by Peggy Webb
THE SECRET GODDESS CODE
Peggy Webb
Johnie Sue and Jane, you are the rarest of friends—my sounding board, my comforting shoulder, my giggling pals, my fiercely loyal supporters, my memory, my strength and my wings. Because of you, I’m still standing.
Did I mention that because of you (Jane), I can spell? And because of you (Johnie Sue), I’m still sane? (Though some would debate that. Only, not in front of you!) This book is for the Big Three. Long may we reign!
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
Acknowledgments
I acknowledge dear friends Olivia Rupprecht, fellow writer who helped me find the heart of the story, and Philece Sampler, actress extraordinaire, whose unsinkable spirit inspired me. You rock, girlfriends!
CHAPTER 1
Where’s the applause meter when you need it?
—Gloria
I have died and gone to Mooreville, Mississippi.
I knew things were bad when that peroxided, collagen-enhanced, nubile nymph Susan Star stole my role as the reigning TV goddess in Love in the Fast Lane, but I didn’t know I’d be killed off for real and sent to the backside of nowhere. Good lord, just because a woman turns forty-five shouldn’t mean she gets tossed out and consigned to life without long-stemmed roses and Godiva chocolates.
Trying to make sense of things, I close my eyes, but when I open them again I’m staring at the same wide expanse of cloudy sky slashed with a sign that says, Welcome to Mooreville. Plus, I have a lump on my head the size of California.
“Is anybody here?”
Expecting Saint Peter to answer, I ease up on my elbow and spot my powder-blue Ferrari Spyder. Or what remains of it. They don’t let you take cars to the hereafter, no matter which way you go, so this means I’m not dead.
To some people that would come as a relief, but the mood I’m in, it just makes me mad.
It also makes me remember swerving to miss a cow, then clawing my way out of the airbag in an adrenaline-propelled panic, which explains why I’m in a ditch. My purse is upside down an arm’s-length away so I scramble for my cell phone to dial 911. Alas, it’s smashed into pieces against a rock. To add insult to injury, the big black clouds that have been hovering overhead let loose a flood that nearly washes me away.
Spotting a little convenience store down the road, I lurch upward intending to walk for help, but a pain rips through my ankle and throws me back down. They shoot horses with broken legs, don’t they? It’s not enough that my twenty-year career is over: I’m going to get shot or drown in a ditch.
When I left Hollywood and headed to my childhood home in Jackson without even telling my agent, I expected headlines to read, Famous Soap-Opera Actress Disappears. I expected buzz in the biz would be that Gloria Hart had eloped to Paris or moved to a villa in the south of Italy or at the very least was last seen in a Piggly Wiggly filling a cart with Almond Joys and double-chocolate pudding.
Instead I’ve wrecked my car, maimed my cell phone and crippled myself, and there’s not a single reporter around to turn this drama to my advantage. The situation calls for a major pity party.
I’m good at tears. Lord knows, I’ve had enough practice. After the writers put me in a fiery plane crash that killed off my fictional husband and swiped my fictional memory, I wept the Pacific Ocean on daytime TV and was flooded with sympathy letters from fans.
Now I try to work up a few tears, but all I can see is how ludicrous my situation is: done in by a cow and my crazy urge to drive Mississippi’s back roads. I start laughing and can’t stop.
Somebody get the net. I’ve gone completely crazy and sirens signal the men in white are coming to take me away.
“Are you all right?”
Oh, my lord. A drop-dead-handsome man in a fireman’s uniform is talking to me. Either I bumped my head harder than I thought and am hallucinating, or Mooreville just started looking a whole lot better.
“That depends on how you describe all right.”
I laugh again, probably teetering on the edge of hysteria, and the man who could be a Playgirl centerfold looks at me as if I’m from another planet. In a way, I guess I am. Hollywood is about as far from Mooreville as you can get. Beyond the man is an honest-to-goodness picket fence. And what looks like a black-and-white cow but just might be a big dog. The one that ran in front of my car and caused me to straddle a light pole.
And there’s not a sidewalk in sight.
The hunk kneels over me and pops the blood-pressure cuff on while an older fireman and a paunchy state trooper scurry around my mutilated car.
“I’m Rick Miller, ma’am, and we’re going to get you to the hospital over in Tupelo.”
Now that makes me mad. My goodness, I’m not that badly injured.
The hunk, who is now checking me for broken bones, is wearing a wedding ring. Now maybe I will cry.
Not that I’m looking for a husband or anything remotely resembling one. But when a big chunk of your life gets ripped away and you don’t have another person in this whole world to turn to, suddenly it feels as if you have nothing at all, as if you’re teetering on the edge of a cliff in the middle of a deserted jungle screaming for a net, and there’s not even a slim chance anybody will hear. It’s times like this that make me long to have a good man who will hold me close and say “Everything is going to be all right.”
“Listen, Rick, thanks for your offer. I’m a little rattled. It’s not every day I run into a light pole. I don’t know what I’m going to do about my poor car.”
