Hissy Fit

by Mary Kay Andrews

  That was as far as I was going to go. Will Mahoney had obviously already seen me naked. I didn’t feel the need to bare the rest of myself to him.

  “I’m going now,” I said, heading for the front door.

  “Wait.” He followed me out onto the front porch and locked the door behind us. Clouds had gathered overhead, and huge raindrops started to splatter around us.

  “Come on,” he said, pointing toward the yellow Cadillac, which was parked over by the toolshed. “I’ll drive you back to your car.”

  We ran for the car, and by the time we’d gotten in, I was glad to have the beach towel wrapped around my shoulders.

  Will stopped at the gate and got out to unlock it. I slid over to the driver’s side and pulled the Caddy far enough forward for him to lock the gate behind us, and then he got in on the passenger side.

  “The Bascombs’ driveway is just up the road a little ways,” I told him. “Are you really thinking about buying both places? Wait till you see it. I know you like to fix things up, but Vince Bascomb has really let his place go. It’s pretty much a tear-down at this point.”

  When we got there, Will stared out the rain-streaked car window at the Bascomb cabin. “Wow,” he said. “You weren’t kidding. Bascomb’s lawyer told me this was an ‘as-is’ deal, but he didn’t mention what a wreck the place is.”

  “He probably didn’t know,” I said. “I don’t think anybody has been back in here for a long time. Vince is pretty much house-bound now, and his kids live out of state and have no interest in moving back to Madison.”

  “What about his wife?” Will asked.

  “Which one? He’s had three. Lorraine, who’s the mother of his children, is dead. The other two took off with what was left of Vince’s money.”

  “I’d like to see the inside of the house,” Will said. “I don’t have a key, but from the look of things, I probably don’t need one anyway. Want to take a look?”

  “No,” I said, shuddering.

  “I thought you loved old houses.”

  “This place isn’t all that old,” I pointed out. “It was all farmland until Georgia Power flooded it. Probably built around the same time as the Jernigan shack.”

  “When was that?”

  “Late seventies, early eighties.”

  “Looks like the roof is gone anyway,” he said. “I’ll come back and take a look after I get back to town. When the weather’s better.”

  “You’re leaving town? For how long?” I asked.

  “Couple weeks,” he said. “I’ve got some meetings in New York, and I need to see some people in South Carolina and Alabama. And I’ve got to go back to Sri Lanka week after next. It’s actually a good thing I ran into you today. What’s the schedule looking like for Mulberry Hill, now that the pump house is done?”

  “I’ve got furniture ordered, but I can’t do too much else while the workmen are in the house. By the way, how did dinner go last night?”

  “It went,” he said.

  “That doesn’t sound so good.”

  “It’s just…she’s pretty wrapped up in that law firm. Got a big real estate deal she’s working on. She’s a busy woman.”

  “Is she seeing somebody else?”

  “We didn’t get that far. I asked her to come over next weekend, but she said she has plans. Some big fund-raiser for the Humane Society. So I asked about the weekend after that, and she has plans for then, too. Her law firm is entertaining out-of-town clients.”

  “But she liked the house, right?”

  “I guess. It’s hard to tell with her.” He tapped his fingers on the Caddy’s dashboard. “I just wish we were farther along with the house. If she could see it, the way I do, the way it’s going to be.” He grabbed my arm. “You’re going to make deadline, right?”

  I sighed. “If your guys make their deadlines, I should be able to make mine. Christmas, right?”

  “What? No! Thanksgiving. I told you Thanksgiving.”

  “You told me Christmas,” I said, clenching my teeth. “And even that’s a stretch.”

  “So stretch it,” he said.

  I pulled the Cadillac up as close as possible to my Volvo. “That’s impossible.”

  “You’ll do it,” he said. “If you have any problems, need a check for anything while I’m gone, just call Nancy at the office. She can reach me anywhere.”

  I opened the Cadillac door and got out.

  “Thanksgiving,” he said, sliding back across the seat to the driver’s side.

  I slammed the door right in his face.

  41

  Gloria glanced over at me from her drawing board and laughed.

  “What?” I asked, putting my colored pencil down.

