“When Horse’s mother lived with us we wound up with all this junk,” she said. “We’ll bring the hospital bed over tomorrow. I just need to round up some more fellas to lift it.”
Patricia realized that Grace must have called Kitty and told her the situation. Before she could call Grace to say thank you, her doorbell rang again. A short black woman, plump but sharp-eyed, her hair set in a stiff old-fashioned helmet, wearing white slacks and a white nurse’s tunic under a purple cardigan, stood on her front porch.
“Mrs. Cavanaugh said you might be able to use my help,” the woman said. “My name is Ursula Greene and I take care of old folks.”
“It’s very nice of you,” Patricia began. “But—”
“I’ll also look after the children occasionally at no extra charge,” Mrs. Greene said. “I’m not a babysitter, but Mrs. Cavanaugh said you might step out from time to time. I charge eleven dollars an hour and thirteen dollars an hour at night. I don’t mind cooking for the little ones, but I don’t want it to become a habit.”
It was cheaper than Patricia thought, but she still couldn’t imagine anyone being willing to deal with Miss Mary.
“Before you make a decision,” she said, “let me introduce you to my mother-in-law.”
They walked onto the sun porch, where Miss Mary sat watching television. Miss Mary scowled at the interruption.
“Who’s this?” she snipped.
“This is Mrs. Greene,” Patricia said. “Mrs. Greene, I’d like you to meet—”
“What’s she doing here?” Miss Mary said.
“I’ve come to brush your hair and do your nails,” Mrs. Greene said. “And make you something to eat later.”
“Why can’t that one do it?” Miss Mary asked, jabbing a gnarled finger at Patricia.
“Because you’re working that one’s last nerve,” Mrs. Greene said. “And if that one doesn’t get a break she’s liable to throw you off the roof.”
Miss Mary thought about it for a minute, then said, “No one’s pushing me off any roof.”
“Keep acting like that and I might help her,” Mrs. Greene said.
Three weeks later, Patricia sat on a green plaid blanket at Middleton Place, listening to the Charleston Symphony Orchestra play Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks.” Overhead, the first firework unfolded until it filled the sky like a burning green dandelion. Fireworks always moved Patricia. It took so much time and effort to get them right and they were over so quickly and could only be enjoyed by such a small number of people.
By the light of the fireworks she looked at the women sitting around her: Grace in a lawn chair, eyes closed, listening to the music; Kitty, asleep on her back, plastic wineglass tipping dangerously in one hand; Maryellen in her overalls, legs stretched out in front of her, taking in Charleston’s finest; and Slick, legs tucked beneath her, head cocked, listening to the music like it was homework.
Patricia realized that for four years, these were the women she’d seen every month. She’d talked to them about her marriage, and her children, and gotten frustrated with them, and argued with them, and seen all of them cry at some point, and somewhere along the line, among all the slaughtered coeds, and shocking small-town secrets, and missing children, and true accounts of the cases that changed America forever, she’d learned two things: they were all in this together, and if their husbands ever took out a life insurance policy on them they were in trouble.
HELTER SKELTER
May 1993
CHAPTER 3
“But if I can’t get Blue to come to the table for supper when Carter’s mother eats with us,” Patricia said to her book club, “then Korey will stop coming, too. She’s already picky about food. I’m worried it’s a teenager thing.”
“Already?” Kitty asked.
“She’s fourteen,” Patricia said.
“Being a teenager isn’t a number,” Maryellen said. “It’s the age when you stop liking them.”
“You don’t like the girls?” Patricia asked.
“No one likes their children,” Maryellen said. “We love them to death, but we don’t like them.”
“My children are a constant blessing,” Slick said.
“Get a life, Slick,” Kitty said, biting into a cheese straw, showering crumbs into her lap, brushing them off onto Grace’s carpet.
Patricia saw Grace flinch.
“No one thinks you don’t adore your children, Slick,” Grace said. “I love Ben Jr. but it will be a happy day when he leaves for college and we can finally have some peace in this house.”
“I think they don’t eat because of what they see in magazines,” Slick said. “They call it ‘heroin chic,’ can you imagine? I cut out the ads before I’ll let Greer have a magazine.”
“Are you kidding me?” Maryellen asked.
“How do you find the time?” Kitty asked, snapping a cheese straw in half and sending more crumbs to Grace’s carpet.
Grace couldn’t contain herself. She got Kitty a plate.
“Oh, no thank you,” Kitty said, waving it away. “I’m fine.”
The nameless not-quite-a-book-club had settled into Grace’s sitting room with its deep carpets and soothing lamplight. A framed Audubon print hung over the fireplace, reflecting the room’s pale colonial colors—Raleigh peach and Bruton white—and the piano in the corner gleamed darkly to itself. Everything in Grace’s house looked perfect. Every early American Windsor chair, every chestnut end table, every Chinese porcelain lamp, it all looked to Patricia as if it had always been here and the house had grown up around it.
“Teenagers are boring,” Kitty said. “And it only gets worse. Breakfast, laundry, clean the house, dinner, homework, the same thing, every day, day after day. If anything changes even the slightest bit, they have a cow. Honestly, Patricia, relax. Pick your battles. No one’s going to die if they don’t eat every meal at the table or if they don’t have clean underwear one day.”
“And what if that’s the day they get hit by a car?” Grace asked.
“If Ben Jr. got hit by a car I think you’d have bigger problems than the condition of his underpants,” Maryellen said.
“Not necessarily,” Grace said.
“I freeze sandwiches,” Slick blurted out.
“You what?” Kitty asked.
“To save time,” Slick said in a rush. “I make all the sandwiches for the children’s lunches, three per day, five days a week. That’s sixty sandwiches. I make them all on the first Monday of the month, freeze them, and every morning I pull one out of the freezer and pop it in their bag. By lunchtime it’s thawed.”