by K. A. Ware
It’s your Mama, don’t be an asshole.
“Sorry.” I pretended to lock up my mouth and throw away the key, she wasn’t amused.
“Where was I? Oh right, even when you were little, you were so free and fierce oh my, were you fierce. I knew you were never going to be a doctor or a lawyer; you’d never be content living a life like that. What I did know is that whatever you did, you would be passionate about it, and you would live life to the absolute fullest. Not everyone can say that Savannah. Some of the richest and most successful people on the planet are empty inside. Sure, on paper they’ve got it all figured out, but their life is confined to four office walls. You've always been a bit of a wanderer, seeking your next adventure and I’ve got to say, the woman you've become, that’s someone special, and that’s someone to be proud of.”
I felt the tears welling in my eyes and I forced out a pathetic laugh. Well, shit woman, you sure know how to make a girl feel special.”
My mother threw back her head and raised her hands in a praying gesture. “Lord help me!”
I reached out and gave her a one-armed hug, balancing my coffee cup on my knee. “Thanks mama, I needed that.”
“Are you ready for some breakfast? The bacon is getting cold.”
God, she was good. Maybe it was because she had gestated me for nine months and then wrangled me for another eighteen years, but somehow she knew I couldn’t take any more of the heavy on an empty stomach.
“Yeah, I’m starved.”
The ancient warped floorboards creaked as Babs made her way down the hall. “Is love orgy over now? I come out?”
“Sure thing, I'm just fixin’ up breakfast, are you hungry?” Mama asked, her voice as sweet at molasses. Her patience with Babs was otherworldly, especially since the older woman seemed to get off on deliberately fucking with my mother.
“Is there bacon?” Babs asked. “The crispy kind not wet soggy-cock kind.”
“Yes ma'am, I made yours extra crispy, just like you like it.”
Babs nodded and then stopped mid-shuffle. “Shit. I have to put good teeth in.”
Mama piled enough food onto my plate to feed Bam Bam for an entire day. Due to an unfortunate incident during Pappy's wake that included several fiesty members of the church elder choir and a gallon of hot sauce from the Piggly Wiggly, Babs didn't have a dining table. I shivered at the memory that I'd rather forget. Because of the absence of said dining table, the three of us sat in the living room balancing our plates on our knees and eating in an uncomfortable silence.
Picking up a piece of bacon I paused and turned to Kevin, wincing. Typically, I tried to avoid eating pork products in front of him. “Sorry bud, but I need this more than I care about your feelings right now.”
“So, you want to tell me what had you driving all the way home in the middle of the night and your grandmother calling me first thing in the morning to tell me you might be dead on her couch because you drank your weight and vodka?”
I'd known it was coming, I was just hoping to avoid it for as long as humanly possible. But my mother while sweet and innocent on the outside was actually a deviant mastermind. Because I've been sitting on the couch so long that my thighs we're vacuum sealed to the plastic covering and there was nowhere to run.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Babs reach down into the knitting basket beside her arm chair and pull out a tiny bottle of vodka, pouring the contents into her coffee cup. She was clearly settling in for the show. Relenting to my fate, I unloaded the whole sordid tale about the picture Kevin had found and Pope’s unwillingness to introduce me to his family and finally what had happened at the barbecue.
Cue the violins.
My mother covered her mouth with your hand. “Oh my, what did he say?”
I crinkled up my face, confused. “What do you mean ‘what did he say’?
She raised a quizzical brow. “When you asked him about his parents, he had told you that they were out of town and then the young man at the barbecue had contradicted that. So, what did he say when you talked to him about it?”
I blinked, I had a feeling the next answer to come out of my mouth was not going to be what she wanted to hear. “I didn't. I just left and came here.”
Her eyelids fell closed and I could hear the gears grinding in her head. “Oh Savannah, you didn't. You didn't even wait to get his side of the story?”
“Why would I? It's just gonna be more lies.”
Mama was not impressed; she straightened her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap before pinning me with a stern stare. “What if they came back early?”
I threw my hands in the air, frustrated that, yet again, no one could see the situation from my side. “What does it matter? Even if they did come home early, he would've known and he still didn't tell me. A lie of omission is still a lie.”
