by Janis Owens
She said no more about it, but you could tell she was worried, taking to the stove and cooking like she always did, all kinds of stuff, more than Gabe could eat in a year, while I sat on the counter, shelling pecans and licking bowls and chewing my fingernails to the quick, trying to think of ways to make him stay. As the afternoon wore on, I kept thinking he’d get up, even thought up a few pleasantries to call out when he walked into the kitchen. (“So, how was your trip from New York?” or “So, what kind of car is that you drive?”)
But he never got up, not even to pee, and by morning, my nerves were about shot, annoyed as heck with Mama, who hadn’t so much as called or come by, though she knew Gabe was at Grannie’s, I’d called her the afternoon before and asked permission to spend the night. She had let me stay, hadn’t tried to talk me out of it, but had taken on this air of complete indifference, not at all interested when I went down to the church early the next morning to get my clothes and told her about Gabe sleeping straight through the morning, not waking up at all. She just sent me to the bathroom to change, her face tired, her hair kind of poofy and big, attractive if you were trying to snag a redneck, but probably not so effective on New York geniuses of the gay persuasion.
It made it awfully hard to concentrate on the sermon that morning from some missionary to the Congo who just went on forever about these nasty diseases they have over there—worms that would crawl up into your joints and wrap around them like a violin string, stuff like that. Grannie seemed very taken with him, though, even invited him to lunch at the Steakhouse, so that by the time we got back to her house, it was late, after two, Mama’s car already in her drive, though she usually didn’t pick me up on Sundays, just met me at the evening service at church. Me and Grannie didn’t know what to make of it, and hurried inside to find Mama and Gabe sitting quietly at the kitchen table, him drinking coffee, her eating a slice of the Lane cake Grannie had baked the day before.
“Baby, you’ll ruin your dinner,” Grannie told her with this face of beaming affection, just so pleased to have them talking, though they didn’t look the least bit in love, but kind of pale and nervous, Mama coming to her feet immediately, asking if they could speak to me in the living room.
Now, the last time I’d been summoned to the living room by an adult was when Brother Sloan sat me down and told me Daddy died, so I knew something big was coming down, though I didn’t know exactly what. I just followed Mama to Grannie’s tiny living room that was kind of crowded that time of year, with dangling tinsel and two different manger scenes and a big old Christmas tree that took up half the room. Mama sat next to me on the couch, though Gabe was too nervous to sit still, just leaned against the mantel in the same rumpled shirt and pants he’d worn the day before, his light hair tousled and upended where he kept taking swipes at it with his good hand in this crazy, agitated way.
Mama was a lot calmer, taking my hand like a palm reader and launching into this formal speech about how much she loved me and how that life sometimes took unexpected twists and if I didn’t like the way those twists were leading, I could say so without fear of offending anyone. I, of course, didn’t know what the heck she was leading up to, was kind of afraid she was outing Gabe, to tell you the truth, thought she was about to say: And now that your father is gone, his brother will be your guardian, and Clay, he is gay and we must accept it, blah, blah, and if she did, I was going to just drop dead of embarrassment for me and Gabe, both.
I mean, I had accepted him for what he was, I just couldn’t believe that Mama, in all her old vampire inhumanness, didn’t understand that these situations called for tact and discretion and not this let-it-all-hang-out Oprah crap. I was steeling myself against it, hoping Grannie would figure out what Mama was up to and run in and save us, when I realized Mama had spoken those old familiar words “—getting married.”
“What?” I blurted out, though before she could answer, Gabe straightened up and took a step forward, recapped her rambling explanation with a halting summation of his own: “We’re just thinking of getting married, Clay. But your mother, she wants it to be cool with you and Simon and Missy. And if you don’t think it’s cool, then that’ll be, cool, with us.”
I’d kind of gotten lost in all his cools and just stared at him a moment, then realized the deal here: that he was asking for Mama’s hand in marriage, like I was her father or something. I didn’t quite get it and just looked back and forth between them, waiting for the other shoe to drop: the confession about Uncle Gabe; the plea for mercy, for understanding. When it didn’t come, I finally just shrugged or something to give my assent, said the first thing that came to mind: “Mama’s last name will still be Catts.”
