Step-Ball-Change (24 page)

Taffy couldn’t find Holden or Neddy, though she didn’t stop trying. She taught her classes. A couple of times I caught her talking on the phone to Woodrow.

Kay nursed her mysterious illness. She said she was starting to feel better. Trey was bringing her cupcakes that he had made himself. Anyone who knew Kay knew that she was a fool for cupcakes.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
when Tom and I came into the kitchen for breakfast, the coffee was already made, and Woodrow was there reading the paper. Stamp was asleep in his lap.

“You’re back!” I said.

“Hey,” Tom said. “I thought the rule was no dogs on the furniture.”

“Do I look like furniture?” Woodrow said. He had one hand on Stamp’s back and ran his thumb back and forth between the narrow shoulder blades.

“I thought you were building a garage?” I poured coffee for Tom and myself and then I refilled Woodrow’s cup.

“I’m trying to spread myself around, make everybody a little bit happy instead of making anybody completely happy.”

“I’d settle for that,” Tom said.

“So did you know that our children are hopelessly in love with each other?” I asked.

“I hear about very little else.” Woodrow leaned forward to get the milk, and Stamp shifted, sighed, and put his muzzle back down on Woodrow’s knees.

“How do you feel about it?” Tom was asking him, one father to another. I was surprised, because I knew what he was saying, and somehow I thought it would be one of those things that, in our progressive household, would always be left unsaid.

“I never particularly liked the idea of my girls dating white men. It happened with the older girls once or twice. I never said anything about it, but in the end it always blew over and I was relieved. My three older girls married black men. I don’t need to tell you, that’s easier. In a hundred different ways it’s easier. When you think about your children, you think life is going to be hard enough in ways you can’t predict. There’s no sense setting a tougher course for yourself right from the start.”

It was true. Everything he said was true, but I thought he would have said, What are you talking about? I never even noticed.

“What Erica and George are doing now, they would have been killed for it in North Carolina, both of them. And not so long ago. We think we’re such a progressive country. We take such a high moral ground with everybody else. But this isn’t the Dark Ages I’m talking about. This was fifty years ago, maybe even forty years ago. Back then if they didn’t kill you, they wouldn’t hire you or rent to you or speak to you in church. Someone chooses that life, they’re choosing something awfully hard.”

“Aren’t you the guy who asked my sister out?” I said.

He shrugged. “I’m sixty-three years old. Nobody gives a damn what I do. Anyway, I like your sister.”

“And you like George,” I said. How could Woodrow care? He couldn’t possibly care. What was true for the rest of the world was not true for our families, for our children.

“Well, that’s what makes it all okay. If Erica had come home with a white boy, I would have been worried for her, I can’t deny that. But I don’t think of George as a white boy. I think of George as George. I think of him as a friend of mine. I wish Erica hadn’t fallen in love with a white boy, but I’m glad she’s fallen in love with George, if that makes any sense.”

“I think that makes all the sense in the world,” Tom said. “Do you want scrambled eggs? I think today is the day I risk my heart on some eggs.”

“Eggs wouldn’t be bad,” Woodrow said.

And that was that, the entire conversation about the racial lines that we’d spent our lives living inside of and fighting our way out of. A two-minute conversation punctuated by an egg.

Taffy walked into the kitchen in her bathrobe and slippers. For the first few weeks she was with us, she came to the breakfast table looking like she was on her way to Saks. But now her face was bare, her hair pushed back behind her ears. She looked up and saw Woodrow. You could tell she was thinking about turning around, but she was already too far into the room to back out gracefully.

“Couldn’t you emit some sort of high-pitched noise when you enter the house?” she said.

“I can, but it bothers the dog’s ears.”

“Well, so much for being mysterious.” She padded over to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. “Every woman dreads the
moment a man sees her for the first time without makeup. At least we got it out of the way before the first date.”

“Speaking of which—”

“If you back out at this particular moment, it will be very ungentlemanly of you.”

“I was going to ask what night was good for you.”

“I’ll need to check my calendar,” Taffy said with great seriousness. “But right off the top of my head? Let’s see. Tonight, tomorrow night, any night this week or next week.”

“Good. How about tonight?”

“Would you guys like a little privacy?” I said.

“No,” they answered in unison.

“Tonight is good,” Taffy said. “But now I really do need to take my coffee back into my room and close the door.”

“Any word from Holden?”

“You know about that?”

“Erica told me.”

Taffy shook her head. “I’m still working on it. So I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Seven?”

“Seven is good.” She walked out of the room and then stuck her head back around the door. “This isn’t some complicated plot about you wanting to get my dog away from me, is it?”

Stamp raised his head at the word
dog
and wagged his tail. “Yes,” Woodrow said.

“As long as I know where I stand.”

chapter fourteen

U
SUALLY
I
DANCE ALONG WITH MY GIRLS, BUT TODAY
my hip was killing me. I remember some of the dance teachers I had when I was a child. They might have worn leotards, but they always just stood on the side of the room counting. One of them, Mrs. Leominster, used to smoke while she called out the steps. If they wanted to show us something, they only moved one foot, as if the foot was a separate thing with its own little piece of information to impart. I never thought it was right. I thought, One of these days I’m going to have a dance studio and I’m going to dance all day, I’ll dance for every class I teach. I had, and I did, but today it was rainy and cold and everything in me was screaming out for a set of new plastic joints. It made me mad as hell when I couldn’t get my body to go along with the program.

