Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi

by Nanci Kincaid

  “Everything okay?” he asked stupidly.

  She nodded yes, but she obviously meant no.

  Truely fished in his pocket for a handkerchief. It was wrinkled and worn, but it was clean. His mother had taught him to always carry a handkerchief — A gentleman always carries a clean handkerchief, she had said — and now he was the only guy he knew anymore who actually did. “Here.” He handed it to her.

  “I can’t do lunch, True,” she whispered. “Can you just take me back home?”

  “Sure thing,” he said.

  He drove her back to her place, listening to her breathe in suppressed sobs. She would not let herself full-out cry, which made him want to.

  When they got home Courtney didn’t want to talk. She took a sleeping pill and went to bed. Truely was worried about her so he sat in a chair in the sitting area of her bedroom and pretended to read the paper. Her sadness scared him in a way his own never had.

  HE THOUGHT OF JESSE, and the way he had lost her to a sadness too heavy for her to bear alone — and too secretive for him to help her bear. It wasn’t until she became pregnant for the second time that he’d understood the depths of her anguish. He had suspected and dismissed the possibility that she might be pregnant because he heard her vomiting in the early mornings the same way she had done before. But he was afraid to mention it because the truth had the potential to destroy him. He would wait it out. Then, when she was ready, Jesse told him, yes, she was pregnant again. “I hope you can forgive me, True.” Truely understood without further explanation. The baby she was carrying was not his. It couldn’t be, since they had not made love since her miscarriage five months earlier.

  Jesse would become a mother. But he would not become a father.

  MAYBE there was something wrong with him. He had not come through for his daddy when he needed him. How much would it have meant to his daddy if Truely’d been around to mow the grass and feed the birds? Would it have been so hard to visit his widowed mother down in Hinds County more often? Instead he’d just lobbed onto her visits to Courtney and Hastings. It was less trouble that way — and he was ashamed of that now. He hadn’t even been there when Courtney found their mother dead with a smile on her face. Now he was thinking of ways to escape the potential effects of the collapse of his sister’s nearly perfect life. Did he just hate having anybody need him? He had an almost violent urge to run to the guesthouse and call Shauna and tell her he loved her. He imagined himself saying things like, “Shauna, you can count on me. I’ll never let you down.”

  Then he imagined Shauna’s response. Would she laugh? Would she think he’d been drinking and hang up in his face? Would she say, “Better late than never, I guess,” and be happy? He had no idea how Shauna would respond. And that was partly what kept him from ever doing anything impulsive. There was no guarantee. Unfortunately, at this point in his life, he was a man who needed a guarantee.

  Truely went to the kitchen and made a modest supper for Courtney. Hot soup from a Whole Foods carton and a tuna fish sandwich. He carried it to her on a tray the way their mother had done when they were small and one of them stayed home from school, sick. She had had a way of making feeling bad something special — almost better than feeling good.

  “Wake up, E.T.,” he said.

  Courtney opened her purple, bloodshot eyes and sat up. “Thank you,” she said. She nibbled at the sandwich and sipped the soup. Truely watched her eat and offered her a full range of services. “Do you want me to open the blinds? Here, let me put this pillow behind you. Are you cold? Should I start a fire? You want the paper? You want to catch the news on TV?” Courtney declined his offers.

  “Truely, I know you want to know about my conversation with Hastings. But I can’t talk about it now. I’ll tell you tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Whatever.”

  She blew him a small, clumsy sister-kiss before thanking him again and going back to sleep.

  COURTNEY WAS FEELING better Sunday morning. She was up and dressed before Truely was and brought a hot cup of coffee out to him in the guesthouse. “Rise and shine,” she sang. While he showered she went to the kitchen to make breakfast, waffles for him, dry toast for herself. By the time he made his way to the kitchen she was sitting at the table nursing her cup of coffee and eating her toast. She appeared rested and oddly composed considering the state she had been in yesterday. He pulled out a chair and sat beside her. “You didn’t have to make waffles,” he said, pleased that she had.

