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disarray.
    Being a bit of a killjoy, it didn’t take much to set Tootsie off, as she was a holier-than-thou type of person with the strict moral code of a Sister of Mercy, only without the mercy.
    The disgrace of the shot-gun wedding between her brother, Phillip and the said Sally was like a thorn of crowns encircling Tootsie’s heart as she prepared to go righteously to her own marriage bed as a virgin. She had clutched her maidenhood to her bosom for twenty years like a prize of some description which she hoped Bernard would appreciate when he received this lovely gift that she would bestow upon him when the band of gold twinkled on her appropriate finger. And not a moment sooner.
    Sex was just a blur going on around her and of no interest to her at all except in the most negative sense of everybody doing it almost willy-nilly. Her father was always out courting, her older brother and sister were getting married, (although not ‘in trouble’, of course). These were merely facts that passed her by as ships in the night.
    Prior to their marriages, Arnold and Rosalie were distinctly unlikely to indulge in some form of sexual activity with their intendeds, Tootsie claimed, knowing human nature as thoroughly as she did. She felt it timely to deliver once more a few lessons on morals and behavior to the rest of the clan, should they deign to listen.
    And now Phillip was disgracing himself right on her very doorstep, so to speak, if you don’t mind. She sought to give the younger ones further instructions before it was too late, to remind them of the fires of Hell that awaited persons who indulged their baser desires without the magic ring on their hands.
    Tootsie quoted passages from the scriptures although she had only darkened the Perishing Plains Methodist Church on several occasions during her lifetime, for the odd wedding or funeral. But at heart, she was a practicing Puritan, having her own little brand of religion running around in her head.
    Old Jerry was more or less disgusted at the outcome of Phillip’s visits to Sally, too, not taking any of the blame unto himself for leaving the young couple waiting for hours on end several nights a week, cooped up in the Hillman Minx so that the whole household would not be kept awake.
    While Sally and Phillip were away honeymooning, Sally’s friend, Prue, at the Dry Cleaner’s asked when they would be returning.
    ‘No idea, nor do I care,’ grunted Old Jerry, his eyeballs crisscrossed with red veins like a road map. ‘That pair don’t need a bloody honeymoon anyway,’ he said in disgust laced with no small amount of malevolence. ‘She’s already in the pudding club so I could say they’ve had all the honeymoon they need.’
    He inhaled smoke from his cigarette and blew it at Prue’s face in an effort to intimidate her while he waited for his leering reference to her friend to sink in. 
    As he had finished his little speech concerning her friend, Prue thought he sounded lewd and disgusting to say the least. She turned on her heel and whipped off to collect his dark green blazer from the rear of the shop, plopping it down in front of him in its plastic bag.
    ‘Remember me to Sally,’ she said through tight lips as she gave him what she hoped was a withering look. ‘She’s my best friend, you know. She’s not the first person to get into trouble, nor will she be the last, Mr. von Hildebrand. You need to widen your outlook on life a little, don’t you think? ’
    Up close, she could see the pores in his nose and knew enough to realize they had been brought about by long bouts of drinking. Beneath his bushy gray eyebrows, his eyes snapped with derision for the little shop assistant in front of him and the young couple who had strayed from the narrow path into the lost world of his displeasure.
    The time was not too far away when Old Jerry would have to swallow that self-fulfilling prophecy in regard to his own life. The words would come back to bite Old Jerry on