by Debby Mayne
“But I didn’t. What’s your problem?”
Bonnie Sue turns and looks to me for support. “Mama, tell her, okay?”
“How you feelin’, Renee?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Not good. Can I stay home from school?”
“No.” Guilt washes over me. “But if you get sick at school, I’ll come get you.”
Bonnie Sue rolls her eyes. “You’re such a baby and a dweeb.”
“Snob,” Renee says in her annoying teenage voice.
“Am not. I just don’t like associating with dweebs.”
“Who’s the dweeb? You priss all over that school, thinkin’ anyone cares you’re wearin’ that fancy little designer skirt.”
Now she has my attention. “What designer skirt?” I ask.
Bonnie Sue rolls her eyes and starts to walk away, but I grab her arm before she gets far. I pull her close and look her in the eye, waiting for her to explain.
“Stop it,” she says as she tries to yank away from me, but I still don’t let go. “You’re hurting me.”
“If you think you’re hurtin’ now, just wait ’til you see what I do if you don’t tell me about your designer skirt.”
She looks at me as though trying to decide if I’ll make good on my threat—which I rarely do—so I put on my crazy-mama-don’t-take-no-prisoners face. “Let go, and I’ll tell you.”
I loosen my grip, but only a teeny bit. I don’t want her taking off. “You better tell me, Bonnie Sue.”
“Yeah,” Renee says. “Go ahead and tell her how you got that skirt, and while you’re at it, you might wanna tell her about all that eye makeup you been puttin’ on after you get to school.”
“Eye makeup?” I squint and study my younger daughter’s face. We have a rule in the Moss house. Makeup is allowed in phases. Eleven years old, a tad of pink lipstick. Twelve, a little face powder to dust off that shine. They can start with one coat of mascara when they get to high school.
“You are such a toad!” Bonnie Sue shouts at her sister as she bolts toward the stairs.
“Come back here right this minute, Bonnie Sue, or you’re grounded.” I glance over at Renee, who is sporting a self- satisfied smirk. I wag my finger at her. “And don’t you think for one minute you’re off the hook, period or no period. I’ll deal with you later.” I take off after Bonnie Sue, who has reached the top step and is heading toward her room. “No slammin’ doors,” I remind her. “We need to talk. Now.”
When she turns and gives me that jaw-jutting, determined look she’s used since her first two-year-old temper tantrum, my heart lurches. She’s still that same little girl, but now she’s as big as me and noticing boys. And apparently not only noticing them but trying to lure them into a web she doesn’t even know she’s spun.
She narrows her eyes and pouts. “What?”
“It’s time we had ourselves a mother-daughter talk.”
Bonnie Sue bobs her head, making me want to knock it right off her shoulders, but I’m not that kind of mama, so of course I just play it out in my mind. She throws herself across her twin bed and doesn’t even bother turning to look at me. Instead of insisting she look me in the eye, I perch myself on the corner of her bed, inspect my fingernails, and think about how to put my feelings and thoughts into words without sounding as crazy as I feel.
“Bonnie Sue, you’re growin’ up so fast my head is spinnin’,” I begin, wishing the perfect words would just plop into my head. “It’s just that . . . well, I don’t want you to try to act older than you are.”
“Mama, everyone’s wearin’ mascara.”
“Everyone?” I know exactly what she means. But I can’t help giving her the age-old comeback. “First of all, I’m sure not everyone is wearin’ it, but even if they were, does that mean you have to do it too? I never thought of you as a follower.” That is true, too. “Your daddy and I knew you were a leader from the moment you popped outta me, with that loud, commanding voice and your ability to get the attention you wanted.”
“I’m not bein’ a follower. I just want to look cute.” She dares a quick glance in my direction but quickly looks away.
I touch her back and feel the pent-up tension. It breaks my heart for her to be so stressed out at her age, but there’s just some things a mama’s gotta say. “So tell me about the skirt.”
