Calling Me Home

by Julie Kibler

  Cost me a thousand bucks, that is, if you looked at the fine print.

  But no. He said, “Fine.”

  Not that I was surprised.

  I tried to pick something out of him. I asked about Bailey, how she was doing and why she’d had such a long face lately, but all he said was, “She’s fine, too, Mom. Damn, you’re nosy.” The “damn” part hurt. But I licked my wounds and let him go.

  I waited a few more minutes before I dialed Teague. I didn’t want to interrupt his bedtime routine with his kids. Yes, those kids, those three … adorable … little kids. This was another catch—a major part of my hesitation. My kids were nearly raised, Stevie Junior about to graduate (maybe) and Bebe coasting along as fine as a middle schooler can. The thought of chaperoning three more all the way from elementary school through the teen years made me slightly lime around the lungs.

  And it wasn’t like Teague had his kids every other weekend. His ex-wife had flat left them, no warning. Turned out she wasn’t ready to be married or tied down with children after all. She’d rearranged her priorities. First, third, and fifth weekends, she and the kids played house, and the rest of the time, Teague was daddy and momma.

  I’d wondered, at first, if maybe he wanted someone to pick up the slack the woman had left in his household. But I was slowly becoming a believer. He hired a baby-sitter when we went out, paid the going rate—and finding out the going rate made me choke. Went to work every day. Fed his children chicken nuggets and Tater Tots, like all the single moms. Went to soccer games and dance recitals, not to mention practices. He’d negotiated a deal with his company that kept him local most of the time, with all his accounts right in the metro area. On the rare occasions he traveled, he made child-care arrangements—generally, not with his ex-wife.

  I took a deep breath and dialed, praying, after my little spat with Stevie Junior, for a conversation filled with sweet and light instead of hateful and spite. And oh, my goodness …

  Teague’s kids were already asleep, and cool jazz played in the background. I pictured him stretched out barefoot and bare-chested on his leather sofa, balancing a glass of red wine against his sculpted six-pack. He’d take a sip, then set it down to run long fingers over his taper fade and down the back of his neck. His hairstylist was good, if I did say so myself.

  Ohhh, his voice. A balm to my road-weary soul. From hello, I floated far out past the breaking surf in a warm, salty sea, hardly having to support myself as gentle waves washed around me. Kind of like the Gulf of Mexico down at Panama City Beach, Florida. The only beach I’ve been to.

  If I’d called Steve while he was keeping my kids when they were little, here’s what I would have heard: Stevie Junior and Bebe bickering, beer commercials blaring from the TV between penalties and goals, and Steve moaning and groaning about when I’d be home, because they were about to drive him crazy. I would have disconnected at my earliest opportunity.

  But a man who had his children under control, happy, and in bed at a decent hour? Mercy. How sexy was that?

  I tried to remind myself there was no way he was perfect. That his kids puked sometimes and misbehaved sometimes and that he had bad days, too. But it wasn’t easy. I asked myself at least ten times in the course of a single conversation why a guy like Teague would be interested in me.

  The obvious answer was, he was too good to be true.

  He asked politely about our trip so far, how many miles we’d made, if we’d had any trouble with the car or the route or the stops along the way. I relayed the story of Mr. Night Manager—a lot funnier on the back end—and Miss Isabelle’s little obsession with crossword puzzles. But in the middle of sharing a laugh over how many snacks an eighty-nine-year-old woman barely bigger than a Chihuahua could put away, my stomach flip-flopped, my scalp tingled, and I stopped mid-chuckle.

  “Dorrie?… Hello?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” I tried to cover the panic in my voice. It didn’t work.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I took a deep breath and pressed my elbows against my churning insides, weighing the wisdom of making this confession. Then I plunged ahead, not even trying to keep my voice steady now. “Oh, Teague. I just remembered I never deposited my cash take from Saturday. Not good. So not good.” And then I wanted to take the words back. This wasn’t something he needed to know.

  Or was it?

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “You going to be in trouble with the bank if you don’t get it in for another few days?”

  “No, no, I didn’t pay any bills ahead, so I’m good there. Nobody’ll be hunting me down, but oh, man, I’m an idiot. I left the envelope at the shop.”

