Slow Poison by Sheila Bosworth

Author:Sheila Bosworth
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781504016469
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-07-28T04:00:00+00:00

“How many tins of tuna you using?” said Abilene. “You ask me, one’s too many. Who going to eat this shit? I hope you drained off all the fish earl out the can.”

Rory, hacking tomatoes into chunks, paid no attention. Now she was enjoying the pleasurable ache of her heart as she recalled the night she had accompanied Johnny to Gibson’s department store to buy a denim workshirt, and the salesman told them that girls had bought up all the shirts in Johnny’s size.

“Your berled rice running all over the stove!” said Abilene.

While Rory was sponging off the stovetop, Aunt Tippy came into the kitchen. “I read in the Times-Picayune where Elizabeth Taylor is in the hospital again. She’s suffering from something they call ‘nervous exhaustion.’ Now my question is, how nervous and exhausted do you have to be before the hospital will admit you? Because I happen to think I qualify.” She strolled around the room, picking various items off the countertops and slamming them down again. An angry woman, strolling around, Rory thought, was a disquieting sight, like a grinning gunman.

“Miss Tipping? Why you don’t go on back upstairs and lie down for a while?” Abilene said.

“Why don’t I?” said Tipping. “I don’t lie around in my nightgown all day because I haven’t cracked up yet. And don’t think I haven’t tried to crack up. I positively will myself to crack up, but there seems to be no goddamn limit to what I can take!”

Rory had often noticed this, about herself. Maybe she had inherited an inability to crack up from her Aunt Tippy.

“The good Lord telling you it ain’t your time to crack,” Abilene said to Tipping.

“Well, goddamn it, I wish the good Lord would tell it to somebody else. To Jane Ann, for one. Look at her! Out there on that old bench all morning, like something left over at a yard sale. Something cracked.”

“Are we early?” called Merrill Shackleford through the screen door. Miss Tate was clinging tightly to Merrill’s arm, as if her legs were too short to reach the ground. “I believe Mass let out a little sooner than usual, though I can’t think how. Father Arrivisto’s sermon! Interminable!”

“I’ve never cared much for the story of the Good Thief, have you?” said Miss Tate, wrinkling her nose. Miss Charlotte Jane Tate had been Merrill’s late mother’s oldest friend; once each month, she took the Greyhound from New Orleans to Covington to attend noon Mass at the St. Joseph Abbey with Merrill. Merrill and Miss Tate were making the five First Saturdays together, in hopes of special intercession by the Virgin Mary on behalf of Mrs. Shackleford’s poor soul in purgatory.

“You’re not a bit early,” said Tipping. “Do come in.”

“Yeah, you right on time for this fine tuna-fish thing,” said Abilene darkly. “Give your veil here, Miss Tate, let me fold it for you.”

Miss Charlotte Jane Tate always reminded Rory of a helium balloon: plump but fragile, and with a tendency to float off.

“Tipping, dear, a glass of sherry would be lovely,” said Miss Tate.

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