The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(12)
“All that chaos and mess,” Grace said, shaking her head sadly. “I can’t wait to return to my housekeeping.”
“But don’t you wish that something exciting would happen around here?” Patricia asked. “Just once?”
Grace raised her eyebrows at Patricia.
“You wish that a gang of unwashed hippies would break into your house and murder your family and write death to pigs in human blood on your walls because you don’t want to pack bag lunches anymore?”
“Well, not when you put it like that,” Patricia said. “Your camellias look wonderful.”
“I spent this week planting my annuals,” Grace said. “Those vincas, and the marigolds, and I have some azalea bushes around the side that are already blooming. When it’s light I’ll show you the noisettes I planted in back. They’ll smell heavenly this summer.”
They said good night and Patricia walked onto Pierates Cruze and Grace’s door clunked softly shut behind her. The Cruze was a dirt horseshoe hanging off Middle Street in the Old Village, and the fourteen families who lived there would rather die than have it paved. The rocks on the road crunched beneath Patricia’s feet, and she felt them through the thin soles of her shoes. The steamy evening air closed around her like a fist. The only sounds were her feet grinding rocks into the dirt and the angry rasp of crickets and katydids crowding around her in the dark.
The book club buzz evaporated from her veins as she left Grace’s perfect yard behind and approached her house, huddled behind overgrown groves of wild bamboo and gnarled trees choked by ivy. She got closer and saw that the garbage cans weren’t at the end of the driveway. Taking out the trash was one of Blue’s chores, but after the sun went down the side of the house where the rolling cans lived got pitch-black and he would do everything in his power to avoid it. She’d suggested that he bring the rolling cans around to the front steps before it got dark. She’d given him a flashlight. She’d offered to stand on the front porch while he went to get them. Instead, he waited until the last possible moment to collect the trash, put all the cans and bags by the front door, and informed her that he was going to take them out in five minutes, just as soon as he finished doing this Wordly Wise crossword puzzle, or this long division worksheet. And then he disappeared.
If she could catch him before he made it to bed, she’d make him get the cans and take them out to the street, but not tonight. Tonight she stood in the doorway to his dark room, the hall light slashing across him where he lay under the covers, eyes squeezed shut, a copy of National Geographic World rising and falling on his stomach.
Pulling his bedroom door halfway closed, she paused outside Korey’s door and listened to the rise and fall of her daughter’s voice on the telephone. Patricia felt a prick of envy. She hadn’t been popular in high school, but Korey captained or co-captained all her teams, and younger girls showed up at games to cheer her on. Inexplicably, girls being sporty had become popular. When Patricia was in high school, the only girls who talked to the sporty girls were other sporty girls, but Korey’s list of friends seemed endless, and they’d finally gotten a second phone line so Carter could make phone calls without call waiting going off every five seconds.
Patricia plodded downstairs to check on Miss Mary. She walked down the three steps from the den to the converted garage room and let her eyes adjust to the orange glow of the night-light. She saw the old woman, thin and deflated under the sheets of her hospital bed, eyes glittering in the dim light, staring at the ceiling.
“Miss Mary?” Patricia said softly to her mother-in-law. “Do you want anything?”
“There’s an owl,” Miss Mary croaked.
“I don’t see any owls,” Patricia said. “You should get some rest.”
Miss Mary stared at the ceiling, her eyes leaking tears that ran down her temples and into her sparse hair.
“Whether you like it or not,” Miss Mary said, “you’ve got owls.”
She acted worse at night, but Patricia had even noticed that during the day she often couldn’t follow the give-and-take of a conversation anymore and covered her confusion with long stories about people from her past that no one knew. Even Carter couldn’t identify two-thirds of them, but to his credit he always listened and never interrupted.
Patricia checked that Miss Mary had water in the sippy cup by her bed, then went to take out the trash. She took the flashlight with her because Blue wasn’t wrong—it was scary around the side of the house.
The humid night air buzzed with insects as Patricia walked across the harsh black slash where the light from the front porch ended. She walked into the thick darkness around the side of the house at a brisk pace, forcing herself to wait three steps before clicking on the flashlight, just to prove she was brave. The first thing she saw was one of Miss Mary’s blue incontinence pads in the dirt. A short length of fence projected from the side of the house, hiding the rolling cans from the street, but even from here Patricia could tell both cans had been tipped over. The nervousness she felt vanished in a flash of irritation. Blue really should be the one cleaning this up.
Behind the fence two mounds of fat white garbage bags spilled from both cans. The oven-hot air smelled thick with the dank, earthy scent of coffee grounds and Miss Mary’s adult diapers. Mosquitoes buzzed in her ears.
Patricia scanned the damage with her flashlight: napkins, coffee filters, apple cores, Toaster Strudel boxes, wadded Kleenex, folded blue incontinence pads. Either raccoons or really big marsh rats had gotten into the trash and torn everything to shreds.