Art's Blood (29 page)

She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Dr. Knightly was really sweet; she didn’t laugh at me or anything. She explained that it wasn’t a real mole; it was a growth of some sort, shaped kind of like clusters of grapes. It had to be treated and she said there was a chance I might not be able to get pregnant afterwards.

“And Marvin was real sweet too; he understood that it wasn’t my fault— he even said it was probably just as well. But it was all for nothing— if we’d waited maybe Kyra wouldn’t hate me now.”

She drew a shuddery breath and fixed Elizabeth with a hopeful gaze. “Now that I’m really pregnant— I went to the doctor to make sure— I couldn’t trust the test after last time— this child will be Kyra’s little brother or sister. I can’t help but think that she will want to know him or her…be part of their life. I was an only child, just like she is, and I would have given anything if…I asked Marvin to tell Kyra about our baby but he keeps saying it isn’t the right time.” Kimmie’s eyes were imploring. “So yesterday, I just sat down and wrote her a letter sharing our wonderful news and telling her that now she would be a big sister. I told her how anxious I was for us to be on better terms.”

The younger woman played nervously with the packs of sugar and sweeteners in the plastic basket at the center of the table, rearranging them by color— three browns, four blues, four pinks, five whites. “She’s staying with her great-grandmother and I sent the letter there.” Now the packs were reshuffled: blue, brown, pink, white, blue, brown, pink, white— till the unequal numbers baffled Kimmie and she abandoned her fidgeting.

She looked up, eager for the response that had not emerged. “Do you think I did the right thing, Elizabeth? Don’t you think Kyra will have to come around? I want so much for us to be a family.”

Elizabeth stalled, unable to tell Kimmie what she obviously wanted to hear. It seemed doubtful to her that bitter and self-absorbed Kyra would suddenly melt at the news of a prospective sibling
— a half-sibling,
Elizabeth reminded herself. The best she was able to offer was a meaningless assurance that things would probably work out. This, however, was enough to elicit a delighted hug from Kimmie.

“That’s just what I told Marvin! Things
always
work out for us.” She was radiant again, and when they parted in the parking lot of the coffee shop, she hugged Elizabeth. “Thanks so much for listening. It was really my lucky day when I joined the painting class and we sat next to each other!”

Kimmie’s ebullience showed in her step as she walked to her Mercedes. “I’ll see you next week,” she called back over her shoulder. Then, with a final cheerful wave in Elizabeth’s direction, she pulled out of the parking lot and was gone. A white SUV came from behind the building and sped after her. Elizabeth, busy searching for her grocery list, looked up just in time to see the car and to notice that the driver was the same gray-haired man in a chauffeur’s cap that she had noticed outside the Candlestation last Saturday.

He still looked familiar. And she still couldn’t place him.

She did her shopping and drove home, eager to see if there would be, perhaps, a message from Phillip. He had called the previous night to say that he was back but would be busy with classes and preparation till Friday. “I don’t have any classes tomorrow and I thought that maybe you and I could go out to Aunt Omie’s and pick up that animal quilt. I’ll get up with her and see if that would be okay.”

Back at the farm Elizabeth unloaded the coolers from the farm truck and rinsed them out. As she was taking them to the workshop where they would be packed for the next delivery, she saw a note from Ben on the workshop door reminding Julio that the sage plants were ready to be pruned again for drying.
Back early morning,
the note ended.

Elizabeth read the note a second time, shook her head, and hefted the coolers into the workshop. She was taking them to the back room where the fresh herbs and flowers were sorted and packed when she saw Kyra’s sketchbook lying on top of a pile of wreath boxes.
Well, hell, Ben, it looks like you moved it and then forgot it again.
She picked it up and hurried on, anxious to get her groceries to the house and check her voice mail.

The phone was ringing as she walked in and she made a dive for it, dumping her canvas bags of groceries on the floor. She was rewarded by the sound of Phillip’s voice.