At that, Gabe’s face just magically cleared and he laughed his big Gabe laugh, that was, like I say, infectious, bringing Grannie from the dining room in a storm of tears and congratulations and hugging, Mama’s red hair no longer the irritant it had been, Grannie kissing it and her both. I just sat there on the couch, feeling somehow responsible for it all, and happily so, proud that I, Clayton Michael Catts, alone and unaided, had snagged the choicest stepfather of them all; the closest thing to Daddy that we’d ever come upon on this old earth: same name, same voice, same mother. Perfect.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Once the big announcement was made public, I thought we’d enter into a week of wedding festivities—you know, bridal showers and trips to the mall to buy lingerie and a wedding dress and maybe new suits for me and Sim. But to mine and Grannie’s great annoyance, Mama refused to do anything further till she’d talked it over with her remaining children, and though Missy was easy enough to find (and positively ecstatic about the whole thing), Simon was camping down in the wilds of St. Joseph’s, and simply unreachable till Friday night. So everything was put on hold till he could be located, and in the meanwhile, Mama wouldn’t do anything you’d expect an engaged woman to do: dress up when she went to town or ask Gabe over to supper or buy so much as a ring or a veil. Mostly, she spent the week laid up in bed in her oldest, rattiest gown, staring at the ceiling, and if you so much as hinted that maybe it was time for a soak in the old tub or a trip to Miss Cassie’s for a haircut, she’d bite your head off or go off on a long, tearful tangent about the importance of making the right choices and knowing your own mind and how she never had.
Over at Grannie’s, Gabe wasn’t much better, still stalking around in the clothes he’d drove down from New York in that were about as wrinkled as Mama’s old gown. Grannie kept at him to let her wash them or run up to Dothan and buy something new, but he shrugged her off, spent most of his time on the phone to New York trying to get his life in order over long distance, or walking down to McDonald’s, where he took up his morning residence at a booth in the back, reading the paper and drinking cup after cup of coffee, or sitting stock-still, staring into space like an inmate on death row waiting for the governor’s call.
It sure didn’t make for the most romantic engagement of the decade, the only really happy note on Wednesday night when Missy finally came home from Georgia, bursting out of the Chapins’ Explorer and tearing up Grannie’s steps to embrace Gabe with this enviable ease, shouting: “Yes! Yes! I knew it! It’s fate!”
That left Sim as the final holdout, and a source of considerable anxiety to me and Missy till he finally made his way home on Friday in the middle of a freezing December night, hoarse from camping in the cold. I guess Daddy had prepared him for the eventuality of Gabe’s return, for he didn’t so much as blink at the big news that me and Missy shouted down the stairs the moment he walked in: “Uncle Gabe’s here! They’re gitting married, him and Mama, they really are!”
He just dropped his duffel bag in the hallway and hugged Mama, told her congratulations in this creaky little voice, then went over to Grannie’s bright and early the next morning and shook Gabe’s hand like a grown man. “I remember you,” he told him in a rasping little whisper. “You taught me to swan-dive,” filling me with this sharp jab of jealousy that I didn
’t have some communal bit of history to share with him, some pleasant childhood memory.
But once that hurdle was cleared, the wedding plans fell into place with amazing speed, the date set for the very next afternoon at Welcome, not in the sanctuary where everyone else got married, but in Brother Sloan’s office, kind of plain and boring to my way of thinking and just another way I thought Mama was letting down the team. I mean, even after Lori and Aunt Candace talked her into going on a honeymoon, her plan to run down to Panama City for a couple of days just galled me because Mama is too white to be a real beachgoer and just refuses to do anything fun, won’t even go on the roller coaster at the Miracle Strip. (“Not without a sports bra,” she used to say.)
I just couldn’t see the point of trekking down there in the dead of winter with nothing to do, was sure that she was getting her wifely duties off on exactly the wrong foot and Gabe would be bored to death.
“Why doan yawl go up to Calloway Gardens?” I suggested to her; then, from a faint memory of an old dream, “Or fishing on Eufaula?”
