Paris did the explaining, while Corrine reached for a banana.
They had been to a party held by college boys. At this information, Belinda’s blood alternately boiled and went cold. She knew the scenario only too well. She was amazed that Corrine, of all people, had done something so stupid, but then she learned that the apparent escapade had been prompted by Larry Joe Darnell’s engagement to Monica Huggins, a fact that came as some surprise to Belinda. Mostly she was surprised at being behind in gossip.
Corrine, her tongue quite loosened by the alcohol, told of the incident with Monica Huggins at the drugstore that afternoon, complete with affecting the accent and manner of the woman. Belinda could imagine it clearly. The teacher was obviously aware of Larry Joe’s fondness for Corrine and was jealous.
“He’s gonna marry her, Miss Belinda. And I love him,” Corrine said with banana in her mouth.
“I know you do.”
Paris put an arm around Corrine. The girl’s fierce protectiveness touched Belinda deeply.
The next instant, Corrine put her hand over her mouth, hopped up and ran for the bathroom. Belinda jumped up and followed, directing, “To the right, sugar!”
With a sigh, she returned to the table. “She’ll be a little better after she throws up.”
Paris looked at her, then dropped her gaze.
Belinda said, “You know, I am surprised at Corrine, but I am really flabbergasted that you would be so pure-D stupid!”
They sat there a moment with Paris still looking downward.
“But I’m glad you called me. You did the right thing.”
Paris’s eyes came up, met Belinda’s, and the girl sat up straighter.
Then Belinda told her to go check on Corrine and for both of them to use the new toothbrushes in the bathroom drawer to brush their teeth really well.
“Okay. You two girls watch my lips.” Belinda stood, arms folded over her ample bosom. “There is not a man on earth worth losin’ your good sense and dignity over. Not one. Men—and family and friends, too—are goin’ to break your heart sometimes. That is just how it is. It is the way of life. You can go on and hurt yourself further by doin’ stupid stuff that could cause you to completely lose your good future…or you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and make the best of things.
“So think about that the next time you two want to go to some stupid wild drinkin’ party.”
“We—” Corrine began.
“Are you interrupting me?”
Corrine shut her mouth and dropped her gaze. Belinda stood silent until both girls again looked at her.
She could practically read the question going through their minds. “No, I am not goin’ to tell Marilee. Mostly for her sake—she might have a breakdown. You think about that, Corrine.”
Belinda found herself wagging her finger in the same manner as her mother had done. She instantly dropped her hand. “I guess we all do stupid things that we would rather others not know about.”
It was a commentary on Paris’s life with her grandfather that Belinda never even thought about telling him.
While driving to the Holloway home, they hatched their story as to how Belinda had just happened along right after Paris’s car had broken down. She even gave them each a piece of gum when she let them out at the curb.
But as she drove herself back home, she worried about her actions in hiding the truth. Perpetuating a lie did not seem like the thing a mother should do. She could hardly sleep for worrying over this, and was awake in the early hours when Lyle came in. She ended up telling him all about it, and he said he thought she’d done right. He said the girls could choose to tell the truth in their own time. And he also said he would get Paris’s car the following day, and have it fixed, too.
Belinda lay back in the shelter of his arm and said, “Thank you, sweetheart.”
Warm gratitude for this man flooded her. She felt she was leaning on him in a way that she had never before done. She decided to tell him about the baby right then…but she did not. She fell comfortably asleep instead.
She was awakened by the phone ringing. She sat up, and Lyle conked her in the head with the receiver as he passed it to her. Falling back against the pillows, she squinted against the bright sunlight pouring through the windows and reached for the receiver hovering over her head.
“Belinda?”
“Yes?”
She had expected it to be Marilee’s voice, blessing her out for not telling the truth about the girls. But it was an unfamiliar voice. She struggled to sit up and think. Was something wrong at the store? Wasn’t that new girl, Barbara Jean, supposed to open today? Was this her? What time was it? The digital clock read 7:50.
