Southern Living (30 page)

A lone pregnant woman, blond with a pink-flowered maternity top, entered the dining room. Boone quickly set down his forkful of carrot-and-raisin salad and got up to pull out her chair.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “That’s really kind of you.”

“Oh, no, it’s my pleasure,” Boone replied. “My wife’s fixin’ to have our first child this fall.”

“Mine’s due in April.” She rubbed her stomach with both hands. “Lord help me, sometimes I think this baby’s standin’ up in here.”

He returned to his table and resumed eating, catching glances of the woman as she leaned back and read the menu, resting it on the shelf of her distended stomach. He realized now how much of Suzanne’s pregnancy seemed secretive and out of reach. He had not seen her naked for the longest time. Saying she was tossing and turning most nights and that she didn’t want to keep him awake, Suzanne had asked him to start sleeping in the east guest room. And his mother was right: Why didn’t Suzanne have that
sweet, rosy appearance and disposition of pregnancy? Was it the stress of the Dogwood party? Why hadn’t she started putting together a nursery?

Boone had not even seen a sonogram of his new son—Suzanne was able to report the gender after her most recent visit—because Josephine evidently had mixed it up with the day’s junk mail and tossed it in the trash on Thursday, which was rubbish pickup day in Red Hill Plantation. Somewhere in the putrid hills of garbage in the Perry County Robert “Robbie” Hines Landfill, mixed with his neighbor’s moist coffee grounds and used Kleenex and the knobby tops of carrots and the silky, clear plastic from dry-cleaning and the past week’s copies of the
Reflector
, was the first portrait of Boone Maston Parley IV, who, Boone’s mother had already decided, would be called, simply, Maston.

Realizing that Suzanne was probably embarrassed about losing it, Boone made a note to himself to call the practice and get another copy. He knew the sonograms were all on disk nowadays, and they could send it as an e-mail attachment. He’d have Mylene, his secretary, call for it when she got back from vacation. He could wait a few weeks. He already knew it was a boy. That’s all that mattered.

W
ith her mother’s well-stained, crocheted hot pad, Donna pushed the roasting pan into the oven and closed the door. “How much longer?” she asked Margaret.

“You don’t want to overcook it,” she answered. “Too many people overcook pork and it turns ugly and brown-gray.”

“So what do you think? I don’t want it too pink; people are scared of pink pork.”

“Twenty minutes … No, fifteen. What do you want me to do with Dewayne’s biscuits?”

“Put ’em in that bottom oven. You think they’re gonna be okay turned on low?”

“How much time do we have? An hour?”

“Sixty-five minutes.”

“I don’t see why not.”

Donna reached into a paper Kroger bag and began pulling
out the fresh produce needed to make a tossed salad for eight—tomatoes and baby spinach; radicchio and hearts of romaine; a long, bowed, English cucumber and little plastic bags of Glencoe Farms fresh cilantro and dill and Italian parsley.

“You gonna make that dressing?” Donna asked.

“I don’t want to overstep my boundaries, Donna,” Margaret answered. “I’m your assistant tonight.”

“I wish you would—I love that dressing. I want you to teach me how to do it. I gotta get my daddy off blue cheese. Did you know it’s got eleven grams of fat per serving?”

Margaret left the kitchen and returned from the car, carrying a straw bag with handles made of skinny rope and a pink, poinsettia-shaped flower and the word
Mexico
embroidered on the side. She had found it in a thrift store on Inglewood Avenue, which was in the throes of a transformation from antiques row to a two-block-long Main Street for people who wear black. It began when a man named Sal Porpiglia, a restaurateur whose wife was a new executive at Toyota, moved to town and bought the Pleasant Peasant Tea Room. He covered the stenciled ivy patterns on the walls with indigo paint and began offering New York–style pizza and a two-page list of microbrew beers.

Next came a dank, basement coffee shop named Exquisite Buzz. Then, a tattoo parlor and New Age store, a Rastafarian clothing shop frequented by white boys in dreadlocks, an Andean-import store, and, finally, the Junkman’s Momma, a thrift store whose owner seemed enthralled with inflatable furniture and affordable, mass-produced Christian icons. Margaret bought for herself one of the very same red-flocked Jesus piggybanks that Randy had shown her months ago. He now stood on her fireplace mantel, flanked on each end by a line of used McDonald’s Kids’ Meal plastic Disney figures (five cents apiece at Junkman’s Momma), including Gaston from
Beauty and the Beast
, Snow White, and Simba from
The Lion King
.

