by Arlene James
It was almost more than he could fathom, sitting down at the table with his family for a real meal. And what a meal! Boiled beef and noodles in a creamy sauce, green beans, corn and hot bread. When Mattie set a small bowl of pickled beets at his elbow, he could do nothing but gape.
“Chaz said you liked them,” she divulged shyly and skittered away.
For the first time he had the presence of mind to look around the table and count the places. Obviously she had been unsure of her welcome at the family table. He twisted in his chair and cleared his throat. When she turned from the sink to look at him, he asked carefully, “Aren’t you going to join us?”
Smiling broadly, she plucked another place setting from the cabinet and hurried to squeeze in between Sweetums and Yancy. Once there, however, she dropped her hands to her lap and bowed her head. Uncertain what to make of that, Orren shrugged and reached for the beets, drawing up short when Chaz widened his eyes and frantically shook his head. Thoroughly puzzled, Orren opened his mouth to ask what the dickens was going on, only to be shocked into continued silence by the sight of Chaz folding his hands in an attitude of prayer, his look pleading. Dumbfounded, Orren realized that they were waiting for him to say grace! All but Jean Marie, who tucked her hands into her armpits and narrowed her eyes stubbornly, and Sweetums, who copied Chaz’s posture without the least idea why.
Orren cleared his throat, bounced a knee nervously, and took a deep breath, finally blurting, “Thank-you-for-this-food-amen.”
Mattie lifted her head, smiling, and began serving dinner.
It beat anything he’d ever seen. Even Jean Marie behaved like a civilized human being and cleaned her plate quickly, despite a pouting silence. Yancy accepted the towel that Mattie tied around her neck bib-fashion, upon realizing that Sweetums was to wear one, also, and ate everything put in front of her, even demanding more. Chaz couldn’t say enough good things about Mattie’s cooking, and Sweetums managed to giggle charmingly while stuffing her little mouth. After wrapping up the feast with canned pears, they all sat back for a few minutes, replete in a way they never had been before, while Mattie explained about the menu taped to the inside of the pantry door and how she had marked the foodstuffs so they would know what was required for meals and what was available for “unscheduled snacking.” She added that she’d tucked the eight dollars left over from the shopping into a jar on the top shelf and suggested that he spend some time with the kids before Candy and Yancy had to be put down to sleep while she cleaned up the kitchen and packed leftovers for his next day’s lunch.
Flabbergasted but wise enough to see the benefits of such a plan, Orren did exactly what she suggested. Only later did he realize that she had slipped away quietly, leaving a note to say she would be in at nine the next morning unless he called to say he wanted her earlier. Bemused, Orren sat down on the couch, pleased that he could, to watch an hour of television with his older children and listen to Chaz glowingly recount their day. Jean Marie was not so thrilled with their new sitter, but her criticism seemed based on nothing more than resentment at being persuaded to behave. In fact, he was a little surprised that her complaints weren’t more vehement, but he was too tired to really do anything more than marvel at what one little gal had been able to accomplish in a single day. Later, when he slid between clean, smooth sheets, he decided sleepily that Matilda Kincaid was a sorceress in a teenybopper’s guise. The next morning, when sitting himself down to enjoy a breakfast of hot muffins, fruit, and—luxury of luxuries—fresh coffee, he silently amended that description to angel, albeit a young one.
Mattie shoved the bed to one side. Jean Marie glared at her from the doorway, arms folded, eyes narrowed, bottom lip jutting out. Mattie sighed. She’d already been told to leave “Mama’s bedroom” alone, but once she’d thoroughly cleaned the place, she’d felt an overwhelming urge to make it more attractive. Its bare, bereft nondecor was depressing, and for some reason she wanted to give Orren Ellis reason to be, if not happy, at least pleased. It hadn’t taken a lot of effort, really, once she’d been able to get a good look at the room and ferret out some items to use for decoration.
