The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies Page 8

  “Work what out? There’s no workin’ out something like this where Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson is concerned. That man is just bound, bent, and determined to be as heartless as he can be.” Mrs. Lacy whipped a lawn handkerchief out of the lace-trimmed bodice of her purple rayon chiffon dress. “He says I have to move all of my furniture and belongings out by the fifteenth. But where am I goin’ to go?” She sniffled and dabbed at one eye. “Where, I ask you?”

  It was a calculating question, and Lizzy refused to answer it. “But how… how could this be?” she asked wonderingly. “Daddy left the house to you free and clear, with a little annuity-enough money to make you comfortable for the rest of your life. What on earth could have happened?”

  Mrs. Lacy dabbed at the other eye, then tucked her hankie back where it came from. “Yes, that’s what your daddy did,” she said in a defensive tone. “Your daddy was a good man. He took care of us. As for the annuity-” She lifted her broad shoulders and let them fall in a gesture of resignation, implying that it, too, was gone.

  “But what could have-”

  Mrs. Lacy lifted her chin. “The stock market was blazin’ away like a house afire, and I couldn’t stand to be left out. So I borrowed some money to invest and put the house up. Collateral, is what it’s called.”

  “Oh, Mama, you didn’t do anything so foolish!” Lizzy exclaimed despairingly. “You didn’t put the money into the stock market!”

  Mrs. Lacy bristled. “Well, I don’t know why not. Everybody was doing it. Every time I opened a newspaper or magazine I read about people makin’ a fortune on Wall Street. So I asked Miss Rogers for the name of her broker and I invested-”

  “You didn’t invest, Mama,” Lizzy cut in grimly. “You gambled. You gambled with your house and you lost.”

  Mrs. Lacy pulled out a chair, examined it to be sure there was no dust, and sat down. “Well, there’s no point in givin’ me one of your lectures, Elizabeth,” she said in a huffy tone. “What’s done is done, and that’s all there is to it.” She picked up her glass. “Are we goin’ to have something to drink, or did you put the glasses out here just for show?”

  Lizzy opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of cold water. “Have you talked to Mr. Johnson?” She poured water into her mother’s glass, and then into her own.

  Her mother picked up the glass and wrinkled her nose. “No lemonade?”

  “I’ve stopped buying lemons,” Lizzy said. “They’ve gotten expensive.” She added pointedly, “And I’ve been saving my money. I’m hoping to buy a car.”

  “A car. I don’t know what you’d want a car for. That fine Mr. Alexander would be glad to let you drive his whenever you want.” Her mother put the glass down, hard. “Of course I’ve spoken to Mr. Johnson.”

  “Well, have you tried to negotiate some kind of settlement?” Lizzy knew that George E. Pickett Johnson (a descendant of a Confederate War general) was considered a hard man, but surely he would listen to reason. There had to be a way to solve this.

  “A settlement?” her mother asked indignantly. “I have begged him. I have pleaded with him. I have pointed out that he and his bank won’t look good at all if he snatches a God-fearin’ widow’s home away from her and puts her out on the street. But he won’t budge. He is a terrible man. Everybody says so.”

  Lizzy turned away, not trusting herself to speak. She took the dish of potato salad out of the refrigerator and the meat loaf and green beans out of the gas oven, where they were keeping warm. The crust of her freshly baked peach pie, made from fruit she had picked from the tree in the backyard and canned right here in this kitchen, looked crisp and luscious, and there was almond-flavored whipped cream for the topping. But she had lost all appetite.

  Still, she was not going to show her mother how hard she had been hit by news of the foreclosure. Smiling gamely, she put the food on the table and said, in as cheerful a voice as she could summon, “Let’s enjoy our Sunday dinner, Mama. I’m sure that things will look brighter after we’ve eaten.”

  Her mother’s appetite didn’t seem diminished in any way by the awful prospect of her house being foreclosed in just a few weeks. She ate rapidly and with enthusiasm and helped herself to seconds. And when Lizzy poured coffee and served the peach pie (she had decided against going into the backyard), she asked for three large spoonfuls of almond whipped cream. The pie disappeared in no time.

