by Cari Cole
"You can bring the wine. Jane's on her way over."
"Why?"
"Because you called her and scared her half to death. She thought you were on death's door."
Lucy swam upright, putting the ice cream on the edge of the tub with the wine. "I din't call Jane." She pushed to her feet and steadied herself on the marble tile wall and held out a hand for the towel.
Mae released the towel, poised to act if it looked like Lucy was going down. "You might not remember but you did call her."
Lucy wrapped the towel around her torso and looked at the side of the tub with a puzzled frown. How the hell was she supposed to get out?
"Here," Mae said offering her a hand.
Lucy made two passes before connecting. She swayed and clutched at Mae's arm nearly dragging Mae into the tub with her. "Whoops." She locked her knees and held on for dear life.
"Maybe you should sit back down until Jane gets here," Mae said.
Lucy shook her head. "Cold. Need to get clothes on."
"Fine, use the wall to steady yourself while I move this stuff off the tub."
Lucy let go of Mae's hand and steadied herself on the wall again.
Mae moved the ice cream and the wine away from the tub. "Now just sit down and swing your legs over."
Lucy followed directions and stood up outside the tub. "Good."
"Hello? Mae? Lucy?" Jane called up from the foyer.
"Master bedroom," Mae called down to her as she led Lucy out of the bathroom.
"Don't know why you're making such a fuss," Lucy said. "I'm old, useless and probably gonna be homeless soon. I earned the right to get drunk today."
Jane stepped into the bedroom, took one look at Lucy's bleary eyes, pruney fingers and rat's nest red hair and shook her head. "Getting drunk isn't the problem. Getting drunk alone at home is."
Lucy crumpled onto the edge of her bed. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."
"How long were you in the tub?" Mae asked.
Lucy tried to think. Couldn't come up with an answer. "Don't know. Maybe since lunchtime?"
"You're lucky you didn't drown," Mae said.
Jane picked up the shirt Lucy had shed on her trek to the tub and wrinkled her nose. "What's that smell?"
Lucy sniffed. "Gunpowder."
"What!" Mae said.
"Is there a dead body in the house?" Jane asked.
"No," Lucy said. "Just some dead fish."
"Then the story can wait." Jane disappeared into Lucy's walk-in closet/dressing room and returned with a pair of sweat pants and a tee shirt. "Put these on. Then we can decide what to do next."
Woe Is Us
"Tell us all the gory details," Jane said as she sipped her Diet Coke, tapping the shank of her sapphire ring on the rim of her glass.
Lucy sipped at the glass of water Jane insisted would help fend off a hangover at least until they decided whether more drinking was in order. "Gary packed a bag while I was cooking jambalaya. He came into the kitchen and announced he'd been unhappy for some time and now that Ryan was gone he saw no reason to stay." She cast a pointed glance at Jane's tapping finger.
Jane put the glass on the table. "The bastard. I hope you let him have it."
Lucy mustered a smile. "I shot his fish off the wall."
Mae gasped and goggled at her. "His tournament bass?"
"And that ugly ass marlin."
"Chip would come unhinged if anything happened to all those stuffed and lacquered things he has in the basement," Mae said with a little shiver.
"Gary was more than a little upset. But he thought better of trying to stop me when I threatened to shoot his dick off."
Jane laughed, delighted. "Damn you've got style."
"Unfortunately, I have a feeling he's going to make me pay when it comes time to negotiate a settlement."
Jane tapped the rim of her glass a few more times and said, "Fuck him. He's the one losing out."
Mae raised her glass in agreement. "Fuck him."
Lucy choked on her water.
Jane stared with her jaw hanging open for several seconds before she found her voice. "I've never heard so much as a 'damn' come out of your mouth before. What gives?" she said.
Still struggling to catch her breath, Lucy nodded her encouragement for Mae to answer.
"What gives? Me. To my family. I've turned them all into a bunch of spoiled brats--and that includes my husband. Do you know, they actually thought I must be physically ill because I didn't clean up the mess they left in the kitchen this morning?"
