by Rhett DeVane
“A little?” Mary-Esther choked out a muffled chuckle.
“One thing about this family, we persevere.” Hattie gave Mary-Esther’s hand a brief squeeze then let go.
Mary-Esther blotted her eyes. How could there possibly be any tears left inside of her? A wadded pile of tissues rested in her lap. She added another.
Were there any pictures of her old life left in Nana’s house? Mary-Esther scraped her memory. Two cardboard boxes in the bottom of a hall closet. Those would be putty and mold by now. Only one other, framed on the mantle, if it had survived. Why hadn’t she thought to grab any of them on her way out? She had taken time to pack those dang rocks.
Simple answer: She thought she’d come back. Something from her life would be intact. Joke’s on you, the universe said.
Mary-Esther closed her eyes, breathed in, then out. She opened her eyes and studied her own hands, grasping the mug. Had her real mother had the same tapered fingers? “You said something about a brother?”
“Bobby. He lives down the lane with his wife Leigh and son Josh, except everyone calls the baby Tank. He’s a chunk.”
Mary-Esther glanced up. “Do you suppose . . . could I . . . meet him?”
Hattie’s open expression shifted to something else—wary? “Sure. But not right away. He’s not home right now. Bobby and his wife are over in Tallahassee at the doctor. He’s had a cough for over two weeks. Can’t seem to shake it. Leigh finally put her foot down.”
Mary-Esther caught the nervous edge to Hattie’s voice and how her gaze shifted to the side, the first time Hattie hadn’t made direct eye contact. Years of mistrust had taught Mary-Esther, body language trumps words.
“Bobby’s a typical guy,” Hattie added with a slight lift of one shoulder.
“Too bad you have to go out of town to see a doctor. Must get old.”
“There’s a little walk-in clinic for minor stuff,” Hattie said. The friendly demeanor resurfaced. “But when you’re really sick, you need a primary care person who takes your insurance and can admit you to the hospital if you need it. Tallahassee’s not far. Hit the interstate, and you can be there in a half-hour.”
“I need to be going.” Mary-Esther set down the mug and stood. “Thanks for the coffee.”
Hattie jumped up and hugged her.
Resistant at first, Mary-Esther relaxed into the embrace. Hattie smelled of wood smoke mixed with some light, clean scent. Well-scrubbed, Nana Boudreau would’ve called it.
“I still can’t believe this. It’s so unreal!” Hattie pushed back and held her at arm’s length. “I can’t wait to tell Holston. And Jake and Shug, and the group at the Triple C, and who else . . . I’ll call you . . .”
“No phone.”
“Oh.” Hattie rocked on her heels, stuck her hands in her jeans pockets. “So I’ll come find you.” She paused before adding, “I’m sure Bobby will jump at the chance to meet you as soon as he’s not contagious.” The downward tone told Mary-Esther not to expect any joy dances from “the brother.”
Moments later, Mary-Esther pulled away from Bonnie Lane and drove for a mile before she eased the truck over to park on the side of the road.
She was Mary-Esther Day Alford Fernandez Sloat one minute.
Alone.
The next, she was someone else entirely.
Or was she?
A cloud gathered on her horizon: a horde of family, friends, and extended relations whose numbers she could only speculate.
And some who might not be as welcoming.
Chapter Nineteen
“You have pneumonia?” Hattie lowered Sarah into a playpen near the hearth and as far from her brother as possible.
Bobby and Leigh’s log home oozed Southern woodsy comfort. Leigh’s heirloom pieced quilts hung from wooden clamp stretchers on three walls. Newer crazy quilts made from irregular swatches draped across the chairs and back of the couch. In spite of the cozy room, Bobby shivered on the couch beneath layers of blankets.
Leigh slid a steaming mug of lemon herbal tea on the coffee table in front of her husband. “He’s a pea-shade shy of being admitted to the hospital.”
Hattie pursed her lips. “Be right back. Let me see if Miz Margie can keep Sarah.”
A few minutes later when Hattie returned, her brother lifted his head and blinked rheumy eyes. “I’m not dead. Just feel like it.” Bobby’s words dissolved into a coughing spell. Leigh helped him sip the warm tea.
