The Secret to Hummingbird Cake

by Celeste Fletcher McHale

  “I mean tipsy,” Ella Rae said. “Laine got a little tipsy . . . so she could explain death to us.”

  “Not that either, idiot.” Laine snatched the bottle away from her. “You drank it all?”

  “Ahhh.” Ella Rae pulled a bottle from the pocket of her coat. “But I came prepared.”

  “Thank God!” Laine rubbed her hands together while Ella Rae struggled with the cork.

  Laine and Ella Rae drinking while I was pregnant and trying to sleep? This had surely been a season of firsts. I watched Ella Rae fumble with the cork for a full thirty seconds before I said, “Give it here. You’re going to put somebody’s eye out.” I twisted the wire and popped the cork. “Here you go.”

  “I’m sorry you can’t have any,” Ella Rae said.

  “I’m good,” I said. “Now what are we here to discuss?”

  They looked at each other, clueless.

  “My funeral,” Laine said. “I want to plan my funeral.”

  I stared at her. “You want to plan your funeral . . . tipsy?”

  She cocked her head. “Can you think of a better time?”

  I thought about that for a second. I had to give her this one. I reached into the drawer of my nightstand for a pen and notebook. “Okay.” I looked back at her. “Knock yourself out.”

  She leaned back in the chair, swirling the champagne in the bottle. “Okay, first of all, I don’t want this big, weepy, drawn-out cry fest. I mean, it’s so . . . ridiculous.”

  I continued to stare at her.

  She looked at me. “Write it down.”

  “Okay.” I began writing. “No big, weepy, cry fest.”

  “No wailing or moaning,” she continued. “I mean . . . really. No wailing or moaning.”

  “No wailing or moaning,” I repeated.

  “Hey, you’ve had that bottle for ten minutes,” Ella Rae said. “Give it back.”

  “I’ve had it for like . . . ten seconds.”

  I snatched the bottle from Laine and passed it to Ella Rae.

  Laine pouted a moment but continued, “There should be music, but not sad music.”

  “Music.” I wrote it down. “Not sad.”

  “Well, maybe a little sad. I’ll be dead and all.”

  The little dagger in my heart twisted.

  “Help me think of a good song.”

  “I know!” Ella Rae began singing, “I’m going home gonna load my shotgun, wait by the door and light a cigarette, he wants a fight, well now he’s got one, he ain’t seen me crazy yet.”

  “Don’t even pay attention to her,” I said.

  “What?” Ella Rae said. “What’d I do?”

  “I think maybe something by—I don’t know,” Laine said. “You decide.”

  I drew little circles on the paper in an effort to push this whole conversation from my mind.

  “And I need you to deliver the . . . you know, the, well . . . the eulo . . .”

  “The eulogy?”

  “Yes, the eulogy.”

  “Yes! Bingo. Yahtzee. Booyah. Touchdown!” Ella Rae said.

  I slammed the notebook shut. “No,” I said. “I can’t do it.”

  Laine waved me off. “Of course you can,” she said. “Just tell them who I am . . . was. What’s the big deal? It’ll be easy.”

  “You’ve lost your mind, Laine.” I threw the notebook back in the drawer and slammed it shut.

  Ella Rae laughed. “Ouch,” she said. “Sister gal didn’t like the request.”

  Laine laughed with her. “Well, I’d do it myself, but I’ll be the dead one. So there’s that.”

  “She’s gotcha there, Carri,” Ella Rae said.

  “Ella Rae, shut up. You aren’t helping.”

  “Wasn’t trying to,” she said. “Duh.”

  Laine was crazy. I couldn’t stand in front of a church full of people and tell them who she was. Not without the aforementioned wailing and weeping. She should know better than to ask me. It was wrong. So wrong.

  “Laine,” I said, “maybe we should talk about this when we’re—you know, maybe . . .”

  “Do you think there’s any more of this champagne downstairs?” Ella Rae peered into the empty bottle.

