Pupcakes

by Annie England Noblin

Since she didn’t yet know where they were going, Brydie had opted out of her usual uniform of jeans and a T-shirt, instead choosing something just as comfortable if not altogether different. She’d pulled out the heavy combat boots she’d worn over Halloween and paired them with a long gray skirt with a slit up the side and a black three-quarter-sleeved cashmere sweater that sat right at her midriff. It left her navel almost in plain sight if she raised her arms up just right.

  It was a very 1990s ensemble that left her yearning for the days of the dELiA*s catalog and YM magazine. It was also, she thought with relish, an outfit her mother hated. She’d worn it once or twice back in Jonesboro after her divorce, and her mother told her in no uncertain terms that she was neither young enough nor thin enough to be wearing it.

  And maybe, she thought, she actually wasn’t young enough or thin enough to be wearing it; she didn’t care. It made her feel good, and today she was going to feel good. She’d woken up feeling good, and she was going to go to bed that night feeling good. Maybe even at Nathan’s house.

  When her phone began to ring, she looked down at it expectantly. Nathan should be here any minute. Instead it was her mother calling. She’d started calling while Brydie was in the shower, and she hadn’t stopped since. Brydie knew she should answer it, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to fight with Ruth Benson. She didn’t want to talk about the things either one of them had said. She didn’t want to, and she wasn’t going to think about it.

  When Brydie heard a car pull into the driveway, she ran out to meet Nathan, making a vain attempt to shield herself from the rain.

  “Don’t you have an umbrella?”

  “There are about twelve in the house,” Brydie replied. “But I can never remember to grab one.”

  “I left Teddy at the house,” Nathan said, shifting the Range Rover into reverse. “I don’t think I could have gotten him outside in this mess if I’d wanted to anyway.”

  “He’s getting pretty comfortable there,” Brydie said. “You may never get rid of him.”

  “I’m hoping his owner will feel the same way soon.”

  Brydie grinned, feeling herself warm from the inside out. “So where are we going?”

  “I told you it’s a surprise.”

  “All right,” she sighed with mock irritation. “Fine.”

  “It figures that the first day I’ve ever taken off from the hospital would be a rainy day,” Nathan continued. “Maybe we should have just stayed at my place.”

  “It’s all right,” Brydie said. “I spend almost all of my time at home, at the nursing home, or at work. It’s nice to get out somewhere different.”

  When they neared downtown Memphis and they turned onto Union Avenue, Brydie knew where they were. She hadn’t been close to downtown since the night Nathan took her out to dinner, and she smiled to herself remembering it. A year ago she couldn’t have imagined herself where she was now. She knew that not everything had changed—there were many parts of her life that weren’t settled. She didn’t know how long she’d be living in Mrs. Neumann’s house, and she didn’t know if her job would keep her past the holidays. In a few months, Brydie realized, everything could be much different than it was now. It occurred to her for the first time that if she had to move away from the house in Germantown, she might have to move away from Teddy as well. The thought made her feel a panic in her chest that she hadn’t expected. She didn’t want to leave Teddy. She didn’t ever want to leave Teddy.

  “We’re here,” Nathan said, drawing Brydie out of her thoughts. “The grandest hotel in the South—the Peabody Memphis.”

  Brydie blinked. She hadn’t been paying attention, and now they were parked in a space in a large parking garage. She knew where they were, of course, because she’d been here before. “I love this place,” she whispered.

  “What?” Nathan asked. “Have you been here?”

  Brydie glanced over at him. The look of disappointment on his face was palpable. It was obvious that he’d meant to take her somewhere she’d never been—the surprise he’d been so excited about. “No,” she said, unable to tell him the truth and spoil it for him. “But I’ve heard about it.”

  “It’s one of my favorite places.”

  “Well, then,” Brydie said. “We’d better go inside.”

