She had just sat down at the table when the back door opened and Marsha came inside. “Thank you, Aunt Bernie, for the offer to stay in a cool house and make ourselves a bit of lunch. We had planned to takeyou and Clara out to a café, but there’s not much of a place here, is there?”
“Only pizza at the gas station. They deliver if you want to call in an order,” Bernie answered. “Help yourself to whatever you can find. I have left the sandwich makings on the table in case Vernie Sue decided that she could bear having a Chihuahua around her for a few hours. There’s a bundt cake one of my customers brought me a couple of days ago under the dome over there.” She pointed in the general direction, but didn’t tell them that it was butter rum with extra liquor in the icing.
Marsha opened a cabinet door and took down two paper plates. “Thank you. We ate breakfast in the hotel, but I’m starving.”
Bernie sat down at the table and felt the heat from her sister’s glare when she came through the door and glanced around the kitchen. “What?” she asked.
“Don’t you say grace?” Vernie Sue asked.
Bernie bowed her head. “Thank you, God, for giving me a full, happy life and letting me make enough money to buy this T-shirt, and for this bologna and cheese sandwich with mustard, pickles, onions, and all the other fixin’s. Amen.”
“That was pure sacrilege,” Vernie Sue mumbled. “But then I should have expected it from someone like you.”
“Mother, that is enough,” Marsha scolded her.
“Whose side are you on?” Vernie Sue demanded.
“Why do we have to take sides?” Marsha asked. “I wish I had stayed in the FBI and moved the family to Washington, DC, and I’m thinking about moving my membership to that new all faith church that just opened up on Main Street in the old clothing store.”
Vernie Sue smeared mayonnaise on two slices of bread and added smoked ham and cheese. “If you do that, I’ll be the laughingstock of the whole town. Our family has been hardcore members of the Community Church since all three of you kids were born. And just who would have raised Clara for you if you had moved that far from me? I did all I could for that girl to give her a proper upbringing, and look who she turns to when we don’t support her wild ways.”
Bernie took a bite of her sandwich and chewed slowly to keep from slapping her sister right out of the chair she sat in. When she had swallowed and taken a drink from a bottle of cold root beer, she finally had her thoughts under control and could speak. “Just because Clara didn’t fit in the perfect little mold you created for her does not mean that she’s a bad person. Now, Marsha, why don’t you catch me up on what’s going on with your other two children.”
“Myra and her husband are doing well. She’s making a fine little preacher’s wife, and they’re trying to start a family. She’s in her mid-thirties, and her husband wants as many kids as the Lord can give them,” Marsha said with a lot of pride in her voice.
“Will that be your first grandchild?” Bernie asked. She could see a little gray sprinkling in Marsha’s brown hair, and crow’s-feet were taking up residence around her blue eyes. She didn’t look happy—not like Mary Jane did.
“No, Luke has two daughters, both teenagers, but they spend more time with their other grandparents than with us.”
I wonder why?Bernie kept the thought inside her head.
“That’s because they live on a farm and don’t go to church at all,” Vernie Sue growled.
“Mother, you promised that you would be civil and not judge,” Marsha scolded.
“It don’t make it right,” Vernie Sue muttered. “We need to have equal time with them.”
“Judging is worse than not being on a hard pew every time the church doors open,” Bernie told her. “Why don’t you throw out all that self-righteous negativity and replace it with happiness? You’ve still got a few years left in your chubby little body. Be glad that your grandchildren and those two great-grands are healthy and independent. If they were sick and would follow anything or anyone, you might have something to whine about.”
“You have no right to preach at me.” Vernie Sue’s voice went even colder.
“No, I don’t, but by the same token, you have no right to judge me or anyone else on this earth. Let’s justtake it back a step or two and have a good visit this afternoon while we wait on Clara to come home,” Bernie suggested. “After we eat, we can go in the living room and reminisce about the old days, or maybe I can even offer you Clara’s bed to have a little nap.”
“That sounds fantastic,” Marsha said. “It’s been way too long since we had a visit, Aunt Bernie.”
“How long has it been since you went down to Spanish Fort to see Mary Jane?” Bernie asked.
“Never, but tomorrow we are going to fix that, aren’t we, Mama?” Marsha said in a tone that didn’t allow room for argument.
“If you say so,” Vernie Sue quipped.
Bernie was struck speechless for several moments. “Y’all are going to the Paradise?” she finally asked.
“Yes, we are,” Marsha answered. “After we talk to Clara, we plan to drive to Nocona to a hotel and then go see Mary Jane tomorrow morning.”
“Does she know you are coming?” Bernie asked.
“Of course not,” Vernie Sue answered, “and don’t you dare tell her.”
