Lily of the Springs (33 page)

Almond Icing

2 T butter, softened

1/3 cup milk

3 cups confectioner’s sugar

1 teaspoon almond extract

Cream butter and gradually add milk, sugar & extract. Beat until smooth, then spread on cake

July 1956

Bowling Green, Kentucky

I
heard the clink of the mailbox lid from the front stoop and quickly finished slathering peanut butter on a slice of white bread. Reaching for the jar of Welch’s grape jelly, I replaced the cap. I glanced out the kitchen window to make sure Debby wasn’t in the kiddy pool Jake had bought her at the beginning of summer—she wasn’t; instead, she was torturing that poor cat the neighbors had given us in early May, carrying it around by its neck in a stranglehold that made its eyes bulge in futile panic.

“Debby Ann!” I yelled through the opened window. “
Put down that cat right now
! I’ve told you a million times not to carry him around like that!”

Lord Jesus, it’s a miracle that animal hasn’t gouged her eyes out by now. Must be her guardian angel in disguise
.

Debby Ann, wearing a petal-pink sunsuit and white sandals, her blond curls tied up in twin pony-tails, looked at me through the window. The orange cat, held prisoner by her chubby little hands, also seemed to be looking at me with a forlorn expression that clearly said, “Please, lady. Save me from this monster child!”

“Debby
Ann
!” I yelled again. “
Did you hear me
?” Too late, I slapped my hand over my mouth. Dear God, Jake was sleeping!
When
was I going to learn to stop yelling in the middle of the day?

But at least my shout had the hoped-for effect on the headstrong child. Debby loosened her grip, and the cat seized the moment. With a disgruntled yowl, he scrambled out of her clutches and scurried off, finding refuge under a lilac bush. Debby Ann frowned and went after him.

“Debby Ann Kitty!” She squatted near the bush, trying to see under it. “Come here!” she ordered, having apparently caught sight of the cat. “Me
wuv
you, Debby Ann Kitty.”

I sighed and slapped the jellied slice of bread onto the one topped by peanut butter. God save the unfortunate animals loved by a three-year-old little terror named Debby Ann Tatlow.

“Come on in and wash your hands, Debby,” I called through the window, being sure to keep my voice down. I opened the new Norge

Customatic refrigerator that Jake’s company had installed when the old one died a few weeks ago and grabbed a bottle of milk.

Once I got Debby settled at her little plastic table out on the patio a few minutes later, I placed my hands on my hips and gave her a firm look. “You sit here and eat your lunch. I’m going to go get the mail, and I’ll be right back.”

Debby Ann took a big slurp of milk, leaving a thick, white moustache above her upper lip. She nodded solemnly. “Okay, Mommy.”

I turned to go into the house, but then hesitated. “That means no getting into the pool, no getting a-hold of Debby Ann Kitty, and
no
eating out of the cat bowl, you hear?”

Just last week, I’d caught her on all fours, meowing and eating the morning’s leftover biscuits and gravy out of the cat’s dish.

“Okay, Mommy,” said Debby Ann, pie-eyed and innocent-looking.

I shook my head.
Lord, three years on this planet, and she’s got that look down to a science
. One thing was for sure. No one could doubt there was Tatlow blood running through that one’s veins.

I went into the house and moved quickly into the living room to get the mail at the front door stoop. Grabbing it from the box, I hurried back out to the patio. Incredibly enough, Debby Ann was still sitting at her table, munching on her PB&J, all the world looking like a little angel. I hoped she wasn’t getting sick.

I sat down in a lawn chair and glanced through the stack of letters. It was a good mail day. Besides a couple of bills, there was a letter from Mother, and two light blue airmail envelopes, one postmarked Heidelberg, Germany, and the other from Honolulu. I quickly tore open the one from Germany. It had been weeks since I’d heard from Betty, and I was starved for news about her exciting life overseas.

Betty’s letters were
almost
as good as a visit. Written on both sides of the stationery in her pretty, sweeping script, her letters told of fancy dining-ins where she wore sequined evening gowns and fur coats, weekend shopping trips to Paris and skiing in the German Alps. I unfolded her letter and began to read.