  “It’s the least I could do.” She smiled.

  “Looks like you’re feeling better.” Even he thought he heard the raw hopefulness in his voice.

  “You’ll go to church with me today, Truely. Right? Before you head back to the city?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I brought a sport coat. Got plenty of sins to offer up too.”

  She smiled. “I want to go. It’ll do me good. It always does. We’ll leave at ten. They have coffee and doughnuts in the fellowship hall.”

  “Coffee and doughnuts it is,” he said.

  “Hastings put Meghan on the phone yesterday.”

  “What?”

  “Her mother told her that a Courtney had called. I’m the only Courtney she knows.”

  “Right.”

  “She asked me to forgive her.”

  “For what?” He swirled a forkful of waffle in a sea of sticky syrup.

  “For falling in love with my husband.”

  “Wow.”

  “She cried.”

  “Well … that’s one approach.”

  “She sounded sort of hysterical. Hastings had to take the phone from her.”

  “That’s a lot of drama for one phone call, Court.”

  “I think they’re suffering too, Truely — you know — in their own way.”

  “It’s called guilt,” he said. “Must be contagious. An epidemic maybe.”

  “So I thought church today would be good for me. Sometimes the minister says exactly the thing I need to hear. It’s like he’s speaking directly to me without even realizing it. Prayer is powerful too, Truely. Really. I’ve seen prayer work miracles.”

  He looked at his sister and nodded. “Of course.”

  “This is not a sermon,” she said. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I’m just worried about you, Court. That’s all. I hate for you to go through all this. Especially now.”

  “Why is now worse than any other time?”

  “I don’t know. Mother and Daddy aren’t around, you know, to be there for you.”

  “But you are, Truely.”

  “Poor substitute for sure.” He smiled. “And you just had your face done and all. You haven’t healed yet.”

  “They’re taking the staples out Tuesday,” she said.

  “That’s not what I mean, Court.”

  “I know what you mean. You think it’s like I’m going to church stark naked, my face a big mess, my not-secret out there for everybody to see.”

  “You are, Court. You’re stark naked here. Should I try to talk you out of this? Damn if I know. I don’t know about these things, Court. I wish I did.”

  “You’re here, Truely. That’s enough. That’s everything.” She stood and ran her fingers through his wet hair, messing it up. “I’ll get my purse and meet you at the car.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Got to make a quick call first.” When Courtney left the room Truely took out his cell phone and fast-dialed Shauna. Shauna was number one on his fast-dial. He let the phone ring a long time. Why the hell didn’t her machine pick up? He felt a pang of panic, like a small fish darting around in his blood.

  COURTNEY WAS RAW-FACED and pale. Her hair was tied back in a sloppy knot. She wore a pantsuit and a turtleneck sweater with some noticeable jewelry that Truely remembered Hastings giving her Christmases past. She was neither smiling nor sullen. He had no read on her mood or her thoughts. They drove in silence to the church and parked in the gravel parking lot. He opened the door fo
r his sister like they were on a date or something, courting each other Mississippi-style. His good manners, instilled in adolescence, still served him well in times of uncertainty.

  When they entered the fellowship hall all eyes turned to Courtney. Truely thought he detected a moment of paralysis among the people gathered in restrained clusters, a pause in the sentences being exchanged, a few decibels dropped in the reverent volume of the place. Courtney seemed not to notice. She entered the room as a woman whose habit it was to conquer — both good people and bad situations. Truely knew that no matter how sure Courtney appeared, she was very unsure. It occurred to him how rare a person she must be not to require certainty — not to insist upon it, falsely fabricating it if necessary. She moved forward without it the way he should have done in his life — the way he wished he could do now.

  People — some of them were friends of hers he recognized — smiled, nodded acknowledgment, gave a silent wave. No one rushed to her with questions. No one asked, “What the hell happened to you?” Two of Courtney’s women friends that Truely had met before, but whose names escaped him momentarily, approached her with confident smiles of their own and timid questions in their eyes.

