The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (19 page)

“Where’s that corn bread, Pernel?” Cozie
strolled up, an empty plate in her hand. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s something about picking Jillie’s nose, Rita thinking Will is ugly, topped off with sacrilege spoken against the pinnacle of all womanhood, Saint Barbie.”

Will turned to Rita. “Don’t tell me hearing that doesn’t make you long to get the hell out of town.”

“Actually, I could use the break. And there
is
something in Memphis I’d like to see about.”

“If you’re going to go to Memphis, you really ought to take me.” Pernel wagged his finger in Rita’s face. “I want to see Lacey Marie as much as you do.”

“Memphis?” Cozie pushed in closer. “Rita you aren’t seriously…”

“The corn bread is in the backseat.” Will gave the tall woman a friendly push in the right direction. “Why don’t you get the door for her, Pernel?”

“And slam your head in it,” Jillie muttered. “I’m not going if
he’s
going, you know.”

“He’s not going,” Will assured his sister. “But Rita is. Let these characters take care of themselves for a change and take that careless heart out for a spin.”

“Of course that would mean somebody would have to stay with your mother.” Rita gave him a Cheshire cat grin, her eyes all innocence and flirtation.

“Perhaps Cozie could…”

The older woman took the tray of corn bread in
one hand and put her free arm around Rita, placing a kiss on her cheek. “Great food, sweetie. It’s been fun to pull together for a common cause with a large group again, but Mouse and I are looking forward to heading home and sleeping for four days straight.”

“Or Pernel?”

“Pernel?” Jillie dipped her head to speak to only Will. “You really want the man who knows all there is to tell and then some about Rita staying alone with Mama for thirty-six hours?”

Will groaned. What had he gotten himself into? He’d avoided his mother all this time only to have painted himself into a corner. “Like they say, no good deed goes unpunished.”

“Don’t you talk about Miss Peggy that way. Staying with her is anything but a punishment.” Pernel stole a slice of golden corn bread. “I’d offer to do it myself, but what with both of us being single and her own son in town? People would talk. Yes, they would.”

“And I shudder to think what they might say,” Will muttered.

“That thoughtless Wild Billy up to his old ways.” Cozie peeled back the cloth covering the bread and offered everyone in the small circle a piece. “He’s breaking his mama’s heart.”

“Uh-huh.” Pernel took a second slice of the moist yellow bread. “They would for a fact.”

“What?” From the moment he heard the old name, his head began to throb, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of the conversation.

“That’s what people would say.” Rita nudged him.

“Oh.”

“But you be the bigger person,” she went on. “You go over to take care of your mother even though the whole town knows you were trying to teach her a lesson about not crying wolf or carrying on like who knows what.”

He squinted at Rita. “What?”

“Then do you know what they’d say?”

“I don’t even know what
you
said.”

“They’d say, ‘That Will, he’s turned out a fine man.’ An upright citizen who looks after his neighbor—me—and is kind to his mama.”

Pernel let out a low whistle. “Do you have any idea the mileage you can get around here out of that? Kind to his mama? Hell, around here they’ll take their hats off and hold a moment of silence the day they sentence an ax murder if the boy was kind to his mama.”

“Is that how you get away with so much?”

“I am kind to everyone’s mama.” Pernel winked. “It’s the self-important, unenlightened kind of mothers that I don’t get along with.”

Cozie laughed. “It’s not like it’s such a huge challenge to take care of Miss Peggy, anyway.”

Will bent his head to whisper in Rita’s ear, “I thought she stopped smoking that stuff a few years back.”

“What is it with y’all?” Will shook his head when the tray passed by. Though the scent of Rita’s cooking had his stomach growling, the
prospect of humbling himself to his mother dampened his appetite but good. “Has my mother taken you to raise?”

“No way.” Jillie took her small square of corn bread and shifted it from one of her cupped palms to the other and back again. “If she had taken them in for more than a tea party, they’d be clawing over one another’s bodies to get a seat on the Jillie and Rita Memphis roadtrip tour bus posthaste.”

“Sounds like you need a break from Mother.”

Jillie smiled. “Maybe I need my own kind of redemption.”

“What do you think, Will?” Rita put her hand on his arm.

When he looked in her eyes he saw so much trust that it humbled him. She trusted him to do the right thing no matter what the cost. Had he believed he needed a thank-you for his efforts? That look was thanks enough.

“You honestly think folks would say Will West had turned out a fine man?”

Rita looked into his eyes. “Yes, I do.”

She could be right. By acting like the man he had forged himself into, choice by choice, he might finally get past his reputation. People in Hellon might see him as something more than a has-been hero and an always-at-the-ready rogue. They might drop the old expectations and finally see him for what he had become. After all these years he might at last enjoy the freedom not to be Wild Billy in Hellon anymore. And all he had to
do to realize his fondest wish was let his mother get her way.

His stomach tightened like a fist around a rock, but he did not let his frustration show. He smiled at Rita and his sister, and said, “Okay. Go. I have to stay here to talk to the new workers, make sure they have everything they need. But I can be over at my mother’s by late afternoon.”

“Thank you.” Rita went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, her hand gripping his.

He nodded.

“Let’s pack,” Jillie jerked Rita away. “I don’t want to waste any more time. If I had my cell phone, I’d call Paul again right now!”

“I tell you, it’s at the church. We’ll get it when I take the dishes by.”

“Never mind the dishes, I’ll take care of them.” Every eye turned to Pernel. “Well, don’t look so surprised. I did run a restaurant for many, many years. I think I can manage a few dirty dishes.”

“We still have to grab a few things for Rita here, then go over and get my—”

A muffled chirping cut Jillie off.

“What the hell is that?” Will asked.

“Somebody has a phone in their purse or pocket, silly. Now like I was saying, Rita, we need to—”

It rang again.

Will squinted. “Does that sound to you like—”

Cozette raised the tray in her hands. “It’s coming from the corn bread.”

“Rita! You baked my phone into a batch of corn bread?”

“Obviously so. And I would gladly stand here at the heart of the circle of all my nearest and dearest and tell you how stupid I feel for doing that.”

“Don’t ever call yourself stupid, Rita.” Will moved toward her.

She held her hand up and shook her head. “But since Jillie is waiting on a call from her Prince Charming…I think we all better dive in and see if we can’t answer that phone.”

“Mama, why do you do this to me?” He braced both hands against either side of the open door. He had convinced himself that if he got a few things cleared up before he crossed that threshold, it would mean he had not have given in.

“Why do I do what, darling?” She swept her hand out to bid him enter.

He did not budge.

She looked impossibly small today. Pale and plain in a cotton dress set off with simple jewelry and the dangedest little gold shoes. They made the most delicate tappy-tap on the polished marble floor as she took a few tottering steps into the foyer. “You coming along?”

He relaxed his arms and shifted his feet on the welcome mat. “Not until you tell me why you are doing this.”

“Whatever you think I’m doing, son, I promise I’m doing it because I want what’s best for you.”
She motioned him in again, then turned and shuffled, with her hand against the white wall, toward the parlor door. “Let’s talk in here. I have the tea already laid out, and the light is better.”

What a show. “Mother, where’s your cane? Did you have the maid stash it in the parlor so you could hobble around in front me?”

She stepped completely out of sight, then a puff of white hair and one eye peeked out at him from inside the recessed doorway. “You coming in or not?”

“Not until you admit you are a big fake, full of baloney, and that you have most of this town buffaloed and like it that way.”

Her small hand gripped the edge of the doorway. It took a minute but her whole face peered out at him, like a small child playing hide-and-seek. “You first.”

He groaned and looked skyward. Finally, all he could do was laugh.

“Come have tea with your mama.” She disappeared inside the parlor.

He rubbed his face and reminded himself why he had come. He sure hoped Rita appreciated his sacrifice.

“Isn’t it bad enough we’re staying in this place? Why do you want to go in here?” Jillie pouted like a five-year-old. She scuffed her pumps practically every step along the teal-and-maroon-patterned carpet. “I know a ton of very nice places…”

“This
is
nice.”

“It’s a hotel lounge.”

“A
nice
hotel lounge.”

“There is no such thing, Rita.”

“Snob,” she whispered as she pushed through the swinging door. How lucky could Rita get? She’d walked right into an indisputable excuse to get away from dwelling on Will, from seeing him around, and having to pretend their time together had left her unfazed. She had this trip to Memphis to prove to herself she
could
do something to
tally unexpected. And she’d found the perfect place to do both.

“Crap! I knew it. This is just…just…too tacky for words.”

“Oh? And waltzing into a room full of people at an early ‘happy hour’ buffet and hollering ‘crap’ is just the epitome of graciousness and style.” Rita grabbed her friend’s arm.

“No, of course not. However, let’s consider something.” She made quite a show of taking a long, sweeping review of their surroundings.

Rita followed suit and held her serene expression despite the view.

“Let’s see. Dark paneling. Antique gilt frames on the sold-by-the-roadside-style artwork. Un-flattering yellow lighting from those same damned candleholders Pernel loved in the Palace.” Jillie hit Rita with a hard glare. “Hollering ‘crap’ might well be tacky, also rude and vulgar, but what can I say? I’m a victim of my environment.”

“Some days, Jillie, I swear I can’t picture any greater satisfaction in life than just to pinch your head off.”

“Couldn’t you relieve us both and poke my eyes out instead?”

“If you’re going to stick around this place, I’d have to lop your ears off too, I’m afraid.”

“Oh my word, I’m afraid to ask why.”

Rita ignored her companion, turned to the hostess, and smiled like the woman was her new best friend. “When does the karaoke start?”

“Oh, Rita, no. Just climb behind the bar and beat me senseless with that guitar-shaped whiskey decanter now and save us both further grief!”

“Only staff allowed behind the bar.” The waitress took the request in stride, making Rita wonder how often someone made that kind of plea around there. “Starts at seven. You can hop up onstage anytime after that.”

“Pretty quiet right now. Does it pick up much in the evenings?”

“Hmmm.” She squinted one eye at the people shuffling along the early buffet. “Typical week-day crowd—a few out-of-town businessmen and a busload of senior citizens on a Memphis/Nashville/Dollywood summer bus-tour package. Don’t expect it to pick up much more than that.”

“So, this is a bad time?”

“If you hope to play to a packed house, yes. But we love to have someone get up and start the ball rolling.”

Rita put her hand over her heart. The lady expected
her
to start things…“Rolling?”

“I personally know a couple of the older gents are just champing at the bit to show off their Elvis moves for the ladies.”

“Kill me now. I tell you, Rita, run me through a wood chipper and sell the pieces for bait. I swear I’d enjoy that more than an evening listening to karaoke.”

“Even if it’s me doing the singing?”

“You? You’d never get up the nerve to stand up in front on all these people and sing.”

“Why not?” She scooped on an extra helping of bravado as much for herself as for Jillie and the waitress. “We don’t know anyone here. It’d be a hoot and a half.”

“Oh, it’s
two
hoots and a half if it’s a peep.” The waitress smacked her hands together. “No sense in being shy. Come back after seven, grab the mike, and knock yourself out!”

“That’s the first sensible suggestion I’ve heard since we walked in.”

“Stop your grumbling or you’re going to hear some suggestions from me that make your tacky, vulgar, rudeness sound like a new-member tea at the Junior League.” Rita snagged the waitress by the arm for one last question. “Um, can you tell me what kind of music you have?”

“Well, Elvis—that goes without saying. And some disco and old rock and roll. You know, the regular stuff that comes with the equipment.”

“Uh-huh”

“And Patsy, of course.”

“Yes.” She shut her eyes and sighed.

“Patsy?” Jillie sounded like a poodle sneezing when she repeated the name.

“Patsy Cline.” Rita put her hand over her heart in a mix of reverence and the perverse pleasure of knowing the show would embarrass Jillie. She turned to the waitress. “Do you have ‘Crazy’?”

“If they are out of crazy, they can for sure borrow a cup from you.”

“Don’t mind her.” Rita spoke in a tone of invented conspiracy to the woman in the black pants and shabby silver vest. “She’s just cranky because she hasn’t eaten in two or three…years.”

“I’m cranky because you made corn bread out of my cell phone and now I don’t know if Paul called me back or not.”

“Then we’d better get upstairs and see if we can nibble down to the key pad enough to call him again.” Rita took Jillie’s arm and spun her toward the door. “C’mon, you have a reprieve from this place until seven.”

“See, y’all tonight!”

Rita waved over her shoulder to the waitress. “We’ll be here with bells on.”

“Mine will be around my neck so when I throw myself into the river, I’ll sink faster.” Jillie hit the doors and went gliding out into the hallway. “Why are you doing this?”

“Your brother.”

“He drove you insane.” She slapped the heel of her hand to her forehead as they waited for the elevator. “Yes, it makes perfect sense now.”

“He inspired me to try something new.”

Jillie folded her arms. “So goes the talk around town.”

“Big mouth.”

“Big talker.”

“It’s not big talk if it’s true.” Rita stole a sidelong look at her friend.

“I’m just going to pretend you’re implying my
brother awakened you to greater emotional depth, to a higher consciousness, or, perhaps, just better living through carpentry.”

“Got it.”

Ding!
The elevator doors whooshed open.

“End of discussion.” Rita stepped aside to allow the people inside the elevator out.

Greater emotional depth? Higher consciousness? Well, maybe her time with Will had opened her to some new avenues of thinking, but those weren’t what made her skin prickle every time she heard his name. Even just a playful conversation about him gave her a light-headedness that she recognized as a danger sign. She had to get that man out of her system. “You know, Jillie, I was just thinking…”

“Oh, Rita, don’t make me go back in there and arm-wrestle that waitress for that guitar-shaped bottle.”

“Hmmm?

“If what you’re thinking now is any loonier than this karaoke idea of yours, I need that whiskey and will be fully prepared to conk myself over the head with that ceramic decanter.”

They got on the elevator and jabbed the button for their floor.

“Well, wait until after I call Lacey Marie and you call your mother and you leave another message for Paul.”

“This must be bad.”

“Why say that?”

“You want me to get my affairs in order first.”

“Jillie, honey, you haven’t been able to get your affairs in order in the last twenty years. What makes you think you could do it in four hours?”

“Are you giving up on me, Rita?”

“You know better than that.” She twisted a piece of Jillie’s hair around her finger, then unwound it again. “In fact, I trust you so much I’m giving you a shot at something you’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

“You don’t mean it.”

Rita grinned and nodded. “You know a good hair salon that could work me in and a dress shop that doesn’t cater exclusively to scarecrows and cadaver-sized women?”

“Hot damn!” If Jillie had been the old-school Southern religious type, she might have lifted her hands to the Lord and danced in the Spirit, Rita ventured. “Okay, the bottle can stay where it is.”

“Good. ’Cause after you’re through with me I might need it.”

Jillie hugged her.

The door slid open, and they stepped out and headed for their room.

This was it. Today she would hand herself over to her best friend’s care. Finally, she’d dare to look like the new—or respectably a little less like her old self—woman she had become. Tonight she would sing her heart out and not give a damn what people thought. If that worked, she would be letting go of all that could never be. And she could rest easy once again knowing she had replaced it with a nice, safe, sane alternative.

“More tea, son?”

“I hate hot tea. Why anyone would take an outstanding beverage, created to be drunk cold and sweet from large ice-filled tumblers and serve it hot from a silver pot into dainty pink-and-white china is beyond me.” Will held his cup out for her to refill.

A curl of steam rose from the dark brew as she topped off his drink. “You want another cookie, too?”

“Naw. I mean, no thank you.”

“I don’t blame you. They’re supposed to be good for you.” She set the heirloom silver teapot back with the rest of the ornate service. “Miss Cozette brought them by yesterday as a kindness for some advice I’d given her. There’s something just not right about that, is there?”

“You can say that again.” Will examined a large brown cookie just chock to the brim with dried fruit and what looked and tasted to him like old hay. “Anybody coming to you for advice has to be a bit touched in the head.”

“You behave, young man.”

He put his elbow on the arm of the cherry-wood-and-velveteen settee and locked into her gaze. “You first.”

She laughed.

He held the cup between his hands and gazed down into the dark liquid. “You know I’ve been here for twenty minutes, Mama, and you still haven’t answered my question.”

“What question?”

He rubbed his forehead. “Why do you have to make everything so hard all the time?”

“I don’t set out to make your life harder, son.” Her teacup rattled on its saucer as she set them both on the silver serving tray. “Honestly, I don’t.”

He shut his eyes. For days he’d nursed an anger with his mother that had burned hot as hellfire. Now came the time to cut loose and let her know about it, and he just couldn’t.

He blamed Rita, of course. She’d gotten to him. While he wasn’t looking she crept into every molecule of his being and changed it—just enough to leave him a better man.

“Tell me, William. I want to hear what’s on your mind.”

“You know, Mama, when Norrie was pregnant and she and I were broken up and I was the world’s biggest jackass?”

“I have a vague recollection of the time,” she deadpanned. “What about it?”

“Only one person was good enough to look me in the face and tell me the truth.”

“Oh?”

“Rita didn’t pull any punches then. She hasn’t let me charm or bellyache my way out of anything since I’ve been back.”

“Good for her.”

“She’s a good person, Mama. And having spent time with her, I’ve concluded I want to be a better person, too.”

“Will I be needing my checkbook to make a contribution at the end of this testimonial?”

“To hell with your checkbook, Mama. But we
are
going to take a page out of Rita’s book today. We are going to cut through the bullshit and talk to each other in plain, unvarnished terms.”

“In this house ‘bullshit’
is
a plain and unvarnished term, son.”

He acknowledged his mother’s peeve with his language by holding up his hands in surrender. “You’re right, of course. Good manners before bad temper, isn’t it?”

“I may make a gentleman out of you yet.”

“Don’t get your hopes up because here comes the rest of what I have to say about your shams, schemes, and shenanigans.”

“I’m listening.”

“I hope you are. Because just once I want you to see that what you deem high-minded, aboveboard ambition often comes across to me like a low-down, underhanded imposition.”

“That skirts mighty close to an accusation, William.”

“Only skirts close to one?” He put his hands on both knees. “Then maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough.”

“If you have something to say, don’t hold back on my account.”

“All right. For one petite, cultured, affluent, old-blood Southern gentlewoman, you play awfully dirty, Mama.”

“I’m not
playing
.” She folded her hands under her chin and her eyes grew darkly somber. “Not where my children are concerned.”

“Don’t lie to me, old woman. You’re playing—playing hardball. You always have. And Jillie on the receiving end of it more than her fair share if we’re going to get it all out in the open.”

She blinked as though startled and trying to find her bearings.

He wondered, had he gone too far? Damn but he wished Rita were here to help him do this right. He wished Rita were here, period.

Finally, his mother dabbed her lace-edged napkin to the corner of her mouth, then let her shoulders fall, slightly. “You are right, son.”

“I am?” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “I know I’m right, but you’re agreeing with me? Admitting it?”

“Yes. Lord knows how I’ve struggled to bite my tongue about your sister’s actions. However, I’m afraid if I did that every time she acted up?”—she stuck her tongue out and pinched the tip of it between her thumb and forefinger—“I’d thald lide dhis.”

“Being adorable won’t get you out of it this time.”

“Fine then.” She put her hands quite precisely in her lap. “Then I reckon the truth will have to do.”

“About time.”

“I did my best with both of you children. But my best never seemed to work for your sister.”

“She is hard to please.”

“No. No, that’s not it. I see how Rita is with her, and I know she is reachable, but maybe not by me. Maybe not in a way that I’m comfortable with.”

“Doesn’t help you’re both stubborn as mules,” he muttered.

“Did you
bray
something, my dear?”

He shook his head, grinning.

“Knowing your sister and I had this gap neither of us could seem to bridge, I found new ways to try to get through to Jillian. Why do you think I have such a broad range of people in my social circles and an unrelenting drive to keep up all those connections?”