Gone With a Handsomer Man (5 page)

Love, Dora

I pushed down my disappointment and headed down the sidewalk. The noon sun burned my shoulders as I walked down East Bay. Even before I got to the corner, I spotted my turquoise Olds in a lot off Adgers. My car key wouldn’t fit on Miss Dora’s tasseled chain, so I’d have to be extra careful not to lose it. I put down the convertible top, drove out of the parking lot, and turned onto the cobbled street where the old cotton warehouses used to be. I headed toward Folly Beach and stopped at one of Bing’s favorite restaurants, The Sailmaker.

“Our pastry chef is from Le Cordon Bleu,” the manager said. “We’re not even hiring dishwashers.”

I thanked him and drove to the next restaurant on my list. A café on West Hudson offered me a waitressing position, but I was still pumped with optimism and turned it down. By the time I’d worked my way across Charleston, I’d been rejected by eighteen restaurants. I drove to Sunset Smorgasbord on Washington Street. It was Bing’s favorite place in the world. We had eaten there every Friday night.

I glanced at my watch. Three o’clock. Perfect. I’d arrived during the lull between lunch and supper. I gathered up my courage and went inside. The restaurant was empty except for two middle-aged women in the corner booth. I asked a waitress if the owner was available. She told me to wait by the nautical ropes. Smells drifted from the kitchen—garlic fried shrimp and Parmigiano-Reggiano. The food at Sunset Smorgasbord was fresh and memorable, but the décor was corny: red booths, mounted sailfish, nets filled with shells and plastic crabs.

Mr. Fortino came out of the kitchen and smiled, as if he recognized me. He led me past the salad bar, which resembled a boat, to a booth in the back. He squeezed into the seat across from me, and the table pressed into the front of his Hawaiian shirt. This was a man who appreciated good food. I started in about how I was a self-taught country cook and really needed a job.

Mr. Fortino held up his hand to shush me. “Miss, I thought you was engaged to that real estate tycoon who eats here. What’s his name, Bing something?”

“Jackson,” I said. “We broke up. And I really need a job.”

“Wish I could help, sweetie. But I don’t have no openings. I got a kitchen full of illegals. If a waitress spot comes open, I’ll keep you in mind.”

“Thanks.” I started to scoot out of the booth, but he caught my arm.

“Don’t worry. Cute as you are, you’ll find a job.” He pointed at me. “Be thankful you’re away from that man-whore.”

I blinked. He hadn’t said a bad word, but it still hurt my ears.

Mr. Fortino lowered his head, looking at me from under his eyebrows. He was mostly bald except for long black strands that he combed straight back. “I seen you and him coming to eat here week after week. You sitting prim and proper in your cotton dress, ordering manicotti, and him going to the men’s room to rub naughty parts with my wife’s baby sister. Didn’t you notice something was funny? The way he ran back and forth to the bathroom?”

I’d never heard a man speak in such graphic terms, but Mr. Fortino wasn’t trying to shock me, he was telling the truth. I averted my gaze and said, “Bing told me he had a sick stomach.”

“Right. ‘Sick stomach’ is man-whorese for ‘Don’t follow me, let me hump in peace.’ The man has no taste. If he ate out a wildebeest, I wouldn’t be surprised. He cheated on his first wife—I forget her name. But she wasn’t sweet like you. I couldn’t believe it when he was engaged to you and tapping that brunette chick.”

I blinked and blinked. Finally I said, “Natalie Lockhart?”

“No dick in Charleston is safe with her around,” he said. “Bing wasn’t the only one she snookered.”

I rubbed my forehead. So this had been going on awhile.

Mr. Fortino spread his stubby hands on the table. “I’m telling you this cause you’re a nice lady,” he said. “You tipped my waitresses extra when Bing threw down a few dollar bills. Do me a favor. If he asks you to take him back, do a ‘fuck you’ dance all over his face.”

I thanked him and drove toward Rainbow Row. On impulse, I swung into the Harris Teeter on East Bay Street for baking supplies. I hit the half-price-candy rack in case I had a sugar attack. Bing thought I was a little too curvy. I am. There is no way to be skinny if you cook like me. Plus, I hate to exercise. Why risk an asthma attack? Me, I use housework to keep from getting too stubby, but mostly I don’t worry and I don’t count calories. My philosophy of dieting can be summed up in five words: when I’m hungry, I eat.

Down the street, I stopped in a funky consignment shop and bought a red blouse, striped pants, and a purse shaped like a giant lemon, all for less than ten dollars.

