“I’ve got to sit,” Lizzie said, massaging the back of her knee.
“Still don’t understand how you can spend six hours a day working out.”
“Rehab is different from exercise.”
“If you say so.” Elyse put her finger to her mouth and looked upward in consideration. “Are you hungry now or can you wait? These waffles will be best right out of the pan.”
“Isobel said she’d be out later than usual, something about having a conference call with her agent and some production company guy. We should wait.”
“I’ll make a few test ones and then we can fire it up again when she rolls in.”
Lizzie watched her cousin crack eggs like chefs did on television, effortlessly with one hand. “You know, people think everything is better now, but it’s not. Feel this.” Elyse passed her the cast-iron waffle pan, which felt greasy to Lizzie. It weighed as much as a small car.
When she was cooking, her cousin exuded calmness. It was only in between activities that restlessness overcame Elyse. There was a girlishness about her, or even more than that, a childlike approach to the world around her—as if she still believed that puppy dogs and rainbows could brighten anyone’s day. Here they were all still who they’d been as children. Elyse had always been chubby, but in an adorable way, and she’d been saved from ridicule then as now by her perfectly creamy skin and her girlish charm. She was the sort of woman men wanted to protect and women felt unthreatened by. Lizzie hadn’t exactly given much thought to her appearance as a child. Some people would have called her a tomboy, but it wasn’t so much that she disliked feminine traits as that she didn’t have time for them. They hadn’t known Isobel would be beautiful. What she had going for her, what she’d always had going for her were perfect proportions and dimples. Casting directors love dimpled children.
“What is it that you want? I mean, what are your dreams?” Lizzie asked. “I know what they used to be, but now that we’re all grown up, I can’t figure out what you want.”
“The recipe calls for melted shortening, but you know what? I think I’m going to try using that bacon fat left over from this morning instead. Doesn’t that sound yummy?”
“Not going to talk about it, huh?” Lizzie said. She didn’t remember her grandmother ever making waffles with that particular pan, but she did remember that whenever the milk soured, Mellie used the curdled dairy to make what she had called dinner waffles. “Are you using sour milk?”
“That’s the other recipe.” Elyse passed over the large note card she was holding.
Lizzie stared at her grandmother’s handwriting that noted simply “Breakfast Sour Waffles.” It wasn’t at all what she remembered. It looked like a version of her own handwriting when she was a teenager. Large circular loops—so that the f’s looked like b’s. The black ink had lightened to a milky brown over the years.
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
3 tablespoons melted shortening
1½ cups sour milk
Use fork to stir salt, flour, and baking powder together. Combine egg yolks, shortening, and sour milk. Stir with same fork. Beat egg whites in separate bowl with whisk until stiff. Set aside. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until batter is smooth. Fold in the stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Bake on hot irons. Six waffles.
Her cousin reached over and flipped the card in Lizzie’s hand. “I’m doing those. I like a little sugar in my waffles. Only difference is you add a bit of sugar, use regular milk and wait to add the shortening, or in my case bacon fat, after you mix the wet and the dry.”
Lizzie’s stomach growled. “I guess I am hungry.”
“We can always eat the test batch,” Elyse said and winked as she used a whisk to stiffen the egg whites.
“There’s a hand mixer somewhere,” Lizzie said, moving to get up from the table.
Elyse waved her down. “I’m doing this the old-fashioned way.”
She set the whites down and turned on the portable propane burner they’d gotten at one of those giant camping stores.
“You want this back?” Lizzie pushed the cast-iron pan toward her cousin.
She picked it up and settled the base over the open flame and then set the waffle-patterned plates in place. “I’m going to let it get hot first.”
“You should get a pot holder.” Lizzie couldn’t see how the mesh wire handles wouldn’t be too hot to touch in a moment.
“It’ll be all right.” Elyse folded the egg whites into the batter and then dumped a large ladle of the batter onto the plates. Steam rose up into the air and condensed on the windows. Batter ran down the sides of the waffle maker, puffing as it came into contact with the hot iron.
