But for the moment I basked in the simple pleasure of my own courage, amazed that I could stand there comfortably, looking out at my people—I had people, again!—and then I sought Thomas’s loving eyes, and I gave him my biggest smile, the movie-star one. And he nodded and laughed.
The night was all good, from then on.
Thomas
Cathy did it. She reclaimed herself, got her mojo back, told the world to look at her on her terms or go take a flying leap. An incredible night, heady, laughing, joyful. Delta being there, that was the key. The gravy on the biscuit, yes. Afterward, Pike, who couldn’t get a seat at the packed event, met us in the civic center’s ballroom, where the SEBSA organizers quickly set up a reception for her adoring audience. Cathy stayed for an hour, signing autographs, posing for pictures with other burn survivors and medical people. She offered to participate in fundraisers for burn research, making Dr. Bartholomew and the other board members ecstatic.
What she wouldn’t do was talk to the press. I’d never seen reporters sweat that hard to push burn patients out of their way without success. It wasn’t pretty.
“They got what they wanted when they took all those photos of me tonight,” she explained with a shrug. “They couldn’t care less what I have to say. They got the pictures.” She wasn’t bitter, just practical.
And then we left. “We have kids to feed, and we’re going to dinner,” she said. Priorities. We took the girls, Delta, and Pike to a pizza restaurant, and we sat in a corner and laughed and ate and relived the extraordinary speech while people stared and some came over to ask for Cathy’s autograph, and some of those took pictures of her, for which she smiled and waved. Then Delta reached into her purse and got our two torn halves of Cathy’s check for the café, and laid them on the table in front of Cathy.
“I reject your offer,” she said. “It just took me a few months to say so.”
She and Cathy got teary and hugged and we toasted with a round of beer, and then we ate a second pizza. Cathy and I drove back to the Cove with the girls happily asleep in the Hummer’s back seat. At home, with the girls in bed and a new moon peeking over the red-and-gold autumn forest, we changed into jeans and Giants jerseys then sat on the veranda steps with one of Mary Eve’s quilts around us.
Cathy reached into a pocket of her robe and held out a small, torn package. “This came two days ago from New York. Anthony delivered it. Delta waylaid it. And I, I admit shamelessly, I opened it to see what it was. Because it’s from your sister-in-law.”
I took the open bubble mailer from her with a sense of fatality. “I should have known Ravel would go for the jugular one more time. But don’t worry. I’ve made my peace with her, whether it’s mutual or not.”
“Take a look at what she sent you.”
I pulled wads of bubble wrap from the package, unfolded it down to a clump that fit in my palm, then slowly reached inside.
The watch. The heirloom silver pocket watch Sherryl had given me on Ethan’s last birthday. I turned it in my hand tenderly. “Was there a note?”
“No. I think the watch says it all.”
I nodded. I tucked the watch into my jeans. Enough said, yes. I had my keepsakes, all of them. “A new moon,” I said to Cathy. We huddled together and watched it rise.
Thomas
I carried a shovel and the small package, wrapped in one of my Giants jerseys, to the Nettie cemetery behind the house. It was a beautiful morning, a little before nine on September eleventh.
The first plane hadn’t struck the towers, yet.
I dug a deep, narrow grave among the heirloom tombstones of Cathy’s people, my people now. Then I knelt beside it and unfolded my jersey for a last look inside. I ran my fingers over Ethan’s toy truck. I rested my hand on the keepsake, one last time.
I buried my grief for my son, not my memories, but my grief. I cried. Then I stood and wiped my face, and put the shovel on my shoulder, and walked back up the path through the woods.
Cathy and the girls were waiting for me at the edge of the back yard. When they saw me walk out of the woods, Cathy patted the girls on their shoulders. Now. Go see him, now.
Cora and Ivy ran up to me and held out their hands. They looked up at me with worried, gentle eyes. “Are you okay, Dad?” Ivy said.
“Are you okay, Daddy?” Cora whispered.
I took their hands, curled them inside mine, met Cathy’s smiling tears, stalled until my voice would work, then said to our daughters, “Yes, I’m fine. I really am.”
