Shem Creek (34 page)

I raised my window and looked at Alex in my rearview mirror.

“So, how’s school going, Alex?”

“Gotta game after school today.”

Notice, I had asked about school, meaning academics, and the answer came in the form of a sports announcement.

“Oh! I want to come!” Gracie said. “Who are we playing?”

“We’re going to kick the ass offa St. Andrews,” Alex said. “Sorry, Ms. Breland.”

“That’s okay, kick them good. You’re not working this afternoon, Gracie?”

“It’s Monday, Mom! I work Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, unless I have a test. I have it all worked out with Louise. Don’t worry.”

“Okay. Gosh, I have so much on my mind that I forget my own name half the time.”

I dropped them off at Wando and told Gracie to call me if she was going to the game. The way we had it arranged, I drove them in the morning and Lupe handled the afternoons, but still, I just wanted to know where Gracie was.

My first order of business was the bank deposit. After a weekend there was a hefty amount of cash in the safe and we all felt better when it was neatly tucked away in our account at PNC.

I arrived at eight forty-five and went to the kitchen to see who was in. There was Mimi sitting on a bar stool drinking coffee while Duane and Louise were inhaling thick slices of Mimi’s pound cake. She had probably crawled out of her bed at dawn to bake, but never mind that, she had made the recipe so many times, she could have thrown two cakes together in her sleep.

“Morning, all. Hey, Mimi.” I poured myself a mug of coffee and gave her a hug around her shoulder. “Are you trying to fatten up Louise and Duane? What’s going on?”

“Well, I just wanted to thank them for being so good to you and the girls so I decided to bake them a cake.” She winked at me. “And you won’t
believe
what they want me to do!”

“Let me guess,” I said.

My clever sister! I just didn’t expect her to do it so soon.

“This is the most delicious pound cake I ever had in my entire life,” Louise said. “I can’t stop eating it and you know I’m not crazy for sweets. It’s like satin and velvet and butter all at the same time.”

I giggled because it was a well-known fact that Louise had a sweet tooth.

“That goes double for me,” Duane said, “it reminds me of my grandmother’s!” He pretended to be wiping away tears.

“They want me to bake cakes for the restaurant! Can you believe that?”

“No kidding,” I said.

“No,” Louise said, “you’re
going to
bake cakes for the restaurant or else things are going to get ugly around here. I’ll have to beat your sister every day until you say yes! Don’t
make
me take my wooden spoon to her backside!”

Everyone was amused because Louise was demanding the cakes or maybe it was the idea of her chasing me around with a wooden spoon or because they were just enjoying a little sugar high to begin their day. No, it was the sugar. I was not about to touch Mimi’s pound cake because I had already gained six pounds since I fled New Jersey and my clothes were tight.

“Well, y’all work it out. I’m going to the bank.”

“I put everything in the safe last night,” Louise said.

Of course she had. Louise was beyond dependable.

When I returned, Louise was waiting for me.

“How come you didn’t tell me your sister could bake like that?”

“Well, it never occurred to me, I guess. She’s something, huh?”

“She don’t belong in the dining room, but she can work in my kitchen any time she wants. She’s gonna make us ten cakes—four plain, two with lemon sauce, two with caramel icing and two all chocolate. Once people get a taste of them, we’re all gonna be rich! I mean
rich!
”

“Good! By the way, she makes killer biscuits, corn bread, shortbread and pies too. Did she tell you about them?”

“No, she did not! I’m gonna call her and have a word with her on withholding information!”

I giggled, imagining the tirade Louise was going to deliver to Mimi. “Wait!” I said. “I gotta talk to you about something.”

“Sure, what’s going on? Tell me quick ’cause I have a million things to do.”

“I’m getting an offer on my house in New Jersey. . . .”

“Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!”

“You said it, sister! And, so I have to go back to New Jersey again and empty the house.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Well, I have a flight Friday that’s the right price but I know it’s short notice.”

