How Sweet It Is (30 page)

Jonas pops his Eagles CD into the player. Zack protests because he’s not sure that his older brother should be acting so familiar in someone else’s home.

“Jonas, don’t you need to ask Deena?” he prods. He does this with the kids at The Center, too.

“No,” says Jonas as the first line to “One of These Nights” starts to play. “She knows me.” Then he announces he’s going to check the pipes.

“But, Jonas.” I am the one protesting this time. I enter the living room. “This is Saturday night. You don’t work on Saturday.”

“Don’t work on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. I have worked Saturday before. No sick day.” He smiles, his teeth glistening like the first day I met him. It feels as if I have known him for years.

He swings his wrench and hums to “One of These Nights.”

Then he winks at me. With his wrench swinging, he heads toward the downstairs bathroom.

Zack faces me.

Suddenly, I feel very awkward. Why are things so easy around Jonas and so difficult around Zack?

“Do you need me to help you in the kitchen?” he asks.

“Are you able to make a fire in the fireplace?”

He gathers some logs from the pile outside on the porch and starts a fire.

I stir the soup and see that the loaf of herb bread is almost done. I open the fridge, smile at the new lone lemon I bought the other day, and take out a bowl of salad. I add spinach leaves to the romaine lettuce and dried cranberries. Then I toss it all with almond slivers and my homemade poppy-seed dressing.

Preoccupied, I am startled when I notice Zack has been standing by the kitchen door, watching me.

I smile and place the salad bowl in the fridge again. “Seems we’re always ending up in some kitchen.”

“I’ve enjoyed our kitchen talks.”

Well, they’ve certainly made me think—and be on my toes.

“Deena?” His voice is soft, hesitant.

“Yeah?” I move from the counter.

“Jonas thinks we should—”

“Get together one of these nights?” I surprise myself by my boldness.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t know, Zack.”

“Why?”

“Seems you’ve hugged lots of people in the kitchen.”

“Like?” His face is puzzled.

I give him a knowing look.

The lines on his face ease as he says, “I mean, besides Rhonda. Lots of people?”

“Charlotte. Darren. Lisa. You even managed to give Bobby a hug, one that at least covered half of him.” “You’re jealous?”

He looks down and then slowly lifts his face to mine.

I swallow. Why is he standing so close to me when we are having this conversation? My knees feel weak, but I will not back down. I have to say how I feel. I mean, this is what he wants, right? I find my words. “I am. Just a little.” I’m not smiling, because it is true. Zack seems to be part of everyone’s life, and I have had so little time with just him.

“What do you want, Deena?” His smile has faded from his lips.

More time with just you. Would that be too forward of me to say? Mom would turn up her nose. “What do
you
want?”

“I’d like to be in a relationship… with you.” He speaks slowly, like each word is coming from someplace deep.

I’ve heard of being honest, but this takes the cake. I swallow and mumble, “You would?”

“How about you?”

I don’t know what to say. I look down at his shoes, then at my shoes. All I can see is Rhonda and him standing in the kitchen together. As though reading my mind—and I guess he can do this because he went to grad school for social work—he says, “Rhonda and I aren’t together. We never were.”

Jonas has let me know this, and so has Robert. Once again, Zack is assuring me that he and Rhonda are not, as the kids say, going out. Yet, there is so much more than just knowing where another woman stands in his life. There are many other components… time, truth, trust. These are small words, but each holds great significance for me.

When I look up, his face is right in front of me. I feel unsure, and yet sweet anticipation floods over me at the same time.

“I know it hasn’t been long.” His fingers encircle my arm just above my wrist; I feel warmth touch my scars.

“I want the three Ts,” I tell him.

He gives me a pensive look. “The three Ts?”

“Yeah.”

“What are they?”

His face is so close to mine.

“Something to do with cooking?”

I am glad for the opportunity to laugh. “Yeah, they stand for Teflon, tablespoon, and tarragon.”

“Tarragon?”

“It’s an herb.” There’s a French-grown variety and a Russian-grown one, and French is usually thought to be best in the kitchen. It’s funny how studies at the culinary school can filter through my mind at the most unexpected times.

“I just wondered why there would be an herb when the other two are objects.”

I note the tongs hanging by the stove and say, “Okay, Teflon, tablespoon, and tongs. Does that sound better?”

He looks into my eyes.

I’m not able to catch the harsh pain I once felt his eyes encompassed. All I see now is tenderness.

His hands move to my shoulder. His touch is so light, yet strong enough to make me take one step closer to him. As I put my head against his chest, his arms slip around me.

I let him finger my hair, slowly, caressing away pain, distrust, loneliness. Even the scars on my arms, legs, and stomach seem not to matter right now.

I could stay like this all night.

We hear Jonas over the music. He enters the living room and then the kitchen. I expect Zack to pull away from me like he did when Rhonda was clutching him.

“Well, it’s about time!” Jonas’s voice booms with excitement. He smiles at us, and then leaves the room again, his boots pounding over the hardwoods. “Who made the fire?” he calls as he enters the living room.

“No comments,” Zack says over my head.

“Needs work,” his brother shouts back. “Needs work!”

“Needs work,” I repeat.

“Okay, okay. I heard him.”

I step back a bit and look into Zack’s eyes. To be truthful, to be trustworthy, to know that over time, with God’s help, I have come from wanting to die in Georgia to embracing the sweetness of life in the mountains of North Carolina—those are the valuable things to know. I risk exposing my thoughts, something that I’ve found near impossible to do these past months in Bryson City. “I think
we
need work, too.”

He looks as though my words have slapped him.

Immediately I want to retract what I said, but it’s Jonas’s fault, he gave me the idea.

“Work?” Zack clears his throat. “We need work?”

