Miss Julia Lays Down the Law Read online

“What did you sign up for?”

  “Oh-h-h,” LuAnne wailed, reminded of what she’d let herself in for. “I don’t even know what it is! It just seemed like the only thing I could do once and be done with it. Not like signing up for a committee that’ll meet two mornings a week for the unforeseeable future or anything. And now, Julia, I can’t even do it once!”

  “Do what?”

  “Run! She’s calling it the Run for Rehab, of all things. What do you think that means?”

  “I have no idea, unless she thinks we all need a week at a spa. But, LuAnne, what does a run have to do with beautifying the town?”

  “Well, see,” LuAnne said, scooting to the edge of the sofa. “She’s mapped out our route, and we’re supposed to take note of places along the way that need to be torn down and rebuilt—rehabilitated, I guess. But, Julia, how am I going to do that when I may not be able to put one foot in front of the other?”

  “I don’t know, LuAnne. I didn’t even know you were into running.”

  “I’m not! The only good thing about it is that nobody else is, either. See, Connie wants us to be slow enough to take note of the buildings and houses that need to come down. So she’s making it an elder run.”

  “Elder run! LuAnne, there’ll be bodies dropping all over town.”

  “I know!” she wailed. “And mine will probably be the first to drop. And here I am, stuck with it. What should I do, Julia?”

  “Nothing. I just wouldn’t do it. Why, LuAnne, you could fall and break something. People who enter these things practice for weeks before the actual run. What kind of shape are you in, anyway?”

  “Julia,” LuAnne said, sighing, “I’ll tell you the truth, I get out of breath just bringing in groceries from the car.”

  “Then call Connie and tell her you’re dropping out, or just don’t show up.”

  “I can’t just not show up. She’ll be keeping count, I know she will.”

  I briefly considered my longtime friend—short in stature, full-breasted, and nervously energetic as long as she could sit and talk about something rather than get up and do it.

  “Listen, LuAnne, how far do you think you can run?”

  That stopped her for a minute, then she said, “I don’t know. A block?”

  “It’s hardly worth going to the trouble of putting on a running suit for a block.”

  “That’s not the worst of it,” LuAnne said. “I don’t even have a running suit. I’ll have to buy one.”

  “For a block? I wouldn’t waste my time or my money. Besides, I think runners wear those tight-fitting latex things. You know, the neon-colored things that reveal everything about you.”

  “Oh, Lord!” LuAnne wailed. “I can’t wear something like that in public!” Then she sat up straight and pulled herself together. “That decides it. I’m going to be sick.”

  I sat up straight, too. “Right now?”

  “No, on the day of the run. Thanks, Julia, I appreciate your help. And I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who felt run over and hemmed in by Connie.

  “However,” LuAnne mused after a moment of silence, “she is going to give out trophies, and it’d be nice to have one.”

  “Listen to you! How do you expect to get a trophy for caving in after the first block?”

  That stung, I could tell, for LuAnne drew herself up and said, “Well, Julia, for your information, it’s not just the winner who’ll get a trophy. Connie’s going to award participation trophies, so there’ll be no winners or losers, just all of us who try. Which apparently neither you nor Mildred is willing to do.”

  “And I’m glad we aren’t,” I shot back. “What’s the use of expending—and embarrassing—yourself on something you can’t do in the first place and which wouldn’t mean anything anyway, even if you won? I say, give trophies just for entering!

  “I tell you, LuAnne, the woman’s a menace. You shouldn’t give her or her dime-store trophies another thought.”

  “Well,” LuAnne said, drawing herself up with a little huff, “here’s something you don’t know. Our running route starts on Main Street and comes right by your house. I’ll wave to you as I go by.”

  “And I’ll tell you this: if any of you puts my house on that so-called rehab list, you and Connie Clayborn will answer to me. But out of the kindness of my heart, I’ll stand on the sidewalk with a cup of water for you.”

  LuAnne sighed then and rolled her eyes. “If I make it this far.”