Dear Lil:

I almost fell over when I saw that picture of Debby Ann you sent in your last letter. My God!!! You’re going to have to stop feeding that girl, kid. Before you know it, she’ll be as big as Davy.

I smiled, recognizing the irony in Betty’s voice. In the most recent picture she’d sent, Davy, nearly four, had looked like a miniature linebacker.

Well, girl, are you sitting down? No, I’m not pregnant. Heaven forbid! Eddie’s leave is coming up and you’ll never guess where we’re going. GREECE! Can you believe it? Eddie has booked us into a gorgeous hotel on the island of Rhodes. Oh, Lil, I wish you were here. We could all go together…of course, the down side is that you’d have to bring that…husband of yours. How is the old snake-in-the-grass, anyway?

I frowned. I supposed I’d never be able to convince Betty that Jake had changed. That he was a real family man now, holding down a steady job and buying kiddy pools for his daughter. A complete turnaround since Texas.

“Mommy, can I change into my swimming suit now?”

Debby Ann stood in front of me, looking so sweet that butter would have a heck of a time melting in her cute little rosebud mouth.

“Go ahead, but remember, you have to wait 30 minutes before you can go swimming. You don’t want to get cramps.”

Debby Ann was already halfway to the back door.

“You be quiet in there, you here?” I called after her. “You don’t want to wake up your daddy.”

Now that Jake was working the third shift at the factory, he didn’t get up until two or three in the afternoon. That had been hard for me and Debby Ann to get used to, trying to keep the noise down in the house. It had gotten better, though, once the weather got nice and we could spend most of our time outside. And it was swell having Jake home for supper again, giving us some family time together.

Flicking a finger at an annoying ant crawling up my arm, I went back to Betty’s letter.

The latest rage over here is what they call Swedish Fitness Centers, and I joined one a few weeks ago. It has all these work-out machines and a pool and a sauna. They offer classes, too, in dance and yoga. I’m taking a belly dance class right now. Trying to slim down so I can wear this hot pink pair of short-shorts I bought in Milan this spring. Are they wearing short-shorts in the states yet? They’re all the rage in Europe. Anyway, I love going to the fitness center, and I’ve already lost nine pounds. What are you doing to stay in shape, Lil? Still watching
Jack La Lanne
?

I gave a wry grin.
No, I don’t have time to watch Jack anymore. I have my own personal fitness system. It’s called the Chasing Debby Ann Work-Out Program
.

Betty’s letter continued:

Well, kid, I’ve got to close now. I have an appointment to get my hair cut before I have to pick up Davy. Oh, before I forget, thanks for the pictures of your new living room furniture. Your little house is so darn cute! Just adorable! I’ll bet it’s a hell of a lot easier to keep clean than this huge old monstrosity I live in. Thank God I have Gretta coming in once a week to clean. Oh, I know how that sounds! But really, all the military wives here in Germany bring in help, even the enlisted wives. It’s dirt cheap for us, and the local economy expects it. Well, I’m going to be late if I don’t get a move on, and believe me, Beirgette is so popular with the American women here, she’ll fill my space if I’m 30 seconds past my appointment. Take care, kid. Love you!

Betty

I sighed and folded the letter back in thirds before slipping it back into its envelope. Betty was so very lucky! Her life just seemed so full of excitement; something happening all the time, it seemed--trips to Milan and Paris and Greece. Hair appointments, fancy parties, fun friends. And to think, if Jake hadn’t been so durn anxious to get back to Russell County,
our
lives might be more like that. I might, at this very moment, be sitting on a beach in Hawaii instead of sweltering here in the back yard with nothing but a plastic blow-up pool to keep me cool.

I looked at the other airmail envelope—the one with the Honolulu postmark and Meg Tatlow’s tiny, pinched script in the upper left hand corner. The return address was different than the one Jake’s sister had had the last time she wrote. Instead of Fort Shafter, it had some oddball Hawaiian name--
Aiea
. I knew for a fact that Meg had re-upped in the Army for another two years, so why wasn’t she living on post anymore? Well, I reckoned Jake would tell me. I always left letters from his family unopened so he could read them first.

“Mommy, I ready!”

