Secondhand Sister

by Rhett DeVane

  Mary-Esther shook her head. “Mississippi.”

  “I stand corrected. You move to town and know more about someone in a few weeks than I know in a lifetime.”

  “I like to talk to people. They’re interesting.” She picked up the salt shaker, frowned, then used the end of a clean toothpick to jab clumps of crusted salt from the tiny holes in the lid as she continued, “Rose collects dolls. My Nana loved dolls too. Had them stuffed in every nook and cranny. Unfortunately, my dear mother Loretta got rid of most of them after I left home. The few that remained were probably ruined in Katrina.” Sadness flashed across her face.

  “Sounds like you’re big friends with Mr. Eustis and Miz Rose.”

  “I’ve taken food over a few times, helped him with some light housekeeping. Nothing big.”

  “Sounds big to me.”

  She jumped up. “Be right back.”

  After refilling coffee mugs and making the anything-else-for-you-this-morning rounds, Mary-Esther returned. “Julie’s whipping up the chili for the festival. One of the other cooks is making homemade chicken vegetable soup. Should go over big, since the weather has turned off cool.”

  Jerry coated a piece of toast with strawberry jam and bit in.

  Mary-Esther leaned toward him. “You have a little . . . ” She pointed to the border of her lower lip.

  “Huh? Oh.” Jerry wiped his mouth. “Thanks. Might not add to the authority of the uniform if I left here with a messy face.”

  “You working the festival after you lead the parade?”

  “I’ll be walking around looking official for a shift.”

  Mary-Esther winked. “Come by the booth and I’ll give you a complimentary cup of gumbo.”

  *

  Hattie stood in line for the carnival pony ride holding a wiggling Sarah. Leigh balanced Josh on one hip. Around them, excited children pointed out which pony they would choose. Hattie’s gaze followed the lines of white lights laced between poles to supplement the streetlight’s illumination. The area teemed with candied-apple-wielding kids and high-spirited adults.

  The two-and-a-half-acre vacant green space in front of the Florida State Hospital had served as the fall carnival grounds for as long as Hattie could recall. That morning when she drove past, Hattie had seen volunteers constructing booths, drawing the circular cakewalk grid, and scattering autumnal decorations. Unlike the Madhatter’s Festival on the banks of the Apalachicola River, slated for the third Saturday of each October, the smaller event attracted mainly locals. The Twin Cities Fall Carnival revolved around games, food, and community mingling.

  Around her, children competed for best-costume prizes, rode the ponies, and tried their skills at the dart-throw and air rifle booths. Parents walked by, their plates piled high with chicken pilau cooked in black cast-iron pots. Others wolfed down hamburgers, hot dogs, and soup, and discussed Florida State and University of Florida football over cups of steaming coffee. Everyone watched out for the kids, regardless of family ties.

  Hattie waved to Elvina Houston. Wrapped to her chin in a thick quilt, the old woman presided over the cakewalk from her wheelchair. An adjacent table strained with an array of cookies, brownies, and layered cakes. Contestants paid their fees and lined up in the number-sectioned circle waiting for Elvina to cue the compact disc player. Every few minutes, Elvina stopped the music then drew the winning number. Afterwards, the proud victor stood with wide eyes, surveying the table and pointing to the baked confection of choice. Hattie smiled, remembering the year she had won a fanciful chocolate cake in the shape of a cat.

  The carnival was the same as others Hattie recalled from childhood. Members of the local Lion’s Club flipped burgers and hotdogs over a massive wheeled grill. Fragrant steam rose and twisted in the night air. Announcements bounced from loudspeakers, paging misplaced parents or the start of raffle drawings. Laughter rang out. People called to each other through the din. The aroma of the charcoal fires blended with the scent of buttered popcorn and heated sugar from the cotton candy machine.

  One of the tethered ponies whinnied. Hattie shifted Sarah to quiet the insistent throbbing in her left shoulder. “Too bad Bobby couldn’t be here with you and Tank tonight,” Hattie said to her sister-in-law.

  “He’s such a kid when it comes to this stuff,” Leigh said. “But his cold is so horrible, he went to bed. He drank one of those awful concoctions your father swore on for coughs.”

