Down and Out in Bugtussle (36 page)

“Where did you go?” she asks.

“To the restroom,” I tell her. “I’m sorry. I was having a meltdown.”

“Yeah, these things are hard if you’re not used to it.”

“How in the hell does someone get used to it?” I ask, watching a mom load three kids into a Tahoe.

“It’s just a part of life in the military,” she says. “Certainly not the most pleasant part.”

“No shit,” I say. “I don’t see how people do it. Every person in the country should have to see this at least once.”

“People don’t have to see it to appreciate it.”

“Not just appreciate,” I say, “but understand. Really understand. Like I do now.”

When we get in the car, Lilly is quiet. She’s sniffling when we drive out past the gates. By the time we get to the airport, she’s squalling like a baby. I pull over in a bus parking lot and pat her on the back until she calms down.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I wasn’t going to cry. I promised him I wasn’t going to cry.”

“Lilly, that’s ridiculous. I squalled my eyes out in a stinkin’ 1970s-model bathroom stall and I’m just here for moral support. It’s okay.”

She stops crying and starts wiping her eyes. I drive around to the rental car booth, and we make our way inside the airport. Lilly and I come within an inch of getting arrested at the security check after she tells the rude woman picking through her purse to just throw the whole fucking bag away and stop talking to her and my ChapStick finally ends up in a TSA trash can.

W
hen I get up on Monday, I wish I’d listened to Lilly and taken the day off. I’m thirty minutes late and Chloe tells me that she’s sorry, but I’ve got a full day of subbing today. I go to the lounge and I’m power guzzling Diet Mountain Dew when Freddie Dublin walks in.

“Oh my,” he says. “Did we sleep late and do our hair in the car?”

“Ha-ha, Freddie,” I say. “You’re a funny guy.”

“How’s your friend?”

“Lilly? I’m sure she’s doing much better than me because she had the good sense to take the day off.” I look at him. “Are you leaving us?”

“Ah, I haven’t heard back from them yet, but my grandfather is head of the school board, so I’m sure I’ll get the job.” He doesn’t look happy.

“Lucky you.” Now I wish I had gone out with them last Saturday night.

“Not hardly,” he snorts. “It’s my mother’s father, and he’s one of these people with an extraordinarily oppressive personality. That’s why I came all the way up here. To show him that I didn’t need his heavy hand to help me get a job. I think he had a lot to do with my parents’ splitting up.”

“Why go back down there, then?”

“Well, my mom—” He stops talking and sighs. “She needs me. Dad ended up with the cats. She never liked the damned cats anyway, so I don’t know why she cared or put up such a fight about it, but nonetheless, I can’t leave her down there all alone with her father trying to tell her what she should do every second of every day. It’s a mess. My dad always protected her from her father, but I guess a person can only take so much. My mom is weak. I can’t blame my dad for having an affair, but I also can’t leave my mother to her own devices.”

“I’m so sorry, Freddie.”

“And then there’s Jarrett,” he says with a sigh. “He lives in New Orleans. Like everything else in my life these past few months, that’s gone to shit, too.” He looks at me. “I really don’t have a choice. I have to go home and try to, I don’t know, put my world back together with the pieces I have left. I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until I went home last week. But, on the bright side, Jarrett agreed to have dinner and we’re talking again, so all is not completely lost.”

I walk over and give him a hug. “I’m going to miss you so much.” I revel in his fragrance. “This place won’t be the same.”

He looks around the lounge. “I’m sure it will be.” He smiles. “You’ll have to come down and visit. We’re right across the bay from the Beau Rivage.”

“We have to go out before you leave.”

“Well, I’m leaving this Friday, so I don’t know if I’ll have time, but seriously, you guys will have to drive down and visit. It’s an easy drive.” Dang! That happened fast. Or maybe it didn’t.

“Do you need some help packing up?”

“Oh no. My dear sweet mother has already made arrangements with a moving company. All I have to do is pack my clothes.”

The bell rings, but we just stand there.

“Here we go,” he says with a sigh. “Another day, another dollar.”

“Right.”

When I get home Monday night, I get a call from Birdie Ross.

“You busy tomorrow night?”

“Nothing planned,” I say. Please don’t let this be about a blind date.

“Why don’t you and Lilly come over to my house. I’ll make you supper.”

“Okay,” I say, wondering what she has up her sleeve.

“There’re some things I need to tell you,” Birdie says. “And Lilly.”

“Will Mrs. Peacock be there?”

“No, she’s out of town at the very present moment. Gone to see one of her grandsons graduate. Can you be here by six?”

“Sure,” I say. “Thank you.”

I call Lilly and she doesn’t answer. I send her a text and tell her that we’ve been invited to Birdie Ross’s house for dinner tomorrow night. Two hours later, she sends back an “OK.”

Tuesday, I don’t have to cover any classes and Stacey Dewberry doesn’t, either, so we hang out in the library. I ask her about throwing
Freddie a going away party. She says she’s already suggested that and he’s not interested.

“He’s kind of depressed,” she says.

“Yeah, I gathered.”

Stacey and I go to Freddie’s classroom seventh period, but he’s not there. We find him in the lounge, with his feet propped up on the table. His socks are brown with white polka dots. We talk him into going out to eat in Memphis on Thursday night before he leaves on Friday.

When I get home from school, I take Buster Loo for a walk, then take a shower and get dressed. I go get Lilly and we drive over to Birdie Ross’s house.

