Heart of the Country (10 page)

23

I
OPENED THE OVEN
to stick the thermometer in the chicken. The heat hit my face, but my insides were already broiling. Crispy and burnt, as a matter of fact. I pulled the chicken out of the oven and stared it down like it had something against me. But really, I was picturing Faith’s face. It had to set for ten minutes, or believe you me, I would’ve started slicing right into it.

Instead, I was going to have to put on my polite face and get out the nice place mats. I checked my watch and started setting the table. Hardy came in, squawking about the squirrels eating the pecans.

“I don’t want to hear about it right now,” I said.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“No, it ain’t. You got lucky with me, Liv. I am one of those guys who listens to what you’re saying, even if I don’t understand it. And sometimes just talking about it helps.”

“Just keep the girls busy. I gotta get this dinner finished up. Dad and Faith’ll be here any minute.”

He leaned against the kitchen bar. “So this is about Faith.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Maybe it was the fact that you watched her like she was some kind of wild animal, all the way through church. I mean, if her skull had eyes in the back, it might’ve worked, but I don’t think she saw you.”

I sighed, adjusting the place mats so they were all spaced equally apart. “Hardy, you just don’t get it, okay? How could you? I don’t expect you to.”

“I know that you don’t talk about her much.”

“She left. Don’t you see that? She left us. Me. Dad.”

“Was there a rule saying she couldn’t?”

“I’d expect you to take her side,” I said, glaring at him over the half-set table. “Everybody does. She’s got that Midas touch. She really can’t do any wrong. I mean, she shows up here, after this many years, and wants to just pick up where we left off? Where we left off was Mom was dead, she disappeared, and I was the only one to try to put Dad back
together.” I put down the forks, leaned against the table, trying to keep the tears from starting. “Do you know that I never got a chance to . . .”

“To what?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to be a blubbering mess when they arrived. Sunday dinner wasn’t about that. It was about family, which she hardly appreciated. Sure, she wanted us when things got bad, but what about all the other times?

I nodded toward the backyard. “Victoria is calling you.”

He didn’t have much to say usually, so I didn’t expect him to say much now. Besides, I could tell Faith had already bewitched everyone, once again. She had that effect on people. They instantly liked her within seconds of meeting her. But they didn’t know what I knew. And she certainly wasn’t going to fool me. Dad, now, that man was easily fooled. He had to grieve Momma and then Faith’s leaving. It was no wonder he was making such a big hubbub about her return.

I finished setting the table and went over to ice the cake. Double fudge, her favorite, on request again from Dad.

“I just want her to feel welcome,” he told me over the phone last night.

Maybe I could get a banner and some balloons too. Heck, let’s throw her a parade.

The girls bounded in, dirty in their Sunday clothes.

“Girls, I told you to change before you went outside to play.”

“Sorry, Mom,” they said in unison.

“When is Aunt Faith going to be here?” Nell asked, jumping up and down.

“Soon enough. Go change, okay? And wash up.”

I stepped back to look at the cake. Perfection. And I knew secretly that although Dad had requested the cake on Faith’s behalf, it was really just because he wanted it himself. Thank goodness for cholesterol pills.

The front door opened and Dad came in, changed from church and in his favorite flannel shirt.

“Just finishing up the cake.” I smiled.

“Smells good.”

“Where’s Faith?”

“She’s not coming.”

I turned, wiping my hands on my apron. “What do you mean?”

“She didn’t want to come,” Dad said, looking me directly in the eye. “Said she didn’t want to upset our tradition.”

I turned and seethed, the whole of my wrath boring right into that chicken. That was just like her, to get the pity pouring on stronger. Setting herself up like some kind of martyr. I picked up the chicken, carried it carefully to the table. And the green beans too. Poured sweet tea for everyone and sat down for the family blessing. When that was done, I promptly excused myself.

“Where are you going?” Hardy asked.

I didn’t answer. But I knew.

24

T
HE SMALL HOUSE
sat between two giant pecan trees and nestled along the edge of a sprawling sea of corn. It still was so quaint but could’ve used a new coat of paint. I got out, my shiny BMW an eyesore among such natural beauty. The yard was a bit overgrown, but still tidy, and I noticed she’d managed to plant some mums in pots along the porch steps.

I remembered coming to Essie Mae’s house with Momma. She made tea for the adults, but lemonade for us girls. We’d play out back on a tire swing and sometimes make our way to a creek about half a mile away. When we’d return, she always had sugar cookies waiting for us.

