Good Time Bad Boy (6 page)

Then she had an idea and texted Megan. Megan replied within minutes, and Daisy used her friend’s login to access the
Leader
online. Mr. Hollister like to read the paper and Megan had set herself up an account for the digital version. Daisy poured another cup of coffee and found the classifieds.

If her dream job was to be a truck driver, she’d have her pick of places to apply. The Jukebox Drive-In was looking for carhops. She grimaced. The owner had a reputation for treating the girls there pretty bad. Still, if it was all she could get, she could take care of herself. She searched the table for a notepad and pen and tore out three pages. Each got a label at the top:
first choice
,
maybe
,
last resort
. Then she made a note about the carhop job on the
last resort
page.

Pickings were pretty slim, but this was just the start. She’d go store to store, to the state employment agency, call friends and see if they knew of anyone hiring. If she couldn’t find anything in Brittain, there was always Danville, the town twenty-five miles away where she went to college part time. She’d be able to find something. What worried her was being able to afford both rent and tuition again in the fall. She had money in a savings account she used for college expenses but it wouldn’t be enough for more than one class. Depending on what a new job paid, she might need that money for living expenses.

She threw her pen. It bounced off of the notepad and rolled to the floor. She would not cry again. Enough tears had fallen last night. It didn’t even make sense to her, how the night had gone from getting hit on by a drunk redneck to getting fired for standing up for herself so fast. Briefly she’d considered calling Randy and giving him her side of the story, but discarded the idea almost immediately. It would feel too much like begging. Besides, she knew he’d be forced to take his grandson’s side. If Josh ever had to stand on his own two feet, that boy would be screwed.

Daisy lifted her coffee cup and stared into it. Somewhere in there she had to find the energy to drive into town and start looking for a job. The caffeine wasn’t helping her today, though. She drank it anyway, then got up and carried the cup to the sink.

Before she went anywhere, the mess on the kitchen table needed to be dealt with. She put the laptop to sleep and placed it in its spot on the bar. Next she tidied all the various notepads and folded her job search pages then tucked them into her planner. Pens and pencils and highlighters and sticky notes were gathered and put away in the little metal organizer next to the laptop. Cleaning up made her feel better, filled her with a momentary sense of accomplishment even though it wasn’t much. Right now, every little bit helped. She knelt to retrieve the pen she’d thrown and a bright red folder peeking out of the messenger bag she used for school caught her eye.

A sigh escaped as she eyed the folder. Forgetting the pen, she snatched the folder instead, figuring since she already felt like shit, why not? She carried it into the living room and sat on the couch with her feet tucked under her.

The folder wasn’t fat, but it wasn’t thin, either. A professor, various classmates, her advisor, and Megan had all held the folder and read through its pages. Surely its contents had a weight only Daisy could feel. Her biggest, most secret dream was in this folder, disguised as an exercise for a business class. She slid her fingers across the slick cover. With a deep breath, she opened it, staring at the report’s cover page. A mockup logo stared back, her name in a pretty but readable script, the Y flowing into a daisy at the bottom and another flower stem curling into the apostrophe before the possessive S.
Daisy’s
. Something she could work toward and build and call her own, instead of always being at the mercy of an employer.

Car wheels crunched on the gravel drive outside. A flash of intuition told Daisy to turn off the lights and hide, because what this shitty day needed to be complete was a visit from her mother. Daisy was too slow. Now that she didn’t drink anymore, Alice had far too much energy than should have been natural for a woman in her early fifties.

“Daisy!” Her mother pounded on the door. “It’s your momma. Come on, I know you’re home.”

Daisy stashed the folder under the couch and prepared for the worst. Her mother’s usual list of complaints ranged from Daisy working at a bar to not going to church to not visiting often enough. The news of Daisy getting fired had likely reached her mother so that would probably be the main complaint of this visit.

With reluctance, Daisy got up and opened the door. “What do you need, Momma?”

Alice pushed her way into the trailer. “I heard about you losing your job at that place and I just wanted you to know how happy I am.”

