by C D Cain
Jacques stepped in between us. “I’ll round up the troops,” he said as he leaned his six-foot-one-inch frame over to place a kiss on my temple. “Hey, pretty girl, glad you made it down.”
My memories held only his image when I thought of the word father. The one who had been a part in creating my life had turned out to be nothing more than a donation. He wasn’t the man who could settle for one woman in his life, much less one he created a daughter with. Although I had known Jacques as my only father figure for most of my life, I never called him Father or Dad. He was just Jacques, pronounced “Jack.” But since Memaw’s death, I had come to look at Jacques with different eyes. He was a comforting presence in my life. One who didn’t change nor confirm to all of the desires of Charlie Grace and her social gatherings. He seemed to go along just as I did with one step at a time. His manner was stoic like mine when it came to such things. Sometimes when I caught him looking at me, I wondered what it was he was thinking. It was as if I saw an understanding in his eyes. An understanding that he knew I questioned the path before me. I didn’t dare ask but I did often wonder if he knew I was a shell of the person I once had the opportunity to be?
It didn’t take me long to find my assigned seat. Of course, I would be close to the head of the table and had no doubts I would be sitting in between Grant and Charlie Grace—Grant, as this was our engagement party, and Charlie Grace so she could keep a close eye on me. I knew she feared my tongue would embarrass her tonight. I decided as I watched her mingle from guest to guest that I would do my earnest attempt at curbing my comments for one night. After all, wasn’t this really her party?
“Oooooh, Charlie Grace, this is all so perfect.” Nadine fluttered her hands across her well-endowed chest. The material of her dress stretched across her shoulders to the point I feared I would hear a rip at any moment. Surely this was a figment of my imagination as Nadine had spent the days up to the party informing us of all the weight she was losing. In fact, to hear her tell it, she was a mere skeleton of her former self.
I shook my head as I tried to conceal the laugh that was building but then noticed the shift of a silhouette masked by Nadine’s skeleton self. Sam was leaning against one of the porch columns. She stared directly at me. I held her eyes, vowing to myself I wouldn’t break our stare until she did. I heard the sounds of chairs being slid back from the table and clinking of glasses against porcelain plates as people took their seats around us. Yet, I didn’t move. Sam’s body came fully into my view when Nadine took her seat in front of me. Sam’s hands were clasped in front of her. I felt a tug on my arm as I was urged to take my seat. I didn’t move. I wouldn’t be the one to look away or take my eyes from her. Not this time.
Sam pushed herself off of the column and held her hand waist high. She held a tight-lipped smile as she gave me a small wave. I rubbed the cicada charm on my necklace instead of waving. Even in mannerism, I couldn’t tell her goodbye. Nothing about me could say it to her. She came for closure. I understood that as her need but I didn’t know how to say the words she came to hear. She dropped her hand and turned to walk away from the house. The air around me stopped circulating. A much-needed breath was smothered in the thickness of it. My chest tightened as it struggled to bring oxygen into my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Life. Conformity. Loss. They all began to suffocate me at once. Frantically, I reached my hand behind my back to steady myself with the chair behind me. Tiny white flashes of light danced across Nadine’s face. Any moment now, I was going to fall flat out on the grassy lawn. I moved my hand back and forth but did not feel the back of the chair. Where the hell is the chair? Suddenly, my hand touched the warmth of flesh instead of metal. I looked over my shoulder to see Flossie standing behind me. She grabbed my hand with hers. She steadied the speeding rotation of the world.
“Here, baby girl. Let me help you.” She placed her other hand on my arm above our joined hands. Gently, she pushed the chair underneath me as I sat down. She placed her hands on my shoulders, steadied the spinning world around me, and said, “There you go, sweetie. I’ve got you.” She walked to her setting and winked as she sat down.
“I do declare I can’t imagine what she’s got in store for the wedding if this is what she’s doing for the engagement.” I heard Nadine’s voice but was only partially aware of the actual words she had spoken.
