“Lordy, I nearly forgot,” Taffy said. “The reason we busted in on you like this was we were hoping to meet you, Timothy, of course. But we also wanted to give the two of you a wedding gift.”
She handed me the box and perched herself on the edge of a director’s chair. By her stiff posture and the way she kept cutting her eyes in Timothy’s direction, I could tell that she was nervous about meeting him.
I unwrapped what looked like a very small Crockpot, not even big enough to hold a couple of new potatoes, much less a side of beef.
“Taffy, this is very—”
“It’s one of them pot-pourri burners,” Taffy said, pronouncing the silent “t.” “Open the lid, and there’s a bag of pot-pourri. You plug it in and it will make your whole house smell like a country morning.”
“What an original gift, Mrs. Polk,” said Timothy. “I’m certain that Elizabeth and I will put it to good use.”
Taffy beamed. “You’re welcome, Tim. ‘Course you can call me Taffy.” Her glance dropped to the floor. “Or even Mama, since you’re a member of the family now. Not that I’m old enough to be your mama, of course.”
“No, it’s obvious that you’re not nearly old enough to be my mother.” Timothy took a step toward the kitchen. “Now, does anyone want to take me up on that coffee? It’s freshly brewed.”
“I’d adore a cup. Just black though,” Taffy said.
Timothy looked at my daddy, who put up his hand and said, “Pass.”
Timothy walked into the kitchen and my daddy said, “What’s wrong with you, girl? Your leg broken or something?”
“What do you mean, Daddy?”
“You got your husband fetching for you like he was Betty Crocker.”
I made a shooing motion with my hand. “Daddy, where is it written that the woman is the one who is supposed to wait on everyone?” I asked.
“The Bible,” he answered quickly.
I snorted. “Like you ever read the Bible. I read the Bible, Daddy, and nowhere does it—”
“Betty D. Don’t disrespect your father,” Taffy said. “He doesn’t read the Bible. But he does watch Hour of Power with me sometimes, which is even better.”
“Here’s your coffee, Mrs.—I mean Taffy,” Timothy said, coming back from the kitchen.
Taffy accepted the cup. “Why, thank you, Timothy. Did Betty D. tell you that Dwayne and I live out in Brandywine? We’d love to have the two of you over for supper sometime. Are you familiar with Brandywine, Timothy?” Taffy asked.
“Yes, I am. It’s a very nice area. I work with a man named Pavey. Maybe you know him and his wife, George and Annette Pavey?”
“Let me think now...” Taffy put a finger to her temple. “Pavey, Pavey.”
“Shoot, Taffy. They must live in Phase I. That’s where all them big houses is,” my daddy said. “We live in Phase III, the Brandywine ghetto. Only folks we ever spoke to was the ones down the street who called security on us because Lanier was making doughnuts in the driveway with his truck.”
Taffy’s face flushed. “I would hardly call a $350,000 patio home with vaulted ceilings a ghetto house, Dwayne.”
My daddy crossed his ankle over his knee and jiggled his foot. “I’ve seen cardboard boxes that were built better. But Taffy had to live in a swanky neighborhood with a guard house and I can afford it.”
He leaned forward to speak to Timothy. “I got a rent-to-own business. You may have seen my commercials. I’m Insane Dwayne of the Bargain Bonanza. By the way, if any of your kin needs a big-screen TV or a sectional sofa, I’d be glad to give them the family discount.”
“Lord, Dwayne. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Taffy was still smarting from his ghetto remark. “Timothy’s kin wouldn’t go to a rent-to-own place to buy furniture. Your place is for folks who are down on their luck.”
“All folks, rich or poor, like to take advantage of a bargain, Taffy,” my daddy snapped. “That’s how they stay rich, isn’t it, Tim? I’ll get you a few of my business cards to pass around.”
“More coffee, anyone?” Timothy asked.
My daddy got up from the couch and plunged his hands deeply enough into the pockets of his khakis to reveal a narrow strip of beer belly.
