The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

“But, Mama—”

Mrs. Lacy held up her hand. “Hush, Elizabeth, until I’m finished. I’ll take the front bedroom upstairs. It will be a tight fit gettin’ my bed up those narrow stairs, but I measured yesterday, and it’ll go. We can put a cot in the storage room for Sally-Lou until you and dear Mr. Alexander are married, and then she can have your bedroom.”

“Married!” Lizzy was incredulous. “What on God’s green earth are you talking about? I have no intention of getting married anytime soon. In fact, I have no plan whatsoever to get married—to Grady Alexander or anybody else!”

As she spoke, she realized that this foreclosure business must have been the moving force behind her mother’s puzzling reversal on the question of Grady Alexander. And all of a sudden, the whole scheme became crystal clear. Faced with the market crash, Mr. Johnson’s foreclosure order, and the need to find somewhere to live, her mother had come up with a plan. She had started urging Lizzy to marry Grady so she could have Lizzy’s house. She got the key copied so she could come over while Lizzy was at work and decide where to put her furniture. And she had put off all discussion of this awful business until the very last minute, when there was no time to have a reasonable conversation about alternatives.

At the thought of having her perfect little house invaded by her quarrelsome, outsize mother, Lizzy felt sick. But she felt even sicker at the thought that her mother was so carelessly, so cruelly manipulative that she would push her daughter into getting married just so she could take over her house!

“Oh, gracious me. Not gettin’ married?” Mrs. Lacy heaved a dramatically disappointed sigh. “I am so sorry to hear that, Elizabeth. I think you and Mr. Alexander make the most marvelous couple. And of course I never raised my daughter to be an old maid.” Another sigh, this one of long-suffering forbearance. “But there’s no point in gettin’ all upset about that part of it. Sally-Lou won’t mind sleepin’ on the cot. Of course, it would be nice if this house was just a teensy bit larger, but we can manage.” She leaned over and patted Lizzy’s hand. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, dear. We’ll be a tad crowded, but we’ll make do. And maybe, in a few months, after you’ve had time to ponder, you’ll see your way clear to marryin’ that fine Mr. Alexander, who loves you so very much. As I do, of course. You know I do.”

Lizzy stared at her for a long moment, and then the sick feeling suddenly turned into something else, a searing, volcanic anger at her mother’s manipulations.

“Mama!” She stood up, clenching her hands. “Mama, you listen to me and you listen hard. I do not know the answer to your predicament, but I am telling you one thing for certain. You are not moving into my house, not now, not later, not under any circumstance. You are going to give me that key you had made, right now, or I will be changing the locks first thing in the morning. Furthermore, you will not step foot in my house again without my express invitation. Do you hear me, Mama? Do you hear?”

“Not moving in—” Mrs. Lacy turned pale and her eyes were wide, staring. Her hand went to her bosom. In a quivering voice, she cried, “You’d let me be put out on the street?”

“I have no idea what’s going to happen about that,” Lizzy replied stonily. She could feel herself shaking. She had never before spoken to her mother in this way. “But I do know that you are not moving in here. It is simply out of the question.” She held out her hand. “Now, you give me that door key you had Mr. Musgrove copy for you at the hardware store.”

Mrs. Lacy widened her eyes. “Key? What key?”

“The key that you used to come in here so you could measure for your furniture, Mama.” Lizzy hardened her voice. “I want it. Now.”

Her mother pushed out her lower lip like a pouting child. “I don’t have it with me.”

“Then I will go to the hardware store first thing tomorrow. I will tell Mr. Musgrove that my mother copied my door key without my permission and I can’t trust her to stay out of my house. I will ask him to put new locks on the front and the back doors.”

Mrs. Lacy looked aghast. “You wouldn’t tell him that, Elizabeth! Why, Mrs. Musgrove is a terrible gossip. She’ll tell everybody in town that I—” She swallowed. “That you—”

Lizzy folded her arms. “Try me,” she said icily.

In the end, Mrs. Lacy surrendered the key.





SIX





The Dahlias in Full Bloom