A sweet, yeasty cake smell filled the kitchen. “You could always open a waffle house,” Lizzie said.
Elyse flipped the pan and then scraped off the drippings with her fingernail and popped them into her mouth. “If I did, I’d be as big as the moon and then no one would ever love me.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” The setting sun lit up all the flyaways in her cousin’s hair and made her seem even more like a child.
“You should.” Lizzie wondered if the thing bothering her cousin was the failure of the bed and breakfast or something larger.
Elyse opened the pan and pried out the waffle. “I’m fine,” Elyse said, and although she didn’t stamp her foot, her tone gave that impression. “My sister’s getting married. BFD.”
Although Elyse would never admit this, she disliked her little sister, Daphne, for being the favorite. This was understood between the cousins. Just as it was understood that Lizzie hated her mother for holding onto the truth about her real father, and Isobel didn’t speak to her mother because she wasn’t sorry about having left her father.
“That’s not such a big deal,” Lizzie said. “It isn’t like biblical times when the older sisters had to get married first.”
“I don’t like weddings,” Elyse said, taking a break from cooking to pour a large glass of white wine.
“I guess Pinot Grigio does go with everything,” Lizzie said, tapping her fingers on the table. “There’s something you’re not saying.”
Elyse finished the glass and poured a second, mumbling an answer in between.
Lizzie snapped her fingers. “Who is Daphne marrying?”
Elyse tore up bits of a waffle and dipped them in syrup. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Landon.”
“Landon? Landon? The guy with only one arm?” Lizzie asked. Landon was the boy her cousin had had a crush on all through high school. He’d been born with some genetic condition and didn’t have the lower half of his right arm. There came a point every summer when Isobel and Lizzie had to put a moratorium on any mention of Landon.
“It’s not that I care,” Elyse said before Lizzie could say more. “I had to adjust my expectations, you know? I mean there are things that you never dream of happening and then when they do—”
“You adjust,” Lizzie finished.
Elyse didn’t look at Lizzie. She made waffles until the batter was gone and then set a plate in front of Lizzie and put the rest in the oven to stay warm. “I lied to my mom, you know.”
“That’s a first.”
“Told her that I thought you might kill yourself. That’s the excuse I gave her to make it okay for me to be here while she and Daphne plan that wedding.”
Lizzie wanted to be upset, but instead she laughed. “I guess that’s as good an excuse for running away as any. She didn’t believe you, did she?”
“She didn’t even listen to me.” Elyse looked at her fingernails and cleaned out the waffle residue.
“Moms never do.”
Elyse fixed a plate and settled next to Lizzie at the table. She held still long enough for Lizzie to see the sadness settle on her. Her shoulders dropped, and she blinked often enough that Lizzie suspected she was
afraid of crying. She clearly wasn’t able to admit how deep her sadness was because her sister was marrying the man Elyse had always thought was hers. When life doesn’t go the way you expect it to, you make strange choices. They ate until their plates were shiny with syrup and butter.
As they were doing the dishes, Isobel came into the house, all smiles. She took up Elyse’s nearly empty wine glass and proposed a toast. Lizzie and Elyse fumbled around trying to find a glass to raise.
“I can’t wait any longer,” Isobel said. “I’m going to be back on television.”
“Holy hell,” Elyse said, clinking the whisk she’d grabbed to her cousin’s glass. “How’d you manage that all the way out here?”
“Congratulations,” Lizzie said, feeling her stomach constrict at the thought of Isobel’s leaving them. She and Elyse would never be able to finish the house on their own.
Isobel talked about the offer, which was to be part of an hour-long “where are they now” type special on child stars of the nineties. A film crew would show up at Spite House for a few days and film Isobel working in the house. “I’ve even decided to try to do a little local theater, you know, so they can see that I’m still working on my craft.”
“What does that even mean?” Elyse asked.
