“You too.” My voice came out staccato as she clapped me on the back.
“This is my aunt, Josephine,” Jack said.
She waved her hand at him and said, “I’m Josie. Only my mother called me Josephine.”
“It’s great to meet you. Thank you for having me.”
“Oh, honey,” she said. “You’re practically family.”
Leading us both inside, she took my hand. “Let me show you around.”
Jack grinned. “Josie and Buck built this house. They love showing it off.”
“It’s beautiful.” I eyed the staircase. They’d done an excellent job of re-creating Craftsman style: clean lines, dark wood, elegant simplicity. Even the windows had arched muntins, one of my favorite features of the period. “I’d show it off too.”
Josie smiled. “We love refurbishing. We salvaged a lot of original woodwork from houses that were condemned after the last hurricane. Many people replace windows and doors with the new stuff, so we’re always on the hunt.”
I took mental notes as I followed Josie through the house. She finally led us to the backyard where Buck was stirring a giant metal pot on a propane burner.
“Hey, kid,” Buck said to Jack. “I see you finally let this gal take a break.”
“It’s not easy.” Jack winked at me. “But ‘crawfish boil’ were the magic words.”
“I knew it,” Buck said. “No one can resist.”
Based on their questions, Jack had obviously filled in the blanks prior to dinner; I felt like Josie and Buck already knew everything about me. Josie wanted to learn more about my house-flipping adventures, saying she’d thought about trying a couple of her own. She and Buck did some carpentry on the side. In addition to running the store, she painted, and Buck could build just about anything.
“You want to help me with the biscuits?” Josie asked.
“I’m not much of a cook,” I said, following her to the kitchen.
“Honey, please. Everybody can make biscuits.”
She quickly tossed the dough together and rolled it out on the counter, then used the lid of a Mason jar to cut them out.
“I sure am glad you found Jack,” she said.
I paused, placing the biscuits in the iron skillet like she’d shown me. “Yeah, that was a lucky surprise,” I said. “He’s been a huge help with the house.”
She smiled, more to herself than at me.
“He’s one of the good ones,” she said.
Josie grabbed another skillet and filled it so the biscuits were touching, then slid both into the oven.
~~~~
Outside, when Buck had declared the boil perfect, we all gathered at the picnic table and filled our bowls. Josie told me stories about Jack that made him blush so hard I thought he’d crawl under the table. They practically raised him after his parents had died, and now they were telling me all the things he’d never tell me about himself.
“Jack graduated cum laude from Tulane,” Josie said. “Went on a scholarship.”
“Is that right?” I turned to Jack and made a mental note to ask him more later.
“Lord, Josie,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “Enza doesn’t want to hear about all that.”
“He never did sing his own praises,” she said.
I was envious of him, having Buck and Josie. They were just the kind of people I imagined everyone else in the world having back when I realized that I didn’t. He’d gotten a second chance with parents, and that made me both happy for him and sad for myself. I could have been that way with Vergie, but I didn’t know it at the time and didn’t have someone to tell me.
We stayed there until well after dark, until the only lights were the tiny white bulbs strung in the oak trees by the picnic table. The low-hanging limbs created a canopy over us, filled with buzzing katydids.
“Well,” Jack said at last, “we’d best be getting back. I have to go in later tonight, and this one will be up early to start more repairs.”
“Don’t be such a stranger,” Josie said. “And bring this gal back, will you?” She hugged me again, squeezing me tight.
“Thank you,” I said, “for everything.”
Buck hugged me too, slapping me on the shoulder. “If you need anything, you just give us a call. I mean anything.” It was a reference to the night before, most certainly. I hated that I’d gotten so close to Remy, so carelessly, but it was worse that Buck had to see it.
“Thanks.”
Jack placed his hand on the small of my back as we walked toward the front of the house—a gesture that Josie did not miss—and then quickly dropped it when she smiled at us.
“Sorry,” he whispered, as we headed for his truck. “Reflex, I guess.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “I just wouldn’t want to give them the wrong idea.”
He nodded.
What I didn’t say was that was the most at home I’d felt since I was a kid. Having dinner with Josie and Buck, hearing stories about Jack as a wild teenager, feeling the warmth of his hands spread through me every time we touched—these were things I hadn’t expected to experience. Not that evening and maybe not ever again.
Chapter 9
The next day, I went into Vergie’s room with the intention of boxing things up. The room itself didn’t need much work, but it would help to pack her things. I’d scheduled a couple of the repair guys Grant had recommended, but they couldn’t come until Friday, which meant they’d start work Monday. The worst thing about repairs was the waiting.
Jack had gone in early in the morning to cover for a friend and would be back late. He was supposed to have two days off, but they’d been shorthanded for several weeks. The arsonist was making them all work extra shifts.
I had two boxes filled with books and knick-knacks by the time I got to the closet, but then my packing turned to snooping. I found an old record player on the top shelf and pulled an old zydeco record from its sleeve. The needle plopped into the groove, and music rolled through the room. I grabbed one of Vergie’s straw hats and put it on. It was a little tight, and the big brim flopped down in front of my eyes. It seemed to catch the sound from the record and funnel it straight into my ears. Pushing the clothes aside, I caught the faintest hint of Vergie’s magnolia-scented perfume. It was like being snatched backward in time, to when we sat sipping tea together on the porch.
