Chocolate-Covered Baloney Read online

  “Who was on the phone, April?” Mama asked.

  “Jessica, or maybe Jennifer.”

  “I should have known.” She sat down. “Myra Sue gets more phone calls in a week than the rest of us do in a month.”

  “Popular girl, eh?” said Mimi. “Well, can’t blame the boys for calling her.”

  There was a little silence, which I broke by saying, “Any boy who’s dumb enough to call Myra Sue deserves to talk to her.”

  “Why, forevermore!” Grandma said, frowning at me.

  “April,” Mama said, giving me a Look, then she went to get Myra, who came back with her, looking madder than a wet hornet for having had her conversation halted.

  “There’s our little Princess Di,” Mimi said, grinning all over her face. Hearing that, it seemed to me ole Myra Sue didn’t know if she should get all smiley and sweet or if she should stay all sour and mad. Apparently sour and mad won out, because she flopped down in her chair and glared at her soup like she wanted to throw it against the wall.

  “I’m sure the darling girl will have more boyfriends than she knows what to do with one of these days,” Isabel said, giving that soured-up darling girl a smile.

  “You mean multiple boyfriends like Grandma?” That question just slipped out of my mouth like it had been greased up and ready to go. There was a Big Silence as everyone looked at me like they could not believe I said that, right out loud, even though it was a true statement.

  I ate a mouthful of that delicious soup. “Yum,” I said, ignoring all those eyes and frowns.

  “You have a lot of beaux, do you, Grace?” Mimi said with a smirky little grin. The tone of her voice said she didn’t believe for one minute that any man would be interested in my grandma.

  Grandma shifted in her chair just a wee bit, and I figured if I valued the opportunity to finish my soup, the smartest thing for me to do was to keep my yap shut.

  “Grace has several gentlemen callers,” Isabel said, delicately dabbing her lips with her napkin. “The fellows in our part of the world know a good thing when they see it.”

  “Ha!” Mimi barked. “I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and I already got me a date for tonight.”

  Now, I do believe everyone was probably just as curious as I was, but no one wanted to let her know we were the least bit interested. Except Myra Sue, who wanted to keep sulking, and Melissa, who had taken a shine to Mimi.

  “Wow!” Melissa said. “Who you got a date with, Mimi?”

  That woman made a big production of slurping a great big spoonful of soup.

  “Fellow by the name of Ernie Beason. I met him at the party last night. You know him?”

  Ole Mimi and Her Dumb Ideas

  I want you to know we all stared at that old woman like she had just grown big, hairy toes out of her forehead.

  “You have a date with Ernie?” I finally gasped out.

  “You betcha!” She grinned real big and winked with all those fake eyelashes.

  Well, I’ll tell you what. We just sat there gawking at her. There was not a single sound in our whole entire kitchen except for the ticking of the yellow clock on the wall and Mimi slurping her soup. One thing about it, if she and Ernie went out for dinner, he’d probably never in a million years go out with her a second time because she had such foul table manners.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Grandma said finally, faintly sitting back in her chair like someone had unplugged her bones. “Ernie? My Ernie?”

  Mimi raised her penciled-in eyebrows.

  “Whatya mean, your Ernie? You’re not married to ’im. I don’t reckon you’re even going steady or engaged to ’im, are you?”

  “I can’t believe . . .” Grandma let her voice trail while she shook her head. She looked about half-sick.

  “Why on earth would Ernie Beason ask you out when he and Grace are an item?” Isabel asked.

  “An item, are you?” Mimi asked Grandma in a tone that said she didn’t believe it.

  “But April Grace just said Grandma Grace has more than one boyfriend,” my best friend Melissa Kay Carlyle said like the Big Mouth she sometimes is. “Why can’t Ernie have more than one girlfriend?”

  Oh, brother. Oh, good grief. Oh, good gravy. I just wanted to crawl under the table. Melissa had a point, but the only two who weren’t Totally and Completely Embarrassed by that question were her and Mimi.