“Your house,” Dewayne said one evening. “It’s lookin’ like a toy store.”

“I know,” Margaret answered. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

With her ingredients in hand, Margaret joined Donna at the island in Suzanne Parley’s newly remodeled kitchen. With the side of her Joyce Chen chopper, she showed Donna how to use the plane of the knife to crack the skins of garlic cloves with a smack from the heel of the hand. Margaret then minced the garlic and, with help from some gritty kosher salt and olive oil, used a fork to mash it all into a paste right there on the counter. With a rubber spatula, she scooped it up and plopped it into a bowl, then began whisking in the Dijon mustard, the balsamic and raspberry-flavored vinegars, the extra-virgin olive oil, and fresh-cracked pepper.

“That’s all you put in it?” Donna asked.

“I might add some chopped tarragon, but it’s not necessary.”

“Lord, I wish I knew half of what you know about food.”

“It sure is doing me a lot of good,” Margaret deadpanned.

Donna poked her finger into the dressing then licked it clean. “People in Selby just don’t appreciate your kind of cookin’,” she said. “It’s fancy. You’re the best cook I know, Margaret—and that’s sayin’ a lot because my momma was a great cook.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. We had preachers at our table every single night. I mean, it was food you probably don’t like too much. You know, home cookin’. Smothered steak and fried potatoes and turnip greens.”

“Dewayne food,” Margaret said.

Hands on her hips, Donna began to pace around the room, absorbing the new kitchen—the gleaming, white Sub-Zero refrigerator … the Viking range and ovens, also white … the wallpaper of peonies and bluebirds on a golden yellow background … the gray-speckled granite countertops resting on custom-built cherry-wood cabinets, and on top of those, artfully arranged clusters of
clear-glass vases filled with dried pastas and bottles of expensive decorator vinegars and oils, all dyed different colors and filled with layers of roasted red peppers and cherries, pepperoncini and olives and garlic cloves.

Donna thought of her own kitchen, which she was still decorating, and how the bottles would look nice on the windowsill with the light shining through.

Her new apartment was one of the new ones out on Lee Road, and she was pleased with the solitary life she had created for herself in this lovely new place, with wall-to-wall carpeting, a breakfast bar, and balcony off the master bedroom. If she got home in time, Donna liked to pour herself a glass of white zinfandel and sit on her green-plastic Adirondack chair from Target and watch the sun go down. There were days, entire weekends even, when she chose to see no one. Having visited Rosemont Cemetery with Margaret, Donna often went on her own now and hiked along the riverbank. Sometimes she stumbled upon wizened black men sitting on overturned buckets, fishing with bamboo poles, eating their cold fried fish or chicken from a crinkled tray of tin foil in their laps.

Donna was still surprised at how much she had grown to love the quiet. She passed on the CD option when she bought her new car—a black Saturn coupe with tan, leather interior. Though she did not need a new car—the one Robbie sold her was only two years old—her Camaro had started feeling like last year’s skirt lengths. “It’s really pretty,” Adrian Braswell said one evening, sitting in the passenger seat as Donna drove him home. “No wonder you don’t want me eatin’ pork rinds in here.”

She had started reading the books from the Oprah table at the new Barnes & Noble. Lately, Donna had been spending most of her evenings trying to master her mother’s air gun that she had used to paint the very popular, personalized welcome mats she sold at Happy’s Flea Market. In place of people’s names and a picture of a rose or magnolia or some other flower, Donna would spell out sayings that she had thought up and scribbled onto Post-it notes
with the Chiquita logo that she kept in the pocket of her apron at work:
Lettuce Entertain You!… Caution: Active brain inside! Shallow men need not knock!

“You gotta come see my new apartment,” Donna said to Margaret. “How about this weekend?”

Margaret peeked through the window of the oven door, checking on the pork roast.

“Dewayne’s off this weekend,” she answered. “We were thinkin’ of driving down to Hilton Head to the beach.”

“Y’all are practically livin’ together.”

Margaret smiled.

“I still just can’t believe Dewayne Case has got himself a girlfriend,” Donna said. “That boy was always runnin’ away from girls—and they was always chasin’ him. He was the shyest boy in my high school.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“I don’t even think he went to the junior-senior.”

Margaret cranked the wooden knob of her pepper grinder, creating a pulsating black snow over the green salad. “He’s perfect for me right now,” Margaret said. “I’ve been afraid of men for most of my life.”

“Why?”

