The Cotton Queen (19 page)

“Mothers don’t have to call first,” I told her. “Mothers have full immunity just to pop in. So I am.”

Laney just stood there, staring at me, apparently dumbfounded.

“Invite me inside, darling,” I said. “You don’t leave your mother standing on the porch.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, opening the door more widely. “We’re painting the kitchen this weekend. Everything is a mess.”

“Um, I see.”

“Come on in, I’ll introduce you to Robert.”

Something in her tone suggested that she’d prefer being devoured by wolves.

L
ANEY

I
T
WASN
’
T
AS
BAD
as I would have imagined. But I’m not sure I would have imagined it at all. In the almost four years that I’d lived in Houston, my mother had not stepped a foot out of McKinney. Now suddenly, without warning, she’d come to stay the weekend.

Robert was not amused.

“What’s she doing here?” he asked me in a whispered question behind her back.

I shrugged like I didn’t know. But I knew.

There was nothing in life that could have stirred my mother to leave her beloved McKinney. Nothing except life and death. And it was my independence that she was determined to try to kill. She’d finally realized that I was having a life of my own, pursuing my own goals and just being happy with neither her input nor her consent.

I brought her into our kitchen.

After three years of dorm living, I’d thought it the ultimate of luxury. Now, seeing through my mother’s eyes, it was a tiny postage-stamp kind of a room with ancient appliances and cracked Formica countertops.

“We’re going with yellow,” I said, stating the obvious. “It seems very sunny.”

“It’s very fumy,” she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

I nodded. “Yes, but I much prefer paint. There is something slightly unhealthy about just wallpapering over dirty walls.”

It was a deliberate dig considering the literal forest of colorful print that she and I had glued up over the years. Unfortunately Babs appeared oblivious to it.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” she asked me.

“Not right now,” I told her. “We’ve got to get this done. It takes forever for anything to dry in this humidity.”

It was probably one of the ten least hospitable comments I’d ever made in my life. Amazingly my mother failed to take offense.

I tempered my nastiness with a more warmhearted suggestion. “Why don’t you have a seat in the living room. I’m sure you need a rest after such a long drive. I’ll bring you a nice glass of ice water.”

“No, thank you,” she said. Instead she picked up the roller that Robert laid down and began to paint the kitchen.

Robert was taken aback. His own mother was such a princess, she never put her hand to any type of manual labor. He was just becoming accustomed to my handiness. Clearly he found it disconcerting to have a woman of an older generation being equally comfortable at doing a “man’s job.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he told her, almost taking offense at her willingness to help.

“I don’t mind,” Babs said. “I’m here to talk to my daughter and my daughter is in here. Why don’t you take a little break? Go out for a smoke or something.”

“I don’t smoke,” he said.

“Well, why don’t you pretend that you do,” she suggested with a very bright smile.

Robert shot me a helpless glance. I could almost have laughed. He always seemed so in control. He was the center of attention in every room he ever entered. But with Babs, he was out of his depth. With her, I knew he could never protect me.

“I’ll...I’ll be out in the backyard,” he said.

Babs dipped the roller and continued her job.

I did mine as well, picking up the narrow brush, I carefully edged a thin border around the baseboards, the tile, the ceiling, allowing my mother the freedom of broad strokes that covered a lot of space in a short time.

We were silent. The longer that it lasted the worse it became. Finally when I could no longer stand it, I started up a neutral conversation.

“How long have you been driving?” I asked her.

“Since I was a teenager.”

“No, I meant how long today.”

“Oh, well, all day, I suppose,” she answered. “I left a few minutes before eight.”

That was a lot longer than it should have taken. “You must be exhausted,” I said.

She nodded. “I am rather tired,” she said, dipping her roller in the paint tray once more.

I reached over and stopped her movement.

“Then stop doing this,” I said.

“No, no, I mustn’t,” she said. “Painting this kitchen is apparently very important to you and you’re my daughter. What’s important to you is important to me.”

“Really?” I said. “I always thought it was the other way around. What was important to you was supposed to be important to me.”

“That, too,” she said.

We lapsed back into a working silence. When I couldn’t bear it anymore, I tried to take the initiative again.

