The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies (5 page)

When the senior Mr. Moseley died, the junior Mr. Moseley continued the practice, and Lizzy (who had finally put Reggie’s diamond in a box in her dresser drawer) had gone to work every day happily cocooned in her romantic dreams. She continued to live at home, but her mother had somehow faded into the background—still bothersome, of course, but more like an annoying barking dog that lived in a house a block away, rather than on the other side of the fence. Lizzy, so fully focused on Mr. Moseley that she felt his presence shining on her like a warm spring sun, lived for the hours she spent at work. It had been rather like living in a dream that was so intense and so magically real that it usurped all other realities. It hadn’t mattered that the object of her adulation didn’t return her feelings—or even appear to notice them.

In fact, Lizzy had gone on glorying in her unrequited love even after Mr. Moseley had courted and married a blond debutante from a wealthy Birmingham family, built a big fancy house out near the country club, and fathered two girls. Then had come his election to the state legislature, and Lizzy had dutifully carried on, keeping the practice going while he followed his father’s footsteps to the capitol in Montgomery.

That was probably what brought her to her senses. With Mr. Moseley away for weeks at a time, Lizzy woke up from her dream and began to realize what an utter fool she was making of herself. She toted her dime-novel romances out to the backyard and burned them. She took the treasured snapshot of Mr. Moseley out of the secret place in her billfold and added it to the fire. Then she went back to writing in her journal—but she kept it with her, in her handbag, so that her mother could not find and read it.

Mrs. Lacy, of course, never suspected any of this. She had decided that her daughter (her heart broken by the death of her young fiancé) would be a lifelong spinster, quite naturally preferring to live with her mother for the rest of her life. And Lizzy, who had been putting away money out of every paycheck against the increasingly remote possibility that something would happen to change her circumstances, found herself beginning to share her mother’s unassailable belief that the two of them would go on living together, forever and ever, world without end, amen.

And then something unexpectedly wonderful had happened.

Old Mr. Flagg died. He had lived across the street from the Lacys for nearly four decades, in a small frame bungalow with a postage-stamp parlor, a kitchen, two little upstairs bedrooms, a front porch with a swing, and a screened-in back porch. Mr. Flagg had been a gardener who lavished his time and attention on his large yard, where he grew sunflowers and a fig tree and pink roses on the trellis and a perennial border. There was also a small vegetable garden—just large enough for one person—only a step away from the back porch. Lizzy was suddenly seized by the idea that she had to have this house, and she had taken her improbable scheme to Mr. Moseley, who was in charge of settling the old man’s estate.

But Mr. Moseley didn’t think it was improbable at all. With his help, Lizzy secretly bought the house, commissioned the necessary repairs—including a bathroom, electricity, gas, and water—and furnished it. She didn’t say a single word to her mother, who was in great suspense about the secret identity of the new across-the-street neighbor, until the work was done and her new home was ready to move into. The announcement had sent Mrs. Lacy into hysterics, of course, but Lizzy, for the first time in her life, had held her ground.

And even though her own house was not quite far enough away to qualify as an “escape” from her mother, it had made all the difference. For the first time ever, Lizzy held the key to her own life. She could step into her own place, close the door behind her, and be perfectly at home. She still felt a warm affection for Mr. Moseley, but the torch she had carried for so long was quite extinguished and there had been another man in her life—Grady Alexander—for more than a year. Lizzy wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about Grady, who always seemed to want something from her, and she knew (uncomfortably) that she would have to make a decision about their relationship before very long. But for the moment, she felt she could handle the situation. She hoped things would stay that way.

And now, as she turned up the path that led from the street to her front porch and saw Daffodil, her orange tabby, sitting on the porch railing waiting for her, Lizzy felt once again the pleasure of coming home to a house that was completely, entirely, and remarkably hers.

Except that her mother had a key.

This was a new situation—it had just happened the week before—and Lizzy was still quietly fuming about it. Mrs. Lacy had apparently lifted Lizzy’s spare key from its hook by the back door and taken it to Musgrove’s Hardware, where she said that her daughter wanted her to have a copy. Lizzy knew about this bald-faced lie, because Mr. Musgrove had happened to mention it to her when she stopped in to get a new rubber plug for her bathtub. She hadn’t yet decided whether to tell her mother to hand over the copied key or have Mr. Musgrove install new locks on the front and back doors. Either way, there was going to be a battle.

