“You are losing control of your own home, pumpkin,” Aunt Jettie said.
“I know.”
“Well, are you going to offer us something to drink, or do you normally let guests die of thirst?” Grandma Ruthie demanded in a tone that had me jumping back to my feet. Man, she was good at that.
“Would you like some iced tea?” I asked.
“Sweet, please,” she said.
Jettie appeared at my elbow as I emptied the tea jug. To be honest, I only kept it around for Zeb and Jolene, and I had no idea when it had been brewed. “Lace it with Ex-Lax. It will do her some good.”
“Don’t start,” I warned her quietly. “Let’s just get everybody out of here as quickly as possible.”
“What was that, honey?” Mama asked as she puttered around my cabinets looking for dishes that had been washed up to her standards.
“Nothing,” I said, pouring the tea into a proper glass, with lemon. No laxative enhancements. I turned to find Jenny standing behind me, arms crossed, jaw set.
“Yes?”
Jenny threw up her hands. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, Mama said you had something to say to me,” Jenny ground out. “She said you were ready to apologize.”
I shot Mama a scathing look. “Well, that’s funny, because Mama said you were ready to apologize to me.”
“Why would I apologize to you?” Jenny demanded.
“I don’t know, for suing me? And by the way, I don’t think my lawyer would appreciate your being here right now.”
“Now, girls,” Mama sighed.
“I’m suing you to get what I deserve!” Jenny cried.
“Trust me, you don’t want what you deserve,” I shot back.
“This was obviously pointless.” Jenny groaned. “Enjoy your dinner, Mama.”
“No, Jenny, don’t go,” Mama wheedled as Jenny stomped out. “You just have to stay and talk this through.”
Grandma Ruthie must have cut Jenny off at the living room, because she and Wilbur were marching my sister back into the kitchen.
“You don’t have to go, Jenny. You have every right to be here,” Grandma told her. “You’re staying.”
“Yeah, I’m sure there are way more insulting things you can say to me in my own house.” I grabbed a bottle of Faux Type O out of the fridge because I knew it would bother Jenny that much more.
“It’s not your home,” Grandma Ruthie sniffed. “It belongs to all Earlies.”
“Well, that’s a handy piece of information. I’ll keep you guys in mind the next time I’m writing out the property-tax check. Or the check for the new boiler. Or the next time I have to make roof repairs.”
Jenny huffed, indignant. “If it’s such a burden—”
“It’s not a burden. I’m just tired of you and Grandma Ruthie talking as if I fell into this no-maintenance pile of clover. It takes time, hard work, and money to maintain this house. And frankly, I’m better prepared to do that than either of you.”
“Because you’re a vampire,” Grandma asked snidely.
“Yeah, because I’m a vampire. And you know, that’s the first time you’ve actually said the v-word. So thank you.”
“I don’t want to go through this business again,” Grandma sighed, waving my concerns away like buzzing insects.
“I don’t think we went though this business the first time,” I said. “You’ve mostly ignored me and any mention of my being a vampire.”
“You know, when I was a young woman, people stayed dead.”
“Sorry. This must be a real inconvenience for you.”
“Don’t you sass me!” she screeched.
Wilbur wagged his finger at me. “Young lady, you need to learn some respect for your elders.”
“Wilbur, I don’t think you want to get involved in this,” I told him.
“Let’s all calm down and talk about this like rational people,” Daddy said.
“Jane, Jenny, stop it. You’re upsetting your father,” Mama said, wringing one of my dishtowels into knots.
“Sherry, hush. Jenny and Jane have been due for this conversation for a long time. I think we need to let them have it.” Daddy tried to pull Mama and Grandma out the door, toward the living room, but Grandma wouldn’t budge.
“No, there are things that Jane needs to hear,” Grandma Ruthie insisted. “You all have coddled her for way too long and let her get away with saying or doing whatever she wants. It’s time she heard the truth about how this family feels about her letting herself get turned into a vampire. We’re ashamed, Jane. We’re embarrassed. What you’ve let yourself become reflects badly on us all.”
