CHAPTER TWO: Excerpt from The Divas of Doom: (Doom Divas Book 2)
Here’s what happened: last month, Charli’s husband, John Carsky, winged off to Japan on business for a couple of weeks, leaving her alone with their three rug rats. Mom phoned in a Mayday to me a few days after he left, begging me to watch the yard apes for a couple of hours on Friday so Charli could have a little time to decompress.
“Poor Charli.” Mom sighed her ‘I know just how she feels’ sigh. “She hasn’t had a minute to herself since John left. Can you imagine? She must be nearly ready to lose her mind by now.”
Okay, so maybe Tim is right about us Sheffields being gifted in the dramatic arts. Since John had only been gone for five days, it appeared that maybe Mom was trying to beat out Meryl Streep for the best actress Oscar.
I sucked up my courage. “I’m really sorry, Mom, but I’m busy all day Friday.”
There was complete and utter silence from Mom’s end of the line. Yikes. This was not going to be as easy as I’d conned myself into believing. Evidently not having learned my lesson yet, despite all those years of living with the woman, I yammered away, desperate to fill the conversational void.
“Really, Mom, I can’t possibly keep them. I have tons of stuff to do.” I hoped she didn’t ask what. I’m not very good at lying under pressure. “Why can’t you keep them?”
“Because I have to write my column and give a speech to the Rotary.” Mom’s a reporter for the local weekly, The Glenvar News-Record, and she’s real big on ‘community involvement’. “Some of us still have jobs, you know.”
She said it calmly and sweetly, not a bit sarcastic, but ouch. She certainly knows how to hit a nerve. I’d just been canned from my job a couple of weeks before. I used to be a weekend DJ at Hot Country radio station WRRR. I was callously given the boot along with all of the other DJs when the station was sold to a big conglomerate. The new owners converted to a syndicated program format so they fired all of us because, as the memo said, we were ‘obsolete’.
“Geez, Mom. You think I like being laid off? Believe me, I’d much rather be working. Those people at the unemployment office treated me like I was a complete bozo when I went down there. My case manager kept me hostage for four hours, making me take a bunch of dopey tests, then, when I told her that I’d never worked at Tootie’s Go-Go-A-Rama like her papers said, she told me to ‘think about it dear, sometimes we forget these things’. Can you believe that? Like I’m so dense I wouldn’t have remembered working at a strip joint.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad, dear. You really shouldn’t be so theatrical.” Pot. Kettle. Black. See what I have to put up with?
“Yes it was, Mom. It was exactly that bad. And I’m not being theatrical. That woman made me feel like it was my fault that I lost my job.”
“Well, you know, Marty, if you’d have finished college instead of coming up with that ridiculous DJ idea…”
I cut her off in mid-sentence. The last thing I wanted to do was listen to yet another lecture on how I’d screwed up my life. “You’ll just have to tell Charli sorry. Maybe she can hire a sitter or something.”
This time Mom’s sigh was the ‘how could I have raised such a selfish child’ one. “Martina Gayle Sheffield, I am extremely disappointed in you. Your sister desperately needs some time off. She has a hard enough time when John’s at home to help out. The strain of taking care of those three children without him around is tremendous. We’re her family. That obligates us to do all that we can to ensure that Charli’s mental health doesn’t suffer.”
Charli’s mental health be damned; what about mine? To put it delicately, Charli’s kids are holy terrors. Just the thought of keeping them made me want to crawl under my bed. Of course I’d have to get rid of all the junk under there first.
In spite of Mom’s attempt at provoking me into an attack of the guilts, I was determined to hold my ground and not give in. I gritted my teeth and stood up straight so I could feel my backbone. “I’m very sorry, Mom, but I just can’t do it.”
Mom’s no yokel. She deep-sixed the ‘make her feel guilty’ strategy and zeroed in on my Achilles’ heel. “I’ll pay you,” she said. “Fifty bucks.”
That certainly grabbed my attention. I wasn’t in any position to turn down the chance to earn money, no matter how distasteful the job. “Deal,” I said, silently cursing the fact that I wasn’t independently wealthy.
“Fabulous!” Mom said. “Charli will be so grateful, Marty. I’ll tell her to bring them over to your place around nine.”
