Читать книгу Sparkle - Jennifer Greene - Страница 12

Two hundred thousand dollars. Bren stood at the gas pump, filling the church van before she headed home. Typically almost everyone stopping for gas was a face she knew, so she waved and smiled and did some chitchat. But her mind was still roller coastering up and down the mental hills of two hundred thousand dollars. Two hundred thousand dollars. Two hundred thou. Two hundred K. Two hundred grand.

Anyway you said it, it was beyond anything she’d imagined.

As a child, she’d grown up safe financially. But that was the last time she remembered not worrying about every dime and every bill.

“Hey, Mrs. Price, how you doing?” Joey greeted her when she plucked a few bills from her cracked wallet. He’d galloped out of the station to clean her windows the instant he’d seen the church van. She had to give him something.

“Doing just fine, Joey. How’s your mom? Her foot any better?”

There was no way to escape the conversation. She knew Joey and his sister, knew their mom, knew what a rough road the family had had ever since the mom had been laid up with foot surgery. She’d carted over dinners herself the first week. Charles had added prayers for them in his church sermon. People mattered more than money, so darn it, caring just couldn’t be rushed. But when Bren finally climbed back into the church van, she hoped God would forgive her—and the Virginia cops, too—because she sped out of town as fast as the old engine would let her.

Giddy euphoria danced in her pulse. She couldn’t wait to tell Charles about their good fortune. She could picture the relief on his face. Picture them sharing a moment of joy together. Picture that harsh look of stress ease on his face for the first time in months.

She wheeled through yellow lights at Willow, then Main, then wheeled left on Baker Road. She supposed it didn’t make too much sense to speed past the courthouse, then past the police and fire stations, as well. But there wasn’t a policeman in town who didn’t know her, so if one was going to do something wrong, Bren figured she might as well do it in plain sight. Past all that busy part of town, of course, was their Church of Peace.

A little neighborhood of houses clustered around their church. Maybe someone thought the area would become a bedroom community of D.C. back in the fifties, but that kind of prosperity never discovered the area. People were hanging on, raising their kids, but this side of Righteous was visibly struggling.

Their church looked as wilted as the rest of the structures. She was just a white frame building, long and narrow, with their house—the parsonage—just beyond the parking lot. Charles often used their home for different gatherings; so did she. The church basement was also huge, ample for events like bible readings and meals and craft sales and all that kind of thing. Even had an old, spotless kitchen down there. Bren had planted bushes and flowers when they could afford them, taken care that the church was always polished and spotlessly clean. So maybe it didn’t look like much on the outside, but inside it was safe and peaceful and had that warm-glow welcoming feeling.

Or it used to. Before things got so tight.

She parked at the house but hightailed it immediately toward the office at the back of the church, assuming she’d find Charles there. But no. She found nothing but dust motes dancing silently in the sunlight. The message light blinked on the answering machine. Charles’s jacket still hung on the old pine tree. A sermon in progress sat half-finished on the desk.

He must have taken off for some reason, and she wanted to head straight for the house, to check there. But first she grabbed a pen and paper and took the messages. Whenever Charles came back, he’d want to know who had called and why, and often enough, she could field questions on her own, without bothering him.

That done, she hustled toward the house, realizing with a half laugh that she was out of breath, had been probably since she’d left the jeweler’s. “Charles!” she called as she pushed open the screen door to the kitchen and then stopped abruptly.

Charles had his white shirt rolled up, hands on his hips. He swiveled around abruptly when he heard the door open. She had the impression he’d been pacing. Her heart sank fifty-seven feet—and fast—when she saw the straight-lipped, tight-jawed expression on his face.

“Where were you?” He asked it in that certain tone. The tone that claimed he had tons and tons and tons of patience and now was completely out.

She tried to calm her panicky pulse, but that particular tone always rub-burned her nerves. She couldn’t think when he was irritated with her. And though she’d always valued honesty, she heard a half-truth babble from her mouth. “I was just talking to a woman in town—”

“What woman?” he demanded, again his tone sharper than ice.

She couldn’t explain why she hedged telling him the whole truth. It’s not that she wanted to lie to him—ever, ever—but when she felt that anger coming at her, some instinct took over. She wasn’t thinking about lies or truth. She was just thinking about doing whatever she could to mollify him. “No one from the church, Charles. No one you would have felt you needed to talk to yourself. Just a woman who stopped to chat with me. I didn’t think there was a problem. I had no idea you were waiting for me—”

He yanked out a chair from the kitchen table, making a scraping noise that made her jump. She understood he wanted her to sit down, which seemed a fair idea, for them to try sitting and talking together—only Charles didn’t sit.

