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Overview
Southern housewife Linwood Breedlove Scott was happily content in her comfortable, complacent thirty-year marriage, but when her husband cleans out their bank accounts and runs off with a stripper, her life takes a hilarious, yet touching, right turn into reality. With no place to go but home, she's forced back to her insular hometown and the "eccentric" family she escaped by marrying at nineteen: her senile father, her loving-yet-controlling mother, her long-suffering aunt, her crazy uncle, and her good-for-nothing brother. But despite her newly dependent situation and her family's genteel insanity, Lin begins to stand on her own two feet and wake up to the joys-and perils-of life as a single woman. And she also learns surprising lessons about her family: that things aren't always what they seem, and that the power of love governs even the most dysfunctional of relationships. This joy-filled, moving, and wise-cracking novel delivers a portrait of Southern life, Southern families, and self-discovery that readers will never forget.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429989473 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 10/19/2003 |
| Series: | Queen Bee , #1 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 345,148 |
| File size: | 377 KB |
About the Author
Atlanta native Haywood Smith lives on the shores of Lake Lanier near the small town of Buford, Georgia. She has one son, currently in medical school who is "married to a wonderful, fearless Christian woman," and a close family that includes her mother, three sisters, and a brother. Inspired by her own observations of Southern life and family, she created this funny, joyous tribute to one woman's triumph over adversity.
Watch for Haywood's next book, the story of five Atlanta women whose warm, witty friendship keeps them together and sane through high school in the Sixties, college, the evolution of the New South, marriage, children, corporate wifedom, Garden Club, death, kiddy sports, affairs, menopause, financial ruin, rehab, facelifts, divorce, and the Junior League.
Haywood Smith is the author of Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch, The Red Hat Club, and Red Hat Club Rides Again. She lives in Buford, Georgia.
Hometown:
Buford, GeorgiaDate of Birth:
April 21, 1949Place of Birth:
Atlanta, GeorgiaEducation:
One year of college and several professional real estate degrees and appraisal certificationsWebsite:
http://www.haywoodsmith.netRead an Excerpt
Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch
By Haywood Smith
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2002 Haywood SmithAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-8947-3
CHAPTER 1
I took the long way home that fateful midsummer day last July, maybe because I still couldn't quite believe what I was about to do.
I could still hear Miss Mamie — that's my mother; everybody calls her Miss Mamie, including my brother and me — telling me, on the eve of my wedding, that if I insisted on marrying Phil at nineteen, I shouldn't even think of turning up on her doorstep again. "You make your bed, you lie in it," she'd said with absolute conviction. (Miss Mamie says everything with absolute conviction.)
Yet here I was thirty years later, galled to my very soul that my family's dire predictions for my marriage had finally proven true. The phantom umbilicus that connected me to my mother had turned out to be a cosmic bungee cord, my fifty years of life one long, ludicrous leap that was rebounding at light-speed back to the womb, God help me.
So that Thursday, the day after the Fourth of July, I took the slow, scenic route through Mimosa Branch. Driving into the old business district, I was struck that my hometown seemed to have come up in the world at least as far as I had come down. Everything was fixed up, filled up, and decidedly suburban upscale, right down to the contemporary artists' warren in one of the old mill buildings.
Miss Mamie had told me all about the artists in her almost-daily phone updates. An equal-opportunity gossip, she belonged not only to the United Methodist Women, but also to the Baptist Women's Circle, so she got the scoop. She'd assured me the good ladies were doing their best to love these "offbeat transplants" in a Christian way, just as they tried to love "those Mexicans" who had flooded into the area and "snapped up" all the jobs at the poultry plant. But as to the artists, the good churchwomen of Mimosa Branch — Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and even the Pentecostals — had been united at last by their common alarm about the New Age influence the interlopers had introduced to their conservative community. Worse still, several of the odd characters were from California, a point of origin surpassing even Florida in its capacity for alienating the locals.
I knew my mother would fill me in on all their subversive activities. Endlessly. Incessantly. In person.
Shuddering at the thought, I tried to concentrate on the brick storefronts that flanked Main Street. Gone were the FOR RENT signs and sad neglect. Like kudzu, Atlanta's suburban tentacles had invaded my hometown and cloaked it in green — the spending kind. And like kudzu, the blanket of green had certainly made things look better, at least on the surface. Whether it was really an improvement, though, remained to be seen. The decay was still there under kudzu; you just couldn't see it.