"And saying fuck relates to this how?" Lucy asked.
"I've decided to try new things. Like using bad language and not cleaning up after them all the time. I'm thinking about getting a job or something." She reached for her purse and started digging for the pack of cigarettes she'd retrieved from her stash before leaving the house. "And I'm going outside to smoke."
Jane and Lucy stared after Mae in open-mouthed shock for several seconds before jumping up to follow her out of the sunroom to the patio.
Mae saying she was going to get a job was like Hillary Clinton announcing she was going to become a Republican. Mae announcing she was going to smoke--well there wasn't anything to compare it to. Mae was all about taking care of her family and presenting an image of wholesome perfection to the world.
Outside, Jane laughed, dropped into a cushioned patio chair, and signaled for Mae to pass her the pack. "You're talking about getting a job and I might be unemployed on Monday."
"What?" Was there some sort of insanity virus going around? "I thought you were going to be realtor of the month." Lucy sat down and watched her two best friends light up and puff away, feeling like she'd gone down the rabbit hole.
"That was before I told my client to make a deal with his trophy wife about how many blow jobs it would take for her to get the house she wanted." Jane coughed as she blew out a thin stream of smoke.
"Oh my God. You didn't?" Mae pulled smoke deep into her lungs with more finesse and no coughing.
Jane drank from the glass she still held and nodded. "I did. And you know what? I don't feel bad about it. I know I should feel bad. I know it wasn't nice. But I've just reached the limit on my bullshit meter."
"That's just how I feel," Mae said.
"Well, I didn't choose rebellion. I had it forced on me by my rat bastard soon to be ex-husband," Lucy said.
She threw back the last of her water, wishing for the box of wine. "I want my nice well-planned future back. I don't like not knowing what comes next." Especially when what came next was sure to be an unpleasant divorce battle followed by a severe cut in her standard of living.
"You want Gary back?" Jane asked.
Lucy thought about that. She should want Gary back. She loved him didn't she? The fact that she had to think about it was a hint. "No, I don't think so, but I want my future retirement back. I want to spend my golden years collecting shark's teeth in oversized brandy snifters and watching the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico from the balcony of my high rise condo."
"Doesn't that sort of go along with having Gary back?" Jane said.
"I don't know. I guess I'm thinking of him in a gone fishing sort of way."
"Well you should probably think of him as just gone," Jane said. "And good riddance. You shouldn't spend the best part of your life with someone you tolerate more than love."
"But I don't want something different. I want safe and predictable and easy. Reinventing my life at this point is just too much work," Lucy said.
"No whining allowed," Jane said.
"We're all at a crossroads in our lives. We have a chance to completely turn things around--find our bliss," Mae said.
Jane and Lucy looked at each other and burst out laughing.
"Are you sure you haven't been drinking?" Lucy said.
Mae pretended to pout. "What's so funny?"
"Crossroads?" Jane said wiping tears of laughter off her face--without smudging her makeup. "Promise me the words 'find
our bliss' will never pass your lips again."
Lucy was shaking her head. "Maybe she's right. Maybe we're all having a pre-midlife crisis."
"Pre midlife?" Jane said.
"Well I'm sure as hell not admitting to being middle-aged. Hell, half the time I feel like I'm just playing a grownup on TV," Lucy said.
"I always feel like a grownup. I think that's the problem," Mae said.
"I think we need a night on the town," Lucy said. "I'm not through drinking yet. Let's go to The Shitkicker."
"You're still drunk," Jane said.
Lucy nodded. "I'm also serious."
Jane tapped another cigarette out of Mae's pack. "I'm game."
"The Shitkicker?" Mae's voice came out as a squeak. "That place is full of rowdy twenty-one year olds. And it's . . ."
"Fun?" Lucy said.
"I was going to say seedy," Mae said.
"Seedy? Nobody says seedy." Jane drummed her fingernails on the table.
Mae pursed her lips in a stubborn pout. "Chip would have a coronary."
