Thirty-Six #2
Before Trudy could respond, Emily came cruising down Court Street in a cherry red 1969 Mustang convertible, her 1972 homecoming queen crown scattering beads of sunlight like a disco ball.
“Oh Lord, forgive her,” Leta Pearl said to the sky. “She’s dressed like Jezebel.”
The car’s eight-track player blared “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” by The Gap Band.
Emily’s breasts looked ready to stage an escape from her neon orange strapless jumpsuit, cinched tight with a fat silver belt.
Legs crossed at the knees, she kicked one silver stiletto to the beat.
She looked less like someone from Bailey Springs and more like she’d been airlifted in from Hollywood.
“She’s playing devil music,” Leta Pearl said, just as Emily shimmied her bare shoulders and blew them a kiss.
“So,” Trudy said, “about those biscuits.”
Leta Pearl scowled. “Why the sudden interest? Last night you said—”
“ You said I should embrace my destiny as an Aberdeen woman.” Trudy shrugged. “Well, I’m ready.”
Leta Pearl patted her shoulder. “We’ll talk later.”
“I don’t have until later. I need you to show me how to make those love biscuits. Tonight.”
“Lower your voice,” Leta Pearl hissed. “Later.”
“I’m gonna give them to June Bug Moody. I need him to fall back in love—”
“Have you lost your mind?” Leta Pearl grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her into Dub’s Diamonds. The bell jingled overhead as the door shut behind them, muffling the parade outside. She turned, wide-eyed. “I’m sorry, you want to do what —with whom ?”
“June Bug is in trouble, Mama. He’s about to ruin his life and take Haskel’s campaign down with him. Your biscuits could fix this.”
“I will not listen to this.”
“What? So you can dole them out, but I can’t?”
“He’s too young.”
“He’s eighteen.”
“Still. No.”
“You said they could be used for good. Mama, he’s in love with a boy.”
Leta Pearl blinked. “A boy ?”
“I caught them. June Bug. Kissing another boy.”
“Trudy, now I’ve heard it all. Boys don’t kiss boys. Especially not boys like June Bug Moody.”
“If he gets caught—if anyone finds out—you know what’ll happen to him. To me . To Haskel .”
Leta Pearl shook her head, swatting the air like it was full of gnats.
“You won’t even consider it?”
“It’s very complicated.”
Trudy’s mind spun. Complicated? What was complicated about helping someone? About healing something broken? Love biscuits could help people, couldn’t they? They could’ve helped someone like Jimmie.
And then—like a dropped plate—something inside her shattered.
Her breath caught. Her stomach flipped.
“Wait a second,” she said, voice flat. “Why didn’t you tell me about the biscuits when Jimmie was falling apart?”
Leta Pearl cleared her throat and looked away.
A wave of nausea left Trudy dizzy. She steadied herself and blinked at the carpet.
“Trudy—”
“You fed Jimmie a biscuit.” It came out barely louder than a breath.
“Trudy.”
“You fed Jimmie a biscuit !”
“Jimmie was so deeply troubled,” Leta Pearl said. “You know that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Trudy slammed her palm on the glass counter.
“What good would it have done?”
“I could’ve forgiven myself! I blamed me , Mama. I thought I was the reason. I could’ve known the truth.”
Leta Pearl pinched the bridge of her nose. “Aberdeen women don’t get that luxury. We’re cursed as much as we’re blessed. Don’t you see? You can have any man you want—but you have to keep this one secret.”
Trudy stared at her. “Or else what?”
The bell above the door jingled. Parade noise rushed in. Neither of them turned.
“We’re closed,” they said in unison.
The bell jingled again. The door clicked shut.
Leta Pearl sighed heavily and walked to the door. “Look outside.”
Trudy’s seething burned inside, her hands were clenched, her knuckles felt like they might burst.
“Come on, look. Across the street.”
Trudy stepped beside Leta Pearl. Across the street, Barbara Beaumont stood in front of Lexington’s, clipboard in hand, her Wallace for Governor button now a fixture.
That notorious relic beehive, always paying homage to the way things used to be, floated through the crowd from person to person, each one nodding and smiling and writing on her clipboard.
“Here’s the truth.” Leta Pearl let out another long sigh and walked back to the counter and leaned up against it.
“September seventh, 1974, Barbara Beaumont came to me in a tizzy, right here in this store. Lord, you would have thought somebody had burned Beaumont Forks clean to the ground the way she was carrying on.”
Trudy continued watching Barbara creep down the sidewalk.
“She and Jerry Don were having trouble. Barbara suspected another woman and confided in me. The Beaumonts had always been so good to us; they even gave us a loan when we opened. We paid it all back of course, but ... I took the term Celestial Sister quite literally; we all did. Or at least I thought we did.”
“So, you gave Barbara biscuits to stop Jerry Don from cheating?”
“And they worked. Barbara couldn’t have been happier.”
