Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt and Other Things I Learned in Southern Belle Hell (19 page)

Unlike Uncle Walter, I still couldn't hear my mother's voice. All these weeks of cruising around B'ville asking her questions, trying to integrate her into my life as Grandmother suggested, and I still couldn't hear her.

By the time I turned nine, the ALS had started to work its decaying ways on the muscles of her vocal cords. At first, it sounded like she was slurring, and we'd laugh that
oops! She must have had one too many glasses of champagne!
But as the disease stole more and more power from the neurons in her throat, Mom's words came out as grunts and groans struggling to shape themselves into comprehensible sentences. Sadly, more and more often, our ears were incapable of making sense of them. Along came the DynaVox, and Mom would spend endless spans of time typing her thoughts into a mini-laptop that would then read them in a computer-generated voice. “Dyna,” we called her, and she eventually became the only way Mom could communicate. So what did the real voice of the fully capable woman my mother had once been sound like? I couldn't remember. Was it screechy and high-pitched? Or low and breathy? Did she call my name quickly—“Jane!”? Or did she sing it out into two syllables, “Jay-ayne”? How did she construct a sentence? Did she ramble on? Or was she efficient and precise with her word choice? At least I remembered her laugh. That never changed, no matter how much her speech deteriorated. It kicked off as a bell tinkling, but if something was really funny, Mom's laugh turned into a train rumbling high-speed off the tracks into sweet chaos. Even after she couldn't speak, that woman could laugh, and she loved to hear me laugh. She called my laugh “her sweet nectar.” Cheesy, I know, but I liked it.

I wonder what she'd say about my laugh now that it's all hoarse and croaky from the cigarettes? Ugh.

And what would she say about the train wreck that was my own personal Magnolia Maid experience? Ugh times two.

I wish I could describe the final days of rehearsals as full of forgiveness and friendship, love, peace, and happiness. But the damage had been done. Regardless of our passionate plea that Mr. Walter not disband the Court, we had fallen apart. Chatterbox Brandi Lyn had resigned and it was like we had all received a memo that no one was to talk to or look at anyone else. Ashley wasn't speaking to Mallory, Brandi Lyn wasn't talking to anybody because well, she wasn't there, Zara wasn't talking to me, and Caroline was so terrified she just wasn't talking, period. She was a walking zombie, and who could blame her? Mizz Upton had ramped herself up into a frenzy way beyond her normal freak-show level. On the one hand, she was delighted that she had gotten one of her so-called undesirables off the Court. On the other, she worried like a madwoman about how the debut was going to come off since Caroline wasn't “Magnolia-ready.” She constantly fretted about all the potato chip–eating and romance novel–reading Caroline had engaged in instead of participating in training. Mizz Upton took every opportunity to remind her of all this, and let me tell you, that's such an effective way to inspire someone to greatness. Tear them down as much as possible so they'll feel really crappy about themselves, then they'll rise to fabulous heights. Riiiiiiiiiggggghhhhtttt. Whatever. Never fear, she used the same tactic on the rest of us as well. “When are you Maids going to understand that you simply are not ready for the responsibilities that lie before you!” Had we perfected our banking up? No! Did we have our curtsies down? NO, no, NO! Did we have any idea how to do the flight formation correctly? NO because we didn't have a queen yet.

I tried to talk to Zara, but she wasn't having it. Oh, she wallpapered a veneer of detached politeness/polite detachment, however you want to put it, onto her countenance, but she made a point of escaping over to the other side of the room as soon as she could extricate herself.
Fine, be that way, Zara,
I thought.