  Mrs. Lacy patted her lips with a folded napkin. “Well, now, Elizabeth, we need to discuss what we are goin’ to do. We’ve had our differences over the years, as I’ll be the first to admit. But I am sure that my only daughter-my only child-will not let her mother be put out on the street.” She put her elbows on the table and went on, not giving Lizzy time to respond. “You know, I hated the idea of your movin’ over here, but it looks like it’s turned out to be just a real good thing. You have fixed this place up so it’s neat as a pin and pretty as a dollhouse. I won’t have to go on the street at all. I can just move in here with you.”

  “Oh, no, Mama,” Lizzy said firmly. “That’s not-”

  “It might be a squeeze for a while,” her mother went on, as if Lizzy had not spoken. “But I’m sure we can find room for everything.” She regarded Lizzy’s G.E. Monitor refrigerator, humming quietly against the wall. “Not all my furniture, of course. Your stove is new, and your electric fridge is much better than my old icebox, which leaks water all over the floor.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson can have the musty old thing, if he wants it.”

  “No, Mama.” Lizzy pulled in her breath and let it out. “I won’t let you be put onto the street. I’ll help you find someplace to live. But you are not moving in with me, and that’s all there is to it. Tomorrow I will go see Mr. Johnson myself and tell him that he needs to give you more time. He-”

  “Absolutely not!” Mrs. Lacy snapped, throwing down her napkin. Her eyes were narrowed and her neck was blotched with red. “You will do no such thing, Elizabeth. I will not abide the humiliation of my daughter goin’ crawlin’ to that wretched bully. Sally-Lou will start bringin’ my things over here tomorrow. Mrs. Oliver’s colored man, Tiny, has promised to help with the heavy pieces. The parlor will be a little crowded, but we can manage. I’m sure you’ll agree that my chintz drapes will look much better in there than your plain ones. I’ve never liked that awful burlap weave, anyway.”

  “But, Mama-”

  Mrs. Lacy held up her hand. “Hush, Elizabeth, until I’m finished. I’ll take the front bedroom upstairs. It will be a tight fit gettin’ my bed up those narrow stairs, but I measured yesterday, and it’ll go. We can put a cot in the storage room for Sally-Lou until you and dear Mr. Alexander are married, and then she can have your bedroom.”

  “Married!” Lizzy was incredulous. “What on God’s green earth are you talking about? I have no intention of getting married anytime soon. In fact, I have no plan whatsoever to get married-to Grady Alexander or anybody else!”

  As she spoke, she realized that this foreclosure business must have been the moving force behind her mother’s puzzling reversal on the question of Grady Alexander. And all of a sudden, the whole scheme became crystal clear. Faced with the market crash, Mr. Johnson’s foreclosure order, and the need to find somewhere to live, her mother had come up with a plan. She had started urging Lizzy to marry Grady so she could have Lizzy’s house. She got the key copied so she could come over while Lizzy was at work and decide where to put her furniture. And she had put off all discussion of this awful business until the very last minute, when there was no time to have a reasonable conversation about alternatives.

  At the thought of having her perfect little house invaded by her quarrelsome, outsize mother, Lizzy felt sick. But she felt even sicker at the thought that her mother was so carelessly, so cruelly manipulative that she would push her daughter into getting married just so she could take over her house!

  “Oh, gracious me. Not gettin’ married?” Mrs. Lacy heaved a dramatically disappointed sigh.
“I am so sorry to hear that, Elizabeth. I think you and Mr. Alexander make the most marvelous couple. And of course I never raised my daughter to be an old maid.” Another sigh, this one of long-suffering forbearance. “But there’s no point in gettin’ all upset about that part of it. Sally-Lou won’t mind sleepin’ on the cot. Of course, it would be nice if this house was just a teensy bit larger, but we can manage.” She leaned over and patted Lizzy’s hand. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, dear. We’ll be a tad crowded, but we’ll make do. And maybe, in a few months, after you’ve had time to ponder, you’ll see your way clear to marryin’ that fine Mr. Alexander, who loves you so very much. As I do, of course. You know I do.”

  Lizzy stared at her for a long moment, and then the sick feeling suddenly turned into something else, a searing, volcanic anger at her mother’s manipulations.

