Read Online Hissy Fit by Mary Kay Andrews - Free Book Online

supper, and I wanted to keep my hair lookin’ nice.”
    He patted the back of his mostly bald head and chuckled at his own joke.
    I looked over at the kitchen table, which was set with three places. “I thought Gloria was in Atlanta tonight.”
    “She is,” Daddy said, setting the hot pan on the kitchen counter.
    “Then who’s having supper with us?” I asked. He took the pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator and poured me a glass.
    I took a long sip and looked around that tired old kitchen, with its harvest gold appliances and worn vinyl tile. Our house had been considered the newest, most modern house in Madison when my parents built it back in the early 1970s. It was just after Daddy started making real money with the car dealership, and he wanted everybody in town to know what a success he was.
    Our house had a cathedral ceiling in the entryway, with real marble floors, white wall-to-wall shag carpeting, big picture windows, and a patio out back with a fishpond and birdbath.
    I could still remember the house when everything had been shiny and new. He’d let Mama order new dishes from the JC Penney catalog, and even new wineglasses.
    My mother loved those dishes. They were heavy stoneware, with hand-painted borders of bright red poppies and yellow stripes around the outside. The wineglasses had little poppy designs too.
    When she left, she left all that behind. In fact, as far as I knew (and at seven, I had taken an extensive inventory) my mother had taken along nothing from her old life when she ran off to start a new one with Darvis Kane, the sales manager at Murdock Motors.
    And Daddy had pretty much left everything the way it was the day she left. The carpet had long since been replaced, of course, along with some of the appliances, but despite my begging andpleading with him to let me redecorate, twenty-five years later we were still eating off the same dishes, sitting at the same simulated Early American maple dinette set.
    I refolded one of the worn gold napkins Daddy had put at each place setting. “So who’s the mystery guest?”
    “You wanna heat up the peas for me?” he asked, pointing at the can of LeSueurs on the kitchen counter.
    “I can do that.” I found one of the gold Club aluminum pots and dumped the can of peas in and placed it on the front burner of the stove.
    “The rice is done, if you wanna put it in the little cup thingies,” Daddy said, pointing to the glass custard cups he’d set out on the counter. “Put some butter on the rice before you put it in there, though,” he instructed.
    “I know, I know. Now, about that dinner guest?”
    “You want a beer?” Daddy asked, opening the refrigerator door. “I bought that import stuff you like.”
    “The tea is fine for now,” I said. “Come on. Quit making me play guess who’s coming to dinner.”
    “New fella in town,” Daddy said. He opened the oven door and peered in at the pan of brown-and-serve rolls he was heating up. “Good-looking young man too.”
    “Oh Daddy, you didn’t.”
    “Didn’t what?” He tried to look innocent.
    “A fix-up? You’re trying to fix me up with a blind date on the week I was supposed to be honeymooning?”
    “A date? Hell no. Is that what you think? Now, Keeley, you know me better than that. Have I ever tried to fix you up with a date in your whole life?”
    “Oh please,” I said. “Remember the advertising guy?”
    “I thought he could help you market the business,” Daddy said. “And there wasn’t a thing wrong with him either.”
    “He was a spitter. I had to wear a raincoat when I went out on adate with him. And that wasn’t the only dog you fixed me up with. What about that creepy Bible salesman you met at Rotary?”
    “A little spirituality never hurt anybody,” Daddy said. “And he made a good living too.”
    “He lived with his mother. He didn’t even own a car. And when I wore a sleeveless dress to dinner he tried to give me a lecture on the wages of the