by Luanne Jones
“You know, Mama, when Norrie was pregnant and she and I were broken up and I was the world’s biggest jackass?”
“I have a vague recollection of the time,” she deadpanned. “What about it?”
“Only one person was good enough to look me in the face and tell me the truth.”
“Oh?”
“Rita didn’t pull any punches then. She hasn’t let me charm or bellyache my way out of anything since I’ve been back.”
“Good for her.”
“She’s a good person, Mama. And having spent time with her, I’ve concluded I want to be a better person, too.”
“Will I be needing my checkbook to make a contribution at the end of this testimonial?”
“To hell with your checkbook, Mama. But we are going to take a page out of Rita’s book today. We are going to cut through the bullshit and talk to each other in plain, unvarnished terms.”
“In this house ‘bullshit’ is a plain and unvarnished term, son.”
He acknowledged his mother’s peeve with his language by holding up his hands in surrender. “You’re right, of course. Good manners before bad temper, isn’t it?”
“I may make a gentleman out of you yet.”
“Don’t get your hopes up because here comes the rest of what I have to say about your shams, schemes, and shenanigans.”
“I’m listening.”
“I hope you are. Because just once I want you to see that what you deem high-minded, aboveboard ambition often comes across to me like a low-down, underhanded imposition.”
“That skirts mighty close to an accusation, William.”
“Only skirts close to one?” He put his hands on both knees. “Then maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough.”
“If you have something to say, don’t hold back on my account.”
“All right. For one petite, cultured, affluent, old-blood Southern gentlewoman, you play awfully dirty, Mama.”
“I’m not playing.” She folded her hands under her chin and her eyes grew darkly somber. “Not where my children are concerned.”
“Don’t lie to me, old woman. You’re playing—playing hardball. You always have. And Jillie on the receiving end of it more than her fair share if we’re going to get it all out in the open.”
She blinked as though startled and trying to find her bearings.
He wondered, had he gone too far? Damn but he wished Rita were here to help him do this right. He wished Rita were here, period.
Finally, his mother dabbed her lace-edged napkin to the corner of her mouth, then let her shoulders fall, slightly. “You are right, son.”
“I am?” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “I know I’m right, but you’re agreeing with me? Admitting it?”
“Yes. Lord knows how I’ve struggled to bite my tongue about your sister’s actions. However, I’m afraid if I did that every time she acted up?”—she stuck her tongue out and pinched the tip of it between her thumb and forefinger—“I’d thald lide dhis.”
“Being adorable won’t get you out of it this time.”
“Fine then.” She put her hands quite precisely in her lap. “Then I reckon the truth will have to do.”
“About time.”
“I did my best with both of you children. But my best never seemed to work for your sister.”
“She is hard to please.”
“No. No, that’s not it. I see how Rita is with her, and I know she is reachable, but maybe not by me. Maybe not in a way that I’m comfortable with.”
“Doesn’t help you’re both stubborn as mules,” he muttered.
“Did you bray something, my dear?”
He shook his head, grinning.
“Knowing your sister and I had this gap neither of us could seem to bridge, I found new ways to try to get through to Jillian. Why do you think I have such a broad range of people in my social circles and an unrelenting drive to keep up all those connections?”
“Because you like the attention and the status it brings you.”
“Well, there is that.” Her fingers flitted lovingly over each piece of her cherished silver service. “But I also do it for your sister.”
“For Jillie?” He started to reach for his cup again, just to keep his hands occupied. “How does that help her?”
“It helps because I can’t seem to be consistently emotionally supportive of her.”
His hand froze halfway to the cup handle.
“I said it.” She nodded as if lending a steely-eyed reassurance that he had not heard wrong. “I know you and half the town have thought it. Now I’ve said it, and we all know it’s true. I’m not the kind of mother your sister has most needed. That’s why I try to keep people in our lives who can set a better example.”
“Example?” He dropped his hand to his leg again. “Like Pernel?”
“The man who spit in the eye of local convention and the entire Hellon social structure? You can damn well bet I like his influence on your sister.”
“Why are you talking to me like this, Mama?”
“How am I talking?”
“Honestly.”
“It’s probably my frailties acting up.” She fanned herself and coughed none too convincingly.
“You’re fine, and we both know it. Just like we both know that I came here for Rita’s and Jillie’s sakes, not because I’m bowing to your royal command and phony illness.”
She dipped her head in acknowledgment. “Maybe I am fine now, but I won’t always be, you know. I simply wanted to know that you would come should I sincerely need you.”
“What a treacherous ploy to use on your own son, Mama. Treacherous and mean-spirited.”
“I never intended…” Her eyes became suddenly bright with the threat of tears. “How so?”
“Testing me. Insulting enough on its own, but using a means that would serve as a reminder of how I failed the baby and so close to the anniversary of his death…”
“Oh, Will. Darling, no!” Her hand went to her throat, then to cover her mouth, when she finally closed her fingers over her small cameo necklace, they were trembling. “No, I never thought of that. Oh, sweetheart, can you forgive me?”
