by Sonya Clark
Daisy lifted her coffee cup and stared into it. Somewhere in there she had to find the energy to drive into town and start looking for a job. The caffeine wasn’t helping her today, though. She drank it anyway, then got up and carried the cup to the sink.
Before she went anywhere, the mess on the kitchen table needed to be dealt with. She put the laptop to sleep and placed it in its spot on the bar. Next she tidied all the various notepads and folded her job search pages then tucked them into her planner. Pens and pencils and highlighters and sticky notes were gathered and put away in the little metal organizer next to the laptop. Cleaning up made her feel better, filled her with a momentary sense of accomplishment even though it wasn’t much. Right now, every little bit helped. She knelt to retrieve the pen she’d thrown and a bright red folder peeking out of the messenger bag she used for school caught her eye.
A sigh escaped as she eyed the folder. Forgetting the pen, she snatched the folder instead, figuring since she already felt like shit, why not? She carried it into the living room and sat on the couch with her feet tucked under her.
The folder wasn’t fat, but it wasn’t thin, either. A professor, various classmates, her advisor, and Megan had all held the folder and read through its pages. Surely its contents had a weight only Daisy could feel. Her biggest, most secret dream was in this folder, disguised as an exercise for a business class. She slid her fingers across the slick cover. With a deep breath, she opened it, staring at the report’s cover page. A mockup logo stared back, her name in a pretty but readable script, the Y flowing into a daisy at the bottom and another flower stem curling into the apostrophe before the possessive S. Daisy’s. Something she could work toward and build and call her own, instead of always being at the mercy of an employer.
Car wheels crunched on the gravel drive outside. A flash of intuition told Daisy to turn off the lights and hide, because what this shitty day needed to be complete was a visit from her mother. Daisy was too slow. Now that she didn’t drink anymore, Alice had far too much energy than should have been natural for a woman in her early fifties.
“Daisy!” Her mother pounded on the door. “It’s your momma. Come on, I know you’re home.”
Daisy stashed the folder under the couch and prepared for the worst. Her mother’s usual list of complaints ranged from Daisy working at a bar to not going to church to not visiting often enough. The news of Daisy getting fired had likely reached her mother so that would probably be the main complaint of this visit.
With reluctance, Daisy got up and opened the door. “What do you need, Momma?”
Alice pushed her way into the trailer. “I heard about you losing your job at that place and I just wanted you to know how happy I am.”
Daisy drew her eyebrows together and slipped her hands in her back pockets. “Alrighty then. You’re happy for my misfortune. I think you might want to reread your twelve steps, Momma.”
Alice gave her a sharp look as she lowered herself to the couch. “What I’m happy about is that you’re free of that place. Now you can go find a better job somewhere else.”
“Yeah, because they grow those things on trees.” Daisy sat in the recliner and took a quick look at the floor under the couch. The red folder couldn’t be seen. Good. That was none of Alice’s business. “Rocky Top’s not a bad place. Josh Tucker’s a jackass, sure, but Rocky Top’s a good bar. And it’s just as much restaurant now. The food’s even pretty good.”
“It’s still a bar. You shouldn’t be around that kind of thing. Believe me, I know.”
“I know, too, Momma. I grew up with you, remember?”
“Daisy─”
“What do you want, Momma?” No good could come of this conversation. She respected Alice for finally drying out and settling into a job, but the occasional flare-ups of self-pity and hypocrisy didn’t sit well with her. Neither did Alice’s attitude about some of the decisions Daisy had made about her own life.
“I want you to put in an application at the plant. You’d have to go through the temp agency, but there’s a good chance they might hire you on after a while.”
Alice worked at the same plant where Daisy’s older sister Deanna worked, only on the afternoon shift whereas Deanna worked days. She’d been there longer and helped their mother get hired after Alice quit drinking. Daisy gazed at her mother for a long moment. Alice may have had plenty of energy and surprisingly good health after all those years of abusing one substance after another, but her once pretty face bore the mileage. Deanna looked more like the old pictures of their mother than Daisy did.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Daisy said, mostly just to be polite. She didn’t want to work in a factory. She’d done it as temp a couple of times and hated it. That was an option that would definitely only be part of the last resort list. Besides, they only had two shifts anymore, and barely that, so she’d likely be working with her mother. They just didn’t need that much togetherness.
Alice crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. “I’d like you to go to church with me Sunday, too.”
Daisy shut her eyes. “Ah, Momma.”
“Now, you listen to me, Daisy. You need to do this. You have done some things in your life that you need to set right with the Lord.”
“We’re not having this conversation.” Daisy launched up out of the recliner and sped to the kitchen. Washing dishes might not be quite loud enough to drown out her mother but it was worth a shot.
Alice followed her. “I know you think this is foolish. I used to think the same thing. But honey, it’s not. It’s the most amazing thing to finally lay all your burdens down and find forgiveness for you sins. That has made all the difference for me and I want that for you.”