  “My grandparents brought me here every time I visited,” Nathan said, slamming his door shut and leading her toward the big double doors at one end of the parking garage. “This way. We can walk down the covered overpass and stay out of the rain.”

  Brydie followed him, breathing in the smell of the rain on the asphalt. “Wow,” Brydie said when they got inside. It had been so many years since she’d seen the place, at least eleven. Not too long after that, she’d deemed herself far too old to go on day trips with her father during the summertime. She hadn’t remembered the gold filigree and heavy, wooden embellishments. She hadn’t remembered the rich carpets or the flapper-era mystique of the place.

  “I know,” Nathan whispered. “Isn’t it grand?”

  “It really is.”

  “The hotel was originally built in the late 1800s at another location, but they rebuilt here in 1925,” Nathan said. “It feels like stepping into a time capsule.”

  “I sort of wish I was wearing a dress with fringe and a headband,” Brydie said.

  “Sit down,” Nathan said, gesturing to a table in the middle of the lobby.

  Brydie sat. There were several tables roped off in the middle of the expansive room, and at one end there was a bar. At the other end there was another staircase that Brydie knew led to a restaurant and bakery. The elevators were to their left, and the front desk, with its smartly dressed employees, was to their right.

  “Let’s have a drink,” Nathan said. “What would you like?”

  Brydie squinted at the little menu on the table. She considered for a moment the Peabody Mint Julep, but decided instead on the Lucille, a drink that was named after B. B. King’s famous guitar. It also had blackberries and tequila, which sounded like they’d go perfectly together. “I’ll have the Lucille.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Nathan replied. “They don’t seem too busy today, so it probably won’t take long. It must be the weather.”

  Brydie didn’t say it out loud, but she was glad that the place was practically deserted. She liked the quiet. She liked the way she could hear the people at the front desk chatting with each other, the occasional bout of laughter echoing off the walls. She liked that the hustle and bustle was on the outside instead of inside.

  After a few minutes, Nathan returned with their drinks. “I thought we could have a couple of drinks here first, and then maybe we could go into the restaurant for a late lunch. I’m sorry—I didn’t even think to ask if you were hungry.”

  “No, I’m fine,” Brydie replied, taking a sip of her drink.

  “There’s something happening later here in the lobby that I think you’ll love,” Nathan said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Brydie had a hunch about what it was, but she didn’t say anything. Her drink was so good. She hoped there would be time for another.

  “My grandfather used to take my sisters and me on day trips when we visited him during the summertime,” Nathan continued. “He thought we needed to learn more about where we came from. He didn’t think much of the East Coast and never quite understood why my mother married a Yankee.”

  “My ex-husband is from Kansas,” Brydie said. “Not quite a Yankee, but good enough for everyone down here.”

  Nathan laughed and took a sip of his Tom Collins. “Yeah, so you can imagine how well being from the East Coast went over. Anyway, my sister hated it down here. She thought people were backwards and she often found it hard to hide her contempt. But she went along with the outings anyway, I suppose because it was better than staying home with our grandmother and baking all day.”

  “I guess your sister was right in some ways,” Brydie said. “It’s not as fa
st-paced as the coast. It’s not as forward-thinking in a lot of ways, especially with older generations.”

  “True,” Nathan replied. “My grandfather didn’t mind showing us the uglier side of life down here, either, and it was sometimes hard to swallow. My sister stopped coming to visit when she was in high school. My grandparents never said anything, but I think it hurt them deeply.”

  “Did they ever come up to visit you?”

  “They came up for Christmas, until they got too old to travel much,” Nathan said. “But they didn’t like it up there any more than the rest of my family liked it down here.”

  “But you liked it here?”

  “Obviously,” Nathan replied. “I visited until I moved down here for medical school. My grandfather and I were very close. That’s why, I guess, they left their house to me instead of my mother. That was quite the argument. My mother expected to inherit everything. When she didn’t, well, she blamed me. She said I’d taken advantage of my grandparents—that as they got older, I somehow convinced them to bypass the rightful heir.”

