Queen of the Cookbooks

by Ashton Lee

  “Did they buy it?”

  Maura Beth shrugged. “Who knows? I did what I could do. I directed them to the two hundreds. Then I walked away, thanking them for their input and hoping that I’d put out the fire. Although something tells me I haven’t heard the last of them. What a can of worms that is—letting any of your patrons censor what’s available to the public. The last time we discussed her parents, Renette said they definitely didn’t approve of her new interest in country music. Told her they thought it was ‘trashy,’ I believe she put it, and that the only kind of music she should be listening to was hymns sung by a choir in church. Anything else was just way beyond the pale.”

  Jeremy had a distasteful look on his face. “So? She doesn’t have to live with them. She has her own apartment, right?”

  “Yes, but you’ve gotten to know Renette a little. She wears her heart on her sleeve. When she gets enthusiastic about something, her emotions just spill over. She probably never should have told her parents about the Waddell Mack thing. She says the last time she went over to their house for dinner, they practically gave her the third degree about the kind of music she was listening to. She told me she lied to them and said she’d thrown all her Waddell Mack stuff away, and they just bowed their heads and said, ‘Ay-men. Our little girl is saved.’”

  Jeremy was shaking his head vigorously now. “Wow! That sounds like a train wreck of a relationship. But as long as it doesn’t affect her job performance, I guess she’s still good to go with you.”

  “I’ve come to think of her as a daughter in a way—even though I’m only ten years older than she is.”

  He put a finger to his lips thoughtfully, knowing exactly where he wanted to go. “Hold that maternal thought, Maurie. I think it’s a safe bet that you’ll need it eventually.”

  Lately, they had seriously discussed the matter of her getting pregnant. Was it too soon, or did they want to wait a little longer to become parents? Both her parents, Cara Lynn and William Mayhew, as well as his, Paul and Susan McShay, had been pressuring them not so subtly on the subject of becoming grandparents. When could they all expect a blessed event? Would it be sooner rather than later? Oh, and please let them know the minute they knew! They had booties to knit and names to suggest and a hundred other things to consider that were always the purview of grandparents. It was high time they perfected the art of spoiling, Cara Lynn, for one, had pointed out.

  “We could start playing the ovulation game seriously. I’ve had all that down for some time now,” she had told him at one point recently. “That is . . . if you really think we’re ready.”

  Jeremy had told her that he thought they should wait until she was good and settled in the new library—the Charles Durden Sparks, Crumpton, and Duddney Public Library, it was going to be called. But although Cherico’s scheming head councilman and its three most generous female benefactors—Mamie and Marydell Crumpton, along with Nora Duddney—had donated the money to make the library’s construction possible, it was Maura Beth who had had the tenacity and vision to force the issue and bring Cherico into the twenty-first century. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Jeremy was right—she needed to put this baby by the lake to bed before she considered taking on one that would involve a lifetime commitment of a different kind of love and understanding. Everything in its time. Still, there was a part of her that was definitely warming to the idea of being pregnant, and she couldn’t envision herself being the least bit upset if it happened sooner rather than later.

  “All right, then, you’ve convinced me,” Jeremy continued at the table, sounding very much like the man in charge that he was. “We’ll load up The Warbler and head for the hills . . . or the swamps . . . or the Delta . . . or whatever part of Mississippi we happen to end up in tomorrow. We can pack our lunches together. And if you say you need to get your mind off dealing with The Stump, you’re way golden with me. Just remember—if you think he needs a little man-to-man talking-to, you let me know, and I’ll take care of it pronto.”

  She sat back, eyeing him with a bit of a territorial attitude and looking thoroughly pleased with herself. She had always been attracted to his intensity, even if he occasionally got too carried away and into trouble because of it. Intelligence was certainly something to admire, but a woman also needed to know that her man would stand up for her in a physical way when necessary. “I knew there was a reason I married you. A man who likes to listen to a woman is a rare treasure, you know. Matter of fact, a man who likes to listen period is rare. I have to say, you’ve done a pretty good job of it as we’ve been sitting here.”

  He cupped a hand around his right ear playfully. “Hey, it’s what I do for a living—I listen to all those teenybopper students of mine all day long and try to cope with the fallout. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it, if you ask me.”

  She didn’t speak for a while as she revisited something that had been nagging at her lately. She just wasn’t completely satisfied with the big day coming up. “I think we need something else. For the Grand Opening of the new library, I mean. Waddell Mack’s concert and the fireworks and the tours of the building will all be well and good. But something is missing—something that will get everyone involved in an even more personal way.”

  Jeremy was frowning now, trying to follow her. “Don’t know what on earth that could be, Maurie. I assume that you’re not envisioning something like a Woodstock on Lake Cherico. That’s not the kind of publicity you really want, and there probably aren’t enough porta-potties available in this neck of the woods to handle that.”

  Her laughter was prolonged, indicating her surprise. “I halfway love the idea, and yes, the library will be renting plenty of porta-potties anyway. We certainly don’t need to get down and dirty and make a mess of things on opening day. I still think we need something more to keep interest up throughout the event, though. And I’ll know what it is when it comes to me.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t that Jeremy was lost. It was more that The Warbler didn’t have a GPS, and neither he nor his Maurie was particularly successful at reading the roadmap at the moment. Not that they couldn’t actually see the red threadlike, meandering lines that represented their whereabouts, but it was as if their brains had been dilated, and they simply couldn’t focus properly.