  “Well, Gracie,” Mimi said, laughing a little, “not only have you lost weight and dyed your hair, you’re as popular as you were in high school when you stole ever’ boyfriend I ever had.”

  This was such a revelation to me, and I reckon to the rest of us, that I was all set to ask a thousand questions. But then Mimi started coughing. She coughed so hard I thought she was gonna bust her lungs and pass right out, but she didn’t. When she finished, her face was redder than raw liver. She sat there and gasped for a million years while we all gawked at her in considerable alarm. I did not like the woman, but I certainly did not want her to gasp to death at the kitchen table.

  Mama jumped up and got her a glass of water.

  “Shall I call an ambulance?” she asked, concern pouring out of her eyes.

  “No ambulance,” Mimi wheezed, eyeing the water but not touching it. “It’s just my bronchitis acting up.”

  Bronchitis, my foot.

  “I am definitely going to quit smoking!” Isabel declared grandly.

  Mimi finally drank her water. She set down the glass and looked straight at Grandma, and neither one of them said a blessed word, but you could almost hear the tension grinding away, getting ready to spew into some big mess at any second.

  Isabel broke the spell and changed the subject by saying, “Lily, have you had any more of those frightening phone calls? Every time my phone rings now, I simply dread to pick it up.”

  She had changed the subject, all right, but this change was no improvement over the rivalry between Grandma and Mimi. All that unease I’d felt before when I thought about those phone calls churned around inside my stomach again.

  “Has someone been calling you and hanging up, Isabel?” I asked.

  “No, but I expect it any day.”

  “No, we haven’t received any more of those calls,” Mama said. “In fact, Mike says it was the storm that sent power surges through the line and caused the phone to ring when no one was calling.” Then Mama smiled a little. “No one around here has a chance to answer the telephone when Myra Sue’s in the house, anyway.”

  Myra Sue pooched out her lower lip and gave a big-eyed blink, as if she were posing for the poster child of the most pathetic and mistreated creature on the face of the earth.

  “I haven’t had any calls,” Grandma said. She had turned from Mimi and was now acting like the woman was invisible.

  “Sometimes people call our house, but they’ve dialed the wrong number,” Melissa put in. “They always say, ‘Sorry, I must have a wrong number.’ Nobody’s called us and then just hung up.”

  “That’s good, honey,” Mama said. “I’m glad no one is bothering you.” She looked at Myra Sue. “We’ve not had any more hang-ups, have we, Myra?”

  Before that girl could respond, though, Mimi spoke up.

  “Guilty!” she sang out, with one hand in the air like she had just hollered, “Hallelujah!” instead.

  “What do you mean, guilty?” Grandma said, slamming her gaze back to Mimi and frowning so hard she nearly turned her face inside out.

  Mimi dropped her hand to the table. She fiddled a bit with the handle of her spoon, then, without looking up, she said in a very quiet voice, “It was me.”

  Nobody uttered a mumbling word. She breathed deep and blew it out softly. Before she could say more, the back door opened, and Daddy came in with Ian right behind him. They were laughing and brought in plenty of cold, fresh air with them.

  “Well, hello, lovely ladies of Rough Creek Road,” Daddy greeted, smiling as he unbuttoned his coat.

  “You should see the herd of goats we
just saw,” Ian added, oozing with excitement. “Amazing! I’m hoping we’ll have a herd like that in a few years.”

  Isabel blinked at him about five hundred times, then she gave him the stink-eye. Either he was getting to where her dirty looks ceased to bother him, or he just didn’t notice the red that was rising on her face and in her eyeballs.

  “No goats, Ian!” she declared.

  “Yes, goats, Isabel. Now that Mike and I have the shed nearly built, I’ll be buying some nannies and a billy in a couple of weeks.”

  You should’ve seen her face. Isabel seemed mad about those goats, but I guess she knew Ian was gonna get his way this time, no matter what she said.

  “What’s going on here?” Daddy said as he poured coffee for himself and Ian. His smile had faded considerably in the last minute or so. In fact, he fixed his gaze squarely on Mimi just like he knew she had stirred up something. She looked away immediately.

