A friend's problems with her in-laws generated this story, which was published in the New Delta Review. This story is copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the permission of Julie A. McCracken.
I was lying in bed, listening to Stanley snore and pop his knuckles, when the idea came to me: Valium. I don't mean Valium for poor Stanley who can barely stomach aspirin, but for his visiting parents, Ed and Marge. A little Valium in the morning oatmeal might keep Ed and Marge out of my hair.
From that first visit after our wedding three years ago, I knew that nobody could please these people. The television was too small, and the radio was too big. It was too hot, too dusty, not enough air-conditioning, too quiet during the night, and too noisy during the day. If Marge wasn't whining about too much fabric softener in the bath towels, Ed was fingering the light bulbs. Was it my fault Stanley's first wife Ella--bless her Christian soul--had poured the fabric softener right on top of the towels which was clearly contrary to the instructions, but just what you'd expect from a contrary person like Ella? It wasn't like my mama had raised me to throw away perfectly good towels, even if they were a little slick for some people.
Ella had been too short to dust anything above six feet, too lazy to get a footstool, and too cheap to buy a long-handled dust mop. Dust clung to the high places and Ed waved his dusty finger at me to prove it. Who would believe that Stan wanted that dust left alone? You'd have thought he saw Ella's face in the dust bunnies. I left the dust until Stan got used to things being different, but I didn't even try to explain that to Ed, not on the first visit. What either one of them knew about living in a house filled with somebody else's dirt, I'd like to know.
Then, the religion problem. Ed and Marge had raised Stan a Roman Catholic, but he was a full-fledged High Elder at the Mt. Olive Holiness Church when I met him. His parents knew this, but Marge especially seemed to think I'd connived to keep her son away from the Church. I tried not to take her ignorant remarks about "holy-rollers" personally, but I did gather the rosaries she scattered around the house and made sure they left with her.
This visit was Visit Number Three. Before she as much as said "hello," Marge slapped a rosary down onto the hall table, and announced that my brand-new vanilla-colored carpet was "too yellow" and looked "pissy." That was just how she talked, too. Ed said the grass was too long, and the tomato plants were staked crooked, like a man with plastic grass in his backyard knew something about gardening. Jesus forgive me, but I wanted use those rosary beads to throttle their skinny necks while they slept, which was hardly ever. Marge swallowed cup after cup of black coffee, and the caffeine propelled her polyester butt around my kitchen, spilling coffee, trailing cigarette ashes, and finding fault. A little slowdown was just the thing to halt Marge's bony behind, and dead little Ella had given me the means.
Once Stanley let me clean the place, little surprises awaited me every time I cleaned a drawer or dusted a closet corner. Ella had hid a mighty drug store in that house, one bottle at a time of Valium, Percodan, and codeine, each labeled with her name along with a different doctor's name. Believe you me, Stanley didn't know his first wife half as well as I did, once I really cleaned her house.
The evening before Marge and Ed arrived, I ground fifty or so pills in the Osterizer. At their first breakfast, I sprinkled a scant teaspoon full into the oatmeal which was the only thing they ate for breakfast, besides coffee. Marge and Ed fell asleep during "Jerry Springer" and I couldn't awaken them for lunch. The next day, I cut the dose to a half-teaspoon, and they didn't fall asleep as deeply, but they didn't talk much either. Marge didn't dress or put in her teeth until about three in the afternoon. She said over and over, "I don't know when I've felt so relaxed, Kate. It's like you took the bones out of my legs. I can't hardly walk!"
"It's that fresh country air, Marge," I said.
Ed grunted what I took as a sign of agreement. He didn't exchange his pajama bottoms for real pants until supper, and then he didn't zip them up until Stan mentioned "open barn doors." Marge giggled like a girl, and dropped her rosary to grab Ed's thigh. Stanley rolled his eyes, and Ed smiled so big that his bald head wrinkled. I wasn't sure if the Valium was doing it, but I cut the dose a little more the next day. I wasn't about to have any amorous seventy year olds on my hands, and Marge showed real promise in that direction.
By the fourth day, I'd found a dose which was just enough to keep them zombied in front of the television, while I stayed in the kitchen and pretended they weren't there. Stanley hid out in the barn fixing the truck. They were his parents, and you'd think he'd want to spend some time with them. I knew that if my parents had been in there hunkered down in front of Jerry Springer's foolishness, I'd have been with them, although neither of my parents tolerated television that much. My mama would have been in the kitchen helping me make jelly, while Daddy would have been fishing in the river, not sitting with his pants open in front of the tube.
