“Cecelia Cross certainly seemed to be upset.”
Thomas gave a deep sigh. “I don’t understand that woman. I’ve never shown any interest in her in all of the time, a decade I think, that she has been a neighbor…She despised Emma, you know.”
“Did she really?”
Thomas nodded. “Told Moira that Emma stole me from her…A real trip.”
“How about Moira? Was she being nice to me or pumping me for information?”
As they passed under a streetlight, she saw his eyes twinkle.
“Yes.” He paused, watching her face. “She is a very nice person, she says exactly what she thinks…and she wanted information.” Thomas laughed. “Moira’s daughter, Bridget, was one of Alexis’s best friends in high school. They would have roomed together in college if Bridget had not had the poor judgment to choose Duke over Emory. Her son had a major crush on Amy at one time.”
“I don’t like for people to talk…”
Thomas stopped, his free hand on his hip. “Are you telling me there is anything, any deep secret, any single interesting fact you do not know about any resident of Whitesburg?”
“It’s not the same.”
“It’s exactly the same. People are interested in other people. Just be yourself and any problem someone has will be theirs, not yours.”
“They believe we’re getting married.”
Thomas stopped. “Moira actually said that?”
“No, not in so many words.”
“So she suspects it. Did you deny it? Confirm it?”
“Neither,” Jennie protested.
Thomas laughed. “Well, let’s see what they make of that.”
They both laughed.
***
They reached the house. Alexis, Tasha, and the boys claimed the porch, and Thomas carried Louisa upstairs to the nursery. He changed her, gave her a bottle, and rocked her to sleep. Then he went to his room to change for bed.
As he entered his bedroom, his telephone rang.
“Hi, Dad. Happy fourth.” Christa was calling from Colorado.
“Hey, girl. I couldn’t think who would be calling so late. Anything wrong?”
“Late? It’s only eight thirty. Oh, right, you’re two hours ahead of us. Sorry.”
“How are you doing?”
“It’s fantastic, Dad. The ranch is wonderful. They have terrific horses, and the teachers are out of this world. Amy has a major crush on one guy named Wayne…hold on.” He heard Christa talking to someone else. “Well, you do, anyway.” She returned to the line. “Amy says that she does not have a crush on him, but she does…Anyway, how are things in the holy city? What have you been up to?”
“Not a lot. We spent the day at the beach. Then we grilled hamburgers and watched fireworks on the Battery. What are you—”
“Jennie is having a good time?”
“She seems to be. Are you having fireworks tonight?”
“We are. It won’t be dark for a while, but they are supposed to be really good…So, you and Jennie are doing all right?”
“I suppose…” Why was she worried about Jennie?
“Just hanging out? Anything special?”
“Christa, we’re all getting along fine.” He was sure Christa could hear the curiosity in his voice.
“How long is Jennie staying? Are my sisters giving the two of you any peace?”
“Christa, what is it that you really want to know?”
“Have you kissed her yet, Dad?”
“Have I what?” he exclaimed. He glanced toward the open door to the nursery, hoping he had not frightened Louisa.
“Have you kissed Jennie?”
Only Christa could leave Thomas torn between laughing at her question and becoming angry. He tried an intermediate approach.
“Is this an academic question, or is there some particular reason that you are asking?”
“Come on, Dad,” Christa begged. “A year ago you shouted at Mom when she wanted to invite Jennie for the fourth…”
“I did not shout, I…”
“The neighbors heard you a block away. Now you’ve asked her to sit with Louisa in Atlanta, you’ve invited her to stay at the house twice, and you’ve visited her—alone I might add—at her house for an entire weekend. You never used to even mention her name, now you include her in family discussions. You didn’t want her even to know Louisa, but now Louisa reaches for her when she comes into the room. She’s not just a random person on the street. All I want to know is whether you’ve kissed her yet.”
“Yet?” Anger was about to trump laughter. “Christa, have you…”
“Hey, Amy was going to ask about sleeping arrangements.”
