Georgia Bottoms

  Sometime after three a.m., Brother came stumbling in drunk, third night in a row. He thundered upstairs like a horse busting out of his stall, colliding with every wall and banister on the way to his room.

  Georgia got up and went down to find the door standing open, inviting the whole world to come right on in.

  Whizzy was standing guard. The sight of Georgia started his tail wagging. She bent down to scratch behind his ears, and shut the door.

  It took a while to drift back to sleep. The next time she started awake, the digital clock was cheeping and it was dawn. She felt a pulse of excitement, like Christmas morning when she was a kid. She sprang out of bed without pausing for her usual sigh—God, how she looked forward to this day! She loved being the Perle Mesta of Six Points, her house overflowing with ladies oohing and ahhing at the excellence of the food and decor. She loved overhearing their compliments when they didn’t realize she was eavesdropping. Georgia was a long way from wealthy, but once a year she got to feel like the richest lady in town.

  The phone was ringing when she stepped out of the shower. She threw a towel around herself and dripped into the hall. It was Lon Chapman at the bank. He always called before his tellers got in if he needed to make some adjustment to their Tuesday night appointment.

  Georgia was careful to maintain legitimate friendships with the men in her life. It was easier than sneaking around trying to hide their calls from Little Mama. Georgia kept her money at Lon’s bank, for instance, so he had a good reason to call.

  “Hey there,” she said. “How’s the money business?”

  “Come jump in, the money is fine,” Lon said with a laugh. “How’s the beautiful business?”

  “Oh, you flatter me, Lon! And don’t let me stop you.”

  Lon laughed. He was a fun guy—bushy steel-wool hair, wide homely face, a big booming laugh that went off at intervals like a cannon. He talked tough, like a TV detective. He wore swanky clothes (dark shirts, white satin ties) and fancied himself a kind of Six Points playboy, divorced twice when he was younger and single ever since. Several times a year he drove his flashy gold Cadillac to New Orleans for God knows what kind of lost weekend. A few times he’d invited Georgia along, but she’d told him she had no interest at all in New Orleans.

  That was one of her biggest whoppers ever. She hadn’t been to New Orleans, but she knew it better than some people who lived there. She’d read all the books, studied the maps. New Orleans was Georgia’s favorite place in the world. She knew it was her destiny to go there. Every fantasy she ever had about her life ended up in New Orleans. Someday, somehow, when Little Mama was gone, and Georgia’s Six Points days were over, she would get down there. And then she’d never leave. She would cling to that place like moss to a tree. She would grow old there, and die there. They would place her body in one of those elegant marble tombs that hold you up out of the damp.

  It would be nice to make her first trip to New Orleans on the arm of a big spendy guy like Lon Chapman, who would spring for the best cocktails and suppers, the nicest hotel—an elegant French Quarter inn with a courtyard, a fountain, and a banana tree, like the one in the souvenir brochure from Mama and Daddy’s honeymoon.

  “What can I do for you, Lonnie?”

  “Listen, babe, I know you’re busy today but I was hoping I could stop by tonight anyways. Okay? Late is fine with me.”

  “Oh Lon, honey, not possible, sorry. Did you forget? Today is my September luncheon.”

  “Yeah, but that’s lunchtime, right? I’m talking about tonight. As late as you want to make it. I picked us up a nice bottle of vino in Meridian.”

  Georgia felt a little wave of irritation—but slow down, now, why should Lon care a thing about your luncheon? That’s for ladies. Be flattered he even remembered you were having it.

  “Lonnie, I would love to oblige you, sugar, but you don’t know how much work it is cleaning up after all these ladies. They go through this house like a pack of wild dogs. By eight o’clock tonight, I’ll be too pooped to pop.” She lowered her voice. “I’ll make it up to you next week.”

  “Aw come on, Georgia. I need to see you! How ’bout… right now? I could say I got a bank association meeting—”

  Honestly. It wasn’t a month ago Lon called at the last minute to cancel their Tuesday night, some flimsy made-up excuse, and now he wants Georgia to turn cartwheels to work him in on the busiest day of her year? Men have way too much regard for themselves. They start thinking you belong to them, you are their property, you should be ready to entertain them whenever they get a whim to be entertained.

