Playing by the Rules: A Novel (3 page)

Granddaddy shook his head, still cracking eggs, careful to separate the yokes from the whites so he wouldn’t have to engage in another runaway-slippery-eggshell search mission. To say that his wife and Ole Miss Johnson didn’t like each other was being kind.

Their intense rivalry in the tomato competition at the Annual County Fair made them relate as politely as two bull moose charging each other, ramming their antlers, protecting what was theirs. Granddaddy hoped that Christmas would provide a day of truce.

Ole Miss Johnson lived next door to Nana. In their youth, they had been close friends, but time came between them and split them apart like a half shadow across a full moon. Some would say it started when Ole Miss Johnson’s husband, Easely, died. Others would say it started with tomatoes.

Doing her best to get dressed, Ole Miss Johnson was moving slowly in her bedroom getting ready for Christmas dinner. The storm that raged through Lemon City last month and cut through her backyard like a mini-tornado had caused a tree branch to fall on her, breaking several ribs, making it more painful than usual to get around. She had no family and usually ate her holiday meals at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. But since the storm, it was difficult to maneuver, and she didn’t feel like going far from the house and was grateful that her next-door neighbor extended a Christmas dinner invitation. As excruciating as it was for Ole Miss Johnson to get dressed, she knew it had been even more painful for her neighbor, Ernestine, to invite her into the Dunlap home. Besides hunger, the pleasure of seeing Ernestine’s discomfort was the only reason she was making an attempt to match her neighbor’s effort to be sociable.

Ole Miss Johnson grabbed the left side of her body as if that were the only means to holding her ribs into place. Although the bandage had come off a week ago, she was still extremely miserable and it hurt whenever she attempted to accomplish the least of things. Putting her arms through the sleeves of her dress, and pulling the front around her, she knew it would be a while before she could manage through all the buttons. To lift her spirit and
pass the time while sitting on her bed, trying to get her fingers to work in unison, she began humming “Joy to the World,” hoping that would help her to find the joy in the day.

Well into the holiday spirit, Nana was tossing the nuts, fruits, and marshmallows into the larger mixing bowl, like she was bringing together old friends. “I wish I had some deerstongue or calamus to sprinkle into this ambrosia to make Clement pay some attention to Theola.”

“Why don’t you leave those two alone?” Granddaddy said, pulling out the drawer, looking for the electric mixer. “Clement can handle his own business. He’s a grown man and if he’s interested in Theola I’m sure he’ll find a way to let her know.” Mumbling into the bowl, he added, “Besides, you’re on the edge of breaking Rule Number Nine: ‘Mind Your Own Business Personally and Professionally.’ ”

“‘Umph… all it seems to me is that Clement needs a little help with taking some initiative.” Nana stopped slicing the pineapple and glanced upward as if she spotted something on the ceiling. “Now where did I put that mistletoe?”

Nana wiped her hands on her apron and felt the thumbtacks she had put into her pocket. Before Granddaddy could begin another sentence, she was headed through the kitchen door. She walked into the dining room, knowing she’d taken the mistletoe out of the storage box but not remembering where she put it. Moving into the living room, she spotted it on the mantle above the fireplace. Fishing around in her apron pocket, she removed a thumbtack from the cardboard and proceeded to hang the mistletoe on the archway over the entrance of the front door.

“I bet you he’s shy,” Nana said, returning to the kitchen, going to the sink to wash off the sticky fruit-juice residue from her hands.

“Ain’t nothing bashful about Clement, so stop making things up to keep yourself occupied ‘cause your granddaughter ain’t here,” Granddaddy said, turning off the electric mixer so he could hear himself speak. “That’s exactly what I mean about overcompensating. You’ve got two other grandchildren. I’m sure they’d appreciate your noticing them instead of mourning the missing.” He unscrewed the cap to the Old Crow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey and poured it slowly into the mixture.

