"Laurel, what on earth are you doing out with that man?" Vivian asked, her voice hushed and shocked. She pressed a bejeweled hand to her throat as if to make certain Jack hadn't somehow managed to steal the diamond-and-emerald pendant from around her neck.
Laurel sighed and shook her head. "It's nice to see you, too, Mama," she said with the faintest hint of sarcasm. "Don't worry about our well-being. Jack hit his head, but other than that we're fine."
"I can see that you're fine," Vivian snapped.
She turned and went back into the parlor, expecting Laurel to follow, which she did, reluctantly. Vivian lowered herself gracefully onto one of a pair of elegant wing chairs done in cream moiré silk. Laurel ignored the implied dictate to occupy the other. That was a trap. She was wet and presumably dirty. She knew better than to touch the furniture while she was in such an appalling state of dishabille. She stationed herself on the other side of the gold Queen Anne settee, instead, and waited for the show to begin.
"You've been in town for days without so much as calling your mother!" Vivian declared. "How do you think that makes me feel?" She sniffed delicately and shook her head, pretending to blink away tears of hurt. "Why, just this morning, Deanna Corbin Hunt was asking me how you were doing, and what could I say to her? You remember Deanna, don't you? My dear good friend from school? The one who would have written you a letter of recommendation to Chi-O if you hadn't broken my heart and decided not to pledge?"
"Yes, Mama," Laurel said dutifully and with resignation. "I remember Mrs. Hunt."
"I can only imagine what they all think," Vivian went on, eyes downcast, one hand fussing with a loose thread on the arm of the chair. "My daughter home for the first time in how long, and she isn't staying in my home, hasn't even bothered to call me."
Laurel refrained from pointing out that telephones worked two ways. Vivian was determined to play the tragically ignored mother. She had never been one to see ironies, at any rate. "I'm sorry, Mama."
"You should be," Vivian murmured, casting big blue eyes full of hurt up at her daughter. "I've been feeling just ragged with worry, not knowing what to think. I swear, it'd like to have given me one of my spells."
Guilt nipped at Laurel 's conscience at the same time the cynic in her called her a sucker. She'd spent her entire childhood tiptoeing around the danger of causing one of her mother's "spells" of depression, and her feelings had engaged in a constant tug-of-war between pity and resentment. On the one hand, she felt Vivian couldn't help being the way she was; on the other, she felt her mother used her supposed fragility to control and manipulate. Even now, Laurel couldn't reconcile the polarized feelings inside her.
"How do you think it looks to my friends to have my daughter staying in town with her lesbian aunt, instead of with me?"
"You don't know that Aunt Caroline is a lesbian," Laurel snapped. "And what difference would it make if she were?" she asked, pacing away from the settee, away from her mother, and toward the mahogany sideboard, where half a dozen decanters stood on a silver tray. She wished fleetingly that her stomach could have handled a drink, because her nerves sure as hell could have used one about now. But she turned away from it and went to the French doors to look out at the rain and the gathering gloom of night.
"It's nobody's business who Aunt Caroline sees," she said. "Besides, I don't hear you complaining about the fact that your other daughter lives with Caroline."
Vivian's perfectly painted mouth pressed into a tight line. "I quit concerning myself with Savannah 's actions long ago."
"Yes, you certainly did," Laurel mumbled bitterly.
"What was that?"
She bit her lip and checked her temper. No purpose would be served by pursuing this line of conversation now. Vivian was the queen of denial. She would never accept blame for her daughters' not turning out the way she had planned.
She pulled in a calming breath and turned away from the window, her arms folded tightly against herself, despite the fact that her clothes were soaking wet. "I said, what's so wrong with Jack Boudreaux?"
Vivian gave her a truly scandalized look. "What isn't wrong with him? For heaven's sake, Laurel! The man barely speaks the same language we do. I have it on good authority that he comes from trash, and that's no great surprise to me now that I've met him."
"If he were wearing a linen suit, would he be respectable then?"
"If he were wearing any less of a shirt, I would ask him to leave the house," she stated unequivocally. "I don't care how famous he may be. He writes trash, and he is trash. Blood will tell, after all."
"Will it?"
"My, you're snippy tonight," Vivian observed primly. "That's hardly the way I raised you."
She rose and went to the sideboard to prepare herself a drink. For medicinal purposes, of course. Very deliberately she selected ice cubes from the sterling ice bucket with sterling ice tongs and dropped them into a chunky crystal glass. "I'm simply trying to guide you, the way any good mother would. You don't always seem to know what's best, but I would have thought you had better sense than to get involved with a man like Jack Boudreaux. God knows, your sister wouldn't hesitate, but you… Coming away from your little trouble and all, especially…"
"Little trouble." Laurel watched her mother splash gin over the ice and dilute it with tonic water. The aroma of the liquor, cool and piney, drifted to her nostrils. Cool and smooth and dry, like gin, that was Vivian. Never mar the surface of things with anything so ugly as the truth.
"I had a breakdown, Mama," she said baldly. "My husband left me, my career blew up in my face, and I had a nervous breakdown. That's more than a 'little trouble.' "
True to form, Vivian sifted out the things she didn't want to discuss and discarded them. She settled on her chair once again, crossed her legs, took a sip of her drink. "You married down, Laurel. Wesley Brooks was spineless, besides. You can't expect a man like that to weather much of a storm."
"Wesley was kind and sweet," Laurel said in her ex-husband's defense, not impressing her mother in the least.
"A woman should marry strength, not softness," Vivian preached. "If you had chosen a man of your own station, he would have insisted you give up law and raise his children, and none of this other unpleasantness would have happened."
Laurel shook her head, stunned at the rationalization. If she had married her social equal, a well-bred chauvinist ass, then she could have avoided dealing with The Scott County Case. She could have given up the pursuit of justice and concentrated on more important things, like picking out a silver pattern and planning garden parties.
"We're having guests for dinner tomorrow." Checking the slim gold watch she wore, Vivian set her drink aside and rose, delicately smoothing the wrinkles from her dress. "The guest list will provide more suitable company than what you've been keeping lately."
"I'm really not feeling up to it, Mama."
"But, Laurel, I've already told people you would be here!" she exclaimed, sounding for all the world like a spoiled, petulant teenager. "I was going to call you today and tell you all about it! You wouldn't deny me the chance to save face with my friends, would you?"
"Yes" hovered on her tongue, but Laurel swallowed it back. Be a good girl, Laurel. Do the proper thing, Laurel. Don't upset Mama, Laurel. She stared down at her squishy sneakers and sighed in defeat. "Of course not, Mama. I'll come."
Vivian ignored the dolorous tone, satisfied with the answer. A smile blossomed like a rose on her lips. "Wonderful!" she exclaimed, suddenly fluttering with bright energy. She moved from table to mirror and back, smoothing her skirt, checking her earrings, gathering up her evening bag. "We'll sit down at one-after Sunday services, as always. And do wear something nice, Laurel," she added, casting a sidelong look at her wilted, rumpled daughter. "Now, Ross and I are already late for our dinner reservations, so we've got to rush."