Georgia Bottoms by Mark Childress Page B

this.) Georgia filled her grandmother’s Depression-glass vases with great trumpet flourishes of scarlet gladiolus.
    She liked massing one kind and color of flower for impact. She had placed the glads in tepid water early to ensure they would open to the maximum red at noon.
    Something nagged at her about Lon Chapman’s call. Some reason she should give in and let him come by tonight. She struggled to remember. Something he could do for her?—
    Another blank Rolodex card.
    Damn it! Too many of those lately. Her head was overloaded with useless information—sometimes she woke up reciting the list of ingredients from a recipe.
    Something Krystal had said…
    Last night, when they were making napkin swans. Krystal looked over her specs and said, “All I need is one old bastard to cave. That would give all the others an excuse.”
    That was it: Krystal’s annexation plan. Half the old bastards on the town council were telling her privately they wished they could go along with it. They just didn’t want to be the one to go first.
    Lon Chapman was one of those bastards.
    Georgia went to the phone in the kitchen. No dial tone. That was surprising. The phone was the most dependable appliance in the house. She tapped the hook with her finger. Nothing.
    She must have left it off the hook upstairs, when Lonnie called.
    She hurried up to the phone table. Sure enough, one end of the phone sat off the cradle, at an angle. No wonder the house had been so quiet all morning.
    Georgia tapped the switch hook. The dial tone returned. She took out her address book and dialed the bank’s number.
    Busy? She’d never known the bank’s line to be busy. This was one of those mornings when nothing was going smoothly. She made a note to call him later.
    Georgia didn’t often meddle in the lives of her men. When she did, she was careful not to leave fingerprints. She would never go directly to Judge Barnett, for instance, and insist he give in to Krystal on annexation. In matters of money or politics, a man will listen to practically any other man before he will listen to a woman. Protest the sexism of it all you want, but Georgia knew it was true. Her method was to convince Man A to do a favor for Man B, who would pass it on through Men C, D, and E, back to A. That’s how Georgia got things done without anyone in Six Points realizing she was the one doing it.
    According to the chart, she was now eight minutes ahead of schedule. Her next job was to preheat the ovens and begin moving food out of the fridges and chest freezer.
    Georgia went up the hall to the pine-paneled den where Little Mama spent the afternoons watching her stories. She steeled herself to look around the door—surprise, Mama was all dressed in her nice pale-blue Sunday go-to-meeting dress, thinning hair brushed into place.
    Georgia said, “Don’t you look pretty!”
    Little Mama had even put on her best necklace, a gold lockettrimmed in tiny seed pearls. She looked perfectly presentable except for the fuzzy pink bunny slippers with rolly eyes. She gazed at the TV, murmuring at low volume. “I wanted to have coffee but I heard you banging around and I didn’t want to get in your way.”
    “Don’t be silly,” said Georgia. “Come on, I’ll make you a cup. You ready for your cereal?”
    “Naw I’ll just stay in here out of the way.”
    “Aw come on, Mama. You must be starving.”
    “I’m all right…” Little Mama’s voice trailed off. This pitiful act wasn’t like her at all. Georgia stepped into the room to see better, and discovered what looked like blood caked at the corner of her mouth. Upon closer inspection it was lipstick that had run off the tracks.
    Little Mama leaned to see the television. “I don’t know why they show the same movie on every station.”
    “What movie?”
    “
The Towering Inferno
.”
    “Oh, I like that one.” Georgia backed out of the room. “That Steve McQueen is one good-looking man.” Little Mama didn’t answer.