Sisters, Ink

by Rebeca Seitz

  “Yep, that about covers it,” Meg said.

  Tandy shook her head. “Then we’ll have to make the buckeyes last. Which isn’t going to happen unless we get our big rear ends upstairs and put our hands to work on some layouts.”

  “Amen, honey!” Kendra said. “Let’s get to the scrapping!”

  They each grabbed tins and drinks and made their way to the staircase as Joy came in the door.

  “Hey, you’re just in time! We’re heading on upstairs.”

  “Don’t let me stop you then.” Joy joined in the back of the line as they all trooped up the stairs.

  “Ugh, one of these days we need to install an elevator or something,” Kendra complained.

  “Love in an elevator …” Meg sang.

  “That was too easy,” Joy said.

  “Hey, don’t knock Aerosmith. They’re legends. Besides, there’s a song for everything in life.”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  “Of course there is.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “And yet, still right.”

  They came into the studio, and Tandy noticed Daddy had put her scrapping totes on Momma’s side of the table. She took a deep breath. Conversation, busyness. She could get through this.

  “Okay, name a song for Atlanta,” Tandy said.

  “Just an old sweet song,” Meg crooned, “keeps Georgia on my mind …”

  “You did not go there. Michael Bolton? Is he a legend, too?”

  “In some circles, yes. But I was channeling Willie Nelson.”

  Kendra rolled her eyes. “My turn. Bet I can stump you. Name one for finding the perfect diamond.”

  Meg didn’t hesitate. “A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” she sang, jumping up on the table, crossing her legs, and ducking her head Marilyn Monroe-style.

  “Diamonds?” Joy shook her head. “Kendra, give her a challenge at least.”

  Kendra crossed her arms and tossed her hair. “Fine. How about doing dishes?”

  “I can bring home the bacon,” Meg belted out, “fry it up in a pan.” She hopped off the table and sashayed around the room. “And never let you forget you’re a man,” she held up an imaginary microphone, “’cuz I’m a woman!”

  “Oh, for the love of Pete. Finding a good pair of shoes?”

  “These boots were made for walkin’”—she changed the sashay to a purposeful walk away from them—“and that’s just what they’ll do.”

  “That was a great song before Jessica Simpson ruined it,” Tandy said.

  Meg dropped the act and came back to the scrapping table. “I know. I’m still mad at her over leaving Nick.”

  Joy shook her head. “I don’t understand why you keep up with celebrity marriages.”

  “Come visit Orlando for two weeks,” Tandy said. “You can’t help but know what’s happening in Hollywood.”

  “Wait! Wait!” Kendra held up her hands. “I’ve got it!”

  “Got what?”

  Kendra turned to Meg, a gleam in her eye. “Bet you can’t name a song for getting a skin rash. There’s nobody who would sing about something like that.”

  Meg grinned and leaned across the table. She sang in a sultry voice, “I’ve got you … under my skin.”

  “Oh no, you did not just break out Ol’ Blue Eyes for a skin rash,” Tandy said. “That’s wrong in so many ways.”

  Meg straightened and laughed. “Never doubt my lyrical powers.”

  “Lyrical?” Tandy smirked.

  “It’s a word,” Meg defended.

  “Yeah, but not in the way you meant it.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It’s about as much of a word as imparticular.”

  “But that’s not a word.”

  “It should be,” Kendra butted in.

  “No, it shouldn’t. You should just say unparticular.”

  “But imparticular sounds better.”

  “It sounds dumb.”

  “Are you saying I’m dumb?”

  “No, I’m saying the word imparticular would sound dumb if it came into common usage. Why are we talking about this?”

  “Because Kendra’s dating an imparticular man.” Tandy pulled a photo box out of her tote and began thumbing through the sections. The other sisters each pulled a similar photo box off the shelf.

  “You’re dating?” Joy came back to the table and set her box down. She, too, began thumbing through prints. “Who?”