“If you’re going to do this, maybe you should change into something you don’t mind getting paint on.”

She glanced down at her clothes. “Do you like it?” she asked. “It’s new.”

“It’s pretty loud,” I told her. “I know you haven’t been keeping up with fashion much, but people are wearing more muted colors these days, browns and grays and navy.”

“Bright colors give you confidence,” she said. “You should really try it, darling.”

I gave her a hard look and then commented nastily, “My confidence comes from inside me, Babs. I don’t need to try to find it hanging in my closet.”

“Right,” she said after a moment.

I realized that I was trying to start an argument and my mother was not cooperating. She was here to intrude on my life, ridicule my choices and discount my decisions. I knew that. And I was ready for her to just get on with it.

“Look,” I blurted out. “I know what you’ve come here to say, and you might as well just say it and get it over with, because it’s going to be nothing but a waste of your time.”

Babs glanced over at me. She was calm, thoughtful.

“If you know what I’ve come here to say,” she said. “You might as well say it yourself.”

“You’ve come here to express some kind of moral outrage about my living with Robert.”

“Moral outrage,” she repeated. “Is that what you think? I’m very upset about this living arrangement, but moral outrage isn’t enough to get me to drive to Houston.”

“Then what is?”

“Love for my daughter, wanting what’s best for her,” she said.

“Since when do you have any idea about what’s best for me,” I said.

“Since the day you were born,” Babs answered. “You are young and very smart. You think you understand the world, but you don’t.”

“I don’t understand the world?” I shook my head, incredulous. “Babs, you’re the one who has been holed up in McKinney for two decades. News flash, the world has changed while you weren’t paying attention.”

“Things haven’t changed that much,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “It’s all changed completely,” I told her. “Completely. All those narrow gender roles that women of your age were forced into, they don’t exist anymore. Maybe people have not started living together in McKinney, but in the rest of this country, Babs, there has been a revolution. Women have been empowered. We’ve got the pill. We’ve got equal rights. We’ve got opportunities. When you were my age your only choices were being a nurse, a teacher or a housewife. My choices are unlimited. I can be and do anything that I’m capable of.”

Babs shook her head. “You are naive,” she said. “Men still own everything and run everything. They only let you think you have power. When it gets down to the gritty details of life, they still have the upper hand. And it’s the whip hand, Laney. Never forget that it’s the whip hand. Getting along with them or staying clear of them are the only choices a woman ever has.”

“That’s crazy.”

“It’s not crazy, it’s how life is.”

“Who has hurt you so much to make you think this?” I asked her. “Was it my father? ’Cause I know it wasn’t Acee.”

“You always defend him, don’t you,” she said, chuckling humorlessly. “He takes your side against me and you’d take his side against me. But that’s okay. I don’t mind. And I don’t want to talk about Acee. I want to talk about Robert.”

“What about Robert?”

“You talk about making choices, being empowered. But isn’t he still in charge here? Isn’t this his house? Doesn’t he set the rules? Doesn’t he make the decisions? Has he ever mentioned marrying you? No, of course not, it doesn’t suit him.”

“It doesn’t suit me, either,” I insisted. “It’s his house because he’s already working. I’m still in school. Once I have my degree and start making my share of the house payment, it will be my house, too. As for the decisions, we make them together. He’s older and more experienced, so I listen to what he has to say. As time goes on, I’m sure that will evolve.”

“Will it? Won’t he always be older than you? Won’t he always believe that he knows more?”

“No, he won’t.”

“Do you know that?”

“I do, because I love him and trust him, Babs,” I said. “I realize that it’s hard for you to understand that, having never loved or trusted anyone in your life.”

“What a terrible thing to say!”

“It’s true,” I pointed out. “You rely completely on yourself. You never let anyone in. Acee is such a great guy, crazy in love with you and would do anything for you.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s why he left me.”

“Yes, he divorced you. Yes, he married Dorrie. But it wasn’t like you really cared. I watched for twelve years as you dismissed him, discounted him. In all those years, I never saw you initiate one encounter with him. He started the conversations, he took your hand. He asked about your day. If you two kissed, it was him kissing you. You never gave him so much as a scrap of your time or your affection. You treated him like a prison cell mate. Trapped in a narrow space, you didn’t want to share anything going on inside you. You don’t know anything about love and trust, so don’t even try to lecture me on it.”

