On the Right Side of a Dream (16 page)

“Of course,” I told him, trying to keep my composure as the food was being brought in. There was so much of it! “No self-respecting bunch of collard greens would be worth any money at all without a few spiders, some mud, and a lot of grit. That adds to the flavor.”

Carl looked at me doubtfully and finished putting the sacks on the counter.

“I see,” he said. He didn’t know whether to believe me or not. These were the first collard greens he’d ever put his eyes on.

I hadn’t slept much the night before and my stomach was jumpy. I’d had too much coffee but it didn’t work. I was so tired that I was afraid to stop moving in case I fell asleep standing up. Williams had trotted over with another request for Mr. High-Up Butt and I was frustrated because I couldn’t get the hang of the percentage conversions that would be on the test. So as I watched the boxes of food pile up, something close to panic set in.

What was I thinking—agreeing to cook for God knows how many people on Saturday night the weekend before an exam? I needed to have my head examined.

But, you know, cooking is not only a job; it is my passion. I can work on meals for hours—chopping, browning, stirring, and frying—and forget about the time. I sing while I cook, I talk on the phone, I joke with Jess, I listen to Mignon’s latest romantic drama, and the food simmers on. I am like a painter, only the pots, pans, and plates are my canvases.

This time was no different. Once I got started, I forgot about everything else and felt just fine.

I grabbed up a sack of collard greens and began to pull out the bunches so that they could get washed. Another little spider saw its chance to get away but I got him. Dumped the greens into the sink and started washing. One of the bunches was tied up with a white twist that read “Putnam County, Georgia.” That was where my mother had been born. I smiled, remembering her soft, gentle accent and spirited yet ladylike manner. And time flew from there.

“Are we feeding the Jolly Green Giant?” Jess asked in dismay. Every available inch of counter space was full of food.

“No,” I answered him, giving the gravy one last stir. “But Mountain’s family is coming. Does that count?”

That seemed to pacify Jess. Mountain’s family would make the Jolly Green Giant look like he shopped in the petite department. The menu was brown, white, green, orange, and warm all over. There was fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans cooked with jowl. The collard greens simmered gently in a pot large enough for me to take a bath in, and I’d seasoned them with Kentucky ham hocks the size of the state of Montana itself. A delicate corn pudding sat on the counter, cooling, and the sweet potato pies were hidden because Carl had threatened to steal one. There was macaroni salad (just a little tease for spring), cole slaw, peach cobbler, and, of course, fried perch and catfish.

“I don’t eat bottom-feeders,” Jess told me as he sniffed at them. When he thought I wasn’t looking, he tore off a tiny piece and stuffed it into his mouth.

I swatted him away.

“Then get your pointed nose out of there and
don’t
drop boogers on them,” I said. “Besides, genius, these are farm raised.”

There was a simple yellow cake with chocolate icing, and apple crisp, just like the kind I’d had at Champion Junior High School when I was a kid.

We opened the doors at five-thirty as usual and by eight o’clock, there was hardly a crumb of corn bread left.

Jess had called in the troops—Mary, Mignon, Carl, and even Randolph—to serve dinner. It’s a good thing. I think that half the town was there, and folks from Mason, plus my whole team from cooking school. Marc didn’t stop grinning the whole time he was shoveling greens into his mouth. And there’s something else that I noticed.

I’m going to stick my neck out on this one. Sopping is an art. You either know how to do it, or you don’t. I was raised by Southern parents so we know how to sop even though Mother said it wasn’t polite. Daddy ignored her and sopped anyway. Sopping is the art of taking a piece of bread, preferably a biscuit or a roll, and scooping up the juices on your plate, whether gravy, butter, or pot liquor. (Don’t tell me you don’t know what pot liquor is because I do not have time to explain that right now.) I happen to think that this is an art form. New Englanders, Midwesterners (unless they have Southern roots), and people from other parts of the country just don’t do it right. We won’t even talk about Californians. There’s no little finger in the air, no theatrics, or fancy finger work. You hold that piece of baked carbohydrate in your paws and scoop up the liquid with meaningful hand motions. You can’t be wimpy about it and you can’t put on airs doing it. Like I’ve said, I always felt that Southern folks knew how to sop; it’s in their blood.

