Thirty-Four
Leta Pearl
“Good Lord in heaven,” I said, following Trudy into the kitchen and out of earshot of our guests. “I raised my daughter better than this.”
“Mama,” she said back. “Are you a witch ?”
“Oh my lord! I knew I shouldn’t have given you that wine. Italian my elbow! Dickie Crump probably got it from a bootlegger in Mississippi.”
“ Are you?”
“I will not dignify that question with a response. I am a Baptist, for God’s sake!”
It was all coming back to bite me, not telling Trudy about the Aberdeen Mountain Oil years ago.
But this reaction was exactly why I never had.
Emily and I knew we’d never hear the end of it.
Besides, Trudy was already pregnant and married by the time she’d reached the age to know.
And who ever thought we’d be using oil again after that terrible mistake I made the last time?
And oh Lord, that mistake. Trudy could never, ever, find out about that or she’d implode.
“Darling, I think you need to lie down. You’re getting one of your headaches.”
“Stop saying that!” She was breathless but eyed me fiercely. “What’s in those biscuits, Mama?”
I should have smelled Verlaine coming before she waltzed into the kitchen, but I was too focused on trying to calm Trudy down.
“Aren’t they the greatest thing since the microwave oven?
” Verlaine giggled. “Why, ever since I started feeding them to Dickie, he’s been holding my hand when we walk down the street, hanging on my every word when I tell him how I feel.
And you know what else? He’s been driving his Plymouth in and out of the garage like a race car. ” She gulped her wine.
“I thought Dickie drove a Chevrolet,” Trudy said.
“I’m not talking about his car, honey!” Verlaine peered at Trudy over her glass of wine and whispered, “I’m talking about his Plymouth .”
Trudy glanced between me and Verlaine. “Tell me,” she said. “Right now. What is happening.”
I placed my arm around her and tried to guide her out of the kitchen. “Perhaps you’ve had enough for one evening, and maybe that wine is getting to Verlaine, too. Neither one of you is making much sense right now. Why don’t we—”
“I beg your pardon, Leta Pearl,” Verlaine said, and that’s when she ruined it.
“I’m not tipsy! Not by any means! Not at all like I was at the Fourth of July parade this summer.
” She took another gulp of wine. “Why in the world I put on my old roller skates, I will never know, but God bless America!” She raised her glass and swallowed another mouthful, then put her arms around Trudy and me, pulling us in close.
“Just picture it, ladies. With Leta Pearl’s love biscuits, we could change the world.
We could have our fellas changing diapers, fixing supper every night, and we might could get more stalls added to ladies’ rooms all over town.
” She released us from her grasp and took another drink.
“Do y’all realize how many hours we waste in those lines?
There are no limits to the sheer power we can attain. ”
I shushed Verlaine. “Let’s lower our voices, Verlaine. We don’t want our fellas to hear, now do we?”
“Hear what ?” Trudy asked and I think steam was coming out of her ears like Yosemite Sam.
Verlaine laughed. “Oh, Trudy, you are so funny.” Then she whispered, “Your Mama already told me the way you’ve wrangled in Haskel Moody with ’em.”
“Now, Verlaine . . .” Leta Pearl said.
“Aren’t they fun, Trudy?”
“ Fun is not really the word I would use, Verlaine.” Trudy had that look in her eye, like she was about to burn down the house and everybody in it. “Especially since Shug Meechum, it seems, has also been wrangled in by those biscuits.”
Verlaine’s mouth gaped. “You gave Shug Meechum a love biscuit?” She set her wine down on the counter in a big, rounded motion, the information too much for her to take in while holding a drink.
“Lord, if I wasn’t married ... what I would not give to stuff one of those biscuits in Shug Meechum’s mouth and let him stuff his—”
“Verlaine!” I hollered. “Honey, Shug Meechum eating a biscuit was an accident. I never meant for that to happen.”
“But it did, didn’t it?” Trudy asked. “You fed him a biscuit and now he thinks he’s in love with me.”
I took in a deep breath. “Yes,” I said, and the cat was out of the bag.
That night, I explained everything to Trudy: biscuit baking, the mysterious oil you can only get from high atop Aberdeen Mountain, and how all the Aberdeen women for generations have used it.
Oh, her tearful face was a bit melodramatic if you ask me, and you’d think she’d have been more grateful.
Because who wanted to waste time on some obsessive football coach in the first place?
Didn’t we already learn our lesson with Jimmie Beaumont?
Hopefully, Trudy would come around and we’d get back to planning a wedding at Falconhead for the future first lady of Bailey Springs.
But even if Trudy did blow up my plan for her to marry Haskel, I still had Verlaine.
And giving her those biscuits was the right move; I could still get my Celestial Ladies membership restored while Verlaine was president, even though I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to stoop to the level I was fixing to stoop.