“I think we better get some things straight,” the older woman responded.“When Uncle Paulie left for California . . . well, some of us thought that was best. There was distance, you understand. We were never very close.Y’all never visited me here, and I never came to you. . . .We’re not really family in that sense. And I have to tell you, Mona,” she turned and addressed her remarks, coldly, to the glassy-eyed woman propped against a corner of her couch, “that I’m really highly disappointed in you and my uncle. You stole from hard-working families—”
Sally jumped up. “Daddy did no such thing!”
A long sigh. “That’s not what the federal government says. And now y’all turn up here, poor as church mice, disgraced.... I declare, Mona, if I don’t smell liquor on your breath at ten o’clock in the morning . . . well, I think it’s just too bad.”
“I see.Thank you for your hospitality.” Sally tossed her golden hair defiantly. “Come on, Momma.We’re leaving.”
“I’m sorry, but I think it’s better to get these things straight. I have a position in society . . .”
“Yes.” Sally gave a mighty heave and hauled her mother to her feet.“It’s better to know where we stand.You’re certainly not family. And yes—you are sorry. A sorry excuse for a Christian woman.”
The tears were threatening now. She was tired—exhausted. Her back hurt from days of driving, she had nowhere to go, and her last hope was looking at her with total contempt.
“Please leave,” said Emily Harris, flushing with anger.
“Don’t worry. We won’t bother you again.” Sally thrust up her chin, her slim shoulders set firm. “And I won’t forget this, either.”
“That’s as may be,” said her cousin, following closely behind as Sally dragged Mona, stumbling, to the door.“But I’m certainly going to forget you.Your family has embarrassed us all.”
Sally pushed her mother out across the sweeping, gracious porch, which had looked so welcoming when they first arrived, all whitewashed wood, cane sofas and heaped cushions; an old-fashioned southern veranda.
“Don’t come back here,” Emily shouted, as Sally opened up the van and helped her mother inside. “We have security.”
And she slammed the door.
“Now what?” Mona asked, as Sally, brushing away the tears, angrily spun the van around. “Where do we go? My head hurts.”
“Don’t worry, Momma.” Sally refused to give in; mingling with her embarrassment and fear was a sense of white-hot anger, and she used that anger to keep her strong. “We’ll be okay. We have some money, enough to rent a place. Look.” She turned left, into Hartford, the nearest signposted town, and slowed as they reached Main Street. “This place has everything.” Sally gestured as they rode by. “Look, a drugstore . . . banks . . . a post office . . . rail station.” It was small, and the houses were not all that big—a place for the working middle classes, Sally assessed instantly. Which was just what they were, as of now.
Hartford. An anonymous American town. It even had a high school. Perfect.
“Let’s pull over, get a local paper,” Sally decided. “I’ll have a house legally rented by the end of the day. This is home.” She glanced at her mother, who was watching the dashboard, betraying no interest.
“We’ll be happy here,” Sally insisted, bravely. But even she didn’t believe it.
She worked hard. First, finding a place. That afternoon, Sally trooped round apartments—mostly run-down, with the paint peeling off the walls—and houses, some with leaking roofs or mold. In the end, forced to raise her price, she found a two-bedroom tract home, on the edge of a main road, near a drugstore and a garage. Poor location, but all the basics; neat, clean, with no more than a square patio to look after in the back. Sally put down three months’ rent to avoid a credit check, and breathed a sigh of relief.The utilities were connected.There were no roaches. It was poor, yes, but respectable. And she could afford to rent there for a couple of years, at least.
Mona was making noises about going to the local bar, so although Sally hated herself, she went out with Momma and bought liquor, cheap gut-rot vodka, in the forlorn hope it would turn her mother’s stomach. And not at the liquor store, either, but not because she was worried about getting carded at either place—she could always make herself pass for twenty-one—but because she could just imagine what gossip would do in a one-horse joint like this . . . they’d go crazy over the new arrivals, a mom and daughter whose first stop was to pick up alcohol in a brown paper bag! Instead, they went to the grocery store, passed the time of day with the clerk, and Sally shopped, for almost the first time in her life, awkwardly putting groceries into the trolley, trying to learn the prices of different brands. Sally picked up milk, eggs, cheese, and fruit; meat was expensive, so she bought spaghetti and mince for Bolognese. Simple; she’d liked to cook, at times, as a hobby, and that would be cheaper than prepared sauces.