Once she was parked, he loomed over her and started talking in that tone again. The acid tone. The acid-angry scary-quiet tone. “I took you in when you were an orphan. You had nothing and no one, remember that? Just your dad in a hospital bed and no way to take care of him or yourself. You didn’t have a roof over your head. I still remember how beautiful you were. How lost. Seventeen, and so crippled on the inside to lose your mother and sister in the same accident. But I came through for you, didn’t I, Bren? Didn’t I?”

“Yes. I know you did. And I’ve always been grateful—”

“This is how you show me how grateful you are?” He yanked out another chair, just to make the squeaky noise again, just to vent more of that rage. Maybe just to make her jump again. “By disappearing for hours at a time?”

“But, Charles, I had no idea you needed me for anything this afternoon—”

“Right. How could you know when you didn’t even bother to ask?” He switched subjects faster than an eye blink. “I had the pastor breakfast this morning—assuming you could bother remembering. Everyone’s doing a fund-raiser for the hurricane in the south. We need to put on a fund-raiser, too. A bigger one. A lot bigger and better one than the Baptists are putting on.”

“All right.” She was thrilled to change the subject. Even though she knew that part of his anger was nerves and stress and not necessarily about her, somehow he made her feel…small. When he started ranting like that, she just wanted to sit tight with her knees together and her arms pressed at her sides and her head tucked, so that she took up the tiniest amount of space possible. It was kind of a goofy sensation. Just wanting to make herself as close to invisible as she could get.

She should be listening to her husband and working on the problem, working on and with him, instead of hiding out in some goofy mental corner. It shamed her that she wanted to disappear like a child instead of handling the real problems between them. But right then, God help her, she just wanted him to calm down and lose that icy look.

“Whatever you’ve been spending your time on, it isn’t as important as this. I want you to spearhead this fund-raiser. I need ideas for something different. Something that will really grab the community’s attention and interest. Not the same old bake sale or craft sale. Something good.”

She’d put on the last bake sales and yard sales and craft sales. All of them had brought in hefty donations, she’d thought. Just not enough to satisfy her husband. But it wasn’t his fault that times were so hard.

“Okay, I’ll be glad to,” she said.

“I want some kind of plan to discuss by dinner tonight.”

She didn’t look at her watch, didn’t dare, but thought it had to be already past three. Charles was still circling the table, finding things to thump around, but at least he’d stopped looming over her.

“Then I’ll include information about it in the sermon this Sunday, put it all together, start to get our parishioners excited about it. We need to look proactive.”

She lifted her head, feeling a spark of enthusiasm catch her now, too. “I couldn’t agree more. We should be proactive in times of trouble like this. And maybe you could put just a little less fire and brimstone in your sermon. Concentrate more on themes about coming together, on—”

God. She’d blown it again. He surged around the table faster than the lash of a whip. “Excuse me? Were your criticizing my sermons?”

“No. No, of course not, Charles. I just—”

“You think I don’t know how to write a good sermon? That I need advice how to do my job?”

“Charles…” She couldn’t maintain this razor-sharp level of anxiety. It was just too crazy. “Charles, come on. For heaven’s sake. Lately you’re angry at me for anything I say. I was just trying to make a suggestion—”

The next seconds passed in a blur. She doubted he’d heard her. He wasn’t listening; he was charging around the table toward her like an angry bull.

She saw him lift his hand. Saw his hand was folded in a fist. Saw the dark, livid color shooting up his neck.

As crazy and ridiculous as the thought was, for that second she actually believed he was going to hit her.

Her heart stopped. Not just her heart, the physical organ, but the core of her emotions suddenly seemed to go still, deep down. She felt as if something died, some feeling, some hope, nothing she could name…yet the sense of loss was as real as her own pulse.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Charles said abruptly. He lowered his arm, dropped that fist. Then said nothing else, just stormed out the back door. The screen door slapped behind him.

Bren sat statue-still for a few more minutes…until the oddest thing happened. She saw a vague silhouette of a reflection in the kitchen window. It had to be a stranger, that cringing woman with the submissive bent head. It couldn’t be her. How could it possibly be her?

For that brief second she felt like a stranger in her own life.

But then, of course, she got a grip. Stood. Started dinner, started brainstorming fund-raising events.

Charles was going to be terribly upset and apologetic when he came to his senses, realized how mean he’d been to her. She was sure of it.

Three evenings later, it was pouring buckets when Bren turned the key on Maude Rose’s apartment. The place was on Willow, with a private set of stairs over Ms. Lady Lingerie and Clunkers. Everyone knew there were apartments above the retail shops, but who ever thought about them? Until she’d known Maude Rose, she’d never considered what those apartments looked like or who lived in them.

