by Lisa Patton
“Keep goin’,” Alice says impatiently, and sweeps her hand in my direction.
“Where was I?”
“The Yankee Doodle is walking toward you at George Clark’s with his hat pulled way down.” Virginia loves all the little details.
“Oh yeah. So, he came up to my car and I jumped out. We stood there not knowing what in the world to say to each other. I mean it was so awkward. And then, out of nowhere, he asks me what CD is in my player. I tell him I don’t think there is one. Then he sits down on my front seat, says hi to Sarah and Issie, and finds Van Morrison’s Moondance in my CD case. He slips it into the player and skips through until he lands on ‘Into the Mystic.’”
“That’s the song y’all started to dance to the night you got the call with an offer on the inn!” Mary Jule’s eyes twinkle. She, like me, absolutely loves a romantic cliffhanger.
“Yes! And remember we never finished the dance?” I say, recalling the night my relationship with Peter went from not-so-platonic to nothing-really-happened-but-we-are-definitely-not-platonic.
“Because you didn’t just let the stupid phone ring and once he learned it was an offer he got so upset about the sale that he left the inn right then and there,” Alice says, finishing the story I’d told them fifty times by now.
“Well, we finished the dance right there in front of God and everybody at George Clark’s gas station. Underneath the falling snow. With a nor’easter headed our way.”
“You did not!” Mary Jule nearly screams.
“Shhhh,” we all say, looking around the room to see who’s peering in our direction.
“Yes, we did,” I tell her.
“That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Mary Jule says decisively, plopping her glass of ice tea on the red linen as if rendering a verdict.
“Did he kiss you?” Alice asks with raised eyebrows. Although she tries to appear calm by sipping her Coke, she can hardly contain herself, either.
I nod my head and visualize it for the fiftieth time since driving over state lines. “It was … incredible.”
“It should be a movie, Leelee, I swear to God. It should be a movie.” Virginia sits back in her chair and rakes her hands through her hair. “Who should play you?”
Alice turns to Virginia and waves her hand. “Hang on a second.” Then she turns back to me. “And then what happened?”
“We said good-bye and … I drove off.” I close my eyes and feel the sadness returning.
“WHAT?” Alice practically yells. “You didn’t stay with him?”
I gape at her. There are no words. I don’t know how to explain to them what I was feeling in that moment. That as hard at is was to leave Peter, my heart was already in Memphis when he finally made his move. Now, of course, I would do anything to make that kiss last longer than it did.
“I would have stayed,” Alice says definitively and reaches for a saltine.
“Would you listen to what you’re saying, please? You’re telling me that you would have stayed in Vermont even though all your furniture was on the way to Memphis, not to mention all your very best friends and everything else that is familiar in your life.”
“But your man was in Vermont,” Virginia says.
“He was not my man. He is not my man. Never once before that moment had he told me he cared about me. Not once. I cannot even believe y’all. First you tell me I’m crazy for moving to Vermont. In this very room. Then you call me every week for fourteen months and ask when I’m coming home. When I finally get here you’re asking why I didn’t stay?”
“Of course we want you home, honey. We just want you to be happy,” Mary Jule says.
Johnson strolls up to the table again and Mary Jule politely asks him to give us two more minutes.
“I just knew Peter had it for you from the moment I met him,” Alice says. She always thinks she has everything figured out. It’s the control freak inside her.
“Well he never told me that. And, even if I had known, what was I supposed to do? Stay in Vermont because another man in my life tells me to do so? I made the decision to come back to Memphis for me. I followed my own heart for once. Sure, I’m crazy about him but suppose we didn’t work out? Then what?”
Alice sits back in her chair and lightly taps her fingers together. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I haven’t thought of it that way.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Plus, y’all won’t believe this. Guess who bought the inn?” I’m hoping to distract them with a bit of Vermont gossip.
“Who?” they all say at once.
“Helga and Rolf.”
A uniform look of horror spreads across the table.
