If his son stayed on his current course, he was going to enlist right after high school, which was around nine months away.
If Corinne stayed on hers, she was going to go pre-Law at the University of Nebraska in about two years.
And Mamie wouldn’t be far behind.
This meant Hix had to prepare to really move on.
In a variety of ways.
Greta
“Jesus, it’s two hundred dollars,” my mom groused. “Bitches up in this burg act like keeping up with the Kardashians is their only goal in life, even though there’s fuck-all to impress. You’re booked solid every day and you got your weekend gig. You can give your old lady two hundred dollars so she can pay her fuckin’ cable bill.”
“Yeah, Mom, I could if I didn’t give you fifty dollars to cover your water bill last week. And a hundred last month to cover your cell phone bill, that along with buying you a new oven because yours somehow got busted in a way your landlord refused to pay for its repair. And remind me, how much did it cost to pump your septic tank in July? Something, I’ll add, your landlord should be seeing to too.”
“I kept you fed and clothed and a roof over your head for eighteen years. Figure I got at least that for you to help your momma take care of shit.”
“Mom, I’m thirty-eight. If that washed, which it doesn’t, your time was up two years ago,” I retorted.
“You keep me fed and clothed and a roof over my head and all that, you’d be right. Since I only need a little extra here and there, you ain’t.”
I drew in breath and stared from my spot in my pretty wicker chair on my cute front porch at my sleepy street, sleepy even though it was only nine o’clock.
Not a car. Not a noise. Not a blaring radio.
Quiet.
Peace.
Except in my ear.
I changed the subject, asking, “You seen Andy recently?”
My mother went silent.
I was a fan of her silence, but right then, not the reason for it.
“You told me you moved here after I moved here because I moved Andy here,” I reminded her. “And as far as I know, the five months you’ve been here, you’ve seen Andy once.”
“I got shit going on,” she retorted.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like shit that’s my shit and none of your business. But I’ll be up in your shit, my cable gets turned off.”
Okay, after all the times I’d put up with it, this time, me in my pretty chair on my porch by my sleepy street where Mom was not supposed to be, but she was because she’d followed me after I’d finally tried to make a break from her, it was safe to say I was really, really done with this crap.
“Do it,” I taunted.
“Say what?”
“Do it. Get up in my shit.”
Mom was silent again.
I couldn’t rejoice in it because of what she said after she broke her silence.
“So rumor’s true. You fucked the sheriff.”
I straightened in the chair and felt the unpleasant sensation of my throat closing.
All day at the salon I’d worried.
No one had said a word.
Now it was coming at me from my mother.
“Sorry?” I pushed out.
“Girl, you ain’t in Denver anymore,” she informed me. “You fuck the county sheriff, get right in his I-don’t-have-to-try-to-make-you-believe-I-got-big-balls-through-my-fancy-ass-ride Real Man with Real Big Balls Bronco outside a fucking nightclub at two in the morning, this little burg, people are gonna talk. ’Specially since Soccer Mom Barbie kicked out her GI Sheriff Joe. Soccer Mom Barbie’s gonna reel that boy back in, mark my words, girl, soon’s he comes to heel. Ain’t no way GI Sheriff Joe’s gonna go all in with Trailer Trash Barbie when he’s got sweet, strawberry pussy waitin’ for him.”
I looked to my lap where I was sitting cross-legged and where I’d rested my cup of tea against my angled thigh.
God, people were talking.
Even Mom had heard!
“I’m not trailer trash,” I said softly.
“Greta, told you all your life, guess I gotta tell you again. Don’t be stupid. You can take the girl outta the trailer but you can’t take the trash outta the girl. You are what you are. You got fancy ideas with that asshole husband of yours and what’d he do when your Farrah Fawcett to his Lee Majors turned in his mind?”
She didn’t wait for my response.
Then again, Mom never did.
“He dumped your ass and went out and got himself the real thing.”
“Why are we talking about this?” I asked.
“’Cause you think, you give our handsome sheriff a little somethin’-somethin’, you got game. You don’t got game, girl. You got shit. You don’t want me to get up in your face. And just sayin’, you don’t want that sheriff to get himself in the middle when I do. Won’t get you a second trip home from that shack in his Bronco. That I know for certain.”
Oh, I’d learned how Mom could make the men in my life feel.
I’d learned that lesson very well.
“I wasn’t threatening you with Hixon.”
“Hixon?”
“That’s his name.”
“His name is Sheriff Drake, and don’t you forget that, Greta,” she suddenly snapped. “You wanna moan that out when he’s givin’ it to you, you do that. I bet he’d get off on that. But he ain’t no Hixon to you, girl. Don’t think, no matter your Playboy bunny with a few extra years look, he’s gonna stick around and fight your battles for you. What he’s gonna do is take, and take more until he’s got his fill and then he’s gonna go. Men don’t stick around and they don’t do jack when they are around. The more you expect from them, the more reasons they got to get up and go. He’s no different, I don’t care he has a badge. He just ain’t. They never are. And you can’t be stupid about that because you saw all the jackasses that left your momma swinging. And girl, you’re all that because I gave you all a’ that. Was even more of a looker than you in my day. And just sayin’, I can pull me in some dick even now, whenever I get lonely.”
Oh yeah.
I’d seen that.
All of it.
I felt my lip start to curl but stopped it in order to demand, “Can we talk for a second about why there always has to be battles between me and my own mother?”
“Because you won’t give me two hundred dollars. Yeesh. That bleach you use soak into your brain or what?”
“You visit Andy, I’ll give you the money,” I haggled.
“I’ll see my boy when I see my boy, not when you tell me to.”
“Then you don’t get the money.”
“So you want me to cause a scene at that House o’ Beauty place you work? All those uptight bitches who never miss church on Sunday but probably moan real pretty when their hubbies take ’em up the ass Sunday night after their kids are asleep seein’ your momma in all her glory?”
“God, do you always have to talk like that?”
“I am who I am. Ain’t changin’ for nobody.”
I looked again to the street, feeling tight around my mouth.
Hell, in my whole face.
In fact, it was a wonder I didn’t look Botoxed to within an inch of my life with all my mother shoveled my way.