So, yeah, since nobody was talking to anybody at rehearsal, and I didn't feel much like talking to anybody anyway, B'ville had turned into a ghost town again. I had a lot of time on my hands, so I ran. I got addicted to
Glee
, which I watched while carefully sponging Brandi Lyn's vomit off my dress with dish soap. I started to look forward to Cosmo's visit and prepared for his arrival by trolling the Internet for everything I could find on international business and shipping. After all, we'd need
something
to talk about over long, leisurely dinners at the Petroleum Club. And I roamed around Grandmother's creakingly empty house trying to recollect my dead mother's voice and thinking about Walter Murray Hill's midnight revelation that it was she who pushed the idea of integrating the Magnolia Maids to begin with. Of course it had been Cecilia. Cecilia at seventeen had been blessed and perfect. Everybody loved her. She never did a thing wrong, had a completely normal life with two adoring parents. If she were alive, Daddy would never have left town, I never would have been kicked out of my own life and packed off to boarding schools or developed a bad attitude. Certainly, I would never have gotten a tattoo. No, I would have been sweet and wonderful and loving and kind and adored and adoring of others in return. I would have lived in a beautiful pink castle with a cute little pink lapdog and driven a little pink convertible and come in singing “The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Muuuuuuu-sic!” every day after school and would have just
adored
life! Cecilia and Cosmo and I would have gone on family vacations together to Paris and eaten croissants on the Seine and waxed eloquent about how
fabulous
our family life was!

Ewwwwww. Enough of that. But I did ponder over and over the question what would Cecilia do if she were in this situation?

I would have given anything to hear the answer.

A few days after the jail incident and about a week before our Boysenthorp debut, I was sitting out on the back porch furtively puffing on cigarettes and pondering the whole scenario once again. Zara's words were starting to infest my thought process. Was I personally responsible for this mess? Had I really overstepped my bounds? Hmmm. Okay, so maybe I did go a
little
crazy. Maybe I could have controlled my mouth a little better. Looked at the whole situation more clearly. Decided to keep my bear-sized trap shut given the fact that everyone in the car was tipsy. Maybe I
had
made a mistake.

And if Walter Murray Hill hadn't come down to the police station and thrown some of his high-class Old Bienville weight around, we might have been booked and gone to court and had to have done community service of a most un-Magnolia Maid variety. Me, I was accustomed to such getting in trouble and to paying the consequences—it had been my way of life for years—but the rest of the girls, they didn't have the criminal element gene anywhere near their DNA. No wonder the whole thing bothered them. Maybe I
was
to blame!

In the middle of the sinking ship of my unwelcome self-realization, the doorbell rang. I threw open the front door to find Ashley standing there.

Ashley?!

I glanced out to the street to see her Escalade, recovered from impoundment, parked at the curb. So she wasn't a hallucination, but still. All I could do was gape at the apparition before me until she rolled her eyes and scolded, “Jane!!! The proper thing to do is to invite me in and offer me a sweet tea.”

Shockingly, I did exactly what she said and a few minutes later we were out back on the porch. Grandmother had left for her Genealogical Society meeting, so I lit up another cigarette. “What are you doing here?” I asked Ashley.

“Well, don't get too excited! It's only because I have no one else to talk to that I'm here.”

“Still freezing out the Mal-ster?”

“Yes. And I'm certainly not talking to Katherine. And Courtney, well, she's as big a part of it as anybody else.” Ashley took a sip of her sweet tea. “You know the worst thing? We all live at Bienville Place. There are only four houses, Jane, and three of them contain people I never want to see again in my life!” Agitated, she grabbed for one of my cigarettes.

I raised an eyebrow. “Ashley, you smoke?”

“Sometimes.” She lit up, took two puffs, coughed up a storm, stubbed out the cigarette. “Ugh! How can you do this?”

“Practice. Self-hatred. Love of the nasty.”

Ashley jumped up and started pacing. “And I can't go anywhere without seeing someone who was at Lancer's the other night! Everybody in our circle, even the people who weren't there, knows what happened. They're all talking about me, I just know it!” She whirled in my direction. “Do you have any idea what that feels like?”

I laughed. “Uh, yeah. Happens to me every day.”

Ashley glared at me. “Thanks, Jane, the last thing I need right now is your sarcasm.” She slammed her sweet tea on the table and jumped up to leave.

I grabbed her arm. “Wait, I'm not being sarcastic!” I said. “In all seriousness, Ashley, it happens every day. Some old blue hair, or some middle-aged friend of my mother will see me out and tell me I'm the spitting image of Cecilia and how kind and generous and fabulous she was and how sad it is that I'm left here without parents. That's what they say to my face. And I know what they say behind my back is even worse because Mizz Upton told me.”

