The Edge of Grace

by Christa Allan

  "That's your second sorry of the morning," she said, wearing her own mother's voice, just finding it a bit too tight. She swatted me on my shoulder with her makeshift fan. "I'm getting better. I promise. That's why I wanted to come here. I can afford a calorie overdose."

  Seats for two opened up, so the door man—who actually looked more like a door kid—waved us in ahead of two families in front of us. He pointed to the empty stools. "Right there, ladies. Enjoy."

  In that small moment, just crossing the threshold, the memories of time spent here with Harrison walked through the doors with me. They tugged on the sleeve of my heart like impatient children who beg for their parents' attention, wanting to show them something important. Eager and impatient and afraid what they want might disappear in the waiting. Look, there's the server who carried nine cups at a time. Over there, that table by the mirror. We sat there the night before Ben was born. Every time I bit into a beignet, powdered sugar floated to the top of my baby bump like sweet snow.

  Not now, I whispered to voices from the past waiting their turn. I shooed them back into the room with the door that wouldn't stay closed. I quieted them by listening to the clattering and the clinking, the waves of voices.

  "Someone should make this," Lori's hands stirred the air around her, "into a perfume. Coffee, chicory, frying oil. A whiff of hangover breath."

  "My nose is closing at just the thought of that, but no doubt some men would be captivated."

  I perched on the round wooden seat of the stool remembering why I preferred sitting at a table. Over a century ago, when the Morning Call first opened, did people have smaller butts or more padding? As if the stools weren't uncomfortable enough, the row of stools all faced a wall of mirrors. Each one framed in a continuous walnut wood arch. Awkward. It meant either looking at yourself or trying not to look at yourself looking at yourself or looking at someone else looking at herself.

  I saw my roots; they looked like a gray zipper that parted my Garnier Nutrisse #50 Truffle hair. My Revlon Grow Luscious Mascara had not lived up to its name. I pretended to dig glick out of my right eye when I spotted the server headed in our direction.

  "What'll it be, ladies?" He reached between us and swiped the white marble countertop with a towel that reactivated the sticky rather than removed it.

  "Two coffees, one order?" I asked Lori.

  "Make it two orders. I'm hungry enough to eat more than one beignet. Wouldn't want to fight you for the leftover." She turned to the bow-tied young man whose face looked as if it was on pause. "Make it two orders."

  He blinked and walked off.

  "Do you have your list of books for our next club meeting?" I pulled a used envelope out of my purse where I'd written titles, most of them missing their vowels, to pick from.

  Lori picked up her iPhone. "Yep."

  "Show off. I suppose you had an app for that." I smoothed over the fold to see what I'd scribbled there.

  "Seriously, Caryn, you're trying to run a business and you're using a cell phone you still have to flip open. David would—"

  "What? David would, what?" I asked.

  Lori's face looked as if I'd just dared her to punch me.

  "Whoa. I wasn't about to say anything negative about David." She tucked her phone in her smooshy black leather tote. Beautiful and practical. Almost the same words David used to describe Lori when he first met her.

  "I can't believe you're saying anything about David at all. I don't even want to talk to him. Not right now. What am I supposed to say? 'Oh, I've thought about this gay thing. It's all good'?"

  I heard "Excuse me," as the white-sleeved arm of our server holding a plate of three pillow-shaped fried beignets appeared between Lori and me. He set our coffees in front of us and was off again.

  Seeing the ripple of frustration tighten Lori's expression, I appreciated the pause in the conversation. She grabbed the shaker with the powdered sugar, a dull silver mug with a handle and a screw on top with holes. The random dents reminded me of the ones in Ben's silver baby rattle after he gnawed on it with his toothless mouth and bashed it on the sides of his car seat.

  She turned the shaker over and slapped the bottom in a way that made me wonder if she saw my face there. Powdered sugar whooshed out, blanketing the beignets, the plate, and the counter. I pinched a corner of one of the still hot puffy donuts, slid it onto my napkin and considered I should wait for the reaction on Lori's face to work its way out of her mouth. People had been known to inhale layers of powdered sugar mid-bite during comic or chaotic conversations.

