The Crossroads Cafe

by Deborah Smith

  “I’m selling the place. Don’t argue with me anymore. Get out!”

  “All right, if you insist, I’ll buy the café from you. Name your price.” I reached for the purse I’d dropped on the tile floor, pulled a checkbook and pen from it, and signed my name. “Here. You fill in the numbers.” I laid the check on her pink-teacupped chest. “I’m buying the property, the name, the right to all your recipes, and the wreckage. Thomas is already drawing up a blueprint for a completely restored building—with a modern kitchen and a few other new touches—but we want to use as much of the original materials as we can salvage.”

  “There’s no way y’all can make the place feel right, again.” Delta snorted. “You can’t even make biscuits.”

  “I don’t have to cook. I’ll hire Becka and Cleo to do the cooking and run the place. Even if their biscuits aren’t as good as yours, it’ll be all right. You know, running a restaurant is just about marketing an image. People don’t have to know you’re not in the kitchen anymore. They’ll just be happy that The Crossroads Café is up and running again.”

  She stared at me. “I want to see y’all pull this off. Go ahead. It’s a deal.”

  My heart sank. So much for my charm. I pinned a casual smile to my face and thrust out my hand, the scarred one. “Good. Shake on it.”

  We shook. I grabbed my purse and walked out.

  Pike paced on the front porch. Thomas leaned against a post, staying out of his way. Both of them looked at me hopefully. “Did you talk some sense into her?” Pike asked.

  “No, but I bought the café.”

  “You what?”

  “I should have known I couldn’t bluff her. So now we move to Plan B. We rebuild, we go forward, and we hope Delta changes her mind. Thomas is already working on the blueprints.”

  Pike pivoted toward Thomas. “Can you do it, Tommy-Son? Bring the place back to life, just like it was?”

  Thomas shook his head. “No. I can only create the illusion. Delta has to do the rest.”

  “What if she doesn’t bite?”

  I gave Pike a hug. “She never gave up on me. She never gave up on Thomas. We’re never going to give up on her, either. She’ll bite.”

  I looked at Thomas. He nodded firmly for Pike’s benefit but looked less certain when he stole a glance my way.

  The sacred biscuit of hope was in our hands, now.

  PART SEVEN

  The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

  —Eleanor Roosevelt

  It’s wonderful to watch a pretty woman with character grow beautiful.

  —Mignon McLaughlin

  It matters more what’s in a woman’s face than what’s on it.

  —Claudette Colbert

  Chapter 28

  Cathy Restoration

  Everyone in the county had something to contribute to the new café; everyone wanted Delta’s faith in biscuits to be restored. Alberta and Macy showed up from the start, with their hammering women. “We’re here to work, even if you don’t like it,” Alberta grumbled, obviously pissed that I owned the place. “You don’t even have to pay us.”

  “Good. I enjoy being verbally abused for free.”

  “You’re not really serious about managing the restaurant yourself when it’s finished, are you? That’s a joke, right?”

  “Oh how I adore your sunny confidence in my abilities.”

  “You can’t just give the restaurant a makeover and think Delta will buy into your fantasy.”

  “Watch me. A good makeover can change a woman’s life.”

  Alberta glared at me. “Is that kind of superficial shit still all you think about? The world can’t be fixed by a new hairdo and the right shade of eye shadow. Looks aren’t everything. Haven’t you learned anything since you got roasted in that Trans Am?”

  I stepped towards her so fast she blinked and took a step back. “Self-image is not a frivolous thing, and makeup is not the enemy,” I hissed. “Some women feel empowered by their brains, some by their brawn, but other women feel empowered by their mascara. You could use a good green eyeliner and a beige foundation that takes the red out of your complexion. A makeover wouldn’t undermine your image as a burly butch goddess.”

  Alberta sputtered. “You can kiss my un-madeup ass.”

  “No doubt that could use some makeup, too. And probably some cellulite cream and a good waxing.”

