The Glass Is Always Greener (8 page)

“Wow!” I said.

“Your friend really
does
have the gift,” Pastor Sam said. “I’d say only forty percent of those folks in the line were plants.”

“
Excuse
me?”

“You know, shills. Nothing opens their wallets like a good old-fashioned sob story. Of course you, and your partner, know all about that.”

“She’s not my partner—not that there’s anything wrong with that! Unless you meant
partner in crime
. But again she wouldn’t be my partner—oh, the heck with explaining myself. We’re not scam artists like you. Whatever you saw actually happened.”

“Give me a break,” Pastor Sam said, and rolled his eyes.

“Hey, you’re the man of the cloth; you’re supposed to believe in this stuff. Tell me something. Was the woman with the goiter a shill?”

“Roberta?” He sighed. “Yeah, she ties a bubble in the scarf. It’s one of my oldest scams.”

C.J. had been giving a final blessing of some kind, but now that she was through, she loped over to us. Gone was the fire in her eyes; also gone was my headache.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “Instead of talking to you in your office, might we treat you and your wife to lunch?”

Pastor Sam might not have believed in miracles, but it was clear from his demeanor that he was in awe of the woman from Shelby. He glanced from her, to his departing flock, and then back to her.

“Just let me call my wife,” he said.

Chapter 9

I
n the olden days, when I was growing up, we womenfolk rose at the crack of dawn to prepare the beef roast (we’d killed and butchered the cow the day before) for the oven, peel the potatoes, carrots, and onions that went in with it,
plus
make a hot breakfast for everyone, find their missing shoes, walk the dog because some eight-year-old had reneged on her agreement, and do whatever else needed to be done. In other words, we (oops, or our mothers) did enough tasks to run a cruise ship
before
heading off to church.

Today it is perfectly acceptable to run through McDonald’s on the way to church, and Burger King on the way back home (although moms still have to look for the missing shoes and walk the dog). No longer does a good Christian housewife need to slave before church, and again during cleanup, while her master snores in bed, or later sprawled across the couch on the pretext of watching the Sunday afternoon ball game. What legislation wasn’t able to accomplish, innovation did. Fast food freed a generation of women who might otherwise have been chained to their stoves.

Because she had not cooked a Sunday dinner, Tina Ovumkoph, bless her heart, was perfectly amenable to my offer. She quickly farmed all her children out to friends and relatives and off we went, riding in two cars. Our destination was the Viet Thai Noodle House at the rear of McMullen Creek Shopping Center.

“Used to be there were no really good authentically Asian restaurants in town,” Sam said. “Now there is a plethora, but this one is special; this one is primarily frequented by other Asians. It’s not like Bubba’s China Gourmet. You ever been to Bubba’s?”

“Gag me with a spoon,” C.J. said.

“What a gross expression,” Tina said.

“No,” I said, “she means that she literally choked on a spoon at that establishment. It was one of those porcelain deals and C.J. had never seen one before, and thought it might be edible. Anyway, we had to call the paramedics, but by then it was too late—for the spoon; obviously not for C.J. Bubba, being the parsimonious dear that he is, has hung on to the spoon—even though it came out in five pieces—and glued it back together. If you’re lucky enough to grab it with your place setting when you’re in the buffet line, Bubba will give you an extra fortune cookie.”

“Ugh,” Tina said.

I made up my mind to hush my mouth before I ruined everything. Usually I can be such a delightful dinner companion, skilled as I am at small talk.

At the door to the Viet Thai Noodle House we were greeted warmly and shown to a booth with a view of a large fish tank. The Ovumkophs, who’d dined there numerous times, ordered “bubble drinks,” fruit- flavored concoctions embedded with “pearls” of tapioca. C.J. was denied her request for a “tall glass of refreshing goat’s milk” and settled for a Diet Coke. I asked for a glass of water with lemon and a Vietnamese ice coffee.

“You like?” the waitress asked.

“I’d never had it,” I said.

“You will like,” she said. Her enthusiasm for my beverage choice was encouraging.

“Are you originally from Vietnam?” I asked.

“No, we are Laotian. You know where Laos is?”

“Yes,” I said, “above Thailand, and to the west of Vietnam.”

Her face glowed. “Very good,” she said. “Most Americans, they don’t know. If we make restaurant Laotian, they not come.”

“We would,” Tina said. “The food here is divine—oops, sorry honey, that word just slipped out.”

