The Angry Woman Suite Read Online Free Page A

Papa had hurt his feelings without meaning to, I instinctively put a hand on Daddy’s cheek. “Daddy—” I started, but Mother, using her impatient voice, interrupted, telling Daddy to put me down.
    I watched longingly out the back window of the car, until Aunt Rose waving her white hankie disappeared from sight, until my fat grandmother was reduced to a mere speck, until Papa was non-existent—and then I wailed. I wailed with a vengeance. I wailed like nobody had ever wailed before. I keened, rocking back and forth, arms clasped tight around my middle, as if to hold my broken pieces together.
    “Let her cry,” Daddy said tenderly some time later, after I’d shuddered into exhausted mewling and Mother had begun sighing her exasperated sigh. Daddy patted her hand. “It’ll work out, Diana. It’s for the best. You’ll see.”
    It was then, at Daddy’s tender tone—a gentle man’s voice, a voice that led me to believe he understood—that my heart gravitated toward Daddy and I began to love him, really love him, even while still loving Papa; and it was also then that I resolved to have a grand adventure, not yet understanding that Mississippi is a world apart from California, and that missing people, one in particular, their smells and cussing and a hollering that sounds like love, is not a straightforward thing. Missing someone is a crazy-quilt kind of thing: acceptance one piece, but right above the acceptance patch is another patch, this one made of grief, plus two more grief patches over at the side rising up to slap you down—generally right after you’ve got yourself convinced you’ve figured out the gist of life’s pattern.
    And neither did I understand, then, that men could be so different from one another. It took me a long time to work that one out. Probably until Aidan Madsen, the man who brought me oranges and books, was firmly entrenched in my life. Which was about the same time I understood that the crazy patches on my quilt were outnumbered by the saner ones.
    And that I would survive.
    ***
    I didn’t find out about Daddy’s nerve problem until our second day on the road. It was very hot, but not the kind of hot like back home in Sacramento, where there are lots of nice shade trees. This hot was unrelenting, and it was humid. Daddy had to stop the car every now and then so the radiator wouldn’t boil over, and waiting for the car to cool he paced and smoked and chewed his lower lip, even snapping at Mother once, making her cry. I wanted to cry, too. I’d never been so hot and miserable, but because Bean was quiet, and Mother was telling her what a good girl she was (plus, I’d decided I now loved Daddy, so I wasn’t looking for his disapproval), I pegged crying for nothing but tagging me as the brat. Our only hope was conversation, so we could all forget just how awful the heat was and get on with a grand adventure the way Papa wanted us to.
    I felt sorriest for Daddy, the way his wet shirt clung to his back, and him looking so worried about the radiator, so I asked if it was true he’d forgotten Mother until just before they got married, and he said no, it wasn’t. Mother had been pulling my leg. He’d remembered Mother clear as anything because who could ever forget someone so snotty? And the reason he’d canceled dinner with Mother and Aunt Rose that first night was because of an emergency. When I asked what the emergency had been, Daddy said I shouldn’t try talking to him anymore because it made his nerves feel shot.
    I was crushed and uncertain again.
    That night in our motel room, while Mother was giving me and Bean baths, and Daddy was outside pacing, Mother confided that Daddy’s nerves were stretched a little thin and that it would behoove me to keep that in mind.
    “It’s not the heat or the driving so much, I don’t think,” Mother said, bending over the tub and soaping my back. “The truth is, your daddy has a sadness deep inside him, and sometimes … well,