“I’m sorry. What was that, Mrs. Thibodeaux?”
“Oh, honey, we’re practically family now. You can call me Mom.” In between her words, Nadine devoured a bacon-wrapped scallop broil in two bites. “I said I can’t imagine what your momma’s got in store for the wedding if this fancy shindig is what she does for the engagement.” She placed her fingers around another scallop as she perched herself to engulf it in much the same way.
“Oh, right.” I scooted the food around my plate with my fork.
I noticed Charlie Grace was glaring at Nadine. I wasn’t sure if it was because of her delicate way of eating or her wishes for me to call her Mom. My guess was the former as I could hardly think of Mother having any jealousy over me.
“I think it will be a beautiful affair,” Charlie Grace finally managed to say. She continued to stare at the jewelry around my neck. “All we have to do now is get these two to decide on a date. Of course, you know I will need a year to plan the whole thing.”
“Mother, we’ve told you already. We don’t plan on setting a date any time soon. This was just an engagement.”
“I don’t know, Rayne. Maybe we should go on and set one.” Grant didn’t bother cutting the scallop. He popped the whole thing in his mouth all at once.
Like mother like son. The thought caused a roll across my stomach.
“I mean, what’s the point in waiting?” he said, trying to talk around his full mouth.
“What?” I knew the look I was giving him in front of everyone wasn’t exactly one of endearing love but at that moment, I didn’t care.
He looked at me as if he was surprised. “What?”
“What do you mean what?” I also didn’t seem to care that my voice kept escalating. “First you spring the engagement on me in front of everyone and now you want to do the same damn thing with setting a date all of a sudden.” I stopped myself before I let my anger and confusion of seeing Sam turn this into a scene. From the corner of my eye, I saw Flossie and Cora looking at us. “Actually, you know what?” I crumbled my cloth-napkin in a ball and tossed it onto the table. “I’m not doing this right now. I’m going to go say hi to Flossie and Cora. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
No one said anything as I stood from the table. They waited until I had stepped a couple of feet away before they let their whispers run freely. I didn’t care. Let them talk about the wedding. At least I didn’t have to sit there and listen.
“Hey there, child. We were a’wonderin’ if you were gonna come over.” Cora dredged a forkful of shrimp through her fettuccine sauce before putting the bite into her mouth. “Lawd, child, this is some good vittles yo’ Momma done did. Ain’t you gonna eat?”
“Cora, leave the girl alone.” Flossie pushed the noodles around on her plate before taking a bit of sun-dried tomato. Her tone was flat. Come to think of it, I hadn’t noticed her voice having anything but a flat tone since we had lost Meems.
“I’ll get something in a bit. I wanted to come over and speak to y’all first. Are you enjoying the party?” I knelt down in between their chairs.
“Are you?” Flossie squeezed a lemon wedge over her glass of ice tea.
“Aw hell, you know me, Flossie. I live for these things.”
Flossie laughed. The sound of it caught me by surprise as I had missed it more than I realized. Her laughter eased some of my troubled feelings.
“Dat you do.” She bit into the lemon wedge and puckered her face. “Damn, I’ve missed you, baby girl.”
“Enough to let me steal one of these?” I grabbed a roasted asparagus spe
ar from her plate.
“Hell yeah. Dem things make your pee stink.”
I let my forehead rest against her temple. “Damn, I’ve missed you too.”
A light rain had run most of the party guests under the protection of the large tents strategically placed around the grounds. Charlie Grace had prepared for the weatherman’s report of ten percent chance of rainfall. Jacques fussed about the cost of the tents because a ten percent chance in Louisiana generally meant nothing but stifling humidity without a snowball’s chance in hell for a drop of rain.
Under the largest tent was a dance floor and band, while the smaller tents had tables with dessert plates of strawberries with Chantilly cream and champagne. I could have been in any one of the tents pleasantly mingling as a proper hostess should be but instead I sat on the farthest corner of the back porch. It was my perfect escape. A dessert plate and half-empty bottle of champagne was my only company.
