by Luanne Jones
Mother was in rare form today. Every inch the woman Will often described to his friends as “Scarlett O’Helmsley.”
“I’m leaning toward Starla, Miss Peggy, but nothing definite yet.”
“That’s fine. Just don’t forget to send ’round notecards when you make your final decision, you hear?”
“I will, Miss Peggy.”
“Now hurry along, or stains will set in that attractive new dress of yours.”
“I will.” He nodded a good-bye and, with the awful magenta scarf trailing behind him, headed for the door. He paused only long enough to give Rita a surprisingly tender look. “I do want what’s best for you, you know.”
“That’s not for you to decide,” Rita whispered.
“Regardless of what direction my life takes, I will always care about what happens to you.”
“I know.”
“Asking me to stay completely out of your life, after all we’ve gone through together, after all the years we’ve invested in our child and each other? It’s like asking me not to breathe.”
“Now there’s an attractive proposition.” Will shifted his feet, both hands in his pockets and his shoulders deceptively relaxed.
“This is not for you to mix into, Will.” Even with her head bent Rita’s voice carried an aching uncertainty that gripped Will by the emotional throat and left him speechless.
How could she still harbor feelings for the man? If someone had treated him the way Pernel had Rita, Will would be gone so fast and so far…
“You’ll always be a part of my life, too.” She took her ex’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I do understand that.”
She’d ruin everything. She felt bad about the way she’d acted and, with one pointlessly sympathetic gesture, was going to undo the small stride she had made by standing up to Pernel.
Will raked his hand through his hair. “This is not happening.”
Both Rita and Pernel looked at him.
Had he said that aloud? No matter. He’d meant it, and he’d stand behind it. He folded his arms. “Well, not while I’m around it’s not.”
“You may have a reputation as a hound but you won’t be playing watchdog here for long, and we all know it.” In other words Rita’s life will go back to the way it was in a day or so. Pernel didn’t have to say it to communicate his meaning.
He told the truth. Will could not play watchdog indefinitely. However, maybe he could stay on the job just long enough to help her find her own voice. Coax her toward claiming her strengths so she could stand up to anyone who would play on her fears of stepping beyond the boundaries of her present life. Anyone who would keep her from reaching for something more.
She had done as much for him once by being the only person who would tell him the truth, who would not let him coast, who pushed him to be the kind of man that even he had not known he could be. He wanted to do the same for her.
He came up behind Rita, ready to speak.
“One other thing, Pernel,” Rita cut Will off before he opened his mouth.
“What?”
“Next time you come by, have the common courtesy to call first and don’t bother trying to let yourself in with your keys. I will have had all the locks changed.”
Pernel did not look back.
“Yes!” Will jerked his fisted hand back like his team had just scored big-time.
“Don’t let the door hit your padded behind on the way out, you hear, sugar?” Jillie called out.
The door slammed shut, and suddenly a deathly silence fell over the room. Rita had sent her worries packing—if only for the short haul. Will, on the other hand, had not yet even made full eye contact with his troubles.
“Isn’t anyone going to offer to get me a chair?” The tip of a cane tapped on the dirty floor. “Or do I have to do everything for myself?”
“Mother, I promise you, no one here wants you to do everything. In fact, I’d lay odds no one here wants you to do anything…” He pulled the best of the wooden chairs out from the table and took her arm, firmly at first, then backing off until he scarcely touched more than her sleeve. When had Mama’s bones started to feel as fragile as bird wings? He settled her into the chair, then bent low to plant a kiss on her cool, perfectly rouged cheek. “No one wants you to do anything but sit down, rest your feet, and have a nice glass of cold tea.”
“Nice save,” Rita murmured behind his back as she hurried around to grab up the pitcher of once-strong tea now diluted by melted ice. “Sweet tea, Miss Peggy?”
“I don’t dare, sugar. I have my social calls to make this afternoon and at my age if I drink too much tea I’m likely to leave a trail of piddle up and down the finest walkways of Hellon. And God spare us from the consequences if I’d have to sneeze!”
“Mama!” Jillie shut her eyes.
Will laughed.
Rita clunked the pitcher down so hard the table wobbled.
“Well, that’s the way of things. Why act prissified about it?” She laid her purse in her lap and folded her hands. “I am officially too old to mince words and too highly placed in the community for anyone to tell me to straighten up and act better.”
Will took the seat next to hers and motioned for Rita to join them. “And what do your ‘ladies’ have to say about this new attitude?”
“They have decided…”
Rita sat on the very edge of her chair.
“To find it charming.”
“Well, of course they do.” Rita brushed some dark red crumbs off the white tablecloth. “I wish I had your poise, Miss Peggy. I’m afraid I’m something of a charm-school dropout.”
“Well, I can’t hold that against you, sweetheart.” She patted Rita’s hand, but her gaze swept over her two children. “Look at the company you keep.”
If the insult got under Jillie’s pale, polished skin, she did not let it show. “Will’s here on business, Mother. He isn’t keeping company with Rita.”
