making a fuss over Rudy, she commenced to making a nuisance of herself by following me around the house as I performed my hostess duties. “Oh, there’s the Abrams boy,” she said when she saw Ramsey. He was standing much too close to the girlfriend of one of the young cops and getting dirty looks from the girl’s date and from his wife, who scowled at him from a few feet away.
Mama said, “You know, it’s sad when you think about it. He’s probably just overcompensatin’ for a very small penis. All of the Abrams men have little dicks. That’s why they’re so short-tempered. His poor father and uncle were the same way, had practically nothin’ down there at all.”
I silently prayed that my mother would spare me the details of just how she’d come across that bit of information about the Abrams men.
I noticed Clarice sitting on the couch next to her mother and aunt. She was frowning like she had a toothache and her attention was focused on some point way off in the distance. The fingers of both her hands were tapping away on her lap like she was playing an invisible piano. If her mother didn’t get out of town soon, Clarice was going to snap.
When I came over to offer to freshen up their drinks, I saw that Clarice’s mother and her aunt Glory had started speaking to each other again. They were having a good time now, arguing about who would be more surprised to be left behind after the Rapture, the Catholics or the Mormons.
Mama sneered at them. “I know you and Clarice are friends, but you can’t tell me you don’t wanna slap the livin’ shit outta that mother of hers. Talk about somebody with her head stuffed way up her own ass. And that sister of hers is just as bad. As far back as I can remember, Beatrice and Glory been usin’ Jesus as an excuse to be bitches.” She wagged her finger at them and, like they could hear her, said, “That’s right, I said it!”
Veronica waved me over to where she was holding court, showing Sharon’s wedding planning book to a group of women who were too polite to walk away. She pointed to a page in the book that held a magazine clipping with a picture of a bride floating on a rug in midair down the center aisle of a church. Veronica said, “I’m thinking Sharon should make a magic carpet entrance. It’s all done with lights and mirrors. Isn’t it something?”
I agreed that it was something, all right, and tried to ignore the fact that my mother was next to me shrieking with laughter at the idea of big Sharon floating to the altar.
Over Mama’s continued cackling, I heard Veronica discussing the trouble she was having finding a suitable affordable home for the newlyweds. Sharon had another year at the university, and her fiancé, Clifton, Veronica claimed, would be going back to school soon. So after the wedding, which Veronica and her psychic had determined should happen on the first Saturday in July, she would settle them into something nice, but reasonably priced, here in town.
James, ever helpful, walked by just then and said, “You know, Veronica, we don’t have a tenant in the house in Leaning Tree.”
If I hadn’t been holding a tray of pigs in blankets, I’d have knocked James upside his head. I had nothing against Sharon. It wasn’t her fault that she’d inherited her father’s intelligence and her mother’s personality. It was the thought of Veronica traipsing in and out of Mama and Daddy’s house that made my pressure rise.
I gave James my back away quickly look. But he’d been immune to my hostile glances for ages, so he wasn’t put off his stride for a second. He just went right on being helpful.
He said, “We just put a new roof on it and painted it. And the last tenant took good care of the garden. It’s not like it was when Miss Dora was living, but it’s not bad.”
It turned out I didn’t have to worry about the prospect of having more Veronica in my life. Veronica wrinkled her nose and said, “Thanks, James, but I didn’t spend all those years working to get out of Leaning Tree just to send my baby daughter back there.”
Mama let out a snort. “Talk about a nerve. I guess she’s too good for my house now. She oughta try to sell that bullshit