“I was not.” Amy’s exclamation could be clearly heard.
“Christa, have you ever kissed your boyfriend?”
“Dad,” Christa exclaimed. “You can’t ask me if I’ve kissed my boyfriend.”
“Yet you ask me if I’ve kissed…”
“So, she is your girlfriend?” Thomas could hear the excitement in Christa’s voice.
“Christa Elizabeth Lindsay, you’re a nosy little brat.” It was all Thomas could do to keep from snapping at her. “If you were at home, I’d lean you across…”
“Pooh. You’ve never touched me.” Her voice became soft. “Dad, everyone knows you like her. Everyone knows she more than likes you. Amy and I have been talking about the two of you and we just don’t want you to let her get away without at least giving yourselves another chance. We’d hoped that this weekend…”
Thomas didn’t respond.
“Mom would want you to be happy, Dad.” Thomas could tell she was crying. “She really liked Jennie and she won’t mind…Amy agrees with me.”
Thomas could hear Amy in the background, voicing her agreement.
“I know she would want me to be happy, sweetheart, it’s just…it’s complicated.”
“Give it some thought. Will you do that? For me? For you?”
Thomas was silent for a moment. “I’ll give it more thought,” he said.
***
Jennie climbed to the third floor. She was sleeping in Christa’s room tonight. As she closed the door, she noticed several sheets of paper on top of her roller bag. She picked them up and thumbed through them.
Obviously copied from the internet, they described studies of relapse among patients with bipolar disorder. Relapse, that means the patients had been cured and became ill again, Jennie thought.
A summary of an article from the American Journal of Psychiatry noted a seventy-three percent rate of relapse within five years of beginning treatment. Jennie stared at the article. After five years? How high must it be after ten years? She thought of herself, how high after sixteen?
A second article noted sixty-eight percent of the patients in one sample had relapsed. A third reported the case of a woman who had relapsed eight times in a period of thirteen years. Jennie gasped.
The other five papers were similar. Jennie glanced around the room, as if looking for who might have left the articles, but she knew it was Tasha.
“I’ve been free of symptoms for almost fifteen years,” she whispered. Well, not completely free. Anger would sometimes flare at minor slights, just as it was had when she was talking with Moira, just as it was doing now, but Dr. Wilson had taught her ways to control her anger. She took medication. She got enough sleep. She never even smelled alcohol.
Jennie took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “I’ve never relapsed and I never will.”
Labor Day
“What kind of barbeque does Kevin cook?”
Jennie had been gazing idly through the window of Thomas’s SUV as the seven of them, Thomas and Jennie, Alexis, Christa, Tasha, Amy, and Louisa, drove toward the home of Jennie’s sister, Sarah. Every year on the Saturday before Labor Day, Sarah and her husband Kevin invited family and friends from all over northwest Georgia to a barbeque. Jennie recalled there had been over a hundred people present the year before, and Sarah wa
s expecting an even larger crowd today.
Alexis’s voice startled her and she jumped, bumping her head against the window.
As the girls’ laughter died away, Jennie rubbed her head.
“So tell us. What kind does Kevin cook?”
“Are there different kinds of barbeque?”
“Not a quite a connoisseur, are you?” Christa shook her head. “We’re going to have to work on you.”
“There are four kinds of barbeque,” Amy told her “You can rub the meat with spices, that’s called dry rub.”
“Makes sense.”
“Or you can use a sauce. It can be made with vinegar, catsup, or, the best of all, mustard.”
“Vinegar based is so much better,” Tasha exclaimed.
“Dry rub is best.”
“They’re wrong,” Amy interrupted. “Mustard is king. Besides, mustard based is found almost solely in South Carolina, and that alone makes it the best.” She paused, apparently waiting for an argument, but continued when no one spoke. “In addition to choosing your sauce, you can either baste the meat with the sauce as it cooks, or you can pour it on when it’s done.”
“So,” Alexis said. “What is Kevin’s like?”
“I don’t know…”
“This is important, Jennie,” Christa insisted. “How does he do it?”
