Which was exactly what journalism had turned out to be. Covering dinky little community events, sitting in on dull school board meetings, interviewing local politicians, and all that—it had given her a steady job, sure, but not one she really cared about. She had often wished she could make up tantalizing tidbits and stick them in. So what if they weren’t true? At least they’d be interesting! City Councilman Brant Hummel spoke out boldly against the increased funding for the new arts center, an unsightly piece of dark green lettuce wedged between his front teeth, or Gail Penninger, the youngest member of the school board, was out of town for Tuesday’s meeting, having gone to Columbia for a breast implant.
Back when she had changed her major to journalism, after Ansell’s departure from Blackrock, it sounded like something you could make a career out of, more than literature. She had liked the possibility of traveling and interviewing famous people. Besides, she had been ready to assert herself, to do things nobody else suggested. Journalism hadn’t been a hard major, nor a particularly enjoyable one—certainly nothing she was passionate about. But she had done well enough to get an internship with a small newspaper in Blackrock, which eventually worked into a job with a larger newspaper in nearby Dover during grad school and later another job with a paper here in South Carolina.
It was amazing that she had stayed in the field so long after discovering how little she liked it. She remembered the feeling of exhilaration after landing the job at the Trio Gallery. The thing she couldn’t get over in those early days was driving to work with a sense of eagerness, stepping outside her dark little world for a while and actually looking forward to what the day would hold. Not that she could ever totally escape, but sometimes for hours at a time the weight of who she really was would be lifted and she might even notice that the sun was shining outside.
Twenty minutes later, after Celia had moved all the bags and rearranged a few boxes, she turned to leave the storage area. She even got all the way to the door leading to her apartment. But then she stopped. Her hand was on the doorknob as she paused to look back at her storage area. It looked much better now, as if someone had actually drawn up a design. She knew exactly which sack it was that held the steno pads. She stared at it for several long seconds, then quickly returned to it, opened the top, and took out four of the pads.
If anyone had asked her how she had made her selection of four, she might have said, “Oh, I just picked them at random.” But if forced to tell the truth, she would have to admit that she had first checked the front cover of each, where the year was boldly printed in Grandmother’s no-nonsense handwriting, and she had intentionally chosen the diaries of the four calendar years she herself was in residence at the little house by the railroad track on Old Campground Road. She wouldn’t read them right away, but they might come in handy during one of her long nights. All that minutiae would be just the thing to put a person to sleep.
* * *
Several hours later, Elizabeth Landis was sitting at Celia’s kitchen table. Somehow on the way back from Louisville the week before, headed south on I-75, the subject of macaroni and cheese had come up, and right there in the backseat of Jenny Steel’s Ford Blazer, Celia had told Elizabeth that although she wasn’t much of a cook, that was one dish she knew how to do well.
Elizabeth had turned to Celia with the expression of someone beholding the amber waves of grain, the purple mountain majesties, and the fruited plains all at the same time. “That’s one of my absolute favorites,” she had said. “Do you make good corn bread, too?” Not bad, Celia had told her. She made it in a cast-iron skillet the way her grandmother used to, except she usually managed to take it out of the oven before it was charred.
So before it was all over, Celia had surprised herself by inviting Elizabeth to her apartment for supper on Monday night. It had been a long time since she had cooked for anyone. Before she had broken it off with Al, she used to make supper for him every now and then, but he had been no fun to cook for. Regardless of what she had served, he always spent a good part of the meal telling her about better recipes he had for the same dishes.
“Where in the world did you get these plates?” Elizabeth said now. Her tone was one of great wonder. For some reason Celia had pulled out two of Grandmother’s old robin’s-nest plates when she was setting the table, along with two of Aunt Beulah’s gingham placemats. Nothing else seemed to go as well with the meal she had fixed.
“They were my grandmother’s,” Celia said. “Real classy grocery store bargains from way back.”
Elizabeth picked one up and turned it over.