  I thought Alberta was going to hit me. I balled up my fist to hit her back. Then a miracle happened. A chuckle bubbled up in her mouth like indigestion. It bulged her lips, and she fought it, but it finally escaped. Bwahahaha. “Correction. That’s ‘burly bitch goddess.’”

  Macy, watching from the sidelines, looked relieved. I thrust out my scarred hand to Alberta. “I accept your apology.”

  Her chuckle evaporated. “For what?”

  “Oh, don’t make me go through the whole long list.”

  She stared at my hand. No more demure, girly, left-handed squeezes. A womanly shake. Macy nudged her. Alberta sighed. “All right. You’re tougher than I thought. For a beauty queen and a third-rate heterosexual actress. But you’re no Angelina Jolie.”

  “Don’t make me come after you with a pair of sharp tweezers.”

  We shook. Sort of arm-wrestled, but it was a start.

  Thomas

  I knew I could rebuild the café in a way that saved all its quirky charms. That never worried me for a second. But people see what they want to see in buildings, and yes, old buildings have a feel about them that not even the most meticulous attention to detail can’t salvage.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I told the crowd, fronted by Cathy and the girls. Armed with old knives and forks, we gathered around stacks of pristine new lumber in the café’s parking lot. “Poke these planks, scrape them, do whatever you want. When we’re done, we want every plank to look as if it’s a hundred years old.”

  The sound of cutlery hitting lumber filled the warm air. As Cathy prodded a board with a steak knife she looked at me askance. “Are you sure these boards will end up with a fashionably ‘distressed’ look, or will they just look mad?”

  “After some creative paint work they’ll look like the café’s original lumber, I promise.” I dragged a tarnished, gnarled salad fork over the wood. “The problem with a restoration is that the new edition of an old building turns out too pristine, too clean. The scars are erased. The character is gone. Without imperfections the appeal is only superficial.”

  I continued forking the board, and she said nothing else. Her silence worried me, and I looked over. She was gazing at me in a way that instantly made me hard. “I know I’ve asked you already,” she said softly, “but will you marry me?”

  Women. I’d never understand how their minds worked. Offer them a little architectural philosophy and they get hot.

  Not that I was complaining.

  “Sure,” I told her.

  Like most men, I didn’t fantasize about weddings. Couldn’t tell you what the rituals were for, why the tiny flower girl had to zigzag down the aisle like a fluffy pinball, why the ringbearer had to be barely old enough to wear a tiny tux over his Huggies, much less carry the ring pillow right side up, or why women spent so much time agonizing over the exact flowers for the bouquets and the exact configuration of the tables at the reception.

  All I knew was this: I wanted to marry Cathy, to have a wedding with her, but I had to rebuild the café first to do it.

  “We’re agreed then,” we said. “We want to hold our wedding at the café, when it re-opens in the fall.”

  Sentimental, the perfect place, a meaningful setting, yes.

  Agreed. Dammit. To wait until fall.

  In the meantime, we divided our days between the renovation at the farm and construction in the Cove. The girls threw themselves into the busy schedule, and we enjoyed a lot of happy days, family days. We cooked big meals in the new kitchen and listened to the Grand Ol’ Opry via streaming audio on the l
iving room computer on Saturday nights. We walked the woods and panned for gems in the creek and visited a goat breeder and bought Banger a harem of beautiful Cashmere does, then went to a chicken house and bought Herman a flock of robust Rhode Island Red hens. They towered over him in the new yard of the fancy new chicken house like big red hausfraus to his one-eyed, scrawny Barney Fife. He was thrilled. We hired a lawyer in Turtleville to start the adoption process for the girls, and we sat down with Cora and Ivy one night in the living room to make sure they understood.

  “This is permanent,” Cathy told them. “Okay? We’re going to be a family in all the ways we can be one. You’ll live with us permanently, and you’ll tell everyone you’re our daughters. You can tell everyone we’re your mom and dad, if you like.”

  I added, “We’ll hold onto you both so tightly that, sometimes, you’ll wish we’d let go.”

  “Promise, Mommy?” Cora asked.

  “That’s cool, Mom and Dad,” Ivy said.

  Pretty simple. The most profound decisions often are.

