Dining with Joy (31 page)
“Let's find out how we are beyond the show. Move to Portland. Write articles, freelance edit or whatever literary people do. Rosie is very self-sufficient. The girls have parents, Joy. Stop doing their job. Stop doing your dad's job. Stop clinging to your past and all the mistakes.” He caressed her cheek and the tender skin melted against his palm. This wasn't going at all like he'd planned, but he rowed with the flow of his heart. “You've paid any debt you owed to your dad, and now it's time to live for you, to find your destiny.”
“In Portland? What could I possibly find for myself in Portland, Luke?” She jumped up, turning her back to him, scooping her hair away from her face.
“Me. Be my wife, Joy.” Luke jumped at the sound of his voice. The unplanned proposal ignited him. “Come with me andâ”
“Be your wife?” She whirled around, hands on her hips. “How is that different than what I've been doing? You just accused me of not living my own life. That I am doing Daddy's will, raising Sawyer and Mindy's kids.”
“There's no replacement Mrs. Luke Redmond, Joy.” Luke's courage careened against his chest as he argued his case. “You're not standing in for another woman.”
“I can't believe this. No, I'm not going to Portland. I was the daughter of a chef, and I'll be darned if I'm going to be the wife of one. I watched Mama and decided it was a pretty rotten existence.”
“I'm not Charles Ballard.”
“You're not. But I have no idea who you'll be when the honeymoon is over.”
“You have to trust me.”
“Trust you? How about love you? Does love factor into your recipe for solving my problems? Do you even love me? No, don't answer. I don't want to know. Because my answer is no, Luke. I'm not going to Portland with you.”
“Seems you have it all figured out.” He needed to leave. Now.
His footsteps hammered the hardwood. But he paused at the top of the stairs. “Your mom told me about Tim, the guy who broke your heart. I hate him for what he did to you.”
“This has nothing to do with Tim.” She faced Luke in the hall, brash and uncompromised. “This has to do with you offering marriage because you pity me. Who does that, Luke?”
“Pity? Is that what you think this is?”
“Hey, go to Portland. Get on with your life. Forget you knew me. Hopefully the rest of the world will too.”
He lingered on the top step, regarding her, torn with each beat of his heart.
“Go. I said, go.” She stomped her foot and gestured to the stairs.
“You can't boss me, Joy.” Luke reversed his steps and walked back to Joy in long strides, swept her into his arms, and kissed her, loving the taste of his risotto on her lips.
When he lifted his head, he held her face in his hands. “My offer still stands.”
“So does my answer.”
The next morning Joy barreled into Miss Jeanne's driveway, braking, cutting the ignition, and hopping out of the driver's side door before the engine finished its sigh.
Up the veranda steps in a single bound, Joy mashed the doorbell over and over. “Be here, Luke.” She'd passed the Frogmore Café on her way to see if his car sat in the shade of the century-old live oaks, but the ragtop was absent from the lot.
After he left last night, she'd cried herself to sleep. How could he do that to her? A spontaneous proposal on the heels of national humiliation. But when she woke up with the morning sun breaking through her window, her soul refreshed, she ached to see him.
“Miss Jeanne, hey, are you home?” Joy eased open the screen door and cupped her hands around her eyes to peer inside the front door. “Miss Jeanne? Luke?”
Miss Jeanne waved, inching down the hall, her hand pressed against the skirt of her housedress.
“How do, Joy.” The foyer smelled of vanilla and lemon with a hint of Pine-Sol. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“It's good to see you, Miss Jeanne.” Joy cupped the woman's cheeks and kissed her forehead. “But I'm a woman on a mission.” Bounding up the stairs two at time, Joy could barely breathe. At the end of this journey, she'd see Luke. There would be time for air later.
She knocked on his door, her adrenaline rising, her legs trembling. When he opened the door, she planned to fall into him and express her heart, lip to lip. “I love you, Luke Redmond.”
“Luke, hey”âshe rattled his doorâ“don't tell me you're still in bed, lazybones. It's noon o'clock. Fall is in the air.”
Silence. In the warm hall, perspiration dotted Joy's brow and the back of her neck. The midday sun baked the attic eaves and scented the air with warm wood.
