Yankee Doodle Dixie (6 page)

“I’m very sorry, ma’am,” the man said.

“Well, all right then.” Kissie shut the door and hurried back into the den. She sat down on the couch and scooped me into her arms. “Daisy’s in heaven, Leelee.”

Pulling away from her I flailed my legs, kicking and screaming, crying so hard I wailed with each sob. Pretty soon I had sucked up enough air to keep me gasping for each breath. Kissie pulled me onto her lap. Rocking me back and forth, she patted my head and pushed the hair away from my watery face. With the lapel of her uniform she wiped away my tears as I pressed into her bosom. “You’ll see her again one day, baby. She’s much happier now, anyway. She’s up there with the Lawd. Runnin’ around, barkin’, no cars to worry ’bout.” Kissie’s smile took up most of her face. “Nobody gonna tell her she cain’t.”

“I want to go there,” I told her, when I saw how happy she looked. “I want to be in heaven with Daisy.”

“I know, baby. But it ain’t your time.”

“When is my time?” I asked between sobs.

“Only the Lawd knows that.” She kept rocking and rocking until my sobs turned into whimpers.

*   *   *

Just thinking about Daisy and Gracie, and having to bury them both is almost enough to keep me from sinking my heart back into another dog. But the only way over one is to love another. That I know for sure. Just like the birth of your first child, it’s hard to imagine that you’ll ever love another as much as you love the first, but of course you do. And I will.

*   *   *

Once I’ve helped Kissie clear the table and wash the breakfast dishes I settle back down at her dining room table, determined to find us a place to live. After circling several homes in the For Rent section of
The Commercial Appeal
, I set up three appointments to see houses in the Germantown area—having decided to take Virgy’s advice and pick a house in a neighborhood with a good school. Growing up, Germantown used to be considered “the country.” Mary Jule and I rode horses out there and only a handful of people from Jameson School lived out there, but today it’s considered a suburb. For the most part my friends live in East Memphis or Midtown. Unfortunately though, some of the elementary schools around there leave a little to be desired. So moving out to Germantown is my only option, for the next few months anyway.

After placing a large basket of freshly dried towels on the floor next to the table, Kissie pulls out a chair, sits down next to me and starts folding. She can tell I’m frustrated because I sigh loudly after hanging up the phone and run my fingers through my already unruly hair.

“One thing about life is always true. Things are always changin’,” she says. “You don’t have to live there forever. Just do what you need to do right now for your little girls.”

“I know. You’re right. You’re always right,” I say, and bury my face in my hands.

“The Lawd will bless you for puttin’ them first.” Kissie stretches one of her fluffy yellow bath towels and expertly pinches the corners together.

“I’m gonna start calling you Aristotle,” I tell her.

“No, baby, I don’t want that name.”

“How come? Aristotle was a genius.”

“That might be but he thought women weren’t fully human,” she says matter-of-factly as she plops the perfectly creased towel on the table.

“What!” I sit up in the chair.

“That’s right.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read it somewhere. I may not have a degree but when I read somethin’ I never forget it. You know my memory is just like an elephant’s,” she says, snapping the wind out of one of the towels.

I make a mental note to look up Aristotle and check the validity of Kissie’s claim. Then I change my mind. She always knows what she’s talking about.

*   *   *

Right after lunch, Kissie keeps the girls while I head out to Germantown to check out the rentals. The first house I tour is drab and depressing. A faint mildew odor permeates the air the second I step inside. After living in BO-infested surroundings in Vermont for fourteen months and endlessly ridding the Inn of Helga’s lingering cigarette aroma, there is no way I would ever entertain the idea of living in a stinky house. It has to smell good on the front end or “nothing doing” as Mama used to say. To Daddy, the man who bragged about having “the keenest olfactory senses known to man,” there was nothing worse than a home with houseitosis. I’ll never forget the time he helped me search for my first house. When the real estate agent escorted us to the front door of a little home on Alexander, Daddy, dressed to the nines in his custom-tailored suit and cashmere overcoat, stepped inside the foyer, turned to the woman and said, “I’ll meet you back at the car, thank you very much. I don’t want to go back to the office smelling like mothball soup.”

