One Last Thing

by Rebecca St. James

  She hadn’t hurled an epithet at me yet, so I took a chance. “Are you still speaking to me?”

  “Are you serious? Can we talk?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Do you want a coffee?”

  She didn’t answer because she was already dragging me across Liberty. I let her zigzag us all the way to Madison Square, where she let me go and dropped herself onto the base of the statue where Sergeant William Jasper everlastingly hoists a flag in the 1779 Siege of Savannah. Both of her legs disappeared under the muslin skirt that only stayed on her negligible hips with the help of a bangled belt reminiscent of a belly dancer. She pulled her hair behind her and looked at me again with the green eyes that had fascinated me since she was a baby. She used to stare at all of us until Kellen would say, “Make her stop looking at me like that. She’s freaking me out.”

  “Before you ask me anything,” I said, “I can’t tell you any more than Seth already has. I’m sorry.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Seth hasn’t told me anything and if he had I wouldn’t have believed him. I had to gather what little I do know from listening to my father talking to somebody on the phone.”

  “Your mom hasn’t told you—”

  “My mom is who I’m not speaking to. Or at least, as little as possible.”

  “Should I feel honored that you’re speaking to me?” I said.

  “Honored. No. You’re just the only sane person I know right now.”

  I laughed out loud. It was a rusty sound.

  “Look,” Evelyn said, “I don’t know what went down between you and my brother and I don’t even want to know. Okay, maybe I do, but since nobody’s telling . . . All I know is I’m glad it happened. I don’t see how you could ever consider marrying him in the first place.”

  That wasn’t exactly news to me. Seth and Evelyn hadn’t been close for almost as far back as I could remember. He was ten when she was born, so he wasn’t terribly interested in a baby girl—not like Kellen was with me—and he and Kellen were always off being boys. But the outright animosity that had developed between them didn’t start until Evelyn was—maybe five? Then it was always as if Seth emitted toxic fumes she didn’t want to breathe. That had gone through several stages—from sibling rivalry that bordered on World Wrestling Entertainment to a brick-wall silence that commenced when Seth went off to college and hadn’t let up since. When I’d asked her to be a bridesmaid in the wedding, you’d have thought I was requesting one of her kidneys. I took that as a no.

  Evelyn rearranged her legs. “I just wanted to say I’m glad you saw the light.”

  “What light?” I said.

  She waited for a woman with a leashed bulldog to pass before she tilted toward me. “He’s not the mirror of Christianity everybody thinks he is. I’ve known it forever, but nobody wants to hear that. Especially from me.”

  The anxiety stuck out its spines in my chest. “What have you known?”

  “That he’s a total fraud.” She dragged her hair over the front of her shoulder and hung onto it like a rope. “He looks like this perfect evangelical role model on the outside, but he’s not. There’s another side of him.”

  “What side?” I was pushing it and I shouldn’t be, but I was also starting to panic. If Evelyn knew, I had to know or people were going to get hurt. As much as she despised Seth, she’d have no qualms about putting the entire thing on Facebook.

  “The seamy side,” she said.

  “Explain.”

  “You want details? I don’t—he’s just not that person. I’ve lived with him my whole life. I should know.”

  I closed my eyes and let relief drive the anxiety back into its hole. Evelyn didn’t know. She sensed something, maybe, but she couldn’t name it.

  “What?” she said.

  I opened my eyes. Her own were in slits the width of hyphens.

  “You do have the details,” she said. “You didn’t break off the engagement because you had issues. You did it because he has them and you know what they are.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t want to know.”

  “I lied.”

  Evelyn flipped her hair to the other shoulder and leaned toward me again over the lotus position she’d pretzeled herself into. “He did something to you.”

  “No, he did not do something to me.”

  I tried to sound dismissive but her eyes weren’t buying it. “He did something you can’t live with, though. That’s why you’re not marrying him.”

  “Okay.” I put up a hand, the one I wanted to use to pull her up by that rope of hair at the moment. “I’ve said all I’m going to say. Discussion over.”

  She nodded sagely, as only a twenty-year-old who knows everything can. “You’re telling me this is none of my business.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, Evvy, but yes, it’s none of your business.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re wrong. It’s my business and it’s always been my business. So I’m going to say this.”

  She stopped as if she were waiting for me to invite her to go on.

  “I don’t think I can stop you,” I said.

  “You’re protecting him somehow and I think—no, I know—you’re better than that. You’re better than him.”

  Somehow she untangled her legs and hiked the gigantic beaded bag over her shoulder.

  “I’ll be there for you when this all goes down,” she said. “And it will go down if I have anything to do with it. Which I will.”

  The panic I’d been pushing away came all the way up my throat, but by then she was already headed toward Bull Street with everything swinging: hair, bag, skirt, attitude. She would smear her brother in a heartbeat. The only thing preventing her was lack of information, and since she was never going to get close enough to Seth to find out anything, maybe that would be the saving grace.

  Still, I pulled my phone out of my bag and contemplated calling Seth to warn him. Poking my fingers on the screen, I left him a text instead. Evelyn suspects something. Be careful.