“What do you think? Are you up for another trip out to Shut In? Aunt Omie’s happy to lend the animal quilt for the show, but she was pretty clear— she wants me to bring you back.” He chuckled. “She wants to tell you some more about Fanchon, at least that’s what she said. She also said,” and he slipped into the mountain accent, “ ‘Now, Phillip Lee, I tell you what’s the truth, I like that Miz Goodweather and I want you to bring her back out here. She seems like a sensible somebody.’ ”

They made plans for the next day and he told her of his frantic maneuvers to get a roofing crew to deal with the problem at his house in Beaufort. It was only much later, when she was in bed and falling asleep, that Elizabeth realized that she had forgotten to tell him about Kimmie’s news.

A
ND SHE SAID SHE WAS PREGNANT WHEN
R
OSE
died and that’s why they got married right away. But then it turned out she wasn’t pregnant after all, it was some weird growth that mimics pregnancy. She said the medical term but I can’t remember what it was— something about a mole— but whatever it was, now she really is pregnant. And she thinks that this is going to bring Kyra back to the bosom of the family— or at least, she hopes that’s what will happen.”

Phillip’s brow furrowed and he moved one hand from the steering wheel to run it over his head— that familiar gesture signifying heavy thought, uncertainty, and/or perturbation. “What’s your take on Kimmie, Sherlock?”

They were traveling along 25–70, the beautiful winding road running through Pisgah National Forest to Hot Springs and, beyond that, Shut In. A few backpackers were crossing the Appalachian Trail footbridge that spanned the road high above the car. The hikers looked hot and tired in the unseasonable muggy weather.

“She surprised me.” Elizabeth tried to sum up her perceptions. “She’s very…well, very ordinary and very sweet. Not at all the bimbo that I had expected. Of course, I was going on thirdhand information— Laurel told me what Kyra told her. But Kimmie’s…well, I like her. She seems, maybe a little naive, but—”

“You believe that about wanting to get Kyra back on good terms with her dad?”

Elizabeth hesitated. “I believe that’s what Kimmie wants. I’m not so sure about Kyra— or her dad.”

The kitchen table was set and the same endless procession of dishes appeared. Today there was a small dish of thick, crisply fried bacon instead of the sausage, and the smothered potatoes had been replaced by fat roasted sweet potatoes, melting chunks of home-churned butter oozing in their split-open tops. “Git you a chair and we’ll eat hit up while hit’s hot.” Omie, clearly delighted to have company, poured their glasses full of icy buttermilk and urged them to heap their plates.

As before, Phillip was asked to return thanks, and this time he did not stumble over the words but recited the grace from beginning to end with practiced ease. As he concluded, he smiled happily at his aunt, who reached out and patted his hand. “That’s a sight better, now don’t you think so, Phillip Lee?”

Their plates piled high, they settled into the serious business of doing justice to Aunt Omie’s cooking. Elizabeth asked about the bacon and was not surprised to learn that it was home-cured. “My neighbor kills two pigs ever year. He’s a widder man and I make him a pie or a cake now and again, so he brings me pig meat when he butchers. I can some, like them sausages we had last time. And some I salt down and hang in the meat house. Course when hit get so awful hot like hit done back in July, that meat’s like to go blanky. So I take whatever’s left and make hit into portions and put hit in the freezer.” With a jerk of her head she indicated the mammoth white chest freezer, humming quietly on the back porch.

“I wouldn’t take nothin’ fer that freezer.” Omie leaned confidentially toward Elizabeth. “Phillip Lee bought me that back in nineteen and eighty-four. I keep my butter there and a feller comes around ever month and buys hit off me. Pays me good too. They sell hit at a store over to Hot Springs. He’ll buy ever last pat I can make.”

Omie jumped up and retrieved a pot from the stovetop. “There now, I was like to fergit the okra and maters.” She gave them each a generous helping from the spicy, steaming red and green stew and resumed her seat.

“Well, Phillip Lee, you gettin’ along good over there in Asheville? How’s that little girl of yourn doin’ with her schoolin’?”

Phillip paused in his buttering of a third wedge of cornbread. “Janie’s doing fine, Aunt Omie. She stays so busy with classes and homework that I don’t see much of her, but I’ll try to bring her out next time—”

“Reckon she’s got her nose out of joint, along of you havin’ a lady friend.” Omie peered at Phillip. “Some young uns is like that. That widder man who give me the pig meat could’ve found him a wife after his old woman died— there’s a sight of widders around here— but his children took on so bad if ever he named another woman that he just give hit up and stayed single. And don’t none of ’em children live near enough to do for him. Hit’s a pure shame, what hit is.”