As far as I know, she doesn’t own a designer skirt. Holding my breath, I pray she came by it honestly, even though for the life of me, I can’t imagine how that would happen.
She shrugs and starts playing with the satin corner of the blanket at the foot of her bed. “It’s just a skirt.”
My mama radar sounds off loud and clear. “I’d like to see it.”
Silence fills the room, making me even more uncomfortable than the night Pete mooned the entire cheerleading squad, while I drove the car, embarrassed beyond belief. I hear a light sniffle.
“Bonnie Sue?” I touch her arm, and she jerks away from me. I get up and walk toward her closet.
“No, don’t.”
I stop in my tracks and slowly turn around to face her. “What is going on, Bonnie Sue? What are you not tellin’ me?”
She bursts into tears . . . and I mean the crocodile tears with the heaving sobs and total inability to talk. This is obviously worse than anything I could have imagined, and I still can’t figure out what it is. Unless . . .
“You didn’t . . . um, do a five-finger discount, did you?”
Her sobbing stops as she scrunches her flaming-red, tear-streaked face and gives me a look like she just saw me for the first time. “What are you talkin’ about, Mama?”
“Just tell me about the skirt, Bonnie Sue. Where is it, where did you get it, and why are you so upset about it?”
Bonnie Sue growls as she hops up from the bed, lifts the corner of her mattress, and whips out a very tiny piece of material. We both stare at it for what seems like forever before she throws it at me. “Okay, so here it is. Now what’re you gonna do to me?”
I pick up the dark pink garment and turn it over in my hands. When I look up at her, she has that old defiant look back on her face. “This isn’t even enough material to cover your behind. How’d you get out of the house without me seein’ it?”
She rolls her eyes. “I wore my dorky jeans to school and put the skirt on when I got there.”
“But why?” I’m obviously missing something. “Why do you think you have to hide your clothes?”
“Because you want me to be like Renee, and I’m so not like her.”
The other question still haunts me, and she’s obviously found ways to skirt the issue. If I weren’t so mad, I’d probably laugh.
“Okay, now that I know what it is, tell me where it came from.”
She folds her arms, forms an exaggerated frown, and stares down at the floor. “I don’t—”
“You do and you will.”
I watch my daughter process her answer and have a flashback to my own childhood. My mother and I didn’t get along all that well, but this conversation actually reminds me more of a situation with my ROTC stepmother.
Her body starts shaking, and the tears begin to stream. She opens her mouth a couple of times before she finally blurts, “Okay, I kiped it. Are you happy?”
“You what?” I think I know what she’s saying, but I need to be one hundred percent sure before I react.
“It was at La Boutique in Hattiesburg. The saleslady was actin’ all suspicious, followin’ us around like she thought we were thieves or something. When I tried it on in the dressin’ room, she walked right in on me ’n my friends and told us to get outta her store. She don’t allow teenagers to come in there without their parents.”
I open my mouth to ask a question, but she plows right on through. I don’t have a chance to say a word.
“I tried to tell her I needed to take off the skirt, but she never gave me the chance.”
“Didn’t she see it on you?” I ask.
Bonnie Sue looks down and mumbles. “No
, I kept my coat on.”
I feel my shoulders sag and my body go limp. Until now, the biggest thing I had to worry about was a drunk husband and spirited young’uns. Now I have to deal with the fact that I’ve raised a thief.
12
Priscilla
Three more days before I go to Piney Point. I could wait another two days, but I want to settle in and spend some time with my parents. Off and on for the past five years, they’ve acted strange. Every once in a while I like to drop in on them for a day or two. Last time, they seemed fine, but the time before, they were getting ready to head off in their separate ways—Mother to the coast with some friends and Dad to an academic seminar at Ole Miss in Oxford.
“I thought you liked to go to Ole Miss,” I said to Mother after Dad drove away.
She shrugged. “I do, but your father will be with his friends, and I’d rather spend time with the Classy Lassies than sit in some hotel room.”
