Hissy Fit (5 page)

I clutched
the door frame for support. “He took Nick? He took Nick to France with him? On our honeymoon?”

Janey gave Gloria a smug smile. “See? I knew you’d never guess.”

I sat back down and held the icy glass of Diet Coke to my forehead. “But Nick is afraid to fly. And he won’t eat anything except fast food. He claims he can’t go a day unless he has a Whopper.”

“Perfect,” Gloria said. “He and A.J. will make a perfect couple in the South of France.”

“He didn’t take Paige?” I said, grabbing Janey’s hand. “You’re not just making this up? He didn’t take Paige to France?”

“Hell, no,” Janey said. “I saw Paige coming out of Mozella’s right as I was leaving for the airport. Her and her skanky mama. I would have run Paige over too, but I was driving Uncle Wade’s new car and I was afraid she’d leave a dent.”

“You’re sure it was Paige?” I repeated. “She didn’t go to France with A.J.?”

Janey gave Aunt Gloria a worried look. “What’s with her today?” she asked, jerking her head in my direction. “You sure she didn’t take an overdose of Midol or something?”

“Just answer the question one more time,” Gloria said.

“Oh. Kay,” Janey said, enunciating slowly, as though she were speaking to a mildly retarded foreigner.

“A.J. took Nick to France. Not Paige. Nick. To France. On the airplane. Paige is still right here in Madison. And,” she added, grinning wickedly, “she’s got some dog-ass-looking orange hair too. Mozella must have been smoking some crack this morning when she got ahold of Paige Plummer.”

On Sunday
I slept.

On Monday, as Gloria said later, “The grits hit the fan.”

First thing, our carpet installation guy showed up with a truck-load of one-hundred-twenty-dollar-a-yard custom-milled broad-loom and a very worried expression.

“We were supposed to install at the bank this morning, but the guy says no, we can’t come in,” Bennie said, crunching his cap between his hands.

“Which guy?” Gloria asked. “Somebody at Madison Mutual?”

“The guy,” Bennie said. “I go in, show the lady at the reception desk the work order, she calls, some guy in a suit comes out, looks at the work order, and hands it right back to me. I can’t repeat what he said. But he sure wasn’t gonna let me lay no carpet.”

“You can tell us what he said, Bennie,” I said. “We’re big girls. We can take it.”

Bennie looked down at his hat and blushed. “Okay. You’re the boss. He said, ‘Tell Keeley she can take this carpet and shove it up her ass.’ ”

“Right,” I said.

Gloria sighed. “The guy in the suit, what did he look like?”

“Never mind,” I said. “I’m sure it was Kyle. A.J.’s daddy would never use that kind of language in public.”

A.J.’s brother, Kyle, was some sort of mid-level manager at the bank. Although he’d always been perfectly polite to me, I’d sensed that he had some long-simmering resentment over his older brother’s role in the business. It had always been clear to everybody that in the family flow chart, A.J. would forever be head dog over there, and Kyle would be reduced to sniffing his big brother’s butt for the rest of his life.

Gloria looked down at the work order and frowned. We’d been working on a long-needed “freshening” of Madison Mutual’s ground floor offices for six months now. The carpet sitting outside in Bennie’s truck was worth a lot of money. Our company name was on the invoice Bennie was folding and unfolding.

“They can’t just refuse delivery,” I said. “Can they?”

“Looks like they did,” Gloria said. “I mean, Bennie can’t make them let him install it.”

“What y’all want me to do with it?” Bennie asked. “That’s a boat-load of carpet out there, Miss Gloria. I can’t do no other installation until I unload that stuff. And I got another job in Eatonton first thing in the morning.”

“You can’t put it here,” Gloria said. “There’s no room.”

“Anyway, Drew Jernigan authorized us to order that carpet,” I said, grinding my teeth at the thought. “He can’t up and cancel just because he’s pissed off at me.”

“I’ll have to call him,” Gloria said. “Maybe it was all Kyle’s idea. Surely Drew understands that this is a professional relationship.”

“Maybe,” I said, remembering the look of blind fury on A.J.’s father’s face at the rehearsal dinner.

But Drew Jernigan wouldn’t take Gloria’s phone call. His secretary coolly informed her that “Mr. Jernigan is in meetings all day.”

Gloria slammed the phone down. “Fine. Bennie, you’ll just have to take the carpet over to our warehouse.” She handed him the key. “We’ll get this straightened out, and I’ll call you to set up another installation time.”

He handed her the invoice and his work order. “It’s a lot of carpet, Miss Gloria.”