“Girl, if it’s the right price, it’s the right flight—go on and make your plans and I can cover for you. Shoot, I’ll get your sister in that kitchen yet!”

“I told you she could cook!”

“You were right too!”

I called Mimi.

“So, is Betty Crocker there?” Wiseass. All in caps. On my tombstone.

“Don’t you just loooove it?”

“Amazing. Isn’t it great to get paid for doing something you like to do?”

“Well, we’ll see. I mean, I just have this old stove, but let’s see how long it lasts.”

“Louise has even had
me
in the kitchen a few times. She taught me how to make her crab cakes. The secret is as little breading as possible and to sauté the green peppers and onions in a tiny bit of butter before you add it in. Then let them sit in the fridge and get cold. Then they won’t fall apart when you cook them.”

“Is that all? Glory! I think picking crab meat is too much work, much less all you’re talking about. So, you’re
cooking?
”

“Only in the loosest definition of the term. Hey, tell me about your date last night! How did it go with old Jack?”

“Well, he’s a good eater and an excellent snorer. I fed him two full plates of food and he sopped up the gravy with six biscuits. I was going to serve him dessert while we watched a movie on television. So, he went into the den and turned the television on and I went to start the coffee. By the time I got there, which was all of four minutes, he was snoring so loud and with so much force my curtains were waving back and forth with each snort. But, he did bring me flowers.”

The vision of this man shoveling down a mountain of food, who then falls asleep in front of her television, snoring like a barnyard full of hogs, was very funny indeed.

“That’s some groovy hunk of burning love you got there, sister. What kind of flowers?”

“The kind they sell at the grocery store for two dollars.”

That wasn’t a good sign. “No moofky poofky?”

“Not diddly. Nada. Goose egg.”

“Rats. You cook all day for two dollars’ worth of flowers and no seduction.”

“Seduction. Humph. And, you know what else? This is going to sound really peculiar.”

“Not to me, honey. You can tell me anything.”

“Well, here’s this nice-looking man, he’s a doctor, has nice manners, I mean, he’s got everything you could want but there’s no . . . I don’t know . . .”

“No heat? No hot and heavy? No urgent desire for a little ooh-la-la?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it. And, you know what? He’s kind of boring too.”

“So are you gonna see him again?”

“I guess so, I mean, why not? It’s not like there are a thousand guys trying to take me out.”

“That’s why I decided to be celibate. It ain’t worth it.”

“Come on. That’s some bull, girl. As soon as we figure out how to get rid of Amy, you won’t be celibate anymore.”

“Forget it. I thought about what you said and I just don’t see it. Anyway, I have other fish to fry, like they say over here on Shem Creek. I’ll talk to you later.”

I hung up the phone and looked at it for a few minutes, thinking about what we had just said. As usual, what was unsaid was more interesting. How was it that there were so many people who wanted to be with someone and yet there were so many people alone? Never mind how many people were rotting away in lackluster marriages that should have ended when their kids went to college. Or men my age chasing girls who still got pimples. Sure, there were legitimate reasons why people had less than optimal personal lives—extensive business travel, demanding careers, narcissism, momma’s boys, daddy’s girls, impotence, uncontrollable flatulence, chronic halitosis, neurological disorders such as Tourette’s syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, being incarcerated, and heroin addiction, to name a few. And let us not forget—you could have just been born with a face as ugly as a mud fence.

But still. There were too many people in unsatisfying relationships and too many with no relationships at all. This did not apply to me, of course, because I had solved the problem of desire by simply lowering my expectations. If I did not expect anything I could not be disappointed.

I checked the e-mail for word from Lindsey and there it was again.
Hi Mom! College is fab! Did you kill Gracie yet? Love, L.
I answered her,
Hey baby! All’s good. Gracie breathes! Love you! Mom.
No one would ever accuse us of replacing a lengthy phone call with electronic messages, but a blurb from her was all I needed. I just wanted to know she was all right.

I was finishing a phone call to one of our vendors, asking for a duplicate invoice, when Brad appeared in my office doorway.

