The Secret's in the Sauce

by Linda Evans Shepherd

  “Let me ask you this: do you have any proof against Jeff?”

  “Only that, for some reason, he never wants me to join him on these gigs he and the boys go out of town on. He used to say that I needed to be home with Jeff Junior, but now that Jeffy’s in college he can’t use that excuse anymore.”

  “So what does he say now?”

  Silent tears began to slip down her cheeks. “That he and the boys only get two rooms at the motels and it wouldn’t be right if I went and we got a private room, meaning one of the boys would have to pay for the price of a room alone.”

  “Well, it makes sense.”

  “Mama says let sleeping dogs lie.”

  I crossed my arms over my middle. “Mama never had to worry about Daddy. Daddy loved Mama more than any man has ever loved a woman, I do believe.”

  Diane and I were silent then. Silent for so long the shadows shifted in the room as the sun began its descent behind the bare oaks and tall pines beyond the window. “I sure do miss Daddy,” Diane finally said. When she burst into tears, I joined her, reaching for her, sobbing loud enough to bring Mama and anybody else in the family that was in the house bounding up the stairs to see what might be the matter.

  But no one came. For the past two weeks we’d allowed one another to grieve as loudly or as quietly as we wanted.

  During those times when we weren’t dealing with the legalities of living and dying, I took long walks alone down the lane toward the main road that led to town. I spent that time praying and crying, thanking God for giving me my daddy and questioning God’s wisdom at having taken him so soon. “You could have waited,” I boldly proclaimed on one such walk. “At least waited until I got home. Couldn’t heaven have waited a few more hours?” I’d no sooner proclaimed my unhappiness at the sovereignty of God than the sky turned a darker shade of gray, sending showers of icy rain to pelt against my body as I hurried back to the house, vowing never to question God again on such issues.

  We’d buried Daddy three days after I’d arrived in Georgia, giving as many family members as could make it a chance to come. That included Jack. He flew in on Saturday and out again on Monday morning. My brother Preston came in Friday morning from Atlanta with his wife Elizabeth but without their daughter Shauna, a twenty-five-year-old beauty who was blessed (or cursed, according to how you look at it) with my golden red hair. Preston and Elizabeth said Shauna “simply couldn’t get away” for the funeral. We all thought that was pretty odd, but their closed-mouth attitude about the whole thing kept us from prying any further. Like I told Tom, Shauna lives and works in Toronto now, a grown woman with her own life to live.

  “It’s her grandfather’s funeral,” Tom said matter-of-factly. “There’s no excuse.”

  I love my brothers—both of them—and have never liked talking about one to the other. Especially in the midst of grief. “Tom,” I said. “May I remind you that my Olivia is not here either.”

  “She’s pregnant. She doesn’t need to be on an airplane.”

  I elected not to comment further. With everything else going on, why add family friction to deepest sorrow? Still, when I was alone and not thinking about Daddy, I did find it rather odd.

  Daddy’s funeral was an event I wasn’t sure I would remember in detail, at least not any time soon. Even as I sat in the front pew of the church and tried to listen to his pastor, all I could hear was a tiny voice inside my head saying, So this is how it feels . . . so this is how it feels . . . Only problem was, I couldn’t quite figure out how it felt. I was numb. Too much had happened too quickly. The middle-of-the-night phone call, the flight, the sudden news that Daddy was gone. Rushing back to the house, to Mama, to the safety and surety of her ample arms, wondering if she were holding me up or if I were holding her up as we cried together. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll always remember the cupping of her hand on my shoulder—pat-pat, pat-pat—and the sound of her voice whispering in my ear, “It’s all right now, it’s all right. You’re here. You’re here.” As though life had somehow been suspended from the time Daddy died until I arrived.