Forgive her? She’d asked it so many times of him over everything from forgetting to pick him up after ball practice to speaking unkindly of the baby’s mother. Not once had it altered her behavior or soothed his aching heart. This time, though, felt different. “You mean that, don’t you? You really do see the hurt your antics caused.”
“I always see it, William.” She lowered her head. Her narrow shoulders rose and fell in a sigh almost as big as she was. “I may not often admit it, but I never lose sight of what a truly flawed individual I am.”
It was not the kind of thing that Margaret—“Call me Peggy, just like Margaret Mitchell”—Curtis Morgan West would admit just to gain a dollop of sympathy. She’d have marched into hell with her lips sealed and her head high rather than say a thing like that if she didn’t mean it with her whole heart.
He moved from the chair to kneel at her side. He covered her hand with his. “Aw, Mama, you’re too hard on yourself.”
“I’m too hard on everyone, darling.” She laid her forehead against his and worked up a watery smile. “Too hard, too much, and too dang old to change my ways now.”
“You’re not that old. You could change if you wanted to, at least a little bit.”
“I might give you the same advice.”
“Me? Why would I have to change? I’m perfect, remember? Wild Billy West? Local legend?”
“You aren’t any more that than I am what this town has me pegged as—the poor pitiful mother of two wayward, ungrateful children.”
He took both her hands in his, chuckling.
“I have not been an ideal parent, Will. Some people aren’t. But I did the best I could. Some people aren’t cut out to be parents, I suppose, but in my day it was simply expected.”
“Since when have you done what’s simply expected?”
“I didn’t. That’s why I became a mother a scant six months after marrying your father.” She looked heavenward as if asking forgiveness.
Will looked up, too, but only noticed that the ceiling needed painting. “If you knew you didn’t have the temperament for parenting, why have Jillie?”
She pressed her lips together.
He pushed up from where he knelt and walked across the room to the fireplace. “Oh, wait I know this one—because you thought Father deserved to have his own child, one with his blood to make up for having to raise some other man’s bastard.”
“Your father loved you.”
“And some days that makes me feel worse, Mama, not better.”
“Then that’s your choice.”
“My choice?”
“Will, you are adult enough to understand that feelings are often as much about choices as actions are. When you think of the baby, do you care for him less today because he wasn’t your blood? Or do you choose to remember him with the same abiding love any father would have for his son?”
Will spread his open hands across the mantel and clenched his jaw.
“William?”
He knocked the toe of his boot against the heavy black andiron. “When did you turn into the tribal wisewoman, Mama?”
“Since I already had a pair of wiseass children, it just wasn’t much of a leap.”
“You are a card, I tell you.” He chuckled and stood straight. “I don’t suppose telling Rita to be more careless with her heart was your handiwork, was it?”
“What did she tell you about that?”
“Passing reference.” He shrugged.
“That girl.” She clasped her hands in her lap and shook her head.
“Don’t start on Rita, Mama. I won’t abide it.”
“I wasn’t about to start on anyone, unless it would be to chide myself again.”
“You?”
“I said a lot of things to the girls that I hoped would resonate with them, encourage them to realize what wonderful young women they are.” Her chair creaked as she sat back in it and rolled her head to the side to look out the window. “But in light of Miss Rita not sleeping in her guest bed last night, I don’t think I made myself very clear.”
“I thought we were through playing games.” He moved from the mantel to block the light streaming in from the long, narrow window. “I don’t need your high drama or the lecture on morals. And I won’t warn you again I won’t stomach your faulting Rita for anything.”
“I’m saying it’s me. My fault, not Rita’s.” She picked up her napkin, set it down, reached for her teacup, but hesitated and placed her hand to her temple instead. “Perhaps carefree. Carefree with her heart, not careless. That would have been a better way to phrase it. Careless is so…I did warn her not to be careless with her body. I should have added not to be too careless with her future as well.”
“I’m not having a discussion about mine and Rita’s personal business, but if it eases your mind any, we were not…careless.”
“Oh, grow up, Will.” She snapped her fingers. “I am not talking about birth control here, I am talking about Rita taking control of her future.”
What a day of surprises. He and his mother both concerned about the same thing for Rita. Of course, they did have one fairly drastic difference of opinion. “Are you saying I’m bad for Rita?”
“Can you tell me you’re not?”
He parted the sheers with one hand and stared out into the courtyard without focusing on any one feature.
“I thought you had matured enough to see that not everything is about you, son.”
“Not everything, but this is…”
“I worry for Rita. I worry that she sold herself short.”
“By coming to me last night?”
“By settling for sex when she could have had love.”
He dug his fingers into the back of his neck and groaned softly. “Suddenly all this honesty and motherly wisdom is giving me a headache.”
“That’s not the kind of carelessness I would ever encourage, most especially in a remarkable woman like Rita.”
“She is remarkable, isn’t she?”
“You just now noticing?”
“No.”