“Belinda, this is Gracie Berry.”
“Oh.” Instantly wide-awake. “Gracie…what is it?”
“I’m sorry if I woke you. Emma said you are always up to open the drugstore, but I called there and the girl said you were home.”
“It’s fine. What is it, Gracie?” She was already getting out of bed, ready to meet whatever was coming.
“Papa—John Cole—had a heart attack. I think Emma could use you, if you can come.”
Good heavens!
As she dressed, she wondered if anything else could be heading her way, and maybe that she needed to quit answering her phone.
CHAPTER 13
Cinnamon, Lies and Sweet Green Grass
Grasse, France
“A CRUDE ESSENTIAL OIL IS PRODUCED BY distillation, and this is then refined by rectification. This is a procedure in which…” The young woman guide spoke flawless English.
Vella felt ashamed of her small ability with the French language. When she realized how many people in the world could speak English, and she could not speak one other language, she felt she fell far short.
She also fell far short in her interest in museums. While the International Perfume Museum was one of the few that she did find interesting—she especially enjoyed seeing their roses—she was a woman who liked to take in things and move on. In fifteen minutes of perusing the museum, she had seen all she needed to see.
“Now, if you will follow me…” the guide said and led the way from the room.
Vella watched the tour party flow out of the room, taking along her traveling companion, Lillian Jennings, who was an avid museum goer. At that moment Lillian was chatting happily with another member of the tour. Vella could imagine what Lillian was saying. She was probably going into every detail of the perfume-making process, things the guides likely did not even know but that were very accurate. Lillian was a walking encyclopedia, and she had something to say on every subject. Vella found the behavior highly annoying, although she was not unmindful that likely at least some of her annoyance came because she, too, possessed a similar intellect and habit. Lillian was enough to make Vella change her ways.
Doing just that, Vella turned and walked back to the museum entry.
A clerk who sat beside the door jumped to his feet. “Is something wrong, madame?”
“No…non…merci…magnifique…” She smiled and waved at the perplexed man as she went out the door.
She strode quickly away from the museum, having the very absurd feeling that Lillian might be coming after her to drag her back.
At a low wall, she sat and pulled out the cell phone that she had borrowed that morning from Lillian, and had managed to keep. Lillian barely used the thing, anyway. In all their weeks away, Lillian had, to Vella’s knowledge, only telephoned home three times, and for absurd reasons, such as to make certain her daughter, Emma, picked up her mail and that her air-conditioning was not coming on in her apartment.
Vella, on the other hand, and as incredible as it sounded, was homesick. Here she had what she had always wanted—to travel the world—and she had called someone back in Valentine nearly every day. She called Belinda several times a week. When her cell phone had conked out, Lillian had said Vella wore it out.
While Vella would not have admitted it, she di
d wonder at her need to have to continually speak to someone back home. Her level of attachment rather flabbergasted her. She actually would have called Belinda every day, if not hampered by embarrassment and knowing her daughter would react poorly. She had called her eldest daughter, Margaret, several times, which was the most she had spoken to Margaret in years. And Margaret had not answered the last two calls, so obviously she had had enough.
Her call that moment to Belinda went unanswered. Flipping the phone closed, she considered who else she might call back in Valentine. Then she gave a large sigh and dropped the phone back into her purse.
Sticking on her sunglasses, she got to her feet and started off leisurely along the sidewalk that took her downhill.
This town, as so many they toured, was built on a hillside, and the streets wound up and down. Impossibly narrow, some of them, and not really bordered by yards but terraces of fragrant bushes and flowers—roses, lavender, bougainvillea and what she would call Spanish sword, but maybe in France it would be French sword. All of the flowers and small gardens everywhere were lovely, although she had a sense of being cramped and hemmed in. She had an absurd longing for a wide expanse of green lawn, something apparently not cultivated in this part of the world.
