A Table By the Window

by Lawana Blackwell

“Please don’t call me ma’am. I know it’s a Southern thing, but I’m only nine years older than you are, and my Western ears just aren’t used to it.”

  “Yes, m—.” She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second before correcting herself. “Okay.”

  “I’m not promising you a job, but I will contact those people. Do you understand?”

  The girl’s shoulders straightened. “Thanks!”

  “And your guidance counselor too, if she’s not on your résumé.”

  “I’m not in school,” Brooke said.

  “I know. But they work summers too.”

  “I mean, I’m not in school.”

  Carley looked at her. “You dropped out?”

  “Back in March.”

  “But why?”

  She shrugged. “I was gonna fail eleventh grade anyway.”

  “Oh.” And yet the girl was clever enough to spot Carley’s problem with the paintbrush and try to solve it in the hopes of getting a job. She obviously had some sense.

  Carley glanced again at the letters on the shirt. In some areas.

  ****

  “Yeah, she worked real hard for us the past two summers. The kids just loved her,” said LPN Arleen Fielding over the telephone that evening. One of two references on Brooke’s résumé, she lived off Highway 44 and was employed at a clinic in Seminary.

  “Why did you terminate her employment?” Carley asked at her kitchen table while tearing salad greens.

  “Well, I didn’t really terminate it. I just don’t need her this summer. My boyfriend’s mom—Roberta—moved in with us ’cause her old man’s fishing buddies were always laying around in her living room drinkin’ beer. She told him to choose them or her, and he chose his buddies.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear—”

  “Roberta isn’t. She said she’d rather clean up after three kids than a half dozen big ones, and it’s saving us the baby-sitting money we’d have to pay Brooke.”

  “Would you say Brooke is honest?” Carley asked.

  “As the day is long. She got here on time and never stole a penny.”

  The second name on the résumé caused Carley to smile. She did not telephone this person, but drove over to Henderson’s early Friday morning.

  “Just leave that in the buggy, hon,” cashier Anna Erwin said, reaching the scanner around to read the bar code on the 48-pack of bottled water.

  “Hey, Carleyreed,” Neal pulled the shopping cart through the checkout lane as she was replacing the wallet into her purse.

  “Hi, Neal.” She did not need the water today, for the painters would not be coming until Monday, and she was content with tap water herself. But she did not want to make Neal uncomfortable, or hinder his work, by showing up with the sole intent of asking about Brooke Kimball.

  “Are you having a good day?” she asked, unlocking the Ford’s trunk.

  “I’m havin’ a good day,” he echoed. “Gabe and I played dominos last night. Do you know Gabe?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He’s my cousin. He’s twelve.” He swung the water into the trunk. “They live in Prentiss, and we made peach ice cream. Do you like ice cream?”

  “I love ice cream. May I ask you a question?”

  “Okay.”

  “I met a girl named Brooke Kimball the other day.” The car rocked when Carley slammed the trunk. “Do you know her?”

  “I know Brooke. She has a basket on the front of her bike. She wants plastic bags, not paper. She ties them to the basket so they don’t bounce out.”

  What to ask now? “Is she nice to you?”

  He grinned, nodded. “She’s nice. She’s my friend.”

  Next, to Tallulah High School, where the guidance counselor, Mrs. Sparks, was a short, softly rounded woman with white cheeks and permed auburn hair. Carley remembered her, vaguely, from the basketball games.

  “You’re the young lady who’s opening the café,” Mrs. Sparks said, pumping her hand. “The whole faculty is excited. We get burned out on lunchroom meals, and take turns going for takeout two or three times a week. Only we get sick of fast food, and you can’t call in orders ahead of time to Corner Diner.”

  Telephone takeout orders. Carley had not considered the idea, assuming most of her patrons would be out-of-town visitors. And she did not even realize that Corner Diner didn’t offer that service. The vision she had for Annabel Lee Café suddenly grew. Was it possible that it would be even more successful than she had originally thought?