Helga and Rolf had been the previous owners of our B&B. They had made our lives unbearable from the moment Baker and I arrived, insisting on overseeing our new management of the inn—which was then called the Vermont Haus Inn. But eventually, I threw them out, and replaced their tasteless Germanic décor (if you can call it that), scrubbed away the years of Helga’s cigarette smoke, boxed up her hideous collection of ceramic hippo figurines and created the Peach Blossom Inn. Along with being a symbol of sweet Southern goodness, peaches also signify long life, so I thought it a highly appropriate name. Its immediate success drove Helga, in particular, mad—and I knew she had been devising a revenge plot, I just didn’t know what it was.
At the time, Baker had been gone for two months, shacking up with the ski slope seductress Helga had initially introduced to him. I had successfully reopened the inn—thanks to an intervention from the girls—and things were actually going well. But I was lonely, desperately so, and all I wanted to do was run back into the arms of Memphis. So I told our real estate agent, Ed, to put the inn back up for sale. I had proven I could stand on my own—I just wanted to be in sandals, not snow boots.
I never expected the inn to sell as quickly as it did—but to my credit, I had turned it from a bleak B&B with limited dining options into a warm and cozy Southernized inn serving some of the region’s most acclaimed cuisine … thanks to Peter. What I didn’t know was that Helga and Rolf, bitter at my success, coerced my Realtor into secretly selling them back the property.
“That smarmy Ed Baldwin—that’s my new Yankee word I learned, smarmy—never told me they were the buyers. And I would never have known if I hadn’t had to go back to the inn. The girls and I were just outside of town when I remembered Princess Grace. I knew I couldn’t dig her back up but I at least had to go back for her grave marker. That’s when I saw Helga’s hippo collection on the mantel, well Sarah did. She was playing with one when I came back inside from digging up Gracie’s marker.”
“That witch!” Alice says.
“Did you smash the hippos in the fireplace?” Virginia wants to know.
“No.”
“Why not?” Virginia is ready to kill me.
“Because. I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t care at that moment. I wanted to come home.”
“Did that make it even harder to leave, knowing she had bought back the inn?” Mary Jule asks.
“Yes and no. Roberta (my beloved housekeeper) and Peter already had new jobs up at Sugartree, the local ski resort. And Jeb had plenty of work on his own with JCW and his snowplowing business. I didn’t feel like I’d be letting anyone down.”
“Yeah, plenty of business all right. Jeb’s Computer World—all twelve square feet of it.” Alice shakes her head. “Bless his heart.” JCW is housed inside a tiny lean-to in Jeb’s side yard.
“Anyway, I figured Pierre would be able to get another job anywhere. He’s the best maître d’ in all of southern Vermont. I wasn’t worried about him. But I just didn’t have the strength to fight Helga anymore. I mean why bother? I’d put up with her crap long enough. That wicked witch can have it.”
“I wonder how long it will take her to paint back over the peach paint and undo all the other changes we made.” Virginia loves the way the inn looked after they came up to help me remodel.
“Of course she will. When I drove back up I noticed the Peach Blossom Inn sign was down. She had thrown it in the trash pile. I snatched it back up and made room for it in my car. There was no way I was going to give her the satisfaction of thinking she had thrown away my beautiful sign.”
“Who cares anyway?” Alice says.
“That’s my point!”
“I’m glad you took it. You might just need that sign one day,” Mary Jule says.
“I’m going to hang it in my rec room. When I find a place to live.” Thinking about that reminds me of all the tasks I have ahead of me and I start to feel terribly overwhelmed.
“Leelee, I am so proud of the way you’ve handled all this.”
“Thank you, Virgy. I really think I’ve changed. I’m not ever going to let another man make all my decisions for me. Let’s eat, though, I’m dying.” I pick up the red linen napkin and place it in my lap.
Virginia motions for Johnson who comes right up to the table. “Ladies, what looks good today?” he asks.
“You know what I’m getting, Johnson. My usual,” Virginia says.
“Chicken salad stuffed in an avocado.” He smiles and puffs out his chest.