Daddy’s face flushed, and he actually raised his voice to yell, “Don’t you put words into my mouth, Ruthie—”
“And Jenny was only trying to show you what you’re facing when you go out among decent people.” Grandma sniffed. “Decent people don’t want a vampire living in their neighborhood. You’re just making things harder for yourself. I really think the best thing for you to do is to deed the house over to Jenny. She can sell her house and give you some of the proceeds to start fresh.”
“She’s finally lost her mind,” Jettie whispered. “Somebody slap her. Hell, slap her just to entertain me.”
“Now, Mama, you’re not making any sense!” Mama exclaimed. “You need to sit down and rest. You’re not yourself right now.”
“Start fresh where, exactly?” I asked Grandma Ruthie, the icy calm in my voice making the color drain from Mama’s cheeks.
“A big city, like New York or San Francisco, where you’d find more of your kind,” she said, patting my hand for about a millisecond before drawing back.
“In other words, a big city that’s thousands of miles away from you or anyone you know,” I said in the calmest tone I could manage.
“Well, yes.” She preened, pleased that I was seeing things her way at last. Wilbur smiled broadly, the slightest edge of his canines peeking out over his lips, as he wrapped an arm around my grandmother. He looked so damn smug that the following just sort of slipped out:
“You know what, I wasn’t going to do this. But since you brought up the whole undead-shame thing, I think you should know that your husband-to-be is not quite fully living himself.”
“Jane, what are you talking about?” Mama asked.
“She’s just being dramatic,” Grandma Ruthie huffed. “You know how she is.”
“Yes, I just make random stuff up, like, for instance, that I saw Wilbur walking out of a vampire bar at four A.M. And also I did a little research on Wilbur’s special macrobiotic health shakes that you so lovingly cart around for him, the key ingredient of which is Sus scrofa domestica. Common domestic pig. You’ve been hauling around pig’s blood in your precious Aigner bag.”
Wilbur didn’t respond. He merely stared bullet holes through me with those rheumy brown eyes. Grandma, however, turned four different shades of pissed off and seemed to be struck mute. It was too good to last.
“You may have gone too far there,” Aunt Jettie murmured.
“What a horrible thing to say! Why? Why would you say that?” Grandma Ruthie cried. “You’re always so sarcastic and hurtful when it comes to your step-grandfathers. So hurtful, so judgmental. You think I don’t hear your little comments, but I do. Can you tell me why you don’t think I deserve a little bit of happiness, a little comfort, in my last years?”
“You’ve been having your last years since I was in middle school!” I cried. “And I think you’ve had more than your share of happiness and comfort in your last years.”
“Why don’t you like Wilbur?” Grandma whined.
“It’s not that I don’t like Wilbur. I don’t know him well enough to dislike him. No offense, Wilbur. But there are things in his background that don’t add up, things I think you should know about before you launch yourself down the aisle again. For instance, do you know how many times he’s been married?”
“Just once, to his high-school sweetheart,” Grandma said, dismissing me.
“Six times,” I corrected her, and nodded to her engagement ring. “You might want to ask yourself how many women have worn that tasteful solitaire over the years.”
“You told me—you—you told me once!” Grandma Ruthie exclaimed, staring at Wilbur and her left hand in alternating horror.
“I don’t think you can afford to throw stones here, Ruthie,” Daddy said.
“John!” Mama cried.
“That’s all I’m saying!” Daddy said, throwing up his arms.
“Oh, Wilbur was married once, when he was still living. See, he actually kicked the bucket in 1993. But this bachelor ghoul didn’t let that keep him down.”
Mama tsked. “Now, Jane, I know you’re upset, but that’s a very unkind thing to say.”
“No, Jane, there’s no reason to be nasty,” Jenny said absently. She’d paled and was sitting at the kitchen table, running her fingers over the smoothed old wood. She looked as if she was going to blow some very un-Martha-like chunks on my hand-hooked rag rug.