Nana knew her husband was right. She had to focus on what she had instead of what she lacked. It wasn’t that she was missing herbs to make Clement pay more attention to Theola. She was missing her granddaughter, Faye. Her other granddaughter, Louise, still lived in Lemon City and would be bringing that fine young man Medford to Christmas dinner, and she was hoping to have a new addition to her clan. Her grandson Billy was her heart and Nana hoped his wife, Elvira, was doing everything possible to make her a great-grandmother, which would make her family expand even more. Yes. Everything was perfect, she thought to herself. She should think about her family growing and not diminishing. It was time to think about tomorrow instead of yesterday.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if Medford proposed to Louise and gave her some karats for Christmas, and I don’t mean the kind you eat?” Nana took the small hammer from her apron, held another hairy coconut shell firmly in place, and cracked it open.

“No, it wouldn’t,” said Granddaddy, stirring in the whipping cream. “They just started courtin’ seriously last month. Don’t rush things. It’s bad luck, and Lord knows we don’t need any more of that.” He poured the egg whites into a separate bowl and started beating them until the peaks were stiff.

“At least that way,” Nana added, “I’d have two of my grandchildren guaranteed to be here with me. Louise would stay be
cause Medford wouldn’t dare think of leaving Lemon City,” she said with confidence. “And Billy ain’t going nowhere ‘cause he and Elvira are gonna have their babies born and raised right here.” Nana’s smile took over her face, thinking about the future. Then she mixed the ingredients in the ambrosia and with every movement of her arm, she increased her strokes as if the power she put behind the wooden spoon would help make the marriage proposal she had predicted and the grandbabies she wanted come true. “Don’t you want to see your oldest granddaughter married?”

“Of course, I do,” said Granddaddy. “But she’s gotta see it first.” He sprinkled nutmeg and cinnamon to his milky batch, then added a dash of anisette. Proud of the outcome of this year’s holiday tradition, he poured himself a small glass to sample.

“They’ve been together practically every day since the storm,” Nana confirmed. “That was before Thanksgiving.”

“And that’s a start,” said Granddaddy. “Let’s just wait and be patient and see how things turn out.” He saved a small taste of eggnog for his wife and put the glass to her lips for her approval.

“But you know they’ve been secretly sweet on each other for years.” Nana took a sip and frowned at the taste of whiskey. “Ever since she was little and he was a little bit older.”

“That’s the truth, and we know it. Let’s just hope they realize it too.” He licked a spot of eggnog off the corner of his wife’s mouth, and that not only made her blush, but seemed to put her at ease.

Two women were on Medford’s mind right now as he was driving along Route 23 behind the wheel of his 1972 black Ford Bronco, four-wheel-drive pickup truck alongside Clement on their way to the Dunlaps for Christmas dinner. They weighed so heavily on him that he didn’t have enough energy to put together words and form them into sentences, and this had made him quiet lately, so
quiet that he hadn’t been himself. One woman he wouldn’t know if she dropped out of the sky and landed at his feet; the other he knew all too well, and he was aware that she was beginning to think there was something not right between them. Even though he had been distant lately, the last thing he wanted was to send Louise the wrong message. Tomorrow he decided he would tell her what was on his mind, so she wouldn’t think he was losing interest, or worse, seeing another woman. Tomorrow he’d tell her about the search for his mother and how he felt it was important to uncover the truth before he could ask for her hand in marriage so they could start their own family. Despite the fact he had only been dating Louise seriously for the past six weeks, he had known all along that she was the one for him. And now that he was on a serious, life-changing mission, he hoped the love of his life would understand. Certain the ad that he’d placed in today’s
Lemon City Chronicle
would generate responses from the public about his birth mother, Medford was optimistic he’d get results fairly soon.

The wool turtleneck sweater he was wearing irritated his skin, making him itch. He slid his finger alongside his neck to scratch and realized he was rubbing his kidney-bean-shaped birthmark. It was the only place on his body that was a souvenir from his birth. It also happened to be the same spot on his body that was sensitive to Louise’s touch. He always saw the irony in his birthmark, which he considered to be the one thing the two most important women in his life had in common because it was the point of intersection, like lines on a road map, the place where they connected, but would never meet.

In contrast to uncovering the mystery of his mother, Medford didn’t feel the same passion to find his biological father. As Clement’s adopted son ever since he could remember, there was no mistaking the man who’d saved his life and raised him like his own. Medford doubted his birth father could have done a better
job than Clement. It was finding his mother that became a priority and the older he got, the more he was being consumed by curiosity. It haunted him to have no knowledge about the woman who had abandoned him forty-four years ago on Clement’s porch. With every passing day, it became more and more an obsession.

