Little Town, Great Big Life Read online

  As it happened, Lyle was the only boy after four older sisters, who all spoiled him so much that he had not had to walk a step before the age of three. And his sisters, as well as his mother, were all full-figured like Belinda, which proved to her that humans were given to liking what they knew, just as she liked the drugstore.

  At the time of their meeting, Belinda, having existed primarily within her mind, had little idea of her sensual, womanly side. That changed with Lyle’s abundant attentions. She quickly came into full bloom. One day she found the Home Shopping Network, Delta Burke lingerie for womanly figures and Nina dyeable pumps, and her life changed forever. Valentine was fifty miles from a mall, but everything that you could want—and that you might not want others to know you bought—came right to Belinda via Buddy, the UPS driver.

  As it turned out, having known and served most of her customers for all of her life, Belinda already knew their most intimate likes and dislikes. She began buying for them as well as for herself, and pretty soon she not only had a good personal shopping business going but was supplying the drugstore with all manner of unique specialty and gift items. She installed an entire perfume counter with locally hard-to-find scents such as Coco, Interlude and Evening in Paris. She stocked the favored brand and color dye for every woman in town who did her own hair, and every preferred shade of cosmetic and fingernail polish. The store’s profits soared. Belinda discovered yet another talent—making money hand over fist, and with little effort at all.

  Three years ago, Belinda had finally allowed Lyle to talk her into marriage. They had a small but lovely church ceremony, and in the end Belinda was secretly thrilled. But she insisted on keeping her own name. She felt to change would cause all manner of complications at this late stage of her life. Everyone knew her as Belinda Blaine of Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain, not to mention that she was of a size to wear a DD cup bra. The name of Midgette just did not fit her at all. It didn’t even fit Lyle, who was six-two, but one could not change what one had been born with. One could only seek to make the best of it.

  When Winston came into the drugstore, everyone went to clapping and cheering him.

  Winston made a courtly bow. “Thank you…thank you. I commend your good taste.”

  At his voice, Belinda laughed right out loud, so rare a happening that she received a number of curious looks.

  Winston said, “I guess I accomplished somethin’ this mornin’. I got a full laugh out of Miss Belinda Blaine.”

  “Oh, yeah, you made me laugh,” she said, with the image in her mind of dropping the pregnancy-test kit in the toilet.

  As Winston held court at his usual table, surrounded by a knot of other gossipy old farts, Belinda brought him a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.

  When her mother had left on her European vacation, she had said to Belinda, “The store and Winston are in your hands. Don’t let either of them die on me while I’m gone.”

  Her mother had meant it as a joke, but they both knew there was a kernel of truth in the sentiment. The store and all who came in it made up their lives.

  The day became quite dreary, and the midmorning lull started early. She had sent Arlo to the storeroom to unpack boxes. All was silent from there. The low drone of the television sounded from the rear of the pharmacy.

  Taking a feather duster, Belinda strolled along the health and intimate products section, whacking here and there, until she came to the pregnancy-test kits. She scratched the back of her head.

  They had three different brands. It had been the $6.99 one that she had dropped into the toilet. The $9.99 product guaranteed to give easy-to-read results.

  Could she read it in the toilet, should she drop it? She really hated flushing money away.

  Just as she reached for the box, the bell rang out over the front door. She snatched back her hand as if from a flame and went to whacking the duster. At the end of the aisle, a familiar figure passed.

  “Emma! Hey, girlfriend! What are you doin’ out this mornin’?”

  “I’ve got to get my hair color.” Emma pointed at her head as if for evidence.

  “Well, come on over and get a cup of coffee on the house,” Belinda called, and headed for the soda fountain counter.

  What a treat! Emma Berry was her best friend, although somehow the two of them had not seen much of each other the past winter. Emma was deeply into her art—she designed greeting cards and stationery that sold in the drugstore—and into her family, which had increased with a new daughter-in-law the past fall.

  And things had just sort of changed, as things often did…but in that instant of seeing her friend, Belinda thought: I will tell her.

