The Potluck Club—Takes the Cake

by Linda Evans Shepherd

  “Let him help,” I said with a bit too much irritation in my voice.

  I watched David as he kneeled down to make the adjustment then looked back at the sour face of my mother. So help me, if she didn’t stop pushing her grandson away I was going to push both her and her chair off a cliff.

  Be nice, I told myself for the millionth time. God will get you through this; he will.

  When David stood, Mother asked, “Vonnie, where would you have me sit? Surely, not here by these doors that keep blowing cold air at me every time someone opens them?”

  I turned to David, to dismiss him. I couldn’t have him wheel Mother to the table, at least not while Donna’s sister sat there grinning at him like the Cheshire cat.

  I took the cake from Mother and handed it to David before grasping the handlebars of Mother’s chair. “David, be a dear and run my dessert to the kitchen. I’ll take over from here.”

  David kept his eyes on Velvet. “It’s no trouble. Let me wheel Gram to your table. That is your table with your white plates on it, right?”

  I put my hands on my hips and more harshly than I intended said, “Never mind that, son. Take this to the kitchen. I’ll call you to pick up Gram later.”

  “Okay.” He gave one last wave to Velvet. “See you,” he called.

  She nodded and waved back.

  I pushed Mother to the table. As I got her settled, her eyes turned first to Doreen then to Velvet. Mother eyed Velvet’s name tag sitting by her plate. When Velvet followed her gaze, she quickly tucked the tag into her purse. Mother said, “Young lady, I thought you were the deputy. You’re not, are you?”

  Velvet grinned. “Donna Vesey? Nope, never met her.”

  “But you know my grandson? You waved at him.”

  “You mean David Harris? I’ve seen him on TV.” She giggled. “He probably thinks I’m Donna too.”

  “I wouldn’t fool around like that, pretending to be someone you’re not.”

  Velvet laughed, sounding much like Donna when she laughed. “I’m only having a bit of fun. Besides, Donna, it seems to me, has more than enough guys.”

  I joined the conversation. “But surely the men around here know you’re not her.”

  She smiled. “As far as I can tell, Donna’s got them under some sort of spell. All I have to do is wear black, keep my mouth shut, and smile and wave, and... Well, let me put it this way—it doesn’t take too much for the guys around here to think she’s finally noticing them.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Mother said. “You pretend to be Donna?”

  Velvet shrugged.

  “But you can’t get away with that,” I said.

  “You’d think so, but as most people don’t know Donna has a sister, you’d be surprised what I can get away with.”

  I must have gasped, because Mother patted my hand and said, “Let me handle this. Young lady, you will certainly not be going out with my grandson. I simply won’t allow it.”

  “What makes you think we haven’t already gone out?” she asked coyly.

  Dee Dee said, “Settle down, Velvet. We’re here to build bridges tonight, not make things worse.”

  Velvet looked miffed. “I’m your daughter too, you know. I’m the one who’s been there for you. Not Donna.”

  “Let’s not talk about that now, Velvet. Just help me reach out. That’s all I want to do.”

  Velvet sighed and rolled her eyes, much the same way Donna did. “Mom, if you’d already approached her to tell her you were in town, like I told you to—”

  “I’ve told you, I’ve tried, but this way, well, it might be easier.”

  “Did you consider she might not even be here tonight?” She turned to me. “Where is she?”

  I shook my head. “Had to work,” I said.

  Dee Dee looked crestfallen. “Just my luck.” She leaned into Velvet with a playful nudge of her elbow. “Behave anyway. I want to make a good impression as I reenter this community.”

  “Mom, I’m telling you, you’re going about it the wrong way. These people are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites.”

  That pushed my button. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. I pushed my chair back and stood up, then I sat down just as my other table guests arrived.

  “Hello, Vonnie, good to see you,” Dora Watkins said. Dora, the proprietor of the local Sew and Stitch, stood before me, along with her thirty-something daughters Paige and Mrs. Ellen Allen, the wife of Terry Allen, the publisher of the Gold Rush News.