“Yes, siree.” She unfolds her own napkin and places it in her lap. “Plus I need a little more tea.” Virginia taps the top of her glass. “When you get a minute.” Then she announces, “Y’all might as well get what I’m getting because I’m not giving out any bites today. I’m starving.”
We all agreed to follow her advice. Chicken salad avocados all the way around.
By one fifteen in the afternoon, most of the lunch crowd has dissipated. Not so, however, for a few women seated around a couple of bridge tables in the corner enjoying a lingering lunch. I love cards. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just that a table full of older women with granny glasses on the tips of their noses, a cigarette or two in the ashtray, and a gin and tonic at 1:00 P.M. grosses me out. They’re always there, though. The beau monde of Memphis.
Nearby I spot the only other occupied table—a four-top with Memphis social elite at either side, each with her pearls and respective Vera Bradley accessories. Tootie Shotwell is a former Tri Delt president at Ole Miss. (I was a Chi O.) I catch her studying me out of the corner of her eye before leaning into the other three women at the table. With a subtlety gained from years of practice, four sets of eyes tactfully flit in my direction, but are always ready to glance away lest they be caught staring.
“Did y’all just see Tootie Shotwell turn around and gossip about me?” I lean into the table, talking under my breath.
“What are you talking about? How in the world do you know what she’s saying?” replies Alice.
“It’s obvious. Who else could she be discussing?” I say indignantly. I knew my return to Memphis Baker-less would not go unnoticed … but I had hoped to make it twenty-four hours at least.
Virginia says, “Uh-oh, here she comes.” Tootie’s group has just finished their meal and have to walk by our table in order to reach the club’s exit.
Alice speaks first. “Hi Tootie, how’s it goin’?” she says with feigned interest.
“Greaaaaaat,” Tootie says, with a plastered smile. “How are y’aaaaaall?” She looks around at all of us and steps back when she notices me, mustering up a phony look of surprise. “Leelee! What are you doing home?” Excuse me while I gag a maggot.
I start to answer but Mary Jule jumps in before I have the chance. “We’ve convinced her to move back. We just couldn’t stand having her that far away.” She kicks me under the table and half smirks at Tootie.
“Really? Was Baker okay with that? He was the one who just had to make a change, wasn’t he?” she asks, with her three sidekicks all gawking at me like I’m some new zoo creature.
“He’s getting used to the idea,” I say. Not a lie, just not fessing up to the whole shebang. Even though I’ve made my peace with the situation, it’s quite another to declare oneself a divorced, single mother of two, homeless and jobless to a gaggle of Memphis’s most cunning gossips. I’m simply not ready to reveal to the outside world what’s going on in my life. Admittedly, I should have thought of that before I agreed to meet everyone at the club.
“Oh, well tell him hi. Trey will be thrilled he’s back in town. He’ll have another golf buddy.”
I force a smile.
“Bye y’all.” Tootie flips us a ta-ta wave and sashays out the door.
“I can’t stand her,” Virginia says.
“Nobody can,” Alice adds. “But let it go. You can’t control people. You can only be responsible for your own actions. I learned that in therapy. Well, actually, Richard did. But he tells me everything.”
“You think he’s telling you everything,” Mary Jule says.
“Whatever. First things first, where are you going to live?” Alice asks, turning to me.
“With Kissie,” I say.
They all cut their eyes at one another. I can tell it’s disapproval time.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it, honey,” Mary Jule says, and touches my arm, “it’s just … far away.”
Virginia takes a more direct approach. “You can’t live in that part of town. What are you gonna do? Use that address for Sarah and Issie on the Jameson application?” All four of us attended Jameson, the elite all-girls school, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Kissie’s neighborhood has never seen the light of day on a Jameson School application.
“Maybe,” I say, a bit stubbornly.
“Come on, Leelee. I’m trying to be the voice of reason here,” Virginia says. “Not only is it a bad part of town, but what about when your date comes to pick you up? And you might as well start thinking about dating, you know. Especially if you’re giving up the Yankee Doodle.”