  Hattie pulled a face. “One tablespoon honey, one tablespoon lemon juice, one tablespoon whiskey—heated and chugged down before you have a chance to gag.” A momentary concern flickered through her mind: Bobby. Alcohol. Even if it was medicinal.

  As if she had read Hattie’s thoughts, Leigh said, “It’s the only booze your brother will touch. Have to admit, it works.”

  “My theory is that it tastes so god-awful, you don’t dare cough, just so you don’t have to drink it again.”

  Leigh laughed. “Got to admire those old-time remedies.”

  “Right,” Hattie said. “Let’s see you take a dose of castor oil the next time you feel a little off. Or, how about a drop of kerosene on a sugar cube to cure chest congestion?”

  “Am I ever thankful for modern medicine!” Leigh repositioned Josh’s cap to protect his head from the brisk night air. “I thought Holston was going to be back in time for this. What happened?”

  “Some snafu with his publicist. He had the choice of either coming home and flying back in a couple of days, or staying. Foolish to make two trips. He’ll be in on Tuesday.”

  “I’d say you and Sarah could come bunk with us, but with Bobby hacking . . . I can bring Tank and stay at the farmhouse if you become uneasy.”

  “I’m perfectly fine.” Hattie licked her thumb and wiped a smudge of hot chocolate from Sarah’s chin. “But thanks. I know I can call if I get spooked. I have the most vicious watchdog this side of the Mason-Dixon line.”

  “This is the dog that, if given a treat, would let someone in and show them where you keep the family jewels.”

  Hattie flicked her eyes up, then down. “Spackle’s good for barking. Suppose I wouldn’t want an aggressive dog around the kids.”

  Hattie spotted Jake picking his way through the throng of revelers.

  He stopped in front of them and motioned toward the food vendors with a tip of his head. “Sister-girl, you simply must visit the soup stand. The woman who looks like your mama is dishing up gumbo.”

  Leigh strained to catch a glimpse of the booth through the crowd. “Someone told me there’s a lady working up at Bill’s who resembles Tillie.”

  Jake flung a hand through the air. “Not only looks like, girlfriend. Is the spitting image of. As I live and die!”

  “Everyone looks like someone, Jakey.” Hattie waggled her head. “There are only so many combinations.”

  Hattie moved into position and helped the ride operator secure Sarah in the saddle. Leigh settled Josh onto the next pony in the tethered circle. As soon as the other four horses held their wiggling charges, the trainer clicked, signaling the lead pony. Hattie and Leigh walked alongside, each with one hand resting protectively on her child.

  Every time Hattie passed Jake’s position, he continued the conversation in snippets. “Won’t hurt to check it out. . . . Aren’t you the least bit curious? Everyone who knew Tillie is talking about this woman. . . . Really, Sister-girl, what can it hurt to look?”

  The ride ended and they lifted their children from the saddles. Josh squealed disapproval.

  Hattie pried a hank of the pony’s mane from Sarah’s sticky grasp. “All right, Jake. I’ll go over there. I could use a cup of something warm anyway. I’d hate to stand there and gawk. That’s plain rude.”

  Jake walked beside the two women until they reached the edge of the crowd. “I’ll catch up with y’all later. I’m helping Mandy and Wanda judge the costume competition. Toodles!”

  Hattie watched her friend melt into the throng. “That man lives to add drama to my life. As
if I don’t have enough already.”

  When she stepped to the front of the Homeplace soup line, Hattie spotted Julie, a familiar face. Another woman, wrapped in the restaurant’s signature sunflower-print apron, bent over a steaming stockpot. Slim build, auburn hair pushed behind her ears. As if she sensed Hattie’s scrutiny, the woman glanced up. Hattie’s breath caught and held. The lady holding a long metal spoon was the double of her late mother, minus twenty years.

  “Hattie. Good to see you and little Sarah.” Julie tickled Sarah beneath the chin and a bubbly giggle rewarded the gesture. “You and your mama need to come see me at Bill’s. Miz Tillie had Sunday lunch with us most every weekend after Mr. D passed.” Julie stood with her hands propped on her hips. “We have chicken vegetable soup, beef chili with beans, chili without beans, and a heavenly Cajun seafood gumbo. What do you fancy this evening?”

