A Table By the Window

by Lawana Blackwell

  “You were secret agents?”

  This time she laughed. “No, about my being evasive. The truth is, I didn’t have a very good childhood. And so it’s not a pleasant subject of conversation.”

  The towel stopped moving in his hand. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She gave him a grateful look. “It’s over now.”

  They worked in silence for a little while, but not an awkward one. Presently he asked how the restaurant business was going.

  “I hired my first employee today,” she said. “Sort of.”

  When she told him the name, he shook his head. “I strongly advise you to reconsider. Forgive my crudeness, but the Kimballs are plain and simple white trash. Melvin Kimball’s living on disability for a supposed back injury. And you’d never know this was a dry county from looking at the heap of bottles in his yard.”

  “How can he buy liquor in a dry county?”

  “He gets it from Hattiesburg.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “The way I hear it, she ran off with another man when the girl was very young. I don’t know much about Brooke Kimball, except that she puts on a parade when she rides that bike through town. She’s never been arrested, but you can tell just by looking at her that she’s going to be trouble one day.”

  That could have been said about me, Carley thought. “I do appreciate your concern, Dale. But I’d really like to give her a chance.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’ve been in law enforcement long enough to know that it’s true—the saying that fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  But the fruit doesn’t have to lie where it falls, she thought.

  He wrapped half of the sandwiches in cellophane and spooned soup into plastic containers. When he presented her with a grocery bag, she said, “Don’t you want to save these for your lunches?”

  “There’s enough for both of us. Besides, that’s half the fun of cooking—sharing with a friend.”

  He sounded sincere, not as if this was a subtle warning that she should not entertain any romantic notions about him. Carley met his eyes and smiled. She liked the idea of being Dale Parker’s friend.

  She would not be a woman if she did not wonder if friendship would lead to romance sometime in the future. But if so, the future was where it belonged. If he were to broach that subject so soon, her old cynicisms would creep into the mix. She was content to keep them at bay for now.

  ****

  There was nothing Carley could do in the café while it was being painted, so she devoted Monday morning to house cleaning and exchanging e-mails with the graphic designer in Sacramento who made DeLouches’ menus so unique. After lunch she drove to Turtle Creek Mall in Hattiesburg and bought a summer nightgown and robe set and a bottle of White Linen for Aunt Helen’s seventy-fifth birthday party, to be held at Blake and Sherry’s tomorrow evening.

  Tuesday morning she stacked and refrigerated two long pans of lasagna before telephoning the Underwood house to ask about a deacon’s bench.

  “We’ll be home all day,” said a woman who identified herself as Vera Underwood over the faint whining of an electric motor. She gave Carley directions, adding, “If no one answers the door, just come around back to the workshop. The dog won’t bite.”

  Three miles east of town on Highway 42, Carley spotted the white sign pointing toward Tallulah Pentecostal Church. Old Salt Road wound through pastures and piney woods. The Underwoods lived in a log home with a porch that stretched across the wide front. As Carley got out of the car, a young beagle sprinted from around the side with ears flopping. He barked until Carley said, “Nice doggie.” Then he wagged his tail and trotted beside her up the steps.

  Vera Underwood answered her ring. She was an elegant woman, with high cheekbones, brown hair combed into a loose knot, and a light bronze complexion enhanced by an embroidered turquoise cotton shift.

  “Good morning, Miss Reed.”

  “Carley, please.”

  “Lovely. I’m Vera. Won’t you come in?” Her accent was the female counterpart of Stanley Malone’s. Graceful, almost melodic. To the dog, she said, “Sorry, Mickey, not you.”

  Honey-colored beams were stacked from sky-lit cathedral ceiling to slate floor. A stone fireplace reigned over one wall. The furniture was obviously handcrafted, with red Indian-blanket-print cushions.

  “I just stepped inside to make lunch,” Vera said. “But I’ll show you to the shop.”

  “I didn’t realize it was so late,” Carley said, even though she was certain the GL’s clock had read only 10:30 when she turned off the ignition.

