Tomorrow River by Lesley Kagen Read Free Book Online Page A

took a hatchet to the grand piano in her parlor a few years back because the Lord told her she was getting too much enjoyment out of playing ragtime music. Grampa Gus told folks that his wife had a heart problem, not a head problem, and that’s why she had to stay in her bedroom with the curtains drawn for a month. Then he sent her off to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and the Feebleminded over in Lynchburg to get better and thank goodness, she did—after the doctors told her to quit being so religious and gave her some electrical treatments.
    “What do you mean mostly ?” Beezy asks suspiciously. She knows things about Gramma Ruth Love that outsiders don’t because Mama told her. Even though she wasn’t supposed to. We’re not to tell anybody what goes on in the Carmody family. “Ruth Love hasn’t gone haywire, has she?”
    “No, no. Why would you think that?” I pshaw . “She’s just been puttin’ on way too much Ben-Gay and it’s been bothering Woody’s sensitive nose, that’s all.”
    That Ben-Gay part is true, but what I don’t tell easily upset Beezy is that on her last visit, our grandmother made us play Holy Communion with her all afternoon. That also bugged Woody, but can you blame her? A person can only stand eating Wonder Bread that’s been crushed into religious wafers for so long without getting bloated.
    “Got any new wiggle-waggle?” I ask, trying to draw Beezy off the Gramma topic and back to the business at hand. Her eyes may not work, but her ears are like sponges soaking up the juicy gossip getting spread by the women that strut past her place on their way downtown. She’s got to have heard something. Mama’s disappearance is still big news.
    “Lemme see, lemme see,” Beezy says, letting what she’s working on slip to her little lap. “Well, just about everybody’s talking ’bout how Mary Jane Upton showed up at the grocery yesterday wearin’ a bathing suit and calling herself Rita Hayworth.”
    Mrs. Upton is always going around town underdressed asking after her tomcat of a husband who works nights at the Old Blue Hotel. You’d think everybody would be used to her by now. “Ya got anything new ?”
    Beezy considers, then says, “I heard that Abigail Hawkins been elected president of the Ladies Auxiliary.”
    “Big deal.”
    “I also heard she’s been showin’ up at your place on a regular basis. Any truth to that?”
    A taste something like an iron handrail comes into my mouth. “She’s been bringing up corn bread and rhubarb pie and . . . I swear, that woman is tryin’ to give Betty Crocker a bad name.”
    Beezy tsks . . . tsks. “It’s not a fondness for cookin’ that’s bringing Miss Abby up to Lilyfield and I expect you know that, Shen.”
    I protest, “Whatta ya mean?” like I have no idea what she’s referring to, even though I have my suspicions. I heard Father Tommy tell Papa after church, “A year’s time is considered long enough to grieve, Walter. The twins need a mother.”
    For God’s sakes, where’s his faith? His hope? I can’t believe that priest is forgetting the same way that some of the single ladies in town are that Mama is not gone forever, only temporarily so. Abigail Hawkins is the worst of them, but I’ve kept a list of every one of those women who bat their eyes at Papa after Mass. Woe to them is all I got to say on that subject. (I’m planning on getting Miss Delia who lives at the boardinghouse to put a hex on all of them. You should see what she did to Charity Thomas who got on my bad side. Miss D gave her a hump. A big one. Think camel.)
    “Yes, indeedy,” Beezy says, rocking back. “Sounds to me like Miss Hawkins is busy settin’ a web for your father.”
    E. J. comes bursting back onto the porch with a fritter in each hand and chewing another. He’s coated them in mayonnaise. I think you could get him to do just about anything for a jar of Hellmann’s. He swallows and says, “Miss Abby settin’ a web, yup.