Queen Bee Goes Home Again (6 page)

But instead of going back earlier in the day, I'd copped out and stayed away for months, telling myself Daddy wouldn't know the difference, and Tommy would be there.

What a coward. Never mind that I'd been working night and day in an effort to keep my home. As usual, I'd let myself get caught up in the urgent and neglected the important.

“I should have gone to see him a lot more,” I confessed.

Miss Mamie was so guilt-ridden about having him committed that she hadn't been able to make herself go see him, even once.

I went on making my excuses. “But the smell was so awful there, and he looked so bad. They never shave him properly.” My father had always been meticulous about his grooming.

“He wouldn't sit still,” Tommy explained. “Kept getting cut. So I bought an electric razor and started doing it myself, first thing after breakfast. He holds still for me.”

Guilt surged. “Every day?”

Tommy smiled. “Not every. But most.” Except for that morning I'd gone to find them out cold and naked. “It's such a small thing to do,” my brother said with absolute sincerity, “but he really appreciates it.”

Maybe Tommy
had
become the life guru.

Internally, I heard that still, small voice mimic the one on my GPS.
Redirecting
.
Redirecting
.

The better part of me vowed to open my eyes to the needs of my family instead of being so obsessed with my own problems, but to be honest, the rest of me would rather have headed for the hills, far and fast.

Would that I could, but blood's thicker than my mother's sawmill gravy. She and Tommy needed me. And so did Daddy. He might be homicidal and crazy as a rabid raccoon, but he was still my father.

I had thought of moving back home as a penance, but it just might be my chance at redemption.

The waitress brought our food, and I was surprised to see the diner's signature smooth, flat brown biscuit—with lots of flaky crust around its shallow, fluffy insides—beside Tommy's scrambled eggs and grits.

I'd caught a glimpse of the cook on the way back, and she was definitely Asian. “How could she make that biscuit?” I challenged my brother. “I've tried to make biscuits like that all my life, and they come out like hockey pucks. With freckles.”

“Estell, the old cook,” Tommy said, “taught the new owner's sister how to do it before she retired.”

Miss Mamie had tried to teach me, but even when we worked side by side with the same ingredients and the same oven, mine had flopped, while hers rose high and light as they always did.

Maybe it was my electromagnetic field.

I bowed my head and murmured the blessing over the food. Then, with perfectly acceptable diner etiquette, I cut up my fried eggs and mixed them well to coat the whites with thick, creamy yolks—perfectly over medium.

A lot of people had been upset when the previous American owner had sold out to the current “foreigners,” but our breakfasts proved that a good cook's a good cook, the world around.

To my chagrin, I heard my voice say, “I saw Daddy and Uncle B the morning I moved in.”

Tommy stopped eating. “How were they?”

Ears pricked up all over. I leaned closer to my brother. “I'll tell you when we get to the truck.”

Clearly annoyed that I'd brought it up only to put him off, he frowned.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn't have brought it up. It's private. But I feel like I'm on display here.”

He regarded me with assessment. “Only till they get used to you. They're good people.” He grinned. “For the most part. We always have a sprinkling of scoundrels, just to keep things interesting.”

I leaned forward again to ask, “Do you know anybody in here?” I scanned the room. “I don't recognize anybody.”

Tommy smiled and nodded toward a nice-looking couple sitting side by side in the far corner, facing a white-haired guy with a sunny expression beside a mountain of a middle-aged man. “That couple's the Dotsons. He's retired military, slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Bought a house in town and restored it. She runs a flower shop and doesn't put up with any of his guff.”

He took a sip of coffee, then wiped his mouth with a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table, never looking at the people about whom he spoke. “Guy with the white hair retired from being a lineman at the GM plant in Doraville, when there still was one. Wife told him he'd have to get out of the house at least half the day to keep from driving her nuts, so he comes here, then goes to the old men's club at Hardee's. Fella beside him owns all kinds of stuff, including rental property and land all around here.”