  Vera smiled. “We’re early birds, but just aren’t ready for breakfast at six or so in the morning. So we have late-breakfast/early-lunch, whenever we decide we’re hungry. I realize brunch is correct, but we backwoods country people just don’t speak that way, or our friends would accuse us of putting on airs.”

  “I’ve never been in a log home. It’s so serene. And cool. Almost like being inside a cave.”

  “That’s because it’s so well insulated. The boys built this themselves—my husband and Steve—from trees on our land. The fireplace was an extravagance, with our having to order stones from Tennessee, but I’ve wanted one ever since my family stayed at Old Faithful Lodge when I was a girl. And since the logs were free…” She smiled again. “But I didn’t mean to go on so.”

  “No, it’s very interesting,” Carley assured her. “I would love to see the rest sometime.”

  “I love to show it off. Why not now?”

  “Don’t you have to make lunch?”

  “It won’t take long, especially now that I have a helper. You’ll stay, won’t you?”

  Carley was still not accustomed to such open hospitality from essential strangers. “Are you sure?”

  “But of course.”

  Vera led her through the wide doorway into the kitchen. The long table and chairs were so richly polished that they gave a mellow amber sheen. Vera said, “Clifford made most of the furniture.”

  That included their four-poster king-size bed frame. A guest room with black iron bed frame was situated between the Underwoods’ room and Steve’s room. Steve lived here only during summers and university holidays, Vera said, for he had a Hattiesburg apartment for the academic year.

  When Carley had seen even the bathrooms, she followed Vera down a hall and out the back door. A brick path led from the porch to a brown frame building with long screened windows. She could hear hammering as well as the buzz of a power tool. The inside smelled of freshly cut wood, machine oil, and varnish. Stacks of plywood rested against one wall. At a long worktable, Steve Underwood was running an electric router around the inside of a thick piece of oak. Several feet past the table, a man with a gray crew cut was rubbing stain into the unfinished wood of a massive pine bookcase.

  Steve saw Carley first and switched off the router.

  “Good morning!”

  “Good morning,” she said back.

  Vera introduced Clifford, who closed the lid on his bucket of stain and showed Carley a sketch of a deacon’s bench that matched the bentwood café chairs.

  “Steve said you might be by, so I went ahead and drew this up. Is about five feet wide what you have in mind? That would be a little longer than those in homes, but not too long to ruin the aesthetic appeal.”

  “That sounds good,” Carley said.

  “I can have one made in a week and a half,” Clifford said. “How does two hundred sound?”

  “It sounds reasonable,” Carley said. Truth was, she did not have a clue how much a deacon’s bench should cost. Perhaps she should have researched on the Internet. But Aunt Helen and Uncle Rory would not have recommended the Underwoods if they were not honest, and so she would have to rely on their judgment.

  Vera showed her how far along she was with the sign. The letters were routered, and the figure of the woman outlined with pencil. Steve was correct in saying his mother was the artist
of the family. “It’s going to be beautiful,” Carley said.

  “Thank you.” Vera took her arm. “Now, let’s go make lunch.”

  “Mother…” Steve said as Mr. Underwood chuckled.

  “I’m happy to sing for my meal,” Carley assured both men.

  Breakfast/lunch was simple: Mexican corn bread, and chef salads made with mixed greens, boiled eggs, garden tomatoes, cheese, and strips of leftover grilled chicken. Peeling eggs, Carley asked how the Underwoods had gotten into the business of woodworking. Vera told her that Clifford was a civil engineer and that she taught art history at USM until they both decided at age sixty to make their hobbies their avocation. “We had saved all our lives for this, and it just seemed the time to do it.”

  “That took a lot of courage,” Carley said.

  “And so does opening up a café,” Vera said, handing her a cutting board and knife.

  “I’ve never thought of myself as courageous,” Carley told her.

  “Hmm. So you have no fear about starting your own business?”