Delbert, my big black and white tomcat, (named for the awesome Delbert McClinton) shot me the evil eye. There was no mistaking his opinion of that particular plan. “Okay,” I whispered to him, “I’ll take care of it.”
“Mom,” I said, “that is simply out of the question. Last time they were here Jaelyn frisbeed six brand new Blue Ray discs off the balcony and the boys attempted to give Delbert a bubble bath with that twelve dollar bottle of shampoo you bought me for my birthday.”
I could almost hear Mom shudder over the phone. Alas, I knew the shudder was directed at Delbert, not at my sister’s kid’s hi-jinks. Mom is absolutely terrified of cats. It’s nothing personal, just that when she was a kid her pet kitten went mad and attacked her.
“Then you can keep them at their house,” she said, “That’s preferable anyway. Don’t forget, now, nine o’clock Friday morning. Don’t oversleep.”
Like that was going to happen. Knowing Mom she’d call at seven-thirty Friday morning to make sure I was awake and that I remembered my promise. Wrong: she called at seven fifteen.
“Morning, darling,” Mom said when I finally pulled the pillow off my head and answered the phone. “Rise and shine, dear. It’s a gloriously beautiful day. I’d love to join you and the children this morning, but, alas, I have an important interview with Mayor Mongan. I’m so envious because I know that you’ll have an absolutely wonderful time with the little angels.”
Angels? Charli’s kids? If I hadn’t still been half-asleep I would have laughed myself into a stupor. Instead I mumbled to her that I was awake, clunked down the receiver, and promptly dozed back off until eight-thirty. That time it was Charli who called to roust me out of my cozy little nest. I stumbled to the shower, scalded myself clean, tossed on cutoffs and a vintage Dixie Chicks tee then, still groggy and completely oblivious to what was in store for me, I practically flung myself to the wolves of the universe.
John and Charli live in Glenvar’s most hoity-toity, snob-infested neighborhood, which, for God only knows what reason, is called “The Oaks of Stratford Manor”. Believe me, it sounds better than it is. Basically, it’s just your typical subdivision, more than slightly upscale, but we’re not talking mansions or anything. That doesn’t stop some of the people who live in ‘The Oaks’ from considering themselves to be above everybody else in town.
(Town: Glenvar, Virginia, population twenty thousand, give or take a few hundred. Plenty of fresh air, good schools, lots of parks, gorgeous mountain scenery, too many people who know your business… Think of a citified Hooterville, but without the pig. Pigs are against the law in Glenvar. Llamas and chickens, however, are allowed.)
Oaks Neighborhood Alliance Group (ONAG, for short) is the name of the homeowner’s association and the people who run it are so militant in their beliefs that we call them the ‘Lawn Nazis’. They like to say that they have to set the standard for the rest of us, so they’re always trying to persuade City Council to pass a bunch of stupid laws. Just last month they lobbied for a statute outlawing the parking of pickup trucks more than ten years old inside the city limits and another one banning yard ornaments, in particular those plastic pink flamingos.
The way I figure it, they have every right to decide how they want to run their neighborhood, but to tell me that I can’t have a pink flamingo or two standing in my yard (not that I have a yard) is going about six peas past a pod. Thank goodness cooler heads prevailed and both ordinances we
re voted down by City Council, three to two.
I parked my not-as-bad-as-it-looks, used-to-be-candy-apple-red, sixty-nine Mustang on the street in front of Charli’s house and trudged up the sidewalk. Charli greeted me at the front door with a cup of gourmet French vanilla coffee and a cheese danish, my favorite. It was bribe food, but who am I to complain?
“Come on in,” she said, “the kids are in the family room watching an educational video.”
As usual Charli was immaculate. Ash blonde hair perfectly coifed, her make-up perfectly understated and elegant, playing up her best features. Grey and black linen dress perfectly pressed and looking like it had been specially tailored just for her. She looked like, well, like a perfect almost thirty-year old clone of our always-elegant mom. And people wonder why I have an inferiority complex.
I took a gulp of the coffee and scalded the bejeebers out of my tongue. Tears welled up in my eyes and my nose immediately turned into a faucet. I thought of begging off the babysitting duty, wondering if I could file for workman’s comp, but bravely carried on, in spite of the agonizing pain.
“Where are you off to?” I asked Charli.
