Checked out

Chapter 5

“So what do you think he wants?” Tessa adjusted the pressure of her garden hose and gently misted the stag fern hanging from a hook on her back porch. “He doesn’t strike me as the reading type, but he checked out a huge stack of books. Do you think he was casing out the building?” she asked worriedly.
“More than likely he was casing out you” teased Marian “ I’m telling you he is one very hot man that you should consider at least thinking about doing. Thinking is free and you never have to shave your legs, ever notice how perfect you are in your fantasies? He might make a good substitute until Viggo shows up to take you away from all this.” She took another sip of her wine. “What in the world would he be casing out a library for anyway? Is he going to take our emergency retirement fund jar with all twenty dollars in pennies that are in there? Damn thing weighs half a ton. Hell, most of that change comes from the bottom of our purses. Do you suppose people ever wonder why it never gets more than a fourth full?” Tessa finished watering her plants and tried not to picture her friend’s lascivious solution to her problem. Unfortunately the thought of him naked came to mind all too easily. She shook the enticing image out of her head. Do you want more wine?” she asked heading to the kitchen.
“No, I’m good for now” Marian reached over and grabbed a handful of chips. “What was his name again?”
“Harald, with an “a” not an “o” Tessa answered, “hey Marian, when did you ever see him anyway? I almost didn’t recognize him myself. He hasn’t been around for at least two years that I can remember.”
“He used to stop in Follies sometimes to play pool. Damn he was fine! Every woman in the place made a point to walk past the table trying to get his attention, including me. He was friendly enough to everyone, but you never saw him leave with anyone. You know that was when he was with Terri, but you never saw her around.” Marian thought for a moment. “ She never struck me as the type to be sitting home with the kids, but who knows? I guess with him hanging out at bars on the weekend while she played happy homemaker was a pretty dull life for her. Maybe that’s why she ran off. I just can’t believe she left her child behind. Who would do that?”
“I think she did the best thing possible; Martha and Jim take so much better care of Tyler than either of those two are capable of . It just bothers me that he’s shown back up again. You know their custody hearing is in about two weeks and it would break Martha’s heart to have to give Tyler up. He’s been with her for over two years now. I can’t imagine a judge giving Harald custody of Tyler, but he is his legal father.”
“Really?” Marion asked. “I didn’t think they ever got married.”
“Well they didn’t as far as I know, but he’s still his father.” Tessa checked her watch and got up.“Let me go check those potatoes, Karen should be here in a minute with the girls.”
“I’m just curious though”, Marian followed her to the kitchen. “Where did Tyler get that red hair? Harold’s hair is jet black, and I would guess hers is brown under that bad dye job she wears. It was greenish the last time I saw her, though with her that might be on purpose.”
“Who knows?” Tessa shrugged. She sprinkled cheddar cheese over the potatoes and put them back in. She saw Karen’s truck turning into her driveway with the joyously barking Bootsy and Bitsy dancing around in the truck bed. She wiped her hands off on a kitchen towel and went outside to help her friend carry things in.
“Here, you hold the wine” Karen held out a green velvet bag, “let me get the girls untied before they hurt themselves. She walked around the back of her truck “Calm down Bitsy, I’m getting this off you.” She unbuckled the safety harness that she had specially made for the dogs when they rode in the back of her truck. Freed, the dogs ran around the back of Tessa’s house to terrorize her cats.
“This is way classy, my friend” Tessa loosened the drawstring neck of the bag and peeked in. “You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble Karen. I always bring my wine in a Wal-Mart shopping bag. These are serious wines, did you pick them up at your wine tasting class?”
“I did” Karen affirmed. “I have never been a zinfandel lover, but we tasted several last week and I was completely hooked. This one is a Clos Du Bois 2004 Reserve. I know we’re having chicken, but this will be wonderful for after dinner. I brought the Riesling for the meal, Now, let’s get this open to breathe and you can tell me all about your new boyfriend.”
“You ran your big mouth already! My god who needs instant messaging in South Georgia when they have you?” Tessa scolded Marian, who was getting some water from the refrigerator.
“She didn’t” Karen interrupted “Jerri Feeney was walking her dog in the park and saw you walking with him the other night.”
“The park is on the opposite side of the library, so how did that nosy old bitch see me? And to clear up any misconceptions, I was not walking with him. He insisted on walking me out to the car for no reason whatsoever.”
“Well, walking the dog in the park sounds better than sitting by the window, spying out every time you hear noise.” Karen deftly opened the wine. “You should be glad those women bother to watch out for this neighborhood and the library. We don’t even really need a security system with that group. Every sound and they’re up dialing 911. Anyway Ms. Jerri happened to mention that he was quite handsome and that he had a cute butt.”
“No she did not!” Tessa laughed “there’s no way she could see that in the dark from all the way across the street. Does she have binoculars at the window too?”
“ I can only assume she does .So he does have a cute butt?” Karen asked archly.