Celia laughed. “I’ve checked, too, dozens of times,” she said. “Not a thing there. I guess the company that made them didn’t want to claim responsibility.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Bad decision.” She turned the plate back over and held it out at arm’s length, admiring it. “Don’t you wonder how many other people bought plates like this through that grocery store deal?” she said. “And how many people still use them?” The funny thing was that Celia had indeed wondered that very thing when she had set the table less than an hour ago.
Elizabeth set the plate back down in front of her and patted the edge. “I can’t tell you how much I like them. I’ve got a soft spot for old things—authentic old things, I mean, not this stuff they make nowadays that’s supposed to look like it came out of grandma’s kitchen when it’s really brand-new. I noticed the quilt in your living room. Was that your grandmother’s, too?”
Celia nodded. “Made from old clothes and rags.” She poured two glasses of tea, then took the macaroni and cheese out of the oven and set it on a hot pad in the middle of the table. It was bubbling up around the edges. Then she took up the field peas and zucchini squash and put serving spoons in each of the bowls. Last, she took the covered dish of ham out of the oven and set it on the table. “The corn bread’s almost done,” she said. “I’ll get it after we’ve served everything else.” She sat down across from Elizabeth. “I like to butter my corn bread right out of the oven.”
Elizabeth nodded. “This all looks and smells wonderful, Celia. Maybe I’ll get inspired after tonight. Ken’s so easy to please I’m afraid I take a lot of shortcuts these days.” She sighed, smiling down at her plate. “Every once in a while I’ll get motivated and surprise him with a real spread, but it gets harder after the nest is empty.”
“I guess I should have told you to bring him along,” Celia said. She had actually thought about it but had decided one person for supper was more than enough when you hadn’t done it in so long. Anyway, she couldn’t imagine having somebody like Elizabeth’s husband, a genuine professional musician, sitting in her apartment. She never had gotten around to inquiring about playing in the outdoor summer band concerts he conducted. Besides, he probably had clarinets running out his ears. If she played oboe or bassoon, that would be different.
Elizabeth shook her head. “Oh no. He was fixed up for tonight. He had it all planned out. He picked up a hamburger, then headed straight back to his study. He’s composing a new piece for his wind ensemble to play this fall. Not that he wouldn’t enjoy a meal like this some other night.”
“Well, don’t think I cook like this all the time,” Celia said. “I’m big on salads and sandwiches. Sometimes it’s not even that much.” She remembered the apple, redskin peanuts, and cheese slices she had eaten for supper the night before.
Celia had already prepared herself for the likelihood of Elizabeth’s saying grace over the food. People who did it in public most often did it in private, too. There was a moment of awkward silence, though, with both of them busily unfolding their napkins, straightening their silverware, adjusting their chairs before Celia finally said, “Well, it’s okay with me if you want to say a blessing.”
And Elizabeth did. No fancy rhetoric, just a simple prayer of thanks for the food and the friendship, and when it was over, Elizabeth looked up and said, “Now, feed me till I want no more.” She looked suddenly ashamed and add
ed, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s something we sing at church. I didn’t mean to make fun.”
“Oh, no problem,” Celia said. She knew exactly which song it came from, and the tune to “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” started ponderously through her mind as they served their plates. She had just gotten to the line “Pilgrim through this barren land” when the timer went off. She rose quickly and took the skillet out of the oven. After running a knife around the outside, she cut the corn bread into wedges. She was pleased to see that the crust was exactly the right color and crispness.
She lifted the wedges out of the skillet one by one onto a plate, reconstructing the circle of corn bread. She wondered what Elizabeth would say if she started singing, “Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more” right now. She didn’t do it, but she wouldn’t have had a chance anyway, for Elizabeth immediately went into raptures over the prospect of what she called “real honest-to-goodness southern corn bread.”