  Hattie finally found her voice. “The g . . . gumbo, please.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Forgoing the first man-toy Holston had purchased after he moved to The Hill, Hattie picked up a shovel and a set of hand tools. When Holston and her brother had bounced up the lane in Bobby’s pick-up with the tricked-out John Deere lawn tractor lashed in the back, Hattie knew Holston had fully embraced Southern farm life. She gave wide berth to the machine with its multiple attachments and confounding dials, and preferred instead to load her weather-beaten wheelbarrow with bags of topsoil and mulch.

  Hattie entertained herself by planning another accent flowerbed. As long as she favored her gimpy shoulder, the physical labor stretched her muscles in ways different from her profession. This morning, it also quieted the jumbled, niggling questions about the woman at the soup booth.

  Took her mind off how much she missed Holston too.

  Independence still pumped in her psyche, tempered by the growing interdependence of a sound union. Hattie had married late in life, well past forty. Where she could sometimes be guitar-string tight, Holston bumped along as if he had always lived in a big, needy farmhouse with a wife and baby. Hattie couldn’t imagine her husband’s former life: the high-powered, stinging stress of a Wall Street trader stuck in a loveless union with a status-clawing socialite.

  And she had Jake. Thank goodness for her best friend. The day before, they had loaded Pearl—a small gray pick-up once belonging to Hattie, now Jake’s—with an assortment of low shrubs and azaleas. The tender annuals would have to wait until after the last frost of spring. “It’ll keep your monkey mind busy, Sister-girl,” Jake had said. “Keep you from obsessing.”

  Hmmph. I don’t obsess! Well, maybe a little. But who wouldn’t, with the hawk omens and weirdo phone calls and—

  Hattie stopped the mental chatter when she noticed the small, faded orange pick-up truck slow in front of Margie and John’s house. The color reminded her of McDonald’s special sauce.

  The truck turned around in Margie’s driveway then flipped a left onto the highway leading toward town. She dug the trowel into the soft dirt and disturbed a moist earthworm. Good thing she hadn’t chopped the critter in half.

  A few minutes later, she once again heard the faint buzz of an engine. This time, the same truck continued past the neighbor’s and paused halfway between before executing a three-point turn and speeding away. Happily chewing an oak limb to sawdust, Spackle stopped to look up and woof.

  Hattie leaned back on her tucked legs and wiped her forehead with the back of a gloved hand. “What the heck?”

  Probably someone lost. Many of the drives off the main state road looked alike. Easy to make a wrong turn.

  At least it wasn’t a van.

  She had settled the root ball of a Japanese elm into its new home when she saw the pick-up for the third time.

  Inner alarms buzzed. She glanced over to the fenced sandbox where Sarah played. Spackle jerked to all fours, in full alert. This time, the truck came all the way up the hundred-yard lane, made a slow circle then aimed in the opposite direction.

  “Hey! Stop!” Hattie stood and jogged toward the drive, waving her hands. “Hey, you! Stop!” Spackle dashed ahead, barking with his tail held high. The truck’s brake lights flashed. It stopped and idled for a couple of seconds before the white back-up lights came on.

  Hattie stood, dead still.

  “Sometimes I have beans for brains.”

  Margie and John weren’t home, nor were Bobby and Leigh. She glanced down at the narrow spade in her right hand. Like that was going to deter anyone.

  Hattie took a deep breath and pushed the anxiety aside. No one was out to harm her or the baby. If she didn’t convey vulnerability, everything would be okay. Her heart beat a rhythm in her ears.

  The window lowered. The driver appeared to be female. Serial killers could be women, but the odds were in her favor.

  “May I help you?” Hattie called out.

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  That voice was vaguely familiar. Hattie stepped closer. “If you’ll tell me whose house you’re looking for, I can probably help.”

  “I’m trying to find Mr. and Mrs. Dan Davis.”

  For the first few months following her mother’s death, Hattie had grown accustomed to old acquaintances appearing unannounced at her doorstep. Her father had been dead a number of years, but folks still looked up her mother. The visitors stopped as word of Tillie’s death spread. This had to be one last straggler who had been on some other planet.

  Hattie held up a hand to shield her eyes from the midday sun. “They used to live here. Both of them have passed away. I’m their daughter. Who are—”

  “They’re . . . dead?”