And we walked back inside together, the four of us, on that morning.
Cathy
“Mom, you’re on CNN!” Ivy called. She and Cora, followed by the galloping cat and barking puppies, ran into the kitchen, where I was stoically waiting for another batch of inedible biscuits to come out of the oven. Thomas, sitting at the kitchen table checking the news via a laptop computer, nodded. “Your mom’s everywhere. They’re showing clips from the speech all over the Internet. Calling her ‘a remarkable story of courage and inspiration.’” He grinned at me. “Don’t get big-headed about it.”
“I’ve got biscuits to mangle. People can call me whatever they like. Talk won’t brown a biscuit, that’s all I care about.”
“Mommy, you are a star!” Cora exclaimed, hugging me by one leg. “Does this mean we’re stars, too?”
“Absolutely.” I stroked her hair absent-mindedly as I peered through the oven’s glass door. Damn biscuits. They didn’t seem to be rising at all, this morning. I’d never get them right. I sighed and sat down across from Thomas. The girls flopped into chairs beside us. Ivy laid my cell phone on the table. “Shouldn’t we turn this back on and see if anybody’s called since last night?”
“I guess. Sure.”
I’d turned the phone off on the way home from Asheville. I knew there’d be calls from reporters. The usual fluff. Ivy switched my phone on and hunched over it, studying the screen. “Whoa,” she said softly. “Dad, look.”
Thomas glanced at the phone and did a double-take. “I’d say you have a few messages here. In fact, so many you’re getting a notice that your message capacity has maxed out.”
I harrumphed and got up. “Big deal. I’ve got Rhode Island Red eggs to scramble while I wait for the biscuits to finish doing whatever awful thing they’re going to do this morning.”
“Mom!” the girls wheedled.
“All right. Ivy, play a few messages back on the speaker function, where we can all enjoy the sillier questions. I bet you a nickel the first ten calls are from tabloids wanting to know if I’m going to start my own line of miracle scar-reducing cream or if I’m having an alien-hybrid baby with George Clooney.”
Thomas arched a brow. “I didn’t suffer through that alien probe so you could get jiggy with him, instead.”
I grinned as I cracked big brown, homegrown eggs into one of Granny’s ceramic mixing bowls. Ivy fiddled with the phone. “Okay. All set. Here goes.”
Beep. “Cathryn, hi! This is Brad Harris with ProtoToon. I’d love to talk to you about some doing voice work in our proposed Robin Williams animated feature. Great speech last night. I totally see you as a lioness.”
Beep. “Cathryn, babe! Marcia Steen Conklin here. Casting director. You’d make a perfect mother for Superman. The next sequel. Flashback to his Smallville years. Young Mrs. Kent. We can work your new look into the script. I am so serious. Call me, okay?”
Beep. “Cathryn. This is you-know-who. Don’t make me beg. Call me, all right?”
Everyone looked at me. “Who was that lady?” Ivy asked. “Her voice sounded really familiar.”
“Oprah,” I said.
It went on like that for dozens of calls. Offers, solid ones, and ‘call me’s’ from all the major players, including studio heads. My agent had left a dozen messages. The first one said, “Hey, I told you to find some great guy and get married and have some babies, but I didn’t think you’d get a fiancé, two daughters, a farm, a café, a vineyard, pets and a goat with
in a year. Listen, what I said before about your options? Forget it. It’s a whole new world after that speech. You’re not just an actress anymore, not just a movie star. You’re a symbol. You’re a role model. And good role models can get good roles.”
And then, finally, there was the call that brought me to a halt with my hand on the oven door.
“Gerald, here,” the deep, pompous voice said. “Cathryn. Come on. Be a team player. Let’s put you back out in public. New campaign. The face of Flawless doesn’t have to be Flawless. You looked fabulous last night. With the right lighting, hey, the sky’s the limit. I never gave up on you, you know. We can still do business together.”
Click.
Thomas and I looked at each other. He looked at the phone. His jaw tightened. So did mine. A small vein throbbed in his cheek. A larger one throbbed in mine. I walked over, picked up the phone, and said quietly, “Allow me.”
