The One & Only(8)

“A little better,” she said. “I’m sorry about earlier. Losing my temper with Miller. I know he’s harmless enough.”

I shook my head, dismissing the apology as unnecessary. It took a lot for me to get upset at Lucy, and I’d always accepted her critiques of my life and boyfriends, both because she always had my best interests at heart and because she was usually right. She had a free pass, good for life.

“Thanks for going with Daddy,” she said, putting down her plate and leaning on the counter. She looked pale, but relaxed, and I suspected that she had popped one of the little white pills her doctor had prescribed “to get through the next few days.”

“No problem,” I said, suddenly wishing I had one to take myself.

“How do you think he’s doing?” she asked. “How was he on the drive over?”

I shrugged and told her I wasn’t sure. “We didn’t really talk about anything … Except for … you know … football.”

Lucy’s eyes filled with tears, her chin trembling.

“Oh. Luce … I’m sorry, honey,” I said, wondering if I’d said the wrong thing, or if it was just another sickening wave of realization that her mother was gone. I put my arms around her, then led her to the privacy of the laundry room. “I shouldn’t be talking about football,” I said, thinking that I finally saw her point. That there was something about life going on, business as usual, that seemed so wrong. Mrs. Carr wasn’t my mother, but even I had the irrational sense that the whole world—or at least the state of Texas—should take a respectful time-out to grieve her.

Lucy shook her head. “No. It’s not that. It’s fine. Football’s fine,” she said, and then added a heartbreaking footnote. “I’m just glad Daddy still has something to love.”


That night, after everyone but my mother and I had gone home, we sat around the kitchen table and talked about Connie. We laughed about how she couldn’t drive on the interstate or read maps, how competitive she was when it came to her pecan pie, widely considered the best in Walker. She had even won bake-offs in Dallas, but always voted for others because, in her mind, casting a ballot for her own pie seemed gauche. We talked about how much she loved her “stories”—taping soap operas and giving updates on the characters as if they were family members we all should know. We talked about how consistently she bungled song lyrics, our favorite being Bob Dylan’s “The ants are my friends, they’re blowin’ in the wind.” We laughed and cried until we were too drained to share any more memories.

At which point, they all ganged up on me. Or, more accurately, they ganged up on Miller, who was no longer there to defend himself. It was my mom, Lucy, and Neil versus Miller—hardly a fair matchup—all of them saying, in various ways, that Miller wasn’t good enough for me. Even Lawton put in his two cents—and I wasn’t sure he was qualified to have an opinion, as he had never been in a relationship longer than three months. Only Coach Carr kept mum on the subject, having moved to the family room, sunk in his easy chair. He was close enough to hear our conversation but seemed focused on watching college basketball, flipping between channels, the television on mute. I hated having my love life dissected, especially in mixed company, but I played along, as it occurred to me that it provided a nice distraction for everyone.

“She really needs to cut him loose,” Lucy said as she transferred her chardonnay from one of the plastic stemmed glasses the caterer had brought to a crystal one from the china cabinet, then sat down again at the expansive farmhouse table that Mrs. Carr had stripped and stained herself.

Except for a platter of sugar cookies from Star Provisions, our town’s famed bakery, the food was all put away, the kitchen tidy.

“Miller’s not that bad,” I said, just as my phone rang in my purse.

“Speak of the devil?” my mom asked.

“Oh, now he’s the devil?” I said, resisting the urge to check it. I was pretty sure it was Miller, though, as he had mouthed I’ll call you upon his departure.

“He is that bad,” Lucy said. “He’s thoughtless. He’s devoid of ambition. He’s a pothead. He has shitty grammar.”

“Thoughtless?” I said, because that was the most serious charge. And because he was actually pretty sweet in his own clueless way.

“Well, he did forget your birthday last year,” Neil chimed in, referring to a dinner he and Lucy had hosted when Miller had showed up empty-handed.

“It just slipped his mind. No biggie. Besides, thirty-two was nothing much to celebrate,” I said.