by Молли Харпер
“I don’t do the work that I used to do,” he mumbled, rubbing at his reddened throat.
“Because of the drinking? Well, consider me your own personal recovery program. The steps are, you build my friends’ house—on time and in good condition—and then you get to keep all of your limbs. Sound fair?”
Buster nodded, mute with fear. He sobered considerably as we went room to room in the shell of the house, discussing what would have to be redone, how long each phase should take. By the time I was ready to leave, Buster seemed almost excited about coming back the next day. Or, at least, excited to keep all of his limbs.
“Bright and early tomorrow, Buster,” I told him. “And if Zeb or Jolene asks, we didn’t have this conversation.”
Buster’s smile was stiff, as if he couldn’t remember how to be a “people pleaser” and was working to recall the skill. “What conversation?”
Eventually, Mama found the shop. The bad news was that Mama found the shop in time for the first meeting of the reconstituted chapter of the Friends and Family of the Undead.
The good news was that seeing that many vampires gathered in one place freaked Emery out so badly that he found an excuse for leaving just a few minutes after he walked in. Maybe we could hold the monthly FFOTU meetings every week …
The FFOTU used to meet at the Traveler’s Bowl, a restaurant featuring healthy “global” cuisine that spiraled into bankruptcy, not just because the owners tried to sell soy cheese to Hollow residents but because the police seized all of the “glass sculptures” they sold at the restaurant gift shop. It took Police Chief Don Parker several visits to recognize that they were bongs and not very complicated ashtrays. Unfortunately, it only took his son, DJ, one visit. Once you sell a bong to the offspring of a small-town police chief, it’s a pretty safe bet that anyone who so much as pauses in your parking lot will be ticketed. With their handful of customers scared off, the owners had no choice but to close.
The support group consisted of twenty or so people of all races, ages, and socioeconomic classes, all of whom were bonded through the shock of knowing that (1) a loved one had died, and (2) that loved one still walked around and sometimes had violent episodes. Plus, there’s the embarrassment and stigma that can come with being associated with the undead in a small rural town like the Hollow, where vampires still occasionally suffered household “accidents” involving pointy wooden objects. It helped new vampires and their families to be able to meet in a safe location just to talk or vent or learn that your newly turned son is not avoiding Sunday dinners because he doesn’t love you anymore but because you serve said dinners with the good silver and he can no longer digest solid food.
The group operated under guidelines that were a mishmash of Alcoholics Anonymous and PFLAG. We did not reveal our last names. Personal information revealed during the meetings was confidential. We were not required to disclose whether we were vampire or human. But after a few meetings, you figured out who was eating the snacks and who wasn’t. The common ground was that each member hurt. Each offered understanding and sympathy to the other members.
Each tried to keep a sense of humor.
Zeb and Jolene actually met at an FFOTU meeting. Jolene was still recovering from the dusting of her recently turned childhood friend, and Zeb was still weirded out by my new dietary habits.
Zeb brought me into the group a few months later.
The meeting started out well enough. I’d set up complimentary drinks and snacks around the
“lounging area” as a sort of welcome gesture. I’d even invited Cindy in the hopes of giving her some resources to deal with her awkward family situation. I gave her the usual latte, and she sat in the back, not attempting to socialize with anyone.
All of the regulars I’d come to know were there, including DeeDee, the de facto leader of the group. DeeDee’s banker husband was voluntarily turned in the midst of a midlife crisis. Instead of buying a sports car or having an affair, he decided he wanted to stop the aging process altogether. She’d felt pressured to be turned herself, aging a little every day while her husband remained forever forty-seven. In the end, she had elected to remain human, and her husband left her. She was now dating a very nice accountant who fainted at the sight of blood. But she stuck around to help other people through the transition and welcomed new members to the group. And the newest addition to the group was my mother.
Stupid grocery-store community board.
I turned my back for two seconds, and there was Mama, carrying a plate of brownies and wearing a black T-shirt with the vampire rights logo on it. And a name tag that she’d brought from home that said, “Hello, my name is: Jane’s Mama!”
