Wife-In-Law (18 page)

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Authors: Haywood Smith

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women

BOOK: Wife-In-Law
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So what if I didn’t have many friends? I’d managed fine before Kat, and I would again.
Sulking a bit, I told myself I could always go somewhere nice by myself. La Grotta, or the Fish Market. But I wasn’t in the mood to eat alone in public.
I got the paper and looked into the movies, but I wasn’t into vampires or computer-enhanced action movies, or chick flicks that were supposed to be fun, but were really just so-so. And I hated going to movies alone, anyway.
Amelia. This was all her fault. If she’d just left me alone, I’d be perfectly fine, going through my day as usual.
At sixes and sevens, I decided to kill some time by calling Mama. (That’ll tell you how desperate I was.) “Hey, Mama. How are you feeling today?”
“I’m fine, but I can’t talk now,” she said in an odd tone. “I’ll have to call you back.”
A click, then a dial tone. What was up with that?
Maybe a burglar had broken into her house and was holding her hostage. I hit redial.
After several rings, Mama answered with a breathless, “I
told
you, I can’t talk now.” I could have sworn the sound she made next was a stifled chortle.
“Are you okay? Is anybody threatening you?”
Another stifled chortle. “Not hardly. See you later.”
An odd choice of words. Again, the dial tone.
I considered going over to find out what was up, but decided it would be wiser not to set such a precedent.
An inspiration came to me. I could bring her a cake, my famous devil’s food with seven-minute icing. And while I was at it, I could bake one for Emma. And one for Kat, as a gesture of goodwill.
So I set about baking, and three hours later, the cakes were cooled, iced, and sitting on the kitchen table while I took a long, cool soak, then washed my hair. I’d just finished drying it when Emma came home.
“Mama?”
“I’m in the bathroom,” I called from my dressing table, sponging a little bronzer on my pale cheeks.
I heard her approach, then looked in the mirror to see her framed in the doorway. She looked gorgeous. “Oh, honey, I
love
your hair. You let them cut it.”
Emma swung the layered, shoulder-length curls. “Yep. It’s still long enough to put up, but the layers in the front give it more volume.”
I hugged her with pride. “It’s beautiful, and so are you.”
She slipped off her Crocs and wiggled her toes, now adorned with bright red polish. “You like it? I thought it would look good with the red flowers on my dress.” She waggled her scarlet fingernails at me. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s perfect, just like you.” I put my arm around her shoulder. “Come on. It’s time for you to get ready. Will you let me do your face?” Mine could wait.
Emma nodded. “Okay, but only if I have the right of refusal.”
“Deal.” We headed for her room.
Thirty minutes later, she emerged looking like a model, only subtler. Her long empire-style dress flattered her figure, and her floral platform sandals showed off her pedicure.
“You look mah-velous,” I told her.
“You do too,” she said.
She’d insisted on doing my makeup, and I looked pretty exotic.
Emma studied herself in the full-length mirror. “Mama, this is fabulous. No wonder people pay you. I look almost pretty.”
“You
are
pretty,” I told her with a mother’s conviction.
Grinning, she shook her curls, looking like she believed it.
I glanced at the clock. “You’d better get going if you want to help Kat with the last-minute arrangements.”
“Okay.”
I got Kat’s cake and handed it to Emma in the foyer as she left. “This is for the reception.”
“Oooh, my favorite.” Emma eyed it with lust.
“Be sure they keep it inside,” I told her. “The heat’ll ruin the icing.”
“I will.” Emma paused by the door. “I thought you were going to go out this afternoon.”
Apparently, nobody was going to be satisfied if I didn’t. “I am,” I lied, “I just wanted to help you get ready first.”
Emma gave me a peck. “Good. I’m glad you decided to get away.”
I opened the door to the inferno. No way was I going out in that. The cake’s icing would probably melt before Emma got it across the street. “Have fun. I’ll leave the key under the doormat.”
Emma waved. “I doubt I’ll be very late. Bye.”
Once inside, I decided to do something I’d never done before in my life. I went for the white zinfandel and poured myself a huge gobletful, then cut myself a slab of fresh cake and had a party of one, long before the sun was over the yardarm. The wine was almost as sweet as the cake, and it went down smoothly. Feeling better when that was gone, I refilled my goblet and my plate. Twenty minutes and two thousand calories later, I got up for some iced water and wavered as I stood.
Whoo! All that sugar and alcohol in the middle of the day had gotten me way past high.
I guzzled a bottled spring water, then lurched back to the shady recesses of my room and promptly fell asleep.
I was worriedly working my way through some formless ordeal dream when a door slammed in my dream, and Emma and somebody else started hollering something I couldn’t understand. As I focused harder, I realized the hollering wasn’t imaginary, and I woke up.
I leaped to my feet, setting off a hand grenade in my skull. Covering my left eye to keep it from falling out, I staggered toward the light and sound and saw two figures in the foyer, backlit by the blazing sun.
“I cannot believe you disrupted the wedding and insulted Daddy and Kat in front of all those people!” Emma shouted. “You owe everybody there an apology, especially Kat!”
“I don’t owe that hippie girl
squat
!”
Mama?
I blinked hard. Must still be dreaming!
I focused as my eyes adjusted to the brightness, and sure enough, there Mama stood, looking like Mrs. Gotrocks in a vintage Chanel suit and Italian heels, her hair pulled back into an elegant chignon.
“Mama?” I stopped breathing, and tiny stars danced around the edges of my vision. No more booze in the middle of the day. I was honest-to-God hallucinating.
