Twilight's Child (Cutler 3)

"I'm very happy for you, Betty Ann," I said. "Happy for both of you."

"What are my two favorite women doing out here alone?" Philip cried, coming up behind us. He moved himself between us and embraced both of us at the waist. "Not exchanging notes about me, I hope," he said, eyeing me suspiciously.

"What an ego. Why should we be talking about you?" I asked. Muscles near his lips worked almost spasmodically, hovering near a smirk or a laugh, I couldn't tell which.

"A little bird told me," he said, squeezing us both tighter to him. "That's all right. I want you two to get to know each other as quickly as you can so we can all be a happy little hotel family again."

"I'm looking forward to being of some use at the hotel," Betty Ann said. "I want to contribute, even if it's only in some small way."

"I'm sure we'll find something appropriate for you to do, darling," Philip said. He smiled at me again. "Even if it's just standing by the dining room door greeting our guests as Mother and Grandmother used to do."

"Oh, I'd love to do that," Betty Ann said. Philip gazed down at me and winked.

"I will be a very lucky man to have two beautiful women around me day and night," he said, and he kissed Betty Ann on the cheek and then turned to kiss me. But I pulled out of his grasp.

"We had better return to the dinner party before Mother has a fit," I said quickly, and I rushed off, feeling as if I were fleeing a dirty dream.

Claudine Monroe, Betty Ann's mother, held tight reign on the planning of Philip and Betty Ann's wedding. Mother tried to insert her opinions and ideas often, but her attempts were continually thwarted. As the wedding date drew closer Mother's complaints about the way she was being treated intensified.

"I feel as though I'm just another guest," she told me on the telephone one morning. "Now that woman (Mother had taken to calling Betty Ann's mother 'that woman') won't even answer my phone calls. I can only get her secretary . . . her secretary! She has a secretary to look after her social affairs, do you believe it? And I'm curtly told my messages will be delivered, yet that woman doesn't return the calls. Isn't that discourteous?"

"It's her wedding to plan, Mother. You had mine," I reminded her.

"Well, who else would have done it, if I hadn't? Besides, these people think they're above us, Dawn. I can't stand the way that woman talks down to me whenever we do talk. They think just because they live on the outskirts of the nation's capital and socialize with congressmen and senators, they're somehow better than we are," she complained.

"I'm sure it will be a very nice wedding, Mother. Why don't you just relax and enjoy having someone else do all the work for a change? If Betty Ann's mother is treating you like a guest, be a guest," I suggested.

"Yes, you're right. I shouldn't give her the benefit of my expertise. Let that woman do it on her own."

"I'm sure she has many professional advisers, Mother, and actually does very little on her own."

"Um . . . have you chosen the carpet for the master bedroom?" she asked, jumping to an area in which she felt she could have some input—my new house.

"I'm going with the beige," I said.

"Oh, that's such a mistake. You don't know how hard it is to keep that looking clean. Now, I think . . ."

It had gotten so that I could listen and not listen to Mother at the same time. I usually did paperwork while she babbl

ed over the telephone, sensing when to respond with an "uh-huh" or a "yes." However, during this particular phone conversation she suddenly switched to a third topic with the shock of a headline announcement and seized my full attention. First she began to cry.

"What is it now, Mother?" I asked wearily.

"Clara Sue has left finishing school and moved in with a man," she announced, her voice crumbling.

"What? When?"

"It's been over a month, but I haven't had the strength to talk about it. I still don't, but I feel if I keep it all bottled up inside me, I will simply explode one day. All that money we've spent on her finishing school has been wasted. Bronson says there's nothing we can do or should do. She's over eighteen now."

"He's right, Mother. Not that she listened to anything you or Randolph told her before she was eighteen. What sort of man is she living with?" I asked. What I really meant was, what sort of a man would want to live with her?

"A man fifteen years older! And divorced, too," she cried. "With two children, a boy ten and a girl twelve!"

"Where did she meet him?" I wondered aloud.

"She went bowling," Mother replied, sighing. "Fortunately, people here don't know yet, but can you imagine what it is going to be like when they find out? And she intends to bring this man to Philip's graduation and wedding. I will be so disgraced—so embarrassed—but do you think she cares? Not one bit."

"Look at it this way, Mother," I said dryly, "someone else has to put up with her now."