Mean Woman Blues

were decent people who’d done the best they could for her and her sisters, both of whom had had the gall to move out of state. That left her to cope, and it would have been a lot easier with her new boyfriend.
    Her parents wouldn’t be rude in front of a stranger, in fact they’d go out of their way to be friendly. And Isaac, truth to tell, would be quite a prize to show off. The man was handsome, and he was talented, and he was polite and well spoken. Best of all, he was just eccentric enough to intimidate them— and she got along with them best when they were intimidated.
    Yet she didn’t know how to pull it off by herself. In fact, she’d cover up the tattoo with sleeves, and she’d leave the barbed-wire thing at home. She was aware that, for all her blue hair and bravado, there was still some piece of her that was deeply timid and submissive. And frightened.
    She sighed, hoping this time would be better. She had baked a lemon chess pie, her mother’s favorite. It was something, anyway.
    Her parents lived in a small, depressing house in one of the few neighborhoods she could name that actually had no charm. This was a hard thing to pull off in New Orleans, but the house was in Kenner, out in the burbs. It might have been the sort of thing you’d hide from a new boyfriend— and so might her parents be— but Isaac was so perfectly sweet and tolerant, he probably wouldn’t even be offended when they questioned him about whether he was Jewish or not, on account of his first name.
    It was still light when she arrived for dinner, and when her mother saw the pie, she said, “Oh. I thought you liked chocolate. I got a cake.”
    “Mom, the pie’s for you. Happy Mother’s Day.” Her mother looked as if she didn’t know how to respond. Neither of them made a move to kiss the other. Her dad was in the den watching television.
    “What’d you do to your hair?”
    “Dyed it. What’s for dinner?”
    Terri stayed in the kitchen while her mother finished cooking: ham, sweet potatoes whipped with orange juice, frozen green beans, and Waldorf salad— her mother’s idea of festive food. She hadn’t started the salad yet. This way she could keep Terri in the kitchen with her while she complained about her husband.
    He never talked to her, she said. Their marriage wasn’t close; it never had been. Sometimes she was so depressed she didn’t know what to do.
    “Pray?” Terri suggested.
    And her mother snapped, “A lot you know about it,” as if Terri were being deliberately insolent.
    When they were at the table, in the small dining room papered with a stiff brown and yellow floral pattern, her mother said, “You’re welcome to bring your boyfriend. We hope you know that.”
    “Thank you,” she said.
    “You got a boyfriend?” Her dad seemed suddenly interested. “Who’d want a blue-haired gal?”
    “A very nice man. An artist.”
    “You meet him in some bar?”
    “At school. He went back for his degree.”
    Her dad pointed a fork at her, speared with a great hunk of pink meat. His face was perennially red, and his neck was thick and always had been, even before his middle matched. Though he’d never hit her— it was her mother who had— she’d always found him frightening. “He older than you?”
    “A little bit. He’s very mature.” She wasn’t sure that he was, but at least he made money, which was more than she could say for herself.
    Her dad made his voice low and somehow seductive. “You gonna marry him?”
    She felt the hot rush of blood to her face. “I don’t know. We’ve just been dating a couple of months.”
    She didn’t even know if she wanted to marry him, but she sure wished he’d ask her to move in with him. Sharing rent and groceries would take a huge financial burden off her.
    “Just so you don’t go living in sin.”
    Terri lost it then; sometimes it didn’t take much. “I wouldn’t consider it a sin to live with somebody you love.”
    It was like throwing a mouse to a cat. Her mother sat up straight as a pole and narrowed her eyes. She was in territory she loved. “It is in the sight of God,” she said.
    “Who decided that? The male chauvinists of the Roman Catholic church?”
    “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
    “If you aren’t married, it isn’t adultery.”
    “Why, it certainly is.”
    “You know, if you’re not a Christian, it just doesn’t matter. You don’t have to listen to what anyone says. You get to make your own rules.”
    “You