“Oh, good, I need a good party to take my mind off things. Lillian,” she said as she sat beside me at the table, “how are you? I hope you’re not missing Ronnie too much.”
“No’m, I get used to him bein’ gone pretty quick.”
“Well,” Hazel Marie said, taking a deep breath, “I hate to carry tales, but I overheard some ladies talking yesterday and I just had to tell you. It wasn’t like I was deliberately eavesdropping, but I was out by that fence of J.D.’s trying to figure how many bushes I’ll need to plant and, well, you know how warm it was yesterday . . .”
“Unseasonably so,” I said, as Lillian nodded in agreement.
“Yes, well, there’s one tree in the Cochran yard and it’s right next to the fence.” She stopped as if wondering whether to continue, but she did. “J.D. says he’s going to rake up every leaf that falls in our yard and dump them all on their front porch. But, well, anyway, all of a sudden three ladies—I wasn’t sure who they were at first, but they’d been working inside that house. So they came out and sat under the tree to eat their lunch. You know, when they come to work over there, they all bring bag lunches. So there they were, talking about how much they were enjoying fixing up that house, and there I was, right on the other side of the fence, afraid to move. I couldn’t help but hear what they were saying.”
“What was it?” I asked, leaning forward.
“They were talking about what they were doing for what they called those ‘poor, unloved, mistreated, and deprived children.’ And, I’ll tell you, it was the silliest stuff I’ve ever heard. I recognized Mary Nell Warner’s breathy voice—you know how excited she can get. But, Miss Julia, she’s had no experience whatsoever with teenage boys. She’s never even been married, but she told about an old train set she was going to bring and set up for the boys to play with. And one of them—I’m sure it was Lorna McKenzie because I’d seen her go in the house that morning—anyway, she said she’d bought two bedspreads with cowboy designs on them that were ‘just so cute,’ and somebody else—it sounded like Diane Jarret—she said she’d had so much fun rearranging furniture, putting out cushions with clever sayings like ‘Hope,’ ‘Eat well,’ and ‘You can do it.’ And she said she’d put flowers in vases around the rooms to perfume the air. They went on and on like that, trying to outdo each other in preparing the house, and, I declare, they sounded for all the world like little girls playing house. They almost had a falling out over the color of towels to go in a bathroom.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I said, slumping with near despair. “That house is nothing but a pastime for them with no thought of the responsibility of taking on wayward teenagers. I wonder how long their interest will last when there’s a fight, or one stays out overnight, or the cops come calling. And,” I went on, “Lorna and Mary Nell are busybodies of the first order, anyway. And if they were there, I’ll bet Sadie Morgan was, too.”
“Oh, she was,” Hazel Marie said, “because one of them said she was crocheting a maroon throw to go on the sofa, and crocheting is Sadie Morgan’s thing. She sent me a set of pink doilies when we moved into Mr. Sam’s house.
“Well,” Hazel Marie said, leaning her head on her hand, “it’s just one thing after another. Every time I turn around, there’s something else to worry about. Why, just this morning I caught J.D. teaching Lily Mae how to handle one of his tools. It was too heavy for her to even pick up, but have you ever heard of such a thing? I said, ‘J.D., she’s a little girl!’ and he said, ‘Girls can do whatever they want to do.’ Which, I guess, is a good way to look at it, but a nail gun?
“But then,” Hazel Marie went on, “he does something so sweet that I can’t stay mad at him. You know Mrs. Randolph, who lives across the street from us in that little English cottage?”
“Oh, yes, Ethel Randolph. She lost her husband last year.”
“Yes, and she’s been kinda lost herself since then. Anyway, those people working on the Cochran house park on both sides of the street, making it so narrow that two cars can’t get through at the same time. And yesterday, one of them parked so that the back end extended over Mrs. Randolph’s driveway, and she couldn’t get her car out. J.D. saw her standing over there crying because she was about to be late for a doctor’s appointment, and the owner of the car had gone off with somebody else to buy picture hangers.”
“Oh, how thoughtless!”
Lillian, frowning, said, “Some people don’t think of nobody but theyselves.”
“Well, they won’t do it again, because J.D. got me to take Mrs. Randolph to her appointment. I had to wait almost two hours to bring her home, so thank goodness Granny Wiggins was with the children. Anyway, when I brought her home, that whole side of the street had been cleared out. J.D. had called the police and they’d had that car towed, and the owner got a citation and a fine when she came back with her picture hangers. And on top of that—I don’t know how he did it, but there were signs going up all along that side of the street saying NO PARKING THIS SIDE. And J.D. stood out there and pointed his finger in Mrs. Randolph’s face and told her if anybody ever parked there again, she was to call either him or the police or both. And she was so grateful that she cried on his shoulder.”
Hazel Marie sighed. “He can be just so sweet.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, willing to be, but not entirely, convinced.
“But,” Hazel Marie went on, “wait
