Read Online The Ladies' Room by Carolyn Brown - Free Book Online

1957, was a very
different letter. Gert's tone had changed drastically. She apologized to Harriet for not writing since the wedding but confessed that the marriage had been a very big mistake.
    The fourteenth letter was the one that caused my eyes to
pop wide open. It was dated June of 1958, a year after she'd
married Lonnie. It started out:
    Dear Harriet,
    I made a mistake. If I could figure out a way to kill my
husband, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but I'm stuck with him
until he dies. He married me because he thought I had
money, and he's cheating on me, and the crazy thing is,
most of the women he goes after are my friends. Daisy
Black and I were friends from the time we were just little
girls, and now she's sleeping with my husband. He even
gave her a fancy piece of jewelry just like one he gave
me. I saw her wearing it at church and knew immediately what was going on. When I confronted him, he
laughed in my face and said that when I gave him access
to all my money instead of a monthly allowance, he'd
stop giving his mistress the same jewelry he gave me.
Until then I could expect to see lots of jewelry just like
mine in Tishomingo. If I divorce him, he'll get at least
half my property. What am I to do? If I toss him out,
everyone will think I was just a silly old woman who played into the hands of a con artist. If I don't, I'll be
miserable.

    I wish I'd never married him.
    I took a deep breath. It's a wonder the man lived another
thirty years. No wonder she'd grown bitter. I yawned twice and
turned off the light. A full moon filtered in through the lace
curtains, and I thought about Lonnie's spirit being locked up in
the room across the hall. If I heard chains rattling in Uncle
Lonnie's old room, I was hightailing it out of that house and
buying dynamite the next morning.
    I had just shut my eyes when I heard a sound like a freight
train headed right toward my pillow.
    How on earth the train had jumped the tracks in Ravia and
made it five miles to Tishomingo was a mystery, but clearly it
was on Broadway Street and coming on strong.
    I sat up so fast, it made me dizzy, and I tried to jump out of
bed, but my legs were tangled up in the sheets. My life flashed
before my eyes as I got ready for the impact.
    If I died, Drew would automatically get everything Aunt
Gert had left me. I'd rather suffer the wrath of Lucifer than
Aunt Gert in those circumstances. I hit the floor in a run and
made it to the door when I realized it wasn't a train but Gert's
alarm clock, which I'd set the night before so I wouldn't be
late to church.
    The cursed thing had two bells on the top and no volume
button. It took me several minutes to find the off button on
the back, and the silence did nothing to stop the ringing in my
ears. I grabbed the clock and slung it against the far wall, but
it kept ticking. I kicked it like a soccer ball against another
wall, and it still kept ticking.
    I picked it up and marched downstairs, out the back door,
and to the garage. The cursed thing was not going to live to ring
another day. The noise it made when it hit the concrete floor
was pitiful but still not enough to kill it. Until that moment, I
hadn't known that inanimate objects could be immortal.
    I searched for something to use to destroy it. I uncovered
ant poison in a bag with the top rolled down and secured with two clothespins. Would alarm clocks be susceptible to ant
poison? Probably not. I pushed around a dozen cans of paint
with labels dating them back at least fifty years. It would take
an act of God to get any of the lids off, so lead poisoning was
out too. There had to be a hammer somewhere. Finally I spied
a rusty metal toolbox pushed up under an old chrome kitchen
table. I bloodied a knuckle trying to open it, but finally a good,
solid cussing popped the lid, and there was a hammer, right on
top. I picked up the clock, set it on Uncle Lonnie's worktable,
and smashed it with the first swing.

    It