  Hattie took a couple of steps forward. “Yeah. My dad about ten years ago. Mom, a little over a year.”

  “Oh.” The voice sounded deflated.

  When she neared the truck, the features of the driver came into clear focus. Hattie sucked in a breath. That woman, the one from the soup booth. She tucked the spade into her coveralls, shucked her gloves, and palmed the sweat from her hands.

  “I’m Mary-Esther. I think—that is, it’s possible—that I’m your sister.”

  Hattie had often heard the expression so shocked, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather. As flummoxed as she felt, a hummingbird tuft would have easily done the trick.

  *

  “This is a lot to lay on you.” Mary-Esther drank the last dregs of now-cold coffee and rested the empty cup on her lap. Her eyelids burned and her nose dripped its own version of sorrow. Never had been able to cry gracefully.

  Hattie handed a tissue to Mary-Esther. “It makes my chest feel fluttery. Like I can’t get enough air.” She dabbed tears from her eyes. “To think, I grew up believing my sister had died.”

  “And your mother . . .” Mary-Esther thought of her own baby, or the promise of one, since she had been only a couple of months pregnant when Ricky Alford violently ended that bud of life. So long ago. “I can imagine the grief she felt.”

  “Mama was devastated,” Hattie said. “Daddy too, though I think he handled it differently, probably by spoiling me rotten. My aunt Piddie was the one who talked to me about what happened, and only after I was in my late teens. Bobby never said Sarah’s name. Mama would go to bed, sometimes for a couple of days at a time, before I was born.” Hattie paused. “Guess having me helped her some, but she still had this sadness that didn’t go away.”

  Sarah Chuntian slept on a pallet near the couch. One plump arm showed a smudge of garden soil her mother had missed in the quick wipe down. Hattie had to be a good person, to travel halfway around the world to give the baby a home. The kind of woman anyone would be proud to call a sister, Mary-Esther figured. The way Hattie spoke of her husband, he was golden too.

  Guess making bad choices in men wasn’t genetic.

  “Oh.” Hattie took a shuddery breath and put her hand over her heart. “It all makes me so very sad. You’ll never know Mama, or Daddy, or Aunt Piddie.” The sides of her lips turned up. “Stick around and you will no doubt
hear stories about my daddy’s colorful sister. Most of them are true.”

  For over an hour, words had poured from Mary-Esther in a garbled stream: her own patchwork life, the final harrowing hours of Loretta Day, and the winding path from New Orleans to Quincy and finally, Chattahoochee.

  How foolish she must sound, like a fiction author conjuring up the plot line for a bestseller, or maybe some complete nutcase.

  Hattie motioned toward Mary-Esther’s mug. “Like a refill?”

  “No. Thank you. I’ll be up half the night as it is. I have the breakfast shift at Bill’s. Five-thirty will come early.”

  Hattie’s fingers twined together. “I have pictures . . . if you’d like.”

  Mary-Esther dipped her chin. Each time emotions surged, her throat threatened to close. She still couldn’t believe she had worked up the nerve to drive out here. Again. Had Hattie not flagged her down, she might still be racing in the opposite direction.

  Hattie hopped up and plundered in a cabinet by the fireplace, returning with two plastic storage bins. “I don’t know where to start.”

  Why would this woman trust her? For sure, Mary-Esther would never invite a total stranger inside for coffee, much less give credence to a story like the one she’d just told. Lately, she had done a number of things far from her usual character. “Maybe, a picture of your parents?”

  “Possibly, our parents?” Hattie snapped off one of the blue plastic lids and sifted through the photos. She handed over a time-faded eight-by-ten.

  Mary-Esther stared at the portrait. The resemblance between the woman and herself was undeniable. Same slender nose, bow lips, and smiling eyes. The man looked like the kind of guy a child could count on. Not an uncle; there one day, gone the next.

  Her hands trembled when she handed the picture back to Hattie. Tears trickled down her cheeks, regardless of her attempts to corral the emotions.

  Hattie sniffled. She reached for the box of tissues with one hand and rested the other over Mary-Esther’s. The touch, both familiar and foreign. “This is going to be a little strange for all of us,” Hattie said in a soft voice.