  “Is it locked up somewhere? Would anyone know it was there or be able to get to it easily?”

  “The money’s locked up, but you know my shop’s not in the best neighborhood. If anyone notices I’m closed for a few days, they might decide to investigate. It wouldn’t be the first time, but I usually don’t leave any money there. And crap, if they find my cash, I will be in trouble next week.”

  I sighed and fumed, even more furious with myself—and embarrassed—than I’d ever admit out loud. I’d forgotten the money Saturday, and was lucky. Then, in the midst of all the other preparations for the trip with Miss Isabelle, I’d left it again Monday when I went by the closed shop to rearrange my schedule. I’d done a few cut and colors that Saturday in addition to some unexpected walk-ins and pulled in several hundred dollars in cash. Not a huge amount in the scheme of things, but enough to pay my power and water bills, and I was counting on it. Kids had vandalized the shop before, but they rarely did more than rough things up, looking for money. Professional criminals knew the payoff for breaking into a one-chair salon—not a big venture, not worth the risk.

  “Can I help? I mean, I could…” Teague’s words trickled off, and I could hear him wanting to do something but worrying anything he offered might be taken the wrong way.

  My response surprised me. “Listen, what does your morning look like tomorrow?”

  “After I drop the kids at school? I don’t have any appointments, and I can get to the office whenever. It’s right down the hall, remember? Nobody will miss me if I’m a little late.”

  He worked out of his house as a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. He made his own schedule most days—one more thing we had in common.

  “Well, could you do this? I left the shop key with my mom. She’s staying at the house—she’ll be there in the morning. Would you run by and grab it, then check on things? I can tell you where the money is, and you could hold it for me until I get back. Or you could leave it at my house, but honestly, I trust you more than I trust my mother.” I laughed nervously, wondering how he’d take that. Who didn’t trust her own mother?

  He rolled on like it was nothing. I told him how to find the key to the file cabinet where I kept the cash, said that I’d let Mom know he’d be by first thing in the morning. I crossed my fingers and held my breath and hoped to God I hadn’t done something even more stupid.

  “I’ll take care of it, Dorrie. It’ll be fine. If your landlord stops me, thinks I’m a hoodlum, I’ll have him call you to confirm I’m on the guest list”—he thought of everything—“and I could even deposit the money if you’d like. I bet your bank will take cash without the account number if I tell them your name and address and the situation.” He was bending over backward, reading my mind, trying to help me understand he wasn’t going to pull a fast one.

  After we disconnected, I stood still, gazing through the glass windows into the hotel lobby, thinking how big this was for me. I watched a cute little couple check in, the young woman waiting by the elevator with all their bags while the guy paid. They both looked so happy to be there, they had to be newlyweds, or practically so. How long had it been since I’d trusted a man that much? How long had it been since I’d trusted a man at all?

  * * *

  BACK IN THE room, Miss Isabelle had drifted to sleep in her chair while I made my calls. Whe
n I opened the door, she startled. Her reading glasses tumbled off the end of her nose and onto the floor next to the bed. When I rushed over to retrieve them for her, I saw her purse, stashed way under her side of the bed. Honestly? I wouldn’t have thought anything about it, except in my side vision as I bent over, I saw her almost translucent cheeks turn the tiniest bit pink.

  “I’m always worried,” she said quickly. “I thought, What if someone breaks in here during the night and tries to take my bag, then what will we do?”

  “You sure, Miss Isabelle? I mean, you’re trusting me with your whole life, more or less, letting me drive your car and sleep in the same room and all. But, okay, so I am mighty jealous of that big thing you carry around. I might sneak it into my suitcase and take it home with me.”

  I winked and handed over her glasses. I knew she wasn’t worried about me. But still, it made me sad that she felt she had to explain herself, that she worried things might be misconstrued. We were close, that’s for sure—and getting closer every minute of this journey—but, realistically, that little gap would always be between us, simply because we were different.

  We’d been conditioned that way.

  11

  Isabelle, 1939

  IF MY MOTHER was overprotective before she discovered I hadn’t been spending Wednesday afternoons at the library, now she scrutinized my every move. The day she confronted me on the porch, I mumbled something about wandering along the river on Wednesdays without permission because I knew she wouldn’t allow it and losing track of time. My disheveled clothing and my face, flushed and sweating after running home, supported my story. She didn’t question me, but whether or not she suspected the true nature of my activities, she obviously believed my reputation was at risk.