  "You haven't talked to your brother?" The question stomped out like a hands-on-the-hips accusation.

  The three teen girls on the other side of Lori laughed as they created hover clouds of sugar over their trio of plates. I was grateful they were loud. Talking about my gay brother in the middle of The Morning Call made me more uncomfortable than my ever-growing numb rear end. I pushed my beignet aside and sighed. "No. What do David and I need to talk about?"

  "I'm the one who fell in love with him. I'm the one who kissed a man who wanted to kiss another man and not me. But I'm the one who talks to him." With each "I'm the one," she'd jabbed her forefinger into the space below the hollow of her throat. When she finished talking, that same finger blotted the wetness in the corners of her eyes.

  She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup and the way she stared into the café au lait reminded me of Madame Harrisonia Katarina, the French Quarter mystic who read tea leaves. One Sunday afternoon, pre-Ben, Harrison and I strolled Royal Street, still in that gazing into each other's eyes stage. We almost crashed into the table outside the door of her shop. Madame didn't even lift her head at our "Oops," as we tripped over the sidewalk and into the street to avoid a collision. Harrison joked she knew from the leaves we would miss her, and he had kept walking. I let go of his hand to stand and watch. It was only then she looked up from the cup, slowly turned her head as if it were moving through bread dough, and stared at me. An expectant stare. A stare that said, "Well?" I felt like the intruder I must have been.

  I felt like that now. Like I'd barged right into Lori's loss. But I didn't think she understood, and I didn't understand that she wouldn't. Too bad the coffee's almost scalded milk didn't do the same to my tongue. That way I wouldn't risk saying something I'd regret later.

  "Lori, here's the thing. You'll eventually find someone else. David will always be my brother. My gay brother. That's not what I bargained for either."

  She looked in the mirror and dusted the powdered sugar off her lips. "Caryn, you know I love you. But you talk like you were the woman left with an unused wedding gown." She tore the one leftover beignet in two and handed me half. "Here. People are still waiting in line. We'll talk about David later."

  "Okay," I said, but later didn't matter. Later wouldn't make David straight. Wouldn't change what I thought about his life. Wouldn't change what I thought about his soul.

  "So," said Lori as she started tapping her iPhone, "here's my list of suggestions for November's pick."

  Every time I grabbed the handle of the door leading into the bookstore I'd feel the same shiver of anticipation as if I'd opened a monster box of chocolates. Whatever I nibbled on and didn't like, I could toss out. I savored the caramel chocolates of books. Harrison used to say that if books were calories, his brain would be a candidate for lapband surgery. Instead, it became a brain no surgery could repair.

  Lori and I found a spot with two squatty chairs nestled between the cookbook and the gardening shelves. We sat to look at the four novels we'd each narrowed our book club choices to. Lori picked up Talking to the Dead and before she could open it, I said, "Nope. I don't like the title."

  She looked at me as if she was peering over reading glasses. "Really?" she said, but it sounded like "Oh, you don't, do you?" in disguise. Lori flipped to the first page and spoke directly into the book, "That's right. You're the one who's not so fond of talking to the living either."

  9

&n
bsp; Because of Paul Prudhomme's Artichoke, Potato and Cheese Casserole and the fact that no one invented a remote control for the unrelenting oven timer, I found myself on the phone with David.

  The hyper-annoying timer started to ping while I was in, of all places, the bathroom. I rescued the casserole before it became one of those disasters I fed the animals that used our trash cans for their dinner reservations, but not before my cell phone started vibrating in my pocket. In my frenzy, I answered the phone without checking the caller number.

  We were both surprised to hear each other's voices.

  "Bad time?" David asked.

  Even before I realized he was on the other end of the conversation, my hello sounded specially designed for possible political survey takers.

  "Um, yes, actually."

  "I can call you back." He sounded hopeful.

