Friendship Cake (8 page)

After two days and all the family members having gone back to the lives they had put on hold to make this living change, Louise sat in the rocking chair pushed up against the window, watching Roxie sleep behind the bars of the hospital bed they had rented. The sleeping woman's mouth curled and twisted, her eyebrows knitted and released as if she were in the process of making a very important decision. Her facial muscles jerked, showing a struggle, and Louise felt a tear spill from her eye. She did not know how long she had been sitting there, but she was somewhat relieved when the doorbell rang and she saw Margaret standing on her front porch.

“Brought you some late corn, Lou. I hope you aren't tired of the summer vegetables yet.” Margaret waited without coming in. She was not the pushy type.

Opening wide the door, Louise softened at her neighbor's presence. “Come in,” she said.

Almost too inviting, thought Margaret.

“No, I quit getting corn weeks ago, and I'm not going to pay those supermarket prices for puny vegetables brought up here from Florida.” Louise took the bag. “Come on in, I have some tea fixed. Care for a glass?”

“Thank you, I believe that would be just right.” Margaret moved into the den with a bit of awkwardness. Even pushed
against the far wall, the hospital bed and Roxie could not be ignored.

“I can't remember, do you take lemon?” Louise was in the kitchen.

“It doesn't matter. Whatever's easy.” Margaret walked over to the bed and peered in at the woman she knew was Louise's greatest secret. Roxie now seemed to be sleeping like a child, all rolled up and comforted.

“She takes a nap every afternoon, before supper.” Louise peeked around the corner as she got ice from the freezer. “I have pages and pages of her daily routine. I'm not sure I'll ever learn it all or get it all right. But so far everything's been fine. I just haven't slept in a few nights is all. I can't seem to leave the room yet for any length of time.” She brought Margaret her tea and sat back down in the rocking chair.

Margaret sat on the sofa across the room. There was a long pause before she asked the question: “What are you doing, Lou?”

Louise bristled at first, ready to pounce in her own defense, but then she realized it wasn't Twila or Earnestine or any other nosy neighbor looking for a story. It was Margaret. It was her friend, and she put down her glass and walked over to the bed.

“She sleeps so peacefully in the afternoon, better than at night. There's something about the light, I guess, that eases her.” She pulled the blanket around the sleeping woman's shoulders and continued to talk without looking at her neighbor.

“I met Roxie when we were both young and innocent.” She stopped and turned to Margaret. “If you can believe there was such a day for me.” She laughed and turned back to Roxie.

“And on the third day that we came home from the mill together and sat on the front porch of Mrs. Bonner's boardinghouse, drinking colas and laughing at the boss, I gave her my heart. I never said a word, of course.” Louise unlatched the side rail of the bed and gently slid it down.

“I never asked a thing from her, but I was lost in her just the same, and I never found my way back to who I was before the day I promised myself to her.” Louise pulled the covers over Roxie's shoulders.

“I suspect she knew I wasn't a ‘safe' friend to be around. But it never seemed to matter. She loved me pure and hard in all the ways that she knew how. And I owe her everything of the goodness I have. She is the best part of me. She is that tiny place that hasn't closed in my heart. The only place inside me that isn't callous. So I know that I have waited my entire life to be able to give something back to her.” She touched Roxie's cheek.

“And for the first time, the very first time in my life, I feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be, exactly with the person I most want to be with, and doing the thing that is the most natural thing I could ever desire to do.”

“I love her, Margaret.” She turned around to face her friend. “Like you loved Luther and your father. Like Beatrice loves her causes. Like a mother loves her child. And I don't care that she doesn't know who I am or how much I love her. I know, and there is nothing, nothing else in this world that I want more to do than sit here by her side and care for her, feed her, sing to her, brush her hair, wipe her tears, clean her face, and read her stories.”

Louise quit to catch her breath.

“Do you know, she can still talk about the mill and the boss and the boardinghouse like we were still there, in the beginning?”

Margaret had never seen Louise so unguarded. She was a different woman altogether.

“I am so grateful that I get this chance finally to love her that I will cherish every single moment we have, like it was the very first moment I knew that I was alive.” She stopped.

“Because that's what love is. That's what love does.” Water stood in her eyes.

