Max’s short dark hair stood on end like a scarecrow’s—and if it wasn’t, it should have—as her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth.
“Don’t scare the crap out of her, Mother,” Witt warned, but she could see the dastardly spark of a twinkle in his blue eyes.
An identical twinkle glittered in his mom’s Witt-blue eyes as she said, “I’m pulling your leg, my dear, and don’t use the word crap, DeWitt.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Still holding on to Max’s hand, she led the way into the cramped living room. Max felt her mouth drop open. She snapped it shut immediately.
The room wasn’t terribly small, but piles of newspapers, magazines, and grocery store circulars covered every available inch of floor space, tabletop, and fireplace stone. Even the top of the TV hadn’t escaped use. Three metal TV trays sat in front of three over-stuffed, wooden-armed chairs, the upholstery of which had seen its best days in the sixties. Lamps adorned with homemade, shellacked shades cast strange shadows across the newsprint on the tables beneath them.
“You sit here, Max.” Mrs. Long led her through a weaving path amid the piles of printed material. “Between Witt and I.”
Max slipped between the TV tray and chair, and plunked down rather than sat, the cushions of the chair sucking her in.
“Now, what can I get you to drink? I have wine, sherry, soda pop, juice or water.” She was a tiny woman, only a few inches taller than a seated Max, and so unlike Witt in the height respect, it was almost laughable.
“Water, thank you, Mrs. Long,” seemed safest under the circumstances. Her voice cracked on “thank,” and Max realized she hadn’t said a word since she’d entered the house.
“Oh, please, such formality. Call me Ladybird.”
“Ladybird?” she squeaked.
“Oh my, yes. My mother christened me Ethel, and I’ve always hated the name. I much prefer Ladybird, like Ladybird Johnson. She was such a regal woman”—she wrinkled her lips—“far more so than that Kennedy woman, don’t you think?”
“Well, yes,” said Max, who hadn’t been born when the Kennedys were in office and couldn’t, even for a million bucks, remember ever seeing a picture of Ladybird Johnson.
She looked at Witt. The bastard was laughing. Sort of. Though his lips were straight, the cleft in his chin stood out prominently, and she was sure his eyes watered with mirth.
He’d pay for not warning her about his mother. Pay big time.
Ladybird Long skittered off to the kitchen, and her oversized son dropped into the chair next to Max, setting the tray in front of him to wobbling.
“I thought you said she needed to clean the house,” she said barely above a whisper.
“She did,” Witt whispered back. “Piles are straight, and your chair’s cleared off.”
The many heaps of papers were actually quite symmetrical, the edges methodically meeting at the bottom left corners. Witt leaned over to turn on the lamp next to him, and Max suddenly saw that the lampshades were made from hundreds of shellacked address labels. Mr. and Mrs. Horace Long. Mrs. Ethel Long. Mrs. Ladybird Long. The Long Residence. Occupant. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. In each newspaper or magazine in the room, a hole had been cut where the address label should have been.
“It’s a fire hazard.”
Witt raised a blond brow. “I don’t let her light a fire or keep any of this stuff in her room or block the hall. Also bought the best smoke detector I could find. What more do you want?”
Max rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. “Has she got Alzheimer’s?”
He shook his head. “She’s seventy-eight and finds the idea of her address in the hands of the garbage man a terrifying prospect.”
Seventy-eight. Max did a quick calc. That meant Ladybird Long had Witt when she was forty-two. A baby at forty-two would make anyone a little batty. If that baby were Witt? The conclusion went without saying. He certainly drove Max nuts.
Ladybird returned with a tray. Water, at least Max hoped so, a glass of dark amber liquid that might have been sherry, and a fizzling glass of beer.
Witt took the beer, downed a large swallow, then licked the foam from his upper lip. Max’s insides flip-flopped, and she gulped her water.
“Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”
A few minutes? Ladybird couldn’t possibly be roasting turkey. A strange mixture of smells drifted in from the kitchen. For a moment she was sure it was beef, no fried chicken, no ... she had no idea, but her stomach rumbled once more.
“I know you must be hungry after your trying afternoon, Max.”
Trying afternoon was an understatement. So was hungry. She was starving, famished, ravenous, weak, dizzy, malnourished—
And possessed by a woman who thought twenty truffles in one night was skimping.
Chapter Five