by Peggy Webb
Even worse, am I going to end up like Mom thirty years from now? Feeling like somebody who has been standing in a cold rain for a very long time?
I get up and put the leftovers in the refrigerator. Let Mr. Last-Minute-Call Rick heat his own dinner. If he doesn’t like it, he can put on his big boy britches and deal with it.
On the way out the door I notice the cupcakes under wrap. My day’s shining achievement. My claim to barefoot-and-pregnant-in-the-kitchen fame. Jerking up the platter I head to the garbage can.
But…wait. This moment feels big, worthy of ritual.
I toss them on the floor one by one and stamp on them, then I leave the TAKE THAT! mess and march upstairs to wash the blue icing off my feet.
CHAPTER 15
“If logic were motor oil,
she’d be three quarts low.”
—Howard
Gritty-eyed and pensive, I stroll into my office after another all-nighter on the sofa, wearing the same blue shirt I’ve worn for three days. If it weren’t for the Old Spice deodorant in the downstairs bathroom, I’d probably stink.
Of course, I’m hoping once again that the jacket covers most of the wrinkles and that Lucille won’t notice, but who knows what a sharp-eyed receptionist of twenty years sees?
“Good morning, Dr. Martin.” She’s as cheerful as ever, but she gives me a funny look as if to say, Well, look what the cat dragged in. She’s probably thinking I’ve shacked up with some loose floozy instead of trying to find a comfortable spot on my own lumpy sofa.
Paranoia is new to me. As soon as I get something into my stomach maybe I’ll be back to my old way of thinking. A man who knows what he stands for and never wavers. A man with the loyalty of a secretary who would just as soon jump off the Empire State Building as believe her boss would cheat on his wife.
A man who takes care of his family, for Pete’s sake. How could Elizabeth think I’d let Jenny spend the rest of her days waiting on tables and living off the charity of others? What do we know about this relative of the Clark boys, anyhow? Nobody with a name like Angel can be taken seriously. It sounds like some made-up, hippie nickname.
“Are there any doughnuts in the break room, Lucille?”
“Two kinds. Cream-filled and plain. Which do you want?”
“One of each. No…make that two of each.”
I had a piece of cold pie for dinner and another one for breakfast, eating both of them straight from the dish while standing in front of the refrigerator in my sock feet, wondering what Elizabeth was doing, worrying that she was painting the bathroom pink, too.
Great-granny’s ghost! My wife has gone mad. What happened to the comfortable, solid marriage I thought I had? What happened to my nice, easygoing wife who fixed dinner every evening and darned my socks?
Not that I want her to be a drudge. Far from it. That’s why I hired our housekeeper, Velma Lou. To make sure Elizabeth has the leisure time she needs to do whatever she likes.
But is she grateful? Is she happy? Oh, no. She has to chop off all her hair and dye it red. Like a baboon’s butt.
My stomach growls in agreement.
“Dr. Martin?” With her eyebrows lifted into her bangs, Lucille looks as if she’s about to take flight. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Bring the doughnuts into my office and then start rescheduling my appointments, starting with the one o’clock. You’ll need to reschedule everything for the next week. Oh, and call Kate to look after Rufus.”
Her mouth opens and then closes like a guppy’s. She knows that nothing less than a major emergency could make me take a week off, but like the good receptionist she is, she doesn’t say anything. Just nods and goes about her business.
Why can’t Elizabeth be more like that?
Lucille brings in doughnuts, and I barely have time to scarf them down and wash the sugar off my chin before my first appointment arrives. Lord knows the state my poor digestive tract is in.
It’s a relief to lean back and listen to Tootie Jo Hodges fantasize about smothering her mother with a goose-down pillow. She has a point. What mother in her right mind would hang a name like Tootie on a little girl, even if it was her mother’s favorite sister’s name?
