52
Nancy’s car was in my driveway when I got home. Michael had offered to drive me, but that wasn’t smart on the day that the story broke.
“Hello?” I called as I walked in the front door.
“If it isn’t Hester Prynne herself,” Nancy said, coming from the kitchen in my apron. “Look, I don’t blame you. He’s good-looking. But how could you not tell me?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said, walking into the kitchen and looking at the remains of dinner. She was cleaning up. “He kissed me after we went to a party at Anna Wainwright’s house, and we both said we couldn’t do anything while I was still married.”
“That’s something,” Nancy said. “We’re still fighting though.”
I laughed. “If you clean my kitchen when we’re fighting, we should fight more often.” I looked around. “Where’s my mother?”
“Ha,” she said slowly, drawing it out to multiple syllables. “She’s lying down. I came over when the paper came, and she started waving it around and yelling that she’d have to move to Europe because she couldn’t show her face in this country.”
I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t even in the Post .”
“Oh, I know. But it’s all about her of course.”
“Of course.” I sighed. “I guess I should go check on her.”
“Bring the sherry,” she said. “Not to drink—you can hit her over the head with the bottle and put her out of her misery.”
A loud crash came from the living room followed by shrieking. “Hey!” Nancy yelled, charging down the hall. “I told you if you broke anything, I was taking the TV apart!”
I grabbed the sherry bottle and headed upstairs.
My mother’s light was off, a faint moaning emanating from the room. “Mama?” I asked, knocking softly at the partially open door.
“I don’t know anyone by that name. I’m changing my name,” she said.
I flipped on the light, and she squinted at me. “To be fair, Mama isn’t your legal name.”
She sat up and shook a finger at me. “Now see here, young lady—”
I held my hands up. “Do you want to hear what actually happened? Or just be upset?”
“I don’t see why I can’t do both.”
With a sigh, I sat on the edge of the bed, starting at the beginning about the night of Anna’s party. By the time I was finished, she was pacing the room, furious. “I have half a mind to call Larry’s mother,” she said. “Dreadful woman that she is.”
I wouldn’t call my mother-in-law dreadful, but her lack of fashion sense damned her irreparably in my mother’s eyes.
“You do know we’re adults, and this isn’t like when Bertie Schwartz put gum in my hair?”
She crossed to me and cupped my chin in her hand. “You’re my daughter,” she said. “I’m allowed to be angry on your behalf.”
Amazing how just ten minutes earlier, she was going to change her name and flee the country because of the shame I had brought on her.
“I called Anna,” I said. “I’m working on a letter to the editor telling my side of things.”
Mama sank back onto the bed. “So you’re going to fix this by airing more dirty laundry? How you could do this to your poor father ...”
“My father? Really?”
“This is his legacy.”
“If his soon-to-be divorced daughter kissing a man and then deciding to do the right thing is his entire legacy, then he wasn’t such a great congressman.”
She leveled a finger at me. “You know that isn’t true.”
“Mama, listen, I’m fixing this. I promise. I’m not letting Larry win.”
“No,” she said. “You’re not.” She patted my leg. “And I suppose if my mother could survive me, I’ll survive this.”
“What did you do when you were young?”
She smiled. “You’re not getting that story this easily.”