Twenty-eight
Why minding my own business (or as Holly would say, MYOB) was the best advice Mom ever gave me (even if she never took it herself):
? You won’t have to find out about nasty rumors targeted directly at your back because you’ll be too busy with your own life to notice.
? You won’t feel the compulsion to go out of your way to learn who started said rumor.
? Then you won’t have to worry and fret about why that person would tell such a lie (assuming it is a lie, which in this case, it definitely was).
? And you won’t develop a case of extreme paranoia manifesting itself into the belief that everybody in town is against you and that they all believe the rumor.
? Then you won’t feel like crawling in a big hole to hide and you won’t consider wearing a sign that says, “I didn’t do it.”
? Plus you’ll sleep better and wake up less crabby, and you won’t have to apologize for your whacked-out behavior.
“I’m sorry,” I said to P. P. Patti when she walked through the store and we met up in front of the wine rack where I was restocking Wisconsin wines. “I apologize deeply and sincerely for anything and everything I ever did to you or said or implied about you.”
“Okay,” she said, though hesitantly, like she was waiting for the punch line.
“I mean it. I’m sorry—past, present, and future.”
“You’re saying you’re sorry for something you haven’t done yet?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Am I missing something here?”
“I’m with you,” Carrie Ann said to Patti, running her fingers through her choppy yellow hair, a sure tipoff that her nerves were frayed from all her recent lifestyle changes. “Totally confused.” Then she looked at me, not too kindly. Or was I being overly paranoid? “You could apologize to me, too, while you’re at it,” she said.
“For what?”
“You don’t pay me enough, for starters.”
“Nobody else complains about the wages I pay. I never did a thing to you worth apologizing for, Carrie Ann, and you know it.” That was a big lie. I’d propositioned her boyfriend after a funeral, of all things. Had he told her about that? “And besides, shouldn’t you be watching the cash register?”
“I can see it just fine from over here.” She swiveled her head to check out the counter.
“Can we find someplace to talk?” I said to Patti. “Do you have time?”
“You could buy me an Italian ice at the custard shop. I’m allergic to dairy, I get a horrible stomach ache, but the ices are pretty good.”
“Fine. Perfect.”
On the sidewalk, walking to Koon’s Custard Shop, Patti brought me up-to-speed on her most recent problems, of which she had plenty.
“The raccoons are trapped and gone, but now squirrels are chewing through all my power lines. My cable’s out. So is my landline. You haven’t been trying to call me, have you? I better give you my cell number. The doctors are still looking into my shaking problem.” She paused to prove her point. I detected a slight twitch in her hand, but nothing a little anxiety medication wouldn’t fix.
She went on and on, working hard to uphold her Pity-Party Patti title. By the time she ordered her Italian ice and I ordered a dish of vanilla custard, and we parked ourselves at an outside table, I was ready to commit suicide. Or murder.
“Patti, we need to have a serious discussion,” I said around spoonfuls of custard. My stomach was doing flips; I hated confrontations and conflicts and I was about to launch into exactly those things with Patti. “Someone,” I began, “has been spreading rumors, lies that are hurting people, things that are mean and vicious and I’d like to know how to put an end to them.”
“Me, too,” Patti said. “One thing I hate is that kind of mean-spirited behavior.”
I almost swallowed my spoon. “But,” I managed to say, “the person I just described, the one spreading nasty lies is . . .”
I couldn’t say it. Patti was watching me with intense concentration, expecting to get the goods on some mean old gossip. She had no idea I meant her!
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.
“But you were going to tell me something really juicy!”
“Be right back.”
In the restroom, I washed my hands and stared at myself in the mirror. I’d never been good at this sort of thing, calling someone out when they did me wrong. Sure, I could stand up to my family in a passive-aggressive sort of way and I could go to bat for another person if I felt they were treated unfairly, like when Johnny Jay used to bully other kids or even now when he pushed around adults. But when it came to face-to-face confrontation, I wasn’t nearly as confident.
In one enlightened moment while I stared into the mirror, I realized exactly why Patti was the way she was. I understood her perfectly, scary as that was.
Patti knew people didn’t really like her too well. They didn’t want her around, but she wanted desperately to be noticed and accepted. Gossiping got attention. Whether good attention or bad attention, she didn’t really think it through that much, so long as she had her tiny little share of limelight.
She just wanted to be part of the community but she was going about it all wrong, driving people away instead of to her.
Or at least that’s what I came up with.
When I sat back down at the table, she said, “It was nice of you to apologize to me, before, at the store. And I accept your apology. You weren’t very friendly in high school. In fact, really rude and insensitive, is more like it. Hanging out with that clique of yours. Maybe now that you’ve grown up we can be real friends.”