She lives in a ranch-style home on the edge of town, and her yard is thick with blooming trees and flowers. When we pull up, she walks out her front door and greets us on her flagstone sidewalk.

“Hope you girls are hungry!” she says.

“I stay that way,” I say.

“I can see that,” Birdie says, and starts laughing.

“Ouch,” I whisper to Lilly, who starts laughing, too.

Lilly and I sit down at Birdie’s large oak table, and she serves us chicken potpie with homemade bread.

“Oh, this is so good,” Lilly says, helping herself to another slice of bread.

“Thanks,” Birdie barks. “I don’t cook like this much anymore.”

“Well, call us anytime you do,” I say. Birdie smiles as we continue to brag on her chicken potpie.

When we finish, she instructs us to take our glasses and go to the living room. Her couches are worn and comfortable. I look around at all the pictures of her kids and grandkids and imagine many happy times have been had in this room over the years.

“I
know you want to know who she planted that tree for, and since you met M., well, you know he’s not dead. So there’s something I think I need to share, but I can’t tell you the who without telling you the why.”

“Okay,” I say. Lilly takes a sip of her tea.

“I really can’t believe that, between the two of you, you haven’t figured this one out.” I look at Lilly and she looks at me. I shrug.

“I’ve been doing most of the detective work myself,” I say.

“Well, you know Essie was one of my very best friends. We went to school together, went to the same church, and got married around the same time. And we had kids the same age.” Birdie looks at me and shakes her head. “I can’t even imagine what she went through after Jake passed. He was such a fine boy.”
Don’t cry,
I tell myself.
Don’t do it!
“Essie loved her family and her life as much as a woman could, and when Jake moved to Nashville, it damned near
killed her, but not for long because then you were born.” She points to me and I can feel my nose stinging.
Don’t do it!
“Oh, you were the light of her world, but I don’t have to tell you that, now do I?” I shake my head and look at the floor. “When her son moved back home, she couldn’t have been more excited if she’d won the lottery because, in her eyes, she had, because not only was her son coming home, but that little fireball Gracie was coming, too!”

“Gracie?” Lilly asks.

“That’s what Essie called her when she was a little bitty thing, but she stopped when she moved down here because—”

“I wanted to be called Ace because that’s what Daddy always called me.”

“So after the accident, a part of her went away and—” Birdie stops to get a tissue. “A part of all of us went away.”

Lilly starts sniffling and Birdie hands her a tissue.
Do. Not. Cry!
I bite my lip and look up at Birdie who is blowing her nose.
Don’t do it!

“I remember both of y’all at the hospital,” Birdie says, and her voice cracks. “Y’all did such a good job of being big girls that day.” She pulls open the drawer of the end table, pulls out a piece of paper, and starts fanning herself. “Oh God,” she says. “This is why it’s taken so long, because I knew it would be so hard.” Tears are welling up in my eyes and I reach for a tissue. Birdie looks at Lilly. “Lilly, do you remember your grandfather being there that day?” she asks.

“Yes, he rode with us to the hospital that morning.”

“And he held Gramma’s hand when they told her,” I say, feeling sick. “I try real hard not to think about it that much.”

“It’s okay to hurt sometimes,” Birdie says. “It’s a part of life. Not
my favorite part, but what will be will be.” She dabs at her nose. “We were all good friends and, Lilly, your grandma had gone on, what, a year or two before?”

“Two years,” Lilly says. “She’d been gone for two years, and I was so mad at the world until—” She stops and looks at the ceiling. “Until that day when I realized how much I had to be thankful for.” She looks at me. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I ever told you that.”

I pat her on the back and she scoots over next to me on the couch.

“Well, when you gals started back to school that year, Essie and Eddie Lane went out on a few dates.”

“What?” I say, and look at Lilly. “Did you know that?”

“No,” she says, smiling. “Did you?”

“Of course not.”

Birdie giggles. “That’s the thing about teenagers—they think they’re the only ones who can sneak around.”

“Why wouldn’t they have told us?” Lilly asks.

“They were just going on friendly dates—at first anyway—and y’all were both so busy with school, Ace playing ball and Lilly cheerleading. Did you not ever notice they always sat together at the ball games?”

“Well, now that I think about it,” I say.

“Yeah, things heated up rather quickly for them.”

“Ew!” Lilly says, and I just start laughing.

“See, now that’s why they didn’t tell you,” Birdie says matter-of-factly.

“Point made,” I say, still giggling. I look at Lilly, who just shakes her head and smiles.

“Anyway, as you girls started having more and more of a social
life, they started seeing more and more of each other and things got a little hot and heavy.”

“Hot and heavy?” Lilly asks. “What does that mean?”

“Do we even want to know?” I say, feeling sure I don’t.

“They fell in love,” Birdie says, and we both gasp. She gets up and walks over to the bookshelves built into the far wall of her living room. She pulls out a few boxes, then pulls out a few more.

“Now where in the shit—,” she says, opening another box. “Here we go!” She brings a large envelope over and puts it on the coffee table.

“Your grandmother asked me to keep these many, many years ago.” Birdie opens the envelope and pulls out a stack of cards and photographs and a navy blue picture folder. She opens it and turns it around for us to see.

Lilly and I gasp again when we see my grandmother in a ruffled red dancing dress and her grandfather in a tuxedo, standing in a semi-embrace and smiling like the world was their oyster.

“They went on a cruise?” I say. “When did they do that?”

“Oh, c’mon girls,” Birdie teases. “Think a minute.”