Keyed Up

The next morning, Mark was fiddling with the coffee when we arrived.

            “What’s up, boss?” Adam said.

            Mark glanced over his shoulder, then returned to his task. “Just changing out the coffee,” he said as he replaced the lid on the Maxwell House can. “I’m putting decaf in the canister. Maybe it’ll keep Mom O. from getting so jacked up. Her blood pressure was through the roof last night.”

            Right then we heard her van door slam outside. Mark rushed to drop into his chair. Put his pointer finger to his mouth and shook his head.

            “Don’t say anything,” he mouthed.

            As soon as the screen door swung open, we were confronted with the aroma of roses. That in itself was startling but then there was the issue of Mom O.’s mouth. She was sporting lipstick. A bright pink hue. On a different day we would discuss whether or not she’d applied blush as well.

            After she set her and Mark’s lunches down and hung her jacket up, she faced us. Punched her hips with her fists and proceeded to throw words at us with her fuschia mouth.

            “I don’t want to hear a peep out of you all,” she said, “about my lips or my perfume. The sheriff will be arriving shortly to launch an investigation and I want to look my professional best.”

            She ignored our mouths hanging open. Sashayed, indeed it was that kind of movement, over to the coffee shelves and started doling grounds into a filter. We would wonder later if cosmetics did that to a woman, made her more feminine on the inside as well as the exterior. Or perhaps it was the thought of Sheriff Kevin Dooley. During our discussion, Adam announced with great fervor he wanted to be just like Mr. Dooley when he got older. “Powerful in stature and calling,” Adam said. “Even at his age. What is he? Sixty-five? Seventy?”

            “My van got keyed last night,” Mom O. said. “Of course this is the United States of America and all, and everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but I’m pretty sure I know who is not innocent in this particular situation.”

            Jason’s hand surreptitiously headed for the treat bowl, but Mom O.’s glare stopped him.

            “Can you not wait until ten in the cotton-picking morning to assuage your craving for sweets, Jason? For crying out loud!”

            While Jason winced like he’d been slapped, Adam stood and went over to the window. Slid the right half of the drape to the side and peered out.

            “Is it bad, Mom?”

            Mom snorted. “I’d say it’s bad,” she said. “Even has words.” She held up a finger for each one she recited. “Fat. Old. And then it would seem she was starting in on another deragatory term that starts with a B before she decided to flee the crime scene.”

            Adam let the curtain fall and returned to his chair.

            No one said or did anything while Mom O. held the trash can under the coffee shelf and brushed stray grounds into it. Flipped the toggle on the coffee machine and returned to her desk. She glowered at us before she sat.