A naked lightbulb illuminated the dingy stairs—not enough to make the lock easy to see. Once inside Maude’s door, she fumbled around the wall for a switch. Lightning crackled just as she located the overhead. Slowly she slipped off her damp jacket, startled at her first look at the place.

Charles often spent one night a month in Charlestown with elders of the church, a prayer retreat sort of thing with a dozen other pastors. It never crossed Bren’s mind to check out the apartment until he’d been on the road. Then the impulse hit. There was no one to question or argue with her if she chose to come here tonight.

For the first time since she could remember, she had a completely private spot to think. Maybe that was part of what had spurred the impulse to come here. More than that, though, she really wanted to know more about the woman who’d given her such a generous legacy—especially because Bren had no idea Maude Rose even knew she’d stood up for her now and then.

And now, as she glanced around, the first shock was discovering the pale pink living room walls. Not red, not neon, not splashy or vulgar. But a quiet, clean pastel, recently painted. As far as Bren could tell, the apartment only had a bedroom, a bathroom and then this one big L-shaped room.

The fat part of the L had windows overlooking the street below. The skinny part of the L was the kitchen and eating area. Or it had been.

Bren heard the clomp of footsteps on the noisy stairs and spun around. Hard to tell who was more surprised, her or Poppy.

“I’ll be damned. Who’d have thought we’d have the same idea on the same night?” Poppy asked wryly, but her grin was wary. “Hey, if you want the place to yourself, go for it. I can come back another time—”

“I think it’s great you’re here. It’ll give us a chance to put our heads together and figure out what to do with the place at the same time.”

Poppy nodded. “I don’t even know why I came tonight. The curiosity bug just keeps getting to me. Who Maude Rose really was. How and why she picked us to give that stuff to, when I don’t remember her even speaking to me. In fact, I didn’t know she realized I’d defended her now and then. And I just…those jewels, you know? That whole thing’s still bowling me over.”

“I know. Me, too.” Bren, all her life, had felt easy around people, loved people in all their facets and colors and rainbow choices of personalities. But Poppy was a puzzle.

She’d looked nervous as a newborn colt when she’d first stepped in. Shed a dripping rain jacket at the door, dropped it. She was such a character, Bren thought. A full-grown ragamuffin. Gorgeous hair, all red and gold and blond, thick and glossy—but she wore it shaggy and rumpled, washed and dried as if it were polyester. The clothes appeared to be rejects from a rag bag—the jeans were too tight in the behind, dirty in the knees, thready at the hems; the flannel shirt was twice too big for her frame.

Poppy’s face fascinated her the most, though. Her dark eyes were bright with intelligence and sassy humor. She had a long, wide mouth, skin softer than a baby’s. The nose took up too much space. So did the chin. But there were so many contradictions in that face, so much character. Poppy seemed shamelessly irreverent, hopelessly blunt…so much her own woman, the way Bren had always wanted to be herself. Everything about Poppy seemed to capitalize a strong woman, unafraid to fight for whatever mattered to her…yet that essential gutsiness was shadowed by something else. Anger, Bren was almost sure.

Somewhere inside that brash, artsy package was a lot of anger at something. The way she walked, the way she moved, Poppy always seemed braced for someone to cut her or hurt her—and ready to lash out when and if anyone tried.

“Pink? You gotta be kidding me,” Poppy said when she saw the walls. She pushed out of her wet shoes, tromped around barefoot.

Bren hadn’t felt comfortable at baldly opening cupboards and drawers, but sheesh, as long as Poppy was doing it, she indulged in her curiosity, too. “Apparently it was rented furnished.”

“You guessing that by the crappy furniture?” Poppy said wryly. “Yeah, I’d guess the same thing. Thinking about an old lady trying to ease her tired bones on a cheap futon kind of makes me sick.” She spun around. “Did you see this?”

Bren nodded. She’d already noticed the picture on the far wall. It wasn’t a good print or even a poster. Just a picture cut out from a magazine of a stone hearth with a blazing fire. It put a lump in Bren’s throat. “Maude Rose never had the warmth of a real fireplace, I’m guessing.”

“Everything around this damn place makes me think she was so damn lonely that I’d like to hit someone. Pardon my French.” Poppy opened a kitchen cupboard. Bren came up behind her to view the contents. The two women exchanged glances.

The shelf held two plates, two cups, two saucers—all cheap, chipped pottery. But also on the shelf sat a half-used candle, rose-scented.

“Damn it,” Poppy said again.