“Emma,” Mama barked out, “you’d better grab your mother before she passes out.”
“Mama!” Emma hurried over and steadied me. “Are you okay?”
It sure
felt
real.
Stunned, I patted her arm, my eyes glued on a defiant Mama. “Is this really happening?”
Emma winced and drew back in disapproval. “Mama! You’ve been drinking.”
“Just two glasses of wine,” I defended, my stomach roiling at the mention, “with some cake.”
My mother sidled toward the door. “Well, while you two are talking, I’ll just slip out. The meter’s running on my cab.”
Emma abandoned me to block the way. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not going anywhere till you apologize to Kat and Daddy for ruining their wedding.”
“Mama,” I said, “what did you do?”
“Turnabout’s fair play,” she said, straightening her cuffs. She jerked her chin upward. “They embarrassed you by having that travesty right across the street. I just decided to give them a taste of their own medicine.”
Oh, Lord. “Thirty years, you haven’t set foot out of that house, and you finally do it for
this
?”
“I did it for
you
.” Mama leveled a clear gaze at me. “Nobody ever takes up for you, including me. I decided it was time.”
Deciding didn’t cure mental illness like my mother’s. Something else was going on, here. I turned to my daughter. “Emma, please go over to Kat’s and explain that I had no idea Mama was going to do something like this, and I deeply apologize on her behalf.”
“Don’t you do that,” Mama warned her. “I do not apologize.”
I motioned Emma to go anyway.
“Don’t worry, Mama,” she said. “I’ll tell them. And I’ll also tell them Nana is mentally ill.” She shot a scowl at her grandmother, then departed with a slam of the door.
As soon as Mama and I were alone, I didn’t mince words. “What’s going on here? How did you manage to leave that house?”
Mama lifted a shoulder and both eyebrows, looking down. “Well, if you must know, I’ve been taking my meds and practicing going out for months.”
“Why? How?”
“You’re not the only one around here who has her secrets, you know.”
What was she up to? “Okay, Mama. Let’s hear it.”
“I have a boyfriend,” she gloated.
What?
Maybe she’d finally lost touch with reality completely. “Oh, really. Who?”
“Claude Brenner, from next door. His wife died a year ago. Somebody told him I was a collector, so he came over to see what I had.” She straightened the hydrangeas in the vase on the foyer table. “Brought me some roses from his garden. I fed him supper, and one thing led to another, and we’ve been seeing each other ever since.”
Was she hallucinating? I talked to Mama every day, and she’d never even hinted at anything like this.
“That’s great, Mama,” I said, still suspicious. “What does he look like?”
“Tall and lanky, just like I like ’em.” She looked twenty years younger when she said it. “He thinks I’m pretty. And he’s been helping me find the real treasures in all the things I’ve been saving.”
If this guy actually existed, I couldn’t help wondering if he was taking advantage of her. “Mama, did you give him any of your collectibles?” Some were actually valuable.
“Heavens, no,” Mama said. “He’s got a houseful of his own. We just started clearing out the spare room, so we could put the good things in there.”
Clearing out? I hadn’t seen any evidence of clearing out. But then again, I hadn’t looked in the spare room for ages.
After all my years of trying to get her to clean up, to take her meds, to reach out to life, some guy comes along and she does it, just like that?
Blindsided, I tried to think of what to say. “I think that’s great, Mama.” Another packrat, lonesome and available, right next door? That was too weird to be believed. “How long has he been visiting you?”
“It’s not visiting,” she corrected. “We’re dating, with a capital
D
.”
Sex? Was she saying they were having
sex
? I flashed on a recent article about rampant STDs in senior communities. “Mama, you’re not … I mean, are you two … you’re not
sleeping
together, are you?”
“Lord, no,” she said. “There’s no way I’d let him stay over after we have sex. I need my rest. And my privacy.”
I almost swallowed my tongue, at a total loss for words. The idea of my mother with some old man … Wash my eyes out with soap. “But Mama, you’ve always been so strict about sex outside of marriage.”
“Well, yes, I have,” she said, tapping her forefinger across her lips. “Seeing as how there is no degree of sin with God, I don’t imagine that what we’re doing is any worse than you not telling me about Greg and that hippie girl for months. A lie of omission is still a lie, and the Lord loves the truth and hates a lie.” She certainly didn’t sound repentant. “Claude and I will have to work this out with the Lord, but any way you slice it, it’s our business, not anybody else’s.”
“Then why did you tell
me
?” I grumbled, still trying to assess what had happened.
“Because I didn’t want to keep something that important from you.” Her expression begged for me to understand.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
Her eyes shuttered with disappointment. “You might say, ‘Thanks for telling me, Mama. I hope you’re happy.’”
She was right. Crazy as this all was, I really did want her to be happy. “Thanks for telling me, Mama. I hope you’re happy.”
“That’s more like it.”
Mama, Mama, Mama. “Well, don’t tell the girls,” I said. “About the sex part, I mean.” Nothing like setting a bad example.
“Of course I won’t,” Mama snapped, “and you’d better not either.”
“I won’t.”
“All right then,” she said.
This was insane. “I hope you’re using protection,” I couldn’t resist saying.
Mama stiffened. “Oh, please. Claude’s the cleanest man I ever met, and neither one of us was ever
with
anybody but who we married.” She pulled a spotless handkerchief from her clutch and dabbed at her neck. “I can’t think of any STD with an incubation period of fifty years.”
At least they’d discussed the subject. “He may have told you he wasn’t with anybody else, but men lie about these things, you know. What if he’s lying?”

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