She gathered up her purse and keys and kissed the kids goodbye. “Here and there. I’m just going to get a haircut and have my nails done, maybe browse in the bookstore. I’m supposed to meet Dicey Ward at Albertino’s for lunch at twelve-thirty. She just returned from a ten-day cruise and I imagine she wants to brag about it. If I’m not home by two you’ll know I crawled under the table and died of boredom.”
I chuckled, in spite of my still stinging tongue. “I doubt you’ll die of boredom over Dicey’s trip tales. Embarrassment, perhaps, but definitely not boredom.”
Dicey Ward was Charli’s two-doors-down neighbor and a Glenvar legend. A few years back she was one of those mousy, lost-looking Southern Belles whose only goals in life were a spotless house, a winning bridge hand, and cooking up the perfect mushroom soup-based casserole. But when her husband died of a massive and unexpected heart attack Dicey shocked the heck out of everybody.
She went back to school and graduated first in her law school class. Next, she started what was to become a thriving legal practice specializing in criminal defense and became a major force in the local legal community. As if all that wasn’t enough, she bleached her hair platinum blonde, spent a chunk of her inheritance on a face-lift, (and judging from her body, invested in a few other assorted operations as well) took to wearing designed-for –shock-value clothes, and found an unending series of pretty young men to escort her around town and provide other, um, services.
Charli rolled her eyes and grinned. “You’re probably right about that. I know way more about Dicey’s sex life than anyone ought to.”
“Well, tell her I said ‘hey’. And don’t worry about a thing. We’ll be just fine.” Actually, I wasn’t totally convinced about that, but no one ever said I wasn’t a cock-eyed optimist.
Charli left but a few seconds later she was back inside. “I almost forgot. Come out front with me. I need to show you something before I leave.”
We stepped outside to her beautifully manicured front yard. Charli pointed to the flowerbed that straddled her property and that of her neighbor, Frank Billingham.
“See that light white line in the mulch?” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t let anyone cross it.”
There was a faint smudge of white spray paint squiggled across the oak bark mulch. I edged my sneaker forward and scuffed at the line.
“Don’t do that!” Charli grabbed my arm and jerked me away from the flowers.
“Geez, Charli, don’t freak out over it. All I did was touch it. You act like it came from a poisonous snake or something. What’s it there for anyway?”
Charli closed her eyes and massaged her temples. “It’s supposed to mark the property line. Frank drew it yesterday and told me that if anyone goes across it he’s going to call the police and have me arrested for trespassing.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“I only wish I were,” Charli said. “The man’s gone completely off his rocker over this.”
“Why? What did you do to him?”
“Nothing! Well, it was something, but I just don’t see why he had to turn it into such a big deal. The boys were playing basketball and their ball accidentally mashed one of Frank’s precious begonias. They’re some sort of fancy-schmantzy variety and I guess he paid big bucks for them. Anyway, I told him I’d replace it, give him the money, whatever he wanted, but he wouldn’t listen to a word I said. He just stood there in his yard screeching horrible things at me. Jaelyn was petrified, so I yanked her up, stuck her in the car and, without saying another word to him, drove off. He was still standing there screaming when I turned the corner.
“About an hour after we got back from the grocery store a messenger delivered a letter from Frank’s lawyer saying that if anyone stepped across the line in the mulch they’d be guilty of trespassing and that Frank would call the police and swear out a warrant. So, whatever you do, don’t you or the kids go near it.”
“That’s outrageous!” I said. “You ought to get a restraining order of your own or something. Teach him a lesson. If you get him mad enough, maybe he’ll move.”
“No, Marty. Like it or not, Frank and I both live here. I’m not going anywhere and neither is he. The best thing to do is to just lay low until he calms down, then I’ll try to talk to him.” Charli glanced at her watch. “I better scoot or I’ll be late for my hair appointment.”
She slipped into her car and turned over the engine. As she backed out of the driveway she rolled down her window and pointed at Frank’s line. “Remember, don’t let anyone go near it.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”
What’s that saying about famous last words?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sherry Siska is a full-time teacher and a part-time writer. She lives and works in Salem, Virginia. She’s been married to Jim for 30 years and they have three wonderful children. She can be e-mailed at
[email protected]. She blogs at www.writesherry.blogspot.com.
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