Re: Loggything: Penny and Clementine
To be real fair, Clementine hated most people some. She just wasn't real nice, and you could go blaming that on genetics, and you could go blaming that on upbringing. Lore made Clem a better person, but Lore was gone much too early, and Clem's momma wasn't no kind of momma. Clem's momma was fainting couches and feathers on heeled slippers, and that was just about all. The woman was always real ready for her closeup, and she was mean as No Wire Hangers and Mommy Dearest. Just what it was, and Clem wasn't kind any. But she was better now than a few years back, and she couldn't even pretend that weren't true, even if she didn't go thinking on it hard.
"Honey, a man shouldn't leave a woman drunk. I come from the South. I'm real old fashioned 'bout some things." Clem was plantation homes and willows weeping, Sunday visitors and gentlemen callers. She and Penny might sound similar, but Clem was about as far from Alabama as a belle could get. Men held doors open, and they paid bills, and they saw drunken women to their doors.
She considered Penny's unwillingness to meet whoever'd been tromping through her dreaming. Made sense, but Clem figured Penny seemed real lonely these days, and meeting anyone at all might be something worth doing. "Might be fine, just saying how do, sugar. That ain't me matchmaking. It's just me suggesting is all," she said, making that last turn toward Penny's place.