34

MOM CALLED WITH hurt feelings, to say she hadn’t got a card, not to mention flowers, from her only daughter for Easter and her only daughter had not even asked about the annual Easter potluck lunch at First Methodist.

“Sorry,” I told her. “It’s been—hectic. Mostly all I did the last month was get Beulah ready for her last Puppy Evaluation before the Training Trials.” I couldn’t go into the hydro-electric ordeal. I couldn’t mention anything about James’s hope that he had found real parents. And I guess it was the first time, or at least noticing it was the first, that there wasn’t much of anything at all I’d been doing that I could tell my folks about.

“Uh, huh,” she said, not about to spend time on my dog. “Let me tell you, since you forgot to ask, about the ambrosia I fixed, as my contribution to potluck, which in some cases, I have to say, even for church people who ought to give the occasion some care, is too much luck and not enough pot. My ambrosia, as I don’t have to remind you, is a legend. I could have made twice as much and not brought home a spoon of it. Isn’t that right, Talbot?”

Daddy, on the other phone, agreed. “Your mother’s a legend.”

“You get that instant pistachio pudding—which is not just on any shelf, let me tell you—the canned chunky pineapple and canned crushed pineapple, see you have different textures here, and shredded coconut, which you used to could get without sweeteners, but now you have to allow, and chopped pecans and those little marshmallows. I don’t like the colored ones. You stir in Reddi-wip, and then garnish it with maraschino cherries. I didn’t write you about that, honey, if you want the truth, on those nice water-color note cards you sent me, because I didn’t know how to spell maraschino.”

Daddy chimed in, “Your mother is just saying that, the actual truth is she wanted to talk to our daughter, you, today. She had the blues, not hearing from you.”

Mom admitted it. “We don’t hear from you and we don’t hear from you, and people are asking about you, and if you’re going to let Millie and the baby stay in that house that was yours, and what Curtis plans to do for you. And I have to say you haven’t shared this information with your own mother. Plus they had Danny’s christening in our very own church, now how many tongues do you think wagged over that?”

“Mom.” Where my life was headed after Beulah went on to a blind person or didn’t, I hadn’t a clue about or even minimal interest in at this minute, with her standing by my chair, and both of us wanting to get out into the bright sun and romp about. Past that, I couldn’t get my mind around it. Maybe I’d sleep in my car or rent a room over the garage behind Curtis’s mom’s house. That would give the town something to talk about. “Mom, I don’t know.”

Daddy coughed, to let me know he intended to get a word in. “Tell that boy of yours I enjoyed the photographs of the machines in the water-power plant. I bet they make a racket will take your head off, something that big. I put them up in the hardware on the bulletin, they’re of interest to customers. I put a little sign under them, YOUR RUN OF THE MILL TURBINES, because that’s a figure of speech, you see, but here they are doing that exact thing. I mean they used to. Run the mill.”

“James will like hearing that,” I told him.

“Well, sweetie, on that topic,” Mom said, “you could move that boy along a bit, somebody like that, a studious type, they need a little prod sometimes to get themselves to notice that a certain marriageable person is about to get away from them.”

“He’s taking students abroad this summer, Mom.”

“Well, we’ve got fall down here, remember. Tell him to come see our fall. Just because we don’t put it in the paper and call our leaves foliage.”