Bren didn’t say it, but she felt the same way. The candle still had a whiff of that soft, vulnerable scent. Again she hurt for the old woman’s loneliness. For something inside Maude Rose that so few had ever seen. A softness. A yearning for something pretty, something gentle, something feminine.

“I’ve got to quit saying damn it around you,” Poppy grumped. “I think it’s because I know you’re a pastor’s wife. I mean, I swear. But not every two seconds.”

“It’s all right.”

Poppy started spinning around again. “Pretty obvious the furniture comes with the place. But I don’t think we should rent this place out—or let anyone else see it—until we’ve taken out some things. Like the candle. And the picture. And whatever else we find that belonged to Maude Rose that’s…”

“Personal.” Bren nodded. She shuffled through a handful of books on the stand by the TV. Dilbert. Garfield. Not reading books, just cartoons. On a wall shelf, she found records. Not CDs or tapes but old records—the kind that had to be played on a turntable. Only there was no turntable. Just the big, black disks. She read the labels to Poppy. “Night and Day, Frank Sinatra. Who’s Montavani?”

“Don’t know.”

“Cal Tjader. Ella Fitzgerald. Miles Davis. Wes Montgomery.” Bren recognized some of the names, not all. “I’d hate to think she loved this music and then had no way to play it.”

“Bren?”

“What?”

Poppy stood in the doorway of the bathroom. “I think we need a glass of wine. Or beer.”

“Oh, I can’t sta—” Bren clipped off her knee-jerk response. It must be the stranger living in her life that said, “Actually, I can stay for a while. And I think a little drink’s a good idea. Hmm, I’m trying to think of the closest place that might sell a bottle of wine—”

“Manny’s Bar. Maude Rose’s hangout. Which seems fitting. I’ll spring for it.”

By the time Poppy returned, she was soaked all over again, laughing at what a rotten, blustery night the storm had turned into. By then, Bren had filled a couple of grocery bags with things of Maude Rose’s. She wasn’t sure what to do with them but left them for Poppy to see so they could decide together.

“I guess I should have asked if you’d rather have a soda instead of something alcoholic,” Poppy said.

“You know,” Bren said mildly, “just because I’m married to a minister doesn’t mean that I don’t drink, don’t swear or can’t have a bitchy mood just like anyone else.”

“You just said bitchy.”

“Yes.” Bren glanced out the window. “And I see quite a bit of lightning, but none of the lightning bolts seemed to have shot me down, so I guess God must be in a forgiving mood today.”

Poppy squinted at her. “Was that a joke?”

“Oh, no. I never joke about God shooting me down with lightning bolts.”

Apparently that kind of teasing was what it took for Poppy to relax around her. Contrary to Bren’s claim, she really didn’t drink—at least, not normally. But when she started to sip that first glass, it seemed the right thing to do. It wasn’t that easy for her to relax around Poppy any more than the other way around. Slowly, though, they seemed to be finding their way around each other.

“So you left your jewels with Ruby,” Poppy said. “Mine, now, they’re still in my fridge.”

“Your refrigerator! You can’t be serious.”

“Can you imagine a thief opening the fridge for anything to steal? Besides which, I’ve just been so darn busy. I’ll do something serious as soon as I can catch some free time. Anyway, the point is, do you know what you’re going to do with your side of the loot?”

“No. Not yet.” She took another sip of wine, let the dry taste swirl on her tongue. “How about you? When you get that free time…do you have some ideas what you’re going to do with the money?”

Poppy was still opening and closing things as she drank, and so far she’d finished three glasses compared to Bren’s first three sips. “You know, my first thought on this place is just to find someone who needs a place. A kid graduating from high school, first job kind of thing. Someone wanting to live independent. Or needing to. But someone needing something cheap.”

“A girl, not a guy,” Bren said.

Poppy nodded immediately. “Yeah. I know we shouldn’t discriminate, but…”

“But it’d feel good to do something for a girl who needed help,” Bren added thoughtfully. “From what Cal Asher said, Maude had enough funds in the kitty to pay for several more months’ rent. So it wouldn’t cost us to hold on to the place for a while. Give us the time to find the right person.”

“I’m not sure how to guess who Maude Rose might have wanted here. Except…a girl who needs a safety net.”

“Yeah. And a girl who needs a little kindness passed along.” Bren found it astounding how easily they were talking about this. But she’d definitely noticed how Poppy had initially ducked the question of her inheritance. Before she could ask her again, though, Poppy motioned her closer.

“Bren! Look what I found!” Poppy had just topped her third glass—again—when she sloshed it on the scarred plastic table. Apparently she’d spotted something under an upholstered chair, because suddenly she knelt down and reached deep under there. She emerged with an old wrinkle-edged cigar box.

