Cold Tea on a Hot Day (32 page)

She didn’t.

She never did say anything about it. She and Tate, both obviously at a loss for words, said goodbye and hung up. That she had not told him about her canceled engagement was annoying. It really was not so big a deal, though. Why would he care?

But she did think he would care. She hoped he would care, and this hope made her quite annoyed.

Louis was over at the table eating his fudge Popsicle with great concentration, probably in the same manner he would grill a defendant, or perhaps lick a woman.

She went and called Willie Lee and got their Popsicles and joined Louis, all three sitting there having a pretty grand time licking when Anita and Corrine came in the door. Corrine did not want her Popsicle. Anita ate only a bite of hers before giving hers over to Louis, who licked it like a boy.

Standing at the bottom of the porch steps, Corrine watched her mother drive away. Aunt Marilee stood beside her, with a hand on her shoulder. Her mother called from the car, “Love you, honey,” and waved and acted like she was about to cry. Corrine stood there and did not cry. She would not cry about it.

When the car was gone, she felt her Aunt Marilee looking at her. She hated her aunt looking, and she hated everybody.

“Come on, Willie Lee.” She did not hate Willie Lee.
Willie Lee was the one person on earth she loved, and in that minute it was like every bit of love she had inside focused on him to such a degree she just about lost her breath. “We’ll finish putting your worms to bed.”

She turned and went straight through the house and out the back door, with Willie Lee and Munro following behind. She got down on her knees in the dirt. Put her hands in it. It was just about too dark to see any worms, but she wanted to dig. She could feel Aunt Marilee come to look out at them every now and then.

It was understandable that her mother would leave her here with Aunt Marilee. Her mother said she wanted to get them a nice house in New Orleans. Her mother was moving very far this time; usually it was just across town, leaving because she couldn’t pay the rent, or was embarrassed because of one of her boyfriends. Corrine wanted to stay with Aunt Marilee; she liked it here. It was okay what her mother did. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter.

Marilee was at the kitchen table, jotting a grocery list; actually, making up a grocery list was something to do to let her sit at the table and do nothing. Her energy seemed at a low ebb. It was as if Anita had taken it all away. She kept trying to figure out what she should say to Corrine, if anything. Corrine seemed perfectly contained, not upset at all. Perhaps Marilee was blowing things all out of proportion.

Corrine, all bathed and in fresh pajamas, came into the kitchen and asked if she could have a juice drink from the refrigerator.

“Sure, honey.” Marilee, trying not to appear to stare, noticed Corrine had dark circles under her eyes.

Corrine got the juice, uncapped the bottle and threw the lid in the trash. Marilee went back to trying to make a grocery list.

Then, “Aunt Marilee, why doesn’t my mother want me?”

Marilee’s head came up to see Corrine standing there, her bottom lip trembling.

In an instant Marilee had Corrine in her arms, and she held Corrine, until Corrine pushed away, choking somewhat and gasping for breath. Possibly, Marilee thought, she had been holding her niece way too tight, in her great urge to absorb the child’s pain and make everything all right with a hug.

Wiping the tears away, Corrine turned and took up her juice. “I’m sorry…it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, yes, it does matter.” Marilee spoke so forcefully that she startled both herself and Corrine.

All right, God, tell me what to say.

She took Corrine’s hand. “It is not that your mother does not want you. That’s not it at all. As a single woman, your mother is in a difficult position. She does not have the skills to earn a salary that can support you and her at an adequate level.”

Corrine’s dark eyes were on her.

Marilee closed her mouth and searched for elusive honesty. “Corrine, it isn’t about wanting you or not wanting you. It is about your mother being your mother. None of it is about you. It is about your mother and her needs, and what happens is that you are caught in that. You
have not caused your mother to make this choice, and you cannot change it.

“And really, your mother is making a decision that benefits all of us. God knew I wanted more children, and this is His way of letting me have a daughter. It is perfect. Your mother wants you to have a good solid home, and I want you to be here with me. I’m so glad you are here, Corrine.”

She tugged her niece to her again and attempted to hug everything right, but trying not to do so with quite as much force. Corrine accepted this.

Feeling as if she had yet not gotten everything said that needed saying, just before Corrine went to bed, Marilee gave it another go.

“I want to tell you something important, and that is that every feeling you have matters. When you are angry, it matters. When you feel hurt, it matters, the same as when you are happy. We matter because we are human beings who are children of God. You matter, I matter, Willie Lee matters, Mr. Tate matters…each person on earth.” Suddenly, with startling clarity, Marilee knew that she was saying this to herself, to the little girl who still lived inside and who had to hear the words. “Don’t ever again say that you, or how you feel, does not matter.”

“Yes, Aunt Marilee.” Corrine’s dark eyes blinked impassively.