  I knew that wasn’t so. By the time I arrived, Diane and Jeff had already met with the funeral director, according to Melody, because Mama had asked them to. “She said she just couldn’t do it,” my sister-in-law told me as she helped me take my luggage up the stairs to my old bedroom. I couldn’t help but notice that Melody, in spite of the long night at the hospital and having enough children to start her own one-room schoolhouse, managed to look so cute and perky on such a day. Then again, she always did, no matter what. It was as though, even with death all around us, Melody was in our family to remind us of one who enjoys life to its fullest, meeting it head-on each and every day.

  Diane and Jeff picked a lovely casket—ocean blue stainless steel lined in baby blue crepe, which I noted matched the color of Daddy’s eyes. Stitched on the inside of the lid was a hillside scene bearing a few trees and three crosses—one prominent—supported by the words: In God’s Care. Because of Daddy’s military service, the American flag was draped and pulled back in an accordion fold until after the casket was closed, then it fell over it like a proud sheet, with corners stiffly pointing downward, reminding me of a soldier standing at attention.

  I asked Tom if he would take me to the funeral home on the evening of visitation before anyone else could arrive. I hadn’t seen Daddy in a year and I wanted some time alone with him before everyone and their brother showed up to pay respects.

  DeLoach’s Funeral Home is, like so many Southern funeral homes, located in what was once a sprawling Victorian on Main Street. Its wraparound porch is lined with old rockers and plant stands supporting enormous ferns, offering a familial welcome. The front door—half glass, half paneled wood with chipped paint— had to be jerked to be opened, and it rattled when Tom gave it his all. Inside what used to be the front hall was a split staircase and on either side of that four sets of double doors leading to rooms where the dead lay in wait for the living. At one time, of course, these rooms had been parlors and dining rooms and such. But not now.

  Someone, a reedlike woman I neither recognized nor knew, came down from a back room and up the hallway. Tom met her halfway while I stared at each set of closed doors, wondering which one my daddy was behind. I heard Tom mumble something, bringing my attention back to him. He stepped back to me. “She said for us to take our time.” He cupped my elbow and turned me to the left, to the first set of doors. He slid one of them open just enough for us to step through. Inside the room my senses were nearly assaulted by the smell of roses and carnations, of lilies and mums. But by this time my gaze was solely on my feet and the long narrow floorboards beneath them.

  I didn’t look up until we’d reached the casket bathed in soft sunlight made all the more ethereal by stained glass windows on the west side of the room. Raising my eyes I saw a man lying in repose. He looked vaguely like my father and yet did not. He appeared younger somehow than the last time I’d seen him, and that had been a year ago. Instead of his favorite faded denim overalls and worn cotton shirt, he was dressed in a dark blue suit, white dress shirt, and a blue tie striped in blood red.

  I placed my hand on his chest as though feeling for a heartbeat and, finding none, wept. “Oh, Daddy . . .”

  Tom’s arm came around me, pulling me to his side, supporting me, I suppose for fear that I might collapse. I knew I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. My hand was on Daddy, and Daddy was all the support I needed.

  The following days were hard. We’d no sooner laid Daddy to rest and begun to make our way to the line of cars than old Mr. DeLoach approached me with a zippered vinyl case and said, “Give this to your mama when you get home. It’s everything she’ll need. Paperwork and the like.”

  I looked into the eyes of a man who’d been a friend to my father since they’d been children, and noted the kindness there. What manner of man, I wondered, chose death as his occupation? A kind one, to be sure. “Thank you.” I took the case and held it against the
black wool of a dress I’d borrowed from my childhood friend Laci. “I’ll be sure she gets it.”

  “Your daddy was a good man. I don’t know if I’ll ever know another one like him.”

  Jack came up behind me just then and placed his hand on my shoulder. “You want me to take that, Goldie?” He nodded toward the case. I handed it to him, and he shook Mr. DeLoach’s hand and then said to me, “I’ll be in the car.”

  I gave him a fleeting glance, then looked back at Mr. DeLoach. “Thank you again.”

  I started to turn away, but before I could the old gentleman stopped me with words. “Did your daddy ever tell you about how he’d bring us banana pudding up to the funeral home?”

  “No, sir. I’m afraid he didn’t.”

