Baby, Don't Go

It left Alicia feeling sick at her stomach to see her mother so desperate for affection. Worse, her mother seemed at loose ends, playing housewife in a small rental house in a shabby subdivision while her sweaty boyfriend worked landscaping jobs—a skill he did not put to use around their own residence, Alicia noted wryly, stepping over tall weeds in the seams of the concrete driveway.

And Jesus, it was hot down here. The temperature was at least a hundred degrees, and the air was as thick as cream. The sweet-scented breeze her mother had promised seemed to have died, along with the luster of her whirlwind romance.

“That was nice of him,” Alicia said, then took the keys her mother offered. She’d never been behind the wheel of a truck before, but it couldn’t be much different than any other vehicle. And maybe a pickup would help her blend in better once she arrived in Sweetness. She opened the passenger door and stepped back as a wave of pent-up heat rolled out.

“So you’re doing a story on Sweetness?” Candace asked.

“Maybe,” Alicia said vaguely as she lifted her suitcase into the seat. The cab of the truck was an oven. “I won’t know until I get there.”

“Since you borrowed my wardrobe, I assume this is for your Undercover Feminist column? Is something strange going on up there?”

“That’s what I intend to find out,” Alicia said mildly.

“I remember reading something in the newspaper about the town building a covered bridge. It sounds like a very pretty place,” her mother said, her voice wistful.

Alicia closed the passenger door, then reached forward to squeeze her mother’s hand. “Are you okay, Mom?”

Candace hesitated, her dark eyes troubled. Standing in the unforgiving sun, she suddenly looked her age. She glanced back at the small house in the little neighborhood, a far cry from the posh home she’d once shared with Alicia’s father. Then Candace conjured up a smile. “I’m fine.” She pulled something from the pocket of her worn jeans and extended it to Alicia. “I made something for you.”

Alicia took the item, a bracelet made of braided leather and silver wire, with a metal charm in the shape of a blossom. “You made this?” Her mother had always admired and acquired beautiful jewelry, but Alicia had never known her to be artsy.

Candace nodded and helped her fasten the clasp. “The charm is a magnolia blossom. It stands for beauty and strength, fitting for my successful daughter.”

Alicia was touched. “It’s lovely. Thank you.” She admired it, then looked up. “Mom, are you sure everything is okay?”

“I’m sure.” Candace wet her lips. “Have you talked to your father recently?”

Alicia hesitated. Was her mother in a funk because she’d heard about the upcoming nuptials? “He sent me an email the other day.”

“I heard he’s getting married again.”

Bingo. “So it would seem.”

“I’m sure the girl is your age,” Candace said, studying her manicure.

“Younger,” Alicia confirmed. “Only a young woman could put up with Robert, you know that.”

“You shouldn’t call your father by his first name,” her mother chastised. “Are you going to the wedding?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought.” Alicia pushed aside the hurt she felt for her mother and smiled. “And you shouldn’t either.”

Candace’s smile was slower, fainter. “You’re right, of course. You’re always right. Drive safely, my dear.”

Alicia clasped her in a hug. “I’ll call you after I get there and get my bearings—who knows, I might be back tomorrow.”

Her mother brightened. “Then maybe we could dress up and go into the city, have a nice dinner.”

So her mother was well aware she’d taken a big step down in her expectations by shacking up with Bo. And she was obviously still pining for her ex-husband, who had married four times since their divorce twenty-five years ago.

Alicia wondered how it was possible to love someone for so long, although she conceded that her parents hadn’t dealt with their feelings at the time of their split. They’d lost a baby to miscarriage, her mother had told her later, when she was old enough to understand. Candace hadn’t been able to shake herself from the melancholy, didn’t want to be a wife anymore…and hadn’t been too keen on mothering Alicia either. Now in the afternoon of her life, she was nursing regrets.

All the more reason to avoid the complications of a relationship in the first place, Alicia thought.

“Going into the city would be nice,” she agreed, then gestured to the truck. “I’d better get on the road.” She shouldered her purse, opened the driver’s-side door of the pickup truck and pondered how to get up into the stained cloth seat.

“There’s a handle,” her mother said, pointing to the top of the door frame, then down to the bottom. “And you can step on the running board.”

