“It sure is nice a’ him to spend so much time helping me get the book ready and all before they even decide if they’re gonna buy it.”
Khaki smiled. “Patrick’s a good one. He just thought a manuscript would be stronger than a proposal in this case, and, looking at it all coming together, I have to say it’s amazing.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “And even if they cain’t publish it, I’m real happy that all them family recipes is in one place so I can pass ’em down. I almost got it all done for you to take a look at ’fore I send it back.”
I could hear you fussing just a little, ready to get outta the crib.
I turned to walk down the hall to get you. But then I turned back around right quick. “Thanks for makin’ it so I could do this. You never know. It might be my ticket outta here.”
Khaki gasped. “Out of here! You want to leave Kinston?”
“I’ll still see Carolina every week. Won’t nothing come ’fore that.”
The doorbell rung before we could finish talkin’. I grabbed you and ran downstairs.
“I thought I might find you here,” Buddy said, when I opened the door.
I smiled, my legs feelin’ right like Jell-O.
“I was just thinking,” Buddy said, “you been here workin’ so much I thought you might want a little rest. I can make it through the market alone this week if you wanna catch up on your sleep.”
I guessed Buddy didn’t know that goin’ to the market with him’s the best part a’ my week. I shook my head. “Nah. I like bein’ there right good. Kinda feels like home, you know?”
He smiled. “All right. I didn’t want you to quit coming or nothin’. I’s just trying to be gentlemanly.”
I could feel that blush rising up my cheeks. He was getting ready to walk away, and I realized I didn’t want him to. “So, Buddy,” I said, real quick before he could get turned around good, “speaking a’ the market, I got something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes. I’ll plant fall crops and help you keep going to the market all year round.”
“Are you sure, I mean—”
He put his hand up to his cowboy hat and shook his head. “Jodi, I know you’re still right young so maybe you don’t get this without me being real clear: I’d do pretty much anything in this world for you.”
I couldn’t believe he said that. My heart was poundin’ so hard I couldn’t even say nothing.
So Buddy just kept on. “You and me both know them parsnips’ll make it all year and the garlic too. We can plant us some peas and onions, rutabaga, arugula, cauliflower. I thought we’d do some herbs too. Cilantro and dill do real good in the cold.”
I cleared my throat, trying to regain my consciousness from Buddy saying he’d do near anything for me. My voice came out kinda shaky when I said, “That sounds great. Peas is one of my favorite things to can. They were my grandma’s favorite. And dill is so good on them pickles I want to make.”
“Great,” Buddy said. “It’s a plan. I love working, so I’m right excited about the whole thing.”
Right then, that sister a’ Khaki’s, she didn’t even say hello, just ran on past me and Buddy like we weren’t even there.
Buddy raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, I guess I oughta let you get back to it.”
“Hey, thanks,” I said. “It’s real good for me to be working.”
Buddy winked at me. “It’s right good for us all.”
I closed the door and followed Khaki’s sister, practically floatin’ on a cloud from gettin’ to see Buddy when I weren’t even expecting it. I turned my face right up toward yours, thinkin’ how it really did feel like you was my niece now. When they said something ’bout you being their girl, I didn’t even think, Yeah, because you carried and gave birth to her. There hadn’t been one time lately I’d tried to stuff you in my shirt and get you on back to the trailer with me.
Virginia, she barely peered in at Grace and said, “Oh, she’s beautiful.”
She lay right up there beside Khaki and them tears started flowing and a-flowing.
Seeing as how she just give birth, that Khaki got to cryin’ real hard too. She said, “Please stop crying. It hurts my incision.”
I handed Khaki a tissue, and Virginia grabbed it outta my hand real quick. I rolled my eyes big enough that she could see. I weren’t nobody’s sister, but I knew it weren’t okay to dump your problems on a new momma no matter who she is.
But Khaki, she got to comforting Virginia. “It’s okay, sis. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to find someone new and better, and you’re not even going to miss Allen.”
“But I’ve been with him since high school,” she sobbed. “I haven’t been on a date in twenty years.”
Khaki nodded real supportive and sobbed back, “When Alex died, and I had to start dating again, it was so awful. I wished he would be alive and I didn’t have to find another man to love me.”
I weren’t sure it’s exactly the same when your husband dies as when he leaves you for his daughter’s preschool teacher. I rolled my eyes again. I ain’t never been too tough. I mean, I let men walk all over me and my momma tell me I ruined her life and was too afraid to go for some things I really wanted. But I was gettin’ just good-feeling enough from my new job and whatnot that I started to stand up for myself—and the people I loved—a little bit more. Plus, I’d been up dern near all night trying to perfect my recipe for dilled green bean pickles, figuring if the flavor was better when they was hot packed or cold packed. My fingers were sorer than all get-out from that bean snapping, and I’d had just about enough.
“Virginia,” I said real firm like. “I gotta get Alex, and Khaki, she needs to get to napping.”
It were like she weren’t even crying all a’ sudden. “It’s okay. I’ll stay here with Khaki and get her anything if she needs it.”
I made my lips real tight and thin. “Visiting hours is over.”
