The Scent of Lilacs (17 page)

Jocie didn’t let her eyes linger on it but instead looked through the door into the living room, where she spotted a stereo. Just for something to say, she asked, “What happens when you want to dance?”

Leigh smiled. “I put on a waltz and dance sedately with my broom.” Leigh’s smile got wider. “Or I climb up on the couch and do the twist. So far I haven’t fallen off and through the ceiling.”

Jocie laughed.

“You think I’m kidding?” Leigh went into the living room, slipped a forty-five rpm record out of a wire holder and put it on. Chubby Checker’s voice urging everybody to come on and do the twist came through the speakers. Leigh threw the cushions off the couch and demonstrated. Everything about her was bouncing and twisting as she let the music take her over. Jocie jumped on one of the couch cushions on the floor and joined in.

When the song ended, Leigh stepped off the couch and fanned
her face with her hand. “See, it’s not too noisy that way. Of course, Mrs. Simpson still complains about the music, but there are some things you just have to do anyway.” She turned on an oscillating fan and then stacked some more forty-fives on the turntable. “Elvis is the very best music for making chocolate cakes. They should put his picture on the cake mix instead of Betty Crocker’s.”

The strains of “Love Me Tender” followed them back to the kitchen, where Leigh gulped down her soft drink before she pulled an index card out of a recipe box and handed it to Jocie. “This is my mother’s recipe. She’s a great cook. One reason I’m too heavy. The other is that I like to cook too, and there’s nobody but me to eat it, and it’s a sin to be wasteful. Of course, it’s a sin to be a glutton too.”

“I’m sure you’re not a glutton,” Jocie said politely. She looked at the card. “I didn’t bring any flour or stuff with me, but I could ride my bike over to the market on Model Street.”

“No need for that,” Leigh said as she took some butter out of the refrigerator. “I’ve got everything you’ll need. Even birthday candles.”

“Tabitha may think she’s too old to blow out candles,” Jocie said.

“Nobody ever gets too old for birthday wishes.” Leigh held out the spoon. “You want to cream the butter?”

“If it won’t mess up the cake if I do it wrong.”

“You can’t do it wrong. You just mash the heck out of it.”

Jocie took the spoon and attacked the stick of butter Leigh had dropped in the mixing bowl on the counter. In the next room, a new record dropped down and Elvis was belting out “Hound Dog.” Jocie kept mashing and thought about her father listening to Elvis. He liked Tennessee Ernie Ford. Singing hymns. Maybe her father was right. Maybe Leigh was too young for him.

Jocie peeked over at Leigh, who was standing beside her, watching her smash the butter. Jocie wondered just how old Leigh was. It
was hard to tell. She looked way older than Tabitha and not nearly as old as Zella. She’d obviously been out of school awhile. She’d been working at the courthouse as long as Jocie could remember.

Of course, Jocie hadn’t paid much attention to who worked where until a couple of years back. When she went to the courthouse with her father, she was more interested in the way her footsteps echoed in the hallway and how fast she could run up the winding staircase. She liked bouncing her voice off the marble walls and then slipping into the clerk’s office to hide among the deed books when the sheriff’s deputy came out into the hall to see who was disturbing the peace.

The first time she remembered seeing Leigh was when she was around ten and Leigh had given Jocie a nickel to put in the Lion’s Club gumball dispenser. Jocie could always get free gum at the courthouse by standing by the gumball machine with sad eyes. The reason she remembered Leigh was that Leigh put in a nickel for herself as well and they’d both crossed their fingers and hoped for a blue gumball. Two blue gumballs had popped out of the machine. It was one of those times when Jocie felt as if she’d wasted a miracle, that she should have crossed her fingers and wished for something important like world peace or a letter from her mother instead of a blue gumball.

She said, “Do you remember the time we got the blue gumballs?”

“I do,” Leigh said as she measured sugar and added it to the mashed butter in the bowl. “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten another blue gumball out of that machine since then.”

“Did you know who I was then?”