  Truely made his way to the coffee urn and poured two Styrofoam cups of hot black liquid. It neither smelled nor tasted like coffee — more like muddy water. Truely understood that the idea of coffee was the thing on an occasion like this. Sometimes the idea supporting the reality was more important than the reality itself. This had always seemed especially true to him at church. The idea of blood was more important than the sip of wine — or in Mississippi, the sip of grape juice — on communion Sunday. The idea of Jesus’ body was more important than the tasteless wafers or the dry bread crusts. Maybe the idea of coffee fit into these rituals in some way too.

  He carried the cups of coffee over to Courtney — his black, hers with a packet of Splenda. He watched her talk with her friends, using her hands, her charm bracelet rattling as she spoke, each charm meaningful, most of them gifts from Hastings, a trip taken, a birthday celebrated, a plateau reached, an apology accepted. Courtney’s hand motions made him think of an accident victim filing a police report, explaining how the crash happened, the insane speed, the reckless man at the wheel, how she had been thrown from her moving luxury vehicle of a life.

  “Here you go.” He handed her the coffee.

  She took the coffee from him, her charm bracelet making its distracting semimusical sound. “Truely, you remember Steel and Angie, don’t you? From the Christmas party last year?”

  “Sure.” He nodded.

  “I was just giving them the Reader’s Digest version of my surgery.”

  “Don’t forget to mention the staples.” He smiled. “She says they stapled her skull together,” he told the women, “with a gun.” They laughed knowingly, the way women often do when a man tries to enter an arena where they’ve had the experience whereas he has simply read the book — if that. “Well, don’t want to stop you from this play-by-play. I think I’ll get a doughnut. Can I bring anybody one?”

  They said no, of course, and he made his escape to the refreshment table like an awkward teenage boy at a dance.

  Originally, Jesse had been the one to teach him the evils of sugar and fat. She had introduced him to sprouts and every sort of bitter lettuce and bland unfamiliar vegetable. At the time he had been a willing learner. She had even tried to convince him of the superiority of the unseasoned steamed vegetable — but she had failed miserably. To his way of thinking there was not a vegetable in all of California that stood up against the squash and green beans of Mississippi — those genius dabs of bacon fat and cane sugar, that dash of hot pepper sauce. Now there was pure love in food like that. He had given it up, not because he didn’t still love those overcooked, well-seasoned Mississippi vegetables, but because he simply couldn’t get anything that came anywhere near it in California. Jesse used to tell him that people who gave up fattening foods would live longer — but he always wondered, Why would they want to? Since Jesse was no longer around policing his food he had his occasional lapses into the vast arena of comfort foods that had sustained him as a boy. On the list of sins he needed to be forgiven for, this seemed a small one. He ate first a glazed doughnut and then, what the hell, a jelly-filled with sprinkles.

  He was glad when Courtney signaled to him that she was ready to go into the service. Otherwise he might have downed Lord knows how many of the artery-clogging, heart-stopping temptations in his futile effort to distract himself from the moment. Or maybe he was simply trying to neutralize that sour void that always seemed to flare in his belly whenever he went to church, reminding him that something important was probably missing from his life. He was relatively sure of it.

  He escorted his sister into the sanctuary, where a smattering of worshippers sat in the pews, some with bowed heads and prayerful poses and others visiting quietly, touching each other on the arms, whispering greetings. It was like nearly any church service he had ever attended, except for the flush of dizziness he felt. He had worried that Courtney might collapse in an onslaught of emotion, but instead he felt unsteady himself, swaying a little, his knees threatening to buckle beneath him. He thought of his parents, church people, like angels now, both dead and yet still very alive, maybe even floating above, looking down on him — on them both — right at this moment. He wished for them and felt the flutter of their presence, which came to him in scraps of memory.

