JANICE BLEW COFFEE clear across the room.
Silence reigned, everyone staring at Janice or the spew of fine French roast that trickled down my mother’s handcrafted cherry cabinets. Only Morgan wasn’t fazed. She took the coffeepot from Lupe’s hand with a dramatic flourish that would have done my mother proud, poured herself a cup, added generous portions of cream and sugar, then stirred with a clink of silver on china that felt like the ominous tick of a time bomb.
“What do you think, Mom?” she finally said, a smile lurking on her orange-lipsticked mouth.
From the expression on her mother’s face, it wasn’t hard to guess what Janice thought. And no doubt she would have spewed more than coffee if my mother hadn’t walked in.
“Morning, good morning,” she sang, her mood clearly back into the rose-colored shades. That was one of the hardest things to anticipate with my mother. Her mood. Given the impending divorce, I’d expect that pendulum swinging off the charts. But she had been surprisingly happy this time—as if she were in the stage of finding a man rather than losing one.
“Bonjour, my little kittens.”
She accepted a cup of coffee from Lupe and took a sip. “Dee-vine,” she added, giving a little shiver of delight, then stopped and looked around. “What? What is going on?”
Morgan smiled at her grandmother. “I’ve decided to be a debutante and I just told Mom.”
A little technicality here: she hadn’t actually been invited. But hey, as they say, the devil is in the details.
My mother froze much like everyone else, then she set her cup down and opened her arms to her grandchild. “Oh, my stars, you are going to be the most fabulous debutante ever born!”
In light of Morgan’s fashion sense and attitude, this was a stretch. What’s more, I doubted she had been practicing the Texas Dip since birth and felt she had the very real potential of following in her aunt’s infamous footsteps. But what was more important, I applauded my mother for this surprising burst of altruism.
Ridgely turned to Janice, grabbed her by the shoulders, and hugged her close. “You must be so proud.”
You can imagine.
I could tell Janice was composing herself, her sense of women’s rights doing battle with her teachings of being true to oneself. Talk about being caught on the dual prongs of the proverbial pitchfork. If she stated the emotion that was on her face (No way in hell any daughter of mine is going to be a deb.), she’d prove that everything she had taught Morgan about being whoever she wanted to be was a lie. But if she agreed, well, even I could see that would be a hard pill for her to swallow. I might not be overly enamored of debutante balls, but my sister-in-law was rabidly against them.
Sue me, but I was amused.
“What do you think, Mom?” Morgan persisted, barely holding back a grin.
“Well, I—”
“I think it is simply grand,” Ridgely said. “In fact,”—she glanced at Janice—“I have a brilliant idea! You and Carlisle will work on the ball together.”
This, I didn’t find so amusing.
“Think of it. The Wainwright family sticking together, and all that.” Mother gave a general wave of her hand. “It will send a message loud and clear that no one messes with us. It’s a master stroke of genius. I should have thought of it sooner.”
“Now, Mother,” I began. “I think it’s great that Morgan wants to be a deb. But really, Janice doesn’t want anything to do with any stuffy social committee. I can handle it myself.”
“Ridgely, really,” Janice began through clenched teeth. But she got no further.
“Pshaw! It’s a marvelous plan!”
My mother really must have been desperate if she was willing to let me and my sister-in-law get involved with the ball.
Janice didn’t look any happier about this turn of events than I was, and her jaw muscles ticked as if she were trying extremely hard to hold herself together.
My brother, Henry, pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen. At the sight of us, his ever-ready smile went still, his eyes narrowing as he stopped and took a look around. He was smarter than his dashing good looks might lead one to believe and he knew something was up. So he did what any sane male would do in similar circumstances. He turned on his heel and attempted to make a hasty retreat.
“Henry Herbert Cushing, stop right there.” This from my mother.
He did as he was told, hanging his head. I heard him grunt before he straightened and turned around. “What’s wrong?”
Ridgely went from stern to excited in the blink of an eye. “Morgan is going to make her debut! And Janice is going to serve on the steering committee with Carlisle. Isn’t this wonderful news!”
Henry stared in disbelief, glancing from his daughter to his wife. “You’ve agreed to this?”
“Of course not.”
Morgan preened in triumph as if to say, See, you’re all talk, Mom.
Janice telegraphed silent (frantic) messages my brother’s way. Back me on this! Tell her no!
Henry turned to me, those eyes boring deep, followed by a hard glance at our mother. Then he burst out laughing.
“Hell. This will be better than fireworks at a Fourth of July picnic.” He walked over to the coffeepot where Lupe handed him a cup. “The lovely Lupe,” he teased and accepted.
When he turned back, his wife was right there, and he nearly washed her with coffee when he jerked in surprise. But Janice Josephine Reager wasn’t going to take this lying down. “Honey,” Janice said to her husband, her smile more a baring of teeth. “Are you saying you approve of not only our daughter being herded out on stage trussed up like cattle at auction—”
“Mom!”
“—but me helping her do it?”
“Good Lord, Janice,” my mother snapped. “There is no auction. The debutante ball is an age-old tradition that makes a girl feel special. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Forget it, Gigi,” Morgan said, referring to my mother. “Mom isn’t going to say yes. I knew she was a hypocrite. Yeah, right, I should be anyone I want to be. Only if it’s what she wants me to be.”
Morgan banged down her cup like a two-year-old, coffee sloshing over on the granite countertop.
I swear I could hear the gears working in Janice’s feminist brain as she desperately foraged for a Pulitzer Prize—worthy speech to convince her wayward daughter of the error of her ways.
But then she surprised us all. “You’re right, Morgan.”
She was?
Though on closer inspection I could see that Janice had something up her sleeve.
“That was hypocritical of me,” she conceded. “If this is what you want, you can be a debutante. In fact, I’ll be on the committee just as Gigi wants.” She hesitated, her brow furrowing with exaggerated seriousness. “I’ll even go with you to have your hair redyed its natural color and the rings taken out of your ears and that one from your lip. You’ll look fantastic,” she gushed with enough fake enthusiasm to impress even me. “And, of course, you’ll have to get rid of the orange nail polish and the brightly colored clothes. But it’s going to be great!”
“What?”
“You don’t think that in the lily-white world of debutantes they let you look like a Rorschach ink blot test recast in color, do you, sweetheart?”
Morgan’s face screwed up with fury. This, apparently, had not occurred to my niece.
And the point goes to Janice.
Morgan swung her head around to look at my mother.
“Yes, dear, you’ll have to fix yourself up a bit.”
Now it was Janice’s turn to look smug.
Mother and daughter faced off in the Wainwright family kitchen, and I could see that Janice was certain she had found the perfect means to get her way. Morgan saw it too. And Morgan was no dummy.
The teenager who was supposedly on the verge of true womanhood (not to mention swore she wanted to be launched into the world as a true lady) drew a deep breath, then said with Grace Kelly aplomb, “I was getting tired of orange anyway. I am going to be a debutante.” Then her eyes narrowed. “And I’m going to be the best freaking debutante this godforsaken, sheep-happy hillbilly town has ever seen.”