A good washing of the walls had revealed a stuccolike finish of eggshell white. The kids had thought she was nuts when she’d taken brown acrylic paint from one of their battered art sets, thinned it, and used it judiciously to highlight every crack, chip, and mar in the plaster. She’d even gouged a little plaster away in places to heighten the effect and was pleased when the overall look suggested old adobe.
The faded, dirty, entirely too frilly Priscilla curtains were cleaned, dried and put away for the girls to use at a later time, as was the heavy old crocheted bedspread. After washing the windows, she covered them with a pair of golden tan sheers that she’d found in the back of the linen closet in the hallway, then for a valance she tacked up an old horse blanket with which the kids had been playing. An old hand-sewn quilt was thoroughly cleaned and quickly repaired to serve as a bedspread. A headboard for the bed was fashioned from a stack of oak posts discarded as too crooked for use as fencing sometime in the past.
With Chaz’s help, Mattie dragged a scarred trunk from the unfinished room, first emptying it of carpentry tools, and placed it at the foot of the bed. Next to it, she arranged a pair of old, nearly rotted cowboy boots and a coiled rope that Chaz insisted his daddy had once used to work the cattle they’d kept on the place. Jean Marie declared this an ugly lie, and Mattie suspected that it had something to do with her mother, but she couldn’t imagine what. After receiving specific instructions about what to look for, Chaz unearthed some rusty bits and pieces of bridle, as well as the barrel and stock of a shotgun so ancient it threatened to disintegrate in Mattie’s hands as she cleaned it sparingly and hung it on the wall. A battered, almost shapeless, felt cowboy hat came out of a closet somewhere and found a place on the end of a post in the rustic headboard, and a second horse blanket became a bedside rug.
The true challenge in this transformation was presented by the lamp that offered the room’s only light source. Pearl white, with gold detailing and a ruffled shade, it was completely out of sync with the new Old West flavor of the room. After much thought and many suggestions from the children, most of them nonsensical but funny, Mattie decided to completely sand the finish of the lamp with sandpaper culled from the unfinished room to give it a rustic look. The shade was another matter. It simply could not be made over to work with the rest of the room, but replacement seemed out of the question—until she came across a tin pail with a hole in the bottom.
Jean Marie volunteered the information that Orren had been furious when Chaz had driven a nail into the pail in a misguided effort to create a shelter for a pet squirrel. The idea had been to attach the pail to a tree in the backyard, but Chaz had been unable to manage that. It seemed that the pail he had chosen was a brand-new one with which Orren had intended to feed the premature, motherless calf he’d secured in the small corral out back. Orren had yelled. Chaz had cried. The squirrel had run away, and eventually the calf had died despite Orren’s attempts to save it. The story almost put Mattie off the idea of using the pail, but in the end, it was the only option she could see. She hoped to mitigate the unpleasant memories by having the children draw designs on the side of the pail with crayons, then, using the drawings as patterns, carefully pierce the metal with a hammer and nail. Jean Marie refused to participate, and Mattie wound up having to perform the piercing herself, but once the bail was removed and the hole in the bottom was carefully enlarged, she had herself a suitable, thoroughly unique lamp shade. Jean Marie, however, predicted disaster. Her daddy would hate the dumb old thing, she declared. In fact, he’d hate the whole ugly room.
Mattie was pretty well convinced that Jean Marie was right by the time Orren’s truck turned into the driveway. She felt a wave of panic as she heard the engine die away in the carport and the cab door open and close as he got out. Jean Marie waited at the corner of the dinner table, the gleam of retribution in her eyes
. When the door opened and Orren pulled himself sluggishly into the house, she launched her offensive.
“She tore up everything!” she declared, pointing an accusing finger at a quaking Mattie. “She took down Mama’s pretty curtains and put up a dirty old horse blanket, and she moved everything around, and she punched holes in things! And she got out stuff she wasn’t s’posed to, stuff you said we couldn’t even get out!”
Orren stood with a hand on the back of his neck, staring at the belligerent child. “What on earth are you talking about, Red?”
Mattie stepped forward, arms rigid at her sides, chin up and confessed. “I redecorated your bedroom.”