  “We never should have gotten off the Natchez Trace,” Maura Beth was saying as she squinted at the map once again. She had come to the sudden realization that she hadn’t ventured outside of Cherico very often over the last six or seven years, and now she was paying the price. “I think we’ve been a little too adventurous. We may never get back to civilization at this rate. They’ll find our skeletons someday, and we’ll be the subject of a future documentary on one of those travel channels. The narrator will say, ‘What do you suppose they were doing way out here? No one ever comes out this far.’ ”

  “What an imagination you have. But I thought this is what you wanted. A little adventure, I mean.”

  He managed a perfunctory smile and drove on along the narrow, winding, two-lane back road with the occasional pothole that they had been trying to negotiate for about twenty minutes now. The first flush of spring was nearly over, and the leaves on the overhanging trees were beginning to darken and proclaim their victory over the long, rainy winter. Except that the rain had still not been vanquished, and Jeremy had the wipers going intermittently against the annoying drizzle they had run into some time ago. Was there anything worse than playing the halfhearted windshield wiper game? Especially when the blades starting squeaking against the glass and setting teeth on edge like fingernails across a chalkboard.

  “Best as I can tell,” Maura Beth continued, looking up from the map after thumping it for emphasis, “there should be a little town called Water Valley about five miles ahead. I’ve heard of it before—just never been there since moving up from Louisiana seven years ago.”

  “As I recall, it’s a little southwest of Oxford,” Jeremy said with a little
more certainty in his voice. “I hope they’ve got a place to eat that’s not fast food. I’m hungry, but I hate settling for burgers and fries and that kinda stuff. Your cooking has spoiled me, you know.”

  She reached over and rubbed his arm affectionately a couple of times. He had indeed been the world’s greatest sport throughout her culinary successes and the occasional failure that they had chosen never to bring up again. “Thanks for bearing with me, sweetheart. I was so afraid I’d burn things up and make a martyr of you. I didn’t want you to have to gulp things down out of pity.”

  “Eating pity meals? Now there’s an idea.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t have to do that with some of my dishes.”

  “Nope, there was nothing in that category that I can recall. I’ve ended up asking you for seconds most of the time. If I had to give you a grade, it would definitely have to be an A-plus.”

  She was remembering the long succession of recipes and the care she had always taken to pull them off successfully. Was she on fire or what?

  “You’re my favorite guinea pig,” she told him.

  “I guess I have made a pig of myself sometimes.” They both exchanged amused glances. Then the rain started to fall a bit harder, coming down in fat drops that seemed to impart a sense of aggression, and Jeremy gratefully changed the wipers from squeaky intermittent to seamless continuous. “So what else is new? More rain. Is there a dark cloud following us wherever we go? Seems like we’ve been coming out of the rain every day for months now.”

  Maura Beth put the map down and snapped her fingers. “Oh, you know—there was a really nice article in the Tupelo paper I saw online not long ago about this charming little combination grocery store and café in Water Valley. Their menu sounded very sophisticated but also like Southern comfort food. I’d really like to see someone pull that off. I made a mental note that if I ever got anywhere near Water Valley, I was going to try it.”

  “Do you remember what street it was on?”

  “Oh, it shouldn’t be too hard to find,” Maura Beth said. “Water Valley’s just a small town, and if I remember correctly, I think it might have been on Main Street. But since you’re not opposed to the concept like most men are, you could always stick your head out the window and ask for directions if we have any trouble.”

  Jeremy sped up a bit, even though the rain was coming down even harder now with a bit of thunder and lightning for emphasis. Obviously, the immediate goal was to get out of the storm as quickly as possible, but stomachs were growling as well. “That sounds really good to me. I’m starving to death.”

  * * *

  Maura Beth was pleased with herself. She had wanted to get away for one day to someplace different and special, and Water Valley’s B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery with its Dixie Belle Café inside fit the bill perfectly. The simplicity of the charming, two-story brick building with its benches out front, big sidewalk planters with seasonal flowers, and blackboard with daily specials scrawled in colored chalk were the essence of small-town curb appeal. If a building could have spoken, it would have said in a soft drawl, “Come on in and try me, y’all!”

  Inside, there was much to recommend it. Fresh produce labeled with the first names of the farmers who had supplied it filled the rustic shelves: blueberries from Joe, Hal’s tomatoes, Mike’s sweet potatoes, Sam’s figs, and Miss Patsy’s cucumbers. It was like walking into a garden tended by close friends and neighbors who were offering up their pride and joy for consumption. A lot of other items seemed to have a “local” label on them as well: jars of local honey, cartons of local eggs—even packages of local pork. After browsing through it all with smiles on their faces, Maura Beth and Jeremy were seated in the crowded, brick-walled café full of tempting aromas and chatting customers; then they began looking over the eclectic menu.