  “That hardly seems fair,” Brydie said.

  “My mother has always been concerned with money,” Nathan said, taking another, larger swig of his drink. “We don’t get along very well.”

  “They must’ve been proud that you became a doctor, your parents,” Brydie said. “I know my mother would have been thrilled if I’d done something with my life other than ‘baking brownies’ for people, as she calls it.”

  “They like telling people I’m a doctor, if that’s the same thing,” Nathan said. “I think my mother was always a little jealous of my relationship with her parents. She put on a good show when I got the bulk of their estate, but to tell you the truth, I think she half-expected it.”

  Brydie hadn’t known either set of her grandparents very well. Her father’s parents died when she was too young to remember them, and her mother’s parents spent most of their time in a nursing home. Visits were rare. It occurred to her that her mother and Nathan’s mother might share more than a few similarities. “My mother and I don’t get along very well, either,” she said quietly. “It’s been that way for as long as I can remember, but I think from now on, we’re going to try a bit harder.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “It’s just complicated,” she said. “It’s been worse since my dad died.”

  Nathan nodded. “The last time my parents came for a visit was after I’d moved into the house in Germantown. I’d remodeled it, and I was so proud. When my mother came in, she broke down into tears. She said all of her memories were gone. I thought that was ridiculous, because she’d only lived there the last couple years of high school. I’d taken everything I thought she might want and put it in one of the spare rooms. We argued that night about how she thought I’d relegated her old life to one room—the smallest room in the house. We didn’t speak again for almost a year.”

  Brydie wished she had something encouraging to say—words of wisdom about raw emotions after death—but she didn’t. She had not yet learned how to navigate the waters of grief or guilt or anything else that came along with having a family member who didn’t understand you. She couldn’t tell him about how she sort of understood his mother’s reaction. She’d had the same visceral response when her mother redecorated after her father died. Everything of Gerald Benson’s had been stuffed into his old study, and it was almost as if he hadn’t existed. It was one of the worst fights she and her mother had ever had. Now, of course, she knew that her mother had been grieving just like she’d been grieving, but in a different way. She wished she could go back to that moment and take back the words she’d said.

  “Do you want another?” Nathan motioned to her empty drink. “I think I’d like one more.”

  “Yes, please,” Brydie answered, smiling over at him.

  Nathan walked away and back over toward the lobby bar, and Brydie noticed that a setup of sorts was taking place in the middle of the lobby by the large fountain. A walkway to the lobby elevators had been blocked off, and a middle-aged man in a dapper red jacket and a cane with a golden duck head was rolling out a thick red carpet.

  Traffic in the lobby had picked up, and children had begun to sit down by the carpet. People were milling about, shaking rain off their umbrellas and ordering drinks. Brydie shifted in her seat to get a better view of the goings-on in the middle of the room.

  “Sorry that took so long,” Nathan said when he finally returned with their drinks. “It’s starting to liven up in here.”

  “I’ve noticed.” Brydie took another sip of her Lucille. “This is one of the most delicious drinks I’ve ever had.”

  “Can you see okay?” Nathan asked. His eyes were dancing around excitedly. “I want to make sure you can see everything.”

  “I can see just fine,” Brydie replied. She knew what was about to happen, but his enthusiasm was so cute, so genuine, she was glad she hadn’t told him about visiting the Peabody before.

  In front of them, the man with the red coat began to speak. “Gather round, ladies and gentlemen, and let me tell you the illustrious story of the Peabody Ducks.”

  “Are you listening?” Nathan whispered.

  Brydie nodded, grinning.