“Then he’s a bigger fool than even I thought he was.”
“What? You want me to keep company with Rita?” He didn’t realize until it went tumbling out of his mouth how harsh that must have sounded. “Whatever you want to say, Mother, just come out with it.”
“I will. Leave Rita alone. Her life here is hard enough without the likes of a careless gust of wind like you blowing through.” She slapped her hand flat on the unsteady table. “She’s too nice to say it to you, but I don’t have that problem.”
“Mama, I don’t see that being any of your business. And since I’m too big to whup and too damn cute to holler at, you better just spare the rod and save your breath.”
Finally, somebody on her side! Rita plunged her hands into the lukewarm, soapy water and sighed. Who’d have thought that the feisty old gal, who at this very minute had both her children’s undivided attention as they helped her back to her car, would become the voice of reason in all this?
Merciful heavens! She pulled one of the heavy gray-white lunch plates out of the water to scrape at a stubborn bit of pimento with her fingernail. Miss Peggy, the voice of reason? When had her life gotten that far off kilter?
She’d tried so hard for so long to keep everything in balance. Then one day she surrendered to a totally irrational flash of empathy for a man who swore he needed to help her, and what had it gotten her? A seemingly endless parade of folks intent on telling her what to do, when to do it, and even whom to do it with.
Or was that whom not to do it with? Either way the person every buttinski had in mind remained the same—Wild Billy.
Just thinking the man’s name gave her goose pimples. Even to imagine that she had some kind of choice over whether or not the two of them did or did not do…well, anything, made her heart rate kick up. She took a deep breath to quiet it.
“To do it or not to do it, that is the question,” she joked to her blurred reflection in the plate. As soon as the pitiful paraphrase left her lips she pressed them shut. Standing so still she swore she could feel the moist lemon-
soap-scented air sinking into her blazing cheeks, she waited and listened.
A muffled round of good-byes carried in from the next room.
A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and she sighed. No chance of a smart-mouth Jillie or an incorrigible Will listening in and misinterpreting that whole “do it or not” thing. She’d meant do the work, not do it in the giant orgasmic break-the-bed-and-make-me-forget-my-manners way, of course but…
“…don’t kid yourself…this is about sex.” Again Cozie’s admonition rang in her head. Sex. She exhaled in a long blast of breath that blew her bangs back off her forehead. How long had it been?
She dunked the plate into the dishwater and scrubbed the surface in hard, swirling motions. What did it matter how long she’d gone without sex? Not like she had much hope of breaking the streak anytime soon, Cozie’s earlier observation notwithstanding. After all, there was nothing to say Will would even be interested.
“Okay, y’all take care.” Will’s warm tone carried into the kitchen. “I won’t. I won’t. I might—but don’t expect I’d tell you about it.”
The front door fell shut, and the lock ticked into place.
Rita rinsed the last plate without checking to see if she’d actually cleaned it. She sensed as much as heard the muffled footsteps approach. She held her breath, and they stopped.
“Alone at last.”
Alone. With Will. Her stomach lurched like the first time she ever rode the Zippin Pippin at Libertyland over in Memphis. “Where’s Jillie?”
“She took off. Not much for her to do here. She’d only get in the way.”
Three is a crowd. Rita thought about saying something like that and wondered if she dared try using the low, sultry tone she heard in her head.
Will stepped fully into the kitchen. “What can I do to help you finish up in there so we can get back to work?”
Quit acting so stupid. Work, that was his only objective, his only reason for being here at all. Something in the man needed to perform a good deed, and she was his pitiable project. She wasn’t a carefree young girl on a wooden roller coaster anymore. She was over thirty, overweight, and overdue for a reality check.
“What more do you need to see around here before you make your recommendations?” She pulled the plug. The sink glugged, and the water began to drain. The only way to the other side of this situation was straight through it.
She shook the suds from her hands and tossed the dish towel over the edge of the drainer. She’d go along with Will’s planning sessions, send him on his way, then deal with Pernel and whatever fallout her choices might create. “If you’re almost done poking around, you could just tell me your ideas and we could have you on the road to Memphis in no time.”
“That anxious to get rid of me?”
“No, I—”
“Then come out here a minute. I want to talk to you.”
“About the renovation ideas?”
“Just come here.” He held out his hand.
She looked to the stairway that led to the safety of her apartment. Finally, she dried off the last of the soap and water, then slipped her hand into his.
His palms were rough. She had expected the soft, pampered hands of a man who gave orders and let others do the dirty work. His fingers closed around hers, and her whole being felt enveloped in safety.
How could such an insignificant gesture do that? More importantly how could she protect against it? A lifetime of yearning for security and never finding it had taught her a thing or two. She had learned the hard way that false security was worse than none at all. And a man like Wild Billy?
His nickname told the tale. Wild, restless, adhering to no one else’s rules and belonging to no one. To put her faith in him was grabbing on to false security with both hands. She must never let herself forget that.