  “Ella Rae, please.”

  “Fine.” She crossed her arms. “I’ll wait for you to go back to sleep, if that baby lizard will let you. You sure have been grouchy lately. I don’t know when you stopped being fun. Wait . . .” She pointed to the sky, indicating a light bulb moment. “It was when you got knocked up.”

  “Hormones,” Laine said. She turned back to me. “Listen, it ain’t that big a deal. All you have to do is stand there and talk for ten minutes about all the wonderful traits I used to have, still have, you know what I mean. Whaddaya think, buddy?”

  “I think maybe we should discuss this tomorrow.”

  She looked at Ella Rae who was apparently counting something on the ceiling and snickered. Then she turned sober as a judge. “Please say you’ll do this for me. Nobody wants to talk about it . . . me either. But I need to know you’ll do this last thing for me.”

  Everything in me was screaming, No! I’d rather have my eyes pecked out by rabid crows. But how could I deny her? She was right, of course. It would be the last thing I could ever do for her. I was constantly looking for ways to make her comfortable. Not just physically but emotionally as well, and she never took me up on anything. I couldn’t tell her no now. And how could I really trust anyone else to do it? I would pick their words apart, because unless it was Ella Rae or me, there was no way to do her justice. I closed my eyes and heard myself saying, “Yes.”

  She smiled and stood up. “Come on, Ella Rae,” she said. “We got what we came for.”

  “Finally,” Ella Rae said. “Can we ditch this stick-in-the-mud and go back to the party?”

  Laine winked at me. “Thank you.” She squeezed my hand. “It means more to me than you know.”

  I faked a smile at her as the door closed behind them, then flung myself back against the bed. I would dread this promise from now until Laine was no longer with us. How was I ever supposed to make anybody in that church understand who Laine Landry is? Was, rather. And what was I supposed to say? Here lies a chick who was so loyal she compromised her standards a thousand times to accommodate my lack of them? TMI, probably.

  How about, here lies a chick who loved McDonald’s French fries but hated their burgers? Or loved Burger King burgers and hated their fries? Or had a heart for the underdog and a moral compass that would rival Mother Teresa?

  How could I ever explain how her words could cut me to the quick but always came from a place in her heart that wanted the very best for me? How could I communicate to anybody in ten minutes or ten hours, or ten days even, what I had lost? What the world had lost? I would never be able to make anyone understand. Not even if I wrote a book about it.

  There were no tears that night, just an increasing alarm that the days were flying by and they were taking Laine’s life with them.

  Much later, when Jack came to bed, I clung to him. The weight of what the future would hold felt like a ton of bricks on my shoulders. I had avoided thinking about Laine’s death, and I absolutely never thought about her funeral. When the notions pushed their way into my mind, I had always pushed back. But the day was coming, and I was helpless to stop it. No matter how much I tried, no matter how much I fought, this was a battle I wasn’t going to win. There would be a funeral, and even the guest of honor had embraced it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

>   By the time late March rolled around I was miserable, for many reasons. Laine was slipping; I could see it happening every day. The changes weren’t dramatic, but even small things alarmed me. The circles under her eyes seemed darker, her appetite wasn’t good, and she’d lost some weight. Maybe only five pounds or so, but it was noticeable. Her demeanor, however, hadn’t changed. She was still her cheerful self and quite excited about the arrival of the baby.

  I, on the other hand, had gained twenty-two pounds and felt like a beached whale. Everyone, including my doctor, said my weight was perfect. But I felt like a cow and was sure I resembled one. I wondered all the time how other women did this four and five and six times. When I sat cross-legged in the bathtub I felt like a Buddha statue.

  Being pregnant had been fun for exactly seven months. After that, it had just pretty much sucked. My boobies felt like rocks, I had to pee every thirty seconds, and if anyone looked at me sideways I cried. When I compared my pregnancy to what Laine was going through, I realized how incredibly shallow and whiny I was being, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

  I was sitting on a bar stool in the kitchen when Jack came in and kissed my forehead. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said.