“Now that Taffy’s delivered her gift, we better be on our way,” he said. He toed the brown shag carpet at his feet. “Speaking of houses, there’s a few up for sale in Brandywine. I sure hope you got something better in mind for my daughter than this shotgun shack she’s been living in all these years, seeing how you’re this bigwig at the paper cup place.”
“Daddy!” I gasped.
“I’m just speaking my piece.” He looked on as Timothy gaped with astonishment. “You don’t mind that, do you, son?”
“Daddy, Timothy and I are going to look for a house this weekend. We were talking about it just before you got here.” I stepped in between the two of them, as if to shield Timothy from my daddy’s crassness.
Timothy’s eyes darted from my daddy to the floor. “Excuse me for a moment, please,” he said in a hoarse whisper. He walked swiftly down the hall to the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
“Daddy!” I said. “Timothy, are you all right?” There was no response behind the bathroom door.
My daddy stuck a thumb in Timothy’s direction and raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with him?”
By this time Taffy had gotten up and was standing by the door with her purse tucked underneath her arm. “Betty D., your father just doesn’t know how to act around quality people. That’s why he chose Phase III. That’s why I have to endure the sneers of those security guards every time I go by the gate house, because we live in the patio homes and not the real houses.”
“Taffy,” my daddy said in warning.
“You tell Timothy that I’m very pleased to meet his acquaintance and that we will have that dinner one night, even though my dining room is so small I can’t even put in the extra leaf, cause folks’ heads would be bumping against the wall,” Taffy said.
“Out to the car, Taff, now,” Daddy said.
He lingered on the front landing. “Your boy is acting like a woman. You sure he ain’t... you know.” He made his wrist limp and stuck out his pinkie finger.
“Maybe you’d better go on home now,” I said quietly.
He stood there rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, jangling loose change in his pocket. His aftershave did little to mask the scorched smell of cigarette smoke that clung to his clothes.
“Well, give me some sugar before I take off.”
I brushed my lips with his cheek.
“And who’s my baby girl?” he asked in that sly tone of his.
Not me, most likely, I almost said, but I bit my lip and replied, “Cleopatra, the Queen of the Nile. You take care now.” Then I shooed him out the door.
I dashed to the bathroom and started banging on the door. “Honey, are you all right?”
There was silence.
“Timothy?”
No response. I was getting alarmed. “Timothy, I’m really sorry about my daddy acting like that. That’s just his way. He didn’t mean it.”
I jiggled the doorknob.
“Timothy!” Again there was no sign of life behind the door.
“All right now, you’re starting to worry me. I’m just going to have to bust down this door. It’s flimsy and I’m pretty sure I could do it. But I’ll lose my security deposit, which is two hundred fifty dollars.”
The door cracked open and Timothy slunk out, avoiding my eye.
“Well, thank goodness, Timothy. I was starting to get worried. You have to understand about daddy. When God was handing out social graces to folks, my daddy was outside taking a cigarette break.”
“You must think I’m a loon.” H
e tugged at his halo of dark curls. “I’m just ashamed of myself because something your father said made me realize that I’ve not been completely honest with you.”
“Does this have anything to do with what you stashed behind the cushions when I walked in the door?”
He nodded, his hands tucked behind his back.
I reached behind the sofa cushion. After unearthing a petrified French fry, a plastic chew steak of Maybelline’s, and the June issue of Celebrity Hairstyles, I found the book The Angler’s Almanac. I looked at it, puzzled.
“Why were you hiding this from me?”
Timothy sunk down into a chair beside the sofa. He exhaled noisily. “I didn’t want you to know I’m a failure.”
“Why in the world would reading The Angler’s Almanac make you a failure?”
“It’s not the book. It’s the reason that I’m reading it.” He toyed with the zipper on one of the throw pillows. “There’s no sense in hiding it any longer.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Go on. Spit it out.”