Celia turned to put the skillet in the sink, then ran some water into it. For some reason she had always been fascinated by the immediate, almost fanatical response of a hot skillet to water, both the quick angry hiss and the clouds of rising steam. But it scared her a little, too, and she always made sure to stand well away from the sink. She remembered watching her grandmother do this same thing in her kitchen, only Grandmother always stood right up next to the sink. Hot skillets and hissing steam didn’t scare Grandmother one bit.
“You know, this meal doesn’t really match you,” Elizabeth said as Celia brought the corn bread over and sat down across from her again. Elizabeth took a wedge of corn bread, cut it open, and placed a pat of real butter inside. “I mean, from what I know about you—how you dress and where you work and all—I would expect something really uptown, you know, haute cuisine and hors d’oeuvres and dishes I wouldn’t even recognize.” She smiled and leaned forward. “But you’ll never know how glad I am that you cook like this instead of like that.”
“Well, I guess that’s a compliment,” Celia said, smiling.
“Oh, it is,” said Elizabeth. “It most definitely is.”
Celia had already thought of several topics of conversation for tonight, things that would be safe and could expand into a variety of other topics. She was about to open her mouth and introduce one of them—something she had recently read in a tennis magazine about Venus and Serena Williams—when Elizabeth said, “Isn’t it funny that so much of the time things turn out to be so different from what you think they are at first?”
“Right,” said Celia. She handed Elizabeth the dish of ham. “Here, help yourself.”
“Take this zucchini, for instance,” Elizabeth said, setting her fork down. “While you were over at the sink, I snitched a little bite to see if I could be polite and take at least a small serving.” She wrinkled her nose. “Usually I don’t do squash. But you know what? I actually liked it. So by the time you came back to the table, here I sat with a decent-sized helping of squash on my plate. Ken won’t believe it when I tell him. He likes squash, but I never fix it. You’ll have to tell me how you do this.” She slid a piece of ham onto her plate.
“Oh, it’s simple,” Celia said. She was relieved that Elizabeth’s statement about things being different from what you first thought was about nothing more than squash.
“And, of course, the same goes for people, too,” said Elizabeth. “You remember my friend Margaret, who went to Aunt Cassie’s with us that night? A lot of people think she’s aloof and hard to get to know. But she’s not really. She’s as soft as butter on the inside.”
Celia remembered Margaret’s face across from hers at the restaurant table. Fifty if she was a day, yet that word immediately sprang to her mind again—beautiful. Dark curly hair threaded with silver, deep violet-blue eyes. Not as startling a blue as those of Denise Davidson, yet eyes that, like Denise’s, gazed at you intently and spoke clearly of a heart ready to open up and take you in. Celia could see, though, how people could take one look at somebody like Margaret, so tall and attractive, could listen to her formal way of speaking, and write her off as unapproachable.
“And you,” said Elizabeth. “You’re a lot different from what I first thought, too.”
Celia didn’t like where this seemed to be headed. “Well, I could say the same about you,” she told Elizabeth. “I used to think you were so quiet, but now I can hardly get a word in edgewise when I’m around you.” There. Return the shot with a clean cross-court volley. Okay, now, what were those other topics she was going to use for conversation? “I think that woman in your poetry club must be rubbing off on you,” she hurried on. “You know, Eldeen whatever-her-name-was, the one who talked so much. Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to ask you how all those poems turned out—you know, the ones they wrote about Ollie’s painting.”
Elizabeth had bitten off the end of her wedge of corn bread and was chewing slowly, her eyes closed and a blissful smile on her face. “That is really, really good,” she said. “I’m so glad you don’t make your corn bread sweet. So many people do, and it ruins it in my opinion. I was afraid to ask you ahead of time if you used sugar in your recipe, and I had already told myself to act nice and eat it anyway if you did, but I can’t tell you what a pleasant turn of events this is.” She opened her eyes.
