Chapter 6 #3
The man nodded. Moe went to work, but he knew what he’d said on Floy’s behalf would be all over Blackjack by morning.
Floy went straight to Edison’s Eats and ordered chicken-fried steak, fries, and a tall glass of iced tea.
“You get another side with that, if you want,” the waitress said. “Green beans or a salad.”
Floy blinked. “No green beans. I’ll take the salad with house dressing.”
Quilla was sitting on the front porch of her house shelling English peas and watching her daughter digging a mess of new potatoes from the garden. Fresh peas with new baby potatoes were a favorite summer dish in their house, but the tension between them had yet to ease.
Mayrene had wanted to get rid of the snake.
Quilla had interfered because she’d wanted to get rid of Floy.
They had both accomplished what they’d set out to do, but with consequences they could never undo.
Mayrene came back toward the house carrying a small bucket with the potatoes as Quilla was getting up to go back in the house. She’d finished shelling the peas.
“I need to make a quick trip into town to pick up my prescription,” Quilla said. “You should probably stop by the post office and turn in a change of address so Floy isn’t getting your mail.”
Mayrene frowned, thinking about her magazine subscriptions. “Good idea,” she said, ignoring the pang of regret at no longer being somebody’s wife.
They washed up, put on clean clothes and nice shoes, and headed down the mountain.
Quilla was prepared for more of the same response they’d received at the Pic Pac and basically didn’t care what anyone thought, but Mayrene was still smarting from the attack, knowing all the women she’d once considered friends now viewed her with disgust.
Quilla wasted no time in the pharmacy. She was in and out within minutes, leaving Mayrene in the air-conditioned car.
Their next stop was the post office. Mayrene knew about change of address cards because she’d done that when she and Floy were first married.
She quickly filled one out and left it with the postmaster before hurrying back to the car where her mother waited.
She buckled her seatbelt and then took a deep breath as Quilla backed away from the curb.
“Mama, I want to drive by the house.”
Quilla frowned. “What house?”
“My house. I want to see if—”
“That’s not your house anymore,” Quilla muttered.
Mayrene flinched, her voice coming out louder than intended. “You think I don’t know that? I still want to see it. That’s all.”
Quilla glared.
Mayrene stared back until her mother took the secondary road out of town that went straight past the house that Mayrene had once called home.
Even from a distance, the first thing Mayrene noticed was that Floy’s truck was gone and so was her car, the one she’d wrecked.
But as they started up the incline toward the driveway, her heart thumped once so hard against her ribs that she thought she was going to pass out.
“Stop the car! Stop the car!” she screamed.
Quilla stomped the brakes, looking wild-eyed and panicked.
“What’s happening?”
“Look what he did! My green beans! He put them out on the side of the road like they were garbage to give away. Pull up. They’re mine! They’re mine! I grew them. I canned them. And he’s tossing them out like he tossed me out!” she shrieked.
Quilla drove as close to the ditch as she dared and then parked.
“Get out. Open the trunk and then help me!” Mayrene said, and flew out of the car and up the shallow ditch to grab a jar in each hand.
But it wasn’t until she had one jar clutched against her breasts that it hit her: the green beans she’d shoved into Floy’s hands right after she’d slapped his face. The same jar of green beans that then broke in his hands and on his chest when she’d slammed the door in his face.
“Oh Lord,” she mumbled, and started to cry.
She picked up the second jar and carefully carried them across the ditch, then she gently laid them down on the packing quilt they kept in the trunk for fragile groceries and went back for more.
She and her mother worked quickly, but silently, desperate to get the beans and get away before Floy returned. It wasn’t until they were driving away that Mayrene started crying in earnest.
“It was the green beans and the slap,” she said, between sobs. “I got carried away. My intention was to pretend to be fed up. Third escape . . . like you said.”
Quilla frowned, but she kept her eyes on the road and kept driving.
“I had a jar of green beans in my hands. That was me setting up the scene to discover Elvis was gone. I slapped him hard—so hard—screaming Elvis had escaped. I shoved the quart of beans in his hands as I ran to our bedroom. You know . . . a “No sex until the snake was gone for good” kind of threat. But I wasn’t looking back when I slammed the door and locked it.
The jar of beans broke in his hands and into his chest. He was standing in bean juice and broken glass, and he was bleeding because of the shards piercing his chest. The green beans he put out on the road were because they were a painful reminder of me and the betrayal.
But he wasn’t treating them like garbage.
He didn’t waste them. He set them out for someone who might need them.
He was still doing all the right things.
I broke my wedding vows by putting him second and putting you first, and that’s on me. ”
Quilla’s heart skipped. “Well, I still say you’re better off without—”
“Shut up, Mother. You’ve already said enough,” Mayrene said, and leaned back against the headrest as she closed her eyes.