“Darlings! Are we all ready to be literary?" a voice trilled from the doorway. Desiree Loftus entered with her usual flourish. She was trailing scarves and an exotic scent that Jane thought smelled like a mixture of marijuana and ylang-ylang. "Ruth and Naomi—the biblical sisters!" she said, rushing over to greet them. "No, don't tell me again. I know that Ruth and Naomi weren't sisters, but you are. I've been meaning to tell you how delightful the naked ladies looked all over your lawn last fall.”
Jane thought Desiree had finally gone over the edge. She looked at Shelley with alarm.
Shelley giggled and whispered, "Naked ladies are those pink lilylike flowers that come up in the late summer. You know, the ones that don't have any foliage.”
Jane sighed. "I'm so relieved. I was picturing unclad virgins artfully strewn all over the corner lot and wondering how I could have missed it.”
Desiree, courageous as ever, called across the room to Mrs. Pryce, "My dear! Such a bad color for you—blue. You have a red aura, you know."
“Utter nonsense!" Mrs. Pryce exclaimed.
“No, not at all. I'm very tuned in to these things." "You're drunk! As usual!”
Desiree glared at her for a moment, then laughed shrilly. "Drunk on the joy of life, perhaps," she replied before turning her attention to the man at the edge of the room. "I don't believe we've met. I'm Desiree Loftus."
“How do you do. I'm Robert Neufield. My friends call me Bob."
“Oh, I do hope I'm going to be among them, Bob." She gave him a dazzling smile and turned to survey the room for other conversational victims. "Jane! Shelley! And who are you? No, don't tell me. You must be a relative of Jane's. It's the eyebrows. They tell everything! People don't pay nearly enough attention to eyebrows these days.”
As the introductions were going on, Jane heard Grady Wells's characteristic hearty laughter in the hallway. He came in the room with Missy, who was smiling—until her eye fell on Mrs. Pryce ensconced center front. Grady, chunky and florid-faced, took a seat by Bob Neufield, and Missy went to her desk and started sorting out her notes.
Jane slipped out of her seat and went to have a word with Missy. "I'm cheating. I made up a person," she said, furtively sliding an envelope onto thedesk. "Just for fun. Not for the class." She was surprised and embarrassed to realize her heart was pounding at her own audacity. She almost snatched the envelope back.
“What a great idea, Jane. I won't pass it out to the others if you don't want me to."
“Oh, no. Please don't. I'm terrified to even show it to you.”
They were interrupted by Mrs. Pryce bellowing at Grady. "I'm surprised you'd have the nerve to show up here.”
Grady smiled at her as if she were a grand joke. "I don't know why that would be."
“After the way you've neglected your civic duties."
“Mrs. Pryce," he said patiently, "I'm not here as mayor. Bring your concerns to the council meeting if you must."
“Oh, yes! To your paid toadies!"
“Mrs. Pryce, the council isn't paid anything. And I only get a hundred dollars a year. That's about a nickel an hour for my time." His patience was obviously wearing thin, but he still looked cheerful. Grady always looked cheerful.
“That may be your salary, but I have good reason to think you make a good deal more.”
All the amusement had faded from Grady's face. "What are you talking about?"
“Let's not mince words. Embezzlement. That's what I'm talking about."
“Embezzlement?" Grady's always pink face had grown alarmingly red.
“Yes. We all pay a hefty amount in taxes, but there never seems to be any money for necessary pro‑ grams. I believe that large sums of money are missing."
“Mrs. Pryce, I invite you to look over the city's financial statement any time you want. In fact, I insist on it. I'll have our treasurer explain it all to you. But I warn you—if there's any more of this loose talk, I'll have to discuss you with the city's attorney. This is slander and could damage a number of reputations. I won't have it.”
Missy cleared her throat loudly. "I believe we had better begin our class.”
Jane scuttled back to her place between her mother and Shelley and sat down, shaking her head in disgust.
“Do you think she's gone gaga?" Shelley whispered.
“God! Can you imagine saying a thing like that to Grady?”
Missy glanced at them, silently ordering them to be quiet. "Now, we're all here to learn to write an autobiography—"
“Some of us already know how," Mrs. Pryce said.
Missy ignored her. "I'll be giving you a lot of instructions—rules, if you wish—but I want to make a disclaimer right now. Rules are, as trite as it may be, made to be broken. But the secret to any good writing is in breaking the rules selectively. I believe—"
“Why are you teaching this class?" Mrs. Pryce interrupted.
“Because I want to," Missy snapped back.
“I hardly think you're a suitable teacher. A woman who writes those dirty books.”
Missy drew herself up and looked dangerouslycomposed. "Have you ever read one of my books, Mrs. Pryce?"
“I wouldn't demean myself."
“Then you have no right to comment on their content, quality, or morality. I'm sorry to say this, Mrs. Pryce, but if you can't keep quiet until you're called on, I'll have to ask you to drop out of this class."
“I've paid my money and I'll stay as long as I wish. That is my right as a citizen." She turned and looked around smugly, as if daring any of them to dispute this.
“Now see here—" Missy began, then caught herself. She looked down at her notes, took a long breath, and went on with her lecture. "The first thing you must determine is the purpose your autobiography is to serve. There are many reasons for writing one, some therapeutic, some instructional....”
Jane was making notes. Why is Priscilla writing this autobiography? To explain herself to her descendants? To clear her conscience? To plead her cause in the eyes of the world? Or to prove a point to the woman she believed to be her mother for so many years? For a little while she was able to put aside the suffocating tensions in the room. Mrs. Pryce didn't exist in Priscilla's world, nor did any of Mrs. Pryce's victims.
5
“So how did it go?" Jim Spelling asked Jane, Cecily, and Shelley as they trooped in the door. He was at the kitchen sink washing grease off his hands.
“Not bad—" Jane said, preoccupied.
“Not bad?" her mother and Shelley said in unison. "Jane! Have you gone mad?" Shelley finished. "What?"
“Earth to Jane. Do I need to get the jumper cables?”
Jane laughed. "I'm sorry. I was thinking about something else. The class was ghastly, at least Mrs. Pryce was. Is Katie home, Uncle Jim?"
“She came and went."
“She's not supposed to go anywhere."
“Just next door to look at somebody's hair. Why anybody'd walk five feet to look at hair is a mystery to me.”
Shelley was getting out coffee cups. "It's my daughter's, and it is worth gawking at. She looks like somebody went at her head with a lawn mower."
“I've been thinking about it, and I believe Agnes Pryce is insane," Cecily said, sitting down at the kitchen table. "I remembered her as being overbearing and insensitive, but nothing like that performance tonight. Maybe it's a particularly nasty form of senility.”
Shelley joined her at the table, setting cups around. "You might be right. I did some volunteer work at a nursing home for a while. There was a man there, not all that old, but he'd had a stroke. He was belligerent and had the foulest mouth I've ever heard. His family was always visiting and always left in tears. Apparently he'd been a gentle, kind person before. The doctor and nurses kept explaining to them that the stroke had triggered activity in some part of his mind that we all have, but normally repress. I guess his inhibitions had been cut off somehow. Maybe that's what age has done to Mrs. Pryce."