In the moonlight, the large tree branches swooped down over the lawn. They looked a bit eerie with their indistinctive clumps of leaves and long-hanging strands of moss. A small puddle of collected rainwater lay in front of me. I watched the ripples of the reflected porch light change with each vibration of the ground. If the beat of the music and tapping of feet on the wooden planks of the dance floor were any indication, this party wasn’t going to end for quite some time.
“I’d figured as much you’d be out here. Mind if’n I join you?”
I looked over my shoulder to see Flossie standing behind me. She held an empty champagne glass in her hand.
“Not at all.” I swung my legs off the side of the porch swing to make room for her to sit. I tilted my glass in her direction. “I heard Charlie Grace giving you hell because you wore denim.”
“Yo’ momma knows I don’t be dressing up in dat fancy smancy stuff she do. Now Cora, dat woman goes all out. But she should a known better than to think I gone put on like I’m a highfalutin.”
“Well, I love it. You look very nice.” And she did. She wore a dark blue jean material pant suit with flare legs and a short-waisted jacket. Small flowers were embroidered on the lapels and around the large pearl buttons. The colors complemented her ivory shell shirt.
“How ya’ holding up, baby girl?”
“I’m hanging in.”
“I was sort of surprised when yo’ momma told me you and your fella were gettin’ married.” She held her empty glass out to me.
I poured each of us a full glass of champagne. “Correction. We got engaged. Big difference.” The freshly poured bubbles tickled my nose when I brought the glass up to my lips.
“Yeah, I’ma thinking they’re pretty close. Y’all set a date yet?”
“Oh no, it’s just an engagement.”
“Aw.” Flossie looked out at the lawn as she took a swallow from her glass. The bubbles must have affected her the same way because she rubbed her slender fingers across the tip of her nose. Several minutes went by. “Y’know that there Chantilly cream tweren’t bad a’toll.”
I looked up at her and noticed she was staring at the strawberry I held in front of my lips. I put it back on the plate in my lap and licked the thickened cream from my fingers. “I don’t know, Flossie.” I sighed deeply. “Things got so screwed up after…” I felt the lump form in my throat. The ripples in the puddle blurred.
Flossie put her hand on top of mine. “Dat it did.” She patted my hand. “But don’t got to stay dat way. She wouldn’t want dat for neither one of us.”
“Seems like I can’t find anything but screwed up these days.” I swirled the strawberry around in the cream and popped it into my mouth. The juice of the strawberry dripped from my chin.
“It won’t feel like dat forever. I promise you dat.” She handed me a napkin. “It won’t.”
The chains of the swing squeaked as we gently swayed the bench back and forth. Even through the beat of the music, I could hear a few cicadas singing in the night. I found the coolness of the golden cicada between my fingers again. Oh Sam, why did I let it get so screwed up?
“I’m afraid I’ll feel this way forever, Flossie.”
“Then maybe some of dem choices you done made ain’t the best for ya’.”
“No, they aren’t, but they’re the only ones I had.”
“Sis, there always more than one choice if’n you want it to be.”
I gave her a half smile. “Not this time, Flossie.” A gentle wind blew in the scent of the climbing jasmine. I breathed in its aroma deeply as I looked out across the lawn. At the moment, I was thankful the frogs were starting to drown out the cicadas. I didn’t think I could handle hearing them sing another chorus. I remembered the forgotten champagne glass in my hand and took a generous swallow. “I love it here. All I ever wanted to do was to come back. I had it all planned out. I would go off to school. Come back. Set up my practice and just be home.”
“It is yo’ home. It’s who you are. Just like Addie. But what dat got to do with what we talkin’ about?”
“Because see, Flossie, to have that, I had only one choice to make. I couldn’t have both. It would’ve never worked. I made my choice so I could come back.”
“Ain’t no choice ever takin’ away yo’ home. Not ever.”
“This one would’ve,” I said as I brought the glass back to my lips. “Trust me.”
