“Is that a pickup line?” she teased.
“Only if it works.” He flashed a bright smile, turned, and walked out of the room—whistling the tune to “Rest Your Love on Me.”
Chapter 11
Memories of the last time Bernie wore her Mardi Gras costume flooded her mind as she carefully folded the flamboyant outfit, put it in a box, and added a dozen strands of beads and a lot of bangle bracelets. She hummed the jazz music that she always put on the jukebox for the Friday and Saturday nights when the Chicken Coop celebrated the holiday. Etta James with her “At Last” and Louis Armstrong singing “Hello, Dolly!” and “Georgia on My Mind” were some of her favorites.
“Can’t leave out Ella Fitzgerald and sweet, sweet Ray Charles,” she said with a sigh. “I could have shown that man a really good time if I’d ever met him in person.”
She shook out the Christmas outfit she intended to take with her—a green sequined dress that had a side slit so high that she had to go commando when she wore it. “My Christmas present to me was a firefighter the first year I wore this. Lord have mercy!” She fanned herself with the back of her hand. “It was a wonder we didn’t set the mattress ablaze that night.”
Her phone rang and jerked her right back to the present, but when she checked the caller ID and saw that it was Clara’s mama, she hit the decline option on the screen. She was too deep in dragging out her memories to listen to a bunch of crap about convincing Clara to go to Fritch so Marsha and Vernie Sue could talk her into going to a save-thy-soul rehab center.
“I believe in God, and I pray every night, but I also believe that He supports unconditional love,” she muttered.
She ignored the phone when it rang five more times. “No thank you,” she hissed.
The third time it started the incessant noise, she figured she had better answer it—just in case Vernie Sue had had a cardiac arrest or maybe a stroke and was having trouble talking her way into heaven. Maybe they had her sitting at the gates waiting to get Bernie’s opinion on the matter. Marsha had already said at multiple reunions that her mother deserved gold stars and diamonds in her halo, but Bernie decided that she would get Mary Jane’s thoughts before she gave Saint Peter the green light.
“What do you want?” Bernie answered.
“That’s a fine way to answer the phone,” Marsha huffed.
“You never call unless you want to yell at me about my lifestyle. Well, like the country song says, I’m happy being me, and I think Clara has found her place in life right here in Ratliff City,” Bernie snapped.
“You exasperate me.” Marsha groaned. “And Mama too, for that matter. Was there ever a time that you two got along?”
“Probably not,” Bernie answered. “She’s always been too high and mighty to accept me for who I am, and I refused to change. I will not give up my happiness to please her narrow mind. Are you calling today to try to get me and your mother to call a truce? Will she let me wear myI love Jesus but I drink a littleT-shirt to the reunion in the fall?”
“Probably not, but that’s not the reason I’m calling,” Marsha said.
“Then spit it out so we can say goodbye.” Bernie could hear the bitterness in her own voice. She didn’t like it, but dang it all anyway, her sister’s side of the family aggravated the hell out of her.
“I feel convicted,” Marsha said in a low voice. “I’ve tried to pray about it, but God won’t talk to me.”
Bernie laid the Mardi Gras costume on the table and sat down with a thud. “If you can’t love your own child unconditionally, then how can you expect Him to love you the same way and open the door to visit with Him?”
There was a long pause and then Marsha asked, “Do you love your sister unconditionally?”
“Yep, I do,” Bernie answered. “I support her religious beliefs, and according to what Jesus taught, I have to love her, but there’s not one place in the Good Book that says I have to like her. So, what have you done that God hasturned his back on you?”
“I was wrong to treat Clara the way I did, and I should have stood up to Mama and told her to butt out,” Marsha admitted.
Bernie held the phone out from her ear and stared at it for a long moment. Surely that shot of whiskey she had had to give her enough courage to go through her costumes hadn’t dulled her hearing. Neither Vernie Sue nor Marsha had never admitted being wrong about a single thing in the past.
Bernie glanced out the kitchen window at the sky. Stars flickered around the moon, so there wasn’t a late tornado about to hit Ratliff City. “Would you repeat that?” she asked as she returned the phone to her ear.
“Are you getting deaf as well as cantankerous?” Marsha snapped. “You and Mama both should get fitted for hearing aids.”
“I am not getting old, and there’s not a thing wrong with my ears or my eyes,” Bernie answered in an icy-cold tone. “Were you also wrong in the way you have treated your own sister? Mary Jane has never talked ugly about you, but I can’t say the same for you about her. And while we are discussing family, Vernie Sue has an even dozen grandkids, nine of them granddaughters. But she only acknowledges the three boys and Myra, probably because that girl is a preacher’s wife. She even set you against your own sister from the time y’all were young. Is that any way for her to act?”
Marsha sighed again. “Mama will have to answer for her own choices, Aunt Bernie. She tried to talk Mary Jane out of getting a divorce. If she had to leave Martin, then she should have come home to Fritch and gotten a decent job.”
“Sounds to me like you aren’t willing to take a step toward really reconciling with either your sister or your daughter, unless they do things on your terms,” Bernie told her.
“I am willing to start with Clara, but she won’t even talk to me,” Marsha said. “Will youpleasehelp me convince Clara to come home? I promise not to preach at her or make her feel like she doesn’t matter.”
Bernie shook her head and set her mouth in a firm line. “Have you ever watched that old movieSteel Magnolias?”
