by Karen White
As they walked back to the car, Ceecee and Boyd, Margaret and Reggie, with Bitty and the tip of her lit cigarette leading the way, Ceecee recalled the ribbons they’d placed in the Tree of Dreams, and she smiled to herself. I wish to marry the perfect man—handsome, kind, and with good prospects, and my love for him will be endless. It was only later when she was lying in bed and staring up at the moonlit sky that she remembered she and Margaret had wished for the same thing, and then she laughed out loud.
thirteen
Larkin
2010
A strong breeze followed me into Gabriel’s Heavenly Ice Cream & Soda, slamming the door behind me with a bang. A young girl with thick black braids stood behind the counter, wearing a red Gabriel’s hat with his trademark halo embroidered in gold in the middle. Her matching apron had the name of the shop in the center, and the devil’s forked tail and trident on one strap and a halo on the other. Besides unlimited ice cream, that apron had been the single reason why I’d wanted to work there when I was a teenager.
The girl smiled at me expectantly. I smiled back. “I don’t want anything—I’m looking for Gabriel. Is he in?”
Before she could reply, Gabriel appeared from the back room with a wide grin. “Well, look who’s here.” He turned to the girl. “Erin, would you please get us two small cups with a scoop of vanilla yogurt and granola sprinkles, and bring them to us at the table outside?”
As he held open the front door, which faced the Harborwalk, I asked, “How do you remember everybody’s orders?”
He pointed to his graying head. “Keeps me young. Besides, ice-cream orders are like fingerprints. Each one unique. I can tell everything I need to know about a person by what they order. If it’s lemon sorbet or peanut butter chocolate chip, or a banana split with extra fudge. Everything I need to know,” he said again, pulling out a chair for me before joining me at the table.
I leaned forward. “So, for a young man to order himself a frozen vanilla yogurt with granola sprinkles means what?”
“That he’s trying to impress the girl he’s with by ordering the same thing she ordered. And she’s trying to watch her weight even though it looks to me like it wouldn’t hurt her to gain a few pounds.”
I rolled my eyes. “I do allow myself ice cream when I want it. I just haven’t had too much of an appetite since I got back.”
“No change yet with your mama?” His eyes were warm and sympathetic, probably the reason I’d gravitated to his shop during my growing-up years. And, I freely admitted, the ice cream. It was the one place I could go when Ceecee and Mama were arguing about me where I could get comfort food and understanding.
I shook my head. “There’s been no change. My daddy and Ceecee remain hopeful, so I’m trying, too.”
“There’s nothing more you can do than remain hopeful. Me and the missus, we’ll keep praying for her. She’s been added to our prayer list at church, too.”
“Thanks,” I said with a smile, remembering sitting in church with Ceecee and my grandfather and listening as the interminable prayer requests were read out to the congregation. It wasn’t that we had so much sickness and misfortune in our community; it was more that people thought the good Lord needed to know about their sick dog or sprained foot. The memory made me smile now, but it made me nostalgic, too.
“So, Gabriel, now that I’m older, maybe you’ll tell me why you never hired me. I wanted to work here so badly, and every time I saw your Help Wanted sign in the window, I was always the first to apply.”
“Yes, you were. Always dressed neatly, respectful of adults, and you were smart. Yes, missy, you were a real smarty-pants. You would have made a great employee.”
“Then why? I’d practically run home crying every time you told me no. It hurt my feelings. Especially when you hired Joe Craigman. He couldn’t count change to save his life, and he always got the orders wrong.”
“True.”
“So why would you hire him and not me? I could calculate change in my head before he could do it on the cash register.”
Erin came out with our frozen yogurts, and Gabriel waited until she’d gone back inside.
“Because he didn’t have a mother who begged me not to hire him. Your mama didn’t think it was a good idea to have you working in an ice-cream shop.”
My mouth went dry as if all the air in my lungs had suddenly rushed out of it. “What?”
