IT WAS STILL EARLY on the morning of what had been
forecasted as a very hot summer day. Rachel Jerrod saw her
mother the minute she pulled the car into the driveway. It
would have been hard to miss her. Alana, or Laney as most
people in town called her, was dressed in the most
brightly flowered capri pants ever to leave a retail
store. They were matched up with a baggy, red-orange T-
shirt that hung down almost to the knees. Her feet were
encased in drab olive garden clogs and on her head was a
wide-brimmed straw hat decorated with a huge sequined
flower.
Rachel simply shook her head and rolled her eyes. Her
mother was so weird.
As soon as she spotted Rachel, Laney rose to her feet and
waved excitedly. She was speaking before Rachel was even
out of the car.
"Let me see,let me see,"her mother said,indicating her
daughter's hair.
Rachel turned slowly, giving the full three-sixty. "Nice,
very nice," Laney said."You look wonderful, as always."
"I can't say the same for you, Mom," Rachel replied."What
are you wearing?"
Her mother looked down at her clothes as if noticing them
for the first time.
"I'm just trying to be cool and comfortable," Alana
said."Be-sides, I'm gardening."
"Well, you shouldn't be," her daughter said."You'll get
all hot and sweaty and you'll have hat hair for the
parade."
Laney laughed, refusing to take offense. "I was thinking
of wearing the hat for the parade," she said."It will come
in handy on that hot sidewalk taking photos."
"Mom."
There was a whiny quality to Rachel's utterance, familiar
to anyone who's spent time with a seventeen-year-old girl.
"Come back to the deck," Laney said."We've got a smidgeon
of time all to ourselves, we should enjoy it. There's
still a breeze out there and plenty of shade. You'll get
more sun than you want this afternoon."
The two walked the length of the driveway to the backyard
and up the steps to the wooden deck off the family room.
"I'll fix you a nice breakfast," Laney said."You ran out
of here this morning without so much as a bite."
Rachel shook her head."Nothing to eat," she told her
mother. "I'm already so jumpy I could barf."
"Well, how about a nice cup of coffee," her mother
suggested.
"Hot drinks are cooling on a summer day."
"Caffeine to cure the jitters, Mom? I don't think so.
Besides the stuff is supposed to be terrible for the skin."
"Then I'll brew a pot of healthy, herbal tea," Laney
said."It'll calm your nerves and quench your thirst."
"Okay," Rachel agreed.
Rachel seated herself at the round patio table beneath the
umbrella. She was staring out over the backyard — her own
backyard since second grade. It was a very ordinary place.
If one of those fancy brass history placards were placed
at this location it would have to read: No truly important
event has ever occurred here. But this backyard was where
Rachel had her swing set as a child.Replaced by a
volleyball net when she was a teenager. She'd hunted
Easter eggs among the shrubs. And last year, she'd had her
photo taken with Clint Howell among the leaves of autumn
before their date to the homecoming dance.
Nothing truly important.
But Rachel had begun to wonder about the unimportant
things. The things no one really examined. The events that
no one wrote down. She had become curious about the day-to-
day happenings that added up to a life. On the cusp of her
own entry into womanhood she'd begun, perhaps for the
first time, to look outside herself and her little circle
of girlfriends for answers about what the world was like
and what her place in it might be.
A knock at the French doors had Rachel jumping to her
feet. She hurried over to open them up for her mother.
"Here we are, sweetie," Laney said as she carried the tray
to the table."I cut up some melon and I found these tea
cookies in the pantry. I know it's white sugar, but you've
got a big day ahead of you and we can't have you keeling
over in a faint. That's very unqueen-like."
"Yeah,I'm sure these small-town gossips would have a field
day with that," Rachel said.
"Oh, it gives them something to do," Laney said."Otherwise
they'd have to create drama in their own lives."
Rachel laughed. "The yard looks great, Mom," she said,
indicating the abundance of flowering shrubs grown as
large now as trees."The colors are fabulous this year."
Laney looked out and nodded. "Wet spring, hot summer," she
said."It's the best combination for Crepe Myrtles, and
McKinney is the 'Crepe Myrtle Capital of the World.'"
Rachel laughed. "I thought it was the 'Diamond Stickpin in
the Lapel of Texas,'" she said.
Laney shrugged."That, too."
"So I stopped by to see Grandma this morning," Rachel
said. Laney chuckled. "I suppose she was in fine spirits,"
she said. "This being her big day and all."
"She tried on her dress for me," Rachel said."She looks
fabulous. And she's really looking forward to the parade."
"I'm sure she is."
"I told her that you were dragging your heels," Rachel
commented carefully.
"Then you misspoke," her mother said."Dragging heels
indicates reluctance. I'm not reluctant. I'm refusing."
Rachel made a little puff of annoyance. "Mom,everything's
ready and we've put so much time into it," Rachel
complained.
Laney shook her head firmly."I never agreed to this, you
and your grandmother agreed and thought you could just
force me into it. She was able to do that twenty-five
years ago, but I'm not so much a doormat these days."
"Doormat? You, Mom? Not likely."
"Perhaps malleable is a better description of how I
was,"Laney said."Rigid is more my stance with your
grandmother today."
"Okay, so what's the deal between you and Grandma?" she
asked.
"There's no deal between us," Laney said."We're fine."
"You never talk to each other."
"Don't be silly,I talk to her,"Laney answered."I talk to
her several times a week."
"Oh, yeah, I know," Rachel responded dismissively."I can
probably quote the whole conversation verbatim." She put
her hand up to her ear like an imaginary
telephone. "'Hello, Babs. How are you?'" she began,
mimicking Laney's more formal tone. "'Fine, Laney,'" she
replied in the croaky voice of an aging matron."'And
yourself ?''Fine. Do you need anything?''No.''Well, call
me if you do.'"