“That's what I'm doing, Margaret. I'm doing what love does.” She turned back around and folded the sheet under Roxie's chin.

Margaret put down her head, embarrassed at what had been said, embarrassed that she had asked, embarrassed that friendship wasn't always enough.

She waited, and then she stood up and walked next to Louise and put her arm around her shoulders, both of them looking into Roxie's face. “Then I will help you, Lou. I will love her too.”

A
s the president of the Women's Guild, I would like to call this special meeting of the Cookbook Committee to order.” Beatrice was rambling through her notes.

“Bea, it's just the five of us; I don't think Robert's Rules of Order are necessary. Jessie, do you want cream with your coffee?” Louise was hosting the meeting because it was easier to have folks come over to her house than to leave Roxie for any length of time. There were only a few people she trusted when she had to run errands, and after two months Roxie's condition had declined quite a bit. “Margaret, can you get some more napkins; they're in there next to the medicine bowl on the cabinet.” She pointed to the kitchen with her chin.

Margaret got up from her seat and walked into the kitchen. She was one of the few that Louise let stay with Roxie, and she could tell the situation had worsened. She also knew that Louise wasn't acknowledging the seriousness of things, but there didn't seem to be any way to approach it with her. She looked for the napkins, and there, sitting on the countertop, was a bowl filled with medicine bottles along with a schedule of what pill got taken at what time and a notebook filled with daily entries about Roxie. Margaret had only seen Louise make notes; she had never read what had been written, so she picked up the diary and began to flip through it.

Louise had notes about each meal, every bowel movement, Roxie's vitals, what she said, her facial expressions, what made her laugh, and what she remembered. There were copious expla
nations about every tick and blink Roxie made, and the sight of such obsessiveness concerned Margaret.

She had noticed a ferociousness in how Louise spoke about Roxie and the possibilities for curing Alzheimer's. She knew that Louise was determined to give Roxie a carefully planned diet that was filled with “brain food,” like fish and garlic. She bought groceries like each meal was a sacred opportunity for healing, and she measured ingredients for Roxie's afternoon snacks like she was conducting a medical experiment. Margaret didn't realize until now how absorbed Louise was in making Roxie recover. She put down the book, found the napkins, and walked back into the den, where the committee was meeting.

“I still think if Lucy submitted a recipe for pears floating in wine, that's her business, and we don't have any right to censor it.” Jessie had not seen the recipe, but everybody in church knew that Lucy Seal cooked with wine, usually a lot of wine.

Beatrice had opened the discussion of whether or not to ask Lucy to submit something other than her pears in port. “Well, I don't have a problem with an alcoholic beverage being mentioned in the cookbook, but I don't want the church to get a name for this.”

“What name do you think we'd get, Bea?” Margaret was handing out the napkins.

“A church with no morals, a place that teaches their children that drinking is okay, a women's group that serves spiked punch at their meetings. I think there are all sorts of possibilities here, and why not just err on the side of caution and ask Lucy to give us another recipe?” Beatrice looked over at the preacher to see if she had any input, any suggestions, and secretly hoping
that she would offer to deal with Lucy and this situation for the committee.

Charlotte suddenly felt Beatrice's eyes on her. She hadn't really been paying attention to what was being discussed, since she was observing Louise sitting beside Roxie on the bed. She watched as Louise took her pulse, wrote a note on a scrap of paper, and then brushed Roxie's hair back into a ponytail. She was whispering something into Roxie's ear, and it almost looked as if Roxie smiled. Louise made another note and helped Roxie up from the bed to walk back into the bathroom.

“Um, what's the recipe you're talking about?” Charlotte put down her coffee cup and smoothed her dress, trying to look interested.

“Lucy Seal gave us a recipe card for soaking pears in wine.” Bea handed the preacher the copy of the recipe. “Do you think we should ask her to submit something different?” she asked, but the others looked for the preacher's answer as well.

“Did somebody else submit the same idea?” Charlotte took the paper, but she seemed confused.

Margaret smiled. “Bea's concerned about having alcohol mentioned in the church cookbook. Are you uncomfortable with that as the minister?”

