“We were packed in, shoulder to shoulder, like a bunch of poetry-loving sardines, breathing in the same words.” He shook his head. “I’d never known so many people loved poetry. In this town it was like having a third eye. Something you kept under your hat if you could, until you were around the other folk who were just as weird as you were.”
She twisted the biscuit cutter, using her wrist the way her mama had taught her, repeating the motion over the wide slab of dough. What was so unique to Jem, what had brought them together, was common in a big city such as Boston. She wondered if that was how he saw her now. Maybe there were a thousand girls like Lucy out there. Now he knew better than to think she was anything special.
“Is the Red Hen still open?” he asked.
“I think so.” Her heart skipped a beat at the name. It was the place he had first asked her out. He said it as if it meant nothing to him, as if it were just another club.
“I loved that place.” He set the bowl of chopped sage beside the parsley and went to the sink to rinse the shears. “Friday nights were wild. You’d think ten poets in a contest wouldn’t take five hours, but I remember it’d be one in the morning before they crowned the winner.”
She remembered walking home with him, under a half-moon, ears ringing with leftover words and heart aching with the beauty of it all. “My daddy accused me of hanging out in a jive joint.”
“Like a blues hall?” Jem was smiling. “Well, that would have been fun, too.”
Fun. She laid the biscuits on the greased sheet and slid them into the oven. She should have been glad that he wasn’t harboring bitterness toward her, but she wished just for a moment that their summer together had been more than fun.
“Are you almost done? They’re going to —” Paulette, who had been talking before she even made it into the kitchen, broke off at the sight of Jem. Although the soft curls of her updo gave her an effortlessly sophisticated look, her red dress was so tight Lucy thought she could see Paulette’s belly button. Paulette’s mouth dropped open and she looked from Lucy to Jem and back. “What on earth?”
Jem wiped his hands on a kitchen towel. “I’m sorry I’m so early.”
“No, that’s not a problem at all. I’m just shocked that Lucy made you help in the kitchen.”
“She had her hands full in here. I was glad to help.” He looked around and started to roll down his sleeves.
“Jem brought us a peanut plant for the garden,” Lucy said, pointing to the tiny pot.
“Peanuts?” Paulette cocked her head and stared at it. “I didn’t know they grew on a bush. I thought they came from a tree.”
Lucy caught Jem’s eye for just a moment and almost laughed. His expression was part shock and part confusion. She wanted to tell him that Paulette really was that ignorant, and not just about legumes, but that would be unkind.
“Well, thank you for the plant. I’ll be sure to put it in a sunny window.” Paulette flashed a brilliant smile and waved him through the doorway. “Go ahead to the living room. I’ll bring out the drinks.”
As soon as he was down the hallway, Paulette, eyes wide, turned to Lucy and hissed, “What are you thinking?”
“What did you want me to do?” Lucy grabbed the butter and dumped it in the skillet with the sage. The kitchen seemed to shrink, the steam and mess pressing in on her as soon as Jem had gone.
Paulette took a tray from the cabinet and set six martini glasses on it. “Something. Anything. I can’t believe you gave him a job like he was a kitchen slave.”
Lucy paused, briefly closing her eyes and counting slowly in her head. She hated when Paulette threw around words like kitchen slave as if they had no connection to her race or her family history. “I think everything is almost done. I’ll drain the corn and put the top back on so it stays hot. The cheese is grated so I’ll mix it up and stick it in the oven as soon as the biscuits are out. Then I’ve got to go.”
“You can’t leave yet. I’ll be entertaining in the living room and can’t be running back and forth to the kitchen. Daddy says a good hostess stays with the guests.” Paulette looked furious. “You said you would help but the table isn’t even set.”
Lucy poured milk into a bowl and grabbed the bag of flour. “I’m mixing up the cobbler. When the potatoes are ready, put them in a serving bowl. Put in the cobbler and set the timer for an hour. It should be done right around the time dinner is over.”
“Wait, I can’t remember all this,” Paulette said, sounding panicked.
“You just listen for the beeping.”
“I don’t know why you said you’d help if you’re going to leave me in this mess. The man I invited tonight might really be the one.” Paulette sucked in a shaky breath.
“If this guy is the one, he’s not going to care if you have to take something out of the oven.”
“Daddy said he’d come back early from the club and meet him. I want everything to go perfectly, and you’re trying to make it a big disaster.” Paulette was near tears. “Oh, I get it. You’re mad because I showed up and Jem realized he didn’t have to stay here in the kitchen.”
Lucy just shook her head. Melted butter, sugar, a pinch of salt. She focused on the ingredients in the large white bowl in front of her instead of the words coming out of Paulette’s mouth.
“You have to stay at least until I get the drinks served. I can’t do both at the same time.” Paulette reached into the fridge for a bag of cut pineapple and strawberries.
Lucy shrugged. “If it takes less than five minutes, I’ll be here. Otherwise, you’ll have to figure it out.”
Paulette let out a grunt of anger and left the kitchen, bag of fruit under her arm and the tray of glasses balanced in her hands. Lucy grabbed a bag of blackberries from the freezer and stood for a moment, letting the cold air billow out in white clouds, chilling her flushed skin. A few more minutes and she could sneak out the back. She’d done her duty, and now it was time to get as far away from this dinner as possible.
Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge—that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them.
—CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
Chapter Eleven
Jem stood at the long window and looked out at the rose garden. He could never have imagined when he left Tupelo that he would stand in this spot, waiting for dinner, being served drinks in the living room. He’d thought moving the Free Clinic to Crawford House would be as bizarre as it could get, but he’d been wrong.
“Do you like martinis?” Paulette went on without waiting for his response. “I just love a good martini. Would you rather have a Deep Blue Sea or a Gummy Worm?”
He turned, glancing over the liquor bottles and fruit-juice containers. “I’m not much of a drinker. If you have water—”
“No, this is a party,” she said, laughing. “My daddy says you should always have party drinks. I’ll make myself a Glamour Girl and you can taste it. I can double the peach schnapps for yours if you like it.” She mixed ingredients in a shaker, listing a constant stream of drink descriptions like a commercial voice-over to the action.
A few minutes later, she was done, popping a maraschino cherry into the light-pink drink. “Here. Try it.” She held it out to him.
Jem shook his head, trying to force his face into a friendly smile. “Go ahead, if that’s your favorite.”
“True, you probably don’t want to get caught holding one of these. They’re not very manly.” She giggled. Taking a gulp, she set it back on the sideboard. “Let me make you something else.”
He wandered to the bookshelf while she worked, half listening to her descriptions of the bars around Tupelo and the bartenders she liked the best and which bouncers were
the cutest. He looked over the titles, pausing to touch the spine of a worn copy of W. H. Auden poetry.
“This is probably more your style.” She handed him a bright-blue drink with a triangle of pineapple stuck jauntily to the top. She glanced at the shelf and shook her head. “Better not touch those. Lucy will string you up from the nearest tree.”
“She doesn’t like anyone else to read them?” He frowned at the books. They looked old, for sure, but leather books could last hundreds of years with good care.
“I needed a few pages for this project and she freaked out.” Paulette rolled her eyes and popped a maraschino cherry into her mouth.
“A few pages?”
“I saw the cutest thing on Pinterest where you took a marker and blocked out words to make a poem. I thought if I used a poetry book, it would be easier because, you know, it’s already a poem.”
“So, how did it work out?”
“Um, well.” Paulette took another sip and shrugged. “It’s hard to make a poem out of just a few words, so I left maybe half of them, just the ones I liked. It didn’t look as pretty as the picture I saw, even though I chose this one book because the paper was nice and yellow.”
Jem felt his eyes go wide. “You didn’t make a copy? You marked up the page right in the book?”
“No, I took the page out first, silly.” She laughed a little, as if he weren’t catching on. “Otherwise the pen would leak over everything else. Anyway, I don’t understand why Lucy had to get so upset about it. She acted like I’d stabbed someone. She acts like old things are better than anything modern. Our daddy doesn’t care about any of these old books. I don’t know why she should.”
“Which book was it?”
She frowned into her glass. “I can’t remember. But the poem I used was about a girl walking in beauty and about stars in her eyes.”
“ ‘She Walks in Beauty’ by Lord Byron?” Jem could almost see Paulette happily taking a Sharpie marker to the pages of a hundred-year-old poetry book. And he had no trouble imagining Lucy’s response. He wanted to laugh but it was too awful, in the end, to think of that kind of treasure defaced.
There was a knock at the door and Paulette rushed to open it. Regan passed through, pausing for hugs, and they exclaimed loudly over each other’s hair and clothing. Regan wore a long, flowing skirt paired with a barely there halter top and jeweled sandals. She looked beautiful. Her skin was perfectly smooth and tan, and when she turned for a moment, he saw that the halter was backless. At least she wouldn’t be too warm. He thought of Lucy in the kitchen, working over the steaming pots in a T-shirt and jeans.
Regan handed Paulette a small package. “Just a little somethin’ for you.”
Paulette tore off the paper and admired the patterned luggage tags. “I love Peachy Fontaine Boutique. Oh, and they have my initials on them. You are always so thoughtful. You pick the perfect gifts.”
There was the sound of another car. “Here’s Marcus,” Paulette exclaimed, waving madly out the door.
A movement caught Jem’s attention and he saw Lucy at the living-room doorway, trying to slip unobserved toward the side table that was crowded with drinks. He tried to catch her eye, but her head was down, gaze scanning the area. He wondered what she was doing, then glimpsed a small purse on the floor, which Paulette must have dropped to make room for the martini ingredients.
Regan came toward him, smiling. “I’m glad you could make it.” She leaned forward and Jem moved his glass, putting out an arm to give her a half hug, but she slipped her hands under his jacket and kissed him on the lips.
“You hardly return my calls and I’m worried you’re working too much.” Regan pouted, her perfectly plump bottom lip pushed out.
Jem tried to step back, but his heel hit the bookshelf. He hadn’t answered her calls because she said she wanted to chat and it hadn’t seemed a high priority. Plus, he remembered her chatter from the Strouds’ party. He could only take so much. Regan smelled good, but her perfume was overpowering, sort of like everything else about her. He shifted, trying to lift his drink into her field of vision. “I don’t want to spill this on your outfit.”