  “No one.” Kendra pulled a grouping of photos from her box.

  “Then I have to ask again, why are we talking about this?”

  “Now we’re talking about it because Kendra’s lying.” Tandy selected a group of photos. Reaching across the table, she snagged one of four paper cutters. Hers still had the purple paint she’d spilled on it her senior year of high school, making it easy to find. “She told me today she’s been seeing a man.”

  “Who are you dating?” Meg asked. “And why don’t we know about him?”

  “I’m not dating anyone in particular,” Kendra said.

  “Oh! So he’s imparticular!” Joy said.

  Kendra snapped her fingers and pointed at Joy. “Exactly, little sis.”

  “So if he’s imparticular, why were you talking about him with Tandy?”

  “I wasn’t. I was talking to Tandy about Clay.”

  “Even better,” Joy said. “Now is a much more appropriate time to discuss this. I heard you ran into him downtown.”

  “Nice to know the Stars Hill grapevine is still thriving like a stubborn weed. So everybody in town is talking about this now?” Tandy finished cutting a photo and pulled the blade holder up.

  All the sisters looked up from their photos and cutters. “Pretty much,” Meg said.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Is it so dead in Stars Hill that—”

  “Do you really need to finish that sentence?” Kendra’s eyes widened. “Remember, this is the town without pizza delivery.” She popped a buckeye into her mouth, then walked over to the wall of paper towers and bent low.

  “I talked to the man for all of fifteen seconds. This is not news.”

  “Fifteen seconds of conversation with a boy that this whole town watched you fall in love with in high school. In Stars Hill, that’s news,” Joy began laying photos out on the table, moving them this way and that to decide on a layout.

  “Then help me make it un-news.”

  “How would we do that?” Kendra chose a few 12 x 12 sheets of red paper, then one each of patterned paper with the same shade of red. She came back to the table.

  “I have no idea. But I don’t want to be the topic at everybody’s dinner table.”

  Joy leaned back to eye her photo grouping. “You could date him.” With her melodic voice, the suggestion didn’t sound as ridiculous as it should have.

  “Wouldn’t that make everybody talk more?”

  Joy shrugged. “I’m not certain. Maybe, maybe not. I think they’re talking now because they wonder if something might happen.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a replay of ten years ago.” Kendra pushed her bracelets up her arm and began layering prints on the solid background.

  “No way people remember something that happened a decade ago.”

  They all three stopped scrapping again and looked up at her.

  “They remember that?”

  Kendra’s cutter sliced through the paper. “Like it was yesterday. It’s not every day we have two people going at it in the middle of Lindell Street.”

  “And then, ten years later, one of them opens a diner at the very spot the event took place.” Meg went over and reached up to pull a Becky Higgins sketchbook from the top of the bookshelf. As she slid it off, something large and green came with it. Meg jumped back, went off balance, and landed on her backside. “Ack!”

  All the sisters looked up at the commotion.

  Tandy sprang from her stool and ran around to help Meg up off the floor
. “What was that?” She looked back to see what had fallen. “Oh my word, I haven’t seen this in years!” With reverent care Tandy picked up the object.

  Kendra came around the table for a closer look. “Is that Momma’s old Polaroid?”

  “It is!” Tandy wiped a bit of grime off the corner of it with her shirt. “And it’s even got film in it.”

  “You’re kidding me.” Joy came to crouch down by her three sisters. “Well, would you look at that? It does have film!”

  “We should take some pictures with this thing.”

  “Oh, Tandy, it probably doesn’t work anymore.” Joy went back to the table, and Kendra followed suit.

  “Kinda like my backside.” Meg wiped the seat of her pants where she’d fallen. “It’s not the cushion it used to be when we were kids. This floor’s hard.”

  Kendra chuckled. “If you’d get some padding back there like the rest of us, you wouldn’t be at such risk of hurting yourself.”