At least Elizabeth was sensible about our children’s names. Kate is named for Elizabeth’s Aunt Bonnie Kathleen, a lovely, sensible woman, and Jenny is named for my granny Jennifer Martin, a prim-and-proper lady. Kate got all Aunt Bonnie Kathleen’s fine qualities and more, but Jenny… Well, the name stuck, but unfortunately, the character didn’t. Lord, Granny would never streak her hair orange and run off with riffraff.
I guess it’s partly my fault. When Kate was a baby, I had more time to stay at home and participate in her upbringing. Not that Elizabeth’s not a good mother; she is, but if she’d had her way Kate would have spent her formative years in overalls in the backyard making mud angels and searching for fairies. Or else running off to some flea-bitten circus to see elephants and dancing bears and grown men in women’s underwear trying to keep from falling off a rope in the sky.
I made sure Kate had a proper upbringing with all the right educational books and toys and supervised outings to museums and art exhibits. And look how she turned out—a daughter to be proud of, steady, reliable, responsible and kind.
On the other hand, Jenny is a daily trial. A lovely girl, granted. Smart and funny and sweet when she wants to be, but Lord, when she was growing up, Elizabeth just let her go wild. Like that time Jenny got interested in frogs…
She was six when she developed an unhealthy interest in those ugly amphibians. I was sitting in my office making notes on a patient when I got a hysterical call from Kate telling me to come home, there were frogs all over her bedroom.
“Put your mother on,” I said, and naturally I was expecting the same horror my teenage daughter had expressed, or at the very least, a grown-up reaction to the situation.
But no, Elizabeth was laughing her head off, telling me it was just one of Jenny’s phases, and the best thing to do was let her learn about frogs in her own way and then she’d move on to something else.
“Like what?” I asked. “Cottonmouth moccasins? Elizabeth, I’m not about to sacrifice my older daughter on the altar of one of Jenny’s whims.”
I hurried home with the full intention of catching the frogs and turning them back into the wild, but have you ever tried to get a roomful of frogs to cooperate while two girls are screeching outside the door? I ended up dispatching the toads with the commode plunger and burying the whole mess out in the backyard. To hear Elizabeth and Jenny tell it, you’d think I had committed first-degree murder.
I should have put my foot down right then, but, of course, I was busy and thought Jenny would grow out of her foolishness. But look what has happened. I’ve got to drive all the way to Arizona to straighten out the mess Jenny has gotten herself into with those irresponsible Clark boys and a flighty aunt named Angel. Maybe I ought to take the commode plunger.
“Dr. Martin, do you think this means I’m going crazy?”
Tootie Jo’s question jerks me back to my patient’s obsession with wanting to do bodily harm to a mother who has been six feet under for two years. Ever since Elizabeth just up and left, I’ve felt the urge to commit a little mayhem, myself; so if Tootie is crazy, so am I.
“No, you’re not. Take your pills, do your relaxation exercises and come back in two weeks.”
After she leaves, I loosen my tie and breathe a sigh of relief. It will be good to go home early for a change. And who knows? Maybe the car trip with Elizabeth will be the best thing that ever happened to us.
I pack up my briefcase, say goodbye to Lucille and head home, cheerful, almost lighthearted. I enjoy being needed, and taking care of people’s problems is my specialty. Once Elizabeth sees how well I handle Jenny, her regard for me will rise exponentially. We might even be able to sleep in the same bed again.
By the time I round the corner to my street, I’m whistli
ng “Seventy-Six Trombones.” Elizabeth will be over her snit, lunch will be on the table and my bags will be packed. If we move efficiently, we can be on the road by one-thirty.
I pull up in the yard and the trombones, the tambourines and the whole damned brass section die in my throat. Elizabeth is sitting in the front yard in a lawn chair. In her bathing suit! The new two-piece one that shows everybody on the block everything she’s got. Her lips are as red as her god-awful new hair and her feet are in Jenny’s old blow-up wading pool.
I screech to a halt and barrel out of the car…and that’s when I spot my suitcase on the ground beside her, gaping open and empty as a black hole.
