by Peggy Webb
Would it hurt if I borrow her for just a little while? Get to know her as if she were my own? Maybe I’ll be helping Jenny, too. Maybe I can take a bit of the pressure off her.
“Angie, do you have time to drive me into town? I need to replace my cell phone.”
“Sure.”
After I talk to Jenny, we climb into Angie’s red Valiant. She peels out of the driveway and nearly mows down the Millers’s mailbox. Resisting the urge to yell stop! then climb out of the car, I lean back and listen while Angie points out the sights—her school, her best friend’s house, Jackson Tucker’s garage.
Suddenly she says, “How old were you when you first had sex?”
Oh my Lord. I asked for it. Now what am I going to do? Where’s a script when I need it?
“I don’t remember, Angie.” I know. I know. It’s a cop-out.
“I saw that flashback episode where Jillian Rockwell did it when she was sixteen. It was so cool.”
I think I hate Jillian Rockwell.
“That was fiction. A plot thread to reel in viewers.”
“But you wouldn’t ask anybody’s permission. Right?”
I had almost forgotten the earnestness and confusion of youth, the power of peer pressure.
“Angie, I have never let anybody take something I wasn’t ready to give.”
She doesn’t answer, and I look out the window to see which way we’re going. Not that I would know. All I know is that mothering has to be the toughest job in the world.
I also know that at the rate the fence posts are whizzing by, I won’t have to worry about getting my job back. I’ll be lost forever in Mooreville, Mississippi. Six feet under.
If being an adult is all that complicated, they’d have remedial classes so some folks could pass.
—Angie
THE REALLY COOL thing about Miss Hart is not just that she told me to call her Gloria, but she’s riding with me without white-knuckling the door handle.
The other really cool thing is that she doesn’t lecture like you-know-who.
And here’s another thing: she’s treating me like an adult, like I have more than two brain cells in my head.
She’s great looking, too. Not like Mom, who wears stuff that looks like it came over on the Mayflower.
Listen, if I let myself go like that when I’m old and thirty, just throw me in the lake.
If love is a mountain, how did I end up on an anthill?
—Jenny
WELL, here I am in my own bedroom after the longest day of my life. Rick’s bent over taking off his socks and I’m thinking this is not the night to employ the tactics I learned from Jillian Rockwell.
Timing is everything. Or so I’ve read. Somehow seduction and nearly burning the house down don’t go together.
“Angie took Gloria to get a new cell phone this afternoon,” I say.
“Good. She seems to feel better today.”
“Gloria?”
“Yeah, who’d you think I meant?” He pads to the bathroom in bare feet and I wait till the toilet flushes before I tell him about Angie peeling out of our driveway this morning like it was the Talledega Speedway.
“Why don’t you lay off her, Jenny?”
Great. I’ve started another fight.
“You always take up for her, Rick.”
“She’s a good kid. You just need to trust her.”
He’s standing in the doorway stark-naked, and if he had any idea of planting the flag, he forgot about bringing along the pole.
Problems with Angie pale beside my sudden rage. I want to throw the pink note in his face, then slap him till his ears ring. I want to yell How could you? What do you mean spending your time with a pink-lipped trollop while I’m in the kitchen making your infernal pies?
The only thing that saves me is Gloria in the spare bedroom. Not Gloria, the Hollywood star, but Gloria, my friend who came back from the ride with my daughter looking pale and tired.
I make a mental note to insist that she rest tomorrow. A second not to burn the pies. A third not to rile Rick about Angie. Another not to dwell on the mystery woman writing pink notes to my husband. To forget about matchmaking and tend to my own shaky relationship.
My list is about a mile long. Which just goes to prove my life’s a complete mess.
I wish Rick would put on some clothes. It ought to be against the law for a man that age to look that good naked.
CHAPTER 7
Oh, Romeo, wherefore art thou, and why do I need a baseball bat instead of a ladder?