  “Whatever,” I said. I made a face. When he didn’t respond, I pressed. “Do I disgust you?”

  He picked up one of Mamie’s famous cinnamon rolls, still warm and thick with icing, and took a big bite. My mouth watered watching him eat. Just the smell of those rolls could pack five pounds on a person. I didn’t dare eat one. Besides, I might as well bypass my mouth and tape them directly on my butt and thighs. That’s where they’d end up anyway. I peeled an orange.

  “You are more beautiful to me than you have ever been,” Jack said.

  Laine sipped orange juice and nibbled a piece of dry toast. “Don’t even bother, Jack,” she said. “She won’t believe a word you say.”

  “You didn’t have to get a winch truck to pull you out of bed this morning.” I squinted my eyes at her. “There are mirrors in this house. I can see myself, you know.”

  “Carri, you are the perfect size,” Laine said. “Even Doctor Davis says so. You look cute in your clothes, not all puffy and swollen. But I do wish you would wear something other than these sad-looking, faded overalls every day.” She tugged on the strap.

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “They’re the only thing that feel good.”

  She was right, though. I wore them daily, and I was now two weeks into zero makeup at all. My hair was in a clip on top of my head, and I could see red curls springing every direction. I probably should at least brush my hair. I turned to Jack again. “Really, do I disgust you?”

  He smiled and patted my cheek. “I love you, sweet girl. See you at eleven.” And out the door he went.

  “See?” I said to Laine. “He can’t even look at me for long.”

  “Get over yourself,” she said. “We’re almost there.” She shoved her plate of toast and fruit away from her, even though she’d barely touched it.

  “You didn’t eat anything, Laine,” I said. “Are you feeling all right?”

  She shrugged a little. “Most days,” she answered.

  That wasn’t the answer I was looking for but most probably all I was going to get. I always wanted more, but those boundary lines had been drawn a long time ago. I tried not to cross them, but once in a while I did anyway. Sometime around Christmas I had asked her if she still thought nixing the chemo had been the route to take and she’d gotten a little defensive with me.

  “Look, Carrigan. It was my choice to make. And as soon as I made it, I had inner peace instead of that awful turmoil I had gone through for days. I didn’t take the treatment because I didn’t want my last days on earth to be spent sick and bald and throwing up. I wanted to spend it appreciating and loving the people who had been in my life. It may have bought me a little more time, but at what cost? I want to feel strong until this disease I didn’t choose strips me of that. Not because a poison I did choose did it for me. I can’t speak for other people, but for me it was a no-brainer. I know you love me and I know this hurts you. But please, don’t question my decisions any more. If there’s something you need to know, I promise I will tell you.”

  What do you say to that? She wanted to fight the monster on her terms, and I grudgingly had to admire that. It was easy for me to say I’d have taken the treatment. I wasn’t the one with the death sentence hanging over my head. From that day forward, I’d been careful to let her set the tone. Even if it drove me insane, and it always, always did, Laine changed the subject back to me. “So, as cute as you look in your little overalls, will you please change clothes before we go to the doctor’s office?”

  “Fine.” I threw up my hands. “If you and Ella Rae can find me something to wear, I’ll put it on.”

  An hour later, I had been pronounced fit to leave the house. I had to give them props. I did look a lot better. I didn’t like how these clothes clung to me, but they were stylish and cute and I felt pretty, and that did wonders for my attitude. I’d turned into such a girlie girl lately. When Jack came in, he whistled at me and I blushed like a little girl. Ugh, these freaking hormones. How embarrassing.

  Jack had begun making the “OB run,” as Ella Rae called it, with us when I started having to go weekly. When I was only going to the OB-GYN monthly, just the girls and I went. We shopped, had lunch, and made a day of it. But the closer my time got, the more Jack hovered. We had watched a Lamaze film in our bedroom a few nights earlier, and I thought he was going to change his mind about the delivery room. “I don’t think I can watch this, Carrigan.”

