Place Your Betts (The Marilyns) (36 page)

***

The next morning, Betts sat at her kitchen table, guitar in hand, trying to nail down the tune for a song that had started up in her head last night.

A familiar
clank, clank, clank
came from the driveway.

She leaned over and pulled up the blinds. The smile froze on her lips, and her eyes rolled of their own volition. God might have closed the door on one set of problems, but damn if he hadn’t thrown open the front door and invited new ones in.

Like a float in the Christmas parade, a 1975 pink Cadillac El Dorado rumbled down the driveway pulling a vintage silver Airstream.

Mama was back. Whatever crisis had called her to the bar had been resolved, and she was staying long enough to need her own RV.

Betts slumped against the chair. A little bit of Mama went a long way.

The car door slammed. Betts sighed long and hard in case God cared that she was put upon, stood, and pressed the door button.

From the trunk, Mama Cherie hefted a lavender suitcase that Betts had never seen before and a giant Igloo cooler.

“I see nothing’s changed at the Double D since I left.” Mama rolled the mammoth cooler over to Betts’s bus.

Today, Mama’s ensemble included a skin-tight white Lycra top that ended four inches above her belly button and super-low hip-huggers that barely covered her hips. A rope of rhinestones looped around the wide strip of exposed flesh and dangled down to her mid thigh. Her shirt was so tight Betts could make out the outline of Mama’s bra. At least she was wearing one.

Betts climbed down and hugged her. “What was the big emergency?”

“We’ll get to that. I’m gonna need lots of wine while I tell that story.” Mama stepped back and peered at Betts. “You had sex last night.”

Was there a mark upon her forehead?

“I want details. Don’t leave anything out.” Mama giggled. It took ten years off her face, which already looked ten years younger than her fifty-three. Betts smirked. That made them the same age. Damn it.

“I thought you wanted to run Gabe over with your car. Now, you’re all happy for me? Explain the change of heart.”

“That boy’s got it bad for you. Probably trips over the furniture when you walk in the room.”

Betts went very still. “How do you know?”

“I have spies. Plus, I can smell love a mile away, and that boy reeks of it. He’s like a love skunk prancing around and hosing everyone down with love stink.”

“How you managed to destroy a perfectly good feeling by comparing it to skunk musk is beyond me.” Betts blew out a long breath and looked across the field. A cow was scratching its hind end against a tree.

Together they heaved the cooler up the stairs. Mama went back outside, got the purple suitcase, and hefted it up the stairs. She stowed it between the driver’s and passenger’s chairs. “We’ll get to that later.”

All this mystery was getting on Betts’s nerves.

“Was that Bump I saw outside the gate? He had a clipboard and a whistle. Looked very official,” Mama said.

Betts explained about Bump.

“How was the homecoming dance?” Mama smiled.

How did she know about that? Freaking Charlie and Lucky—blabbermouths.

“Fine. Kaitlin and Linde—”

“What’s a Linde?”

“Perky cheerleader.”

“Oh.” Mama nodded. “Do we like her?”

“Yes, if you ignore the manic peppiness.”

Mama popped the lid on the white cooler, and a faint saltwater fishiness filled the room. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Mama pointed to the cooler.

“We should’ve left that outside.” Betts screwed up her nose.

Mama stuck out her tongue.

“Nope. Shrimp boil.” She made a big show of pulling the cover off. “We could ask Bump and his family if they’d like to come over?”

Mama wouldn’t make eye contact.

“You’re not sleeping with him. He’s a nice guy who lost his wife. And he works for me.”

Mama winked. “Who said anything about sleeping?”

“If you so much as flip your hair in his direction, I’ll post your real age on a billboard on Highway 80 for all the world to see.” Betts needed Bump and genuinely liked him. She didn’t want Mama to screw things up.

“When did you become so bitter? As a child, did I make you go to bed at a reasonable hour or force you to eat your green vegetables? 
No
. And this is the thanks I get.” Mama mumbled something under her breath—the only words Betts could make out were “old biddy” and “sexual revolution.”

Betts turned her back on Mama and glanced at the cooler. It was filled to the top with ice and jumbo shrimp. Nowhere else but Louisiana were shrimp sold by the cooler. “Think you bought enough? Ten pounds per person, somebody might leave hungry.”

What in the hell were they going to do with all this?