  I tried not to grimace at the realization that the trio would get a front row seat to the drama that was unfolding before me. Oh brother! This would be all over Summit View by tomorrow afternoon. Everyone but Donna would know her mother and sister were in town.

  My heart skipped a beat. I nodded at Dora and her girls. “Welcome, make yourselves at home,” I said.

  I looked at Velvet again. Somebody had to tell Donna about Dee Dee and Velvet, and soon, I realized.

  But what if Donna dropped in at the church for dessert? She was on duty, of course, but that never stopped her from sampling home-baked goodies. I felt my eyes widen. Oh boy. This could get interesting.

  This was all Donna needed, what with the depositions for the lawsuit starting. People wouldn’t know if they were describing Donna or her sister to the gathering attorneys. I felt my stomach churn.

  “Well, we didn’t know if we could make it,” Dora was saying. “But with this being the first women’s event without our dear Jan Moore, we felt we had to come. To support her memory, you know.”

  She turned and looked at Doreen and her daughter for the first time. “Oh dear,” she said to Velvet. “Did you know you look just like Donna Vesey? I almost thought you were her.”

  Velvet grinned. “You don’t say?”

  Dee Dee extended her hand. “Dora Watkins, long time no see,” she said. Dora’s eyes went to Dee Dee’s name tag, then back to her face. “Do I know you? Oh my sweet red calico. Doreen? Doreen Vesey?” Her eyes darted from Dee Dee to Velvet, and she let out a little gasp. “Oh! You’re Donna’s sister?”

  Suddenly the lights dimmed, and Evie and Lisa Leann were up in front of the room, sharing the microphone. Their voices chimed a welcome as the group applauded politely while Clay snapped their picture. Next, Lisa Leann and the choir director, Pastor Hal, did a lovely duet of “Away in a Manger.” Dee Dee and Velvet rose from their seats and began to walk toward the front of the room. Now, where were they off to? Before I could ask, Mother leaned over to whisper, a bit too loudly because of her hearing loss, “Vonnie, take me to the bathroom please.”

  I stood and pushed Mother back through the foyer doors to the ladies’ room. I got her situated, then decided to step outside the bathroom just in time to see Donna breeze through the outside door. I scurried to head her off, but before I could, I could hear Lisa Leann and Hal finish their song. Hal took the microphone and said, “Tonight we have a special treat for you. Lisa Leann introduced me a few days ago to a former church choir member from thirty years back, Doreen Roberts Vesey, who is here with her daughter Velvet. They’ve asked to sing for us tonight, and after hearing them, I couldn’t say no.”

  A collective gasp escaped the Grace ladies, the loudest of which I’m sure came from Evie, who was probably about to have a coronary.

  Donna stopped in her tracks and stared at me first and then at the door of the fellowship hall.

  “My mom?” she mouthed as she walked to the fellowship hall entrance. I stepped behind her just as Doreen’s eyes fastened on Donna.

  Through the doorway, I could see Evie, who sat at a table near the front, shift her body so she could follow the path of Doreen’s stare. As Evie’s gaze came to rest on Donna, a look of horror rose with her arched eyebrows.

  Clay snapped a picture.

  Doreen had the microphone in her hand now. “The last time you saw me, I was singing, so it’s appropriate that as we meet again the microphone is back in my hand. As I’m not very good with words, I t
hought I’d use a song to express my regret and to let you know, well, that I’m ready for a fresh start and I hope to put the past behind me. This is my way of saying hello. Tonight, I’m going to sing a Christmas favorite of my daughter Velvet and myself. It’s not a song from your hymnal, but it’s a special song that I want to sing in honor of my daughter Donna Vesey.” She gave a shy smile. “I’ve missed you, honey.”

  The crowd gasped again as Velvet, who’d been strapping on her guitar that had been placed at the side of the stage, began to strum the first few notes of “Please Come Home for Christmas,” a song recorded by the Eagles that one of the local stations always played this time of year.

  Mother began to call me from the bathroom. “Vonnie? Vonnie! Are you going to let me sit here all day?”

  I was caught. Should I let Mother wail loud enough to disrupt the group or should I stand with the daughter of my heart as she listened to her natural mother plead in song about coming home?

