Just like that.
Then she was alone, standing outside of Madge’s, the cold air biting at her cheeks, Jax’s words pounding in her ears.
*
“So as if it’s not bad enough my daughter runs a company where fornicatin’ with your words outside of marriage is accepted, today, while I’m mindin’ my own business at Brugsby’s, Blanche Carter tells me she saw you drivin’ around late at night with that new man in town. Jack, is it?” Her mother’s continual state of disapproval glared at her over the island in her kitchen.
Dressed in a gray sweater buttoned to her neck, sensible shoes on her feet, Clora worked with purpose, wiping down the messy counter after breakfast.
Em sucked in a breath of air and reached for Gareth’s lunch box. “Jax, Mama. His name is Jax Hawthorne. He’s Miss Jessalyn’s nephew.”
Clora sucked in her cheeks and grunted. “I don’t give a hoot if he’s Pontius Pilate’s nephew. You shouldn’t be driving around with him late at night alone in a car.”
“Jeep. It was my Jeep.”
“That matters how, Emmaline? Is the make of the car necessary when the deed’s been done?”
The pressure of her recent uncharacteristic behavior, coupled with the idea that she’d have to face Jax this morning at work, that she’d see every shade of disgust on his face when she apologized to him for shunning his advice like it was no more valuable than day-old bread, forced her to clamp her lips shut.
“Are you hearin’ me, Emmaline?” her mother prodded, handing her a juice box to load into Gareth’s lunch pail.
Heard. But it was vague. She’d tuned out after her mother said she’d been minding her own business. That was ludicrous. Clora minded everyone’s business like she was in charge of the righteous stick. “I heard you, Mama.”
Clora’s lips formed a flat line. Scolding complete. Reminder number one million, Em would never do anything right accomplished. “Good. So no more runnin’ around town like you don’t have a reputation to protect. I can’t have people talking about you and the boys any more than they already do these days.”
Em jammed Clifton’s cheese sandwich into a Ziploc bag to prevent hurling it against the wall. Lately, her mother’s disapproval didn’t just make her sad it infuriated her—suffocated her. Drove her almost to the point of violence.
Used to be, she took her licks from her mother rather than suffer the tight knot of fear a confrontation with her brought. She’d spent most of her childhood either looking for ways to please her, or hiding from Clora’s stifling anger. She didn’t know why her mother was always so angry. She didn’t know why she took pleasure from almost nothing.
Maybe it had something to do with whatever Louella was insinuating last night. She’d been very specific. She’d said Em was sneakin’ off to see her boyfriend just like her mother.
That made no sense. Her mother never had a boyfriend. She’d had a husband who’d left when Em was an infant. Boyfriends implied fun and dates at Madge’s, ice-cream sundaes and secretive giggling. None of which applied to her mother.
Growing up, there were far more chores and lectures than there were kisses and hugs or cookies and milk. There was also little laughter. Em had vowed, when she had children, things would be different. She’d give them all the things she’d craved and lacked in her childhood.
But lately, she noticed the boys had begun to adopt some of her old habits around their grandmother, and it wasn’t sitting well with her. In fact, at one Sunday dinner, she’d come close to telling her mother what a horrible downer she was—how oppressive and depressing her very presence was. But the words wouldn’t come.
The knot of Clora fear tied itself tight in Em’s belly, and instead of defending her sons and their silly dinnertime banter, she’d hushed them with a stern frown. These days, she wondered if the help her mother offered her with the boys was worth exposing them to her negativity.
“Did you hear what I said, Emmaline? I can’t have people talkin’ about you and the boys.”
Crack. A little crack in her emotional dam fractured. “Of course not. People talkin’ about me and the boys is the worst thing that could ever happen to you, Mama.”
Clora didn’t even look up at her. She didn’t have to. Her dissatisfaction dripped off her in invisible drops. “Is that sarcasm I hear comin’ from your lips?”
“From our Em’s lips?” Dixie chimed from her front doorway, breezing in with two foam cups of coffee. She handed one to Em and teased, “Never, Clora.”
Em breathed a sigh of grateful relief, wrapping her hands around the base of the cup, letting the warmth seep into her frozen fingers. Dixie—ever her savior. Dixie understood better than anyone what it was like to live under the constant scrutiny and censure of your mother.