Was it too late to change my name?
I turned on my heel, hoping to escape the room, possibly get as far as Borneo, before I heard, “Janie! Baby! It’s Mama!”
Cringing, I turned back to where Mama had DeeDee in an arm-lock and was dragging her over to me.
“Now, DeeDee, this is my daughter, Jane. She was turned last year! This is her shop, isn’t it wonderful? I’m just so proud!” Mama cooed. “Jane, this is DeeDee.”
“I know, Mama, I’ve known her for a while,” I whispered. “Miss DeeDee, would you please excuse us for a second?”
DeeDee winked at me and made her way to the bar to get a free latte.
“I love your little shop, honey!” Mama cooed, walking me around the lounge area like a show dog and mouthing a breathless hello to every person we bumped into. “I just love what you’ve done with it. The colors and the chairs and all the pretty little knickknacks. Did Andrea pick all this out?”
“Nope, that would be me. I did this,” I informed her.
“Well, it’s lovely, but I probably would have gone a little lighter on the wall color. You know, Jenny says if you paint a room too dark, it’s like losing ten percent of your square footage. You might have called her and asked her advice.”
“Well, since my lawyer has advised me against speaking to her without a transcriptionist present, that might have been difficult,” I said, smiling sweetly.
“Oh, now you’re just being silly.” She sighed and then saw Jolene and Zeb come through the front door. Zeb saw Mama and turned on his heel, trying to usher Jolene out for a quick escape.
But there was no escape. This was the Thunderdome of parental intrusion. “Zeb! Oh, honey, come see what Jane’s done with the shop!”
“Mama, he’s seen it,” I told her. “He’s been here before. In fact, he helped me paint. I appreciate that you’re being so supportive, but could you be a little less, I don’t know, forceful about it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Mama sniffed and then launched herself at an unsuspecting Jolene for non-consensual belly rubbing.
Andrea smirked at me. I glared at her. “Am I naked? Normally, when I have this dream, I look down and I’m naked.”
“I know, it’s terrible. I’m sorry,” Andrea said, barely able to control the twitching corners of her mouth.
“You don’t look sorry.”
“I’m terribly, terribly sorry,” Andrea promised, a snicker escaping when she turned her back to fetch a bottle of hazelnut syrup.
“You’re just humoring me because I sign the checks, aren’t you? I would say I don’t need your pity, but obviously, that’s not true.”
Zeb joined me at the bar, having abandoned his wife to Mama’s pregnancy interrogation, the coward. Zeb gave me a sympathetic shoulder squeeze. “I meant to tell you. DeeDee put ads on bulletin boards in the supermarkets, Walmart, the events calendar in the newspaper …”
I groaned. “I knew this community-involvement thing was going to come back and bite me on the ass. You know what we could do instead? An awareness crusade for vampires who use sunless tanner. Nothing’s as obvious as an orange vampire.”
“It’s good for business,” Andrea told me. She shot a fierce look at Zeb as she hefted a king-size tray of fruit, veggies, and cheese cubes. “I’m going to go rescue
your wife with a plate of nutritious, baby-building snacks, you weenie. Jane’s mama doesn’t scare me.” She cleared her throat. “Much.”
Zeb chuckled, watching as Andrea managed to insinuate herself between Mama and a grateful Jolene.
“So, how’s the house coming along?” I asked.
Zeb’s face flushed with an incredulous smile. “Great. Buster actually started putting up interior framing this week. He’s got a crew coming out to do the roof soon, and he said we might be ready for Sheetrock before next month. And when Jolene’s dad came out yesterday to give Buster the stink-eye, Buster just kept his head down and worked his butt off. Even Lonnie had to admit that Buster was doing good, solid work. We might actually be moved in by Christmas. Can you believe it?”
“Wow,” I intoned, trying to sound appropriately impressed. I kept my eyes wide and innocent.
“You must have really put your foot down with Buster.”