“Poor bubba.” Hattie patted her brother’s thinning hair. “I hate it you feel so horrid.”
“They started him on strong antibiotics and an inhaler, plus an oral steroid,” Leigh said. “If the congestion doesn’t start breaking up in a couple of days, we’re supposed to call the office. People are dropping like flies with this junk. Doctor said both hospitals are maxed.”
Bobby moaned and cinched the covers around his neck.
“Chills again, babe?” Leigh’s expression left no doubt of her feelings, the same soft-edged look Hattie had often seen passing between her parents.
Hattie laid the back of her hand across Bobby’s flushed forehead. “You’re burning up.”
Leigh picked up the digital aural thermometer and stuck the fluted nozzle into his ear. In a few seconds, a series of beeps sounded. “One hundred and one, point two.” She sighed. “Fever spikes in the evenings.”
“Have you tried a lukewarm bath? Mom used to do that, or either an alcohol rub.”
“Must have been in all of our mothers’ handbooks. I’ll stoke the fire and turn up the heat a bit, then I’ll try that again. He shivered so hard last time, his teeth chattered.”
“I can help you bathe him.”
Bobby opened his eyes. “No, by God, you won’t! I’ll not have my sister bathing me. That’s where I draw the line.”
Hattie held her arms akimbo. “Not like I haven’t seen it before, Bobby.” How many times had she cleaned up his vomit and thrown his drunk butt into a shower? No need to bring that up now.
He struggled to rise. Listed to one side. Fell back onto the cushions.
Leigh’s lips drew into a thin line. “I’ll stick with wiping him down with alcohol. Help me sit him up.”
This time, Bobby offered no resistance, verbal or otherwise. The two women peeled off his sweat-stale flannel pajama top. While Hattie supported him, Leigh used gauze pads to wipe his arms and trunk.
“My skin hurts.” Bobby wrapped his arms around his midsection and trembled.
Leigh flinched. “I know, babe. I know. We’ve got to get your fever down.” She gestured toward the back of the house. “Grab a clean pair of his pajamas off the dryer, will you? I should have thought of that before we started.”
Once Hattie and Leigh managed to get the fresh top on him, they helped Bobby stand and removed his bottoms.
“Don’t make me take off my drawers,” Bobby whined. “Please, spare a man a bit of dignity.”
“Like we’re concerned with seeing the family jewels,” Leigh said. “But okay. Let’s at least wipe your legs down and get some fresh pajama bottoms on.”
By the time they wrestled on the flannel pants and returned Bobby to his quilted cocoon, Leigh and Hattie were as winded as their patient. He slipped into a drugged sleep.
After a few minutes, Leigh took a second reading. “Seems to have helped. That and the Tylenol. Fever’s down.”
“Where’s Tank?” Hattie asked in a low voice.
“Staying with my mom. I seem to do okay not catching something from Bobby, but let Josh get it, and the chances are good I’ll get sick in record time. If I go down, we’re all in trouble. Someone has to be the nurse.”
“I could’ve kept Tank.”
Leigh regarded her. “With your shoulder like it is, there’s no way I would have even asked. Josh is a lot to lift, even with two good arms.” She ran her fingers through her hair and released a breath. “Not that I don’t love you stopping by, and certainly welcomed your help, but you’d best get out of the germs. I’ve w
iped everything down with disinfectant so much my skin is chapped, but still . . .”
Hattie went to the kitchen to scrub and dry her hands. “If you need me, don’t hesitate to call,” she said when she reentered the room. “I can get Margie and John to watch Sarah, or I’ll enlist Evelyn. Promise?”
“Don’t worry. I will.” Leigh walked Hattie toward the door. “Was there some reason you stopped by? I didn’t even ask. I mean, other than checking on your brother?”
“It can wait. Can I get you anything from town?”
Leigh tapped her chin with one finger. “Maybe some more Gatorade. The original green kind. That and a little chamomile tea is about all I’ve been able to get him to drink.”
A few minutes later, Hattie pulled onto Highway 269 and headed north toward town. “I know the perfect person to share my news with: my ‘other sister,’ Jake.”
Sarah squealed approval from her car seat.