Really. Ever since Mother got into this barely-old-enough-Red-Hat group, she’s acted like a college sorority girl. I think Dad’s annoyed by the whole thing, but he’s not about to tell Mother what he really thinks. He never has. Dad has always been one of those live-and-let-live types. He has strong opinions, and they eventually come out, but he’s never direct. Mother, on the other hand, doesn’t hesitate to say what’s on her mind.
“I just wanted to make sure y’all were okay,” I said. I brushed her cheek with a kiss before hopping back into my yellow sports car to head back to Jackson.
Now that I’m getting ready to stay with them for a couple of weeks, I’ve started thinking about their relationship. Dad once said every marriage has phases, but this one is lasting a mighty long time. I can’t help worrying. It’s like they’re married, but they’re not.
I’m probably worrying needlessly, I think as I go through the clothes in my closet. I’ll need a different outfit for each special event while I’m in town, but I can do laundry and wash my work clothes. Since I now have a salon rule of dark bottoms and light tops, I pull out every single pair of navy and black pants I own and toss them onto the bed. I choose a variety of white and off-white tops to mix and match with the pants and some scarves to add a touch of color.
I go back into my large walk-in closet to pick out shoes when the cell phone in my pocket rings. It’s Celeste. Odd. She’s not one I hear from often.
The instant I say hello, she starts right in. “I’m worried sick about Laura, and I don’t know what to do.”
“What happened?” I’ve been worried about Laura too, ever since the last reunion. After Pete wound up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning, I thought he might straighten up, but last I heard, he was back to hitting the bottle just as much as ever.
“She refuses to get out of bed. Pete can’t even talk her into getting up.”
“Do you know why?”
“No,” Celeste says softly. “But I’ve heard rumors she had some serious trouble with one of her daughters.”
“Have you tried talking to her?”
“Yeah, I tried, but she refuses to see me. We still have so much to do I’m at my wits’ end. And you know how Laura is—such a Miss Do-it-all. I don’t even know what she’s started or finished. I don’t know how all this reunion stuff is gonna get done.”
I tuck the phone into the crook of my shoulder and start packing as Celeste fusses and fumes about how everything is now on her shoulders, but Laura won’t even give her what she needs. “What do you want me to do?” I ask as soon as I can get a word in.
“When can you come to Piney Point?”
“Um . . . ” There goes my plan. “How about tomorrow?”
“You can’t come tonight?”
Without argument, I go back into my closet and pull out my overnight bag. “Sure, I can go tonight, but I’ll have to come back to Jackson tomorrow. I hadn’t planned—”
She cuts me off. “Good. I’m surprised you’re able or even willin’ to do this on such short notice, you bein’ so busy and all. But Pete, he said you wouldn’t let us down. I still have some doubt—”
“Celeste, if you want me to go tonight, I have to get off the phone, toss some extra clothes into a bag, and make a few calls before I leave.”
As soon as we hang up, I call Tim, but he doesn’t answer. Since I know he’s more likely to check his call log than listen to messages, I don’t leave one. Next, I call Mother.
“You’re what?” I hear the annoyance in her voice.
“Never mind. I’ll just find a hotel room in Hattiesburg.” I could drive back to Jackson tonight, but there’s no telling how long it’ll take to get through to Laura, and I hate being on the road so late.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, Priscilla, but I don’t understand why you couldn’t have given me more notice. I’ll call your father and have him pick something up on his way home.”
“Don’t do that.” I try to explain what’s going on, but she doesn’t seem to think it’s an issue I need to worry about.
“Why did Celeste call you? She’s a grown woman and perfectly capable of doing whatever she needs to do. Isn’t she one of the co-coordinators?”
“Mother, I really need to get on the stick. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“I don’t think Teresa changed the sheets on your bed, and she’s already gone home for the day.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Mother worries about every last little detail when it comes to anything having to do with me. Too bad she doesn’t put that kind of energy into her marriage. I catch myself and remember how I’ve recently noticed that Dad hasn’t exactly been the “husband of the year.”