  Meg grimaced at her and went back to her stool, then settled on it gingerly.

  “I bet it does work.” Tandy pulled a face at Meg. “The camera, that is, not your backside.” She brought the old camera back to the table and set it down.

  “Let’s try it out later.” Meg thumbed through the sketchbook looking, they all knew, for a layout to fit all her pictures on. “Right now, let’s get back to Clay and the strategic positioning of his diner.”

  “Somebody tell me he didn’t put his diner there for any reason other than it was the only space open on Lindell.”

  “The old bookstore was vacant, but that’s not a very good location.” Meg turned pages.

  “I think he did it for looooove,” Kendra said.

  “Kendra, this is not a Lifetime movie. This is my real life, and everything doesn’t work out all happy and perfect in the end.” Tandy refocused on her pictures.

  “Why not?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Maybe. Meg got her happily ever after. And Joy did, too. Why not us?”

  “Whoa, sister—” Meg set the guidebook down—“marriage is not happily ever after. It’s happily ever sometimes and difficult every other time.”

  Kendra wrinkled her nose. “I love it when married people try to tell me how fortunate I am to still be single.”

  “Look, I’m not saying one is better than the other, but there are advantages to both.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but one of my advantages isn’t lying down next to a fine man every night after tucking in my three beautiful kids.”

  Meg wasn’t backing down. “No, it’s getting to go to bed whenever you want and staying up all night working on a sculpture if you feel like it without worrying about being too tired to get your kids ready in the morning.”

  “Point taken.” Kendra nodded. “But I’d go to bed every night at the same time for what you’ve got.”

  “I’ll remind you of that when you’ve been married as long as I have.”

  “Deal. Joy, you’re awfully silent about this. Everything okay with Scott?”

  Joy looked up from her eyelet setter and nodded. “Of course. We’re wonderful. He’s working hard, and I don’t see him as much as I’d like, but other than that we’re wonderful.”

  “Good,” Tandy said. “Because I think there’s a law somewhere about only two sisters having messed up love lives at one time. Wouldn’t want to disturb the fabric of the universe or anything.”

  “The universe is in good standing,” Joy said with a smile.

  She went and pulled a bottle of fabric flowers from a shelving unit hanging off the Peg-Board. “I just adore these little flowers now.”

  “Me, too. I’ve got them all over my scrapbook,” Kendra said. “It’s beginning to look like a flower child put it together.”

  “I don’t think I’ve used them much yet,” Tandy said. “Let me see.”

  Joy handed over the glass bottle, and Tandy tipped it up in her hand. A few flowers in bright turquoise, pink, orange, and yellow fell out. “These are pretty.”

  “I’m using them on a lot of Savannah’s pages,” Meg said. “I love the ones by K & Company.”

  “Me, too.”

  Tandy looked up at the wistful tone of Joy’s voice. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Joy’s bright blue eyes widened. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t know, but you sounded funny just then.”

  “Funny how?”

  “Funny like you’re hiding something.”

  “No, not a thing.” Joy’s gaze dropped to her layout, and Tandy admired her sister’s shock of black eyelashes on pale skin before going back to her own work.

  “If I date Clay, people will still talk about whether or not we’ll keep dating.”

  “Or get married,” Kendra said. “This town loves a wedding.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Meg and Joy said in unison, then laughed.

  “Then dating him isn’t going to help. What if I just stay away from him?”

  “I don’t see how that will help,” Meg said.

  Tandy glared at Meg. “If they don’t have anything new to say, then they’ll go on to the next interesting thing.”

  “Are you planning on giving them another interesting thing?”

  “The Iris Festival is in two weeks. They’ll focus on that!”

  “You may have a point there,” Joy said. “They’re planning a doozy of a parade and even a live concert the night before.”

  “A live concert? Who’s playing?”

