Brenda Gets a Surprise
BRENDA DIDN’T KNOW IT, BUT HER SISTER ROBBIE HAD BEEN saving money to buy her a fifty-inch flat-screen television set for her birthday, in two weeks. This morning, Robbie had read that Costco was having a huge one-day sale on electronics, and the exact model Brenda wanted was marked down 35 percent. So that afternoon, with the help of two of her intern friends at the hospital, they borrowed an ambulance and ran out to Costco and bought one. Because she couldn’t trust Brenda not to go through every square inch of the house and the garage looking for her presents, they took it over to storage to keep until her birthday, so it would be a surprise. But it was Robbie and the two interns who got a surprise when they moved the chest of drawers.
The next person to be surprised that day was Brenda. When she came bouncing in the door from her Youth at Risk meeting, she was feeling pretty good, until she saw Mr. Crocker sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed and Robbie sitting right beside him.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” said Robbie.
“Uh-oh.” Brenda understood that this was one of those times when changing the subject with enthusiasm was just not going to work. She was busted and she knew it, so she sat down and told Robbie the truth.
After she finished, Robbie shook her head and said, “Brenda, do you have any idea how insane you are?”
Brenda blinked her eyes and tried to look as innocent as possible. “Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time.”
“And Maggie went along with this? That doesn’t sound like her.”
“I know, but you don’t understand: we needed this sale. Our office depended on it. Please don’t tell Maggie that you found him. Please.”
Robbie thought about it for a minute, then said, “Well, okay, I guess it won’t hurt anything. But why do you keep saying he?”
“Because we’re almost positive we know who he is.”
“Oh, really?”
“We think it’s Edward Crocker, the man who used to live there. There’s a painting of him in the house wearing this same exact outfit. Don’t you think that’s a pretty good clue?”
“I do. Except for one small detail.”
“What?”
“Your little friend here is a female.”
“WHAT? How do you know that?”
“Because I examined it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure; I know physiology. You can tell by the hips.”
Brenda was not happy to hear this news. “What were you doing examining my skeleton’s hips… and now that I think about it, what were you doing over at the storage unit in the first place?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” said Robbie. “Other people have secrets, too.”
Usually, as it was so close to her birthday, Brenda would have badgered Robbie until she found out what the secret was, but she had other things on her mind right now. She was wondering how she was going to tell Maggie that the skeleton was not Edward Crocker. After thinking it over, she decided that maybe she wouldn’t tell her. What Maggie didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
ACROSS TOWN, AFTER Ethel Clipp had poured herself a nice stiff drink, she was sitting in her living room in her purple velour pantsuit, looking out the window and watching the pigeons walking all over her yard. One big fat male pigeon was all puffed up, strutting around and pestering some poor female to death. Typical. It could have been her ex-husband, Earl. If she thought there was any truth to the reincarnation thing, she would have gotten up and gone out in the yard and swatted it.
After the divorce, that son of a bitch Earl had just disappeared. He just took off and hadn’t sent her a dime in alimony, not even a postcard. If it hadn’t been for Hazel, she never could have gotten those two kids raised, much less been able to send them to college.
And after her working so hard to make sure they had an education and would be able to get a good job, they both wound up weird as hell, and neither one of them had a job. Now, just like crazy Dottie Figge, who had flipped out and gone all Hindu, they said they were on some so-called spiritual quest and needed to devote time to discovering the “path to happiness.” Opal, her youngest, had just sent her a book. She said it was the most profound thing she had ever read. Ethel didn’t want to burst her bubble, but it seemed like a bunch of gobbledegook. Back in her day, going to church every Sunday used to be enough. But now everybody and their brother had some new lamebrained theory or philosophy they were pushing. Years ago, you used to have to wait until someone asked you to write a book, but now with self-publishing, every wing nut in America was writing one. Ethel thought that maybe she should write one. She had a philosophy, too. She even had a title: Fools and Idiots I Have Known or Have Been Married To. Her theory was very simple: there wasn’t a thing the matter with the world, just the people in it. They never learned, and they just kept doing the same damned stupid things over and over again. Animals were fine, but all humans were fools. Herself included, or she wouldn’t have married Earl in the first place.
The Kate Spade Affair
ON SATURDAY MORNING, BRENDA AND HER SISTER TONYA WERE AT the factory outlet mall for the annual Kate Spade March Madness handbag sale. They had arrived at five A.M. to make sure they got in the front of the line, and by seven, the line was already around the block, with women waiting to stampede through the store and grab as many bags as they could. When the doors finally opened at eight, Brenda shouted for Tonya to go to the left, and she would go to the right. Brenda had been rushing around the store for about ten minutes when she began to feel ill. She felt a burning pain in her chest; she was hot and sweaty and was suddenly having trouble breathing. She should have gone home, but this was a once-a-year sale, so instead, she ran in the ladies room and threw cold water on her face and headed back out again. When she did, she caught a glimpse of her sister across the room, and Tonya held up a bright red bag in triumph, and Brenda started over to that side of the store to try to find one just like it. She needed a red bag, too.
MEANWHILE, ACROSS TOWN at Avon Terrace, Maggie was busy with her last-minute details again. Finally, after weeks of waiting, her deposition and all the paperwork involving the wreck had been completed, and yesterday, the Conways had called and said that the insurance company had finally agreed to cover all the costs of the fence and a new sign. When Maggie had heard from them, she had gone back to the river, this time with her snakebite kit in hand, and left all her jumping-in-the-river items.