Not long after Bennie left, we got a call from Annabelle Waites. That would be Annabelle Shockley Waites, of the Shockley Poultry family, married to Walter Waites, who mostly managed his wife’s vast inheritance when he wasn’t playing golf.

“Oh, hi Keeley,” Annabelle said, her voice unnaturally high and agitated. “I wasn’t expecting to find you there this morning.”

“I wasn’t expecting to find me here either,” I said.

That really got her flustered.

“I’m calling to tell Gloria we’ll have to cancel lunch today,” she continued.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is everything all right? You’re not sick again, are you?”

Annabelle Waites was subject to many mysterious ailments, but she was also one of our best clients, what we referred to as a “frequent fluffer.” Right now we were about to embark on a serious “fluffing” of the kitchen in her Greek Revival house on West Washington Street. The plan was to rip the “old” kitchen (last remodeled four years ago) down to the studs, bump the back wall out by eight feet, install French doors, and build a new antique brick terrace. Annabelle’s cooking consisted mainly of boiling bag rice and Heat ’n Serve frozen entrees, but she’d decided that nothing short of a top-of-the-line six-burner Viking stainless steel commercial range, Sub-Zero fridge, double Gaggenau drop-in burners, twin Asko dishwashers, and a Sub-Zero wine cooler would do for the new kitchen.

“No, I’m not really ill, not per se,” Annabelle said, her voice quivering. “It’s just that Walter thinks…that is, we agree, perhaps, we should hold off on the kitchen, until the stock market settles down a little.”

“Hold off,” I repeated, letting the words hang in the air, like a stink bomb. “Hold off on the kitchen?”

“Oh no,” Gloria said, putting her head down on her desk and banging it gently a couple of times.

“Give me the phone,” she said finally.

I handed it over to her. Gloria pushed the loudspeaker button so I could listen in.

“Annabelle?” Gloria cooed. “Is your esophagus acting up again? Or is it those nasty bone spurs on your heels?”

“Gloria, honey,” Annabelle said, getting all quivery again. “My feet are just killing me. I can’t even stand to put on a pair of stockings, they’re so sensitive. Walter thinks I should go back to that doctor down in Jacksonville.”

“You poor old thing,” Gloria said, clucking sympathetically. “I’m going to come right over there and bring you some of my foot salve. I have it sent over from England, you know. And I’ll stop by the Silver Spoon and bring you some of that soup you like too. Now you sit tight, and I’ll be over there in a jiffy.”

“But Walter thinks…the kitchen might be too much for me to undertake, right now, with my feet, and the stock market the way it is,” Annabelle’s voice trailed off.

“Now, Annabelle,” Gloria said briskly. “Wasn’t it Walter who said he was tired of those old dark wooden cabinets? And wasn’t it Walter who complained that there was never enough room for beer in the old refrigerator?”

“Well, yes, but Walter feels…”

Gloria laughed her tinkly little laugh. “Honey, when did we ever let what Walter thinks stop us from getting you what you want? Remember when he said those drapes for the den were too expensive? And we just doctored the bills the teeniest little bit and you paid for them out of your own account? Honestly, men have no idea what it costs to have a decent living environment. Thank the Lord, your daddy left you your own money.”

“Daddy did like for me to have nice things,” Annabelle said.

“Only the best, that was Arthur Shockley’s motto,” Gloria agreed. “Walter isn’t there right now, is he?”

“Oh no,” Annabelle said. “He had a noon tee time.”

“Fine,” Gloria said soothingly. “Shall I bring some dessert too? Maybe some lemon bars?”

“Well…” Annabelle hesitated only a moment. “Nothing too chunky. My esophagus, you know.”

“I’ll be right over,” Gloria said.

She hung up the phone and kneaded the base of her neck with her right hand. “I’ve got a bad feeling about all this,” she said. “First the bank, now Annabelle.”

“It’s the Jernigans,” I agreed. “They’re putting the screws to us, is what it is. Walter Waites doesn’t give a damn about the stock market, and he doesn’t give a damn about Annabelle’s feet either.”

“But he banks at Madison Mutual, and I think he plays golf with Drew Jernigan,” Gloria pointed out.

“This is all my fault,” I said. “That’s a three-hundred-thousand-dollar job over there at Annabelle’s house. And to save it, you’re gonna have to go over there and kiss her bony old ass.”

“Keeley, if it means keeping Annabelle Waites as a client, I’ll not only kiss it, I’ll rub her bunions and prechew her lemon bars,” Gloria said, picking up her purse.