Sam squeezed out what just barely passed for a smile. “Let’s order, shall we? We’ll have number thirty-four all around.”

“But honey—”

“Yes, sir.” The waitress bobbed her head and scurried off to the kitchen. No doubt she was glad to be shed of what could have blossomed into a full-blown domestic scene. In fact, it
would
have done so for sure, had I been writing the script. I mean, what chutzpah for him to not even
consult
us about our meal choices when I was the one paying for lunch.

“I hope I like whatever it is,” I said with a laugh. One must appear to keep it light, especially when one is the gift horse. This etiquette rule is found in
The Moron’s Guide to Southern Manners
, the handbook given to every baby born south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

But I didn’t like what Sam had ordered for me; I
loved
it. Never mind what it was called. It was strips of tender grilled steak served over a bed of steamed rice, accompanied by a mixed green salad. There was a small bowl of sweet yet tangy dipping sauce for the beef. The flavor of this meat was so fabulous that my tongue couldn’t stand it, and wanted to come out and box my ears silly.

As for the coffee, it arrived in a cute metal drip pot set atop a glass that contained sweetened condensed milk. When all the water had been put through the press, I stirred the milk and coffee mixture and poured it into a much larger glass that was filled with ice cubes. I stirred that. The result of this minimum amount of effort was a party for the mouth, making my tongue quite glad she’d played by the rules and stuck around.

Of course we engaged in a lot of conversation. Pastor Sam tried to steer the talk to the moneymaking possibilities of C.J.’s miraculous power. C.J. wanted to talk about new technological development in the direct reduction of iron ore using microwaves. Then there was Tina Ovumkoph, who was dying to get a word in edgewise about her nine children.

Tina, bless her heart, was as homely as stump full of spiders; honestly, there is just no kinder way to describe her. No doubt when she was born, her mama had to borrow a baby to take to church. Such mean observations on my part may seem uncalled for, so I’ll come right out and say that I’m no prize myself. But I did bring up Tina, and I did so because she was married to a very handsome man. Think of Sam Champion with six-inch lifts in his shoes; this man really was a head turner. Right away this begged the question, how did someone like Tina, bless her heart again, snag a looker like that? And one to the manor born, to boot?

To put it another way, what did Sam see in Tina? In my opinion the Ovumkoph family kept more secrets than a stadium full of mummies. Anything they had to say could, and would, be used against them, until they were proven not guilty by a court of law.

“I hate to bring this up,” I said, after I’d eaten enough of my steak to be fully nourished, “but have you heard the news?”

Tina pressed her hands to her cheeks. “You mean about them tornadoes over ta Oklahoma? Warn’t that just terrible? ’Twas like the Devil was wrasslin’ with the breath of God.”

“How very poetic,” I said, “but that’s not the news I meant. Sam, didn’t anyone tell you that your aunt’s green ring has gone missing?”

“Say
what
?”

“She means the emerald ring,” C.J. said, just before I kicked her.

“Ouch, Abby, what was that for?”

“I’m sorry, C.J., I guess there’s just enough room on this banquette for one murder suspect who’s trying hard to clear herself. Everyone else is going to have to stand.”

“But Abby, I wasn’t even at the good-bye party. How could I be a suspect?”

“C.J.,” I said, “remind me what your IQ is again.”

“Hold everything,” Sam said. “I think the rules of this game have just changed. If you’re a murder suspect, then you’re no better than the rest of us.”

“Except that this isn’t a game,” I said. “Not for me. I hadn’t even met your aunt until that afternoon, and I sure the heck didn’t know she was in possession of a ring that valuable.”

“One sixty-five,” C.J. said. “My low score was such a disappointment for Granny. I’m telling you, Abby, she wept bitterly the day those test scores came back.”

“So how’d you do it?” Sam said to me. “Aunt Jerry wasn’t alive when you put her in the freezer chest, was she?”

I drew upon what little experience I’d had in acting in Sunday school pageants: one year I got to play a bleating sheep, another year a silent Mary; and in elementary school plays: one year as a snowflake, two years as pilgrim, and one year as a leprechaun. Unfortunately my roles didn’t improve much in high school or college.

“She struggled,” I said, “and please keep in mind that she was much bigger than I—of course everyone is—but what else could I do? I’d forced her to rewrite her will, right there in front of the watermelon, at knifepoint, so I couldn’t very well let her blab to everyone, now could I?”

“Ooh, Abby,” C.J. moaned, “your mama’s going to be so disappointed. But I promise you that I will come to see you every visiting day, and if you marry someone from the outside—like one of the Menendez brothers did—I’ll still come to see you, unless it’s your turn to do the bird with two backs.”

“That’s
beast
, not bird,” I said. “No wait; you probably know of some exotic bird that procreates in mid-air.”

“Your nose is as long as a telephone wire,” Tina said, before C.J. could respond. It was the most grammatically correct sentence I’d heard come out of her mouth.

“
Excuse
me?” I said.

“It’s from a children’s saying,” C.J. explained, “only instead of ‘nose’ we used to say ‘ears’ on account of—”

“Hush,” I said gently. “Mrs. Ovumkoph, are you calling me a liar?”

“I are.”

“On what grounds?”

Tina stared at her husband. “I just know that you ain’t tellin’ the truth; you ain’t the killer.”

“Maybe you should hush as well, baby doll,” he said. He had his arm around her with his hand on her shoulder. As he told his wife to stifle it, Pastor Sam’s fingers dug into her shoulder, causing her to wince. I could see the tendons in his talons; every one of them was clearly delineated.

Nothing gets under my skin quite like a bully. As a miniature person of so-called normal proportions I was still tormented beyond endurance. I had a very robust brother, but he was younger, his name was Toy, and his sexual preferences were yet undecided. He had his own battles to fight.

So the teasing persisted, and sometimes it progressed to worse things, like when Sarah Newhart and her cronies tied me up and put me on the top shelf of the paper supply closet. This was on a
Friday
afternoon. Thank heavens Mr. Sodt wanted to mimeograph some handouts at the beginning of eighth period. Right or wrong, I skipped school for the next two weeks.

To this day the issue of school bullies raises a visceral response in me, but now that I am a woman of means and am married to a very buff man who is six feet four, I no longer have to put up with it. I also learned that bullying doesn’t stop just because one becomes an adult. Nor does it happen just to those people with obvious differences. There are those folks who will bully anyone who will allow them to get away with it. Apparently Pastor Sam was just that sort.

“Get your manipulative mitt off her,” I said.

“Beg pardon?” he said.

“You heard me,” I said. “Now process it. And you, Mrs. Ovumkoph, don’t let him stifle you like that.”

There were tears in her eyes. “But ma’am, you just told your friend to hush.”

“Touché,” I said.

“But that was different,” C.J. said. “Abby and I have this agreement; anytime I go off on a tangent with one of my Shelby stories, then she has the right to tell me to put a lid on it.”

Tina’s right homely face got within six shades of pretty. “Are you from Shelby, North Carolina?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“By jingle, so am I!”

“You wouldn’t, by any chance, happen ta know Lyudmila Parsons Ledbetter, would ya, ’cause she’s my granny.”

“Get out of town on a dirt road! She’s my granny too!”

“Why shoot a monkey, but don’t hurt it none! If this don’t beat all! Cousin!”

“Cousin!”

The women flew at each other across the table, and dishes and food flew to both sides. Due to the ruckus that they caused I insisted that we move the show outside, and since Pastor Sam pretended to have left his wallet at home that morning, I also paid for the broken crockery—in addition to the meals, of course.

“Is there a Shelby dialect?” I asked Pastor Sam as we walked behind the two very animated ladies to the car.

He laughed, sounding almost pleasant. “Maybe it’s a Ledbetter thing. Have you ever met any others in her family?”

“Yes, an aunt. But she wasn’t much for talking.”

“Mr. Ovumkoph, how is it that you manage to live with yourself?”

“Dagnabit, Mrs. Timberlake, I thought I’d made it clear that I did
not
murder my aunt. She was always a favorite, by the way.”

“No, what I mean is: how can you fleece your own flock, shear your own sheep, hide your own herd as it were, and not feel guilty?”

“Give me a break, Mrs. Timberlake, will you? Tina’s going to be giving the money back on my behalf, remember?”

“Yes, but how can
you
possibly remember everyone you’ve ever bilked? After all, you do it on a weekly basis.”

We were almost to the car, where the ladies had stopped and were carrying on an animated conversation, so Pastor Sam put a hand gently on my arm and we slowed our pace considerably. Fortunately the weather was fabulous and there were no biting insects about.