Zeb puffed his chest out a bit and tried to sound nonchalant. “If I’ve learned anything from my scary in-laws, it’s all about tone of voice.”
As everybody circled to start the meeting, I scrambled to sit next to Mama, so I could control … um, introduce her. Mama had apparently taken the time to memorize the Pledge, a collection of five truths the group repeated before every meeting, and was louder than the rest of us combined as we promised: “I will remember that a newly turned vampire is the same person with new needs.
“I will remember that a loved one’s being turned into a vampire does not reflect on me.
“I will remember to offer my vampire loved ones acceptance and love, while maintaining healthy boundaries.
“I will remember that vampirism is not contagious unless blood is exchanged.
“I will remember that I am not alone.”
Before DeeDee could stand up to introduce herself, Mama bounced to her feet. “Well, hello, everybody! I’m Jane’s mama, Sherry. I’m just so happy to be here!”
“Hi, Sherry,” the group chorused, despite my attempts to pull Mama back into her seat by her sleeve.
“I’ll admit that I went through a bit of bad patch after Jane came out, but I’ve come to accept that I cannot change what Jane is,” Mama said, her voice quavering. “And I need to do whatever I can to make her feel accepted and loved by her family. Even if she tries to avoid spending time with us. And isn’t speaking to some of us.”
“That’s my Mama,” I conceded.
“Well, Sherry, it’s refreshing to see a parent so vocally supportive of her child after they come out,” said DeeDee.
I rolled my eyes. Can we talk about the fact that her “bad patch” involved force-feeding me pot pie and trying to give me a tan? I sulked through DeeDee’s discussion of the pain and confusion of new vampires adjusting to a human world and through her preplanned talk on subconscious conversational slips that can be highly insulting toward vampires. I couldn’t help but think this last topic was directed toward Mama, and I was all for it. But she was so caught up taking notes and beaming beatifically at DeeDee that I’m pretty sure the clue sailed right over her head.
The group broke up to socialize, which was usually my favorite part of the meetings, but this time, I was dodging my mother with a sudden, extremely urgent search for coffee filters in the stockroom.
“Jane?”
“Gah!” I cried, jumping and whacking my head on a shelving unit.
“Are you all right, hon?” Mama asked, cooing over my new contusion.
“No, no, I’m not,” I grumbled, rubbing my forehead.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to catch you in private,” she whispered. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing, you know, since Gabriel broke up with you. Your daddy and Jolene said you took it awfully hard.”
“Wha—G-gabriel did not break up with me. I broke up with him. And what is Jolene doing talking to you about that? If she thinks she can deflect belly questions by baiting you with information about me, well, that’s just evil and brilliant, actually. I don’t think I give her enough credit …”
“Oh, you’re so silly. Now, I’d like to talk to you about your grandma’s birthday,” Mama said breezily. “Your grandma Ruthie wants to make sure you apologize to Wilbur so we can all enjoy dinner without any unpleasantness.”
“Hmm. Unpleasantness like bringing up the fact that Wilbur tried to stake me with his cane the last time I saw him?” I asked. Mama made a “disappointed” face.
Sometimes newly turned vampires are only given enough blood to enable them to wake from the death sleep. They have none of the vampiric strength or speed … or charm. They’re called ghouls. I only know this because my grandma Ruthie almost married one of them earlier this year. Despite the fact that Wilbur looked like Skeletor and may have bumped off several of his wives to sustain his endless after-death retirement, he and Grandma Ruthie decided to keep dating.Afterhe tried to dust me with his cane.
It turned out that Wilbur and Ruthie were a perfect match. After all, Grandma Ruthie’s four husbands and previous fiancé all died under equally suspicious circumstances, involving a speeding milk truck, a brown recluse bite on the inside of the throat, a previously unknown allergy to Grandma Ruthie’s famous strawberry-rhubarb pie, a golf-related lightning strike, and a miscalculation of Viagra dosage. Wilbur and Grandma Ruthie seemed very happy together, though I guess when you never know when your lover might facilitate your release from your mortal coil, it’s important to keep up the appearance of happiness. Frankly, I was glad they were still so lovey-dovey. For me to win the “dead pool” with Zeb and Dick, either Wilbur or Grandma would have to meet a grisly end in a botulism outbreak next spring.