Trudy studied her mother’s face.
“Everything was fine ... until she gave them to Jimmie. Right after y’all split up.”
Trudy shook her head trying to make it not be true. She folded her arms and leaned on the display of engagement rings. She slammed her fist on the case again, knocking a T-bar of pendants on its side. “How could you do that?”
Leta Pearl jumped, startled by Trudy’s pounding. She placed her hand, lightly, on Trudy’s shoulder, but Trudy yanked herself away. “I didn’t,” Leta Pearl said. “Barbara did. She had the best intentions. She thought it might fix whatever was broken.”
Trudy felt a drumming in her ears. “I sat in Sheriff Wilson’s office for seven and half hours that day explaining myself like some murderer. Is that why Barbara Beaumont never pressed for an investigation—because she killed Jimmie with your biscuits?”
That day at Bessemer’s Bluff, Jimmie was strangely calm and loving, his rage had somehow turned to sadness and remorse, seemingly overnight.
It made sense now. Trudy could hear it in his voice—he’d spoken like he had when she first loved him—and that’s why she agreed to meet him there, the parking lot above the bluff, the spot where they’d likely conceived Pete.
Barbara had fed him a biscuit, so he must have realized the hurt and pain he’d caused.
Perhaps that’s why he’d cried so hard, sobbing, unable to catch his breath or make out intelligible words.
It broke Trudy’s heart—it really did—when he’d begged forgiveness, begged Trudy to come back to him, to help him.
He’d promised to go to a psychologist, or AA, or do anything she wanted, if only she and Pete would come back home.
He swore up and down he would never, ever lay a hand on Pete, or her, again.
Trudy had considered it for a moment, but simply couldn’t get that image of Pete’s screaming, crimson face out of her head. She’d never escape that image. She simply needed a little time to think about it. Not right now , she’d told herself that day. Another time, maybe .
But what she’d said aloud to Jimmie was simply, “No.”
She took one last look at him before getting into Dub’s Cadillac to go back to work, and that’s when he’d turned and jumped.
“Oh, Trudy, honey . . .”
Trudy, again, backed away from Leta Pearl’s touch.
“I thought I’d driven him to do it.” Hot tears flowed from Trudy’s eyes.
“I thought I’d ruined your life. And Daddy’s.
Do you know what it’s been like groveling under your roof all these years?
Do you even care? And to think you’d do it all over again.
How do you live with yourself? Holding Daddy hostage like that? ”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” Leta Pearl waved her off. “ Hostage makes it sound like I’m—”
“ Deranged ! Exactly. Like you’re a deranged, creepy witch who keeps her husband under a spell! And giving them to Verlaine so you can be in some sorority?”
Leta Pearl stiffened. “I’m doing the best I can.” Leta Pearl started fiddling with the clearance earrings.
Trudy’s blood vessels pulsed in her forehead. “By secretly poisoning people?”
“Good grief.” Leta Pearl grunted. “They’re hardly poisonous .”
“I am ending this, right now. All of it! I’m telling everyone.” Trudy walked back to the door and pushed it open. She’d go to Haskel first, then to Shug, then she’d tell Dickie Crump, too. Her own father after that.
Leta Pearl scurried toward her, grabbed hold of her daughter’s arm, tried to pull Trudy back inside.
Trudy muscled out of her grip and came face to face with Dub on the sidewalk.
“True-Belle? What is it darling?” Dub’s handsome face reflected the golden autumn sunset.
His eyes didn’t register a care in the world, and the lines on either side of them boasted his lifetime of laughter that dared life to come on, throw me some curveballs, I dare ya!
And looking at those eyes, Trudy saw right through to her daddy’s heart, a heart she was certain she could never break.
Perhaps that’s what Leta Pearl saw, too: a deeply blissful man who loved her to every corner of the sunset and back.
Who would he become if he knew the truth?
Who was she to take his happiness away by telling him?
“Nothing.” Trudy wiped her cheeks. “Mama and I made sure you had plenty of boxes for all the Bruin Brooches you’re sure to sell after this parade.”
Dub chuckled. He pulled her close and kissed her forehead. Trudy imagined that, through the years, he’d learned from raising girls, among several things, when to keep questions to himself.
“I need y’all to bring Pete home,” she said into her daddy’s chest. “I’m walking back to the school to get my car.”
From across the street, Barbara Beaumont’s eyes met Trudy’s.
They raised their eyebrows as if mirroring one another.
Haskel interrupted the silent exchange by calling out from the back of June Bug’s Silverado.
He stood next to a life-sized paper maché bruin; paws raised to the sky with a football in its teeth.
“Trudy!” he hollered. The sign on the truck read, Superintendent Haskel Moody says Eat ’em up, Bruins!
Instead of candy, he was tossing pencils.
Pete picked one up, looked at it, and gave it to Dub, who had already helped Pete collect a whole Winn Dixie sack full of candy.