  Truely followed Courtney down the aisle and took a seat beside her on the second pew from the front. He felt oddly exposed. He had always preferred to sit in the back, where he could slip out easily when the service was over and get on with his life in a hurry. He felt the eyes of others on Courtney. These people were her friends, her partners in faith. She had nothing to fear from them, right? Courtney sat up straight and stared ahead. She appeared calm.

  Truely did not know what would happen today. He felt both dread and anticipation. He didn’t really understand his sister — or himself. Maybe he had never fully understood anything in his life. He buried his face in his hands and tried to be grateful for everything good that had ever happened to him. He thought of Shauna smiling at him, waving as she left his loft to go home, her dogs tugging on their leashes. He hoped that if, as some people insisted, every life had a specific purpose, that he had not, in ignorance, strayed too far from his. If indeed his life had purpose he wanted to know exactly what it was. He wanted to cooperate fully and do his part. And he could too, he felt sure — if only it would become clear to him.

  He sat in the pew slightly slumped with a hymnal in his hand. It was what he always did at church, hold the hymnal in his lap and flip the pages, waiting for the page numbers to be announced and the singing to begin. He never took much interest in the program spelling out these details. Beside him Courtney bowed her head and whispered quietly an inaudible prayer. He looked at her closed eyes, her moving lips, her strange cut-and-paste face. Seeing his sister pray made him think of their mother and her unyielding faith in things unseen.

  Truely began to imagine the long-unseen Jesse walking into this church on this day, looking for him. They had been here a number of times together before everything. He imagined she might be wearing a simple dress and low heels because that was what she had worn before. His imagination steered Jesse to this very pew and watched her nudge her way in and take a seat beside him. It felt good to imagine this. It felt excellent.

  At first his imagination wanted her to say, I should never have left you, Truely. This was a scenario he had rehearsed for months after she left, when he was trying to trick himself into falling asleep at night. But now he didn’t want her to say anything she didn’t mean. He just wanted to hear what she had come to say — whatever it might be. She took his hand. He felt the jolt of disbelief that accompanied a wish coming true.

  “Truely, are you okay?” It was Courtney. She was squeezing his hand.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m okay.”
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br />   “Listen,” she said. “No matter what happens with Hastings and me, I want you to know, I’m going to forgive Hastings for everything. It’s the only thing to do.”

  “Good,” he mumbled.

  “If you can forgive Jesse the way you have, then I can forgive Hastings.”

  Something was caught in Truely’s throat, a speck of dust or lint maybe. He began to cough. It was like he was choking on a fish bone, the sounds in his throat becoming embarrassingly harsh and vulgar. In seconds his cough turned into a loud, nasty-sounding hack-cough. He felt like one of those wizened old die-hard smokers who could not get his breath and just gagged his life away gasping for air. In something short of panic Truely reached for the handkerchief he always carried in his pocket. He covered his mouth but could not stop the spasms of loud, desperate coughing. Courtney was fishing through her bag. “I’ve got a throat lozenge in here somewhere,” she said.

  Truely stood up in the midst of this fit of grotesque coughing and with his head down made a hurried exit from the church, nearly breaking into a run before he reached the open doors. The coughing did not cease until he made his way through the church courtyard and out into the gravel parking lot where his car was parked. Even then he was wheezing and his eyes were watering, making him look like a man weeping for the ages. For a split second it actually occurred to him that he might die an untimely, freakish death.

  He sat in his car and tried to compose himself. He turned on the radio and listened to some soothing, uninspired music and waited until he was sure the coughing had stopped and his irrational panic had subsided. When he was sure he was breathing normally again he fast-dialed Shauna on his cell phone. She didn’t answer. He remembered her kid brother, Gordo, telling him once, “One of these days my sister is going to come to her senses — and you’re going to be history, man. I don’t know what’s kept her hanging on this long.” Truely had believed Gordo was half kidding, but now it crossed his mind that maybe he hadn’t been. He dialed Shauna’s number again. No answer. He intended to press redial until she did. Shauna had never been one to play hard to get.