“I’m glad for you, Momma. I really am. I’m glad you made peace with your sins. But you know what? I’ve made peace with the things I’ve done, too. We just went about it in different ways. So stop trying to get me to go to church with you.” Daisy’s stomach rolled at the thought of where this might be going.
“You may think you’ve made peace but you haven’t. You can’t, not without God. You need God’s forgiveness for what you did.”
There it was – the thing Daisy had been afraid of. She realized then that her mother would have come today, or maybe tomorrow or another day this week, whether Daisy had lost her job or not. Because her getting fired wasn’t what this visit was really about.
She rested her hands on the edge of the sink. “You need to let it go.” At first it had been almost constant, an unceasing litany of abuse and accusation. When she was drunk Alice would get downright mean and nasty about it, calling Daisy every name in the book and screaming about how she’d thrown away her child. That if being a single mother was good enough for her, good enough for Deanna, it should have been good enough for Daisy. When Alice was sober, she was all tears and regret and pain born of self-pity. Then she finally sobered up permanently and her anger had taken on a different flavor. Now Daisy needed God’s forgiveness for giving away her baby. Daisy thought that was bullshit and she was pretty sure God did, too. She’d given her daughter a better life, given a child to a good family who could provide for her. Throwing away something unloved was nowhere in that equation.
But Alice had never accepted that. “I will never let it go. It may have been easy for you to toss aside your baby, my grandchild, but I will never let this go. No college degree, if you ever even finish, will make up for what you did.”
There was so much Daisy could have said to that, but none of it would have mattered. They’d had this conversation a thousand times and it always went the same way. Today just happened to be one of those days that Daisy didn’t feel like taking any shit from her mother. “You can hate me all you want but I know I did the right thing for her.” She looked Alice in the eyes. “And if you want to hate me for wanting better than what you settled for, for her and me both, you can do that, too.”
“Better,” Alice spat. “You always did think you were better than me.
Who’s better now, you ungrateful little slut? I’m the one with a good job and a nice little place to live. And here you are, can’t even keep a job at a bar and living in this dump of a trailer. What good are those honor roll grades now, huh, Daisy?”
Daisy squeezed her eyes shut. “You need to go.”
“You can pretend all you want but everyone knows all you’ll ever be is trailer trash.”
“Get out,” Daisy said through gritted teeth. At least this only happened once a year now. Alice liked to save it up and dump all of her vitriol on Daisy’s head sometime around the birthday of the child she’d given up for adoption. This was why the only person who knew about her alternate Mother’s Day was Megan. If Alice knew that Daisy marked the day in any way, she probably would have done her best to ruin it. She certainly would have thrown it in her face.
Apparently Alice had satisfied her need to cause pain because she left without another word. It would be weeks before they saw each other again, that’s how it always went after this. Alice would pretend nothing had happened and Daisy would play along for Deanna’s sake.
As soon as the door slammed, Daisy leaned over and vomited in the sink. Acid burned her throat as the coffee and toast she’d had earlier came back up. Tears stung her eyes and she let them flow free, hoping it would rid her of the poison twisting through her veins. She clung to the countertop as sobs shook her body and doubt punctured her resolve. Only her mother could make her feel this way, make her doubt whether or not she could finish school and make something of herself. Make her second guess the enormous decision to go through with the adoption. It was like some kind of dark twin to the peaceful ritual Daisy enacted every year, wishing her daughter happy birthday and sending grateful thoughts to the woman who was her mother now. Alice always, every damn year, had to do something like this. She had to cut Daisy down to size and make her hate herself all over again, like in those first few years after the adoption, even if it only lasted briefly.
All the sobriety and the twelve steps and being in church every time the fucking doors were open couldn’t cure Alice of hating her own daughter. The only thing that seemed to make her feel better when it came to Daisy was making Daisy hate herself.
The sobs subsided gradually. Her arms ached from gripping the counter so tightly. She turned on the tap and splashed water on her face, then used the sprayer to rinse the sink. A vanilla candle helped with the lingering smell of sick. The dishes could wait. She went to the bathroom to brush her teeth then returned to the living room. Job hunting could wait, too. Not for long, God and her bank account knew. Just one more day.
She didn’t want to be around anybody while the stain of her mother’s hatred marked her.
Chapter 7
Wade spent a solid hour talking about fishing with Randy Tucker before he had a chance to bring up the subject of the fired waitress. Randy’s lined and tanned face puckered into a sour expression.
“I’m over a barrel on this one, bubba.”
Wade sipped his iced tea. “Oh, come on, now. This is your place. It’s your decision who you hire and fire.”
Randy waved a hand. “It’s my grandson. That boy is dumb as a box of rocks but my wife and my daughter love him to pieces. They’re hoping that working here, getting some real world experience, will help him.” He shook his head. “There’s no help for that boy but you can’t tell them that. I raised hell when I found out he fired Daisy. She’s the one who needs to be running this place when I’m gone. But then he went crying to his momma and his grandmomma and I got a double earful about how I was undermining his confidence.”
“Undermining his confidence? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Randy tapped a meaty finger on his desk. “You ever read about those helicopter parents? The ones who do everything for their kids. Go on damn job interviews with their grown kids. I don’t know how it happened, but that’s my daughter in a nutshell. He’s twenty-two years old and sometimes I think he has to call her and ask how to wipe his ass.”
