Bubbles and the Red Hat Society (Fiction, 2008?)

Martha looked at her daughter and smiled. "Samantha, I think you're old enough to join our little group."

Samantha, better known as Bubbles to her friends, looked up from her corn flakes, at her mother standing by the kitchen sink in an elaborate red flowered hat and garish purple outfit. "You mean the Mad Hatters?" Bubbles mumbled, milk dripping from the corner of her mouth.

"It's not Mad Hatters, it's Red Hatters!" Her mother scolded, knowing her daughters penchant for irony. "And if you tried it I'm sure you'd like it."

Bubbles squinted her eyes at her mother, "What are you doing with your eyes you silly girl?" her mother asked.

"I just pictured myself in a red had and purple costume, a horrid portrait!"

"Of course it is! You wouldn't wear red and purple, not until your fiftieth birthday. You'd wear a pink hat and lavender dress."

Bubbles shook her head and again squinted her eyes, she accentuated her disapproval by wrinkling her nose, "That didn't help, I still looked schlocky."

"Oh not at all Samantha, you always looked good in pink. You'd look precious."

The word caused Bubbles to cringe. "Precious? She picked up a spoon and tried to look at her reflection. Her straight black hair hung down the sides of her face, which accentuated her pale skin. She smirked as she again thought of the word, “Precious, yeah, that’s what I see too!”

Martha stared at her daughter and waved her hands, "Earth to Samantha, come out, come out, where ever you are!"

Bubbles shook her head, "Huh? What? Sorry, I was thinking.”

"Thinking about joining the group were you?" Her mother asked hopefully.

"Yeah, something like that." Bubbles replied, putting the spoon into her cereal bowl, safely beneath her soggy corn flakes.

"So mom, what exactly do you ladies do? I mean, what's the group's raison d'être? Do you raise money for the poor? For civic endeavors? To beautify corporate bathrooms? What?”

"That's the great thing about our club," Martha spoke in an elevated tone, "We don't do anything. “We’re not strictly an organization, in fact we’re a Disorganization.”

"So you dress up like a tacky clown for no reason?"

Martha laughed at her daughter's description, "Clowns, okay, I suppose we do look a little silly, but that is part of it."

Bubbles squinted a third time, which prompted her mother’s attention, “Samantha! You look liked Charlie Chan when you do that!'

"Charlie who?" Bubbles asked

"It was a series of movies back in the 30's."

"Oh back in ancient times." dead panned Bubbles.

"Yes, your mother is antediluvian"

"Yes, Primordial," Bubbles quipped, trying to one-up her mother.

Martha shook her head but was undaunted, "ANYWAY, we Red Hatters have spent a life time doing for others, it's now our time to do for us!"

Bubbles thought to squint at that answer but thought better of it, “So you do nothing? You just wear silly hats and drink tea? It's not exactly my idea of 'The Purpose Driven Life.'"

Her mother's eyes widened at the mention of her favorite book. Have you read it Samantha? I always hoped you would!"

Bubbles laughed, "No mom, I haven't read it" and thinking of the Ashley Smith/Brian Nichols* hostage case, "Maybe someday when I start using crystal meth I'll read it, but right now I'm too sane."

Martha ignored Bubbles' vitriol and walked over to her daughter. Standing behind the slouched teen, she removed the red open weave hat from her head and placed it gently on her daughter's, "There, now let me see," she said, bending over Bubble's right shoulder to look, "You're adorable, there's no other word for it!"

Bubbles slouched lower in her chair but made no attempt to remove the hat. Her mother wandered off to another part of the house, humming as she went. Bubbles took the spoon from her cereal, licked the milk from it and tried to see her reflection. She adjusted the hat, tilting it down over her face, "There, that's better," she mumbled, "I look like a field of wild flowers that had caught fire." She took off the hat and set it gently on the table, leaned back in the direction her mother had gone and yelled, "Mom was I adopted?” She waited, for her mother's reply, with an open mouthed, half-smile.

In a moment the answer came from another room, "Adopted? No, you were the milkman's daughter remember dear. It was that torrid affair; I never could resist a man in a bow-tie."

Bubbles, though she tried, couldn't hold back a laugh. "So I guess that's that, I really am your daughter." she shot back in an overdone, disappointed tone.

"That's right dear, I'm sure you're as shocked as I was when I first found out Sophia Loren wasn't my mother, that I was just the wayward daughter of your grandmother Pearl."

Coming back into the kitchen, she bent down next to her daughter and kissed her on the cheek, "You'll get used to it Samantha, I did."

"You did?" Bubbles replied and was about to add some caustic complaint, but was interrupted by a knocking on the kitchen door.

Martha looked up and saw an elderly woman in a red bonnet smiling through the door's window pane, "Ah mom, I'll be right with you, Miss Twitchett here has been concerned about her maternal lineage. She can't believe she's my daughter.

"Oh," Pearl smiled, "How could she, didn’t you tell her about you and the traveling salesman?”

Bubbles rolled her eyes and picked up a napkin from the table. She bent her head back and placed the opened cloth over her face, finally accepting who she was and who she'd one day become.