That Cali certainly is a sweet girl. It makes me feel good to be able to help her. And it’s tragic about her parents.What’s her story?I wonder. I’ll find out soon enough when I get her résumé.
EIGHTEEN
WILDA
I’m supposed to meet Mama for lunch. Truth is, I’m making myself meet Mama for lunch. I love my mother, I do, but she’s a thespian from the grandest of Shakespearian repertories, the ilk of which defies duplication. Yesterday she called to tell me my baby sister Mary, who lives with her family in Dallas, was dying,“literally dying,”she said, of heatstroke. Naturally it scared me to death when she said that and after almost dying from a stroke myself I finally recovered enough to ask what the heck had happened.
“The tempatuah in Dallas has hovered over the hundred-degree mark for twenty-foah days straight,” she said, in her thick Mississippi drawl. “Their entiah family will be dead by the end of the week.” That, in a nutshell, is Mama.
When I walk into The Cupboard, one of our better-than-average restaurants, Mama is seated at a table holding her cell phone. She’s already ordered water and tea for both of us, and there’s a basket of two rolls on her side of the table. I give her a hug, notice she’s looking at Facebook, and take my place. When I sip my tea, I can tell it’s unsweetened. I’m glancing around the restaurant, packed with diners, when Mama asks what I’m doing.
“The waitress made a mistake. This isunsweet tea.”
Mama pats my hand, which is still wrapped around the glass. “She made no mistake, Wilda. You really need to stop ordering sweet tea. Your hips don’t get any smallah the oldah you get.”
That crawled all over me. “Mother. I am fifty-eight years old, five foot eight, and I weigh… well I weigh less than I did a year ago. I hardly think ordering sweet tea is the end of the world.”
“Do you still wear the same size you wore last year?”
I give her a small shrug. “In some things.”
“That”—she squints one eye, pops up her pointer finger, and adds a loud clucking noise inside her cheek—“is the end of Haynes’s world.”
Every single cell of my body winces. When we were young, Mary and I would kick each other under the table whenever she did it, all the while knowing what the other was thinking…she makes me siiiick.We call it the ick. “Mama did the ick today,” one of us might say, or “She icked the lady in the checkout line.” It’s without questionthemost annoying thing in the world. Mama, by the way, is a four. Still. At eighty years old. Her arms are the size of my big toes.
“Did you invite me here to spend the afternoon insulting me?” I ask her. Haynes is forever preaching to not let her bother me. But she always has, always will.
“No, but you have to think of Haynes.”
“What about Haynes? He loves me just the way I am.”
She lightly strokes my forearm. “Honey, men keep their sex drives much longah than we do.” She leans forward. “Is Haynes still having luck… down theyah?”
I lean in toward her, our foreheads nearly touching. “I refuse to talk withmy motherabout this subject. I’m going to pretend like she never asked me that question.” Settling back in my chair, I take a sip of water. And stare at her.
She purses her lips, then tents her fingers together. “Your fathah died so young. I never knew if his would still work when he got ol—”
“That’s it!” I slap my hand on the table. A piercing screech fills the room as I push back my chair. Standing up, I grab my purse.
The room chatter dies a sudden death and Mother glances around at the onlookers with indignant eyes. “Wilda,please,” she mutters through clenched teeth.“Sit down.”
Slowly I lower myself back in the seat, still clutching my purse. I lean in again. “What in the world makes you think I would ever have any interest in my daddy’s penis? Either change the subject or I’m leaving.”
“Okaaay.” After scanning the restaurant to see who’s still looking, she clutches my hand, which is still resting on top of my purse. With a much kinder expression she says, “How is Ellie? And how’s it going with her roommate? It’s Annie Laurie, right?” Mama picks up my napkin and hands it to me. I’ve been in the restaurant entirely too long not to have placed it in my lap.
I sigh, resigned to my fate, and wrap my purse strap around the back of the chair. “I think they’re doing okay. It seems they’re fairly different, but I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
“I can’t tell you how glad I am they are rooming togethah. The girl is from such a fine family.”
I ignore her comment. Her definition and my definition of fine family differ inexhaustibly. “She’s made a new friend from next door whom she adores. A girl from Blue Mountain, Mississippi. I met her. She’s a lot like Ellie.”
“Where is Blue Mountain? I’ve never heard of that. Actually”—she points a finger in the air—“I have. It seems to me there’s a character from one of Tennessee Williams’s plays from Blue Mountain. But I can’t seem to recall which one.”
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
Mama lifts her readers from the chain around her neck and places them at the tip of her nose. Then she glances at her menu. “It’s because of the great depth with which I studied Tennessee Williams at Sweetbriah.”
She wants me to acknowledge this, but I don’t. I’ve heard it a thousand times. “Anyway. Ellie wants me to write her an Alpha Delt rec. I guess the girl doesn’t know many alums and needs all the help she can get.”
