by Liza Palmer
As I walk a bit farther out of the bustling churchyard, I let my eyes rest on Merry Carole and I’m calm. Family. Love. The promise of time together. Neal continues to flip through papers and I wait for him to tell me that he thanks me for my résumé, but— Neal continues, “Aha, there it is. I’m so sorry. I spoke to Brad Carter over at the McCormick and he had some great things to say about you. We’d love it if you would come to Portland and head up the kitchen here at the Raven.” The Raven? I sent out so many résumés, it’s hard to remember. I finally land on the little neighborhood grill in Portland. Family owned, really cute place.
“I applied for the sous-chef position, is that—”
“The reason I’m late getting back to you is because we’ve been restructuring a bit here, which you know is fancy speak for letting our executive chef go. That’s where you come in,” Neal says.
“As the executive chef?”
“We thought the broad spectrum of your experience made you the clear choice for us.” I’m stunned. I continue to walk out of the churchyard.
“This is really an honor and I’m very flattered; is there any way that I can think about your offer and get back to you?”
“Oh sure. Sure. I understand that it’s a lot. I have your e-mail. I’ll send you the details: pay—the chef’s residence is on the same plot of land—hours, and vacation days.”
“That sounds perfect,” I say.
“Queenie, I’ll need to hear back from you by the end of next week, you understand.”
“Sure, and once again thank you so much for thinking of me.” Neal and I sign off and I look up to find myself just outside the church cemetery. The bustling churchyard is alive with good news and I freeze.
The broken-down picket fence that corrals North Star’s departed is covered in vines and overgrown underbrush. I creak open the gate, wiping the dust and dirt from the wood onto my Sunday best. I tuck my cell phone into my pocket and pick my way through the ancient headstones and makeshift crosses, names of cowboys branded onto them as if they were cattle. I swallow hard as the emotion burns in my throat. I chalk the sensation up to what happened with the McKays. Chalk it up to a lot of things.
What am I doing here? Is it curiosity? Not enough melodrama for one day? Do I think after all I’ve gone through in the last few weeks I’ll have a different response to this cemetery than the one I had all those years ago? Is this a test? Some kind of ritual I can put myself through to prove that I’m over her? Is this about Yvonne Chapman and her fresh strawberry ice cream? Black holes and dusty plots of land. Flaming red hair and cruel blue eyes. The first of many tears slides down my cheek.
The humidity settles around me as I make my way to where I know Mom is buried. The grass itches and tickles my legs, the dampness of the air and the earth gather inside my sandals as I walk around the graves and headstones like a cat burglar trying to avoid the laser beams in an upscale museum.
Brandi-Jaques Wake
1963–1998
The Number One
She was only thirty-five? I remember her as being so much older. She was barely older than I am now. Within a matter of seconds, I’m losing control and unable to stop my own bawling. How did I get here? My sobs are coming from a place so deep it terrifies me. The only word that comes to me is why. Why? Why me? Why you? Why did it have to end that way? Why weren’t you the mother I wanted you to be? Why didn’t you love me? Why wasn’t I enough?
“Queenie, sweetheart?” Merry Carole comes up behind me.
“I’m fine,” I howl. I’m wailing like a lunatic at our mother’s grave.
“Oh sweetie,” Merry Carole says, pulling me in close. Rose water and Aqua Net. Home. Love.
“Why didn’t she love us?” I ask, my face buried in the crook of Merry Carole’s neck.
“I don’t know, my love. I don’t know,” Merry Carole says.
“Aren’t parents supposed to love their kids?” I ask.
“Apparently not,” Merry Carole says. We break apart from each other and she wipes my tears away, smoothing my bangs down. Cal passes me a handkerchief. I thank him and I’m momentarily embarrassed that he’s here to see my full-blown breakdown.
“Aren’t you supposed to tell me that people love in different ways and—”
“I don’t want to lie to you, sweetness and light,” Merry Carole says, her chin up in pure defiance.
“Not even in my weakened state?”
“Especially not in your weakened state,” Merry Carole says with a smile.
“I think I’m going to go see the little plot of land,” I say, blowing my nose.
“Honey, you don’t have to,” Merry Carole soothes.
“No, why not make today a hat trick?” I say.
“Do you even know what a hat trick is?” Cal asks.
“Three of something?”
“Yeah, but it’s usually three good things; I’m not so sure—”
“No, this is good. These are good,” I say. I must look like a wreck.
Cal just keeps quiet and takes my word for it.
“Will you tell Reed, Cal, and the girls I’ll see them at supper later?”
“Sure.”
“You can say something, you know.” I motion to Mom’s grave.
“I’ve made my peace,” Merry Carole says, entirely calm.
“Am I going to get there?” I ask, envying her cool demeanor.
“Today was a start,” Merry Carole says as we walk out of that tiny cemetery and leave Mom behind us. Hopefully for good this time.
“Okay . . . well, I’ll be home in a bit.”
I walk away from the church and stop at the DQ for a double-dip swirl. I take the side streets, licking my ice-cream cone and observing life in North Star. I feel cleansed. Baptized, almost. I finish my cone just as I make the final turn down the tree-lined street to where the shack used to be.