Marilee, persistent for her own need as much as for what she thought her niece needed, again hugged Corrine, and after a brief hesitation, Corrine hugged her back.

Later Marilee thought of how upset Parker would have been at the turn of events. And how happy she was at it.
She felt a little guilty, for it meant she was glad Anita had abdicated her role as mother. That was the truth of it, Lord. Forgive me. I am glad.

It had to be done. Marilee had put it off as long as she could. She telephoned her mother to tell her that she and Parker would not be getting married after all.

“Hi, Mom. How was your trip to Las Vegas?”

“Wore me out. We had a good time, but it wore me out. We didn’t get home until noon yesterday. We decided to stay over Sunday night, because Carl and Charlie Linford got to playing slot machines, and Carl got on a roll. He just started winnin’ and winnin’. I played, too, and I won three hundred dollars, but Carl won two thousand, so he told me to go change our plane reservations. I didn’t want to do it, but I did, and when I came back, Carl had won another five thousand dollars, at the slot machine. His machine hit some premium number. When that happens a light goes off on your machine, and a guy will come over and give you a ticket for the money. When I got there, a crowd was all around where Carl had been playing, and I thought at first that he’d had a heart attack.”

When her mother paused for a breath, Marilee, quite impressed, said, “That is just wonderful, Mom.”

“Well, you know Carl had to keep on then. He gave me five hundred of it, and he took the rest. I played the machines for a while, but then just went up to bed, and Carl played way into the night, until they wouldn’t let him play anymore, because he’d had too much to drink. He had won another four thousand, though.”

Marilee was amazed. “Carl won eleven thousand dollars?”

“Yes, he did. He didn’t know how much he had won by the time he came up to the room. He had a bucket, but he had chips stuck all in his coat and pants pockets. I pulled one out of each of his shoes, even. Heaven knows what he was thinking, but he had tucked them in his shoes.

“I took all of those out of his clothes, and I went downstairs and cashed them in. There was nearly fifteen hundred dollars from just in his clothes. He never knew when he woke up. He just remembered about the bucketful. And then, while we were waitin’ for our cab, he went in there and lost that entire bucket at the blackjack table.”

“Oh.”

“I never did tell him about that fifteen hundred dollars I got out of his clothes. He remembered the five hundred he’d given me and wanted that, but I wouldn’t give it to him. I told him I had paid it on his drink bill.” Her mother’s voice dropped. “I want you to help me get it into the bank down there in Valentine. Carl won’t know about it there. I want you to help me choose a CD.”

Marilee sat there a minute. Then she said, “The bank will help you choose a CD. I wanted to tell you that Parker and I are not getting married.”

She did not know why every conversation with her mother seemed as if they each spoke a foreign language.

Seize the Day

H
e spilled his guts to his mother, in her kitchen at 6:00 a.m., over morning coffee. His mother had already had her meditation and yoga workout, and having slept very little, he had lain in his bed, listening to her stir.

He had, he realized, come running to her just as he always had, despite being a man of a certain age. He was also quite amazed at his level of heartache. He simply had not known what was going on inside him until he had arrived at his mother’s house and found he didn’t want to bathe or shave.

Now that he had poured out his difficulty of wanting a woman he could not have, he didn’t feel any better, either. If anything, he felt worse.

His mother’s response was not a great deal of help. When he had finished with his sad tale of love rejected, she said, “So she got engaged, and you ran off.”

Tate did not appreciate this take on the situation. “I let
go. I quit tryin’ to make it be my way. She’s made her choice. I’m not going to beat my head against a brick wall to change things I cannot change.”

“Oh, pshaw…all she did was get engaged.” She sipped her ginseng tea. “You can let go but still stay around to see what happens and see if things are eventually going to go your way. What you did was more like giving up. Two different things entirely.”

Tate was stung. He had not expected this criticism.

“People often change their minds, most especially about being engaged,” his mother continued. “You don’t know that she might not have changed her mind the next day. You were too busy runnin’ off because of your hurt pride.”

As Tate saw it, a man did have his pride.

“You’re down here, so you aren’t goin’ to know what is goin’ on up there. You say this Parker fella isn’t right for your Marilee. Well, it may take time for her to realize this. What if she realizes it while you’re down here pitying yourself?”

“I am not pitying myself.” Tate did not appreciate the picture his mother painted of him. He smoothed his hair and got up to refill his coffee, real coffee, not some health-nut stuff his mother wanted to palm off on him.

Grudgingly, he could admit to slogging around in a bit of pity. Maybe ankle deep.

“You wanted my opinion, and I’m givin’ it. Get back up there and see what develops.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” he clarified. “I just wanted you to listen…and to make me feel better.” He was disappointed and annoyed, and felt very childish.

