In-laws. You can’t live with ’em; unlike Eleanor’s fifth husband, Jimmy, you can’t bury them in the backyard. In this seventh installment in the continuing saga of Eleanor and her suspiciously departed husbands, Sara Wright Covington introduces us to the wayward widow’s long-suffering daughter-in-law, Hope. If you haven’t had the pleasure of making Eleanor’s slightly daff y, thoroughly diabolical acquaintance, or if you’ve missed a few chapters along the way, we invite you to catch up anytime by visiting the Read Online link at noalastudios.com/shoals. The series begins in our July/August 2015 issue.
a Favor for Eleanor Chapter Seven: Hope by sara wright covington » illustrations by rowan finnegan
God this women is intolerable. If she’d just die already, or at least have the decency to get herself formally committed to the full-out 400 unit where they didn’t allow visitors, she could spend the remainder of her miserable days sedated and strapped to a gurney. At least then she would be out of my hair. Mrs. Eleanor McIntosh Darby Foster Dauterive Smithfield Harrison lay motionless in sandpapery sheets at Bryce Mental Hospital in Tuscaloosa, while her daughter-in-law, Hope, sat slumped and sulking in the corner. Hope’s husband William (Billy) Hagen Foster IV stood across the room at his mother’s bedside, cautiously regarding the half-comatose woman in the bed as if expecting her to suddenly spring up at any moment and demand to know who was responsible for the far too over easy eggs sitting on the untouched plastic tray to her right. Even in her sleeping state, Eleanor commanded her son’s entire person, and he stood perched, ready to ring the nurse’s button as soon as his mother’s eyes so much as fluttered open. Hope pulled oversized sunglasses from atop her head down over her eyes to shield the sunlight streaming from the window and pretended to doze, all the while taking in the scene before her with half-hooded eyes. She’d taken a Xanax an hour earlier and pounded a mini bottle of Chardonnay right before they arrived in the car. While Billy had been pumping gas, she had carefully smuggled the little bottle out of her purse and poured it into her emptied paper coffee cup left from their breakfast at Panera Bread, saved specifically for that purpose. Billy didn’t approve of her self-medicating, but medicated was the only way she could tolerate his mother, comatose or not. And Hope was now just the right amount of buzzed to deal with the old bat.
july/august | noalastudios.com |