  "No. We can talk now. For a little while." Even that might be a stretch depending on the conversation.

  "So, how are you and Ben? I've missed talking."

  "Fine. We're both fine." I paced. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes, yes. I'm staying busy. But, Caryn, you're not returning my calls, and I hoped we could find time to talk. Maybe meet somewhere."

  "David, I can't talk right now. I have to leave soon to pick Ben up from school."

  "It doesn't have to be now. Tell me a convenient time, and I'll call back or we could meet for coffee."

  "I'll let you know. You just need to give me some time."

  I hung up knowing that I had no idea of how long "some time" would be.

  Within months, meals for a few teachers sprouted into meals for a few schools. Ben's teacher had passed my business cards around at faculty meetings, then one faculty led to another. Usually, every Friday morning I delivered Ben and ten meals to the front office, then stopped at four more schools before I headed home to collapse on my sofa.

  But after today's last delivery, I headed to Regions Bank where Lori works to make a deposit before our mortgage company made its withdrawal. Last year, I'd taken a second mortgage to help float the expenses of starting my business. Still, it seemed most of the time I ran out of money before I ran out of month.

  Harrison's life insurance benefits helped, but dying young didn't. We thought we had time to estate plan, to set up trusts, to save for Harrison's retirement. Who knew Harrison would retire from life before he retired from his job? Neither one of us ever thought money would have to stretch like a rubber band over so many years of life.

  I turned into the parking lot and headed for the drive-through window, which years ago convinced me that Ben and I spent too much time driving to our food. The insider teller's voice had chirped "May I help you?" through the speaker and, before I could answer, Ben leaned over in his car seat and said, "French fries and Coke." He'd earned himself two suckers that day when I retrieved my deposit slip from the transaction drawer.

  Just before I pulled into the last lane, I spotted Lori's silver Prius in the employee parking area. Mature Caryn, who sometimes terrified me, crossed her arms over her chest and said, "Park this car, go in there, and talk to your almost sister-in-law." Not-so-mature Caryn argued from the bubble she protected herself in, "She'll probably never even know you were here. You don't need to be getting into any more David discussions. Remember how the last one ended?"

  I hoped to not find a parking spot but, of course, I did because the good sense gods were conspiring and would not allow me to wallow in my smallness. Opening the glass doors to the bank, I saw Lori had two clients at her desk so I walked to the counter to make my deposit. By the time I finished, the clients were gone, but Lori was on the telephone. She saw me, waved me over, and pointed to one of the chairs in front of her desk.

  She mouthed, "Won't be long," and followed it with a polite clothesline of "yes" and "I see" and "of course" responses into the telephone. I didn't need her to tell me that she'd recently seen David. The sweet lemony fragrance that drifted toward me as soon as I sat revealed it. On the corner of her desk behind her nameplate, a fluted cut crystal vase held a bouquet of willowy-stemmed white freesia. David used to bring her a fresh bouquet of the delicate trumpet-shaped flower every week. She'd planned to use them in the wedding. Said their tiny golden throats would be the perfect touch to complement her candlelight gown.

  I sat and stared at my unpolished toenails shamelessly exposed in my flip-flops. When did I stop treating myself to girly mani-pedi days? Lori yammered on while I tried to pretend one of us was invisible so I wouldn't feel as if I were eavesdropping, which I most definitely was. A learned skill from the few recent party caterings. I learned eye contact and an animated expression were detrimental to disappearing in plain sight. No harm in listening. I considered it smart business planning. If a party was waiting to happen somewhere, the sooner I knew about it, the better chance I had to book it. People spend time at one party talking about the next party they're either invited to or not. Listening could pay. Literally.

  Lori said, "Great. I'll see you next Thursday," and hung up, which meant I could stop being captivated by the bank's recent financial disclosure statement, framed and propped near her file stacks.

  "Hey. Do you have time to visit?" I didn't like feeling clunky with Lori, like a ballerina wearing clogs. Our last conversation was as comfortable as tap dancing in wet mud. But I didn't have a template for redefining our relationship as the almost wife of my now gay brother.