  Emma brought the box of L’Oréal light ash blond to the cash register and dug money out of her purse with pretty manicured hands.

  Belinda handed back change, saying, “Latte or coffee? On the house.”

  “Oooh, latte.” Emma scooted her small frame up onto a stool at the counter. “I only like yours.”

  Belinda stuck a large cup beneath the aromatic, steaming machine, while Emma chattered on about needing caffeine because she had been up that morning since half past six, when, over the radio alarm in the new coffeemaker, she heard Winston shouting and then found out that John Cole was already heading off to work.

  “Don’t put any whipped cream on it. Did you hear Winston this mornin’?”

  Belinda, who had paused with the whipped cream can pointed, said, “Oh, yes, I heard.” She brought the steaming cup to Emma at the counter. Her thoughts were in something of a tangle, wondering why anyone would want a coffeemaker with a radio in it at the same time that she tried to figure out how to bring up the subject of her worries.

  “I’m afraid he’s gonna have a heart attack,” Emma said. “Can I have a spoon?”

  Belinda handed her one. “Winston? Well, we all are. He is ninety-two.”

  “No. John Cole. Really? I didn’t know he was that old. He’s workin’ twelve- and fourteen-hour days…again,” Emma added with pointed annoyance.

  Belinda thought, John Cole…Winston…John Cole again. Conversation with Emma was apt to be a little convoluted.

  “I’ve learned by now, though, that I cannot control him,” Emma said, aiming for resignation, although she did not quite reach her mark.

  Belinda agreed, and the two women tossed around comments about how everyone had their own lives to lead, the sort of practical statements that everyone knows but forgets when trying to help other people live their lives.

  Then Belinda leaned forward on the counter. “I’ve been goin’ to call you.”

  “You have?”

  Belinda nodded, then found herself averting her gaze. “Uhhuh. I…” It was just silly. She should not speak of it.

  Just then the bell over the door rang out. Both women looked over. If Belinda had not already stopped talking, she would have then, because the person who came in was Gracie Berry, Emma’s daughter-in-law.

  Emma waved and called out, “Hi, honey!”

  Belinda felt her spirit dipping as she watched the women hug.

  “We’re drivin’ down to Dallas,” Emma told Belinda. “Gracie has a meetin’, and afterward we’re goin’ shoppin’.”

  “Ah-huh,” said Belinda, her gaze moving back and forth between the two women.

  It was somewhat astonishing how much the women, not at all blood kin, favored each other. Emma was fair and Gracie dark, but they were of the same petite size, and possessed of the same sort of innocence and liveliness.

  Belinda offered to put Emma’s latte in a foam cup to go and asked if Gracie would like something to drink.

  “Thank you. I think I would like a latte, too.” Gracie had a very polite and precise way of speaking. She was from “up north,” as everyone said, a beautiful, very stylish young woman.

  Belinda turned to the rear counter and focused on carefully filling the foam cups and putting on the lids.

  She waved away Emma’s offer of payment. “You two have a great
day.”

  “We will…thanks!”

  Standing there with her hands flat on the counter, Belinda watched through the glass as the two women disappeared down the sidewalk. Then she gave a great sigh. She felt like a tiny speck on the great big planet.

  Fayrene Gardner came blowing in the door, then paused to shake her plastic rain cape.

  “Hi, Fay. Wet out there?”

  As expected, the woman shot Belinda a frown. She hated the short version of her name.

  “Hello, Belinda.” Spine straight, she looked forward and flounced—there was no other way to describe Fayrene’s walk—her skinny frame directly to the pharmacy counter, calling in a faint and wavering voice, “Oran?”

  The lanky pharmacist came shooting out from the back. “Good mornin’, Miss Fayrene. What can I do for you today?” he asked with such a tender and delighted expression that Belinda had to turn away, rolling her eyes.

  Shy Oran loved bold Fayrene, who was way too dense to see it. Or if she did, she discounted the man’s feelings. She never was interested in a quality man. Thank goodness, was Belinda’s opinion. Occupying herself straightening the nearby perfume counter, she listened without any shame nor reaction to Fayrene’s annoyed glances.

