Southern Girl

by Lukas,Renee J.

  Of course, Carolyn wasn’t surprised when, upon her return, Abilene had given her the expected cold shoulder. It had felt strangely liberating, even though she was practically wearing a scarlet letter. However, she was still the wife of Reverend Aimes, and Abilene was still sitting in the pew behind her family. She must have been concerned about how it would look to others if she switched seats. She had made a point, though, of not speaking to Carolyn at the service or afterward…until today, when she cornered Carolyn on the top stair outside the church. As spectators, mostly “Smurfs,” watched from a distance, Abilene removed her gloves, looking for all the world as if she were about to engage Carolyn in some sort of bizarre boxing match.

  “Don’t tell anyone this,” Abilene said conspiratorially. “But there have been so many times I’ve thought of quittin’ the club myself.”

  “You ARE the club,” Carolyn said with great surprise and relief that Abilene was again speaking to her.

  “Well, it gets me up in the mornin’, I’ll give you that,” the old lady drawled. “But you might be surprised to know I get sick of makin’ muffins and casseroles all the dang time. You think that’s all I wanna do?”

  Well, yes. Carolyn slowly shook her head, pretending to be open to other possibilities but praying that Abilene was not about to share a secret dream of being an astronaut or something else to which there could be no good response.

  “Now don’t go gettin’ a big head or anything,” Abilene continued. “But when you quit, it got me thinkin’ ’bout quittin’ too. Before Harlan died, I loved watchin’ him make deals, buying up companies. That was fun. Course I turned over all that business to my son, who won’t tell me a dang thing. He keeps sayin’ he don’t want to worry me, as if I’m on my deathbed or something. I can handle bad news, you know. I’m not so fragile as that.”

  Carolyn smiled. This was a side of Abilene she’d never known existed.

  “You could start your own company,” she suggested.

  “I’m probably too old for that.” Abilene waved her hand. “But you know, I love them Sugar Babies candies. I can’t never find enough of ’em. If I did have a business, it’d be a store with nothin’ but Sugar Babies in it.”

  Carolyn tried not to appear as though she were looking at a visitor from another planet. Instead, she smiled and nodded graciously, a move she had perfected.

  Abilene gave her a squeeze on the shoulder. “You’re an excellent cook, by the way. Don’t let nobody tell you different.” With a wink she descended the stairs and made her way to her shiny white Cadillac.

  Carolyn shook her head. Abilene had thought she was a good cook all this time? Would it have killed her to have given her the occasional compliment?

  A bigger issue, of course, was why Carolyn had been so desperate to receive an approving word from the old bat. She’d analyze that later, probably right before bed when her most stressful thoughts liked to come out and play. For now she would bask in this brief moment of validation.

  Even stranger was how pleased she was to turn and see Dan’s approving smile. She hadn’t seen this particular smile in some time; he seemed proud of her.

  Chapter Forty

  Jess couldn’t avoid Alex forever. She’d worn his jacket to school every day, which she knew pleased him, but she always made excuses for avoiding him on the weekends. It came in handy being a preacher’s daughter sometimes; she could tell him her dad didn’t like her to stay out late, things like that. Other times, she’d fake an illness or stomach bug. She couldn’t fake too many “illnesses,” however, because he was exactly the thoughtful kind of guy who would try to take her to the hospital.

  She slammed her locker door. “Why does it always have to be somethin’?” she barked.

  “’Cause you’re always busy,” Alex cried. “It’s like I don’t even have a girlfriend!”

  She knelt on the floor to zip her backpack, ignoring his huffing noises.

  “We’ve been to see, what, like one movie?” he asked, following her upstairs.

  She rolled her eyes, knowing full well she wasn’t being fair. Then she paused on the landing and turned to face him. “I know you can’t help it. You’re a guy. It’s in your DNA.” She tugged at his jacket. “I wouldn’t be wearin’ this if I wasn’t, you know…” She didn’t want to say it.