He shook his head. “That Ivy. Ceecee was always the one coming down and yelling at me for not hiring you, telling me how you were in tears over it.”
“I didn’t think Mama ever even knew I was interested in working here. And why would she care?”
Gabriel took a small bite of his yogurt, taking his time as if he wanted me to figure things out on my own. I shook my head. “I really don’t understand.”
“She knew one of the benefits of working here is that I offer all the ice cream you can eat to my employees, that’s why.”
I took a bite of my own yogurt, just to bring moisture back to my mouth, and because I had no idea of what I should say.
“They both wanted you to be happy. They just had different ideas on how to make that happen.” He gave me a contemplative look. “Your mama was always in a difficult place where you were concerned. She didn’t think she could be a good mother to you, but she couldn’t abandon you to Ceecee’s care completely. It just wasn’t her way. But trying to smooth the way between you and Ceecee was probably harder than dressing a flea. Ceecee can be as forceful as a hurricane when she’s got it in her mind to make people happy, and your mama was always trying to pretend that she wasn’t toting a broken heart. But they have always loved you something fierce. They just had different ways of showing it. And not always in a way that made sense.”
I stared down into my cup, drowning the granola bits in the melting yogurt. “You can say that again.” I met his eyes. “So, you knew about Mama’s first husband?”
He nodded slowly. “I knew the Altons real well. Good people. My own mama was a nurse, and when Mrs. Alton got sick and was put in a wheelchair, Mama cared for her in their house. Mr. Alton was president of the bank back then, and he gave me the loan to start my own business when I got back from ’Nam. And Ellis, well, that was a shame. He was a fine young man. A fine, fine young man. We all lost something when he got killed, but your mama especially. It takes a very strong person to survive such a thing.”
“She’s not strong,” I said softly. “I used to think so. I used to admire the way she lived her own life, even if it meant leaving me behind. I thought she was so brave, not caring what other people thought. I even wanted to be like her. Until . . .”
Gabriel’s voice was gentle. “Until what?”
I shook my head. “It’s complicated.”
“I’m good at complicated.” When I didn’t say anything else, Gabriel sat back in his chair. “You remember the murals on the back wall of the shop that changed with every season? Your mama would come in after the shop was closed at night and paint them for me. It was to thank me for not hiring you.” He placed a wrinkled hand over mine. “People have different ways of expressing love. It doesn’t mean the love is worth any less.”
Without a word, I stood and walked back into the shop and looked—really looked—at the mural on the back wall. In all the years I’d been coming to Gabriel’s, the changing murals had been awarded only a passing glance from me, a background not worthy of my notice. Like so many things.
I felt Gabriel standing behind me. “Did Mama paint this one?”
“Sure did. Just recently, in fact. It had been a few years since she’d done a mural for me on account of that arthritis in her one shoulder.”
I faced him. “She has arthritis?”
“Has for years. It’s hard for her to raise her arm, but she said it didn’t bother her too much when she was doing her furniture refinishing.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
Gabriel shrugged, his eyes meeting mine with frank directness. “Maybe because you never asked.”
I cringed inside, thinking about my new life in New York, how smart and professional and fit I’d become. How different I was from the girl I had once been—and yet, still completely self-centered. I turned back around to study the mural, waiting for my vision to clear. My breath left me again in a sigh.
It was a mural of an enormous live oak, with exaggerated sweeping branches, and two martin houses dangling from twine. But when I really looked at it this time, I recognized the Tree of Dreams—its heavy green foliage, its thick broad trunk with the opening like a mouth speaking to the viewer. The river ran behind it, and there, on the bank, were the backs of three girls sitting close together, their arms linked. One had hair that was neither light brown nor quite blond enough to be called blond, and one had short, burnished red hair. But the girl in the middle had gold hair that reflected the unseen sunlight, her head tilted back as if in laughter. It was hard to determine the ages of the women, but their dresses appeared to be from another time period—fifties or sixties; I wasn’t sure. There seemed to be filtered light around the central figure, making her appear to glow, the women on either side of her tilting their heads slightly toward her as if to acknowledge the golden-haired girl was the focus.
