The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (14 page)

He did not let her get a word in. “I didn’t care about my work or my responsibilities in those days. Just tried to hide from my problems by re
living my past glories in a place where all everybody ever expected of me was that I be Wild Billy.”

“I’m sure that was a full-time job in itself.” She caressed his arm.

“You have no idea. That expectation pressed down on me like a yoke. I know everyone dreams of being the hero, but in a town this small after a time it becomes a kind of curse. People want to be Wild Billy’s friend, not
my
friend necessarily, but Wild Billy’s.”

“I can see that.”

“There was always this pressure that came with it, these expectations. And because they weren’t unpleasant expectations, how could I resent them?” He shook his head, his chest tight. “It’s hard to explain.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

“As long as I stayed in Hellon nobody wanted me to grow up, nobody wanted me to get serious about my life. And nobody had the gumption to say ‘boo’ to me when I become a selfish donkey-headed bastard.”

“Except me.”

“Except you.”

“In this town half-fueled by gossip, I have never heard a harsh word over my behavior during that period.”

“You lost your son, Will. It’s not a town without a heart.”

“I wouldn’t have been there for him—or
Norrie—when he was born if you hadn’t spoken up.”

“But you did go before it was too late. That matters, Will. You got to see him and hold him.”

“Norrie and I had broken up before…” No, he could not tell everything, not even to Rita. “Before she even knew she was pregnant.”

“You and she were together a long time, right?”

He nodded. “Lived together for almost three years. My longest-standing relationship outside family and folks in Hellon. Guess that sounds pretty pathetic to a person like you, doesn’t it?”

“No more pathetic than I figure my choices and relationships seem to you.”

“Not pathetic, just…we’re so different, aren’t we?”

“Like sunshine and rain.”

“Still, I thank you, Rita. It changed my life.”

“Maybe it changed that one eternal moment for you, Will. Not your whole life.”

“You can’t possibly make that judgment.”

“We are known by the fruits we bear. You gather a bushel of pecans and bake a pie, it won’t taste like apple no matter how much you tell people it does.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“If what happened with your son changed your
life
, Will, then your life would be different.”

“It is different.”

She didn’t say a thing to that.

“What you really think is that if my life had re
ally changed, that
we
wouldn’t be so different. If I were a changed man, I’d be more like you now, right?”

“You’ve been in town all this time and you still haven’t gone to see your mother. Does that sound like a man changed in his heart toward his family?”

He could tell her about the calls, about the checking with his mother’s doctors and getting reports from Jillie. He could tell her that if his mother had used any other ploy but a phony deathbed summons, he would have given in by now. He could tell her, but having to tell her something so obvious, something that even her ex-husband had known? It galled him more than a plain old-fashioned slap in the face.

He started the car. “We’d better get back to the Palace.”

“Yes, we should. You haven’t even had your lunch.”

He jerked the car into reverse. “It’s you I’m thinking of.”

“Don’t worry about me.” She put on the phoniest smile he’d ever seen. “I can afford to skip a meal now and again.”

“As can I.” He laid his hand on the back of the seat. Twisting around he looked out the back window. “But I was thinking about the talk.”

She wound her fingers together in her lap. “The talk we just had?”

“The talk around town.” The brakes squeaked.
He faced forward without even meeting her gaze. “You and I take off in your car and stay away too long. It’s bound to start tongues wagging.”

“I think it’d be hard to top the real big story of the day—me lending a new meaning to the idea of a portable toilet.”

“Either way they’ll talk about you, and I know you hate that.”

“I’ll live.”

He clenched his jaw. “Why do you do it, Rita?”

“Live?” She purposely evaded his meaning. “Because I’m not ready for the alternative.”

The car surged forward. “Yeah, you’re a regular survivor.”

“I pretty much have had to be.”

“But you don’t have to be one
here
. Rita, you could do so much more than survive, you could flourish if you’d get out of this town and—”

“Now it’s my turn to change the subject.”

“We’re a pair, aren’t we? Both thinking we know what’s best for each other, each too stubborn even to consider we might be right?”

“Right about each other or right about what’s best for ourselves?”

“If I answered that honestly, you’d shove me out of this car and make me walk the rest of the way.” He slowed to ease the car back onto the paved road.