Daisy drew her eyebrows together and slipped her hands in her back pockets. “Alrighty then. You’re happy for my misfortune. I think you might want to reread your twelve steps, Momma.”

Alice gave her a sharp look as she lowered herself to the couch. “What I’m happy about is that you’re free of that place. Now you can go find a better job somewhere else.”

“Yeah, because they grow those things on trees.” Daisy sat in the recliner and took a quick look at the floor under the couch. The red folder couldn’t be seen. Good. That was none of Alice’s business. “Rocky Top’s not a bad place. Josh Tucker’s a jackass, sure, but Rocky Top’s a good bar. And it’s just as much restaurant now. The food’s even pretty good.”

“It’s still a bar. You shouldn’t be around that kind of thing. Believe me, I know.”

“I know, too, Momma. I grew up with you, remember?”

“Daisy─”

“What do you want, Momma?” No good could come of this conversation. She respected Alice for finally drying out and settling into a job, but the occasional flare-ups of self-pity and hypocrisy didn’t sit well with her. Neither did Alice’s attitude about some of the decisions Daisy had made about her own life.

“I want you to put in an application at the plant. You’d have to go through the temp agency, but there’s a good chance they might hire you on after a while.”

Alice worked at the same plant where Daisy’s older sister Deanna worked, only on the afternoon shift whereas Deanna worked days. She’d been there longer and helped their mother get hired after Alice quit drinking. Daisy gazed at her mother for a long moment. Alice may have had plenty of energy and surprisingly good health after all those years of abusing one substance after another, but her once pretty face bore the mileage. Deanna looked more like the old pictures of their mother than Daisy did.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Daisy said, mostly just to be polite. She didn’t want to work in a factory. She’d done it as temp a couple of times and hated it. That was an option that would definitely only be part of the
last resort
list. Besides, they only had two shifts anymore, and barely that, so she’d likely be working with her mother. They just didn’t need that much togetherness.

Alice crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. “I’d like you to go to church with me Sunday, too.”

Daisy shut her eyes. “Ah, Momma.”

“Now, you listen to me, Daisy. You need to do this. You have done some things in your life that you need to set right with the Lord.”

“We’re not having this conversation.” Daisy launched up out of the recliner and sped to the kitchen. Washing dishes might not be quite loud enough to drown out her mother but it was worth a shot.

Alice followed her. “I know you think this is foolish. I used to think the same thing. But honey, it’s not. It’s the most amazing thing to finally lay all your burdens down and find forgiveness for you sins. That has made all the difference for me and I want that for you.”

“I’m glad for you, Momma. I really am. I’m glad you made peace with your sins. But you know what? I’ve made peace with the things I’ve done, too. We just went about it in different ways. So stop trying to get me to go to church with you.” Daisy’s stomach rolled at the thought of where this might be going.

“You may think you’ve made peace but you haven’t. You can’t, not without God. You need God’s forgiveness for what you did.”

There it was – the thing Daisy had been afraid of. She realized then that her mother would have come today, or maybe tomorrow or another day this week, whether Daisy had lost her job or not. Because her getting fired wasn’t what this visit was really about.

She rested her hands on the edge of the sink. “You need to let it go.” At first it had been almost constant, an unceasing litany of abuse and accusation. When she was drunk Alice would get downright mean and nasty about it, calling Daisy every name in the book and screaming about how she’d thrown away her child. That if being a single mother was good enough for her, good enough for Deanna, it should have been good enough for Daisy. When Alice was sober, she was all tears and regret and pain born of self-pity. Then she finally sobered up permanently and her anger had taken on a different flavor. Now Daisy needed God’s forgiveness for giving away her baby. Daisy thought that was bullshit and she was pretty sure God did, too. She’d given her daughter a better life, given a child to a good family who could provide for her. Throwing away something unloved was nowhere in that equation.

