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Sensing my distress, Daddy said, “Oh, Sherry, leave the girl alone. Can’t you see she’s got something to tell us?”
“Oh, um, thanks, Daddy,” I said, motioning for them to sit on the couch. Mama fluffed the pillows and beat unseen dust from the cushions before making herself comfortable.
Jettie popped up behind the sofa. It was so weird that they had no idea she was standing less than a foot behind them. “Tell them you’re pregnant with a married minister’s baby, then say, ‘Just kidding, I’m a vampire,’” she suggested.
“Not helping,” I whispered.
“What’s that, honey?” Mama asked, buffing fingerprints off my coffee table.
“Well, I have some interesting, exciting news,” I said, stalling.
“It’s about that Gabriel, isn’t it?” Mama squealed. “You’re engaged?”
“Mama, I’ve only known him for three days!” I cried.
Mama made that tsk/sigh combination sound only mothers can master. “Well, are you at least seeing him? Have you tried dressing a little more feminine? Making an effort? You know, you’re not getting any younger.”
I snorted. I wouldn’t be getting any older, for that matter. “Mama, I don’t think you—”
“You’re never going to get married if you don’t lower your standards a little bit.”
“Mama—”
“Don’t you want to be settled? Get married? Have a fami—”
“Mama!” I shouted. “I’m not engaged. I’m not dating anyone. I—I…”
Time slowed. I could read every muscle, every pore in my parents ’ faces. Daddy’s eyes were narrowed, considering me carefully. Worry crinkled the lines at the edges of his eyes. Mama ’s mouth was drawn, clearly expecting some sort of bad news beyond “your daughter was fired in a spectacularly public manner that will be chewed over for months. ” Their emotions came in stinging slaps of scent. Confusion, disappointment, irritation, sadness, impatience, a sour haze that was making my head ache. And that was just from Mama. My eyes burned with unshed tears. How do you tell someone that their child has died? How do you explain when that child is sitting in front of them, seemingly alive? How do you tell your parents that you’ve moved beyond them on the evolutionary scale? And that your mama’s going to need to serve O negative alongside her Thanksgiving gravy?
Well, I didn’t. Because I’m a great big coward.
“I’m not ready to date anybody right now, Mama,” I said, swiping at my eyes. “And I’m not going to move back home. I just need some time to focus on finding a new job and figuring out what I’m going to do next. I’ll be fine.”>Mama put a stop to that after Grandpa Number Four, Fred. He was a nice man. Shame about the lightning strike.
All of Grandma Ruthie’s husbands had died under weird circumstances. A milk truck hit Grandpa John, my real grandpa, back in the days when milk was actually delivered door-to-door. Grandpa Tom had a heretofore-unknown allergy to rhubarb and had an anaphylactic reaction while Grandma was baking her famous strawberry-rhubarb pie. Grandpa Jimmy died from a brown recluse bite on the inside of the throat. His doctor’s article on the improbability of such a bite was published in several medical journals. And poor Fred, struck down on the twelfth hole at the Half -Moon Hollow public golf course. It’s a wonder Grandma hadn’t been questioned by the police or at least gotten a cool nickname like the Black Widow.
Of course, that would probably be in poor taste, given what happened to Grandpa Jimmy.
That was why I was allowed to go to the Wacky Rivers Water Park with Rae Summerall on the day of Jimmy ’s funeral.
Apparently, Mama realized that it wasn’t normal for a little girl to have a designated funeral dress. After Fred, she told Grandma it was time to slow her prolonged death march down the aisle. Grandma had been dating a very nice man named Bob for the last five years. They’d been engaged for four and a half.
Bob was proof that medical science could keep pretty much anyone alive. He’d had his gall bladder, one of his lungs, part of his pancreas, and his prostate removed. He spent more time in the hospital than out. Why was this sweet man engaged to my Grandma? I can only imagine that he actually wanted to die, and he saw marriage to her as his only way out.
“As long as Ruthie keeps killing off husbands, I’ll have an active social afterlife.” Jettie preened.
“That’s just gross.” I shuddered. “But maybe your committing postmortem infidelity will distract Mama and Daddy from my nifty new nocturnal lifestyle.”
Jettie blanched. “Your parents are coming here? Now? Oh, honey, that’s not going to go well.”
“Thanks, that helps,” I told her, stuffing the pink bow and cellophane into the trash. “I bet you ten bucks Mama shows up with a pot pie.”
Mama’s almost-from-scratch chicken pot pie was my favorite B.D. meal. All crusty and filled with cream-of-chickeny goodness. I already missed it, though I did have seven of them in my freezer. Mama operated under the assumption that I was eight years old and incapable of feeding myself. It was physically impossible for her to cross my threshold without some form of nourishment. She once offered me cheese crackers from her purse while we were standing in my kitchen.
Like Grandma Ruthie, Mama attributed Jettie’s leaving me River Oaks to senility. Obviously, it would have been much better to leave the family manse to my sister, Jenny, who would be able to care for the house properly. Crafty, thrifty, and the proud owner of an industrial-grade glue gun, Jenny made Martha Stewart look like a bag lady. And she fulfilled each of my mother ’s daughterly requirements by being (a) elected cheerleading captain in high school, (b) married to a chiropractor right after graduating from paralegal school, (c) the mother of two boys, Andrew and Bradley. They were barely children, really, more like hyper badgers in Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirts.
Nonetheless, Jenny assumed that bearing fruit of her loins meant that all family possessions funneled to her. After I moved into River Oaks, I found dozens of little preprinted “Jenny” stickers marking a good deal of the antiques. In anticipation of Aunt Jettie dropping dead, Jenny had surreptitiously tattooed furniture, figurines, and family portraits, with the little blue dots to claim dibs on what she saw as her share of the inheritance. Fortunately, Aunt’s Jettie’s iron-clad, very specific will prevented what I’m sure would have been a posthumous robbery. But I was still finding stickers in strange places. I had no idea how she managed to stick them without me seeing her.
She was like a greedy ninja.