  “Way back in the 1930s, the general manager of the Peabody, Frank Schutt, and a friend came back to Memphis from a hunting trip to Arkansas. The men had a little too much whiskey, and they thought it would be funny to place some of their live duck decoys in the beautiful Peabody fountain. Three small English call ducks were selected as ‘guinea pigs,’ and the reaction was nothing short of enthusiastic. Thus began a Peabody tradition, which was to become internationally famous. In 1940, a former circus-animal trainer offered to help with marching the ducks to the fountain each day and taught them the Peabody Duck March. This man became the Peabody Duckmaster, serving for fifty years until 1991. Decades after that very first march, ducks still visit the lobby fountain. What you are about to witness, ladies and gentlemen, is the march of the Peabody Ducks.”

  Brydie watched as one of the lobby elevators opened and several ducks waddled out, led by the Duckmaster. Using his cane as guidance, the ducks followed him to the fountain, amid cheering children and smiling adults. One by one, the ducks marched around the fountain and jumped in, seemingly oblivious to the people around them.

  “What do you think?” Nathan asked her.

  “It’s wonderful,” Brydie whispered, truly meaning it.

  The last time she’d seen the march of the ducks, she’d been seven years old. Her father woke her up one morning and told her that she was going to be taking the day off school, as he had some business to attend to in Memphis. At first she’d been wary about going with her father on a “business” outing. She’d been on them before, and they were always impossibly boring and consisted of delivering real estate paperwork for her mother. He usually had a drink or five, and they had to wait long enough for him to be able to drive again. Sometimes that was hours. But this day, her father didn’t have any paperwork. He didn’t have any drinks. Instead he bundled her up into the car, and they drove along the interstate singing George Michael songs.

  When they had pulled up to the Peabody, Brydie knew she was in for a delight. First, Gerald Benson treated her to lunch at the restaurant, where she got to eat her fill of cheese grits, before heading over to the bakery for a duck-shaped cookie. In the lobby, he’d let her order a Fuzzy Duckling drink while he nursed a beer, and they waited.

  “Now, you can’t tell your mother where we’ve gone today,” he’d said to her with a wink. “She needs to think you’ve been slaving away at school for the last eight hours.”

  Brydie had grinned at him. Secrets between her and her father were her favorite things. They shared lots of them, and it felt like they lived in their own, private world that was impenetrable from the outside. He was her best friend, and at seven years old, she couldn’t imagine that it would ever change between them.

  Of course, things had c
hanged. She’d grown up, and her father had gotten older. When he hurt his back when Brydie was sixteen, life changed even more. Life in the house became unbearable—her father’s constant pain and her mother’s constant reminders that her father was not as he once was. She supposed that it was one of the reasons she’d been so keen to marry Allan. Marrying him meant getting away from it all, and when she came to visit, everyone seemed to be on their best behavior.

  The summer before her father died, he and Brydie had the last conversation they ever would about her having children. He’d been so insistent about a grandchild, and Brydie hadn’t been in the mood to talk about it.

  “I just need one,” he’d said one afternoon over coffee at the bakery. “Just one little girl or boy on whom to dote. It’s lonely having no one to take on adventures.”

  “You can’t go on adventures, Dad,” she’d said, motioning for him to eat the last cranberry scone. “Not anymore, at least.”

  At that, her father had grown very quiet and said nothing more. Brydie spent the rest of the afternoon feeling guilty about it, but she’d never apologized.

  Now, as Brydie watched the children laughing and clapping for the ducks, their mothers and fathers looking on with smiles on their faces, Brydie felt the absence of her father more than she had in years. She felt the absence, too, of the child she never had—that her father never had the chance to meet.

  She sat back in her chair, allowing the two Lucilles she’d drunk and her emotions to wash over her. She’d told herself a million times not to dwell, but the wound was still fresh. She didn’t know at that moment if it would ever heal. How could the words she’d never said, the life she’d never created, fester so? Would she always feel this raw?

  Brydie didn’t even realize that she’d gotten lost inside of her own head until Nathan pulled his chair up close to her and said, “Didn’t you like the ducks?”

  “What?” Brydie looked around, blinking, as if she’d just woken up. “Oh, yes, I loved them,” she said.

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing!”