“Elizabeth? What in the world’s going on?”
“What do you think, Howard?”
She stands up real slow, a sure-fire sign that she’s got a snarling tiger in her tank.
“I’m doing your laundry.”
Then as calm as you please she steps into the wading pool and starts stomping around. That’s when I see my Fruit of the Looms floating around. Every last pair, from the looks of things.
On top of everything else, I’ll have to stop and buy myself some clean shorts.
“Elizabeth…what the hell. Get out of there.”
“Oh, okay. You can do your own packing.” With this excruciating calm, she steps out of the pool and sashays toward the house. If anybody cared to stare out their window, they’d see my wife swinging her butt around like there was no tomorrow.
Mortified, I grab the beach towel draped across the back of her lawn chair and throw it over her shoulders.
“For God’s sake, Elizabeth. What are you trying to do? Scandalize us in front of the neighbors?”
“If you worried about your own daughter as much as you worry about the neighbors, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
I’m not fixing to have a private conversation in earshot of the neighbors, so I hustle her into the house.
“Now, would you care to illuminate me?”
“I’d like to illuminate you with a lightbulb straight up your wazoo.”
“For God’s sake, Elizabeth.”
“Stop saying that. This is for Jenny’s sake. Thanks to you, she didn’t answer her phone until this morning.”
“Did you tell her we were coming?”
“I did. But not to pack her up and haul her home like some misbehaving three-year-old.”
“If she’s going to act that way, then she’ll be treated that way.”
“Howard, don’t you get it? She’s not being childish, she’s trying her wings. And if we clip them at every turn, we’ll lose her. She’ll become a statistic, one of those teenage runaways you see on the back of milk cartons.”
Elizabeth’s habit of overdramatizing used to amuse me, but now it just gives me ulcers. I feel as if I’m caught up in a crazy carnival ride, one of those Tilt-A-Whirls that spins you upside down till you get disoriented and can’t tell where the ground is. Why can’t we ease into old age like ordinary people?
“Elizabeth, I’m not about to let an eighteen-year-old child throw away her future. Now, are you going to Arizona with me, or do you want me to go alone?”
“If you think I’m going to let you go out west and provoke a showdown with my daughter, you’re sadly mistaken, Howard Martin.”
She jerks the towel off and flicks it at my butt. Hard.
“Besides,” she adds, “I’ve got a thousand miles to make you change your mind about Jenny.”
It’s fifteen hundred, but Elizabeth never did know a thing about long-distance travel. The trip we took to Disney World when the kids were little is a case in point. We were down in south Alabama—Thomasville, to be exact—when Kate said, “Mom, where are we?”
“Why, honey…we’re in the car!”
Of course, we all laughed and made a big joke of it, but all these years later I’m beginning to see that while I’ve always known where I was going—working hard to secure a good future for my family—Elizabeth has simply been along for the ride without the foggiest idea of where she’s headed.
I guess I’m partially to blame. I’ve always indulged her, let her drift along writing her music and taking care of the house and the girls.
Now, all of a sudden, she wants to take charge. And her without a clue. Good Lord, if I let her have her way in the current situation with Jenny, there’s no telling where we’ll all end up.
CHAPTER 16
“Could ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall save this road trip?”
—Beth
I used to picture us traveling along these roads, stopping to admire the Painted Desert and the Grand Canyon. Instead, Howard and I are barreling along, bleary-eyed and sore-tailed, not noticing a thing except the icy chill in this car.
I argued nonstop for Jenny’s independence all the way to the Mississippi River bridge, but by the time we crossed into Arkansas I realized I might as well be talking to a stump. I swear, Howard is the most exasperating man I’ve ever met. How could I ever have thought he was sweet?
“She’s eighteen, you know,” I say in a final effort to get him to be reasonable. “Legally, she can do what she wants.”
“Who gives a shit about legality if she’s eating out of a garbage can?”
Good Lord. Is this my mild-mannered husband? Howard’s never used profanities before.
