Read Online Small Blessings by Martha Woodroof - Free Book Online Page B

patted her arm. “We all are.”
    There was a slight pause. Rose looked down at her jar of flowers. “How did it happen? What did poor Marjory do?”
    Russell shook his head. “‘Poor Marjory’ had a car wreck yesterday. She ran off the side of Route 29 in that section south of Charlottesville where the drop-off is so very steep. She was dead by the time they got to her.”
    An image of a squashed car with that lovely woman trapped inside, people milling around it, yelling, flashed before Rose. I’ll never know what Marjory saw in me, she thought. “How brutal,” she said.
    â€œYes. It is. Particularly since Marjory was such a flimsy creature.”
    Flimsy? What an unkind word to use about someone who’s just been killed. But accurate, Rose suspected, when it came to Marjory Putnam.
    â€œDo you want to come in?” Russell asked. “Or would you rather sneak away into the night and escape? It’s not very festive in there. Of course, there’s a lot of truly awful food—casseroles and Jell-O and such—and you must be hungry if you’ve been moving all day and were expecting dinner.”
    Someone walked heavily across the floor of the foyer and Iris Benson appeared in the doorway, swathed in a lime green, vaguely African-looking ensemble and carrying an almost empty highball glass. Was it possible her hair was even redder than yesterday? “Rosie!” she bellowed, striding out onto the front stoop, pushing Russell out of the way and attempting to fling her arms around Rose before she was stopped by the thorny bouquet in the canning jar. “My, my,” Iris said, swaying slightly. “It’s our newest college star come with flowers to honor the passing of the little woman. How sweet.”
    Iris was clearly very drunk, so drunk that standing was problematic. She grasped Russell’s arm. “Have you ever noticed that we are both named for flowers?”
    â€œYes,” Russell said. “I have.”
    Iris turned to face Russell’s chest. “Isn’t that sweet? Isn’t she sweet?”
    Russell let go of Rose and put his arm around Iris to steady her. “Yes, it is, and yes, she is. Now perhaps we’d better get you back inside, Iris, and see if someone will give you a ride home.”
    But Iris was not to be corralled. She lunged for Rose and caught her by her free arm. “Not without Rosie!” she said, her voice soaring. “I won’t go back in unless Rosie comes, too!”
    Russell shrugged and looked across Iris’s fiery head toward Rose. “Do you mind? It would save a scene. Iris is quite capable of a scene when she hasn’t been drinking. When she has, the sky’s the limit.”
    Iris listed back toward Rose. “You got that right!” she said cheerfully. “The sky’s the limit!”
    â€œOf course not,” Rose said.
    Together, each grasping one of Iris’s arms, they hauled her into the house and shut the front door. The foyer was dim and cluttered. Piles of newspapers, books, and unread junk mail littered a wooden bench. More books lined the walls. Faint sounds of conversation and Bach drifted out from the back of the house, sounding like a gathering of polite, musical ghosts.
    Rose and Russell lowered Iris onto the bench, wedging her in between a stack of paperbacks and a pile of back issues of the Sunday Book Review . Iris waved her highball glass at Russell. “I need another drink.”
    Russell crossed his arms. “No, you don’t, Iris. You’re already as drunk as a frat boy on Saturday night. And this is not an occasion where even you want to lose control.”
    Iris’s face grew ugly. “Get me a drink, you goddamn pompous hack!” she bellowed.
    Russell turned bright red, took the glass without a word, and disappeared into the hall, slamming the foyer door shut behind him.
    Iris grinned up at Rose. “I’d have