“Well, aren’t you a big strong boy!” A plump gray-haired woman squeezes his arm. “Make sure you get seconds, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Grady says, after swallowing a bite of cornbread and meat.
“Aren’t you Elaine’s grandson?” She lifts her pink-framed bifocals on a chain to get a better look at him.
“No, ma’am.” He eats a deviled egg in one bite.
“Oh, I thought for sure I recognized you!” She flaps her hands over her face to lower her glasses and laughs. “Goodness, the older I get the more touched in the head I am!” Grady smiles at her, amused at being recognized—but not quite. She closely tracks the movement of his plastic fork across his plate; anticipation lights in her eyes whenever he goes near the potato salad.
“Well, I don’t know about that, but whoever made this potato salad oughta be nominated for sainthood.” He takes another bite, and mm-mms his way through chewing and swallowing.
“Oh!” She says, delighted, squeezing his arm again. “You know, it was really my mother’s recipe. God rest her soul.”
It is delicious, not exactly like Memaw’s; she added horseradish, a touch of pickle brine, Duke’s mayonnaise of course, and a secret something else that was buried when she was. Grady’s never been able to replicate it. “My mistake then,” Grady says. Her grip loosens. “Clearly this potato salad is the work of an angel.”
Her name is Emma, and she brings him two plates of pie and cobbler and cookies and cake, then invites him to meet her granddaughter next Sunday after service.
“I’m afraid I’m already spoken for,” Grady tells her. “Engaged.”
But Emma’s not upset; she brings him a plate covered in foil to take home to his betrothed. Church people, gotta love ‘em. Grady dumps his trash and rubs his bloated belly and puts off worrying about the number of crunches and squats and miles of running he’ll need to work that meal off, then he passes by an empty pickle jar with some change and a handful of dollar bills crumpled at the bottom. A label written on pink construction paper taped on the lid reads: BBQ Fundraiser for Libertyville Presbyterian Food Pantry.
Grady empties his wallet. It’s only fifty-two dollars and twelve cents. Well, even podunk towns in the middle of Western Tennessee have ATMs. Grady jumps in his truck to backtrack up the road to where he spotted a bank before taking the church barbecue detour. He withdraws the max amount and when he circles around the bank’s exit, it spits him out onto a different side street. That’s when he spots it.
His feet carry him out of the truck and to the front door before he knows it’s happening. He knocks on the front door of the brick house with knee-high weeds and a yard full of rusting cars. “The Plymouth,” he says to the confused-looking man in the open doorway. “How much would you take for it?”
He’s late for dinner, not that he’s hungry—after the church picnic meal he could hibernate for the rest of summer—still he’s anxious to get home after getting sidetracked and then sidetracked again. Nico is pretty easy going about meal times, generally. They both tend to eat when they remember to stop working for a second, but tonight is one of their potluck gatherings. Everyone is probably waiting on him. But, wanting to build the anticipation, he doesn’t call until he’s coming up their driveway. “Come outside, I have a surprise for you.” He can hear the hum of several conversations in the background of Nico’s phone.
“What surprise?”
“Nico,” Grady scoffs. “I can’t tell you. Then it won’t be a surprise.” So obstinate, that man, he swears. Grady pulls into the garage, dives out of his car, and ducks under the garage door as it rolls down. He practically skips up the stone walkway to the front door.
Nico is waiting on the bottom step. “Well?”
“Wait for it.” Grady looks down the hill, trying to see through the cover of trees to the road. Nothing. Nothing. Nico’s impatience is palpable, which just ratchets Grady’s excitement up higher. Nothing…
“There!”
A tow truck rumbles up the drive, struggles with the steep incline and narrow driveway, but it makes it, eventually. It stops with a screech of brakes and shuddering engine. Wide-eyed and grinning like a fool, Grady spins to face Nico.
“Um,” Nico says. “What am I looking at, exactly?”