Alicia reached for the handle and put her foot on what she assumed was the running board, then swung awkwardly into the seat. She crinkled her nose—the interior was filthy and smelled like cigarettes. She’d definitely be turning on the air conditioner full blast.

“The air conditioner is on the fritz,” her mother said. “Sorry.”

Alicia gave her a tight smile. “I’ll roll down the windows.”

“Only the passenger window goes down,” her mother said, then winced. “Halfway.”

Perfect. “Anything else I should know?”

“Um…Bo said you might need some gas.”

Alicia reconsidered her rental car still sitting in the driveway, with a working air-conditioner and a full tank of gas. But the last thing she wanted to do was drive into the small town and advertise the fact that she was a reporter on an expense account. Besides, this was an adventure, she reminded herself.

So she closed the door and after wrestling with the seat belt and the manual seat adjustment, she started the engine. Bo’s muffler, it seemed, was also questionable. Alicia waved to her mother and pulled out of the driveway.

By the time she reached a convenience store with a gas pump, her thin T-shirt was already stuck to her back. The heat was unbearable—she wasn’t sure how she was going to make the four-hour drive without some kind of ventilation.

Inside the convenience store, she was startled to realize men were openly ogling her legs. She already felt self-conscious in the short denim skirt and white sandals her mother had lent her, and the attention was unsettling. She usually didn’t garner a second glance in Manhattan, where she blended in with all the other thirtysomething women who wore dark business suits and blister-inducing stilettos. Besides, all the men in New York had their faces buried in the financial pages.

Were Southern men really as sexually assertive as their stereotype? The intense gaze of Marcus Armstrong rose in her mind, stirring unbidden desire in her stomach. She squashed the sensation, attributing it to feeling like a fish out of water.

Pulling her mind back to her objective, Alicia removed a large bottle of water from the refrigerator case. She was hungry, but the breakfast sandwiches were wrapped in grease-soaked paper, so she passed. The other offerings were pastries and packaged fare with names like “honey claw” and “cow pie,” none of which she found appetizing. If she were in Manhattan, she’d be having an egg-and-avocado sandwich on sunflower-seed bread and the world’s best coffee from Alfred’s café a block away from her office building.

She was definitely a city girl, she mused. If Sweetness was more primitive than this area, she hoped her visit would be of short duration.

On the way to the counter she spotted a battery-operated neon-colored plastic fan that mounted on a car’s dashboard with suction cups. The display model was generating a little breeze, and although Alicia found the item horribly gauche, she thought it couldn’t hurt, so she sheepishly plucked one from the stack. In a mirror near the counter she winced at her reflection. She had styled her hair this morning in a more casual version of her normal sleek bob, but humidity had taken over and it was already a frizzy mess. Luckily the eclectic racks at the counter also offered a package of elastic hair bands, so she added them to her bounty, along with a flip map of Georgia. The woman at the register gave her a big smile and called her “sugar.”

It was like being in another country, she mused.

Alicia looked around as she made her way back to the pickup truck with her purchases. Outside speakers blared twangy music, and the parking lot was jammed with trucks, muscle cars and motorcycles. Even the women drove huge SUVs, and everyone snatched up cartons from the barges of beer and soda sitting all around. Every person she passed nodded and smiled, as if they knew her. The first few times it happened, Alicia was startled, worried that someone had recognized her.

But that was ridiculous—who would recognize her? Even if anyone here read Feminine Power magazine, she didn’t resemble the polished woman in her head shot. She climbed back into the suffocating truck cab and mounted the little fan on the dashboard. She parted her damp, frazzled hair in the middle and braided it into low pigtails. Then she retrieved a mini voice recorder from her bag and spoke into it.

“I’m on my way to Sweetness, Georgia, on an undercover manhunt. Estimated time of arrival, about four hours. I’m hot, sweaty and driving a pickup truck. Not exactly sure of what I’m getting into, but here goes.”

4

The battery in the battery-operated fan died one hour into the drive to Sweetness. The radio in Bo’s pickup truck picked up nothing but howling country music stations. And when Alicia had to stand on the brake to allow a furry brown creature to cross a two-lane road, everything underneath the seat came rolling out at her feet, including a half-empty can of hot beer that soaked her sandals, and a pair of zebra-striped panties monogrammed with Pam.

Since, to her knowledge, her mother didn’t go by the nickname Pam, it seemed safe to assume that Bo was spending his days laying more than sod.