The Book of Peach

by Penelope Stokes J.

  Oh, I thought I loved Robert. And he probably thought he loved me, too. Maybe we did love each other, as much as we were able to love. But my friendships with Dell and Boone, Scratch and Alyssa and Imani, have taught me more about real love than I ever imagined.

  Even crusty, crazy old Hoot Everett and Purdy Overstreet have caught the bug. They’re getting married in two weeks. At the Heartbreak Cafe (where else?).

  Love isn’t all about irresistible urges and gushy feelings in the moonlight. It’s about finding people who value your soul, who help you stay centered, who call you to account, who affirm your intrinsic worth and value. It’s about doing the same for them and finding mutuality in relationship.

  Maybe someday I’ll fall in love again. Maybe at fifty or sixty I’ll find the love of my life—or at least the love of this life, this new life. Maybe God or fate or the universe will throw me into the arms of my last best love, the one who will truly see me—scars and cellulite and wrinkles and fault lines and all—and love me for my real self.

  Or maybe not. What I do know is that at forty-six, I’m not nearly as concerned about being old and alone as I was at forty-five.

  The check finally came through, the cashing out of my relationship with Robert. It may be true that you can’t put a price on love, but houses and cars and furniture can all be split, fifty-fifty.

  In the end, Robert kept everything—the 1922 Arts and Crafts bungalow we’d bought and renovated together, all the Mission oak furniture I loved, even the artwork. For a millisecond I wondered how his new girlfriend would like living in the house I’d created, but the moment passed, and I discovered I really didn’t care. I didn’t want any of it. I just wanted to be done.

  True to form, Robert sent me documentation on everything—the current appraisal on the house, a detailed estimate of the value of the contents, all very generous, all very civilized. More than enough for me to start over, to buy a place of my own and furnish it, to go back to my life and pick up where I left off.

  It was time to go home.

  But first I had some important business to attend to.

  In college, at the W, I once took a seminar on Flannery O’Connor. I remember the professor describing her writing process as “finding interesting characters and following them around to see what they’ll do.” Flannery would have loved Hoot Everett and Purdy Overstreet. She would have been at their wedding come hell or high water.

  And I wasn’t going to miss it, either.

  It was April Fool’s Day. I won’t even comment on the irony of that choice. The cafe was packed with all the people who loved Hoot and Purdy, and a lot of folks who were just downright curious.

  A huge two-tiered wedding cake sat in the center of the marble counter, surrounded by an odd assortment of pot-luck dishes in mismatched serving dishes, disposable tins, and Tupperware. I don’t know how the nose can discern among such mingled odors, but I caught a whiff of fried chicken, pork barbecue, corn bread, and chocolate.

  The minister for the occasion was the Reverend Lily Frasier, the new chaplain at St. Agnes Nursing Home. She was trying her best to maintain order and decorum, but with Hoot and Purdy this was easier said than done.

  She barely got out their full names—Herman Melville Everett and Priscilla Mayben Overstreet—before all hell broke loose. I never knew Purdy and I shared the same first name, but I had little time to think about the coincidence. The vows themselves were lost in the chaos. Hoot interrupted Reverend Lily, yelling, “I do!” before she even got the question out. Purdy demanded that she “skip the formalities and get on with it.”

  In the end it didn’t matter one bit. Everybody cheered when Hoot kissed Purdy—he took this as a sign that he ought to keep on going, which he did until she pushed him away and danced him across the room, crooning “I’ll Be Seeing You” at the top of her lungs.

  I watched it all from my accustomed booth in the back, but on this day I wasn’t writing in my journal. There’s a time for observing and a time for participating.

  Boone and Toni joined me in the booth, and Imani came to sit in my lap. I hadn’t told any of them I was leaving Chulahatchie; the timing hadn’t seemed quite right, especially today of all days. But I had brought a gift for Imani—the tiara from my reign as Soybean Queen. I put it on her head and kissed her on the cheek.

  “You mean I can keep it?” she said. “For all and forever?”

  I nodded. “For all and forever.”