  “Mama!” She stood up, clenching her hands. “Mama, you listen to me and you listen hard. I do not know the answer to your predicament, but I am telling you one thing for certain. You are not moving into my house, not now, not later, not under any circumstance. You are going to give me that key you had made, right now, or I will be changing the locks first thing in the morning. Furthermore, you will not step foot in my house again without my express invitation. Do you hear me, Mama? Do you hear?”

  “Not moving in-” Mrs. Lacy turned pale and her eyes were wide, staring. Her hand went to her bosom. In a quivering voice, she cried, “You’d let me be put out on the street?”

  “I have no idea what’s going to happen about that,” Lizzy replied stonily. She could feel herself shaking. She had never before spoken to her mother in this way. “But I do know that you are not moving in here. It is simply out of the question.” She held out her hand. “Now, you give me that door key you had Mr. Musgrove copy for you at the hardware store.”

  Mrs. Lacy widened her eyes. “Key? What key?”

  “The key that you used to come in here so you could measure for your furniture, Mama.” Lizzy hardened her voice. “I want it. Now.”

  Her mother pushed out her lower lip like a pouting child. “I don’t have it with me.”

  “Then I will go to the hardware store first thing tomorrow. I will tell Mr. Musgrove that my mother copied my door key without my permission and I can’t trust her to stay out of my house. I will ask him to put new locks on the front and the back doors.”

  Mrs. Lacy looked aghast. “You wouldn’t tell him that, Elizabeth! Why, Mrs. Musgrove is a terrible gossip. She’ll tell everybody in town that I-” She swallowed. “That you-”

  Lizzy folded her arms. “Try me,” she said icily.

  In the end, Mrs. Lacy surrendered the key.

  SIX

  The Dahlias in Full Bloom

  The Dahlias met at their clubhouse at two in the afternoon on the second Sunday of every month. During nice weather, there were usually several absences, since moms and dads liked to pile the kids into their Fords or DeSotos or Chryslers on Sunday afternoons and drive out to visit their kinfolk. But when Lizzy called the meeting to order, she saw that everybody was present except Myra May, who was working Violet’s shift on the switchboard. Lizzy suspected that the rest of the Dahlias might have shown up out of self-defense. They knew the club would be discussing the talent show. If they missed the meeting, they’d likely find themselves appointed in absentia to chair a committee.

  Lizzy never handled angry encounters very well, and the scene with her mother had been so nerve-wracking that she was still shaking when she called the meeting to order. But she pushed the awfulness to the back of her mind and focused as intently as she could on the business at hand. After Ophelia’s minutes and Verna’s treasurer’s report were approved, she called on Miss Rogers to present the program, then sat down next to Verna.

  Miss Rogers, still wearing her Sunday-go-to-meeting navy faille dress and narrow-brimmed baku braid hat, read a paper she had submitted to the Southern Regional Garden Club Newsletter. It was all about late-season flowering shrubs that ought to do well in the Gulf Coast’s hot, humid climate, especially the Holly tea olive (Osmanthus heterophyllus), senna (Cassia corymbosa), and sasanqua camellia (Camellia sasanqua). She spelled out the Latin names not just once but twice, so that people who were taking notes could get them right. The reading went on a little long and when she was finished, her audience rewarded the conclusion by clapping-those who were still awake, that is. The scattered applause woke the others up and they sat up straight in their chairs, pretending that they had just been resting their eyes.

  The next item was a little livelier. Bessie Bloodworth reported on the garden jobs they could check off the club’s to-do list and the things that still needed to be done before the first freeze. Bessie took names for the work days. Lizzy was happy to see that everybody volunteered-all but Mrs. Johnson, who regretted that she was expecting company from out of town.

  Then Aunt Hetty Little (everybody called her Aunt Hetty because she was near kin to almost everybody in town) gave a report on the repair work on the clubhouse, paid for out of the Treasure Fund.

  “Donny Lee Arnett charged us seventeen dollars and fifty-two cents to fix the leaks in the roof,” she said, “and it cost us four dollars and seventy-five cents for Raby Ryan to repair the front and back steps so we don’t all sprain our ankles.”