In the light of day I can see that it’s all but gone now. The Hall of Fame, just next door, is closed. It is Sunday after all. I walk through the dirt toward what’s left of the shack. My sandals are already wrecked, what’s a bit more? The rotted-out shack is now just fallen planks of wood that once were walls. They lean haphazardly against the concrete wall at the back of the property line. I shift and move the planks around trying to unearth something that I don’t even know I’m looking for. And yet I find it. That old plank Mom nailed to the front of this shithole is just as rotted as the rest of them. WAKE. Four letters. No punctuation. I brush off some of the muck, but think better of it as splinters and spiders threaten to attack at any moment. The branded name is blackened and deep into the wood. Scarred.
“Now I’m just being melodramatic,” I say to myself, trying to look around the little piece of land with fresh eyes, just as Merry Carole told me to.
I feel nothing. No swell of emotion like I felt back in the cemetery. I look out to the street in front of the shack, getting reacquainted with the view I stared at day in and day out as a kid while I worked behind that take-out window. And that’s when the emotion chokes me. When I think about that kid. The kid who waited and tried to be enough for a selfish, feckless parent. I’d watch down that street for Mom. I remember trying to look busy and proficient as she walked up only to have her shove me aside and tell me I was doing it wrong. I search my memory bank hoping to find some tender nugget of a memory of her and can’t find a one.
I’ve heard people talk about loving their kids or friends or parents, but not liking them. As if love is this inalienable right that trumps a person’s bad behavior and neglect. Our society needs parents to love their kids. We joke about how hard parenting is, but there’s an understanding that parents would do anything for their kids. It’s heresy to suggest anything different. As I stare out at that street, that unchanged street, I realize that I’ve been wrong this entire time. Just like the movies I’d studied about the Small-town Girl in the Big City, I’d fallen for the mythology of the incompetent parent who makes good in the end. As I stand in the ruins of what
Mom once built, I know I won’t find some secret letter where she finally proclaims her undying love for Merry Carole and me. I’ve tried to fit my mother into society’s idea of what a parent should be. And within those parameters, I’m cast as the monster. I’m the unlovable child.
What happens if I switch the paradigm?
What happens if I finally see my mother for who she was? A woman so incapable of love that her entire life was about what she wanted, how she’d been wronged, and how the world owed her. Merry Carole and I were just two rusty nails her dress got snagged on as she searched for her real life. This isn’t some big philosophical discussion about parents and children at all. It’s about one woman. One inexcusable woman who saw people as stepping-stones. Including her own kids. As the ideas run through my head, the leaves rustling in the tiniest of breezes, I feel a coldness run through me.
A woman whose life was only about what she wanted, how she was wronged, and how the world owed her.
The words bump and ping around in my head. How did I not see that these patterns repeat themselves? I’m sure Mom felt the same about her mother. I remember hearing terrible stories about the woman whose recipes I now make by heart.
So here I am. Staring down the same street I did when I was a kid. Who am I waiting for now? Who am I trying to look busy for? Who do I think is going to shove me aside and tell me I’m doing it wrong? I turn the rotted piece of wood over and over in my hand as I replay Merry Carole’s simple answer of “apparently not.” The quiet settles around me once again.
I choose to go forward.
I throw the rotted piece of wood back in the pile with the rest of the planks and walk down the street, back home to Merry Carole’s. I’ll call Warden Dale first thing tomorrow morning.
I will make Yvonne Chapman’s last meal.
I walk down the manicured path to Merry Carole’s house. She and Cal are standing in the kitchen. I walk in and they immediately stop talking.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my announcement taking a backseat.
“I was on the computer and your e-mail was open; I didn’t know it was yours. I heard a ping and I thought it was mine, you know?” Cal says, looking from me to Merry Carole.
“An e-mail came for you,” Merry Carole says, holding out a sheet of paper. I walk over to the kitchen and take the sheet of paper from Merry Carole. It’s from Neal Howard at the Raven. He’s confirming our conversation about the executive chef position and following up with some details.
“Merry Carole, I—”
“You had no intention of staying,” she says.
“No, I mean . . . yes,” I say, stuttering and stumbling over my words.
“I actually thought you were . . . no, never mind. You just do what you want,” Merry Carole says, opening up the refrigerator. She slams the door immediately. “You told me you were going to at least stay for the wedding.”
“Let me explain,” I say.
“Are you taking it?” Merry Carole asks.
“I don’t know . . . I don’t—”
“It says they want you to start next week. So you’re also going to miss Cal’s opening game,” Merry Carole says, steadying herself on the breakfast bar. Cal just looks . . . crushed. Merry Carole walks through the kitchen toward the front door, sweeping past me in a rage. “Cal, why don’t we go on over to Reed’s for supper.” Cal nods and walks out of the kitchen and right past me. He can’t even look at me. Merry Carole wraps her arm around the boy, and they walk out of the house, slamming the door behind them.
What have I done?