  She hugged me around the middle until I thought I’d never breathe properly again. “I love you, Aunt Peach,” she said.

  “I love you, too.”

  It was a good thing the music was so loud. When the tears came, nobody caught me dabbing my eyes on a cocktail napkin. I recovered my composure, read the gold embossing on the napkin, and laughed out loud:Hoot and Purdy, Old but Not Yet Dead

  Five people at Hoot and Purdy’s wedding told me I looked beautiful. And I believed them. I felt beautiful, in this flowing eggplant-colored dress I’d found at the consignment shop. It concealed most of my figure flaws, but I couldn’t have cared less, one way or another.

  Hearing it from Boone and Dell and Fart Unger was a sight different from hearing it from Charles Chase—or, rather, Chase Haley. When he said I looked beautiful, I never really believed him. But I was desperate to think myself beautiful again, and he knew it, and he used it.

  One of these days the episode with Chase would seem like ancient history, a dim image from a half-forgotten nightmare. I was grateful beyond belief for Dell’s forgiveness, but while I waited for the memory to fade, I had to live with the awareness that I was not nearly as good a person as I’d thought myself to be.

  I was still musing about it when I turned the corner toward Belladonna and saw the flashing lights.

  24

  There’s something strangely anachronistic about police cars and ambulances and fire trucks and bars of red and blue lights clustered around a place like Belladonna. The house was born in a slower time, an era of lamplight and carriages and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. A gentler time—at least for the privileged few who dwelt in these opulent homes. Perhaps not so gentle for the slaves who chopped cotton, or the sharecroppers who took to the land after emancipation. Perhaps not so gentle for the teenage boys on both sides of the line who drained out their blood on the fields at Vicksburg and Sharpsburg and Shiloh.

  With images of bullets and bayonets and blood flashing across the back of my brain, I left my Honda at the curb and dashed up the brick sidewalk. Standing on the front verandah with his arms folded across his chest was the last person I wanted to see at the moment: the idiot sheriff who had arrested Scratch last December.

  “What happened?” I said. I tried to push by him into the house, but he blocked my way.

  “They’re bringing her out now.” He motioned with his head, and I peered past him to see the EMTs coming out of the parlor with Mama strapped to a rolling gurney. Her eyes were closed and her skin looked pale and clammy. The ludicrous thought flitted through my mind that she couldn’t be dead since her face wasn’t covered and they had an oxygen mask strapped to her mouth.

  This time the sheriff didn’t resist as I shoved past him and grabbed hold of the gurney’s side rail. “What happened?” I repeated.

  The paramedic looked across my mother’s body and into my eyes. She was about my age, but she was tan and fit and had the look of a woman who lived with a purpose. I wondered for a millisecond whether she was sizing me up and finding me wanting.

  “We think your mother’s had a stroke,” she said. Her voice was measured and calm, infused with a quiet confidence that caused some of my own anxiety to dissipate. “We’re taking her to the hospital now. Perhaps you and her friend could come together.”

  Her friend?

  I looked around. Standing in the big double doorway that led to the parlor was Gladys Dalrymple, whom everyone in the country club set called Gladdie. The woman was further from glad than anyone I had ever known or i
magined. Her daughter—named, with equal irony, Dymple—was just like her, a sour-faced girl without a dimple in her whole doughy face, unless you counted that green-persimmon pucker.

  Gladdie frowned at me. “This,” she hissed, “is all your fault. And after everything that woman’s done for you!”

  I opened my mouth to respond and shut it again. And then, without giving Gladdie the satisfaction of seeing my confusion and outrage, I spun on my heel and followed the EMTs out the door.

  “It wasn’t as bad as it might have been,” the doctor said. “She’s got some paralysis on the left side, and her speech will be difficult for a time, but she’s made good progress in the past week. In a couple more days I’ll release her to go home. She won’t get back everything she’s lost, but with therapy and some hard work, she ought to do fine.”

  He looked down at the chart and then back up at me. “You live with her, is that correct?”