“She’ll have plenty to eat, Howard. No matter how much you bluff and bluster, I know you would never cut her off without a penny. Especially when she’s done nothing wrong.”
“This is not about right and wrong. It’s about stupidity versus sensibility.”
How like Howard to veer away from the real topic and try to turn this into a philosophical discussion. I have no intention of being drawn into that sticky fly-trap. Instead, I unsnap my seat belt and lean into the backseat for a blanket.
“Great-granny’s nightgown, Elizabeth. Buckle up. Do you want to get yourself killed?”
“Why, are you fixing to wrap this car around a tree?”
He mutters shit under his breath, which means I’ve won this round. If you call sitting hunched on the passenger’s side of the car like a moody Buddha winning.
Now that I’ve stopped talking, I notice that Howard’s relaxing. That won’t do. If I want to win this battle for Jenny, I’ve got to keep him off balance, exhaust him to the point of submission.
And so I start humming “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” At first, he tries hard not to notice, but after forty miles of purposely tuneless humming, he’s about to crawl out of his skin.
He swerves into a 7-Eleven so sharply I almost get whiplash.
“Gotta get gas,” he mutters.
He’s onto my ploy. Never mind. I’ll just keep it up for another hundred miles or so, and then we’ll see who wants to jerk Jenny up by the scruff of the neck as if she’s some silly kitten who can’t find her way to the milk saucer.
But first I need sustenance. Inside I load up with peanuts and chocolate bars and several sacks of corn chips. Not that they’re my favorite. I prefer potato chips, but corn will make huge, crunchy sounds that will drive Howard even crazier.
We get underway again, and for the next fifty miles, I alternately hum and crunch, but the only thing I achieve is indigestion and an acute aversion to corn.
When did Howard and I come to this—warring parties always on the opposite side of an issue, especially if it involves the girls? I don’t know. Maybe I’m the only one making war. I remember a time when we settled our differences with normal conversation in the civilized atmosphere of the living room.
Now we’re racing through the night in a car filled with crumpled corn chip bags, chocolate smears and peanuts that went astray. I’ve worn myself out with antics designed to make him give in, and he’s exhausted me with his dogged silence.
“Are we going to stop for the night?” It’s long past midnight, and I want to know.
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since we left Tupelo.”
“Does that mean yes or no?”
“If I can find a Comfort Inn, I’ll stop.”
Howard has an obsession about the Comfort Inn. I guess he thinks the name guarantees what it says. A highly unlikely prospect, considering the state of affairs between us.
Anyway, we pass a small Holiday Inn, a nice-looking Ramada and two no-name local motels, but he keeps on batting it. I’m not going to say another word. Even if he falls asleep at the wheel and runs us into a ditch.
Two can play this martyr game. Finally I see the Comfort Inn sign ahead, but I don’t say anything. It would be like giving in. Let him think I’m indestructible, a woman who can scrunch into the corner of the car all night long and still remain strong and determined. Heck, even scintillating. Surreptitiously I reach into my purse and pull out a travel flacon of my favorite Jungle Gardenia perfume. There’s nothing like fragrance to make a woman feel beautiful. Well, sex, but we won’t even go there.
With my hands under the blanket, I spritz some perfume on my wrists, just on general principle.
“What’s that I smell?” Howard says.
“I don’t smell anything.”
Let him think gardenia is my natural aroma. I’m certainly not primping for him.
“There it is.” He wheels into the Comfort Inn—thank goodness—then gives one last whiff. “I could swear I smell flowers.”
“Just get us a room and forget it.”
He gets a room, all right, with two double beds. His and hers, obviously.
Not that I mind. In fact, I wouldn’t sleep with him if he was the only man on Earth and I was in charge of single-handedly propagating the human race. For one thing, I’m too tired, and for another, I’m just plain mad.
While he’s in the bathroom performing his nightly ritual, I undress and chew some Tums, then crawl under the sheets and shut my eyes.