Miss Julia To The Rescue Part 1

Miss Julia to the Rescue.

ANN B. ROSS.

This one is for The Book Club-the one in Mississippi that is so special to me, as well as for all the book clubs everywhere whose members buy, borrow, read, discuss, recommend and love books.

Chapter 1.

"Hazel Marie," I said as we sat at my kitchen table, "would you mind terribly if I redecorated your room?"

"Why, Miss Julia," she said, smiling at me, "it's your house. You can do whatever you want to it." Hazel Marie leaned over to replace a pacifier in one baby's mouth, then rocked the twin stroller back and forth with her foot.

She had strolled the babies over on this beautiful early June morning and now sat visiting with me. She was blooming-there was no other word for it. Second motherhood, late though it was, certainly agreed with her. Of course, a lot of it had to do with the fact that on this go-round she had a husband by her side. Well, not literally by her side today, for Mr. Pickens was off somewhere doing his private investigative work, while she reveled in her place as a well-situated matron, complete with spouse, three children, home and social standing.

It was all so different, you know, from her first foray into motherhood, when she had kept her head down, raising Lloyd essentially alone and avoiding notice as much as she could. That's what you do when you're a woman kept by a married man who wanted to keep his double life secret. Which he did until he keeled over one night in his new Buick Park Avenue and it all came out.

"What're you thinking of doing to it?" Hazel Marie asked, picturing, no doubt, the pink and gold room upstairs that she for the first time in her life had decorated exactly as she wished. She had chosen pink velvet armchairs-faintly French in style-pink taffeta bedskirt and quilted coverlet, pink striated wallpaper, pink lamps and pink carpet. Touches of gilt on picture and mirror frames and odds and ends throughout the room relieved the pink to some extent. It was a little much for my taste, but Sam and I had slept in it for months while she was on bed rest, relegated by her doctor to the large bedroom downstairs.

But now, she and Mr. Pickens, along with their baby girls, were ensconsed in Sam's house, four blocks away, and Hazel Marie was loving every minute of it. That meant, however, that Sam no longer had a quiet and private place to work on the book that he'd been fiddling with for so long.

"Well, I'll tell you," I said, leaning my head against my hand, "the upstairs hall is stacked with boxes of Sam's papers and books-everything that was in his office at your house-so I have to make an office for him here. I've gone back and forth over this, and it comes down to either your room or the downstairs bedroom. Your room will be quieter for him and the downstairs room will be larger for the two of us, so that seems the best solution. The only thing, though, is the walk-in closet you put in upstairs. I hate to give that up."

"You wouldn't have to," she said. "You could use it for out-of-season clothes and for things you don't wear very often."

"Well, yes, I could." I sighed, trying to visualize Sam and me in each of the rooms. "I've even thought of turning the closet into Sam's office. Goodness knows it's big enough. What it comes down to, though, is that I hate to dismantle what you loved so much. It's like-I don't know-resigning myself to the fact that you are truly gone."

"Why, Miss Julia," she said, laying her hand on my arm. "That is so sweet. I thought you'd be glad to have me out of your hair and on my own. Well, on my own with J.D., I mean."

I knew what she was getting at-safely married with legitimate children. And I was glad, but I still missed her in spite of the rough start we'd had. The two of us had spent too many years together with me struggling to get over what she'd been to my now-deceased first husband-as hard as it still is to say, she had been his mistress and the proof of it, in the person of Lloyd, had the run of my house. And those same years had been spent with her trying to fit in with my respectable and unblemished way of living. We'd each done a good job of arriving at a meeting of minds and living in harmony, if I do say so myself. In fact, almost too good a job, because I was left with an empty s.p.a.ce where she'd once been.

But I tend to look on the bright side of things, and the bright side of having her in Sam's house was not having little Julie and Lily Mae in mine. Oh, I was delighted with those twin babies, but I'd lived too many years in a quiet and well-organized home to adjust easily to the demands of growing children. Except for Lloyd, of course, whom I never minded having around, even though he was currently the reason for my unrelenting anxiety and feelings of dread.

Lillian pushed through the swinging door from the dining room and stopped. "I didn't know y'all was down here! Jus' look at them baby girls, they growin' like weeds." She leaned over the stroller and stroked the cheek of one of them-I never knew which was which. "Hey, little sweet girl, you come to see Lillian? I think you both need a sody cracker, don't you?"

The babies kicked and crowed and smiled at Lillian, reaching little hands for the saltines she offered. One immediately spat out the pacifier and crumbled the cracker against her mouth, while the other tried to get her cracker in without releasing the pacifier.