But now, I think I’m wrong about that.

You should have seen Mountain sopping up the chicken gravy, and Mr. Ohlson did everything but put his face in the plate to get the last bit of pot liquor from the greens. The others didn’t do too badly either, even Amy Hsu and her New York City self. That girl is the size of a Barbie doll but, I’ll tell you what, there wasn’t a drop of gravy left on her plate when she got done sopping it up with her corn bread. I went over to compliment her personally. She’s good. Sopping with corn bread is not easy.

By eight-thirty, Jess went to lock the doors. We were just about out of food! Williams managed to slip in just as Jess started to turn the key.

I was standing over at Mountain’s table. (He has a table now.) He and Amy were wrapped around each other like always and I was teasing them about picking out the babies’ names before there was a wedding. I knew I was in trouble when they asked me, with serious expressions, what I thought of the names “Taylor,” “Tricia,” “Thomas,” and “Spring.”

The place was noisy but Williams is an expert at adjusting the volume when he clears his throat. I heard him. He was standing right at my elbow.

“Yes, Mr., er, Williams?” I could not get the hang of calling him by just his last name.

“Mrs. Louis, ma’am,” Williams said solemnly, his eyes darting around the diner at the chomping jaws. “Mr. Hayward-Smith has asked me to pick up a dinner for him. His finance meeting went long. May I see your menu?”

I was having so much fun that I didn’t suppress a smile. Shrugged my shoulders.

“Sorry, Mr. Williams, our menu is done for the day. We’re just about out of everything. There’s not much of a choice now. Wish you hadn’t waited so long.”

I could tell that Williams was practically starving to death. The hungry look he had on his face told me that the super-sized cup of black coffee he’d gulped down this morning was the only nutrition he’d had all day.

“I see . . . well . . .”

“Have
you
eaten, Mr. Williams?”

I thought I saw the man blush.

“Er, no, ma’am,” he answered.

I wiped my hands on my apron, excused myself from Amy and Mountain, and headed toward the kitchen.

“Have a seat, Mr. Williams, I’ll see what I can scrape up from the bottom of a pot. For you and for Mr. High-Up Butt.”

“Ma’am?”

I heard Jess chuckle behind me.

“Don’t have much. Just catfish and collard greens, I hope that’s OK?”

Mr. Williams looked panic-stricken when I said that. Probably never had a collard green in his life. But when he finished eating twenty minutes later, I knew that catfish and collard greens were just fine with him. After the first few bites, he abandoned the prissy way he had of dabbing his mouth, tucked the white napkin under his stiffly starched collared chin, and dug in, face first! I didn’t realize that such a skinny man could eat so much, so
fast.
I even heard him burp. Well, belch.

His normally waxy-looking face reddened. And then he smiled. He doesn’t look as much like Dracula’s uncle when he smiles.

“Oh! Excuse me, Mrs. Louis,” he said, embarrassed.

I might be wrong but I think that when I had my back turned, Mr. Williams licked his plate clean. There wasn’t a spot on it. Talk about Jack Sprat.

We sent him off into the cold Montana night with a plate for Mr. Pointy-Nose High-Up Butt: catfish, collard greens, corn pudding, and three rolls. And one slice of sweet potato pie for dessert.

Jess and I watched him trudge down the walkway into the parking lot, where one of Mr. High-Up Butt’s black-on-black Suburbans was waiting.

I turned over the “Open” sign and Jess and I headed back to our guests. The diner was still three-quarters full.

“Juanita?” I was headed to the counter to get a glass of water while I could still take a minute. I turned around.

“What?”

Jess had a sly smile on his face that was threatening to break into a huge Kool Aid–sized grin.

He paused for a second then he spoke.

“You didn’t put anything in Hayward-Smith’s food. . . . Did you?”

I beamed at him.

“Humph!” I snapped my fingers. “I’m glad you mentioned that! I must call Inez and remind her to put more toilet paper in the bathrooms. We were a little short the last time that I was there.”

Jess’s eyes rolled upward.

“Heaven help us,” he said, grinning.

“No, darling. Pepto-Bismol, not heaven,” I said.

