“But I can’t take it anymore.”
“She’s your sister, Gramma.”
I glanced at the clock-radio on the nightstand next to my bed—seven A.M.—and on a day I didn’t need to be at the Folk Art Museum until ten o‘clock. We’d been officially closed for the last week as we set up our new exhibit, a collection of antique quilts owned by residents of San Celina County.
A blast of rain rattled the windows of my small Spanish-style house. The Pacific storm that had been camping for days off California’s Central Coast had attacked San Celina during the night. While little mouse soldiers marched double time on the roof, I tried to remember whether I’d closed the windows in my truck.
“She’s driving me crazy,” Gramma Dove complained. “She’s waxed all the floors twice. Follows me everywhere. Keeps rearranging my pots and pans.”
Now Dove’s voice took on her normal loud tone. Aunt Garnet must have left the room. “She’s trimmed all my plants down to nubs with those nasty little embroidery scissors of hers. Benni, she’s been eyeing my hair real strange.”
Dove’s long white braid had tempted her younger sister for years.
“She hasn’t seen your house yet. She loves craft festivals.”
“No way. I’ve got too much to do this week with the Folk Art Festival. I can’t babysit Aunt Garnet.” I struggled up, tucked the covers around me, and waited for the attack to begin. I didn’t have to wait long.
“Who bought you your first brassiere, young lady? Waste of money that it was. Who taught you all you know about poker? Who changed your dirty diapers?”
“You didn’t come to live with us until I was six,” I pointed out.
Another blast of rain slapped the bedroom window. I sank down under the covers and prayed the storm wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
She tried blackmail. “I never told your daddy what time you and Jack really came in after the senior prom.” She paused for emphasis. “Yet.”
I laughed, imagining her scheming look. “Dove, that was seventeen years ago. My virtue hasn’t worried Daddy for a long time.”
She went for the throat. “Your mama, God rest her soul, would have wanted you to help your defenseless old granny.” Her voice cracked dramatically.
“Mama would have been hiding over here with me. And you’re about as defenseless as a wolverine.”
I shifted the phone to the other ear.
“Who would have thought a son of mine would raise up such a coldhearted daughter?”
“Seems to me I recall spending most of my childhood tagging after you.”
“It’s a dollar a chip on Thursday,” she said, changing the subject once she knew she wasn’t getting her way.
“High stakes this year. Who’s coming?”
“Everyone but Clarence. He’s got some fevered bulls.”
Every year at Thanksgiving, Gramma Dove’s children, four sons and two daughters and their families, came from all over the country to meet at my dad’s ranch outside San Celina. Everyone wore their best boots and brought a hundred bucks for our no-holds-barred-kick-em-in-the-nuts-when-they‘ re-down poker tournament.
“What time are you going to be here?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, my mind drifting back nine months to the last time most of the family was together at Jack’s funeral. I’d sidestepped an invitation to my in-laws’ ranch too; after fifteen years of shuffling back and forth between the Harper and Ramsey ranches, the thought of going either place this year made me feel melancholy and a bit queasy.
Dove’s voice softened. A rarity for her. “Come up, honeybun. It’ll do you good.”
“I have a lot of work to get done before Saturday.”
She tsked under her breath but didn’t press it. “You seen Rita lately?”
“Not since she left here a couple of weeks ago.”
“Garnet’s chewing nails because she hasn’t called.”
Aunt Garnet’s twenty-one-year-old granddaughter, my cousin Rita, moved out from Arkansas two months ago with vague plans of attending college and starting a new life. On the spur of the moment and to everyone’s consternation, she broke a two-year engagement with a wonderfully suitable—Southern for wealthy—man. With a certain amount of doubt and apprehension, I was persuaded into letting her live with me. Aunt Garnet, Daddy and even Dove were convinced the company would do me good.
The Oreo crumbs all over the house I tolerated; even the long, sniffly phone calls to her girlfriends in Pine Bluff only raised my blood pressure a few manageable notches, but the morning I wandered into my own kitchen wearing nothing but a pink tee shirt and a pair of Jack’s old hunting socks and encountered a sloe-eyed, bare-chested cowboy in a dirty white Stetson, sipping a mug of my chocolate amaretto coffee, I’d had enough.
“Rita’ll be back in a minute,” he’d said, appraising me from droopy socks to tangled hair, his left hand disappearing behind a silver belt buckle the size of a pie pan. “Went for doughnuts.”
I played with the phone cord as Dove continued to complain.
“I could tell Rita was going to be trouble from the day she was born,” she said. “She had shifty eyes even then. Where is she?”
“As far as I know she’s still working at Trigger’s out by the interstate. She’s renting a room from a bartender there. A girl named Marla who belongs to the co-op. I guess it’s working out okay.”
“Two of a kind,” Dove pronounced. “Probably bringing home a different fella every night of the week.”
I made a noncommittal sound.
“You just get ahold of her and tell her to call Garnet. And you’d better be here on Thursday.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“As long as you’re thinking, think of some way to get rid of Garnet. Something that won’t throw any suspicion on me.”
I couldn’t help giggling. Dove and her love-hate relationship with her only sister always raised my spirits. “Chin up, old woman. When does she fly back to Arkansas?”
“Three weeks, hallelujah. You’re sure that ... ?”
“Busy, busy, busy.”
“Stubborn brat.”
“I understand short hair is much easier to take care of.”
She snorted and hung up, as usual, before I could beat her to it. The woman had the