“Then why the hell are you here arguing with a woman you are never going to get the best of when you could be in Memphis with her?”
“You just said—”
“I said she shouldn’t sell herself short. She shouldn’t have settled for an affair when she has enough love to give for a lifetime.”
Let’s see, he had spent a lot of years misjudging his mother and battling with his baby sister. Now he realized that the one person he had come to help—his big shot at redemption and finally getting to be a real hero—he had, in fact, treated her like a dog. She had a lifetime full of love to offer, and he had convinced her that giving of herself for more than the moment was a waste of time.
“You’re right, Mama.”
“Of course I’m right, and I might give you the same advice.”
“Me? Advice?”
“It pains me to inform you of this, son, but you are not so perfect you could not benefit from a whomp upside the head. Why are you enduring a rootless existence filled with people who barter and trade their friendship for your goodwill but who don’t love you?”
“I’d rather those hairy, tool belts pulling their pants down below the equator contractors and suppliers that I work with keep things platonic, Mama, if you don’t mind.” He gave her his most disarming smile.
Her gaze did not lighten one iota. “I’d rather you had people in your life besides just the ones you work with.”
“But love, Mama?” He shook his head. Love? No. He would never say it to his mother, but he was too damn selfish for that emotion. Hadn’t he proven that already with his child? Hadn’t he proven it again with Rita? “Remember when I told you Rita spoke the truth to me about the baby?”
“Yes.”
“She called me an ‘immature, irresponsible, self-loving donkey-headed bastard.’”
“Isn’t that amazing?’
“What?”
“That she could know you so well and still love you so much?”
“Rita does not love me.”
“Maybe you don’t know she does yet. Hell, maybe even she doesn’t know it. But if she didn’t love you, why would a woman like Rita have been so careless with her heart around a self-loving donkey head like you?”
“Neither of us mentioned love, Mama.”
“So you’re a pair of fools. At least you’ll have that in common to keep things interesting.”
How could one small woman tie him up in knots like this? He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I know where they are staying. I even know where they will be tonight. Jillie called just before you came over to complain to high heaven about it.”
“Don’t tell me Rita is finally asserting herself with Jillie?”
“Maybe you should go see for yourself.”
“I can’t. Somebody needs to stay with poor, sickly Mother.”
She shook her napkin out into her lap. “Oh, I’m all right.”
“I knew it.”
“Don’t gloat, son, it’s rude.” She took one of the chunky cookies, broke it in half, and held it up as if it were the missing piece of evidence in a murder mystery. “Besides, I am never more than a phone call away from mobilizing a network of people that would be the envy of one of those master criminals in those English spy movies.”
He did not know about love, but he did know he wanted to see Rita. Half a day apart, and he already missed her. “Okay, I’ll go.”
“Good.” She raised her chin to encourage a quick all-purpose good-bye, thank you, and “yes mother” kiss.
He went to her chair, put her cookie aside, and helped her to her feet. Then he wrapped her in the most heartfelt hug he had given her since childhood. “Thank you, Mama.”
“You’re welcome, so
n.” She hugged him back.
He shut his eyes and smiled, then pulled away and helped her to sit again.
She sniffled. He retrieved her napkin, which had fallen to the floor, and handed her one of the cookie halves, taking one for himself. “If your advice works out, I’ll thank you with a much higher quality of cookies.”
On his way out the door he heard the woman supposedly on death’s door with lingering, debilitating ailments bellow like a construction worker on a noisy site. “To hell with the cookies! If my advice works out—give me grandchildren!”
Chapter 17
EVERY DIXIE BELLE WORTH HER SALT IS INSPIRED TO:
Be careless with your heart. Not hasty and irresponsible but if the cause is worthwhile, then fearlessly throw yourself into the fray even if you know it could tear you apart.
She had lost her ever-lovin’ mind. That’s the only way she could explain it.
A spattering of strangers gaped at her.
Her head spun. She raised her gaze to counteract the dizzying effect of the flashing light from under the plastic panels of the stage in the hotel lounge. Karaoke music blared behind her.
“She gonna sing or what?” A bald man in a tan-and-black sports coat asked the circle of ladies at his table.
“Shh. She’s working up to it.” The woman next to him slapped his hand. The glitter on her Graceland T-shirt flashed as she moved closer to the candlelight on her table. “Don’t mind him, honey, he’s an old poop. Go on with your song.”
The smell of stale cigarette smoke stung Rita’s nose. Every eye in the room homed in on her. Despite her brand-new, fit-like-spun-magic-from-a-fairy-godmother red dress, she felt positively naked.
“Go, girl!” Another of the older ladies from the nearby table shouted. A smattering of applause rose to urge Rita on.
“Two, three, four.” Under her breath she counted the beats until the crescendo of the chorus. When the music swelled she could swing into the spirit of things with full force.
“Careful now,” the waitress cautioned a patron as she handed over a frozen margarita.
“Five, six, seven eight.” The chorus came. And went. She bowed her head forward and a strand of her freshly highlighted hair fell across her eyes.