  “Your face,” she said. “I wish I had a camera. You were actually scowling down at that sketch you’ve been working on all morning. What’s wrong with it?”

  I picked up another pencil and twirled it beween my fingertips. “I guess I’m frustrated. This is just so impossible. But Will wants it so badly, and I don’t want to let him down.”

  She got up and walked over to my drawing board, looking over my shoulder at the sketch I’d been working on for the past hour. It was supposed to be the upstairs sitting room at Mulberry Hill. The room looked fine. I had the overstuffed sofas, the Aubusson carpet in soft greens and golds, the built-in bookshelves, and a huge antique Venetian mirror that set the tone for the whole room.

  “What’s so impossible? Gloria asked. “It’s a wonderful room. Anybody would love it.”

  “Not just anybody,” I corrected her. “Stephanie Scofield. She has to love it. She has to love it enough to want to give up her life in Atlanta and move right in.”

  “Isn’t that Will’s department?” Gloria asked. “Isn’t he supposed to be wooing her?”

  The old-fashioned word made me feel wistful. I wanted to be wooed. Maybe someday.

  “He hasn’t seen her in more than two weeks,” I said. “He’s miserable. He even went so far as to drive over to Atlanta last night to take her to dinner in Buckhead. On a Tuesday night, when he had to be back at the plant for an early morning meeting. And he hates Atlanta. The man is totally smitten.”

  Gloria patted my shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do about that,” she reminded me. “Your job is to just design the project and get it done. Period.”

  “He expects me to do more than that,” I said. “The poor fool thinks I can make her fall in love with this house, and then him.”

  “Well, you can’t.” Gloria went over to the coffeepot and poured herself a mug. The smell of fresh-ground French roast filled the studio. She held up the pot toward me. “Want some?”

  “It smells divine,” I said, but I shook my head no. “I wish I could make Stephanie really see the house. Experience it with all her senses. You know, like they tell you in marketing classes. You can’t sell the steak without the sizzle…”

  “Maybe you should go over to the Wal-Mart and buy some of those strawberry-scented crayons they sell for the kids,” Gloria said, laughing.

  “No strawberries,” I said, but that gave me an idea. I picked up my pencil again and started sketching. I put a beautiful petite blond in a flowing gold robe seated at a vanity in front of the Venetian mirror. Her back was to the room, but it would be clear who she was. Perched on an ottoman in between the sofas I drew a little brown and black dog. I tilted my head and considered, erased, and redrew. Yes. Now the dog was unquestionably a dachshund. A miniature dachshund.

  I signed the corner of the sketch with a flourish. Done! I took it over to the photocopier and made two more copies. The original I put in the folder I’d send over to the Loving Cup plant for approval later in the day. I put one of the copies in our office file. The third copy I rolled tightly. I found a piece of gold silk moiré ribbon and tied it with a neat little bow. I slid the sketch into a mailing tube and headed out the door.

  “Where are you going?” Gloria asked. “And why so happy?”

  “I’m go
ing to the post office to overnight the steak and the sizzle to Stephanie Scofield,” I told her.

  It wasn’t even noon yet, but the day was already a scorcher. I could feel the heat of the concrete sidewalks through the thin soles of my shoes. I dodged a couple cars and jaywalked across Washington Street, then cut around the old courthouse to get to the post office. There was only one clerk on duty, and four people in line ahead of me, but the arctic blast of the air conditioning felt heavenly. I bought some more stamps, choosing the Audrey Hepburn ones, and I was walking out the front door when I bumped smack into GiGi Jernigan.

  Crap! Why hadn’t I just picked up the phone and called UPS to pick up the sketches for Stephanie? Why had I dawdled over the stamps? I should have just taken the damn flag stamps like everybody else. And why hadn’t I worn my dark sunglasses and a wig that morning?

  “Keeley!” GiGi exclaimed, seizing me by both wrists. She looked immaculate, as always, her pale blond hair freshly colored and coiffed, her hot pink linen pantsuit miraculously unwrinkled, her Easy Spirit walking shoes unscuffed by life.

