porch is not your average outdoor sitting area but more of a grand colonnade,
littered with black-cushioned wicker furniture and large, soft ferns. The sort of place suitable for sweeping hoopskirts.
She sits in an overstuffed chair and looks out at White Point Gardens. Passersby peer curiously up from the street.
“So you back for a while?” Mitchell asks.
“No.”
“Just a visit?”
She nods.
“Long time since you visited,” Mitchell says.
“I haven’t had a reason to come back.”
“How’s your husband? Mrs. DeWitt says you’re married.”
“He’s fine.”
“How come he’s not with you?”
Hannah pauses, considering. Would Mitchell accept the truth? Well, sir, because I screwed around on him so much that he finally wised up and began screwing someone else, too!
“He’s working.” She gets up. “Listen, I’m making coffee. You want any?”
“Sure.”
Hannah goes into the kitchen and plunges the grounds to the bottom of the press. Forty hours down, hundreds (how many hours are in a month?) to go. She hears the front door open.
“Hello?”
Her mother’s heels click on the marble. Hannah rises on her tiptoes and makes her way toward the back stairs off the kitchen.
“Hannah,” her mother calls. “Stop. I can hear you.”
Daisy appears, carrying a Goodwill shopping bag. While she now has more money than she ever dreamed of or currently acknowledges as possible, Hannah’s mother grew up poor. Her father was from a respected family, but when she was a baby, he was discovered to have gambling debts. (“Respectable” doesn’t always mean “smart,” Daisy is wont to observe.) Consequently, she suffered through the experience of being from a “good” family in an unfortunate financial situation—a story that has graced many a Hallmark movie: the home-sewn clothes, the job in a dress shop after school while her friends hung out at the soda fountain,
the soup flavored with tripe.
Happily, Daisy was—as she still is—indisputably beautiful. During her second year of college (on scholarship), Hannah’s father met her on a porch, spilled a drink on her more or less on purpose, and promptly whisked her away to the solidly middle-class life of a doctor’s wife. Still, Daisy was terrified of spending money. When Palmer and Hannah were children, she shopped for them at Sears and Kmart. They never went out to dinner. Birthday parties were homespun affairs of limp balloons and, once,
a Banana Slide purchased on sale and stretched out on the grass with a hose. Groceries were bought in bulk, sandwiches packed on road trips so the family never had to stop at a restaurant.
Hannah had no complaints about her childhood. And thrift, she will tell anyone, is an increasingly precious virtue. Anyway,
it was fun, aside from the occasional rock in the ass. Palmer and Hannah liked the Banana Slide. Esprit pants and Benetton sweaters were somehow more triumphant to wear when purchased at 70 percent off, even in sixth grade, when label-whoring was perhaps at its most rampant.
However, Daisy has been married to one of the richest people in the city for more than two decades now. In high school, alarmed by her mother’s behavior (she was borrowing the housekeeper’s S&H Green Stamps), Hannah once took Will aside and asked if he was having money troubles. Perhaps he was only land rich, she suggested, upon which his flushed face grew a frightening shade of purple and he started to laugh.
“Land rich? Sure, we’re just land rich, other than the thirty million in the bank. Why, Check-o-slavana? You in trouble?”
“Czecho slovakia .”
“Sure. I’ll buy it for you. The whole place. Now scoot.”
It seems, Hannah thinks as she appraises her mother’s out-fit, that Daisy still doesn’t have a handle on her situation. She’s always been a bargain hunter, spending weekend afternoons stalking sales like some famished lioness. But now it appears she’s graduated down to the land of secondhand. This
littered with black-cushioned wicker furniture and large, soft ferns. The sort of place suitable for sweeping hoopskirts.
She sits in an overstuffed chair and looks out at White Point Gardens. Passersby peer curiously up from the street.
“So you back for a while?” Mitchell asks.
“No.”
“Just a visit?”
She nods.
“Long time since you visited,” Mitchell says.
“I haven’t had a reason to come back.”
“How’s your husband? Mrs. DeWitt says you’re married.”
“He’s fine.”
“How come he’s not with you?”
Hannah pauses, considering. Would Mitchell accept the truth? Well, sir, because I screwed around on him so much that he finally wised up and began screwing someone else, too!
“He’s working.” She gets up. “Listen, I’m making coffee. You want any?”
“Sure.”
Hannah goes into the kitchen and plunges the grounds to the bottom of the press. Forty hours down, hundreds (how many hours are in a month?) to go. She hears the front door open.
“Hello?”
Her mother’s heels click on the marble. Hannah rises on her tiptoes and makes her way toward the back stairs off the kitchen.
“Hannah,” her mother calls. “Stop. I can hear you.”
Daisy appears, carrying a Goodwill shopping bag. While she now has more money than she ever dreamed of or currently acknowledges as possible, Hannah’s mother grew up poor. Her father was from a respected family, but when she was a baby, he was discovered to have gambling debts. (“Respectable” doesn’t always mean “smart,” Daisy is wont to observe.) Consequently, she suffered through the experience of being from a “good” family in an unfortunate financial situation—a story that has graced many a Hallmark movie: the home-sewn clothes, the job in a dress shop after school while her friends hung out at the soda fountain,
the soup flavored with tripe.
Happily, Daisy was—as she still is—indisputably beautiful. During her second year of college (on scholarship), Hannah’s father met her on a porch, spilled a drink on her more or less on purpose, and promptly whisked her away to the solidly middle-class life of a doctor’s wife. Still, Daisy was terrified of spending money. When Palmer and Hannah were children, she shopped for them at Sears and Kmart. They never went out to dinner. Birthday parties were homespun affairs of limp balloons and, once,
a Banana Slide purchased on sale and stretched out on the grass with a hose. Groceries were bought in bulk, sandwiches packed on road trips so the family never had to stop at a restaurant.
Hannah had no complaints about her childhood. And thrift, she will tell anyone, is an increasingly precious virtue. Anyway,
it was fun, aside from the occasional rock in the ass. Palmer and Hannah liked the Banana Slide. Esprit pants and Benetton sweaters were somehow more triumphant to wear when purchased at 70 percent off, even in sixth grade, when label-whoring was perhaps at its most rampant.
However, Daisy has been married to one of the richest people in the city for more than two decades now. In high school, alarmed by her mother’s behavior (she was borrowing the housekeeper’s S&H Green Stamps), Hannah once took Will aside and asked if he was having money troubles. Perhaps he was only land rich, she suggested, upon which his flushed face grew a frightening shade of purple and he started to laugh.
“Land rich? Sure, we’re just land rich, other than the thirty million in the bank. Why, Check-o-slavana? You in trouble?”
“Czecho slovakia .”
“Sure. I’ll buy it for you. The whole place. Now scoot.”
It seems, Hannah thinks as she appraises her mother’s out-fit, that Daisy still doesn’t have a handle on her situation. She’s always been a bargain hunter, spending weekend afternoons stalking sales like some famished lioness. But now it appears she’s graduated down to the land of secondhand. This
Similar Books