My eyes traveled up the branches of the tree, to where the limbs reached across the perimeter of the room, gourds dangling at sporadic intervals and seeming to project movement even on a static surface. I stepped closer, wondering if it was my imagination or if there seemed to be a brush of a lighter color inside the mouth of one of the gourds. A purple martin, or the fall of light from the painter’s perspective. Only the painter would know for sure. Or maybe she wanted ambiguity, wanted her viewers to think it was whatever they wanted.
I stepped back, bumping into Gabriel, who’d moved to stand behind me. “I need to get to the hospital and see Mama. I’ll give her your best when she wakes up.”
“You do that,” he said, walking me to the door.
“Thanks for the yogurt. How much do I owe you?”
“It’s on the house. For all the ice cream you didn’t get by not working here.”
I gave Gabriel a thumbs-up, realizing that if I pushed words past the ball in my throat, I might actually cry. As I walked away, Fats Domino singing “Ain’t That a Shame” from the store’s stereo followed me down the steps.
* * *
• • •
There had been something about the painting of three friends beside the Tree of Dreams that made me think of Mabry. We’d known each other since we were babies, sharing everything, including chicken pox when we were eight. There was nothing we’d ever kept from each other, mostly because it was impossible since our mothers were best friends and we went to the same school. Bennett, too, but since he was a boy, there were a few things I tried to keep from him such as when Ceecee had taken me shopping for my first bra, or when I’d finally gotten my period a whole year after Mabry.
I hadn’t pursued friendships with Josephine or any of my other coworkers at the ad agency. Friendship was such a complicated relationship, a perpetual give-and-take in which someone always ended up with a deficit. Growing up, I’d just never realized it, had never really thought about the nature of friendship. Until I had to.
I didn’t head straight to Ceecee’s house and my car to go to the hospital. Instead, my feet took me in the opposite direction toward Prince Street, where Mabry now lived with her husband and little boy. It was strange to think that the big, life-altering things had happened to her without my being a part of them. As little girls, we’d promised each other that we’d be each other’s maid or matron of honor, and Mabry had made me promise that I would sing at her wedding. I told her I would as long as I could pick the music. Since she was tone deaf, she’d readily agreed.
I wondered who she’d selected to sing and who’d been her maid of honor. And who she’d called first when she’d gotten engaged. It felt silly to be hurt by childhood promises that hadn’t come true. But it did hurt. Because back when we made those promises, Mabry had been my best friend.
I wasn’t sure why I’d headed down her street, and I certainly hadn’t expected to see her, but after I’d gone two blocks, I spotted her in the front yard of a 1920s-style Craftsman cottage with a red minivan in the driveway—something else we’d promised each other that we’d never own, much less park in our driveways, showing our shame at becoming suburban stereotypes. She was pushing a little boy in a tire swing hung from the branch of an adolescent oak.
My first instinct was to back away and pretend I hadn’t seen her, but she spotted me before I could do an about-face. She straightened and looked right at me. “Larkin?”
I stood still, hoping she’d turn away and go back to pushing her son in the tire swing, but she didn’t. “Nice car,” I said, standing in the street with my arms crossed.
She ran over to me and gave me a giant hug just like she’d done before. “Larkin—so happy to see you!” Indicating the van, she said, “Hey, at least it’s red—it’s just not the sports car I always said I wanted. Does it count that my husband has a red Mustang?”
“If it makes you feel better, I don’t even own a car, red or otherwise.”
She laughed, then grabbed my hand and pulled me across the yard to the tree and the little boy in the swing. “I want you to meet my son.”
He looked up at me and smiled, and I found myself laughing. “Oh, my gosh—you’re right. He looks just like Bennett. I hope your husband doesn’t mind.”