  Some girls might conduct their affairs that way. Not this girl.

  “No chance, Lonnie, sorry!” She kept her voice light. “I’ve got a to-do list as long as your arm. Just talking to you now is making me late.”

  Here came Little Mama down the hall. Lately her forgetting seemed to be worse in the morning. This morning what she had forgotten was her bathrobe. Here she came out of her room in a saggy old bra and big white underpants riding up around her waist. Georgia started to scold her… averted her eyes instead. Little Mama scuttled to the bathroom and slammed the door.

  Lonnie kept talking: “Come on, now, babe, you don’t know how bad I been—uhm… Yes, okay.” His voice straightened out. “Well, of course, with those debentures coming due, I’ll have to notify the bank’s attorney and then we can authorize the release of those funds. Let me call him, and I’ll call you back.”

  Thank God for whichever teller had come in early. “Okay, Lonnie,” said Georgia, “you just do that, you little sweetie. Call me tomorrow, I’ll tell you all about the luncheon.”

  The bathroom door swung open, giving Georgia a panoramic view of her mother on the toilet, baggy panties at her ankles.

  That door was out of plumb, like every damn door in this house. You had to pull up on the knob to make it catch.

  Squinting to blur the view, Georgia chucked the phone onto its cradle and sprinted down the hall. “Shuttin’ the door for you, Mama,” she called, easing it closed. Didn’t want to slam it and give the poor thing a heart attack when she was obviously not all there this a.m.

  In all her careful preparations, Georgia had never considered that Little Mama might not be well enough to stand around pretending to co-hostess the luncheon, as usual. In Georgia’s mind, Mama’s forgetting was not that bad—not so much worse, anyway, that anybody needed to do anything. Now she found herself wishing for somewhere to park Little Mama for the afternoon, get her out of the house without hurting her feelings. She couldn’t follow her around all day making sure she didn’t take off her dress in front of people.

  Georgia threw on shorts and a gingham work blouse. She made her bed extra neat, for the nosy ones who would “accidentally” wander into her room. She laid out the Lauren dress (so gorgeous, that emerald shade) and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on Brother’s doorknob. After that early-morning arrival, she could count on him to sleep through the entire luncheon.

  She hurried downstairs to look at the timing chart.

  Not even started, and already ten minutes behind!

  She could skip breakfast—that was five minutes. Also she had blocked out five minutes to call Krystal to remind her to bring the cut-glass plates for the Red Velvet, Jell-O, and Coca-Cola cakes. She decided to trust Krystal to remember, and bang! Right back on schedule.

  At this hour, all the ladies would be laying out their nice dresses, fixing their hair. The phone wouldn’t ring for the next couple of hours, which was good because the schedule kept Georgia hopping. She hurried around trimming candlewicks, smoothing creases out of tablecloths, up and down the stairs dozens of times.

  Krystal’s table settings had taken an extra-dramatic turn this year. She chose a nature theme, lots of twigs, pinecones, bare branches and mossy rocks, autumn leaves, darling little ponds of water in bowls. Napkins folded into decorative swans. Georgia’s gold-foil goody bags sparkled at each setting, amid clouds of decorative ribbon in ton
es of green and brown. The big house had never looked more festive. On every mantel and sideboard were greenery runners, chains of sweet-smelling balsam, heavenly splashes of freesia. (Tommy’s Dixie Florist was the big winner in all this.) Georgia filled her grandmother’s Depression-glass vases with great trumpet flourishes of scarlet gladiolus.

  She liked massing one kind and color of flower for impact. She had placed the glads in tepid water early to ensure they would open to the maximum red at noon.

  Something nagged at her about Lon Chapman’s call. Some reason she should give in and let him come by tonight. She struggled to remember. Something he could do for her?—

  Another blank Rolodex card.

  Damn it! Too many of those lately. Her head was overloaded with useless information—sometimes she woke up reciting the list of ingredients from a recipe.

  Something Krystal had said…

  Last night, when they were making napkin swans. Krystal looked over her specs and said, “All I need is one old bastard to cave. That would give all the others an excuse.”