“Let me guess, you think you’re right about what’s best for me
and
that you know best about what’s right for you.”

“Spoken as a woman who shares the sentiment.”

“Oh, how pleasant things would be if only people behaved the way I want them to.” She laid her head back and gazed at the ceiling.

“Pleasant but not very interesting.”

“Did you just call me dull?”

“I know you’re anything but dull.” He stopped the car a few feet back from the intersection. From there they could see the corner of the Palace’s parking lot through the trees, but no one milling around there could see them. “I just wonder sometimes if you know it.”

“I know that with all our talk of late of life changing, of renovating and following dreams, that when it comes right down to it, neither of us can do that work for each other. I’ll make my choices, and you’ll make yours.”

“We can be inspired to make better choices.”

“Translation:
you
, the wise William West, can inspire
me
, the girl with the goddess thighs, to make better choices.”

“You have so much potential, Rita.”

“So do you, Will.” She put her hand to his face.

He wanted to argue that with his business success and a home in the most coveted part of Memphis he had realized his potential years ago. But material gain wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans with this woman if she thought he had missed achieving his fullest human potential. How had she put it?

For his life to have meaning. For someone to miss him when he was away and mourn him when he’d passed on. To be really good at something, to hear
praise for his work and know it was earned…. to beloved.
Will had no grounds to argue he had lived up to that.

“In a week or so, when you’ve gone and the dust has settled, there’s every chance things will look and feel almost like you never came to Hellon at all. Except, of course, people will be able actually to eat in the Palace without breaking half a dozen health codes and a couple of the Ten Commandments.”

“Is that all, Rita?”

“That’s a lot more than most people have given me in my life, Will. It’s more than I expected or ever deserved, and I’m grateful.” She leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek.

He turned just enough for their lips to brush at the corners. Just like that his mouth found hers. At first he thought she would protest, or make a pretense of it for appearances’ sake. When she didn’t, he cupped the back of her head in one hand and deepened the kiss.

He slid his tongue between her lips.

She sucked at the tip, her fingers curling into the tight muscles of his neck.

He groaned and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her almost into his lap.

He’d given her more than she expected, more than she deserved? He had given her so little and had so much more to offer. One stolen kiss could not begin to convey how much. He pulled away, whispering her name as he did.

She cleared her throat and fussed over her col
lar, and then over the neat row of tightly fastened shirt buttons. “Well, what do you know? You were right.”

“That goes without saying.” He stroked one finger under her chin as she slid away, back to her side of the seat. “But just so I don’t gloat over the wrong thing, what was I right about?”

She shot him a sly look that did nothing to cool the fire she’d ignited in him. “You said if you and I stayed away too long, that tongues would start wagging.”

He laughed though what he truly longed to do was take her in his arms and kiss her all over—over and
all over
—again.

“And now you’d better get me back to the Palace. I have to collect the lunch things, get that all cleaned up, and start on dinner for the crew. Y’all will still be there at suppertime, won’t you?”

He nodded. “We’ll work till we lose the daylight.”

“That’s right you don’t have electricity. Or water.”

“Just the electricity from the portable generator and the water we’ve brought in. You have a place to stay tonight?”

“Jillie invited me out to your mother’s.”

“Good.”

“Will I see you there?”

“You don’t give up, do you?” He took the car out of park and pulled up to the intersection.

She smiled, then fixed her gaze on the Palace as
they drove up to it. “Looks like they are about done with lunch.”

“I’m going to camp out on-site tonight. Don’t want to risk vandals or anyone helping themselves to the tools, do we?”

“There’ve been enough people helping themselves around this place already, I think.”

“Maybe you can come by later after everyone’s left and…”

“I’ll see you at
supper
.” She hopped out of the car and began collecting the dishes and the lavish compliments of those who had just eaten her meal.

Rita was something special. A man only had to watch her like this to see it. If that man were lucky enough to get closer still…

She thought he’d given her more than she should expect? Maybe, but more than she
deserved
? Not by a long shot. And he wasn’t through yet.

“What Rita is saying, Mother, is that she never does
anything
to her hair.” Jillie curled into the corner of the overstuffed couch. When she tucked her bare legs up under her nightshirt she put Rita in mind of a twiggy-limbed bird crouching on a nest. “No dyes, no permanents, no extensions, she didn’t even try a bad do-at-home frost job in high school.”

