by Naomi Niles
“How have you and Jamal been?” I asked.
Sam shrugged. “I have nothing to complain about. Like all relationships, it has its good days and bad days. Tomorrow will hopefully be one of the good ones because after he takes the dog to the groomer, we’re supposed to go ring-shopping.” Although Jamal had already proposed, he hadn’t yet bought her a ring.
“Oh, exciting!”
“I guess so. Anyway, what’s up with you? Normally when you come back from the library, there’s a glow on your face. But right now, you just look depressed.”
I opened one of my books absently and leafed through it. “You remember that scene in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge regrets being mean to the boy who sang ‘God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen’ through his keyhole on Christmas Eve?”
“I did not remember that, but thank you for reminding me. What about it?”
“Well, that is a portrait of my emotional state at the moment. A guy tried to strike up a conversation in the library, and I told him off.”
“Was he cute?”
“Not particularly. I mean, I guess he could have been if he hadn’t been dressed like a hobo. I’ve never understood why boys think that’s attractive.”
“Boys have a lot of strange ideas about what is and isn’t attractive,” said Sam. “Apparently, some boys think it’s attractive to just walk up to you in a public space and start jabbering.”
“Yes, exactly!” I closed the book and turned to face her. “But I feel bad now because my response was pretty vicious. I feel like I might owe him—an apology.” I often punctuated my speech with dashes, the result of a misspent youth reading Emily Dickinson.
“Knowing you, Lori, it probably wasn’t vicious at all. You think you’re a lot meaner than you actually are. When a boy walks up to me in the coffee shop, I don’t care if there are kids there, I will curse. I will yell.”
“You can be quite firm. It’s something I both fear and respect about you.”
“It makes the boys scared to approach me, but I’ll survive. I’ve already got one fiancé; I don’t need another one.” She raised a hand to her shirt pocket, then, apparently remembering that she wasn’t allowed to smoke in the house, lowered it again to her lap. “Anyway, you don’t need to panic about it. Yes, you can be unsociable, and yes, you tend to hide in your books, but you don’t owe a conversation to everyone. And that can be hard for you to remember because you’re naturally kind and sensitive.”
“So am I too mean or too soft? Or both?”
Sam thought about it for a moment. She had the loveliest thinking face. “Your problem is that you live too much inside your own head, worrying what others think. And so you panic and hide and don’t want to talk to your sister who just wanted to make dinner for the two of us.” She said this last in a voice of exaggerated sorrow, tossing a pillow in my direction. “But I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe go see a therapist.”
“I work in a bakery; I don’t have enough money to see a therapist.”
“Well in that case, just suffer in despair and worry. I’m joking!” she added when I threw the pillow back at her. “Please do the opposite of that.”
***
The next morning, I regret to say, the men were at it again.
A few of our regular customers had some decidedly old-fashioned views about women. Old Joe was the worst of the lot. I liked wearing skirts, but I had to stop wearing them to work because he seems to think women should only wear skirts and dresses. He dates America’s decline to the day we all started wearing pants and joined the workforce. Talking to him, one sometimes got the unpleasant notion that he thought we were dolls to be admired and fussed over.
On that morning, he was feeling particularly patriarchal.
“I was driving through Raleigh last week,” he said with a theatrical shudder, “and just over the overpass there was a billboard so dirty I had to shut my eyes.”
“Please tell me you didn’t actually,” I said.
Old Joe ignored me. “At first I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be for. There was just this woman—probably in her mid-twenties, ethnic-looking—wearing nothing but the skin God gave her. Imagine my surprise when Sandra told me it was supposed to be a clothing ad! Where were the clothes?!”
He shook his head and stirred his coffee with a long spoon. “It sickens me to think what women these days get up to. I can’t even hardly flip channels without having to cover my eyes. When I was a boy, Raquel Welch wore a loin-cloth bikini in a movie called One Million BC, and that was considered scandalous.”