“Um, doesn’t look like much of a treasure. Maybe if you smoked,” Bren said doubtfully.

Poppy rolled her eyes. “It’s not about smoking, you silly. Cigar boxes are for hiding treasures.”

“This is a rule where?” Bren asked wryly, but they both bent over the box to view the contents. Neither touched. They just looked. There was a dried-up daisy. A newspaper with its name cut off, just a scrap of yellowed paper with the cutout date of November 7, 1984. A beach shell, broken. A photo of a couple from the ’40s, judging from their clothes, but it was so faded and crackled it was hard to tell. Another photo of a young man—skinny, scrawny, standing by a motorcycle, looking cockily as if he owned the world.

Slowly Bren said, “You’re right. They are treasures.”

“Impossible to guess what they meant to her.”

“No way to know,” Bren agreed.

“I guess we should throw it all away.”

“I guess we should. What else could we do with it anyway?” Yet Bren looked at Poppy’s face, sighed and said, “Okay, let’s just put it back under the chair for now. We’ll throw it away. Eventually.”

“I know we will.” Poppy put on her tough, defensive face. “Hell, how stupid to be sentimental about stuff like that. What difference could it possibly make now?”

“You’re so right,” Bren murmured. She tried to look away from Poppy, but for that instant—whether Poppy knew it or not—her eyes glistened when she saw that cheap dried flower. So had Bren’s. But then, Bren had no illusions about herself that she was tough. “Hey, Poppy…I didn’t mean to pry before. You don’t have to tell me what you plan to do with your jewels. I was just making conversation.”

“Hey, I wasn’t ducking it.”

She was, but Bren wasn’t about to call her on it. She watched Poppy toss back the rest of her wine. The Ms. Tough expression was back in place.

“I want to have my face fixed,” she said bluntly.

“Your face? What’s wrong with your face?”

Poppy rolled her eyes again. “Come on. It’s obvious. My whole life, I’ve been butt-ugly. But I always thought I just had to live with it. Now suddenly I don’t have to. And it’s not as if I need the money for anything else.” She scowled at Bren. “You don’t approve.”

“It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove.”

“But you think it’s vain. Frivolous. A dumb thing to do with the money.”

“I never said that,” Bren defended herself.

“You didn’t have to. It’s all over your expression. But you never had to live with a face like this. You don’t have my history. You don’t even know me—”

Bren said quickly, “Poppy, I’m sorry if I offended you. Or if you felt I was judging you. You just took me by surprise, that’s all. I had no idea what you were going to say.”

But Poppy closed down tighter than a threatened clam. She corked the wine, put attitude in her shoulders, carted her glass to the sink. She was obviously making moves toward leaving. “So what about you, anyway? What’d your husband say when you told him about your windfall?”

Now it was Bren’s turn to fall silent. Poppy turned. “Bren?”

Bren punched out cheerfully, “I haven’t gotten around to telling him yet.” It was her turn to leap to her feet. She aimed for the sink, figuring she’d wash both glasses. Oh, and check the contents of the refrigerator. Neither of them had looked inside to see if there was food that needed throwing out.

Poppy hadn’t moved. Was still staring at her. “Well, hell. I didn’t mean to ask some heavy, loaded question.”

“It isn’t a loaded question. It’s just a little different circumstance. It’s hard to explain.”

“No need to strain yourself. It’s none of my business.”

“I’m going to tell him. He’ll be really happy. I mean, who wouldn’t at such an extraordinary surprise—”

“Uh-huh. That’s why you didn’t tell him immediately, right? Because he’d be so happy.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Bren repeated uncomfortably.

They both left at the same time. Both had keys, lifted a hand to lock the door at the same moment. Went to take the stairs down at the same moment. Hesitated at the same moment before taking off in the pouring rain in opposite directions.

Bren couldn’t stop thinking how nice it had been between them for a while. Just talking together, more easily than either could ever have expected. It was as if the bond of Maude Rose had somehow paved the way for a friendship between them. They shared a secret. A secret that seemed to open the doors to communicating, talking about things they wouldn’t or couldn’t normally.

But that door had sure slammed shut fast.

Bren was still shaking her head—who could ever, would ever, guess that a woman who dressed as ragamuffinlike as Poppy would want plastic surgery? That vanity or looks was even a thought in her head?

And for herself…well, obviously she couldn’t just tell Poppy about her marriage. You couldn’t explain something like that in a single sentence or a couple of seconds.

Heckapeck. Bren had been trying for days, weeks and now months to explain to herself what the Sam Hill was going wrong between her and Charles. If she couldn’t figure it out herself, how on earth could she tell a stranger?