“Oh, I’d forgive you.” She gave him a little squeeze and then let her hands rest at his hips for a moment.
Jem felt his face go hot. He wasn’t a prude, but Regan was making him uncomfortable. If she thought this was flirting, she was wrong. If he acted like this with his receptionist, he’d be fired. If he acted like this with any woman, he’d be a first-class jerk.
A deep voice cut through the awkward moment: “Is the party already started?” Jem saw a handsome African American man in the doorway, surveying the room as if he’d been given the deed to the place. He wasn’t tall, but he was well built and wearing a pressed polo shirt. He looked as if he’d just walked away from a round of golf with the mayor.
“It has now,” Paulette said, giving him a peck on the cheek. “Come on in and I’ll make you a martini.”
Lucy had paused in her search and stood watching Marcus enter the living room. Something about her expression made his chest go tight.
“Hi, Regan, good to see you again.” Marcus received a kiss on the cheek, looked past her to Jem and held out a hand. “And our new doctor. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I admire your dedication to the poor of the area.” Marcus’s accent was purely local, but his bearing spoke of wealth and education.
“Jacob Stroud has worked with the Free Clinic for almost twenty years. That’s real dedication, and I’m honored to work with him.”
“I know the Strouds. I missed the fund-raising party. My father asked me to fill in for him on an important business meeting in New York City.”
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to go shopping on Fifth Avenue,” Regan sighed. “Did you pick up anything nice?”
“I’m afraid it was business only”—Marcus glanced back to Paulette and smiled—“but there may be a pleasure trip in my future.”
Paulette beamed at him.
“I almost forgot. A little something.” He handed a large bag to Paulette.
“Hmm. All the good gifts come in small boxes,” she said as if joking, but it was clear to Jem that she was serious. It couldn’t be a piece of jewelry in a bag that large. He realized that his peanut plant was not even close to an acceptable hostess gift. It had made sense at the time, actually seemed almost perfect, but now it seemed like something a country kid would bring his grade-school teacher.
Paulette peeked into the bag and gasped. Pulling out a canvas, she held it up. “Look, it’s me!”
The photo was an overly Photoshopped version of Paulette, with much larger eyes and perfect skin about five shades lighter than her real self.
Marcus said, “There’s a company that will make a canvas from your Instagram photos. So I thought, what better gift for you than one of your pretty selfies?”
Lucy made a sound that was part snort, part laugh, and covered her mouth with her hand.
“And this is . . . ?” Marcus cocked his head and waited to be introduced to Lucy. Her T-shirt had a small stain on the sleeve and her face still bore a sheen of sweat, but she was beautiful despite it all.
“Oh, that’s my sister.” Paulette handed Marcus his drink and quickly crossed to Lucy. She grasped her wrist and whispered in her ear. Lucy rolled her eyes and said something Jem couldn’t hear, pointing to the table. Paulette trotted over and grabbed Lucy’s purse.
“And does your sister have a name?” Marcus asked, laughter in his voice.
There was an awkward pause, where Paulette pushed the purse at Lucy instead of responding.
“I’m Lucy. I just forgot my keys were in here. I’ll be out of your way now. Have a good dinner.” She gave a polite smile and turned toward the hallway, not meeting Jem’s eyes.
Watching her walk away without even acknowledging her generosity seemed wrong. “Lucy cooked
the meal,” Jem said.
“I’m Marcus Gibbs. And you’re leaving us? You have somewhere to be?” He managed to sound welcoming in a way that Paulette would never achieve, no matter how many cotillion classes she took.
“Thank you, but I should go.” Lucy shouldered her purse and flashed a smile, this one a little more sincere.
Marcus crossed the living room. His accent seemed to deepen as he spoke to Lucy. “And I think I recognize you from Brice’s Crossroads.”
Surprise flashed across her face. “I’m the curator.”
“I haven’t been there myself, but our company owns the state travel magazine, and I saw the article about y’all last month. I hear there’s a new exhibit coming about the women who disguised themselves as men so they could fight.”
With just a few words, Marcus had ignited a spark in Lucy. Her gaze was bright with interest as she said, “By the end of the month we’ll have it set up. We’ve acquired original photographs, letters and a very important diary.”
“I can’t wait to see it.” Marcus stood about six inches taller than Lucy and they looked perfect together, like a couple from a website advertisement for singles. She was curvy and perfectly proportioned, matching Marcus’s wide shoulders and muscled build. Both casually dressed but undeniably attractive.
Jem was suddenly aware of his vest and white button-up shirt, wishing he had chosen something less formal. A cold lump settled in his gut. He would never find the right note for these parties. You had to be born into it to understand when you came dressed in a polo shirt and when you came in a three-piece suit. There was a code to every move they made, and this poor boy from the run-down trailer park across the tracks would never crack it.
“Stay for dinner. I won’t be able to eat if you leave after all your work,” Marcus said.
“Well . . .” Lucy paused.
Persuasion, Captain Wentworth and Cracklin' Cornbread Page 15