  They sat in an office with Wedgwood blue walls, Carley taking her up on an offer of a chocolate-covered mint from a candy dish. “Brooke Kimball has applied for a job at my café. Would you recommend her?”

  Mrs. Sparks nibbled a bit of her own mint thoughtfully. “Yes and no, frankly.”

  “I guess I should hear the bad news first.”

  “When she was here, she wouldn’t study, cursed like a sailor, and dressed like a tramp.” She sighed. “None of that seems to have changed, from what I can see and hear.”

  And none of that was surprising. Still, it was enough to reinforce Carley’s initial misgivings. But as long as she was here, she asked, “And the ‘yes’?”

  “She’ll work like a field hand if you encourage her. I tried that, and was beginning to make some headway with her, but there was no reinforcement from home.” Defensively, she added, “It’s almost impossible to do your part if the parents refuse to do theirs.”

  “I understand,” Carley said, without explaining just how well.

  ****

  The figs were ripe, but Carley had no time for them, beyond filling a cereal bowl in the mornings for breakfast. She invited the Paynes to pick them, and suspected it was not by happenstance that they overlooked the ripest figs on the lowest branches. Nice, when friends, as well as family, took pains to be thoughtful.

  “I hear you have a date with a certain chief of police,” Gayle called over the sheets on her clothesline Saturday morning as Carley filled her bowl.

  Carley made a face at her. “It’s not a date.”

  Gayle laughed, but then came around the sheets. “Just be careful, Carley. He’s a nice guy but a real Romeo, from what I hear.”

  “Really, it’s not a date. He’s cooking some vegetarian foods in the hopes of my putting them on the menu. But thanks for looking out for me. And that goes for leaving the best figs too.”

  “Well, it’s your tree! Besides, you need them. They’re loaded with zinc.”

  Zinc? Carley thought on her way into the house. She hoped it made a person stronger, for today she had to carry sixty chairs into the storage room in preparation for the painters coming Monday. She would have to leave the tables for them to move, but wanted to get as much out of their way as possible beforehand.

  She did not telephone the Kimball home; she wanted to speak with Brooke in person and figured the girl would show up again. Sure enough, she arrived a few minutes after Carley. In a concession to modesty, she was wearing a simple white cotton shirt with all buttons fastened. But the denim skirt fell only midway down her heavy thighs.

  How did she ride her bicycle without causing a scene?

  “Hi, Miss Reed,” the girl said.

  “Hi, Brooke.”

  “Um…I was wondering…”

  “You’re here about the job,” Carley said, lowering a chair to the floor. “I’ve checked your references.”

  “Yes, ma’am?” the girl said hopefully, then flushed. “I mean—”

  “It’s okay if a ma’am slips now and then. I’ve been called worse. You have the job.”

  “Oh, thank you!”

  Carley held up her hand. “Wait, hear me out. You have the job, providing you agree to three conditions.”

  “Anything!”

  That almost made Carley smile again, but she forced herself to assume a serious expression so that the girl would understand the gravity of the situation.

  “First…you must understand that the only job I’m offering you
is as dishwasher. I’ve done it before—it’s hard work. If you don’t think you can handle it, or if you think you might be tempted to complain later, I’d rather get someone else.”

  “I can handle it,” she said. “I won’t gripe.”

  “Good. Second, when we order uniforms, you’ll get your correct size, with room to move around in, and you will not shorten or alter it in any way. Do you get my drift?”

  “I’m not sure…”

  Carley sighed and conjured up an image of suit-and-tie EEOC investigators lurking outside the window. “My patrons will need to feel comfortable here.”

  The girl nodded, but with enough glaze over her green eyes to cause Carley another sigh. “Brooke, frankly, I don’t want anyone coming to work here looking like a Hoochie Momma. Now do you understand?”

  The green eyes widened with comprehension. “I’ll wear a gunnysack if you say to.”

  Now Carley could not help but smile. “Maybe it won’t come to that. And number three is that you get along with your fellow employees. Keeping customers fed and happy will be stressful enough. We don’t need drama in the kitchen. No fights, no cursing.”