  “Yes, but—” I paused. “Only temporarily. I was fixing to move back home as soon as I could find a place.”

  “And home is—” He consulted the chart again.

  “Asheville,” I supplied. “North Carolina.”

  “How far away is that?”

  “About ten hours.” I felt myself sinking in a quicksand so profound I might never again feel solid ground beneath my feet.

  The doctor shook his head. “She can’t be in that big old house alone,” he said. “Unless you want to consider assisted living or St. Agnes Nursing Home, she has to have someone with her.”

  I already knew, of course, who that someone would be. In the week since Mama’s stroke, I had talked to Melanie every night and to Harry only once. He was on the beach at Belize or scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef or something. All I got from him was, “You’re breaking up; I can’t hear you,” and “I know you’ll do what’s best for Mom. I’ll call you when I get back to the States.”

  Melanie, on the other hand, had plenty to say. Since Mama was in no immediate danger, she wasn’t going to fly to Mississippi all the way from California, but she sympathized with my plight. “I know it’s not your responsibility,” she said for the hundredth time, “but you’re the one who’s there. Mama’s got plenty of money. We can hire someone to take care of her. We can set her up in a really nice place where she’ll be looked after.”

  “She doesn’t want to leave Belladonna,” I said, also for the hundredth time. “You know how much she loves that old house.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Melanie said. She left the other half of the sentence unspoken: More than she loves you or me. “But Peach, she’s not in a position to make all the decisions anymore. For once in her life she can’t get everything she wants.”

  But she did.

  As usual.

  Before I brought Mama home, I had a long talk with the banker and then an even longer one with Tildy. Melanie was right about one thing: Mama could afford just about anything she needed or wanted. My daddy had done his job, at least according to the prevailing wisdom of his generation. Money was not going to be an issue. His family would be taken care of.

  With that worry relieved, I set about taking charge of Mama’s affairs—the power of attorney, financial control of the estate, all the legalities I’d need to run the house, write checks, pay bills, and see that Mama was cared for.

  As soon as I had power of the checkbook, I sat Tildy down and laid out my plan. “I need you, Tildy,” I said. “And Mama needs you, too. It’s going to be hard for her not to be in control—”

  Tildy gave a wicked grin. “You reckon?”

  “Yeah, I reckon.” It was the first time I’d laughed since the night I’d come home to those flashing lights, and it felt like a deep breath after being underwater. Oxygen flooded my brain cells, and everything seemed to come a little clearer.

  And so it was decided. Tildy would come every day in time to get Mama up and bathed and dressed and to get breakfast for us. She’d stay until three thirty or four, which would give me a chance to run errands and go to the Piggly Wiggly and maybe get a little time to myself. She’d leave supper on the stove. On weekends I was on my own.

  “The doctor warned me that Mama isn’t going to be her old self,” I told Tildy. “So we have to be prepared. The stroke may have affected the portions of her brain that deal with social filters—you know, impulse control and tact, that kind of thing. We may find that she blurts out whatever comes into her mind without considering how it makes other people feel.”

  “In other words, Miss Donna’s gonna be exactly her old self, only more so,” Tildy said.

  I couldn’t argue with that, even if I had been so inclined.

  On the afternoon I brought Mama home from the hospital, every chair on the front verandah was filled with folks waiting for us to show up. From my vantage point as I pulled in the driveway, it looked a little bit like the Hatfields and McCoys, or maybe the Union vs. the Confederacy.

  I got out, helped Mama into the collapsible wheelchair, and rolled her up onto the porch.

  On the left sat Boone, Scratch, and Dell’s friend Fart Unger, along with Dell, Alyssa, and Imani. Fart was holding his toolbox, so I was pretty sure he was responsible for the ramp that took up half of the broad steps up to the verandah. It was easily wide enough for a wheelchair and had a sturdy handrail.

  Dell Haley perched on a rocker with an enormous cardboard box propped across the wide wooden arms of the chair. Even with the tinfoil still on, I was pretty sure I could smell chicken and ham pie, applesauce cake, and fresh corn bread and collard greens.