The players had changed, but the place was still the same.

I wondered how long it would take me to reacquaint myself with the town's occupants—not the thousands of exurbanites out by the mall, just the townies.

When I'd first moved back to Mimosa Branch ten years before, it had been a small town of about six thousand, expanded from three. Now it had sprawled across the interstate to take in the new mall and scads of apartments, over sixteen thousand households in all, mostly people from other places.

Tommy stirred his grits. “Did you hear? Donnie West isn't going to run for mayor again next year.”

A major item Miss Mamie had neglected to mention. “Why not?”

Ever since we'd overthrown our corrupt mayor ten years before in favor of Donnie West—the most down-to-earth, honest Gospel preacher we'd ever known—things at City Hall had straightened up and stayed that way.

Who knew what would happen here without him?

Tommy exhaled. “Said the Lord was calling him to a church in Pittsburgh, so how can you argue with that?”

“You can't.” If Donnie said so, it must be true.

Hamm Stubbs, Donnie's crooked predecessor, had gone to jail for racketeering and laundering drug money, so we were safe from him, but I had no idea who could replace a man as good as Donnie. There'd be plenty of politicking going on in town, for sure, so at least the gossip at the diner would be interesting.

And as Tommy had said, there were always a few scoundrels in the mix.

I sent up an arrow prayer:
Lord, keep us from some wolf in sheep's clothing. Things are hard enough as it is.

I sure would hate to see things at City Hall go downhill. Especially since we now had an
olde towne
district to take care of.

Tommy broke my concentration by asking, “So, what do you have on tap for this afternoon, after we see Dad?”

Convinced I wouldn't get it, I confessed, “I thought I'd go over to Ocee U. to get an application and find out if it's too late to get in. Assuming I can get a scholarship.”

Tommy cocked back, dubious. “You're serious about that?”

“I know. I'm old. But real estate is out, for obvious reasons, and I'm not really fit for anything else. I can't touch-type or do anything complicated on a computer, and my knees are so bad, I can't work on my feet. Education is one field where my age won't work against me. I was thinking of teaching high school English.”

My brother's expression screwed up. “High school English? Are you crazy? Have you seen the teenagers out there?”

“Yes, and I have a perverse affection for them. Don't ask me why, but I do.” I stared at him, flat-mouthed. “At least I'd have some benefits till I qualify for Medicare.” Assuming I got my certificate in three years, going full-time. “Plus, the vacations are great.”

“I think you've lost your mind,” he whispered, leaning forward. “Haven't you heard all the jokes about having an English degree and not being able to find work? Google it. And what happens if you spend all that time and money to get a teaching certificate, and nobody wants to hire you?”

“I'll deal with that when it happens,” I told him calmly, my resolve stiffening against his rejection. “But this is my plan.” My impulse, actually, but he didn't need to know that.

Tommy cocked an eyebrow. “I think you might want to consider a plan B. Like another job.”

I leaned forward to whisper, “I
tried
to find another job, but nobody wants a sixty-year-old high school graduate with bad knees, who can't touch-type or use Excel, or work an electronic cash register, or balance a checkbook. The only openings I could find were collection agencies, straight commission sales for pyramid companies, phone sex, and telemarketers, but you have to draw the line somewhere.”

Tommy shot me a smug expression. “I don't know; what does the phone sex pay?”

“Very funny.” Why couldn't he at least be a little supportive about my going to college? “Never mind,” I concluded. Since both of us were finished, I picked up my purse as I rose. “Let's go see Daddy.”

As he looked up at me, Tommy's face reflected a twinge of regret. “I'm sorry. I was wrong to be so negative. I know you're just doing the best you can.” Which was AA-speak for doing things that were hurtful or unwise.

“Why don't you go back for a degree, too?” I challenged. “Or technical school. Who knows? Maybe you could graduate with me.”