26
Leftover fried cherry pie and not enough coffee in the world
I wake up early the next morning. Cal’s bumping around the house before his morning run. I flip my sheets off and walk out into the rest of the house just as the front door slams.
“Come on,” I say to a darkened house. I grab Cal’s sweatshirt by the door and run out of the house in bare feet and my pajamas pulling the sweatshirt on over my head. Cal’s still stretching just in front of the salon as I come barreling toward him.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“On my run,” he says, bending over for another stretch.
“I know yesterday was weird, but I swear—”
“This whole thing goes away when you tell me and Momma that you’re not taking that job. You get that, right?” Cal asks.
“Yeah.”
“So . . .”
“You know how when I first got here you asked me why anyone would want to leave New York City and come back to North Star?”
“Yeah.”
“And that all you can think about right now is going to UT and getting out of North Star?”
“Yeah.”
“But do you know that in-between place? Where you’re excited to go to UT, but kinda scared to leave home?”
“Yeah,” Cal says, not able to look at me.
“That’s where I am right now. I’m in that in-between place. I don’t quite know where I want to be,” I say.
“Momma wants you to stay here,” Cal says, finally taking out his earbuds.
“I know,” I say.
“Are you wearing my sweatshirt?” Cal asks, tilting his head as it dawns on him.
“Yeah . . . sorry,” I say.
“All right then. I’m going to go ahead and run. I’m not trying to leave without you, but West is waiting.”
“No, that’s all right. You go on ahead, but I’m back on tomorrow. Say hi to West for me,” I say. Cal beams. We’re both thinking it. Say hi to your brother for me.
“Yeah, all right,” he says, putting his earbuds back in and running out through the center of town. I watch him trot away through the early morning haze. I walk down the driveway and back into the house.
“What are you doing?” Merry Carole asks, standing in the kitchen.
“I was just talking to Cal,” I say.
“What were you saying to him?”
“I was just trying to explain to him where I’m at.”
“You are so full of shit.”
“What?”
“He wants you to stay. I want you to stay. You don’t get to explain away why you’re leaving again and feel good because you made it sound poetic,” Merry Carole says, switching on the coffeemaker.
“I get to figure this out. You don’t get to bully me into doing what you want me to do,” I say, walking toward her.
“Bully you?!”
“Yes!”
“Oh, that’s just fine. That’s just fine. We’re some stopover every ten years while you get your life together, and if I ask you to actually think about being a part of this family, I’m a bully.”
“You’re not a stopover,” I say.
Merry Carole dismisses me out of hand with flicked fingers and a sniff. She can barely look at me.
I continue, “You want me to pick up right where Momma left off? Is that it? I open up that shack and spend day in and day out making the Number One for the drunks in that bar, all the while being Everett’s mistress? You get your life and I get hers? That’s your plan?” I walk into the kitchen and face her.
“Of course not.”
“Then tell me what my life looks like if I stay. Because from where I’m sitting, I don’t see a future except maybe being mercifully put down by Everett’s future wife when she finds us in bed together and then I get a gravestone with my most famous recipe on it. Not that I was a mother, or that I’ll be missed. No. Our mother’s legacy is a well-made chicken fried steak,” I say.
“Queenie, I—”
“I don’t know my place here. You say I can have that land, but what am I supposed to do with it? I want to drink the coffee in front of me, Merry Carole. I want to chug it down and luxuriate in it, I swear to God. And I love being here with you and Cal more than anything in the world, but . . . I can’t stomach being the spinster aunt who pops up in the background of all of your family photos.” Tears stream down my cheeks.
“Come here,�
�� Merry Carole says, pulling me in for a hug. I shudder as she holds me tight.
“I become her if I leave and I become her if I stay,” I say, sobbing into the crook of her neck.
“All right now . . . all right now . . . shhhhh.” Merry Carole holds me tight, rocking us back and forth as she soothes me. I sob and wail as the epiphanies and realizations squirm and infest my entire body once again. I don’t know where I belong. I never have. I’ve been a stray dog trying to find someone to take me in for as long as I can remember. I was thankful just to find a quiet corner I could call my own where the most I could ask for, as far as comfort went, was a warm bed. Acceptance and being enough is my holy grail. So my life became about begging for scraps at the back door.
“I’m so sorry,” I say as we finally break apart.
“Don’t be,” Merry Carole says, swiping my bangs out of my eyes. She kisses me on my forehead, lingering there. I close my eyes as she smooths my hair. She nods; her brow is furrowed, her lips are pursed.
“I decided to make Yvonne Chapman’s meal,” I say.
“Good. Good,” Merry Carole says, her eyes darting around the kitchen as we finally collect ourselves.
“I’m thinking that decision probably has to do with this whole crying-marathon thing,” I say.
“I expect that’s that closure thing people like talking about.”
“We don’t have to decide everything right now,” I say.
“It’s that uncertainty part that I don’t like. I like my one hundred percent odds, you know,” she says, kissing me on the cheek. She turns around and pulls two coffee mugs from the cabinet. She pours coffee into each and passes me one.
“So we just go forward,” I say, trying out my theory. I inhale the luscious coffee smell.