  He smiled when she told him that. It seemed to put him at ease, if only momentarily. Ironically, he probably liked her because she didn’t act like other girls. She wasn’t clingy like some of them could be. She did her own thing. He seemed to love that, but Jess secretly worried that she was ruining his life.

  In the meantime, she had to deal with biology class, which was threatening to ruin her life. Either Ivy had had it wrong or Coach Purvis had developed a more sadistic streak. Instead of giving oral presentations on photosynthesis, as Ivy had said, he had instructed them to pull a topic out of a baseball hat, and do presentations based on whatever they selected. Kelly had gotten the topic “how diseases are spread,” which, to Jess, seemed fitting. Unfortunately, Jess pulled out a piece of paper on which was written “the human reproductive system,” something which was ten times worse for a class of seventeen-year-olds.

  Taking her turn today, Jess was having flashbacks to second grade and her traumatic report on Rosa Parks. It was a living nightmare to be standing before a class again, the morning light streaming in and lighting up the piece of paper shaking in her hands. She tried to read what was there, but the words stuck in her throat.

  “Fert…fertilization…” she stammered. Why couldn’t she show the same confidence here that she had in the gym during a game? There her hands would be wrapped around something familiar, solid, reliable. Here there was only a flimsy, sweat-dampened piece of notebook paper between her and the judgmental faces of the class.

  “The egg…” She swallowed hard. That was it. She wasn’t going to talk about sex in front a bunch of horny boys and giggling girls. Public speaking was the scourge of humanity, she decided. Too bad she didn’t inherit her father’s love of being the center of attention.

  “Go on now,” Mr. Purvis said, nodding encouragement from his desk in the back of the room. Easy for him to say. His only concern today was probably getting his coffee thermos open. She thought all the football coaches were idiots, mainly because they were so defensive, as if afraid that someone would expose their lack of knowledge. They had to be right about everything, which she found suspicious. Her dad was like that when it came to spiritual matters.

  Jess was about to go back to her seat, defeated, when the bell rang.

  “Class dismissed,” Mr. Purvis said. “Except Aimes. I wanna talk to you.”

  Kelly gave her an exaggerated look of worry as she moved toward the door.

  Jess came over to the coach’s desk and braced for battle.

  “Aimes,” Mr. Purvis began. “So far you got an A in this class. If you don’t do the report, you get a C.” He stared at her as if that would be shocking enough to provoke a reaction. He didn’t get one. “You don’t wanna take a C.”

  “It’s better than a D,” she said, knowing she sounded like a real smartass.

  He nodded, as if to say “very well then,” and she turned toward the door.

  “How would Reverend Aimes feel if his daughter got a C?’”

  Jess glared at him contemptuously. She despised anyone who invoked her father for any reason. Without another word, she left.

  * * *

  That night Jess went over to Stephanie’s house. It was smaller than her last house, dating back to the 1940s, with nooks and crannies and wood details not commonly found in more modern places. Even the creaks of the wood floor were different from what Jess was used to. They passed through the living room where there was a small sitting area with built-in bookshelves and a couch. Jess followed her upstairs to her room.

  They sat on the floor of Stephanie’s bedroom, up against the bed, as they did in Jess’s room. Stephanie’s mother wasn’t home, so they were able to h
ang out and talk for hours. Stephanie’s room was decorated in a more traditionally feminine way than Jess’s, with pink carpeting and a pastel-colored bedspread. On her walls were posters of Madonna, INXS and even a few country stars like Dolly Parton and Crystal Gayle.

  In Jess’s house, country music wasn’t usually played, except for her father’s old Hank Williams cassettes, which he only played in his beat-up truck, not in the family car. Her mother couldn’t stand Hank. She actually liked the music her kids were listening to and would sometimes pop in a Police tape on the way to the grocery store.

  Stephanie opened her record player.

  “Don’t you have a Walkman?” Jess asked.

  “Yeah, but I still like albums.”

  Jess threw her head back. “Just like my brother. He says tapes are inferior and won’t buy anything but records.”

