The One & Only(26)

In other words, my mother had sincerely flattered Connie Carr on a daily basis, especially when it came to matters of taste. When Mrs. Carr traded her silver car in for a white one, my mother followed suit (even though she had once told me that she’d never own a white car). When Mrs. Carr decided to get a crisp bob one summer, my mother chopped off her hair, too. And on and on. Mrs. Carr was my mother’s best friend, but also her field guide and barometer of all her decisions, both minor and major, and losing her, I could tell already, was having a disorienting, devastating effect. It was unfathomable to my mother that Connie had actually drawn the short straw, and a source of great guilt. Striving even harder for perfection, Connie Carr–style, seemed to be a way of repenting for being the survivor, and, as always, my mother couldn’t separate me from her quest. In this way, Ryan James would be the ultimate salve. If I could land him—heck, even date him for a minute—there would be some sort of tangible proof that she had raised me right, been a good mother, overcome her blue-collar roots.

All her life my mother had been scrapping and scheming to defy her familial shortcomings, beginning with her own acceptance to Walker on a full (albeit need-based) scholarship, then continuing when she befriended Connie, landed my dad (Yankee money was better than no money), joined all the right clubs, and, most of all, aligned our family so closely with the Carrs. There was really nothing more she could have done to set me up for her brand of success and status. Yet, I still managed to let her down, time and again, beginning at a young age when she signed me up for riding lessons only to discover that I had a severe allergic reaction to horses. It was downhill from there. I sucked at ballet. I refused to go out for cheerleading. I spent too much time on football. I wasn’t into clothes or makeup or all the things that girls in Texas are raised to care about. I didn’t get into the exclusive Camp Waldemar, a sleepaway camp with more stringent admissions than Harvard, or the Hockaday School, the fancy boarding school in Dallas that all the “best” girls attended (the only notable exception was Lucy because Coach Carr didn’t believe in sending children away). I made the Homecoming Court, but skipped the festivities for a regional track meet.

And perhaps the biggest disappointment of my mother’s life, at least since her marriage ended, was when I wasn’t invited to be a debutante. It was a long shot, as these things were passed down through the generations, but, because of my mother’s diligence, and our close affiliation with the Carrs, I still had a shot—until I dated Gregory Hobbs my junior year of high school and eviscerated her efforts in one fell swoop. It didn’t matter that Gregory was in the National Honor Society or that his father was an economics professor at Walker or that our romance was short-lived and mostly innocent. What mattered was that Gregory was African-American, and, whether or not anyone admitted it, interracial dating wasn’t exactly a fast track into the upper crust of Texas society. My mother had zero tolerance for racism and certainly never discouraged my friendship with Gregory, but I could tell she let the debutante dream die after that, slightly lowering her social ambitions for me.

When Mrs. Carr and Lucy began the whole tedious debbing process, my mother’s wounds were briefly reopened, and I actually felt a little sorry for her. But I reassured her that it was for the best. I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in getting all dolled up to walk down a runway in silly white gloves and bridal wear, especially for a bunch of elitists. Nor was I about to get on my knees and do that ridiculous “swan” curtsy to the boys I had seen belching and swearing in the cafeteria. The whole thing was a big misogynistic joke, and I told my mother I’d be forfeiting my rights as a strong, independent woman if I got up on that auction block. Hadn’t she raised me better than that?

With a dash of feminism somewhere in her blood, she didn’t disagree entirely, but she was also a realist and warned me that I would never marry into a “good” family if I didn’t learn to play the game—or at least pretend to be a proper Southern lady. She was right, of course. Because I never played the game, never became a proper Southern lady, and never made headway with Texas blue bloods, the kind of boys who stand when a girl comes to the table, tip their hats at the right moments, make you look good when they spin you around the dance floor, and have loads of money, the older the better. Instead, I ended up with guys like Miller who broke all the rules and, in my mother’s words, wore boots on all the wrong occasions, namely weddings (you didn’t have to be Mrs. Carr or Garth Brooks to know that boots have no place at black-tie affairs).