  “Uh, hi, GiGi,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Devastated,” she said. “Simply devastated. I may never get over this whole awful thing.”

  She was devastated? Wasn’t I the one who had been cheated on by her older son? Wasn’t I the one who’d spent weeks repacking and sending gifts back to Jernigan family and friends? Wasn’t my father the one who was out untold thousands of dollars for a wedding dress and sit-down reception with open bar for four hundred people? This was so like GiGi. My life had gone to shit, but she was the one doing all the suffering.

  What do you say to something like that?

  I had no idea. “I’m sorry,” was the best I could come up with on such short notice.

  “I’ve tried and tried to talk to you,” GiGi went on. “But you never return my calls. And I’ve called for weeks. Didn’t you get my messages? Or the notes?”

  In fact, I’d been dodging GiGi’s calls, and I’d tossed the handwritten notes she’d sent, unread, in the trash. And up until now, I’d managed to avoid seeing her, or any other members of her immediate family, through a combination of luck and planning. I never walked past Madison Mutual anymore. I took detours so I didn’t have to go near The Oaks, and I’d steered clear of the local shops or restaurants I knew GiGi haunted. The trip out to the shack had been my one foray into Jernigan country, and look how that had ended up. I’d had a case of the sniffles for three days after my swim in the lake.

  “I’ve been pretty busy,” I said, wishing she would let go of my arms. “In fact, I’m on deadline on a big project right now.”

  Tears welled up in her large blue-green eyes. They were A.J.’s eyes, down to the thick black lashes. “Too busy for me? Keeley, you’ve been like a daughter to me. I thought…I thought, since your own mother hasn’t been around…I remember the first time A.J. brought you home for dinner. You were wearing the prettiest flowered dress. So suitable. Keeley, my son brought home dozens of girls over the years. Beautiful girls, from fine families. But that night, when we were in bed, I turned to Drew, and I said, ‘She is the one. She is the one I want to see sitting in my parlor, opening presents on Christmas morning with the rest of the family.’ I said, ‘Drew, tomorrow, first thing, you open up the safe deposit box. Bring home the blue velvet box. The one with Grandmother Jernigan’s pearls in it. For our Keeley. She is the one who will bear our grandchildren.’ ”

  “Grandchildren?” I yelped. She had probably picked out their gender and names too. If it hadn’t been for that one little hiccup of A.J.’s I might even be incubating little Andrew Jackson III right this minute.

  “GiGi,” I started. But she cut me off again.

  “Maybe I was fooling myself, to think we had a special bond.”

  I had thought our special bond was that she had plenty of money and liked to spend it on redecorating her houses. And yes, I’d been fond of GiGi. But there had never, ever, been a time when I’d thought of her as anything more than A.J.’s mother. I had a mother, thank you.

  “GiGi, I’m not mad at you,” I started again.

  “Well, why would you be?” She looked startled at the very notion. “This has all been a horrible, unbelievable misunderstanding. But as I told Drew, sometimes bad things happen for a reason. Now that things have settled down, we can look ahead. Sort things out.” She squeezed my hand. “Have a time for healing. Don’t you agree?”

  “Healing what? You don’t seriously think I would ever take A.J. back—do you?”

  She dropped my wrists and took a step backward. “Keeley, you need to look deep within yourself and think about things. A.J. has apologized to you. He told me so himself. The least you can do is meet him halfway. The boy has been half crazed with grief. It’s time, Keeley.”

  Despite the sun beating down on my head, I suddenly felt icy cold. I had to laugh at the complete absurdity of this scene. This was downtown Madison. The middle of the day. People were peeking out of shop windows at the two of us. Two old ladies were hiding on the other side of the World War I doughboy monument, waiting to see what happened next, to see if that crazy Keeley Murdock was going to throw another hissy fit like the one they’d all heard about.

  I didn’t intend to give them the satisfaction. But I also didn’t intend to let GiGi go on deluding herself about the possibility of my joining the family at The Oaks on Christmas morning, or of wearing Grandmother Jernigan’s pearls, or of breeding yet another generation of selfish, self-absorbed, two-timing, double-dealing brats with big blue-green eyes.

