Southern Fried Sushi (19 page)

“I … uh … might not be.”

Instantly everyone silenced. Adam and Tim stopped their impassioned conversation about politics, football, and who had the biggest ears back in high school. Becky paused in midsip, ice clinking. Even Gordon stopped chewing his bone and pricked his ears.

“What did ya say?” Becky demanded. “Because of … ya know … what ya told me …?”

I shook my head, my light manner faltering. “Um … no. Not exactly.”

I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Pretended great interest in my plastic fork. Plastic chopsticks never went over well in Japan. To-go chopsticks are wooden, connected at the end to snap apart, and tucked in a little paper sleeve.

“Is it money er somethin’?” cautiously asked Tim, the financial advisor. “I mean, if ya don’t mind me askin’?”

I put my fork down. “Well, money, yeah. And no.” I bit my lip, color shooting into my face. “I lost my job.”

Tim froze. “Laid off?”

I started to nod. Laid off. Sure. And then glanced guiltily up at Faye. “No. I … uh … got fired.”

Adam stared at me. I fidgeted with the napkin in my plate. Heard the scrape of Faye’s chair and felt her arm on my shoulder.

“This young’un’s been through a lot,” she said softly. “But she’ll make it. She’ll be okay.” She patted my arm firmly. “Don’t ya worry, kiddo. Things’ll look up.”

I reached up and hugged Faye with my free arm, humiliated. Becky and all the others would probably see me as the fraud I really was. Me, with the thousand-dollar cell phone and no place to call home.

Instead, they scooted closer. Becky took my hand. Tina called me “darlin’“ and told me it would all work out.

“You can only go up from here,” said Adam with a sympathetic smile. “And we’ve all been through rough times before.”

“I did something stupid,” I confessed in an almost whisper, too ashamed to raise my voice. “Really stupid. And now I don’t even have a place to live.”

Without my meaning to, the story slipped out. I told them about Dave making Nora cry and my late story, about Kyoko, and how I marked person after person off my cell phone list to no avail.

When I finally stopped, a pale violet twilight had settled. Moths hovered around the porch light, and cicadas began to whisper from the trees. Gordon snoozed and snored, front leg slung across my foot. Still they sat, chairs pulled close to mine.

“Sorry,” I apologized, patting Gordon’s fat belly in humiliation. “I’ve ruined everything.”

Becky waved me away. “Aw, quit. We’re here to help, ain’t we? Ain’t none of us here who haven’t never made a mistake.”

Everyone nodded. Faye squeezed my shoulder again. I felt embraced, warmed, drawn in to the little circle. A pearly crescent moon rose over the trees.

“Whatcha gonna do with yer mama’s place?” Tim finally asked over the peaceful hush. “Ya gonna sell it?”

I shrugged. “Of course. Right?”

“Well, it’s up to you. Ya gonna go try an’ find another job?”

“I want to go back to New York, but …” I looked away, embarrassed. “I haven’t found a place to live there yet. Besides, I don’t have money to pay some inheritance tax on my mom’s place. It’s better to sell.”

“You don’t pay inheritance taxes on that,” interjected Adam.

“No? Are you sure? I’m positive you have to.”

“No sirree. Not unless yer mama’s house is worth more than a million bucks, in which case we’re havin’ burgers at yer place next time, not here,” said Tim. The others chuckled.

“So I don’t have to pay anything?”

“Shouldn’t. It’s yers. The will was clear, ain’t that right?”

“Guess so. Right, Faye? That’s what my copy said and what the lawyer told me. There were no other beneficiaries.”

“Wale.” Tim shuffled his cowboy boots. “It’s all yers then, every dime. I’m sorry ya had to come by it through tragedy, Shah-loh, but you can thank God for your blessin’. We’ll be payin’ on this place a few more years.”

I stared up at the sky, which was turning indigo just through the trees. Fireflies began to sparkle in the grass.

“Where you going to stay until you sell? If you decide to?” Adam asked.

“Of course I’ll sell! I just don’t have a place lined up in the meantime. Yet.” I couldn’t keep paying for hotel rooms, but …

Tim shuffled his boots again. “This might sound kinda weird, but why don’t ya stay here?”

“Why, of course she can stay with us,” Becky said indignantly. “Ya reckon I didn’t think a that? Don’t got much of a guest room, but there’s a bed in there.”

“Well, yeah, baby, that’s fine, too.” He kissed her cheek. “But I meant her mama’s place.”

The thought struck me like a sumo wrestler falling on my head. “Mom’s?”

“Well, from a financial point a view, it makes a lot a sense.” Tim leaned forward. “It’s done bought and paid for. Don’t owe no rent. No bank payments. Just yer utilities an’ nothin’ else. Not a cent. Ya even got a car. All dropped right in yer lap. Might be smart of ya to settle in for a little while till ya get yer bearings. Stop payin’ a hundred bucks a night at Best Western and do yer own cookin’. That sorta thing.”

I gasped for breath. Stay at Mom’s? No way. Too much of her stuff. Her memories. Surrounded by a bunch of redneck wackos.

“It’s out in the country!” I cried.

Tim laughed. “Well, so’s we!” He rocked back on his heels. “Ain’t half bad neither! Ya got a perfickly good house sittin’ there empty with your name on it.”

“But I’m selling it! I can’t stay here!”

“Sellin’ don’t happen overnight, doll,” interjected Jeanette. “It takes time. Sometimes years. You might save yerself some money while ya put it on the market.”

An owl hooted from the dark shadows at the edge of the yard. “Is it … safe?” I felt light-headed again, like I had when I heard the news about Mom.

“Churchville? One of the safest. Nobody does nothin’out there ‘cept shoot starlings,” said Tim, and I instinctively exchanged glances with Adam. “People leave their doors unlocked an’ whatnot in some parts, although that’s still perty dumb if ya ask me.”