*
Hattie pulled the SUV to the curb in front of a white, wood-framed house. A warm feeling washed over her. Some of Hattie’s fondest childhood memories revolved around her Aunt Piddie’s home.
The two-bedroom, one-bath home resembled many bungalow-styled houses built in the late forties following World War II. Constructed in a time before air conditioning, it sported a deep porch across the front and a screened room in the back. A row of evergreen shrubs shaded the porch from the brain-simmering sun during the summer.
Sarah jabbered to herself. Kid chilled out in her car seat, no matter if the vehicle moved or not. Hattie took a moment to delight in the memories of her favorite female relative, outside of her mother.
Aunt Piddie and her best friend Elvina had spent many afternoons in those porch rockers, aluminum pans cupped in their laps, shelling peas or butterbeans while commenting on everyone who passed by. As a child, Hattie had her own little pan and popped the peas from their hulls until her thumbs were sore and stained green around the nails. The child-sized rocking chair was still on the porch, freshly painted. Maybe her own daughter would sit there one day, learn that peas didn’t come from a can or freezer bag.
Short-needle pine trees dotted the corner lot, looped with a maze of azaleas. In the spring, their hot-pink flowers transformed the yard into a magical place to play hide-and-go-seek with fairies, dragons, and knights on rearing white steeds. Now, the spindly shrubs bore only pointed green leaves.
In the sloping back yard beneath the broad limbs of a southern magnolia, Hattie had “baked” mud pies for a family of rag dolls. Bobby constructed a fort in a copse of trees and defied Hattie and her friends to cross the threshold.
Hattie closed her eyes and could see Aunt Piddie standing at the screened door, checking on her charges. In the fifties and early sixties, neighbors watched over each other, and children worried only about swatting mosquitoes or looking both ways before crossing the street.
Back then, no horrors lurked in the shadows. No one had to check an online predators’ list to rest easy about the people on their block. Trick–or-treat candy didn’t have to be x-rayed and scrutinized. And if you acted ugly at a friend’s house, your parents knew the details before you got home.
She opened her eyes and glanced in the rearview mirror. Sarah watched her, contented in her car seat. “Different times then, baby doll.” Hattie sighed. “Long before you were born, I used to dance in the living room to Motown singles Aunt Piddie played on this suitcase-style record player and we’d eat hot teacakes fresh from the oven.”
Sarah gurgled a reply.
“I know. You met her before she went to heaven, but I wish she was still here to watch you grow up.” She got out of the SUV then extracted the kid from her seat and balanced her on one hip. Her shoulder complained.
After Aunt Piddie died, Hattie had worried someone would raze the simple house to make way for a modern brick structure with little character.
Who could possibly love it and fill it with happiness as her aunt had once done?
Aunt Piddie knew that answer. She willed her house to the only son of one of her paint-by-numbers, thick-and-thin, life-long friends. Betsy Witherspoon, for all of her money and uppity ways, had been an integral part of Aunt Piddie’s circle.
Piddie was the first to fold Jake under her protective wings when he returned to town following his mother’s death, and later came to his bedside to encourage him after his tangle with the hatred that might have crushed his spirit. Piddie had sensed something of herself in Jake: a flamboyant person who rose above pain, believed in the basic goodness of people, and shoved bad memories into the past.
Since Jake had played as many hours as Hattie in the deep yard, he had taken great pains to preserve the original plantings—many, antique varieties—and added complementary flowerbeds.
“You did good, Aunt Piddie,” Hattie whispered. Nobody else could’ve loved the old place more.
Hattie extracted herself from the bittersweet past and carried Sarah onto the porch. She stopped to admire the refinished rocking chairs with their green gingham cushions. Pots of maidenhair and Boston fern hung from overhead hooks. The wooden floor planks shone with a fresh coat of dark green paint to match the new shutters.
No need to act like company and wait for permission. Hattie rapped on the door and stepped inside. “Haah-looo! Just me and Sarah!” She glanced around at the mounds of labeled cartons. Elvis, Shug’s Pomeranian, scampered to the door, yapping. Hattie reached down and petted his head.
Jake trundled from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a red and white cloth. “Sister-girl. Good of you to stop by.”
“What cha doing, Jakey? Cleaning closets?”