  Chapter 6

  Saying that she would see me that evening at Sue’s for the ornament sewing group, LuAnne took herself off, leaving me unsure of whether she’d back out of the run beforehand, just not show up for it, or feel she’d have to give it a try. I hoped she wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t in any condition to survive the two blocks from Main Street to my house, much less keep at it for a mile. And to have a runner collapse after a couple of blocks would not speak well for rehabilitating anything, unless it was by way of physical therapy after breaking something. Nor would LuAnne sprawled out on the sidewalk with EMTs in attendance please Connie. And pleasing Connie seemed to be LuAnne’s sole motivation.

  Thank goodness, I congratulated myself, I couldn’t care less what Connie thinks of me. And with that, I decided that henceforth she and her multitudinous ideas would be of no concern to me. Let her have at it on her own. As long as, that is, she left that park alone.

  • • •

  As it happened, though, the crusade Connie had started toward civic participation popped back up that evening in an unexpected way.

  Sam and I had just gotten up from the supper table on our way to the library when Lloyd came in to spend the night.

  “They’ve all got colds,” he said, explaining his appearance at our house, “and I have a paper to write. I can’t concentrate with all the crying and sneezing and coughing going on.”

  “Aren’t you about to freeze?” I asked as he came in with a blast of cold air from the open door. “Come in and get warm. Have you had supper?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Soup for all the sick and ailing, but it was fine. I’ll just go on upstairs and get started on my paper.”

  We kept Lloyd’s room as it had always been, complete with a computer, printer, books, and clothes, because he spent as many nights with us as he did with his mother, Mr. Pickens, and his twin half sisters. Which was fine with me. I liked having him around and always felt content when he was in the house.

  Sam and I settled into our favorite places close to the fire in the library, with Sam looking through the paper and me picking up some needlework. Picking it up was as far as I got, though, because it was my first chance to tell Sam how I intended to regain the equilibrium I’d had before Connie Clayborn had thrown me for a loop.

  And tell him, I did. But the more I expressed my good intentions, the more incensed I became all over again. Thinking that I’d vented enough to Mildred and Emma Sue to clear the air for good, I was surprised to realize how much fire was still simmering inside.

  “And, Sam,” I summed up after recounting Connie’s lecture again, “Mildred and I are in perfect agreement—Connie has overstepped herself and ruined any possibility of her getting into the garden club or the book club or anything else in town.

  “Emma Sue, though,” I went on, “I just don’t know about her. She takes everything to heart, then it goes straight to her head and down she comes with a migraine. To tell the truth, I’m a little worried about her.

  “However,” I added, “I intend to put Connie’s ranting on a back burner and stay out of her way. I don’t want to hear another critical word about the women of Abbotsville or of the town itself. There’re too many other things to occupy my mind and my time. Sewing ornaments, for one, which I guess Hazel Marie can’t do tonight with everybody sick at her house. And you know, Sam, it takes a lot of energy to stay mad, and I don’t have any to spare on
Connie. I’ll just put it all behind me so that whatever she thinks of us won’t matter a bit as far as I’m concerned. Live and let live, I always say.”

  “I do, too,” Sam said, probably bored to death with the subject by this time. He folded the paper and laid it aside, then opened a book, as one was never far from him.

  After a few minutes, I thought of something else I hadn’t told him. “Sam?”

  He raised his eyebrows as he looked up from his book.

  “Have you heard about Coleman?”

  He closed the book and put it aside. “What’s going on with Coleman?”

  “I’m not sure. Binkie thinks he’s lost his mind, but she doesn’t seem particularly concerned about it.” And I went on to tell Sam about Coleman’s effort to raise money by sitting on a sign and waving at passing cars. And to do it through rain, sleet, or snow, like a postal worker.

  Sam chuckled, shaking his head. “Better him than me.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s a wise thing to do. He could ruin his health.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Sam said. “I expect he knows what he’s doing. He and Binkie do a lot of camping.” He reached for his book again. “By the way, you remember I’m going to Raleigh at the end of the week? You want to go with me?”