His mouth fell open, his blue eyes widening. “You what?”
“It was presumptuous of me,” Mattie admitted, bowing her head. “I don’t know quite what came over me except…well, it was depressing, even after I cleaned and reorganized it, and I thought…” She blinked, deciding it was better not to say exactly what she’d thought, that it’d be of benefit to everyone to remove every trace of his ex-wife from the room in which he slept night after night—especially of benefit to her. “If you don’t like it,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll put everything back the way it was. I’ll even repaint the walls.”
Orren stared at her for what seemed like an eternity, then he rubbed a hand over the top of his head and said tiredly, “Guess we’d better go take a look at it.”
Jean Marie ran ahead and smugly threw open the door, while Chaz rushed forward to exclaim that he liked the new room, he thought it was swell, he wished it was his room. Orren paused to apologetically pat his son’s head and say, “One of these days it will be your room, Chaz, just as soon as I finish the new master bedroom. Promise.”
The rather forced smile that Chaz gave his father in return for that promise made it clear that the boy didn’t figure it would be kept anytime soon. From the grim expression on Orren’s face, Mattie concluded that Chaz was correct; a conclusion which did nothing to calm the butterflies beating madly in her stomach. She held her breath as Orren moved into his room and abruptly stopped, shock registering on his face. Mattie closed her eyes, biting her lower lip to stifle a moan of distress. Suddenly Orren rounded on her.
“I don’t believe this!”
Feeling sick, Mattie pressed a hand to her abdomen and quickly said, “I’ll put it all back, I swear. I’ll do it before I go home tonight.”
Orren lifted his hands to his hips. “No way!”
“But—”
Throwing his arms out, he whirled. “This is great! It’s wonderful! I can’t believe you did this without spending a cent!” Suddenly he whirled back. “You didn’t, did you? Spend any money, I mean, because if you bought stuff, it’ll have to go back. I can’t afford—”
“No!” she interrupted. “I didn’t buy a thing! I just sort of…rearranged stuff.”
He grinned and pivoted to take another look. “This is amazing. You’re a genius, Mattie, I swear you are! Man, I’m sure glad I didn’t throw any of this stuff away. I nearly stomped that pail there, and I can’t tell you how many times I meant to burn those old crooked fence posts!”
“I he’ped!” Yancy said around the thumb in her mouth.
“Me, too!” Chaz admitted proudly.
“They all did,” Mattie said, tossing a glance in Jean Marie’s direction.
Jean Marie clamped her jaw and glared at her, tears gathering in her eyes. She advanced on her father. “You don’t like all this junk, do you?”
Orren smiled, completely missing the import of the question. “I like it real fine, Red. Y’all did a good job.”
“But what about Mama’s curtains?” she cried.
Orren turned a confused face at Mattie. “I put them away,” she said softly. “I thought if…when the girls get a room of their own, they might like to use them in there.”
“Now that’s a good idea,” Orren said a bit too heartily, finally having divined the problem. “You’ll like that, won’t you, Red? Maybe we can put up one of those borders you see in all the stores these days, too.”
“And we can dye the curtains and bedspread to match,” Mattie offered helpfully. “With some pretty throw pillows and a nice scarf or two we could—”
Crying out in frustration and rage, Jean Marie tore from the room and out of the house. Sighing, Orren bowed his head in defeat.
“I’m so sorry,” Mattie said. “I didn’t realize how sensitive she is about her mother’s things. I shouldn’t have made any changes without consulting you first, either. Maybe we should put everything back.”
Orren shook his head. “Mattie, I owe you a debt of gratitude. You read me just right, figuring what I’d like and all, and you did a fine job in here. I never imagined what all you could do for us when I hired you! Makes me wish I could keep you on past the end of summer, but since everybody will be going back to school, you included…. Well, never mind that. The thing is, I like this room a whole lot better now than I ever did before, and Red has to accept the fact someday that her mother isn’t ever coming back. I wish I knew what to say to her to make her understand. Lord knows I’ve tried, and I reckon I’ll just have to keep on trying. But you don’t owe anybody any apologies. Now, if it’s all right with you, I’ll wash up and go talk to her while you get dinner on the table. My belly’s beating against my backbone, I’m so hungry, and whatever you’ve cooked up in there sure smells good.”