“I got a good deal.”

Betts shook her head and gave up. “My big pot is down in the cargo bay. What else do you need?”

“I’ll make a list and get started on the shrimp. Go put on some clothes.” Mama glanced at Betts’s peach satin robe. “That’d be enough for me, but you’re too inhibited to pull it off in public.”

“You mean morally conscious, tasteful, and classy.”

“Sticks and stones.” Mama bent over and pushed the cooler toward the sink.

“I can see your butt crack. There’s a hooker somewhere missing her clothes.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in years.” Mama dumped handfuls of shrimp in the sink and ran cold water over them.

Betts lingered. Now was her chance. Tom’s comment about Gigi being a singer had been eating at Betts. “Was Gigi a singer? I don’t mean in the choir but, like, a lounge singer?”

Mama froze with a handful of shrimp midway to the sink. “How did you find out about that?”

Betts stared at Mama. Was it true? “Gigi told Tom. Showed him some pictures of her singing. According to Tom, she was real nice to him.”

Mama blinked. “He’d be the first.” She dropped another load of shrimp in the sink. “Your grandmother never talked about it. When I was in junior high, I found an old photo album in the attic full of her in these fancy dresses standing in front of a microphone. I showed it to her, and she went ballistic. Tanned my butt. I couldn’t sit comfortably for a week.”

“Why? It makes no sense. Why hide it?” Betts drew her knees up and hugged them. “You know the wall of fame in her kitchen? It full of pictures of me.”

“I know.” Mama’s cheeks puffed out, and then she blew out the breath.

That meant that Mama had actually set foot in her old house. Satan must be serving up cherry snow cones in hell right about now.

“Gigi must have mellowed in her old age.” Betts tried to sound like she meant it.

“Fat chance.” Mama shrugged one shoulder. “Evil doesn’t change its stripes without divine intervention, and I doubt Jesus would have anything to do with her.”

“Tom says she was nice to him.” Betts hugged her knees tighter. “It doesn’t fit. The Gigi I knew wouldn’t have given Tom the time of day.” No matter how long ago it was or how old Betts was, her grandmother’s hatred and disapproval still stung. Would it ever go away?

“Your grandmother was a very unhappy person.” Mama walked over to Betts and put her arms around her daughter. “Gigi was out to prove that she was worthy—”

“Of what?”

“Respect…love…life. There’s a lot you don’t know about her. Things I never knew until recently. That’s why I left for New Orleans.” Mama released Betts and took the seat opposite her. “Big Mike called to say that a man walked into the bar claiming to be my mother’s brother.”

“Gigi didn’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“That’s what I told him. Bob Dittmeyer pulled out that old purple suitcase full of old black-and-white photos of his parents and little sisters.” With a nod of the head, Mama gestured to the suitcase. “There’s a picture with Gigi in pigtails and missing her two front teeth sitting between an older boy and girl. Believe it or not, she was the only one smiling.”

Betts pulled the old suitcase over to the middle of the floor, popped the locks, and pulled the lid back. Hundreds of yellowing black-and-white photos spilled out. She picked one up. Gigi had on a starched dress, hair in braids, posed on a rocking chair, smiling beatifically for the camera. This wasn’t real. Gigi as a girl? Betts was pretty sure that Gigi had come out of a uterus old and angry.

“Uncle Bob”—Mama rolled her eyes—“that’s what he wanted me to call him, told me this wild story about Gigi. He said that she used to sing in honkey tonks with the likes of Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline. Gigi’s father was a traveling Baptist minister—did tent revivals and such. He didn’t like the life his middle child had chosen, but he didn’t interfere. Until she got pregnant.” Mama eyed Betts. “With me.”

Betts’s jaw dropped.

“Her father kicked her out. In the rain. No money, no place to go. She was dead to him.” Mama didn’t sound sympathetic or hurt. Her voice was in generic storytelling mode. “If she was bitter, she had a right.”

Betts knew what being cut off felt like. But she’d had a place to go—maybe no money, but she hadn’t been homeless.

“How come we never knew this until now?” Betts didn’t know what to believe. Did knowing Gigi’s sob story change anything?

Mama shrugged. “Don’t know. Gigi told me that my father died right after they got married. Who was I to question?”

