Jess graduated the following spring. Ivy and Cobb sat in the second row of a packed stadium, holding—and showing off—the newest addition to the family, Allie Rose, now an active one-year-old. Named in part after their grandmother, she looked like an exact mix of Ivy and Cobb, with Ivy’s button nose and mouth and Cobb’s blue eyes and face shape.
There was another guest in the audience too. Jess’s mother had driven down for the event and had apparently stopped at every farm stand along the way. She had the idea that if it was sold by the side of the road, it had to be fresh and better than the packaged stuff she’d always served. She handed everybody bundles of tin foil too—after carefully wrapping it around apricot bread loaves, chocolate swirled raspberry pie and assorted other baked goods. Everyone looked too thin, she insisted, but Jess figured she’d was just enjoying having an excuse to bake again.
Unfortunately, she didn’t bring any information about Stephanie. Jess had asked about her almost as soon as her mother arrived.
“Do you know where Stephanie is?”
Her mother’s face was solemn as she shook her head.
Cobb was grilling some hot dogs in the backyard, and Jess didn’t want to dampen the mood, but…“No word? Nothin’?” she persisted.
“No. They left town shortly after…everything, but I don’t know where they went. I didn’t want to ask because…” Carolyn shook her head, as if she were angry with herself. She knew how much any news of Stephanie would have meant to her daughter. “I should have,” she said, looking at Jess apologetically. “I heard a rumor about Arlene being back before I left town, but I didn’t see them and I haven’t heard from anyone who has. I’m sorry.”
Jess responded with a shrug and a sad smile, then turned her attention to the new family clattering all around her. As Cobb plopped hot dogs on paper plates for everyone, Ivy was trying to keep little Allie Rose from putting a ketchup bottle into her mouth whole. As they ate, Carolyn caught them up on the news of their brother. “Oh, you know Danny.” Their mother’s tone, combined with her excessive hand waving, told them everything. “I told you, I think, that he ran off to New York with Wade last fall, thinking they’re going to be the next big thing in rock ’n’ roll.”
“How’s he doin’?” Jess asked.
“He’s working in a record store,” her mother answered. “Because, naturally, they haven’t hit the big time yet. They’re sharing a pea-sized apartment with four other guys.” She waved a hand and made a face. “Can you imagine what it smells like in there?”
* * *
Carolyn waited until a seemingly casual lunch downtown with her daughters to drop a bombshell right on the table.
“I’ve left your father,” she said, adding, “Can you pass the breadsticks?”
The news came as more of a shock to Ivy than to Jess, who immediately said, “’Cause of me?”
“Oh no, dear,” her mother assured. “I won’t go into the details—that’s between your father and myself—but this has been coming for some time.”
Ivy nearly choked on her ice water, staring at her mother with gaping mouth. “Okay,” she said, as if joking, but not. She was surprised primarily because of the way her mother had stood beside the man who had kicked her out of the house. On some level, Jess knew her sister was having a hard time forgiving her for that. She could understand why, but hoped they’d eventually reconcile.
The surprises kept coming. Her mother explained that she’d been living in Atlanta for the past few months, getting settled, though she told no one for a while. She was getting ready to start a new life, she told them. She wanted to be closer to her granddaughter and would be doing something she loved, working at an upscale Atlanta café and bake shop. Atlanta, she said, being a large city, was going to be a lot easier for her to get used to than tiny, rural Greens Fork had been.
Ivy hesitated. “What about Dad?”
“He seems to be doing okay on his own, though heaven knows if he’ll ever learn to use the stove. As for the church—there were some who left the congregation last year,” she admitted, “most notably, Abilene Thornbush.”
“No kiddin’.” Jess shook her head as a devilish laugh escaped her throat.
“Yes, she made it known that anyone who was anyone would have to attend her new church. Your father still has about thirty or so left. He’ll rebuild it, I’m sure.”