  Donna and her frown were frozen in the moment as her mother sang and my mother continued to wail. “Vonnie, come and get me, will you?”

  33

  A Million Little Pieces

  Clay had been unable to help himself; the opportunity for picturetaking had been too much of a temptation for him to stop. He was sure the ladies thought he would use them for tomorrow’s paper, but he had not a single intention of that. These were going in his personal file. Or, he should say, his personal file of the ladies of the Potluck Club.

  He’d thought ever so fleetingly about something his boss had said to him earlier in the week. “Whitefield,” he’d said, “I’m having lunch today with an old college buddy of mine; we studied journalism together. He’s a big-time editor now of some big-time publishing house in New York.”

  Clay had been sitting at his desk, his boss standing over him, and he peered up. “Really?”

  “You’ve no doubt heard of it,” he said, then spouted off the name of one of the top publishing houses in the country. No, make that the world.

  “Really?” Clay repeated.

  “He’s over in Breck skiing and looked me up.” Clay’s boss smiled wryly. “Yes, really.” He stepped away then looked back. “Hold down the fort for me, will you?”

  “Sure, sure,” Clay had said then. Now his mind whirled with thoughts of contacting his boss’s old friend... of talking about acquisitions and such... talking about fiction. Or, would it be... what were they calling it these days? Creative nonfiction? Either way, he could easily turn this chaos into fame and fortune.

  sBut that was before Donna walked in.

  Before he saw the look on her face.

  The look on Dee Dee McGurk’s.

  Before he watched Donna’s world shatter into a million little pieces.

  Donna

  34

  Digesting the News

  When I stepped into the foyer of the fellowship hall I felt like I’d entered the twilight zone. In the dim light, the building seemed to echo a sort of shocked hush. I walked to the entrance, where I saw two women glowing in the spotlight on the platform at the front of the room. Something struck me about the pair. For one thing, the younger woman, especially from this distance, could have been my twin, and the older woman looked familiar. Was it Dee Dee McGurk, the barmaid from the Gold Rush Tavern?

  Then the woman held her eyes with mine as she announced, in front of God and all the world, that she was my mother.

  I mouthed the words “My mom?” then stared at a ghostly image of Vonnie as she glided toward me through the darkened hall. She nodded, confirming this nightmare was not a dream.

  I couldn’t believe this. The entertainment at tonight’s Christmas tea was my Benedict Arnold mother and some long-lost sister singing a song about coming home, in dedication to me?

  That just tore it. Wasn’t it enough that my privacy had been exposed on national television with Mr. Hollywood himself and that I was being sued in the baby Long case? Now this?

  If I could have stepped outside of myself to view this fiasco from a different perspective—like maybe as someone from Mars—I might have found it somewhat amusing. But there was my mother, the mother who had abandoned me to raise yet another daughter, singing me a song. I blinked then stared at my sister. She appeared to be a younger, kinder version of myself. This was not what I needed.

  If Vonnie hadn’t put her arm around me when she did, I think I would have sunk to the floor in a puddle of humiliation.

  I pulled my eyes from the horrific vision before me and looked at Vonnie.

  “My mother?” I mouthed again.

  Vonnie leaned to whisper in my ear. “I’m afraid so, dear. I only realized moments ago that she was in town.”

  Somewhere in the background, I could hear a voice crying above the strains of the Christmas song that seemed to hold the women of Grace Church captive.

  The voice sounded like Vonnie’s mother. “Vonnie! Come get me now!”

  Vonnie gave me one last squeeze. “Donna, I’ve got to get Mother out of the bathroom. But I don’t want to leave you like this.”

  “Go,” I said, my focus on the apparition before me.

  I’d known that old woman from the Gold Rush Tavern was up to something, but I’d never have guessed this. How dare she make a mockery of how she’d rejected me and my dad, all to music, no less?

  The last strains of the song faded, yet the women in the room sat as if they were held in a trance. That is, all except Evie, who was craning her neck at me as if she was afraid she’d lost her mind and I knew where she’d put it.