When I got home the house was bright and the smell of garlic and oregano rushed out into the night when I opened the door. Taffy was at the stove with a dish towel tied around her waist.

“Don’t you have an apron?” she said.

I dropped my bag on the floor and came over to the stove. “I never use them.”

“Now I know what to get you for Christmas.”

“I thought you were going out to dinner?”

“I am going out to dinner but you’re not. Here, taste this.”

I took the spoon from her hand and tasted. It was rich and deep, tiny bits of carrot and zucchini and onion swimming in a dark broth. “I didn’t know you could cook like this.”

“Face it, you didn’t know anything about me.”

“What is it?”

She shrugged. “Chicken soup, chicken stew depending on how thick it gets.”

“God, this is nice of you. Why don’t you forget about going back to Atlanta? Send for the rest of your stuff, if you have any other stuff there, and move in. You can cook and teach.”

“Are you offering me a role as an indentured servant?”

“I am.”

Taffy took off the dish towel, and for the first time I noticed that she was wearing the same camel outfit she had on the day she showed up here. It struck me that she wanted to make a good impression on Woodrow, and that she must have wanted to make a good impression on us at the end of her long drive. “You look beautiful,” I said.

She looked down at herself as if to see what I was talking about. “Really? Do you think so? I was wondering if I should wear a skirt.”

“You’re perfect.”

Tom walked in carrying a scotch. “Can you believe this?” he said. “A gourmet meal, and she fixed me a drink, too.” He kissed me and then he kissed Taffy. “It’s like being married to sisters.”

“I’m in a very low-grade good mood,” Taffy said. “Don’t get used to it.”

The doorbell rang and immediately Taffy touched her hair.

“You’re perfect,” I told her again.

“The man who is sitting in my kitchen every morning reading the newspaper before I even get up is now ringing the doorbell. What is happening to the world?” Tom went to answer the door. “Good evening, sir,” he said to Woodrow.

Woodrow came into the kitchen. He had on a red bow tie tonight with a blue shirt and a navy jacket. I thought he should run for president.

“Now before you start in,” Taffy said to Tom and me, “let me tell you, there will be no jokes about ‘Where are you taking our little girl?’ or ‘You better have her in by eleven’ or ‘You kids have fun.’ Understood?”

“I had actually planned on making those jokes,” I said. “Maybe not all of them, but at least one.”

“There, I saved you the trouble.”

“Can I get you a drink?” Tom asked Woodrow.

Woodrow shook his head. “I’m pretty much a one-drink man, so I’d just as soon have it in a restaurant if it’s all the same to you.”

Taffy got her purse. “So then, the soup is ready anytime you want it. Just don’t let it boil.”

Woodrow looked into the pot. “You made this?”

“She cooks,” Tom said.

“Good night,” Taffy said, clearly in a hurry to leave.

Once they were gone, Tom put his arms around my waist and kissed me. “So, George is gone.”

“Correct.”

“And there goes Taffy.”

“Correct again.”

“And we don’t have to worry about dinner.”

The doorbell rang.

“Maybe they forgot something,” I said hopefully.

“You’re dreaming.”

It was Trey. He was bearing no flowers and his tie was off. “I’m so sorry for just showing up this way,” he said. “I didn’t even really know I was coming here. I was just driving around. You’re getting ready to have dinner.”

“We’re having soup,” Tom said. “Have some soup.”

I was waiting for the polite refusal, but Trey pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. I doled out three bowls of soup while Tom got the silverware and the wine.

“It’s gotten warm so quickly,” Trey said. I wondered if that was what he had come to tell us. He didn’t exactly seem dejected, but he seemed like he would be dejected if he were the kind of person to show his feelings.

“It’ll do that,” Tom said.

“Have you talked to Kay lately?”

“I talked to her today,” I said. I had, but I had stopped asking her any questions. We just kept checking in with each other. She was trying to decide what to do. I knew that when she was ready to talk she would tell me so.

“Did she seem okay to you?”

“I think she’s feeling better.”

Trey ate a spoonful of soup and then put the spoon back in the bowl. “I’m afraid that Kay is going to call off the engagement.”

I put down my spoon as well. Tom filled Trey’s wineglass.

“What makes you say that?”

“The way she’s been since Jack left with her cousin. I think maybe she didn’t realize she was in love with him until he was gone. I think he was the one she wanted to marry.”

“Kay doesn’t want to marry Jack,” Tom said.

I was a little surprised that he answered, especially that he answered the way he did. Tom usually left everything in the emotional realm to me.

Trey, momentarily comforted, ate some more soup. “What makes you say that?”

“She doesn’t love him. She loves you. Jack was a smooth talker, a real D.A. Maybe she got confused by all the flash, but trust me, if you’ve got the patience to hang on a little longer, Kay’s going to come out of her fog.”

I was floored. Where had Tom gotten this? He said it with such authority that even I wondered if it was true.

“Do you really think so?” Trey asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Mrs. McSwain, Caroline, do you think he’s right?”

Tom looked at me, told me with complete visual accuracy what my answer should be. I had to trust him on this one. “I’m sure of it.”