  “What?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, maybe you should just let them put you to sleep and take the baby out.” He looked a little pale.

  “Jack,” I said, “you watch cows have babies all the time. What is wrong with you?”

  “It’s not having the baby,” he said. “Do you hear her? I don’t think I can listen to you do that.”

  I winced. I hadn’t been too thrilled about the screaming either, and it was awfully sweet of him to be so concerned, but if he thought he was going to leave me in the delivery room, he was out of his mind. “I won’t scream like that.”

  “You say that now,” he said. “She probably said it too.”

  I laughed. My sweet Jack, who was tough as nails, didn’t want to see me in pain. “I love you.”

  “I bet you won’t be saying that then.” He pointed at the TV.

  “Oh, I will too,” I said. I planted a kiss on his cheek. “It won’t be that bad.” I didn’t believe a word of that, but it had seemed to pacify him. Slightly.

  “Let’s roll, Team Whitfield,” Laine called. “Places to go and people to see.”

  My entourage was waiting in the driveway when I came down the porch steps. Jack jumped out of the driver’s seat and held my hand while I got in the SUV. I took the hand he extended. “I hate this,” I said. He just smiled. Truthfully, I really had enjoyed being pregnant up until the past month. I felt awkward and clumsy now. Two things I had never felt in my life. I couldn’t jog at all any more either. I kept feeling like I needed to hold my hands under my belly. I was ready for this baby to see the outside world. I highly commend and admire women who love being pregnant and want to have a baby every year . . . but I ain’t one of them.

  My OB-GYN, Doctor Ike Davis, was also Laine’s and Ella Rae’s regular doctor. He was a sweet, jolly, older man with kind eyes and a heart of gold. He had a deer camp close to Bon Dieu Falls and was a college friend of Poppa Jack and my daddy. He often came to the annual Crawfish Boil as well. I knew he’d felt awful about Laine. She had gone for her regular checkup barely a y
ear before she’d been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The checkup had revealed nothing abnormal. Laine knew that a routine pap smear wouldn’t detect ovarian cancer, and after her diagnosis, she assured Doctor Davis she understood that. He called the Farm every week or two to check on her and had even stopped by a couple of times. I knew her illness had broken his heart, and on some level he felt some misguided responsibility. But Laine had never blamed him. Laine never blamed anybody.

  “Here are all my favorite patients!” Doctor Davis said when he entered the exam room. He hugged each of us and shook hands with Jack. “How are you feeling, dear?” he asked Laine.

  She playfully hit him on the shoulder. “Like pitching for the Saints.”

  He looked at me puzzled.

  “She thinks they play baseball,” I explained.

  He laughed. “Sometimes I wish they did.” He smiled. “And how are you feeling, dear?”

  “Like a busted can of biscuits,” I said.

  Doctor Davis laughed. “First time I’ve heard that one,” he said. “But your chart looks great. You’ve only gained twenty-three pounds. And your blood pressure is perfect. I’m proud of you.”

  “Whoop-de-do,” I said.

  Laine gave him a pleading look. “Please deliver this baby so her attitude will get better.”

  “You been giving everybody a hard time?” Doctor Davis said.

  “I have no idea what she means.”

  “Huh,” Ella Rae said.

  “Jack?” Doctor Davis said.

  “Been a perfect angel,” he answered.

  “Ass-kisser,” Ella Rae said.

  We all got a good laugh at that, including Doctor Davis.

  “I need to utilize your pregnant-wife skills with some other husbands, Jack,” he said. “Now, let’s take a look, shall we?”

  I looked at Ella Rae, Laine, and Jack, all glued in their same places. “Come on, y’all,” I said, “at least look out the window till I get the sheet wrapped around me.”