The Secret to Hummingbird Cake

by Celeste Fletcher McHale

  “Not my fault,” she called back. “They move stores around all the time. You better put that bottle up and go to bed. You need to stop this. It’s time to face your problems instead of putting a Band-Aid on them.” She never missed a beat.

  She said all kinds of other stuff, too, but I turned her off. It was the exact same song and dance she performed after any of my slightly off decisions. I pretty much had the playbook memorized. I watched her walk across the street and into her yard. She waved as she closed the side door to her kitchen. I lay down on my sofa and sipped some more liquid Band-Aid. Laine was right, of course. This wasn’t helping. She was probably right about everything she’d said.

  But that didn’t make me like it. Laine had always adored Jack, even though he’d cheated on me. At least I was relatively sure he’d been unfaithful. Laine took up for him, always insisted that he loved me and encouraged me to hang on and keep trying. But what good was trying if you were the only one making an effort?

  She was my best friend. She and Ella Rae were the anchors in my now rocky life. Ella Rae never encouraged me to stay with Jack. She didn’t care what I did as long as I was happy. Why did Laine insist that I stay? A better question: How could Laine insist that I stay?

  I drank more wine and laid my head back. Laine frustrated me. She made me mad. And above all, she hurt my feelings. She was choosing Jack over me—there was no question about it. She might have thought she was helping me, but she wasn’t. I consoled myself with the fact that she didn’t understand because she’d never been in a relationship. Not a long-term one, anyway. She had no idea how twisted and complicated things got years into a marriage. Even if you still loved each other, sometimes that just wasn’t enough. And if I were completely honest with myself, I wasn’t even sure Jack and I had that left. We seemed like two stars that once burned so bright and brilliant, and now the only thing left was an ash so fine you could only see it when the sun streamed through the windows. I made a face at my own morose thoughts. Well, that was depressing

  The phone rang again, and my shame meter shot up the charts. No one knew about Cell Phone Romeo except Laine, Ella Rae, and me. For that I was grateful, but I still carried a huge weight of guilt and shame about my indiscretion.

  What a stupid word. Indiscretion. That’s what all the blue bloods, including my family, called an affair. Why didn’t they just call it what it was? One huge, idiotic mistake caused by an enormous amount of plain old ordinary hurt. Only there was nothing ordinary about it.

  And when I was alone, I allowed myself to feel it. When I thought about the relationship I’d had with Romeo, it made me want to throw up. Because the truth was, I loved Jack—so much that I sometimes physically ached. I still loved him with that wild and crazy passion that had brought us together in the beginning.

  And as close as I was to Laine and Ella Rae, I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that. As far as they knew, I was ready to divorce him and move on. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. If I searched for a hundred years, I’d never love another man the way I loved Jack.

  But my pride wouldn’t let me show it. To anybody. So I found a way to hide it with an attitude, an . . . indiscretion, and a terribly disgusting bottle of—I glanced at the label—Flaming Peach Mist. I was pretty sure the finer homes in the great state of Louisiana weren’t serving that same bottle on their hundred-year-old linens. But it was getting the job done in Bon Dieu Falls. And I had the tingly hands to prove it.

  Sometimes lately I ripped a page from the Scarlett O’Hara playbook and decided I wouldn’t think about unpleasant things today. I’d think about them tomorrow. This was one of those times. I took my wine into the bedroom and glanced at the bedside clock. One a.m. Do you know where your husband is? I took another drink, clicked the remote to an infomercial promising to make me look younger than my thirty years, and stripped. The sheets felt good against my skin. I was asleep in thirty seconds, the concerns of the day drowned in sweet, fermented grapes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ella Rae showed up at the crack of dawn. Actually, it was the crack of noon. It just felt like dawn. Laine had been right, as usual. I shouldn’t have finished the Flaming Peach Mist. Yet another fine decision . . . I was becoming quite fluent in idiot.