Before I reached the porch, Essie Mae had flung open the
screen door and was waving me in. “Faith, oh my goodness, what a blessing, what a treat! You just missed a big dinner!”

Inside, it smelled like always, like all old people’s homes. Hints of mustiness. Baby lotion. Vitamins. And leftovers. At least that’s how it smelled to me. It was like the warmth of my childhood had wrapped its arms around me.

Floral was all the rage then, and as Essie Mae offered me a seat on the wingback with the largest floral print in the room, I gazed around the sitting room, at the dried flowers and the country baskets. Nothing had changed. Even her knitting needles and yarn sat in the same corner.

She poured coffee from a carafe with a shaky hand. “Guessing you prefer this stuff to that lemonade I used to make you?” she said with a smile.

“Maybe.” I winked. “But that was awfully good lemonade.”

“Made fresh.” She beamed and pointed to the coffee. “Still grind my own coffee beans, so I guess this is fresh too. Cream and sugar?”

“Just black. Thank you.”

She sat across from me, balancing her coffee on her lap with a small plate underneath. “Boy, have you seen how those leaves are changing? Absolutely beautiful. My favorite time of year.”

“Miss Essie, you’re as lovely as ever.”

“May be. May be. But you didn’t come here to tell me how lovely I am, did you, girl? You ready to tell me about
that fancy life you’ve been living up in New York City?” She dropped two cubes of sugar into her coffee. “Been singing?”

“I haven’t sung in a while. But it’s okay. Really, it’s fine.”

“Hm.” She twirled a tiny spoon around in her coffee. I could feel her stare as I pretended that somehow my drink was particularly interesting. “Why’d you come back home?”

I looked up at her, tried a small smile. She was feisty as ever. “Too much drama,” I said with a shrug.

She set her coffee down and shuffled to the sofa near my seat, taking my hand in hers. “Baby, I’ve known you your whole life. And I knew your momma since she was a girl too.”

I nodded, but the tears came.

“Honey, you have your momma’s soul.”

“No. I don’t.”

“But you do.”

“I look like her. I sing like her. But I cannot live like her.”

“Maybe it feels like a burden right now, but your momma will always be a part of you.” She tapped a crooked old finger against the air. “But. You are not your momma. You hear me? When you sing, it’s your voice. It’s you showing the world Faith Barnett
 
—”

“Carraday,” I said softly.

Essie Mae smiled and patted me lightly on the hand. “Of course.” Then her eyes grew big. “My heavens, look at that rock on that tiny finger of yours!” She lifted my hand. “Let me see that thing. What a dazzler!”

I laughed. “It is beautiful.”

“Mrs. Carraday. A fine name indeed.” She rose again and beckoned with a shaky hand. “Come now. Come with me, honey. I want to show you something.”

We walked to the next room over, the living room, which separated the sitting room from the kitchen. Doilies covered the arms of the chairs, light streamed through the windows, and country dust, the kind that liked to find the sunbeams, floated in the air. The crisp white trim on the furniture and walls had aged to the color of vanilla pudding.

She wobbled over to the old upright piano
 
—the very piano I’d taken four years of lessons on
 
—picked up a frame, and held it out for me. I took it in my hands and recognized it immediately. The same picture was in my dad’s bedroom. It was me, twelve, a mouth full of braces and limbs so long and gangly they’d dubbed me “Puppet.” Olivia stood next to me, her arm wrapped around my neck. Her black curls were blown up by the wind, and her face had a fun, surprised look on it, like she’d just been splashed with cold water. Next to her was Mom, as delicately beautiful as she ever had been, wearing a floral summer dress and her hair pinned back in a loose bun. Her arm stretched over Olivia’s back and to my shoulder, and it was so true that her arms were always long enough and her reach wide enough for anyone in our family who wanted to be embraced.

It seemed like a lifetime ago. Yet I could remember the exact moment it was snapped.

“That’s how I remember you. All three of ya.” Essie sat down on the piano bench, grabbing its arm for guidance.
“Your momma gave me this picture one Mother’s Day. I love it. But you know, I’ve always wondered, what on earth made y’all crack up like that?”

