The Ladies' Room (13 page)

"Are you sure about that? I'm not Gert" So our friendship
was solid. I liked that idea.

"No, she died and made me God, remember? Come on,
Trudy, if we're going to be friends, you've got to remember your
place."

That brought on a whole new set of delicious giggles. I
vowed to find something to laugh about every day for the rest
of my life. I finally got my amusement under control, but a
smile stayed with me most of the afternoon when I thought
about Gert making a misstep and Saint Peter giving her soul
to the devil. Bless Lucifer's little red heart, he'd have to keep
Gert tied to his forked tail and make sure Lonnie was exiled
to the back forty if he wanted to keep any kind of order in his
fiery abode.

Several minutes later Billy Lee said, "When we get the
doors done, I've got a surprise for you"

At noon everyone took a break, and Billy Lee and I stood
our bare doors against the tree to dry. They looked pitiful, but
he assured me they'd come to life with the stain we'd put on
after lunch. We had sandwiches in the kitchen. Ham and cheese
on rye bread with mayonnaise, Fritos, icy sweet tea, and the last
of the cheesecake for dessert.

I pressed my fingers to the plate to gather up every last
graham-cracker crumb. "If life was truly fair, cheesecake
wouldn't have a fat gram or a calorie."

"Why do you worry about such things? You're perfect the way
you are"

Well, knock me down with a sneeze, and beat me to death
with a feather. Me, perfect? Was Billy Lee making a joke? I was
thirty pounds overweight and looking forty in the eye.

"Thank you, but you are legally blind," I joked.

"We've had this conversation before. I can see perfectly.
Evidently better than you can, because you're always putting
yourself down. You are a wonderful person and a beautiful
woman, Trudy"

I'm sure even my scalp was red from the full body blush. I
couldn't remember the last time anyone had paid me a compliment. He would never know how much I'd treasure him from
that moment forth.

He wiped down the cabinet top and hung the dishcloth on
the edge of the drain board. "I promised you a surprise."

"I believe you did." I'd wondered about the surprise all
morning and come up with dozens of ideas.

He led the way into the living room, back down the short
hallway, and slung open the door into a storage room. He pulled
a light cord and lit up the room, and I saw rows and rows of
folded quilts arranged neatly on shelves-at least fifty, and the
whole room smelled of dryer sheets instead of mothballs. I
squealed and grabbed him in a bear hug. When I stepped
back, he was grinning, and his ears were red.

"They won't fall apart if you touch them," he said.

"Promise?"

"I promise. Gert pulled one out of here to show me once.
Said her mother made it. We were talking about birdhouses,
and she remembered the quilts."

I was so tickled, I wanted to take them all to the living
room. "It's a gold mine."

"So it's a good surprise. You aren't disappointed."

"I could kiss you"

His eyes lit up. "Then I guess you really are tickled with
them"

I settled on one and carried it to the living room, where I
laid it out over the sofa. I sat in a rocking chair, afraid to blink.
He brought another rocker across the floor and sat beside me.
Sitting there beside my friend, gazing at a fan quilt with black
hand-embroidered edging, I figured out a big life lesson. I
had two choices. I could be bitter, or I could get on with life.
Drew could drop dead or marry Charity tomorrow. Crystal
could grow up or stick her head in the sand for twenty years.
Those were their decisions. Mine had been made. I had a
whole closetful of gorgeous quilts, two doors out under the
shade tree, and a friend to share it all with. I wasn't going to
be bitter.

"You've got your stash of quilts without going to the antiques
stores, and they've got a history. What do you think of that?"
he finally asked.

"Unworthy," I said.

He frowned. "What?"

"This morning I was wallowing around in a whining pity
pool, feeling sorry for myself, and now I realize that I'm blessed,
not cursed"

A brilliant smile replaced the frown. "I told you."

"That I'm not cursed?" I asked.

"That you are wise. You recognize that you are blessed. That
makes you wise."

"It makes me a fool for wasting a single minute wading
around in a pity pool."