  For the third time the sisters stopped their scrapping. This time, though, they looked at one another. An uneasy feeling started in the pit of Tandy’s stomach. “You guys have got to stop doing that. You make me think I’m about to get hit by a bus and you’re trying to figure out which one of you should tell me.”

  “You’re planning on coming to the Iris Festival?” Kendra asked.

  “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

  “Let’s find out.” Kendra leaned forward and locked gazes with Tandy. “The band is Clay’s.”

  Tandy’s forehead wrinkled. “Clay has a band? I don’t understand.”

  “He plays with a couple other guys. They go to Nashville sometimes and play a gig. It’s nothing major. At least, I don’t think it’s major. But his band is playing the Iris Festival.”

  The uneasy feeling grew into a lead weight. Tandy leaned on the table and thought fast, trying to hide her thought process from Kendra’s laser eyes. She took a deep breath. “Then I don’t see a reason to miss the Iris Festival.”

  “If this is some sort of reverse psychology—” Kendra peered at Tandy—“it’s working.”

  “No psychology. Just pragmatism. If Clay’s busy playing music, then the town can’t expect us to talk or not talk to each other. There won’t be anything for anybody to observe and discuss. It’s perfect.”

  “Your definition of perfect needs a little work,” Meg said. “Are you telling us you have no feelings at all for Clay Kelner?”

  Tandy walked over to the window and looked out. Everything seemed perfect and placid except for the soft wind rustling new leaves. She could lie, she supposed. But the sisters would know, and they’d be on her in a heartbeat.

  “I’m telling you that I don’t have any feelings worth acknowledging.” She turned from the window and walked back to the scrapping table.

  “What does that mean?” Meg asked.

  “It means you always have a special feeling for your first love. Clay was my first love, so it’s logical that I would still feel something for him. But it has nothing to do with the present and certainly nothing to do with the future. It’s a fondness for the past. That’s all.”

  They stared at her as if she’d stabbed herself with an eyelet setter.

  “Just so we’re clear—” Meg said and Tandy braced herself—“you’re still in love with Clay Kelner.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Right. You just said you love him.”

 
“I said I’ll always have a special place in my heart for him because he was my first love. That’s not the same as being in love with him.”

  They continued to look at her.

  “Girls, stop looking at me like that. You’re freaking me out.”

  Meg whistled the theme from The Twilight Zone.

  “Meg, cut it out. I’m not living in another dimension.”

  “No, but you may have lost your mind.”

  “Why?” Tandy threw her hands in the air. “Because I don’t want to start a relationship that can do nothing but end badly? Because I don’t trust a guy who broke my heart ten years ago? Because I’m having a conversation about this after fifteen seconds of conversation, which he has, by now, totally forgotten but which this town is calling my sisters about within the hour?” She picked up a piece of paper and a distresser and savagely ripped down the side of it. “Which of these reasons lumps me in the category of another dimension?”

  “Whoa, girl! Put down the distresser and step away from the table,” Kendra said.

  Tandy realized she was sounding a bit hysterical and got herself back under control. This is why she didn’t like emotion—it crept up on you and sandbagged your plans when you least expected it.

  “We didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Oh, Meg, I know you didn’t. But you’re all making such a big deal of this when it isn’t. I ran into Clay unexpectedly today. We talked for fifteen seconds. He said hi. I said hi. Cooper barked. That was about it.”

  “I heard he scratched Cooper’s ears and belly.”

  Tandy rolled her eyes. “Yes, Cooper and Clay bonded in the five seconds of doggy love they shared. Do you hear yourself? If anything is weird here, it’s this conversation. Man, I forgot how small towns work.” She blew out her breath and tucked her curls behind her ears.

  Silence reigned for a few moments until Meg sighed. “You know what? You’re right. We’ll not mention Clay again unless you decide you want to talk about him.”

  Tandy sent up a prayer of thanks for her peacemaking sister.

  “Thank you.” She made eye contact with each sister. “I didn’t come home to find a man, and I don’t need this right now, all right?”