Mattie smiled and nodded. “All right. It won’t take long. The meat loaf’s done, and the macaroni’s almost ready.”
Orren licked his lips and made hungry noises while she turned away and headed for the kitchen. He slipped out the door a few minutes later, and soon after that returned with a pouty Jean Marie in tow. Her eyes and nose were red from crying, and her attitude had not noticeably improved, but she said nothing as she sullenly ate her dinner, then disappeared into the back of the house.
Mattie made short work of the post-dinner cleanup, while Orren spent time with the youngest two girls before putting them down for the night. When she gathered her things to make her usual low-key departure, however, Orren appeared to thank her once again for all she’d done.
“You are one talented young lady,” he said. “I don’t know anyone your age anywhere who could do what you’ve done. One of these days you’ll make a fine wife and mother.”
He hadn’t the least idea how dismaying his words were to Mattie. None of her efforts, she realized, had made him see her as the adult she was inside, if not outside. Perhaps it was time for another sort of transformation, this time of herself.
Chapter Three
It was just a sundress, and that’s exactly what Mattie told her father, patiently, unconcernedly, determinedly. He didn’t buy a syllable of it.
“That thing’s indecent!” he exclaimed, walking a circle around her, the better to become outraged by the strapless bandeau top and the short slit skirt that exposed the matching short-shorts. “You’ve worn bathing suits less revealing than that!”
“And will again,” she assured him nonchalantly. “In fact, if you prefer, I could wear one today and save myself the same hassle.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She sighed and flipped the long tail of her hair over her shoulder. “We’re going to lie out in the sun today,” she explained, delivering the well-thought-out excuse. “The kids should start swimming lessons soon, and I want us all to get a little sun first. I don’t want to have to change my clothes twice to manage it.”
Evans scowled but couldn’t argue with her logic. Amy stepped into the fray, lifting a loving hand to her husband’s shoulder, sending a knowing look to Mattie. “Honestly, Evans, you sound like the father of a twelve-year-old instead of a twenty-year-old.”
“She’s not twenty!”
“She’s closer to twenty than nineteen.”
“That dress would be indecent at fifty!”
Amy smirked. “Now I agree with you there, unless, of course, the fifty-year-
old should have a body like a twenty-year-old. Give over, Dad. Your little girl is all grown up and has a perfect right to wear anything she wants.”
“Oh, and I have no right to voice my opinion, I suppose,” Evans sulked.
“You have as much right to voice your opinion, Daddy, as I have to ignore it,” Mattie said blithely, and with that she went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “See you tonight. Have a good day. Bye, Amy.” Trilling her fingers at her stepmother, she sauntered down the hall, ignoring the heatedly whispered conversation taking place behind her. Poor Daddy. How upset he would be if he knew upon what campaign she had just embarked!
Orren frowned at the Mattie who stood before him, busily pinning up her hair. If she was not careful that so-called dress was going to show more than it already did, and it showed quite enough already—more than enough. The sight of all that pale golden skin made him decidedly nervous. His hands were shaking, for pity’s sake! Not that he found her attractive exactly, not in the same way as he’d found Gracie attractive. Heavens, no. Gracie was sexy, blatantly so, almost embarrassingly so. She had often referred to herself as a “hot property,” and no one had ever argued with the assessment. Gracie breathed heavy sexuality and had from a very early age. He imagined she’d appeared more worldly and womanly at twelve than Matilda Kincaid did at twenty. There was something innocent about Mattie, something wholesome. Actually, coupled with her very sleek, almost exotic beauty, it was pretty heady stuff. But it just wasn’t the kind of thing that really attracted him. Not really, really attracted him, anyway. Of course not. She was much too young, just a girl. He scraped his fingers through his hair, just to have something to do with his hands, and cleared his throat.