Tommy barked a laugh. “No way. I long ago drank away too many gray cells.” He grabbed the check, then threw a generous three-dollar tip on the table. “And anyway, I
have
a job, fixing things for hire and looking after the Mame and the house. And the General.” He got up, then followed me to the front. “You're the smart one. You'll do fine, I know it.”

“But first,” I told him as we reached the register, “I have to get a scholarship.”

After we checked out, we drove to the Home. On the way, I told Tommy what had happened there the day I'd moved home, and both of us ended up hilarious.

As luck would have it, we came in to find Daddy and Uncle Bedford decently dressed in flannel pajama pants and matching VFW T-shirts. Daddy immediately strode over to give Tommy a back-clapping man-hug, but it took Uncle Bedford time to recognize me.

“Are you that boy?” he grumbled. “That gay guy?”

Ignoring my sore knees, I crouched in front of his wheelchair and gently stroked his hair away from his face. “No, sweetie. It's Lins-a-pin, your niece.”

Daddy's geriatric psychiatrist had said that even if they were deaf, people with Alzheimer's were highly sensitive to touch, tone, and expression, so I did my best to act calm and reassuring. I smiled up at him despite the tears that stung the backs of my eyes when I thought of the lively, laughing man he'd once been.

His expression cleared, and for a moment he looked like himself again. “Hey there, little girl. You come back home?”

I nodded. “Yep. I've come back home.”

The question was, would I ever escape again?

The odds were against it, but maybe that wouldn't be the end of the world.

“Lin!” Daddy hollered. “Get over here and tell your brother to quit mumblin'. I cain't hear a bleemin' thing he says.”

I gave Uncle Bedford a pat, then rose to face the General with a purposeful smile on my face. “He's not mumbling, Daddy,” I said distinctly into his better ear. “If you want to hear people, let us get you some hearing aids.”

Tommy started laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“We got him some. Twice.” Tommy gave Daddy a sidelong hug, then sat him aslant on the bottom corner of the bed and stepped behind him, massaging our father's sloping shoulders, which Daddy seemed to enjoy.

Out of the General's line of sight, Tommy explained quietly, “He wouldn't—or couldn't—adjust to them, so he kept taking them out and hiding them to get us to stop trying to make him wear them.”

He shook his head. “When they disappeared, we got new ones with the insurance, but the insurer said they would only replace them once in four years. I explained it to the General, but the next thing you know, he'd chewed the replacements to pieces and swallowed them with his chili, so that was that. Sayonara, six-thousand-dollar state-of-the-art hearing aids, plus a trip to the emergency room to have the pieces fished out of his stomach.”

Tommy hadn't told me about any of that. Or the Mame. Apparently, the sane members of my family had cut me out of the loop.

I scowled. “He chewed them up?” Yuk.

“Yep.”

I gave Daddy a bear hug. “You sweet, silly old fella,” I said softly into his ear. “I love you.”

My father wrapped his long, sun-freckled arms around me and murmured back, sweet as could be, “I love you too, Lin. Always have. Always will.”

For that precious moment, I had my daddy back, and the world was put to rights.

Until I got to Ocee University.

 

Six

Twenty minutes north of Mimosa Branch, I found the campus of Ocee University sparsely inhabited by summer-quarter students, most of whom looked too young to drive. The one-story brick buildings were attractive, but far spread, and the grassy quadrangle had been burned to tan by the drought. Beyond the library, I noted a gym and a new humanities building with five stories.

Nice, but lots of steps between classes.

I followed the directionals to the registrar's office (as far from where I'd parked as you could get), then signed in behind two girls who were decked out in major slut, with large tattoos on their upper arms and multiple piercings, both of them glued to their smartphones, one texting and the other playing games.

God forgive me, but I judged them. I know it was wrong, but I mean, isn't that the whole point of how people present themselves: to show the world what kind of person they are? The message from these two was,
cheap, easy,
and
phone-obsessed.

The girls sat down on opposite sides of the room while I filled in the “purpose for your visit” blank with
I want to go back for my degree on scholarship,
then sat down without even a brief glance from the girls.