“No one gave them shoes,” she sobs through her fingers. “That’s hor-rible.” I rub her back and wish I could do more. “People can be so meeeean.”
“What’d you do to Lindsey?” Mom is finally looking at me, and her eyes are snaky at the edges.
“Me?”
“You’re always bossy and mean.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Well, you must have done something.”
“I didn’t!” I look at Lindsey, then back at Mom. “What did you do?”
“Nothin’.”
“Sor-ry,” Lindsey manages between hiccups.
Mom’s chin goes up even further. “It’s the baby.”
I give her a warning glare.
Of course she doesn’t notice. “Babies make women emotional.”
“Mother!” She’s gone from calling Lindsey fat to saying she’s pregnant.
“Yep. It’s the baby.”
“You’re being mean,” I whisper over the sound of Lindsey’s sniffles.
“It’s the baby, all right.”
“Stop.” Alzheimer’s is no excuse for how she’s treated me, and now Lindsey, today. “I’ve had it with you.”
“She’s got a big ol’ baby in there.”
I close my eyes. Please God, make her stop.
“Might have to get her uterus yanked out like I did.”
God isn’t listening, so it’s up to me. “No one cares about your uterus.” Out of all her remaining memories, of course, that one is securely wedged in her hippocampus right next to Melvin’s testicles. Two things no one wants to hear about. I hug Lindsey closer and kind of press my shoulder to her ear in hopes she can’t hear what I’m mouthing to Mom. “If you can’t say something nice, stop talking.”
“There’s gonna—”
“There is no baby!” I interrupt.
Lindsey hiccups and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Actually, Patricia’s right.”
“What?” I push Lindsey away and look into her red puffy eyes.
“I’m pregnant.”
My brain seizes. No thoughts coming in. None going out.
“Told ya there’s a baby.”
How’d she get pregnant? Okay, I know how, but in the three months she’s been with me, I’ve never even heard her talk about a man. She hasn’t talked about anyone since we’ve been in Louisiana either. I put a hand to my forehead in an attempt to make sense of all this. Lindsey has her driver’s license, but she never really goes anywhere. When she does, she isn’t gone long and she’s never out at night. I drop my hand to my lap. This has to be a prank. Is it April Fool’s Day? No, that was last month.
“I have a picture of my baby.” Lindsey reaches into a side pocket in her dress and pulls out an ultrasound photo. She puts the small picture in my hand, and I expect to see an image like when Fern showed me the first ultrasound of her baby. I think I’m going to see something that looks like a nugget with flippers, but the glossy image in my hand is of a fully formed baby sucking its thumb.
“His name is Frankie.”
I let that sink in. Frankie. A baby. A real person.
“When is this baby due?”
“September ninth.”
My math skills are about as good as my measurement skills. “Which makes you how far along?”
“Nineteen weeks.”
“What’s that in months?”
“Five.”
I don’t have to be in the mood for math to figure out she was two months pregnant when I hired her. I wonder if she knew. “When were you going to tell me?”
“I wanted to tell you when you called in February, but I knew you wouldn’t have hired me.”
That answers that question. “You were right.” For the first time since Lindsey entered our lives, I’m angry with her. She lied to me by omission and betrayed my trust.
“I’ve been afraid to tell. I’m afraid you might fire me.”
“You’re right about that, too.”
“I’m sorry,” Lindsey says again, and tears fill her eyes.
“You knew when I hired you that I needed someone on board for the long haul.” I stand and walk toward the door. I thought we were close, that we had each other’s backs. Now I have three months left with her, at best. “I trusted you.”
“What are you going to do?”
I look back at her and at my mother’s face still pinched with anger. This is a mess. “I don’t know,” I say as I walk from the room, hardly noticing the temporary railing as I climb the stairs. Lindsey’s eagerness to leave Washington makes sense now. She had a baby on board and wanted to get as far away as possible.
It’s still early, but I strip down to my bra and panties and crawl into bed. There have been innumerable bad days in the past few months—the flight to New Orleans, the first night in Sutton Hall, casket shopping at Bergeron Funeral Home—but today tops them all. It started with Mom thinking that I’m going to be cool with killing her and ended with Lindsey thinking I’m going to be cool with a baby named Frankie.
“Lou Ann.” Lindsey knocks and pushes open the door at the same time.
I turn on my side away from her. I don’t want to see her right now.
“I’m sorry. I should have done things different, but it just got crazy. When you called in February, I was staring at an e.p.t. stick, and you seemed like the answer to all my problems.”
“And here I thought you were the answer to mine.” I roll onto my back and look up at her. “I depend on you to help with Mom. You’re my rock when everything goes insane around here. Did you think about the position your pregnancy puts me in?” Her silence is my answer. “What about your family?”
“They’d never accept Frankie.” Lindsey sits on the side of my bed. “And every baby should be born into a family that can’t wait to welcome it.”
“What about Frankie’s father? I’m assuming you told him.”
She shrugs and looks away. “He doesn’t want the responsibility.”
Well, that makes him an irresponsible asshole, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s kept this baby a secret since I hired her. It’s not a small secret, either.