  Mama got the men some soup bowls and spoons from the cabinet.

  “Sandra Moore was fixin’ to enlighten us on something important, I b’lieve,” Grandma said. Her voice was chilly, and she did not wear a hint of a smile. She stared a hole through that other old woman.

  “Oh?” Daddy said. “Go ahead, Sandra.”

  He leaned back against the counter and took a sip of coffee. Ian stood just a couple of steps inside the doorway. His feet were wide apart, like he had planted himself there to stop anyone from running out the back door. Everyone in that kitchen was staring at Mimi.

  She was all pink in the face, which made her blue eye makeup look like the mask for a cat burglar. I reckon she was completely embarrassed to have the whole entire clan gawking at her.

  “Those phone calls,” she said, looking down at her cup and fiddling with the handle of it. “Those hang-ups. I did that.”

  “How’s that?” Daddy said in that real quiet voice he uses sometimes, and believe me, it’s worse than if he yelled, because it means his coals have been stirred.

  “I got scared and hung up,” she said, still nervously playing with her cup handle. “See, I thought if I called you, Lily”— she looked up long enough to glance at Mama, then down again—“and said I wanted to see you, you’d tell me no.” She sighed real deep and finally lifted her head. “But I figured if I showed up without warning, you wouldn’t bar the door against an old woman.”

  The kitchen clock ticked louder than ever, and no one said anything because we were waiting for her to finish.

  “It was only two or three times, and I lost my nerve every time. I didn’t mean to upset anyone. I figured you’d just think it was a wrong number.”

  “Well forevermore!” Grandma looked as sour as Myra Sue.

  “Well, people go and dial wrong numbers all the time!” Mimi said.

  “Yeah,” Melissa piped up, like a big, fat dope. “Somebody called our house just the other day, and it was the wrong number.”

  “You just said no one called and hung up—”

  “That’s right!” she snapped. “No one has called and simply hung up like a rude person. We get wrong numbers sometimes, April Grace. Weren’t you even listening to me?” She bugged out her bright eyes and glared at me.

  I glared back. I tell you what. Maybe it was because I was feeling rotten with a runny nose and sore throat and a cough that had a mind of its own that Melissa was getting on my nerves. Maybe she was getting sick, too, and I was getting on her nerves, but one thing was for sure: I was about ready to call her mother myself to come take that girl away if she didn’t stop sticking up for Mimi. When she did that, I felt like she was taking sides against me and Grandma and Mama.

  “Do you realize the discomfort you’ve caused these people?” Isabel said, shooting fiery darts at Mimi from her eyes. “Even I have been terrified that some awful backwoods baboon might be lurking about, stalking residents along this road, just looking for someone to rob or assault.” She looked around at the rest of us and added, “I have even considered getting a dog.”

  “What kind of dog would you get, Isabel?” I asked because curiosity was eating me in great big, hungry bites.

  She blinked at me a dozen times. “Well, I don’t know. A Chihuahua, maybe.”

  I hooted at that, but hushed right quick because I knew this was not the time and place to be laughing at Isabel’s crazy ideas.

  Mimi pursed her lips and looked around.

  “Well.” That’s all she said, then she pushed back her chair. “Excuse me.” She grabbed up her cigarettes and went outside.

  “Forevermore!” Grandma said. “Imagine, all this time it was just Sandra Moore playing tricks on the telephone.”

  Mama looked about half-sick.

  “You know what?” she said. “If she had asked me over the phone if she could come here . . .” She swallowed hard. “I would have told her to stay away.”

  There was just the tiniest silence. I think we were all surprised Mama would say that.

  “Well, Lily, no one would blame you,” Isabel said.

  “Of course not, honey!” Daddy added.

  “Absolutely!” Grandma agreed, nodding.

  “But she’s my mother!” Mama passed her gaze over all of us. “All those things she did . . . that was all long ago. I should no longer feel this deep resentment, and yet I do. Excuse me, please.” She scooted back her chair real fast and left the kitchen. A few seconds later, her bedroom door closed softly.