“Mind the store now,” she said, heading for the door. “And don’t worry about Annabelle. She’ll come around. Especially after I tell her those hand-waxed English kitchen cabinets she wants are being discontinued next month. You know her cousin Becky over in LaGrange just had her kitchen done, and that’s what she’s got. And if Becky has it, be damned if Annabelle doesn’t have to have it. You watch. I’ll get Annabelle to write the deposit check today.”

“Those cabinets aren’t the ones being discontinued,” I pointed out.

“Annabelle doesn’t know that,” Gloria said grimly.

After Gloria had gone, I kept myself busy working on a presentation for our newest clients, Suzie and Benjamin Chin. They were a young couple, both in their thirties, both with busy careers as pediatricians. I’d met Suzie the previous year at a Junior League function. And when she’d heard what I did for a living she seized on me like a tick on a dog.

“Oh God,” she’d said, clutching my arm. “Tell me you’ll come over and make it all right.”

“Make what all right?” I’d asked.

“That house.” She moaned. “That awful, hideous house.”

The Chins, it turned out, had bought a huge pseudo-Tudor house in Hampton Court, one of the new subdivisions full of faux chateaux that were springing up on the outskirts of town.

The builders of the Chins’ house had thrown every bad English country house cliché in the book at that particular property. The exterior had stucco, dark wood half-timbers, exposed beams, oversized wooden shutters, and a heavily metal-studded front door. Inside the ceilings were too high, the wood floors were too shiny, windows and doors were awkwardly placed, and the floor plan was choppy and dysfunctional.

The Chins and their two toddler daughters had more or less been camping out in the house, clueless about how to decorate or make it liveable. With two careers and two young children, they had no idea what their taste was, or how to achieve any kind of cohesive plan.

Suzie and I had spent two happy months together, chatting and window shopping, having long lunches, and getting to know each other before we even began discussing how to turn their mausoleum into a home.

I’d given her stacks of magazines to dog-ear—
House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, HG, Veranda, Traditional Homes.

She’d given me back a neatly organized file folder. Colors—they liked neutrals, with touches of red and black. Furniture—mostly traditional, although Ben was leaning toward contemporary and Suzie had some ideas about country French. Art—Ben had begun collecting contemporary Southern folk art. Suzie liked watercolor florals.

Ben’s contribution had been a carefully thought-out budget. The first year the Chins would spend forty thousand dollars. For this they would like to furnish their family room, buy a good rug for the living room, and get a chandelier for their so-far unused dining room.

I was pulling fabric swatches for their new sofa and love seat when I heard the door chime tinkle.

“Hey, Suzie,” I said, holding up a square of dark green chenille fabric. “I’m just thinking about you and your new sofa.”

Instead of coming in and sitting down beside my desk, Suzie stood just inside the door, her hands punched down into the pockets of her white lab coat. Her usually sunny face looked troubled.

“Oh Keeley,” she said softly. “I don’t know…”

“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

“Furniture. It’s so expensive. And maybe this isn’t such a good time. The girls are still so little, maybe it’s foolish to spend money on nice things when they are still so messy. You know, grape juice stains and crayon marks on the walls…”

“But Benjamin worked out the budget to the penny,” I protested. “He isn’t saying you can’t spend the money, is he?”

“No, it’s not that,” Suzie said, chewing her bottom lip. “He wants the house to look nice, maybe even more than me.”

She gazed out the window, toward the street. “You know, Ben and I are getting ready to build our own office. We’ve bought the land, over near the hospital, and we’re having an architect draw up plans.”

“I’ve done lots of doctors’ offices,” I said quickly. “We could have a lot of fun with the waiting room. There are some wonderful wall-papers and fabrics, you know, youthful, but not too cutesy.”

She fidgeted with the plastic ID badge clipped to her coat pocket. “The thing is, we have to get a construction loan for the new building. And the banker is asking a lot of questions about our cash flow.”

I tied the chenille fabric in a tight knot. My face got hot. “I see. Suzie, is your banker somebody at Madison Mutual?”

She nodded, too miserable to speak. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Ben and I feel terrible about this. We love your work. The children love you. And I still think…after things settle down, well, nobody will care about our little design project.”

I got up and put an arm around her shoulder. She looked away. “Can I keep the drawings you did?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll get back to it. Later. Like you said, after things calm down around here.”

She squeezed my hand. “This sucks,” she said. “We thought, a small town, everybody is so friendly. So nice. But we have to have the money to build that office. So we have to do things that aren’t so nice.”

I found myself telling Suzie what my own daddy had told me so many times. “You do what you have to do.”

“But I don’t have to like it,” Suzie said.