Ashley's head rocked into a slow nod. “That's true. People do talk about you.
I
talked about you…. Oh my God!” Her eyes fell to her sandals, in something that kind of appeared to be… shame? “Oh, Jane. I am so sorry. I just didn't think.”

“It's okay.” I shrugged. “Gossip. It's Bienville's favorite pastime.”

Ashley sighed and sat back down. “I don't see how you stand being talked about so much. I saw Andrew Lancer at the Stop and Pump the other day, and you know what he did? He turned and acted like he didn't see me. Like he didn't see me! We've been friends since the sandbox, Jane! How could he?”

I sympathized. “Or what about this? Has this happened? Where someone comes up to you and acts all friendly, ‘How are you doing? How have you been?' But the whole time you just know they're thinking ‘Wait till I call so-and-so and tell her what's going on!'”

Ashley gasped. “Oh my God, that happened yesterday! I ran into Missy Milliner at Dillard's, you know her, right?” I shook my head. “She's Katherine's first cousin on her mother's side, so of course she's heard about everything. It was so obvious she was pumping me for information!” Ashley looked relieved. “Jane, you totally get it!”

“I told you I live it,” said I. “By the way, what's the news on our jail time? Has it gotten out?”

“No. I think Uncle Walter really squashed it.”

“We should write him a thank-you note. ‘Dear Mr. Walter, thank you for saving our butts and keeping jail time off our permanent records.'”

Ashley laughed, and so did I. Wow, laughing with Ashley. One for the history books, as Mallory would say.

“There's something I've been wondering, Jane,” Ashley said. “That night, down at the bay, you tried to save me, didn't you?”

I looked away.

“Because I've been thinking about it,” she continued. “And I remember it was you who pushed so hard for us have a dance party. Then to leave. You knew what was happening and you tried to get me out of there, didn't you?”

Finally, I nodded.

“Why did you do that for me? After I was so horrible to you? Why?”

I shrugged. “Oh, you know, that party was boring anyway. All those drunk bastards running around with their Ping-Pong paddles and their beer bongs. It was time to go.”

Ashley leveled a no-nonsense “I am not letting you get away with that answer” look at me.

“Okay, fine,” I confessed. “I just didn't think anyone deserved that kind of humiliation. Not even you.”

“Wow. Thanks, Jane.”

“You're welcome.” Ashley reached for another cigarette but I knocked her hand away. “Ashley! You don't smoke!”

“I can't help it. I'm just so nervous.” Her fingers tapped incessantly on the arms of Grandmother's antique wooden rocking chairs. “It's funny, Jane. I've been thinking about what you and Zara said the other night, about Jimmy. About how it sounded like I was just doing what everybody, what my mother, expected.”

“Really?”

“I'm starting to wonder if I ever really liked him, I mean for me. Or if it was just for her.” She sighed. “But still, I don't think I can do this, Jane. I can't go out in public and be the laughingstock of the young set.” All the breath in her body exploded out in an even deeper sigh. “I have to quit.”

“Quit what?
The Magnolia Maids?
” I leapt out of my chair. “What! No, no, no. You can't quit, too!”

She burst out laughing. “Wait.
You
are trying to get
me
not to quit?”

“Seriously, Ashley, you can't skulk around town hiding from everyone until you go off to college! You have to make your next public appearance a huge triumphant splash! You have to put on your beached-whale dress and twirl your parasol and go out there and show everyone that you're just fine. In fact, you're perfect. In fact, Ashley part two, now that that cretin James is out of your life, is more than perfect. You're better than ever.”

A slow grin crept across Ashley's face. “Oh my God, Jane, that's good advice!”

“I know. I'm the expert at picking fights and throwing things in people's faces.” I flashed a grin that could only be described as rueful.

She grinned back. “That's true, you are.”

I chose my next words carefully, knowing full well I was going out on a limb. “But Ashley, I don't mean to sound mean, but you really are a controlling, demanding princess. You do have a knack for making life hell for people.” I braced myself for a furious response.