him off."
Jody looked for a place on the turtle to grab - reached out and pulled back several times. "I don't want to touch him."
The phone rang.
"I'll get it," Jody said, running out of the bathroom.
Tommy dragged Scott to the doorway, keeping his feet safely away from Zelda's jaws. "I forgot to tell you..."
"Hello," Jody said into the phone. "Oh, hi, Mom."
Chapter 23~24
Chapter 23
Mom and Terrapin Pie
"She's in town," Jody said. "She's coming over in a few minutes." Jody lowered the phone to its cradle.
Tommy appeared in the bedroom doorway, Scott still dangling from his sleeve. "You're kidding."
"You're missing a cufflink," Jody said.
"I don't think he's going to let go. Do we have any scissors?"
Jody took Tommy by the sleeve a few inches above where Scott was clamped. "You ready?"
Tommy nodded and she ripped his sleeve off at the shoulder. Scott skulked into the bedroom, the sleeve still clamped in his jaws.
"That was my best shirt," Tommy said, looking at his bare arm.
"Sorry, but we've got to clean this place up and get a story together."
"Where did she call from?"
"She was at the Fairmont Hotel. We've got maybe ten minutes."
"So she won't be staying with us."
"Are you kidding? My mother under the same roof where people are living in sin? Not in this lifetime, turtleboy."
Tommy took the turtleboy shot in stride. This was an emergency and there was no time for hurt feelings. "Does you mother use phrases like 'living in sin'?"
"I think she has it embroidered on a sampler over the telephone so she won't forget to use it every month when I call."
Tommy shook his head. "We're doomed. Why didn't you call her this month? She said you always call her."
Jody was pacing now, trying to think. "Because I didn't get my reminder."
"What reminder?"
"My period. I always call her when I get my period each month - just to get all the unpleasantness out of the way at one time."
"When was the last time you had a period?"
Jody thought for a minute. It was before she had turned. "I don't know, eight, nine weeks. I'm sorry, I can't believe I forgot."
Tommy went to the futon, sat down, and cradled his head in his hands. "What do we do now?"
Jody sat next to him. "I don't suppose we have time to redecorate."
In the next ten minutes, while they cleaned up the loft, Jody tried to prepare Tommy for what he was about to experience. "She doesn't like men. My father left her for a younger woman when I was twelve, and Mother thinks all men are snakes. And she doesn't really like women either, since she was betrayed by one. She was one of the first women to graduate from Stanford, so she's a bit of a snob about that. She says that I broke her heart when I didn't go to Stanford. It's been downhill since then. She doesn't like that I live in the City and she has never approved of any of my jobs, my boyfriends, or the way I dress."
Tommy stopped in the middle of scrubbing the kitchen sink. "So what should I talk about?"
"It would probably be best if you just sat quietly and looked repentant."
"That's how I always look."
Jody heard the stairwell door open. "She's here. Go change your shirt."
Tommy ran to the bedroom, stripping off his one-sleever as he went. I'm not ready for this, he thought. I have more work to do on myself before I'm ready for a presentation.
Jody opened the door catching her mother poised to knock.
"Mom!" Jody said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. "You look great."
Frances Evelyn Stroud stood on the landing looking at her youngest daughter with restrained disapproval. She was a short, stout woman dressed in layers of wool and silk under an eggshell cashmere coat. Her hair was a woven gray-blond, flared and lacquered to expose a pair of pearl earrings roughly the size of Ping-Pong balls. Her eyebrows had been plucked away and painted back, her cheekbones were high and highlighted, her lips lined, filled, and clamped tight. She had the same striking green eyes as her daughter, flecked now with sparks of judgment. She had been pretty once but was now passing into the limbo-land of the menopausal woman known as handsome.
"May I come in," she said.
Jody, caught in the half-gesture of offering a hug, dropped her arms. "Of course," she said, stepping aside. "It's good to see you," she said, closing the door behind her