  Ella Rae didn’t care what kind of shape I was in. “Get up!” she shouted. She held the empty wine bottle over my head. “I bet this was just delicious.”

  The sight of the bottle made me want to gag. “Ugh.” I turned over and wrapped my head up in my pillow. “I can’t play softball today,” I said. “I’ll die. I’m not going.”

  She ripped the covers from me. “Oh, yes, you are going,” she said. “And put some clothes on. Nobody wants to see . . . all that.”

  I tugged the cover back over my body. “You’ve seen me naked maybe a thousand times,” I said. “I can’t play today. I just can’t.”

  “Seeing all your business when you get in and out of the tanning bed ain’t the same thing,” she said. “And nobody dies from a hangover. Go barf if you need to, but hurry up!”

  I lay motionless. “Two more minutes.”

  “Whatever.” Then she changed directions completely, a classic Ella Rae trait. “Did Romeo call again last night? Tell me everything.”

  That made me sit straight up. “Where is Jack?”

  “He left as soon as he let me in. Do you think I’m crazy? Asking about Cell Phone Romeo with Jack in the next room?”

  So he had come home last night. I glanced over and saw that his side of the bed was rumpled. He had slept here, but I had no idea for how long.

  Ella Rae reached into the suitcase she called a purse, pulled out an ancient Rubik’s Cube, and began twisting it. “This thing annoys me.”

  I shook my head. Ella Rae’s attention span was three to five seconds long. Shorter if alcohol was involved.

  “Thank God Jack is gone,” I said. “I thought maybe you’d switched over to Laine’s team.” I looked around. “Where is Laine?”

  “She had to be there at eight this morning, remember? She’s keeping score.”

  “Oh yeah. I think she mentioned that as she was delivering the sermon last night. I love her, God knows I do, but she’s so . . . responsible.”

  Ella Rae laughed. “One of us has to be.” She walked to my dresser and began fishing for clothes. She threw a pair of panties at me that hit me in the face. “Get in the shower and hurry. I’ll find you something to put on.”

  I stood up and groaned. The Peach Mist was indeed flaming this morning. Wine had to dispense the absolute worst hangover ever. What was I thinking?

  I shook my head. Not the first time I’d asked myself that same question in the last few months.

  “Ten minutes, I promise.” But as soon as I got in the shower, I stood still in the hot spray. It felt too good to move.

  “Hurry up,” Ella Rae said and slapped the shower curtain.

  “I am hurrying,” I said.

  “Liar,” she said. “You’re standing in one spot trying to recover. Now hurry up!”

  “Fine.” I grabbed the shampoo bottle.

  Today’s softball tournament was a benefit for a five-year-old boy in our community who had recently been diagnosed with leukemia. His name was Dakota. Sweetest little guy in the world. Ella Rae, Laine, and I had gone to high school with his parents. Good people. Laine had helped put this tournament together. Thankfully, Dakota’s prognosis was excellent, but the frequent trips to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis were taking a financial toll on his family. Most of the expenses of the immediate family were covered by St. Jude’s. But where we come from, your immediate family included aunts, uncles, cousins, that one guy who came f
or the summer five years earlier and never left, and your crazy Great-Aunt Doris who really needed to be in a home but just continued to sit on the front porch under the watchful eye of family and neighbors.

  All the proceeds of today’s tournament would go directly to Dakota’s family to help with their travel expenses. That was one of the perks of living in a small Southern town. Among other things, we came to each other’s aid. Bon Dieu Falls, Louisiana, was no different. When one of our own was in trouble, we showed up. We baked, we babysat, and we gave cars, time, and money. Nobody could ever accuse us of being unfeeling or uncaring.

  But the flip side of that coin applied as well. Your personal business was also everybody else’s. The old adage, “When I don’t know what I’m doing, somebody else always does,” fit Bon Dieu Falls like a glove.