Chapter Fourteen

I
never in my life have pulled an “all-nighter.” Now, I’ve stayed
up
all night, I have definitely stayed
out
all night, but I have never,
ever
been fully conscious and sober from sundown to sunup
and
spent the time studying.

There is a first time for everything.

“Hey, Juanita! Study session at my place tonight. Wanna come?” It was Marc. “I can quiz you, you can quiz me, and we can get Olympia to help with the conversion tables. Larry Barrymore and Karen are going, too.”

Olympia was the “girl” who had an engineering degree. It was probably a good idea to have her help but just being in the same room with her made me feel dumber than a basket of boulders.

“Aw, she’s OK,” Marc assured me. “It’s not like she smacks your face with it or anything.” A small frown flickered across his forehead. “Not often, anyway.”

I studied with the “kids” until midnight, drove back to the cabin in Jess’s truck, and went to bed. I tried to go to sleep but my eyelids wouldn’t close and my brain wouldn’t turn off. I felt like a VCR stuck in eternal fast-forward.

Well, shoot, if I’m going to be up, I might as well be studying,
I grumbled to myself as I slid out of the warm bed and into the cold darkness of the room. Shivering, I put on my robe, and then put on Jess’s robe, too. With my head scarf and thick wool knit socks, I know that I was quite a sight.

“You talking to me?” Jess’s voice came from beneath the covers. He wasn’t awake, just repeating De Niro’s lines from a movie.

“No. Go back to sleep,” I told him.

“Hold on to your matchbooks, fellas, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Jess makes no sense at all when he talks in his sleep—just misquotes lines from movies that he’s seen. Somehow he’d mixed up
Taxi Driver
with
All About Eve.

I headed to the back bedroom and clicked on the light. Dracula raised his big head and opened one eye.

“You go back to sleep, too,” I told the dog, sighing. My brontosaurus-sized charcuterie textbook was open. The print was the size of a microbe but it came into focus when I slipped Jess’s reading glasses onto my nose. I was the only student in the class who needed reading glasses. Just one more reminder that I was probably too damn old to be staying up all night—partying, studying, or anything else.

Am I too old?

Is that the question or the answer?
my conscience asked.

I studied until my head was too heavy to hold up anymore. Napped for an hour, got up, showered, and got ready to go to school. I still felt dumber than a basket of boulders. But there was no turning back now.

“Whoa! You look wrecked!” Marc exclaimed as I slid into my seat. His eyes were bloodshot, too, but if he’d been up all night, he sure looked a whole lot better than I did.

“Thanks for the compliment,” I said to him.

The other students had bleary eyes, puffy faces, and wrinkled clothes. They had been up all night like me—studying and worrying. Only Olympia appeared unaffected. She looked as if she had just come in from the Yellow Cactus Spa in Sedona after having the all-inclusive special.

Marc and I exchanged looks.

We hated her.

“How was the test?” asked Inez later that day.

“Don’t ask,” I told her. I had already jotted down my “I quit” speech on the back of the telephone bill envelope.

“I see,” Inez replied, nodding sympathetically. “I know it will turn out,” she added. “You are a smart woman, Juanita.”

Not as smart as Olympia,
I said to myself. I took the chores list from her and went to work. Maybe inhaling ammonia while I cleaned the bathroom would help me forget.

“Who’s in?” I called over my shoulder as I headed down the hall checking off the items that I had to do.

“The Swensens have gone but Gwen already prepare the Mauve Room, is ready for the Florida couple. They’ll be in tomorrow morning. Señor Williams is upstairs and Miss Hsu is in Missoula on business for your favorite person.”

Speaking of my favorite person . . .

“Where is he?” I asked. I wasn’t in the mood for him today. I blinked my eyes a couple of times. They were still burning from the lack of sleep. Better get some eyedrops. Check towels, unpack new sheets, and call SW Montana Electric . . . a few seconds passed before I realized that Inez hadn’t said anything. I turned around.

She had a funny look on her face, a combination of confusion, thoughtfulness, and humor. In other words, her face was screwed up in a strange way.

“Something wrong with him?”

Inez shook her head as she slipped the strap of her gigantic purse over her shoulder.