  Alyssa sat with Imani in her lap. The child held a huge bouquet of spring flowers. At a nudge from her mother, she came forward and laid the bouquet in Mama’s lap. “These are for you, Miz Rondell,” she said then ducked her head and sidled over to me for a hug.

  “She can’t talk very well right now,” I explained to Imani. “But thank you so much; the flowers are lovely.”

  No one on the right side of the porch had moved. Gladys Dalrymple and her daughter, Dymple, looked like they’d been frozen into statues by the White Witch of Narnia. Two more of Mama’s country club cronies were there as well—razor-thin look-alikes, with platinum teased hair and bony knuckles knobbled with diamonds and rubies. I had met them, I knew, but even if I had been able to call up their names at the moment, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you which was which.

  What I did remember was what Gladys had said to me the night Mama went to the hospital: This is all your fault. In the trauma and anxiety of Mama’s stroke and the stress of being thrust into the role of caregiver, I had completely forgotten about it until now.

  Gladys, obviously, had not forgotten. She glared at me across the empty space between us, looking from me to Mama and then to Scratch, Dell, and the others.

  My training as a Southern Lady kicked into overdrive. “Please come in,” I said to them all. “Y’all are so gracious to support Mama this way. She’s very tired, as you might imagine, but I’ll get her settled and then we can all have coffee.”

  Alyssa cut a glance across to Gladys and, almost protectively, put an arm around Imani and drew her close. “Perhaps we should come back another day,” she said in a quiet voice. “Peach, you call us if you need anything. We’ll see you soon.”

  There was a flurry of hugs and kisses, and some hasty good-byes, and all the Heartbreak Cafe folks were gone. I was left facing the Dalrymples and the bleached blonde twins.

  “That,” Gladys Dalrymple said with a huff of outrage, “is why your mama is in this wheelchair.” She pointed in the direction of town, where Dell’s car and Fart’s truck were just disappearing around the bend. “Surely you know better, Priscilla, than to consort with such people! Surely your mama raised you better than this!”

  I didn’t invite them in a second time. Instead, I pushed Mama’s wheelchair across the threshold and turned at the doorway.

  “Cows are raised,” I said. “Cabbages are raised. Southern Ladies are brought up.”

  While
she was still gaping at me, I shut the door to Belladonna in her face.

  “And the name,” I muttered to the closed front door, “is not Priscilla. It’s Peach. Peach.”

  Mama reached up with her good right hand and squeezed my fingers.

  “Pee,” she said. “Na piss. Pee.”

  25

  Over the years I’ve seen a lot of different looks from my mother. I’ve seen her angry plenty of times, and petulant, and demanding. I’ve seen her sneaky and manipulative and self-absorbed and whiny. I’ve seen her as an exultant winner and an ungracious, bad-tempered loser. I’ve watched her, in T. S. Eliot’s words, “put on a face to meet the faces that you meet,” and recognized all too often the polite and icy smile that masks a seething disapproval.

  But never this emptiness, like a deflated balloon. Never this vacancy, this void, this eerie stillness.

  Wherever Tildy and I position her, she stays—in the bed, on the sofa, at the dining room table, in the wheelchair. She’s like a mannequin in a display window advertising strokes for sale.

  The doctor says it will take some time for her to begin to come back to us, that depression is a normal response to this kind of loss, and that we just have to be patient. All those years I wished she would just shut up and go away . . . now she has, and how do I learn to cope with it?

  “Peach?”

  I looked up to see Dell and Scratch standing over me.

  “Are we interrupting?”

  I closed the journal with the pen still inside to hold my place and noticed how few blank pages were left. I supposed I’d have to drive up to Tupelo in a week or two and scout out the office supply stores for a refill.

  I shrugged and motioned for them to sit. “Just trying to sort out things with Mama,” I said. “I’ve got a telephone session with my counselor tomorrow afternoon.”

  They were well aware of my ongoing relationship with the old white-haired fool, of course. I had long since given up any pretense with these friends. I simply didn’t have the energy for it.