  “Oh, you’ll have old friends to catch up with. Lots of gossip about judges I don’t know. I think I’ll pass.” I smiled at him, for Sam knew how proud I was that he had been named to the governor’s Judicial Standards Commission—it had been announced in the newspaper and everything—and that I wanted him to enjoy his time as the governor’s representative.

  “Mr. Sam?” Lloyd walked in, pen and paper in hand. “Could you help me with my paper?”

  “Sure, if I can. What’s your topic?”

  “Supposed to be on the rehabilitation of economically challenged communities, and I don’t even know what that means.”

  Sam started laughing, and I got to my feet. “I think I’ve heard enough on that subject,” I said, smiling at Lloyd. “I’ll leave it with you two to hash out. Sam, Mildred’s picking me up in a few minutes, so I’m off to make Christmas ornaments—a far, far better thing I do for my blood pressure than to go through a civics lesson again.”

  • • •

  Seven of us sat around Sue Hargrove’s dining room table, covered now by a quilt to protect the finish from scratches. Piles of red, green, gold, and white felt squares; boxes of sequins, pearls, and buttons; pin cushions filled with pins and needles; thimbles; scissors of all sizes; hot glue guns; spools and skeins of thread, braid, and piping; and Santa Clauses, snowmen, angels, and stars in various stages of completion were scattered across the table. An urn of hot spiced tea and a plate of shortbread were on the sideboard, available to anyone who wanted a break. Our rule was to not get bogged down with entertaining as such, nor with visiting with one another, but to work. We’d started, as usual, in early September, and our goal was for each member to complete an ornament at each weekly meeting. Mildred was far behind, but she was good company.

  Roberta Smith, who’d started out some years before with flowing red hair that was now a weekly tended coif of rust-colored waves and wisps, shifted her chair as Mildred and I took our places at the table. Roberta was an angular woman of a fairly young but uncertain age, one—well, two—prominent assets, and a generally quiet demeanor—so appropriate in a librarian. She looked up from her sewing, blinked several times, and asked, “Does anyone know where Mrs. Ledbetter is? I hope she’s not ill like Hazel Marie and her family.”

  I, too, had wondered about Emma Sue’s absence. She rarely missed any kind of meeting. “I spoke to her on the phone yesterday, and she seemed fine.” That wasn’t exactly true, but I wasn’t about to repeat the conversation I’d had with Emma Sue. The less said about Connie Clayborn, the better. “Actually,” I went on, “we’re short several others tonight, so something may be going around.” I stopped and looked under the table. “Where’s that box of odds and ends? I need some fur for this Santa Claus.”

  “Here it is,” Helen Stroud said, reaching behind her chair and sliding a box toward me. “There’s fur in there somewhere. I used some on that elf I made.”

  “An elf!” LuAnne said. “Do elves wear fur?”

  “Mine do,” Helen said complacently. “I put a knob of it on his cap and on the turned-up toes of his shoes.”

  “Oh, I saw that,” Sue said, “and it’s darling. I think we should ask ten dollars for it.

  “Which brings up another thing,” Sue went on. “We need to decide where our proceeds will go. We only have about five weeks before the county sale, and they’ll be after me to turn in our advertising copy. I need to be able to say who or what we’re supporting this year.”

  “Well,” LuAnne said, “I still think Meals on Wheels is what we should support.”

  “We did them year before last,” Callie Armstrong said, “and I thought we’d agreed to spread the wealth around.” Callie was a plump, pleasant woman with a houseful of children and a husband who’d agreed to put them to bed one night a week. Callie made the most of it, always being the last one to leave.

  “What wealth?” Mildred said, laughing. “If anybody buys this snowman I’ll be surprised. Ida Lee said she can get bloodstains out, but I just put another one on it.”

