon-oiled, and Windexed everything in sight, plus I had turned the air conditioner off and raised my window. The air was humid, but a stiff breeze ruffled the lacy curtains and carried the scent of honeysuckle into my room.
    My shoes, now emptied of candy and gum, lined the closet floor. My nightstand drawer held my stash of sweets along with Vick’s Salve,deep-heat rub, Geritol, Milk of Magnesia, aspirin, camphor, and Kleenex. Panties, bras, slips, hosiery, and socks, were stacked in the top drawer of the chest. A good nightgown I’d bought on sale at Rose’s—still in its tissue paper and kept back in case I should ever have to go to the hospital—lay in the next drawer along with a cotton sweater, a shawl I’d crocheted, and a navy dress purse hardly used because it didn’t hold all the necessary items like my red one.
    In the next drawer were two new sweat suits from K-Mart, one purple, the other pink. Perfect for walking to nearby garage sales, which I planned to do as soon as I found a place to call my own. “Unpacking in this place is temporary. I’m not living here, Charlie. I refuse.”
    He had no reply.
    The last drawer held twenty-five tabloids called
Hot Press
. I’d bought them at a garage sale last Saturday. Didn’t matter they were almost five years old. That kind of news would be the same if it happened fifty years ago or ten years in the future.
    I pulled one out, opened it to page twenty-eight, my birth date, laid a stack of bills near a story of Big Foot, closed the magazine, and returned it to its place. I’d always heard anything of value often disappeared in places like this, so I didn’t intend on leaving money where someone could help himself. The rest of my money was in my purse, which would be with me at all times.
    “Can’t be too careful these days, Charlie.”
    Settling down with another tabloid, my rocker felt worse than before, like it had been rode hard and put up wet. I’d have to ask Henry to take a look at it when he came to visit on Sunday, if I was still here. The headline read:
Elvis Sings for Aliens
. Before long my mind wandered. The little black words danced before my eyes, and my eyelids felt much too heavy.
    Next thing I knew, a stocky young lady, white-uniformed with a mop of blonde hair, was in my room ringing a bell and calling, “Mrs. Hopper, wake up. You can’t sleep all day. Didn’t you read today’s schedule? Time for blood pressure checks in the sitting room.”
    By the time I got up and walked into the hall, that blonde head was darting in and out of rooms like a humming bird.
    “She’s going to wear herself out, Charlie.”
    As I neared the main house, an old woman with wild white hair ran up to me and grabbed my arm. Dressed in a long flimsy nightgown,she smelled like sour milk, and her eyes were wide and bloodshot. “You know why our weather’s messed up, don’t you?”
    I tried to pull away, but her grip was strong for a frail-looking woman. A trail of spittle dripped from the corner of her mouth when she threw her hands up in the air and shouted, “Lord-a-mercy! Lord-a-mercy!”
    I moved away as fast as I could manage, but she was beside me again, her mouth spouting like a fish.
    “That moon shot. Men walking around up there. It’s unnatural. Whole world’s gone haywire.”
    Everything in me wanted to say, “Lady, you’re the one’s gone haywire.”
    She ran ahead and turned to face me. “Why does it thunder in dead of winter