Page 100 of The Do-Over

My mother growled and turned on me. “How could you do this here? Now? Are you trying to embarrass me?”

My heart clunked against my chest and then began to beat double-time. “Like all the times I embarrassed you? Oh, it’s Perci? She can’t get anything right. Here, I can do it better.”

I swiped at my cheeks and my fingers came away wet. That made me angrier. I didn’t want to cry. I wanted pure, unadulterated rage to pour out of me. Then I wanted my mother to hug me and tell me everything would be okay.

Mom’s fists balled at her sides. “That’s not true. Of course I’m not embarrassed by you.”

Mimi snorted.

“Shut up, Mama!” Mom’s eyes narrowed on Mimi. “You always do this, turn her against me. She’s my daughter, not yours.”

“Oh, is that what I’m doing?”

“Yes! It’s always been about you, even when I was a child. You had to dress like that.” She pointed a finger at Mimi’s dark green leopard-print caftan. “You had to be loud. You could never just fit in with the rest of the moms.”

“I wasn’t like the rest of the moms.” Mimi held up her hands, the skin paper-thin and covered in wrinkled lines. “You might remember, I had to work. It was these two hands that worked every day to make sure you had food on your plate and clothes on your back.”

“How could I possibly forget? Everyone knew I was Mona Raye Perkins’ daughter, and they pitied me. ‘Look how hard she works, and just for hand-me-downs and thrift store bargains. Had that baby so young and no man to help her.’ And you never let me forget we couldn’t afford this or that.” Mom’s hands twisted at her waist, her normally placid expression laced with frustration, anger, hurt. “Is it my fault I want better for my daughters?”

“I didn’t realize life was so difficult for you,” Mimi said, and for the first time I could remember, an edge of bitterness crept into her voice. “It didn’t go exactly how I planned either.”

“Well, you never could afford the double-wide trailer of your dreams,” Mom bit out.

Pain flashed in Mimi’s eyes. Jaw ticking, she climbed to her feet, a full drink cup in her hand. In slow motion, Mimi’s hand tipped and spilled all its contents—on my mother.

With a hiss, Mom froze and stared at the dark stain overtaking the front of her dress. The crowd gasped. Phee scrambled to get out of the line of fire. My jaw dropped.

Mom’s eyes shot to Mimi, her face grim. “I cannot believe you did that.”

“I apologize,” Mimi said in a very non-apologetic voice. She picked up a tiny ham-and-cheese quiche from the table, held it up like she was about to take a bite, and paused. “You know, Bobbie Jo, for a girl who came from a trailer park, you sure act like royalty. You weren’t raised this way.”

And then, instead of eating that quiche, she threw it. At my mother’s face. “Whoops.”

Mom blinked; red slashes burned her cheeks. With blurring speed, she reached over and grabbed a cracker topped with artichoke dip from the plate of Mr. Sinclair, who lived three houses down, and lobbed it at Mimi.

The crowd released a collective, “Oooo.”

Mimi swiped at her cheek. She selected a cream puff from the plate and took aim. It landed in the middle of Mom’s cleavage, where it clung for a moment, before taking the dive into her dress. A deep, rolling laugh burst out of Mimi.

“That is it, Mama!”

“Bring it on, baby girl.”

With a screech, Mom turned and snagged a cup of punch from a startled guest’s hand and hurled the contents at Mimi.

I swiped at the drops of red liquid that sprinkled on my arm. Old Perci would dive for the nearest safe place and wait for the war to die down. But this was New Perci.

I grabbed a meatball and flicked it. It left a trail of gravy as it slid down Mom’s hair to the floor. “That meatball has forty-five calories, and I didn’t eat it. Aren’t you proud?”

“Persephone, please.”

It’s hard to take someone who has a cream puff in her bra seriously, though. With a grin, I followed up the meatball with a cheese-and-cracker combo.

Then all hell broke loose.

“This is for ruining my job,” I shouted, and tossed a berry-beef bite at my mother. “One hundred calories.”

“This is for setting me up on dates.” A bacon-wrapped fig. “One hundred and thirty calories.”