And she also bought bread, and a few little luxuries. The exhaustion had not dissipated, but Sally was discovering the fire she had in her belly. Damn it all, she was going to survive. One step at a time. Get a little money, rent a normal house, fill the refrigerator. And they were not going to live like slobs. For only a couple dollars, she picked up pretty scented soaps and some potpourri. Candles could come later . . . Sally didn’t trust her mother not to knock them over and accidentally set the place on fire.
In the discount racks, Sally found other things. A couple of framed samplers. Cheesy, perhaps, but this way they would have art on the walls, not just bare white space.
They came home. Momma took the vodka and drank till she passed out on the couch.That was a relief. Sally quietly unpacked, and took a long, hot, relaxing shower.Then she stashed away the suitcases and left a note on the table. She drove out of town to a Shop Smart they’d passed on the way in.That place was paradise for shoppers down on their luck. For an hour or so Sally forgot her troubles; she scoured the aisles, looking for bargains, looking for bright, stylish touches: a five-dollar rug, some artificial silk roses, a white wicker wastebasket, fluffy towels for the bathroom, oversized and underpriced.
When she got back, Mona was still snoring. Her limbs drained, Sally nonetheless managed to unpack, hammer, and hang; to make the beds, fluff the cushions, lay out the towels, put the toothbrushes in the holder.
By the time she was done it was late at night. Sally walked around the house, with the blinds down, a grim little smile on her face. On less than seventy dollars, she’d made the place look normal; it was cheerful and clean, a respectable, basic house.
Quite an achievement. She thought of her mother, staggering around motel rooms, knocking over full ashtrays the maids hadn’t bothered to clean. When she woke, hung over, it would be in a proper house for a family to live in. Not what they were used to—but miles away from Skid Row.
She undressed, carefully slipped on her pajamas, and tumbled into bed, enjoying the feel of the brand-new sheets. Tomorrow there was lots to do. Return the rental car . . . buy a new one . . . register for school . . . contact the lawyer . . .
Sally knew her father would be proud of her. Misery probed at her, but she was too tired to dwell on the past.Tomorrow was the start of a new, tough life, but she knew she could handle it. She slipped into a deep sleep.
“Mom . . .” She hated the way her voice sounded, all whining and pleading. “You don’t need that.”
“Hey.” Mona gripped the vodka bottle, all the way to the sink. She swayed on her slippers.“Don’t lecture me, missy. I can’t stand it when you get all uppity.”
“You’ve already had too much.”
A fat tear of self-pity rolled down her mother’s cheek.
“Why can’ you leave me alone?” she slurred.“Can’ I have a lil bit of pleasure left in this world? . . . He’s gone . . . he’s gone.”
“I know.” Sally fought back her own tears. “He’s gone, Mom. And he’d hate to see you like this.”
She reached out to grab the sink to steady herself, missed, and fell over; the vodka bottle slipped from her grasp and smashed on the floor. Mona burst into loud, drunken tears.
“We gotta go out,” she whined. “Gotta go out and get some more.... I don’t have more here.”
Thank God,
thought Sally.
She went over to her mother, carefully picking her way through the broken glass.
“Never mind, Momma. I’ll clear that up.You come with me. Just take a little lie-down..”
“Yeah . . . a lie-down.”
“This way.” Sally was slightly built, but she was strong, and getting stronger. Hauling Mona’s dead weight around was something she did a lot of lately.
“I don’ feel so good. . . .”
Mona was turning a nasty shade of green. Hastily, Sally shoved her into the bathroom.Thank God it was downstairs.
“Go ahead, you’ll feel better. . . .”
But Mona had already slipped to her knees and was puking violently.
Sally leaned back against the wall and tried to count her blessings. This was gross, but at least her momma was getting it out now. She was frightened that one day Mona would fall asleep and choke on her own vomit, like a seventies rock star, but without the glamour. Or just die of alcohol poisoning.