  But I was no longer fooling myself. I wasn’t just protecting Seth anymore. I was protecting me. And I was so angry that I even had to. I picked up a handful of wet oak leaves and threw them. They fell right back to their original places and plastered themselves on the Belgian block.

  I showed up for work the next day before two, as prepared as I could get for something I knew absolutely nothing about. Not even enough to come up with a script.

  My hair was pushed away from my face with a red headband, and I had on a relatively new pair of skinny jeans and ballet flats and a tank under my long-sleeved cranberry top to try to cover the fact that my ribs were starting to show under my clothes. I’d even done my nails the night before, which hadn’t happened in seventeen days.

  To my surprise Wendy was there when I arrived. She actually looked a little surprised, too, and not pleasantly so.

  “Ike changed my shift so I could train you,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She pulled in her chin, a finely chiseled feature to match the rest of a face that appeared to have been formed out of fine marble and stained lightly with tea. “Why are you sorry?”

  “Because I need training?”

  Wendy rolled the deepest shade of violet eyes I’d seen since Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, and somehow that particular piece of body language looked completely different from when Evelyn did it. Evelyn’s eye-roll said, Are you stupid or what? Wendy’s said, I’m about to make you feel better.

  “Everybody needs training,” she said. “No matter how many shops you’ve worked in, every one is different so it’s almost like starting from scratch.”

  “Um, I am starting from scratch,” I said.

  She handed me an apron that used to be white at some point and watched me tie it on. “You really are, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Ike didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me . . .”

  “That I’ve never worked as a barista before? Or in food service? At a
ll?”

  The eyes rolled again. “No. But he really didn’t have to.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Okay, first of all, stop saying that. He hired you. You’re here. Let’s get started.”

  This girl was incredibly hard to read. She was, in fact, like a Faulkner novel, which I’d always found impossible to plod through. The Sound and the Fury was the only book I’d ever used CliffsNotes for in college or grad school. I had a feeling I was going to need them to understand Wendy.

  The first thing I discovered as I followed her to the coffee counter was that I was overdressed. Wendy had on ripped jeans and Nikes and a faded blue T-shirt that said Life Is Good? Are You Serious? on the front. Her dark hair, dyed the color of Randi Grissom’s mahogany doors, was braided and then tucked into a bun at the crown of her head. There was a lot of it, but it looked like it didn’t dare fall down.

  I was feeling that way myself.

  It didn’t really go that badly to start with. I shadowed Wendy for the first hour, and then she stood behind me and to the right while I took orders, attempted to work the register, fixed the noncoffee drinks (she said I wasn’t ready for barista training yet), and served the constant food that came out of that scary kitchen. Fortunately I didn’t have to go in there. From what I could tell it was small and steamy and things clattered and Ike barked. I was content to stay out front where it was all smiles and coffee.

  Then three o’clock hit. Clearly every third resident of Savannah and every visitor chose that hour to come in out of the waning sun and have some kind of complicated drink and a food item with five substitutions. They were all some degree of cranky. Blood sugars were low? People were snarky because they still had two more hours to work? Husbands were sick of following their wives into one house museum after another?

  I didn’t have time to analyze it. Suddenly I was expected to take orders, fill orders, ring up orders, and do it all without asking any questions.

  “What goes on a cheeseboard?” I said.

  “It’s on the list.”

  “What list?”

  “By the thing. That will be twelve-oh-two, sir—pennies are there in the dish—Tara, this gentleman needs his fruit bowl.”

  Fruit bowl. Where the heck were the fruit bowls? While I was looking around for something to dump strawberries into, Wendy wrenched open the glass case, pulled a plastic container of melon and blueberries off the ice, and plunked it into my hand.

  “You just fill the orders I give you,” she said. “I’ll do everything else until it slows down.”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered. I couldn’t help myself.

  Okay, deep breaths. How hard could this be? I had a master’s degree for Pete’s sake.

  “I need a baklava and a blueberry scone!”

  Baklava—already in pieces—put it on a plate—scone, blueberry—no, that was raisin—

  “Excuse me, honey?”

  I looked over the glass case at a woman about GrandMary’s age with a salt-and-pepper bob and a pair of hazel eyes that blinked at me from behind round red-rimmed glasses.

  “Yes, ma’am?” I said. “They’ll take your order over there.”

  “I already got my order but I was just wonderin’ . . .” She held up a plate bearing a sandwich with one bite taken out of it. “Have y’all changed the Brie and pear sandwich?”

  I knew I looked exactly like Bambi in the path of a semi. Wendy appeared at my elbow.

  “Is there something wrong, Ms. Helen?”

  “No. This is delicious. I think it’s smoked ham and Swiss, but I did order the Brie and pear. You know how much I love that combination.”

  “I know you do.” Wendy’s smile could have lit the place in the event of a power failure. “I think what happened is that they’re right next to each other in the case and somebody just grabbed the wrong one. I am so sorry. Let me just get you a Brie and pear.”

  “Let me!” I grabbed the sandwich that clearly said Brie and Pear on the wrapper and plopped it on a plate which I handed over the counter.

  “You’re going to want that heated up, aren’t you, Ms. Helen?” Wendy said.