Timothy’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously. “I don’t want to work at Hollingsworth Paper Cups. I can’t stand being a corporate executive. I’m not even very good at it.”
He looked so forlorn that I sat down beside him and gave him a hug.
“That’s okay, sweetie,” I crooned. “I’m not really that surprised. You’ve never seemed very happy over there. But I still don’t understand what this has to do with bait.”
He bit his lip and looked up at me, nervously. “Orson wants to sell his bait shop. He’s moving to New Orleans to work on an oil rig. And I want to buy it, so I’ve been reading up on the different kinds of bait.”
“You want to buy the bait shop?”
Timothy nodded. “I’m sorry I ducked out when your father was here, Elizabeth. But he made me realize that you married me thinking I was this hotshot CEO of a big company when the only thing I really want to do is sell mealworms to fishermen.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “The bait shop. Well, I’ll be darned.”
“Bait shop and tanning salon,” Timothy said, correcting me. “Although I’ve never understood how the two go together. But Orson said the tanning salon has ended up being a nice little money-maker for him.”
“My husband, the bait and tanning salon mogul,” I said.
Timothy winced. “Are you terribly disappointed?”
I laughed. “Of course not. If selling worms to folks makes you happy, I couldn’t be more tickled.” I paused. “Just make sure you wash your hands real good before you come home.”
Timothy threw his arms around me. “Elizabeth, I’m so glad you understand. I’m going to notify the board of directors as soon as I can work this deal out with Orson.”
“Who are you going to get to replace you at Hollingsworth Paper Cups?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess Mother will have to deal with that.” He shuddered. “I don’t want to even think about breaking the news to her.”
“Well, don’t put it off too long,” I said.
“I won’t, but there’s no sense in calling her until everything is definite,” Timothy said. “And Elizabeth, there’s one other thing.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Worry etched his forehead. “I do have a fairly generous trust fund that Grandma Grace set up for me and I’ll be using part of that to buy the store. But bait store owners and CEOs of companies are in completely different income tax brackets. There will be less money coming in.”
I smiled at my husband, trying to picture him doling out crickets to the local fishermen. “That’ll suit me just fine. I’d rather have a content husband than a rich one.”
He kissed my cheek. “We’ll always have enough to get by. As a matter of fact, even with buying the bait shop, I’ll still be able to treat you to a wonderful honeymoon. How would you feel about walking along the Seine or sailing the Greek Isles this summer?”
“You know I’d love that,” I said. “But there’s really only one thing that I hope we’ll be able to afford to do, when the time’s right.”
“What’s that?” Timothy asked.
“Babies,” I replied coyly. “I was hoping that we’d have one or two of them someday.”
“Babies?” He rolled the word in his mouth like a butterscotch drop. “Oh, that would be something, Elizabeth.” His brow wrinkled. “Just one or two though?”
“To start.”
“Babies,” he said, breathing in the word. “I like the idea of that very much.”
Twenty-Four
If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
~ Sign outside the Dazzling Do’s Beauty Shop
I’d been curious about Timothy’s role in the operation of Hollingsworth Paper Cups, so with his permission, I poked around his briefcase and perused some of his P-and-L numbers. He found me the next morning sitting at the table and snoozing on a stack of quarterly statements.
“Morning, sweetie.” He planted a kiss on my earlobe. “Did you fall asleep reading my papers? I’m not surprised. Deadly dull stuff, isn’t it?”
I twisted my back to get rid of the crick I’d gotten in the night.
“It’s fascinating to me. Accounting, marketing, operations, the whole tamale. You sure you want to leave this all behind?”
Timothy stood in the slant of sunlight, sipping his coffee. “You know, Elizabeth, if business is an interest of yours, you should consider taking an evening class or two at the University in Aiken.”
I stifled a yawn. “You sound like your grandmother. I’ll tell you what I told her. I’m not college material.”
“Says who?” Timothy said, slathering some of Meemaw’s marmalade on his bread.
