Down Home Carolina Christmas (10 page)

Silence. “Luke Mason is coming to dinner?”

“Right. I invited him.”

More silence.

Carrie decided to provide additional information. If she didn't, she'd be on the phone with Dixie for an hour. “He doesn't have much of a family, and I felt sorry for him. He's lonely.”

“Luke Mason is lonely,” Dixie repeated as if utterly fascinated.

“He's a long way from home.”

“What should I wear? Should I scrap the blueberry cobbler and bring my special tunnel-of-fudge cake, instead? What about allergies? Is he allergic to anything, like eggs? Wow, Carrie, I can't believe you're doing this to me!”

“I'm not doing anything
to
you, Dixie. I'm doing something
for
Luke Mason.” How extensively she was doing things for Luke, not to mention
to
Luke, was something she had no intention of discussing.

“So the tunnel-of-fudge cake would be okay?”

“Sure, that sounds fine. I've got to hang up, Dixie. It's time to set the table.”

“Use Great-Grandma's best tablecloth, the one with the lace at the corners. And don't forget the cloth napkins,” Dixie cautioned.

“With Voncille and Skeeter's brood, I'm not sure I want to go the cloth-napkin route. Otherwise I'll be washing and bleaching little white squares of fabric for the rest of the week. Bye, Dixie.”

“Wait, wait. I forgot to ask you about Tiffany Zill. What's she really like?”

“Dixie—”

“Tell, tell!”

“Later. Besides, you'll be glad to know that I'm going to sign a contract with Whip Productions so they can use Smitty's for filming.”

“You are?” Dixie sounded dumbfounded.

“Yes, but I'll have to fill you in later.”

“Don't you dare hang up, Carrie Smith!”

“Sorry, Dixie. Gotta run.”

She clicked off over the sound of Dixie's outraged objection.

W
HEN
L
UKE ARRIVED
home, he checked his cell phone and discovered a message from Whip.

“We've got to do something about Tiffany. She called me up last night, crying her heart out. We can't have her self-destructing before we even start filming.”

Luke phoned Whip back immediately. “What is it—some problem between her and Peyton?”

Whip let out a long sigh of frustration. “He's flying to Alaska for an extended fishing vacation, and she can't go because she has to work.”

Luke thought about it for a moment. “How about if I phone her in a while and suggest that we do something together this afternoon. Maybe that'll cheer her up.”

“Might as well try it,” Whip said. “Fill me in on how it goes.”

“Sure, Whip,” Luke said, and he immediately phoned Carrie.

“You don't mind if I bring a guest to dinner, do you?” he asked. “It's Tiffany. She's seriously in need of nurturing.” He would never have made such a request except that Carrie already understood about Tiffany's fragile emotional state, and besides, he couldn't imagine Carrie saying no.

She didn't hesitate. “That'll be fine, Luke, though my sister, Dixie, will go absolutely berserk at the idea of entertaining not one but two movie stars.”

“Does your family stay into the evening?”

“They're mostly gone by six or seven o'clock.”

“May I request the honor of your presence tonight? All night?” he asked.

He heard pleasure in her voice as she said yes, and hung up elated at the prospect of spending another night amid her rumpled sex-scented sheets, his arms wrapped securely around her.

Tiffany was a basket case when he stopped by the large estate she'd rented on the lake. He walked up the flagstone path, and she opened the huge double doors with a green gel eye pad fastened over her eyes. She squinted at him through two slits in the plastic. “You're a little early,” she said. “I'm in the middle of a migraine.”

“I'd like to get to Carrie's on time,” he told her, walking in and nodding to Ham, who was on the couch reading the sports section of the
Los Angeles Times
amid a nest of discarded pizza boxes. “Does he have to go with us?” he whispered to Tiffany, thinking that Carrie's hospitality might not extend to the Incredible Hulk, who was not only a social dud but appeared to eat half his body weight in food every day.

“No, since we're going to a private home.” Tiffany removed the gel pad, which had concealed puffy red eyes.

She's got to be in a whole lot better shape before we can start filming,
Luke realized. “Let's hurry,” he said.

Tiffany addressed Ham. “Tell Becky to slice off a hunk of that turkey breast in the fridge. You can both have that for dinner if you like.”

Ham nodded, tossed the sports section aside and padded off in the general direction of the kitchen.

“Am I all right? Should I change clothes?” Tiffany asked anxiously.

Luke took in her hair, caught high in a barrette on one side, and her well-cut ivory slacks, which fell in a perfect line from her derriere to the tops of her expensive sandals. “You'll do,” he said gruffly, upon which she smiled and ran to get her purse as well as Carrie's freshly laundered T-shirt.

When they drove up in front of Carrie's house, with its assemblage of cars and one battered minivan, Tiffany was agog.

“Why, the house is absolutely darling!” she exclaimed. “All that white gingerbread trim, and those precious pots of petunias, and that old-time porch swing! It's exactly the kind of house Carrie
should
live in,” and she kept up her overblown paean once she got inside.

Luke was more interested in meeting Carrie's relatives, a veritable sea of curious faces staring at both of them as she opened the door. As for Carrie, her welcome was warm, and she immediately drew them into the parlor.

Before she could introduce the people assembled there, a small redheaded sprite ran up to him and said, “Mister, are you the movie star?”

An audible gasp came from the redhead with the long braids.

“Get on back here, Amelia,” she ordered. “You've got no business talking until you've been introduced.”

Luke knelt and took the child's hand. “My name's Luke,” he said. “And, yes, I'm in Yewville to film a movie. So is Tiffany,” he said.

“Can I call you Tiffany?” the little girl asked, turning toward her.