“It’s just Frankie and me.”
“No, it’s not.” I sit up. “It’s you and Frankie and my sick mother.”
“I can still give the same quality of care to Patricia that I’ve—”
“No, you can’t,” I interrupt. “If Mother falls and needs help getting up, you can’t help her. Once the baby is born, you can’t take care of Mom and a newborn at the same time.”
“I think I can.”
“Don’t be naive.”
She looks down at her hands resting on her round stomach. “I’m sorry.”
“You never answered the question of when you were going to tell me.” How had I missed something that was so obvious, even to Mom? She must have scheduled doctor appointments on her days off. “Did you think you could have this baby on your day off and sneak him into your bedroom?”
“I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid you might fire me.”
It seems we’re right back to the same chaos as when we first arrived at Sutton Hall. Only now a baby has been added to our madhouse.
“Are you going to fire me?” Lindsey asks just above a whisper.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” The only thing I do know is that the circus is officially out of control.
16
May 7
Frankie. Fish.
Peaceful bobbering.
MOM SLAMS her studio door and cranks up the Carmen Miranda record I found in the attic yesterday. She’s behaving like a petulant teenager, blasting her music on the Victrola. Lindsey sticks her head in and leaves the door halfway open so Mom won’t succumb to paint fumes, but unfortunately that means we all get to share in the pleasure of bongos and maracas and “boom-chica-boom chica-boom-boom chica-boom.”
I head toward the front of the house to get as far away as possible. I hurry past the stai
rs and Raphael perched on the temporary railing, bobbing his head to the beat and squawking “Chica, Chica, Boom, Chic” like it’s an old favorite.
“You’re demented,” I tell him as I rush to my office and slam the pocket door behind me. I can still hear Carmen in the distance, but I’m safe from a migraine for now.
It’s been five days since the cemetery incident and Mom’s anger has dropped from boiling to frozen solid. There is nothing I can do to change the situation, except maybe agree to kill her. She hasn’t mentioned her “merciful slumber” plot, and I’m not sure she even remembers why she’s so mad. She just knows that I’ve done something to her, like hidden her shoes or stolen her money. She even mumbled something about her old mink coat, which, incidentally, I mercifully killed five years ago when I found it stinking like a wet cat in the closet with threadbare elbows and ripped seams.
Mom’s anger will have to run its course, but I did nothing wrong. I’m not going to act as if I did, and over the next few days I continue to search out interesting articles and photos for her, although she says little to me. We eat our meals at the same dining room table, but she mostly talks to Lindsey.
The upside of Mom’s cold shoulder is I’ve spent more time in my office and created meaningful content for the website. I made a funny little video about my life in southern Louisiana. I showed off my new hair and “Who Dat” boots and got over a hundred thousand likes the first hour it was posted on my website. I’m finally feeling optimistic about Lulu’s recovery.
The downside is, I miss Mom. I’m sad that instead of wonderful memories, all I’m getting is the stink eye—and that’s only when she pays any attention to me at all. With Mom storming around at night and wringing her hands, it seems we’re back to where we started months ago. Nevertheless, I feel I’ve made huge changes both inside and out. I have more patience, have rearranged my priorities, and have shifted the focus of my life. My hair is different and sometimes I only wear mascara and lipstick. Maybe it’s the climate or the change in me, but my designer clothes and shoes remain in the wardrobe in favor of jean shorts and T-shirts and flat sandals or sneakers for climbing around in the attic. Today I pulled on a tank top with an angry crab holding a “Say No to Pot” sign that I wouldn’t have been caught dead in six months ago.
There’s a knock on my door and Lindsey pushes it open. “Simon’s here. He said you wanted him to come over to talk about varnish or something.”
Well, that’s the cover story, anyway, but I lied. He’s man bait, pure and simple. Mom won’t be able to control her passionate nature around him. She’ll smile and flirt and glow with giddiness. Once he’s escaped her clutches, I’m hoping she’ll bask in a happy afterglow for a few days and forget she hates me.
I admit it’s a shameful and sexist plan. I’m a horrible hypocrite and a very selfish woman. And yet, I am quite willing to bear that burden.
I follow Mom’s laughter through the hall and find her smiling like rainbows and sunshine just walked through the door. Her man bait has arrived, and he doesn’t disappoint. Jim’s with him, which makes Lindsey all smiley and giggly, too. She knows I’m not going to fire her, but I wonder if she’s informed Jim of the baby on board.
“I’m glad you called, and I guarantee you’ll love the new finish on those stairs.”
I can’t really blame Mom for her crush on Dr. Simon. I’ve always been attracted to a man in a sharp suit and tie, polished shoes, and hair cut to razor perfection, but lately I’ve come to appreciate a man in tight T-shirts and old-school Levi’s with seams worn in interesting places. A man with finger-combed hair and scuffed work boots and a languid ease about him that misses nothing.
“It’s cheaper and easier to do it before we put the railing up,” he adds.
I’m sure he’s right, but cheaper and easier are relative. “Easy for you,” I point out. “You won’t be living in a construction zone with my mother, sucking up dust.”