Yep. Things had definitely changed. I passed the nude painting Miss Mamie had told me "blared right out on Main Street." Galleries now replaced all but a single law office of the dozen that once practiced here. I'd always wondered how so many lawyers could stay in business in a town of 3000 that wasn't a county seat. Apparently, they couldn't. But then again, this was no longer a sleepy little town of 3000.
Even the people on the sidewalks looked different. Where were the fat women? Mimosa Branch had always had the state's highest per capita ratio of fat women. I wondered if one of those California artists had gotten the city to enact that same secret ordinance they had in Beverly Hills and Brentwood, banning fat people from coming out in public.
My thirty extra pounds smarted in outrage.
The one comforting presence downtown was Chief Parker's Drugs, which had defiantly held onto its ugly aluminum awning and faded fifties' commercial tackiness through three owners and the insurgence of trendy bistros, boutiques, and galleries. "NEVER CLOSED TO THE SICK" was still painted on the front windows above the store's number and old Doc Owens's home phone. The place stuck out like a sore thumb among its trendy new neighbors.
Mimosa Branch, trendy. I still couldn't believe it. Seeing the tastefully quaint renovations in subdued merchants'-association-approved coordinated colors, I felt like I was looking at a movie set.
How long had it been since I'd come here last? I thought back. Not since the year I'd dragged Miss Mamie on that cultural exchange to France ... '91. Cripes. Ten years. I was moving back to a place I hadn't even seen in a decade. Heaven only knew what things were like here now.
Everything changes, I told myself. Maybe if I got lucky, life at home would be different, too. Better, I hastily qualified.
Not that it was that bad growing up. How can I put it diplomatically? Life at 1431 Green Street had been just a bit too ... colorful for my tastes.
I eased my car into the turn where Main Street became Green Street at the second dogleg, just past the most recent and ostentatious of the Breedlove mansions, now resurrected to its turn-of-the-century Italianate glory as a posh bed-and-breakfast. Miss Mamie had told me all about it, of course, but seeing the restored grounds and tastefully sandblasted sign, I felt an inexplicable sense of loss. The place seemed to wear its newfound prosperity uneasily, like a mechanic in a three-piece Brooks Brothers suit.
A bed-and-breakfast in a town that had always been a "meat and three" kind of place. Go figure.
Two more blocks of Green Street to home, railroad on the left now, houses on the right.
Bracing for a bump that didn't happen, I realized the city had finally done away with the abandoned sidetracks leading to the old mill. Farther down, the old Watkins place gleamed afresh with vinyl siding and dark green shutters. Law Office. Maybe they hadn't all gone away, just moved to larger quarters.
Beyond that, somebody was redoing Mrs. Duckett's fanciful Victorian from the studs out, complete with a copper cupola, scalloped shingles in the gables, suitably gaudy Chinese red paint on the gingerbread, and a real slate roof. Must have set them back at least a mil.
And across the next side street, 1431 Green Street loomed, the one thing in town besides Chief Parker's Drugs that still looked the same as it always had.
Home.
On its own, my foot eased back on the gas.
Bounded by shoulder-high camellia hedges that, like the rest of our home place, had seen better days, the sturdy old white Victorian sat firmly anchored by eighty feet of verandah — "Miss Mamie's Porch" to one and all in Mimosa Branch. Nothing fanciful about our house; it was massive, angular, and quintessentially functional. And as usual, it needed painting. Old Southern houses peel worse than Scandinavians at Miami Beach, so ownership conveys a constant cycle of scrape and paint, and I do mean constant. At least it gave my underemployed brother, Tommy, something useful to do.
As I neared the driveway, my car slowed to a crawl all by itself. I still could not accept that I was really doing this, so I distracted myself by focusing on the familiar landmarks. The same massive elm stumps rotted between the road and the cracked, uneven sidewalk. The same garden-club flower beds bloomed with marigolds and cockscomb by the railroad tracks across the street.
I reached the opening in our camellia hedge and squeezed my car past the historical marker onto the circular gravel driveway. My eyes scanned past the bronze letters: ALLEN BREEDLOVE MANSION, 1897. THE SECOND RESIDENCE OF ALLEN BREEDLOVE, FOUNDER OF MIMOSA BRANCH AND BREEDLOVE TEXTILES. ... I used to take pride in reading my family's illustrious history, but ever since Granny Beth had spilled the beans about what a pompous son-of-a-bitch my great-grandfather had really been, the words rang false.