  That night, after the girls were asleep, Cathy drank a good red wine and I sipped from her glass. The toxic vodka demon was gone. I had a harmless taste for the vintages of grapes. “To our daughters, and to our vineyard,” Cathy said, holding up the wine glass.

  “We’re going to have a vineyard as well as daughters? You’ve decided?”

  She nodded. “You like the idea?”

  I thought about it. Grapes, wine, wine-tastings, cheese, crackers, friends, family, fertility. To be a vintner. To have vinted. “Yes,” I said emphatically.

  She smiled. “I’ve got an idea for a name. A name for our label. ‘Tree of Life.’ What do you think? ‘Tree of Life Wines.’ A salute to your idol, Frank Lloyd Wright. And we can put an aerial picture of your ‘Tree of Life’ trellis design into the vineyard brochure. And use the abstract tree logo on t-shirts and coffee mugs. Think of the merchandising!”

  I stroked her cheek with the backs of my fingers. “Why don’t we call the wine label ‘Wild Woman Ridge,’ instead? Good alliteration. ‘Wild Woman Ridge Wines.’”

  She looked pleased. “But what would the logo be?”

  “How about a crazed woman with her hair on fire, chasing a goat who’s eating a cell phone?”

  She stared at me wide-eyed, processing the image from a slightly lubed perspective. For a second I was afraid the fire joke had been too much. Then that famous smile, the little-seen-in-recent-times megawatter, lit her face. “Okay. We’ll work on it.”

  A few days later, Cathy bought me an early wedding present. It arrived right after we finished the new master bedroom. Bert and Roland picked it up in Asheville for her and delivered it on Bert’s aging, open flatbed. The sight of it in several big boxes marked BED must have entertained most of Jefferson County by the time it reached our ridge.

  “It’s a Stickly,” Cathy said, looking up at me anxiously for any hint of displeasure or rejection. A man can go a long way on an adoring look like that from the woman he loves. “A reproduction, because Gustav Stickly didn’t make king-sized bedsteads originally. But it’s the Stickly company, even now, and they’re still known for the finest Craftsman furniture. It’s solid cherry, and it’s a classic style.”

  “I love it,” I said, as we studied the giant boxes scattered around the formerly empty new bedroom.

  “We haven’t even unpacked the pieces and assembled it, yet.”

  “I know I love it, anyway. Because it’s a Stickly, and because you picked it out especially for me, and because I’m happy to sleep in any bed, anywhere, as long as you’re in that bed with me.”

  “Oh, you’re too easy.”

  I put my arms around her and pressed against her pelvis just-so. “No, I’m hard.”

  She grinned.

  The best sex takes us somewhere. Somewhere warm and expansive, a paradise of lust and happiness. Sex is and can be and should be but only very rarely is an act of communion with something bigger than ourselves. Men fuck and women make love, people say, but we men make love when we fuck a woman we adore; it’s the same thing to us. We mean it sincerely. I had places inside me only Cathy could fill with her body, and I made her happy with my body more than I ever thought I could.

  We lay naked in the new bed that night, looking at the summer stars through big new windows I was beginning to appreciate. She stroked my thighs with her fingertips. “A good bed to live in,” she whispered.

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Cathy

  During the first few days of construction at the café Jeb and Bubba pulled a potbellied stove from the rubble; Granny had given it to Delta years ago, and it had graced a corner of the café’s main dining room. The Turtleville Gardening Club, headed by Toots Bailey, took charge of the little stove and had it refinished. The Methodists donated six handmade rocking chairs for the new porch; the Baptists, not to be outdone, rebuilt a piano that had been scorched in the side-porch dining room.

  Other people brought in new mementoes for the walls, presenting them solemnly to Pike, as Delta’s surrogate. A bulletin board to replace the one that had always been full of ads for free kittens, yard sales, and school plays. Old photos and antique kitchenware and chunks of corundrum bearing specks of ruby and sapphire. Kerosene lamps and tin pie plates and blue enamel coffee pots. Books for the new swap-shelf and gingham curtains for the new windows. And even a jackalope to replace the one who had lived on a shelf near the cash register.