"How you doin', Miss Hazel Marie," Lillian asked, her eyes staying on the babies. "You gettin' much sleep?"

"They slept six hours straight last night. I couldn't believe it, but I'm getting them outside as much as I can. They sleep better if they have some exercise." Hazel Marie smiled ruefully. "Of course, pus.h.i.+ng this stroller around means I'm the one getting the exercise. But I really need it." She looked down and patted her stomach under the loose top she was wearing. "I'm so stretched out of shape from carrying twins, it's unbelievable. I exercise like crazy, but I think the only hope is to have surgery to take up the slack."

"Oh, Hazel Marie, you're not thinking of going to South America, are you?"

She laughed. "No, my obstetrician said it can be done here, but to wait awhile before thinking about surgery. So I guess I'll just keep on exercising. Anyway," she went on, smiling down on her babies, "I have my hands full with these two little ones now. It takes all my energy to keep up with them."

By now-some five or so months after their birth-the babies were beginning to adjust their inner workings to fit in with the schedules of normal people, and I feared that Hazel Marie's days were getting easy enough for her to reconsider the arrangements we'd made, especially if she was thinking of having surgery. I would never bring up the subject, though. I just acted as if the way things were would be the way things stayed.

"I'm happy for you, Hazel Marie," I said, picking up where we'd left off, "but I do miss having you around."

"Shoo, I seem to be over here so much you hardly have time to miss me. But I know what you mean, because as happy as I am, I miss you, too."

We smiled at each other, then she said what I'd been dreading to hear. "But, Miss Julia," she said, her lovely face marred by a frown, "I miss Lloyd, too. I don't see how I can do without him much longer. I'd like us to think about when he can move in with us."

I knew it. I knew it would be coming sooner or later, and here it was.

Chapter 2.

Every time Hazel Marie came to visit, which was two or three times a week, I would get that sinking feeling, sure that she'd come to tell me she wanted Lloyd living with the rest of the Pickens family. Up until this time, the boy had remained with Sam and me on the basis that he didn't need to be uprooted in the middle of a school year even though a move would not have meant a change of schools. The other, maybe more important, reason was that, try as they might, Lillian, Etta Mae Wiggins and Hazel Marie had been unable to get those two babies on any kind of reasonable schedule. One or the other of the twins, and often both at the same time, were awake and screaming half the night. Which meant that Hazel Marie had to sleep when they did-namely, half the day. And who wants a young boy wandering around a house alone while his mother is laid up in bed all afternoon?

And Lloyd himself had made the final decision, saying that he didn't have time to pack up and move all his stuff. That's what he called it, his stuff, which consisted of a computer, a printer, lengths of wires and cables, books, games and innumerable other electronic gadgets, to say nothing of tennis rackets, tennis shoes, books and collections of everything from rocks to compact disks. Frankly, though, I thought that he, too, preferred peace and quiet to the continuous turmoil that the babies created. But he occasionally spent a night or a weekend with his mother when Mr. Pickens was out of town. Even though James lived in the apartment over the garage at Sam's house, Hazel Marie liked having someone in the house with her. So it wasn't as if the Pickenses had abandoned the boy, although Mr. Pickens worried about it at first.

"I don't want Lloyd thinking he's been replaced," Mr. Pickens had said to me. "He's a big part of our family and I want him with us."

Well, he was a big part of my family, too, and I wanted him with me. But I tried to stay out of it, simply suggesting that he stay at least until school was out, when he could unhook all his electronic appliances without needing them every day for homework.

So that's where we were, but school would be out for the summer before long and here Hazel Marie was, saying she wanted her boy back.

I thought about crying, which I was on the verge of anyway, but to use that as a method of getting my way was too low to consider for long. Hazel Marie loved that child, and regardless of how many other children she had, although I hoped the twins were the last, Lloyd was her firstborn and special to her.

I pulled myself together and said, "I understand, Hazel Marie, and I think he's planning on it as soon as school is out. Of course he's welcome here as long as he wants to stay."

I didn't mention that my heart would break if he left. One thing, however, was certain: I'd never dismantle and redecorate his room.

"So," Sam said that evening while we sat in the living room after supper, "Lloyd will be leaving when school's out?" He folded the newspaper he'd been reading and watched as I separated yarn for the needlepoint piece I was working on.