The tow truck driver unhooks the heavy chains holding the car securely on the flatbed. Grady gestures to it as if he’s Vanna frickin’ White. “It’s a 1970 Plymouth Superbird!” He dances closer to it, waving his arms even more emphatically as if Nico is unable to see an entire car on an enormous, loud tow truck sitting at the top of their driveway. “See?”
“Oh, I see all right.” His flat expression remains unmoved.
“The guy wouldn’t take any money, just gave it to me for free. He said his son left it there years ago and it’s an eyesore. Can you believe that?”
Nico’s expression does change; he arches one imperious eyebrow. “Yes. Yes, I can.”
“Don’t worry I’m gonna send some him money anyway.”
“Yeah that’s the part I was worried about,” Nico deadpans.
He clearly doesn’t get it. “You don’t get it,” Grady says, hopping from foot to foot while the platform lowers behind him with a shrill grinding noise. “They only made around two thousand of these! Richard Petty raced in one, and NASCAR banned it because it was too powerful!” Finally, the flatbed stops, and the car is free. Grady reaches in through the busted passenger side window for the most exciting part. He beeps the horn: Meep-meep. It’s wheezy and weak after decaying in weeds for so long. But it’s there, clear as day, that definitive roadrunner beep: Meep-meep.
“What do you think?” Grady asks. Nico can sometimes be hard to read.
“That depends,” he says crossing his arms and giving the car a coolly assessing once-over. “Have you had a recent tetanus shot?”
So the car is a little rusty. Grady rests his hand on the hood; the spot disintegrates under his palm. He lifts his hand to brush off rust flecks. It’s a lot rusty. And the tires are all flat. The windshield is cracked, and one side window is completely missing. The headlamps are the concealed pop-up style, and the left one has rusted-out hinges and has flapped permanently closed, giving the car a lazy-eyed sagging look. The interior is somehow even worse than the outside: the seats shredded, the floorboards and dash caked with dirt and grime.
After Grady signs the receipt and other paperwork and sends the tow truck rumbling away, he slings an arm over Nico’s shoulders and frames the car with his hands. “Picture it,” he starts, “Like the clients you had before working with the ever-glamourous Clementine Campbell. The ones who were a little rough around the edges—” Nico makes a skeptical noise in his throat after the words “a little rough;” Grady continues on. “Even when everyone else had written them off as hopeless and beyond repair, you found something in them. That shimmering pearl of who they were, hidden deep down in the slimy muck, and you brought it to the surface and made it shine.” He stands in front of Nico and slides his other arm around him. “You saw who they really were and never gave up on them just because they had a few rusty patches.”
Nico’s face softens.
“I’m talkin’ about me,” Grady adds, just in case Nico needs clarification.
Nico laughs, knocks Grady arms away, and says, “I know that, dummy.” Hands on his hips, he looks at the car again, shakes his head, and sighs. “Let’s push it into the garage, then. It’s supposed to storm, and that thing can’t afford any more rusting.”
Grady pushes the back of the car, under the absurdly high and incredibly cool back spoiler. Walking alongside the open driver’s side door, Nico steers the car while Grady pushes, digging deep and pushing hard; the car is a monster. He decides not to mention that he also spent eight hundred fifty-two dollars and twelve cents on a church barbecue somewhere out in Western Tennessee. He’ll explain later, over Nico’s
own plate of foil-covered church picnic delicacies, courtesy of someone else’s Memaw. Grady beeps the horn again once it’s safely parked and follows Nico inside to greet everyone.
10
The only person who greets Grady in return when he enters the dining room is Cayo in his clip-on highchair, who reaches for him with sticky hands and a stickier face. “Every time I see this boy, he’s a mess,” Grady says, tickling a clean spot on his belly.
Gwen scrapes more cut up pasta and fruit onto Cayo’s plate. He picks up the pieces very studiously with his thumb and pointer finger, then mashes them against his mouth.
“Do you hear that, Bubba?” Gwen says, “Uncle Grady wants to clean you up after dinner!”
“Ha!” Flora says, reaching over to Gwen for high-five. Then she says more softly to Grady, “Hi, Grady. How have you been?”