“Well, sure I did. You were the noisy brat Deputy Karsner kept threatening to put in jail if he ever collared you.”

Jocie grinned. “Daddy used to threaten to turn me in.”

“The sheriff talked about putting up a wanted poster,” Leigh said.

“Surely I wasn’t the only kid who liked to stomp my feet and make echoes in the courthouse hall.”

“No indeed. Just the one who was there the most and whose daddy never told you to pipe down.” Leigh broke a couple of eggs into a bowl and beat them for a few seconds before adding them to Jocie’s mixing bowl. “It never bothered me. I still wear my clickiest shoes so I can break up the silence of the place. It’s like a tomb in that hallway when nobody’s around.”

“Did you grow up here in Hollyhill? I mean, I guess you did. Everybody who works at the courthouse grew up here.”

“Nope, not me.” Leigh made a paste of cocoa and hot water to add to the cake mixture. “Now stir that in fast.”

Jocie stirred fast. She licked a little of the chocolate paste off her finger and made a face. It was bitter.

“It does look as if it would taste good, doesn’t it?” Leigh said as she handed Jocie her glass of soda. “You have to wait till the end to lick the bowl. There’s no sugar in the cocoa paste.”

“So how did you get a job in the courthouse if you’re not a Hollyhill native? Zella says it can’t be done.”

“My mother was raised here, and my aunt works for the judge. Actually, the judge is my third or fourth cousin once removed or twice removed, whatever. I grew up in Grundy, but I always loved coming to Hollyhill to visit my grandmother. She died last year.” Leigh looked teary.

“My grandmother died when I was nine.”

“Yeah, I was lucky to have mine so long, but I still miss her,” Leigh said as she sifted and measured the flour. She added the flour along with the milk. “Now we’ll have to beat it three hundred strokes.”

Jocie counted as she slapped the spoon through the batter and against the side of the bowl. By the time she got to sixty she was slowing down. Leigh took the bowl and spoon and beat the batter in a steady, easy rhythm as she counted under her breath.

“It looks easy when you do it,” Jocie said.

“Lots of practice. Every time we have a church dinner, people go into fits if I don’t bring my chocolate cake.” She held the spoon up and let the batter drip off it back down into the bowl. “Here, you finish the last fifty while I grease and flour the pans.”

The music had stopped in the living room, and Leigh went in to lift the pile of forty-fives up, flip them over, and start them playing again. She was singing along with Elvis when she came back to the kitchen and started greasing the pans.

“Dad says he’s too old for you,” Jocie said as she pushed through the last five beats.

L
eigh’s face turned bright pink.

Jocie looked up. “Uh-oh, I guess I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Well, probably not.” Leigh fanned herself with the end of a dish towel spotted with sunflowers. “But I pink up easy as pie. One of the problems with having a fair complexion.”

“Me too. Last time I flamed up, I opened my mouth and blew the heat out and off my face.” Jocie opened her mouth wide and demonstrated. “It sort of helped.”

Leigh stopped fanning and gave it a try. The pink on her cheeks faded. “I think it did help. Where’d you come up with that?”

“A slant on a Jupiterian idea.”

“Oh, Wes. Zella’s always fussing about him, but I think he’s kind of fun.” Leigh spooned the cake batter evenly into the two round pans and set them carefully in the oven. “Now we’ll let them bake for about thirty minutes.”

She closed the oven door, stood up, and looked straight at Jocie. “I guess we might as well talk about it now that you’ve brought it up. My mama always says there’s no shame to getting embarrassed unless you tried to hide from what was embarrassing you. So you think I don’t have a snowball’s chance in you know where with your father.”

Now Jocie’s cheeks went hot. “I didn’t exactly say that.”
“Well, you can if that’s what you think,” Leigh said. “Come on. Let’s go sit at the table while you tell me what you think. And just so you’ll know, I’m the type of person who’d rather hear the truth straight out than to have somebody lie to me to keep from hurting my feelings.”

Leigh pulled out a chair at the table for Jocie and then sat down across from her and waited.

“I wouldn’t do that. I nearly always tell the truth,” Jocie said as she sat down.