  I wasn’t sure if the awfulness I felt inside my body was from the creeping crud or whatever was making me sneeze and cough, or if it was because I felt so bad for Mama. Maybe it was all those things combined in one big, fat feeling of rottenness.

  “No one could possibly blame her for feeling that way,” Isabel echoed her own words.

  All of us agreed out loud, except for Melissa, who usually keeps her mouth shut when she thinks she should, and Myra Sue, who rarely has anything intelligent to add to any conversation. Both of them just sat there like a couple of rocks. If ole Melissa was gonna stand up for Mimi, she ought to at least have extra sympathy for my mama.

  From my itchy, watery eyes, I glared at Myra Sue, who rolled her own eyes at me in return, and then I glared at Melissa, and she just looked at me like I was a brick in the wall, as if she didn’t care that I was feeling sick. I sniffed good and hard, then coughed up half my lungs, and she didn’t even blink.

  As soon as I finished my soup, I very politely stood up, and because Mama wasn’t there to stop me, I left the room without inviting Melissa to go with me. A minute later I heard her voice and realized she was talking on the phone, telling her mom to come and pick her up.

  Out on the service porch, Daisy was a far better and understanding companion than my best friend, anyway. So there.

  The Ways Spies Spy When Wind Blows in Their Eyes

  Melissa went home not long after I left the table. She went right out the front door without saying a single, solitary word of good-bye to me, and I peeked through the curtains just in time to see her get into that brown van.

  Now, I have to admit I felt sorry for Melissa having to go back into that noisy mess with those Purdy people, but she got on my last nerve by sticking up for Mimi instead of Mama. I had hoped she’d help me scavenge around the mailbox area, maybe see something I’d missed in my quest to uncover my sister’s secret, but now it was too late. Well, she could just go on home and put up with her maybe-future stepfamily.

  I sighed and turned from the window, wishing we’d not fought. Then I coughed and hacked into a Kleenex and felt even worse.

  A bit later Myra Sue went upstairs, but soon she came scurrying down again, pulling on her coat.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I really don’t see how where I’m going or what I’m doing is any of your business,” she said, so uppity your liver would clabber like old milk if it had the chance. Then she ran out the door without even buttoning her coat or putting on her hat.

  I sneezed a bunch of times, then coughed li
ke crazy as I watched her go prancing down the drive toward the mailbox. Of course! How could I forget that the mail just ran? And I for sure never really did believe that crazy story about ordering gifts, especially as Grandma’s birthday was over and she did not get anything special from my dumb sister.

  I started to turn away, but movement in the trees on the other side of the road caught my eye. No one could mistake that purple cowboy hat and that weird red hair. She walked right up to Myra Sue while my sister pilfered through the mail. The two of them talked for a bit, then—would you believe it?—they turned and ambled off down the road. Mimi had one arm around Myra Sue’s shoulders, and Myra didn’t shove it off or anything.

  Now, I have to tell you, this was a weird situation. Myra Sue hates the cold, she is very particular about the people she talks to, walks with, or hangs around, and Mimi had been griping about having to go outside to smoke like she might freeze to death before she could light her nasty old cigarette. I found it strange that, number one, both of them were out in the cold, and number two, Myra was walking along with Mimi, as if she liked her.

  I threw on my coat as fast as possible, and lucky for me, my gloves were in the pockets. Unlucky for me, my good, warm hat was upstairs, but I wasn’t about to waste time going up there to get it. I did not feel like going outside, but it’s what I did, because how else was I gonna find out what was going on if I didn’t snoop?

  You know what? Things sure would be easier if people would just stop keeping secrets and acting mysterious.

  I stepped out into the cold, brittle daylight that made my eyes ache and water even more. Now, you should know that along Rough Creek Road, we have fields, we have hills and hollers, and we have trees. Of course, I was not going to go trotting along behind Myra and Mimi in the middle of the road where they could see me. How in the world could I find out secrets if I was right out in the open that way? I trailed after them. The trees and their shadows hid me as I passed through the wooded parts. I hunkered down like I had the bends as I crept along the open spaces.