“Joe, the sixties weren’t some golden age of moral purity,” said Sam, wiping her powdered hands on her apron. She didn’t like arguing with him, but sometimes she couldn’t help it. “Do you want me to tell you what happened at Woodstock?”
But of course, if there was one thing Joe hated, it was being contradicted by a woman.
Pointing his spoon at me, Joe said in a loud voice, “You know what I like about you, Lori? You’re respectful and innocent. You’re not one of those girls who parades her body on TV or talks back to her elders. You work hard, go to church, and wear your hair long the way God intended. We could use more girls like you around this shop.”
It was one of those uncomfortable moments where I had to choose between defending my sister or driving away a long-time customer. This ought to have been an easy decision, but at the moment, I froze, gripped by a feeling of fear and hesitation. I was so good at being brave when there was no one else around.
I talked about it with Sam over our lunch break.
“Every time I talk to that man,” I said with a sigh, “it makes me want to cut off all my hair and get a couple tattoos on each arm. I wish he would go back to the fifties where he seems happiest.”
“I would have said something, but I make it a point never to insult customers,” said Sam irritably. “He was clearly subtweeting me, trying to shame me for the way I talk and dress. If he keeps it up, I reserve the right to refuse service. I’ve put up with enough of that crap in my life.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I never know how to react when he gets like that.”
Sam shrugged. “It’s no big deal. You weren’t the one who suggested that I would be flaunting my boobs on TV if I wasn’t so busy disrespecting my elders. Sometimes I get the feeling he’s pissed that I’m dating a black man.”
This had never occurred to me, but the suggestion made a certain amount of sense. “He always gets up and leaves when Jamal comes into the shop. He probably grew up believing that good Christian girls don’t go out with black men.”
Somehow, the thought seemed to cheer Sam. “Tell you what: the next time Jamal comes into the shop, you stand in front of the door while I make out with him.”
“Deal!”
We returned to the cool of the bakery, which was empty save for a middle-aged woman wearing sunglasses and a boater hat. I followed Sam into the kitchen, where the Boltons’ vanilla pound cake stood waiting for their arrival. Sam hummed to herself thoughtfully as we put on our aprons.
“You know what I’d love, Sam?” I asked.
“Hmmm?”
“To live in a place with better-quality boys. I sometimes think we made a mistake moving to South Carolina. I’m not saying they were great back in college, but at least I could always count on having a date to the theater or symphony. Boys here don’t seem interested in that sort of thing. I hesitate to call them rednecks, but, well—”
“It is exasperating,” said Sam. “It’s hard to escape toxic masculinity no matter where you go in America, but here it’s the whole culture. Good luck finding a date who isn’t infected with it.”
“Like, it would be nice to find a guy who thinks there’s more to being a man than fishing and football and beer-drinking and juvenile pranks. I want someone who’s at least interested in the arts, even if he isn’t an artist himself. Someone who reads, even.”
“What about that guy you met last night?” Sam asked wi
th a wry smile.
“He’d have been great if he wasn’t an ass-hat. And honestly, he might be the best I can hope for. One is almost tempted to go out with him, because at least then I would be dating someone I could have an intelligent conversation with.”
“Maybe,” said Sam. “I think sometimes you overrate the importance of intelligent conversation to a romantic relationship.”
And with this enigmatic statement, she turned and glided out of the room.
Back in the shop area, the air was heady with the scent of lemons and vanilla extract. Whenever I smelt it, I was reminded again why I had taken this job straight out of college. Sam had emailed me midway through my senior year to let me know that she was managing a bakery in Summerville, South Carolina. She said over the summer there would be an opening for an assistant baker and encouraged me to apply. As soon as I graduated, I packed all my worldly goods into one car and left Philadelphia to move in with her.