"A fool keeps wading. A wise person gets out of it. You got
out of it, Trudy," he said.

"Okay, point taken. Now, which one will I put on my bed?"

He shook his head. "That could take hours and hours to
decide."

"I need a couple more of those shelf things to set in corners.
These are not going to stay hidden away. I'm going to display
every one of them in this house when it's finished. Quilts will
be the new theme of my house. The past meets the future. And thank you, Billy Lee, for this wonderful surprise. I seem to be
saying that more and more"

It was the first time I noticed that his smile was crooked,
and it made him look a little bit like Harrison Ford.

"I've always been your friend, Trudy. We just took different
paths that led us away from each other for a few years."

"Well, I'm glad we got back onto the right path."

"Me too," he said softly.

Together we folded the quilt back up, put it away, and headed
upstairs to take paint off the woodwork on the landing. I was
beginning to love my new life and all its surprises. Betsy and
Marty didn't have a clue what they were missing.

That afternoon Alford finished sanding the floors in the
two bedrooms and the stairs. He left with a promise to come
back when we were ready for the floors to be varnished. Workmen were in the attic putting ductwork into the upstairs
rooms and down in the basement to vent air to the first floor.
I hadn't built up the courage to venture into the attic or the
basement.

Molly and Joe, my great-grandparents, had moved into the
house right after they married. Her father had passed on, and
her mother gave them the place with the stipulation that she
could live there until her death. So my great-great-grandmother
Elizabeth lived there with Molly and Joe until she died. They
raised a family, and all those people with all their possessions
over all that time, plus all those junk sales Gert had frequented-it all gave me the willies. Angels would hide in the
back corner of Hades to keep from wading through the attic
and the basement of this house. And I was no angel.

I was managing without Drew, and some days a whole hour
or two passed when I didn't think about my former perfect
shell of a life. Poor Trudy's big bubble butt was not pointed
skyward anymore. I was existing quite well in my new world,
working on a project that would net me a lovely home someday. I had Billy Lee right next door-my friend who could
fight with me and still enjoy sitting and looking at a single quilt
for half an hour. That night after a hard afternoon of work, I fell asleep with a smile on my face. Life was good when I
counted my blessings.

Heavy knocking on the front door awoke me. I sat up so fast,
it made me dizzy. A quick look at my new digital clock said
it was eight thirty. Billy Lee and I had agreed to take the
weekend off. So what was he doing waking me up on the only
day of the week I could sleep in?

I grabbed a ratty old robe of Gert's that had lost its buttons
years before from the end of the bed, wrapped one side over
the other, and plodded downstairs in my bare feet. Billy Lee
had been there the day Gert's ancient alarm clock had startled
me awake; evidently he didn't realize I'd have no qualms
about taking the hammer to his head for the same thing. I unlocked the door and swung it open with a speech already on
my mind that would scorch the hair out of Lucifer's ears.

It wasn't Billy Lee at all.

It was my daughter, Crystal.

"What are you doing here so early?" I asked bluntly.

"Good morning to you too," she said sarcastically.

"Come in. I'll put on a pot of coffee"

She followed me into the kitchen, where she pulled out a
chair and slumped down into it, propping her elbows on the
table and her chin in her hands and looking at me with disgust. "You look horrid."

I made coffee and rubbed my eyes. "You look like a breath
of spring. You want me to cook you some breakfast? If not,
I'm going to have cold cereal."

"Daddy took me to breakfast. I didn't come here to have a
nice little mother/daughter breakfast and forgive you for tearing our family apart"

I laced my fingers together tightly to keep them from slapping fire into her cheeks. Physically she was a combination of
three people. She had Drew's straight blond hair, my mother's
clear blue eyes, and my short height. In attitude, she was often
too danged much like Drew's sarcastic mother.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" she shouted.

I took two steps toward her, leaned forward until she was
blurry, and whispered, "You will not speak to me like that ever
again, Crystal. Either respect me, or get out. I haven't torn our
family apart. Go ask your father about the divorce. He's got all
the answers, not me"

Her voice instantly went back to normal. "Oh, come on,
Mom. You had to have known about his affairs for years"

I went back to making coffee. "Sorry, doll. I didn't have a
clue. If I had, I'd have left years ago."