  For a girl like me, that was sometimes quite annoying. Not that I was a wild child. I was no child at all. But I was, well, busy. I was thirty years old, but every time someone asked my age, my immediate thought was “seventeen.”

  I often wondered why I got stuck there in the first place. Maybe it was because I had married Jack when I was seventeen. Maybe I felt permanently trapped there, holding my breath waiting for my life to begin again. And perhaps the years in between were just really long seconds, and one day I would exhale again and turn thirty.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jack Whitfield III was ten years my senior. His family owned and operated Whitfield Farms, a hugely successful soybean farm and cattle ranch. He was extremely handsome, and his seemingly cool and detached attitude made him all the more attractive. He was considered the catch of the town for years, but no one could seem to make him commit or tie him down for long.

  Maybe the reason I succeeded with Jack was because I wasn’t trying. At least not in the beginning. But the truth was, Jack had intrigued me long before we ever really talked. The boys my own age bored me. I loved them all as friends, but romantically, they offered me nothing even remotely interesting. I wanted a man, not a boy.

  Enter Jack.

  And to add fuel to the fire, I was a bit rebellious in my teenage years. Okay, I was a lot rebellious in my teenage years. I just liked to test my limits no matter what I was doing. With grades, ignoring curfews, ignoring expectations. I felt . . . different. That’s about as well as I can explain it. Like the rules didn’t really apply to me. Not in an “I am better than you” kind of way, more like in a “that rule is stupid” kind of way.

  I had a hard time relating to people who just accepted all their restrictions without question. I had always been able to talk my way out of any situation I found myself in. That itself made me feel out of step with the world around me. While everyone else seemed to struggle to find their voice, words flew out of my mouth at the speed of light. That wasn’t always a good thing, but it was pretty much always an effective thing. I never understood what was so difficult about just saying whatever was on your mind. But sometimes folks looked at me like I was an alien, even though I thought it made me determined. I wanted results, and I wanted them immediately. Regardless, I’m not sure my parents found the outspoken trait quite as endearing as Jack Whitfield III had found it. He told me once it was what had made me irresistible to him.

  It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Mama and Daddy were less than pleased when I announced I was dating a man ten years my senior, especially one whose womanizing reputation preceded him. They were always cordial when he came to the house to see me or to pick me up. But they didn’t like it, not one little bit.

  They reminded me often of the age difference between us and the problems that went along with that. They said I liked the idea of a relationship with Jack much more than I liked Jack. Then one night, after yet another round with Daddy, he told me Jack Whitfield III “had a way with women.”

  That made me laugh, and I said, “I certainly hope so.”

  My father was furious with that answer, and an argument ensued. Daddy ended the argument by saying he forbade me to see Jack again. He might as well have told me not to breathe. I failed to mention the argument to Jack. Looking back, I am sure he would’ve done the honorable thing and backed off. But I wasn’t about to let somebody else tell me how to live my life. Not even my parents. As much as I loved them, this was my life.

  For the next couple of weeks, I got pretty slick about hiding my relationship with Jack from them. On the Friday exactly two weeks after I had gotten the I-forbid-you-to-see-him speech from my daddy, Jack and I picked up Ella Rae and Laine, drove to Texas, found a Justice of the Peace, and got married. I had managed to con Jack into believing that my parents, while they weren’t happy about it, had consented to the elopement. He questioned me, of course, but I told him they understood what we were doing, but didn’t want to be a part of it. I even produced the proper legal document showing my father’s signature allowing me to do so.

  It was forged, of course, but Jack didn’t know that. I know that sounds just awful, but I loved this man, and I knew my parents would too if they just gave him a chance. If I came back married, they’d have no choice but to accept him. And then, I reasoned, we could all live happily ever after.

  Jack had wanted to talk to my father face-to-face, but I had convinced him it was unnecessary and unwelcome. “Let’s just go,” I said. “Don’t make it any harder than it has to be. He’ll just try to talk us out of it. Don’t you want to marry me?”