  Dee Dee, or I guess I should say, my mother—or at least the woman who had given birth to me—spoke into the microphone again, her eyes still holding me prisoner. “Donna, I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here so I can tell you how sorry I am. Could you ever find it in your heart to forgive me? To let me be your mother again?”

  Suddenly, the women of the room shifted and turned, all eyes on me, waiting for my response.

  They wouldn’t get one.

  I slowly turned and walked back toward the outside doors, my steps echoing across the foyer.

  “Donna?” Dee Dee called out after me.

  I didn’t turn around. After all, what did she expect? For me to run to her as if in a slow-motion moment of ecstasy, butterflies fluttering as I leap through flowering gardens while violins crescendo in joy? Oh, Mother dear, thanks for coming home after thirty years of abandonment. Wanna bake cookies?

  I snorted. That kind of reconciliation would never happen. Not here, not now, not ever.

  I pushed open the double doors and felt the stinging cold slap me in the face. I swatted at a stray tear, disgusted by my emotional response. I wanted to feel nothing. But instead, my stomach flipped as the stars overhead blinked out of focus. I reached for my keys from my pocket. Was my hand shaking?

  Vonnie’s Taurus turned into the parking lot and pulled up next to me. David Harris powered down his window.

  “Is the party over already?”

  When I didn’t respond, he stared at me. “You’re certainly a quick change artist,” he said. “Weren’t you just wearing red?”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. He’d thought my sister, what was her name—Velvet?—was me. Actually, that explained a lot of the strange comments I’d gotten in the past few weeks. I stared through David and kept walking. He parked, then popped out of the car. “Donna? Is everything okay?”

  I shook my head. “Later,” I said before climbing into my Bronco. He walked in my direction. In response, I turned on the motor and prepared to steer out of the parking lot.

  The lights of a Jeep sliced through the darkness.

  Clay. Had he been inside to witness yet another humiliation? Sure he had. He’d probably even recorded the whole thing with his trusty camera. Hey, with my luck, this could make front page news in the morning. “Deputy Publicly Spurns Apology from Mother.” Maybe even Hollywood Nightly would pick it up.

  Hey, maybe Baby Bailey Ann�
�s mother would even see it and add it to her “Why I should sue Donna’s pants off ” file.

  Perfect.

  I pulled out of the parking lot, as did Clay’s Jeep. I guess he had to hurry back to the paper if he was going to make tomorrow’s edition with his scoop.

  Me? I’d drown my sorrows in a cup of joe at Sally’s. It should be quiet there.

  Moments later, I pushed through the jangling door and sat down at my usual table. I signaled Sally for a cup then slid into a chair, not bothering to look up when the door jangled again.

  “Donna? Are you okay?” Clay dropped into a chair across from me.

  “Nope.”

  “You mean you didn’t know Dee Dee was your mother?”

  “No!” I blurted. “Did you?”

  “Well, I’d hoped your dad or Miss Evie would have told you by now.”

  I felt my jaw set. “So, the three of you were just going to keep this a secret? Or were you all in on the great revelation tonight?”

  Clay reached for my hand. “I swear, Donna, I didn’t know about that. I don’t think anyone did.”

  “Well, I for one can’t wait to see it in the paper.”

  “I wouldn’t!”

  “Your publisher’s wife was there. I saw her sitting near the back. I’d wager this will make the paper whether you write it up or not. Don’t you think?”

  Clay blanched. “Um, I don’t know. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “You’ve certainly done a lot, Clay. You leaked the story about David Harris to the national media, and now you’re going to paint me as the bitter woman I’m fast becoming.”

  “Bitter? No, Donna, that’s not how I see you.”

  I stared at his hand over mine, then looked him in the eye. “Aren’t you afraid your girlfriend is going to see us together?”

  “I... uh...” He stood up. “I gotta go. I’m going to call my publisher to see what I can do about the story I have to file tonight.”

  “You do that, Clay.”

  He leaned over and hugged me. “Donna, you know I care about you. I’ll see what I can do to make this all go away. Who knows? Maybe I can turn this around to paint you in a positive light.”