“If I can call you Amelia,” Tiffany said with a sweet smile.

This broke the ice so that introductions progressed smoothly.

“This is my grandmother, Memaw Frances,” Carrie said, first escorting him to meet the matriarch of the clan, an eightyish matron with perfectly coiffed white hair.

“I just love your movies,” Frances said as she blinked at him through her glasses. “I especially liked
Seven Years in Tibet.
”

Carrie hastily intervened. “Memaw, Brad Pitt starred in the Tibet movie. Luke's last movie was
Night Pass.
Remember, you went with your friend, Dottie.”

“Oh, yes, we drove to Florence one afternoon and stopped at the mill outlet store on the way. That's before it closed for good, of course. I did used to love buying cheap sheets and pillowcases there.” Frances smiled and extended her hand. “I'm happy to meet you, Mr. Mason.”

“It's just Luke, please,” he said.

After that he learned that little Amelia, her two brothers and one sister belonged to the redheaded woman with braids, whose name was Voncille and who was married to the taciturn Skeeter. Estill, the older man with the concave chest who also had concave cheeks due to a lack of teeth, was Skeeter's uncle or related to him in some way that Luke didn't catch. Claudia, who was around the same age as her sister, Frances, and wore her steely gray hair pinched into waves across her forehead, was profoundly deaf and had to be told everything twice, including Tiffany's name. This was slightly awkward, because Tiffany didn't like it when people didn't know who she was.

While Luke was still attempting to figure out what to say to minimize the damage and shore up Tiffany's ego, another man arrived. He peered out from under a heavily gelled thicket of light brown hair. “I'm Jackson, Carrie's cousin,” he said, pumping Luke's hand as he peeked down the front of Tiffany's shirt. “I like the movies a lot. A whole lot. Mighty glad to meet you, Luke.”

“And you remember me,” said the brunette whom he recalled from the picnic.

“And me,” said Carrie's sister, Dixie, who resembled Carrie so closely that they might have been twins, except that Carrie's eyes were a much lighter shade of blue.

Before he could respond, Tiffany tripped over to the curio cabinet and began to ooh and aah over the thimble collection within. Frances and Claudia immediately joined her to explain the origin of each one, all collected by Carrie's great-grandmother.

“Have you almost got those place cards ready?” Dixie asked Joyanne, whose head was bent over what appeared to be a jumble of cut-up greeting cards that she was embellishing with a black calligraphy pen.

Luke rocked back on his heels, unsure what to do with himself while Carrie was helping Liddy, the eldest girl child, pull up her socks, which had worked their way down into her sneakers. By then Joyanne was distributing the place cards around the table in the dining room, visible from where he stood. Afterward she came over and began to ask him how she might find an agent to represent her in Hollywood. Skeeter had started correcting the children, who were now sprawled on the floor playing with a deck of cards. Estill, who seemed overwhelmed by such a large group, raised his head and asked loudly and plaintively from his chair in the corner, “Who are all these people?” but no one answered him.

Carrie caught Luke's eye over the heads of everyone else before she and Dixie disappeared into the kitchen and smiled. He already couldn't wait for bedtime.

“I
LIKE YOUR FAMILY
,” Luke said later as he and Carrie walked hand in hand through a meadow toward a copse of trees that hid a small creek. A full moon lit the sky, casting the distant trees in pure molten silver, and the shrill of crickets lent music to the September night.

“Everyone was surprised that you were so approachable. I'm sure they didn't expect you to get down on the floor with the kids and play Go Fish while we cleaned up the kitchen.”

“I don't know about them,” he said, “but Tiffany certainly was amazed.” His costar's jaw dropped when she saw him on his stomach amid kids and cards, the lop-eared rabbit, which had ventured out from under a desk as he shuffled, sitting nearby and sneering at him every minute.

“The whole time Tiffany was loading dishes into the dishwasher, I was concerned that she'd splash gravy on those white slacks of hers.”

“Wouldn't matter if she did,” Luke said. “She'd find a dry cleaner.”

“Not in Yewville,” Carrie said.

“Carrie, stop worrying about what this place doesn't have and start appreciating what it does have,” he advised.

“I thought I did. Do, I mean.”

“Maybe not enough. These days, not many families get together every weekend the way yours does. People like Estill eat alone, far away from family and sometimes without friends.” He'd learned from Claudia that Estill resided in a trailer in a remote section of the county and that Voncille and Skeeter drove out there to get him every Sunday. Estill hadn't participated much in the proceedings—he'd hunched over his dinner and scarcely spoke—but he'd seemed to brighten when the kids asked him questions and plied them with jelly beans when he thought no one would notice.

“We take care of our own, that's for sure.”

They continued in silence, the long grass snatching at their ankles, until they reached a path fragrant with freshly strewn pine straw. “We're almost there,” Carrie said, squeezing his hand. “Sycamore Branch is one of my favorite places in the world.”

They stooped to duck beneath a dense haven of kudzu vine draped over low-hanging branches and found themselves in a small glen. A narrow stream, glimmering like shot silk in the moonlight, surged over a tiny waterfall, the water scintillating on the rocks until it disappeared into the darkness. A scattering of beams and boards indicated where a building must have once stood.

“That's the old spring house,” Carrie said. “My great-grandparents cooled their food there because they didn't have an icebox. That came later, and then electricity.”

The soft colors of the night filtered through the canopy of leaves above and reflected in Carrie's luminous eyes. She pulled him down on a wide flat rock and leaned back against his chest. He slid his arms around her, listening to tree frogs winding up and letting loose nearby. The air smelled of moss and cool water.