The Hurricane Sisters by Dorothea Benton Frank

mother who learned it from her mother before her. Juliet could grow vegetables and make relish like Maisie. I thought it was unnecessary labor and a good way to wreck a manicure. Maybe that sounds shallow or defiant but I preferred reading or listening to music to digging in the dirt. That was one more reason Juliet was always my mother’s favorite and it’s also why she gave up her vegetable garden and so forth, saying she had no one to share them with, a comment that was repeated often even though she knew it made me feel sick inside. Her feelings were more important than mine.
    My father, Neal (who died right after Juliet, in a hunting accident at fifty-two), was cut from the same cloth as my mother. He banked every nickel Maisie saved. My parents worked for everything they had, which was probably what attracted me to Clayton. Clayton was as completely self-made as they were. But back to my mother. With Dad and Juliet gone, my mother fell into an understandable but terrible depression. I was already in New York by then but I came home to visit as often as I could. We would sit across the table from each other, wallowing in silence. She thought she was the only one who had suffered a loss. She really did. Talk about denial? Over and over she’d say, I can’t believe this happened to me.
    Lately I’ve been wondering about the impact of all this loss on me, and one thing is certain: I’ve always been risk averse, almost to the point of absurdity. I knew Clayton was a safe bet when I married him. He might not have an overabundance of passion in him, but he was steady. His professional life was complicated and stressful so naturally he wanted his life with me to be reliable and calm. I could usually deliver that much without a problem. He sort of balked at my work initially, but in an odd way, it added some cachet to our family’s reputation. As long as I didn’t put myself in personal danger or bring too much of it home, he was fine with it. And it gave me spending money, taking some degree of pressure off him.
    Way before Clayton came along, when I was a very young girl, Maisie worked as the secretary at my school, which was wonderful if I skinned my knee on the playground, but it also made it impossible to play hooky. She ran a strict house and was as hard on herself as she was on us. When Dad died, things changed dramatically. She claimed it was no longer necessary to work. She dumped her sensible shoes for kitten heels, started wearing makeup all the time, and made no secret of the fact that she was desirous of male company. The more I inched toward the altar, the more flamboyant she became. And by the time my children came into the world after Juliet was gone, she had become this other person, angry one minute and ebullient the next, as though she didn’t want to be anyone’s mother anymore but being a fairy godmother might suit her fine. It wasn’t just a monetary issue. She spoiled my children rotten with things she never gave me—attention, approval, gifts—and darn near ruined them. She drowned them in undeserved praise while withdrawing from me at the same time.
    She told Ivy and Ashley they were special every five minutes. Not just a little bit special, but, by golly, they were geniuses ! They should chase their crazy dreams and don’t worry about having a solid career to fall back on. Yes, I worked as a swimsuit model but I also had a business degree. Maisie always frowned on me as though I was some kind of slutty exhibitionist, so I took myself through night school knowing my firm thighs wouldn’t last forever. But let me assure you I made ten times the money walking a runway than I ever would have earned running a small office or doing some other dreary thing. And later on when I needed it, that degree qualified me to have a meaningful position with one of Charleston’s leading nonprofits that worked to stop domestic violence. Even I knew you shouldn’t be strutting around in bathing suits after