—Gloria
The sound of something pelting against the outside bedroom wall shatters my dreams and sends me scurrying to the window.
Shades of Romeo and Juliet! Tuck is standing in the shadow of Jenny’s giant magnolia tree looking mysterious and romantic, and he’s motioning for me to come outside.
There’s probably a rule somewhere about trysts in the moonlight when you’re a guest in Mooreville, Mississippi, but I’ve always been a rule-breaker. Grabbing my outrageously vampish red silk robe and my relentlessly awkward crutch, I sneak through the darkened house and hurry outside. I feel sixteen.
“Gloria. Over here.”
“Oh my lord, Jackson Tucker.”
“Yeah. It’s me. I had to see you.”
“At one o’clock in the morning? Are you crazy?”
“Maybe I am.”
He starts to lift his hand, and all of a sudden I see myself dragged off by the hair in the middle of the night, headlines screaming, TV’s Goddess Abducted by Mooreville’s Mechanic: Raging Hormones on Both Sides Blamed.
I swing the crutch upward toward his more sensitive body parts, and we both topple and land in an ignoble heap.
“That hurt.” He should complain. I have him by quarter of a century. Frightful thought.
While he’s rolling around clutching his groin, I roll the other way trying to get my old, bruised knees untangled and working. Jackson grabs the hem of my robe.
“What did you think I was going to do? Maul you?”
“I thought you were going to grab me.”
“I was brushing my hair out of my eyes. Honest. I just wanted to talk. That’s all.”
“And you couldn’t wait till morning?”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I didn’t notice what time it was.”
“It’s time for old ladies to be in bed and bad boys to go home.”
If anybody but me had called me an old lady, I’d cut out his tongue.
What would Matt Tucker think if he knew I was rolling around in the dirt with his son? And what if something develops between Matt and me? Something serious? I could end up Jackson Tucker’s stepmother.
Somebody in this Universe must have a warped sense of humor.
Jackson helps me up, all gentleman now but still, little more than a kid.
“Angie said she talked to you, that you were real nice.”
“She’s not pregnant, is she?”
“No. We use protection.”
I’m not sure I wanted to know that. And I’m not sure I should be standing in the heady sweetness of Jenny Miller’s magnolia tree at oh-lord o’clock discussing something that is clearly none of my business. Especially with a young man whose father is the object of my lustful dreams.
It’s just that I’ve never had a really close friend except Roberta, and that’s different because she’s also my employee. I don’t know where the lines are drawn regarding family secrets and helping somebody versus meddling.
A quick sideways glimpse of Jackson, and he could be his daddy, and all of a sudden I don’t know anything anymore.
Clearly I’ve become unhinged by magnolias.
“Go home,” I tell him. “Don’t ever do this to me again. We’ll talk later. In broad daylight.”
I hurry toward the house not caring a whit about my exit but caring deeply that I don’t inadvertently do anything to hurt this little family. I know, I know. As Roberta would say, “I’m not going to know you, girl,
if you turn into a nice person.”
Besides, nice is not what it’s going to take to fight for my TV role.
I sneak back into my bed and pull the covers over my head and hope I sleep.
I also send a prayer into the Universe that I don’t metamorphose into Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Survival in my business requires guts and moxie.
“Just spare me a claw or two. Please.”
Holy shit, and why do I keep stepping in it?
—Jenny
“HOLY shit!”
Of all the ways I want to be roused from sleep, hearing my husband’s outraged bellow is not one of them. Opening one eye, I lean on my elbow and sneak a peek at the clock. Five-thirty.
The front door rattles and Rick yells, “Jenny. Open this door.”
Now what? He’s going to wake the whole neighborhood.
Hurrying in bare feet, I fling open the front door and there is my husband, caught in the cross beams of flashbulbs. In his shorts. Holding the newspaper in front of his crotch.
“Oh…my…gosh.”
He streaks through and slams the door, then leans against it looking wild-eyed.