  “What’re some of the other groups supporting?” Helen asked, referring to the several groups around the county that contributed handmade items every year to the County Christmas Sale. Some groups were making Christmas placemats and napkins, others were making stuffed toys, topiary trees using artificial greenery, wreaths using real greenery, and, of course, Christmas cookies, cakes, and candy. And this year we’d heard that some retired men had decided to join us by making birdhouses to sell. The County Christmas Sale was always well attended because so many people throughout the county were involved in making sale items. We counted on their families and friends, at least, to feel obligated to support us.

  “Oh, I have an idea!” I said, suddenly remembering Binkie’s concerns. “What about playground equipment for the elementary school?” And I went on to tell them about Coleman’s cold weather sign-sitting project. “We must all go out on the boulevard and wave at him. That may be the only way he keeps warm.”

  “He’s crazy,” Mildred pronounced.

  “That’s what Binkie thinks, too,” I said. “But we do have some mild days in November, so the weather’s on my prayer list.”

  “You better pray hard,” Callie said, always seeing the gloomy side. “We usually have at least one snow in November.”

  “Oh,” Roberta said, almost moaning, “I hope he won’t get cold. But what a heroic thing to do! He’s such a fine man. Officer of the law, I mean. ‘Protect and serve’—that’s what hero means, you know, and that’s their motto. He came to the library and spoke to the children’s reading group. They were simply fascinated with him and all his accouterments.”

  Accouterments? I had to give full attention to my Santa ornament so I wouldn’t laugh. Miss Roberta Smith was given to sudden emotional outbursts, usually announced in a decidedly loud voice when she wasn’t in the library. She was, of course, quite well read and often referred in rapturous tones to any number of her favorite characters, most especially Mr. Darcy.

  “Well,” Sue said, bringing us back to the subject at hand since she wasn’t quite so fascinated by Coleman. “I say we choose playground equipment to sponsor this year. It’s certainly a worthwhile cause, and we’d be helping Coleman out, too. Maybe he won’t have to sit up there so long.”

  That proposal was met with general approval, but I hoped Coleman would have long been off that sign and back in his warm house by the time of the Christmas sale. If he had to stay up there in the weather until the second week of December, the poor man would be frozen solid.

  • • •

  On our way home that
evening, Mildred said, “I’ve about decided that Roberta has had a breast enhancement.”

  “What? Mildred, she’s a librarian. She wouldn’t do that, although I will admit that she’s somewhat out of proportion.”

  Mildred laughed. “More than somewhat, I’d say. She’s as skinny as a rail except up top, and the only way you get that kind of figure is surgically. But who knows? I guess they could be genetic.”

  “I think they are,” I said. “Haven’t you noticed that she always wears open jackets or cardigans, sort of like she wants to make them less, well, outstanding?”

  “You may be right. You’d think if she paid out good money, she wouldn’t want to hide them.

  “But listen,” Mildred went on, glancing at me, “do you realize that Connie wasn’t brought up even once tonight? I thought she’d be the main topic.”

  “I did notice, and I, for one, am glad she wasn’t. To tell the truth, I was afraid somebody had invited her to join us. Thank goodness they didn’t.”

  “I wasn’t worried about it.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “No,” Mildred said, squinching in the dark car as bright headlights flashed across the windshield. “Because I called Sue this afternoon and told her that if Connie was coming, I wasn’t.”

  “Oh, Mildred,” I said, laughing, “you didn’t.”

  “I certainly did. I know I didn’t exactly exhibit the proper Christmas spirit, but neither did Sue. She said she hadn’t even thought of inviting Connie because she wanted us to enjoy the evening, not be castigated again for our shortcomings. And speaking of that, wasn’t that shortbread good?”

  Chapter 7

  True to my intentions of discounting Connie and the black marks she’d given us, as well as keeping other, more uplifting things foremost in my mind, I was able to put aside the whole miserable mess she’d created. Several days of peaceful routine calmed me down considerably, although I admit that every passing thought of Connie brought out my ill feelings again. It was her arrogance in presuming to lecture us—me—that rankled. Who was she to set herself up as our instructor in civic responsibility? We volunteered, we voted, we contributed, we pitched in when need was apparent. And what had she done? Criticized and debased all our efforts, and that was it.