Up ahead, the house's wide, shallow steps and porch boards shone the same blue-gray against the white of the latticed foundation. The same sweet autumn clematis twined through the porch rails. And the same damned purple bathtub full of pink begonias reclined on its gilded ball-and-claw feet beside the front door, like a rich old socialite laid out on a swooning couch in her underwear. Miss Mamie had affixed 1431 to the side in big brass numbers, which only drew more attention to the embarrassing eyesore. Clearly, she'd given up even trying to find somebody to haul the thing away. How white-trash was that?
My foot hit the brake as if my body was telling me, "It's not too late! Get away! Run!"
The trouble was, I had no place else to run. The only people who would take me in lived inside those walls. And every last one of them was crazy to some degree.
Unlike me, of course. I was damaged, but normal. At least, that was the conviction I clung to.
I forced myself to drive the last few yards to the wide spot in the gravel where the porch steps came down to the edge of the driveway. There I stopped. Like it or not, I had arrived. A dull throb of pain bloomed in my right eye and deepened slightly with every heartbeat.
Oh, God. I was really doing this, moving back home at fifty. The very thing I'd spent the past five years criticizing my brother for doing.
Judge not that ye be not judged, in spades.
But unlike Tommy, I had no intention of staying. I'd only be here until I got back on my feet. I'd be back out from under Miss Mamie's roof as soon as I made enough money to redo the garage apartment. Beyond that, who knew, but I had great hopes. I had to.
I'd escaped once; I could do it again. I'd be fine.
Right, the cynical new voice who lived inside me said. You're fifty. No money. No degree. No technical skills. No real job experience. Knees too rotten to wait tables or work as a checkout clerk. Sure, you'll be fine.
My spiral into self-pity was cut short when Uncle Bedford lurched out the front door in nothing but Depends, carrying a mahogany TV tray loaded with his shoes. (I recognized the white patent slip-ons.) His stocky, little hyper-blond self had wasted away to almost nothing, but he descended the steps with surprising speed and agility.
I watched in morbid fascination. Hearing Miss Mamie's reports about his mental deterioration was one thing, but seeing him this way was quite another. Now I understood why Aunt Gloria had moved the two of them in with my parents six months ago. Who could cope with this alone?
"Don't try to deny it!" he hollered to nobody in particular.
Stupidly, I raised my hand and waved as he detoured around the front of my car, leaving a cordovan loafer on the hood. "Hey, Uncle Bedford." Since he'd been a well-respected podiatrist for more than forty years, the shoes seemed vaguely appropriate to me, which is pretty damned scary in retrospect, I can tell you.
Heedless of the gravel on his bare feet, Uncle Bedford stomped toward the late-blooming azaleas that separated the circular driveway from the front lawn.
Better stay out of Miss Mamie's pet azaleas, Uncle Bedford, or you'll really be in hot water. For reasons unknown to God or man, those gumpos had been flowering in midsummer ever since my mother had planted them back in '73. They'd become her local claim to fame.
"That boy took my shoes, that gay guy," my uncle ranted. "He takes everything."
Miss Mamie's updates had informed me that Poor Aunt Gloria had become "that gay guy" to Uncle Bedford, just as she had become Poor Aunt Gloria to the rest of the family when Uncle Bedford had finally quit drinking three years ago and promptly gone into the permanent D.T.'s.
Poor Aunt Gloria, indeed. At least I was moving back to the bosom of my own family. She'd been forced to live at the sufferance of in-laws.
Speak of the devil, here Aunt Glory came out the front door, round, fierce, and firmly packed as ever, holding out one of the sheets Uncle Bedford used for keeping "the Japanese" off the furniture. Hobbling down the stairs on her arthritic knees, she said through her tiny teeth, "Don't you dare get out of that car, Lin. I'll take care of your uncle. He's my husband, so it's my shame to bear."
She caught up with him beside the Rose of Sharon that was in glorious fuchsia bloom. "Jackson Bedford Breedlove the Fourth." Owing to his deafness, she shouted loud enough to be heard a block away. "Cover up and come back to the house this instant before somebody from church sees you!"
Her husband hallucinated Japanese, thought she was a gay guy, and was running around in Depends with a TV tray full of shoes, and she was worried what somebody from church would think? Uncle Bedford wasn't the only crazy person in this scenario. Obviously, living with him had made Aunt Glory as loony as he was.