The second house, only a couple of blocks from the first, is not much better. In fact it’s even more dark and dingy on the inside, making me think both of the houses must have been taken off the market and turned into rentals because they were too hard to sell. Discouragement reeks from every corner. Thinking about the house I left in Memphis before we moved to Vermont, I’m not sure how I can’t be discouraged. That bright, cheery, odor-free house, only a few blocks from all of my best friends, is fifteen miles away in the other direction, now occupied by happy people living my Memphis dream.

The unfairness nearly keeps me from starting the car and moving on but I’ve already set up the third appointment. I figure I might as well go ahead and keep it—this one can’t be much worse than the first two.
They are rental houses,
I keep telling myself.
Don’t be expecting perfection.

Ten minutes later, I pull up in the circular driveway of 2247 Glendale Cove and from the driveway, the view actually isn’t bad. The small front porch has a nice wooden Chippendale-style railing on either side of the steps. Boxwoods run across the front of the home and there’s even a picture window off to one side. Two dormer windows poke out of the black shingle roof, which appears to be a story and a half. I know from the ad that the home has three bedrooms and two and a half baths.

Since the owner has yet to arrive, I walk around back. There’s a nice backyard, fenced for a pet, and there’s even a swing set. It’s old and a bit rusty, that’s for sure, but at least it exists. The best parts about the house are that it’s affordable, it’s in the Dogwood Elementary School district, and pets are allowed.

Once the owner arrives and shows me around the house, I’m positive that this is the place for us. The three bedrooms are downstairs next to one another and there’s a nice-size kitchen with a large picture window that looks out over the quiet cove. Not too many cars passing by—a perfect situation for little ones. Upstairs has a large attic and a big playroom that sits over the garage in the back. There’s a living room and dining room just off the wide foyer and a small half bath. Carpeting runs all through the downstairs. I’d have preferred hardwood floors but if that’s the worst part of it, I can certainly live with beige rugs.

I write out a check for the first month’s rent plus a deposit and the owner hands me two keys. What a relief. While it may not be “home, sweet home” yet, at least the moving van now has an address to deliver my belongings.

*   *   *

Before returning to Kissie’s, and after a stop at Dinstuhl’s candy store for a white chocolate chunk, I head over to Seessel’s grocery to fill my new pantry. Seessel’s went out of business years ago, it’s actually called Schnucks now, but in the same way that I call Macy’s, Goldsmith’s, I’m never going to be able to stop calling Schnucks, Seessel’s. Extinct hometown landmarks die a slow death, especially in the South.

I leave my shopping cart for just a second and as I’m returning with an armload of items I forgot from the previous aisle, I notice there’s a woman trying to get past my cart, where I’ve left it a little too far into the middle. By the time I recognize the face, though, it’s too late to turn around. Cissy Green, the absolute last person on earth that I’d ever want to see—well, besides Tootie Shotwell—is looking dead at me. Her perfect taupe-eye-shadowed eyes bug out of her head when she sees who’s at the other end of the displaced cart. “
Leelee?
” she says, with perfectly executed astonishment, as if she hadn’t already heard through the grapevine that I had returned to town, with no Baker, no job and—well, thank the Lord I have a house now …

I feel my hand flitter in a fake, glad-to-see-you wave, and already know a polite smile is creeping onto my face.

“What in the world? I thought you were in Vermont?” she says, with a phony shrill to her voice.

“I
was
in Vermont, Cissy. But I’m so happy to be back in Memphis. The Northeast is overrated; let me tell you.” I can hear myself babbling even though my insides are screaming at me to
shut up
! Even
I
think my voice sounds obnoxious.

“Why? What happened? I thought—”

I interrupt her on purpose. I can’t take whatever it is she might say next. “The girls and I
froze
the entire time we lived there. It’s just hard to be Southern and live that far up there. Last month it never got above negative five for three weeks straight. Can you believe that?” I exaggerate a tad. But I need her to think that my move home was all about the weather.

“I had no
idea
it got that cold,” she says, with emphasis on “idea,” as if I had just suggested the formula for permanent Botox.