“I haven’t given up the Yankee Doodle. He’s coming for a visit in May.” A slight exaggeration since I haven’t actually invited him yet.… “Dating other men is the last thing on my mind.”
Before I can say another word Alice speaks up, despite the fact that she has yet another saltine in her mouth. She holds her hand in front of her lips so the rest of us aren’t exposed to the mush on her tongue. “I have a therapist I want you to talk to. Richard’s been talking to her all about his childhood crap. She’s helping him a lot.”
“So I need a therapist because dating is the last thing on my mind?” It comes out far more defensively than I had intended.
“No, because of everything you’ve been through. That’s why you need a therapist,” she says, and swallows the last bit of her saltine as if to punctuate her thought.
Somehow I knew that would probably be a good idea but it wasn’t something I was ready to jump into right away. “I’ll think about it. But right now, all I can think about is, where is my furniture going in four days? How am I going to support myself? Where is Sarah going to school next week?”
“These things will all work out. They always do.” Virginia tears open another melba toast and looks back at the kitchen door. “Where in the heck is our lunch?”
* * *
After staring in deep thought at the ceiling for what seems like hours, although it’s only been thirty minutes, I glance over at my cell phone plugged in on the bedside table. I reach over and hold it for a few minutes, turning it over and staring at the keypad. I’d resisted the temptation for three days already but now I punch in the numbers to Peter’s phone … and hang up before it starts ringing. Oh this is ridiculous. Just call him. I dial back but it goes straight to voice mail. His recorded voice tells me that he’s away from his phone. “Leave a message and I’ll get back with you,” he says.
“Hi. It’s Leelee. I just wanted to tell you that I made it. I’m here. Back in Memphis. Safe and sound.” I want to tell him I miss him but I’m afraid. “I…” I pau
se and change my mind. “I hope you’re good. Hope to talk with you soon!”
I’m disappointed that he didn’t answer. And a tiny bit afraid to wish he would have.
Chapter Three
“Leelee, today is the first day of the rest of your life,” I speak into the mirror and tap my toothbrush on the side of the sink. Who actually said that? I wonder. I remember hearing those words for the first time when I was in high school and not giving it much thought. It sounded corny back then but today is different. I’m starting my life over and it sounds like it ought to be my mantra, or at the very least my thought for the day.
I stroll into the kitchen around eight thirty and Kissie’s got her old griddle heating over two eyes of her gas cooktop. She’s stirring pancake batter in the same yellow mixing bowl I’ve seen her use a hundred times before. “Good mornin’, sweet,” she says from the stove. “Did you sleep well?”
“I always do when I’m here.” I detect a faint amount of body odor while reaching around her middle and kissing her cheek. “I hope Sarah didn’t toss and turn too much.”
“That baby did fine. You know I sleep like a rock anyway. What’s on your agenda today?”
“I’m not really sure where to start, to tell you the truth. A house? A job? School for the girls?” I sound exhausted already. “And I can’t wait to get a new dog.” I’ve already decided the only way I’ll ever move past the ghost of Gracie is to go ahead and replace her.
“Ooo-wee. You’ve got lots of business that needs straightenin’ out.” She sighs heavily while unwrapping a large package of Tennessee Pride sausage. I watch as she lines the entire iron skillet with sausage links all the while wondering who in the world is going to eat all this food.
“Tell me about it. I feel like my head might bust off my neck.” Glancing around her kitchen I say, “Have you brought in your paper yet, Kissie?”
“No baby, it’s still layin’ out there in the driveway.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I throw on my robe and head on out the front door. Her next-door neighbor to the right waves to me. Mrs. Clark, another kind old lady, knows all about my family and me from living next to Kissie all these years. They have been next-door neighbors as long as Kissie has worked for our family. I wave back and smile, pondering just how safe these two elderly ladies really are. As much as I hate to admit it, it scares me a little. After grabbing the paper I practically run back to Kissie’s front door.