            “Go on now,” she said. “Start your day.”

~~~~~~~

After lunch, Mark eyed Mom O. as she took her blood pressure. “What is it?”

            “One forty five,” she said, as she tugged the Velcro cuff off her arm.

            “Not horrible, I suppose,” Mark said. “Considering.”

            Mom O. stood. Made her way to the warehouse door and stepped into the darkness. Threw the light switch. We heard her footsteps fade then return.

She paused in the doorway. “Where’s Charlie?”

“He went back out already,” Mark said. “Why?”

Mom O. didn’t answer. She packed up the remains of her lunch and set it on the floor against the wall behind her chair. Hauled her sizeable purse up onto her lap and rooted around inside. After a minute, she extended her arm in our direction and opened her fist to reveal a TracPhone.

“I bought this at the dollar store this morning,” she said. “How do you do that thing where they can’t trace your number?”

            Adam leaned forward and nudged the phone back to her. “Just punch star sixty seven, Mom.”

            She studied the cell for a moment then slid it over the desk to Adam again.

            “How do you turn it on?” she said. “And dial it?”

            Adam picked the phone up. “Give me the number, Mom.” He hit the power button and keyed in the phone number she handed him on a phone message slip. He joined her on her side of the desk and showed her the phone in his palm.

            “Just press the button with the little green phone on it when you’re ready,” he told her.

            We busied ourselves with paperwork to keep from cracking up as Mom O. struggled to hold the phone to her ear and cover her mouth with a hanky at the same time.

            "Hello?"

             We snickered behind our hands at the way she pitched her voice way down low. She shot mad eyes at us and twirled her chair to face the wall instead of us.

“Yes, indeed, you can help me,” she said. “It has come to my attention that suspicious, very suspicious mind you, activity is occurring on a regular basis at the end of Jake's Run Road. Children and animals may be at risk. I highly suggest investigators be dispatched immediately.”

            We heard the voice on the other line murmur, but we couldn’t make out the words. We all jumped when Mom O. shook her head so hard her glasses flew to the floor.

            “Absolutely not,” she said in her fake voice. “I feel I would endanger myself and perhaps my entire family if I revealed my identity. I am simply doing my civic duty to protect children and animals that can’t protect themselves.”

            Mom retrieved her glasses and spun her chair back around. Reached for her message pad and a pen. “And what’s that number?”

            She scrawled the information down as it was given. Listened for another moment before her eyes bugged out.

            “What part of no do you not understand?” she barked. “I told you once. I’ll tell you twice, missy. I'm not giving my name!”

            With that, she dropped the phone and the handkerchief on the desk. Stabbed at the off button with her pointer finger. Placed a hand over her heart as if to slow its tempo. She used the hanky to blot at her forehead and throat. 

            “You don’t think they can figure out who I am, do you?”

            Mark walked around Mom’s desk, the blood pressure cuff in his hand. “Arm,” he said.

(If you'd like to know what the heck is going on, click here: 

"Vandalia and Charlie." That's where this short story begins.) 

Vandalia and Charlie

Charlie once told us it wasn’t Vandalia he fell for so much as the way she applied lipstick. When he described it, he sounded like he was in church.

            “She lines, primes, paints, blots, glosses.”

            Fact is, the making of Van's candy apple lips mesmerized us all. Every day she drove to the warehouse at 5:15 to pick up Charlie. As soon as we heard the putter of the Escort’s engine or its door slam, we’d make our way toward the office to watch her do it, paint her lips.  

            Vandalia wasn’t a beautiful woman by traditional standards, but something about the way she held herself felt compelling, magnetic. Come to think of it, it was more gravitational. Like she was a sun and we were her planets.

            There in the beginning, Mom O’Dell was the only one who recognized Van for what she was.

            “I’m telling you,” Mom said after Van and Charlie left one day, “that female is a strumpet. Someday, hopefully soon, Charlie’ll regret joining up with her. Mark my words.”

            Jason leaned forward on his folding chair. Reached toward Mom O’Dell’s candy dish.

            “Mom O?” he said. “What’s a strumpet?”

            Adam flicked his eyebrows up and down. Spoke under his breath. “A gal ya wanna strum, or pet, or both, I'm thinking."

            Mark, our boss, rarely engaged in our end of the day banter. That afternoon, like every other at 5:25, he snapped his fingers.

            “Paperwork,” he said. “Now please.”

            “A strumpet,” Mom O said, as we fished in our cargo pockets for the day's sales slips, “is a woman of ill-repute. A trollop.”

            Jason tilted his face and squinted until Mom-O produced another option, two in fact.

            “A hussy, Jason. A tramp.”

            Jason perked right up. “Oh,” he said with a grin. “Got it.”

            Mom O shook her head and returned her attention to her calculator. “And the boy wonders why he still lives with his parents,” she said softly to her ledger.

            Jason relocated his Fireball to the space inside his lower lip. Fixed his eyes on Mark.

            “Why’s Charlie get to go home before the rest of us?” he said. “Every daggone day he does.”

            Mark didn’t glance up from the stack of receipts he was perusing. “Because, Jason, Charlie’s numbers are perfect,” he said. “Every day. Without fail.” He paused to pin each of us with his gaze—me, Jason, and Adam. “You all would do well to learn from him.”

~~~~~~~

After they’d been married approximately one year and a baby, Van only entered the office on Wednesdays, payday. She’d perch on the edge of the folding chair there by the door, cross her legs, and rock Jeremiah’s pumpkin seat with her foot while she shined her pout.

            Pregnancy had significantly increased the size of Van’s bosom, a fact she took full advantage of. The office air fairly crackled the day Mom O, in a roundabout way, addressed Van’s near indecent exposure. Mom stood, walked around her desk and over to Van. Without a word, she removed Jeremiah’s traveling blanket and draped it across Van's chest. She used her cupped hands to pat Van's shoulders simultaneously, firmly, as if to make the cloth stay put. Forever. 

            “It appears, Van,” she said when she returned to her seat, “that you are chilly. You best cover yourself so you don’t take sick.”

            Recently Van had begun to line her eyes like Marilyn Monroe and when she narrowed them that afternoon, we fully expected her to hiss.

            “Why, thank you, Mom O’Dell,” she said, her mouth barely moving. “I do appreciate your interest in my well being.”

            Van then proceeded to pinch a corner of the covering and draw it away, revealing her impressive creamy expanse once again.

            “However,” Van said as she tucked the pale blue fabric around her sleeping child, “I am more concerned for Jeremiah’s health than my own.”

            Mom O’s pleated face compressed in on itself. Her lips seemed almost to disappear. We would say later that her face resembled an ancient sow’s.

            “That’s touching, Van,” she said. “It most certainly is.” She hunched toward the floor and yanked her bottom desk drawer open. Jason had informed us not long ago that Mom kept a secret stash of peanut butter cups in that very drawer.

            We held our breath as Van leaned toward Mom’s desk, her cleavage straining the fabric of her top considerably. It reminded us of a dam, perilously close to bursting. We felt suddenly strained ourselves.

            “My mother named me Vandalia, you know,” Van told the hump of Mom's back. She spoke with her chin thrust forward. “It’s really what I prefer to be called.”

            When Mom O didn’t respond, Vandalia’s gaze traveled from one of us to the next. She held her face as if someone was taking her photograph. Lips forward, her cheeks indented slightly, eyes wide. Adam inspected the ceiling. Jason moved toward the candy dish. I retrieved my Swiss Army knife from my pants pocket and went to work on my fingernails.

            Charlie entered the office from the outside. Smiled and waved. “Have a good night, you all,” he said as he held the door wide to accommodate the baby’s safety seat and Van.

            After they left, Mom O handed Jason his paycheck which he folded and creased and tucked into his breast pocket.

            “Not to change the subject,” he said, “but tell me again why we get paid on Wednesdays?”

            Mom O’s fingers flew over the calculator keys. “Van can’t seem to make money last Friday to Friday so she had Charlie beseech Mark to change payday to Wednesday. Apparently she thought that’d help.”

            Jason rooted through the candy dish and made his selection. Bent a Tootsie Roll in two and popped one half in his mouth, twirled the other between his thumb and middle finger.

            “You’d think if Charlie’s so good with numbers, he’d pay their bills his self.”

            Mom O swept pink eraser bits from her ledger page. “You’d think now, wouldn’t you?”

            Mark snapped his fingers. “Paperwork. Now please.”

(Want to read more? Please check back next Friday.)

A Love Hate Friendship

For the longest time I loved you. And hated you. Actually, it was more of an envy. ‘Cause day in and day out boys liked me but wanted you. Week after week I was cute but you were hot. Back then I was pretty sure cute was a four letter word.
            Things were different today. In court. When you were trying to get permanent custody of your granddarlings. You wore a black suit with a pink top and you’d twisted your waist-length hair into a complicated figure eight. You peered at the judge over your Target reading glasses. Not a stitch of makeup on.
            That morning I’d slipped into my all-green Ann Taylor outfit hoping it would make my eyes seem aqua and communicate this-chick-has-her-act-together. I styled my hair Jennifer Aniston straight. Sprayed it with Aveda gloss drops and everything. I primed my lips then slicked them with stay-the-day lipgloss in L’il Red Corvette. Tucked the tube in my sparkly clutch for touchups. 'Cause you never know who's looking when.

            When you introduced me to your lawyer, I got the feeling he thought I was pretty. Maybe even hot. I saw him inspect my hands, probably checking for a wedding ring. Man, I tell you what. That guy sure knows how to jack his jaws. Don't know if he's always like that or if he was just trying to impress the judge. Or me.
            I giggled behind my hand every time the just-the-facts lady judge said, "Get to the point, counselor." 
            Even though I thought your attorney exceedingly long-winded, I liked it afterwards when he said my testimony on your behalf was like a verbal hug. That wasn't what I'd prayed for. It was better.
            The coolest thing was when Judge Just-the-Facts asked me how long I'd known you. I swept my shiny hair behind my shoulders and said, "Forty years, ma'am."
            I almost missed her awarding you physical and legal custody of your twin granddaughters. I was still focused on those forty years. And how some things change like hating you and some things stay the same like loving you.