  Soon we had all the ingredients to mix a new batch of café-ness. We just needed the cook for this meal of faith.

  But she stayed in her house, grieving.

  “There needs to be a quilt rack in here,” Thomas pointed out amidst the buzz of saws and the thud of hammers. We were in the café’s new side porch looking at the blueprints with Cleo and Becka and Jeb.

  “Lord help, you’re right, we almost forgot,” Cleo said. “This room wouldn’t feel right without a half-finished quilt hanging from the ceiling.”

  Jeb nodded. “I’ll build a new rack.”

  Becka turned to me. “Cathy, you have to help us work on a pattern. Something special. Something that might lure Delta back.”

  “I guess this means I’ll have to learn to sew.”

  We started the quilt one night in the yard of the cafe, seated in a circle of lawn chairs with piles of small fabric squares in our laps. I sat between Toots and Ivy, facing Cleo, Becka, Dolores and several other women. Moths and bats fluttered beneath big work lights. Cora ran happily with other children, laughing and chasing each other. The local teens lounged in the shadows, pretending not to care. Thomas organized a poker game under the oaks. Dozens of neighbors arrived, bringing food. The dishes spread over long tables; cold beer and sweet tea frothed in tubs of ice. Banger wandered around, affectionately butting trees and stacks of lumber and people. We’d brought him with us for a visit to his old home place. “What’s that?” one of the kids asked Cora, pointing at a pile of crumpled, blackened dough in Banger’s traveling feed bucket.

  “Cathy’s biscuits,” Cora answered. “Banger’s the only one who’ll eat ’em.”

  “Delta won’t come to the quilting bee tonight?” I asked Pike. “She can’t be persuaded to even sit in the yard and enjoy working on a new quilt?”

  He shook his head wearily. “She packed her suitcase and went to Chattanooga this morning. Visiting some of my kin. Said she just can’t bear to see everybody pretending it’s the same here.”

  Delta traveled a lot that summer. She never came to the construction site, and when forced to drive by it, she looked the other way. She and Pike even took the grandkids on a Caribbean cruise, though Jeb confided to us that his mother still had bad memories of children in the thrall of water.

  Alberta and Macy held an impromptu Log Splitter concert that night at the quilting bee. “We like to think we’re developing a Dixie Chicks sound,” Alberta announced over the microphone. “Only edgier, and with no love songs about men.”

  I c
hewed my tongue and wisely made no comment.

  Becka launched the quilt project with this announcement. “We could be traditional and do a pattern—‘Crazy Patch,’ or ‘Sampler,’ but I think this calls for something different. So. Everybody. Just stitch your little squares together in whatever form you want, and we’ll piece it all into one big crazy-patch quilt top later. It’ll represent all of us, and it will be unique, if nothing else.”

  I watched Dolores parcel out yellow and green fabric. “What are you making?” I asked.

  “Abstract yellow roses.”

  Toots organized her fabric squares in splotches of green and pink. “What are you making?” I asked.

  She smiled. “A golf course. The fifteenth hole at the Masters, to be precise. The pink section is the azaleas.”

  Ivy immediately arranged her fabric squares into stacks sorted by print pattern, and began outlining a large architectural shape. “Are you making the Vatican?” I asked.

  “The Biltmore mansion,” she explained patiently.

  Thomas had taken the girls to see the fabulous estate in Asheville. Ivy and Thomas spent their visit discussing the architecture. Ivy gazed at my jumble of squares. “What are you making?”

  “I call it . . . ‘Oscar Night.’ This tiny little red-rose print represents the red carpet. These blue and gold fleur-de-lis squares are the bleachers where the fans sit.” I pointed at a garish purple square. “And there’s Joan Rivers.”

  “Do you miss it?” she asked. “Being on the red carpet and all that stuff?”

  I could lie, but I didn’t. “Yes,” I said.

  Later, as I hunched over my creation, Thomas came over, gently placed his hands on my shoulders, and studied my work. “No photographers on your red carpet?” he asked.