The Quaker Café (7 page)

“I understand that Maggie has invited the Reverend Broadnax to participate in the funeral on Sunday,” she said with a look of disdain. Her mouth puckered, adding wrinkles to her already withered lips highlighted with bright red lipstick. She stood straight as a board in her uniform dark blue polyester suit and pumps. Her bifocals caused her to tilt her head forward or backwards depending on her need. “And…” she added, “the Jerusalem choir will be seated in
our
choir loft.”

“O
h my,” Mary Law the church organist gasped. “Am I to accompany them?”

“Why don’t you ask Liz,” Helen said
. “She and Billie seem to be running the show.”

Heads turned. Liz stood awkwardly on the fringes, not wanting to speak out-of-turn
. “Maggie’s made the arrangements with Reverend Broadnax and Reverend Morgan. You’ll have to talk to her.”

“Where is she?” Helen asked surveying the room.

“Upstairs with a number of her Chapel Hill friends,” Liz said.

“Chapel Hill,” Helen huffed, “not surprised
. That’s where she gets all of her liberal politics. We all know what they teach at Chapel Hill.” Helen eyed her companions with a knowing nod and appeared to dismiss the unspoken invitation to go upstairs. Instead she said, “Poor Reverend Morgan is just beside himself over the whole thing. Maggie should have realized what stress this puts him under.”

Liz moved across the room in an attempt to distance herself: she didn’t want to enter into a debate with Helen over social or racial norms.

Liz and Billie knew that most people would leave before nine. The Tar Heels took center stage from then on. A North Carolina basketball game pre-empted any competing event. In this case, the only people expected to abstain from watching were perhaps Helen and the body lying in the coffin. Even then, it could be a toss-up. It always made for good politics to be able to quote scores and reference certain player’s assets and more than one fan had asked to be propped up in front of a television prior to internment. If observers witnessed that the deceased did not rally when Carolina scored, then it was permissible to proceed with burial plans.

As 9:00 approached, Chase eyed Liz and motioned her towards the door
. “Game,” he mouthed, tapping his watch.

             
The crowd began to thin rapidly as people climbed the steps to pay their respects to Maggie before leaving.

             
“Basketball, Billie,” Liz carried an empty platter into the kitchen where she found her wrapping up leftovers.

             
“I know. You go on home. You were up most of last night. I’ll straighten up some and then I’m leaving, too.”

             
“Thought you were going to stay with Maggie?”

             
“Some of her Chapel Hill friends are staying to watch the game. She told me to go home. Think I will.”

             
“Okay, then. You know how Chase is about basketball.”

             
“Yes, I do,” she said, and waved Liz out of the room.

*****

Liz knew when she married Chase that basketball would remain an obsession. The fact that their children were all boys just heightened the intensity of each game. Four boys, all different in their own unique ways, and all wonderful. She never failed to appreciate the fact that even though you loved one more than you could stand, when another came along, your love expanded exponentially. Nat, their oldest, was given Grandpa’s name. Born within the year after they married he’d graduated from Wake Forest four years ago and was engaged to be married in October. The wedding plans already had Liz in a spin. She had tried to stop talking about it all the time as Maggie had obviously grown weary of the topic. Billie, however, was her main confidant. She was ready to coordinate the whole shebang despite the fact that the role fell to the bride’s family.

Adam, their second son and the one who most resembled Liz, married Heather, his childhood sweetheart, after their sophomore year at Guilford College
. Their desire to tie the knot prior to graduation had given Liz a severe case of gastritis, but they had both graduated on time and joined Teach for America in New Mexico. Happy on a limited budget, they were expecting their first child in November.

Liz’s two youngest, Nicholas and Evan, were a midlife surprise that she’d never regret
. While having children in your forties with the prospects of sending them to college on Social Security had never been in their long-term plans, both children were a joy. There was a wisdom that came with parenting as you got older. The small stuff didn’t matter so much anymore. Liz tended to be kinder to herself—to give herself a break when things went wrong. Alas, if her mother-in-law would only do the same.

With the one exception of Grandma, all the
Hooles were avid basketball fanatics who shouted and screamed and jumped up and down with each score. Grandpa would sometimes join them, since he and Grandma still hadn’t taken the leap into the purchase of their own television set. Grandma preferred a good book.

Liz made a big deal of having chips and dip and so
das and other junk foods around for the games. College rivalries of their two sons added to the hype, but the Darth Vader on the bracket sheet was always Duke. ABD: 
A
nybody
B
ut
D
uke. Liz knew Chase would miss the boys that evening, but he most certainly would not miss the game.

“I’m going to go soak,” Liz said as Chase turned on the TV.

“Right,” he said while he flipped through the channels.

“Then I want to make mad passionate love to you,” she added with a wink.

“Uh-huh,” he responded, as he adjusted the volume.

Liz ran the water and poured an ample amount of bubble bath under the faucet
. She glanced through the tapes that sat on the shelf to the left of the sink and debated between Andrew Lloyd Webber and André Gagnon. The Gagnon tape was from a second honeymoon she and Chase had taken to Québec. She flipped André into the recorder, loosened her hair clip from her hair, and slid into the tub.