  That was it: Krystal’s annexation plan. Half the old bastards on the town council were telling her privately they wished they could go along with it. They just didn’t want to be the one to go first.

  Lon Chapman was one of those bastards.

  Georgia went to the phone in the kitchen. No dial tone. That was surprising. The phone was the most dependable appliance in the house. She tapped the hook with her finger. Nothing.

  She must have left it off the hook upstairs, when Lonnie called.

  She hurried up to the phone table. Sure enough, one end of the phone sat off the cradle, at an angle. No wonder the house had been so quiet all morning.

  Georgia tapped the switch hook. The dial tone returned. She took out her address book and dialed the bank’s number.

  Busy? She’d never known the bank’s line to be busy. This was one of those mornings when nothing was going smoothly. She made a note to call him later.

  Georgia didn’t often meddle in the lives of her men. When she did, she was careful not to leave fingerprints. She would never go directly to Judge Barnett, for instance, and insist he give in to Krystal on annexation. In matters of money or politics, a man will listen to practically any other man before he will listen to a woman. Protest the sexism of it all you want, but Georgia knew it was true. Her method was to convince Man A to do a favor for Man B, who would pass it on through Men C, D, and E, back to A. That’s how Georgia got things done without anyone in Six Points realizing she was the one doing it.

  According to the chart, she was now eight minutes ahead of schedule. Her next job was to preheat the ovens and begin moving food out of the fridges and chest freezer.

  Georgia went up the hall to the pine-paneled den where Little Mama spent the afternoons watching her stories. She steeled herself to look around the door—surprise, Mama was all dressed in her nice pale-blue Sunday go-to-meeting dress, thinning hair brushed into place.

  Georgia said, “Don’t you look pretty!”

  Little Mama had even put on her best necklace, a gold locket trimmed in tiny seed pearls. She looked perfectly presentable except for the fuzzy pink bunny slippers with rolly eyes. She gazed at the TV, murmuring at low volume. “I wanted to have coffee but I heard you banging around and I didn’t want to get in your way.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Georgia. “Come on, I’ll make you a cup. You ready for your cereal?”

  “Naw I’ll just stay in here out of the way.”

  “Aw come on, Mama. You must be starving.”

  “I’m all right…” Little Mama’s voice trailed off. This pitiful act wasn’t like her at all. Georgia stepped into the room to see better, and discovered what looked like blood caked at the corner of her mouth. Upon closer inspection it was lipstick that had run off the tracks.

  Little Mama leaned to see the television. “I don’t know why they show the same movie on every station.”

  “What movie?”

  “The Towering Inferno.”

  “Oh, I like that one.” Georgia backed out of the room. “That Steve McQueen is one good-looking man.” Little Mama didn’t answer. “I’ll bring your coffee, Mama. You sit back and enjoy the movie.”

  Little Mama stared at the TV.

  Definitely something off with her today. Not just the lipstick and the bunny feet, but a new frailty, a sense that she had lost ground, just since yesterday.

  Ted Horn had explained that in early-stage dementia you have good days and bad days in no particular order. This wasn’t shaping up to be one of the good days.

  Georgia was pouring water into Mr. Coffee when the phone rang. She reached it just in time to hear the caller hang up. The clock said 10:58. Probably a last-minute RSVP.

  She slid the first sheet of stuffed figs into the top oven, set the timer, and began carrying serving dishes from the back-porch fridge to the mahogany table in the dining room.

  Krystal’s foresty stylings of moss and fern made the room look like a National Geographic special. She had spent all last evening dragging in bags of dead plant material, festooning every available surface with Spanish moss, garlands, dried leaves, cranberries, sprays of seedpods. Although Georgia was a little worried about ticks and spiders coming out of all that moss, she had to admit the result was lovely.

  She reached into the sideboard for her camera. The flash whistled warming up. She liked to take scrapbook pictures of the table in all its perfection, before the herd came stampeding through.

  The coffeemaker was gurgling, spitting. Georgia made up a tray with coffee, orange juice, and Cap’n Crunch, and carried it to Little Mama, still wrapped up in her movie. (Lately it was a struggle to confine Cap’n Crunch to breakfast; Little Mama would happily eat it three meals a day.) “Here, we need to fix your lipstick, and I brought you some shoes.”

