Page 13 of The Do-Over

My mother answered the door, perfect and tasteful in a cream-colored sweater dress that skimmed her body. Although she would never admit it, my mother was a Perkins through and through. Just like Mimi and me, she was naturally short and curvy with dark, heavy-lidded eyes and equally dark hair. The difference was that she had figured out how to win the battle against genetics. With the joint efforts of her personal trainer, a Pilates instructor, a strict diet of ice cubes and lettuce, and, I suspected, a plastic surgeon, she remained thin and elegant.

I guess we had the potential to look alike. If I lost fifty pounds, got blonde highlights, and a personal shopper, we’d practically be twins.

“Mama, what are you wearing?” Mom said, a hint of annoyance in her perfectly modulated voice. When I was very young, she’d had a Southern twang a country singer would be jealous of. But then a woman began coming to our house to give her elocution lessons and beat that accent right out of her. Nowadays, she only slipped when she and Mimi got into one of their “discussions.”

A smile stretched across Mimi’s face as she adjusted her dress—orange leopard print with a tie at the waist and flirty slit in the back. She strutted past my mother on spiky black heels. “You like it? I got it off that Home Shopping Network.”

My mother sighed in annoyance and plucked the pie I’d brought from my hands. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek, wrapping me in the soft fragrance of her perfume. “Thank you for picking her up.” Taking a few steps back, she inspected me. “You look very nice. That’s the suit I got you for your birthday, right? But”—she frowned; there was always a “but” with her— “we might need to get you a new hair straightener.”

I bit my lip, equal parts embarrassed and annoyed. “Mine works, I might’ve just missed a piece or two.”

“Nothing for it now. Come on.”

Mimi and I trailed behind her as she made her way to the kitchen. “Your father is finishing up the turkey in that deep fryer. Don’t know why he insists on cooking it that way. But don’t worry. I got a turkey breast for those of us watching our figures.” She winked at me.

I didn’t reply because it would be useless. Plus, she was right, I could stand to lose more than a few pounds.

Mimi dumped her purse on the small table in the eat-in kitchen. “I’ll definitely be having me some fried turkey. Did you get what I need to make the sweet potato casserole?”

“Mama, do you really need to make that? It’s not very healthy.”

Hands on her hips, Mimi shot daggers at her daughter. “Bobbie Jo, this is the holidays. We have traditions.”

My mother scowled. “Roberta.”

“Your birth certificate says otherwise.”

“And the federal government says differently.” It did as of fifteen years ago, when she’d legally changed it.

Mimi slipped an apron on and tied it with sharp movements. “I don’t much care what the government says. You came out of my body, I named you, and that’s what I’m calling you.”

With a growl, my mother ripped open a cabinet and slammed down a package of marshmallows, a bag of brown sugar, and a huge can of yams. “There. Make your damn casserole.”

Mimi opened her mouth to reply—surely something that would only annoy my mother—when a scratching noise at the back door sounded, followed by a sharp bark that sent a chill up my spine.

“Can you let Pericles in, please?” my mother asked, gesturing at me with a bundle of artichokes.

The back door was tucked at the end of the kitchen next to a small dining table. I opened it and Pericles paused, his black eyes staring at me from under a fringe of fur like he could see my soul and found me lacking. I shivered.

When my mother sent Phee off to college, she’d lamented her empty nest and filled it with Pericles—part standard poodle, part demon. Mom doted on him. Pericles had a full wardrobe and was only allowed to eat a homemade diet with ingredients like scrambled organic eggs and rice and sweet potatoes that Mom culled from the canine cookbook she read with religious fervor. But it was his eyes that bothered me the most; the dark, bottomless pits followed me around the room like one of those haunted paintings. I secretly called him Scary Perry when Mom wasn’t around.

I turned away and made a gagging face at Mimi. She grinned.

Mom produced a treat and Scary Perry took it gingerly between his teeth. He trotted past me and settled in the dog bed in the corner, turning three times before lying down to survey us humans with haughty disdain.

Mom wiped her hands on the towel and went about rinsing and drying off the artichokes. “Where’s Brent? Is he coming later?”

I gnawed on a fingernail nervously. So she hadn’t heard anything about the break-up yet. Of course, she’d ask. A whole person was missing.

“I wish you’d stop that. It’s such a bad habit.”

Cocking a hip, Mimi squinted at my mother. “Ya know, you sucked your thumb till you were seven. I thought that thing was gonna shrivel up and fall off, you had it in your mouth so often.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Mom asked.

I knew. Mimi had swooped in to distract my mother and save me. On my list of the Best People Ever, Mimi was numbers one, two, and three.

Mimi shrugged. “You’re the one who brought up bad habits. I thought this was sharing time.”