She gave me one of those looks that I'd seen from her paternal grandmother many times. "I've known for years. How could
you not have known? Besides, obviously he wasn't getting what
he needed at home, or he wouldn't have strayed."

I gritted my teeth and poured Cheerios into a bowl. "Tell
you what: when your new husband has a fling, you remember
those words. And when you realize your worst nightmares
and suspicions have become reality, you come on back here,
and we'll talk again. There will come a day when you'll need
a mother-trust me"

"Jonah and I are in love, and I'm never going to be your
friend after what you did to our family," Crystal declared.

"Momma said to give a man everything he wanted and to
make his life wonderful and he'd stay close to home. It didn't
work with your father."

"Evidently you didn't work hard enough at it. Daddy says
you're sleeping with Billy Lee Tucker. How long has that been
going on? From Daddy to the town's oddball? That's awful."
Her pert little nose wrinkled into a snarl.

"Billy Lee is my friend, and you will not call him names,
Crystal. He's the only one who's stood beside me in this
mess"

She threw her blond hair over her shoulder and pursed her
lips. "Daddy says he caught the man in your bedroom, and I
believe him."

"Believe what you want. Live the way you want. You are of
age according to the laws of Oklahoma. You can even get
married without my permission. You don't have to answer to
me at all, do you?"

She stood up so fast that the chair almost went over backward. "I'm old enough to make my own choices."

I nearly smiled. "Likewise. I do not have to answer to you
for any of my actions." I sat down at the table and started eating Cheerios. "Sure you don't want some breakfast?"

"I told you, I already ate. Has your mind gone along with
your style and class?"

"Guess so. You got anything else to say?"

"Just that I'm ashamed of you"

She'd grow up someday and regret saying such mean things.
Maybe I'd forgive her. Maybe I wouldn't. But I was sure that
whichever way it shook out, the sun would come up, and the
world would keep spinning on its axis.

"I'm sorry you feel that way. Did your father consult with
you about Charity?"

She stuttered and stammered, but the words wouldn't form.
Finally she slapped the table so hard, the milk in my cereal
slopped out in big drops all over the plastic place mat.

"I don't have to listen to this," she said with clenched teeth.

"You know the way to the door, honey. This is my house.
From now on I do what I want, and no one sends me on any
kind of a guilt trip. Not even you, as much as I love you"

Her sweet little world had shattered into pieces, and she
couldn't force me to put it back together again. "You're not my
mother. She wouldn't say those things to me"

"Oh, I'm your mother, all right. And I should've been more
like this the whole time you were growing up. It would have
been a much better role model than who I was in those days. I
should have confronted my doubts instead of burying them.
I'm going to get dressed and go out to the nursing home to see
your grandmother. Want to go with me?"

"Not on your life. I'm not going anywhere with you. If it
were possible, I'd file for a divorce from you."

"Someday you'll grow up. Until then have a wonderful life
and know that I love you" Surprisingly enough, I wasn't crying. I couldn't begin to imagine having this conversation before the ladies' room day without shedding enough tears to
flood the Pacific.

"I might love you back if you'd give up this crazy lifestyle
and go back home to Daddy." Her voice had turned into
whining.

"Did he send you here to ask me that?"

"He hoped I could talk sense to you. He misses you. I guess
he was wrong." She raised her tone a few octaves as she started
toward the door.

If she was waiting for me to break into tears and throw myself at her feet, she'd better get ready to grow roots down through
the floor, the basement, and even deeper, because I didn't care
if Drew missed me.

"Guess you never know how much you like the water until
the well runs dry, and if I can't have your love unconditionally, then I'll just have to do without it until you grow up.
Drive safely," I said.

She slammed the door so hard, it rattled the pictures on the
wall. I poured myself a cup of coffee and carried it upstairs
without a tear and without looking back. Both of which surprised me.