I held the picture closer to me, studying every detail. “Daddy. He took the picture. We all posed so perfectly and had nice smiles on our faces, and Daddy said we looked way too stuffy, like mannequins at Walmart.” I grinned as the memory ran through my head. He’d started singing
 
—at the top of his lungs like usual
 
—“I Feel Pretty” from
West Side Story
. It did the trick. Liv and I almost died from embarrassment. And that instant was captured perfectly with one click of the camera.

“Good to know,” Essie Mae said.

“What?”

“That you can still smile after all.”

I hadn’t even realized I was smiling. “Come on. I’m not that bad.”

Essie Mae’s face lit up. “And there is that accent! I knew you still had it.”

I glanced over the pictures and then noticed a postcard, propped up next to one of the frames. I picked it up. It was the New York City skyline. I didn’t even remember sending it, but there on the back was my signature and lots of exclamation points proclaiming how much fun I was having. The exclamation points had been replaced by commas now. Ellipses maybe. Long pauses with no conclusion.

I set it down. “I better get back to Dad.”

“He’s fine.”

“I know. He is. Thanks to Olivia.”

Essie Mae stood, her knobby fingers slipping between mine. “I want you to sing in the choir Sunday.”

“But
 
—”

“Your butt can come too, but it doesn’t sing nearly as well. And bring your father. He was banned a couple of years ago because he’s awful and awfully loud, but he does love to sing and maybe some of your talent will rub off on him.” She patted my cheek. “Okay, honey? And there’s a fair coming up
 
—they like singers to enter. Your momma sang in that, back in nineteen . . . eighty-four, was it?”

“Okay, Miss Essie.”

We walked to the door, said our good-byes, and I got in my car. Her screen door shut, then her wooden door. I stayed in my car a long time, gazing forward.

Olivia was wrong. Life did freeze here. I was in the time capsule. Just like then, everyone wanted me to pick up where Momma left off. Just like then, I still couldn’t fill her shoes. She had that thing about her, that light in her eyes that made you feel like you were the only one in her life who mattered. I couldn’t even stay in Juilliard, a place Momma dreamed of going. I’d barely gotten out of the gate and I’d failed.

I gripped the steering wheel. What did these people want from me?

25

I
T COST ALMOST FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS
to bury Momma. I was old enough to know what a strain that put on Daddy, so I gave him some of the money I was saving for college. I’d only been out on my own for a year. I’d decided I’d start at a community college and then go to nursing school. At the time, I was just starting to date Hardy, too.

Lots of reasons nursing school didn’t pan out for me. I regretted it. But I guess I got my share of caretaking in.

The day of Momma’s wreck, I got the phone call from Daddy, who was sobbing and telling me to get to the hospital. Hardy drove me and I found Dad and Faith in the waiting room. The doctor was just coming through enormous
automatic doors, pulling his face mask off, drenched in sweat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “She has died.”

It is the anguished cry of my father that I still can’t get over. He fell to his knees and screamed. It sounded primitive, and I knew I’d witnessed the bloody mess of his soul. My father was tall, and to see him crumpled against the ground, screaming like he was on fire, was more than I will ever be able to bear in this lifetime. Daddy never showed much emotion. Mom had enough for the both of them. I’d never seen him cry. Or raise his voice.

I’d looked across at Faith, who was shaking so much I could hear her bracelets rattling. I stumbled to her and she fell into my arms and sobbed. Hardy excused himself because he didn’t know us well enough at the time.

There I was, and there was not a single person to hold me up, so I stood with one hand on Dad’s shoulder and my other arm wrapped around Faith. I knew I was going to have to take care of them. I could hear Mom’s voice telling me that.

I don’t know how much time passed. It could have been hours or minutes. But someone from the hospital, who didn’t look like a doctor, came into the private room we were allowed and said that we needed to identify the body. I stood up with Dad, but he waved me away and followed the man through those large doors, disappearing as they swooshed closed.

Hardy found us. He brought us each a cup of water. I stared at Faith. She was pale, her eyes watery, and she looked
more terrified than I could possibly describe. Like she’d been left alone in this world. Totally alone. Like she was left to die.

The slight wind stirred the trees of the graveyard. It sat on a hill and was shadowed by large trees, so it was always cold, even in the summer. “Hi, Momma.” I bent down and put a white rose on her grave. Daddy always got her red roses for the church memorial, but Mom told me once that she liked white roses. I had to special order it through the local florist.

I liked this time alone with Mom. Dad never wanted me to come along when he’d come on her birthday or the anniversary of her death, so I just learned to come out here by myself.