“All I know is he cooks ten-pound pork loin roasts…”
“Not an entire hog?” She rolled her eyes. “And he calls it barbeque.”
“He uses something that looks like it was made from an old oil drum.”
“An oil drum?”
“Actually, he has two of them. They look like old oil barrels that have been cut in half and the top is hinged. Each one is four or five feet long and has a trailer hitch…”
“His cookers,” Amy said. “Some of those ‘old oil barrels’ cost two or three thousand dollars.”
“That much?” Jennie raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“Low-end cookers, yes.”
“Anyway, Sarah and I were talking last night at nine o’clock and she told me he had already started the fire, was letting it burn down, and would put the roasts on at about nine thirty. I think she told me he would let them cook for about fifteen hours.”
“What kind of wood does he use?” Tasha asked.
“I’m not sure…pine?”
“Pine?” Amy exclaimed. “I hope not.”
“Hickory, maybe.”
“And there’s no sauce?” Alexis probed.
“I don’t remember any, Alexis. I just know it tastes really good. He competes in cook-offs, and I hear he does very well.”
The four girls huddled in the back seats and Jennie could hear whispers, but she could not make out what they were saying. Finally, they resumed their places.
“We’ve decided to give Kevin a chance, but we all have serious reservations concerning what he calls barbeque,” Amy reported.
“Well…thanks.” Jennie looked to Thomas for an explanation. He laughed.
“Welcome to the barbeque wars. Combatants choose sides based on sauce, wood, method of preparation. They eat, they compare, they argue. Sometimes they literally fight. Neutrality is not allowed, so Kevin had better watch his back today.”
“I’ll warn him. Definitely.” Jennie laughed.
“Oh don’t laugh, Aunt Jennie,” Amy told her. “This is deadly serious.”
Christa nodded. “Absolutely.”
***
They turned off the highway and followed the long, winding drive through the woods to Sarah and Kevin’s house. At least forty vehicles were already parked in the old cornfield near the barn.
Jennie recalled how excited Sarah had been when she and Kevin had purchased the farm years earlier. They had completely renovated the house. They had kept horses in the barn when their sons were at home, but they had never operated the farm, except to grow food for the animals. Now, most of the fields were slowly returning to woodland.
The aroma of the cooking pork reached them as they left the car. Jennie took a deep breath. “Yum. It smells so good…no matter how he cooks it.” She looked at the girls and smiled, but no one smiled back.
Jennie was surprised the entire family had been both able and willing to come this weekend, but Thomas had insisted they were all there willingly. While Jennie would know most of the people who attended, few of them had seen Thomas in twenty years, even fewer knew their children, and less than a handful had met his children.
“Now, Alexis and Christa know Kevin and Sarah.”
Both girls nodded. “They knew you when…when we were married,” she told Thomas. “And you’ve seen them at church. Tasha and Amy, I’ll introduce you.”
“I know Sarah,” Amy said. “We had lunch with her once when I was at Mr. Smyth’s riding school.”
Mr. Smyth operated an equestrian center near Whitesburg, and both Amy and Christa had participated in his summer riding school, staying with Jennie two or three weeks at a time. One of those periods had been the first time Jennie had been with any of the girls for more than a weekend.
“That’s right. You still need to meet Kevin and—”
“We’ll discuss his barbecue.”
Jennie sighed. “Good. You do that.” She shook her head as they walked toward the house.
Tables had been set under the trees near the house. One of them held several large bowls of what Jennie guessed were coleslaw and baked beans. Sarah sat at the next table and a crowd had gathered around her, drinking iced tea from tall glasses, munching on chips and dip. As Thomas’s family arrived, Kevin was stepping away, and seemed to be heading across the yard toward the cookers.
Jennie chuckled at Amy’s reaction to her description of the cookers. She couldn’t’ quite believe Kevin had spent so much on them, but she knew Thomas had a camera that had cost a little more. Little boys and their toys. She shook her head.