“I mean, he’s an actual ghoul. He’s a half-turned vampire. He’s the Splenda of vampires. I don’t think he would hurt you just because of his ghoulness. I’m only saying something because of his history. I’m afraid that if you marry him, something’s going to happen to you. I just don’t want anything to happen to you,” I said, realizing that was true as the words left my mouth.
“Really?”
“We don’t always get along, Grandma, but I don’t wish you actual harm.”
Grandma sniffed. “Oh, Janie.”
The degree of emotional openness triggered some sort of channel into Grandma Ruthie’s psyche. I had brief flashes from her thoughts, like old hand-tinted photos. She was remembering me as a little girl, in a starched pink linen dress, ready to go to church. Handing her a card I’d made for her birthday. And then the images turned to the time I dropped wedding ring number three down her garbage disposal. The disastrous Teeny Tea when I tripped and spilled the contents of my teacup down the front of Mrs. Neel’s Sunday dress. All of the times I embarrassed her. All of the times I disappointed.
It was no wonder I’d let something like this happen to me, she was thinking. It was just the capstone to a life dedicated to embarrassing my family. If my mother had listened to her, Grandma Ruthie thought, and sent me to that reform school in New Mexico, I would have married some long-distance truck driver by now and disappeared.
“Well, everyone has problems, Jane,” Grandma said, giving Wilbur a long appraising look.
“But—but—ghoul!” I sputtered.
Wilbur snorted. “Oh, and you’re all so noble. Vampires walking around all more powerful than thou. As if you don’t have all the same weaknesses as us halfsies. Well, I got news for you, missy. Back in my day, vampires knew their place in the world, underground. I think it’s time I dished out some tough love.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
Wilbur cocked his fist like an Atlantic City pier boxer. “Time to put your money where you big, fanged mouth is, Jane.”
“I’m not going to hit you,” I told him. “Besides, don’t you have any old-fashioned rules about not hitting girls?”
Wilbur circled me, throwing practice swings. “The way I figure it, you stopped being a girl a while ago.”
“So did Grandma.” I threw my hands toward my grandmother. “Besides, you can’t fight me, old man. You don’t have vampire strength.”
“No, but I do have this,” he said, pulling the handle off his cane and revealing a hidden stake.
“Wilbur!” Grandma Ruthie cried. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
“Oh, come on, who hides a stake in their cane? What’s next? Are you going to make nunchakus out of your dentures?” I yelled.
“Wilbur, don’t you dare!” Grandma cried.
Wilbur flew at me, a surprisingly spry ball of geriatric fury. I managed to grab the hand with the stake and turn so I wouldn’t land on top of him as we fell to the floor. Both for the safety of his hip and my own mental well-being.
Unfortunately, Wilbur took advantage of this and rolled over me, his rank feta breath making my eyes water. I watched as yellowed, crooked fangs extended from Wilbur’s canines, a long string of drool stretching between his jaws. I pressed my head back against the tiled floor to try to put as much distance between our faces as possible. Faintly, I heard my dad yelling, my mother crying, and the dull thud of my sister passing out and sliding to the floor.
“This is my family now, Jane,” Wilbur hissed, his wiry peppercorn eyebrows furrowing as he tried to force the stake from my hand. “And in my family, we don’t tolerate sassy mouths.”
“Get off of me, you crazy … old … man!” I grunted. It took all of the strength in my legs to kick up and launch him into the refrigerator. Wilbur landed in a heap, his neck making a sickening crunch as his head skidded across the tile.
“Wilbur!” Grandma screamed. “Jane! What did you do?”
I hauled myself to my feet, cracking my own vertebrae back into place as my family stared in horror at Wilbur’s lifeless body. Their silent shock was palpable. Mama was sobbing quietly as she frantically tried to revive an unconscious Jenny. Daddy moved toward Wilbur, then stumbled back on his rear when Wilbur’s eyes sprang open.