Yankee Doodle Dixie (10 page)

I rise from the bed and search for paper to write him a letter. Among the boxes and clutter I’ll be lucky to find an old receipt to pen my thoughts. Then I remember who helped me move in. I dash into the kitchen and throw open the drawers. Sure enough, a lined yellow legal pad sits in the top drawer under the phone so I grab it and hurry back to my bed. My purse is always kept on the floor beside me and I reach down, plop it on top of the covers, and rummage for a pen. I’m tired of wondering, tired of keeping all this to myself. As I place the pen’s point down on the page, any ill will about his feelings for me vanishes.

Dear Peter,

I’m not sure if you got my messages or not. Sometimes voice mail can be unreliable. I knew you’d want to know that the girls and I made it back to Memphis safe and sound! It was a long drive, but I’m happy to say we weathered the nor’easter. Somewhere around Scranton, Pennsylvania, I stopped at a Target store and bought a portable TV for the car. We had played all the car games I could think of and the girls had had their share of little arguments. I knew a movie would keep them quiet for a few hours at a time, so I splurged on a small TV with a car adapter and put it on the console in between the front seats. It has a DVD player inside and I loaded up on several new movies. That one purchase turned out to be my saving grace. I hardly heard a peep out of them the rest of the trip. Several exits down I got the brilliant idea to buy two headsets for the girls so I could listen to my own music up front. There were a few bumps but all in all it was a very pleasant road back.

You’ll never believe this: Helga bought back the inn. After I left you at George Clark’s gas station I remembered Princess Grace’s grave marker. As you might guess, I turned around for it. When I got back to the inn, Helga had already placed her hippo collection back on the mantel. I thought about staying and calling off the whole move but then I realized you already had a new job. I didn’t want to run the Peach Blossom Inn without you. So, I went ahead and left.

Tell Roberta hello for me when you see her at Sugartree. She’ll be great at her new job. So will you. I hope to talk with you soon. I can’t wait for you to come to Memphis. How about May?

Love, Leelee

P.S. Guess what? On the way home, the girls and I actually saw a moose!!!!!!

After I punctuate the last of the letter, I fold it into a spare business-size envelope—it’s not one of my nice embossed ones, but I’m too desperate to wait on unpacking boxes in search of my personalized stationery to share my feelings with Peter. I don’t seal it yet, and fumble through my oversize purse for my Day-Timer and flip over to the address book. “Owen, Peter” is the third entry under the
O
s but there’s no address. Only a phone number. Why in the world I never wrote down his address I’ll never know. I make a mental note to call Roberta and get it from her. Surely she has it and if she doesn’t, I’ll send her on a GKA assignment. The GKA, our acronym for the Gladys Kravitz Agency (named after the one and only from
Bewitched
) is the means by which Alice, Virginia, Mary Jule, and I get our information. It’s how we know things. For instance, if it weren’t for the Agency, we’d never know how many times Alice’s husband, Richard, plays golf every week. Although he’s got his secretary trained to say he’s on a sales call, all we have to do is park out on Greer, the street next to the Memphis Country Club, and wait on him to round the seventh hole. It’s covert. It’s crucial. And it’s certainly credentialed. We’ve been charter members since the seventh grade, the year of the Agency’s founding.

Moving and unpacking, the stress of this past week, have rendered me utterly exhausted yet I take the letter from the envelope and reread it five times, making sure it sounds okay. I start to fold it up and place it on my bedside table when it crosses my mind to give Peter another call. As I’m mulling it over, my chin hits my chest. I haven’t yet made the bed, and my linens are still in boxes—but with no one to crawl toward under the sheets, I fall asleep on top of the bare mattress, clutching my cell phone.

Chapter Five

The music on FM 99 blasts from the white Bose alarm clock across the room. “Every Breath You Take” by the Police is not a bad way to start my Monday morning but the tiny bit of natural light poking through the blinds certainly is. I can’t think of the last time my alarm has been set before dawn.
Get up and turn it off
.
Otherwise you’ll lie in bed and daydream about Peter an extra thirty minutes. Or an hour.

