Read Online The Do-Right by Lisa Sandlin - Free Book Online Page B

was used to moving or not as he chose. But these observations she folded away. Without Tom Phelan chancing on her, she’d be eaten up with the problem of keeping herself and dwelling in a world of old people. New Rosemont rented to retirees. Ida Rae topped 40, Miss Doris in her far sixties, Calinda, 70-something. Mrs. Speir, queen of the boardwalk.
    Delpha, carrying and setting down before. Right now maybe but not forever. And a free handmaiden, remember—she was getting paid for her work.
    Don’t overlook that, Delpha .
    Don’t think you got nowhere. You got where .
    A radio played at the end of the hall, farthest room from Mrs. Speir’s. Oldie, A little bit of soap will never wash away my tears . Who sang that? Couldn’t remember, but she’d heard it. Might or might not mean Ida Rae was at home.
    She fed Mrs. Spier every last spoonful of the Vegetable Beef. It was a record player that was playing and a 45 because after the song ended there was a silence then it started again. Ida Rae could have turned off the damn thing before she went out. No more thought than a red-headed woodpecker.
    Mrs. Speir’s eyes closed. Her knees drew up and her chin curled into her neck.
    As Delpha strode into the room where the record player was repeating, her toe kicked an empty bottle, spinning it aside. Large room, chandelier, main feature dead ahead: a brass bedstead fit into an alcove, sheets twisted off onto the floor, pink lightbulbs in the fringed lamps casting a rosy glow. The air smelled like gin, sweat, and…yeah, cum. Delpha did recognize that sea smell. Ida Rae lay splayed naked, letting it air out beside some hairy-butt snorer wearing only striped crew socks dirty on their soles.
    Ida had slim white legs but was carrying some thick in her middle from the gin. She raised sleepy lids. “Night nurse, my friend, sweetie, what’re you doing in my room?”
    â€œYour grandmother wants me to shut off the—”
    Ida Rae pushed herself up. She plucked at the sheet, but it didn’t move. “Oh. I’m lying on it. What’d you say you were in my room for?” The man turned over on his side and cupped his balls.
    â€œJust came to turn off your record player. Watch.” Delpha crossed the room to a table by the window and yanked the record player’s cord out of the wall. “See?”
    â€œOh. OK.” Ida Rae knocked the fellow beside her between the shoulder blades, causing him to grunt. “Get dressed. Let’s go out.” She reached toward Delpha. “Hand me my robe there, would you? You know, if you have some better clothes than that, we could go out and have lunch sometime.”
    Delpha handed over the robe, went back to Mrs. Speir. Nekkid people night .
    Ida and her companion finally exited. The front door shut, a Cadillac engine turned over. Telling herself maybe she could spy the Tiffany for Miss Blanchard, Delpha pulled on rubber dishwash gloves and searched.
    She rolled up the carpet and the pad beneath. No trap doors there. Delpha knelt to see under the bed with the flashlight. She ran her hands between mattress and box springs. She lifted the gilt-framed paintings, craned up the chimney of the tile-front fireplace, pushed on the oak mantelpiece. Genuine horsehair settee beneath the long window, hard as a pirate’s plank. She took off her black flats and walked it, weighing down each section. No bulges or corners or lumps.
    Delpha plunged her hands into bureau drawers containing Mrs. Speir’s old-lady underwear and nightgowns and fresh sheet sets. These were to be moved, for convenience sake, to the bottom shelves of the bedside night-cabinet. She did this now, transferring one set of flower-sprigged sheets into the lower shelf of the night table so they would be to hand when next she needed them. Sliding out its single drawer, narrow and deep, she saw clippers, Q-tips, Vick’s Vapor Rub laid out before an army of plastic pill