Never one to back down, Aunt Gloria held the sheet like a matador's cape and did her best to corral her husband. Uncle Bedford evaded her first few swoops, but he soon got enough of it and counterattacked with a powerful swing of the TV tray. Shoes went flying. Fortunately, Aunt Gloria managed to jump out of the way, because the tray made an ominous whooshing noise as it whizzed past her.
Damn, he was strong. I had read somewhere that when they were psychotic, even fragile old geezers like Uncle Bedford were strong as prizefighters on PCP, and now I believed it.
My conscience told me it was time to get out of the car and try to rescue my aunt from her husband, but not before I punched 911 into my cell phone and poised my finger over the send button. I opened the car door and stepped into humid, oppressive air that smelled of granite dust, fresh-cut grass, magnolia blooms, and honeysuckle.
My mother chose just that moment to emerge from the house in full dudgeon, broom in hand, still a force of nature despite her eighty years. "Good Lord, Bedford," she fumed, "if you weren't the General's baby brother and sole survivin' family, I'd shoot you dead on the spot. Now get back in the house. Poor Lin's gonna think this place is an insane asylum!"
"Poor Lin" knew it was an insane asylum and so did my mother, but my only thought was a desperate, Dear God, please don't let me be Poor Lin from now on! I couldn't stand it. Anything but that.
After a perfunctory, "Sorry, baby," to me, Miss Mamie bustled over and laid a firm hold onto Aunt Gloria's elbow. "Go back inside, Glory," she said with exaggerated diction, a manner of speaking reserved for embarrassing situations. The more embarrassing the situation, the more precise and gravid her speech. "You only make it worse when he's this way. Leave him to Lin and me."
I took another look at the heft of that TV tray and the brittle spark in Uncle Bedford's eyes and voted for 911, but I kept my mouth shut because I knew the mere mention of calling in strangers would send these women into a rage, or hysterics, or both.
Aunt Gloria, unwilling as ever to leave the field of dishonor without a clear victory, shot yet another anxious look up and down the empty pavement of Green Street. Then she deflated. "All right." She handed over the sheet, suddenly looking every bit of her worried, worn-out seventy-six years. "But at least try to keep him behind the azaleas where nobody can see him. I won't be able to lift my head in this town if anybody from church should drive by."
"They won't, sugar," my mother reassured her in her normal voice. "This time of day, they're all home napping or watching All My Children. You know that."
"Lord, I hope so." Aunt Glory glared at Uncle Bedford, which was all it took to set him off again.
He jabbed the TV tray in his beleaguered wife's direction. "That boy took my shoes! I want 'em back! These new ones hurt my feet!"
"Bedford," Aunt Gloria hollered, "look at your feet. You're not even wearing any shoes."
This was going to be my life: Aunt Gloria trying to use logic with Uncle Bedford in the midst of a psychotic break, and Miss Mamie thinking she can fix everything with confidence and a broom.
I'd married at nineteen to get away from crap like this!
The pain in my right eye bloomed to ice-pick intensity, stabbing through the back of my skull. I winced like Popeye.
Miss Mamie prodded Aunt Gloria toward the house. "He'll do better when you're out of sight, honey," she assured in her embarrassing-situation voice. "So hurry on outta here, before somebody from church really does come by."
Patting her sparse permanent wave, Aunt Gloria turned her silk-clad back on her husband with military precision, then marched her Talbot's flats toward the porte cochere. Uncle Bedford watched with a canny gleam of triumph. "Hah!"
Miss Mamie handed me the sheet. "Keep this ready, sugar. Let's just give him a little time to settle down."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch by Haywood Smith. Copyright © 2002 Haywood Smith. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Reading Group Guide
Linwood Breedlove Scott's life has officially hit rock bottom. Her husband of thirty years has run off with a stripper. The IRS has taken everything but her coffee table. And her hot flashes are four-alarmers. The only thing that could make being flat-broke and fifty any worse is having to crawl home to her parents' house in Mimosa Branch, Georgia...which is exactly where she's headed.
Lin's barely prepared for the loony bin that greets her, from her controlling, eighty-year-old mother and shockingly blunt father to her long-suffering Aunt Glory and her deranged Uncle Bedford who is convinced a cannibal lives under the furniture. Nor is she ready for the instant love-hate attraction she feels for her handsome new next-door neighbor. Trying to navigate her way through the second act of her life with nothing more than a prepaid calling card, a broken heart, and plenty of Prozac, Lin's about to discover that it's never too late for old friends, new romance, the ties of family, and a second chance to survive it all on the road to becoming the person you were always meant to be...