Just then the delicious, and quite familiar, sweet aroma of sugar and cinnamon came from a building—a bakery, with a window of delightful-looking sweet cakes. For a moment, she was reminded of walking past Sweetie Cakes Bakery on Main Street.
She went inside, where a stocky—and handsome—man in the vicinity of her own age stood behind the glass cases. Instantly he gave her a wide, quite engaging smile.
“Bonjour…American, madame?”
It was as if she had a sign on her. “Yes…I would like two of those pomm…two of those.”
“Ah…” He kissed his fingertips. “An apple slipper. Puff pastry filled with apples and cinnamon. You will love it. You like cinnamon?”
She said that she did, and he said that he had judged her a cinnamon woman. He winked at her. Her response was to put a hand up to smooth her hair.
Then the man pointed out several other pastries, insisting that she try them. “On the house. It is my shop to do as I please.” And then he came around the counter, extended his hand and introduced himself as Gérard, who, it turned out, knew English so well because his father had been American. “I am a widower, madame. Please take pity on me and have your rolls and coffee at my table.”
How could she say no to such a delightful flirt?
Within minutes, Vella was sitting across from Gérard at a small table within a peaceful courtyard at the rear of the bakery. There were lovely flowers and a grand view of the town cascading down the hillside. A woman brought them coffee, and over the sweet rolls, the two of them chatted. Gérard went into detail about how he made his pastries. He was a man in love with his craft. And with life, Vella thought, watching him with envy.
They talked on, sharing the particulars of their lives and families, and each brought out pictures. His wife, dead for many years, had been a real beauty. He had eight children. He was kind to say that Vella’s daughters had the faces of angels. At this, she gave both of her daughters’ photographs a second look.
When she noticed the time, that she had been at the bakery for nearly two hours, she got quite flustered. “Oh, my goodness! I must find my friend and the tour.”
“Here…here, take these with you.” Gérard pressed a bag of his sweet delicacies into her hand. “You are an angel to spend time with me today…talking of our families. Thank you.” He kissed her cheek.
She put her hand up to where his lips had been and gazed at him for an uncertain moment. Then she quickly kissed his cheek, turned and hurried away up the sidewalk. Curiosity caused her to look back over her shoulder. Gérard was there, gazing after her. She waved, then headed on at as close to a run as she could manage and not look silly.
Suddenly tears blurred her vision. She did not understand it at all, but she felt a lot less homesick. In fact, she quite suddenly took note of the beautiful blue sky above, and thought that halfway around the world in Valentine, her dear daughter and friends would look up and see the same sky. All along her way back to the tour bus, she was aware of the familiar: people nodding and smiling in greeting, the warmth of the sun, the shade of trees.
When she reached the bus, she found that it sat at the curb of a small park with carefully mowed grass that she had not noticed when they drove up. The other members of the tour were sitting around on benches and on the grass. Vella threw herself on the grass and looked around, wondering what other things she had been missing.
It turned out the bus had broken down, and they got to sit there some time, talking with one another, without the distraction of sightseeing and schedules. Vella was delighted.
Valentine, Oklahoma, U.S.A.
When they returned home after the Wake Up show, delicious breakfast aromas greeted the four of them—Papa Tate, Mr. Winston and Willie Lee and Munro.
“Looks like Rosalba is havin’ a cookin’ day,” said Mr. Winston, casting Willie Lee an eager grin.
Papa Tate headed upstairs, two at a time with his long legs, to speak to Willie Lee’s mother, who called down over the banister, while Mr. Winston and Willie Lee went on to the kitchen.
Rosalba had made sausage and warm cinnamon rolls. She asked if Willie Lee and Mr. Winston wanted eggs. Mr. Winston said, “Does the sun shine?” and Willie Lee said simply, “Yes, ma’am.” He carefully washed his hands at the sink and then scooted onto his chair at the table. His feet still did not touch the ground. Munro lay just beneath them.
Willie Lee gazed at the pan of cinnamon rolls atop the stove. He loved cinnamon rolls.