Virginia looked at Khaki real sad like she’s some puppy needs saving, but Khaki shrugged. “Whatever the nurse says.”
“I don’t know who you think you are,” Virginia hissed like a wet cat as I walked her to the door.
For the first time in my entire life I didn’t think I was anyone. I damn well knew.
Khaki
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
I absolutely love decorating with the color pink. While I don’t think it has to be only for little girls’ rooms, Graham wasn’t too keen on the idea of having his house resemble a princess palace. So, we never found out the sex of baby Grace, but when your daddy decided she was a girl, I went with his instinct and had that room painted pink before he could even tell me to wait. I had picked a rug, curtains, a crib, a changing table, an armoire, a diaper pail, a toy chest, a bookshelf, a mirror, a pair of paintings, and a store’s worth of clothes, shoes, and baby blankets. What I had failed to choose was the most important and by far the most difficult thing: a nanny.
The last thing you want to do when you get home from the hospital and are juggling three under five is look for a new nanny. I had intended to have this all worked out before Grace was born, but, obviously, I thought I had three more weeks.
Looking for a nanny is, to me, essentially the same as dating. If I know there’s no chance I’m going to marry you, I don’t waste a bunch of time. When my first interview of the day walked through the door, though, I thought that maybe we’d go ahead and say our vows so I could get back in bed. She had long blond hair, crystal-blue eyes, a clear complexion, and a voice like a midnight train rolling down the tracks. I loved her immediately.
“I thought you might want some references,” she practically whispered, handing me a list of names and phone numbers. “I used to be a full-time nanny for four children, and it was the best experience of my life.”
I tried to shift positions but found it too painful, so I stayed slouched down on the couch instead of sitting up straight. “Do you have any experience with babies?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Two of the four children were twins, and I helped their parents bring them home from the hospital.”
Charlie walked in about that time, throwing a handful of peanuts into her mouth and handing me a plate of the orzo with vegetables that had been the only thing I could stomach since I got home. Charlie smiled weakly, glowered at me, and said, “Sorry to interrupt.” She walked around behind that field of glowing blond and mimed, Are you crazy?
I smiled like nothing had happened. My husband and I had spent decades trying to be together. It was doubtful that one dead husband and one dumped-at-the-altar fiancée later he was going to have an affair with the nanny. Nevertheless, I could hear Mother’s voice in my head. “When you hire a nanny you make sure she’s old, heavy, and unattractive. In a weak moment, a man might be with a woman who’s old or heavy or unattractive. But things would never be so bad that he would succumb to all three.”
The tiny me in my head pushed away Mother like you push away Alex when he’s trying to get a toy you’re playing with. (It’s so cute!) My nanny candidate continued telling me that she had formerly been a vegan chef and liked to cook and clean when the children’s schedule permitted it. “I don’t believe in sitting around,” she said, and I almost cried, picturing her folding the five loads of laundry per day that our family now produced. I’d read that cloth diapers prevent diaper rash, and I couldn’t bear the thought of those raw little tushies.
I was about to say, “You’re hired,” cancel the rest of my afternoon appointments, and go on about my day when I asked, “Is there anything else I should know about you?”
“Well,” she demurred, teeth whiter than freshly fallen snow gleaming at me. “I’m having a baby five months from now, and I’m planning to stay home for six months.” Then she had the nerve to add, “Do you pay for maternity leave?”
I gritted my teeth, forced a smile like Alex into church clothes, and said, “We’ll be in touch.”
As I slammed the door, Stacey sauntered in like a ballerina, her curly brown hair pulled up in a ribbon, and said, “Surely you aren’t crazy enough to hire her.”
“She’s pregnant,” was all I said in reply.
Greg came in and said, “Pregnant or no, she can be my nanny.”
Charlie slapped his arm.
I said, “She had the nerve to ask if I would pay her for maternity leave.”
“Maybe you should have asked if you could help with her baby,” Stacey said, and we all laughed. I writhed in pain and shot her a look. “No one is allowed to say anything funny for four more weeks.”
Stacey and Charlie agreed to take over the next four interviews so that I could get some much-needed rest. Three hours that felt more like five minutes later they were up in my room, plopping résumés on my desk with a pleasing “thunk.” Charlie dropped the first one and said, “Scientologist.”
Stacey cringed and said, “If we’ve learned anything from Katie Holmes, it’s that you don’t mess with that no matter how sexy it is.”
Another slam of paper and Charlie pointed between her legs and said, “Inappropriate piercing.”
Stacey shuddered.
I put my hand up. “Wait a second. Do we care about that?”
“We don’t care so much about the piercing as that we’ve known this person for twenty minutes, and she told us all about it,” Stacey said.
“In an interview to be your nanny,” Charlie added.
She had a point. “Okay. Please have good news for me on this next one.”
Another thump and Charlie said, “Hate to tell you, sweetheart. Criminal record.”
I peered at Charlie. “How on earth do you know that?”
“Please, I’m a lawyer,” she said like she was saying, Please, I’m in the FBI.
