Cutler 03 - Twilight's Child

the dinner party before Mother has a fit," I said quickly, and I rushed off, feeling as if I were fleeing a dirty dream.
     
    Claudine Monroe, Betty Ann's mother, held tight reign on the planning of Philip and Betty Ann's wedding. Mother tried to insert her opinions and ideas often, but her attempts were continually thwarted. As the wedding date drew closer Mother's complaints about the way she was being treated intensified.
    "I feel as though I'm just another guest," she told me on the telephone one morning. "Now that woman (Mother had taken to calling Betty Ann's mother 'that woman') won't even answer my phone calls. I can only get her secretary . . . her secretary! She has a secretary to look after her social affairs, do you believe it? And I'm curtly told my messages will be delivered, yet that woman doesn't return the calls. Isn't that discourteous?"
    "It's her wedding to plan, Mother. You had mine," I reminded her.
    "Well, who else would have done it, if I hadn't? Besides, these people think they're above us, Dawn. I can't stand the way that woman talks down to me whenever we do talk. They think just because they live on the outskirts of the nation's capital and socialize with congressmen and senators, they're somehow better than we are," she complained.
    "I'm sure it will be a very nice wedding, Mother. Why don't you just relax and enjoy having someone else do all the work for a change? If Betty Ann's mother is treating you like a guest, be a guest," I suggested.
    "Yes, you're right. I shouldn't give her the benefit of my expertise. Let that woman do it on her own."
    "I'm sure she has many professional advisers, Mother, and actually does very little on her own."
    "Um . . . have you chosen the carpet for the master bedroom?" she asked, jumping to an area in which she felt she could have some input—my new house.
    "I'm going with the beige," I said.
    "Oh, that's such a mistake. You don't know how hard it is to keep that looking clean. Now, I think . . ."
    It had gotten so that I could listen and not listen to Mother at the same time. I usually did paperwork while she babbled over the telephone, sensing when to respond with an "uh-huh" or a "yes." However, during this particular phone conversation she suddenly switched to a third topic with the shock of a headline announcement and seized my full attention. First she began to cry.
    "What is it now, Mother?" I asked wearily.
    "Clara Sue has left finishing school and moved in with a man," she announced, her voice crumbling.
    "What? When?"
    "It's been over a month, but I haven't had the strength to talk about it. I still don't, but I feel if I keep it all bottled up inside me, I will simply explode one day. All that money we've spent on her finishing school has been wasted. Bronson says there's nothing we can do or should do. She's over eighteen now."
    "He's right, Mother. Not that she listened to anything you or Randolph told her before she was eighteen. What sort of man is she living with?" I asked. What I really meant was, what sort of a man would want to live with her?
    "A man fifteen years older! And divorced, too," she cried. "With two children, a boy ten and a girl twelve!"
    "Where did she meet him?" I wondered aloud.
    "She went bowling," Mother replied, sighing. "Fortunately, people here don't know yet, but can you imagine what it is going to be like when they find out? And she intends to bring this man to Philip's graduation and wedding. I will be so disgraced—so embarrassed—but do you think she cares? Not one bit."
    "Look at it this way, Mother," I said dryly, "someone else has to put up with her now."
    "This is no time to be flippant, Dawn. It's a serious problem. At this period in my life I don't need anything to speed up my aging process. I'm thinking of taking those new skin treatments I read about."
    "Mother, if I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times: anyone who wants to see wrinkles in your face has to use a magnifying glass," I said.
    "I know you're just being nice, Dawn, but I can see myself in a mirror, can't I? Oh, this thing with Clara Sue," she moaned. "It will be the death of me. What should I do?"
    "There's someone knocking on my office door, Mother," I said.
    "I'm sure there's no one there, Dawn. You just want to get rid of me. Everyone just wants to get rid of me these days . . . Philip, that woman, Clara Sue, and now you, too," she sobbed. "Thank goodness I have Bronson."
    "There really is someone knocking, Mother. We're in