“Jenny, where did all those people come from?”
“Why didn’t you just come back inside?”
“I locked myself out. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“They’re reporters.”
“And they’re here at the crack of dawn because…”
“I called the media?”
“Another of your benefits.”
He says benefits the way you’d say armed robbery.
“You needn’t act like somebody’s poked a gun in your back. It’s for the Volunteer Fire Department.”
I add that last praying it will help. Judging by his stiff, self-righteous stance, I can see it didn’t. But does that stop me? Oh, no. I plow forward, digging my own grave.
“Gloria’s going to sign autographs. Tuck thinks it’s a good idea. And I’d think you would, too.”
He heads to the bedroom and I continue talking to his back. “I said, I’d think you would, too, since you’re so all-fired busy putting out everybody else’s fire you can’t even put out your wife’s.”
There’s blistering silence from our bedroom, and thank goodness all’s quiet from Angie’s and Gloria’s rooms too.
But not the front door. The press is out there knocking like I’m the third little pig and they’re fixing to blow my house down.
Speaking of which…Rick whizzes by so fast I’m nearly sucked under by his tailwinds.
“Rick!” He’s out the back door before I can say diddly-squat.
Dressed, might I add. Thank goodness.
The knock sounds again and I jerk open the door.
“What?”
“Mrs. Miller, what’s it like to have the goddess of daytime TV in your house?”
Great. Here’s another situation I’ve created, even if I didn’t do it on purpose. If I don’t do something about it, every petunia I have is going to be tromped into the ground. Even worse, my husband is going to be front-page news in his tighty-whities.
“If you’ll wait there until I change clothes and if you promise not to run pictures of my husband nearly naked, I’ll come out and answer your questions. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Lord, I just hope they keep their promise.
BY THE TIME the reporters leave and I’ve flopped down at the kitchen table to catch my breath with a cup of coffee, the phone rings.
“I heard about the commotion at Rick’s house.”
Godzilla never says hello and she never acknowledges that I’m part of Rick’s life in any way, fashion or form. She even calls Angie Rick’s child.
Years ago, I gave up trying to please her. Believe me, if I had caller ID in the kitchen, I’d never have picked up the phone.
“Good morning to you, too, Lulu.”
“If I’d caused the ruckus you did this morning, I wouldn’t be acting so smarty-pants about it.”
Usually I’ll do just about anything to keep the peace with my mother-in-law, but I’m already so far in the doghouse, I’m feeling reckless.
Maybe a bit liberated, too. Maybe Gloria’s spunk and Jillian’s goddess persona are rubbing off on me.
In a situation like this I think the goddess code needs an addendum: add arrows, pull string, smile.
“I see the neighborhood grapevine is working overtime.”
“I can talk to anybody I please.”
And I know who that anybody is. Sometimes I think my neighbor Patty Jones does nothing except watch my house with her spyglasses for the express purpose of calling Lulu to report my every move.
“You caught me redhanded, Lulu. I’m a smarty-pants. A troublemaker, too. Let’s see? What else can we add? Oh, I know. Terrible wife and worse daughter-in-law.”
She hangs up. Great. She’ll call Rick and repeat the conversation word for word and I can add another nail to the doghouse I’m in. Suddenly, I come undone.
“Jenny?” I didn’t hear Gloria come in. She’s standing in the doorway giving me funny looks. “Are you laughing or crying?”
“Both, I guess.”
I tell her about my morning’s escapades.
“It’s all my fault. I should have warned you the reporters would invade. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. This is the best publicity our benefit has ever had. Besides, I haven’t seen my husband move that fast since he chased me around the play gym set when we were chubby children.”
“This calls for girlfriend therapy. And celebration. My ankle is almost healed.” Gloria does a cautious pirouette without her crutch. “A day at the spa. My treat. Is there a good one around here?”
“In Tupelo. What about Angie? And the pies?”
