“I hope not,” Mike mumbled, following Daisy down the front walk and across the lawn. “The husband’s always first to go.”
“You have nothing to worry about,” Daisy said, stopping to kiss his cheek. “I need you to rule the kingdom when I’m gone. See you tomorrow, Hollis. I’m thinking lemon tarts. A whole lemon theme. I’ve got loads of recipes.”
She had loads of recipes and I had a whole folder of poisonings. Women who’d poisoned for insurance money, women who’d poisoned for revenge after an affair, and a slew of very disturbing stories from the 1800s, when it seemed like women were just poisoning everyone, willy-nilly-style.
Women who poisoned. It was a great start to the season and I was pumped.
Daisy and Mike had no sooner left when my phone rang. I checked the caller ID while I headed over to spruce up the podcast corner. Daisy and I had disagreed over the appropriate name for our recording space. I wanted to call it the control center, or perhaps the anchor desk. She wanted to call it a warm and welcoming nook, but was willing to settle for podcast pad, because of the retro-sounding alliteration, of course. In the end, we called it a corner, which was neither creative nor authoritative, and now I had another whole fifty-fifty-partners discussion to edit out of our episode.
I answered the phone on the third ring. “Hey, Mom. Hey, Aunt Ruta.”
They were too busy carrying on their own conversation with each other to hear me. As always.
“Hey, Mom. Hey, Aunt Ruta,” I repeated.
One of them said something about outdoor chair cushions. One aggressively stirred sugar into iced tea. One complained that tea had splashed onto the clean tablecloth and there was no need to get so snippy about cushions. One countered that there was no need to get so snippy about tablecloths. I was convinced that Mom and Aunt Ruta had come into this world arguing—but we could never know who started it, because they couldn’t even agree on who was born first. And my grandma never told, because she was afraid of one of them getting a superiority complex over the other.
“Ma! Aunt Ruta!” I shouted.
“Oh, mercy, no need to shout,” Mom said. “Guess someone’s having a bad day, Rut.”
“Eh, she was born having a bad day. A bad hair day.” They both cracked up with their signature twin cackle.
“Very nice,” I said. “Did you call specifically to insult me, or…”
“Oh, now, don’t get your Tootsie Rolls in a twist,” Aunt Ruta said. “We were just teasing you.”
“She doesn’t care for teasing, Rut. Never has. Serious all the time. Good thing she was an only.”
“What are you talking about? I am not serious all the time. And I’m not an only,” I said. “What did Betsy and Harlowe do now?”
Betsy and Harlowe. My sisters. One thinks she’s still in college and the other thinks she’s the First Lady. They both live walking distance from Mom and Aunt Ruta but neither of them ever walks over, unless they need money (Betsy) or a sitter for their herd of nervous Pomeranians (Harlowe) or a chocolate stash to raid when their significant other is being annoying (both). And they were constantly getting themselves “disowned” by Mom and Aunt Ruta for various and sundry real and imagined offenses. And to Mom and Ruta, “disowned” was a very transient state of being. You could be “disowned” on a Thursday and invited over for sandwiches on Saturday. And then disowned again on Sunday for having previous plans that prevented you from showing up for said Saturday sandwiches.
“Oh, nothing important,” Mom said. “We weren’t calling about them. Even if we haven’t seen hide nor hair of either of them in two full months, so they obviously don’t care about two little old ladies. We could have fallen and been lying here waiting for sweet death to take us out of our misery and into the light of the Great Beyond, and would either of those girls have even known?”
Another favorite in the Mom and Ruta conversation repertoire: mortal injury.
“I mean, the chances that you would both fall at the same time are pretty low…”
“It’s bad enough that you moved seven hours and thirty-six minutes away, but you would think after a lifetime of sacrifice, someone would stop in and call 9-1-1.”
“But you’re not—”
“You would think someone would care enough to pick poor old Ruta here up off the floor, especially since I’m dead and gone. Save one of us, you know. If not your sisters, then your ungrateful cousin, Bart. Now, there’s a conversation.”
I massaged the bridge of my nose. Ungrateful Cousin Bart was a subject that would last for hours, and I had zero ice cream in the house to distract me from it.
“That would be a long conversation,” Ruta yelled, confirming my need for ice cream, and causing my ear to ring from the volume of her voice. I winced, pulling the phone away from my ear.
“Aunt Ruta, you’re on speaker phone, you don’t have to yell. I can hear you just fine. Well, could. Now I kind of only hear ringing.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Hollis,” she replied. “Your ears are fine.”
“She always did have sensitive ears,” Mom said. “You did. You always had sensitive ears. This is why you never got them pierced.”
“I got them pierced in eighth grade, Mom.”
“How long are we going to talk about your ears?” Aunt Ruta shouted.
“You’re right, Rut. We didn’t call about ears,” Mom said. “Even though you clearly got them pierced without my knowing. You never did mind breaking your mother’s heart.”
“What did you call about?” I asked, trying my hardest not to get frustrated. And also wondering if she was right about my ears being too sensitive.
“We called to tell you that we saw Trace,” Aunt Ruta yelled.
I forced nonchalance, or at least my best version of it, although my voice sounded a little strangled. “Oh? That’s nice.”
“We agreed we were going to break the news to her gently,” Mom said.
“What