I went out the new kitchen door, through the side yard, and out to the fresh new fences of the goat pastures and the palatial goat barn. Thomas and the girls followed me. Banger and his ladies looked up from a delicious pile of hay. I held the cell phone through the fence to him. “A special treat. This one’s loaded with high-calorie sweet-talk. Want it?”
“Bah,” he said happily, and crunched the phone between his teeth.
I pivoted to find Thomas’s grim look fading to a smile. The girls looked up at us, frowning.
“Mom, you’re not going to take any of those offers?” Ivy said. “Not even Superman’s mother?”
“We’re not moving to Hollywood are we?” Cora asked. “I don’t think the chickens’d be happy there.”
“We’re not moving,” I promised, holding Thomas gaze. “But I might accept a good offer from time to time. Can’t hurt to make a little extra money here and there. And get some publicity for Wild Woman Ridge Winery. Hmmm?”
Thomas chuckled and nodded. “I totally see you as a lioness.”
So did I.
Ivy turned toward the farm road, listening. “Somebody’s coming.”
Pike’s patrol car rumbled into the yard. We hurried over. “Delta’s cooking,” he yelled. “Come on down to the café. She’s back in the kitchen!”
“Grab your coats,” Thomas told the girls. “I’ll feed the puppies and the cat, and—”
“My biscuits are still in the oven,” I moaned, running for the house. This would be the worst batch ever. I rushed into the kitchen, flung the oven door open, and peered inside as I swiped a pair of oven mitts off the counter.
I halted, staring.
“The Lard cooks in mysterious ways,” I whispered.
Word spread like the aroma of good food. The Crossroads Café reopened that morning without any pre-opening publicity, yet the parking lot was full by the time we arrived. Thomas and I headed into the new kitchen via the new back door.
“Fry that ham a little harder,” Delta commanded cheerfully. “Get that new griddle up to temperature! And somebody, please, somebody stir another stick of butter into those grits.”
Becka, Cleo, Jeb, Bubba, Alberta, Macy, Dolores and the Judge hurried in all directions. Thomas and I ducked into a safe corner. Delta pivoted and saw us. “Make yourselves useful!”
I came towards her like a peasant bringing a gift to a queen. I held out a shallow bread basket draped in one of my grandmother’s embroidered dish clothes. “I did it,” I whispered.
Thomas ceremoniously pulled the cloth from atop the basket. A small mountain of golden-brown biscuits waited underneath. Delta laughed and applauded. “I told you it was all about having the right heart. They look perfect!”
“More important, they taste perfect.”
She plucked one from the top, studied it the way a wine connoisseur studies a great cabernet, then broke the biscuit apart with her hands. “Flaky, buttery-smelling, just right,” she crooned. Slowly she put a piece in her mouth, shut her eyes, chewed and swallowed. She gave a laugh, looked at me with glowing eyes, and held out her arms. “You’re a biscuit-maker now, cousin!”
We hugged. “How would you like to meet Oprah?” I asked.
“Oh, sure. Any ol’ day. And the Queen of England, and Dolly Parton.” She thought I was joking. I let it go, for now. Plenty of time to discuss my plans for her cooking show. Forget the Food Network. We’d produce and sell our own videos. ‘Cooking at the Crossroads with Delta,’ or something catchy like that.
Delta took my biscuits and set them on a steam table. “Serve those up,” she told the gang. “Biscuits aren’t meant just to be admired; they’re meant to nourish the wounded soul and feed the aching heart.”
My biscuits were whisked into the new dining rooms. On that morning I began to feed the soulfully needy, to share my wisdom of the golden crust. Thomas kissed me. “Flaky,” he said, “but just right.”
I laughed. “What can we do to help around here?” I asked Delta.
Delta pointed to a crate of apples. “Peel and slice. I feel some apple cobbler comin’ on!”
Thomas and I carried the apples outside. We sat down under the oaks with a wash tub and paring knives, in the sunshine of the fall morning. Everything in life leads us where we’re supposed to go. It’s not always easy to see our destination in the middle of the journey. Thomas lost his son but found me and the girls. I lost my beauty, at least the easy version of it, but I found him, and the girls, and Delta and the café.