  “I think I need…” Fayrene looked at Belinda and dropped her tone lower, causing Oran to lean over close. Belinda heard about every other word. “…to…off…sleepin’ pills…some natural…I could…”

  “Well, yes,” Oran said soothingly and with some eagerness. Since he had come to work at the drugstore, he had been trying to help Fayrene, who kept getting dependent on one prescription drug after another.

  Finding the sight of the two together annoying, Belinda left the perfume counter and went to the soda fountain register, opened it and began counting the cash, something she often did to settle herself.

  Going out the door, Fayrene called out to Belinda, “When you speak to your mama, you be sure and tell her how much we all miss her.”

  “I’ll do that.” There were some people you just wanted to smack.

  Only seconds on the heel of that thought came the sound of squealing tires and a scream.

  Belinda hurried toward the door, but Oran was already ahead of her and sprinting outside with his paramedic bag swinging from his hand.

  Belinda saw Fayrene’s legs on the wet pavement and people coming from everywhere. She ducked back into the drugstore, got an umbrella and hurried out again to hold the umbrella over Fayrene and Oran and a man she did not recognize, who came from the café.

  Talk about never a dull minute.

  The phrase was repeated half a dozen times during the lunch hour. The conversation was now divided between Winston’s morning reveille, the rain, which had entered the picture, and Fayrene getting hit by a car. Between making three chicken-salad sandwich lunches, four hot barbecues and a number of jalapeño-cheese nachos, Belinda downed two extra-strength aspirin for a headache that had reached pounding proportions. Glancing over at Oran, who was still sitting at a table drinking his second hot coffee, she shook two more aspirin into her palm, grabbed a small glass of ice water and took both to him.

  “Doctor, tend thyself.”

  He had really been shook up. Luckily there had only been a tiny bit of blood on Fayrene’s skinned knee, and Oran had been able to press a bandage over it almost without looking. Belinda thought the torn fabric of Fayrene’s pants had shook him up the most. That and the handsome stranger who had come to lift Fayrene and carry her back to the café, leaving Oran staring after them.

  Oran gazed at the pills in her hand as if he didn’t know what they were, but then he took them. Handing her back the glass of water, he gave her a crooked grin.

  As Belinda returned behind the soda fountain counter, a voice hollered out for service over at the pharmacy. She was relieved to see Oran’s lanky body rise and hear him answer in an exaggerated drawl, “Keep your shirt on. This ain’t New York City.”

  “Was Fayrene hurt bad?” asked Iris MacCoy, who was waiting on an order of half a dozen barbecue sandwiches and the same number of fountain drinks to take back to MacCoy Feed and Grain.

  “No, ma’am,” said Arlo, passing over two sizable cardboard carry containers. “I put in extra bags of potato chips.”

  Arlo’s gaze lingered on Iris’s chest, which was where most men’s eyes lingered. Iris was a stunning woman. Belinda knew that Iris was over fifty years of age, and had more refurbishment on her than a 1960 Corvette.

  “Well, I saw the whole thing,” said Julia Jenkins-Tinsley, scooting her small frame up on a stool, sitting half on and half off. Julia was postmistress and a woman who lived life in perpetual motion.

  “I had just come out of the P.O. on my way down here. The car didn’t hit her—Fayrene hit it. She ran right out in the street. She had her hood up to protect her hairdo—you know how she is about her hair. She was no more lookin’ where she was goin’ than the man in the moon. She never is, and is always crossin’ in the middle of the block. Maybe this will teach her a lesson. We have crosswalks for a reason. Here’s your mail.”

  Julia passed a wad of mail held by a rubber band across the counter to Belinda. “I saw you hadn’t come by your box yet today. I know you are just swamped here with your mother on vacation. Thought you might want to see you got another postcard from her, but she didn’t really say anything. Just that she’s havin’ a good time, and what she writes every time—Love to Valentine.”

  Iris said, “That pavement is really slick from the rain. We haven’t had any all winter, and now it’s just dangerous out there. I about slipped comin’ in here. And, Belinda, I just love your reports from your mother. Please tell her I’m missin’ her.”