"That's the way it looks." I cut a length of yarn and tried to thread the needle, then gave up in spite of the gla.s.ses I was wearing. "Oh, Sam, I don't think I can stand it. Just look at us, sitting here like two old people with nothing to do, and he's just away for a tennis match. We should've gone, too. I don't know why we didn't. The school they're playing is only two hours away. We could've gone."

"We go to the home matches," Sam reminded me. "He doesn't expect us to be at all of them."

"I know, I know." I sounded a little snippy because I was on edge. "But I'm thinking that this is the way it'll be all the time once he's gone. And that we ought to take advantage and be with him every minute of the time we have left."

"Julia, honey, it's not as if he's moving cross-country. He'll be in and out of here all the time. This is home for him."

"That'll change soon enough, as soon as he settles in over there. And I know I'm thinking only of myself, but I just don't know how I'll fill the days without him here."

"Well, I'll tell you one way. Go with me to the Holy Land."

I looked at him over my gla.s.ses. "Why're you bringing that up again?"

He shrugged. "I've wanted you to go all along, even before this came up. Traveling would take your mind off Lloyd during his first weeks away."

"No," I said, not having to even consider it. "I've not lost one thing in the Holy Land. Besides they're shooting at one another over there."

"It's safe enough," he said, somewhat complacently. "You'd enjoy the trip. I know I will."

"Yes, but you have wanderl.u.s.t and I don't."

Sam grinned. "Restless foot syndrome."

"I believe it," I said, remembering the trip to Russia he'd taken awhile back. "I know you want to go and that's fine. Just count me out." I looked at the needlepoint piece, wondering if I'd ever finish it. "Besides, it's not as if you're going by yourself. You'll have plenty of company, won't you?"

"There're about nine or so who've signed up, but Ledbetter asked if I would talk you into going, or anybody else, for that matter. I think he'd hoped to have a bigger group so he'd get better tour rates."

"For goodness sake, Sam, why would anybody want a cut-rate tour? I still don't understand why you'd want to go with him in the first place." Pastor Ledbetter was not someone I'd choose to lead me around a strange land. He was hard enough to take on home ground.

"Oh, he'll do fine. This'll be his third trip, and I've heard good reports about the second one." Sam raised his eyebrows and gave me a wicked grin. "Not so good about the first one. Everybody got sick, including him."

"Preachers ought to stay where they belong," I p.r.o.nounced. "I've never understood why they have to go running around all over the world. Next thing you know, he'll be wanting to go to Africa."

"Yeah, he's mentioned that. Wants to build a dam or a hospital or something one of these days."

"Well, count me out of that, too."

"Okay, but I'd like to count you in for the Israel trip. Give me one good reason why you don't want to go."

I looked at him. "I'll give you more than that. I have no desire to get in an airplane and let somebody else drive it. I don't like flying, and I wouldn't like traipsing all over the Holy Land with my knees aching and my feet hurting. And Pastor Ledbetter would drive me crazy, being with him every day, and I have to supervise a room remodel here. There's no way I'd turn a bunch of carpenters loose in this house with n.o.body watching them. And, finally, Hazel Marie might need me. She's still not in full control of those babies, and with Mr. Pickens gone so much she'll need help. And, well, I guess this is the final reason, but Lloyd might want to stay on awhile, so I need to be here in case he does." Then I said, "But I know how much you like to travel and see new places. Your plans are all made, bags ready to be packed and everything, so you go on and don't worry about me. Besides, I don't have a pa.s.sport. That's really the final reason."

"I expect," Sam said mildly, "we could get you one, have the process expedited, so that's not a good reason."

"Well, I'll strike that one and let the others stand." I smiled at him, ready to let the conversation lapse.

"You don't mind my going?"

"Sam, I miss you every time you step out of this house, even to walk downtown. So, yes, I'll mind your being away for-what? Two weeks, isn't it?"

"Yeah, two and a couple of days for travel."

"I wouldn't keep you from doing something I know you'll enjoy. You just have a good time, and I'll try to have your office all set up and ready for you by the time you get back. Then we'll see if you can finish that book you've been working on for a hundred years."

"Setting me a challenge, huh?"

"That's right," I said, giving him a warm smile. "Actually, it would've been better if you'd had that book done by now. Then while everybody's reading it, you could be out of town."

Sam laughed. "I doubt everybody'll be reading it. There won't be many who'll be interested in the legal history of Abbot County. Although," he said, patting his fingers against his mouth, "it's not turning out to be quite as dry as I thought it would be. Might not be a bad idea to plan another trip when it does come out."