I wouldn’t trade any of them for a perfect face. Never.
I looked at the breathtaking autumn panorama of the mountains. I listened to Cora and Ivy’s laughter as they played with friends in the café’s backyard. I thought of our animals at home, well-fed and safe. I inhaled the aroma of the café’s kitchen. I thought of the warmth and friendship of the coming years. I looked at Thomas, contentedly working beside me. We’d have lots of happy decades to come. Years full of biscuits. Homemade and satisfying, filled with love. I put a hand to my heart.
This is how it feels to be beautiful.
Delta’s Biscuit History and Recipes
“Biscoctus.”
That’s Latin for biscuit, and it translates as “twice cooked.”
According to food historian Lynne Olver, editor and researcher at foodtimeline.org, the traditional Southern biscuit—a soft, leavened bread instead of a hard cracker—was mentioned in travelers’ journals as early as 1818 and appeared in Webster’s Dictionary by 1828. Nineteenth-century recipe books—especially those in the South—included instructions for “soda biscuits” or “baking-soda biscuits,” and by the 1850’s cookbooks also noted a curious cousin, the “beaten biscuit.”
Though often called the “Maryland Beaten Biscuit,” the beaten biscuit was a staple of Deep-South and Mountain-South kitchens, often served up with thick slices of ham. Cooks literally beat the biscuit dough for at least thirty minutes to tenderize it, usually employing a wooden mallet or rolling pin, but a hammer or ax handle would suffice, too. While it’s hard to pinpoint the exact ethnic origins of Southern biscuit-beating, we know for sure that English cooks were pummeling biscuit dough as early as the 1500s.
Beaten or not, the historic Southern biscuit consists of these basics: flour, salt, baking powder, water or milk, and lard—evil, wonderful, saturated-fat, high-cholesterol lard. Rendered pig fat. A Southern delight. Lard is white, gooey, delicious and a fabulous cooking ingredient due to its high smoking point. (People used it not only for baking, but as a topping, like butter.) It produces incredibly light, flaky biscuits (and also great pie crusts.) Many traditional cooks feel lard’s charms outweigh its health risks. Just enjoy all foods in moderation, and never forget, as Delta says, “The Lard cooks in mysterious ways.”
Purists still make their biscuits with lard, particularly the premium “leaf lard” rendered from high-quality fat around the pigs’ kidneys. But in 1911 Proctor & Gamble introduced Crisco, a hydrogenated vegetable oil that was tasty, easy to store, and cheaper than either lard or butter. To teach housewives about the new product, Proctor
& Gamble provided a cookbook full of Crisco recipes and hired home economists to demonstrate those recipes all over the country. (Read the history of Crisco at www.crisco.com.)
Of course, we now know that both lard and hydrogenated vegetable oil have nutritional drawbacks, but what’s the thrill of Southern soul food without a little hellfire! Why, taking the flaky, fatty goodness out of a great biscuit would be like taking the moonlight out of the magnolias. Sacrilege!
Some Good Biscuit Recipes
A little trivia: Here are a few of the sacred names you’ll see on the pantry shelves in a Southern kitchen: White Lily or Gold Medal (flour), Crisco (vegetable shortening), Calumet or Clabber Girl (baking powder). A baking tip: Use a deep biscuit pan, not a cookie sheet. And make sure your baking pan is shiny. A dark pan will cause your biscuits to brown too much on the bottom.
Chuckwagon Biscuits
This one’s only for a serious outdoors cook. You need a bed of coals and a black-iron Dutch oven. The feet of the oven let air circulate underneath as it sits in the coals, and the rimmed lid lets you pile coals on top to brown the biscuits.
Ingredients:3 cups flour (not the self-rising kind)
6 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoon lard
1 cup of milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
Grease your Dutch oven and let it start heating up in the coals. Set the lid in the coals—you want the lid warm, too.
Sift the dry items together then mold the lard into them by hand until the dough’s texture is flaky. Add the milk to moisten the dough. Roll or pat the dough out on a floured board (the dough should be about an inch thick when you’re finished), then cut into biscuits. A clean tin can makes a good cutter!
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