“Hmm.” Mama’s understanding and kind face had turned in to one of judgment.
Oh shit, here we go.
“Sounds to me like you're just looking for an excuse to cause trouble here. So, tell me Savannah, what are you really afraid of?”
I gripped my coffee mug so tightly I was afraid it was going to break off. “How did this come become about me? He's the one that lied.”
“You don't know because you don’t ask,” Babs chimed in
“Take it from two women who have collectively been married for close to a 100 years. You're jumping to conclusions because you've already predicted the outcome of your relationship. You're just looking for a reason and excuse not to try so you won’t get hurt. You need to ask yourself this, do you want to be with Pope or not? Because the only thing standing in your way is you.”
Et tu brute. I do believe I just got served.
“I want to be with him,” I admitted sheepishly.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes.”
Mama wasn’t letting up. “Then what's the problem?”
“I think he's embarrassed of me,” I blurted it out. It took a minute for it to sink in. That really was the root of the problem. I was worried that the reason Pope didn't want to introduce me to his family was because he didn't want them to know that he’d been slumming it with swamp trash.
She stood up from the couch and straightened her skirt. “Mmm hmm, sounds like you have a few things to think about. I've got to head over to the church but I'll be back later this afternoon to check on you, okay sweet thing?”
“Yeah Mama, thanks.”
She dropped a kiss on the top of my head before sashaying out the door like she hadn't just dropped a bomb of epic proportions right on top of my goddamn head.
***
I'd had the coffee and grease from the bacon, I just needed that little extra something to pull me fully out of my hangover. I search the cabinets not caring that I let them slam behind me until I came upon what I was looking for. A can of funfetti frosting. Just what the doctor ordered.
Grabbing a knife from the drawer I shuffled my way to the front porch. Just as I plopped my happy ass down and shoved a spoonful of sugar and red dye number 5 in my mouth, a hissing noise sounded behind me. I jumped up like my ass was on fire and spun to see fluffy's sharp teeth and beady little gator eyes staring at me through the porch railing. "Christ on a cracker!"
He'd ninja'd up behind me and had it not been for the rickety railing, he probably would've bitten my head off. The little fucker had murderer tattooed all over his reptilian face. Storming back into the house I shouted for my grandmother. "Babs! Where's the shotgun? I'm going to kill your little fiend before he eats me."
She popped her head out from the kitchen. "Why you bitch so loud?"
I rolled my eyes and flopped onto the sticky plastic couch. "Because your little pet gator just tried to bite my face off."
"He get you? I get vodka will make better."
I sighed, maybe Addie had a point, maybe I did tend to overreact just a teeny bit. "He didn't actually bite me, just scared the ever-loving shit out of me."
Babs hurumphed and she disappeared back into the kitchen mumbling to herself. "Pussy."
"What was that?"
Instead of pretending like she hadn't said anything at all like a normal person Babs barrel back out of the kitchen and pointed at crooked finger at me. "I call you big fat gaping pussy. You raised in swamp whole life and afraid of little baby gator."
"Little? He's fucking six feet long!"
"Ack! Still baby, teeth not yet break bones, harmless."
"Whatever, as long as he stays out there. I don't want him seeing Kevin and getting pork fever."
She waved me off and turned back to whatever she was doing in the kitchen. "In Russia we wrestle bears for vodka, Americans too soft."
I leaned back and flipped on the TV prepared to spend the day wallowing and watching Dr. Phil talk nonsense at a teenager who thinks her unborn child is the antichrist.
Because that's what any well-adjusted twenty-five-year-old woman would do. Sit on her grandmother's couch eating junk food and watching daytime television on a Tuesday afternoon.
I'd deal with the remnants of my shattered heart tomorrow. I just needed a mental health day, and maybe some vodka.
Chapter 7
Epilogue
Savannah
New Orleans, Louisiana
“What are you doing, Pope?” I asked as he guided me forward into the house. He’d covered my eyes with his hands as soon as we reached his front door and wouldn’t let me in until I agreed to follow orders. If he wasn’t a cop, I’d think he was about to murder me.