If anyone else had asked Isobel that question, she’d have turned cold. Arched one eyebrow and offered a half-smile as if responding would merely expose the asker to more embarrassment. Instead, Lizzie laid a hand on Isobel’s arm as if to tell her all that she and Elyse had talked about earlier—Landon and the disappointment of not even knowing what dream it was that you were waiting to come true.
“I don’t want to settle for one of those small lives—filled with jobs that pay for cookie-cutter houses in suburban neighborhoods where children are sent to good schools and I can’t help but feel like it’s all over.” Isobel paused for breath and then took a long drink of wine. “I keep looking for a new start, but the past looms so large—as if the shadow of what I’d already done is enough to keep anything new from happening.”
Without a word, Elyse got up, removed the remaining waffles from the oven where they’d been kept warm and fixed Isobel a plate.
March 2012: Memphis
By the time the dogwoods bloomed in early March, Lizzie had a job. The dwindling balance in her grandmother’s trust and the mounting costs of the renovation pushed her into calling T. J.’s sister, who needed help with an afterschool program her nonprofit organization ran. In less than an hour, Rosa May had hired Lizzie and put her to work.
“Walk with me,” Rosa May said, motioning for Lizzie to follow her down a dim hallway Ignoring the grinding in her knee, she tried to keep pace with her.
“You must be a runner,” Lizzie said, struggling to match Rosa May’s stride.
She slowed. “I’m sorry. T. J. said you’d only now started to make real progress with therapy. I damaged my Achilles a few years back. It was murder to come back from.”
“Murder’s about right.” For the last month, she and Phil had worked six hours a day on strengthening and conditioning exercises. Although he remained optimistic, her leg wasn’t back to normal, but it was stronger. “If all goes well this week, I can start jogging again.”
“Bet you’re tired of that damn stationary,” Rosa May said.
“Just the seat. No way a woman would ever design something so tortuous as a bicycle seat.”
A girl approached them. “Miss Freeman,” she said, and then dropped her voice too low for Lizzie to hear. Rosa May put up her hand indicating to Lizzie that she’d be right back and escorted the girl back to a classroom. Returning, she explained that the girls were divided by age and that they spent ninety minutes on homework and then ninety minutes on extracurricular activities. “This group has been playing basketball, but I’m tired of basketball. I can only use five at a time and it isn’t easy for all the girls—the ones who are shorter or struggle physically. It’s no good for them.”
Rosa May’s voice had a musical quality that made Lizzie think of choirs. She talked about why she’d started the program and the risk the girls were at for teen pregnancy. “I know what you’re going to ask: How do we know who’s at risk?”
Lizzie hesitated, thinking Rosa May would answer her own question, but the pause in the conversation became uncomfortably long and finally Lizzie ventured, “All of them?”
“That’s right,” Rosa May said, pausing at a closed door. “The reason T. J. had you call me is that what I want, what I’ve wanted from the beginning, is a way to get these girls active. Not to be blunt, but I want to exhaust them, leave them with not enough time or energy to get into trouble.”
“Active,” Lizzie echoed, looking at her knee. She needed that too.
“Can you coach girls who hate running?”
“We’ll find out,” Lizzie said.
“Let’s say you can because I need you.” Rosa May opened the door with a flourish. Inside were two dozen girls all looking glumly at textbooks or scratching in composition notebooks with chewed- up pens. “Meet your team.”
A week later, the question of whether she could coach still echoed in Lizzie’s mind. For the first three days of her new job, it rained. This meant that after homework had been completed, she was forced to stay with the girls in a portable classroom where they watched soccer games on tape, talked about the rules of soccer, and engaged in team-building and confidence-boosting activities (which were worksheets dropped off by a harried Rosa May). On the fourth day the rain ceased, but after walking the grassy field next to the community center where the outreach program was housed, she deemed it too wet to play. On the fifth day, the girls set fire to a trashcan of crumpled paper.