Charlotte thought for a minute. She never drank. Once in college at a fraternity party, she had mistakenly picked up somebody else's glass loaded with vodka; she drank it before she knew what she had done. She didn't get drunk, but it had made her a little too uninhibited and she didn't like the way it left her feeling, loose and unprotected.

She was scared that her mother's genes had predisposed her
to become an alcoholic. And since Serena had died from a drug overdose, it just seemed too likely that she would have the same disposition towards overindulgence. And yet, despite the problems with her mother, she never had a moral issue with drinking. After all, she had accepted the literal interpretation about Jesus' lifestyle, which apparently had included the drinking of wine.

“Does the church have a written statement about alcohol use by its members?” she asked.

“No,” Jessie said, crossing her arms over her chest. “We've never made a written statement about anything, but I'd have to guess that more than half the congregation would say that drinking is wrong.”

“You think? Really, Jessie.” Margaret looked surprised. “I guess I'm naive about some things. I would figure most of the folks have a bottle of wine sitting around the house and that nobody would really have a problem with fruit marinated in hooch.”

Louise was coming up the hall with Roxie, who overheard the last bit of the conversation and began to yell, “Hooch, hooch, who's got the hooch?”

Everybody laughed.

“Not this bunch, Rox. This ain't the hooch type, if you know what I mean.” Louise sat her on the bed and starting taking off her shoes.

“You drink hooch, Louie?” Roxie seemed clear.

Louise stopped and looked her in the face and smiled. Roxie hadn't called her Louie since she had been in her house. “Oh yeah, I'm the queen of hooch.”

Roxie tipped back her head and squealed. “You are the queen of hooch, Louie. Louie's the queen of hooch!” And she clapped her hands together while the women laughed with her.

“Louie, queen of hooch, huh? So that stuff we hear about Mrs. Bonner's boardinghouse in town is all true then?” Jessie was intrigued.

Roxie began to talk. “Oh, Louie could drink a fish out of its bowl. You remember the night we drove down to Fayetteville, Louie? You remember that drinking game you played with the soldiers?”

She looked away from Louise and at the other women. “Louie drank every parachute jumper under the table. She was the last one to vomit. Way to go, Louie!” Roxie stood up and pretended to give a toast.

“You must be so proud, Louise.” Beatrice was enjoying the story and nodded back at Roxie with her coffee cup balanced on her palm.

“That was the night George gave me the ring, wasn't it, Louie? We had a fight, and then he showed up at the bar and gave me a diamond. So while I was getting hooked up you were getting hooched up.”

All the women laughed.

“Good ole Louie, queen of the hooch.” Roxie sat back on the bed, winded from the excitement.

“Yep, that's me! Good ole Louie.”

Roxie reached over and gave Louise a hug. “Good ole Louie.”

Louise took a tissue and wiped Roxie's nose. It was a bittersweet story that they were remembering.

Beatrice cleared her throat. Somebody had to break the spell. “Well, Louie,” she said with a disapproving voice, “we still haven't made a decision about Lucy's recipe. I think Rev. Stewart should have the final word.”

Charlotte pushed back a hair that had fallen into her face. “Then I say, keep it in. It's not worth hurting Mrs. Seal's feelings over it. If somebody gets upset about a fruit recipe, then we'll deal with it when it happens. But, really, I can't see much controversy about a cookbook.” She picked up her cup and took a drink of coffee.

“Well, you should know by now that churches can have a controversy about anything. That Baptist church on King Road split over the picture behind the baptismal pool. Some thought Jesus should be coming out of the water, and some thought he should be going in. They had to go to court because the family paying for the painting got a lawyer. Split them right in two, and the lawyer is now the proprietor of the church.”

Bea interrupted. “Well, I heard the preacher stirred everybody up by changing Sunday School from nine forty-five
A
.
M
. until after preaching. They say it was after that change that the whole baptismal pool incidence occurred.” Bea raised her eyebrows and nodded at Jessie.

“So what are you saying, Bea, that altering the time of Sunday School made everybody stupid? This is the preacher's fault?” Margaret always cut to the chase.

Charlotte cut her eyes to Beatrice and listened closely.

“No, well, no, I'm just telling the whole situation of what happened, or at least the way I heard it.” Bea was defensive but not rattled.