Jess scooped up the last of the potato salad and realized she didn’t give a rat’s ass if the congregation was rebuilt or not. Or whether he ever figured out how to use the freaking stove. Like most of her thoughts, she kept them to herself.
* * *
At graduation, everyone watched proudly as Jess walked across the stage in her black cap and gown with a gold tassel signaling her academic achievement. There weren’t specially colored tassels for her other achievements, but in addition to excelling in English and science and lettering in basketball, she’d been, amazingly, a standout on the debate team. The eruption in church had somehow enabled her to use her voice more easily. She wished she could tell Stephanie how proud she was of that, though for obvious reasons the accomplishment was bittersweet.
* * *
Jess spent most of the summer babysitting for Ivy so her sister could resume her college courses. She was not going to let her dreams of being a veterinarian be derailed; she’d already arranged for a good friend of hers to take over when Jess went to LSU.
Cobb had found a full-time job in a paper mill. Jess couldn’t stand the stench that came home with him; if he didn’t take a shower immediately when he came home, she would be so nauseous, she’d throw up. He confessed he didn’t like it much either, though he’d told her it wasn’t much worse than a barn full of manure. She still thought the manure would be preferable to that. She was relieved for her sister when he said he’d look for something else soon.
Aside from putting everything in her mouth and necessitating endless calls to Poison Control, Allie Rose was pretty easy to care for. During the day, Jess would play Crystal Gayle for her, and she’d fall asleep easily, which either meant she liked the soothing sound of her voice or she was so bored it put her to sleep. Jess didn’t care, because her songs would always mean something special to her.
When she was not caring for Allie Rose, Jess was trying to get a head start on the reading in her freshman English course, which had been sent to her by the academic advisor to the men’s and women’s basketball teams, and pounding up and down the roads in Valdosta to get in the best condition of her life—and distract her from wondering about what Stephanie was doing. All too soon, August arrived, Ivy’s summer courses were over, and Jess was free to tend to the one thing she wanted to do before heading off to Baton Rouge and the next chapter of her life.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Clad in the purple and gold jacket of an LSU Tiger, Jess settled back in her seat on the bus and studied the passing scenery. Awake after a long nap, she was surprised to see that the countryside of Maryland had been replaced by factories along the New Jersey Turnpike. In a few more boring hours they reached Connecticut, where she saw clumps of green lining the highway like postcards. Then finally, the “Massachusetts Welcomes You” sign, which featured a turkey. She hadn’t expected that. What did Massachusetts have to do with turkeys? Her mother had never mentioned that before.
Jess knew she would be on the Mass Pike a while yet before she’d ever see the ocean. While she waited for the first signs that they were approaching water, she noticed how parts of the countryside here reminded her of Tennessee—rolling hills and farmhouses that, had she not been on a bus heading north for the better part of a day, she’d have sworn were in the South.
She held her mother’s letter in her hands, a letter that said she wished she could be there to point out to Jess the best places to go on the North Shore, but as the newest employee at the bakery it wasn’t possible.
It would have been great to have her there, Jess thought, and for her sake and not only because Jess was nervous
about taking this first big trip on her own. It wasn’t like she was jetting off to France or some other foreign land, but it might as well have been. She’d been listening to some of the conversations around her and while a few things sounded like her mother’s accent, at other times it sounded like they were speaking another language, using words like “bubbler” for “water fountain” and other strange expressions.
Suddenly Denisha, the girl from Jess’s math class, popped into her mind—her smiling face and her little swagger. She grinned, knowing what she’d advise. It was time to “strut her stuff” and not hold back.
Denny wasn’t the only one she found herself thinking about from the “old” days, of course. She kept thinking she saw Stephanie’s silver Sunbird at different places along the highway, only to have it drop out of sight, lost in the congestion on the road. It was just a case, she decided, of wanting something so much you could convince yourself a daydream was real. Thinking of Stephanie always left her with a sense of yearning, the feeling that they’d left things unfinished. She wondered if she’d ever stop missing her.