  “I’ve already got on my shoes,” said Mama.

  “No, those are bunny rabbits. These are your shoes.” She held them out.

  Little Mama smiled on the bad-lipstick side of her mouth. “But these keep my feet warm.”

  “The ladies will be here in an hour. You look so pretty otherwise, you don’t want to be wearing bunny rabbits at our fancy party, do you? Come on, be a good girl and put your shoes on.”

  Mama snapped, “Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady! You are not too big for me to turn you over my knee.”

  “Okay.” Georgia dabbed at the side of her mouth with the washcloth. “Hold still.”

  Mama jerked away. “I swear to God, you are gettin’ too big for them britches, Missy Jean.”

  “Okay, Mama. I’m sorry.”

  “The same thing over and over,” Little Mama said. “I am just so tired of it.”

  “Tired of what?”

  “This damn movie. They keep showing the same part. I don’t know what they’re hoping to prove.”

  Georgia glanced at the screen. There was a shot of the skyscraper engulfed in a huge cloud of fire, with helicopters darting around like dragonflies. “Hang on, Steve McQueen will be back in a minute.” She got up. “I’ve got to get dressed.”

  She went to the kitchen and dialed Krystal. The phone rang and rang. This struck Georgia as odd, like the busy signal at the bank. If Rhonda was away from her desk it should click over to the answering machine. What the hell was wrong with the phones today? Ma Bell had better not be screwing around with the system on the day of Georgia’s luncheon.

  Georgia made multiple trips from the deep freeze to fill the galvanized washtub with crushed ice. She brought out trays of Lobster Scallion Shooters in votives and began wedging them into the ice in decorative rows, like the picture in Bon Appétit. It was only a hundred thirty dollars’ worth of lobster (only!) but doled out among all those little glasses, it looked like a million bucks. One whole bright-scarlet lobster was splayed out in the middle, just for show. Spotlit at the center of the table were rows of votives containing a crimson dab of sauce and a sprig of green onion
, backed by a wall of red glads. The display was awe inspiring.

  Georgia stood back to admire the effect. Girl, you have outdone yourself. Sometimes she heard Daddy’s voice congratulating her, saying the nice things he never actually said when he was alive. Daddy was one of those people who was more enjoyable to think back on than he was at the time. Even Little Mama didn’t have much to say about him, and she was married to him for fifty years. Georgia never forgot how unhappy they were, all that fighting. She used to vow that she would be rich when she grew up, so she’d never have to marry a man she didn’t like.

  Anyone looking at this lobster display would think she was wealthy, all right. She liked that—she had restored a bit of cachet to the Bottoms family. She knew it was shallow, but to Georgia, appearances really were everything.

  Speaking of which—if she didn’t get dressed, the first guests would arrive to find her looking like an old ragbag. She hurried to her room, tossed off her party-prep clothes, squeezed into control tops and Wonderbra, the silky emerald Lauren dress. She ran a brush through her hair, touched up her makeup, spritzed a cloud of Chanel in the air. She had just put on her daytime diamond earrings when the doorbell rang—here we go! Eleven thirty on the dot.

  Whizzy barked. Georgia called him upstairs and shut him up in Daddy’s room, where he would be much happier until the guests were gone.

  She paused before the gold-filigreed mirror in the center hall. She did look smashing. She blew a pouty kiss at her image, and carried a dazzling hostess smile to the door.

  Wouldn’t you know the first guest was Geraldine Talby, last seen looking irritated when Georgia pushed past her getting out of the pew to faint? Now Geraldine stood beaming on the porch. Her pantsuit was an awkward shade of pumpkin orange, with brown piping on the lapels. Autumnal, but not in a good way.

  “Why Geraldine, how wonderful to see you! How marvelous, you’re the first to arrive. Hey, that color really suits you. Come in!”

  Who wants to be first at a party? Personally, Georgia would have skulked around the block ten times to avoid such a fate, but it didn’t bother Geraldine. She chattered all the way down the hall. She burst out in a whoop at the sight of the Lobster Scallion Shooters. “Oh! My Lord! Would you look! At! That!”