“I’m out on the patio,” came the response.

Amy backed out of the door and walked around to the back, where her mother was repairing a broken nail. “How are you, Mom?”

“I’m fine, as you can see. If you’d call once in a while, it would be nice. The last time you were here was Christmas.”

“The kids keep me busy, Mom. You’re never here anyway. You told me you didn’t like it when I popped in and disrupted you and your friends. By the way, where are they today?”

“They all went on a cruise. Your father couldn’t get off work so I couldn’t go. It was for senior couples…as in two.” Her voice was so bitter-sounding, Amy cringed.

“You musta come out here for a reason, Amy, so spit it out.”

“Mom, I think I might be in some trouble.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it? You have a husband. When you left this house, my responsibility ended.”

Something in Amy snapped. “What responsibility are you talking about, Mom? You didn’t raise Andy and me. We raised ourselves. Actually, I raised Andy. Half the time you didn’t know we were alive. We came and went and did whatever we felt like doing. We didn’t have a set bedtime. I got us up for school. I didn’t know what a hot breakfast was till I went to college. Andy and I worked and bought our own clothes. Half the time we bought our own food. That’s probably why I have high cholesterol at such a young age. It was all that fast food and grease.”

“Are you saying I wasn’t a good mother?” Alma Hollister screeched, her cotton candy hairdo moving in her own breeze.

“You weren’t any kind of a mother. One time I wore the same underwear for a week because you didn’t wash clothes. I had to ask the neighbors how to work the washer, and from that day on, I did my and Andy’s clothes. You didn’t take care of us when we were sick either. I used to steal money out of your purse to buy cough medicine for me and Andy in the winter. No, you weren’t a mother.

“Did you know people in this town used to call us white trash? That’s pretty hard for a kid to live down.”

“You survived, didn’t you,” Alma snapped. “If I’m such a lousy mother, what are you doing here?”

“I don’t know. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I guess I wanted you to look at me and show some concern. I wanted you to ask me what was wrong and if there was anything you could do to help me.”

“I have problems of my own, Amy. You’ve really porked up since Christmas, haven’t you? If your husband is having an affair, that might be the reason. Men like thin women, women who take care of themselves.”

“My husband likes me just fine the way I am, and no, he is not having an affair.”