I had always loved baking, or at least that was what I thought before I signed up for the job. I liked watching baking shows on TV—GBBO, Crime Brulee, and its spinoff, Just Desserts. Living with my aunt, I had sometimes baked a lemon-zucchini cake or chocolate cake with shredded coconut when I had the whole house to myself. Baking was intense and required my full concentration, which I couldn’t employ if there were other people running about underfoot.
But of course, a bakery was something else altogether. Here, there was always somebody else underfoot. And they usually wanted to know why their pies hadn’t been done on time. And so the thing that had once relaxed me had become the source of my greatest stress—the reason I found myself hiding in bathrooms and seriously considering seeing a therapist.
This wasn’t the way I had pictured it. Baking was supposed to be fun. But when it became your job, “exhausting” and “panic-inducing” were more apt descriptors.
During our break, Sam had left a batch of Austrian breakfast rolls baking in the oven. As I was taking them out, the woman in the boater hat walked up to the counter. Seating herself on one of the stools, she smiled with a glance that seemed to take in the whole shop at once.
“It’s been so long since I was here,” she said at length. “It’s good to see that not much has changed.”
“Did you used to come here often?” I asked.
She nodded tranquily. “I lived here for most of my life, up until a few years ago when my husband was transferred to a plant in Ohio.”
“That’s where I grew up!” Shoving the napkins to one side, I added, “Where in Ohio?”
“Cincinnati. He works the night shift at a plant there, keeping watch over one of the old, derelict factories to make sure nobody breaks in and steals dangerous chemicals. It’s a rough area. Everything you read in the papers about the opium and heroin epidemics is true. We’re really glad to be back home for a couple weeks, visiting my mom.”
“What are you planning to do while you’re in town?” It was refreshing to meet a customer who wasn’t trying to hit on me or lecture me for being a hussy.
“I think we might visit some of the museums and plantations. In all the years I lived here, I’ve never actually been to the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. I think Brian and I might go for a visit.”
The name stirred something in my recollections. “Aren’t there a lot of strange legends surrounding that place? I seem to remember it being wonderfully spooky.” Sam, who had long been fascinated with old houses and crumbling, ruined estates, had once told me about it. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Cheryl.” She held out a hand for me to shake. “I don’t know about legends, but the history of the place is really fascinating. It’s been owned by the same family for fifteen generations. The reverend who built the gardens supposedly built them hoping to lure his bride away from Philadelphia, where she lived.”
“Oh, fascinating. Sort of like the Hanging Gardens.” Cheryl stared at me blankly. “The Hanging Gardens are said to have been built by a Babylonian king three thousand years ago. He wanted to cheer up his wife who was depressed because she had been taken far away from her own home. I guess people are more or less the same as they’ve always been.”
“I guess so,” said Cheryl. “Anyway, my sister was reading about it online and started texting me all kinds of interesting facts. So I told Brian, ‘Well, since we’re in the area, we might as well drop by and pay it a visit.’ Apparently, the garden’s owners were the first to introduce azaleas to America. And there’s a full-scale model of a famous English maze—I forget the name of it. It’s a giant hedge maze.”
“Oh, you mean the Hampton Court Maze?” I remembered learning about it through a documentary on Britbox.
“I think that was it. Anyway… Amazing place.”
“Sure sounds like it. I wonder how many slaves were needed to maintain the gardens.”
Cheryl didn’t seem interested in the gardens’ potentially unsavory history and ignored my comment, continuing on with her vacation plans. “And then the week after that, we’re going to the Flowertown Festival. I used to go every year when I lived here, and I told Brian we couldn’t go home this year until we had been.”
“I’ve actually never been.” Seeing the surprised look on Cheryl’s face, I explained, “I only moved down here at the beginning of last summer. You recommend going?”
“Absolutely,” she said, laying an emphatic hand on my arm. “It’s—correct me if I’m wrong—but I believe it’s the largest annual arts and crafts festival in South Carolina.”
“Oh, exciting!” Just then the door opened, and Sam came walking in. “You hear that, Sam? The Flowertown Festival’s in a couple weeks, and we might actually meet some boys worth knowing.”