The changing landscape fascinated her—to the irritation of her fellow passengers. Even when they stopped at a rest area, the trees were different and she couldn’t help commenting on that.
“This is northern grass and northern sky,” Jess said to one of her traveling companions as they ate lunch on a picnic table.
“Yes, yes it is.” The woman had grown tired of Jess’s obsession with all things northern; she was from New Hampshire and had seen it all already. Many times.
The wind picked up and blew their napkins off the table. “Northern wind,” Jess said, smiling as she chased them down. She couldn’t contain her excitement, even if it annoyed everyone around her. At this point, she didn’t care. She’d waited a long time to get here.
* * *
Eventually maple and poplar trees, dogwoods and dandelions, all turned to fir trees that looked like Christmas, then pine trees, then those tall weeds she’d seen in pictures of the high dunes near the beach. She got off when they arrived in Cape Ann, the end of the line. Everybody in the station talked like her mother. It must have been lonely for her, she realized, never hearing others who talked the same way she did.
Jess parked her bag in a locker at the station and followed the signs and a string of other tourists down to the sea. She stared in fascination at the deep blue Atlantic waves crashing against a tan shoreline. Even though it was still summer, there was a chill in the breeze. She snapped her LSU jacket closed as she walked along the sidewalk taking in the old-fashioned candy stores and pottery stores that were open inside what looked like old Victorian houses. Boats docked in the harbor bobbed up and down with the waves. The shoreline was rocky, with miles of coastline and a lighthouse far in the distance—a place to snap pictures and breathe in the fresh air. Beams of a different sunlight twisted and twirled in a line toward the horizon. The town of Rockport had a romance about it, a unique charm that she’d remember forever, a feeling like no place she’d been so far in her life. It was so much like one of the photographs in her mother’s calendars. So unlike home. So…free. She finally had made it.
Realizing suddenly that she was hungry, she went to the nearest seafood stand. A handwritten menu said it had clam rolls, lobster rolls, all kinds of foods that you could eat here and nobody would stare at you and make fun of you. She couldn’t wait to try them out.
“A lobster roll and a Diet Coke, please,” Jess said excitedly, proudly.
The attendant, not used to her accent, took a moment to understand what she’d said. “Where are you from?” he asked, sounding like a real Bostonian himself.
“Tennessee,” she replied.
“Oh, you’re a Southern girl,” he said with a wink and a smile before pulling his head back inside the booth to fill the order.
He may have been flirting. Usually she was oblivious to things like that, but she was getting better. Not that she was interested.
Southern girl. The way he said it, Jess knew that the guy probably attached all kinds of assumptions to the label—that she probably loved grits, which happened to be true. And guns, which definitely wasn’t true. Or that she looked down on everyone who didn’t go to church, which wasn’t true either.
Jess smiled faintly. Even though she had been born in the South, she had never really felt a part of it, not in the way that someone feels a sense of belonging, of place, or like those people who said their home state was in their blood. She thought her home state was beautiful, with landscapes that were almost unreal in the way they inspired her. She would always treasure the scenes of her childhood. Even so, Jess had always felt like an outsider there, as though she was from someplace else and no place in particular. She had no home.
“Thanks,” Jess said, taking her lobster roll and finding a nearby bench. She took a bite, savoring the sweet butteriness of the roll and the tartness of the lime in the mayonnaise. It was a little different than her mother made, but surprisingly good.
As she chewed she thought some more about being a “Southern girl.” She didn’t think she had actually ever met a girl her age from the South, except one, who believed the Bible was to be taken literally, and even that girl didn’t agree with the “stoning people” part.