Goodness, surely he, of all the intelligent people I know, understands this. “Needing work isn’t a bad thing,” I explain. There are times even the best-looking cake could use a little more icing or a few more buttercream roses.

His eyes are hopeful. “But you do think there’s po–tential?”

That’s when I tell him what the three Ts really stand for. “Trust, time, and truth.”

“You’re right. I believe in all of those.” His smile makes me think of a picnic by a cool mountain stream. Add a pinch of autumn breeze, a cup of sunshine, and a heap of potential.

When he kisses me gently, it is even better than a slice of velvet cake.

forty

R
egena Lorraine, dressed in a bulky peach-colored dress, removes her leopard-spotted glasses from her eyes. Her frame fills the doorway to the kitchen as she watches me pipe rosettes along the top of an almond cake. I’ve received three cake orders already this first week of November.

People have told me they picked up brochures at the Chinese restaurant and bookstore. This has to mean that the employees I handed them to are displaying them, as they said they would. Even though I’m an outsider from Georgia, I feel I’ve been given a chance in this little town. I know that Jonas has been instrumental in telling everyone he does business for that my cakes are the best, which means that people are ordering because of his genuine marketing skills. And who can resist Jonas when his eyes flash like headlights as he speaks of dessert?

Marble Gray did pay for her cakes, although she claimed she didn’t have the exact amount on her and gave me a dollar less than the price on the brochure. I let it go. I had a feeling if I argued with her, she’d make a scene so voluminous that it would bring the Swain County police to my front door. I don’t need that kind of publicity. Regena Lorraine said she was surprised Marble Gray paid anything. “That woman will steal the shirt off your back.” And your underwear, I once heard.

As I notice the frosting running low, I open the refrigerator for more butter. I’ll need to make more frosting. I’m grateful that not only do I have the mixer I brought from Atlanta, but that Ernest has one in this cabin, as well. On the refrigerator door is a drawing of an owl. The feathers are brown, with shades of gray at the tips. The eyes are as round as demitasse cups. If the picture could sing, I’m sure it would do so loudly and beautifully. This is a tawny owl, and although they hide, they like to be heard. Darren’s name is signed in the lefthand corner. I told him he better put his name on the sheet or otherwise, since the drawing is so good, I might think Bob Timberlake drew it.

“Bob who?” he asked.

“We’ll have to go to Blowing Rock one day,” I said. “He has an art gallery there.”

My aunt inserts a finger into the bowl of buttercream frosting, smacks her lipstick-covered mouth, and says, “Cabin is yours now, Shug.”

I’m not sure I heard correctly, so I just look at her.

“You don’t have to teach cooking at The Center anymore.” With a jeweled hand, she reaches inside her tote bag and displays official-looking papers.

My eyes glance at the papers and then at her face. Is she serious? Or, knowing my aunt, is there a long story she needs to tell me first?

“All legal. I was at the lawyer’s this morning. This is your place now. Oh, we do have to get you to sign some forms next week.”

“So I fulfilled my obligation?” Over six months of grueling lessons to noisy, wild, rude, lovable children.

“Sure did.” She smiles, but then shows clear shock at my next question.

“But can I still teach?” I’ve learned how to love those kids. I would hate to give it all up now. I know that soon they’ll have outgrown middle school and graduate on to high school, but there will be others to replace them. I want to be ready for the new kids with my shiny pans and recipes for something other than white sauce.

She regains her composure, places her glasses back onto her face, uses her fingers to delicately adjust them against her nose. “Of course.”

Nervously, I ask, “There’s nothing that says I have to give up my classes?”

“Oh no, Shug. Besides, I don’t think Miriam would want you to quit.” She attempts a wink. “The kids would be sad if you left them.”

Giovanni, resting at his usual spot, stretches and yawns.

I put the frosting bag on the counter and look at my aunt to ask the very thing that has been on my mind. “Do you think Grandpa knew I needed to teach so that I could change?”

“Change?”

“You know, grow up.”

“You are all growed up, Shug.” She smiles and turns to go, leaving the papers on the countertop. I follow her down the hallway, guessing she doesn’t understand what I mean at all. But I’m wrong. As she opens the door, a blast of cool November air flows into the cabin, and Giovanni races outside to jump into a pile of brown leaves. My aunt pauses, looks at me, and says, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

I nod. I think of the words my grandfather penned in his letter to me. “
Life is never as we expect it.”

“I suppose Ernest’s plans, mixed with God’s, all came about to teach you wonderful things.” She lifts a strand of gray hair from her eyes, considers saying something else, hesitates, and then says, “Ernest was fond of you.”

“Really?”

“You and he are more alike than you realize. He saw something in you, something that clicked with him.”

My face must have its bewildered look because she clarifies with, “Shug, he knew. He asked for my advice, and I gave it. I told him that I was sure you would appreciate a cabin in these parts. But he wanted you to not just get the cabin and stay holed up in it. He wanted you to receive something and to have to give something of yourself. Receiving and giving, isn’t that what it’s all about?” She smiles.

“Receive… and give… ?”

Fingering her sentimental silver ring from her mother, she explains. “Did I ever tell you about the time I wanted a bunny rabbit?”

Without waiting for my reply, Regena Lorraine excitedly dives into her story. “Ernest made me work for it. I begged for a bunny, in spite of the fact that he told me caring for a pet takes a lot of work. He went on and on about how I would have to clean up after it and feed it and be responsible enough to keep it out of Mrs. McGullery’s flower garden. I said that I could do all that. That’s when he looked me in the eye and said that I had to help the Kinston twins with their math. They weren’t very smart, oh no. They weren’t the brightest bulbs in the county. But I could teach fractions pretty well.” She smiles as though reflecting on a chalkboard filled with one-thirds and three-fourths.