  “I can do that,” Brooke said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I can. You won’t be sorry, Miss Reed.”

  Carley recalled having said the same thing to Emmit White. She hoped both predictions would come true. Lifting the chair again, she said, “Okay, now if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish here.”

  But when she walked back in from the storage room, the girl was still standing, leaning her head thoughtfully.

  “Is there something else?” Carley asked.

  “Is it against the law for me to help you do that?”

  “Yep.” Carley hooked her arm through the curved back of another chair. “You’re still a minor, and I still don’t have my tax ID number.”

  “You wouldn’t have to pay me. I got nothing better to do.”

  “Thank you, anyway. We’d better play by the rules.”

  The girl hesitated, then picked up a chair.

  “Brooke, I said you can’t help me.”

  “Uh-huh. I heard you say that.” Brooke started carrying the chair toward the propped kitchen door.

  Had the girl lost her mind? Suddenly uncertain if she should have agreed to hire her, Carley was about to order her to stop, when Brooke turned and gave her a little smile, “But if I won’t listen, how are you gonna get in trouble?”

  Chapter 17

  Remembering her protests to Gayle that this was not a date, Carley nonetheless rationalized that the desire to wear something other than grubby work clothes was reason enough for a dress. But a casual dress, a three-year-old lime green sleeveless knit with polo collar trimmed in white, and tan sandals.

  Dale’s directions were simple enough. A white frame house on Second Street on the west side of Main, three houses down from Green Thumb Nursery. The only house on Second Street with a squad car in the driveway, parked behind a Mustang coupe in a dark metallic blue. He answered the door wearing jeans, a knit shirt almost the color of her dress, and a navy apron featuring a cartoonish pig wearing wings and a halo, beneath Heavenly Pig Barbecue House.

  “A gag birthday gift from my brother, Chad, a couple of years ago,” he said before she could ask. “It’s an actual restaurant in Tallahassee. But why waste a good apron?”

  “Do you give him gag gifts?” Carley asked on the way through a tidy living room with tan canvas sofa and recliner, big-screen TV, and pine bookcase.

  “Of course.” He paused before an arched doorway. “Ah…I didn’t have time to clean up.”

  The kitchen was indeed a mess, with bowls in the sink, vegetables littering the counter around a cutting board, a light brown mixture congealing in a blender, open jars of mustard and soy mayonnaise, and cellophane bags of bread. But he had taken great pains with the presentation of his food, for the table boasted an impressive two trays of sandwiches, plates, and soup bowls for whatever simmered in two pots on the stove.

  “I understand,” she said, even though she herself was obsessive about cleaning up as she went along. “Everything smells so good.”

  “Really?” He rubbed palms together and pulled out a chair. “Well, I hope you came hungry.”

  “I did.” But the fact that he had such variety frightened her. Had she not made the point that she could only devote a small portion of her menu, if any, to vegan foods? She said, “You cooked so many dishes.”

  “I wanted to give you a good selection,” he said, settling in the chair beside her and placing half a sandwich on her plate. “Let’s start with avocado-cucumber. Easy and delicious.”

  He was correct about the delicious part, and she had no reason to doubt the easy. Simply cucumber and tomato slices, pepperoncini, mashed avocado, and alfalfa sprouts sprinkled with olive oil and vinegar, on whole wheat bread spread with tofu mayonnaise.

  “Very good,” she said, nodding after her second bite.

  The anxiety in his expression lessened. He took the sandwich from her. “Save some room for the rest, please.”

  The rest included:

  Spinach wrap with chopped vegetables and sunflower seeds

  Olive spread on barley

  Veggie burger on multigrain bun

  Grilled eggplant sandwich

  Roasted portobello mushroom, zucchini, red bell pepper, and chopped basil on white

  Mediterranean hummus—the contents of the blender—with pita bread

  Mushroom-wild-rice soup

  Tomato-vegetable soup

  “How did you learn to do all this?” she asked, raking up more hummus into her bread before he could take the plate away.

