Karen Templeton - Playing For Keeps

And…

Well, hell. That was it?

Another frown bit into her forehead as she pulled into her mother’s driveway. Eschewing the ten-second fashion trendiness known to fell many a lesser woman, Glynnie hot-footed it out to the van in a snazzy linen suit, silk blouse and a pair of classic slingbacks that sure as shooting hadn’t come from Payless. Behind her mother loomed a two-story, rose-stuccoed monstrosity still glittering in its newness. Lots of arbitrary levels and grand arched windows and things. “Indigenous” landscaping. No grass, no trees, just lots of dirt, rocks and scruffy-looking bushes. Not exactly homey. But definitely impressive, in a Southwest bourgeois kind of way.

Joanna saw her mother’s half-pitying, half-repulsed expression long before the woman reached the ten-year-old minivan. Sort of the way you might look at a homeless person.

“You know what, honey?” Glynnie said when she reached the car. “Why don’t we take the Lexus? It’s got a full tank.”

“So does this.”

“But, Jo—”

“Hey. You invite yourself along, you ride in the van. I don’t have time to switch stuff over.”

“But, honey—”

“Mom? Get in. You can always duck if you see anyone you know.”

Glynnie did, her fashionably pale mouth set in a glistening line.

“And, if it makes you feel better,” Jo said as she backed out of the drive, “I’ll park far enough away from the gallery that nobody’ll see it. ’Kay?”

“And aren’t we being Miss Sensitive this morning?”

“I’m not the one who just looked at my car like it was dog poop.”

“I just don’t understand why you won’t let your father find you something a little less…used-looking.”

“Why, when this one already smells like the children?”

“I noticed,” Glynnie said, then lifted a manicured, beringed left hand to her hair, which, much to Glynnie’s perpetual chagrin, shot the control-freak image all to hell. Hundreds of itty-bitty corkscrew curls shuddered around her mother’s face, curls that had triumphed over every straightening and relaxing process known to cosmetology. At one time—like last week—her mother’s hair had been redder than Joanna’s. Today, however, it was kind of a strawberry-blond.

“Nice color,” Jo said.

“You really like it?”

“Yes, Mom, I really like it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Glynnie said on a sigh. “Sylvia thought the natural color was getting too harsh for my face.”

Joanna swallowed a smile, then said, “So how come you’re not off slaying dragons this morning?”

“Because, my dear, your brilliant mother brought a particularly nasty one to its heels yesterday.”

“You’re kidding? Hawthorne versus Northstar? You won?”

“My ego really appreciates your confidence in my abilities.”

“Sorry. But from what I’ve heard, the case was anything but a slam dunk.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Joanna caught her mother’s smug grin. “It wasn’t. Which made victory all the sweeter.” The grin widened. “Your father helped me celebrate.”

“With champagne and dinner?”

“That, too.”

Joanna’s already gloomy mood got gloomier. Her mother noticed.

“Okay. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing. Exactly.”

Her mother waited. Joanna sighed. There wasn’t a person alive who could withstand her mother’s let-them-crumble-on-their-own tactic.

“Okay, Bobby came to take the kids to school this morning.”

“No wonder you’re grouchy.”

“I am not grouchy. At least, not just because he came over,” she muttered in response to her mother’s raised brows. “Tori’s pregnant. So they’re getting married. Bobby and Tori.”

“Sounds like a dance team from Lawrence Welk,” her mother said, then added, “What is the child thinking?”

Joanna had to smile. Tori had been temping at her father’s Lexus dealership—as a means of putting herself through college—when Bobby met her. By all accounts, she was bright, focused and mature for her age. How on earth she’d fallen prey to Bobby’s charms was anybody’s guess. But then…

“Ohmigod…Tori’s practically the same age I was.”

Beside her, curls bobbed. “Wondered how long it was going to take for that to click in.” She sensed her mother’s eyes on her face. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine. I think. But not because I have any feelings left for Bobby,” she hastily added.

After a moment her mother said, staring out the window, “You remember that blue Ellen Tracy suit I had, the one I gave away about five years ago?”

“Vaguely. Why?”

“I got rid of it because it no longer fit, for one thing. And I was bored with it, for another.” She turned to Joanna. “But damn if I wasn’t pissed when I saw some woman wearing it a few months later.”

Joanna chuckled. “I get your point. But that’s not it.”

“Then what?”

And without warning, Joanna’s mouth fell open and half of what she’d been thinking that morning flew out. Including, amazingly enough, a lot of the stuff about missing sex.

“Hell,” her mother said, “If it was me, I’d be in the loony bin by now.”

“I could have gone all morning without knowing that.”

“And for somebody so determined to ‘do her own thing’ or whatever they call it these days, you’re the biggest prude I know.”

“That’s not true!”

“Is, too. Honey, Bobby’s moved on. He’s started another family, scary as that thought is. The feelings you’re having are perfectly normal. You need to get out there, go find a man, get—”

“—a life, I know, I know.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

Joanna grimaced. “You’re saying I should throw myself back into the dating pool?”

“Ding, ding, ding! And a point to the beautiful woman on my left.”

“Beautiful, my ass.”

“Well, that’s probably pretty nice, too, but I haven’t seen that since you were ten.”

Joanna ignored her. “Right. One slightly worn, slightly droopy, recycled singleton seeks the company—”

Her mother grunted.

“—of a breathing male with a reasonable understanding of personal hygiene, most of his own teeth and at least a moderate grasp on reality.”

“See, that’s your problem. You’re too picky.”

In spite of herself, Joanna laughed as they pulled into the parking lot in front of the gallery. “I suppose the part about having most of his teeth was pushing it.”

“Better they need dentures than Viagra.”

Thinking, Hmm, Joanna parked the car and got out, retrieving the Santas from the back. When she straightened, blowing her hair out of her face, she noticed her mother frowning at her dress.

“What?”

“Somebody needs to go shopping. Bad.”

“Hey. This is New Mexico,” Joanna said. “Denim is always in style.”

Glynnie came as close as she ever did to rolling her eyes.

Dale McConnaughy happened to look out the store window right as the two women got out of the dusty, suburban-blue minivan and just in time to see an explosion of red curls catch fire in the morning sun. The women disappeared inside the art gallery next door, however, before he had a chance to get past the initial Shee-it. Which was just as well, since he had more pressing things to tend to than gawk at a bunch of obviously fake hair. Wonder how much she’d forked over to get that look?

“Excuse me? How much is this? Colton! No! Don’t touch!”

Dale turned to a shell-shocked woman, a newborn strapped to her chest, clutching the handlebar of an SUV-size stroller that had been crammed to the gills with toddlers when she’d arrived a couple minutes ago. Well, only two, actually; one about three and another one maybe a year younger. The older kid, a boy, had immediately screamed to get out, and was now tearing up and down the aisles in a crazed euphoria while his mother shrieked, “Don’t touch!” every thirty seconds or so. Well, hell—let a three-year-old loose in a toy store, what did she think was gonna happen?