PI On A Hot Tin Roof

command, executed a one-eighty, so that she faced the starving masses. “You two need an attitude adjustment. You are here as guests of your father and me. If you do not learn to accommodate your father’s wife, I can’t be responsible for what he might do. She’ll move in, and neither one of us will tolerate unnecessary strife in Lucy’s life. Lucy loves the girl and she needs a female role model the worst kind of way.”
    Talba cut her eyes at Suzanne, who hadn’t missed the fact that she was the target of Adele’s barb. Her fresh rosiness had become a red-hot flush.
    “Aren’t we jumping the gun, Mommo?” Royce said. “They’re not even engaged.”
    “How stupid can you be, Royce? Hear this: They soon will be. And you are gon’ have to adjust to it.” She rose and left the room.
    “Oh, hell,” Royce said. “Forget breakfast. I’m going to work.”
    Suzanne shrugged. “This is delicious. Alberta cooks her eggs too hard.”

Chapter 5
    Fortunately, no one but Adele wanted lunch that day, and taking pity on the new kid, she made herself a tuna fish sandwich. The afternoon was running, running, running—five loads of laundry, eight sheets and sixteen pillowcases to iron, beds to make, bathrooms to clean. Talba had to stay till well past four—and then well past five—to feel she’d done a good enough job to warrant a second day. She had only a moment to snoop, and that was in Buddy’s night table, where she found a vial of Viagra, a box of condoms, an excellent collection of sex toys, and a gun nestled amid the happy clutter of true love. Buddy came home shortly before she left and went upstairs with a curt nod. She was just walking out the door when she heard him roar, “Can’t anyone take a crap around here?”
    Good timing,
she thought, and closed the door behind her.
    At home, Miz Clara was dozing in her rocking chair, wearing her old blue slippers and no wig. “You look like death warmed over.”
    “Mama, I’m in no mood. I’ve got to go lie down.”
    “Ain’tcha got a date with my baby?” Sometimes that was Talba, sometimes Sophia, but this time she meant Darryl.
    “Can’t do it,” she said. She’d phoned to cancel on the way home. She kicked off her shoes and threw herself on her bed, wondering if her body was ever going to be the same. Two hours later, she woke from a deep sleep, teased into consciousness by a black cat purring in her ear, a white one nibbling her toes. “Don’t bite, Blanche,” she snapped, and forced herself to go forage for food.
    Her mother had made chili. Miz Clara had already eaten, but she sat down across the old black-painted table from her daughter, having first poured her a glass of Chardonnay—an unaccustomed attention. “Ya gotta either drink or read the Bible if ya gon’ clean houses,” she said, “and I know ya mama raised a heathen.”
    “Have some wine with me,” Talba said. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
    “Why, I b’lieve I will,” said Miz Clara, who never drank unless invited, and then only one glass. She retrieved the wine, which she’d already put away, and poured a glass for herself. “My baby have a hard day?”
    “Mama, I’ll be honest. I don’t know how you do it.”
    “I got my systems.” Miz Clara looked like the Cheshire cat.
    “What would you think about sharing? Along with some recipes.”
    “Recipes! They want ya to cook?”
    “You don’t have to?”
    “These people are animals.”
    Talba considered it. “Well, one of them is,” she said, thinking of Buddy. “Jury’s still out on the rest. How do you do it, Mama?”
    She meant the question literally, and Miz Clara took it that way. “First of all, ya gotta start at the top. If ya do the floor and then the chandeliers, what’s gon’ happen?”
    Talba didn’t know, but apparently she wasn’t required to. Miz Clara answered herself. “Ya gon get a second coat of dust on that floor. Have to clean it twice. See what I mean?”
    Talba’d never considered the effects of gravity on dust—this was actually very educational. “Ya gotta look for cobwebs while ya up there—most housecleaners don’t even notice ’em. But they up there; they up there catchin’ dust, holdin’ dust, makin’ everybody sneeze. Get them cobwebs and the room’s gon’ be a lot cleaner already. They gon’ like that.
    “Another thing. Clean the windows before you do any other heavy stuff. Why? Because the whole house looks cleaner when the windows are clean. Right