“I wouldn’t know about that. I didn’t hardly look at the man.” Tessa pulled a casserole dish from the oven and got a serving spoon for it.
“It looked pretty good to me bent over a pool table,” Marion answered for her friend. “ I already gave her my opinion about the matter. She needs to give up her self imposed chastity and do him. Oh my god Tessa, you didn’t join some crazy cult and sign a re-virginity pledge or something like that did you? I saw something about that on Oprah, all these middle aged divorced women are having their hymens surgically replaced so that they can go to their brand new husbands with a newly virginized church sanctioned hootie. ”
Drew came through the garage into the kitchen and the women immediately stopped talking. “What’s for dinner?” he asked as he opened the refrigerator. He pulled out a gallon jug of apple juice and began drinking from it. Tessa swatted him on the head with a potholder. “Get a glass Drew, you know I hate when you drink out of the bottle. What if someone else wanted some juice? I can’t believe you just did that in front of Marian and Karen, they’ll probably never drink anything at our house again. Can you not say hello first to my friends?” She swatted him again with the potholder.
“You should be glad I freely share my germs with you. I don’t do that for just anyone. Just chill Mom.” He put the juice back. “Is dinner almost ready?”
“Grab a plate, I didn’t know if you were eating with us or going over to Emily’s” Tessa spooned some green beans into a bowl and carried them to the table.
“This looks really good” Marion scooped some of the casserole onto her plate “what is it?”
“Chicken Fuck You” Tessa and Drew said simultaneously and both laughed raucously at Karen and Marion’s puzzled faces. “You explain.” Drew said to Tessa, who had tears coming out of her eyes from laughing.
She wiped her eyes off on her napkin. “You know how Drew is such a fussy eater. Every night I try to figure out what he is or is not eating anymore. Same when I go to the store, I never know if he is a vegetarian or is only eating cheese, or what. He won’t eat red meat, he won’t eat fish, and truthfully he really doesn’t like vegetables or fruit that much. So basically we’re down to chicken, pasta, and cheese. So we eat a combination of these three things pretty much every night. Well, one night I had made dinner and he was complaining about how all we ever eat is chicken. And we did! Every night; chicken divan, chicken Alfredo, chicken tetrazinni, chicken and dumplings, fried chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken.”
“Seriously” Drew interrupted. “I don’t care how you cook it, I’ve had it that way. She can cook chicken about eighty million ways.”
“So,” Tessa continued,“ I put the plate in front of him and he’s like “So what kind of chicken is this now?” in his smart ass way and I said “Chicken Fuck You”.
“Can you believe she says the eff word in front of me?” Drew asked with his mouth full. “Somebody should call a social worker on you, Mom. I’m messed up for life. Look at me, I am just totally screwed up. I’ll need therapy for years.”
“You look messed up Drew. Scarred for life you are.” Tessa regarded her son affectionately. “Thanks for eating with us though.”
“Dinner’s not until eight at Emily’s” he shrugged. “I’ll be hungry again by then. I think they’re having chicken too. He took his plate to the kitchen. “I’m out of here” he said going out the garage door. “You all can go back to discussing your vaginas or menopause, or whatever screwed up woman stuff you were talking about when I came in. I swear to god, all I get in this house is chicken and woman problem conversations. Emily’s family is never talks about crap like that, they’re like normal” He grinned at his mom. “Love you” he said as he held up his phone, “call me if you need me.”
After cleaning up the kitchen, the women went outside to spend the evening with Karen’s zinfandel. She poured them each a glass.
“I’m not a wine person,” Marion said after savoring a mouthful “but this is some good shit, better than that sangria I’ve been buying at the store. Does this come in the big weekender box too?”
“Shame on you! Stay away from the box wine, that stuff will kill you. Plus it’s harder to hide a huge empty box of wine in your garbage. The bottles you can at least wrap well and shove down to the bottom, but the box proclaims loud and clear to all your neighbors “cheap alcoholic.”
“Screw my neighbors,” yawned Marion. “I swear Harvey Osgood deliberately mows his backyard for hours when I lay out by the pool, the old pervert. I’ve never seen anyone take three hours to mow a postage stamp like his. He could hand trim it with scissors faster.”
“Are you still trying to kill the good Reverend by laying out naked?” Tessa asked, “You are a scandal you know.”
“I have a huge fence around my pool for privacy. If he makes a point of looking in then he deserves a good shock. I like to think I inspire his Sunday sermons.” Marion took another sip of wine. “Remember last spring’s series of lectures, “Bad Girls of the Bible? He had a packed house every Wednesday and Sunday. Nobody ever thanks me for all the good I do around here, ungrateful heathens. You try inspiring a good sermon.”
“You don’t think he’s the one putting the tracts in the book drop do you?” Karen asked idly, swirling wine around in her glass.
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s given up on Jesus and decided just to put a curse on Marian’s mojo” speculated Tessa. “Of course his Sunday lecture inspiration will dry up considerably and that would be an awful shame.”