  “He’s right,” Stephanie replied as she slid a record from its cover. There was a dramatic close-up of Crystal Gayle on the cover. “You have to hear this,” she said excitedly, touching the needle to the black vinyl. After a few crackles, her favorite song began: “When I Dream.”

  “It’s nice,” Jess said nonchalantly, tracing shapes in the carpet. The song actually moved her very much, but she was trying to appear cool. It was a habit she couldn’t seem to break.

  “How is it, havin’ a brother and sister?” Stephanie asked as the song floated in the background.

  “They’re pains in the ass.” She smiled. “Nah, they’re okay, but make you wish you had some alone time.”

  Stephanie propped herself against a large pillow. “I’ve had too much alone time.”

  Jess wanted to hold her hand. But she didn’t.

  “You won’t believe this,” Jess said. “I’m gonna get a C in bio ’cause I won’t do the oral report.”

  “Oral reports,” Stephanie said knowingly. “Not your favorite.”

  “No.” Jess squeezed her tucked-up knees. “But c’mon, the man’s got no sense, makin’ me talk about sex in front of everyone.” Just then, she remembered the kiss at the river, and her face flushed.

  “Oh no, you got human reproduction?”

  Jess nodded dramatically. “And since I don’t like talkin’ in front of people anyway…” She drifted off.

  “What scares you so much?” Stephanie asked.

  “I’m not scared,” Jess said, again, making another futile attempt to sound cool.

  “It’s okay to admit if you are.” Was Stephanie talking about something else?

  Jess felt another meaning behind her words and lowered her eyes. “My mom did a speech one time,” she said, trying to remain composed, as if public speaking were the only subject here.

  “It was a while ago, when she took me and my brother to her cooking group. You know the Thornbush place?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Jess fidgeted with the carpet loops, feeling self-conscious. “Yeah, well, Mom thought it’d be a good idea to show all of ’em how to cook a lobster. It didn’t go so well.” She looked up at Stephanie with a slight smile. “She took live lobsters, stuck ’em in a boiling pot, closed the lid, then showed ’em all what the finished dish would look like. She was so happy. I remember her face just beamin’ with pride. She thought everyone would think it was cool to see how to make a dish like that. But nobody said a word. When she was done, there was no applause, only this weird, long silence. I felt real bad for her.”

  Stephanie put her arm around her. Jess jumped a little, and Stephanie took her arm away.

  It was tricky every time they got close. Jess had to fight with herself, with the religious doctrine that she’d been immersed in ever since childhood. The ideas put forth by her church were like vines twisting around in her mind, making it so hard to free herself. Try as she might, what she shared with Stephanie still felt like a perverse kind of happiness, something that carried shame and guilt with it.

  Jess threw her head back and listened to the music: “When I dream, I dream of you. Maybe someday you will come true.” The song might have seemed sappy if she’d heard it anywhere else, but here it would make a lasting impression. She felt special that Stephanie had chosen to share it with her. But she pretended not to be affected by the music or the intensity of the moment. “I mean, it was only a lobster,” she continued. “Where do those old bags think their meat comes from?” She shook her head. “They acted like Mama came in there and slaughtered a cow in front of ’em. But they’ll eat burgers, no problem.”

  “You should do a report about that in biology,” Stephanie mused, reaching for her hand.

  “Hell, no,” she laughed nervously, intensely aware of their hands touching. “Coach Purvis hates my guts.”

  “How could anyone hate you?” Stephanie said, inching closer.

  “Lots of people do.” Jess kept talking, pretending not to notice. “Kelly hates me…even my brother and sister…”

  Stephanie moved toward her, but Jess refused to turn. So Stephanie’s other hand caught in her hair, and she stroked it, still watching her.

  Waves of euphoria rippled throughout Jess’s body…if she was going to hell, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. She didn’t know why, but she pretended that Stephanie was out of line.

  “Are you makin’ moves on me?” Jess asked playfully.

  “When I like something, I go after it.” There was an unmistakable twinkle in her almost translucent gray eyes.

  “You can’t always get everything on your terms.”