I looked up to see Debby Ann coming out the back door, and I burst out laughing. “Honey child, you’ve got your swimming suit on backwards.” But darned if she didn’t look cute as a button with her hair up in those pony-tails and her pudgy baby legs all tanned from the sun.

Debby Ann could care less about her backwards swimsuit. She was already making a beeline for the pool. I got up and dropped the mail into the lawn chair. “Wait a minute! Let’s get your bathing suit on right.”

“
No
!” She’d already reached the grass. “I swim
now
!”

“No, you’re not! You’ve still got ten minutes to wait!” I grabbed my daughter just as she reached the pool, and was trying to climb in. Debby let out a shriek that sent what felt like twin ice picks through my eardrums.

“
Hush, girl
! You’re going to wake your father!” I pulled the straps of Debby’s swimsuit off her shoulders and began to tug the garment down her body. It was like wrestling with a greased pig.

“
Noooooo
!” Debby howled, struggling like a little demon. “
Me want to swim now
!”

Debby wrenched herself away from my grasp and threw herself down on the grass, kicking and pounding the earth. Too late, I realized I shouldn’t have pushed the issue. So
what
if the little brat had her swimsuit on backward? Who was going to see her in our own back yard?

But I’d gone beyond the point of no return, and war had been declared. Screaming at the top of her lungs, Debby fought me every inch of the way as I yanked off the swimsuit, my patience snapping like a worn rubber band. I turned the little girl over on the grass and gave her a smart smack on the buttocks.

“
That’s
for being a big pain in the ass!”

Startled, Debby Ann caught her breath, and for a blessed second, she stopped screaming. But then she began again, louder than before. Exasperated, I stood up and glared down at her. “Okay, missy, just for this little drama, you can forget about going swimming this afternoon. You can just lay there on the ground and scream your heart out. But when you’re done, you’re going to go take a nap.”

Debby Ann kept screaming, her face as red as a garden-ripe tomato. I stood with my hands on my hips, at my wit’s end as to how to stop her. My eyes welled with frustrated tears, and I felt like bawling along with her. What kind of mother
was
I that I couldn’t get control of the situation?

“
What the Sam Hill is going on out here
?”

I turned. Jake stood at the back door, wearing only a pair of checked boxer shorts.

“Oh, just the usual,” I snapped, angry at my daughter, angry at myself for not being able to handle her. “Debby Ann is having one of her fits just because she can’t get her way.”

Jake’s brows knitted together. “Well, maybe if you didn’t spoil her rotten and mollycoddle her the way you do, she wouldn’t do it.” He stepped out onto the patio. “She’s got you wrapped around her little finger, Lillian.” He strode across the lawn, heading for the young hickory tree we’d planted just after moving in. “But I aim to put a stop to this behavior once and for all.”

My stomach began to roil with dread. As angry as I was with my daughter, I hated what was coming. Debby Ann, naked as a jaybird, was still sprawled on the grass, pounding her heels into the earth; eyes squeezed closed, she was screaming like a banshee.

Jake tore a slender limb off the tree and headed toward her. He flashed a commanding look at me. “You better go on inside. I don’t think you want to see this.”

“Jake, please!” I protested. “It’s not that—“

“Bad?” He stopped in his tracks. “You don’t think her behavior is that bad? Lily Rae, if we let her get away with stuff like this, Lord help us when she’s a teenager. We’ve got to start putting our foot down with her. You know I’m right.”

I looked at Debby Ann who was still wailing. Yes, I
did
know he was right. The child was just too willful. And God knew the discipline I’d been using wasn’t working.

I released a long, tremulous sigh. “Okay,” I said. “But please, Jake, don’t hurt her.”

Jake nodded, and I could tell by his face that he wasn’t looking forward to what he was about to do. “I won’t. Not any more than I have to. But Lily, this child has got to be taught a lesson.” He gestured toward the house. “Now, go on inside.”

Every cell in my body screamed in protest as I stepped through the kitchen door. I was barely inside when I heard the first slash of the switch followed by Debby’s outraged scream, more piercing than before.

I closed the door of the kitchen, then covered my ears with my hands, and burst into tears of my own.