But no, Panama City it was, much to my disgust, and when I went to Missy to beg her to persuade Mama to go anywhere else, she just laughed. “Oh, I’m sure they’ll find something to do down there. It is a honeymoon, you know.”
Well, sure I knew it was a honeymoon; I just didn’t think Mama could pull it off, and spent the day of the wedding compensating where I could, getting dressed an hour early and going down to the church to help Missy decorate Gabe’s car with balloons and shaving cream. As five o’clock approached, I got too impatient to hang around back and went around to the front of the church to wait for Mama there, kind of afraid that she wouldn’t show up, to tell you the truth. No one was there yet, so I just took a seat on one of the big old cement pillars by the front steps and waited forever, getting madder by the minute because Mama was late and Grannie had insisted I wear the same dress pants I’d worn to Daddy’s funeral that were a year old now, and so short in the legs they made me look like Jethro Bodeen.
I sat there on that pillar for what seemed like an hour, till finally, at like, one second till five, the Mercedes pulled up and Mama and Simon got out, Mama wearing, of all things, a navy-blue pants suit. I had never in my life heard of a bride wearing such a thing to a wedding, felt like standing up and pointing to the car, saying: Young lady, just turn around and go back to the house this instant, put on a nice dress.
I couldn’t help but think that Gabe would be mighty disappointed, and indeed, he didn’t look too enthused with the job, but still kind of pale and nervous as we all gathered in Brother Sloan’s tiny office and he took his place next to Mama in front of the desk, repeating his vows in this flat, mechanical monotone. Brother Sloan had been unexpectedly felled with the flu that morning, so Carlym had to do the honors with none of the old man’s style or humor, just rattling through the service with absolutely no emotion, coming to the end abruptly and slapping shut his book, pronouncing them man and wife.
He paused then, waiting for the official kiss, though Gabe just reached across the desk and offered him his hand like he was concluding the end of a business deal or something. Carlym looked kind of surprised, though Mama didn’t seem to notice the omission, and I guess they would have packed it in right then, left without a kiss, if not for Missy, who prodded her on the shoulder, said: “Gosh, Mama, aren’t you gonna kiss your groom?”
Mama just blinked at her a moment, as if she didn’t understand the request, then said, “Oh,” and turned back to Gabe, who obediently dipped his head and kissed her lightly on the mouth, a kiss I couldn’t quite figure at the time. I mean, it wasn’t one of those awful tonsillectomies some people do at weddings these days, but they didn’t part right away, either, connecting for a moment with a poignancy that did something to me, hit me in the belly with this unexpected flip of reaction, so real that I actually glanced around the room, wanted to ask someone: What was that? Did you see that?
But no one else seemed to have caught it, the ceremony ending in a flurry of handshakes and backslaps and hugging, the whole wedding party moving down the hall to the church steps, where Mama said her good-byes, told us to behave for Aunt Candace, for me and Missy not to bicker. Then she kissed us in our turn and left with Gabe, Aunt Candace watching them leave with a face of wry amusement, commenting after a moment in a dry little voice: “So Peter Pan ended up marrying Wendy after all. I always wondered.”
Everyone laughed (except Grannie, who told her to hush), though I didn’t get it, of course, just stood there on the bottom step, staring after the car, when Missy added in this teasing little voice: “Clay’s all worried about ’em going to the beach. Thinks Gabe’ll be bored, won’t have anything to do.”
There was even more laughter at that, though I didn’t pay them any mind, just kept standing there on the bottom step, still in the tail end of the shock from that kiss, still muttering in this pained little undertone: “What the heck was that?”
It was a riddle that wouldn’t be answered for many months, one I wasn’t particularly worried with solving at the time, too enamoured with Gabe myself, and still pretty much convinced that this was a marriage of convenience, the kind they used to make movies about in the old days. You know, starring someone like Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as this odd, impossible couple who started out as strangers at first, maybe for the sake of an adorable child (say, Shirley Temple), then after some tragedy or setback, wake up one morning and find themselves in love.