When I walk into Classic Hits FM 99 for the first time as an employee, Edward Maxwell’s door is closed. It feels a little awkward, not knowing anyone, so I sit at my desk and start poking around the small office. A vast collection of old vinyl records, alphabetized by artist, is squeezed into floor-to-ceiling cabinets behind the desk chair. I can’t help but pull a few out to examine. With each album I touch my mind flashes back. Steppenwolf’s first self-titled album with “Born to Be Wild,” Virginia and I, each dancing like a wild child, down the long hall in front of her bedroom.
Chicago,
Jay Stockley and I slow-danced to “Colour My World” in Alice’s parents’ basement. The Cars—Mary Jule and I screamed “My Best Friend’s Girl” at the top of our lungs in her Mustang with the windows rolled down almost every night the summer before we went to college.

When I get to the
S
section my eyes are drawn to the blue spine of one of our favorite childhood albums.
Diana Ross and the Supremes Greatest Hits
. If only I still had that gorgeous pastel poster of the Supremes that came inside the album. I check to see if it’s in this one and it’s not. Gone to the same place as the posters inside the Beatles
White Album
and James Taylor’s
Sweet Baby James
. Probably ripped off a bedroom wall and wadded up inside a trashcan by a mom who’s desperate to redecorate once her child goes off to college.

*   *   *

“Alice always gets to be Diana Ross,” Virginia whispered in my ear, and jumped so high her head hit the canopy over my bed. One more jump and she landed on the carpet with a big thud. I bounced to the mattress on my butt first and then sprung off the bed behind her. We hooked arms and skipped down the hall out to the den where Alice and Mary Jule held their noses and shimmied their butts down to the floor. “Come swim, y’all,” Mary Jule called while moving her arms over her head as if she were crawling across the pool.

Virginia ripped into the jerk. I stood there, eyes traveling back and forth between the two, wondering which side to join. Virgy looked at me like she’d kill me if I didn’t follow her. Not wanting the other two mad at me, either, I decided to go out on my own and pony around the outskirts of the room and back down the hall. It was Saturday afternoon and
American Bandstand
was on the TV. We’d waited all week to dance along with the teenagers. As ten-year-olds, teenagers were our greatest infatuation and we copied their every move.

The console housing the television took up one side of the wall in our den. Alice stood just two feet from the screen holding one of the finials from my four-poster bed in her hand. Mary Jule, Virginia, and I stood a few feet behind her, singing into our own finials. Clad in striped polyester mini dresses and white go-go boots, the four of us sang and danced our hearts out.

“I’ll sing Diana’s part, and y’all be the Supremes,” Alice turned around and instructed. None of us was gutsy enough to protest the fact that she was
always
Diana, so we took our places behind her. The music started and I felt the goose bumps rise as Diana and the other two appeared on the
Bandstand
stage. When they started to sing, we hummed and oooed along with them, swaying our bodies and snapping our fingers. Alice turned around to us again and put her fingers over her lips. When Diana opened her mouth so did Alice. “Stop in the name of love, before you break my heart,” she sang into her pretend mic, while the rest of us only got to echo, “Think it oh, oh-ver.”

*   *   *

Whether it was Diana Ross, Martha Reeves, or the head WHBQ Cutie, Virgy, Mary Jule, and I had no choice in the matter. We were always the Supremes or the Vandellas. Just one of the background Cuties. Never the star. If we had been little when the Dixie Chicks first burst on the scene, Alice would definitely have “called” Natalie Maines.

WHBQ was
the
radio station back then. There was a little window on the outside of the building where people could watch the deejays inside. We’d walk several blocks in the summer just to be able to take a gander at George Klein, the morning deejay, best known as Elvis’s closest friend from high school. Back home we’d hole up in front of the TV every Saturday afternoon before
American Bandstand
to watch him host the local dance show,
Talent Party,
starring the WHBQ Cuties. I don’t think there was a girl in Memphis, Tennessee that didn’t dream of one day becoming a Cutie.

I’m so engrossed in reliving my past, that when the phone rings I don’t pay much attention. After several rings, though, it dawns on me that it’s most likely my job to answer so I pick it up and say, “Classic Hits FM 99 radio, may I help you?” I say it with confidence. Charm. Oomph. Like I’m a twenty-five-year radio veteran. I’m feeling so good about myself; a little chill runs down my spine.

“I see the pandas!” a man says, excitedly.