“Luke?” Joy knocked and rattled, then peered out the nautical window at the end of the hall. Miss Jeanne's 1950s Plymouth was parked under a tree outside the open garage door, Mama's orange-and-red-flame design streaking along the blue side panels.
Where Luke's car had been parked, tire tracks matted the grass. “Luke?” Joy tapped on his door again, then turned the knob.
On the bed, the thick mattress was naked and exposed. Without linens. The closet door stood ajar, and the only item on the nightstand was an old Tiffany lamp.
Hello, my way out, where did you go?
“He left last night.” Joy spun around to see Miss Jeanne in the doorway, her arms folded, a look of mercy on her heart-shaped face. “I tried to get him to wait a day, but he seemed upset, all fired up and in a hurry. Mumbled a few things about you, but in the end he had to go.”
“Miss Jeanne, what did he say?”
“Something about falling in love and being stupid to trust a woman who lied her way through a cooking show, but oh, she just got under his skin until he couldn't figure out his own thoughts. He was slapping his clothes into the suitcase.” Miss Jeanne demonstrated, tossing imaginary clothes into an imaginary suitcase with imaginary force.
“He's right. I'm a liar. And a coward.” Joy eased down into the rocker by the window and folded her torso over her legs, cradling her face in her hands. “Everything I touch falls apart.”
“Come on.” Miss Jeanne disappeared through the door. “What you need is some lemonade.”
“Miss Jeanne, really, if this is about life handing you lemons so you can make lemonade, I'm up to my eyeballs with that kind of fluffy advice.” Joy lifted herself from the chair and followed Miss Jeanne downstairs. Best not let her heart sink any further and get lost in a wallow of emotions and failures.
Expecting to find herself in Miss Jeanne's Westinghouse kitchen, Joy was surprised when the older woman slipped her pocketbook over her arm and whistled to the dog. “Come on, Ebony, we're going for a ride.”
“Miss Jeanne.” Weariness mantled Joy's shoulders. It was okay not to wallow for the moment, but the prospect of rattling around town made her feel exhausted. “I think I'll just go on home. Crawl into bed, wait for the New Year, new decade, new millennium.”
“Pish-posh nonsense. You're going with me.”
“Are you kidnapping me?” Ebony, a black-and-white Border collie with wisdom in his brown eyes, watched Joy from the top porch step.
“I'm rescuing you. Hurry up, now.”
Joy fumbled down the steps, Ebony herding at her heels, escorting her to the big, boxy car. “Where is this lemonade of which you speak?” She buckled the lap belt around her waist and gripped the door handle.
“Hang on.” Miss Jeanne cranked the engine, powered down the windows, and fired backward out the driveway. The car swayed from side to side, the suspension squeaking. Ebony settled against Joy, his pink tongue dripping drool, and panted with the heat.
Joy buried one hand in his onyx fur and surfed her other out the window.
Heavy on the gas, light on the brake, Miss Jeanne rumbled down Port Royal like a tanker on a mission, riding up on folks' bumpers, honking her horn, motioning for drivers to “get out of the way.”
By the second red light, Joy's toes cramped against the floorboard. But really, all things considered, perishing at this stage of the game wouldn't be so bad, would it?
“So you're in love with Luke?” Miss Jeanne mashed the gas, pushing Joy against the seat. The wind rushing through the windows teased her hair.
“I don't know, maybe. I'd like to see.”
Car, Miss Jeanne, car
. Joy tensed for impact.
“I saw the YouTube clip of
The Bette Hudson Show
.” Miss Jeanne wrangled the beastmobile to a roaring stop, just shy of the lead car's bumper.
Joy pressed her hand to her chest, holding her raging heart inside. “You watch YouTube, Miss Jeanne?” Now she knew the whole world had seen her monumental failure.
Ebony nudged Joy's hand, and when she gazed down at him, he was watching her. As if he knew, as if he could see through her.
Peace. It'll be all right
. Then he sighed, rested his chin on her knee, and closed his eyes with a contented exhale.
Trust
.
“Life is a series of choices, Joy,” Miss Jeanne said. “When I came of age I went to law school. The only woman in my class.”