At least that’s what I hoped would happen, and more than hoped: worked hard to bring about, me and Missy both did, spending the weekend of their honeymoon sitting around Aunt Candace’s kitchen table, eating Christmas fudge and discussing ways to make Uncle Gabe happy as a clam in his new role as stepfather. Simon sometimes joined us, but he was a senior that year, already working part-time at Sanger in his one year’s apprenticeship with Sam McRae before he went to FSU for a degree in business, a plan he’d made long ago with Daddy’s blessing.
So he wasn’t as worried with our domestic arrangements as me and especially Missy, who talked Aunt Candace into taking us home early on Christmas Eve so we could prepare the house for the newlyweds’ triumphant return, though we got in a fight the moment Aunt Candace dropped us off over who had to clean the pool. After a lot of shouts and threats and name-calling, she finally agreed to do the outside stuff, left the house to me, and I must say I did a decent job, even dust-mopped all the wood floors with Liquid Gold so that we were slipping and sliding around for weeks to come.
When everything was finally in place, I even brought in camellias for the table, for they were the only flowers blooming that time of year and easy to arrange. It must have been somewhere in the back of my mind that someone with Gabe’s proclivities would appreciate fresh flowers, and he did seem mighty impressed when they came in that night, actually halting just inside the French door, taking in the blinking Christmas tree, the flowers, and the shining floors with a face of true wonder. “This is the most beautiful house in Florida,” he proclaimed after a moment in a small, sincere voice.
“The pool is marble,” I heard myself bragging like a big old goober, I couldn’t help it.
It was just so important for me to impress him, to keep the good times rolling. Indeed, he looked considerably more relaxed than he had stalking around Grannie’s all week, still in khaki pants and a rumpled button-down shirt (his uniform, Mama called it), though his hair was less insane, flatter and more subdued. Mama herself seemed little changed, maybe not as tense and snappy, but still preoccupied and worried, kissing me and Missy in turn and looking at us eye to eye, asking when Sim was due home (he was hosting the company Christmas party in Waycross); if we’d behaved ourselves; if we’d had fun at Aunt Candace’s.
“Except that we’ve been starved,” Missy told her, and she wasn’t lying, either.
For Aunt Candace, this Queen of Family Values, doesn’t cook, and I’m talking never, nothing, nil. It’s always been something o
f a mystery to Sim and Missy and me, how a daughter of Cissie Catts could be so lacking in this respect, so different from Mama, who didn’t even change clothes or put up her suitcase, just kicked off her shoes and set about making supper. It wasn’t anything extravagant, just bisque from the fresh crab she’d bought at Port St. Joe on the way home, though to hear Gabe talk, you’d have thought she was creating a feast of exotic proportions.
“Where’d you learn to make bisque?” he asked as he followed her around the kitchen, watching her prepare the iron pan and melt the butter for the roux.
“In Louisiana,” Mama answered in a distracted little voice, her eyes on the pan that she shook with a practiced hand, “when I was about three. Go put up the suitcases,” she told him. “I cain’t talk, it’ll burn.”
After a little more shooing, Gabe left the kitchen, though he seemed uneasy when he wasn’t with Mama, wandering around downstairs with his hands in his pockets, checking out the pictures in the hallway, the bow windows in the parlor (the ones that used to be part of the church). He kind of reminded me of Kenneth, the first day he came over as a child, struck silent by the opulence of it all, finally making his way up the stairs with me tagging along to help, lugging the garment bag he’d had sent down from New York that was tagged with all these strange names: Logan and LaGuardia, places I’d never heard of.
He was telling me about them as we went down the hall, how they were airports in New York and Boston and what a pain it was to get in and out of either of them, when we got to Mama’s bedroom and he came to another of his dead halts. He didn’t say anything, just stood there in the doorway, looking around at the room in silence: the shining floor, the carved vanity and ornate bed, the tarnished-brass ceiling fan that stirred a lazy breeze year-round.
“New bed,” he finally observed, dropping his bags at the door and hesitantly strolling in with an air of quiet curiosity, like a tourist in a museum, pausing by the vanity to pick up a silver brush, then an oval perfume bottle that he read with a little grunt of recognition.