"Didn't you just get finished telling us you wanted to try new things? Break out of your soccer mom mold?" Jane said.
"And don't forget the always feeling like a grownup thing," Lucy said.
"But I don't have anything to wear," Mae said.
"Just throw on a pair of jeans and you'll be good to go," Jane said.
Mae didn't say anything but the vaguely guilty look on her face spoke volumes.
Lucy was horrified. "Don't tell me you don't own a pair of jeans."
Boot Scoot Boogie
"I can't go out in public dressed like this," Mae said. "I thought these clothes were going to be fun but I feel like I'm wearing a costume." She shuddered. "People will laugh at me."
Lucy thought Mae looked adorable in her western wear. After Mae's confession that she indeed didn't own a pair of jeans, Lucy had insisted they go shopping for Shitkicker clothes at Wild Bill's. "Look at it this way, it would have been worse if we'd opted for the square dance clothes."
"Mae, you really need to loosen up," Jane said. "You take this whole conservative suburban soccer mom thing to the extreme. When was the last time you went to the grocery store in your sweats?"
Mae looked vaguely horrified at the thought. "I never leave the house like that."
"Do you even sit around the house like that?" Jane asked.
Mae shook her head. "Too many people coming and going from my house. I like to be presentable."
When Jane arched an eyebrow, Mae got defensive. "There's nothing wrong with always wanting to look your best."
"Of course there isn't," Lucy said giving Jane the eye.
Jane ignored Lucy. "No, there isn't anything wrong with wanting to look your best but everyone has a skanky sweat and tee shirt day. No one would think less of you if you forgot your mascara every once in a while."
Mae shivered at the thought. "Easy for you to say."
"What does that mean?" Jane said.
"It means, I never see you running around in sweats and even if you did you wouldn't have to worry about anyone looking down their nose at you because of it," Mae said. She ground her cigarette out in a ceramic dish they'd brought out to the patio for use as an ashtray.
"You're right I don't have to worry about it and neither do you," Jane said.
Lucy squinted at both of them with concern. "What's going on here? Mae, why would you think anyone would look down their nose at you for any reason? Especially your clothes. You've seen the way I dress. We live in the same neighborhood for God's sake." Lucy had never met a pair of jeans or sweatpants she didn't like and the very thought of wearing something that had to be ironed--except for weddings, funerals and the occasional church service--gave her hives.
Mae's lower lip trembled. "You don't understand, either of you. You never had to." She looked at Jane. "Your mother probably dressed you in designer diapers and I'd bet everything I own that you were the queen bee at your high school." She turned to Lucy. "And you, you're one of those people that can get away with anything by being 'creative' and 'intellectual'. Well, I'm here to tell you it isn't like that for all of us. Some of us live on the other side of that coin."
"What the hell are you talking about? Just because you came from a peanut farm in South Georgia instead of the city? Or some college campus?" Jane said.
"I lied."
The Truth As We Know It
Mae's voice was so low when she responded that Jane and Lucy took several seconds to process her words.
"Lied about what?" Lucy said. "Your parents?"
Mae nodded looking miserable and blinking back tears.
"So what?" Jane said.
"I knew you wouldn't get it," Mae said.
Lucy shot Jane a look letting her know to back off.
Jane shrugged and leaned back in her chair.
Lucy couldn't imagine what Mae's parents had to do with any of this but obviously Mae had something bubbling to the surface after being submerged for a while. "Maybe you should explain," Lucy said. "We want to help." And maybe thinking about someone else's problems would take her mind off her own for a while.
"The only true thing I've told anyone about my past is that I'm from South Georgia. Even Chip doesn't know the whole truth," Mae said.
"What is the truth?" Lucy asked.
Mae sucked in a breath and averted her eyes before answering. "My parents were total white trash losers. Drinking, drugs, jail, unemployment, bad trailer parks--the whole works. I spent more time in foster care than I did with them. Which was a blessing and the only reason I made it to college. I was the kid everyone either felt sorry for or ridiculed in high school." She shuddered. "It was hell. After I made it to UGA, I invented a different past for myself and made it a point to learn how to dress and how to act to fit in. But deep down, I always knew I didn't really belong, that if I wasn't vigilant my genes would come back to bite me and everyone would know I'm a big impostor."