“Angie can come, too. And we’ll pick up pies at the bakery, then deliver them to Rick. My treat.”
“Can we add a little arsenic to his piece?”
“The seduction didn’t work out?”
“I don’t think those techniques work on grizzly bears.”
“We’ll just have to think of a way to revert him to teddy bear.”
I feel better already.
My family ought to be on Oprah.
—Angie
DOES Mom think I don’t have ears? Does she think I can’t see what’s going on in my very own house?
I heard that ruckus with the reporters this morning. And when I went to the kitchen to get some cereal I heard her crying. Fortunately she didn’t see me, so I just backed out and pretended I hadn’t heard a thing. Went back to my room and shut the door.
Not that I don’t care. I mean, who wouldn’t? This is my home, too, which some people I won’t mention seem to forget. But does anybody ever ask my opinion? Does anybody ask how I’d feel about anything? Like divorce.
I don’t even want to think about it. Instead I’m sitting here eating the cheese snacks I had stashed. If I hadn’t, the way Mom’s making the kitchen enemy territory, I’d starve to death.
Listen, I’m no child, in spite of what you-know-who thinks. I realize marriage is not always an old TV rerun of The Partridge Family. But all in all, I thought Mom and Dad had it better than most.
Boy, was I wrong. And to think, I used to aspire to be exactly like them.
“Angie?”
It’s Mom. She’ll have a conniption if she sees me eating junk food instead of healthy food. I stuff the cheese snacks under my pillow, swallow my last bite whole and wipe my mouth before I yell, “Come in.”
She’s all smiles. Like that fools me for a minute.
“How would you like to go to the spa?”
When has she ever gone to the spa? Is this a joke? A bribe?
“You’re kidding. Right?”
“No. Gloria’s invited us.”
I should have known. At least somebody in this house thinks I’m not a little kid. But I’m not fixing to make a big deal of it.
“Sure.”
Wait till I tell Sally
.
Where’s the script when you need it?
—Gloria
THERE’S NOTHING like being wrapped in seaweed to make a woman feel pampered.
On the tables next to me, Angie is catching a catnap and Jenny is making little humming sounds of contentment. I feel good all over just knowing I’m responsible for this few hours of pleasure. Finally I’ve done something to pay her back for her generosity.
After we finish our spa visit, we have a quick cup of coffee with Jenny’s friend Laurel at the library, then pick up pies at Kroger’s Bakery and head back to Mooreville. This is my first opportunity to see Rick’s restaurant. It’s rustic and homey, filled with the aroma of Southern cooking and diners who are probably friends and neighbors, most of them in jeans and baseball caps, a few wearing straw fedoras against the intense summer heat.
We’ve surprised Rick with the pies. He seems genuinely touched. Watching the two of them exchange guarded, almost shy looks, I can’t help but believe their love is solid. If the marriage is shaky it’s only because they’ve lost their way from each other. Now pride is in the way. And maybe complacency. Long-practiced habits of tending to business and not tending to each other.
Okay, maybe this is just Jillian Rockwell talking, but she knows that goddesses pay attention. Goddesses know you can’t take somebody else for granted. And you for darned sure can’t let them take you for granted.
I’m not talking about demanding expensive diamonds here. I’m talking about the important stuff, letting the one you love know you hold him in deep and tender regard. Not just on birthdays and anniversaries. Every day.
Unfortunately, I have no firsthand knowledge that my theory is correct because Jillian is the figment of a screenwriter’s imagination. But I would surely like to find out.
Suddenly Tuck comes through the front door, and I’m thinking that nothing in this world is coincidence.
When he spots me, I feel a little rush at the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. Not a smile, really, not a major display of joy, just a glad-to-see-you look. And it’s enough.
Rick claps Tuck on the shoulder. “Coffee’s coming right up.”
“Do you have time to join me, Rick? Ladies?” Tuck swings around to include Jenny, Angie and me.
