The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

She hung her straw hat on the wall peg in the hallway, then went past the parlor and into the compact kitchen. She had left the windows open, and the room was cooler than the out of doors. Nervously, thinking about the letter (so much seemed to hang on it), she filled a kettle with water and set it on the gas stove and got out her Brown Betty teapot and the ceramic canister of tea she had bought in that cute little tea shop in Montgomery and measured the fragrant tea into the strainer in the teapot. Her fingers trembling, she took Nadine’s envelope out of her purse and slit it carefully, then laid it on the oilcloth-covered table in the small dining nook. The nook looked out on the garden and was one of her favorite places in the house—one of her comfort places, especially when the window was open to the honeysuckle-scented breeze, as it was now.

When the tea was ready, she poured herself a cup, added a spoonful of honey, and sat down. Steeling herself to read the letter—bad news or good?—she took it out of the envelope and said a tiny silent prayer for the courage to face whatever came. She had just begun to unfold it when she heard a sharp rapping at the back door. She looked up to see her mother peering through the glass.

“Damn and blast,” she muttered, and quickly slid the folded letter under the oilcloth. With a long sigh of resignation, she got up and opened the door.

“Oh, hello, Mama,” she said brightly. “I was just sitting down to a cup of tea. Would you like to join me?” She was going to do it anyway, Lizzy thought. She might as well be invited.

“I waited for you to telephone me when you got home,” Mrs. Lacy said accusingly. “But you didn’t.” She puffed out her breath. “Lord sakes, it is hot. Comin’ across the street in that sunshine is like walking across a bed of coals.”

“Then maybe you’d rather have lemonade,” Lizzy said. “It might cool you off.”

“I’ll have lemonade,” Mrs. Lacy said, as if she had thought of it herself, and went to the refrigerator to get it, taking the opportunity to look on the shelves to see what Lizzy was eating. Mrs. Lacy was an oversized woman with an oversized voice and ample bosom and hips. She was wearing a wide-brimmed orange straw hat and a red rayon chiffon dress splashed with large orange and yellow flowers that made her appear even bulkier than usual. Her smile was just a little smug. “I have some important news, in case you’re interested.” She put the pitcher on the table.

“Of course I’m interested,” Lizzy said. Since the kitchen was quite small and Mrs. Lacy was quite large and loud, she took up more than her share of the space, leaving very little room—and not quite enough air—for Lizzy. Now, Lizzy moved her teacup and the teapot to the round kitchen table and took a glass out of the cupboard for her mother. The one time her mother had tried to squeeze into the dining nook, she’d gotten stuck and Lizzy had had to move the table so she could get out.

Lizzy was often tempted to feel sorry for her mother, but that was difficult, because she had been so foolish. Five years before, she had put up her small annuity and her paid-for house as collateral against a bank loan to buy stocks in the booming stock market, planning (like everybody else in America) to get rich quick and be set for life. When the stock bubble burst and Wall Street crashed, she lost everything. Mr. Johnson, at the bank, carried the note on her house as long as he could (he had done that for a great many Darlingians), but he finally had to foreclose.

Unfazed, Mrs. Lacy declared that the bank could take the house and she would move in with her daughter, which, as Lizzy saw it, would be a disaster of titanic proportions. Her little dollhouse wasn’t large enough for two normal-sized people. If her mother moved in, there wouldn’t be any room for her—and not one shred of privacy.