Leaving L.A.

I come from a long line of motherless daughters. I used to think of us as fatherless: my mother, my older half sister, me. But the truth is that the worst damage to us came from being essentially motherless.That's the conclusion I reached after six days, thirty cups of pure caffeine and two thousand miles of driving back home. Of course all that philosophical crap leached out of my head the minute I crossed the Louisiana state line. That's when I started obsessing about what I would wear to my big reunion with my sister. I'm not proud to admit that I changed clothes three times in the last one hundred miles of my trek. The first time in a Burger King in Port Allen; the second time in a Shell station just east of Baton Rouge; and the third time on a dirt road beside a cow pasture just off Highway 1082.Okay, I was nervous. Howdoyou dress when you're coming home for the first time in twenty-three years and you're pretty sure your only sister is going to slam the door in your face--assuming she even recognizes you?I settled on a pair of skin-tight leopard-print capris, a black Thomasina spaghetti-strap top with a built-in push-up bra, a pair of Rainbow stilettos and a black dog-collar choker with pyramid studs all around. My own personal power look: heavy metal, hot mama who'll kick your ass if you get in my way.But as soon as I turned into the driveway that led up to the farmhouse my grandfather had built over eighty years ago, I knew it was all wrong. I should have stuck with the jeans and the lime-green tank top.I screeched to a halt and reached into the back seat where my rejected outfits were flung over my four suitcases, five boxes of books and records, and three giant plastic containers of photos, notebooks and dog food."This is the last change," I muttered to Tripod, who just stared at me like I was a lunatic--which maybe I am. But who wants a dog passing judgment on you?I glowered at him as I shimmied out of the spandex capris. They were getting kind of tight. Surely I wasn't already gaining weight?I was standing barefoot beside my open car door with my jeans almost zipped when my cranky three-legged mutt decided he'd had enough. Up to now I'd had to lift him into and out of the high seat of my ancient Jeep. That missing foreleg makes it hard for him to leap up and down. But apparently he'd been playing the sympathy card the whole two thousand miles of I-10 east because, as soon as I turned my back, he jumped down through the driver's door and took off up the rutted shell driveway, baying like he was a Catahoula hound who'd just treed his first raccoon."Idiot dog," I muttered as I snapped the fly of my jeans.The day I adopted him he'd just lost his leg in a fight with a Hummer on an up ramp to I-405 in Los Angeles. Not a genius among canines, and an urban mutt, to boot. The only wildlife he'd ever seen were the squirrels that raided the bird feeder I'd hung in the courtyard of my ex-boyfriend G.G.'s Palm Springs villa.But here he was, lumbering down a rural Louisiana lane, for all intents and purposes pounding his hairy doggy chest and declaring this ashisterritory.I paused and stared after him. Maybe he was on to something. Straightening up, I took a few experimental thumps on my own chest. "Watch out, world--especially you, Alice. Zoe Vidrine is back in town, and this time I'm not leaving with just a backpack and three changes of clothes. This time I'm not going until I get what's rightfully mine."Then before I could change my mind about my clothes one more time, I slid into the driver's seat, shoved Jenny into first gear, and tore down the Vidrine driveway, under the Vidrine Farm sign, and on to the Vidrine family homestead.It was the same house. That's what I told myself when I steered past a large curve of azaleas in full bloom. In a kind of fog I pressed the brake and eased to a stop at the front edge of the sunny lawn. It was the same house with the same deepBecnel, Rexanne is the author of 'Leaving L.A.', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373881079 and ISBN 037388107X.