I want one.
Willie Lee looked downward to see Munro’s brown button eyes regarding him intently.
Okay. He petted the dog’s head.
His mother and Papa Tate approached through the dining room, their voices coming on ahead of them.
“It is a good thing John Cole made it to the hospital,” said his mother as she came through the door. “I’ll bet Emma is beside herself.”
“Everything is in his favor. He’s a young man, and he wasn’t even passed out or anything. He was drivin’ himself to the hospital,” responded Papa Tate, using his best reasonable voice, as Corrine labeled it.
His mother and Papa Tate were talking about Mr. Berry’s heart attack. Papa Tate had heard about it that morning and told Mr. Winston on the way home. Willie Lee knew it did not mean the heart had attacked Mr. Berry, but that his heart had failed…but not like a test. It was failing to work correctly, thought Willie Lee, as he observed his parents. He could practically see the worry swirling in his mother’s head. Corrine said worrying was something at which his mother excelled naturally. Papa Tate was being more jovial than usual, attempting to joke her out of it, as he always did.
“‘Keep on the sunny side…always on the sunny side,’” he sang to her, making a silly face.
As if not hearing him, she said, “I’ll call Belinda in a minute and get the details.” Then she frowned at the table, where Rosalba was setting out plates of food. “Well, here’s a heart attack waitin’ to happen.”
Uh-oh, said Munro, and he crawled a couple more inches from view beneath the table.
Then, as Rosalba set the pan of cinnamon rolls on the table, right in front of Willie Lee, his mother instantly snatched them up again. One minute they were there, and the next they went flying up into the air, where they hovered, while his mother said something about the fat content clogging up Papa Tate’s arteries and carb grams laying Winston flat out with his diabetes. “You have already had one heart attack, Winston—do you want to lose your feet?”
Willie Lee wondered at the statement as he gazed at the cinnamon rolls hovering in the air.
Mr. Winston said, “Might as well, since no one lets me drive anymore.”
The pan of cinnamon rolls had made it to the counter. Mr. Winston reached
out and took it up and returned it to the table, where it landed with a thud in front of Willie Lee again.
Papa Tate was saying, “We hear your point, Marilee, but we have the breakfast now. Let us just eat it and not waste. Rosalba has gone to a lot of work, and there are people all over the world who are starvin’.”
“Why should that mean you kill yourself?” asked his mother.
While his parents threw this argument back and forth, Willie Lee reached out and succeeded in getting a thick, gooey cinnamon roll. Across the table, his mother snatched up the plate of eggs that Rosalba had brought Mr. Winston.
“Winston does not need three eggs—one is plenty.” She scraped two of Mr. Winston’s eggs onto Willie Lee’s plate, then returned Mr. Winston’s single egg to him. Mr. Winston gazed at the plate as if he wasn’t certain what had happened. “And don’t make Mr. Holloway any at all. He can have two pieces of the sausage.”
I want eggs. Munro came up off the floor, nose high and sniffing hopefully.
Willie Lee passed the rest of his cinnamon roll down to the dog and reached for another one from the pan, fearing that his mother might snatch them away at any moment.
“And this is all you expect me to eat?” said Papa Tate, gazing at the two small links of sausage in front of him.
“Well…” His mother eyed the table, and Willie Lee’s fear for the fate of the cinnamon rolls escalated.
“I’ll make you some oatmeal,” said his mother in a voice echoing with triumph. “And whole-wheat toast, and I still have a jar of my homemade strawberry jam.”
At the mention of the strawberry jam, Willie Lee looked at Papa Tate, who looked at Winston. No one had ever wanted to tell his mother that her jam was like rubber.
While his mother flew to the pantry, Rosalba, who was always wise and never entered controversy in the home, put down her cooking utensils, pulled a package of cigarettes from her skirt pocket and stepped out the rear screen door.
Winston said, “Now, look here, Marilee…how long do you want me to live, anyway?”
Little Town, Great Big Life Page 14