Place Your Betts (The Marilyns)

Place Your Betts

By

Katie Graykowski

Copyright © 2013 by Katie Graykowski

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced in any fashion without the express, written consent of the copyright holder.

Place Your Betts
is a work of fiction. All characters portrayed herein are fictitious and are not based on any real persons living or dead.

For Kenneth Clyde and Karrie Lynne,

I wish heaven could have waited a few more years before claiming you.

Acknowledgements

This book owes many thanks to lots of people, all of whom wouldn’t let me give up. Thank you to Emily McKay, in addition to being a gifted writer, you’re an amazing friend. Thank you to Tracy Wolff, who offered to write a book with me and then hounded me until I said yes. Thanks for teaching me how to write. For Robyn DeHart and your fantastic mother Hattie Mae, thank you for all of the encouragement, writing craft help, and willingness to drive to Austin for lunch. For Sherry Thomas and Shellee Roberts, who were also willing to drive to Austin for lunch. Thank you to my mother, Barbara McClellan, for always believing in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. Thank you to my best friend Charlotte Coggins who has read every book I’ve ever written whether she wanted to or not. And finally, thank you to my wonderful husband Paul and my beautiful daughter Karrie—you two are my life and nothing would be possible without the love and kindness that you show me every day.

“I’m not singing ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’
at Gigi’s funeral.” Betts Monroe tucked an errant lock of red hair behind her ear and stared down Mama Cherie Boudreaux.

Betts’s life had always been a circus, and this would be no different. With five multi-platinum albums and thirteen years in the country music business, nothing should shock her. But the rest of the world didn’t have Mama Cherie for a mother. Normality wasn’t a malady Betts suffered from. No matter how hard she tried.

“Why not? It was written about her.” Mama Cherie stabbed the nail polish brush back into the bottle, reloading it with her signature color: blood red.

The neon Abita Beer sign above her head blinked purple, green, and yellow sparkles off Mama’s silver sequined halter top. The glittery triangle barely contained her double-D breasts, exposed a good six inches of creamy white tummy, and exemplified Mama’s personal style philosophy—less was more than enough.

The acrid scent of fingernail polish mixed with decades of stale cigarette smoke, draft beer, and chicken gumbo—the Saturday night special— all simmering in the heavy New Orleans air. Betts inhaled deeply. The smell of childhood. Depending on how she looked at it, her life had started and ended in this bar. Voodoo Gumbos—a legend in the French Quarter. If walls could talk, these would never shut up.

“You’re right.” Mama continued to mop her fingernails with the color of homicide. “Your grandmother made the Wicked Witch look like the tooth fairy.”

Gigi was the only subject on which Betts and her mother had ever agreed. Gigi—Irma Cherie Dittmeyer—was the devil disguised as a Southern Baptist. She’d spent most of her life thumping her Bible so loudly she gave Jesus a headache.

“When does the funeral home expect to receive her body?” Betts picked up a dishrag and polished the bar top.

“
Evil
arrives at noon.” Mama Cherie screwed the top on the polish and blew on her nails.

“Evil” was being kind. Satan would throw her back for being too slimy.

“Can you help me move those tables against the wall?” Mama pointed to five tables in the back corner. “The funeral home said they needed four feet of clearance all the way around.”

“She’s coming here? I knew she was on her way to New Orleans, but I thought we’d have the service at a funeral home.” Betts slung the dishrag over her shoulder. This was why her mother hadn’t wanted help planning the service—Gigi’s final farewell was to be the ultimate fuck-you.

It was wrong. It was a sacrilege.

Betts could live with it.

Any love she’d had for her grandmother had died sixteen years ago on May 25th at exactly 3:32 p.m.

“I figure it’ll take the Peaceful Rest and Slumber folks fifteen minutes to unload and set her up. We’ll start at twelve twentyish. It shouldn’t take more than thirty minutes, tops. We’ll have her out of here by happy hour. Which reminds me”—Mama Cherie nodded toward the daily special chalkboard behind the bar—“I’m calling the drink of the day ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.’”

“You’re not closing for your own mother’s funeral?”

“Heck, no. My regulars will be the only mourners.” Mama Cherie wriggled her fingers and waved her hands, making nail drying an aerobic exercise.

“What about her church? Surely some of them will want to pay their respects—”

“Nope. Not a one. Pastor Mark Somebody threatened to drive down, but I assured him I had things under control. He didn’t seem too upset about not driving seven hours for the woman who’d spent her last days bitching about the offertory music.”

Betts rolled her eyes as she folded the rag neatly on the bar top. Her grandmother had hated contemporary Christian music. If it wasn’t “Onward Christian Soldiers” pounded out on a piano, then it was the Devil’s work.

“Are The Marilyns coming to the service?” Mama glanced at Betts.

The Marilyns being a secret society of three—Betts and her best friends, Charlie and Lucky. All three girls had met their freshman year at boarding school when they all showed up to the Halloween dance dressed as Marilyn Monroe. Every now and again, they met up, donned blonde wigs and black moles, and raised hell. In honor of Marilyn, Betts had taken Monroe as her stage name.

“No, Charlie’s in Dallas, and Lucky’s God knows where. Both mentioned coming to the funeral in full Marilyn dress, but I couldn’t taint Ms. Monroe’s memory by placing her most devoted fans in the same room with Satan.” Betts shrugged. “Since she’ll be looking up from the pits of hell, it would be great for her to see three of her mourners in white, blow-the-skirt-up dresses and missing some valuable foundation garments.”

Some suspicious jiggling underneath Mama’s halter top suggested that the missing foundation garments had been taken care of. Betts looked up at heaven and implored the Almighty’s help. Not seeing a bra materialize, she turned on the hot water and filled the sink. For as long as she could remember, her job had been to wash the dirty glasses. Two-hundred-dollar manicure be damned because old habits died hard.