  “Not like this, Carrigan.”

  It had taken quite a performance, one that surely warranted an Academy Award. But in the end, I won.

  Ella Rae had been on board immediately. It took a little coaxing for Laine. At first she had absolutely refused to be a part of it. She had been mortified at the prospect of deceiving Jack and my parents. But then again, Laine felt bad if she gave the dog the cheap biscuits.

  Finally she realized if she were the only one of us left in town that weekend, she’d cave in to the questions immediately. So, rather than face the firing squad alone, she reluctantly climbed on board. I’m pretty sure she prayed all the way to Texas. For years afterward, she had apologized to Jack for being part of the deception, but he always smiled and told her the same thing: “Laine, my wife could sell ice to the Eskimos. Let it go.”

  After a three-minute wedding and a honeymoon the next day at a huge Texas water park, Ella Rae and I felt grown-up and superior and extremely adventurous. We were all quite pleased with ourselves. Except for Laine, who bit her fingernails and wrung her hands for three days.

  I have to admit, her paranoia was right on the money. When we got home, there was a big ole small-town mess waiting on all of us. My parents were infuriated and threatened to have Jack arrested because for another week, I was still seventeen. Jack was livid with me for lying to him, and his parents were mortified over all of it. Laine’s mother threatened to break off Laine’s arm and beat her with it, and Ella Rae’s mother glared at her for thirty straight minutes before she ever said a word.

  It was most unpleasant. Every adult in the kitchen of my parents’ house was sure I was pregnant, no matter how many times I denied it. Lots of tears. Lots of yelling. Followed by lots of silence. Then more yelling. I can clearly remember my father’s clenched jaw being inches away from Jack’s face demanding him to explain why he’d agreed to my scheme. But Jack stayed calm and never offered an excuse other than, “I love her, sir. I love her.”

  That memory still makes me smile.

  At the end of a very long night, futility set in. To this day, I feel bad as I recall the resignation on my father’s face. He was only trying to do what he thought was best for me. But he could never tell me no. So in the end they relented, although they did insist that we have a small and proper wedding the next weekend in our church.

  Jack was pretty
unhappy with me for a few days. In fact, he was flat-out furious. I wasn’t entirely sure he’d show up at church the next Friday night, but he did. And he looked so good standing at the end of the aisle waiting for me, I almost ran to him.

  We settled into our new home on my eighteenth birthday, and life was beautiful. We were young and happy and in control of our lives. Our house was the hangout in town for all our friends, and they were there nearly twenty-four hours a day. Jack adored me, couldn’t get enough of me, and catered to my every whim.

  He said I made him laugh . . . in the beginning . . .

  “Let’s go, Carrigan!” Ella Rae shouted. “We play in thirty minutes!”

  I snapped out of my dream trance and threw on a pair of cutoffs. “I’m ready.”

  “Get your bat and glove.”

  “Already in the car,” I said. “I anticipated my condition this morning, so I loaded all my stuff last night.”

  She beamed at me as if I’d won the Nobel Prize for Good Thinking. “Good call!”

  I chuckled. Ella Rae woke up in a new world every morning.

  The ball park was a three-minute drive from my house. Ella Rae and I usually jogged there and back every morning while Laine rode circles around us on her bike. A ritual we had practiced for years, rain or shine, hot or cold. We had also played softball at this park since we were five years old. Laine had kept the scorebook since she was old enough to figure it out. She wasn’t athletically inclined, as she liked to put it. Ella Rae and I called it “lazy.”

  Laine didn’t care what we called her. She wasn’t about to give up her comfortable chair, the huge purple-and-gold tailgating tent she sat under, the soft quilt under her feet, or her cutesy flip-flops for cleats, dirt, and sweat on the field. She liked everything to be neat, clean, and shiny. In fact, if we rode in her car after games, she made us sit on towels and take off our shoes. Which explains why her car was spotless and my truck was, well, a hot mess.