“Excuse me?”

“Two of them in the field. Yeah, baby. I can see ’em from my car. I’m pulled off on the shoulder of I-240, right near Christian Brothers High School.
I’ve spotted them,
” he says proudly.

“O-kaay.”

“Oh, there one goes! He’s heading into the woods. Nope. He’s coming back out. Tell Johnny Dial he should come on down. It’s crazy. Oh yeah. More cars are pulling off the interstate and parking right behind me. They see ’em, too. I’mo hang up now and call the zoo. See ya later.”

“Thanks for calling,” I say, with absolutely no clue of what’s just happened.

“Sure. Glad I could help.”

I hang up the phone, stunned. What in the world is this guy talking about? Pandas on the interstate?

The faint melody of a song emanates from the clock radio on my desk. I reach over and turn up the volume. Surely it’s okay to listen at work. This is, after all, a radio station. The phone rings again. Once more I answer it the same way. “FM 99 radio, may I help you, please?”

“They are so
cuuute,
” a girl says, squealing.

“I’m sorry. What’s so cute?”

“The pandas. I’m down here at Christian Brothers High School and I can see them right next to the woods.”

“Really? How many are there?”

“Two. Two adorable little panda bears. Do you know when the zoo people are coming to rescue them? I’d hate to think they might get hit by a car.”

“I’m not sure, actually. I’m just getting in to work.”

“It’s quite a sight out here. I bet there are one hundred cars lining the interstate and a hundred more here in the school parking lot. There’s nowhere else to park. Oh. Here comes the fire department. Maybe they can help catch them.”

“Do you know what happened? How the pandas got loose?” I say, feeling panicked, too.

“Yeah. Johnny Dial’s been talking about it on the radio all morning. You know how the Memphis Zoo just got the pandas? They were taking them around to different places in the city to show them off. Johnny Dial called it ‘The Panda Bear Field Trip.’ They accidentally got loose and people started spotting them near Christian Brothers High School.”

“Oh my,” I say, feeling just as concerned as she. “I so hope they’ll be okay. I didn’t even know the zoo was getting panda bears. I’ve just moved back to town and I’m still not up on all the Memphis news. I dearly love pandas.”

“Oh me, too, girl. Their names are Ya Ya and Lee Lee.”

“Leelee? That’s my name!”

“You should come down here and see her for yourself.”

“I wish I could but I better stay put. It’s my first day. Oops, the other phone is ringing, thanks for calling.” I hang up from her and spend the next thirty minutes talking with more callers about the loose panda bears. It’s hard to imagine the zoo would be so neglectful, I can’t help thinking.

A guy strolls by my office and glances inside, whistling as he walks. We briefly catch eyes. He gets a few feet past my door before taking a few steps backward. “Hellooo, gorgeous,” he says.

“Hi,” I say shyly.
Oh dear.

“And you must be the new Sallie,” he says, with a wink. I’ll admit his voice is captivating, although I’m not so sure about his personality.

“Was she the old assistant?”

“That she was.” After stepping into my office he holds out his hand. “Hi, I’m Stan. Stan Stallone. Midday jock.” He winks again and nods his head deliberately, like he’s sure I already know exactly who he is—which unfortunately I do, though thankfully never this up close and personal.

“Nice to meet you,” I say out of habit.

Stan leans in closer till he’s right in my personal space, so close I can smell his coffee breath when he talks. It’s black and it’s nasty. “And you are?”

An involuntary jerk of my head causes me to hit the album cabinet behind me. “Leelee.” I reach up and rub the back of my head. “Satterfield.”

“Careful there. Are you okay?” Now his nose is almost touching mine.

I plop down in my chair to escape the odor. “I’m fine,” I say, although it sounds more like a squeak, and I decide to breathe through my mouth only.

“Well, welcome aboard, Leelee Satterfield.”

“Thanks.”

His eyes travel from my face down to my feet, with a pause at my chest.
Double nasty
. I’d heard his voice on the radio for years and had conjured up an image of what he might look like. Gorgeous voice, gorgeous man, I’d always believed. Not Stan, bless his heart. A large bottom on a woman is fine but it’s a different story altogether when it’s on a man, especially when his waist is much smaller. “Ever worked in radio before?” he asks and squats down level with my face.