Jennie waved to get Kevin’s attention. “Kevin,” she called. “I have some people for you to meet.” She introduced Amy and Tasha. “As we drove up, they were expressing some concerns about the way you prepare barbeque.”
“Actually, we all were,” Alexis told him. “Is it true you cook a roast and call it barbeque?”
“Well, yes, I do, Alexis.”
“And you don’t use sauce? Of any kind?”
“I do not.” Kevin smiled as if he had heard the questions before. “I’m going to check the meat now. Why don’t you four city girls come with me and I’ll explain what real barbeque is.”
“Humph.” Amy looked down her nose at him. “From what I’ve heard, you don’t know the difference between barbeque and a pork pie.”
“Amy,” Jennie exclaimed.
Keven laughed. “I’ve been described in less flattering terms by any number of misguided barbeque fanatics.”
The girls went with Kevin to see his cooker and to inspect his process. Jennie and Thomas walked over to the table, accepted glasses of tea, and sat to talk with Sarah.
“Oh, let me hold her.” Sarah spied Louisa and reached out her hands. “Come here, sweetie.” She looked up at Thomas. “You really miss having a baby around once they get big.”
Thomas nodded. “You really do.”
Half an hour later it was time to eat. Kevin and two other men began to remove the roasts from the cookers and to chop them into small pieces. Jennie helped Sarah uncover the food on the table and Alexis went to the kitchen to retrieve a huge bowl of potato salad and several loaves of bread.
Jennie now counted sixty-five cars parked in the field. The picnic tables were full and a number of people, including Thomas, had spread blankets on the ground. They filled their plates and sat on the blanket to eat.
Louisa crawled across their blanket, going from person to person. She approached Jennie, stopping just beyond her reach. She sat back, looking into her eyes, a serious expression on her face. As Jennie reached for her, she screeched, laughed, and scurried away, crawling toward Alexis and repeating the
process. After making her way around the blanket, she crawled to Thomas and fell asleep beside him.
Several minutes passed in silence as they ate. Then, as people began to return to the tables for seconds, Keven squatted beside Amy.
“So, how is the barbeque? Does it pass?”
Amy cocked her head to one side and looked up at him. “I have serious reservations about the lack of a proper sauce.” She paused for a moment, looking into Kevin’s eyes. “You did not make a convert. However, I will say it tastes…very, very good.”
Her sisters and Thomas clapped.
“Coming from you, I take that as a high compliment.” He gave a deep bow.
Kevin found a place to sit beside Sarah, and, for a while, no one spoke.
As everyone finished seconds and were complaining of having eaten too much, Kevin recruited Thomas to help him with dessert. They went to the house and emerged a few minutes later carrying a tub of banana pudding.
Leaving Tasha, Jennie, and Sarah to watch Louisa, the other girls promised to bring bowls of pudding for everyone and met Kevin and Thomas as they reached the table. As they placed the tub on the ground, Kevin’s cell phone rang, and he stepped away to take the call. Sarah watched him, a concerned expression on her face.
“Is something wrong?” Jennie placed her hand on Sarah’s arm.
“Oh, I expect it’s about the little Watkins boy.” She sighed. “He’s one of Kevin’s students. He’s been into drugs for a couple of years. As I understand it, he keeps trying to quit, but he tells Kevin it’s just too hard. Claims he needs them in order to function. Problem is, of course, that when he takes them, he doesn’t function, not well anyway.”
“Doesn’t he see it’s not good to be so dependent on a drug to keep you going,” Jennie asked.
“I used to date a guy who had to take an upper every morning to get up and go to class.” Tasha sipped her lemonade.
“It’s not natural,” Sarah said. “A person ought to be able to cope without a crutch.”
“A lot of people need medication,” Tasha said. “Dad takes something every day for cholesterol. Is that bad? If he ate healthier, he wouldn’t need to take the medicine. Christa takes medicine for her allergies.” Louisa coughed and Tasha patted her on the back. “Those are health-related conditions, though. That’s different.”
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