“Line up!” Marshall barked, and we took our places in line. I was sandwiched between Becca and Raphael.
“Kiotske!”
We put our heels together and stood to attention.
“Rei!”
We bowed.
“Class dismissed.”
Still feeling a tad shaky, I walked carefully over to my little pile of belongings, pulled off my sparring pads, and stowed them in my gym bag. I slid my feet into my sandals, thankful I didn’t have to bend over to tie sneakers.
Janet joined me as I walked out to my old car.
“Are you really feeling all right?” she asked quietly.
My first impulse was to snarl at her, but instead I admitted, “Not quite.” She relaxed, as if she’d expected the snarl and was pleasantly surprised at the admission.
I fumbled with unlocking my car, but finally got it right.
Janet said, “I’m sorry about Deedra. I’m sorry you had to find her. It must have been awful.”
I tilted my head in a brief nod. “I guess you and Deedra had known each other for a long time, both growing up here and all.”
Janet nodded, her thick brown hair swinging against each cheek. She’d let it grow to chin length, and wore bangs. It became her. “Deedra was a little younger,” she said, leaning against my car. I threw my gym bag in to land on the passenger’s seat, and propped myself against the open door. It was a beautiful night, clear and just a little cool. We wouldn’t have many more evenings like this; summer practically pounces on spring in southern Arkansas.
“I was a year ahead of her in school,” Janet continued after a minute. “I went to Sunday school with her at First Methodist. That was before they formed Shakespeare Combined Church, and way before Miss Lacey’s first husband died and she married Jerrell Knopp and began going to SCC. My mom is still real good friends with Miss Lacey.”
“Was Deedra always… promiscuous?” I asked, since I seemed to be expected to keep the conversation going.
“No,” Janet said. “Not always. It was her chin.”
And I understood. Her severely recessive chin was the only feature that had kept Deedra from real prettiness, the flaw that had kept her from being homecoming queen, head cheerleader, most prized girl to date-everything. It was easy to imagine Deedra gradually coming to feel that if she couldn’t achieve those things, she could be remarkable in another way.
“Wonder why her parents didn’t do anything about it?” I asked. “Is there anything you can do about chins?”
“I don’t know.” Janet shrugged. “But I can tell you that Lacey has never believed in plastic surgery. She’s real fundamentalist, you know. A great lady, but not a liberal bone in her body. That’s why she took to Shakespeare Combined Church so well, when she married Jerrell and he wanted her to go to church with him.”
A tap on the jaw seemed to have much the same effect on me as a glass or two of wine. I felt disinclined to move, oddly content to be standing in a parking lot having an idle conversation with another human being.
“Jerrell and Deedra didn’t get along so well,” I commented.
“No. Frankly, I’ve always wondered…” and Janet hesitated, her face compressing into an expression of both reluctance and distaste. “Well, I’ve always wondered if he ever visited Deedra… you know? Before Lacey’s husband died, before Jerrell ever imagined being able to marry Lacey?”
“Ugh,” I said. I turned this over in my mind for a minute. “Oh, yuck.”
“Yeah, me too.” Our eyes met. We had matching expressions.
“I would think he would hate remembering that,” Janet said, slowly and carefully. “I would think he’d hate wondering if Deedra would ever tell.”
After a long, thoughtful moment, I replied, “Yes. I’d think he certainly would.”
Chapter Three
Lacey Knopp called me the next morning. I was about to leave for Joe C Prader’s house when the phone rang. Hoping it was Jack, though the time difference made me fairly surely it wasn’t, I said, “Yes?”
“Lily, I need you to help me,” Lacey said. I hardly recognized her voice. She sounded like she’d been dragged over razor blades.
“How?”
“I need you to meet me at Deedra’s tomorrow. I need help packing up the things in her apartment. Can you do that for me?”
I try to keep Wednesday mornings free for just such special projects. I wasn’t more than a little surprised that Deedra’s mother was in such a hurry to clear out Deedra’s apartment. Many, many people react to grief with a furious flurry of activity. They figure if they don’t hold still, it can’t hit them.
“Yes, I can do that. What time?”
“Eight?”
“Sure.” I hesitated. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Thank you.” Lacey sounded shakier, suddenly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I was so buried in thought that I took the wrong route to Mr. Prader’s, and had to turn around and go back.
Joe Christopher Prader was as old as God but as mean as the devil. Called “Joe C” by all his family and cronies (those few still surviving), he’d been known for years for stalking around Shakespeare brandishing a cane at everyone who crossed his path, lamenting the passing of the better days, and bringing up old scandals at the most inopportune times.
Now Joe C’s stalking-around days were pretty much done.
Some visits, I kind of enjoyed him. Others, I would have decked him gladly if he hadn’t been so frail. More than once, I wondered if he was really as fragile as he seemed, or if maybe that show of frailty was a defense against just such impulses as mine.
Shakespeareans were inexplicably proud of having Joe C as a town character. His family was less thrilled. When his granddaughter Calla had hired me, she’d begged me to work for at least a month before I quit. By that time, she hoped, I would be over the shock of him.
“If we could get him to move out of that old house,” Calla Prader had said despairingly. “If we could get him into Shakespeare Manor… or if we could get him to agree to live-in help!”
Joe C was definitely not in the business of making life easier for anyone but himself, and that only when it suited him.
But I’d lasted my month, and was now into my third.
Joe C was up and dressed by the time I knocked on his door. He adamantly refused to let me have a key, so every week I had to wait for him to shuffle from his bedroom to the front door, which I tried to bear philosophically. After all, keeping his keys to himself was his right, and one I understood.
But I was sure he wouldn’t give me a key simply out of meanness, rather than from principle. I’d noticed he came to the door especially slowly when the weather was bad, and I suspected he relished the idea of keeping me out in the rain or cold; anyway, keeping me at the mercy of Joe C Prader, all-powerful doorkeeper.
This morning he swung the door open after only a short delay. “Well, here you are, then,” he said, amazed and disgusted by my persistence in arriving on time for my job.
“Here I am,” I agreed. I tried not to sigh too loudly when he turned to go ahead of me to his bedroom, where I usually started by stripping the bed. Joe C always had to lead the way, and he always went very, very slowly. But the man was a nonagenarian: What could I say? I looked around me at the remains of the grand house as I followed the old man. The Prader House, the only remaining home on one of the main commercial streets of Shakespeare, was a showplace that had seen better days. Built about 1890, the house had high ceilings, beautiful woodwork, restored but cranky plumbing, and an electrical system that had seen better decades. The upstairs, with its four bedrooms and huge bathroom, was closed off now, though Calla had told me that she cleaned it about twice a year. Joe C wasn’t fit to go up stairs anymore.
“I’m all stopped up this week.” Joe C opened the conversation, which would not let up until I left the house. He lowered himself into the old red velvet chair in a corner of the large back bedroom.