  She took the plate and, without making eye contact with me, headed for the toaster oven.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Ms. Helen. “That was my mistake. It’s my first day.”

  “Well, bless your heart,” she said. “Don’t you worry about it. Now that I know that ham and Swiss is s’good, I might order it next time.”

  “Still need a blueberry scone!”

  “I’ll let you get back to work.” Ms. Helen lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’re doing just fine.”

  Yeah, well, not according to Wendy. When things slowed down she pulled me behind the loose teas display.

  “That lady, Ms. Helen?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “She’s a regular.”

  “She was really nice.”

  “And she knows everybody. We can’t have her going around telling people the service has gone downhill at the Piebald.”

  “I’m so—”

  “Do not say it. Look, you’ll get the hang of it, but just be careful, okay? Ike’s really strict about customer service.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Her violet eyes drifted to the top of my head. “Go in the bathroom and put yourself back together, why don’t you? And you might want to wipe the mustard off of those jeans before you ruin them. How did you get mustard on yourself anyway?”

  I had no idea. What I did know as I escaped to the restroom was that even though Wendy and I were probably about the same age, she had at least a decade on me when it came to experience. I’d been to Europe, I’d been to Duke, I’d been to a dinner at the governor’s mansion, but I couldn’t tell one sandwich from another—and that was what I needed to do in order to keep from losing my mind.

  I settled my hair down with some water on my fingers, but I didn’t bother with the jeans. Maybe it was time I got a little mustard on me.

  My shift wasn’t over until seven, but things were winding down after the dinner rush so Ike let me go. I was envisioning a skin-pruning bath in my claw-foot tub as I headed for the door, but halfway there I felt a touch on my arm as if a cat was passing by. I looked up at the long, lean form of the Reverend Paul Grissom.

  Seth’s father. My pastor.

  “Hey, Tara,” he said.

  Pastor Paul had a voice like honey when you spread it on a warm English muffin. It worked for preaching sermons, placating Randi, and talking various members of his flock off the ledge. But right now, it was among the bottom ten voices I wanted to hear.

  “Hey,” I said back.

  “Can I buy you dinner?”

  Buy me dinner? My antennae went up. I loved Paul, always had, but when had he ever invited me for so much as a Coca-Cola? This was a busy man with a huge congregation and a book coming out every other year. Nah, this was an ambush if I ever sensed one.

  “I’ve already eaten,” I lied.

  “A walk then? It’s a nice evening.”

  I would rather have walked off the wall down at the riverfront, but I was going down the drain by the minute and I didn’t have what it took to refuse.

  “Sure,” I said.

  It wasn’t until I’d followed him out onto the corner that it occurred to me to ask how he knew where to find me.

  “Your mother outed you,” he said.

  The choice of words was chilling. I hugged my sweater around me and pulled the sleeves down over my hands.

  “You cold?” he said.

  “I’ll warm up when we get going.”

  I turned toward Bull Street, hoping we would move in the direction of home, but he steered me west on Perry, where the walking crowd had thinned to a trickle of tourists in search of dinner. It was as private as you could get in a public place.

  “You know,” he said, “sometimes it’s hard for me to separate me as your future father-in-law from me as your pastor. Does that make sense?”
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  He looked down from his six-foot height, down the long, slim nose that gave him a profile that seemed cut from smooth granite. He had dark eyes like Seth and the same dark hair, frosted with grey as if Randi had sent him to her colorist. Unlike my father, he was classic handsome. Also unlike my father, he was one to beat so far around the bush you couldn’t remember where you’d started.

  I wasn’t in the mood for bunny trails.

  “You want to talk about Seth and me, but as my pastor, not as Seth’s father,” I said. “Right?”

  “Right.” He sounded a little disappointed. He’d probably had a whole homily planned, and under different circumstances I probably would’ve even enjoyed it. I longed for different circumstances.

  “I’m going to tell you what I’ve told everyone else,” I said. “We’re not ready to get married.”

  “Actually I wasn’t going to ask you about that.” Paul’s smile was wistful. “Seth’s made it perfectly clear he doesn’t want to discuss it with me.”

  “I know he’s hurt and I’m sorry.”

  Paul curled his fingers around my upper arm at the corner of Perry and Whitaker and let a carriage go by. The hooves of the Percheron clopped on the Belgian stone in rhythm with the driver’s soft patter about the Sorrel Weed House. Her two fortyish passengers weren’t listening. He was nuzzling her neck while she tugged at the lapel of his tweed jacket and laughed without sound.

  Right on cue.

  “Seth is hurting,” Paul said as we crossed Whitaker and turned south on it. He let go of my arm. “But so are you, and you’re the one I’m concerned about right now.”

  I started to say I was fine but decided to save my breath for the fast pace he’d established with his long legs. I knew he wouldn’t have believed me anyway, not from the concern carved into his face like the words below the statues in the squares.

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” he said. “Something is going on with you—some anxieties, some doubts—things that go deeper than just not being ready to get married. How am I doing so far?”

  He looked down at me again, face fatherly, ready for me to pour out my soul to him. I’d done that once when I was fourteen and convinced that no one understood me. Nobody understood now either, but this time he wasn’t going to be the one to help me sort that out.