But Lizzy always tried to see things from both sides of the question and give the other person the benefit of the doubt. On balance, she felt that her mother probably wouldn’t use the key very often, and she was determined
not
to let it disturb the pleasure she felt each time she put her very own key in the lock of her very own door and turned it.

“Come on, Daffy,” she said, as the cat rubbed against her ankles, purring an enthusiastic welcome. “Let’s get you some milk.”

Stepping inside, Lizzy took a deep breath of the faint lemony fragrance she used to polish the furniture and savored the quiet that fell on her like a shawl every time she came in. On the left, a flight of stairs led up to two small bedrooms. On the right, a wide doorway opened into a little parlor, which she had furnished with a very nice Mission-style leather cushioned sofa, a chair she had reupholstered in dark brown corduroy, and a Tiffany-style lamp with a stained-glass shade. She had paid seven dollars and fifty cents for that lamp—far too much, she knew, but she had fallen in love with its amber-colored light, which gleamed richly against the refinished pine floors. Behind the parlor was the kitchen with a tiny dining nook, just big enough for two, looking out on the garden. At the end of the hall was a large storage room, part of which she had converted into a bathroom with a claw-footed tub, tiny sink, pull-chain toilet, and newly tiled floor. (Mr. Flagg had used the privy behind the garage.) It was the most perfect house in the world, she felt, and—after all the quarrelsome years she had lived with her mother—a perfectly private place, almost like a sanctuary.

She went down the hall to the kitchen, Daffy running eagerly ahead of her, and stopped stock-still in the doorway. In the middle of the oilcloth-covered table was her last-year’s blue felt cloche, newly decorated with exquisite peacock feathers and glass beads, all shades of blue—a gift from her mother, no doubt. Beside it was a folded note.

Her eyes narrowing, Lizzy picked it up. It was written in her mother’s hand, telling her to look inside the refrigerator, where she found four thick slices of Sally-Lou’s meat loaf (one of Lizzy’s favorite dishes), a large bowl of potato salad, two ripe tomatoes, and two pieces of apple pie. The note said that since there was enough food for two people, Mrs. Lacy was planning to join Lizzy for supper at six o’clock.

Obviously, Lizzy’s mother had used her key. And she wasn’t making any secret of it.

Huffing out an aggravated breath, Lizzy poured milk into a saucer for Daffy. As he got down to business, she went to the phone that hung on the wall. She and her mother were on the same party line, so she didn’t have to ring through to the telephone exchange. She cranked two shorts and a long.

In a moment, Sally-Lou answered with her pleasant, musical “Miz Lacy’s residence.”

“Sally-Lou, let me speak to Mama, please,” Lizzy said. Then she thought of something else. “Oh, before you get her, I wonder—have you heard from your aunt DessaRae since Miss Hamer’s niece and her friend have moved in?”

“Yes’m, Miss Lizzy, I has,” Sally-Lou said, and paused, turning the silence into the unspoken question:
Why you askin’ me ’bout this?

Sally-Lou had been fourteen when Mrs. Lacy hired her to take care of two-year-old Lizzy. An orphan, she had been a long-limbed, gangly girl, as black as night, young enough to play games and sing songs with Lizzy but old enough and smart enough to make the little girl mind. Still, Lizzy had grown up thinking of her as a friend. In fact, when Mrs. Lacy had climbed up on her high horse about something or other, Sally-Lou became not only a friend but an ally and a staunch defender, adroitly helping Lizzy stay out of her mother’s way and sometimes even standing between mother and daughter. She had never married—whether by choice or happenstance, Lizzy didn’t know. But as she got older and became more sure of herself, Sally-Lou had made her own place in the household and become her own woman. If you didn’t know her, she might seem so meek that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and you might think you could push her around. But she was strong as a stick of cordwood when need be, and feisty as a banty rooster.

“I’m asking because . . . well, because I saw Miss LaMotte this afternoon,” Lizzy replied, a little lamely. “I was just wondering how they were getting along.” Actually, she was asking because it had occurred to her that maybe, via Sally-Lou and DessaRae, she could get an insider’s view of Miss LaMotte.

Sally-Lou’s reply was guarded. “It look like they done moved in to stay, is what Aunt Dessy say. Brung they clothes and suitcases an’ such.”