“You might,” said Sam. “I’m already spoken for.”
“It’s the perfect time of year for a festival, too,” Cheryl went on. “Not too hot or humid, and Azalea State Park is just gorgeous in early spring. I heard on the news that they’re expecting record attendance at this year’s event—over 250,000 people, a lot of them coming like us from out of state.”
I stared at her, my mouth agape. “How are they going to fit that many people into the park?”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever been, but it’s a huge park, one of the largest in the state. I’m not here to tell you how to run your own business, but the Cooper River Bridge Run is being held that same weekend, and between the two of them, if you play your cards just right, you could make a small fortune in selling pies.”
Cheryl paid for her sweet tea and left. The moment she was gone, I turned to Sam.
“Did you hear what that lady said? We’ll have to work overtime the next couple weeks if we want to be ready in time for the festival.” Sometimes it was exhausting being the owners of a store.
Sam nodded, though she was too preoccupied with the bread rolls to look up at me. “I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about it, but with the inexplicably large rash of spring weddings this year, there hasn’t been a lot of time for planning ahead. Luckily, after this weekend, the Bolton wedding will be out of the way, and that’s the last wedding until, I think, mid-April. Last year, I waited until the week before the festival, and that was a mistake. I didn’t make nearly as many pies as I wanted to.” A flinty look came into her eyes as she added, “This year, though… this year, we’ll be ready.”
“I sure hope so,” I said and helped myself to a chocolate croissant and a glass of iced tea.
Chapter Three
Marshall
On Wednesday morning, Sean and I went fishing.
I was pouring myself some coffee into a thermos when I heard a knock on the front door. Sean was standing there wearing his fishing gear: a rod slung over his shoulder. Behind him, the city was just waking, and a pale grayish mist rose over the street in front of my house.
“Sean, it’s too early in the morning for this,” I said groggily. “What do you want?”
“Only a few hours of your time. When I got into
work this morning, Gramps encouraged me to take the day off—”
“Those were his exact words?”
“Well, no, it was more like, ‘Please keep your ass at home today and stop bothering me.’ But I took it as a day off, and I’ve decided to head on over to the lake if you want to come with me. I’ve got a cooler full of beer and Pibb sitting in the back of my car, and it’s not going to drink itself. I know you’re not doing anything for the rest of the day.”
“I could be doing something.”
“Are you?”
I was silent.
On our way to the lake, I asked him if he had resolved his existential crisis. He put on an old Elvis Costello album and sat there in silence for a few moments tapping his fingers in time to the beat and looking thoughtful.
When he didn’t respond, I added, “I just remember the other day, you were saying—”
“Yeah, I remember the conversation,” he said shortly. “I wouldn’t call it an existential crisis. More like a quarter-life crisis if we’re being honest. I just don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. What do you do when you’ve spent your whole life preparing yourself for a career in music, and it’s not working out?”
“Well, you do have a law degree,” I pointed out. “You could be making bank if you just applied yourself.”
“That’s assuming I want to apply myself. Let me ask you this: if you were me, what would you do? Would you double down on your music, or would you find a nice girl and start a family?”
“I’d—probably find myself a nice girl.”
Sean winced as though he had been expecting a different answer. “I don’t know, Marsh. I know there are some amazing tunes inside me just waiting to be brought out. I can’t explain how I know; I just know. I remember hearing somewhere that gifted men always have a sense of their own greatness, and I can feel it burning inside me. I know I won’t be single forever, and these might be my last years to discover my destiny before family intrudes and fame becomes nothing more than a dream.”
Sean had an odd habit of waxing philosophical like this whenever we were alone together. It was a side of himself that he hid from most other people, but it always seemed to come out around me. I felt privileged, in a way, that he let me see it. Maybe because from the beginning I had seen more to him than just a shallow frat boy with a penchant for pranks.