Wade choked on his tea. “Look, I get you’re in a bind. Family, man.” He shrugged. “What can you do?”
“Me, I try to go fishing every chance I get.” Randy let loose with a gusty laugh.
Wade joined in, even though he wasn’t really feeling it. “The thing is, this is my fault. If I’d behaved myself, she never would have gotten fired. What should have happened is, he should have thrown me out and told me not to come back. At least made me apologize.”
Randy stabbed that finger in the air at Wade. “That’s for damn sure what would have happened if I’d been here. It’s one thing for people to talk a little mess, flirt and whatnot, but I don’t let my girls get harassed. They know they don’t have to take that shit off customers when I’m around.” He leaned forward and poked Wade in the chest, hard. “What the hell were you doing putting your hands on a waitress, anyway? You know better.”
Wade lowered his head in shame, and he didn’t have to fake it. “I had too much to drink. Things have been kind of rough for me lately. But that’s no excuse and I owe this girl an apology.”
“Her name’s Daisy, and damn right you ought to apologize.”
Wade straightened in his seat and met Randy’s gaze. “But what I’d really like to do even more than apologize is get Daisy her job back.”
Randy sighed, the sound loud and billowy, a cloud of exasperation.
“We go back a long way, Randy. I got my start here. I sure wouldn’t mind doing a show or two on that little stage again.” He could practically see the numbers being added and subtracted in that ledger the old man had for a head.
“Well, one or two shows might be nice but I don’t know if it would be enough to get the ladies off my back.”
“Break it down for me, Randy. How many shows will it take to get Daisy her job back?”
“You got to understand, to justify this at my dinner table I’m going to have to have a guaranteed winner. Things have been slow lately. There’s a new place opened up out at the lake. They got Cajun food and a bigger stage and they been getting some of my weekend business.”
“Cajun food, huh?”
Randy stared at him for a long moment. It gave Wade an uncomfortably graphic image of bait being put on a hook. “I heard you got fired from one of them casinos in Mississippi.”
God damn internet. “We parted ways.”
“So how long you free for?”
Wade stared into his tea glass and gave the ice a shake. He wanted to lie, or just get up and walk out the door. Walking away had gotten easy for him over the years. Too easy. Maybe a little penance would be good for him. He was tired of feeling ashamed of the things that made him walk away, the things that he screwed up and refused to even try to fix. This was something he could fix. He didn’t know this girl, but he did know that she didn’t deserve to lose her job over him getting drunk and losing what little good sense he had.
So he made his decision and it only hurt his pride a little. “As it happens, I’m free all summer.”
Randy continued to watch him, the fingertips of one hand moving restlessly over the surface of his desk. “I won’t put up with you being drunk on stage. If you can handle a beer or two, that’s fine. But you need to mind your limits.”
“Yes, I do. And I can. I know it may not seem like it but I’ve been doing a lot better. It was just...” Wade shook his head, the words drifting away.
Randy softened his tone. “I heard about Kristin. That’s got to bring back a lot of memories.”
Wade swallowed, not sure how to handle the concern in the older man’s voice. “How’d you hear about that?”
“She and your momma keep in touch a little bit. My wife ran into your momma and they talked.”
Holy shit, small towns. Wade took another drink of tea to give himself something to do while his brain spun. “I can play, Randy. I can stay sober and I can play good shows. I can do it all summer.” He placed the glass on the corner of the desk. “I can even do it for
free, but I will have to insist on one condition.”
Randy grinned. “I got to hear this. What is it?”
“I will not sing Empty Rooms.”
Randy slapped the desk. “Damn it, boy. All the awards that song won, and you won’t sing it? How are people supposed to go for that?”
“They’ll be too busy having a good time to want to hear that one.”
Randy made a pained, disbelieving face.
“That’s the deal,” Wade said. “I play for you for free all summer, every weekend. You give Daisy her job back. I won’t sing Empty Rooms and your grandson stays out of my way and out of Daisy’s way.”
“That’s more than one condition.”
“Somebody once taught me how to drive a hard bargain. I haven’t forgotten.”
Randy’s big booming laughter filled the small space. “No, you sure hadn’t.” He offered his hand. “You got yourself a deal, Wade.”
Wade shook his hand.
“Welcome back to Rocky Top,” Randy said.
Wade did his best to smile. Now he was stuck in Brittain all summer long, and he couldn’t even get drunk to ease the pain. That damn waitress had better be grateful.
He wasted as much time as he could with Randy before the old man got wise and kicked him out with strict orders to go see his mother. Bright mid-afternoon sunshine greeted him as he walked out of Rocky Top and headed two blocks over to Tennessee Valley Bank and Trust. The air conditioning in the bank chilled the sweat that had glued his t-shirt to the small of his back. He’d left his hat at the house but wore his aviator sunglasses like a shield. Reluctant to lower that shield, he took them off slowly and hooked them on the front of his shirt.