When they had gorged themselves to repletion and beyond, Omie quickly cleared the table, then stepped out to her back porch and returned with a Tupperware cake container. “Now, this here is one of my yaller cakes with that car’mel frostin’ you like so good, Phillip Lee; git you a big ol’ slice.”

She beamed at her nephew, who was dutifully cutting a huge wedge of the cake. “Law, when he was a young un, now he could
hide
him some cake!”

They were permitted to turn down second helpings on the condition that Phillip take the remainder of the cake home with him. As before, he was grudgingly allowed to do the dishes, and, as before, Elizabeth accompanied the old woman to the back bedroom where the quilts were kept.

“Don’t you pay no mind to Janie.” Aunt Omie looked up at Elizabeth. “She ain’t a bad young un but her mama raised her to think that folks out here is nothing but a bunch of ignorant hillbillies. Law, first time Phillip Lee brung that wife of hisn to see me, that Sandy like to had a fit when she found out there weren’t no commode. I heared ’em fussin’ out there on the front porch. ‘You take me back to a mo-tel,’ says she. ‘There’s one in Hot Springs we drove right past.’ And he done hit too, and come back hisself and stayed the night here.”

Omie shook her head sadly. “That was the first and last I seen of Sandy. When they got the divorce and the children was some older, Phillip Lee brung ’em up to see me one summer. But they was their mama’s babies, all right. Fussed about havin’ to go out to the little house, fussed about there weren’t no TV; the boy was plumb scared of the chickens and little Janie girl wanted to change her clothes ever whipstitch— any time she got the least speck of dirt on ’em, here she’d come a-bawlin’, ‘Doighty! Doighty!’ ”

“I’ve not seen much of Janie,” Elizabeth said. “She’s been out to my farm with her father a few times, but, like Phillip said, she does stay busy with school. Besides, Phillip and I are just friends; there’s nothing for her to be jealous of—”

Aunt Omie’s bright blue eyes glittered up at her. “In the Book hit says that love is strong as death and jealousy as cruel as the grave. I see what I see. Phillip Lee’s a good boy and he’s due some happiness in his life. I don’t want him to buckle under to his young un like my neighbor done. Now, let me git at this newspaper piece I wanted to show you.”

The little woman began to delve into the chest from which she had taken “the Fanchon quilt,” as she called it. When all the quilts and blankets, woolen winter coats (there was one that surely dated from the forties, Elizabeth judged), as well as a miscellaneous assortment of punitive-looking corsets and long winter underwear, had been removed and laid on the bed, there remained a layer of folded newspapers, brittle and yellowing.

“I always saved these whenever somethin’ big happened.” Omie carefully lifted out a stack of papers. The bold headline on the topmost issue read
VICTORY IN JAPAN.

“This here is the one I thought you might want to see.” She made a space on the bed and gently unfolded the crumbling newsprint.

Local Girl to Meet President and Mrs. Roosevelt.
The story was long and fulsome:

The article continued in flowery tones, lauding the work of the AWCC and expressing firm expectations that the trip would result in more funding for the Center and a concomitant growth of the local economy. Beside the article was a picture of four women, all dressed in the severe garb of the Depression era.

Elizabeth peered closely at the images, eager to see the beautiful Fanchon. Two women, evidently in their forties and dressed in tailored skirts and blouses, were identified as Miss Geneva Mills and Miss Carolyn Hedley: “Founders of the AWCC and tireless workers for the furthering of our Native Arts and Crafts.” A slender teenager wearing a dark, long-sleeved dress with a gored skirt, her light hair in a loose knot, smiled at the camera. She was identified as “Fanchon Teague, Marshall County’s talented ambassadress to the White House.” The fourth was “Miss Lily Cabot.” A pale-haired woman in her twenties, she seemed, as far as could be told from a faded photograph, to be more stylishly and expensively dressed than the other three. She was standing by Fanchon, her arm protectively circling the younger girl’s narrow waist. She alone did not stare into the camera; her head was turned toward her lovely charge.