Gone Crazy by Shannon Hill Read Free Book Online

under it all. Boris noticed, too. His tail shuddered and twitched the entire visit, though he did not lash it. When I shook Laura’s hand before leaving, it hit me. Her eyes were expressionless. Even when she smiled.
    I’ve seen those eyes. They come in people who’ve been beat down so far they can’t remember up .
    ***^***
    Honey was a housewife, and it’s fair to say she was married to that house. It was large, modern, impeccably decorated in the latest tasteful fashions, and it was all she talked about for half an hour. When I got her off furniture and on family, the change startled me. Good-bye pleasant smile, hello vicious scowl.
    “Hill-billies,” she snapped, pausing to straighten a magazine on a mirror-polished table. “No taste, no…‌ambition. They’d live in shacks if you let them. Only books they read are westerns or trash romance.” She waved her manicured hand at the shelves of leather-clad books that looked like they’d never been touched. “If Rich could just get a job in Charlottesville…”
    After she’d ranted, offered me wine, then set out smelly cheese on tiny crackers, she finally offered opinions on them as individuals. “Well, Ken’s just a hick,” she said with a sneer. “Eileen’s a bitch, I mean epic bitch. She told Mama all the time it was Mama’s fault that we all turned out ‘bad’.” She sniffed. She ate a cracker without realizing Boris had licked the cheese, then abandoned it as too nasty for his palate. “As if we did!”
    I had to admit, her house was nice. Her clothes were from high-end mall stores. The diamonds in her ears were real. But that’s not the standard Aunt Marge raised me to value.
    “And Laura is just as bad. What a hypocrite! All that Betty Crocker, and you know she wanted to be a lawyer, but now?” She rolled her eyes elaborately. “You’d think it was her dream to make peach cobbler!”
    I pushed Boris gently aside. He was about to snatch a cracker. He mewed, and Honey glared at him. “That was rude!”
    I didn’t point out that cats don’t believe in etiquette. “Let’s get back to your siblings. What do you think about Army?”
    “That wimp?” She flicked two nails together.
    “And Rob?”
    “Rob is the laziest man alive. I swear he’d be meaner than the rest put together if it didn’t take energy. But he’s not a jerk like Beau at least.” Her laugh hit my ears like fingernails on a chalkboard. “I’ve seen Beau try to run down dogs just for fun.”
    Not a plus in my book, either. “And Davis?”
    “Oh, the homo,” she sighed. “Well, Laura says it’s a sin but the way Mama raised us, it’s no surprise. She didn’t leave a one of those boys a full set, except maybe Ken. And Buck, but that’s because he ran off to the service and didn’t come back. Daddy should’ve taken Mama in hand, but he never could.” She tittered. “Mama had her flaws but…” She rose, took down a lovely framed photograph in black and white. She handed it over, careful not to put her fingers on the glass. “That’s Mama when she was in her twenties.”
    She was hatchet-faced, but it didn’t matter. She had a figure that’d put Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner to shame, and a smile that’d stop traffic. In her youth, Vera Collier was so hot she sizzled.
    “She could get men to do what she wanted,” Honey smirked. She preened. I was supposed to say she had inherited the talent. She hadn’t.
    “You said Laura thinks homosexuality is a sin?” I said as I handed back the photograph.
    “Oh Laura’s an android. It’s all a tape recording of whatever that TV minister says.”
    “Not your minister?”
    “That’s just our cousin,” said Honey, amused. “Frank’s okay but he’s no Jerry Falwell.”
    “Do you speak much to Marilee?”
    “Marilee has the most smarts of us all. She got out just like Buck and she doesn’t even pretend she’s a Collier anymore. We barely even get Christmas cards.”
    “Jeff?” I prompted.
    She