The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

Lizzy??s ample mother couldn’t fit comfortably into the narrow dining nook and Lizzy’s small house didn’t boast a dining room, so they would be eating at the kitchen table. Lizzy dressed it up for their Sunday dinner, spreading an embroidered tablecloth and setting it with her favorite yellow china plates, rimmed in green and decorated with decals of flowers and fruits. Her napkins were green, and in the middle of the table, she added a vase filled with pretty asters and cosmos and a few sprigs of autumn honeysuckle.

Lizzy stood back and surveyed her work, feeling satisfied. She and her mother would have a pleasant dinner and talk over whatever it was that her mother wanted to discuss—probably something trivial, like that green straw hat. She just wanted some attention, that was all, and Lizzy thought guiltily that she probably hadn’t visited her mother often enough the last few weeks. She would make it a point to drop in on her every few days. Then, when they had finished dinner, they would take their pie and coffee into the backyard, where they could enjoy the hollyhocks and morning glories still blooming along the fence and the marigolds and four o’clocks bordering the vegetable garden. And at one thirty, Lizzy would tell her mother that she had to leave for the Dahlias’ meeting. She had given quite a lot of thought to the way she would handle that worrisome business about the door key, and had a little speech already planned.

“Please stay and finish your coffee,” she would say, “but be sure and leave your key on the table when you go home. Otherwise, I’ll have to change the locks.” She would say it casually and sweetly but firmly, and then walk out the door and leave her mother to consider her options. Unlike her mother (by nature an argumentative person), Lizzy did not like disagreements. She always tried to think of a way to avoid unpleasant encounters.

But that wasn’t exactly the way things happened, for Mrs. Lacy delivered her news the moment she set foot in the kitchen, even before she took off the black gloves and wide-brimmed black straw hat with fanciful fuchsia flowers that she had worn to church. When she heard her mother’s announcement, Lizzy felt as if the roof had just fallen in on her, or the earth had opened up and swallowed her. In fact, she could think of nothing worse, unless it was cancer or tuberculosis, and even then there was sometimes a cure, and always hope, until the very end. But there was no cure for this, and no hope, either, as far as she could see.

Mr. Johnson, at the Darling Savings and Trust, was about to foreclose on her mother’s house.

Lizzy put her hand to her mouth, scarcely able to get her breath. “Foreclose!” she gasped. “But—”

“The fifteenth of October!” Mrs. Lacy cried dramatically. She was a large woman with a pillowy softness that was belied by her habit of sharp, petulant speech, which not even her Southern drawl could soften. Between her physical size and the power of her vocal chords, Lizzy always felt small and squeezed, as if her mother took up all the space and sucked up all the air, leaving almost no space and no air at all for her.

“October! But that’s just a few weeks away!” Lizzy protested, bewildered. “He can’t do that! Why, how long have you known?”

Her mother looked away. “Only since April.”

“April!” Lizzy exclaimed in disbelief. “But that’s . . . that’s over five months! Why didn’t you tell me earlier, Mama? We might have been able to work something out.”

“Work what out? There’s no workin’ out something like this where Mr. George E. Pickett Johnson is concerned. That man is just bound, bent, and determined to be as heartless as he can be.” Mrs. Lacy whipped a lawn handkerchief out of the lace-trimmed bodice of her purple rayon chiffon dress. “He says I have to move all of my furniture and belongings out by the fifteenth. But where am I goin’ to go?” She sniffled and dabbed at one eye. “Where, I ask you?”

It was a calculating question, and Lizzy refused to answer it. “But how . . . how could this be?” she asked wonderingly. “Daddy left the house to you free and clear, with a little annuity—enough money to make you comfortable for the rest of your life. What on earth could have happened?”

Mrs. Lacy dabbed at the other eye, then tucked her hankie back where it came from. “Yes, that’s what your daddy did,” she said in a defensive tone. “Your daddy was a good man. He took care of us. As for the annuity—” She lifted her broad shoulders and let them fall in a gesture of resignation, implying that it, too, was gone.

“But what could have—”

Mrs. Lacy lifted her chin. “The stock market was blazin’ away like a house afire, and I couldn’t stand to be left out. So I borrowed some money to invest and put the house up. Collateral, is what it’s called.”

“Oh, Mama, you didn’t do anything so foolish!” Lizzy exclaimed despairingly. “You didn’t put the money into the stock market!”

Mrs. Lacy bristled. “Well, I don’t know why not. Everybody was doing it. Every time I opened a newspaper or magazine I read about people makin’ a fortune on Wall Street. So I asked Miss Rogers for the name of her broker and I invested—”