The truth was, not every Southern girl was a conservative, uber-religious, “you’re-going-to-hell” type of person, as the rest of the country might have imagined. There were Southern girls who did believe these things, some out of genuine conviction, others because of what they had been taught. There were also Southern girls who questioned what they were taught and girls with dreams bigger than society had told them to have. Girls who’d fought adversity, and girls with gray eyes. She pictured Stephanie’s smile, brighter than a million fireflies on a summer night, and recalled her laughter, like a favorite song.
Stereotypes never allowed for the complexities of reality. If they would, then she would have to say that she was, in fact, a Southern girl.
She lifted her lobster roll, preparing to take another bite.
“Can I have some?” The voice was familiar, so was the accent.
It wasn’t her imagination. Stephanie was standing there. A year older, her hair a little longer, but with those same smoky eyes, now sparkling in the New England sun. She was real, the answer to a prayer. Jess gasped.
“How did you find me?” she said when she could finally speak.
“You didn’t think I was going to let you see the ocean all by yourself, did you?” Stephanie was beaming, taking great delight in having surprised her.
Jess dropped the lobster roll and threw her arms around her, holding her so tightly she was surprised either of them could breathe. “How did you know where I…?”
“Your mom told me.” Stephanie smiled radiantly as she released her. “You’ve got mayonnaise on your…” She pointed to the front of Jess’s jacket.
Neither of them could stop laughing.
“Screw it!” Jess clumsily wiped at the mess, while napkins blew away in the wind.
“I was behind you the whole way!” Stephanie laughed.
They were giddy, seeing each other again.
“I thought it was my imagination!”
Stephanie shook her head.
They hugged again for what seemed like forever, ignoring the crowds of tourists passing by. Stephanie didn’t seem to mind getting the mess on her jacket—it was a darker denim, one Jess hadn’t seen before. Finally, remembering her initial question, Jess gestured to the seafood shack. She said, “You want me to get you one?”
“It can wait,” Stephanie said. She smiled in a way that made Jess blush before suddenly breaking down in a rush of tears.
Jess grabbed a stray napkin and dabbed at her face. “You’ve got to get a hold of yourself, girl!” Her eyes were tender on her.
“I wasn’t sure you’d ever want to see me,” Stephanie said, collecting herself. “Because I didn’t go…that day.”
The day in ch
urch. Had this been troubling her all this time?
Jess shook her head. “Forget it, really. I saw your mom and…I got it.” She took her hand, reassuring her as they sat together on the bench.
It took them a few minutes to get their bearings—Jess could have spent the rest of the day cataloging the details of her face, the face she’d tried to remember every night before she fell asleep.
Once she was able to relax a little, Jess had so many questions. Stephanie laughed at the way they came pouring out without her taking a breath.
“Mom went to one of those places to clean herself up, in Scottsdale,” Stephanie explained in answer to one. “I went to live with my dad.”
“So you had your senior year at a different school too?” Jess asked, eagerly wanting to know every detail.
Stephanie nodded. “In Nashville. Mom visited us every now and then.” She lowered her eyes. “I think she’s gonna have to go back…to that place. Last time she came for a visit, I could tell she’d been drinkin’ again.”
“I’m sorry.”
Stephanie waved her hand. “It is what it is.” Always the tough girl. By now her eyes were dry, her emotions about her mother tucked inside.
“I wish you’d come down to Georgia. I kept wondering what happened to you. I tried to get a message to you.”
“I called your house,” Stephanie said, “hoping to get your mom and beg her to tell me where you were, but every time I did your dad would answer and I’d hang up. I didn’t know how he’d react.”
“You did the right thing.” Jess laughed ironically.
“I finally got a hold of your mom a couple of weeks ago. It’s a long story, but one of my mom’s visits…she heard that your mom was living in Atlanta now and working in a bakery. So I looked her up. That’s how I found out about your trip.” She smiled, as if she were an expert sleuth. Turning serious, she asked her, “Have you been…okay?”
“I am now.” Jess gazed at her in an unmistakable way. She was completely lost in this moment. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. “My sister and Cobb had a baby girl.”
Southern Girl Page 38