My mother shakes her head, clucks her tongue a few times, and looks at me as if I’ve just died and someone is getting ready to load me into the back of the hearse. It’s bad enough that I’ve let a doctor get away and have taken a job cutting up dead bodies; in my mother’s eyes, that’s tantamount to sleeping in an alley with a screw-top bottle of wine wrapped in a brown paper bag. With the hearse I’ve hit an all-time low.
Desi pours a glass of wine and slips it into Mom’s hand, no doubt hoping it will take the edge off her. Mom takes a sip and then settles onto a stool at the breakfast bar next to Lucien. She turns and looks at me with an expression of keen disappointment.
“Mattie, if you need money I can help you out a little,” she says.
“Thanks, but I can manage. It’s about time I established some credit in my own name anyway. I was a fool to give David the financial reins in our marriage.”
“Well, he is the primary breadwinner, isn’t he?” Mom says, taking another sip of her wine.
“He
Mom dismisses my comment with a look of disgust and an impatient wave of her hand, as if she’s wafting away some nasty odor. “What have I always told you about letting your husband feel as if he’s the king of the castle?”
This is Rule #1 in Mother’s Rules for Wives, a set of ten conventions she swears will keep any marriage strong and intact. She’s been beating the rules into my and Desi’s brains since we were old enough to walk. The fact that Mom’s been married and divorced four times makes the validity of her advice a bit dicey, but she chooses to ignore that.
“You undermined David’s masculinity by insisting on working all the time,” Mom goes on. “It’s no wonder he strayed.”
Desi, who is stirring her sauce on the stove, sucks in a breath and gives me a wide-eyed look. Lucien wisely takes this opportunity to slip off his stool and escape from the kitchen.
“I’ve worked all my adult life, Mom. That was how I met David in the first place, if you’ll recall. Had I not been working, I most likely never would have married him.”
“Yes, but once you
“We had a nice home, until David wrecked it. And why shouldn’t I be allowed to do something I love the same way David does?”
Mom shakes her head sadly. “You just don’t get it, Mattie,” she says.
“No, Mom,” I say irritably. “You’re the one who doesn’t get it. David risked my life by sleeping with another woman. In
Mom is about to come at me with another comment when we are all literally saved by the bell—the chiming of the front doorbell. I make use of the interruption to escape Mom and her insane list of rules. By the time I reach the front door, Lucien has already opened it and I see William standing on the stoop. I hurry over to greet him and make introductions.
Lucien is courteous but it’s obvious he doesn’t want to get caught up making small talk to an odd-looking man with a bad comb-over, so I steer William out to the kitchen, praying that my instincts on this one are correct. After doing a quick round of introductions, Desi pours a glass of wine for William and hands it to him. Making no effort to conceal what he’s doing, he holds the glass up to the light and examines it carefully. Can’t say I blame him after what happened at my place.
“William is a very talented financial analyst and accountant,” I say.
“That’s nice,” Mom counters, watching him with a curious expression.
As soon as William is done inspecting his glass, he takes a sip and then focuses on the other two women in the room. He nods at Desi and then zeroes in on Mom. His expression softens noticeably and one of his eyebrows arches in surprise. With her porcelain skin, blue eyes, trim figure, and well-maintained blond dye job, Mom is an attractive woman, at least physically.
“It’s a definite pleasure to meet you,” he says, taking Mom’s hand and brushing his lips over it. As I watch, I make a mental bet with myself as to which of these germaphobes will try to wipe the cooties away first but surprisingly, neither one does. “Mattie said you were attractive, but she didn’t do your beauty justice. You are a very striking woman.”
Mom makes a stuttering motion with her mouth but no sound comes out. For once, she is speechless. She smiles at William and does a coquettish tilt of her head as a faint tinge of pink colors her cheeks.
William stares for a few seconds more, then looks over at Desi, who has just finished scraping Italian sausage from her cutting board into a frying pan. As she takes the board to the sink and starts to wash it with one of those soap wand thingies, William’s eyes grow huge.
“You need to use bleach,” he says. “Meats can harbor all kinds of bacteria that soap alone won’t get rid of. You’d be amazed at the horrible diseases you can get from something like that.”
My mental uh-oh is quickly countered by the heightened interest Mom is now showing William. “You are so right,” she says, apparently in control of her voice again. “I’m constantly on these girls about stuff like that. One can’t be too safe when it comes to germs.”
She locks eyes with William and I imagine love being born over the mental image of a Petri dish. I’m thinking this dinner is going to be a huge success on all counts when Ethan enters the room.
“Aunt Mattie,” he says. “Check out my new pet.” He thrusts his arm out as he approaches and there sitting on his sleeve is a three-inch-long bug. “It’s a Madagascar hissing cockroach,” he says proudly. And as if on cue, the bug sits back on its haunches, waves its hairy antennae in the air, and hisses.
The hissing sound is closely followed by a high-pitched screech and a loud crash as William faints dead away, taking one of the bar stools down with him.
Chapter 32
Despite all the drama, the evening isn’t a total bust. When I couldn’t arouse William right away and the gash on his head refused to stop bleeding unless I put direct pressure on it, Desi called for an ambulance. There was some brief confusion when the ambulance arrived and saw a hearse already parked out front, but that was cleared up with a few explanations.
William is now awake but foggy, his comb-over safely contained inside a gauze turban, his body loaded on a cot rather than in a coffin. We follow the entourage outside to the driveway and watch as the EMS crew loads William into the ambulance. Mom insists on riding along with him and makes a big enough stink with the ambulance crew that they finally cave and allow her in the rig. As the ambulance pulls away, I can see my mother sitting next to William, stroking his arm and murmuring in his ear.
Lucien, who briefly appeared in the kitchen right after the incident, has been ensconced in his office ever since, searching his law books in case William decides to sue. Ethan is in his room, hopefully locking his pet roach back inside its cage.
As Desi and I watch the ambulance disappear down the street she says, “I do believe you made a love connection there.”
“Not exactly the way I hoped the night would go but hey, I’ll take it.”
“I’m sorry about Ethan,” she says. “I keep telling him he needs to be careful about showing his bug collection to other people, but he gets so excited he forgets. The kid loves bugs. He reads everything he can get his hands on: books, Internet sites, magazines . . . you name it.”
“It’s okay. In fact, I think it bonded Mom and William faster than any quiet dinner would have.”
“It could have been much worse, you know,” Desi says as we turn to head back into the house. “Ethan could have brought out one of his fly farms.”
I’m afraid to ask but do it anyway. “Fly farm?”
“It’s an enclosed terrarium type of thing filled with maggots and flies. Ethan has six different ones in his bedroom because he’s studying the reproductive cycles of various types of flies for a school science project.” Desi pauses and shudders. “He’s pretty much done with it at this point. All he has left is to organize his data and write a report. It can’t be soon enough for me. I don’t mind the flies so much but all those maggots give me the