She tugged her fingers free and curled them into a fist against her chest. “Well?”
“Can we sit?” He pulled a chair out for her.
She hesitated.
He brushed the last bit of cake crumbs from the seat and offered it again.
She perched on the edge, one hand braced against the back.
He took the chair next to her, his broad shoulders relaxed, his legs open so that his foot touched the side of her tennis shoe. “So, is it always this…um, interesting around here?”
“Is that what you brought me out here to ask?”
“No. Just trying to lay some groundwork. Trying to understand what you’re up against.”
“Oh, please. Can we skip over the part where you play amateur social worker so you can earn your wings?”
“Wings?”
“Wings, halo, Scout badge, whatever lame thing it is you think you’re getting out of this project you’ve made of me.”
“I thought we were long past that.” He leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs.
She crossed her legs. “If you have something to ask me, Will, ask it outright.”
“Humor me.”
It was not a request. Anyone else came on with that kind of arrogance she’d have humored him right through the roof. She gritted her teeth. “You have eyes. Both times you’ve been here you’ve pretty much seen how it is. Jillie, Cozie, Pernel, folks around town like your mother, there’s always somebody handy with an opinion for me.”
“And?”
“And what? Some try to push me one direction. Some pull me in another. I just try to stay—”
“In the middle.”
Coming out of his mouth it sounded so sad. She bit her lip to keep from saying so out loud.
“Don’t you want more?”
“More? I have just about all I can handle as it is.”
“Don’t you have dreams and hopes? Ambitions? Aspirations beyond living alone above a greasy spoon, working your ass off to make everybody happy but yourself?”
She laughed. “Working my ass off? Anyone with eyes knows that’s not happening.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Run yourself down like that. I think you have a damn fine ass.”
“And so much of it, too.”
“You are a very attractive woman, Rita.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Me? Patronize anybody?” He laughed. A wonderful, throw-your-head-back-and-cut-loose laugh that startled her at first, then made her join in. “Did you totally forget who you were talking to?”
“Oh, don’t play that game with me. I know you are not the unredeemable jerk you want everyone to think you are.”
“How can you know that, Rita?”
She started to tell him exactly why, but somewhere between the thought and her open mouth the old fears welled up. It had been a full enough day without making a complete fool of herself in front of this man. She exhaled hard and shook back her hair. “Because.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s the kind of multifaceted million-dollar answer I was looking for.”
“Does that mean the question-and-answer period of the afternoon is over?”
He shrugged. “It was a stupid idea anyway.”
“What? What was a stupid idea?”
“I thought…well, if it’s always like this around here, I thought that my coming around for just a day or two probably only added to your headaches.”
“You had to put me through all this to come to the same conclusion I came to the day you first suggested getting involved?”
“What can I say? I’m a thickheaded bastard.”
“I never said—”
“If you knew it would only make your life more crazy, why did you agree to take my help?”
“You asked. You said you needed to do it.”
“But still…”
She wet her lips and when she spoke, it came out in a heartfelt whisper. “Because of what I saw when you took your sunglasses off that day.”
He suddenly seemed fascinated by his hands in his lap. “What? Bloodshot from too much tequila the night before?”<
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“No.”
He looked up, his expression weary and his heart in his eyes.
“That.” She smiled, just barely.
“What?”
“That somewhere underneath all the bravado of Wild Billy West is a decent man who wants something different for his life.”
“I never said that.”
“You had the gall to talk to me about my hopes and dreams. Assuming, I guess, that a plain, plump girl like me would have plain, puny dreams.”
He dragged one bent knuckle along his lower lip.
“What did you think, Will?” Her voice came out more steady than she felt. “That you could come here for a day, flirt with me a little? Make me feel better about myself? Then show me how to fix up this dive and go on your way hoping the effort moved you closer to realizing your own dreams?”
“You don’t know my dreams.”
“I’ll bet they’re the same dreams everyone else has, Will.”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
She’d never learn, would she? This man tapped something inside her that she could not fully control. It scared her. And yet, she felt perfectly safe going on. “We all share some of the same hopes, you know. Whether we are handsome small-town heroes, successful big-city businessmen, or the girl who lives over the Pig Rib Palace with her books and music to keep her company.”
“If you know my hopes, Rita, I wish you’d tell them to me.”
“You want for your life to have meaning.”
He nodded.
“You want someone to miss you when you’re away and mourn you when you’ve passed on.”
His gaze fell to the floor for only a moment, then he looked to her again. “Go on.”
“You want to be really good at something, to hear praise for your work and know it’s earned.”
He huffed out the sort of hard laugh that told her that one had really hit the mark.
“You want…” She held her breath. She’d probably regret this just as she had regretted the last time she’d dared to tell this man the whole unvarnished truth about himself. That did not stop her. “You want to be loved.”
He bent his knees, putting his feet flat. His jaw tightened, and he dipped his chin just enough to really drive his dark gaze home. “You still don’t pull any punches, do you?”