The closet shelves were full of boxes and stacks of books. It hadn’t occurred to me until right then that Vergie might have kept some things of my mother’s. “I sure hope you were a packrat,” I said, emptying the first box onto the floor.
Photos and little notebooks, letters and trinkets—I arranged them all like a collage and then sat back to look at them. It was like they were parts of an equation that only made sense if you saw all the components together. In one pile was a tiny doll made of corn husks and scraps of cloth. Staring into its blank face, I thought of Miranda standing in the storm, still as a fence post as the rain beat her hair against her face. I wondered what had drawn Jack to her in the beginning. It was fascinating to imagine how unlikely couples stayed together—what it was that bound them so tightly to one another, despite their dissimilarity.
My parents had been two of those people. My father was practical, responsible and reliable as a hammer. He found comfort in solid calculations and stone-cold statistics. He liked predictability in all things, and my mother had been about as predictable as a tornado in a square state. She’d been a painter and taught art in middle school before I was born. Then she stayed home with me and sometimes painted when I was keeping myself busy catching frogs to put in my dollhouse. She’d sit outside to work sometimes, watching me from the corner of her eye.
After my mother left us, some days I imagined tracking her down. But I always chickened out. After all, she could have found me any time if she’d wanted to. I figured she didn’t care any more—maybe never did to begin with—because why else would she vanish from my life? The act of leaving made it clear she di
dn’t want to know anything more about me. So I decided I didn’t want to learn anything else about her either.
My father rarely talked about my mother. On one occasion years ago, he’d said, “She went all new-agey and metaphysical on me and then walked out.” He said she was like a hummingbird in that she never stayed in one place very long, and so he wasn’t at all surprised when she left. I’d often wondered how much truth there was in that, because I’d caught him crying once or twice shortly after she took off. He would never admit to that, of course, and tried to be this stoic figure, like that would somehow make it easier. He seemed to think that if he made her sound flaky enough, we wouldn’t blame ourselves. He made a point of telling me she had started reading tarot cards, drawing up astrological charts, and had one day decided that they were no longer compatible according to their numerology, the Chinese calendar and the tea leaves in the bottom of her china cup. My father sneered when he told me that, calling her ridiculous, saying she’d finally crossed the edge of reason. But as I grew older, I began to think they had finally just grown apart, like limbs in the fork of a tree. After a long enough time, they could no longer fit together.
That didn’t mean I excused her behavior. She could leave him—but she didn’t have to leave me too.
There had always been tension between them. On the bad days, I’d wondered how they’d made it as long as they had. On the worst days, I wondered if every relationship was doomed to that fate—if all couples realized at some point that they were more different than they’d thought at the start, and so different they had no hope of staying together.
The saddest part for me was how quickly I’d forgotten the little details about my mother once she’d left. It hadn’t occurred to me that the memories were slipping away until I was in my twenties. After a while, I couldn’t conjure the image of her face—I could imagine her eyes and her freckles, but I couldn’t put the pieces together in one continuous shape. It scared me to think of how this had happened so quickly. Sometimes it seemed like the people I cared most about in my life were destined to leave me, and I seemed destined to forget them. It made me want to cling tight to the last memories I had of my mother and Vergie. Some nights, I imagined the more vivid ones, playing them over and over in my mind as I fell asleep. Maybe if I thought about them hard enough, I could train my brain to remember them.
Sifting through Vergie’s photos and trinkets, I wondered why she had never remarried. She’d married her high school sweetheart—but not until she was twenty-five. My grandfather, Jay, had waited and waited for Vergie, who refused to marry him while her own mother was in poor health. It was only after her mother died that Vergie reclaimed her own life and married Jay. They had a year and a half together before he died of an aneurysm, coming home from the late shift at the textile mill where he’d worked since he was sixteen. That story hadn’t affected me much at the time, but now, staring at the photos, I cried as I thought of Vergie, a widow so young after a marriage so short, and a grandfather I’d never met. It seemed there was never a convenient time for the things we needed most.
Near the bottom of a shoebox were some snapshots of Vergie and Jay. In one, with “Niagara” scribbled on the back, they both wore bright yellow slickers, their faces streaked with mist from the falls. Both grinning like the Cheshire Cat, they looked like they fit perfectly together, like tongue-and-groove boards. Rather than staring into the camera, as most people do, Vergie and Jay were always staring right at each other, as if nothing around them was nearly as interesting as the person right in front of them. From those pictures, it was clear why she’d never married another man. Some people find their match only once.
Things like that made me wonder if I’d met my match and lost him, too busy or preoccupied to recognize him.
My cell phone rang, and my whole body shivered.
Jack.
I climbed up from the floor and scrambled to find it, following the ringing into the hallway. By the time I answered, I was out of breath.
“Sounds like you’re busy,” my father said, and I held the phone farther from my head. “That’s what I like to hear.” His voice boomed in my ear, and I furrowed my brow.