“But … I don’t have a job! Or anything! No income!”

Tim shrugged. “Well, git one, I guess. Whatever you can find ta tide ya over.”

“I could drive the car to New York.” I thought fast.

“And stay where? Do what?”

Becky tried to help me out. “Reckon ya could git another high-payin’ reportin’ job anytime soon? Like at the
New York Times
?”

I shivered. Wrapped one arm around myself, trying to stop shaking. Only it wasn’t cold out. At all.

Adam tossed a jacket to Faye, and she draped it around my shoulders.

I couldn’t look at Becky. Couldn’t answer. Just numbly played with my iced-tea glass until I got control of my chattering teeth. “Once you get fired for something like plagiarism, your name’s mud. Over. Done with. Nobody ever trusts you again.”

“Can you teach … ya know, like at a college?”

“I’m not done with my master’s. You’ve got to have a master’s. At least. And without a decent income now, I’ll have to drop out or …” I huddled under the jacket, nauseated. “I just know how to write. And nothing else.”

My beloved world slipped further and further out of reach, like the moon disappearing behind a whisper-thin cloud.

“Well, it might hafta be something not so great for a while,” said Jeanette gently. “Workin’ at a store or somethin’ till ya git yer bearings. We’ve all been there before, sugar. It ain’t so bad.”

My hand shook, and I spilled my tea. Faye quickly grabbed something and mopped it off the wooden deck slats.

A store? Like, with cash registers? Oh no. Oh no.

The panicked look on my face must have worried Tim.

“Savings account? Stocks?” he asked, trying hard to save me.

I put the glass down and pulled the jacket tighter. “I don’t even have a car in Japan to sell.”

“Wale.” He leaned back and slapped his knees pensively. “I guess ya got yerself a dilemma. If ya cain’t find somebody like your dad to take care of ya for a while, I’d recommend you stay put.”

“‘Til …’til … what?” I felt panic—mixed with fury—rising inside.

“‘Til you can git yer debts paid off, find a good-payin’ job, and get a new start. Then you can sell yer house an’ take off.” Tim spoke seriously. “If you got a mountain o’ credit cards, you need to get them paid off. Pronto. The interest’ll kill ya if you drag it out, ‘specially if ya ain’t got no job.”

It already was.

“You can do whatcha want, of course. It’s just what I’d do if I was you.” Gordon rolled over and groaned his agreement.

Becky patted my hand and grinned. “Well then, Shah-loh, welcome to Staunton.”

T
hursday reality set in as I tossed and turned about what to do with Mom’s house. With my life.

Carlos had really left me. I found more photos of Carlos and Mia on his Azuki page and little love messages that made me slam the computer shut in anger. I’d never look again. He had fallen for Mia, really fallen for her, and I—as usual—was left on my own. My left hand achingly empty.

For the first time I wished I hadn’t sent his ring back so fast. Having it at least left me with the memory of someone I had once loved. And someone who had once loved me.

Despite all my attempts to keep a brave face, Carlos’s mutiny hurt more than losing my job. A lot more. Dave had done what he had to do; no head of a respectable media service would have done less. I could forgive him for that.

But Carlos had known me and still chosen Mia. It stung. Deeply. It was a rejection not of my skills, but of me.

I wanted the ring back. I wanted Carlos back. More than I could admit.

I was seven again, staring out the window at Dad’s retreating back in the dusky streetlight, one hand carrying a suitcase. Warm tears on my face, salt on my lips, and a ripping sensation insidemy chest. He didn’t look back.

If only I’d been better … if only I’d tried harder … if only I’d helped Mom more …

I looked in the mirror, staring at my morose hazel eyes and trying to figure out what I had done wrong. I’d put tears behind me forever. I’d dressed the part. I’d climbed the ladder. And still, after all my efforts, I’d lost. To a twenty-three-year-old blond who batted her eyelashes.

I’d never felt emptier in my whole life. Like my hotel room—full of nice furnishings, but with inhabitants who quickly came and went, never staying long enough to bring warmth or call it home.

And at the end of the day, it never really belongs to anyone.

I started my day with a run in the rain then spent the day making more calls and finding less and less possibility of moving to New York. The Internet went down. I crabbed. Bobbie apologized.

I gave up. Spent the morning with Jeanette in Wal-Mart, restocking my toiletries and gawking over American stuff I’d missed for two years. Shook a jar of pickled pigs’ feet, by far one of the grossest things I’d ever seen. Ogled cans of hominy while Jeanette explained it was corn soaked in lye.

“You eat lye?”

“No, it jest sorta makes the corn swell up.”

I looked horrified. It sounded pecan pie-esque, like I’d be sprouting a third limb in no time. “Are you sure this stuff’s safe?”

“I been eatin’ it since I could walk.” She chuckled. “Guess it ain’t hurt me yet.”

I looked over her strong, wiry body, much younger than her sixty-some years indicated, and had to agree. But I still left the cans on the shelf and tried to remember not to bow or pay with my cell phone. Old habits die hard.

Then Faye accompanied me to the courthouse to do a bunchof boring document stuff on the house. We took my red Honda back to the rental car company, and I paid a hefty fee for only driving it one way.

And then went to pack up my things for tomorrow’s move.

After sending my cell phone photos to Kyoko Friday morning, I signed off and hauled all my suitcases downstairs to the front desk. Opened my wallet to square up with Patty.

But at the bottom of the form, where the total should be, it showed zero. Comp, it read next to the room charges.

“Comp?” I repeated, handing the form back to Patty. “I don’t understand. My room charges aren’t on here. Can you fix it?”

She smiled, and those freckles seemed to smile back at me. “It’s fixed. It’s correct.” Patty lowered her voice. “It’s taken care of.”