Fairy Tale Blues by Tina Welling Page A

that I was providing a playmate for their energetic pup.
    I found a clean towel in the clothes dryer, left the bathroom door open so the puppy could find me when she woke and began to strip for a shower. Though this was one of the guest baths, the twins had five flavors of toothpaste in pump bottles lined around the faucet. I chose bubble gum. I held my towel under one arm and my clean clothes between my legs while I brushed my teeth, since I couldn’t find a cleared space to set anything down. Soap and shampoo smears covered the counter. I returned to the dryer for another clean towel to spread out and lay my stuff on. Marcus teased Daisy that she treated the dryer as a combined linen and clothes cupboard; everybody knew to go there for their needs, apparently even me.
    While irritated at the mess, I was also admiring of Daisy, because she hadn’t caught our mother’s tidy disease. Our mother didn’t make a home for us—she kept a house. She wasn’t so much a neat freak as devoid of a personal taste she felt comfortable displaying. A house of cleared surfaces. No knickknacks on shelves, no pillows on sofas, no canisters on kitchen counters. Everything was tucked away in closets or drawers or else given to the Salvation Army. She and my father had kept life stripped to the minimum when it came to belongings, and that included family photographs—there were none. If a friend or relative sent pictures of us or themselves, our parents admired the photos, then tossed them in the wastebasket as easily as yesterday’s newspaper. When company came it was the height of embarrassment for our mother if any room displayed a trace of human presence. I took the middle way in my Wyoming home; I liked to think of my decorating as Zen spareness mixed with evidence of a full family life. Daisy just went with the full family life.
    I let cool water drum onto my head, shampooed and rinsed. Once my ears were freed of the spray of water, I heard rustling sounds and, thinking it was Bijou, I peeked out the shower door. Nell and Libby, dressed in ruffled sun dresses and jelly sandals, were preparing to surprise me outside the open bathroom door. Their whispered plan was to jump out at me as soon as I appeared. So busy plotting, they didn’t see my face above them. I ducked back into the shower and began humming “Oh, Susannah.” I heard them giggle. I reached for my towel, slung over the shower door, wrapped it around me and stepped into their trap. The girls leaped into the doorway with gleeful shouts, arms raised and waving; I pretended to nearly faint and they broke into hysterics. I burst into teary laughter and knelt down and swooped them into my arms.
    This morning on the phone, Daisy had said Marcus planned to stay overnight on the boat he docked in Palm Beach an hour down the coast, where his office was located, in order to give Daisy and me some private time. When Marcus was gone, his presence resided in the status symbols he surrounded himself with, and sometimes that was true even when he was home. Whenever I asked him, “What’s new?” he answered by telling me what he had purchased lately. Though in Marcus’ favor, he was generous and enjoyed setting up good times for his friends and family. His latest plan was a Conestoga trip for him, Daisy and the girls through Yellowstone this coming summer.
    Daisy first dated Marcus when he worked with her in Dad’s Palm Beach store; then suddenly he received a huge commission as a part-time real estate agent selling a cattle ranch outside Ocala and turned to real estate full-time. A year and a half later, he and Daisy married. I knew Daisy truly loved her husband, yet it was also true that a person needed leverage around Dad, and Marcus had so much money and so many powerful friends that his leverage was without question in the vicinity of our father. Jess even joked that Marcus was impressive enough that he could have been a black