It’s clear from the concern in her eyes that she’s gently prodding him about both his father and the issues with his song. Grady tosses her a grin and drops sideways into a chair. He shrugs. “Fine.”
“Where did you go, anyway?” Nico asks from across the table.
“Yeah, and what did you decide to do?” Gwen asks. Nico tilts his head. Grady can’t quite reach Gwen to kick her under the table. He pretends he didn’t hear either question. Looking around the table, he can see that they didn’t wait for him after all. The serving dish of rotini pasta with red sauce and the wooden salad bowl are nearly empty; the bread plate has two dry crusts left. Even the cheesecake has been nearly decimated.
From his other side, Clem notices his assessment of the dinner spread. “Gotta get while the gettin’s good, sugar.”
“Speaking of getting,” Grady replies, taking some cheesecake before it’s too late. “How are things going with Ellis?” He’s trying to shift the focus from himself, and it works: All heads swivel in Clem’s direction.
“Wait. Who is Ellis?”
“Oh, are you dating? That’s so wonderful, Clementine.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing? Or who you’ve been doing, I guess.”
Grady is close enough to Clementine to get a swift kick in the shin. She’s wearing those sharp heels of hers; that’s just cruel. Grady frowns and rubs his leg as Clementine is bombarded with more questions. When the doorbell rings, they all pause.
Gwen breaks the silence. “Is that her? Or him? Or them? Did you invite Ellis to dinner? Are you in love? Can I get all the dirty details now or later?”
Clementine calmly sips her wine and slides Gwen a look. “I’ma let you stew in all those questions for as long as possible.”
Nico stands, laughing, and tosses his cloth napkin onto the table. “I’ll get it.”
Grady can’t manage to eat more than half a slice of cheesecake, and the girls are still trading quips and pestering Clem with questions, so he follows Nico. He hopes it’s not another certified letter bearing news that Grady doesn’t know what do with.
“Spencer.”
“Hey, Spence.”
He looks like a shadow, small and dark and hesitating in a corner of the porch. Grady flips on the porch light, and he startles. “I—” There’s a file folder in his hands. He holds it out to Nico and stands straighter after he hands it off. “I went through and called all of the ministers and officiants on the list. The ones who aren’t available are crossed out. The ones I think you’d like best are highlighted. And one of them said he was a shaman who unites souls linked through time, so I went ahead and crossed him out, too.”
“Good.” Nico flaps the folder in a dismissive kind of way. “Night.”
Nico turns back into the house, and, when he’s out of sight, Grady says, “He’s warming up to you.”
“Oh, for sure. Any moment now we’ll be planning a boys’ weekend in Cabo.” Spencer scowls. Finally, a genuine glimpse of Spencer’s true self; Grady’s thrilled to see it.
“Ah, he’s all bark.” Grady squints, remembering a few times when Nico has bitten, too. “Usually,” Grady amends. “Why don’t you come in for a spell?”
Spencer takes a step back, shaking his head. “Hard pass.” He trots down the steps still scowling and falls back into shadows. “Have a good night, Grady. And thanks.”
The potluck gathering moves outside to their patio, which is lit up in the mellow reds and oranges of paper lanterns hanging from trellises. Gwen hands Grady a marinara-sauce-coated Cayo, who wiggles and cries and tries to arch out of Grady’s arms as Grady cleans him up. “What are you kickin’ up such a fuss for?” Grady sets him down on the living room rug after he nearly does a backflip out of his arms. “Land’s sake.”
Cayo sits on the rug and cries, rubs his eyes, and droops to one side; must be near to bedtime, poor little guy. Grady’s guitar is still stashed behind the couch from his last fruitless attempt to change the song. He pulls it out and sits cross-legged across from Cayo.