Karen topped her glass off and leaned back in her chair. Bitsy and Bootsy lay on either side of her chair contentedly gnawing on smoked pig ears that Tessa bought earlier at the store. “What about the whole chicken foot thing earlier this week, did you have any thoughts on who might have perpetrated that little mess?”
“It could be one of hundreds of people” Tessa paused “there are a lot of messed up characters in this town. Pick one, any one. Be glad it’s not a dirty diaper again, you remember that one Marian?”
“Oh my god yes” Marian answered as she stared intently at her phone screen. Her fingers flew over the little keyboard as she typed a reply. “Shit, I need my glasses. I swear I can’t see anything. Tessa, get more lights out here. I am going blind trying to read my messages in the dark.”
“Hot date later? Are you doing a drive by at Follies or are you sneaking over the state line to a no-tell motel? Tessa teased her friend as she craned over trying to squint at Marian’s screen.
“I’ll bet you’d be learning to text if your biker boyfriend was trying to get in touch with you” Marian turned her body so her friend couldn’t look.
“I would be surprised if he even had a phone, he looks like he just sort of lives life day by day, if you know what I mean. I think he does odd jobs here and there when it suits him or he needs pool money. Martha never said much about him. I suspect she didn’t like him much, but what do you tell your grown children about their love life, you know? They don’t listen any better than your grown friends do” Tessa poked her friend with the toe of her sandal as Marian continued to type furiously with her thumbs.
“Y’all, hate to eat and run, but I have to go home and take a shower. I have company coming over in about thirty minutes.” Marian jumped up from the chair and hurried in to get her purse. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You are crazy, he’s coming to your house? What if Reverend Osgood is up working on his Sunday sermon and sees Teeter’s truck?” Tessa followed her friend in the house, amazed at her lack of caution.
“Who the hell said it was Teeter? He’s my Saturday night man. This one is my Friday night man.” Marion smiled mysteriously and headed toward the door.
“Uh uh missy, you can’t just sashay out of here on that note. Who’s Mr. Friday and how long have you been texting him up? Tessa called after her friend.
“I’ll call you tomorrow!” Marion chirped as she got in her car.
Karen was laughing as Tessa huffed back out to the porch. “My god, no wonder the good Reverend is composing sermons about her. What’s she going to do for vacation this year? Fleet Week? No wonder she’s dragging in exhausted every Monday!”
“Actually, I think she looks remarkably well rested and relaxed”, Karen replied. “I take it this one has a wifey at home too?”
“Do you know any single men in this town over the age of twenty five, Karen? Everyone here goes two by two from middle school to middle age. Then they divor-si-do to the right, alimony to the left, and re-marry the first person they get lucky with. Did you know Ms. Faye has been married three times already?” Tessa sat back down in her chair and finished her wine.
“Are you talking about Faye Wetherington from the Lightsey Historical Society?” Karen asked incredulously, “How old is she, a hundred?”
“Close” Tessa replied. “After her first husband died in 2001, she married his best friend six weeks later. Then he died in 2004 and she married his cousin a mere three months later. She waited longer that time because she said the ladies in her AWANA group were snubbing her, and assigned deviled eggs to someone else during the Harvest fundraiser. Ms. Faye has always done deviled eggs and that year they put her on the paper products committee. She was just cut to the bone over it. Then he up and died last February. She says she’s taking a break, but I think she has finally run out of men in her age rang; except for Ms. Beulah’s husband and I notice she keeps him exactly where she can see him when Ms. Faye is lurking around.”
“Well she seems close to James Healy now” Karen said amused by the older woman’s antics. “I see them sitting together when I go read on Thursday afternoons over at Baptist Village.”
“That figures, he’s retired from First State Bank. He owns the parts of Lightsey that she doesn’t. Talk about a perfect merger. Hey, maybe instead of hitting up bars, Marian and I can start hitting up the senior centers. The expensive ones anyway, like Fordham Place or Magnolia Village. My goodness, we would be the hottest young things there, men would fall over their walkers just looking at us.”
“I can’t wait to hear your results” Karen laughed at her friend. “Let me pack my girls up and head toward home. I am going to a raku pottery class at the Stephen Foster Center tomorrow and it starts early.”
‘What’s raku pottery?” Tessa asked her friend. She loved Karen’s pottery and wished her friend devoted more thought to opening a gallery of her own. They had quite a collection of her work at the library for decoration, and customers routinely inquired about buying pieces.
“It’s a Japanese technique of glazing and firing ceramics. We should be doing some in class, so when it’s done I’ll bring it in to show you. The patterns are wonderful and I have never had much time to work with the technique before. The instructor just moved here from California and is supposed to be a master at his craft. I am really excited to be going, we have classes every Saturday for the next twelve weeks” Karen finished locking the dogs in their safety harnesses. “Thanks for dinner, next Friday my house okay?”
“Have a good weekend” Tessa waved goodbye and watched her friend back up the driveway and head for home.