“Faith’s back in town.” I shrugged, then sat cross-legged on the grave. Crisp, freshly fallen leaves blew around the headstones, dancing over the dying grass. “Guess she and Luke had some sort of falling-out.” I went on to tell her how Victoria and Nell were doing. I updated her on Dad. But as I knew I would, I got back around to Faith.

“She’s unpredictable, and I don’t know what to do with her. Dad’s all glad she’s back, but at the first sign of trouble, I’m sure she’ll run again.” I picked at the prickly blades beneath my legs. “It must’ve been something awful to bring her back here. I mean, we all said if we could get out of here we would. I just didn’t think any of us meant it.” I sighed, my gaze hovering over her headstone. “Not that there’s anything wrong with here, Momma. I know that was your choice to stay. Mine too. But it doesn’t stop me from wondering what it
might’ve been like. What the rest of the world is like. I guess it’s not that great, is it? Maybe that’s what Faith found out.”

I let the wind talk for a while. Sometimes I ran out of things to say. And sometimes I felt stupid talking to a headstone. But sometimes I just needed my mom. “I’m thinking about changing my hairstyle. Nothing crazy like you see in the magazines, but maybe some bangs. Or a few highlights
 
—”

I heard the crunching of leaves against the small gravel road that led from the church to the cemetery. I didn’t have to look. I would’ve recognized the sound of those fancy shoes anywhere. I got to my feet, dusted my pants off and took a deep breath.

“I was just leaving.”

I expected her to speak, but she just had her arms wrapped around herself, as if the wind were colder than it was. She was looking at the grave, a few feet behind me.

“You’ve never been out here.” I realized it just then. She hadn’t come since the funeral. The last time she saw it, it was a gaping hole in the ground. She wouldn’t know it took four months for the dirt to settle. She wouldn’t know the headstone cracked and we had to have it redone. She didn’t know these things because she wasn’t here.

“So we’re going to do this. Here.” Faith stepped past me and walked up to the grave.

I stood there, wanting to shove her like I did when we were kids and I’d get aggravated with her. But instead, I walked up next to her, stood beside her as we both looked at the grave.

“Which conversation do you want to have, Olivia? The one where you ‘told me so,’ that I shouldn’t have married the man that I did? Or the one where you lay on all the guilt because I left you and Daddy after Momma died?” She glared at me. “Or how about the one where I’ve forgotten my roots and I don’t belong here anymore?”

“Take your pick. You left, not me.”

“You are unbelievable. When did you turn so mean?”

I laughed a little, studying the pair of our feet at the edge of Mom’s grave. “Do you remember the night that she died? We were at the hospital. Hardy took you home.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“I had him take you home because Dad had to go identify the body.”

“What’s your point?”

“I had to be there for him when he came out. And I’ve been there for him every day since.”

She glanced at me. “I know that. And he’s better for it, Liv. Truly. I left Dad a heartbroken wreck. I just couldn’t lose Mom and watch Dad. I’m not strong like you.”

“Don’t patronize me, Faith. This isn’t about me. Or Dad. It’s about you. It’s always been about you, and it always will be. And you know what really irritates me? You travel all the way to New York, and then you go and quit on your dream. I mean, if you’re going to run, at least make something out of your indulged self.” I caught my breath. I hadn’t meant to say that.

Faith started crying.

“I see how he looks at you,” I said.

“Who?”

The words stuck in my throat. I was being nasty and mean and I knew it. But it didn’t stop me. “You know, I fill Daddy’s kitchen with groceries so he’ll eat something other than a TV dinner every night. Hardy drives Dad’s trash to the dump. The girls and I clean his house every week, and then on Sunday he always brings them a flower for their good work. I drive him to Whiteville for his doctor appointments because he doesn’t like to get on the highway. I know what his favorite ice cream is and how he likes his coffee. But no matter what I do, he never looks at me the way he looks at you.”

Faith’s eyes snapped to me. “What are you talking about?”

“To answer your question, about when I got so mean, I think it was the day that Lady died and one more piece of Dad did too. Or maybe it was the day that I realized no matter what I did for Dad, I was never going to be enough for him.”

Faith held her hands against her cheeks, brushing off tears, staring at me wide-eyed like I’d just made some sacrilegious comment. “Daddy loves you, Olivia.”

“Maybe he does. But I had to work for it, and you get it for free.” I left her there, standing over the grave, her long, shiny hair blown sideways by a wind that had suddenly picked up.