  “Oh yeah?” Stephanie moved still closer, this time more direct as she went in for a kiss. The moment their lips touched, the front door burst open with a blast of sound that shook them apart. It was followed by the sound of high heels walking unevenly, as if stumbling, across the tiled floor of the foyer. Stephanie jumped up and pulled the needle from the record, scratching it and stopping the music abruptly.

  “Stephanieee!” Ms. Greer’s voice was ragged and her speech slurred. “This place is a wrrreck! You messa messeda up again!”

  Stephanie held out her hand to help Jess up. “I’d better drive you home.”

  All at once, Jess understood.

  They came downstairs and met Arlene Greer. She looked tired and she reeked of whiskey. Since Greens Fork was in Daggett County, a dry county, that meant that Ms. Greer had to have driven a few towns away to purchase liquor. Jess winced at the thought of her driving so far while intoxicated.

  Ms. Greer looked embarrassed, not having realized that Jess was there.

  “I need to take her home,” Stephanie said in a low voice.

  “Yeah,” Ms. Greer grunted. “Tell your dad I said hi, Jess.” She leaned a little too long on Jess’s shoulder before giving her a goodbye pat, as though she was six years old again.

  Stephanie took Jess’s hand and quickly led her out of the house before she could see any more.

  In her car, they didn’t talk much. Jess waited until Stephanie seemed more relaxed. She switched the tape to Foreigner, and “Urgent” started playing.

  “She’s been like this ever since the divorce,” Stephanie said quietly.

  “Did your dad leave her?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jess snuck a glance at her. She’d always thought she was beautiful, endowed with the kind of looks that drove boys wild. She realized tonight that she was also tough, someone with a hard outer shell that could block anything the world might toss at her. She’d had to be her own protector—and her mom’s too, no doubt. Jess wanted to relieve her of some of her burden, though she didn’t know exactly what she could do.

  “Most nights she passes out on the couch,” Stephanie said. “She hardly ever sleeps in her room.”

  Jess could imagine the whole scene—Stephanie covering her mother with a blanket on the couch, clearing away empty bottles of Jack Daniels. Her heart sank a little.

  “She needs to get some help,” Stephanie continued, staring at the road. “She’ll say ‘Yeah, I’ll do it’ when she’s sober, then she’ll go
right back to it the next night.” Clearly she’d had to be the adult to her childlike mother for some time now. Jess wondered how long. She saw Stephanie wipe her cheek quickly, probably hoping Jess wouldn’t notice.

  Could this be the reason why Stephanie was so critical of adults and authority figures? Because she’d seen the flaws in her parents up close? And about church teachings…the commandment about obeying your parents. Was Stephanie supposed to do that even when her mother was drunk?

  Jess didn’t think her dad was some godlike being, the way many in town seemed to. But she knew better than to argue with him, especially in public. There was an understanding in the Aimes’ house that you obeyed your parents no matter what, whether you agreed with them or not.

  Jess had sometimes envied the independence Stephanie seemed to have. She had the freedom to do as she pleased, even had her own car. Turns out when her mother wasn’t working, she was usually off somewhere drinking or buying something to drink. Jess remembered a phrase she’d heard from childhood, about walking a mile in another’s shoes, how it might not be how you’d imagined. Maybe this was why Stephanie felt freer to do and be whatever she pleased. On the other hand, Jess felt like she was living in a fishbowl with daily feedings of fire and brimstone that made everything she felt for Stephanie seem ominous and threatening.

  “It’s okay,” Jess said, holding her hand, trying to make her feel better.

  When they pulled up the driveway, Stephanie sat for a moment at the wheel. “She’s not a bad person, you know.”

  “I know that.” Jess smiled warmly, remembering that this was the same woman who used to make her s’mores whenever she came over to their house as a child.

  She saw the concern on Stephanie’s face, so protective of her mother. Jess gave her a long, reassuring hug. She felt so good, so warm, and her arms encircled her just right. She squeezed her tightly, wishing she could stay with her forever. Eventually, though, like every night, they had to let go. On this night, it was especially hard to say goodbye.