“I’ve always loved you,” she said. “You’ve never doubted that.”

“Frankly, Babs, from time to time, I have. You’ve been as secretive with me as with everyone else in your life. Now here I am, finally happy and getting what I want from life. Are you here to celebrate that with me? No, you’ve come to try to make me feel bad about the good things I’ve found.”

“No, Laney, no, that’s not why I’m here,” she insisted. “I’m here because I love you. I can’t bear to see you hurt or unhappy and this road that you’re on, that’s the only place that it can lead.”

I shook my head. “Babs, I’m sure you think you know what you’re talking about, but you don’t,” I told her. “It’s not like it was when you were my age. America has changed. We don’t have that 1950s mind-set anymore. Women like me, who are bright, intelligent, motivated, we’re allowed now to go out and seek our own goals. We don’t have to marry someone to make a life.”

“So you don’t believe in marriage? It’s because of my divorce, isn’t it?”

“No, don’t be silly,” I told her. “I’m not angry at you or at Acee. You both love me and gave me a good home. I’m grateful for that.”

“But you don’t want it for yourself.”

“I do want it. I think. Eventually.”

Babs nodded as if she understood, but her words were sarcastic. “So you don’t want to tie yourself down to the vows and commitments of marriage. You want to be free to just have sex with people.”

“I am not ‘having sex with people.’ I am having sex with Robert. I love him and I’m committed to him. I’m just not
legally
committed to him.”

“And he’s not
legally
committed to you,” Babs pointed out. “I don’t suppose you’ve found this out yet, but men have a difficult enough time staying faithful and true when they’re legally bound to. Without any sense of obligation to you, the
best
that we can expect of this man is to merely break your heart.”

“Maybe I will end up hurt and miserable,” I admitted. “Then you can pat yourself on the back and say you were right all along.”

“I don’t want to be right,” she said. “I want you to be happy.”

“That’s what I want, too. I’m not like you, Babs. I have hopes and dreams and ambitions. There’s a big, wide universe out here and I want to see it, experience it, understand it. Do you think that I can come back to McKinney, marry some throwback to another era and put up wallpaper for the rest of my life?”

I hadn’t meant my words to be such a stinging indictment of her own life, but the high color in her cheeks and the hurt expression on her face indicated that it had come out that way.

Bravely she held up the roller and eyed me sternly.

“I don’t mind if you paint,” she said.

We continued through the rest of the day. Robert ordered a pizza for supper. Babs had never had food delivered. And seemed to relish the novelty. With Robert she was social matron in full battle gear, alternately charming him and putting him down. She manipulated him so easily, I was thoroughly annoyed.

As the evening wore on interminably, she finally rose to go.

“I’d better go find a hotel,” she said.

“You’re very welcome to stay here,” Robert told her.

I could have kicked him.

“No,” she told him, smiling so brightly that he apparently couldn’t hear her words. “I couldn’t stay here. That would be like condoning, wouldn’t it?”

Robert laughed as if they were having a little joke. He got in his car and had her follow him to the Shamrock Hilton Hotel at Main and Holcombe. By the time he returned, I was already in bed.

“I had my doubts about your mom at first,” he told me. “But she’s delightful. You two are a lot alike.”

“What? That’s nuts,” I told him. “Robert, she’s here to break us up. She doesn’t like you and she’s playing you.”

“Don’t be silly, Laney,” he said. “I’m far too shrewd a businessman to be ‘played’ by some small-town housewife.”

“Babs may never have ventured into corporate America,” I explained. “But she’s had lots of experience running civic groups and organizing fund-raisers, doing big social events. She even ran my stepfather’s campaign for judge.”

Robert chuckled. “I’m sure she can give a lovely dinner party,” he said. “That’s what those women do, isn’t it? Wow each other over bouillabaisse. I’m not likely to be outmaneuvered by your middle-aged mother.”

I was a bit surprised at Robert’s dismissal of Babs’s competence. I never doubted her abilities.

My point was proven the next morning when she showed up before eight. I hadn’t even had my coffee.