“Remarkable.” Miss Peggy settled back in the enormous leather chair, which sat framed by the open arching doorway in what she called “the receiving room.”

She alone called it that. Everyone else, unbeknownst to the regal imp of a family matriarch, called it the “throne room.” Here she welcomed family and close personal friends only. That differed from the parlor—where she served after
noon tea or hosted casual parties—and the more formal “salon” where she greeted those not in her inner circle.

For all her years of being Jillie West’s nearest and dearest bosom buddy—with Rita supplying all the bosom and more than her share of the buddy bonding—it was the first time Rita had ever been invited to this room. She sat on the floor in her short-sleeved pajamas with the coffeepot, bacon, and egg motif on them and took in her surroundings with unabashed awe.

“Not that your hair isn’t perfectly lovely, dear, but haven’t you ever had the urge to…” Miss Peggy waved her hand with a cavalier air of majesty. Her rose-colored satin robe billowed around her tiny body, and her actions sent a handful of long, thin marabou feathers somersaulting through the air. “…experiment?”

Rita sank her fingers into the stick-straight, baby-soft hair falling against her neck. “I’ve had it cut before and, you know, curled it. But, well, I guess I just never gave it that much thought.”

“Oh, but you should.”

Rita cocked her head. “Dye it?”

“What have I told you for years?” Jillie coiled her finger in her flawless red curls.

“When you said diet, I thought you meant to lose weight. To think all these years, you only wanted me to go blond.”

“Don’t you dare!” Miss Peggy clucked her tongue.

“Absolutely not!” Jillie pinched a strand of
Rita’s hair between her thumb and forefinger. She studied it like a bug under a microscope for a second before she released it and announced, “Blond is not your color.”

“Diet!” Miss Peggy snapped her fingers. “Don’t you dare go on a
diet
, Rita, honey. Not unless you really want to or your health is a concern.”

“My health is excellent, thank you.”

“Mother, don’t encourage her. You can’t appreciate how hard I’ve pushed these past few years for her to drop a good fifty pounds.”

“Fifty!
Fifty
? Have you lost your very last bit of sense, child? How could she ever do that?”

“I could drop Jillie; she weighs almost that much.” Rita narrowed her eyes at her narrow-hipped and tight-lipped pal, and grinned.

“You are fine the way you are, Rita.” Miss Peggy held up both hands as if she were issuing a decree. Then she cast a scathing glare at her daughter. “Rita doesn’t have fifty pounds to spare unless she cares to walk around skin to bones like this one of mine.”

Jillie huffed. The second Miss Peggy looked away she sneered and rolled her eyes.

“Don’t you make a face behind my back, young lady.” Miss Peggy did not look at her daughter, but Rita wished she had. For once if the pair of them would look at each other, really see the pain they inflicted on one another, it might shake loose a little of that stubborn pride that stood between them.

But Miss Peggy never glanced Jillie’s way as
she went on, “If you cared what other people value instead of walking around all put-upon because they don’t value
you
as much as you think you deserve, you might learn a thing or two.”

Jillie picked at her nail polish.

“Rita, don’t you fall for that baloney about having to be rail-thin and dumb as a post to attract a man.” If she realized she had just challenged her daughter’s intelligence, her expression did not show it. Her face all but glowed with the benevolent liberality of an old Southern matriarch doling out her worldly wisdom “Men don’t like that. They want something to grab ahold of in bed.”

“Mother! We have guests.”

“Oh, that didn’t shock Rita, Jillian. Rita was married a good many years. She knows about men and what they want in bed, don’t you, darling?”

“Uh, I…” It felt like someone had just held a candle too close to her cheeks and that her heart had hiked up too high in her chest. She couldn’t form any coherent thought except that Miss Peggy must know she had done unthinkable—incredible, all-consuming, left-you-satisfied-but-begging-for-more—things with Will. But how could she know? Was Rita that obvious? Rita hadn’t told a soul but had Will blabbed? She felt certain he hadn’t. Of course, there was one person who had her suspicions about what went on that night. Had Cozie said something?