“Mrs. Babb, the guidance counselor at Cayboo Creek High School. She wrote ‘Vocational Tract’ in big red letters across my records folder. Plus, none of my kin has ever gone on to college. Our minds just aren’t wired right for higher learning.”
Timothy’s jaw fell open. “You can’t possibly believe that.”
“Sure, I do. It’s what I’ve been told all my life. Daddy always said Polks work with their backs, not their brains.” I picked up the butter knife. “Any of that marmalade left? And quit eye-balling me like I’ve grown a horn through my forehead.”
“Elizabeth, you, like most people, are shortsighted when it comes to seeing yourself as others do. When I first met you, guess what sent me straight to the moon?” He kissed me on the top of my head and whispered. “It was your big, beautiful brain.”
He thrust out his wrist so I could fasten his cufflink—just one of the little rituals of married life that was becoming so dear to me.
“The next time you’re at the library, look in the reference section,” Timothy said, as he slipped into a suit jacket. “See if they have any SAT practice guides. I want you to take the test the next time it’s scheduled.”
“Timothy, I’m telling you, I can’t—”
Timothy put his finger up to quiet me. “Elizabeth, maybe it’s true that you can’t do it, although I seriously doubt that. But you should try at least.”
“Timothy—”
His lips grazed my cheek. “Trust me on this, Elizabeth.”
After he left, Maybelline barked, letting me know that the postman had shoved my mail through the slot.
I picked up the few pieces on the floor. There was a pizza flier, the electric bill, and a postcard that said “Greetings From Hilton Head” on a photograph of a stretch of sand, dotted with beach umbrellas. The postcard was from Mrs. Tobias, saying she would see me in a few days when she got back from her trip.
There was a knot of nervousness in my stomach at the thought of Mrs. Tobias’s return. What would she think of me once she found out that I had gone an
d married her grandson?
I stuck Mrs. Tobias’s postcard under a magnet on the refrigerator with all the rest of her postcards. Mrs. Tobias was a big traveler, and she’d sent me nine postcards in all. Everything from a tour of Williamsburg, Virginia, to a trip to see the geysers in Yellowstone Park.
I lolled the rest of the morning away, enjoying the luxury of my day off. About 11:45 a.m., my stomach growled. I decided to head over to Pick of the Chick for the Lickety Split special—a drumstick, a dinner roll, and a jalapeño pepper.
The Pick of the Chick was a drive-in restaurant dating back to my daddy’s youth. Customers consulted billboard-sized menus with long-since-faded pictures of chicken and fixings, then placed their orders over loudspeakers.
Even though the landscaping was scraggly, the speakers crackled with static, and the waitresses moved like they had cement in their shoes, the Pick of the Chick bustled because it had the best chicken in Aiken County. A friend of mine who worked there one summer swore that the secret to Pick of the Chick’s chicken was Wise potato chips crushed up into the batter. All I knew is once every couple of months, I had a fierce craving for a piece of their chicken, whatever the secret ingredient.
I hollered my order into the speaker and while I waited, I fiddled with the radio pre-set buttons. Timothy had last tuned it to Public Radio. I tried to listen, but I couldn’t cozy up to the announcers. Their voices reminded me of the museum guards cautioning school kids on a field trip, “Please remain behind the velvet rope.”
I turned the station to Big Sky Country WBEG and listened to a Dixie Chicks song, a Faith Hill ballad, and two used-car commercials before my food was trotted out by Eloise Jenkins, who’s worked at Pick of the Chick for over twenty years and is also Clip’s second cousin.
“Sorry, Elizabeth, about the wait. I dropped a bottle of Texas Pete on the floor and I had to get it up,” she said, placing my order on the window tray.
“That’s okay. Though I don’t know why y’all call this the Lickety Split special. You ought to call it the Belated Bird.”
Bet Your Bottom Dollar (The Bottom Dollar Series Book 1) Page 15