But Alice had never accepted that. “I will never let it go. It may have been easy for you to toss aside your baby, my grandchild, but I will never let this go. No college degree, if you ever even finish, will make up for what you did.”

There was so much Daisy could have said to that, but none of it would have mattered. They’d had this conversation a thousand times and it always went the same way. Today just happened to be one of those days that Daisy didn’t feel like taking any shit from her mother. “You can hate me all you want but I know I did the right thing for her.” She looked Alice in the eyes. “And if you want to hate me for wanting better than what you settled for, for her and me both, you can do that, too.”

“Better,” Alice spat. “You always did think you were better than me. Who’s better now, you ungrateful little slut? I’m the one with a good job and a nice little place to live. And here you are, can’t even keep a job at a bar and living in this dump of a trailer. What good are those honor roll grades now, huh, Daisy?”

Daisy squeezed her eyes shut. “You need to go.”

“You can pretend all you want but everyone knows all you’ll ever be is trailer trash.”

“Get out,” Daisy said through gritted teeth. At least this only happened once a year now. Alice liked to save it up and dump all of her vitriol on Daisy’s head sometime around the birthday of the child she’d given up for adoption. This was why the only person who knew about her alternate Mother’s Day was Megan. If Alice knew that Daisy marked the day in any way, she probably would have done her best to ruin it. She certainly would have thrown it in her face.

Apparently Alice had satisfied her need to cause pain because she left without another word. It would be weeks before they saw each other again, that’s how it always went after this. Alice would pretend nothing had happened and Daisy would play along for Deanna’s sake.

As soon as the door slammed, Daisy leaned over and vomited in the sink. Acid burned her throat as the coffee and toast she’d had earlier came back up. Tears stung her eyes and she let them flow free, hoping it would rid her of the poison twisting through her veins. She clung to the countertop as sobs shook her body and doubt punctured her resolve. Only her mother could make her feel this way, make her doubt whether or not she could finish school and make something of herself. Make her second guess the enormous decision to go through with the adoption. It was like some kind of dark twin to the peaceful ritual Daisy enacted every year, wishing her daughter happy birthday and sending grateful thoughts to the woman who was her mother now. Alice always, every damn year, had to do something like this. She had to cut Daisy down to size and make her hate herself all over again, like in those first few years after the adoption, even if it only lasted briefly.

All the sobriety and the twelve steps and being in church every time the fucking doors were open couldn’t cure Alice of hating her own daughter. The only thing that seemed to make her feel better when it came to Daisy was making Daisy hate herself.

The sobs subsided gradually. Her arms ached from gripping the counter so tightly. She turned on the tap and splashed water on her face, then used the sprayer to rinse the sink. A vanilla candle helped with the lingering smell of sick. The dishes could wait. She went to the bathroom to brush her teeth then returned to the living room. Job hunting could wait, too. Not for long, God and her bank account knew. Just one more day.

She didn’t want to be around anybody while the stain of her mother’s hatred marked her.

W
ade spent a solid hour talking about fishing with Randy Tucker before he had a chance to bring up the subject of the fired waitress. Randy’s lined and tanned face puckered into a sour expression.

“I’m over a barrel on this one, bubba.”

Wade sipped his iced tea. “Oh, come on, now. This is your place. It’s your decision who you hire and fire.”

Randy waved a hand. “It’s my grandson. That boy is dumb as a box of rocks but my wife and my daughter love him to pieces. They’re hoping that working here, getting some real world experience, will help him.” He shook his head. “There’s no help for that boy but you can’t tell them that. I raised hell when I found out he fired Daisy. She’s the one who needs to be running this place when I’m gone. But then he went crying to his momma and his grandmomma and I got a double earful about how I was undermining his confidence.”

“Undermining his confidence? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Randy tapped a meaty finger on his desk. “You ever read about those helicopter parents? The ones who do everything for their kids. Go on damn job interviews with their grown kids. I don’t know how it happened, but that’s my daughter in a nutshell. He’s twenty-two years old and sometimes I think he has to call her and ask how to wipe his ass.”