  “Well, yes. Plenty of fear.”

  “But you’re doing it anyway. That makes you either courageous or foolish, and you don’t strike me as being a fool.”

  “Thank you, Vera,” Carley said, and once again thought about how glad she was to have moved here. Was Tallulah unique in its number of nurturing women? It was almost as if God looked ahead years ago and decided this was the place where she would get the most healing from the past.

  Her cynical side asked that if God was that involved in her life, why had Huey Collins been allowed to torment her? She thought about Aunt Helen’s words about free will. If her stepfather could be programmed, like a robot, that would mean she could be as well. Would she wish that?

  The men came into the kitchen and offered to help.

  “We should have company more often,” Vera said before reminding them to wash their hands.

  “I can’t find the salad dressing, hon,” Clifford asked at the open refrigerator.

  Vera winked at Carley and crossed the room. “Perhaps I can.”

  “Your parents are great,” Carley said as Steve opened a drawer for napkins.

  “Thank you. I’m sure yours are too.”

  Carley returned his smile. “Will you hand me those tomatoes?”

  Over lunch the three asked about her plans for the café, even down to the colors the Stillmans were currently rolling on the walls. Over dessert of watermelon slices, Carley learned that Vera was one-quarter Choctaw, Steve therefore one-eighth, and that Clifford was the grandson of sharecroppers. She left with a bag of homegrown tomatoes and an invitation to come back and visit again. It was one of those niceties people said, of course, but she had enjoyed their company and the way the hands of the clock were not too much of an issue here in the piney hills.

  ****

  She backed the GL out of her driveway that evening with the pans of warmed lasagna, wrapped in foil and dish towels, on the floorboard and Aunt Helen’s gifts on the seat. Lights were still on in the café, so Carley parked behind Winn Stillman’s truck. She could smell paint from the sidewalk.

  “Perfect timing, Miss Reed,” John said, gathering rags into a bucket.

  Winn smiled, folding a ladder. “Well, what do you think?”

  Carley turned slowly, taking it all in. The olive green was even more soothing on the walls than in the sample square, and it balanced out the brown, red, and parchment trim work. Running along the tops of the four walls, in elegant script that must have been extremely difficult to stencil, were lines from the poem’s final stanza:

  For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

  The Stillmans were waiting. The first word to pop into Carley’s mind was one she had grown sour on while teaching school, after hearing students use it to describe movies, earrings, the latest hip-hop song, even a brand of chewing gum. So she smiled at the two and used another adjective that was just as appropriate. “It’s wonderful.”

  She regretted not having left the house earlier, for the Stillmans were as eager as she was for her to see the rest of their handiwork. By the time she turned down Mill Creek Road, six vehicles were parked two-by-two in the driveway, and five were parked alongside the road. Along with family members were neighbors from Fifth Street, some members of the Hudsons’ church, and fellow shop owners—including Marianne Tate. Almost everyone brought at least a token gift in spite of Sherry’s having penned No gifts please…Mom will consider your presence gift enough on the invitation.

  “Did you misspell presence?” Blake quipped while scooping ice into glasses, and Sherry assured him that she knew how to spell. Still, with worried expression later, she asked Carley if she had her invitation in her purse.

  “It’s on my refrigerator,” Carley said. “But you didn’t spell it wrong. It’s just that everyone loves your mother.”

  Aunt Helen glowed with pleasure, but the fact that some guests had followed Sherry’s instructions and some had not, posed a dilemma. “I don’t think I should open them until everyone’s gone,” she whispered to Sherry and Carley as people were settling into sofas and folding chairs with plates of food. “I don’t want to embarrass anyone.”

  “Well, you’ll have to open one, Mother,” Sherry said, while Blake and Uncle Rory exchanged a secret smile. “Go look in our bedroom.”

  The surprise was Deanna Hudson Wood. She was an older version of her sister, Sherry, but with brown hair and Uncle Rory’s dark brows and lashes. Mother and daughter came up the hall arm-in-arm, Aunt Helen wiping her eyes.