As if on cue, Cozie swept into the room. “Mouse is exhausted and sends his regrets, Miss
Peggy. But he prefers to go on to bed and let us girls gab a while on our own.”

She searched her friend’s guileless expression and eased any qualms away with a sigh. Not only would Cozie not tell, she probably had put the whole event aside. What with cultivating her new friendship with Miss Peggy, tending her husband and home, and now pitching in to tear up the Palace, Cozie hardly had time to spread speculation about Rita’s one piddly indiscretion.

Cozie plopped onto the end of the couch nearest Miss Peggy’s chair like she felt at home there.

Rita didn’t know what prickled her more about her friend’s ease in this house—that it underscored how Cozie had a life beyond the small box everyone normally put her in, or that Rita did not.

“Tell your Mr. Mouse how much I missed his company, won’t you?” Miss Peggy coyly patted her teased and sprayed-to-stay-perfect poodle-permed curls.

“After all that work today he’d have been a misery to endure, Miss Peggy, I assure you. Time was he could have worked like an ox on the farm then come home to help with the kids. Later, he’d have gotten out his guitar and serenaded a houseful of friends to the wee hours of the night.”

“I didn’t know Mouse played the guitar and sang.” She’d known Cozie almost a decade and marveled how she was always learning something about that woman’s life.

“He doesn’t much anymore, only around the house and just for my ears.”

“My, isn’t that romantic?” Miss Peggy laid her hand to her cheek. “Many, many years ago, I had a gentleman caller who serenaded me out on the veranda.”

“Oh, Mother, you sound like some corny Southern story where the innocent flower of womanhood gets her heart broken by the scoundrel drifter.”

“Now, that’s no way to talk about your daddy, darling.” Miss Peggy’s eyes twinkled.

Jillie’s brow wrinkled, her lower lip went positively pouty. “Daddy used to sing to you?”

“I had many gentleman callers and beaux who brought flowers and took me out dancing in white dinner jackets. But your daddy was the only one who sang to me.” She smiled at Jillie in the way Rita always imagined a mother should smile at her child.

Jillie had her head bent.

Miss Peggy sighed. “Oh, my but there was no feeling like that in the whole world. To be young and lovely and adored on a moonlit night.”

“Amen to that.” Rita sighed, too, but her memory was hardly of serenades and verandas. “Moonlight, summer, no care for the future, and the right man…”

Cozie gave her foot a nudge and reeled Rita back in before she said too much. “It’s a shame when we get older we sometimes let those sorts of experiences fall by the wayside. It’s a smart person who gets the chance to feel that way again and doesn’t talk themselves out of going for it.”

Rita wriggled the toes of her white socks against the arch of Cozie’s bare foot. “But it’s a danged fool who thinks she can make that fleeting feeling last longer than the moonlight, wouldn’t you say?”

Cozie started to laugh, but the minute she opened her mouth it transformed into a long, face-contorting yawn.

Which, upon seeing it, sent Rita into one of her own.

With her head bowed, Jillie seemed immune, but no sooner did Rita close her mouth and mutter an “excuse me” than Cozie let out another yawn.

“My, but y’all must have put in a full day over at Rita’s place.” Miss Peggy put her hand to her mouth to stifle her own response to the contagious yawnfest. “What time did you finally finish up?”

“Around nine.” Cozie stretched and shifted, then settled down deeper into her seat. “That made for a fourteen-hour day if you don’t count the time out for Rita’s wonderful meals.”

“That’s right, because Rita never misses a meal.” Jillie folded her arms.

Most people would have been hurt by the jab, but Rita saw the pain behind it. It was a pain she knew all too well. She readily identified with the need to have your mama’s affection, to feel that as her daughter you came first in her thoughts and heart. Whenever Miss Peggy extended uncommon kindness to Rita, Cozie, why, even to Pernel, it had to twist the knife for Jillie just a bit. So Jillie
took a shot at a safe target to draw her mother’s fire. Because when you’re starved enough for your mama’s attention even anger and reproach will feed your need.

“For such a pretty girl, you have a very ugly mouth on you, young lady.” Miss Peggy folded her arms as well, ignoring the feathers it sent cascading around her. “Rita, I don’t know why you put up with her at all.”