I put my hands over my eyes and said, “Well, that settles it. Stacey, you’re never going back to New York, and, Charlie, you and Greg are going to have to sell Mrs. Jacobs’s house and move in here.”
“Don’t give up yet,” Stacey said in her best motivational speaker tone. “You have one more interview at four thirty.”
When Diane (pronounced Dee-ahn) breezed through my front door, I have to admit that I judged her on her outer appearance. She looked a little like the Wicked Witch of the West, with long, unruly gray-and-white hair, glasses, a pointy nose, and an all-black outfit.
“At least you don’t have to worry about your husband screwing her,” Charlie said out of the corner of her mouth.
I had to clear my throat to keep from laughing. She met only two of Mother’s three criteria, but I thought that maybe being skinnier than the stray cats wandering around downtown might be as big a turnoff as being overweight.
You crawled up to her, put your hand on her leg, and didn’t even cry when she picked you up. You were fascinated with her glasses all through our interview, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I had found the one. When she said, “I’ve been so lonely since my husband passed away,” I felt myself tear up. When she added, “So I’m available for nights, weekends, and I could even go away with you if you wanted,” the tears dried faster than a bathing suit in the sun.
I held my breath when I asked, “Is there anything else I should know about you?”
She shook her head and said, “Just that I absolutely love children, and they tend to love me too.”
That was clear from the fact that, for a child who was into everything and never stayed still, you had sat with Diane for forty-five minutes, examining her strange jewelry. I looked at Charlie and Stacey, and their knowing glances confirmed my thoughts: Diane was going to work out great.
She had four children, eleven grandchildren, and decades of baby-raising experience; I couldn’t think of anyone better. So I sent you and Diane to join Alex in the playroom while I went upstairs to feed Grace. We had agreed that for a week Diane would come over for an hour or so at a time so you could all get acclimated to each other.
When I walked back downstairs, gripping the rail for dear life, realizing how much we actually use those poor, incision-ridden stomach muscles to do everything, I heard Alex laughing. I was thinking that I sure had made the right decision with Diane, and said, “What’s so funny, honey?” I noticed Diane in the corner, holding you on her lap, looking like Stacey when she’s deep in meditation.
Alex started laughing all over again and said, “Mommy, we’re talking to ghosts.”
I could feel the confusion written all over my face. “You’re pretending there’s a ghost in here?”
Diane piped up in an eerily monotone voice like a Clear Eyes commercial gone wrong, “I am a medium, and I’m helping a soul cross over.”
“Now?” I asked, my voice getting high and squeaky like a bike wheel in need of WD-40.
She cracked one eye and said, “It’s a gift, not a time clock. I can’t turn it on and off.”
With that, I snatched you off her lap, doubling over in pain, and said, “Thank you very much, Diane, but I don’t think we’ll be needing your services.”
She got up, looking befuddled (I mean, honestly, why would a person care if her nanny was helping souls cross over instead of watching her three children?), and handed me her card on the way out. “This is a very old house,” she said. “I sense a high frequency of paranormal activity here.”
I nodded. “Of course you do.”
The house was actually only ten years old, so the logical part of me knew that Diane was mistaken. But it didn’t keep me from feeling totally creeped out.
“If your lights start flickering or you feel breath on the back of your neck at night, call me.”
Every hair on my body stood on end. I looked nonplussed, but I immediately w
ent in the house to call Graham and tell him that he had to come home right away, as we had a high level of paranormal activity. I could tell he was trying not to laugh when he said, “Okay, honey. I’ll leave the crew of twenty-five I’ve got in the fields and rush right over to save you from the monsters in the closet.”
“Not monsters,” I hissed like an aggravated cat. “Ghosts.”
“So I take it the nanny search isn’t going well.”
“Well, let’s see,” I said sarcastically. “We’ve had the pregnant chick, the pierced weirdo, the Scientologist, the convict, and now the medium. You could say this isn’t what I had pictured.”
“I’ll see if I can ask around for someone too, sweetheart.” He paused and then said, “Hey, you know . . .”
“Hey, you know what?”
“Jodi is working for us anyway and—”
“No,” I interjected, feeling my momma bear instincts rise to the surface like oil on water. I couldn’t decide if I was worried that Jodi would see how wonderful you were and want you back or if I couldn’t imagine asking someone to take care of a child she had birthed without getting to be her momma. Either way, it was a firm no.
“Maybe one of the guys has a wife or sister or somebody.”
I sighed. I thought of the laundry and cleaning that even the four-days-a-week cleaning lady couldn’t keep up with, the interminable amount of cooking that had to be done for children at different stages of eating, the hours on end of breast-feeding, the sleepless nights, the cupcakes for school, the field trips, the birthday parties. I didn’t know how I was going to do any of that much less fly back and forth to New York, promote a book, design homes, run a store, pay payroll taxes . . . “Maybe I should quit work.”
Graham laughed like the time Alex pulled his pants down and peed in front of church.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh, honey,” he said. “You’re not the kind of woman who can quit work and be okay.”
I wanted to argue, but I was sore and tired. Plus, I knew he was right. My children were my life, sure. But my work was my identity.
Dear Carolina Page 21