“Actually, Jonathan encourages the similarity since Bennett is so tall and my husband stopped at five feet eleven.” She smiled as she scooped up the little boy and set him on the ground next to her before squatting to be face level with him. “Remember that picture on the refrigerator of Mommy and Uncle Bennett dressed up as the Scarecrow, and I was the Tin Man for Halloween? And between us is Dorothy with the sparkly red shoes? That’s Larkin—who’s come all the way from New York to visit. Isn’t that nice?”
The little boy looked up at me with Bennett’s eyes and smiled. “Hello,” he said, his voice light and sweet.
Mabry stood and put her hands on the boy’s shoulders. “And this is Ellis,” she said proudly. “He just turned four.”
He reached out a hand to shake, and I almost missed it because I was still hearing the name. “Ellis?” I asked.
“E-l-l-i-s,” the little boy said proudly. “I can spell it.”
“He’s named after my uncle. He died before I was born, but I always liked the name. Mama thought it would be a nice way to honor her brother, so it’s a good thing Jonathan and I both liked it.”
I looked down at the little boy, thinking of the ribbon my mother had put in the tree all those years ago. Come home to me, Ellis. I’ll love you always. I cleared my throat. “My mother knew an Ellis. I wonder if it’s the same one.”
“It most definitely is. When I was pregnant, Mama told me about Ellis marrying Ivy. Just think—we could have been cousins.” Without even looking, she removed Ellis’s thumb from his mouth. “She got your mama’s permission because she wasn’t sure if she could tell me. From what she told me, it near broke your mama in half when he died. That’s why she never talked about him. It made her real happy when we told her we were going to name the baby after Ellis. She even threw the biggest baby shower for me.”
I stared at her unblinking for several moments, trying to understand how I could have been so in the dark about so many things. Because you never asked. “I can’t believe Ellis was your uncle, and married to my mother.”
Mabry nodded as she stroked Ellis’s fine hair across his forehead. “Yeah, weird, huh? She always planned to use the name for one of her own children, but after she got married, she had a lot of miscarriages. Her first full-term baby was a boy an
d she named him Ellis, but he only lived less than a week. That’s why Bennett’s named after her father, instead. You can imagine how thrilled she was that Jonathan and I liked the name. Not as thrilled as I was that he was a boy, or else she might have insisted I call my daughter after her favorite aunt.”
“Whose name was . . . ?”
“Euphemie.”
I widened my eyes in horror. “Was she serious?”
“Sadly, yes. You know how Mama gets when she makes up her mind about something. At least now you have a great name for one of your book characters.”
I looked away. “Yes, well, that’s not going to happen. That was just one of my many pipe dreams from when I was a kid.”
“Don’t say that. You’re really good. Don’t you already have several unfinished manuscripts under your bed or something? Can’t you just go back to one of them to get your juices flowing again? Seems to me that would be easier than starting from scratch. And you can always send me chapters to read—that’s the beauty of e-mail. I really miss reading your stuff.”
I wrinkled my nose, trying to get rid of the sting I felt behind my eyes. “Yeah, well, I think writing is one of those things like acting and singing that I mistakenly believed I was good at. To do the world a favor, I gave them all up.”
Ellis leaned against his mother’s leg and put his thumb back in his mouth. “I kind of agree with you about the acting and the singing, but not about the writing. You really were good.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I’m just being honest. Like I always have been. You just never listened before.”
I wanted to argue, but I knew she was right. She’d never been mean-spirited, but it had always been her way to be excruciatingly honest, regardless of whether her words were what I wanted to hear. All I’d needed to do to erase any doubts about my abilities would be to ask Ceecee, and she’d always agree with me. And Bennett and Mabry would then support whatever endeavor I’d committed myself to, regardless of how ill-advised. Which meant I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have. Like singing “Ave Maria” at a talent show to a tap dance I’d choreographed myself. I’d had a standing ovation, begun by Ceecee. It was only after I’d left Georgetown that I thought about the talent show, suddenly realizing that the rest of the audience had probably thought the entire performance was some kind of brilliant joke.