To tell the truth, Ed really did leave his barn door open too often to figure that absent-mindedness was the cause, but I didn't dare say anything to Stan. "Respect your parents" was what the Bible said, and I was trying to respect Stan's, but, I swear to Jesus that Marge could leech the joy out of an angel's heart. If you said, "What a fine day! Isn't the sky beautiful?" she tilted her head back, and said, without taking her cigarette from her mouth, "Looks like rain. A sky that blue means rain. A smart person takes an umbrella."
If you gave her a sweater, it didn't fit, or the color was bad with her hair which resembled a used Brillo pad. If you baked her a cake, she was on a special diet, and could only eat baby food. Or, it was Saint Whose-It's Day, and she could only eat the canned tuna she brought with her from Berwyn. All she liked was coffee, the Catholic Church, television, and those tabloid newspapers you found in the check-out line at the supermarket. She believed everything printed in those papers, too. She told us that Liz Taylor ate ground up monkey glands and pearls every day to keep her skin tone.
"Ah, Ma, don't believe that junk," Stan said.
"If it wasn't true, they wouldn't have printed it, Stanley. You got to agree that Liz Taylor has beautiful skin, even if she does have a little weight problem."
He just nodded, and I rolled my eyes, although no one noticed
except Ed who snorted. Ed's pattern was to complain about everything
in the first twenty-four hours, and then let his snorts speak for him thereafter.
It was an unpleasant sound, but a person could get used to it, especially
if she was used to barnyard sounds.
Since Marge was so fascinated by the peculiar, we zipped up Ed
and I took both of them to my sister Florence's house in Wyvonia.
It wasn't that Flo was peculiar, although her religious beliefs left a
lot to be desired, but her neighbors were something to see. Flo fixed
a pot of coffee to go with the lemon cake I brought, and we sat on her
front porch. The Johnsons had moved into the house next to Flo after
the government took their farm, because Bill Johnson was growing marijuana
amidst his corn and beans. More than one farmer around here was growing
that stuff, but Bill was too lazy to hide it, probably because he was smoking
it, too. Working was not Bill and Shona Johnson's number one priority.
They had ten or eleven kids which gave you an idea of what was important
to them. They were first cousins, too, which explained that slackjawed
look on the faces of some of those kids who swarmed in the grassless, rutted
yard like pigs in a wallow, and just as happy. Each wore a stretched-out,
torn, pink T-shirt printed with "My Grandma Went to Disneyland and All
I Got Was this T-Shirt."
One of the taller ones carried a long, fat snake which curled
around his neck like a muffler. The other kids sang Christmas carols
to the snake, although it was July, but they probably didn't know any other
songs by heart. It was hard to tell if that snake liked the singing,
but the kids were having a great time, especially with us as audience.
A few months earlier when the snake first appeared, Flo was all
in a panic and called me to come over. I reassured her that it wasn't
a cobra, despite what one of the Johnson kids had told her. From
what I had seen on educational television, I guessed it was a python or
a boa constrictor. To tell the truth, I was kind of surprised the
snake had survived the Johnson kids.
That snake worked some kind of trance on Marge. She stared
at it like she'd never seen a snake before, her mouth sagged open, the
cigarette glued itself to her lower lip by lipstick, and a little bit of
spit ran out of the corner of her mouth. She said over and over to
herself mostly, "Never seen anything that big. Ain't it against the
law?"
Flo laughed, "Oh, Marge, nobody here worries about snakes."
I snorted like Ed. I remembered who had been crying about a cobra living next door. Flo glared at me, and continued.
"The `law' would be the Chief of Police, and I suspect the Chief of Police's wife bought those T-shirts, since she's their grandma."
Marge looked confused. Flo had a way of doing that to a
person.
Flo added out of pure meanness, "That old snake doesn't hurt
anything, except maybe a cat or two. He's done us a favor, swallowing
some strays."
Marge dabbed the spit from her chin, "That's disgusting.
Cats are better than some people I know. I swear, we don't have this
kind of thing in Berwyn. At least not in our neighborhood where people
sweep gutters in front of their houses and take pride in where they live."
Marge slurred most of this together, but we got the gist of it.
Ed's milky brown eyes were the widest I'd ever seen them, and he snorted
his general agreement with Marge. The two of them were so dopey that
I almost felt sorry about the little bit of Valium in their breakfast.
Then, she turned it around by saying, "You holy-roller farmers sure get
used to some low living out here, don't you?"
By the way she said "farmers," you could tell it wasn't a compliment.
Now, I'd seen how Marge and Ed lived in their bungalow with about
two closets, plastic-covered furniture, plastic runners over the carpet,
two dozen crucifixes, fifteen plaster statues of saints, and the biggest
damn crystal and froufrou lamp you ever saw in your life right in the middle
of the front picture window which was the stupidest place I ever saw to
put a lamp anyway.
She kept a clean house, though, even with the cats. The
static electricity from all of that plastic was treacherous, especially
if you kissed your husband and charged both your lips with enough power
to run a dentist's drill. Lord knew what have happened if you made
love in a house like that. Somebody could have gotten hurt.