Mama tested her index fingernail for tackiness, found it dry, and moved to the next one. “The funeral needs to run on time.”

“Why? Has Gigi got someplace to be?” Betts was pretty sure she didn’t want to know the answer.

“Yep. The lab techs from LSU should be here around one or one fifteen.” Mama Cherie kicked a chair out of her way.

“Do I want to know why LSU lab techs are coming?”

“I donated her body to science.” Mama used the palms of her hands to push a table against the wall. “Maybe they can figure out what was wrong with her.”

Betts’s mouth dropped open. “Gigi hated science. She always said she wanted to meet her maker wearing her pink Chanel suit, white gloves, and Jackie O pillbox hat.”

The corners of Mama Cherie’s mouth curled up. “I know.”

Betts placed the first armload of dirty glasses in the sink.

“Oh, I forgot.” Mama stepped behind Betts. “A letter came for you.” She turned around and stuck out her butt.

An envelope was stuffed into the left back pocket of Mama’s denim shorts, the white paper an interesting contrast to the thin strip of red lace peeking over the shorts’ low-slung waistband.

Betts blew out a long breath as she pulled out the envelope. Fifty-something women shouldn’t wear thongs and tiny shorts. And they sure as hell shouldn’t look so good in them.

“That’s odd. Why didn’t it go to my business office or my house?” Betts shoved her thumb under the flap and ripped the envelope open. A single index card floated out and landed on the counter.

Seconds ticked away on the turn-of-the-century register clock opposite the front windows overlooking Bourbon Street. The handwriting was the same perfect penmanship that had scrawled nothing but venom for seventy-seven years. Gigi was writing from the grave. With trembling fingers, Betts picked up the card.

Elizabeth
,

Betts rolled her eyes. It was just like Gigi to use Betts’s real name instead of the nickname she’d gone by since birth.

If you are reading this, I’m dead. Don’t celebrate too much. Jesus is watching.

I feel it is my Christian duty to heal the breach caused by your careless behavior. The son you gave up is healthy and happy. I saw him well placed, and he wants for nothing.

You did the right thing by giving him away. Things might not have happened as you would have liked, but everything turned out for the best. You would have made a terrible mother at sixteen.

Tom turned out to be a good boy in spite of his mother. He lives with his father and is well liked in the community. Gabe Swanson has done a fine job of raising him.

That is all.

Irma Cherie Dittmeyer

Betts couldn’t breathe. She pulled at the collar of her dress. Her son, her precious boy, was fine and healthy? Please God, let it be true. Her baby—she glanced at the card—his name was Tom, and he was alive and well, living in Hollisville, Texas.

Wait.

She leaned against the bar. He was living with Gabe Swanson—the man she’d spent half of her life trying to forget. Unfortunately, she could recall with great clarity his shaggy, golden-blond hair and the rage boiling in his faded-denim eyes the last time she’d seen him. Her pulse roared in her ears as she squeezed the recipe card into a crumpled ball. Holy Mary, Mother of God. Clark Gable Swanson. The only person she hated more than Gigi.

“What’s wrong?” Mama Cherie put an arm around her. “You’re as cold as ice.”

“Read.” The word stuck in Betts’s throat.

Gigi, that manipulative bitch. She had kept Betts’s son from her. The only reason that some folks didn’t believe in the devil was because they hadn’t met Gigi.

Mama plucked the card out of Betts’s hand. “Christ. I knew it. Evil can’t die. She’s still with us.” She read the card. “Why is she bringing this up now?”

Betts touched the gold locket around her neck. Inside was the only thing she had of her baby boy—a lock of his red hair—a lighter, finer version of her own. Right after he was born and she’d made sure that her baby had all ten fingers and ten toes, his hair was all she’d had time to note before he’d been whisked away to his new parents—real, loving parents, not an unwed teen who’d mistaken sex for love.

Every day for the last sixteen years, she’d thought about her son, and every year, she’d written him a letter on his birthday, sealed it, and kept each one in her nightstand. She looked for her son in the face of every red-haired teenaged boy she passed.

In giving him away, she’d given him a better life.

Betts had stayed away and hadn’t searched for him. It was better to have him reside in her mind with a mommy and a daddy, a house in the suburbs, white picket fence, and a dog named Tiffany. Her son had the life she’d always wanted far away from the tiny town of Hollisville, Texas.

Betts looked at the crumpled card in Mama’s hand and realized her imaginings of her son’s idealized life had just been crumpled too. She kicked the cabinet. The vibration pulsated up her leg. If Gigi’s recipe card from hell was to be believed, her son lived in Hollisville, Texas, with his biological father. Gabe Swanson. All the blood rushed from her head. Her knees buckled. She sat down hard on the scarred oak floor.

Mama’s arms came around her. “Breathe, baby girl. Just breathe.”

Gabe, who’d called her terrible things and accused her of worse. He hadn’t wanted her or her baby seventeen years ago. What the hell was he doing with her son now? Had Gabe been raising him the entire time? She shook her head. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. She tucked her head between her legs. Did Gabe belittle Tom like he’d done to Betts? Did her baby boy feel as used and worthless as she had?

Betts sat up and squared her shoulders; the mantle of motherhood fell in place like a mink stole. Gabe would not ruin Tom’s hopes and dreams like he’d ruined hers. Her baby boy deserved better. She hadn’t been able to protect him until now, but by God, she’d save her son from the man who had never wanted him in the first place.

Her son needed her, and she needed him. And she could hold her baby again.

Betts grabbed her car keys. “Tell Gigi bye from me.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Mama nodded. “Go and get your baby boy.”