About the Carleton Sisters by Dian Greenwood

Author:Dian Greenwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press

Chapter Thirteen Lorraine

Julie’s white legs stretched out bare under the black skirt on the spare seat in front of her. She’d pulled her skirt past her knees and mid-thigh, her legs spread apart in the heat, never mind the folks gawking when they walked by the downtown Coffee Carousel on K Street. This was our first casual outing away from Mama and the mobile home and, as always, she flaunted herself. Sometimes she embarrassed me so much there was nothing to do but what I was doing, gaze across the street at the new county offices, the four-story stucco showing orange in the afternoon sun. I just hoped no one I knew saw us there.

“I should have taken Dotty to Las Vegas,” she said.

I sipped at my iced coffee, feeling the August air against my skin, my throat. “And you’d have done what with her? Left her sitting alone in an apartment while you gallivanted all over town?”

Julie tucked her hair behind her ears. “Dotty would have loved Las Vegas. Cher and Rod Stewart,” she said. “Wayne Newton. There’s always something going on. Always excitement.”

The old me would have pounced on that. You think your shit doesn’t stink? But that wasn’t me anymore.

“Mama would mix with Las Vegas like polka dots and stripes scrambled together,” I said. I could just see Mama, and it wasn’t pretty; day after day, an old lady with her white plastic beer cup full of nickels in front of a downtown slot machine. What a disaster.

“River’s End might not be the Mandalay Bay,” I said. “But it’s calm and steady and you know what to expect.”

Julie’s Hollywood sunglasses zeroed in on me, and her mouth took the shape of a smirk. She didn’t have to say a thing. I knew what she thought.

We sat like that for a while, not saying anything, and I was thankful for the breeze blowing down K Street. Julie probably didn’t notice the blue hyacinth that stuck out above the yellow marigolds in front of the convention center. We might not be the MGM Grand or her precious Bally’s, but look at that waterfall and those magnificent trees, forty, maybe fifty feet tall. The Red Lion to the west, the convention center on the east, everything balanced the way it should be.

“Tell me, what’s so special about River’s End?” she said.

“Almond blossoms in February. Every February. You know it’s that time of year when you see them. And peaches at roadside stands in July,” I said. “Peaches and the smell of peaches. Every July, that smell and that taste—juice running down your chin. We don’t get them all year long, so it means something.” I picked up my iced coffee. “What about those times we picked up mica between the railroad ties when we were kids?”

“You really get off on nostalgia, don’t you, Lorraine?”

“Since when did you get so high and mighty? There was a time when being Almond Queen was the peak of your success.” She wasn’t going to derail me.

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