When I got home, I put my car key in my change purse, then I carried the groceries to the kitchen and set them on the counter. The island was black granite, and it caught my reflection as I moved around the large, square room. I opened a white cabinet and twirled the built-in spice rack. I removed an empty peppercorn tin and replaced it with a jar of Hungarian paprika.

Next, I found tea bags in one drawer, a copper pan in another. I filled the pan with water and set it on a burner. The gas whooshed up, then tamped down into a quivering blue circle, casting light on the brick backsplash.

While I waited for the water to “smile,” as the French say, I checked out the appliances. The double convection ovens needed cleaning; the warming drawer was filled with fine bread crumbs. I flipped the switch to the garbage disposal. It sputtered and emitted a sharp whine. I shut it off.

I wasn’t going to get along with this room. Wherever I’d lived, I’d developed a relationship with the kitchen. I’d fallen in love with Bing’s state-of-the-art appliances, and I’d had great rapport with Aunt Bluette’s antique stove and temperamental ice box; but I’d had a tumultuous union with Food Lion’s kitchen. I had battle wounds to prove it. Once, a springform pan had exploded and dumped blistering-hot graham cracker crumbs and cheesecake onto my wrist. I still carried a dark brown, half-moon scar.

I found a stool in the pantry and pushed it against the counter. As I shoved cornmeal and sugar bags in the tall cabinets, I wondered if my shortness had made Bing take up with a giantess. He was six foot two. Me, I wore high heels that deformed my poor feet, and still people had stared at us, as if trying to figure out how a tall man and a short woman could fit together.

On my way down the stool, I paused to rearrange the tall spices that wouldn’t fit into the lazy Susan. Too bad Bing hadn’t picked someone his own size. I’d had no clue he was a player. I’d just assumed he had a low sex drive—not terribly low, mind you, just not what you’d expect from a thirty-year-old man. I’d been clueless. I’d baked layer cakes, played with my dog, and weeded the herb garden. Meanwhile, Bing had disrespected me on a daily basis.

I put away the stool, walked into the garden, and picked lavender, piling it into my shirttail. Then I went back inside and made a vanilla peach pecan coffee cake and drizzled it with royal icing. I sprinkled lavender on top. When Aunt Bluette fixed this cake, she’d added a few pulverized peach seeds—not enough to be poison—because it added a hint of almond.

Just thinking of her made me feel sad to my bones. I wandered into the pink living room and curled up on the settee. Worry begets worry. Quiet begets quiet. Peace begets peace. Mama used to say I attracted trouble. She blamed it on the year I was born, 1980, when John Lennon got shot. But all of the Templetons were nervous people. Only two aunts were still alive. Goldie was a professional clown and lived somewhere in Tennessee with her psychic daughter, Tallulah Belle. Aunt Pinky lived off the coast of Georgia, tending to wild donkeys, while her son Ira made talking Jesus dolls. I loved my family, even though some of them were flat-out weird, but Aunt Bluette and the farm were my heart.

When I was little, I’d sit on her lap and grip the steering wheel while she drove through the orchard, checking the trees for blight. She’d shift gears, and the engine would sputter. She was the eldest Templeton sister. Mama was the baby. They didn’t always agree about my upbringing, but Aunt Bluette never argued with Mama, she just went about things in her quiet way.

On Wednesday nights, Aunt Bluette and I went to the Pack-a-Pew party at First Baptist. We’d leave Mama sitting at the kitchen table, her head bent over a spiral notebook, cookbooks piled around her. It looked like she was planning a menu, but she was matching rock-and-roll songs to recipes and Bible verses, the way a foodie would pair wines with the entrée, adding complementary music.

When Aunt Bluette and I got home, Mama would tear out pages from the notebook and set them in front of me, just as proud of her imaginary recipes as if she’d cooked a steaming hot bowl of actual soup. Aunt Bluette said Mama was feeding me the only way she could.

Mama was right fond of ZZ Top’s “Poke Chop Sandwhich” paired with Isaiah 65:4, along with a tried-and-true recipe for pan-fried pork cutlets—so moist and butter-like you could cut them with a spoon.

Mama was totally fixated on dead musicians: John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Elvis—especially Elvis. She had a life-sized
Viva Las Vegas
poster on her bedroom wall. She even paid a man to build me a Graceland dollhouse. When she had one of her spells, she’d get to thinking that Elvis might not be dead after all, and she’d stop writing recipes and keep a log of the King’s sightings.

