Mrs. Shady

On the day I agree to help Susie and Shady clean out Mrs. Shady’s house I realize my life is truly at a low point. Susie Peel and Ricky Shady, known locally as Shady, is Mrs. Shady’s youngest child. They are the type of people who take over when they arrive, eat all your food and use your phone when you are not around. Six weeks later you get a phone bill that takes a year to pay, and they are nowhere to be found. Susie and Shady come around once every couple of years and no one says a word. It is this type of town, secrets and smirks and sin. I gather my thoughts and make a mental list of pros and cons. I find this approach useful when I am about to make a bad choice. Lately I had been making many of those.

Mrs. Shady died a week or so ago following a life of being old and cranky. Everyone knows she died from neglect, both self-imposed and at the hands of her family. She was unapproachable, and people around town say she liked it that way. Occasionally you would catch Mrs. Shady making her way down the main street. She shuffled behind her walker with a push and a nod, moving between stores.

Locals would see Mrs. Shady going about her business. Overly enthusiastic greetings ensued, most folks seemed to be forever 12 years old. Meetings of this kind were always met with a nod, partially debunking the myth that she was to be feared. Mrs. Shady was was generally always unfriendly. I heard that Mrs. Shady chatted to Wendy in the Post Office about a recent political event though no one really knew if this happened. Most of the town felt sorry for Mrs. Shady. She never left this town in all her 75 years, had 3 rotten kids with 2 long gone fathers. Mrs. Shady never felt appreciated and never showed it either.

Susie approaches me as I leave Pikes with a bottle of ginger ale in my bag and Saturday night on my mind. I have some rum at home and my night is shaping up . Lately I had been feeling restless and just the right amount of depressed not to care too much about my life. I was, as my former therapist said, in a “rough patch”. Susie asks if I have a minute. I have many minutes though I did wonder if this was the best use of them.

Ricky Shady is leaning against the wooden railing in the parking lot beside the ticket machine. No one ever pays. The instructions and rates are not visible due to some graffiti where the PAR in PARKING once was. Next to it was the word “town!” in green nail polish. Shady gives me a quick wave as I approach and Susie settles beside him.

Shady looks down and speaks to the ground. He says he is back to pay respect to his mother. He says he is heartbroken. Shady hits the railing with the palm of his hand a few times. It is both sad and comical. I grunt and say, “I am sorry to hear that”. Honestly, I don’t care about any of it, but experience knows that it is easier to pretend. Susie puts her arm around Shady and looks at me. She says they need help to go through some of the papers and items in the house for the estate. I have no idea if this is true, but it is also not my business. I did not see any other funds coming my way this week and I needed to buy my brother a birthday present. I could tell Wendy at the Post Office that I had been inside Mrs. Shady’s house. I knew I was being invited to legitimize what they were doing. Like our too short summer, they would be gone soon enough. I would say, if asked, that I did it out of courtesy for a town elder. This is a respectful response even if uttered from a disrespectful mouth. The pair say that they want to gather all the “personal” documents and take them to the lawyer to execute the will. Any further details were not asked for by me nor given by him. Shady says they have a funeral to arrange with family. This all seems highly unlikely, but I just don’t care.

The next day my hangover and I arrive just after 10 a.m. Shady is sitting with his legs spread looking at papers on the floor in the living room. Glancing around I see that it is not as cluttered as I imagined. I begin to feel somewhat hopeful that I may come out the other side of this with $100 and another tale to tell. Shady says that Susie is upstairs in the bedroom. He tells me to start in the kitchen, to clear out the cupboards and put it all in boxes. Shady points to the corner of the living room at some cardboard boxes. He adds, “If you find anything I need to see, let me know “.

The kitchen is small, dark and smells a little damp. I hear Susie coming down the stairs, they meet just in and out of ear shot. “Nothing Shady, I do not think your mother had anything worth shit”. She sounds annoyed and I am intrigued. “I mean, the fact that that lawyer said the old cow left none of you anything makes me so mad. No jewelry, no cash, nothing!”. Mrs. Shady was not well treated by her kids; she gave them life but in death she was giving them the middle finger. Clearly the story of executing the will was fictitious and whoever needed to know the contents of the will already had those details. Likely some bureaucrat was tied up in paperwork somewhere figuring it all out. This gave Susie and Shady time to get in and out. Shady says in a hushed voice “Yeah, you heard the lawyer, nothing for none of us. She had only costume jewelry and the house sale and small amount of savings in her account goes to the local hospital”. I can hear Susie’s strained voice say “It is not fair!”.