“You busy?”

“No, I’m on hold. Come on in—sit a spell.” The man I was talking to came back on the line and gave me some jazz about our payment being late. “If you want to fax a copy of the invoice, I’ll get the check out to you today. Okay, thanks.” I hung up the phone and looked at Brad. “What a jerk! How can we pay him if we don’t know how much we owe?”

“Good question. Hey, how come you never told me that Amy came by?”

Shit!
“Um, I thought Louise told you?”

“Funny. She said the same thing about you. Do you have the card she left?”

Shit!
“Um, I think Louise has it.” I was blushing very hard and very fast and very deep, which sounds like more fun than it was.

“Funny. She said you had it. Is there something going on around here that concerns me that I am unaware of?”

It’s important to note here that Brad was not angry, annoyed or irritated in the least. In fact, he seemed to be up for a little cheery verbal spar.

“We, that is, Louise and I are concerned about your
health
. Did you hear back from your doctor?”

“My health? Yeah, I heard. I’m fine. Gonna live to be a hundred and two. I just have to avoid red wine and chocolate.”

“
And,
that Amy.”

“Yeah, well, she’s tough to avoid. I don’t think there’s ever been a man who told her no besides me and so she just keeps calling and calling and calling. She’s driving me a little crazy.”

“So, why don’t you just tell her to buzz off?”

“Because, Miss Jersey, that’s not how I do things.”

“Well, I’ll tell her if you want me to. It would be a pleasure!”

“Louise said the same thing. You two
really
don’t like her, do you?”

“That’s riiii-ght.”

“I don’t care, but can I just ask why you ladies harbor such ill will for a girl you don’t even know?”

Ladies? Girl? I didn’t like the implication of the difference in our ages.

“Because she’s a slut, whore, gold-digging bitch from hell, that’s why. Louise and I know what’s best for you and it’s
not
Amy. I don’t like a thing about her from the top of her dyed red hair on her too-big head to the tip of her manicured and polished stripper toes. Even the sound of her voice rankles my nerves. So, now you know.”

I said all this in a perfectly calm voice as though I had said,
Pass the peas, please.
Also, delivered in one breath.

“Now I know. Gee.”

There was the hint of a smirk on his face that I suddenly felt like wiping off with a backswing of my right hand. I decided to give him something to think about. “And doesn’t it bother you that she could be Alex’s sister? Isn’t that a little sick?”

“No. I mean, yes, of course, that would offend a woman
your
age.”

“
My
age?
My
age? I’m
your
age! Probably. Well, close anyway.”

“I’m forty-two.”

“You’re older. And, it
is
offensive. But not for the reasons
you
probably think.”

Now the air in the room sizzled with the electricity between us. I only ever argued to win.

“The fact is that she still has a hard body and you’ve had two children that, let’s face it, can dramatically alter certain internal aspects of your physiology.”

I could not believe my ears! He could not have meant what his words implied. But if he did, what had begun as teasing would escalate into a contest for each other’s jugular. For a moment I was unsure how to answer him. We were on the brink of some barroom trash and even I, the one who had worked with teamsters in New Jersey, was not going to take a ride on the elevator down to that gutter. But I wanted to be certain that he had been that explicit.

“Let me understand this. Are you saying what I
think
you’re saying?”

“What do you
think
I’m saying?”

“I think that you are saying that women who have given birth are not as, um, the same as women who have not. Am I right?” My face was so hot you could have baked macaroons on my cheeks.

“That’s correct.”

I became infuriated with him and did not care if he fired me on the spot.

“That is about the most disgusting thing I have ever heard from your mouth and if you want me to continue to have the smallest shred of respect for you, you had better take it back and say you are sorry. And, this is not a joke, Brad.”

He realized that he had crossed the line and now his face turned red. I thought it was admirable that he had the decency to blush but I was not backing down.

“Linda, I . . . come on! Don’t be mad at me! I was just shooting the shit with you. Come on!”