Giving Away Virginia Holton

"I didn't."

"You did."

"You're not going to win this time, Virginia."

"Yes, I am, Marla."

"You know, you gorgeous thing, you are at times simply weird."

"I'm NOT weird, Mother!" Virginia shot back.

"Yes, Darling, you really are."

With a grin tugging at each corner of her mouth, Virginia asked the question that Marla knew was coming.

"And why do you think I'm weird?"

"All right, anybody whose music preferences range from George Gershwin to Creedence Clearwater Revival to Little Anthony and the Zydeco House Rockers to elevator music to...oh, heavens, Virginia, ...to Bluegrass...I consider them so odd that they ought to be arrested as a public menace!"

Marla was working hard to suppress laughter. She failed. Virginia tried to look truly aggrieved and likewise missed her target. Instead, she leaned to her right toward her mother's chair, glared at the uninhibited display of Marla's black bush that her short skirt failed to conceal, and whispered, "I see your grass, Marla."

Since this response made no sense at all in the context of their talk, Marla looked at Virginia as if she'd lost her marbles.

"What?"

"I see your bush. Your lovely itty-bitty skirt doesn't cover you. I see you."

Virginia gently tapped a long-nailed finger on the table as if she had laid down a challenge and was awaiting a response.

"Somewhere in all of this I have missed something vital. We were talking about how weird you are. So what? Seeing my pussy in public has never bothered you before."
She glared at her son sitting across the table on the canopy-covered rear deck of the Pineapple Boat. He was perfectly beautiful. And she loved him so dearly. Sunlight turned his butt-length blonde waves into a massive skein of golden threads. Blue eyes laughed at her from a face that was one of the most striking she had ever seen; she felt his hands cover hers, then begin to toy with her long fingernails.