“What can I do for you, Dad?”
“Just checking in. How’s everything going?”
“Fine.”
“Can you elaborate?”
No need to mention Jack. My father was liable to drive down here himself to personally kick the man out, and he’d never trust me with another job. Ever. He’d see Jack as a freeloader, and he’d let me have it for allowing him to stay. Even worse, he’d know in a second there was something brewing between us. He could read me as easily as The Wall Street Journal.
“Everything’s on schedule,” I said. “Repairs are going great. The house is in good shape. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“You sound like something’s amiss,” he said. I could hear his pen tapping against his desk.
Only my father used words like amiss.
“All is fine. There’s some mold that has to be taken care of. And a leaky pipe, but otherwise it’s nothing big.”
“Mold?” he bellowed. “How much? What did you do?”
I told him about my appointment with the specialist, and there was a pause on the other end of the line. He was no doubt pulling up a spreadsheet and punching buttons on his calculator.
“And what will that set you back?”
“Two to three thousand, give or take,” I said, but it was closer to four. The specialist gave me a ballpark based on the size of the house, but I knew it could climb higher depending on the extent of the damage.
“Give or take? What kind of accounting is that?”
“Twenty-six hundred and eleven dollars and thirty-nine cents. Is that more helpful?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. The budget is what drives these projects. You lose track of the numbers, you screw yourself over.”
I sighed, glad he couldn’t see the face I was making.
“Enza, what have I told you about big investments? What about this pipe?”
“Twelve hundred.”
“Are you out of your mind? You can’t throw that much money around on single repairs.”
“It had to be done, Dad. The mold is a health hazard. The water bill is twice what it should be.”
“Let the next owner worry about that,” he barked. “You’re not supposed to make the house new again. You’re supposed to make it look new.”
“I find that a little unethical, Dad.”
He groaned, and out of reflex I held the phone from my ear as he grumbled about losses and money pits. At last he snapped, “This is a business, Enza. It has nothing to do with ethics.”
Before I could answer, he slammed the phone down. Part of me feared he’d show up the next day, his phone in one hand and hammer in the other, but it was possible he’d wait it out. He needed to test me and see if I’d cause my own destruction.
I threw the phone, aiming for the bed. But I’d never had a good arm. It sailed toward the window, then caught in the curtain for a split second before dropping out into the yard. I thought I heard it ring just before it crashed to the ground.
“Dammit!” I rushed to the window. Below, the dog came bounding across the grass, pausing to sniff the phone.
“Hey,” I yelled. “Drop it!”
Bella cocked her head, then took the phone in her mouth and pranced away.
I ran down the stairs and out onto the porch. Bella gave me one quick look and streaked across the yard.
“Dog! Get your furry ass back here!” My feet squished in the spongy ground as I ran, but Bella cut a zigzag path toward the swamp. She was teasing me on purpose. That dog hated me. I chased her anyway, thinking she might at least drop the phone while she was overcome with glee. The ground turned to mud, and she paused under a cypress tree. I slowed to a walk. She turned, and giving me the closest thing to a smile that a dog can have, bounded farther into the swamp.
“You get back here!
” I stuck two fingers in my mouth and tried my best to whistle like Jack had, but I sounded like a balloon losing its air. Briars snagged my shirt, tearing my skin as I kept one eye on the dog and the other on the ground. I stumbled over a tangle of roots and reached for a tree to steady myself. The dog dropped the phone, panting, and looked straight at me.
“This is because we threw you out, isn’t it?” I said. The mud clung to my feet as I walked along the edge of the stream. The dog looked away as if she were finally bored with me. When I was within a few feet, she snorted and snatched up the phone again. I moved to grab her, and she leapt toward the water. The mud gave way under my feet, and I slipped and landed in a puddle. The smell of decaying vegetation made me gag, and my ribs throbbed from where they’d smashed against a tangle of roots.
My ankle stung. My side ached. Mud covered my jeans and blouse. I cursed that dog to pieces, but she only trotted farther into the woods, the water splashing behind her. I limped back through the brush to the house, cursing the whole parish in general and this patch of ground in particular.
At last I collapsed on the porch steps and pulled my boots off. They were caked in mud, and the left one was already tight on my swollen ankle. I tossed the boots to the side of the steps, and that’s when I saw it.
Lying in the grass was a tiny doll-like figure. I slid closer and reached into the weeds. It was a humanlike form that looked like it had been fashioned out of an old sock, with little stumpy arms and legs tied on. It was impossible to tell if it was meant to be male or female, but it definitely had a face and hair. At first I thought it was a child’s toy, but then I realized there were sewing pins stuck in it—so far that their colored round heads were all that protruded.
Only one kind of doll wore pins. The question was whether it was real or just a prank.
I pulled myself up with a groan and leaned against the rail. I peeled my shirt and jeans off on the porch and stumbled into the house in my panties and bra. My ankle hurt more with every step. My skin was streaked with dirt and blood, and my arms crisscrossed with cuts from the briars.
Bayou My Love: A Novel Page 11