Though she could hear the background noise of the television, once the tape started, the noise was gone
. She submerged in the water and let her mass of copper curls become wet and heavy. They always made her feel as if she had a giant rubber tube around her head fighting to stay afloat as the rest of her body sank under the water. She had bleached her hair blond her first year away at college. Her mom had a fit, as she knew she would. In reality, she remembered being quite satisfied with the outcome, not on her hair, but on her mother. Now, the curls simply did their own thing. She tried to keep them corralled with scarves, cloth headbands, or an extra-large clip at the base of her neck.

The tension began to drain from the muscles in her back and legs as the warm water enveloped her, but her mind wouldn’t let go of the events of the past twenty-four hours
. If she wanted to get any sleep she’d have to find some way to wind down completely. Her body liked routine, and didn’t react well to all-nighters or skipped meals. Sex would do it.
Sex
, she thought. She must be crazy. Sex…Basketball. Sex…Basketball. She weighed the two in her head. No, she didn’t think she was up to the challenge.

André Gagnon began to play
Vue sur la mer
and a wave of remembrance washed over her. How could she forget?  It was a row boat in the middle of an isolated lake north of Québec City. They had let it drift and despite Chase’s initial objections, she had seduced him into making love in the middle of the day. They were lucky the dinghy hadn’t capsized. It was great sex, even Chase admitted, although he’d resisted her initial advances.

“We’re not in public, Chase
. Just the two of us here,” she teased.

“It’s a public place.”

“We’re in the middle of a lake, no one else around.”

“They could be, any moment.” 

“We’ll make their day,” she persisted as she slipped off her blouse and brassiere.

She loved how she could fluster Chase with the least bit of public affection
. If she pinched his butt or ran her hand up under the front of his shirt, he’d immediately blush and grab her wrist. While Quakers certainly weren’t opposed to sex, they were restrained. He admitted that he’d never seen his parents do more than give one another a gentle peck on the cheek. Liz liked to rattle that cage for him.

She believed her spontaneity was one of the things that attracted him
. It was so different from how he had been raised. Chase was so practical, always the one to balance her exuberant, over-committed lifestyle. He was the head and the soul of their family. Liz was the heart and spirit.

Liz began to fantasize
. Tonight might be a good test of her talents. It would be quite a conquest to score against the Tar Heels. She let her imagination set the trap.

She climbed out of the tub and began the laborious task of drying her hair
. That accomplished, she put on make-up and sprayed herself with a sample blend of l’eau de perfume from her Clinique bonus package. She slipped in a tape of
The Entertainer
and after maximizing the volume she wrapped a large fluffy pink towel around her and sidestepped out of the doorway into the den.

Liz knew Chase would be ensconced on the sofa
. With her back towards him she took four long sideways strides so that she stood immediately in front of the television set, still facing backwards and effectively blocking the screen. Liz spread her arms wide, holding either end of her pink towel, and then let it drop. While she knew that her derriere was a bit more ample than ideal, she also knew what turned him on. She had great boobs.

Running her fingers up through her hair, she slowly lifted her arms over her head and did an abrupt turn, bending her right knee and turning it in a bit for a Kewpie-doll look
. Her next step was to bite the tip end of her index finger and coyly flutter her eyes.

Liz didn’t get that far
. She stopped cold. There in front of her, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, sat Chase. Next to him with a frozen stare so alarming that she thought perhaps he had stopped breathing, was Grandpa Hoole.

  If lightning had struck her dead at that moment, she would have welcomed it
. Liz catapulted to the bathroom as fast as humanly possible and locked the door.

             
She slammed the off button on the tape recorder and collapsed in a heap on the bathroom floor. The television in the next room clicked off. A car started and pulled out of the driveway. One of the dogs barked. The house was quiet. Eventually there was a knock.

             
“Liz. Are you going to come out?”

             
“No.”

             
“You’re going to have to come out, honey, sooner or later.”

             
“Later, maybe.”

             
“Okay, I’ll wait.”  Another thirty minutes passed before there was a second knock.

             
“Liz, please come out.”

             
“I don’t think I can.”

             
“I wish you had stuck around to see the look on Dad’s face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that look before in my entire life.”  There was a chuckle.

             
“Chase, this isn’t funny.”

             
“Actually,” he responded through muffled cracks in his voice, “it’s perhaps the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”

             
“Oh, this is just great. You’re laughing.”  She threw a UNC plastic cup that sat on the tub at the door.

             
The guffaws increased a level and now he couldn’t catch his breath. Liz snapped the door open and stood buck-naked shaking her finger in his face. Tears in his eyes, Chase doubled over. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him laughing so hard.

             
“You stop that right this minute,” she demanded, leaning down and retrieving the pink towel that was still on the floor. “This is NOT funny!”

             
Chase collapsed on the sofa holding his sides and rocked from side to side. “If you could have seen him, Liz!  Dad stood up straight, cleared his throat as if to say something, and then just turned and went for the door. He’ll never EVER watch Carolina or Ohio State again with the same expectations. He’ll keep waiting for you to make your bump and grind entrance from the sidelines.”

             
Liz let escape a long sorrowful moan. “How can I ever look him in the eye again?  What must he think?”

             
“He must think Mom has really been holding out on him all of these years.” Chase gasped and went into another contortion of laughter.

             
“OH,” Liz wailed. “Euphrasia!”  The thought that her mother-in-law would hear of this almost paralyzed her. “What if he tells your mom?”

             
“Are you kidding?  He won’t ever tell Mom. What would he say?  He just saw a great pair of boobs?”