“I’ll call Tuck’s Tow Service. Jackson Tucker’s the best mechanic in this area.” He wraps his fireman’s jacket around me, then he and the other fireman lift me onto a gurney. “Is there anybody else you want me to call?”
“No,” I say.
Shouldn’t women my age have at least ten best friends on tap for situations like this? Both my parents are dead and nobody in Jackson was expecting me. The only person I can think of to call is my maid/personal assistant/jill-of-all-trades Roberta, and I sent her on vacation so I could make my getaway undetected. “There’s no one.”
“Don’t you worry, Miss…”
“Gloria. Gloria Hart.”
“Miss Hart, I’ll be right there with you.”
My lord, I’d forgotten how sweet Southern hospitality can be.
I wonder what else I’ve forgotten. I’ve been caught up for so long in the world of daytime television drama, I don’t know the first thing about the real world.
He didn’t have me at hello.
—Jenny
I’M UP TO my elbows in pie crust when the phone rings. Rick’s cell phone number pops up and I refuse to answer it. There was a time when a phone call from Rick Miller would send me into a hormone-fueled tizzy, but now all I can think about is the passing of years that have left me with cellulite and crow’s feet while my husband still looks like every woman’s wet dream.
Considering our track record of the last few months, there’s no way he’s calling me in the middle of the day to propose something kinky or even mildly flirtatious. He’s probably calling to see when I’ll have the pies ready.
When he’s not parading around in his volunteer fireman’s uniform, Rick’s running his little log-cabin restaurant under the hill and
waiting for me to supply pies for the dessert menu.
I’m tired of pies.
“Up yours,” I say, and my testy tone sends Rollo and Banjo scurrying under the table. Well, good. I’m also tired of keeping two dogs of dubious heritage happy—my other major daytime activity.
The phone keeps on ringing, so I finally give in and wipe the dough off my hands.
“Jenny, I’ve got a problem.”
What happened to ‘Hello, how are you?’ I have problems, too, but I haven’t lost my manners over it.
“Hello, Rick. How’re you doing? Listen, I’m working on the pies, but they won’t be ready for another hour.”
“I’m not calling about pies. There was a wreck at the intersection.”
“Who was hurt?”
I hope it’s not a neighbor or one of my cousins. And though I’ve often said I wish she’d jump in a lake, I wouldn’t even wish an accident on the mother-in-law from the Black Lagoon, Lulu Miller, who has hated me since Rick got serious. At every opportunity she opines I’m not good enough for her son, not smart enough and certainly not pretty enough.
Now Rick is telling me, “Some woman from California. Gloria Hart.”
“Oh…my…gosh.”
“Jenny? Are you all right?”
“Do you know who Gloria Hart is?”
“Yeah. I just told you. She wrecked her Italian sports car and banged up her leg.”
“She’s Jillian Rockwell from my favorite soap opera. Get her autograph.”
There’s a huge, deafening silence, and I wonder if Rick’s cell phone has gone dead.
“Rick? Are you there?”
“This woman from California is in the emergency room without a single friend, and you want me to go up and ask for her autograph?”
“When you put it that way…look, I’m sorry, Rick. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Listen, her left ankle is bruised up and sprained and she’ll be on a crutch a few days. There’s no way she can manage alone in a motel. I was wondering if we could invite her to stay with us.”
“Stay with us?”
The biggest soap-opera actress in Hollywood in my house, with a noisy, angst-ridden teenaged daughter, two spoiled hairy dogs and pie dough all over the kitchen counter?
“If you don’t want to, maybe we can help her find a sitter.”
“No. No, wait! Tell her she can stay with us. Oh…my…gosh!”
“Okay, then. We’ll be home in time for supper.”
I have to sit down. All of a sudden I’ve gone from an ordinary housewife covered in flour to an interesting woman with a Hollywood star sitting in my kitchen eating home-baked cherry pies.
Grabbing the dust mop and the Johnson’s lemon wax, I go on a tornadic cleaning rampage that sends Rollo and Banjo into the master suite deep underneath the king-sized bed I can’t remember using for anything but sleep in heaven knows when.
Oh, I know what all the slick women’s magazines say about keeping romance alive, but I have enough to do keeping my seventeen-year-old daughter alive. Rick just got her a car and I just got my first gray hair.
Right now, though, I don’t even have time to think about Angie. Important company’s coming. A famous woman who has it all.
I stop my cleaning frenzy long enough to program the TV to tape Love in the Fast Lane, then I send a fervent prayer into the Universe.
“Help me remember Gloria Hart’s a real person, just like me. Only eighty-five thousand times more glamorous.”
Southern hospitality is not a myth.
—Gloria
LEANING HEAVILY on Rick and my new crutch in the middle of their charming country home, that’s all I can say. If I say any more, I’ll start bawling and won’t be able to stop. Real tears. Not the fake kind.
I don’t why, but unexpected kindness always undoes me. I can deal with a banged-up leg and having my car hauled off behind somebody who probably doesn’t know beans about Italian sports cars. I can even deal with a younger woman stealing my TV spotlight. After all, I’m planning to steal it back.