"Ooh," I said, teasing him. "You mean you've been writing a racy book all this time?"

"Well, you know what they say," he said, his eyes twinkling. "A writer should write what he knows."

I laughed, warmed by my husband's teasing. "You're too much, Sam." I held up the painted needlepoint canvas-j.a.panese or maybe Chinese chrysanthemums, only partially st.i.tched. "Look at this thing. There's so much shading, I'll never figure out what color goes where."

"Pretty," he said and picked up the paper again.

I slipped the needle into the canvas and folded the piece, ready to leave it for the night. "Sam," I said, "I've just had a thought. Emma Sue's not going on the Holy Land tour, is she?"

"I don't think so. She planned to go on that first tour-the one that was a disaster-six or seven years ago, got a pa.s.sport and was all ready. But at the last minute she backed out and ended up staying home, remember? And now I guess she's too busy with all her commitments." He turned a page of the newspaper, then looked at me. "Why?"

"Well, it seems to me that the pastor could make arrangements for his own wife to go at least once. And, yes, I know. She says she has too much to do to leave, but I'm wondering if the real reason has to do with thinking they can't afford it."

Sam lowered the paper. "That would be a big part of it, I expect."

"Then she can go in my place. I'll pay for it."

"You mean," Sam said, his eyebrows lifted high, "as my seatmate, roommate, whatever?"

"No," I said, laughing at the look on his face. "I want you to enjoy the trip."

"Well, seriously though, it would be a nice gesture on your part, Julia. I think Emma Sue uses her commitments as an excuse because it'd be too expensive for both of them to go."

"Yes, but you and I know what the pastor makes, and they could afford it if he'd just do it. Tell him tomorrow that I have too many commitments and that I want Emma Sue to go in my place."

"Okay, but what if the real reason is because he wants a break from her," Sam said, "or she wants one from him?"

"Too bad, because she's going." I laid aside the needlepoint and went over to his chair. "That's not the case with us, though, is it?" I sat on the arm of his chair and took his hand. "I expect you've noticed that we're all by ourselves. And, furthermore, it'll be a couple of hours before Lloyd gets home."

Chapter 3.

With the question of my going to the Holy Land firmly settled-I was not going-I turned my mind the next morning to the other matter that needed settling. I was still going back and forth, trying to decide which room I wanted Sam to work in and which room I wanted him to sleep in. And the more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea of remodeling the downstairs bedroom into an office. Well, not an office, exactly, but more of a library with deep leather chairs and a sofa trimmed with bra.s.s nailheads, cherry or mahogany panels with bookshelves lining the walls, a few good oil paintings and, of course, a large mahogany desk for his work. And, I suddenly thought, a fireplace. Yes, we had to have a fireplace. I could already picture the room-a lush, quiet refuge for him during the day and for the two of us in the evenings.

To tell the truth, I was tired of the Victorian furnis.h.i.+ngs in our living room-tired especially of that stiff-backed, hard-stuffed neocla.s.sical Duncan Phyfe sofa, which I'd never liked anyway. Even though I'd recovered every upholstered piece in the room in bright florals-as far from Victorian velvets and tapestries as I could get-as soon after Wesley Lloyd's demise as had seemed appropriate, the room was still a little too prim and stodgy for my taste.

So there was no way I'd carry the Victorian theme over into the rest of the house, now that I was in a redecorating state of mind. I'd just live with the living room the way it was, putting it on hold for the time being while I concentrated on Sam's new library. I wanted deep, soft leather-real leather, not Naugahyde, vinyl or plastic-and maybe carpet instead of an Oriental on the floor, and a colonial mantel with large bra.s.s candlesticks on each end or perhaps wall sconces on each side of an oil painting of a horse in the English countryside.

I would have a butler's tray with those bra.s.s hinges as a coffee table and lamps converted from porcelain vases, draperies with valances and fringed trim and a great leather executive's chair for Sam. It would be beautiful but, I realized with another one of my sinking feelings, not exactly suitable for a working office. The computer, a printer, cables and surge protectors strewn around would just ruin the decor.

Still, I wasn't ready to give up my vision because, to tell the truth, I'd just realized that the best place for Sam's office would be the sunroom upstairs at the back of the house. That was the room that then-Deputy Coleman Bates had rented soon after Wesley Lloyd pa.s.sed and had more recently served as a guest room for Etta Mae Wiggins. It would be the quietest room in the house, and he could leave his books, notes and papers spread out all over the place without anyone seeing or disturbing them.