Laney smiled, but not with a great deal of humor. "Very
amusing," she commented dryly. "She's an old lady, Mom,"
Rachel said."She's not going to be around here forever."
"Oh for heaven's sake, Babs is sixty-five," Laney
said. "She'll probably live to be a hundred."
"I hope she will," Rachel said."I hope she has thirty
years left. But I guess it wouldn't matter if she had
thirty minutes if her own daughter won't give her even one
summer afternoon for something very special,something that
she's dreamed of and hoped for for a very long time.
Something that would mean so much to her and to me."
Laney laughed aloud at her daughter's sincere
intensity. "Is she giving you guilt lessons?" she asked
Rachel. "You're sounding more like her every day."
"No, Mom," Rachel said."I'm not the one that's like her.
It's you. You're the one who's just like her."
"Me? I'm not like my mother."
Rachel nodded."You are both stubborn,single-minded and
determined to have your way."
"Oh, please, it's not that bad," Alana insisted.
"It is that bad," she said."It hurts you. It hurts
Grandma. And it hurts me to watch the two of you."
"She and I just have very different views on this queen
thing," Laney said.
"You didn't want me to be this year's Cotton Queen,"Rachel
said.
"That's not true," Laney told her."It wasn't that I didn't
want it for you. I didn't want you to be pushed into it."
"I wasn't pushed into it,"Rachel said."It's an honor and a
privilege to represent the people of McKinney."
Laney rolled her eyes."Rachel,honey,save it for the
acceptance speech," she said."It's a small-town beauty
pageant that has about as much meaning in terms of your
long-term happiness as a bug splat on your car windshield.
A woman's life is not a reign of glory. I want to protect
you from that kind of thinking. It's not smiling in the
spotlight and having every eye gaze upon you in awe. The
things that make up a life, a real life, involve lots of
hard work, plenty of disappointments, tremendous failures,
horrible twists of fate and fortunate accidents.I know
that it's tempting to think that if you're a nice person,
a good person, a deserving person and attractive as
well,that the world just falls at your feet.You get chosen
as Cotton Queen, you wear a fancy dress, people applaud
and you live happily ever after. That's not how it is."
Rachel's brow furrowed. "Mom, I'm not an idiot. I know
it's not that simple."
"No," her mother agreed."It's not."
I REMEMBER how I laid my finger upon her tiny open palm
and she clutched her little fingers around it. My
daughter, just fifteen minutes old, wrapped in a little
pink blanket in my arms.
"She's beautiful," Tom said beside me. He was still
dressed in fatigues, having hitchhiked from the air base
in Biloxi as soon as I'd gone into labor. Twenty-two hours
of contractions had allowed him to make it to the waiting
room in time to meet up with his parents and field
requests for pink-ribboned cigars.
"I know you wanted a boy," I told him.
Tom laughed and shook his head."I can't imagine ever
wanting anyone else but her," he said.
That's what I loved about Tom.One of the many things I
loved about him. He always seemed to be so pleased with me
and with everything I did. I swear, if I'd presented the
guy with a five-limbed, hare-lipped gorilla, he'd have
said she was the prettiest child he'd ever seen.
But it was no stretch for him that day. She was
perfect. "I don't think Thomas Henry Hoffman, Jr., will
work for her name, though."
Tom laughed ruefully. "Do you still want to name her after
your mother?"he asked me. I looked up at him, serious but
open to discussion. "If it's all right with you."
"I didn't know your mother," he said. "But I know you and
how much you loved her. It will be a fine name for the
baby to live up to."
"You don't think it'll make your mama jealous?"
He shrugged."This is her ninth grandchild," he said."I
don't think it's all that big a deal for her."
"Maybe we could use her name for the middle."
"Alana Helen Hoffman." Tom voiced the name thoughtfully.
"I like it," he said."But it's too big for this little
bit."
I smiled down at my baby once again. "Oh, we'll shorten it
till she's big enough to manage such a mouthful," I told
him."We'll call her Ally or Laney."
"Laney," Tom said."I like that."
And so it was that seven-pound, two-ounce Laney Hoffman
entered into life in McKinney, Texas, in the summer of
1958. It wasn't a perfect summer. Tom was in the Air
Force. He'd joined up hoping to get into mechanics
training. He thought that would offer him big
opportunities with a big private company like Pan Am or
TWA. That was our plan.
Unfortunately much of it involved me living in the small
apartment above my uncle Warren's Pennsylvania Street Coin-
Op Laundromat. He let me live there free just for opening
the door at 6:00 a.m. and closing at midnight. Between
time, I had to keep the floor clean,the change machine
full and run interference on washer backups,overloads and
plumbing calamities,all of which were common.
But I didn't mind, especially that summer when the courts
mulled over public school integration, and Elvis spent his
days in the Army. I took my Laney in her little carry
basket to work with me and I spent every spare moment
singing to my little girl, playing with my little girl. It
worked out well. Much of the time we were alone. And even
when the laundry was full of people, the whirr of the
washers and fft-fft-fft of the dryers enveloped us like a
cloud of privacy. It was Laney and me against the world.
We were a powerful pair that summer. Nobody could ever
come between us.
I hadn't known all that much about caring for babies. I
had, of course, put in a million hours babysitting my
cousins.
I was an orphan, though I guess I didn't think of myself
that way at the time. Orphans lived in big brick
institutions waiting for someone to adopt them.I'd not
spent one night in such a place. I'd lived with Uncle
Warren and Aunt Maxine.