Greg Lilly: Fingering The Family Jewels

"I'm so sorry I didn't visit sooner…" the words trailed into the sorrow I felt at Walterene's absence.

"No, no, you kept up with us more than nephews and nieces who live a mile away." She sat down in one of the two wingback chairs facing the television. A talk show was on, and she turned the sound down.

I hesitated before sitting in the other wingback, Walterene's regular seat. Her warm, calm essence settled around me as if she still occupied the chair. "How are you doing?" I asked.

"Okay," Ruby said automatically, then sat quiet for a moment. "I miss her. Hard to realize she's gone. We've been together all our lives. Now, an old woman like me has to start a new life alone." Tears streamed down her powdered cheek. "I don't think I ever cried as much as I have in the past couple of days. I'm sorry."

I knelt down in front of her and held her cold hand. "Don't apologize."

"You're such a good boy." She smiled and rubbed my head. "The baby of the family."

"Twenty-five isn't much of a baby."

"Derek, you will always be mine and Walt's baby. We never had babies of our own, but when you came into the world, we knew you were special. Gladys was so busy with Valerie and Tim…" She drifted off into her thoughts with a faint smile.

"I'll get my bags out of the car." I stood to leave.

"Oh, honey, someone should have met you at the airport. I didn't think to call Valerie or Tim."

"Tim? Do you see him much?"

"Your brother's busy with a new housing development up around the university area. I never seen houses thrown together so quick and sold at such a price." She shook her head.

I grabbed my bags, and she led me back to the guest bedroom. The house only had two bedrooms; the third had been turned into a reading room with their books. No one had ever made any remarks about Ruby and Walterene sleeping in the same room, the same bed. I hadn't thought much about it, that was just the way things had always been.

The guest room looked out onto the back yard. Walterene's love of plants showed in the clumps of tiger lilies, violet blue irises, climbing thorny roses, and shiny-leafed camellias lining the fence. She had a small goldfish pond near the cellar door; I noticed the small stone waterfall had been turned off. Two wrought iron chairs sat next to a table facing the pond. Everything about the house had shadows of two people. Ruby would have a hard time being here alone.

She stood in the doorway watching me.

"The yard looks great. I noticed the tulips at the corner."

"They're on their last legs. We usually start ripping them up about this time. Walterene wanted to put scarlet sage in that bed this summer." She looked down, then back at me. "Maybe you can help me with that next week."

"I'm not sure how long I'll be here, but I'll help all I can."

"Ruby," a voice called from the back door.

We went to the den and found Valerie carrying a casserole dish into the kitchen. "Derek? What are you doing here?" Her green eyes were wide with the question. "Oh, it's so good to see you. I didn't think…" She set the casserole on the stove. "I'm glad you came home." She hugged me hard. At forty-one, she still looked like the teenage big sister I remembered from childhood. She wore little make-up and kept her hair shoulder length; wearing a gray business suit, she looked the part of an accountant. She hadn't gone to Carolina, Duke, or Wake Forest like our brother or cousins, but instead went to the community college and worked her way up in a firm outside the Harris empire. She was a beautiful woman in her own way, independent, smart, and kind. "Aunt Ruby, Aunt Edwina sent this chicken casserole. I picked it up on my way home from work." She turned her attention back to me. "Derek, why didn't you tell me you were coming in?"

"Oh," Ruby interrupted, "that was my fault. I meant to call you after I talked to him this morning, but time got away from me."

"Don't worry about it." My sister hugged me again. The strength of her body, her arms, impressed me; she still possessed her high school cheerleader body. "I'm just glad he's here. Do you want to stay with me?"

"No thanks. Ruby and I will be fine here." I wanted to keep her company, especially with the funeral being the next day. "Hey, isn't there a visitation tonight at the funeral home?"

"Last night," Valerie corrected. "The Builders' Ball is tonight, so we had the visitation last night."

"You're kidding?"

"No, the family didn't want to make people choose between the two." Val looked out the window and wiped her nose with a paper towel.

Walterene's visitation, treated as just another item for the social calendar? No need to ask, the scheduling reeked of Gladys the Bitch. Or was my assumption too hard on our mother? Valerie and Tim didn't clash with her the way I did; of course they hadn't dropped the "I'm gay" bomb on her.

Ruby peeked under the foil of the casserole, stuck her finger in, and tasted. "Not bad. Edwina was never much of a cook, but this is one of her better dishes." The comforting aroma of chicken casserole filled the kitchen. "Valerie, stay for dinner. Neighbors and family have stuffed our refrigerator with food. We, I will never be able to eat it all before it goes bad."

Val looked at me, then to Ruby, and back to me. "I'd love to. I have too many Friday nights alone in front of the television. I'll go home and change. Back in twenty minutes." She hugged me again and kissed my forehead. "Derek, thanks for coming in."

"Sure, Sis." My eyes stung a little.

"REMEMBER WHEN TIM took you to that strip club out on Wilkinson Boulevard?" Valerie laughed and took another sip of her wine. We ate in the dining room with the lights dimmed and candles lit. "I was never so mad at him. You were way too young."

"I was fourteen," I explained to Ruby, "and Tim had asked me if I had ever seen a naked woman. Of course I hadn't, so he took me to this nasty little bar on Wilkinson."

Ruby frowned over her empty dinner plate.

"He had no right to do that," Valerie huffed, but then smiled again.

"The bouncer knew Tim," I looked at Val and snickered because, in his early twenties, our brother had stuffed most of his weekly salary into the G-strings of strippers, "and he made Tim take me into a private room so the other customers wouldn't see me."

"That Tim." Ruby shook her head. This seemed to be a habit with her when she thought about him.

"Anyway, girl after girl came into the room and danced. They teased me, rubbed their tits against my crotch, tried to take my pants off, and I fought them the entire time. I thought they were disgusting." I lowered my voice as if someone else might hear.

"Apparently, in the private rooms, the girls can take off everything. One girl, a blonde, or at least at first glance a blonde, danced with her little G-string on until she noticed I had little interest in her talents. She hooked one leg over my shoulder and started to thrust her crotch in my face. God, the smell! That salmon and rose scent still comes back. She ripped off the G-string and there I was face to face with the ugliest thing I'd ever seen."

"Eeeww," Val cried out.

I leaned into the table. "It looked like a pulsating open wound with a beard of black hair. I almost threw up."

"Stop it!" Val yelled.

Ruby giggled.

"Well," Val defended, "a penis isn't the prettiest thing in the world."

"Valerie!" Ruby's face turned as crimson as her hair.

"Well, it's not," she laughed.

"I never met one I didn't like," I countered. "Besides-"

"Okay, that's enough, children." Ruby halted the conversation, although she still snickered. "Oh, it's good to laugh again."

I poured her another glass of wine, then got up to take away the dirty dishes.

"Quit that," Ruby ordered. "I can clear the table."