“That's the problem, Bea. The way you hear things is sometimes distorted.” Margaret seemed to take this issue personally.

“Well, I've led us off on a tangent. Back to Lucy's recipe, I agree with you, Reverend. Besides, we aren't always intended to anticipate and prevent every conflict. Sometimes a good fight shakes a place up and reminds folks what's really important.” Jessie nodded at Charlotte.

“Or nobody learns a thing and the lawyer ends up with the building.” Margaret looked over at Beatrice. “Now what else is there, Bea?”

Bea looked down at her notes. “Well, somebody needs to decide about headings. Do we put the fruits with the vegetables or with the salads?”

“Vegetables.” Roxie and Louise said it together. Louise looked at Roxie, unsure of how it could be that she was so clear. “Why vegetables, Rox?”

“Because it just sounds nicer. Now, I think I would like to give Ruby a call. Could you bring me the phone, dear?” Surprised at this sudden burst of clarity, Louise hurried out of the room and brought the cordless phone to Roxie. She dialed the number of Roxie's daughter and put the phone next to her ear, but Roxie had already fallen asleep. She pulled the phone away, listened for a minute as Ruby's machine picked up, then turned off the phone.

Louise stood up and spoke quietly but with excitement to the group. “Maybe the social activity of this committee helped her. Do you think that could be it? Do you think us being together and discussing instead of just me speaking to her helped her
remember better?” She was talking very fast while she ran into the kitchen to get her notebook.

There was a pause. Margaret walked over to Roxie's bed while Louise came back into the room. “Louise, I really don't think there's any pattern to this. With Daddy, some days he just knew and some days he didn't. I don't think you can write down notes and figure this out.” Margaret was taking off Roxie's glasses and putting her feet under the covers.

“Yeah, but did you hear her? She hasn't been this clear, well, not since she's come to stay with me. Maybe it was the talk about food. She loved to cook. She had tons of cookbooks. Maybe this conversation just brought her back to me.”

Jessie began to clean up around where she was sitting. “I once had an aunt who in her later years couldn't even tell you her name, but ask her a question about how to plant beans or when was the best time to harvest melons and she could be just as clear as a bell. She would know when the moon would be full and whether or not the tomatoes had enough lime in the soil.” She shook her head. “It was that way right until she passed.” Then she looked over at Louise as if she shouldn't have mentioned death, but Louise hadn't seemed to notice.

“Okay, well, it's getting late.” Beatrice seemed uncomfortable. “I just have one more question.” She was writing something down. “Is grits a vegetable or an old favorite?”

“Somebody gave a recipe for grits?” Margaret shook her head and looked over at the preacher, who shrugged her shoulders.

“Dorothy West said that her sister had a recipe for fried grits that would make your mouth water.” Beatrice took her last sip of coffee.

“Who needs a recipe for fried grits?” Jessie asked. “You just take the leftover grits, put them in a loaf pan, and then put it in the icebox. When you take it out, you cut it into slices and dip them in flour and eggs, then you just stick them in the frying pan until they're done. Don't you do that with your leftover grits?”

The women looked at each other stunned. “No, I stick mine in the microwave with a little water,” Margaret said.

“I don't eat grits,” replied Louise.

“Well, don't look at me,” Charlotte said. “I haven't ever cooked grits in my life.”

The women smiled.

“We've been doing that with grits for as long as I can remember. I thought everybody around here knew about fried grits. I guess I was wrong. This cookbook is going to be a community culture lesson for us all.”

“Jessie, speaking of Dorothy West, is Wallace doing some work over there?” Beatrice had sat back down with her books by her side. She had heard something. Everybody could tell. Margaret rolled her eyes.

“No,” Jessie said with a knowingness of Beatrice's ways. “I think he's become friends with her granddaughter, Lana. They're in the same classes at school. He says she's better in science and he's better in English, so they help each other out. He's third in his senior class at the high school, you know. Janice is real proud of that boy, and so am I. He's gotten invitations to several of the colleges to come and visit, but I don't think he's made up his mind about what he wants to do or where he wants to go yet. Beatrice, since you've asked, do you have some concern about my grandson and who he spends time with?”