Flossie shifted in the seat of the swing to face me full on. “You listen to me, Sis. Ain’t nothing you ever gone do or say gone change who you are or where you from. This yo’ home and always gone be.”
I emptied the champagne bottle evenly into our glasses and handed one of the two remaining strawberries to her. “I don’t want to go back to school.”
“What? That crazy talk.”
“It won’t be the same when I do.” It wouldn’t be either. Without the chance of seeing Sam walk down the hallway. Without the opportunity to breathe in her scent of eucalyptus mint when she passed by me. The remembrance of her scent remained with me no matter where I went. The breeze caught in an opening door seemed to carry it to me. The pillowcase of my bed seemed to hold the fragrance in their fibers even though her body had never rested on its sheets. Nor would I see the smile that had taken the strength from my legs cross her face again. At least, knowing she was in Birmingham had given me some hope I would see it again. We hadn’t spoken and I hadn’t seen her but the possibility had always been there. Many days, it had been the sheer possibility of seeing her that held the power I needed to make it another day at the hospital. The possibility was my oxygen. Now that chance was gone. Sam had left Birmingham and she was not coming back. The heaviness of her absence was a weight I could hardly bear.
“I just can’t imagine going back there, Flossie.”
“Sure you can. You got lots more learning and you love doctoring. It’s who you are. Who’d you always wanted to be.” Flossie pushed her foot against the porch to give the swing motion. “And once you done soaked up all dat learning, you gone come back here to yo’ home to bring what you done learnt to us.”
I looked out at the remaining flickering tea light candles. Some had managed to stay lit through the light rain while others had grown dark. I let my ears open up to the laughter behind the dancing footsteps. I let my mind look beyond the sadness of Sam’s moving away and let it drift to the people behind the laughter. They were my family. They were the reasons why I called this place home. In some moments, there were flickers of light in the darkness. Flickers which held enough of a flame to brighten the darkness. This was one of those moments.
I clinked my glass against hers. “And thus, another reason for the decisions I made.”
“Hello, Mrs. Lambert. I’m Dr. Storm. Your OB doctor requested a surgical consult about your gallbladder results.”
“Yes, come in.” The young woman positioned herself to sit up straighter in the bed. Her very pregnant belly made even this
simple task difficult.
“Here, let me help you.” I set the chart down on the bedside tray table to help her adjust the pillows.
She panted breathlessly as if she had just run a three-mile marathon. “Thank you. To remember the day an entire hour-long aerobics class didn’t make me this out of breath.”
I smiled at her. “It’s not entirely your fault, you know? The pregnancy is causing pressure against your diaphragm which makes it difficult for you to expand your lungs fully.”
“You’re sweet not to mention my fat ass when I tell you about my old aerobic days.”
“You’ll be back to class in no time.” I flipped the chart open to review her results once more. Not that I needed the reminder. I had noticed over the years of rounding at UAB that patients seemed to be more comfortable when you opened their chart in front of them. I’m not exactly sure why but always guessed there was a hint of worry when a new doctor came into the room that they didn’t know everything about their history or because we see a large number of patients in a day that we will somehow get them confused with another if we didn’t have their information right in front of us. I have even caught some of them turning their heads to try to read the name on the side of the chart.
I tried my best to stifle back the developing yawn but failed miserably. “I’m so sorry,” I said as I closed the chart. In less than an hour, I would be getting off after a solid twenty-four-hour work day. I had managed to snag a couple of hours sleep in the on-call room. Beyond those, these eyes had not seen sleep. Maybe the patients were onto something after all. I was so tired I could easily forget my own name.
I rubbed my eyes and started again. “Your doctor consulted us due to your abdominal pain with nausea and vomiting. She was concerned for gallbladder disease as a cause of your symptoms. Your blood work was fairly normal except for a mildly elevated white count and amylase. Both of which can be increased with gallbladder problems. The ultrasound didn’t show any signs of gallstones which is a good sign. Considering your pregnancy and the associated risk of further testing or surgery, we have decided—”
