Mark Dunn - American Decameron

“It might interest you to know that I have divorced and have not remarried,” he said. “My days of marital heartache are finally over. I get all the companionship I need from my younger brother, Chad, who moved in with me a couple of months ago.”

Badeaux liked my bid and we won the job. I estimated three weeks to get it finished. We met Chad for the first time on Thursday of that first week. He came down the stairs bearing glasses of lemonade. He was wearing purple eyeshadow, a bright red kimono (loosely sashed), and embroidered mules.

We knocked the job out in two weeks. I’m thinking of changing professions.

It was Dr. Key who first suggested the unthinkable: that the two fifty-something-year-old couples should drive to Oklahoma City together.

In the same car.

One sister in the front seat, one in the back seat.

Ladella and Fay in closer proximity than they’d been in twenty-some-odd years.

Ladella said that such a suggestion didn’t even deserve a response.

Still, this didn’t stop her from delivering one: “I don’t like Fay. I don’t look up to her. She’s nasty and she’s selfish and I vowed after that awful Christmas when she went out of her way to put me down in front of our whole family that I would never see her again.”

“Well, you’re going to have to see her in Oklahoma City, whether you like it nor not.”

“I will go to Oklahoma and wish my mother a happy eighty-fifth birthday, Cleron, but I intend to avoid even placing myself in the same room with Fay. And I will not , in this lifetime or any other, trap myself in the same car with her for twelve ungodly hours.”

Ladella and Fay’s mother lived with the sisters’ younger brother, Marcus, and his family near Tinker Air Force Base, where he served with the 2854th Air Base Group. Neither Ladella nor Fay had chosen to marry military men, though there was a tradition of national military service in their family going all the way back to the U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment, more familiarly known as the “Buffalo Soldiers.”

Ladella and Fay, both nurses, wed medical men instead — both physicians and instructors at Meharry College in Nashville, the largest historically black medical college in the country. Ladella’s husband Cleron had won national recognition for his research into the pathology of sickle cell anemia. Fay’s husband, Truman, achieved equal recognition for his work in developing treatment protocols for childhood asthma. Each woman felt that her husband was more successful than her sister’s spouse, though the husbands themselves remained noncompetitive colleagues. Friends, even.

The rivalry between these two feuding siblings extended itself into all areas of their lives. It was a tragedy that in one instance became an odd blessing when Fay learned that she couldn’t bear children. Ladella, who didn’t want children, was then released from having to bear and raise a “spite” child, though she had nevertheless given serious thought to going ahead and making the sacrifice for the sake of rubbing Fay’s nose in it. Ladella’s husband Cleron was forced to undergo a vasectomy to keep the peace.

The rivalry extended itself into all areas of their husbands’ lives as well.

While this non-starter conversation was taking place in a neighborhood north of the Cumberland River, which bisects the city of Nashville, a similar conversation was playing out in a neighborhood south of that river, near the college.

“Cleron came by my office this morning with what I think is an excellent suggestion,” said Dr. Truman Nicholas to his wife. “He thinks that the four of us should drive to Oklahoma City together. I agreed and volunteered the Matador station wagon.”

“Are you insane?”

“It makes perfect sense to me.”

“I’m going to schedule an appointment for you with Dr. Eastman.”

“Dr. Eastman teaches psychi — oh. You’re very funny, Fay. You’re a laugh a minute, baby.”

In spite of the fact that Dr. and Mrs. Nicholas and Dr. and Mrs. Key would both be headed to the very same place, taking a mostly straight-shot route from Nashville, Tennessee, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; in spite of the fact that they would be leaving at roughly the same time on the morning of Thursday, July 29, and arriving at roughly the same time early in the evening of that same day; in spite of the fact that both relatively law-abiding brothers-in-law intended to flout only minimally the double-nickel speed limit leveled against the American motorist by the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act signed by President Richard Nixon on January 2, 1974—in spite of each of these things which strongly argued for a carpooling solution to the problem of how best to transport two women equally fearful of plane travel due to a certain excessively turbulent flight they’d shared in their youth, the two couples set out in their own cars, and that was that.

But it really wasn’t. Because fate was to play several mischievous tricks on Fay Nicholas and her slightly younger sister Ladella Key on that trip. The first came at a West Memphis, Arkansas, truck stop both husbands had visited on earlier road trips. Both the Nicholases and the Keys had decided independently of each other to stop there so their vehicles’ drivers, in each case the husbands, identically possessive of their respective steering wheels, could quaff down a couple of hasty cups of coffee to keep the late morning drowsies at bay.

It was Truman who noticed his brother-and sister-in-law from across the crowded truck stop dining room and acknowledged them with a friendly wave. Truman and Fay were seated in a booth, Cleron and Ladella at a table across the room.

“Well, look who’s here!” marveled Dr. Key to his wife as he waved back. “Fancy seeing the Nicholases so far from home.”

“You aren’t the least bit funny,” muttered Ladella, hiding her face behind her menu.

At the booth across the room, Fay flinched. “I’m going to the bathroom. Knock on the door after they’ve left.”

At the table, Ladella said nearly the same thing.

The upshot was that both sisters entered the restroom at almost the same time, Fay having kept her eyes front and center upon her approach, and Ladella having kept her gaze largely focused upon the vinyl tile floor.

Left alone for the time being, the two husbands gravitated toward one another in the no man’s land between their respective dining stations.

“Funny how things turn out,” said Dr. Nicholas to Dr. Key. “How long do you think it will take them to realize they’ve wound up in the bathroom together?”

Cleron chuckled. “We should lock them in there and not let them out until they both promise to be good little girls.”

In the ladies’ restroom, Ladella had sequestered herself in a stall only a moment before her sister entered. They were the only two women in the room. It quickly became apparent to each that the other was sitting in the neighboring stall, Ladella recognizing Fay by her “Evening in Paris” perfume, which Fay had worn for years, and Fay recognizing her younger sister Ladella by her comfortable, slip-resistant Nurse Mates shoes.

Both sat for a long time in mortified silence. Eventually Ladella said, “All right. I’ll go first.”

“Yes, go,” answered her sister curtly.

At the Stuckey’s store outside of Conway, Arkansas, Ladella munched on a pimento cheese sandwich as she strolled through the aisles containing pecan rolls and boxed peanut brittle and pecan divinity. Ladella had pulled the sandwich from the ice chest, which sat on the funky Levi jeans — upholstered back seat of the couple’s 1973 Gremlin. Ladella’s husband, Cleron, like his counterpart, Truman, liked American Motors cars for their value and a little for their placement a few rungs below the top three automaking giants. Being men of color who had overcome the powerful forces of prejudice and orthodoxy in the medical field, both Cleron and Truman respected companies that tried to break down barriers. The Gremlin, being a funny little car with a sawed-off rear end and blue-jean upholstery, was especially iconoclastic.