“I don’t mind,” Mom says, one of her front teeth marked with red lipstick. She must have been in a real hurry to get out here and chat with the doctor.
“No dust. All our electrical sanders have dust filters, and we bring in the cyclone to clean the air. We’ll be in and out in a couple of days.”
“We have to be able to use the stairs while you work.”
“Use the back stairs. I’ll have two guys clear all that stuff out.”
“That’s a problem. The attic is full as it is, and I don’t know where else to put all that mess.”
“Landfill. Unless that’s a problem.”
“Not for me, but Mom’s going to have a problem with it.”
“No problem,” Mom says to spite me.
She wouldn’t agree with the plan if she understood he was talking about disposing of Sutton treasures. “I don’t even want to imagine what you’ll charge me for a dump run.”
“I’d waive the debris removal charge.”
“Wow. Generous.” I look at all those wooden steps. That’s a lot of sanding. “Do you charge by the stair?”
His gaze lowers past my mouth and chin, down my throat to the front of my tank top. He chuckles and folds his arms across his chest. “By the hour.”
“How many hours?”
He rocks back on his heels and looks up as if the answer is written on the ceiling. “Best guess… soup to nuts…”
“Hard to say,” I finish for him.
“You’re learnin’.”
Mom coaxes both men to stay for lunch, and she puts me at the head of the table so she can sit closer to Simon. We eat roasted chicken breasts and coconut brussels sprouts off gilded Limoges china, and I feel like a third wheel.
Lindsey and Jim talk between themselves while Mom chats nonstop about herself and squeezes Simon’s arm. It’s embarrassing, but I remind myself that this was my big plan. Only it’s not working like I’d hoped. Mom is still ignoring me and rambling on about her “wonderful paintings” and “sexy swimsuit.”
“That’s where we bought our ‘Who Dat’ boots,” I add when Mom comes up for air.
She gives me the side eye, then returns her attention to Simon. “It has little holes in the back.”
I am invisible. My scheme is a bust, but more than anything, I hate brussels sprouts. You can sauté them in butter, smother them in cheese sauce, or sprinkle them with coconut, but they still taste like fucking brussels sprouts, and I flick one off my plate. It leaves a trail of shredded coconut as it rolls to the center of the table. No one notices but Simon, and he raises a brow and gives me half a smile.
“I always wanted to marry a doctor.” A piece of coconut is stuck to one corner of Mom’s red-lipsticked mouth, and if I wasn’t invisible, I’d help her take care of that. I’d give her a subtle hint, but I push my plate to the side and rest my chin in my hands instead. Lindsey asks if I’m okay. “Peachy,” I answer without looking up. I tune Mom out and pay closer attention to Lindsey and Jim’s conversation. The more I listen, the more I can pick out a few words here and there, or here and dere, rather.
A brussels sprout rolls into view, and I glance at Simon out of the corner of my eyes. Apparently, I’m not the only one who hates brussels sprouts.
“You should seriously consider what we talked about,” he says.
It takes me several seconds to recall our last conversation and I sit up in my chair. “It’s been so long since I took a day for myself, I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Mais, dere’s nothin’ like a cool-a of beer and a bucket of fish.” Simon chuckles and points across the table. “Axe Jim.”
Jim’s smile lights up his brown eyes. “Talk about.”
“I think I’ll pass,” I tell them both.
“I got a massage at a day spa in Houma.” Lindsey gives me a tentative smile, and I feel like I’ve been mean to a pregnant puppy.
Ahhh… a spa. I check out my short fingernails and let myself wish. I haven’t had a manicure in months.
“I never get to go to a spa.”
&
nbsp; I look at Mom, sitting back in her chair and finally looking at me. “I’ll take you if you want to go. You always liked an aromatherapy pedicure.”
She folds her arms over her chest. “I don’t have money.” I mentally brace for impact because I know what’s coming. “You stole all my money. I never get anything.”
This is so unfair.
“I can never buy anything on a card.”
Now, that’s somewhat true. I had to lower the spending limit on her Visa due to her new QVC habit. I hadn’t realized the depth of her addiction until a UPS truck began to show up several times a week to drop off everything from palazzo pants to a police scanner with laser detectors and voice alerts. Mom said we needed it in the Escalade to “hide from cops” like we were boozed-up moonshiners. I’m just grateful that she used her own card and not one she managed to steal.
“You bought Tova Beauty just the other day,” Lindsey reminds her.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
“I hate Tova Beauty!” Then Mom points across the table at me. “She hides the remote so I can’t watch my shows.”
Funny. I hear her shows blaring every time she’s in her room.
“I think it’s just been misplaced,” Lindsey steps in. “We’ll find it.”
“My own child wants me dead.”
Says the woman I refuse to kill. “That’s not true. I love you.”
Jim makes an uncomfortable sound in his throat, and he’s looking around as if he doesn’t know what he should do.
“No one wants you to die, Ms. Patricia,” Simon assures her.
“Be quiet!” Mom snaps, her anger clearly overruling her passionate nature. “You don’t know anything. She wants me gone so she can make Sutton Hall a bed-and-breakfast.”
How Lulu Lost Her Mind Page 17