  “Well, he sure did. Your mama would make it, of course. Then Hoy would say, ‘Bake two of ’em, Doris, and I’ll take one over to Kenny and his bunch of gravediggers.’” He chuckled. “That’s what he always called me. A gravedigger. I’d say, ‘Hoy, now you know I’ve got men out there to do the digging,’ and he’d say, ‘Yeah, but that don’t stop you none from dropping the casket in the hole, now does it?’ Your daddy . . . he was a character.” Mr. DeLoach choked on his final words.

  I’d heard those words more in the last few days than I’d been able to count. I tried to smile but failed. “Yes, he was.”

  “I’m gonna miss him. I’m going to miss his puddin’ too.”

  I placed my hand on his arm, leaned over, and said, “I’ll be sure to tell Mama to bake you a banana pudding next time she’s baking one for the family.”

  “Nobody bakes ’em like your mama.” He gave a sad shake of his head. He turned then and walked away.

  The day after my eye-opening conversation with Diane I stood alone in the kitchen and pulled Mama’s recipe book out of one of the cabinets, laid it on the counter, and began to skim it.

  “What’cha doin’?” Mama said from behind me.

  I’m sure I jumped a country mile. “Mama! You scared me nearly to death.” I took a quick breath. Funny how something as ordinary as “scared me nearly to death” suddenly didn’t suit.

  “Only the guilty jump.” She smiled at me.

  “Mr. DeLoach said Daddy used to take him some of your banana pudding, and I thought I’d make some for the funeral home before I leave tomorrow.”

  Mama picked up the recipe book and placed it back on the shelf. “You won’t find it in there,” she said, straining a bit. Then she looked at me and pointed to her temple. “It’s all up here, sister.”

  I put my fists on my hips. “Well, Martha Stewart, will you talk me through it then?”

  “Go get yourself a mixing bowl over there,” she began, reaching for an apron hung on a hook near the sink. I believe Mama is one of the few women left in this world who still cooks wearing an apron, and I said so as I retrieved the bowl and brought it to her.

  She blushed a pretty shade of pink. “Your daddy always said it made me look sexy.”

  My eyes widened. “Mama . . . my, my. The devil you say.” I cut my eyes in jest.

  “Your daddy was a lover, honey. I never talked to you children much about it, but he was that. A hard worker and a fine lover. That man was mad about me, and I was mad about him.” She paused. “Hand me the bowl.”

  I did.

  “Get me four eggs from the icebox, and the milk too.”

  I did as I was told, and Mama began pulling other items from the pantry: sugar, flour, a box of vanilla wafers. . . . I joined her back at the counter and said, “Don’t stop there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me some more saucy stuff about you and Daddy?”

  “Nope. Now, get me four bananas from over in the fruit bowl, and while you’re doing that, you can tell me more about this catering club I heard you talking to Diane about the other day . . .”

  Preston drove me to the airport Friday morning. He and Elizabeth had come in the night before to spend the weekend with Mama and so Preston could see me off. I spent the better part of the evening packing and crying, so I welcomed the time alone in the car with my oldest living brother.

  “How’s Mama doing, you think?” he asked me when we’d pulled onto the main highway in his Escalade rich with the scent of leather.

  “Mama’s made of pure butter fat and starch. She’ll hold up. Besides, she’s got Diane and Tom right there with her, so neither you nor I have to worry, Preston.”

  I’m sure my tone was a bit icy; for the life of me I don’t know why. He whipped his head to face me, then turned back to the road. “Where’d that come from?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . I don’t know.” I took a breath and let it out, all the while pressing the front of my slacks with the palms of my hands. “You and I used to be close, and I guess I just came to realize with Daddy’s dying and all, you and I have become familiar strangers. To our own family as well as to each other.” I looked at him, pondering his profile for a moment as he studied the highway that stretched out before us. He looked so much like Daddy. Tall and lanky but with a little extra poundage brought about by age. His hair was salt and pepper like Daddy’s, not quite as wavy, and combed back from his face. I thought for a moment that he looked more like Daddy than Hoy Jr., whom Daddy now lay beside in the church’s adjoining graveyard. “I mean, when was the last time we talked, Preston? Really talked?”