“It just doesn’t make sense. If anything, that should have made her sympathetic, not scornful. I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t she have told you?”

“Shame, spite…who knows?” Mama took a long breath. “Once or twice, I did hear her say something to the effect that I was her penance. I never knew what she meant until now.”

“So what? Gigi had a bad life. It doesn’t change things.” Betts watched Mama cleaning shrimp.

“It does, and you know it. Makes her more human and explains some of her issues. I’m not into forgiveness, but at least I can begin to understand. It gives me some peace. I mourned the loss of a loving maternal relationship long ago. Now, she can’t hurt us anymore, and I don’t have to waste time finding new ways to piss her off. I like to think that she was kind to Tom because she felt some remorse or she’d—”

“Don’t you dare say ‘changed.’”

Mama threw a fist up on her hip. “Do I strike you as delusional? In all my forty years on this earth, I’ve never thought of myself as delusional—optimistic…yes, open-minded…absolutely, high…occasionally.”

Betts glared at her.

Mama returned the glare. “Not in a long time.”

Betts turned to her bedroom. Mama put her hand on Betts’s arm.

“She’s dead and gone. Let her go. You’ve always wanted her approval, and you don’t need it. Love and approval aren’t the same thing.” Mama nailed Betts with her direct gaze. “I like to think that in her own fucked-up way, she thought she was doing the right thing. You had the singing career she never had, and Tom had a good home.”

Only Tom hadn’t started with a good home. What about the rest of the money Gigi had been paid for Tom? Betts opened her mouth to ask, but then she closed it. What good would it do now? Mama had found some measure of peace in de-villianizing Gigi—it was time to let sleeping dogs lie.

“She had the problem, not you. Don’t get confused.” Mama dropped her hand. “Go get dressed. I’ll get that list going, and we’ll go to the store together. It’s about time you came out of hiding and faced the gawkers.”

Betts shook her head and smiled. Somehow Mama seemed older—less of a playmate and more of a mother. She kissed the older woman’s cheek. “I’m glad you’re my mother and that you’re just the way you are.” And she meant it.

Someone knocked on the door.

Betts pulled her robe tighter around her. “Get that, will you?”

She stepped into her bedroom and closed the door.

“Well, if it isn’t Bump Bledsoe,” Mama’s voice called from the living room.

Betts rolled her eyes.

“Good morning, Cherie. I thought that was you drivin’ up. Sorry about all those reporters. I got me a plan to get rid of them for good.”

“Sneaky and handsome. Lethal combination.” Mama’s lascivious tone would have made the Pope regret celibacy.

“I don’t suppose you shoot skeet?” Bump sounded very proud of himself. “I figure some target practice in the direction of those reporters should make them think twice about hanging around.”

Betts grabbed the closest garment, which happened to be a red silk dress, and lunged for the door. She burst into the living room. “
No. No
shooting at the reporters.”

But the room was empty.

***

“That is one enormous zit.” Kaitlin stared at the bump on Linde’s chin. It was hard not to, it being the size of a blueberry and all.

“I know. What am I supposed to do?” Linde smeared on more cover-up, but that only made it worse. Now it was bigger and painted an abnormal flesh color. “I can’t help it. My period started yesterday, and my skin would like for everyone to know.”

Kaitlin leaned back from the bathroom mirror and checked the date on her watch. It was the third, and usually Linde’s and her periods started around the same time. So what? She was a little late, just a day or so. It didn’t mean a thing. She and Tom had used protection…well, except for that first time, and everyone knew that you couldn’t get pregnant the first time. Nothing to worry about because her body was just adjusting to womanhood.

Kaitlin shook it off, grabbed her lipstick, and applied a fresh coat.

A week later, she wasn’t so sure, and the first faint flutterings of worry weighed heavily on her mind. She stared out the window as Tom pulled up to “their place”—the burned-out old house. It was Saturday night. They’d had a nice dinner. She should be happy. Being with Tom usually made her happy, but tonight, her mind was too busy wading through the what-ifs.

What if girls could get pregnant the first time? What if she was pregnant and had to tell her mother? What if Tom didn’t love her enough to stand by her? Her heart cliff-dove into the abyss. Losing Tom would be the worst part.

“What’s wrong?” Tom put his truck in park, cranked off the engine, and turned to her. “You’re distant and quiet.” He stroked her cheek.