Rita put one hand on Jillie’s angular knee. “I put up with her because she puts up with me. She’s stuck with me when fair-weather friends went their merry way. She always uses her own brand of candor on me, and she can always trust me to hear the real truth beneath her words and love her as my friend, because of—and some times in spite of—it.”

“Damn it, Rita.” Jillie sniffed and slapped the hand off her knee but not before she gave it a squeeze. Then she dabbed her knuckle under one eye. “If you make this new mascara run, I will hate you for life.”

“You should be proud of your daughter, Miss Peggy, because she may be a pill—and a sour old diet pill, at that—but she is one of the finest friends anyone could ever want to have.”

Miss Peggy lowered her head and adjusted the robe over her elaborate pegnoir. The marabou trim flew upward with each movement like it was charged with static electricity.

“Well, maybe you only have to lose forty-five pounds.” Jillie pressed her lips into a thin line but
still managed to convey a genuinely warm and teasing smile to her friend.

A chilling silence fell over them after that.

Jillie picked at an invisible chip in her nail polish.

Miss Peggy fanned feathers away from her coral-tint lipstick.

Rita tapped her foot, but between the thickness of the Oriental rug and the thin cotton of her white ankle socks, it did not make a sound.

“Oh!” Cozette sat up straight as if she needed to make her body a visual aid to her exclamation of having thought of something to break the quiet. “Thank you again, Miss Peggy, for putting us up for the night.”

“Oh, yes, thank you very much. Very, very much.” Rita realized she was gushing, but the urgency to make some kind of noise superseded her usual restraint. “What with the electricity out at my place and all. I can sure cook the meals for the crew over at the church, but I can’t hardly sleep there, can I? So your invitation is just so…it’s…well…what can I say?”

Jillie leaned down to whisper for only Rita to hear, “Well, you could announce you think you just had an embolism, that might explain the sudden brain burp that made that nonsense fall out of your mouth.”

“Thank you so much for your support,” Rita grumbled back.

Cozie sprang to the rescue again with a well-placed laugh and a tilt of her head that rivaled the
acting of any sixties sitcom mom. “I know it’s only a thirty-minute drive out to our place. But what with Will asking everybody to show up at the crack of dawn tomorrow so we can finish up the last bit before the flooring men come at ten…”

“Don’t say another word, child. It’s all right.” Miss Peggy spoke to Cozie as if Rita and Jillie had become part of the furniture. “I don’t envy you young people, all that hard physical labor. You should tell my son not to push everyone so hard.”

Rita feigned a sudden fascination with the rug. The last thing she wanted was to be dragged into a discussion about Will.

“He doesn’t push anyone half as hard as he does himself.” Cozie slid off the fat woven band at the end of her braid and began undoing her hair. “That’s what we should tell him, to cut himself a little slack now and again.”

“
I
can’t tell the boy a thing.”

“That’s because he’s not a boy, Mother, he’s a man.”

Rita had to grin at Jillie standing up for her brother. Some good might have come of his staying in town after all.

“He’s an intelligent, capable, fully operational—without his mother’s puppet strings—adult male.” Jillie whipped her head around. “Right, Rita?”

“Righ…uh…” Correction. The
last thing
she wanted was to be dragged into a discussion of Will’s manhood. “Yeah, well, he…uh…”

“If anyone should tell the man anything, it should be Rita. For some reason he listens to her.” The sparkle in Cozie’s eyes said she understood exactly why and that she had not forgotten finding them together “Why do you think that is, Rita?”

In her own way, Cozie probably thought she was helping along a wonderful romance with her gentle teasing, despite her assumption that Rita held any kind of power over Will.

Quick distraction. That’s what Rita needed. Fortunately, that was not a difficult task where Will’s mother was concerned. “You know, Miss Peggy, Cozie is one of those all-natural earth-mother types. I’ll bet she’s never done anything to her hair, either.

“Is that so, Cozette, darling?”

“Don’t count on it. My hair started turning gray in my twenties. Not exactly the right image for a youth-culture-promoting, free-love-advocating, living-on-a-commune, going-to-change-the-world type, is it?”

Jillie put her chin on her arm. “So, like, thirty years ago you and Mouse actually lived on a real commune, Cozie?”