“Good, now we’re getting somewhere.” Leigh drummed her fingers on the table while staring at the wall over the top of Jocie’s head before she said, “Surely your dad has had a girlfriend or two since your mother left. That’s been forever ago, before I even came to Hollyhill.”

“If he has, he never let me know about it.”

“Really? No other woman has ever been after him?”

“Gee, I don’t know.” Jocie scooted the sunflower dish towel over in front of her and began tracing the petals with her finger. “I didn’t know you were till Wes told me.”

Leigh laughed. “I guess I’ve been too obvious, but I thought if I could get your dad to notice me, he might think going on a date was fun.”

“I don’t think Dad worries too much about having fun.”

“You don’t worry about having fun. You just have it.”

“I guess,” Jocie said.

Leigh broke off a piece of a chocolate chip cookie but didn’t put it in her mouth. “Well, if he doesn’t think about having fun, what does he do?”

“Work. Pray. Preach. Visit the sick.”

“Surely he does something just for fun?” She picked a chocolate chip out of the cookie and put it in her mouth. “Read?”

“Mostly the Bible or other newspapers or magazines. For the
Banner
or for church.”

“Does he like to take walks?”

“Yeah. Early in the morning when he’s praying about something.”

“Then he probably wouldn’t want company. TV?”

“We have a TV, but it doesn’t come in too good. Dad says we need a real antenna instead of just the rabbit ears on top of the set.”

“Okay.” Leigh studied the cookie and then picked out another chocolate chip. “Baseball?”

“He takes pictures of the kids playing Little League. That’s sort of fun.”

“I could watch little kids playing baseball,” Leigh said. “But he’d be down on the field taking pictures, and I’d be on the sidelines looking like a mom who forgot to bring her kid. Not much of a date. Anything else he does for fun?”

Jocie thought about it. “He plays horseshoes with the men at church picnics, and they talk about going fishing.”

“I’m horrible at horseshoes, and I hate fishing. Nasty, slimy fish.” Leigh shuddered.

“Yeah, when I have to go, I just don’t bait my hook.”

“But that’s the problem. I am trying to bait my hook and I can’t think what bait might work. Music?”

“Not Elvis. We saw him once on Ed Sullivan, and Dad just thought he was funny. Of course, the screen was pretty snowy.”

“At least he thought something was funny.”

“Dad thinks lots of things are funny,” Jocie said. “He’d probably think this was funny.”

“This?”

“Us talking about him. He laughs a lot. He says God wants us to be happy.”

“Is he happy?”

“I guess so. I don’t know. He’s got a lot on his mind right now with a new church and the paper and Tabitha coming
home and Aunt Love going a little more bananas every day and trying to keep me out of trouble.”

“Do you get into trouble often?” Leigh pulled the last chocolate chip out of the cookie and popped it into her mouth before she pushed the crumbs away from her.

“I try not to, but I have this bad habit of talking too much. I’m probably talking too much right now.”

“I know I am. But your dad is just so nice, and he’s not all that much older than me. I’m thirty-two and what’s he? Forty?”

“Forty-four.” Jocie bit off a piece of cookie. She hadn’t tasted anything as yummy since the last dinner on the grounds at church. Maybe Wes was right and cooking was something important to consider in a stepmother.

“Well, that’s still not so bad. I don’t have to listen to Elvis.” She pulled her shoulder-length hair back and twisted it into a bun on the back of her neck. “I could start wearing my hair like this and get some glasses. I may need some anyway. I have to squint my eyes to make out the small print.”

Jocie laughed. “I don’t think trying to look like Zella or Aunt Love will do the trick.”

“Oh well.” Leigh dropped her hair back onto her shoulders. The timer went off, and Leigh showed Jocie how to stick a toothpick down in the middle of the cake to see if it was done. When the toothpick came out clean, Leigh turned the cake layers out onto a cooling rack. “We’ll give it a few minutes to cool and then make the icing.”

“Can we go listen to some more records while we’re waiting?” Jocie asked.