Miss Mavis Meeker was a
flappy-clothes, tall lank lady who loved gossip, and she could insert her
beanpole self into the tiniest niches---for hiding and overhearing, or for
barging in and asking. It seemed as if carrying around all those rumors
kept her thin as jogging, for she was the one who “sold out” from the
Fund-Raiser Tea before scones, to get home to the phone when she heard that old
Mr. Halliburton got caught retrieving his hearing aid from the back seat of a
married lady’s car.
She traded in
“good works” in her information quest, walking an apronful of tomatoes from her
garden down the street to the house where a strange car had been parked for
several days, trying to peer around the door when it was opened, to see if the
Boyette girl had left her husband again and come back to stay with her Mama
'n'em. If ever a
stranger or anyone in law enforcement knocked on a neighbor’s door, she’d make
sure she was outside with some little chore so that she could hear or see
whatever happened, or she’d grab up a few flowers and take them innocently over
just for an excuse to hang around.
She was the first to take a dish by
the home of the bereaved, and also took pains to be the first to view a
corpse. She’d been known to
wait outside the funeral home in her car til they opened the doors. She’d stand right by the casket,
looking her eyes full, and then would
circle the room like a name-dropper at a cocktail party, pronouncing how the
departed looked---from Natchrul to Peekid to They
Did All They Could, with a sly peek at the listeners for their reactions. Closed casket funerals put her off
kilter for a week, not being able to assess the make-up, or if they were wasted
away, and all.
Being first at the house after
the news spread of the death was important, so she could see “how they took
it.” Folks in town swore that she
had four cakes, two casseroles and a banana puddin’ on hand at all
times---no WAY she could whip up a dish that fast.
If Evelyn
Couch, inquiring after Ont Vesta in the nursing home, were as nosy as all
get-out, and a tee-nincey bit on the obnoxious side, she’d have sounded
like Mavis Meeker.
She’d arrive at Golden Years, look up and
down the halls for a likely victim, and home in. She wasn’t above going right in a door
where someone was sleeping, making herself at home, and rustling about a bit to
wake the unwary soul, and had no qualms about asking prying, pointed
questions.
Until Miss
Martha Bridger, that is, who had never
had much of a filter to start with, and had taught sixth grade boys for enough years
to inure her to any inquiry, expletive, observation, or
gesture.
“Miss Marthy!!” Mavis trumpeted, apparently
also convinced that passing eighty rendered her victim deaf, “Do ye know
who Aaah ayum?”
A long, testy no-nonsense
teacher-look from Miss Martha, and a little complete-circle-like-clock-hands of
her tight-pursed lips before she spoke.
“AA’ve known ye all yeh lahfe,
Mavis, and ye habm’t improved.”
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