  "Sure." She stepped around her standard issue official bank officer desk. A quick hug, and then she sat in the chair next to me. "I'm glad you're here."

  "I wanted to apologize for being such a snit when we met a few weeks ago. I thought I'd see you at the book club meeting, and I planned to talk to you then. But I just couldn't drag myself out the door after staying up late the night before getting all those teacher dinners ready." I'd folded and refolded the deposit slip in my hands so many times while I talked that I could have designed a piece of origami. "I should have called you." A part of me still blamed David for this mess. His news stormed through our lives like a hurricane, and we were left clearing the debris.

  She granted me a forgiving smile as if I'd just apologized for eating cookies before supper. "Julie told me why you weren't there. And, if you were trying to avoid me, I'd come after you." Lori crossed her legs, her hands over the knee of her top leg as it stirred the air between her chair and the desk. Her black silk pants swished in the background.

  "The other thing is," my eyes drifted to the ivory flowers, "I talked to David." I looked at her and waited for her "It's about time" to follow.

  It didn't. She leaned back in the chair, clasped her hands on her lap, and nodded her head. "And?"

  I ran my thumbnail along the long scratches on the wooden chair arm. "And I just wanted you to know that I didn't ignore him the last time he called." I'd run out of tiny trenches to excavate, so I stopped, drummed my thumb on the wood instead, and waited.

  Nothing.

  Lori's expression matched my dating life—totally blank.

  "If you're waiting to hear some happily ever after, well, it wasn't that kind of talk. I asked how he was doing, he said, 'Fine.' I needed to pick Ben up from school, so I didn't have time to stay on the phone." I shifted in the chair, but the weight of my emotional discomfort still pushed against my chest. This didn't sound like I thought it would. When I rehearsed this in my brain, I imagined Lori would be relieved to hear that I—what does she call that?—stepped out in faith and talked to David. So, maybe I only tiptoed, but it was movement in the right direction.

  "I guess talking at David instead of to him is better than not talking to him at all," she said to the space in front of her and fingered the double strand pearl necklace she wore. Yet another gift from David.

  The buzzing telephone on her desk spared me more David talk. Lori excused herself to answer the call, and I slipped my purse on my shoulder and scooted to the edge of the chair in the ready position.

  She hung up, but before I could tell
her what she could already see, she said, "Wait. One more thing, and this will be quick because I have an appointment in ten minutes." She opened a file on her desk and handed me a sheet of paper. "I know Trey's been doing your accounting, but I wasn't sure if he'd reminded you about that balloon payment that's going to be coming up on your second mortgage."

  My stomach performed one of those tumblesets over itself the way it does on the down slide of a roller coaster. Of course, I knew about the balloon note. I just hadn't remembered how soon it had to be paid. And even though Trey balanced the money, or the lack of it, David always reminded me, sometimes nudged me, about the financial side of the business. Two years ago, he had suggested a second mortgage to fund equipment for my business and for advertising and marketing expenses.

  I scanned the columns until I found what I'd owe and the due date. The tumbling in my stomach gave way to trampoline jumping. I spotted the figure on the page and felt like I'd been in an elevator that fell fifty floors.

  10

  If every teacher in every school in the parish starts ordering dinner every week, maybe I'll be able to make that note in four months." I handed Julie another disposable aluminum pan filled with pesto grilled chicken breasts on linguine tossed with olive oil, garlic, and fresh basil.

  "Maybe then we could buy a bolt of foil instead of yards of it," Julie said as she crimped another shiny sheet over the top of the pan. "Or, you could expand your holiday business to include Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa," she said.

  We'd been assembling dinners for hours. I layered the linguine and chicken into the pans, Julie covered them, and Ben wrote the teachers' names and school sites on the foil. Sometimes his handwriting looked more like what I'd see on a prescription. All angles and lines, seemingly minus vowels. Anything totally illegible, Julie corrected later.