  At this, Belinda gave a polite nod.

  Iris gave her and then everyone else at the soda fountain a feminine little wave as she left. The eyes of the three men followed her, and old Norman Cooper, of all people, jumped up and ran after her, saying, “Let me help you get all that to your car, Iris.”

  Belinda found the postcard. It was an aerial photograph of Paris, France. She took it over and stuck it on the bulletin board, below the previous two, one from New York City, another from London.

  Julia, looking up at the menu on the wall as if she had not seen it every day of her adult life, finally said, “I guess I’ll have a chicken salad on lettuce, no bread, and a sweet tea with lemon—two slices. I can do the sugar. I jogged an extra mile this mornin’. Make it to go. I need to get back. Norris didn’t come in today.”

  As Belinda turned to get the order, she noted that Julia’s gaze dropped to her hips with a distinctive disapproving look. Julia went at keeping in shape as if it would give her a ticket to heaven.

  Belinda knew that she had something Julia would never have: six years of youth, womanly breasts and total guilt-free eating of anything she wanted.

  “Did you see that guy who picked up Fayrene and carried her back to the café?” Julia asked.

  “I saw him, but I haven’t heard who he is. Jaydee said he thought maybe the guy missed the bus to Dallas…that he saw him earlier in the café. Lucky for Fayrene.” She glanced over to the pharmacy, where Oran was waiting on Imperia Brown, who had all three of her children down with the flu.

  Julia said, “No…he’s some guy Woody brought into the café this mornin’. Where Woody met him, nobody seems to know, and Woody won’t say. You know how he can be—that inscrutable old wise black man routine.”

  Belinda, closing the plastic container of chicken salad and resisting licking her finger, asked if the stranger had a name.

  Julia eagerly filled in with all she knew. The man’s name was Andy Smith, and he had a very cool British-type accent but was from Australia. Bingo Yardell had asked him. Bingo had also asked what had brought him to town, but he had been distracted working the counter and had not answered. “He knows how to brew a proper cup of tea. Bingo Yardell was in there havin’ breakfast this mornin’, when this woman came in off the Dallas bus and ordered
a cup of hot tea. She made a big deal out of the café needin’ to have china teapots, not those little metal deals. I have thought that, too, ever since Juice and I went to New York for his grocers’ convention and stayed on the concierge floor. Every mornin’ the hotel served a layout, and they had tea in china pots. It really does make all the difference. And this Andy fella was able to make the woman a proper cup of tea.”

  Belinda set the woman’s foam cup of cold tea on the counter. “I doubt there’s a large call for hot tea over at the café.”

  “That’s what Fayrene said, but Carly said she serves it right often to customers over there in the cold months—mornin’s like this one was, a cup of hot tea is nice. Tea has a lot of anti-oxidants.” The postmistress put her mouth to the straw and sucked deeply, as if eager to get antioxidants that very moment.

  “It’s got somethin’ everyone likes.” Belinda cast an eye to the cold-tea pitcher. All the talk was making her want some.

  “Well…” Julia laid the exact change on the counter and picked up her lunch. “I gotta get back. I’ll be listenin’ to your report this afternoon. I like to hear about your mother’s trip. Be sure to tell her to keep writin’ home…and tell her to write somethin’ interestin’ on the postcards.”

  “Wait a minute, and I’ll give you her e-mail address so you can write her yourself.”

  “Oh, Lordy, I don’t mess with that e-mail. I work for the U.S. Postal Service. You just tell her for me, ’kay?” The woman went out the door.

  Belinda said under her breath, “I don’t have another blessed thing better to do than send messages from ever’body and their cousin to my mother.”

  Nadine called with an excuse again. Her voice, as usual, came so faintly over the telephone that Belinda strained to hear.

  “I’m sorry I missed the lunch hour, Miz Belinda. I had a flat tire.”

  “I really need you tomorrow, Nadine,” Belinda said with a sternness that she hoped would motivate. She could fire the young woman, but a replacement was likely to be worse.