“Cay-Cay,” Grady sings, strumming a slow chord. Cayo’s cries fade, and he blinks his big brown eyes at Grady. “Memaw used to sing this to me when I was sad.” He strums as he talks, and Cayo finally quiets completely. “I used to kick up a fuss a lot, too. Don’t even worry about it.” He plays the intro, and Cayo watches, then Grady sings to him, and Cayo bobs to the music. “There you go,” Grady says. He picks up the tempo, and Cayo smiles, pushes up on unsteady legs, and totters closer. Memaw would sing this to Grady when he was sleepy, too, and still for once. She’d perch on his bed and run her hand through his curls. No matter how much grief Grady caused her during the day, she’d sing him to sleep—until he got too old for it and wished every night that he wasn’t.
Flora quietly enters the room when the song is finished and Grady is letting Cayo grab at the guitar strings and pat a hollow non-beat on the body of it.
“He still hanging in there?”
Cayo looks up at her and rubs his eyes with balled-up fists.
“Barely,” Grady says without needing to. She picks Cayo up, and he immediately tucks his face into her neck and curls his little body against her chest.
“We should probably head out.”
“Yeah.” Grady is surprised at how melancholy his voice sounds. Too much reminiscing, he supposes.
Flora runs her hand through Cayo’s wild curls, then does the same to Grady’s. “Come by this week for dinner.”
Grady nods. “Yeah.”
After everyone leaves and they finish cleaning up, Grady goes back to give the Superbird a closer look. He hasn’t even glanced at the engine; it may be in worse shape than anything, which is really saying something. The hood opens with an unholy shriek, and, by the florescent lights in the garage, Grady discovers an engine just as busted up as the rest of the car, with dangling wires and missing parts to boot. The first thing he needs to do is get the car up on blocks and start yanking out the parts that will never work again.
The interior door to the garage opens. “Any rats nesting in there?” Nico says. He comes down the stairs and rests a hip on the car’s grill.
Grady glances at the interior with its holes and pulled out stuffing. “Not at the moment.”
They look silently into the engine. Grady tinkers; Nico’s arms cross over his chest. “You’ve been kind of quiet tonight.”
“Busy day. Guess I’m worn out.” Grady twists a spark plug and yanks it from its terminal. When he brushes off the corrosion, he finds a melted electrode and an insulator that’s turned white. He’ll have to dig out his Granddaddy’s old Chilton car repair manuals to double check what all that means, but he knows it isn’t good.
Nico stands and stares at the engine while Grady yanks all the spark plugs and tosses them out, then bends over the engine to blow dust and corrosion from the empty holes left behind. “Do you think,” Nico says when Grady is back upright. “That the car and Spencer might have something do with your dad?”
Grady gives him a quizzical look while he b
rushes off his hands. “Not really.”
“I mean. Second chances. Repairing things.” He reaches in to fiddle with a rusted out bolt, then pulls his hand away with a grimace. “Maybe if you talked about it—”
“Talk about what? Grieving a father that didn’t want anything to do with me except to hit me up for money?” The world hasn’t suffered any great loss at the death of Vaughn Dawson, and neither has Grady. Nothing has changed for him.
Nico steps closer, holding his rust and dirt covered hand awkwardly out to the side. “You can grieve that. I know you held out hope that he would change someday, and now he can’t, and it’s okay to be upset about that.”
“Well, I’m not,” Grady says brusquely.
“Grady, would you just—”
“I know you’re trying to be helpful,” Grady cuts in. “But I really need you to leave this alone. Please.” The day has been too long already. He has too much time to think as it is; he doesn’t need to drag anything else to the surface right now.
Nico obviously doesn’t want to let it go; his mouth is tight, and his nose is flared. He nods, though, and says nothing more. Grady reaches for his dirty hand and brushes it off on his own T-shirt. “Thank you.”
The doorbell rings again as they’re going up the stairs to their room.
“Spencer again?” Grady wonders.
Nico backtracks down the stairs. “I haven’t asked him to do anything else yet. That’s pushy even for him.” The house is dark. Even the outside lanterns are off; there’s just the glow of the porch light to lead their way. “It better not be another fan who has no concept of boundaries. I will not be nice about them showing up at our house.”
Grady is pretty sure Vince took care of the address leak. Still, he’s worried when Nico opens the door. Grady doesn’t like being stern with fans; he knows they mean well.
Blended Notes Page 6