  “GiGi,” I said. “Just so there are no further misunderstandings, let me fill you in on all the sordid details of the breakup between your son and me. I saw him, your son, my fiance, with my own eyes, that night at our rehearsal dinner. In the boardroom at the country club. He had his pants down around his ankles. My former best friend and maid of honor, Paige Plummer, was with him. Her dress was hiked up around her waist. Her panties were off, and the two of them were going at it like a pair of barnyard animals.”

  “OH!” She held her hand up to her cheek as though she’d just been slapped. “How dare you! I don’t believe it. A.J. would never.” She scuttled backward. She couldn’t get away from me fast enough now. “How dare you spread such filth about my son?”

  Suddenly GiGi wasn’t as crazy to have me in the family anymore. She was halfway down the block. “Liar!” she screamed. “Liar, liar, liar!”

  The old ladies behind the doughboy monument froze, goggle-eyed with a mixture of horror and amazement. What the hell? I decided to really give them their money’s worth.

  “It’s all true,” I hollered after GiGi. “Sad but true. And if I were you, I’d have the backseat of that Escalade of yours steam-cleaned next time you go through the JiffyWash.”

  42

  When I got back to the studio, I went directly to the kitchen. I put my head under the faucet and let cold water pour over my hair. I squeezed it out, pinned it up off my neck, and went back to my drawing board, where I drew sketches of horrible, big-eyed babies wearing nothing but diapers and sensible shoes. They were scary even to me.

  I’d been working for over an hour before Gloria said anything.

  “Anything going on at the post office today?”

  “You heard?”

  She nodded. “Before you got back here. Arlene Gillman got it from Mae Finley, who, I’m guessing, got it from her sister, who works at the post office.”

  I put my head down and banged it a couple times on the drawing board. “I’m going to have to leave town,” I said. “Maybe move to Michigan. Milwaukee, I’m thinking. Someplace cold, yet in need of good design services. Preferably where nobody knows me.”

  “Keeley, sweetie, Milwaukee is not actually in Michigan. It’s in another of those M states I think. Anyway, none of this is your fault,” Gloria said soothingly. “GiGi should have left you alone. She was in the wrong here, not you.”

  “Then why am I th
e one who’s the talk of the town—yet again?” I asked. “Did Arlene tell you that GiGi actually expects me to take A.J. back? She thinks this whole thing is just an unfortunate misunderstanding!”

  Gloria laughed. “I heard you told her in colorful detail just how you found A.J. and Paige. I believe the phrase ‘going at it like a couple of barnyard animals’ came into play? Is that accurate?”

  “I was so mad I’m not sure exactly what I said, but that’s probably a close approximation. But you know the amazing thing? She still doesn’t believe any of it. GiGi flat-out called me a liar! The woman adds new dimensions to denial.”

  My aunt cocked her head and gave me a serious look. “The thing is, all the Jernigan men in this town have always gotten away with bloody murder. And do you know why that is?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “It’s because they could. They run around and cheat and lie all week long, then stand up in church on Sunday in the front pew and sing louder ’n anybody—because everybody looks the other way. GiGi knows for damn tootin’ sure that A.J. cheated on you. Just like she knows Drew cheated on her, and old Chub cheated on his wife. They all knew. They had to. But none of ’em ever said anything, ’cause they didn’t want to cause a stink.”

  I closed my eyes. I could feel a tension headache coming on.

  “But why? Why would GiGi want to live like that? I never knew A.J.’s grandmother, but I do know GiGi. She’s an attractive woman, and no matter how she acts sometimes, I know for a fact that she’s not stupid.”

  Gloria smiled, but it wasn’t her usual, angelic smile. Her lips twisted down at one corner. “Family tradition. GiGi lives a nice life over there at The Oaks. And out at Cuscawilla, and wherever else she chooses. Drew knows she knows. And she makes him pay. And the sad thing is, for all their games, I think they probably do love each other in their own sick way.”

  I put my hand up to the back of my neck and rubbed the base of it. For a second I pictured Grandmother Jernigan’s pearls wrapped there, choking me, tying me to a long line of other defeated women.