The Summer Kitchen (43 page)

Chapter 25

SandraKaye

I heard the investment company planned to paint Poppy’s house yellow. The same color they painted all their rentals—a marker perhaps meant to let residents of the neighborhood know they were moving into the area, looking for deals. Sooner or later, the whole block would go, the old homes would be cleared out, and new housing complexes would be built.

Some things are easier imagined than seen, so I didn’t drive by Poppy’s house after the sale was final. Even when Teddy, Rusty, Christopher, and a gathering of volunteers finished cleaning the park next door and reopened it, I stayed away from Red Bird Lane. It wasn’t so hard to do. There were a million details involved in securing a new place for the café, moving equipment, and getting set up.

It was Teddy who solved the problem of finding our new home. In the midst of Holly, MJ, and me cleaning our supplies out of Poppy’s house and discussing the possibility of trying to operate from an empty portion of MJ’s building—with no kitchen, almost no parking, and no air-conditioning—Teddy popped into the conversation and said, “Pas-ter Al church got a kit-tchen, and lotta table, and chair, and . . .”

The three of us looked at each other with our mouths open in a dawning eureka moment.

“That’s perfect!” Holly gasped, one hundred percent positive, as always. The next thing I knew, she was giving Teddy a bear hug. He was so shocked he dropped paper plates all over the floor.

When Holly released him, he stood snorting and laughing, his face turning red. “Pas-ter Al church got a kit-tchen and lotta table!” he repeated, and soon we were all headed to the little white church on the corner to find Pastor Al. Within a few days, we had a location for the café in the fellowship hall. Our new space came complete with a commercial kitchen, tables, space in the parking lot for basketball, and even a few church members interested in volunteering. We moved our equipment from Poppy’s house to the church, and I said good-bye to Poppy’s on a quiet day in early June, then I didn’t go back. It was too hard to think about what would happen there next.

If not for the fact that a bit of mail came three weeks later, I never would have returned to the house at all.

The note was waiting in the mailbox at the end of a perfectly ordinary day, when Holly dropped Christopher and me in our driveway. She waved as she pulled away, with Opal yawning and stretching in the back, her arms barely visible above the car seat Holly had saved in the attic all these years, just in case there might be one more little Riley, after all. As it turned out, the thought wasn’t so preposterous. One adult-child Riley moved out, and Opal moved in.

Christopher trotted up our drive to tell his dad about the day as I walked to the curb to get the mail. I stood leafing through it, the afternoon sun warm on my hair. There were bills, advertisements, a newsletter from Family Central, where we’d started attending group counseling sessions on Tuesday nights. A tattered white envelope fell from my hands and drifted downward into the grass like a butterfly searching for a place to land. I finished skimming the outside of the Family Central newsletter, laughed at a cartoon of a teenager trying to coerce the car keys from his parents, then reached for what I’d dropped. The grass brushed my fingers as I picked up the envelope, turned it over, looked at the handwriting and knew instantly who’d sent the letter. The postmark blurred behind a sudden rush of tears, and I sank into the grass, blinking and reading the return address.
Guatemala City, Guatemala.

Inside the envelope were a carefully folded letter and two photos. I clasped the photos in shaking fingers, holding them like something fragile. A smile bloomed from somewhere deep inside me as I took in an image of Jake. He was laughing, holding up a soccer ball, with children all around him. I turned over the photo and scanned the neatly printed caption, undoubtedly meant to be read after the letter explained everything.

Me at the school with the kids,
it read. In the photo, Jake’s face was filled with joy, his dark eyes alive with light. Throughout the years, I’d seen Jake smile many times, but I’d never seen him look so completely at peace, so entirely in the moment.

The second image was of Jake and a beautiful dark-haired young woman. They stood arm in arm in front of a waterfall that tumbled from the thick veil of trees. A rainbow had formed in the mist, encircling them.