“Nada . . . pero . . .” Now, she was frowning. “Funny thing. Señor Hayward-Smith, he eats breakfast now. I fix him a waffle and bacon. And . . . I thought I heard him talking to someone . . .”

“Probably Williams.” My attention returned to the list of things I had to do.

“No, Señor Williams, he was in the pantry, ironing a shirt. I checked.” Inez shrugged her shoulders as if she was trying to throw off something. “Maybe it was the cat he was talking to. The Siamese, he has come out of hiding.”

Since Millie died, Asim had taken to hiding in the strangest places. You would hear him howling sometimes but you never saw him. Now that was an animal that needed a pet shrink.

I went through the chores to keep me awake and take my mind off of the test that I had just flunked. When I’d finished downstairs, I headed up to the Mauve Room to put out the “welcome” package for the Florida guests and check the bathrooms again. Elva Van Roan had been good but you never knew when she’d get a bug up her butt and lock herself in.

I met Mr. High-Up Butt in the hall near the third-floor landing. He had kind of appeared out of nowhere. I shrieked. The house was as quiet as a tomb. For such a large man, he moved like a . . . well, like a ghost.

“Oh! Excuse me, Mrs. Louis! I’m so sorry,” he said politely. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

I swallowed my heart and tried to pat my hair down where it was standing straight up.

“Oh, that’s OK,” I said, trying to sound as if he hadn’t scared my intestines clean. “I, um, can I help you with something?”

“Yes, please. I was wondering . . . well, I know how busy you are, but, if you have some time, could I have a word, Mrs. Louis?”

Please . . . I’m so sorry . . . if you have some time,
I stared at Hayward-Smith. The stiffly starched white shirt had been replaced by a neat blue one, no tie. The pin-striped suit was gone; he wore khaki slacks and brown shoes. He didn’t look like the hoity-toity tight ass that I had been sparring with for weeks. He didn’t sound like him either. And there was something else.

Asim, the Siamese, was nestled in his arms, purring loudly, blinking his large, azure-colored eyes at me. I couldn’t remember Hayward-Smith doing more than shooing the cats away before, not cuddling them.

Hayward-Smith took my silence for a “no.”

“You’re busy, perhaps another time . . .”

“Now is all right. More special requests, Mr. Hayward-Smith?” I asked. In my experience, when this man stooped low enough on the social scale to speak to me, he usually wanted something, like more toilet paper or another doily on the chair in his suite. “And I have two more days on that proposal.” I thought I’d better remind him in case he was trying to rush me.

Hayward-Smith’s cheeks reddened and he smiled slightly.

“Yes, my . . . proposal. No, Mrs. Louis, I just wanted to talk with you about something. If you have a moment.”

Well, this was new: politeness, a slight stammer. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well. We headed down to the back parlor. I’d left my notebook there on Millie’s desk and figured that I would need it. Just inside the doorway, I stopped and stared. Millie’s portrait was presiding over the room once again.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Hayward-Smith?” I asked him. Polite or not, I wasn’t dropping my guard. Asim continued to purr.

“Well, you see . . . ,” he cleared his throat nervously. “I want you to know that I have dropped my petition to break Mrs. Daniels’s will. I have instructed my solicitors to file the appropriate documents but they have notified Mr. Black. However, I wanted to tell you . . . personally, since it was your efforts that . . . encouraged me to do it. Your inheritance is free from any interference from me, Mrs. Louis. My mother knew what she was doing when she left the inn to you. However, if you decide to sell it, I hope that you will give me the right of first refusal. And I will honor my original offer to you. I have put that in writing to Mr. Black.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. OK, maybe with a passel of feathers, not just one.

“Dropped it? You . . . wh-what did I do? Uh, you dropped it?” Yep. I made a lot of sense.

I was so relieved and surprised that I plopped down onto the red velvet settee. It had always been Millie’s favorite perch. Hayward-Smith took the chair across from me, scooping up Louis and cuddling him. Cuddling. That was something else that I didn’t associate with this man. What was going on?

“I don’t understand.”

Louis yawned and went back to sleep. He stops his naps for no one. Asim gave me a long, deep blue-eyed stare, then closed his eyes. Hayward-Smith smiled.

