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 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.