When she got like this, Aunt Bluette did her best to set things right. She’d take Mama to the garden and make her weed. If it was raining, they’d sit in the kitchen and string beans. I’d stretch out under the table as the kitchen filled with noises—beans ringing against the side of the metal pan, water streaming off the roof, the rise and fall of Mama’s chatter. She knew she was talkative and poked fun at herself. “I’m the Mouth of the South,” she’d say. But once she got going, she couldn’t stop no matter if it was motor-mouthing or acting wild.

If Mama acted up during peach season, Aunt Bluette would steer her to the kitchen and put her to work. “Come on, Ruby,” my aunt would say. “Let’s make jam.”

One time Mama set a pot to boiling, then she leaned across the counter, moving her hands like she was treading water. “Teeny, did I ever tell you how I got pregnant with you? I went on a church trip to Daytona Beach. That’s where I met your father. Well, one of them.”

“Ruby, hush,” Aunt Bluette said. “The child is listening.”

“No, she isn’t.”

“God is listening,” Aunt Bluette said. “God has ears.”

“How do you know? Have you seen Him?”

Aunt Bluette muttered something about blasphemy. Mama wandered over to the stove and dipped a peach into boiling water. The skin slid off in one piece. She held it up. “Just like a debutante stepping out of a ball gown,” she said, then frowned. “What was I saying? See? That’s what happens when you interrupt me, Bluette.”

“You should see a doctor,” Aunt Bluette said. “It ain’t natural to talk this much.”

“But I have things to say. Teeny has a right to know who her daddy is.”

I tugged at her skirt. “Who is he, Mama?”

She squatted beside me, her eyes shining. “Well, I’m not sure. He’s either a green-eyed proctologist or a hashish dealer with a fuzzy red ponytail. Cute as buttons, both of them. I’m waiting to see who you take after, so I can sue his ass.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Aunt Bluette said, pointing at me. “Teeny’s like us, brown-eyed and blond.”

“That explains it.” Mama giggled. “I’m the mama and you’re the daddy.”

Aunt Bluette ignored her and ladled preserves into a Ball jar. “Get me more peaches,” she said.

“You can’t order me around. I won’t be trapped on this farm,” Mama said. “One of these days, I’ll fly away, and you won’t stop me.”

I stared up at her. I didn’t think she’d go; she was just talking big. But I couldn’t be sure. I grabbed the hem of her dress. “Take me,” I said, tugging hard. “Don’t you go without me.”

She didn’t leave that day. But she was like a bird fluttering around a cage. If you leave the door open for a second, it will escape, darting from room to room, smacking against windows, searching for a way through the glass, beating its wings harder and harder, wanting nothing more than to fly up into the blue.

eight

Late that afternoon, I set out for McTavish’s Pub. I paused by Natalie’s sign, then I yanked it up and slid it under the hedge. Pronged shadows fell across the sidewalk as I started up East Bay Street. Most of the time the light in Charleston was clear and polished as if filtered through a fine net. This afternoon, it was thick and woolly as if it had been wrung out of a bright yellow washcloth.

The pub wasn’t far, so I left my Oldsmobile at Adgers and turned onto Exchange Street. I saw a blond man, but he turned out to be older than Bing. He held open the door to Carolina’s Restaurant while an elderly woman with a walker shuffled inside.

I breathed in the smells of fried pork bellies, bacon butter, and fried flounder. Carolina’s made the best peach jam in the south, even better than Aunt Bluette’s.

Bing had loved my preserves. Aside from his career in real estate, I knew basic details: He was a native Charlestonian. He’d grown up in the Queen Street house with his tycoon daddy, Rodney Jackson, and his debutante mother, Genevieve, who’d died of a brain aneurysm when Bing was a junior at Clemson. His LSAT scores were shockingly low. Rather than suffer through the exam a second time, he got his broker’s license and went to work for his daddy.

Bing hated wasps, bad grammar, sunburn, headaches, ice cold water, jalapeño peppers, weird night noises, and black-and-white movies. He liked chocolate, 70-degree weather, matching socks, and Ping golf clubs. His idol was the late golfer Payne Stewart, who’d traipsed around in kilts and had won two US Opens and one PGA championship but had died young. Bing was a Virgo to my Gemini, and when I’d read his daily horoscope out loud, he’d listen patiently, like I was a crazy aunt who’d just gotten released from the local asylum.

So I knew factoids but nothing juicy. The trouble was, he’d buried his sore spots. Not that I wished him to have any, but he was bound to have at least one. I’d shown him my embarrassing stories and cracked pieces.