Bubbles And The Red Hat Society

What a sad day when we realize, we are our parents.

 

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

The dour Samantha, ironically known as Bubbles to her friends, looked up from her cornflakes at her mother who stood by the kitchen sink wearing 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, which she accentuated with a wrinkled 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 bead back and placed the opened cloth over her face, finally accepting who she was and who she'd one day become.

Author notes:

*Ashley Smith/Brian Nichols: Brian Nichols escaped from a courthouse, killed four people and held Ashley Smith hostage in her apartment. She appeased Nichols by reading from the book, “A Purpose Driven Life.” Due to this, the book shot up the Best Seller list, later it came out that she’d also given him crystal meth.

Author's Note

Find any typos etc, please let me know, thanks.

Reviews

[Penslinger]

I liked it, though I didn't really understand it, or the author's note, for that matter~I try to read the news as often as I can, as depressing as that can be.
I took the daughter to be in high school, given her general attitude towards her mother. Her friends called her bubbles, because she was dour. And I kinda got the impression that the daughter was a gen-x beat type goth and its entirely possible that she would have that kind of vocabulary if she was well-read.
Very good piece: authentic dialogue and situations

[Snuggles McClintock]

This seems to be typo free, though I am not the best copy editor.
I found this to have some nice banter between a mother and daughter, but I wanted to offer a few stray observations:

-it would be nice to know why she's called bubbles. Is it suppose to be ironic? She doesn't seem very bubbly, so it seems like it would a moniker that she might take pride in.

-it would be nice to know how old the daughter is. I would place her in university due to her fancy word usage (primordial, horrid portrait, etc) and the fact that her mother is over 50 (hence the red hat and purple). given that, I am immediately interested as to why she is sitting in her mother's kitchen, mooching only cornflakes (she should go for the free big ticket items like lemon poppy seed muffins or bagel with cream cheese).

-It might also be nice to get some setting description of the kitchen. since bubbles sees her mother as a little ridiculous, what might she think of the wall clock, the oven mitts, the table cloth, etc.

[Daynise Couch]

My mother in law is reading The Purpose Driven Life. It has taken her three years to read and she still has not finished it. I too would have to be on Crystal Meth to read it.

Anyway, I thought this was very well written. It was descriptive. It was a good reflection of a typical conversation between a mom and teenage daughter.