The Last Job

The Last Job - Prologue

1956

                I’d always done what was expected of me. Never before had I thought about turning my back on my life. But sometimes, a girl has got to do what a girl has got to do. At least, that’s what I learned from Frankie.

                My entire life I listened to my old man. According to Maxwell Hodges, a good girl always obeyed her daddy. And my Mama would just nod along to whatever it is the wet rag would say. According to Marian Hodges, “Good girls never talk back to their husbands. No. Good girls must understand that it is not our place to undermine the head of a household, but instead support that head like a firm neck.” Her soft Carolinian accent would float across the air, and caress my head as she spoke these words on a daily basis.

                But Mama…well, Mama was a damn fool. Too worried about whether she would be accepted at the country club to ever realize that I was drowning. I was walking around as though I was the happiest queen that ever existed.  And every single day, I would my lovely day dresses, and my lovely pearls, and the lovely short heeled Mary Janes…the white ones that Daddy had bought me. They shoes my long tan legs that were kept in shape by being in ballet as a child, and then Cheerleading in junior high and high school. The colors of the dresses were bought specifically to compliment my naturally honey blonde tresses and cornflower blue eyes. The shapes of these high quality day dresses flattered my thin waist while, demurely, hinted at my ample bust and child-bearing hips.

                No, anyone who was watching from the outside would think (and many often said), “Golly gee, that there Lucinda Anne Hodges sure does have it all. She’s beautiful, has straight A’s, wealthy, a cheerleader, and her beau is Peter Mathews. Lucinda must be so happy,” Yeah. Happy.

                But that all changed when I fell in love with Frankie Goldman.