Undead and Undermined

Chapter THIRTY-THREE



“Elizabeth Anne Taylor!”

I’m a grown woman. I’m thirty (forever). I haven’t lived at home since I was seventeen. I balance my own checkbook and it comes out right (nearly every time).

I’ve survived the Miss Burnsville Pageant. I survived freshmen orientation at the U of M. I died. I came back. I’m married. I’ve been to hell. I’ve been to LA. I’ve been assaulted. I’ve been audited. I’ve messed with serial killers, zombies, scary vampires, lame vampires, vampire killers, killer vampires, werewolves, my stepmother, Satan, the Antichrist, killer librarians, cancer, knock-offs, and the absence of Christian Louboutin in this timeline.

I am the foretold queen of the undead.

Still, when my mom roared all three of my names, everything in me stopped dead and sort of shriveled up. Suddenly I was fourteen again, nailed red-handed lifting my mom’s gold card because Jessica’s driver was going to sneak us over to the Gaviidae Mall.

And here she came, stomping down the sidewalk, my sweet, “frail” mother, Professor Taylor. Her doctorate was in history, specifically the Civil War. When people asked, as they almost always did, “Are you a real doctor?” she’d reply, “No, I’m a hologram.” My father, long before the divorce, had once told me, “Your sarcasm didn’t come out of a vacuum.” It was years before I figured out what he meant and by then, of course, he’d tired of sarcasm from any quarter.

I could see her jaw flexing from here; this was a Level Five Tooth Grind. The last time I hit a Level Five was when I ran over our neighbor’s foot while I was backing out of the driveway. Then I ran over it again when I popped Mom’s car into drive to rush forward to find out what he was screaming about. In my defense, he was a smelly bigot who referred to Jessica as “that little colored gal you run with” who always “borrowed” our Sunday paper. I’d had my driver’s license for eighteen hours.

(And, while I’m thinking about it, colored? Seriously? Dude, it is not 1955, so pop some Tic Tacs and go lie down until you can remember that.)

(Oh, and the best part? Jessica laughed her ass off when I told her I couldn’t hang with her for three weeks, due to the accidental squashing of the bigot’s feet. She rushed over to his place and solicitously inquired after his health and asked to sign his cast and he was so freaked out that there was a gorgeous colored girl in his house he let her do it. “With love from your favorite jungle bunny.” That was how she signed it.)

“You will pick up and brush off and apologize to Clive this minute.”

Oh, right. Mom was mad about the schmuck I’d found giving her mouth to mouth. And possibly a close-chest massage, the perv bastard. After what I strongly suspected was a booty call. I wanted very, very badly to bite someone.

“This minute,” she repeated, like I’d died and come back and gone to hell and come back deaf. When I would have preferred coming back blind. Oh why oh why couldn’t I be blind? “Nuh-uh. Who is he and why was he putting his germ-laden mouth on you?”

One heel tapping. Hands on hips. Yep, I was definitely closer to death than usual. Mom’s eyes were lasers. “You’re not funny, young lady.”

“I’m a little funny,” I mumbled, resisting the urge to scuff a toe in front of me as I stared at the sidewalk. “Sometimes.” I squashed the urge to obey. Somebody owed me an explanation.

Exasperated and super-pissed, my mom leaped forward to help . . . Clive, was it? Rhymed with jive, alive, and beehive. I decided that wasn’t a good sign. Cliiiiiiive. Gah.

For the first time I noticed she was dressed up—and this was a woman who, the minute she got tenure, was famous for lecturing in sweatpants. She was wearing a black midcalf broomstick skirt with a crisp white blouse under a blue cardigan. She had her favorite locket on; in my timeline it held my teeny senior picture. I imagine Cliiiiiive’s pic was in there now. Her face glowed with a fresh application of Jergens for dry skin. Also, she was wearing her Curious George slippers . . . a special occasion indeed!

So, fully dressed . . . my mom’s version, anyway. In the wee, wee hours of the morning. So she’d been up all night with Cliiiiiiiive, or they’d both recently gotten up and gotten dressed. Curse you, logical brain, stop sniffing out clues that this was indeed a booty call! Go back to sleep, brain.

Don’t let the white curly hair fool you—my mom’s hair started going white in high school, and she still only had about three wrinkles. Instead of making her look old, her hair made her striking; I can remember being a kid and wishing I had white curly hair instead of stupid flowing blond waves. Mom got knocked up with me a month after graduation. She was fifty years old now—barely—and took care of herself.

I was not unaware that my mom was near Cougartown. The curly hair and the blue eyes masked her intellect and her formidable will. This was a woman who lost her husband to his secretary (cliché!), and spent the rest of their lives punishing them in a thousand small, aggravating ways.

“Wow,” stupid Clive was saying. Mom had helped him up, which was great, because no matter how much she clenched at me, I wasn’t gonna. Nope. He looked a little shaky, which was too bad. I wanted him a little comatose. “You’re quick! You must work out. You must be Betsy.”

I gave him a bright, white smile. “And you must be—”

“Elizabeth!”

“—Clive.” What? That’s what I was going to say all along. I swear on the soul of Clive, even if it means he had to burn in hell forever and ever if I had lied to myself just then.

“It’s funny we haven’t met before now.” He extended his hand.

“Hilarious.”

I stared down at his soft pink hand. He was the least dangerous-looking male I’d seen; in fact he looked like a giant baby. A giant baby who wanted to make out with my mom.

His rosy cheeks got pinker while I looked at his hand and thought the thoughts of an evil undead vampire queen.

Bad idea. One squeeze—not even a hard one for me—and you’ll have toothpicks for bones. One twist, and you could be the one-armed man from The Fugitive. Maybe two. You can’t molest my mother with two dislocated shoulders, right?

“I’m sure your manners will quickly return,” my mom said. The finished sentiment: They’d better. I could actually hear her teeth grinding together: krrrk-krrrk-krrrk.

“Your reputation precedes you . . .” He turned to my mother and didn’t smile with his mouth. But his watery blue eyes crinkled in a friendly way. He had a soft round face, and was plump the way men in their fifties had softened. Not fat, just . . . puffy. He was trying to be nice, but he was also nervous (yay!); when he swallowed, his prominent Adam’s apple dipped up and down a little. He looked like he’d swallowed a cork. Why couldn’t I have been the one to jam that cork down his throat?

The little hair he had was brown and wispy. He was wearing grass-stained black slacks, a grass-stained black dress shirt, and a grass-free white tie. Jeez, was he in the Mafia? “She’s charming!”

And you’re suicidal. I decided there was a possibility she’d grind herself into a stroke, so I shook his hand . . . barely. You know those lame, clammy, limp-fingered handshakes that are just sad? That’s what Clive got.

“Dr. Lively was on his way out. But you’re on your way in, young lady.”

“Yeah, Mom, I know, I’m the one who came here—wait. His name is Clive Lively?” Now I really wished I’d dislocated his shoulder. Or his face. “Oh, boy. The hits just keep on coming. Clive Lively. Nice to meet you, Lively, I’m going into my house to kill myself, hope you don’t get run over six or seven times by a truck in our driveway.”

So I did. At least the first part of that sentence, for sure.