Waving the letter over my head, I ran toward the house, calling for Rob and Christopher. “It’s Jake! It’s Jake! Jake sent a letter!” I was breathless by the time I reached the kitchen and handed the photos to Rob and Christopher.

Rob smiled and shook his head at the picture of Jake with the children. “Look at him,” he whispered, his eyes growing moist.

Chris snatched the picture of Jake and the girl, turned it over searching for an explanation, then focused on the image again. “Forget about Jake, look at
her.
”

We laughed together, admiring Jake’s new life. “There’s a letter,” I said, then unfolded the wrinkled sheet and laid it on the counter. The letter was written in pencil on notebook paper, the surface smudged and scrubby, as if Jake had composed and erased the text many times, trying to get it just right.

Standing together, we read Jake’s note as a family, learned of his new life teaching at a school in Guatemala, and his blooming relationship with Gabrielle, whom he’d met at the school. He explained his reasons for leaving home, his deeply held emotion for his birth country, his need to go, and his inability to tell us about it.

Mom and Dad, please know that I love you both,
the letter ended
. You gave me everything I needed to come here and try to make a difference. Chris, I miss you, dude. Shoot a three-pointer for me. I’ll get home when I can. Write me. There’s so much I want to tell you about this place.

I only wish Poppy could see it, but sometimes I know he’s watching. I think about you often. I love all of you.

God bless,

Jake

I set Jake’s letter by the bed, let it rest there overnight, and felt his presence in the house again. Even though he was growing up, finding his own way, we were still a family, and we always would be. Families aren’t dictated by geography, or biology, or the chemistry of chromosomes and DNA. There is, in fact, no perfect science to it at all. There is only the tie of love, which, in the end, is all that matters.

In the morning, I woke early to look at the pictures. Rob stirred as I reached for them. He wrapped his arms around me, and I snuggled in, letting the photos lie. For now, there were more important things to tend to. The first lesson Rob and I had learned in family counseling was that
we
were the most important thing of all. In order to give Christopher a stable, happy home, we had to be willing to set everything else aside and do the work it took to give him stable, happy parents. In the long run, it wouldn’t matter how perfect our life looked to the neighbors, or how well we kept up appearances, but it would matter whether or not we showed our son that it’s all right to be imperfect, to admit your mistakes and then move past them.

When I left the house for the day, I took Jake’s letter with me, stowed away in my pocket like a secret passenger. As I passed the little white church, Teddy was already busy working on some new gardens around the fellowship hall. Today he’d brought Hanna Beth and her husband, Edward, and they were planting some daisies with their young nurse and her two little boys. Any time now, Rusty would drop off Cass on his way to the morning credit-recovery classes that would allow him to start next year as a high school senior. Cass would help Teddy, and make the coffee, and wait for me to show up. When I arrived, we’d spend some time checking her lessons from afternoon summer school before the others came.

This morning, she’d have to work on her own for a few minutes longer than usual. I had a special mission, and it was for no one but Poppy and Jake.

Poppy’s house was silent and dark when I drove up. It seemed strange to see it in yellow, but it wasn’t as painful as I’d anticipated. Just as all of us were moving on, it was fitting that Poppy’s house move on, as well. Perhaps it was someone else’s time to find the secret places now.

A breeze stirred the roses Teddy had groomed so carefully as I tiptoed to the house and slipped Jake’s letter underneath the loose piece of clapboard by the front window, where it could remain part of the house, part of Jake and Poppy.

A bit of each of us, a bit of the whole of us, would always be here.

But there was room for something new, as well, space to grow in directions that had once been beyond our imagining. My mind filled with the possibilities, with a sense of power and potential, as I crossed the yard and slipped into my car, feeling that, in some way, the work here wasn’t finished, but what would come next wasn’t for me. It was time for the little girl who hid beneath the oleander bush to leave the safe places behind, spread her wings, and fly out into the world.

