Chapter Eleven #2
“Gotta be honest, Sue: I’m from Miami and I’m not crazy about snow, but the kids love it,” he said, mirroring her chattiness. He almost didn’t say the last part, wasn’t sure why he did: “I had enough snow at my grandmother’s.”
Sue’s eyes brightened, artifice melting away. “Mazywood? That was hers?”
Tasha, beside Johnny, noticed Sue’s excitement and sidled closer to him. Tasha held on to Johnny’s arm, a sign that she still wasn’t feeling well.
Johnny’s face seemed to make Sue realize she’d said something wrong, but she wasn’t sure what.
“Dickie Hollman told me her grandson’s fixed up the place,” she said.
“I was glad to hear it. My granddad used to deliver meat up there. Somebody came in looking for that place just yesterday. Not every town has its own movie star. Especially out here.” The words gushed out.
Johnny was ready to change the subject, but Tasha said, “You met Mazelle Washington?”
“What was she like?” Sharise joined in, her earlier mischief forgotten.
Sue looked relieved at having another chance to mend her interaction with them.
Her smile widened with memories. “A few times, but I was real young. She used to let some of us kids like me and Dickie go tubing on her property when she didn’t have guests.
Gave us peppermints. She was a beauty, all right. ’Til the end.”
It wasn’t a headache yet, but Johnny’s temples contracted. Spending the weekend at his grandmother’s lodge was one thing, but he didn’t have to make small talk about her with a stranger. He cursed himself for bringing her up.
“She called it Bear Creek Lodge,” he said. “Not Mazywood.”
His tone was so sharp that his family all stared at him, surprised. He felt as if he’d channeled a flash of his grandmother’s famous temper. She’d changed the name for a reason.
No mistaking Sue’s bright pink ears now. “That’s just what my granddad called it.” She sounded defensive, her eyes turned down as she busied herself scanning their purchases.
Johnny felt Tasha’s hot gaze on him. Even Imani, who was still a novice in the art of social interactions, had questions in her eyes. Johnny took a breath and decided to try again with lightness in his voice. “You said someone was looking for the lodge? Did they want to rent it?”
She shrugged, not looking up at him as she scanned Tasha’s ginger ale. “A podcaster. That’s all he said.” A definite We’re done now clip.
“I’m also gonna fill up three gas cans,” Johnny said.
“Where will those fit?” Imani asked. She’d complained the whole time she was trying to fit the groceries into their rented Toyota RAV4, somehow making room with the snow gear they’d brought from home. Based on their luggage, it looked like they were staying for a month.
“You’ll make it fit,” Johnny said. “I have faith in you.”
The broadcaster was going on about the snow and road closures. Johnny didn’t recognize the street names, and a new worry occurred to him. “Will we be okay just with the chains?” he asked Sue. “We won’t need a snowmobile up there, will we?”
Sue didn’t answer for so long that he wondered if she was outright ignoring him.
“Probably not…” she said finally. “But sometimes it gets snowed in higher above Thirty-One Road. No plows up there.” Her response was dutiful.
She didn’t look up at him, disappearing into her task as she packed his items. Tough titties if that happens, asshole, her demeanor said.
She seemed to have decided that her earlier profiling had been justified.
“Have a good day,” Johnny said in her stead, and took the bag of groceries.
“What was that about?” Tasha said when she climbed into the car beside Johnny, while Imani and Sharise argued over how to rearrange their new acquisitions in the rear.
“She knew what she was doing,” Johnny said.
“What was she doing?”
“She was watching us like we were Crips,” Sharise said from outside the rear hatch.
“True,” Johnny said, and was glad to see Tasha’s frown at him soften. “And it’s not just that—she called it Mazywood.”
The grace he’d won from Sharise’s Crips comment vanished. “Why does that matter, Johnny?” Tasha said. “Isn’t that what Mazelle named it?”
“She named it after her character—Lazy Mazy,” he said. “You know that, right?”
His grandmother had her own franchise in the early 1940s, fifty years before Johnny began his own.
But hers had made her the headliner, with her name above the title on the posters.
Playing the bumbling housekeeper Lazy Mazy had made Mazelle Washington rich—just like he had gotten rich playing Hollywood’s game in a different way, he reminded himself.
At least Mazelle had figured out a way to make her money last beyond her generation. Would he?
“Let me do it,” Imani complained to Sharise outside. “You’re messing it up!”
“Fine!” Sharise said, and huffed back inside the car, slamming her door. “Everything has to be her way or she freaks out.”
Tasha shot Sharise a look over her shoulder. Imani’s fussiness was a part of her array of symptoms on the spectrum, and mocking symptoms was off-limits. The word freak had been banned years ago, in every form. Sorry, Sharise mouthed at Tasha.