Pope slowly walked forward, his entire torso plastered to my back, I was definitely not hating the position. I could feel every divot and hard plain of his body, and I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering to all the different ways I’d experienced that body all up in mine over the past day and a half.
“It's all surprise, now hush.”
“When did you have time to come up with a surprise? You’ve been wrapped up in me for the past thirty-six hours.” I shuffled along as he guided me forward. If I was counting my steps correctly, we were in the living room.
I could practically hear the smirk in Pope’s voice as he bent down to whisper in my ear. “I called in some favors.”
We’d stopped walking and I impatiently waited to find out just what the hell he had up his sleeve. What on earth was he doing?
“Okay, are you ready?”
“No, I think I’d rather stand like this for the rest of the night, thank you very much.” I felt Pope’s laughter all through my body and it had me foaming at the mouth for more of what I’d just had. I couldn’t help my reaction, the man turned me into a hussy in heat.
“Open your eyes,” he murmured, removing his hands. I had to blink a few times, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light in the room. Once everything came into focus a lump formed in my throat. It was beautiful. There were candles everywhere, on the tables and across the mantle of the fireplace, and rose petals sprinkled all over the floor. It looked like something from a movie.
“What’s all this for?”
He came to stand in front of me, taking my face in his hands. He stared into my eyes, a fierceness in his expression I’d never seen before.
“You mean the world to me Savannah; I want you to know that. I have something to ask you.”
Crazy boyfriend say what?
The sound of a record scratching reverberated in my head and my eye started to twitch. It was a full on all systems failure in my brain, neurons weren’t firing, and his words began to run in a loop.
I have something to ask you, I have something to ask you, I have something to ask you.
Pope’s voice broke through the haze. “So, will you?”
Oh shit, did he already ask and I missed it? He’s not down on one knee, and I don’t see a ring…what if he slipped some fucked up shit into the proposal? Addie always tells me not to agree to something I don’t fully understand. Fuck, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and tell him I wasn’t listening.
“Will I what?”
Pope grinned, clearly enjoying watching me off balance. “Go to the Policeman’s Ball with me. My parents will be there and they’re looking forward to meeting you.”
Holy hepatitis, Batman! That was better than a marriage proposal.
“You’re not fucking with me?”
The toothpaste commercial smile was out in full force. “No, I’m not fucking with you.”
I let out a scream and lunged. We both toppled to the floor in a mass of elbows and knees and lips and tongues.
Blue Lights and Boatmen
Chapter 1
Pope
New Orleans, Louisiana
Sunday.
The only day of the week I had to will myself out of bed. It was only two hours, tops. Two hours of absolute torture that no person on the planet should be subjected to. Two hours of sitting across the table from my father and listening to all the ways I’d screwed up my life in the most polite and condescending way imaginable. Of course, my father insisted on sitting on the terrace for brunch, to ensure not only civility from me, but that everyone passing by the Columns Hotel could see his perfect family enjoying a perfect meal at the perfect establishment. Image was the only thing that mattered and every moment was an opportunity to advertise our brand.
Yes, my fucking family had a brand. At least that’s what my father called it. My mother on the other hand, just wanted to listen to the music. The jazz brunch was her absolute favorite part of the week, and that was the only reason I still came.
Every. Fucking. Weekend.
I bit back a groan as I approached the front of the hotel. My parents and sister Katherine, were waiting for me, I’m sure because my father wanted to make a grand entrance with the entire Pope clan. This meant the first half of brunch would consist of my father telling me how unfortunate it was that I made my poor mother wait on the sidewalk.
“Quintin,” my father’s clipped voice grated on my already frayed nerves.
I kept my lips sealed; if I tried to speak I’d lose my cool and cause a scene, upsetting my mother and sister in the process. Swallowing my pride, I nodded at my father and offered my elbow to my baby sister who gave me a wink of solidarity as we made our way up toward the hostess.
The same hostess that had seated Savannah and I months ago was peering up over the hostess stand. “Good morning, Senator Pope. If you’ll just follow me, I’ve got your usual table all set up.”
Senator. The worst thing that ever happened to my family.