  “Necessity—cookbooks and the Internet. I couldn’t even fry an egg before I went vegan.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Which means I’ve never fried an egg, come to think of it.”

  She did not care for the grilled eggplant sandwich, and so privately ruled it out. A perk of being one’s own boss. Both the soups were delicious.

  “You do understand that, as good as everything is, I can’t promise how many will go on the menu?” she warned, even though she already knew that the hummus was a keeper.

  “I understand,” he said. “And it’s really good of you to at least consider them.”

  She insisted upon helping clean the kitchen.

  Clearly tempted, he said, “But I don’t have a dishwasher….”

  “Neither do I. But I have a system. I’ll wash and rinse, you can dry and stack.”

  “Only if you’ll wear my apron,” he said, reaching back to untie the strings. “Since you have the messiest part.”

  He helped her slip it over her head, then tied it for her. The simple courtesy unsettled her a bit, and she covered it by scooping up the almost-empty bottle of Dawn on the back of the sink. “Do you have any more of this?”

  “Here, I’ll get it,” he said, and she stepped aside so that he could open the cabinet. He handed her the dish soap, and as she tested the hot tap water she asked about the two framed photographs on the windowsill.

  “My family last Christmas,” he said of the one on the right. “My parents, Alvin and Ginger, brother, Chad, and his wife, Peggy, and their three girls.”

  “But where are you?” she asked.

  “Taking the photograph.”

  “And that’s you and your brother?” she asked, nodding toward the one on the left. The two boys in different softball uniforms had identical heads of platinum hair.

  He nodded. “I was nine, so Chad would have been twelve. I was in coach’s pitch and he was in junior fastball.”

  “What do your parents do?”

  “Mom keeps house, and Dad’s still a ranger at Florida Caverns State Park.”

  She handed him a dripping plate. “With such a close family, what made you go to college in Hattiesburg?”

  “Well, I followed Chad. I had done so all my life, and so I didn’t even think hard about it, even though he was a senior w
hen I entered as a freshman. He had an academic scholarship; I had a burger-flipping-ship. Chad moved back home after graduation, and I planned to do the same. But by the time I earned my bachelor’s in Criminal Justice, I was dating a junior in Marketing.”

  Carley wondered if he was referring to the Atlanta socialite fiancée.

  “My first girlfriend,” he went on. “Diane. That was after I got in shape. By the time she dumped me for a premed student, I was working for the Hattiesburg Police Department.”

  So, she was not the Atlanta fiancée after all. Carley said, “And you became a hero.”

  “Well…I have to give some credit to vegetarianism. Back in my carnivore days I wouldn’t have gone near a salad bar.”

  Carley loved his modesty and self-effacing humor. “I hope Diane was good and sorry.”

  “That thought did cross my mind once or twice,” he admitted with a little smile.

  “Your family must be proud of you.”

  “I hope so. They all came when I was sworn in as chief of police.”

  “Do they visit often?”

  He shook his head. “It’s easier for me to go there, what with Chad’s family and Mom’s rheumatoid arthritis. And I do, about once a year. We aren’t the Cleavers, but we’re pretty close.”

  “The Cleavers?” Carley asked while unscrewing the base to the blender.

  “You know…Leave it to Beaver?”

  “Is that a TV show?”

  “It was,” he said. “Now it only comes on cable reruns. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of the ‘Beave.’”

  “I didn’t watch a lot of television growing up.” Even the times they owned one, watching TV conflicted with her main goal of staying out of range of Linda and, sometimes, certain other people.

  “Well, that’s probably good,” Dale said. He gave her a sidelong grin. “So you were the studious sort, were you?”

  “Not really. Just your typical girl.”

  “Barbie dolls and tea sets?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Their fingers met again as he took the blender handle from her hands. He frowned. “No fair, Carley. You let me rattle on about my family, and now you clam up when I ask about yours. Were you secret agents or something?”

  Just the idea made Carley smile. “You’re right.”