  “I like the sound of this Lola Burger,” Jeremy said, pointing while nodding his head crisply. “It says here it’s got flat-grilled beef on a Rotella bun with some white cheddar, pickled red onions, and something called Lola Sauce. I think I’ll give that a big ‘yum.’ ”

  Maura Beth had a whimsical look on her face. “Lola. Wasn’t she a character in Damn Yankees? Wasn’t she the Devil? ”

  “The Devil’s mistress, I think. Or maybe his personal secretary or something like that. At any rate, she was plenty saucy. I believe she sang ‘Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets.’”

  She began mouthing the words, finally nodding her head enthusiastically. “Yep, I didn’t know you were that up to speed on musical theater.”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I dabbled in high school,” he said, waving her off. “Got a small part in the chorus of Oklahoma! and thought at the time I might even want to become an actor. But my voice wasn’t that good, and my love of the English language prevailed instead.”

  “Well, I think I’m going to have this Jive Turkey Sandwich,” Maura Beth told him. “Says it’s smoked turkey on wheat-berry bread with Muenster cheese, alfalfa sprouts, avocado, and some real fancy mayo with jalapeño and some other stuff. I do love me some spicy food.”

  Just then the waitress arrived—a breezy young thing with short blond hair and a bright smile plastered on her face. “Hello, folks. I’m Melba, and I’ll be taking care of you this afternoon. We have a few specials today and—”

  Before she had a chance to say anything further, however, Jeremy took over and ploughed right ahead. “That’s okay about the specials, thanks. But the deal is, we’re really hungry, so we’d like to go ahead and order everything, if you don’t mind.” He paused and chuckled to himself. “Well, I don’t mean we want to order everything on the menu. We just want to go ahead and order.”

  Maura Beth wagged her brows at the waitress. “English teacher.”

  Melba smiled and said, “Oh, I knew what you meant, sir.”

  With that, Jeremy rattled off their choices exactly the way he gave homework instructions to his students at Cherico High, and Melba was off to the kitchen. Then Maura Beth quickly rose from her chair.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Ladies’ room?”

  She pointed toward the front of the store with its wide display windows. “No, I saw something that interested me when we walked in. I think I’m getting that idea about something extra for the Grand Opening.”

  “I know that look.”

  “What can I say? I love it when things fall into place.”

  “Then I’ll just sit here twiddling my thumbs and wait for you to tell me all about your brainstorm.”

  A few minutes later, Maura Beth returned with a book in hand and handed it over to Jeremy, who read the title out loud. “The B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery Cookbook.” He fanned through it briefly. “Looks very interesting. I’d certainly like to try some of these dishes. But you bought it before we had a chance to eat the food?”

  “Oh, I can smell that the food we ordered will be good. Just look around. Happy locals munching away. And this is definitely what’s missing in our Grand Opening celebration for the library—food, food, food. I mean, why should we settle for the store-bought cookies and punch we had originally talked about? I can’t believe I was about to settle for something that lame. What was I thinking?”

  She sat down across from him and began painting a picture, her hands framing an imaginary canvas. “Can’t you just see it? Food tents. Tasting booths. We invite everyone who can cook—or thinks they can—to come and offer their specialties to the public. They can charge nominal prices—no one’ll get rich. But some might benefit from the exposure. It can go on all day while the library tours are taking place. People will get hungry and thirsty, of course, since it’ll be the Fourth of July and hot as all get out. We can have contests for best overall recipe and best dishes in all kinds of categories—just like a county fair. We can give out ribbons or trophies or maybe even a little cash to really give them some motivation to participate. There’s plenty of money in the library till for the prizes since my Cudd’n M’Dear left us that in
credible endowment to do with as I please.”

  Jeremy sat back, admiring his wife’s tenacity where the library was concerned. “Maurie, you thought of all that just now?”

  “We librarians think of lots of things on the spur of the moment. It’s our nature. Our brains roam around like the generalists we are.”

  Jeremy mumbled something under his breath and slouched a bit in his chair, his mood nearly undecipherable.

  “What did you say?” Maura Beth wanted to know.

  “Roaming Brains. Sounds like the title of the novel I may someday actually write, since I don’t seem to be able to get anywhere with the one I started in Key West on our honeymoon. Of course, I should have known better, since it was our honeymoon. I . . . or rather, we had something else on our minds.”

  She reached over and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. He truly had not been making much progress with his writing, and she wanted to be as supportive as possible of his aspirations. “Your muse will come. Just be patient.”

  Shortly after the food arrived and they began sampling the Lola Burger and Jive Turkey Sandwich they had ordered, Maura Beth took a moment to puff herself up. “See? This is beyond delicious, just as I knew it would be. And besides that, people who love to cook take an enormous amount of pride in their food. They live for it, and nothing makes them feel better than getting compliments on what they’ve fixed. I’m betting the citizens of Greater Cherico will stand in line to set up their tents for the big day.” She took another bite of her Jive Turkey and slowly ruminated. “Yummy. This mayo is really spicy. And this trip proves that I was absolutely right to get away from the library and Cherico to get a little perspective on things. Do you see what’s happened as a result?”

  “You are preaching to the choir, sweetheart. I never doubt your ability to get the job done right. You have vision.”