His mother got up and came over, kissed him and hugged him hard. “There you go.”

Just before noon, the door opened and Charlotte looked up to see a man enter. Young, in his twenties, thin as a rail, and wearing his slacks high at his waist. Her mother would have told him to jerk his trousers down where they belonged. It was, however, his great height that arrested her attention; she found herself looking at his thighs, and then her gaze moved upward, higher and higher, to six and a half feet at the very least.

“Hello. I’m Sandy Conroy.”

“Hello…Mr. Conroy,” Charlotte said, as she slowly stood, until she was straight as a rod. Finally, at long last, she was looking upward at a man. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Mr. Holloway.”

“I’m sorry. Mr. Holloway is out of town. Was he expecting you?”

“Well, no…well, yes, ma’am, but he was expectin’ me next week. He’s hired me to do layout. I was supposed to be in next week, but I decided to come on down.”

Charlotte saw his blush and instantly drew the conclusion that there was a story behind his coming early. The most likely scenario would be a breakup with his girlfriend.

“I should have called, I guess.” He looked at a loss.

“I can show you to your desk,” Charlotte said so quickly that he blinked. She suddenly was not going to take a chance on him leaving.

“Oh, I’m Charlotte Nation. I’m the receptionist and general do-all person.”

She put out her hand, and he shook it with some eagerness. “Glad to meet you, ma’am.” At his touch Charlotte thought something happened to her. She seemed to lose coherent thought.

Seeking to regain her poise, she strode firmly back to the office cubicle that had belonged to their former layout artist, gesturing along the way at the empty desks—“The paper is put to bed, so everyone sort of scatters, and Leo has taken the disks to the printer…he’ll see to the deliveries later.”—and Zona’s office, telling him the names of his new colleagues. She was thrilled to be walking beside a man who stood a full head taller than herself.

She had to knock dust off the desk. Only then did she notice he carried a bulging case with him, likely a portable computer. “This space hasn’t been used much since we lost our layout man, several months ago now. June uses the long table some.”

He placed his case on the desk and looked around. He was shy, and quite suddenly Charlotte felt very shy. It was such a foreign emotion that she didn’t know how to handle it. She had no idea of where to lay her eyes, because she found she could not meet his gaze.

“There’s the coffee machine,” she said gesturing. “Oh, only there isn’t any coffee made, since the editor is out. But you can help yourself to the cold drinks in the refrigerator…if there are any. I don’t know. I haven’t looked today. I like mixed juice drinks, but I haven’t brought any down this week. Sometimes the editor puts Orange Crush in there. Do you like that?”

She was rattling and just came out with the question, while what she was really thinking as she gazed into his
soft brown eyes was: Are you free and open to an older woman, and would you possibly like Chinese food, which is my favorite?

“Yes, I like Orange Crush,” he said, seeming a little surprised at the question.

“Well, help yourself. Look around. I’ll leave you to settling in.” She was backing up. “If you need anything, let me know.”

She beat a retreat to her desk, sat herself squarely, and sought to find her familiar composed, even cool, self. Goodness. She was shy. This was quite a surprise. It had never happened to her before. She did not care for the feeling.

As she struggled to bring herself into some order, she attempted to focus on her computer screen, while her eyes were repeatedly drawn back to the young man moving around in his glass cubicle. The ringing of the phone was a welcome interruption.

“Charlotte?” It was the editor.

“Yes. It’s a good thing you called.”

“It didn’t sound like you. Why? What’s happened? Is there trouble with the Wednesday edition?”

She was a little surprised at his rapid-fire questions. Her boss did not usually speak so fast. He sounded almost as if he wanted trouble. “No trouble with the paper. It’s a light edition, already gone to the printer. But the layout artist you hired—Sandy Conroy—has shown up.”

“I wasn’t expecting him until next week.”

“That’s what he said.”

“Well, make him welcome. You can show him his desk and stuff.”

“I did.” Did he think she’d thrown him out? “He’s at his desk now. Do you want to speak to him?”

Her editor said he did want to talk to the “young man.” Charlotte called back, “Mr. Conroy, the editor is on the phone for you,” and punched the button.

Sandy Conroy was looking wide-eyed at her through his window. Then his phone rang, and he answered it. Charlotte sat there thinking that he wasn’t all that young. He had just taken a responsible position at a newspaper.

The two men conversed for some minutes, and then Sandy Conroy lifted his head right over his cubicle window and hollered, “He wants to talk to you again, Miss Charlotte.”

She snatched up the phone and pressed the button. Her editor told her the young man was starting immediately and to have Zona cut him a check for a week’s pay. He then wanted to know who won the council seat, and she told him it was Jaydee Mayhall by a landslide. “He was embarrassing going on about it, and then him and Juice got into it so bad that Sheriff Oakes hauled them in for disorderly conduct last night. Marilee interviewed them both at the jailhouse, right after they were let out. Reggie got a picture, too.”