Smiled.

I looked at the portrait above the fireplace.

Broderick Tilson Hayward-Smith looked just like his mother.

“Don’t you?” he asked. “You
are
the woman who threw a handful of papers into my face? A file folder that included a story written by . . . my mother?”

It was the very first time I had ever heard him use those words.

I felt my cheeks getting hot.

“Oh. Well, I was having a bad day . . .”

“It was a good day for me,” Hayward-Smith commented. “I read that story. I read it over and over. And when I finished it, I called my solicitors. I knew that my efforts to take revenge on . . . her estate were baseless and stupid. And mean.” His dark-blue eyes were steady and serious. Then Hayward-Smith was silent for a minute before he continued.

“Isn’t it amazing how much we carry with us from our childhoods? We pack these slights away, both big and small, and carry them around long after we have gained the wisdom and knowledge to put them in their proper perspective.”

He was asking me a question but I got the impression that he didn’t want me to answer him. I looked at him and nodded. Something else about this man had now struck me. Strange as it seemed, he even
sounded
like his mother.

“You see, I was raised by David Hayward-Smith. A great statesman. A financier, philanthropist, and pillar of London society. And one of the biggest bastards who ever lived. Please excuse my language, Mrs. Louis. He never loved me. He didn’t care about me at all. He only wanted me because I was a son. Had I been a daughter, I would have been thrown onto a scrap heap. I was a trophy for him just like the stuffed rhino and antelope heads he collected from his safaris. He turned me over to nannies and governesses and then packed me off to boarding school when I was eight.”

Inside, I cringed at the thought of such a little boy being sent away from home.

“He allowed me to come home for the holidays. If you can call it a home. His London town house was exquisitely and expensively decorated and as cold and empty a place as you can imagine. My father was cruel and manipulative. It was only when I was grown that he allowed me the privilege of being in his presence for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. And that was only because I could be useful to him, manage his business interests so that he could retire and become a country gentleman. But by then, I hated him. And . . .”

Hayward-Smith paused and looked down at the cats that were snoozing in his lap. Then he looked up at Millie’s portrait.

“And I hated her, too. For leaving me with such a man. For abandoning me to a life with this unfeeling person who never showed me a day of love or affection. I knew nothing about her and by the time I was grown, I didn’t care anymore. My father had managed to poison my mind against her.” He gave me a rueful smile. “So, now you have a case for a talk show. Man raised by cold, unfeeling father, abandoned by free-spirited mother.”

“She didn’t want to leave you!” I exclaimed.

“I know that now,” Hayward-Smith replied. “Truthfully, I think I always knew it. My father married twice more and both of his wives left him. He was abusive, stingy, and mean. I knew what kind of man he was; I really couldn’t blame them. I couldn’t blame my mother, either. I just never knew what had happened to her. I never really even knew her real name. Father always referred to her as ‘Rose.’ ”

I thought about the rose-bordered wallpaper in Millie’s rooms. Around Paper Moon, she was Millie Tilson, the dotty old woman who lived in the big old house on the hill. But in her Paris days, she’d been “Rosie Tilson,” and I remembered hearing some of the old showgirls fondly calling her “Millie Rosie” as they recounted their exploits.

“She loved you,” I said, stating the obvious.

“I know she did,” Hayward-Smith said, sadly. “I wish that I had known her. From what I’ve heard and from what I’ve read, she was quite a lady.”

It was interesting to hear him talk about his mother that way, to hear
anyone
talk about Millie that way. I’d heard folks say “she was quite a gal.” Her friends had called her a “great old broad” in their testimonials at the funeral. Everyone thought highly of Millie, even those who thought she had a screw loose. But I had never really heard anyone say that she was “quite a lady.” She would have been thrilled to hear those words from her only child.

“Yes, she was,” I agreed.

“I know that I haven’t been the easiest guest that you’ve had,” he commented. Yes, when he smiled, he looked just like his mother. “I would like to make it up to you. You’ll have your hands full these next few months with running the inn and going to school. I put myself and my staff at your disposal. Just tell Amy what you’ll need.” He looked around the room for a moment. “It is important to me to keep this place going. As a tribute to my mother.”