Medford glanced at Clement. There was a thin white cloud swirling around his derby hat from the cherry pipe tobacco he was smoking. Clement had as many hats in his closet as a millinery, or at least as many hats as some women have shoes. His everyday hat was a porkpie, but he had an assortment of other headwear that included Panama hats, buckets, and fedoras. The way Medford saw it, Clement wasn’t deliberately stylish. He was as bald as a rock on top of his head, with hair that clung like moss to the sides, giving his hairline a horseshoe kind of shape. The hats he wore were intended to cover his vanity and as Clement would be the first to say, his “head-toppings” also made him more appealing to the ladies, like sprinkles across a scoop of ice cream.

Taking a puff off his pipe, savoring the smell of his cherry tobacco, Clement blew smoke out of the crack of the opened window.

“I been noticing that you and that gal been seein’ a lot of each other lately,” he said, clenching his pipe between his teeth. “Seem like she’s been enjoyin’ herself being with you too.” He waited for his son to add on to the conversation, but Medford continued driving as if he were alone in the car. “I know you been waitin’ a long time for her to come ‘round, had your eye on her since she was young…how old’s she now? Twenty-six or so? If you ask me, that’s just ripe for marryin’.”

“Yes,” agreed Medford, wincing at the age difference between him and Louise. “But please don’t make me sound like I’m robbing the cradle.”

“I don’t mean it like that.” Clement smiled at the response
from his son. “It’s just, I see the way you two been lookin’ at each other over the years. And at forty-four, you’s old enough to get married. Matter of fact, son, you’s old as hell. You been round long enough to be married and widow’erd and married again, if you ask me. Don’t want people talkin’ about you like you was your Uncle Bootsie.”

Bootsie wasn’t a blood relative, but since Clement and Bootsie had been friends since high school, he might as well be family deserving of the title.

“It doesn’t bother me what people say,” Medford added. “They’re supposed to be minding their own business anyway.”

“As you know, Bootsie sings in the Pursuit of Happiness Jubilee Choir. At least all your singin’, as far as I know, is done in the shower.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ain’t ‘spose to mean nothin’. You know Bootsie is like a brother to me …” He paused to take a puff on his pipe. “Just want to make sure you still like gals, is all.” He slapped Medford on his knee, creating a reflex reaction that made it jerk against the steering wheel.

Medford looked at his father as if he were crazy. There were times when Medford thought he actually was.

“I know which way Bootsie likes the wind to blow, but I don’t think he’s decided on which direction to follow,” Clement continued, pushing another stream of smoke out the window. “What I wanna know is why you been so quiet lately and what’s goin’ on with you.”

“I just have something on my mind, that’s all.” Medford was hoping he didn’t sound defensive. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Clement’s feelings. “I’m sure I’ll bring it up some other time… later, when it’s not Christmas… maybe tomorrow. But right now I just want to enjoy the holiday.”

“Then tell your face it’s enjoyin’ the holiday, ‘cause it looks like it’s going to a funeral.”

Medford finally forced his mouth into a smile, and Clement took another draw on his pipe, happy to get his son to talk even if it wasn’t about the thing that was bothering him. Clement already knew, based on experience, that whenever a man was quiet, the silence usually had something to do with a woman.

With the eggnog chilling in the refrigerator, Granddaddy went upstairs to take a shower. While Nana was waiting for him to finish, she counted the number of boxed lemon desserts to make sure she had the right amount of gifts for her guests. Making a few trips, carrying the boxes to the living room, she organized them neatly under her fully decorated red spruce tree. As a final touch, she plugged the cord into the outlet and the lights came on, making her feel her tree was now completely dressed. She put the Nat King Cole Christmas album on the stereo and set the needle down easy, because it wouldn’t feel like Christmas until she heard him sing “The Christmas Song.”

Turning her head toward the fireplace, Nana looked at the stockings that were hanging and stuffed with smaller items, each embroidered with the names of her grandchildren: Billy and his wife Elvira, Louise, and Faye. Despite Faye’s absence, Nana appreciated the memento of her granddaughter and held out hope that she might arrive home for a surprise visit.