My head is pounding as I pick up anything I can grab and begin placing it in a box. Time is ticking and these two are restless as they have not found anything extraordinary. I just want out of there. Susie and Shady are growing frustrated. I continue packing boxes thinking about this latest information. I note that Mrs. Shady liked to snip recipes from magazines or hand write her own and put them in notebooks. There were many notebooks, lined and unlined of assorted sizes and shapes sitting on a bookshelf in the kitchen. It seemed unlikely that Mrs. Shady would have ever cooked these recipes, half the ingredients were not on the shelves at Pikes or even at the Grace’s Gourmet Gifts and Goodies.

Shady looms over me and says “Geez, what a bunch of crap” and he points to the shelf and the books. Shady tells me to stack them up in a few boxes and says he will put them out on the curb for when the recycling truck came.

I take the books and put them in the boxes which are mostly full. I turn back to the solid bookshelf and lean against the table edge. It was obviously handmade and I see engraved in the corner the initials TS. This shelf had been made by Timmy Shady I guessed, maybe in woodworking class in Grade 11. The oldest of Mrs. Shady’s kids, I had never met the guy but my brother sort of knew him. I look and notice the back panel of the shelf; the inside corner is coming off. A tack seems to be missing. I press to see if I can reinforce it. I touch something sitting against the back panel where the tack is missing. I push and it bounces back. I look around and then pry a little more off and peer into the gap. I can see bags of money, all paper, neatly folded and stacked against the back panel. They were deliberately hidden from view. Some folks did not trust banks and many a mattress in town is known to be overflowing. This is the real reason Susie and Shady arrived in town.

I am excited and scared. I look over to where I see Shady. After a few minutes I say, “hey man, I am pretty much done here”. He looks up and stares at me. Casually I ask if I can have a few things “like this shelf. I think your brother made it or something”. Shady crooks his head to one side and looks over at me. “You can take it; Timmy is a bastard, and I don’t want any of his shit. Consider it a tip on top of what I owe you for today”. Shady tells me to take what I want. I decide that there are a couple of things I could use. I want to get out of there, but I do not want to arouse suspicion. If inside the bookshelf is what I think it is then I know that I have found the lotion for my rough patch.

I casually but purposefully get the shelf to my car with little fanfare. I lift it up with effort and slide it roughly to the back of the car. I go in, grab a few things I had put aside to make it all seem exactly right. A lamp, a few sheets and a couple of cookbooks I will never use. One of them on top is a small, black notebook, newer than the rest. The next recipe book started by Mrs. Shady perhaps. Shady steps out to the driveway as I am getting in my car. “For you” and he hands me a well-used envelope of what might be $100. I smile. “Thanks!” I say and drive off.

Later that night I look over at the shelf, sitting in my garage. In private I had pried open the back and removed about 12 small transparent plastic bags full of cash. I counted every dollar and calculated it on a piece of scrap paper. $20, 000 and a few dollars randomly sitting in another bag. Possibly the next deposit in the bank of Mrs. Shady. I felt no guilt at knowing I would be keeping this money. I was quite sure the only person who knew it was there was now dead. Mrs. Shady lived a life of misery in a town she could not seem to leave. It felt right that I would not become Mrs. Shady, alone in this town. My future was going to be full of promise or booze depending on the choices I made; however I knew for sure none of it was going to be happening here.

I look at the first recipe in the small, black notebook. I feel connected to Mrs. Shady in an indescribable way. The notebook is symbolic of her and I, both inhabitants of a small town where dreams do not come true. Unknowingly Mrs. Shady has given me an opportunity, a chance to leave this town when clearly, she could not. As I look at the neat handwriting on the first page of the notebook, it dawns on me in a moment of clarity that agreeing to help clean out Mrs. Shady’s house was one of the smartest decisions I have ever made.