“Got any courage to spare, Miss Jeanne?” Joy held on to Ebony as Miss Jeanne mashed the brake and jerked the boxy Plymouth across two lanes of oncoming traffic for a wide, wild left turn. A billow of dust and gravel spewed from under the skidding tires as Miss Jeanne parked at a petite hotdog stand, Silly Dog.
“I come here every day for lunch.” She looped her arm through her pocketbook and stepped out of the car. “My treat today.”
Two tall lemonades and foot-long hotdogs later, Joy sat across the picnic table from Miss Jeanne.
“So, Silly Dog is a favorite. Have any others?” Joy bit into the soft bun and warm meat, the tingle of mustard and onion on her tongue.
“Well, I take my dinner at the Frogmore Café every day.” Miss Jeanne slurped her lemonade.
“I take it you never learned to cook either?”
“All girls in my day learned to cook. Even the ones who wanted to be lawyers. But I never did enjoy it much. When my father passed, I put away my pots and pans. I'll fix toast or a sandwich, but that's about all.”
“How come you never married, Miss Jeanne?”
“I had a beau in law school. Franklin Wolfe, a very lovely, traditional man. He was to join his father's law firm, and had I agreed to marry him, I would've been relegated to the wives' club. I didn't go to law school to watch the men work while I served tea and crumpets.”
“Did you love him?”
“Most certainly. I'd never waste my time on a man I didn't love.” Miss Jeanne's bold tone contrasted with her dainty, almost fragile appearance.
“But not enough to marry him.”
“Not enough to give up my dream, my education. If he didn't want me to practice law, why'd he ask me on a date? There were plenty of girls hanging around who didn't care a whit about the law.”
“See, Miss Jeanne, that's what I love about you. Courage. You stuck to your principles instead of letting Franklin Wolfe force you into a mold.”
“I didn't see it as courage, Joy. It was a sad day when I walked away from Franklin, but I couldn't see myself being the woman he needed.” Her voice faded. “He's gone now. Seems so strange to think the young, handsome man with the stiff white collar and perfectly tied tie no longer walks on God's green earth.” Miss Jeanne broke off the end of her hotdog and handed it to Ebony.
“I still can't believe Daddy is gone some days.” Joy took another hearty bite of her hotdog. Nothing had tasted so good to her in months. She would have to add this place to her personal favorites list.
“Joy, your problem isn't lack of courage. Your problem is that you don't recognize the courage you do possess. A coward wouldn't take over
Dining with Joy
like you did. A coward wouldn't take in her young nieces and raise them as her own.” Miss Jeanne thumped the table. “Courage is running up to Luke's room to tell him you love him. Just what is it you think you need, missy? You have everything you need right inside.”
“What would that be?”
“Jesus. My darling girl, Jesus. He is good, and He is love.”
“Miss Jeanne, God can have whatever He wants from me, of me, about me. I have nothing. Nada. Zip. I'm almost thirty, with no career, no husband, no children, no passion. If God has need of someone like that to stand with her finger in the hole in the dike, there's no one more available than me.”
My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me
.
“Complete surrender is the sweetest place to be. I know you have a few obstacles to face. The fallout from the show must be pertnear overwhelming, but you'll face it and overcome. The Lord will move you on, dear. Listen to ol' Miss Jeanne.” Ebony raised his nose and offered a textured bark. “Even Ebony agrees with me.”
“Really? Ebony understands complex English sentences?”
“He understands a lot of things.” Miss Jeanne wiggled her eyebrows and began to gather her trash. “And it wouldn't be the first time he understood the heart of God. Now let's go. I need an ice-cream cone. Then we can run to Walmart.”
“Ice cream? Where?” Joy shoved the last of the hotdog into her mouth. Protesting the ice cream and Walmart seemed futile. “A chocolate dip cone would be good.”
“There's a place just down the road. Joy, what about law school?”
“For me?
Nooo
, three more years of school? My heart can't take it.”
“Coaching?” Miss Jeanne slipped in behind the wheel. “Give back to young athletes.”
“I'd like to write again, but I'm so far removed from written words and stories.” Joy climbed into the passenger seat with a sigh and snapped on her seat belt. “I am a blank slate. Whatever God wants.”
“Remember the gifts I gave you in the summer?” Miss Jeanne gunned the Plymouth's gas then turned to Joy, cupping her hands to her chest. “Two gold coins. God is love. God is good.”