“And then if I’m the one who’s still alive next Wednesday, I’ll keep our appointment.”
Brock laughed and patted her knee. “It won’t be as bad as all that. You may even be pleasantly surprised.”
“Sure,” Phoebe said.
Actually, Phoebe thought as she drove her sick old car home, what I ought to do is see if I can land Brock. He knew everything about her. It would make life so simple because she wouldn’t have to lie to him or try to keep him from meeting her mother. The problem was — though she was fond of him — he did not excite her romantically. She couldn’t get past that halo of golden curls, she supposed, and he was way too tall. He stood at least six six to her five two, and he was not by any stretch handsome with his short little nose and long chin. Handsomeness was not a prerequisite with her, but she did prefer that her men not be funny looking and Brock was... sort of. Still, she did like him tremendously. If she married Brock — well, he’d know how to handle a mother-in-law like Felicia Hooks.
Of course Brock was thoroughly professional. He had ethics up to his earlobes. In the six weeks she’d been seeing him, he’d never made a pass at her. But it had happened before. Doctors had married their patients, and shrinks had married their clients. Yes, her life would be so much simpler if she married Brock, who knew so much about her, but when she tried to imagine them sharing a bed she had to laugh.
When Phoebe reached her apartment building, a square stucco affair with a red California tile roof, she parked the car and crossed a small yard carpeted with pungent, multicolored leaves to climb stairs to the second floor. The last time she had moved away from Good Old Mom, she had intentionally leased a tiny one bedroom apartment so she wouldn’t have room for her. Now she slept on the couch every night while Mom occupied the bedroom.
She had lived alone for two blissful months while Felicia, as usual, simply refused to pay rent at the old address. Then, again as usual, she’d been evicted and had turned up at Phoebe’s door with three suitcases, several large wooden crates, and her green parakeet in his cage.
During those two blissful months Phoebe had told herself that she would not let her mother move in again but, somehow, she had done just that, just as always. Now the woman’s eclectic collection of decorating horrors smothered the little apartment. Now the single bedroom was undeniably Mom’s domain, from the parakeet in the cage by the window, to walls hung with garish photos of Good Old Mom during her belly dancing days with the carnival, to equally garish satin cushions that said things like A Souvenir of San Francisco on one side. What didn’t fit into the tiny bedroom overflowed into the tiny living room.
She paused outside the door with the key in her hand and sighed. Two more months on the lease. By then she’d have close to five thousand dollars in her savings account. She’d have to give up a good job, of course, but if she moved from Oregon to Maine or Florida or New York, she didn’t see how Good Old Mom could possibly follow her with the suitcases and the wooden crates and the parakeet. In two months she’d be free. Maybe Brock could keep her sane until then.
Felicia Hooks was on the couch watching tabloid television when Phoebe summoned the courage to go inside. The older woman’s bleached hair was carefully set on big green rollers (bingo night). She wore a blue cotton robe splashed with bright red flowers and crew socks — white with red stripes. Dragging cold gray eyes away from the television, she swept her daughter with a sour look. “What’s for dinner?” she growled in her raspy voice.
Phoebe thought about Brock’s assignment. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said, collapsing wearily into the tiny room’s single chair. “That’s the first thing you say to me every day when I get home, and it’s really very irritating. Besides, I work hard and I’m tired. It wouldn’t hurt you to cook once in a while.”
“Well, la-dee-da!” Felicia said, her wide mouth curling into a sneer. “Aren’t we sensitive today. Not to mention late.”
“I always get home later on Wednesdays.”
“The least you could do is bring hamburgers. You know how hungry I get when you’re late.”
Phoebe popped angrily up out of the chair. “I think I’ll eat out tonight. What you do is up to you.” She slammed out of the apartment before Felicia could launch her tirade about how many meals she’d fixed for her when she was a kid.
At least I communicated, she told herself as she thundered downstairs and out of the building, though she knew that wasn’t quite what Brock had had in mind. Now her mother would have to either cook for herself or go out, which meant spending some of her own money on food, both of which she hated to do. The thought cheered Phoebe. Smiling, she drove downtown and had a good dinner at a nice restaurant.
She dawdled over dinner. Good Old Mom always left for bingo night at the Odd Fellows Hall at seven o’clock. If she stayed away long enough, she might not have to deal with her mother again until after work the next day. Felicia frequently stopped off at a bar after bingo with her old battle-axe of a crony, Pansy Holloway. She’d be late getting home and, hangover or not, she always slept late in the mornings. Oddly enough, when she came home soused to the gills, she’d always tiptoe into her room and not bother Phoebe.
Things did work out for a change. Felicia, soused to the gills, came staggering in at one o’clock and tiptoed noisily into her room. Phoebe woke but pretended she hadn’t. As she drifted off to sleep again, she thought about Brock Weaver’s assignment and how she would communicate with her mother tomorrow.
“I wish you’d keep your ugly old souvenir pillows in the bedroom,” Phoebe said the next day after work. “I’d be embarrassed if anyone saw them.”
“As if anyone ever came here,” Felicia said with a snort. “As if you ever had a date, Ugg-face.”
“How can I, with you here? I never know how you’ll behave.”
“So meet the jerk someplace else. Besides, what’s so bad about your mother? Seems like I’m the only one around here who ever has a date.”
“Bar pickups, you mean? Sure, I could date as much as I wanted if I wasn’t very choosy, but I don’t happen to like the drunken old slobs you and Pansy pick up in scuzzy bars.”
“Phoebe Hooks! That’ll be enough out of you!”
She knew she wasn’t doing it right, that their communication should be gentler, but at least she remembered the other half of Brock’s assignment. “I’ve told you about something you do that bothers me. Now it’s only fair to let you talk about what bothers you.”
Felicia gave her a wicked grin. “You got all night, Ugg-face?”
“I couldn’t complete the assignment,” Phoebe told Brock the following Wednesday. “All I said was that I wished she’d keep her ugly old souvenir pillows in the bedroom. I didn’t turn it into a personal attack. Well, maybe a little, but I didn’t tell her she was ugly and stupid and worthless and use every insult I could think of like she did when it was her turn. I can’t take it. I’ve listened to that all my life, and it flattens my ego. She knows it, too. It’s her weapon.”
“Hmm,” Brock said as he wrote in his notebook. “Perhaps this is a little more serious than I thought.”
“Now you’re getting the picture. Do you know what her pet name for me is? Ugg-face.”