“Me, neither. I can promise you that. Alaska maybe, but the continental United States? It never once crossed my mind.”

“What does Baker think about it? I mean he was all gung ho to move. Is he okay about coming back?”

“Oh, he’s dealing with it.” Again, not entirely a lie … but certainly not the whole story. Why on earth can’t I just tell her the truth?

She pushes on. “I remember somebody telling me he was sick of the insurance business and that was the reason he wanted to move away. Will he go back to Allstate with Mr. Satterfield?”

“It’s actually Satterfield State Farm. And we aren’t sure yet.” At least
that
was the truth.

“Well, he’ll be great at whatever he does.”

Baker gets all kinds of passes because he’s good-looking and a former UT football star … one of the many perks of Southern football majesty. The truth of the matter is Cissy cares way more about Baker than she does me, it’s
his
happiness she’s after.

“Oh, yes. Baker is great at lots of things,” I say, knowing that list now includes cheating on your wife and abandoning two daughters. If there could be a way that I could make my cell phone ring right at this moment I would give up my right baby toe. Since it doesn’t, I take matters into my own hands. “Cissy, do you happen to know what time it is?”

She glances at her diamond Rolex Oyster Perpetual. “One thirty.”

“Oh my gosh, I’m late. I have to have Issie to a doctor’s appointment in fifteen minutes. I’ve got to run
right now.
Bye Cissy, good to see you.” I back up my cart and turn around and leave it, two aisles over. I’ll do my shopping closer to Kissie’s house where I, the great liar, can be completely anonymous.

I grab my cell to call Alice and whisper into the phone as I’m exiting the store. “It’s starting.”

“What’s starting?”

“I just ran into Cissy Green, of all people. She kept trying to dig all the scoop out of me she could get. What am I going to do when people start finding out that Baker and I have split up? And even worse that he has a fifty-year-old girlfriend with silicone implants. Or maybe they’re saline. How can you tell the difference anyway?”

“One is softer than the other. You know, better to the touch,” she says.

“Well shoot, Alice, I didn’t manage to fondle her boob while I had the chance … what with trying to keep our livelihood intact I forgot to feel up my husband’s mistress.” My sarcasm reeks of wounded pride.

“Leelee, listen. You’re gonna hold your head up and deal with it. Who cares?”

“
I
do. I hate my life.”

“Don’t ever say that again. Everything is gonna be fine in the long run. It’s hard as hell right now but you’ll be yesterday’s news tomorrow.”

I start to protest when she butts in, “Leelee, you have five more seconds of this pity party and then I have to pick up the children from mother’s day out. Miss Becky passes out candy like it’s as healthy as spinach and I have to save my patience for whatever sugar rush they’re on.”

“You’re right, you’re right.”

We hang up, laughing, and as I’m running out to my car I hear my name called from across the parking lot. Acting as if I don’t hear the person, I bolt inside my car, my heart running so fast it might as well be the engine. There’s no telling how many cell phone calls Cissy Green has already dialed from the inside of Seessel’s, and I know all too well the rate of speed at which Dixie gossip blasts down the highway. Just as I ram the gearshift in reverse, I hear a knock on my window. I want to pretend I don’t see the person for fear it’s another Baker-lover but I notice Natalie Walker’s kind smile in my peripheral view. We graduated together at Jameson and she’s as nice a person as you could ever find. I roll down my window and hug her through the opening.

“Hi, sweetie,” she says, genuinely happy to see me. She was at my going-away luncheon and would have to be burning at the stake before she’d ever say a mean word about me or anyone else. Something about her gentle hug and soothing voice brings tears to my eyes. The Cissy Green incident shook me senseless. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“
No.
” I sit back in my seat, feeling the tears pour down my cheeks. She hurries around to the other side of my car and I toss all the junk from the passenger seat into the back between the girls’ car seats to make room for her.

Natalie reaches over and wraps her arms around me once she sits down. “What is it, Leelee?”

There’s no sense in lying again—so I let loose. “Vermont was a disaster. It didn’t go well from the minute we arrived. The move turned out to be catastrophic for our marriage.” I pull away from her and look her in the eye. “Baker and I split up.”