I call Mandy’s cell phone to let her know where I’ll be. “I thought you weren’t leaving for a few days,” she says.
“I’ll be in the office sometime tomorrow, but I’m not sure what time.”
“Oh, okay. So why did you call me?”
I don’t have a good answer, so I tell her I’ll see her soon and get off the phone. I forgo calling Tim again, since I figure he’ll probably know where I’ll be before I get there. He’s good at that.
Three hours later, after I deposit my overnight case at Mother and Dad’s, I’m standing on the Moss doorstep. Pete comes to the door looking ragged as ever.
“I don’t know what to do,” he says as he opens the door and steps back for me to go inside. “She refuses to do anything around here, and these young’uns are just about to drive me up the wall. They act like they’re starvin’ to death, but I bought ’em Happy Meals.”
“How old are your children?” I ask. If I recall correctly, Happy Meals are designed for the toddler crowd.
Pete shrugs. “I dunno, ten or so? Laura always keeps up with that.”
“Let me try to talk to her.” I nod toward the stairs. “Is she in the master bedroom?”
“Yeah.” He gets out of my way as I head upstairs.
As I pass three bedrooms, all with open doors, I see unmade beds and a tiny bit of clutter, but nothing like what I expected. I knock on the only closed door in the hallway. No answer.
“Laura,” I say softly. “It’s me, Priscilla. May I come in?”
“Miss Priscilla?” I turn around to see who’s behind me, and I see someone who looks to be a teenager. I’m not sure who she is, but I think she may be one of Laura and Pete’s daughters. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any of their children, so the vision is rather surprising.
“I’m here to see your mother,” I say.
The girl slowly shakes her head as tears stream down her face. “It’s all my fault. I told her something that upset her so much she won’t talk to anyone or eat or nothin’.”
Guilt is a powerful thing. “What did you tell her?”
Her chin quivers, but she doesn’t answer my question. We just stand there staring at each other for a while, before I finally break the eye contact and knock on Laura’s bedroom door again.
“Laura,” I say a little louder. “If you don�
��t answer, I’m coming in.”
“Go away.” Her voice is muffled. “I don’t wanna talk to you.”
I hear the sound of feet scurrying away behind me. Making the decision to impose on someone who has just told me to leave, I turn the knob and push the door open. “Laura, everyone is worried about you—Pete, Celeste, your children.”
She bolts upright in bed, startling me, rubs her eyes, and starts laughing. Not a ha-ha-funny sort of laugh. It’s more of an I’m-ready-for-the-white-coats-to-take-me-away cackle.
I have no idea what to do now, so I just stand there looking at the silhouette of a wild woman in a semidark room that reeks from the smell of dirty sheets and pent-up anger. Her laughter eventually winds down, and she flops back on the pillow.
“Everyone can rot as far as I’m concerned. They don’t really care about me. All they want is clean clothes and food on the table. Oh, and now I find out one of my girls is a shoplifter, just so she can make her friends think she’s better than she is. Nothin’ I do around here matters anymore.”
Well, at least I’ve gotten to the heart of the problem. Laura Moss, control freak extraordinaire, has lost control of her family. I’m sure by now she probably realizes she lost control of everything else when she married Pete Moss.
“Um . . . ” I try to think of some brilliant comment that will get her out of bed, or in the very least make her sit back up and argue with me. Instead, I wimp out. “She probably didn’t mean to do that. Maybe if you—”
That does the trick. Laura not only sits up, she hops out of bed and opens the door, jabbing her finger toward the hallway. “Get out of my bedroom, Priscilla. You have no business interfering in my life.”
Okay. I follow her order and leave, only to be met by five pairs of eyes trained on me as I make my way down the hall. I open my mouth to explain, but Pete shakes his head.
“I coulda told you what would happen, but I didn’t expect you to give up so fast.” He rakes is fingers through hair that looks like it hasn’t been shampooed in weeks. “I thought you might be able to use some of your smarts to make her come to her senses.”
No one is that smart. Besides, I think she’s clinically depressed.