“This is my place, not yours, and it’s not a family reunion where you are the queen bee. I will wear what I damn well please. Now I understand those storm clouds.” Bernie snapped.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Aren’t you afraid that lightning will shoot downout of the sky and strike you dead for sitting so close to a bar?”
Marsha eased down into the third chair and sighed loudly. “Can you two be civil long enough for us to have a discussion? We have driven all the way down here, so be nice.”
“I’ll try if she will,” Vernie Sue agreed. “You got old and wrinkled since I saw you last, but then you have always lived a rough life.”
“Have you looked in the mirror lately?” Bernie snapped without taking her eyes off her twin sister. “We are identical twins except that you got fat and let your hair go gray.”
“Oh, for the love of God,” Marsha groaned. “We came to see Clara and to apologize for the way we made her feel when she needed help.”
“Marsha, darlin’, sometimes it’s too late to do what you should have been doing all along,” Bernie scolded.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Vernie Sue asked.
“If you can’t figure it out, then you aren’t even as smart as I thought you were,” Bernie told her.
“Well,” Vernie Sue huffed, “I’m smart enough to know that we’ve been sitting here at least five minutes, and you haven’t even offered us a drink of water. Have you lost all the manners our mother taught us?”
Bernie held out her mug. “This is my coffee, and it has a little kick of Jameson in it. The kitchen is right through that door, so help yourself to whatever you want.Refrigerator has food in it. You are family, not guests, so I’m not obligated to wait on you. Coffee is in the pot, but you can have a sip of mine if you are dying of thirst. I would never want you to die behind a bar. That might keep you from going to heaven.”
Vernie Sue reached for the half-empty mug and then shook her head. “I can smell whiskey in it all the way over here.”
“A sip or two might loosen you up a little,” Bernie said.
“Are you calling me…” Vernie Sue started.
“That’s enough, Mother,” Marsha said in an icy-cold tone. “We didn’t come all this distance for you and Aunt Bernie to argue. Where is Clara? We really do want to talk to her and maybe, hopefully, even take her home with us.”
“I’m surprised that her old car even made it this far,” Vernie Sue said.
Bernie took a sip of her lukewarm coffee and decided that when she refilled the mug, it would fill it to the brim with Jameson. She deserved no coffee in it at all if she was going to have to put up with her sister until Clara came home.
“Y’all might as well come on in my apartment. It’s getting hot out here, and the mosquitoes are starting to buzz around.” She hoped that they declined and went on back to Duncan.
Vernie Sue crossed her arms over her chest. “I will not go into a beer joint.”
“I didn’t invite you into the bar. I don’t want you in there spreading your condemning aura all over it,” Bernie said. “There’s a storage room between the Chicken Coop and my apartment. I don’t want y’all in my place of business, but out of family courtesy, I will let you come into my apartment and let you make yourselves a sandwich. I’m more hospitable than y’all are.”
“I’m very welcoming,” Vernie Sue argued.
“You threw your own sister out of the family reunion if I remember right,” Bernie reminded her.
Vernie Sue shook her chubby finger at Bernie. “That shirt, the very one you are wearing now, was and is sacrilegious. And for your information, people come to my house all the time, and I always offer them something to drink, and most of the time I even give them some homemade cookies or a slice of pie.”
Bernie stood up and took a step toward the back porch. “I ain’t got pie or cookies except for the store-bought chocolate chip ones, but I’m hungry so I’m going inside where it’s cool to make myself a sandwich. Y’all can sit out here in the heat all afternoon if you want, but Clara is out on a date, and most likely won’t be home until dark.”
“Who…what…where…” Marsha stammered.
“She went to church this morning with Nash Murphey, the guy who is going to buy the Chicken Coop, and after the services she was going to his grandparents’ house for Sunday dinner. Nash is a good man,and he really likes Clara. From what I see, she likes him, so y’all are wasting your time trying to get her to leave Ratliff City.”
“Church!” Vernie Sue fumed and then she saw Pepper and put up both palms. “Get that thing away from me. You know I’m allergic to cats and dogs.”
“Not to Chihuahuas. They are the only dog that folks with allergies can have,” Bernie told her. “Pepper lives with me and Clara. So, get over yourself, Vernie Sue. And Clara has even asked for him. I’m leaving a note in my will that if I die before Pepper does, she will inherit him. Are you sure you want her to live in Fritch with a sassy little dog?” She marched into the house and closed the door behind her. Let them both sit out there and suffocate in their fancy church clothes, high-heeled shoes, panty hose, and possibly even a girdle.
“Dammit!” she swore again as she got all the sandwich makings from the refrigerator, along with store-bought potato salad and coleslaw, and brought paper plates and chips from the pantry. “I only get one day a week to relax, and they have spoiled it. I hope those Texas-sized mosquitoes come up over the Red River and carry them away. Allergic to dogs, my royal hind end.” She fussed and fumed the whole time she made herself a plate.