  When the guests were gone, Sherry shooed Aunt Helen, Uncle Rory, and Deanna from the kitchen to the den and shooed Conner and Patrick in the opposite direction. Carley was scrubbing pans at the sink when Conner came into the kitchen and asked if the painters had finished.

  “Just before I came here,” she said.

  “How does it look, Carley?” Sherry asked.

  “They did a wonderful job.”

  The kitchen clean and dishwasher humming, everyone rejoined the Hudsons and Deanna. Aunt Helen opened her gifts, and then Sherry divided the rest of the cake onto paper plates.

  “Well, that was fun,” Uncle Rory said, covering a yawn as Blake went around with a trash bag.

  “Me, too, Dad,” Sherry said, covering her own yawn.

  Carley managed to stifle hers. She rose, went over to Aunt Helen, and leaned down to wrap her arms around her shoulders. “I’m glad you had a good birthday.”

  Aunt Helen touched her cheek. “Thank you, dear.”

  Deanna rose to embrace Carley. “I’m glad we finally got to meet, cousin.”

  “Me too.”

  After farewells were exchanged, Carley was halfway to the door when Uncle Rory said, “By the way, Carley, did your painters finish?”

  “They did,” Sherry said before she could answer.

  Deanna got again to her feet. “I want to see it.”

  “So do I,” said Aunt Helen.

  The group loaded up into Sherry’s SUV, with Carley following so that she could drive on home afterward. Proudly she unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and ushered everyone inside. As they wandered around the place, reading lines from the poem, marveling at the cleanness of the kitchen and bathrooms, and praising her choice of colors, Carley drank in their compliments and decided she had severely misjudged the word awesome.

  Chapter 18

  Wednesday evening, Dale changed in the station bathroom to shorts and his 1999 Hattiesburg March of Dimes 10K T-shirt, drove to the high school, and ran four miles around the track. At home, he showered and changed into jeans and another T-shirt, then ate two veggie burgers and several carrot sticks in front of Law and Order on cable.

  Putting it off’s not gonna make it any easier, he told himself at the close of the episode. He switched off the
remote and picked up the cordless telephone. The ten-digit Pascagoula number appeared several times in the caller ID. Pressing the Dial button, he leaned back in his recliner.

  Stephanie answered during the first ring, as if she had been waiting.

  “Dale?”

  “Yeah, hon, it’s me. Sorry I didn’t call sooner. There was an overturned tanker truck on Highway 42, and I had to assist the highway patrol.”

  “Really?” she said, her voice a mixture of hope and mistrust.

  “These truckers take those curves like they’re still on the interstate. He’s lucky to be alive.” He softened his voice. “Did your sister drive you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How was it?”

  There was a hesitation, then she barely whispered, “It hurt.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m still cramping. They sent me home with pain pills.”

  “Poor baby!” He blew out an audible breath. “I feel like a major heel for not being there. When you only have two deputies, and one is out with the flu…”

  “It’s all right, Dale,” she said dully. “You explained.”

  “I just want you to know I thought about you all day.” He waited one second, two. “Did you…get my check?”

  “Yes, but I don’t need—”

  “Please, Stephanie. We agreed, remember? This was my problem as much as yours.”

  He heard faint sniffling.

  “Stephanie?”

  “I just didn’t know how depressed I would feel…afterward,” she blurted thickly.

  “Well, that’s only natural,” Dale soothed. “You’ll feel better tomorrow, when you don’t have this hanging over you. And as soon as I can get down there, we’ll drive to Mobile and have dinner at Gambino’s, then find you something special at the mall.”

  There was another hesitation, another sniff. “Really, Dale?”

  “Well, of course, baby. Why do you even have to ask?”

  “You were…so upset.”

  “I know.” He sighed again. “I acted like an idiot. But I’m proud of you, for being a real trooper. And we’ll have a half dozen kids when the time’s right.”

  “I love you, Dale,” she said.