Free Maggie Sweet by Judith Minthorn Stacy Page B

my own house.
    At first I tried to defend myself, Steven, my mother, and all ungrateful children, etc., etc., but they ignored me like the wallpaper on the wall.
    When I couldn’t take it anymore, I stomped upstairs and splashed cold water on my face ’til I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have a stroke. Then I carried the hall phone into my bedroom and called Mary Price.
    “This is Mary Price ‘Got the Wedding Band Blues’ Bumbalough. I can’t come to the phone now but if you’ll leave your name…”
    Damn! The message machine. I hung up, wondering if “Wedding Band Blues” meant Mary Price had written a new song, or if she was fixing to leave Hoyt again.
    When I finally went back downstairs, Mama Dean and Mother Presson were still at it, having a wonderful time lapping up the other’s accounts of how “the children just don’t understand.”
    Mother Presson had even invited Mama Dean to stay for supper, without asking me, which I didn’t appreciate at all.
    When Steven finally turned up, he got his feelings hurt because while they usually hung on his every word, tonight they were so busy talking they ignored him. He only looked confused when I whispered, “Some friendships are built on the bones of the enemy.”
    And loneliness too, I thought later, when Steven locked himself up in the den and didn’t come out ’til I was in bed.
     
    It rained again on Thursday. Around eleven I was staring out the kitchen window and fixing chicken salad for Mother Presson’s lunch, when Steven slammed into the kitchen, drenched to the skin. He glared at me and said, “I’ve been sick all borning…then the car broke down on the way hombe so I had to walk a bile in the rain…oh, hell…I’m going to bed.”
    While he took a hot bath, I called Hootie’s Garage, laid out whiskey, lemon, honey, cold tablets, aspirin, vitamin C, and braced myself for the worst. Steven’s a real booger when he’s sick.
    A few minutes later, I carried the thermometer and a hot toddy upstairs. Steven was sitting on the side of the bed with only a towel around him. When he snapped, “Does it take an act of Congress to get an aspirin around here? A man could die waiting for an aspirin!,” I noticed he was getting a potbelly.
    Just then Mother Presson walked past the bedroom.Since I didn’t want her to hear Steven picking on me, I stuck the thermometer in his mouth so he’d have to hush.
    His temperature was 100.2 but I told him it was only 99. Anything over 99 is a sign to Steven he’s fading fast, which makes him even crabbier.
    “Are you just going to stand there? I’m freezing. Get me a blanket, the heating pad….”
    I got the blanket, the heating pad, his terry-cloth robe, fluffed his pillows, and tried to ignore his tone of voice. When I couldn’t ignore it anymore, I said, “Steven, I know you feel like pure crud, but it’s just a cold. Now get some rest.” Then I shut the bedroom door and went downstairs to finish Mother Presson’s lunch.
    After lunch, I washed two loads of laundry, carried a tray to Steven, tidied the kitchen, put the laundry away, made polite conversation with Mother Presson, carried another hot toddy upstairs, started supper, went back downstairs for the Vick’s, vaporizer, and vitamin C and carried them back upstairs.
    At two o’clock I remembered the girls. It was raining harder than ever and they’d be expecting to ride home with Steven. I threw on my slicker, waded out to my old secondhand car, and prayed it would start.
    The girls were just leaving the building when I pulled into the parking lot. Jill saw me and came running. Then I saw Amy, standing under a doorway, looking miserable. I didn’t think she’d seen me, so I tapped the horn and waved. Her face went tight, then she looked around carefully and came running, too.
    The radio was playing Helen Reddy’s “You and Me Against the World.” I turned up the volume. When the girls were little, we’d played that song hundreds of times while