“Sugar hides the cornmeal flavor,” Celia said. “If you’re going to eat corn bread, you’ve got to taste the cornmeal.” As soon as she had said it, she realized it was something her grandmother used to say after every family get-together. Both Aunt Molly and Aunt Elsie used to make sweet corn bread and bring it whenever they had a potluck supper, and Grandmother would always fuss about it afterward.
“Exactly,” said Elizabeth. “If you want a sweet bread, eat blueberry muffins or something.”
“Right,” said Celia.
They both laughed.
“Well, now that we’ve got that settled, where were we?” Elizabeth said. “Oh yes, I was saying that you’re not at all what I first thought you were like.”
Celia shook her head. “No, we were done with that. I asked you about the poems, remember.”
“Poems—oh yes.” Elizabeth removed the slice of lemon on the rim of her glass, squeezed it into her tea, then dropped it into her glass and wiped her fingertips on her napkin. “I read one yesterday that I can’t get off my mind. It was by a Greek poet, Ritsos I think was his last name. I’d never read anything by him before. He compared lemon slices to yellow wheels on a miniature carriage.” She paused. “In fact, that was the title of the poem—‘Miniature.’” She took a drink of tea, then stared down at the lemon slice in her glass. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at a lemon slice again without thinking of yellow carriage wheels, just like I can’t ever look at a dogwood tree without thinking of that description about the petals being burned with the tip of a cigarette.”
Celia had no idea what description she was talking about. Why hadn’t she sliced the lemon the way she usually did, in pudgy practical little triangles? Why had she gone and evoked images of wheel rims and spokes by trying to copy the way they did it in restaurants?
“Or a dead possum on the road without thinking of candy corn,” Elizabeth added.
“Candy corn?” Celia said. She couldn’t keep up with all this. She felt like she was suddenly having a conversation with Macon Mahoney.
Elizabeth laughed. “It was something Travis said one time.”
“Travis?”
“My son, Travis. When he was a little kid, I mean really little, like three or four, he pointed to a picture of a possum in one of his nature books and said, ‘Candy corn.’ I told him no, it was a possum, and then he put his finger on its nose and said emphatically, ‘Candy corn.’ And you know what? That possum’s nose did look exactly like a little piece of candy corn stuck on the end of its snout. So now every time I see a dead possum on the road, I think of candy corn.”
One thing Celia had always appreciated about Eli
zabeth was that she wasn’t forever talking about her children the way a lot of the women on the tennis team did. It never ceased to amaze Celia how mothers naturally assumed that you wanted to know all about their kids’ accomplishments, their interests, their personalities, their illnesses, every little fact of their short histories. Whenever someone started talking about something one of her children or grandchildren said or did, Celia tried to ease away from the group. And if she was stuck and couldn’t escape, say at a table or in a car, she would drift away to some other place in her thoughts.
Which is what she almost started doing now until she realized that Elizabeth had already quit talking about Travis and had returned to the subject of food. Celia was surprised. That had to be a record for the shortest amount of time spent by a mother recounting the charms of her child.
“ . . . one of my very favorites,” Elizabeth was saying now as she studied the forkful of field peas she was preparing to put into her mouth. “I like all the brown vegetables,” she continued. “Crowders, blackeyes, colored limas, pinto beans—the whole bunch of them. Of course, it makes a difference when you grow up on them. My mother fixed them a lot.”
Celia nodded. “We ate them a lot, too.”
They ate in silence for several long seconds, during which Celia heard Patsy Stewart clomping down the basement stairs, followed by a thump as she dropped her laundry basket on the floor, followed shortly by a metallic clank as she shut the lid of the washer. These were sounds as familiar to Celia as her own heartbeat. Always on a regular schedule, too—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights without fail, around six-thirty, after Patsy and Milton had eaten supper. Then right after Wheel of Fortune Patsy would plod back down to transfer the washed clothes to the dryer, and sometime after Jeopardy she would come back down to fold them, using the big table next to the dryer. This part would take only a few minutes so that by eight-fifteen or so she was climbing back up the steps with her basket of clean folded laundry.
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