“I’ve missed some excitement,” he said. “Where is Marilee? I called her house, but no one answered. She didn’t go get married today, did she?”

“Oh, no. Marilee and Parker broke up.”

“They broke up?”

Her editor fairly yelled, and this got her attention. She had been concentrating so hard on an unobtrusive way to ask about Sandy Conroy’s age that she had not fully pro
cessed his question, which, now that she thought of it, was a very telling one.

“When?” he demanded.

“Well…they were broke up on Monday.” She had not asked Marilee when, and she didn’t think it really mattered, although she clearly saw the situation now.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“You weren’t here, and I did not know you particularly wanted to know.” Okay, that dealt with, she said in a hoarse whisper, “How old is Sandy Conroy?”

“Uh…twenty-five. And, Miss Charlotte, don’t let Marilee get back engaged to that idiot before I get there.”

“I don’t think I can do anything about what Marilee does.” Her editor was getting carried away.

“I put you in charge of it—and in charge of helping Sandy Conroy find a place to live, so you owe me. I’ll be there tonight.” And the line clicked dead.

She sat there, wondering how she could have been so blind to her editor’s inclinations toward Marilee, but then her gaze slipped over, and she was looking through the window of Sandy Conroy’s office again. It was only an eleven-year difference. That wasn’t so much. And he was taller than she was. He was so tall that she could once again wear high heels.

What she thought was something along the lines of: Seize the day. She had spent too long mooning after Leo, Sr., and many others before him, men who were too short to be fully satisfying, and usually married or otherwise beyond her reach. She had done this because she was afraid to reach out. Now, here before her, was a real chance, and she was going to go forward and take it.

She pushed her chair away from her desk, took up her purse and walked back toward the young man’s office. On the way she poked her head inside Zona’s cracked door and said, “Zona, Editor says cut a week’s check for Sandy Conroy. We’ll pick it up later. I’m leaving for the day. You are now in charge.”

She proceeded onward so quickly that she caught the barest glimpse of Zona’s shocked expression.

“The editor said for me to help you find an apartment. Would you like to go check out some places, and then possibly have supper?” She was no longer shy. She knew what she wanted. Her ship had come in.

“Well…yes, thank you.” His grin was shy but wide.

As she walked beside him out the door, she dared to slip her arm through his, and she stood straight and tall.

After some minutes, Zona came to her door and peeked her head out, looking around at the huge empty room. Slowly she opened her door wider and left it that way. Everyone was getting too lax in the workings of this paper, and the responsibility to hold the fort apparently had fallen to her. She could do this, for Ms. Porter.

Tate told his mother, “Okay, you were right.”

She did not ask what about but said simply, “I won’t ever say I told you so.”

In twenty minutes he had his bags packed, Bubba stuffed into his carrier, and was loading his car. His mother brought him a mason jar of cold tea with lots of ice, just like the ones she would pack in the old days, for working in the cotton fields. For an instant, memory of
how cool and sweet the tea would be on his tongue and going down his hot throat washed over him.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said and kissed her cheek.

“You’re welcome, and now remember: everything will turn out how it is supposed to, and in its own time.”

“That isn’t what you were saying this mornin’.”

“I could not say it then, because you were running away, upsetting the flow of life. Go back up there and get into the flow.”

She was standing in her little yard, watching after him, as he drove away with the salty air of the Gulf blowing around his windshield. He gauged that he could get to Valentine in less than seven hours. And he supposed he had within his reach the best secrets of life: cold sweet tea and a high heart.

When Perry came driving down the street, Vella was sitting on the front porch, drinking iced tea flavored with her own mint leaves. She had not wanted to start sitting on her porch; that was something her mother and other old ladies did. However, she had been taken with a new set of wicker furniture on sale up at the Home Depot, really pretty, newfangled wicker that went through anything and never molded, so the brochure said.

Her front porch was beautiful with it, and once she had sat down in the chair, she found it rather relaxing, sitting there, gazing out at the street, watching the birds and rabbits, a blue jay harass a cat. Certainly it wasn’t as bad as she had anticipated. She didn’t feel any older or more depressed sitting on the front porch than she did sitting anywhere else. In fact, it did seem to soothe her.

Sitting there, she was quite surprised to see Perry’s black Lincoln approaching in the middle of the morning. She did not think she had ever seen him go anywhere outside the pharmacy before five o’clock in the afternoon, not in a decade, since they had buried his brother in a morning service. She felt a flicker of anticipation. Of hope, and it ran along the lines of her husband dashing up in the driveway and saying he had come to be the man she had married.