  “I don’t know. Seems like life has a way of getting in front of what’s really important.” He flexed his hands on the wheel, then continued. “I’ve been thinking a lot since I got the call that Daddy was sick. Here we lived just a few hours from home, and Elizabeth and I barely made it down to see the folks.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Preston. We live in the jet age; I could be here in a matter of hours myself, if you think about it. And I come home once a year. We have families, and Mama and Daddy always understood that.”

  “I should have called more often.”

  I felt tears sting the back of my eyes. “If we’d known we only had a little more time, we’d have called every day, several times a day. Both of us would have. You know that.”

  “Years ago, after I’d moved up to Atlanta, it was all about work, getting settled in my career. Then, I met Elizabeth and we got married. Suddenly life was about building a home and a family with her rather than staying so much connected to the family I’d grown up with.”

  “C’est la vie,” I said. “Of such things is life, brother.”

  He cleared his throat before going on. “I asked to be the one to drive you to the airport because I thought it was time we really talked again, Goldie. Like you said, we used to be so close.”

  I smiled at him. “Oh, sure,” I said with a lilt in my voice. “Never has a brother so mercilessly picked on a little sister.”

  He chuckled. “It made you tough.”

  I grew pensive. “And tough is what I’d need to be to get through this life.”

  He looked at me momentarily. “How’s Olivia? Mama says she’s expecting.”

  I nodded. “Baby number two. What about Shauna? Anyone special in her life?”

  I watched Preston turn pale, then flush red. “Shauna has someone special, Goldie. In fact, she’s married to him.”

  “What? Preston! Why haven’t you told anyone?”

  Preston swallowed. “He’s a man of color; or at least that’s the way Elizabeth puts it . . . when she can bring herself to discuss it.”

  I took in a breath, my fingers lightly touching my chest. “He’s black?”

  “That’s why Shauna didn’t come to the funeral. In Canada it’s not so big a deal, but here in the South . . .”

  “It’s not something Dixie is altogether ready to deal with,” I said.

  Preston chuckled. “Noooo . . .”

  “Is he nice?”

  “Very.”

  “Does Shauna love him?”

  Preston reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a photo. “You tell me. I’ve be
en holding on to this . . . in case I . . . we . . . talked.”

  I took the photo from him and then stared at the image of my beautiful niece and a handsome black man. They both bore wide smiles, and I noted the way his dark hand was gently draped over a pale one, his fingertips lightly touching hers. It was a loving caress, evident even on photo paper.

  “He obviously makes her happy.”

  “Like no one I’ve ever seen.”

  “Personally I’d rather have Olivia happy with a black man than miserable with a white man.” I swallowed. “Believe me.”

  He looked over at me again, then back to the road. “What are you saying, little sister?”

  I shrugged. Jack had changed. There was no need to open this can of worms.

  “Jack?” Preston finally asked. “Something with Jack?”

  I looked at my brother, his face growing hot in the cold of winter. “Preston, the nightmares of my marriage are all over now. We’ve worked through some issues and . . . you’ve always liked Jack. I don’t want to say anything that might make you not like him.”

  Preston exhaled loud enough for me to hear him. “Why do we do this, Goldie? Why do we keep secrets from the people who love us and who we love?”

  “I don’t know.” My voice was barely audible.

  He reached over and took my hand, squeezing lightly. “Remember when we were kids? There was that bully—what was his name?”

  “Biff Davis.” How could he forget?

  Preston laughed at my quick answer. “He used to pick on you all the time when you were, what? Third grade?”

  “And fourth.”

  “Then you came home and told me.”

  “He made fun of my hair,” I said with a pretend pout and a touch of my red locks.

  “So the next day, I held him down while you poured red paint all over his head.” Preston laughed heartily, and I joined him.