There wasn’t much information in that, Lizzy thought, disappointed. She tried a different question. “Is Miss Hamer happy with the new arrangement?”

What Lizzy really wanted to know was whether Miss Hamer was aware that her niece had once been a vaudeville dancer, but she didn’t think it wise to ask. Anything she said to Sally-Lou would reach DessaRae’s ears, and in this case, that might not be a good idea. Not yet, anyway.

“Miz Hamer happy?” Sally-Lou chuckled wryly. “Well, now, I don’ know ’bout that, Miss Lizzy. That ol’ lady ain’t happy wi’ much of anythin’ these days. Aunt Dessy just say the ladies are gettin’ settled is all. She ain’t seen nothin’ of Miz Lake, though. She lay low in her bedroom, don’t come out at all, even to eat her meals.”

“Hmm,” Lizzy said, thinking that this wasn’t much help, either. “Well, keep your ears open for me, would you?”

The silence stretched out a little. “If you don’ mind me askin’, how come?” Sally-Lou asked, almost warily. “Somethin’ bad goin’ on over there?”

“Oh, no,” Lizzy replied hastily. “I’m just curious, that’s all.” Before Sally-Lou could ask another question, she said, “Could I speak to Mother now?”

“Sho thing, Miss Lizzy,” Sally-Lou said. “Hang on—I get her.”

Lizzy took a deep breath. When her mother came on the line, she said, very firmly, “Thank you for fixing my hat, Mama, but tonight isn’t a good night to have supper together.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Lacy said, and heaved a pained sigh. “Whyever not, Elizabeth?” There was a brief pause, and then her usual question, tinged with hopefulness: “You and Mr. Alexander are goin’ out for supper, I s’pose.”

Grady Alexander had been Lizzy’s boyfriend, more or less, for the past year or so. Mrs. Lacy, who had gotten used to having her unmarried daughter handy whenever she was needed, had opposed the relationship at first, finding all kinds of reasons why Grady wasn’t right for Lizzy. But in the past couple of months, she seemed to have changed her mind about him and was now leaning the other way—and leaning on Lizzy about it, too.

“You’re not gettin’ any younger, you know, dear,” she said, several times a week. “There aren’t that many eligible men in Darling. And he is
such
a fine-lookin’ gentleman.”

This sudden change of heart was a mystery, since Grady was exactly the same person he had always been. But maybe the answer was as simple as a dependable paycheck. Grady had a job in the Alabama Agricultural Department and it looked like he was going to keep it. Or maybe it was a matter of status. As the county agricultural agent, he was respected in the community. Either money or status, in Mrs. Lacy’s eyes, might have transformed him from Mr. Wrong to Mr. Right.

Lizzy took a deep breath. “No, Mama, I am not going out with Grady tonight. Myra May and Verna and I are going to the movie—just us girls. We’re going to see
The Saturday Night Kid.
Clara Bow stars in it.”

The minute the words were out of her mouth, though, she knew she had made a mistake. Her mother didn’t approve of Clara Bow, the “It Girl.” (Nobody knew what “It” was, exactly, but everybody suspected it was “Sex Appeal.”) In fact, Mrs. Lacy had told Mr. Greer, the owner of the
Palace
, that he should not show any more movies starring Clara Bow, because she was nothing but pure trash.

Mrs. Lacy said testily, “I wish you wouldn’t, Elizabeth. You know my opinion of Clara Bow.”

“Yes, I know, Mama. But—”

“And don’t you think we could have supper first?” Her voice tightened. “There’s something we need to talk about, Elizabeth. Something important. Surely you can spare a little time for your mother, can’t you?”

Lizzy straightened her shoulders. “Of course I can. But not tonight, Mama. Verna and Myra May and I are going to have supper together before the movie.” She tried to put a smile into her voice. “How about if you come over here tomorrow after church?” Her mother was Presbyterian and never missed a service. “We can have Sally-Lou’s meat loaf and potato salad for our dinner. Will that do instead?”

“I suppose it’ll have to,” her mother said reluctantly. She heaved a plaintive sigh. “I just wish you were goin’ out with Mr. Alexander tonight, Elizabeth. He is such a fine, upstandin’ Christian young man and comes from such a good family. His mother sits in the pew right behind mine every Sunday morning. You could do worse than marry him. And of course you don’t want to live out your life as a tragic old maid.”