Louella put her mug on the counter and grabbed a loaf of bread from the pantry. "Verna Pearse is as loose as aslipknot," she said. "For a year she told me she got paid ten cents more an hour than me because she was abetter waitress. She bragged and held it over my head, but come to find out, she was earning it in other ways."
"How?"
"With Big Bob Jenkins."
Daisy remembered the owner of the diner, and he hadn't been called Big Bob for nothing. "She was having sexwith Big Bob?"
Louella shook her head and pursed her lips. "Oral gratification in the storeroom."
"Really? That's criminal."
"Yes. It's a form of prostitution."
"I was thinking it was more like slave labor. Verna blew Big Bob for what turns out to be like -eighty cents aday? That's not right."
"Daisy," her mother scolded as she got out the toaster. "Don't talk filth."
"You brought it up!" She'd never understand her mother. "Oral gratification" was okay, but somehow "blew"
wasn't.
"You've been in the North too long."
Maybe she had, because she just didn't get the difference. Although there had been a time when she neverwould have uttered the word in that context.
Louella opened the loaf of bread. "Do you want toast?"
"I don't eat in the morning." She took a drink of coffee and moved to the corner breakfast nook. The brightmorning sun poured in through the sheers and lit up the yellow table.
"Did you go out last night?" her mother asked as she toasted one slice of bread.
Meaning, did she work up her nerve to drive to Jack's. "Yes. I went to his house last night."
"Did you tell him?"
Daisy sat on one of the bench seats and looked down at her hands wrapped around her mug. She had a chip inher red fingernail polish. "No. He wasn't alone. His girlfriend was there, so it wasn't a good time."
"Maybe that was a sign you should leave it alone."
Growing up, her mother had always liked Steven more than Jack. Although, Louella liked Jack too. When thethree of them got into trouble, Jack was often blamed. And while it was true that he'd usually come up with theoffense that landed them in hot water, Daisy and Steven would gladly go along with him. "I can't do that,"
Daisy said, "I have to tell him."
"I still don't understand why." Louella's toast popped up and she set it on a little plate.
"I told you why." Daisy didn't feel like discussing her reasons again. She opened the bottle of finger-nail polishshe'd left on the table yesterday and set about repairing the chip.
"Well, if you're determined to do this, you shouldn't go over there at night." Louella lifted the lid off the butterdish and buttered her toast. "People talk about widows. They say you're desperate."
Daisy's father had died when she was five, but she'd never heard any gossip about her mother being desperate.
"I don't care." She covered her index fingernail with red polish, then screwed the lid back on the bottle.
"You should." Louella grabbed her plate and coffee and sat across the table from Daisy. "You don't want peopleto think you're going over there for relations."
Daisy blew on her wet fingernail to keep from laughing. It had been over two years since she'd had relations,and she wasn't sure she knew how to do it anymore. After Steven's diagnosis and first surgery, they'd tried tohave a normal, healthy married life, but after a few months, it just got too difficult. At first she'd really missedsex with her husband. Then the more she'd gone without, the less she'd missed it. Now, she really didn't thinkabout it all that much.
"Tell me about all those flamingos in your backyard," Daisy said to change the subject.
"I think they're pretty," her mother said. Growing up, her mother had been into Disney. Their yard had beenoverrun with Snow White, the Seven Dwarfs, and several characters from Alice in Wonderland. "I got the bigflamingo with the little pocket book in its beak from Kitty Fae Young. Her granddaughter Amanda makes 'emup special order. You remember Amanda, don't you?"
Just like she was a kid again, Daisy felt her eyes glaze over. Her mother had always had a tendency to rambleoil forever about people Daisy didn't know, had never met, and didn't give a rat's about. Growing up, she andLily had been involuntary victims, trapped into listening to the hottest gossip going around the diner, whichusually wasn't all that hot. It didn't mailer how often they hinted that they didn't care about so-and-so's newBuick, arthritis or yummy homemade cookies, Louella was like a needle stuck in a record groove and absolutelycouldn't stop until she came to the end.
She shook her head and said a weak, "No."
"Sure you do," her mother said. "She had those really bad buck teeth. Looked just like a little beaver."
"Oh yeah," she said although she didn't have the foggiest. There were quite a few kids in west Texas with buckteeth.
Daisy slid from behind the table and stood. While her mother talked about Amanda and her yard art, Daisywalked to the sink and rinsed her mug. She glanced up at the purple and green stained-glass frame makingpatterns on the sill. She'd taken the photo in the picture frame. It was Steven and Nathan on Nathan's fourthbirthday, and she'd used a wide-angle lens to distort the closeup shot. Both wore party hats and were grinninglike lunatics fresh from the asylum, their eyes huge. She'd taken it when she first started photography classesand was experimenting. They'd all been so happy then.
A frown creased her brow and she looked away. She didn't want to think about the past today. She didn't wantto get sucked into the emotional morass of it. She put the mug in the dishwasher and her gaze felt on a grocerylist clipped in a clothespin recipe holder.
"...but of course you didn't live here then," her mother was saying. "That was the year a twister took out RedCooley's trailer."
"Are you going to the store?" she interrupted.
"I need a few things," her mother answered as she rose from the table and put the bread away. "After churchtomorrow, Lily Belle and Pippen are coming over for Sunday dinner, and I thought we'd have a nice ham."
Lily was three years younger than Daisy, and Pippen was her two-year-old son. Lily's husband had run off witha cowgirl, and they were in the process of a messy divorce. She was having a difficult time, and as a result, menin general were on Lily's hit list. "I'll go to Albertsons for you," she offered. That way she could choosesomething beside ham. She'd never been a big pork fan, and after Steven's funeral, a lot of well-meaning peoplehad dropped off baked hams. Some of them were still in her freezer in Seattle.
She took a shower then dressed in a pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt. She dried her hair and put on a littlemakeup. With the list in her back pocket, she jumped in her mother's Cadillac. The car had several dents up anddown each side due to her mother being nearsighted. A flamingo air freshener hung from the rearview mirror,and the Caddie whined when she turned corners.
Inside Alhertsons, the Muzak of choice was Barry Manilow's "Mandy," an abomination in any state, butespecially Texas. She tossed a box of tea bags and a can of coffee into her cart, then she headed for the meatsection. She was in the mood for steak and grabbed a package of three rib-eyes.
"Well hey, Daisy. I heard you were back in town."
Daisy glanced up from her steaks. The woman in front of her looked slightly familiar. Her hair was pinned up inbig pink rollers, and she held a big can of Super Hold Aqua Net in one hand and a pack of hobby pins in theother.
It took Daisy a few seconds to place a name with the face. "You're Shay Brewton, Sylvia's little sister." Daisyand Sylvia had been on the same cheerleader squad at Lovett High. They'd been good friends but had lost touchwhen Daisy and Steven had moved away. "How's Sylvia?"