  “Money well spent,” Miss Rogers observed. “Nobody can afford to see the doctor these days.” Earlynne Biddle leaned over and gave Miss Rogers’ hand a comforting pat. It was common knowledge that she had invested every cent of her money on Wall Street and lost it all on Black Tuesday, not quite a year ago. Now, she was living on the few dollars a week she earned as Darling’s part-time librarian. Her salary barely covered her room and board at Bessie Bloodworth’s Magnolia Manor, next door to the Dahlias’ clubhouse. She lived in fear that the town council would decide that Darling couldn’t afford to keep the library open and she’d be out of a job. But it wasn’t just Miss Rogers, of course-almost everybody who had a job shared the very same worry.

  Aunt Hetty cleared her throat. “We also need to get Mr. Kendrick to come over and clean the stovepipe before it’s time to start building a fire in the stove here in the clubhouse,” she went on. “And we need to pay Sam Westheimer to haul a load of coal for us. I guess we should have a motion. Liz?”

  “Liz,” Verna nudged her. “Liz, wake up.”

  Lizzy wasn’t asleep. She had been thinking about her mother’s predicament. She had no idea what the motion should be, but she got up anyway. “Do I hear a motion?”

  Everybody turned to look at Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson, because the Treasure Fund was in Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson’s bank, the Darling Savings and Trust. “I so move,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Both the stovepipe and the coal.”

  “I second it,” Beulah Trivette spoke up briskly. “But be sure and tell Mr. Westheimer to bring us some clean coal,” she added. “We don’t want none of that dirty ol’ smoky stuff he’ll deliver if you don’t especially tell him not to.”

  “I agree with Beulah,” Alice Ann Walker said firmly. “More than once, I’ve had to sweep Sam Westheimer’s black coal dust up off the floors before the kids and the dogs tracked it all over.” Everybody (except for Mrs. Johnson, who had a gas furnace) agreed with Beulah because at one time or another most of them had been on the receiving end of one of those dirty coal deliveries and knew about the extra work it caused.

  Then it was Mildred Kilgore’s turn, so all the Dahlias took deep breaths and sat up straighter in their chairs. Mildred (who had that effect on people) was in charge of this year’s talent show. She and her husband Roger lived near the Cypress Country Club, where Mildred grew Darling’s most gorgeous camellias. Her garden was always scheduled as the last stop on the annual Garden Tour, because no self-respecting Dahlia wanted visitors to see her garden after they had been ooh-ing and ahh-ing at Mildred’s camellias.

  “The show is less than four weeks away,” Mildred said, in her brisk, I’ve-got-e
verything-under-control voice, “so it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get busy. I’ve been working on the program for the past month, and so far, I have nine acts lined up. You’ll probably recognize most of them.”

  Mildred took out a typed list and began to read names. “I thought we would start with the Carsons’ Comedy Caravan, then Sammy Durham’s drum solo.” Aunt Hetty groaned and everyone else smiled. Sammy Durham considered himself to be a jazz drummer. Most people thought he was just plain loud. “Then the Tumbling Tambourines-they’re bringing their own mat this time-and after that, Mr. and Mrs. Akins will do their famous Spanish fandango.”

  Mrs. Johnson cleared her throat delicately. “I thought there was an objection to that dance at the last show. Something to do with Mrs. Akins’ costume, wasn’t it?”

  “Mrs. Akins says she’s adding more frills to lower the hem, and putting a ruffle at the neck,” Mildred replied, and Mrs. Johnson gave a grudging nod. “After the dance, Mr. Trubar and Towser will do their trombone act, and then we have something brand-new. It’s a family of jugglers from over near Monroeville. The Juggling Jinks.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen them!” Lucy Murphy exclaimed. “They juggled at the Methodist picnic in July. They’re amazing!” Lucy was the club’s newest member, bringing their number to thirteen. She had been nominated by Ophelia Snow, whose husband was Lucy’s husband’s cousin. Lucy and Ophelia had had an exciting little adventure the previous May, when a convict escaped from the prison farm and ended up in Lucy’s kitchen. Ophelia beaned him with a jar of raspberry jam.

  “I understand they’re quite good,” Mildred said, “but unfortunately, they’re the only new act in the program. After them, our very own Miss Rogers will perform Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ ”