Grr.
Tod and Stevie came up, saving me from having to answer.
“Kitty Sue told us you were kidnapped last night,” Stevie noted with concern.
“Again,” Tod put in.
Before I could say anything, Kitty Sue called from her chair, “Why didn’t you tell me Tod was performing tonight? You know I like to see Burgundy do her thang.”
“What’s this about panties?” Tex broke in.
“Do you think we could turn the hose on the kids? It’s so hot and they’d love it,” Andrea shouted from across the lawn, struggling to get a pair of shorts on the streaker.
“Oh, by the way,” Kitty Sue said, getting up from the butterfly chair, “we’ve decided to go out for pizza before Tod’s show, all of us. Won’t that be fun?”
Everyone was staring at me and I was at a momentary loss. Okay, it wasn’t as if I’d lived an uneventful life. My life was pretty active and kind of exciting but all of it had been controlled. This was out of hand.
Ally, as she had many a time, saved my bacon.
“Marianne, it’s none of your business so quit asking and go get yourself laid, for God’s sake. Hank, get the hose and turn it on those monsters before they tear up the yard. Tex, go upstairs and lay down for awhile. Mom, help me make everyone a sandwich.” Then she shoved forward, taking our shopping bags, opened my house with her key and went in.
“I love your sister,” I said to Hank.
He threw his arm around my shoulders, pulled me into his body and gave me a sideways hug.
Tod and Stevie had gone back to yard work and I felt the guilt pull. Their side of the lawn was lush, green and manicured, the edges that butted our brick walkways were cut precisely. Colorful flowers grew healthy along the front, black wrought iron fence, down the wooden fence at the side and in the beds in front of their porch. They had a basket on the porch overhang that happily dripped fuchsias and terracotta pots on each step of the stoop trailing ivy and bursting with flowers.
My side of the lawn was also mowed and had clean and cut borders but only because Stevie did it. I’d planted flowers in my flower beds but they were being choked by weeds, had not been watered in days, looked dry and close to death. The fuchsia basket that Tod bought me to balance the look of the duplex was bedraggled and only in slightly better shape than the flower beds because it didn’t have weeds attacking it.
Their side looked like Martha Stewart. My side looked like Sanford and Son.
I needed to help with the yard work. It was my neighborly duty.
I went into the house and up to my bedroom. I was running out of clothes at Lee’s place so I dumped the contents of my ever-ready, rarely-used workout bag and shoved items in just in case my stay there lasted longer. I took off my clothes, slathered myself with factor 8, put on a pair of cutoff jeans shorts and a kelly green camisole with a shelf bra. I gathered my hair in a messy knot on top of my head, grabbed my phone and called Lee.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“How’s it going?”
“Not good.”
He didn’t sound happy.
Yikes.
“If you get finished in time, we’re going out for pizza before Tod’s show tonight.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Your Mom says ‘all of us’ so I’m guessing that means Marianne Meyer, Andrea Moran and her kids, probably Ally and Hank, likely Dad and Malcolm and select players from the Colorado Rockies,” I paused, “oh, and Tex.”
“Marianne Meyer and Andrea Moran?”
“They’re on a Lee and Indy Sex Watch.”
“Come again?”
“They want to know when we’ve done it.”