She’d drawn down the blinds. Their house was now permanently shuttered, and they lived in a darkened, gloomy atmosphere, like a Spielberg movie just before the aliens come. But Sally had learned to cope with just the cracks of sunlight that beamed through the dusty windows. No way did she want any of the neighbors to see her mom looking like this.Worse still, the press....
They had come crawling around here, those damn vultures. Sally had learned to manage them. When they doorstepped her on her way to her new public school, Sally would just smile and say that she was settling in, and her mother was still in mourning. That it was a beautiful neighborhood. That her daddy always taught her to take the lemons of life and make her some lemonade.
And then she would politely remind the snapper that she was still a minor, on her way to school. Could they please back off?
That always worked.Whether it was from fear of legal action or shame, they left her alone.
The tabloid articles were out there. With their pictures in. “Brave Sally, starting over.” “Sally Lassiter, staying strong for Mom.” It was human interest, and at least it was better than the alternative—nasty realms of print, castigating her and her mother for living off the backs of the poor.
There was some of that too, of course; the shrieking phone calls, late at night, the hate mail, notes from people swearing her mother was a greedy bitch, that they had money stashed away in Switzerland or the Caymans. Sally tried to remember that these folks had lost everything. Lassiter Oil had collapsed, the pensions of the workers had evaporated, and her dad’s old buddies at the top were mostly in jail.
Good—she’d rather have seen them dead. They were murderers—they’d killed her father.
And the aftermath was killing her mother.
Sally dealt with grief. She had to.There was only room for one invalid in the family, and Momma had taken that slot.While Sally tried to piece things together, just the most basic stuff—talking to law enforcement, swearing out depositions, arguing with the bankruptcy courts—Mona had dived into the clear, numbing depths of her vodka bottle, and Sally had the feeling she wasn’t coming out of it anytime soon.
Sally knew she wasn’t brilliant, like Jane, or even smart, like Helen; Helen, so graceful and diplomatic, aristocratically feminine; Jane, the librarian limey, both girls far more sophisticated than the pretty Texas rose who’d had life handed to her on a silver platter.
But Sally had something. Something more than long blonde hair, flawless limbs, and a tan. Sally had street smarts. She knew how to sell herself, and how to sell situations. A parting gift from her dad, perhaps.
Despite it all, she had managed—still was managing—to change the story from “embezzler’s widow” to “brave survivors.” She had negotiated a settlement with the IRS that left them without any more creditors, at least. And she learned how to shop on a budget. Sally took care of school enrollment, and signing Mom up for benefits and Medicaid.
Sally wasn’t embarrassed to go on welfare; she couldn’t afford to be.
The most important thing was to look after Momma. Sally didn’t mind the press stalking her; but she couldn’t bear them to see the wreck of her mom, a slovenly drunk, hell-bent on killing herself and oblivious to shame.
As Mona retched and heaved, Sally glanced around their home.This was getting to be a routine. Put Momma to bed, force her to drink a glass of water and choke down two aspirins, then clean the place while her mother snored in a drunken stupor.
She was getting to like cleaning. It gave her a very small sense of control. At least their home would not be a disgrace.
Mona gave one more dry heave and collapsed.
Sally quietly went to the sink, moistened a washcloth, and cleaned her mother’s face. She flushed the toilet, and heaved her mom back into the living room. Mona had already passed out—no way to get her up the stairs.
Carefully Sally laid her mother on her side, in case she was sick again, and put a blanket over her. No water—she was unconscious.
Then she went upstairs, to her own room.To think.
Upstairs, Sally’s room was a little haven. A tiny box, sure; her dressing room at home had been twice as big. But she had decorated as best she could with cheap touches from Shop Smart, little pink cushions and swatches of gauze; it had fresh flowers on the windowsill; her clothes hung neatly in the wardrobe; and she had used candles to give the place a soft glow at night. It smelled good and looked fresh, and Sally hung a framed photo of Laguna Beach, California, right over her desk.
There was a calendar underneath that picture, and she noticed the next day was ringed—oh. Right. Her birthday.
Yeah, she thought, morosely. Happy birthday.To me.
A year out here. A year of suffering. Of being ogled by the boys and teased by the girls at a little hick school, where pupils were content to make low grades and scrape by. A school with no Helen or Jane. And, knowing she was friendless, the boys hit on her. One even offered her money.