“Sure,” I said, not sure at all, wondering what I was getting myself into, sensing a new direction I didn’t want to explore. “But I’m pretty busy with the store and my bees. I don’t have much time for girlfriends.”
Which I realized was absolutely true. I didn’t have any close female friends unless you wanted to count my younger sister or my cousin. How pathetic was that? I hadn’t had time for a personal life while I’d been living in a bubble while struggling to save the store from ruin during my marital split.
Even so, Patti wasn’t exactly my first choice for a new best friend.
“Now that we’re buddies,” Patti said, seeming to have forgotten the thread of our earlier conversation, thank God, “I didn’t get a chance to finish telling you what I know about Grace and your ex-husband.”
“Something important?”
Patti nodded. “I saw them through my telescope.”
“Your . . . telescope?” Jeez!
“I have it set up in the window facing the river so I can watch birds and water fowl and, you know, whatever.”
“Right.” I tried to picture which window she might be referring to. And whether that same one looked out over my yard and into my windows. My compassion for her socially inept manipulations was fading fast.
Patti leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Anyway, I saw them together last Thursday night right before dark. You were at the store, I think, because I couldn’t see you moving around inside your, uh, I mean your lights weren’t on and I know you work late some nights.”
P. P. Patti had been watching me through a frickin’ telescope? Oops, there went my sympathy, completely gone.
“Grace had parked in the library parking lot so no one would see where she was going.” Patti was in her element, her eyes shiny. “I know because I followed her afterward to see where she went. That’s how I found out where she’d parked. Anyway, she knocked on Clay’s door, looked around to see if anyone was watching, and when he opened the door, she slipped right in. And this was the very night before her husband was killed by bees! Of course, she didn’t know he was going to die. Later on, she must have felt pretty bad about her timing.”
“Are you sure it was Grace?” This was the proof I was looking for! Grace and Clay really were having a clandestine affair! If Patti could be believed. From her detailed account, it had to be true.
“Like I said, I followed her about an hour later when she came out, dabbing at her eyes with a hanky. She’d been crying! I’m not sure why. She could have been calling it off with Clay, or he’d dumped her, because I haven’t seen her back and believe you me, I’d know.”
“That was the only time you saw them together?” I asked.
“That I know of, but I wasn’t on high alert until that Thursday.”
“Did you mention any of this to the police chief?” I asked.
“Should I have?” P. P. Patti said. “I didn’t think it mattered. I’m only mentioning it now because of our new friendship. This should stay strictly between you and me.”
“Carrie Ann heard about it through your fast-track grapevine, so we aren’t the only ones who know. Who else did you tell?”
Patti’s eyes shifted to the left, blinked, then her eyes moved to the right. “Maybe I did mention it to a few other friends. But I didn’t tell anybody about your own little secret.”
There! She’d brought it up. I felt my blood pressure spike. “Oh, really,” I said, “you mean the story you spread about Manny and me, saying we were lovers? Is that the secret you’ve been keeping to yourself?”
“Shhh,” Patti cautioned. “Someone will hear you. It’ll be all your fault if it gets out.”
P. P. Patti was impossible—crafty and cagey with a knack for twisting the truth to fit her plan. This entire dramatic moment was reminding me of high school and how relieved I’d been to graduate and get away from Moraine and its small-town mentalities.
“I heard from a reliable source that you’ve been spreading that lie yourself,” I said. Finally. Some guts.
“I don’t lie,” Patti said, narrowing her eyes. “All my facts are backed up with evidence.”
“You are so full of it. You don’t have any proof.”
“That isn’t the way to talk to a friend.”
“You aren’t my friend, Patti. Friends don’t tell horrible, spiteful lies about each other.”
“Is this the future event that you apologized for at the store? Because if it is, I’m not accepting this time.”
I blew steam out of my nose and ears. I even saw red. “You took an innocent friendship between Manny and me and insinuated that it was something nasty and dirty. If you don’t care about my feelings, you could at least try to care about Grace. How do you think that made her feel?”
“Grace was getting hers with that ex of yours.”
“I know you lied about me. Are you lying about Grace and Clay, too?”
Patti glared at me. She had her arms crossed. “I’m done talking to you,” she said. “Keep on bullying me and I’ll call the cops all right.”
The bullying part stopped me in my tracks, because I had an aversion to bullies and wasn’t exactly sure I hadn’t been acting like one, “I’m sorry,” I said. “But you put me in a serious position when you spread that.”
“Go away. You’re acting like a nut case. I know you’ve been through a lot lately, but don’t take it out on me.”
I left her sitting there and headed for Stu’s.
I needed a drink.