They’d been working on goal setting and Lizzie had made the mistake of crumpling a piece of paper and using her left knee, juggling it in the air several times before letting it fall and then kicking it into the wastebasket as if it were a ball. The girls erupted into hoots and calls for her to do it again. When she refused, they tried on their own to mimic her motions. Most of them weren’t any good, but a few of them managed to juggle their pieces of paper more than once. Neela, who had short, flat-ironed hair that stuck out from her head like cedar shingles, particularly impressed Lizzie. But she’d lost control and she’d had to raise her voice and demand that the girls pick up their missed shots and return to goal setting. It had seemed such a simple exercise. What is your goal for today? What is your goal for tomorrow? Lizzie had been thinking about her goals and was erasing what she’d written down as her goal for a year from now when she smelled the smoke.
She looked up. Two girls in the back were smirking at her, and the rest of the class had their heads bent toward their papers. The two in the back were already pregnant. They weren’t far enough along to show, but they’d made a point of telling her on the first day. Well, one of them made the point of telling her. Sonja had waist-length black hair and wore hoop earrings that were nearly larger than her face. The other girl, Drayden, didn’t speak, but she made faces that were the equivalent of texting abbreviations—WTF and LOL seemed to be her favorites.
“My papa thinks I should play soccer,” Sonja had said, winding her long hair around her hand. “But Drayden and I can’t do that sort of physical stuff now, well, you know.”
“I’m pretty sure you can,” Lizzie had said, putting her hand on the girl’s lower back and escorting her to a seat. There’d been women on the national team who played right up until they gave birth. Kelly had been four months pregnant during one of the World Cup games. She didn’t share this with the girls: she’d always worked harder at their age for coaches who held themselves apart.
Neela, her favorite, told her about the fire. “There’s smoke,” she’d said, turning her head away from the side of the room where the fire had been lit. The flames had started to catch when she said this. Lizzie steadied her knee and walked quickly toward the fire. She picked up the basket with both hands and dropped it in the classroom sink jus
t before its plastic bottom melted. She turned on the water and ashes floated up around her face. She rubbed at it and then turned to face the girls.
Drayden covered her mouth and then doubled over in laughter, pointing at Lizzie. LMFAO, Lizzie thought. Then Sonja curled her lips in a smile, and said in an attention-drawing voice, “You’ve got a little something right here.” She moved her hand to indicate that the little something covered Lizzie’s entire face.
In the bathroom, she saw that the ashes from the fire had left charcoal smudges all across her cheeks and forehead. The girls had too much energy. Lizzie had been too tired at their age to think about setting fires or talking back to her teachers. The thought again occurred to her that she wasn’t at all qualified to be responsible for so many lives. What were her skills? What did other women who left soccer do with their lives? A few of them got married and started having kids right away—having put that part of their life on hold earlier. Some of them, the starters from that first year when women’s soccer captured the nation’s attention, brought their little girls to practices or demonstration games. These mothers made Lizzie wary. She couldn’t decide whether they were teaching their children about who their mother used to be or what the children were expected to become.
There was a knock on the door and Rosa May entered. “They giving you a hard time?”
Lizzie wiped the last of the charcoal from her face and shook her head.
“I can’t have you quitting on me already. Those girls have already run off our basketball coach—they’ve got me out there and I can’t even dribble. Besides, it’ll look bad on our grant renewal if there’s no consistency.” Rosa May smoothed her eyebrows with her index finger. She kept her hair short and wore large earrings and pantsuits. She spoke the girls’ language in a way that Lizzie did not. Growing up in Memphis, Lizzie was familiar with the divide—people like Lizzie lived out east. These at-risk girls didn’t live in any one place in particular, but they tended to keep to a certain neighborhood—Orange Mound, Glenview, Hollywood. They moved from apartment complex to apartment complex as relatives were evicted for not paying rent, or an uncle whose name was on the lease went to prison, or great-grandmothers died and none of the relatives could agree on who would live in a house that was too ramshackle to be worth selling. She wasn’t sure which of these neighborhoods T. J. and his family had lived in, but it hadn’t been east.
Three Story House: A Novel Page 9