Ten
Leta Pearl
My Lord, you would have thought somebody had peed in her chili the way Barbara Beaumont wheeled her buggy over to me in the produce aisle pitching an absolute fit.
She almost knocked over a whole display of quick grits in the process, and it’s a thousand wonders that twenty-year-old beehive kept its shape.
“Leta Pearl! Do you have any idea what your daughter has done?” Barbara’s caked-on rouge and plum eyeshadow made her look like she was auditioning for the circus. She wore a business suit dress of maroon and mauve plaid with shoulder pads as big as a linebacker’s.
“Well, hello, Barbara,” I said, with as much pleasantry as I could muster. “I’d ask the same question about your daughters, but I prefer not to be put to sleep in the grocery store.”
“Trudy has made a mockery of the Bruins cheerleading squad, that’s what.”
“Goodness me,” I said, thumping watermelons. “I didn’t think twice was possible in a single lifetime.”
Barbara’s face turned tomato red; her lips were tight and worried. She carried on and on, something about Trudy and a boy cheerleader.
“I’m telling you right now, Deborah Delaney is throwing a hissy.”
“Deborah who?”
“My daughter ?” Barbara rolled her eyes and blew out an exasperated breath.
“You mean Dee Dee?” I said. “She hasn’t run away from home yet?”
“Exactly what does Trudy think we’re gonna do about uniforms?” Barbara asked. “What’s that boy gonna do? Wear a skirt ?”
I calmly placed two watermelons in my buggy and eased it down the aisle. “These won’t be in season much longer, Barbara. Better get you one.”
She pushed her buggy alongside mine. “Those uniforms are hand-sewn and embroidered by Miss Marvalee Adams, and she lives all the way in Moulton. We paid fifty-six dollars apiece for those uniforms with the money those girls hard-earned themselves at the Homecoming Collard Greens Supper.”
“You know what? That sounds delicious.” I beelined over to the collard greens .
“Do you know how awkward it’s gonna be, Leta Pearl?
” Barbara squeezed the handle on her buggy so tight, I worried her four-carat diamond—the same one that, just a few weeks ago, Dub had spent two hours soldering its broken shank and hadn’t charged her a dime for it—might pop right out of its setting and put my eye out.
“We are the only home with a video cassette machine, so we must host all the cheerleader spend-the-night parties at Beaumont Forks. Pray tell, how am I supposed to do that with a teenage boy on the squad?”
“I’ll put you on the prayer list at church, Barbara.” I touched her shoulder. “Even though you are a Methodist.”
“I’m giving you fair warning, Leta Pearl. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Trudy should have been locked up for what she did to Jimmie, and if I had more proof, I would have seen to it, but she is not going to get away with this .”
Kicking Barbara Beaumont in the shin was what I wanted to do, but she was so wound up, I knew just being nice would heap some of those burning coals on her head like Pastor Hargett had talked about in his sermon last Sunday.
“Oh, Barbara.” I smiled. “Y’all already kicked us out of Falconhead. What’s next? You gonna kick us out of the Piggly Wiggly too?”
Barbara was working hard to keep her composure, so I smiled even bigger, letting her believe she wasn’t getting to me.
“I have already spoken with Mr. Hendon. He had no idea about this. I think Trudy’s using her relationship with Haskel Moody to change things she has no business changing.”
I smiled, the vision of my future as the mayor’s mother-in-law playing in Technicolor in my head. “I reckon that’ll be happening a lot more once she’s married to him. Don’t you?”
Barbara drew in a breath; she was as tense as a rubber band around two light poles.
“Leta Pearl, nobody in this town, except your daughter, wants to see a boy priss around like a girl doing cheers at football games. As the mother of the head cheerleader, I simply will not let Deborah Delaney be upstaged her senior year.”
I opened my mouth to point out that the black-eyed peas were on sale, but Barbara kept going.
“And I wouldn’t get my hopes up about Haskel’s campaign. I plan to hold no punches in my column. I am trying to do Trudy a favor here, even though you know I have no respect for her.”
“A favor? Well, we certainly appreciate that, Barbara, but if I may, as the mother of the head cheerleader, emeritus myself, that’s rather presumptuous, don’t you think? That your respect is something to which Trudy aspires in the first place?”
“Oh, Leta Pearl.” Barbara followed her sneer with a bark of laughter. “Bless your heart. Maybe you will respect this. Jerry Don’s next project is a new shopping mall, just outside of town. Bailey Square .”
“A mall? In Bailey Springs? Now that would be something.”
“Oh, you should see the building plans, just like Huntsville’s new mall. In fact, Jerry Don is working with the same builders.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Well, hon. I’m so glad you asked. I would imagine every downtown Bailey Springs business will be interested in a storefront.”
“Well, we aren’t.”
“That’s okay, Leta Pearl, because the people at Zale’s are . You’ve heard of them, right? Big jewelry store? A chain with locations all over the USA. They have that big fancy catalog with the glossy pages?”
“Yes. I know what Zale’s is.”
Barbara shrugged. “Apparently, once the Zale’s people heard Castner-Knott, Pizitz, and Parisian were coming, they really wanted to open a store in the new Bailey Square Mall. I bet they have a bigger selection and lower prices than Dub’s Diamonds, don’t you?”
If I weren’t a Baptist, I would have slapped Barbara to sleep and then slapped her for sleeping. Instead, I whispered in her ear, “Darling, the cream for fever blisters is on special today. Aisle six. You might wanna get you some.”
Barbara touched her lip as I walked away.