Margaret plucked a leaf of arugula from the salad and nibbled on the rounded end. “They’ve been such a mystery to me. I lived with my mom until she died, Donna—even when I was going to college. I didn’t date. I didn’t go to slumber parties and call up boys on the phone and giggle and hang up. I just didn’t do those things.”

“Well there’s nothin’ to be afraid of,” Donna said. “They’re simple as can be.”

During her months in the male-dominant produce field, Donna had learned a different side of men at her own store and at other Krogers when she went to fill in for someone. They were not as petty and competitive and nasty behind each other’s backs as women
were. They joked with Donna in ways she imagined them doing in locker rooms. It was so easy to be their ally. Simply sharing and getting lost in a consuming task—unloading a carton of lemons, coring and slicing fresh pineapples—was all that was necessary to help define and solidify a friendship with a man … no talking … no sharing … just working toward a goal in the same aura of sweat and energy. Men did not seem as distracted around her nowadays. They did not waste their energy or her time with cocky, empty mating dances, and they seemed less interested in her lips than the words that came from them. And while she sometimes worried that all sex appeal had leaked from her body, Donna found great relief in this.

Suddenly, the door to the dining room swung open and in walked a woman with a red bouffant and red lips adrift in a pale, unblemished complexion. She wore a fashionable, ivory-colored, double-breasted knit pantsuit with square buttons and flared legs. Margaret immediately recognized her as Madeline VanDermeter, the executive director of the International Dogwood Festival, whom she’d seen at the neighborhood meeting she covered in Red Hill Plantation. Though Margaret had never spoken with her, the woman was a legend in town. In just nine years she had turned what used to be a simple pancake feed and parade into one of the largest, most lucrative festivals in the South that drew upwards of sixty thousand visitors. Each year she allowed just five coveted corporate sponsorships for the event and as a result had collected an impressive array of gifts from CEOs who came to court. From Frito-Lay, she received a Tiffany sapphire ring; from Target, a dogwood-blossom-themed mailbox designed by Michael Graves; from American Airlines, lifetime Platinum AAdvantage frequent-flyer status; and from the CEO of Pepsi who tried every year, unsuccessfully thus far, to beat out Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, a case of Dom Perignon, a two-week trip for two to Tuscany, and an ivory Vera Wang gown, designed exclusively for Madeline in her busty size twelve.

Madeline VanDermeter hated the
Reflector
, especially since someone in her office had leaked to Randy Whitestone a detailed history of all these perks (which the companies denied giving, of course, throwing her honesty and integrity into question) and he ran a front-page story, including a photo of the mailbox outside her home.

“So y’all are the maestros behind those wonderful canapés.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Donna said. “I’m glad you like ’em.”

“They’re divine! They’re just like somethin’ I once had in California—at the International Garlic Festival in Gilroy? I just love garlic, but it doesn’t love me, if you know what I mean.”

“Garlic’s been proven to boost your immune system,” Donna said.

“I’m Madeline VanDermeter,” she said, offering her hand in an elevated manner that made it look as if she expected you to kiss instead of shake it.

“I’m Donna Kabel. This is my friend, Margaret. She’s helpin’ me out tonight.”

“I work at the
Reflector
,” Margaret said. “I remember you from the meeting at the house in this very same neighborhood … the one about the dogs.”

“Why, yes! I thought I recognized you.” She leaned back slightly to study Margaret. “I haven’t read anything about those poor dogs for the longest time.”

Margaret quickly intuited that the woman knew very well who she was, and that her reason for venturing into the kitchen was not to praise the salmon-garlic spread but to inquire about the story. The International Dogwood Festival was just three weeks away. The producers of the “Today” show had already promised to open their seven o’clock hour with a live feed from Selby, and both the
Chicago Tribune
and
Dallas Morning News
had said they’d be in town to cover the festival as a live travel story. Of course, an epidemic of dying dogs—specifically,
murdered
dogs—in the land of dogwood blossoms, specifically during the International Dogwood
Festival, of which Alpo was a sponsor this year, would be too irresistible for any irony-loving journalist to overlook. The result could be disastrous. And Madeline VanDermeter—whose beige, silk, stiletto-heeled shoe had just rendered a dropped raspberry into paste, splashing flecks of juice onto her toe and creating an impression that she was responsible for some small-scale roadkill—was on a fact-finding mission. Would the
Reflector
, which had taken on such an ugly face since the new owners bought it, break a story before the festival? How much did they know? And, most importantly, how much control could she exert over the situation?