Lucy blinked back tears of her own but Jane just stared at Mae with her mouth open for several seconds. "You're serious," she finally said.
Anger sparked along with shame and hurt in Mae's eyes when she looked squarely back at Jane. "Of course I'm serious. Lately it's been harder. My kids are getting older and I'm always afraid I'm going to embarrass them or do something to make the other kids treat them the way I was treated in high school."
Lucy got it. For the first time Mae made sense to her. The ruthlessly clean house. The immaculate clothes, hair and manicure. The fact that she never, but never, drank more than two or three drinks even when it was just the girls. Her constant worry about Chelsea and Trey's grades, sports performance and social life.
"You need a serious reality check," Jane said.
Lucy started to shush her but Jane shook her head indicating she knew what she was doing.
Lucy waited, ready to jump in if Jane went too far.
"All those people you seem to think are somehow better than you? They all have their secrets too," Jane said.
"If you're talking about Betsy Lamar's husband having an affair or Leanne Standish being an alcoholic, it's not the same thing," Mae said.
"You're right. But the fact that Betsy was 'Betsy Boop' stripper extraordinaire when she met Mike or that Leanne drinks in part because Truman Standish makes his money producing porn isn't just the same thing, it's proof positive that these people you so admire don't have one tenth as much class as you."
Lucy's eyes went wide. She hadn't known any of that. "Are you serious? About Betsy and Truman I mean."
"Oh yeah. You'd be amazed if you knew the kind of secrets that are being kept in the houses of Pine Bluff Country Club Estates."
"Wow," Lucy said. "You aren't kidding."
"The point," Jane said turning back to Mae, "is that you shouldn't be ashamed of your background. You should be proud of the fact that you overcame it and made a good life for yourself and your family."
Lucy was starting to think Mae hadn't been listeni
ng when she suddenly started to laugh.
"Truman Standish makes dirty movies? Bald, short, coke-bottle glasses Truman?" Mae said.
Jane nodded. "Oh yeah. Wanna hear about John and Trish Markham?"
"I do," Lucy said. She felt a tiny twinge of guilt at listening to such evil gossip but, well . . .
"They're swingers."
"No way! Not Trish. She leads a bible study group at the Baptist church," Mae said.
"The very one," Jane said.
"And just how do you know all of this?" Lucy wanted to know.
"The years I spent married to Lloyd were very educational," Jane said.
"Oh my God you didn't . . . I mean you weren't . . ." Mae couldn't find the words.
"Swinging with Trish and John?" Jane shook her head. "No but not because they didn't try to convince me--all three of them. It was the last straw that sent me to divorce court."
Mae didn't know what to say.
"So you see we all have our secrets," Jane said. "As for the designer diapers and the queen bee thing. You're right but I doubt I saw more of my parents than you did yours--sleazy personal injury lawyers make a lot of money but they work a lot of hours. And I like to think I've grown a conscience since I tortured the less popular in high school."
"I'm sorry," Mae said. "I apologize to both of you I was out of line."
"No worries," Jane said.
"I'm just glad you got it out," Lucy said.
"Let's get out of here," Jane said. "We really need to kick up our heels."
###
"I guess everyone has their sacred cows," Lucy said when Jane turned up her nose at the Shitkicker's appetizers. What the hell had she expected? Sushi?
Jane looked a little green around the gills. "Sacred cows?"
"Okay, maybe that wasn't the best choice of words." Lucy eyed the huge assortment of deep fried and sauced food--including a basket of fatty ribs swimming in a brown sugar based barbecue sauce. "But this isn't a salad bar kind of place."
"Can I help it if I have a fear of getting fat?"
"Yes, you can. I've been meaning to tell you you're starting to look a little pinched around the edges. That can happen when the main staple in your diet is iceberg lettuce with lemon juice dressing," Mae said.