When I reached the old white church, Cass was helping Teddy in front of the fellowship hall. They smiled and waved as I drove up, then they stood very deliberately shoulder to shoulder, hiding something.

“What are you guys up to?” I asked, climbing out of my car.

Cass rolled her gaze upward in feigned innocence, her eyes reflecting the clear summer sky. “Something.”

“Som’tin’ Rusty done,” Teddy added. “He done it las’ night. Rusty did.”

“Guess,” Cass teased. “Guess what it is.”

“I haven’t a clue,” I admitted, trying to see behind them, where something was covered haphazardly with a tablecloth. Cass nodded at Teddy, and he grabbed the corners of the fabric and pulled it away.

“Ta-da!” she cheered, presenting the big reveal like a game show model. “It’s a present from Rusty and me.” Her blue eyes were so vibrant, it took me a moment to focus on the gift. When I did, I was filled with the purest joy, the sort that is rare and precious.

Who could imagine that such joy could come from a simple wooden sign, from three words carved into the polished grain, then neatly painted in the bright pink of Poppy’s house? The gift encompassed so much more than a building, or a group of workers, or shelves stacked with food ready to be prepared, or a sense of purpose found, or empty stomachs filled, or lives changed.

“It’s perfect.” I stepped forward, traced the words with my fingers, then whispered them aloud.
“The Summer Kitchen.”

Letting the name settle over me, I considered the wonders that a simple coat of paint on cabinets had led to.

Who could have predicted such possibilities, but then again, nothing really happens by accident. There is a plan, even when we don’t see it, even when it’s nothing we would have guessed. There is a purpose for broken houses and broken people.

Perhaps the wandering men knew that long ago. Perhaps they sensed it, and so they left behind the symbol of blessing.

Or perhaps the blessing was the beginning of it all.

CONVERSATION GUIDE

the summer kitchen

Lisa Wingate

This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the
individual reading experience, as well as encourage us
to explore these topics together—because books,
and life, are meant for sharing.

CONVERSATION GUIDE

A CONVERSATION WITH LISA WINGATE

Q. As with many of your books,
The Summer Kitchen
conveys a strong sense of community. Has your own life inspired this interest?

A. As a writer, you eventually realize that no matter how out of the blue you think your ideas are, most of them can be traced back to your own life experiences. One of the experiences that greatly influenced my way of looking at the world, and therefore my writing, was growing up in a family that moved repeatedly. My father had a busy career, and it seemed that his opportunities always took us far from friends and family. Even though we visited the old family home places in the summers and kept in touch long-distance by sending reel-to-reel tapes, I remember always feeling the lack of regular, close contact with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other home folks. Because we were transplants, those empty spaces in our lives were often filled by neighbors and friends, and the neighborhoods we lived in became very important in giving us a sense of belonging.

When we moved from a neighborhood, we missed the people we’d left behind. When we came into a new neighborhood, we did exactly what Cass does—we went out and canvassed the new territory, looking for the creeks where the tadpoles hid, interesting places to visit like the Book Basket, and new people to get to know. Always, in us, there was the need to replace our lost connections with new ones. In the story, Cass is still canvassing the neighborhood, but her efforts to build connections are complicated by the fact that she has a secret to keep. Even though she recognizes the dangers of letting people “get in her business,” she feels the need to replace her lost sense of family with something new.

In a way, Cass’s struggle is a microcosm of the larger struggles inherent in the neighborhood. As human beings, we are tribal animals, and we instinctively recognize our need to belong, yet when life experience has taught us that contact with other people can sometimes be complicated or risky, the instinct for self-preservation causes friction. Like Cass, the neighborhood is engaged in a struggle between fear and trust, between going it alone and becoming part of a group. In the end, the summer kitchen becomes a place that brings people together.

Q. In
The Summer Kitchen
, reading, storytelling, and books play an important role, particularly in Cass’s life, as she uses her books to travel to “mind places.” Was reading important to you as a child, and what is your fondest memory related to reading?