“I’ve got to pay my respects to Josiah.” Harry slipped her arm around Susan’s waist. “The bank won’t tell on Danny, so if you and Ned keep it quiet no one will know but me. I think a teenaged boy is allowed a few mistakes.”
“A five-hundred-dollar one! And that’s another thing. His father says he has to pay back every penny by Halloween.”
“Halloween?”
“At first Ned said Labor Day but Danny cried and said he couldn’t make enough from mowing lawns between the middle of July and Labor Day.”
“This must be an up-to-date version of clipping a few bills from Mom’s purse. Did you ever steal from your mother?”
“God, no.” Susan’s hand automatically covered her chest. “She would have beat me within an inch of my life. Still would, too.”
Susan’s mother was alive and extremely well in Montecito, California.
“My parents would not only have whopped me good,” Harry said, “they would have told everyone they knew, to accent my humiliation, which would have made it ten times worse. Did I ever tell you about Mother not being able to get me up in the morning?”
“You mean when our classes started at six-thirty A.M.? I didn’t want to get up either. Remember that? There were so many of us the schools couldn’t handle it, so they staggered the times we’d arrive at school in the morning. If you missed your buddies at lunch hour, that was that.”
“Poor Mom had to get up at five to try and get me up because I was on the 7:00 A.M. shift. I just wouldn’t budge. Finally she threw water on me. She was not a woman to shy from a remedy once its potency was established.”
Harry smiled. “I miss her. Odd, now I have no trouble getting up early. I even like it. It’s too bad Mother didn’t have more years to enjoy the fact that I’ve become an early bird.” She collected herself. “I’ve got to say something cheery to Josiah.”
Harry strolled over to Josiah, who was now being ministered to, literally, by Mrs. H., who was telling him about Lazarus. Josiah responded by saying that he, too, drew comfort from the thought of Lazarus waking from the dead but he, Josiah, was beat up, not dead. She needed to think of a better story. Then he reached for Harry.
“Dear Harry, you will forgive me for not rising.”
“Josiah, this is the first time I’ve seen anyone’s eyes match his shirt. Maroon.”
“I prefer the descriptive burgundy.” He leaned back in his chair.
“Now isn’t that like you, making light of something terrible.” Mrs. Hogendobber artlessly tried to pretend she liked Josiah and wished him well. Not that she disliked him, but she didn’t feel he was exactly a man and she knew he wasn’t a practicing Christian.
“It isn’t so terrible. The man was distraught and lashed out. I don’t know why Berryman’s distraught, but if I were married to Our Lady of Cellulite perhaps I’d be distraught too.”
Harry laughed. He was awful but he was on target.
“I had no idea that Linda Berryman evidenced an interest in film.” Mrs. Hogendobber tentatively accepted a gin rickey—not that she was a drinker, mind you, but it had been an unusually difficult day and the sun was past the yardarm.
Fair, sitting across from Josiah, burst out laughing and then covered his mouth. Correcting Mrs. Hogendobber wasn’t worth it.
“What’s this I hear about the adorable Mrs. Murphy and the fierce Tee Tucker being caught red-handed, I mean red-pawed, in Maude’s store—which I am buying, by the way?” Josiah asked Harry.
“I have no idea how they got in there.”
“I found them, you know.” Mrs. Hogendobber recounted, to the millisecond, the events leading to the discovery. She withheld the information about the desk but did give Harry a conspiratorial glance.
Josiah picked imaginary lint off his sleeve. “Don’t you wish they could talk?”
“No.” Harry smiled. “I don’t want everyone to know my secrets.”
“You have secrets?” Fair inclined his head toward Harry.
“Doesn’t everyone?” Harry shot back.
The room quieted for a moment; then conversation hummed again.
“Not me,” Mrs. Hogendobber said in a forthright voice, and then remembered that she had one now. She rather liked that.
“One teeny secret, Mrs. H., one momentary fall from grace, or at least a barstool,” Josiah teased her. “I agree with Harry—we each have secrets.”
“Well, someone’s got a humdinger.” Susan loathed the word humdinger, but it fit.
Harry exited the conversation on secrets as Mim joined it. She walked over to Little Marilyn, who couldn’t weasel out of talking to her now.
“Marilyn.”
“Harry.”
“You’re not talking to me and I don’t much like it.”
“Harry,” Little Marilyn whispered, genuinely fearful, “not in front of my mother. I’m not mad at you. She is.”
Harry also lowered her voice. “When are you going to cut the apron strings and be your own person? For chrissake, L.M., you’re over thirty.”
Little Marilyn flushed. She wasn’t accustomed to honest conversation, since with Mim you glided around issues. Speaking directly about something was tactless. However, life in WASP nirvana was growing stale. “You have to understand”—she was now almost inaudible—“when I get married I can do what I want, when I want.”
“How do you know you aren’t exchanging one boss for another?”
“Not Fitz-Gilbert. He isn’t remotely like Mother, which is why I like him.” That admission popped out of Little Marilyn’s mouth before she recognized what it meant.
“You can do what you want now.”
“Why this sudden interest in me? You’ve never paid much attention to me before.” A hint of belligerence crept into her voice. If she was going to rebel against Mama, why not practice on Harry?
“I love your brother. He’s one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known. He loves you and you’ll hurt him if you keep him from your wedding. And I suppose if you’d stop hanging around with that vapid, phony chic set I could learn to like you. Why don’t you motor out to the stables and get a little horse shit on your shoes? When we were kids you were a good rider. Go to New York for a weekend. Just . . . do something.”
“Vapid? Phony? You’re insulting my friends.”
“Wrong. Those are friends your mother chose for you. You don’t have any friends except for your brother.” Tired, worried, and irritable underneath her public demeanor, Harry just blurted this out.
“And you’re better off?” Little Marilyn began to enjoy this. “At least I’m getting the man I want. You’re losing yours.”
Harry blinked. This was a new Little Marilyn. She didn’t like the old one. The new one was really a surprise.
“Harry?” Josiah’s voice floated above the chatter. “Harry.” He called a little louder. She turned. “It must be a glorious conversation. You haven’t paid any attention to me and I’ve been calling.”
Little Marilyn, defiantly, walked over to Josiah first. Harry brought up the rear.
“You two girls were jabbering like bluejays,” Mim said with an edge. Then her husband, Jim, pushed open the front door with a booming greeting and Mim was truly on edge.
Harry eyed Little Marilyn’s impeccable mother and thought that being in her company was like biting deeply into a lemon.