The Quick-Change Artist: Stories

Snow Day

Snow Day I. NELLE FENTON WAS in Florida visiting John, the oldest of her seven sons, when she received the terrible news that her youngest boy, Dudley, had eloped with Nelle’s housekeeper. The woman, Mildred Murphy, was low-class, in Nelle’s opinion , and she was more than twenty years older than Dudley: seventy-three or four to Dudley’s fifty. The elopement was only technical. They had not run away. After a visit to the justice of the peace at the county courthouse, they had returned to Nelle’s Virginia farmhouse, where Dudley lived also. It was New Year’s Day when Dudley called to tell her about this marriage. “Take that woman and go,” Nelle ordered Dudley, while John and his wife Harriet paced nearby, extracting the news from Nelle’s side of the conversation. “I don’t want either of you there when I get back.”  Nelle handed the receiver to John and went outside to the half-dozen citrus trees that John and Harriet called the grove: two each of lemon, orange, and lime. Dudley had said, “I have some news, Mother, good news,” yet he must have known she would be outraged. Nelle reached up and touched the hanging fruits. They were never as brilliantly colored as they should be. She tore a lime from a branch and held it to her nose. The skin was not green, but a leathery yellow, and it smelled harsh. Nelle had been in Lake Worth for only a few days, yet already Christmas in Virginia seemed long ago. Her daughters-in-law had assembled Christmas dinner, for Mildred Murphy had declared she didn’t feel well and had taken to her bed. Now Nelle saw that for the ploy it was. She remembered Dudley hovering furtively in the hallway near Mildred ’s room. Oh, she’d known about their doings. She’d planned to fire Mildred as soon as she could find somebody else. It wasn’t easy hiring a housekeeper. That slattern was worse than nobody, though. On the job two months. On the make with Dudley. Nelle’s mouth was completely dry, her heart wild. She squeezed the lime until it burst between her fingers. Harriet came out of the house and said, “Oh, Mother F! Here, let’s go inside,” as if it were cold, as if they were in a Virginia snowfall instead of this strange place with its sultry sun. Through the glass patio doors, Nelle saw John hang up the phone. She threw the mutilated lime to the ground and allowed Harriet to escort her back into the house. Harriet always dressed coquettishly, in tight dresses and high heels, unless she were flying, copiloting the Cessna with John, in which case she became Amelia Earhart, in slacks, goggles, and scarves. They were childless, Harriet and John. Snow Day  Nelle recalled that Mildred Murphy had offspring from some earlier marriage or liaison. Such women always did, and grandchildren too, garrulous, pitiful, threatening creatures who would slobber over Dudley, demanding money from him the rest of their lives. Nelle would ban them all from her house. She would get another dog. Yes, a ferocious one to live on the porch. Her poodles were for indoors, though they were not exactly friendly to strangers. And Dudley was her favorite son. Had been. Until now. “Let’s sit down and have some orange juice,” Harriet said. She took a carton from the refrigerator and poured juice into small glasses. John pulled out a chair for Nelle—a tiny, silly chair made of metal, with a red plastic seat—and she sat down. Their furniture belonged in a garden or an ice-cream parlor, though John had retired a wealthy man from his airplane hangar business. He and Harriet put their money into cars, a new Cadillac for each. They took the house and the tiny citrus grove and themselves very seriously. Nelle didn’t think Harriet was sorry there were no children. John, maybe. He would have been a good father, never mind that he was twice divorced, Harriet his third wife. “Mother F, what will you do?” Harriet said. “Dudley said he doesn’t want you to feel bad,” said John. “Said they’ll live with one of her daughters until they can find a place of their own.” They drank the juice. Nelle’s hands stank of the lime she had...