“No. Absolutely not. You all can just celebrate without me,” I told Mama. “I do not apologize to people who try to kill me. It sets a bad precedent.”
“Oh, but your grandma Ruthie will be so hurt if you don’t show up!” Mama protested.
“No, she won’t,” I told Mama. “You know she won’t. She’ll be much happier, and things will be a lot less tense without me there. In fact, that will be my gift to her this year, not showing up.”
Mama looked resigned but unhappy, which was generally how we both felt when negotiating the logistics of family gatherings. “Sometimes I just don’t understand the things that come out of your mouth, baby,” Mama said, pushing my hair back from my face.
“I hear that a lot,” I told her.
Mama chuckled, rolling her eyes. “Now that we have that out of the way, how are you doing, really?”
“Other than spending an unhealthy amount of time faking answers to magazine quizzes so I get better scores, I’m fine,” I told her. “The shop is doing well. I have sweet, patient friends with a high tolerance for whining. Zeb and Jolene keep me involved in their never-ending baby-name debate. Dick is the older brother I never really asked for. Andrea wants to start a belly-dancing class next month. My life is very full.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Mama asked.
“No, I do not.”
“Honey.” She sighed, tipping my chin toward her. “I know it hurts right now, but whatever Gabriel did, I’m sure he’s sorry. And if he’s not, maybe Adam Morrow is still interested …”
“No. Mama, I love you. I love that you’re being supportive and that you want to put me back up in the saddle. But trust me, trust me, you don’t want me dating Gabriel … or Adam. I’m better off alone right now.” I kissed her cheek. “But I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said, squeezing my cheeks. She let out a cleansing breath and returned to her normal cheerful tone. “Maybe it would help if I invited Adam’s mama to the meetings. You know, maybe if she learned to be a little more open-minded like me, it would make it easier on the two of you if you just happen to start dating.”
I thought about making a smart comment, but for the sake of this newfound bridge of motherdaughter understanding, instead I said, “Maybe we shouldn’t make more connections with the guy who has a fuzzy perception of pe
rsonal boundaries?”
“Oh, you’re so strange sometimes,” Mama said in that tone of voice that always left me unsure of whether she was going to pay attention to what I said.
The gears in my brain whirred, searching for any activity that would keep Mama occupied and safely away from Adam Morrow’s mama. When all the machinery clicked into place, a wide smile spread over my face.
“Mama,” I said, putting my arm around her. “How would you like to throw Jolene a baby shower?”
I received a “reminder” e-mail from Head Courtney that I had yet to submit a progress report on my collections for the prize committee. She was giving me three demerits and told me to meet with Jenny to “better implement a synergistically creative approach” to my begging freebies before a progress meeting with the Courtneys. I was going to find the person who sold Head Courtney her copy of Who Moved My Cheese?and smack them.
With an obvious expression of disdain, Jenny strolled through the shop’s front door with her hand sanitizer at the ready. She seemed surprised by what she saw. She even smiled, just a tiny bit, at the fanciful little pottery dragon grinning at her from a table by the front window.
“How can I help you?” I asked, smiling pleasantly to the point that it was hurting my face. “We just got a shipment of self-help books. Can I interest you in a copy of How to Stop Being a Raging Bitch in 30 Days?”
Jenny’s lip curled back, and I could practically see the acid response forming, but she bit her lip and exhaled loudly through her nose. “This is a nice place,” she conceded. “Good light, nicely arranged. Probably not a color scheme I would have chosen.”
“I’m sure.” My teeth were grinding as I led her to the counter. I didn’t offer her coffee or a scone, despite the fact that they were arranged temptingly under a nearby glass dome. This was not a social visit. This was business. OK, fine, fine, Jenny had been making me feel unwelcome for years, and now I was having a tiny bit of revenge.
