“Mom’s never been like this before,” I said.
“Not this bad,” Liz said.
“She won’t shut up.”
“I noticed.”
“Maybe it’s just a mood and it’ll pass.” I plumped up one of the oversize pillows and leaned against it. “Mom and Uncle Tinsley have such different memories of growing up at Mayfield.”
“Like they grew up in two different houses.”
“What Mom said about her dad being inappropriate is creepy. Do you think it’s true?”
“I think Mom believes it, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Maybe she just needed someone to blame for the way everything turned out. Maybe something happened and she blew it out of proportion. Or maybe it’s true. I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
After a while, Mom knocked on our door. “Ladies,” she called out, “time to hit the shops.”
She was still wearing her red velvet jacket, but she had teased her hair even higher and had put on glossy lipstick and thick, dark eyeliner. She was also still talking a mile a minute. As we rode the elevator down, she explained that the hotel’s main dining room was so fancy that men were required to wear a jacket and tie, and if they showed up in shirtsleeves, the maître d’ provided them with the proper apparel from a collection of jackets and ties kept in the coat room.
Mom led us back through the main lobby, which was now bustling with smartly dressed guests checking in, uniformed bellboys stacking luggage, and dapper waiters in tuxes hurrying along with champagne buckets and silver trays of martinis. Liz and I were still wearing the cutoffs and T-shirts we had put on that morning at Mayfield, and I felt seriously out of place.
We followed Mom down a corridor lined with stores that had glittering plate-glass windows in brass frames displaying everything from jewelry and perfumes to fancy carved pipes and imported cigars. Mom directed us into a dress shop. “My mother took me to this very store when I was your age,” she said.
There were racks of clothes, tables of shoes and handbags, and headless mannequins wearing expensive-looking pink and green summer dresses. Mom began holding up pairs of shoes and pulling dresses off the rack, saying things like “This was meant for you, Bean,” and “You’d look fabulous in these, Liz,” and “This has my name written all over it.”
The clerk came over, a slightly older woman with half-moon glasses hanging on a gold chain around her neck. She smiled, but like the doorman, she glanced down at my mud-caked sneakers. “Is there anything in particular I can help you with?” she asked.
“We need ensembles for dinner,” Mom said. “We checked in on impulse without bringing much in the way of clothes. We’re looking for something a little formal but also très chic.”
The clerk nodded. “I know precisely what you have in mind,” she said. She asked our sizes and started holding up various dresses while Mom oohed and aahed over them. Soon there was a pile of possibilities draped over a rack.
Liz fingered one and looked at the price tag. “Mom, this costs eighty dollars,” she said. “It’s sort of out of our price range.”
Mom glared at Liz. “That’s not for you to say,” she said. “I’m the mother.”
The clerk looked between Mom and Liz as if she couldn’t decide whom to believe and where this was headed.
“Do you have any bargain racks?” I asked.
The clerk gave me a pained expression. “We’re not that kind of establishment,” she said. “There is a Dollar General on Broad Street.”
“Now, girls, you’re not to worry about money,” Mom said. “We need outfits for dinner.” She looked at the clerk. “They’ve been staying with their tightwad uncle and have picked up his penny-pinching habits.”
“We can’t afford this, Mom,” Liz said. “You know that.”
“We don’t need to eat in the restaurant,” I said. “We can order room service. Or takeout.”
Mom looked at Liz and me. Her smile disappeared, and her face darkened. “How dare you?” she said. “How dare you question my authority?”
She was trying to do something nice for us, Mom went on, something that would lift our spirits, and this was the thanks she got? What a couple of ingrates. Thanks. Thanks a lot. She had driven all the way across the country to get us, and what did we do to show our gratitude? We publicly embarrassed her in a store where she’d been shopping since she was a girl. She’d had it. Had it with the two of us.
Knocking the dresses off the rack, Mom stormed out of the store.