“Isn’t this positively ghastly? Shug brought all of this down from the attic last night. It appears somewhat orderly now. But wait until he gets home and starts digging in. Give it five minutes, tops, and it will look like someone got sick and threw up Christmas.” He tickled Sarah beneath the chin.
Hattie situated the baby into a playpen Jake kept for such drop-in occasions.
“Christmas?” Hattie’s eyebrows flicked upward. “A tad early, don’t you think? We just got past Halloween.”
“Not if you live with Jon Shug Presley. You know how the man is all about Christmas. He’s blasted so far over the top this year, by the time he finishes, you will be able to practically wipe your behind with tinsel, and you won’t be able to look anywhere, and I mean anywhere, without being visually accosted by some jolly elf or a pig in a Santa hat or choirs of singing angels.” He stopped to huff out a breath. “You get the idea.”
Jake flipped the cloth in the direction of two large bags. “That’s not all. On the excuse of replacing one of his little fake trees that looked overly ratty, the man went shopping and came back with three more. That brings the artificial tree tally up to,” he stuffed the cloth in one pocket and ticked off a finger count, “nine! One is designed to hang upside down from the ceiling. And get this, another has a fuchsia Lava light trunk. That, I can’t wait to behold.”
Hattie laughed.
“This year, Shug’s threatened to cover the entire front yard with those gosh-awful inflatable snow-globe things and maybe a Burl Ives snowman figurine. Those dang things constantly hum on account of the air machines that keep them blown up. It’ll keep people up at night.” Jake jabbed the air with one finger. “It will send someone who is teetering on the edge to murder his nagging wife.” More jabbing. “It will look like the invasion of the Pod People!”
Hattie didn’t comment. When Jake wound up, it was best to step back and let the curve balls whiz past. Sarah followed Jake’s gestures and giggled every time he launched into a fresh tirade.
“I’ve warned Shug, this house may not handle all those electronics. He says he’ll pay to have it rewired.” Jake tilted his head back and rested one hand on his forehead. “I may have to leave town until after the New Year.”
“I hear Tahiti is lovely this time of year.”
Jake shoved aside a canister overflowing with ti
nsel and motioned her to follow. “C’mon back to the kitchen. It’s the only place in this house with a bare spot.” Elvis trailed behind them, his tufted tail wagging.
Good thing about the small house: she could sit in the kitchen and still watch Sarah playing in the adjacent room.
The aroma of cinnamon wafted from the galley-style kitchen. Some of the best Southern dishes in town had once been prepared in the cramped space with one metal countertop, a sink, and a gas stove. Jake and Shug had updated the appliances, replaced the cracked linoleum with ceramic tile, and painted the yellowed walls, but the original flavor of the room remained. Piddie’s Formica-topped metal table, surrounded by four red and white vinyl-upholstered chairs, was the only furniture.
“What smells so good?” Hattie asked, her nose lifted.
“I had this wave of nostalgia. I made teacakes.” When he grinned, the twin dimples showed. “Piddie’s recipe.”
Hattie’s mouth watered. “Oh.”
“Sit.” Jake poured Hattie a cup of strong black coffee and slid it onto the table. “They’re almost ready to pop from the oven. And yes, sweet love, you may have one or two or three.”
“That’s the signature scent of this house. I didn’t realize it until now.”
Jake smiled. “I have to appease the previous owner’s spirit every now and then.”
The timer bell tinged and Jake extracted a cookie sheet from the oven with a pair of silicone mitts. He scooped several teacakes onto a plate and set it on the table. “Don’t be shy, Sister-girl. I’ll be offended.” Elvis stood on his back legs, begging. Jake broke off a chunk of teacake, blew on it for a couple of seconds, and handed it down.
Hattie bit into a still-warm cake and almost swooned, overwhelmed by the combination of taste and scent. “Ohmygah!” She closed her eyes. “I haven’t had one of these in years.”
Jake watched as she chewed. “Bliss looks good on you.” He bit into a teacake. “These are to die for, even if I do say so myself.” He dabbed crumbs from his lips with the tip of one finger. “To what do I owe the pleasure of you and the little chinaberry’s company this time of the evening?”