Marge brought me back to the here-and-now with, "You know what
the Bible says about snakes?"
I didn't think Catholics read the Bible all that much, what with
the Priest telling them what it said, so I was interested. Meanwhile,
the Johnson kids were singing "Joy to World," loudly and off-key.
"No, Marge, can't say that I recall."
"Snakes are the image of Satan. People who play with snakes
are Satanists. What you got here is some kind of cult."
Her voice was getting less slurred. Maybe the Valium was
wearing off. I decided to add some to her coffee, if she kept this
up. I knew about cults. Who didn't? I was pretty sure
the Johnsons were just in-bred country people with odd taste in pets.
Just then Flo said, "Kate, Some folks think your Mount Olive
Holiness Church is a cult."
"Watch your mouth, Flo," I warned, "You're asking me to hurt your feeling--"
Without warning Ed sat up straight, and said just as clear as a bell, "Pussy? Did I hear someone mention pussy? I like pussy."
You got to believe that shut everybody's mouth. Then, Marge smiled at Ed, like he just told her that he liked her dress.
To cover her embarrassment, Flo announced, "I think I'll get us some fresh coffee for us. Want to help, Kate?"
I nodded, and gratefully followed her into the house.
She turned to me, and said, "Jesus Christ, Kate. What's with them? I thought those two had the corner on odd, but I guess they took the next block, too."
I shook my head like it was all a mystery to me. Some details are best kept to yourself.
Without a second thought, I grabbed the car keys. They had no business driving country roads they didn't know during the day, let alone at night. The country wasn't as safe as it used to be, not with folks growing illegal stuff and protecting it with rifles and other tricks they learned in Vietnam.
I decided to try the Deer Creek Road. A hundred guilty thoughts
whipped through my head, and I knew that I had sinned in a terrible way
by drugging them, and I prayed to Jesus that He would protect Marge and
Ed from harm, even if they were Catholics and didn't know any better than
to stray from the Redeemer's Blessed Light. I prayed that the Blessed
Light would lead me to them before anything really bad happened.
I drove past the Baptist Church without seeing the van or any
other car, glad for the clear sky, and the moon which would be full in
a day or two. As I came around the curve following the boundary of
the cemetery, I saw red taillights shining ahead, then brake lights as
the vehicle slowed to turn right. I followed the disappearing lights
to a rutted road leading to a relatively new silo, a huge elm tree, and
a brick foundation marking where a farmhouse had been. Somebody was
still paying the light bill for the tall mercury vapor light standing between
the silo and the ruined house. The bright bluish light shone upon
the gray metal silo and Ed's black van. If they didn't stray any
further from the blacktop road, they wouldn't get into trouble, although
for city people they'd picked a pretty lonesome place to park. Maybe
they just needed privacy. I understood that.
I turned my car around to face the way home, and took one more look. Both van doors had opened, and Marge and Ed were holding hands and walking under the elm tree. I swear to Jesus that they were as naked as the day they were born. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. The trickery of light erased years and lines to make them young and firm. I saw the outline of Stan's face in the new contours of Ed's, and Marge's frayed hair glowed with light. Even the crickets were still and I could hear music, probably from the van's radio, or maybe the tape player, because it was Tommy Dorsey's band. Ed gathered Marge into his arms, and they danced skin against skin onto the flattened, dry circle of grass lit by the light. The music, or them, or just the movement of their bare feet on the dry grass awakened a flock of black birds sleeping in the huge tree. The birds took off all at once, cackled what I took as a blessing, circled over them, and then flew off to find peace of their own.
Strictly speaking, our church is against dancing, although I never saw any harm to it. I wondered if Stan and I, or any two people ever looked as lovely as Marge and Ed did at that moment, dancing for themselves in that alien place. Finally, Ed bowed, kissed Marge's hand, and led her to the back of the van. He opened the wide doors, and lifted her inside, as if she weighed nothing at all. To watch further would be to compound my sins.
Seeing them brought back memories, ancient memories, maybe of twenty years ago. Oh, the moon had been different, or the years had made it a full moon. The boy wasn't Stan, but another boy, young, handsome, awkward. I wasn't much of a Christian them, and it was such a warm summer night. The boy--was his name Bill?--left the convertible's top down, and I lost my virginity against a real leather seat, while the stars watched us. I want to say I saw a shooting star, but I didn't see anything but the familiar black arch of sky and the usual blinking stars of a Wyvonia summer night. I wondered what Marge and Ed saw, and I guess that I might know how they felt. I knew at once that I would not ask them, nor mention this night to anyone, not even Stan. I knew, too, that I forgave them their oddities, and prayed for them as only the truly saved can.