But I don’t know how I’m going to deal with ordinary life with Rick and Jenny Miller.
They have captured the American dream—marry, have a family, buy a house and two cars and live happily ever after. It’s not my dream, but watching them, all smiles as they show me the spare bedroom where I’ll be staying, I can’t help but feel a bit cheated.
Back when I believed you could have it all, I tried twice to mix marriage with a career. Both times I failed miserably, which isn’t all that uncommon when you consider the grim divorce statistics.
Of course, statistics are no consolation at all when you’re dealing with a broken heart.
These two seem to have beaten the odds. It’s going to be interesting to see how they do it.
CHAPTER 2
If I scream will I scare the cows?
—Gloria
When Rick and Jenny Miller told me to rest, that supper would be ready in a few hours, I was so keyed-up I didn’t think I’d fall asleep.
Obviously, bruised bones are more painful and traumatic than I had imagined. Here I am, waking up in a four-poster bed underneath a pretty rose-sprigged canopy to the delicious aroma of Southern-fried chicken. The setting sun sends long slanting rays across the rocking chair in the corner, and children romping on a swing set across the street shout to one another as their mothers call them in to supper.
This reminds me of everything good about my childhood—the big kitchen where I could always find cookies in the jar, tall frosty glasses of lemonade, the rope swing on the big oak tree in the backyard where a homely little girl with buck teeth and thick glasses could dream of something more than the life of service the Catholic Sisters at Sacred Heart said was her destiny.
Somewhere in the Millers’ house a raucous CD starts playing. I hear Jenny saying, “Angie, turn down the volume,” and Angie’s plaintive reply, “Aw, Mom.”
There are footsteps, followed by a knock on my bedroom door.
“Come in.”
Jenny cracks it open and peeps in. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore in places I didn’t even know I had.”
She slips inside holding a tray filled with every forbidden food on the planet—fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits and peach cobbler with the crust floating in butter.
“I’ve made supper for you. I hope you’re hungry.”
“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven after all. I haven’t had this many calories since I was sixteen.”
“I can make you some soup. Or a light salad, or anything you want.”
Oh, lord. She’s going to treat me like a celebrity. I wish just once I could meet a woman who would get past what I do and consider me for who I am. Sometimes I think the only friend I have is Roberta, and that’s only on her good days. She’ll tell you in a New York minute—which is considerably shorter than a Mississippi minute—that most days she’d just as soon snatch me baldheaded as look at me.
“This looks great,” I tell Jenny. “Southern comfort food, just like my mother used to make it.”
“I forgot you were born in Jackson.”
Jenny Miller stands there and spouts the Cinderella version of my history as reported in all the newspapers and slick magazines. Basically this is “homely country girl runs away from the Deep South and after the fairy godmothers of orthodontia and ophthalmology sprinkle her with fairy dust, she zooms to stardom.”
The story is all glamour and hype. It leaves out my acting classes: the fast-food restaurant where I learned to act as if taking orders for hamburgers was preparation for running the country (and maybe it ought to be). Bay Street Boarding House where I feigned fifteen different illnesses to get my rent-due date extended. The department store where I sold more face cream than any other clerk by pretending to be twenty years older and sharing my beauty secret with women desperate to defy age and time.
I know, I know. I’m not a very admirable person. But listen, if you’d
had a father waiting back home just itching to parcel out lectures on how to get your life on the right track and a mother who said I’d starve in Hollywood salivating for the opportunity to say, I told you so, wouldn’t you resort to creativity?
A much nicer word than lying. And I do believe in the niceties.
I’m tempted to tell Jenny the real story, but most people prefer their fantasies to the truth. Besides, it’s human nature to want heroes, especially if you’ve got one captured in your house. By remaining a mysterious star in Jenny’s eyes, I give her bragging rights. It’s the least I can do.
She sets the tray on my bed then adjusts the yellow rose in the small blue crystal vase on the edge of the tray. “Do you need anything else, Miss Hart?”
“Call me Gloria.” I swallow my quip that Miss Hart makes me feel as old as my mother. She doesn’t know about my warped sense of humor, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings. “The rose is gorgeous. Did you grow it?”
“Yes. People say I have a green thumb.”
“They’re right.”
“Miss…uh, Gloria, my daughter’s back from swim practice and wants to meet you, but I told her she’d have to wait. I’m sure you don’t feel like having company.”
Polite people would show their gratitude by saying, let her come in, but my leg hurts like the devil and I’m not into martyrdom. Besides, I’m vain. After the drubbing I took in the rain in the ditch, I look like the wrong side of a baboon.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I say.
“Can I get you anything else, or help you with anything?”
“If my crutch doesn’t throw me, I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, then. I won’t bother you again unless I hear a big thump on the floor.”
I’m thankful that Jenny has a sense of humor. If I can figure out how to get her to loosen up, maybe I won’t have to spend the next few days acting like fallen royalty being attended by loyal subjects.