  In the following days, I hovered around corners when Nell and Cora worked together in various rooms, straining my ears for a mention of Robert. I’d seen no sign of him since my confession, and my pride shrank each time I remembered the foot I’d crammed inside my mouth, apparently embarrassing both of us. Even if every word I’d spoken was true.

  I heard cheerful snippets about which neighbor had finally landed a job, hushed gossip about a cousin who’d kicked her drunken husband out for the last time, quieter whispers about an unfortunate girl who’d come up pregnant, shaming her family in the worst way. But not a word about Robert, as if they’d agreed not to mention his name in my house. I knew he wouldn’t have told them about our afternoons at the arbor or the feelings I’d admitted. Rather, it seemed, some hunch permeated their collective subconscious, motivating them to draw an invisible line of defense between the two of us.

  I attempted to regain Nell’s trust when we happened to cross paths. I hoped she’d give me a glimmer of news about Robert, but I also missed her desperately.

  She kept me at arm’s length, answering my inquiries with no more words than necessary, keeping her eyes focused just below mine—high enough she didn’t come across as disrespectful, low enough I knew I was still on notice.

  Then, one day, I was curled up in a corner of the porch swing, pretending to read. In truth, I was moping and daydreaming of Robert. The screen door creaked open, and Nell emerged with mop and bucket. I thought she saw me. She didn’t acknowledge me, but that was nothing new these days. I returned my gaze to the pages of my book, my eyes crossed slightly and the letters blurred in the laziness of my wandering attention. The heavy scent of honeysuckle drifted up from the beds bordering the porch. I inhaled the aroma and expelled the frustration my situation had created in my chest, hoping for a productive exchange.

  Nell plunged her mop into the bucket, wrung it out, and moved it back and forth, back and forth along the porch’s dusky gray surface in a soothing rhythm. Eventually, she hummed in time with her work, and finally, she broke into a song.

  Her back was to me. I listened, entranced. We’d sung childish rhyming songs as girls, but I’d never realized how beautiful her voice was. When she drew out the lower notes, my heart contracted, and when she soared on the high ones, my heart soared, too. She was marvelous. When she stopped, I dropped my book and jumped up, applauding.

  Nell jerked as though she’d been shot between her shoulder blades. She whirled, and her eyes met mine for the first time in weeks. They flashed both humor and irritation. “My goodness, Miss Isabelle, you about scared the grits and gravy out of me. How long’ve you been watching me act like a fool?” This was the Nell I’d missed. The one not scared to tell me most of her thoughts and many of her opinions, until I’d ruined it by brushing her away as carelessly as if she were an outgrown dress.

  “Oh, Nell. I had no idea you sang so well. What’s that song?”

  She lowered her gaze again as I gushed compliments. “Just something I’m practicing for our revival meetings. A new song by Mr. Thomas Dorsey.”

  “I’ve heard of Tommy Dorsey. He wrote that?”

  “No, not the big-band guy. Mr. Dorsey writes gospel songs. Me and my pastor, we just love everything he writes.” She glanced up quickly to check my reaction.

  “It’s beautiful. And you’re going to sing it as a solo? Oh, that’s wonderful, Nell. I wish I could hear you sing it there.” My voice trailed at the ridiculous suggestion. I sighed.

  Nell dunked her mop back into the suds.

  A tendril of an idea stretched up in my mind. I spoke in a controlled voice, as though my inquiry was born of good manners. “When is that? Your revival. It’s coming up soon?”

  “All next week. We’ll have a picnic supper, then begin the meetings about sundown every evening, starting Sunday. I’m singing the altar call at the end.” She couldn’t conceal her pride, and a smile transformed her face like the sun touching water.

  “Oh, Cora must be so proud, Nell. Your whole family—they must be practically bursting with excitement to hear you.”

  At my nonspecific mention of Robert, Nell’s smile fell away. First, it deserted her eyes, and then her lips curved down. “I don’t let it go to my head, Miss Isabelle. It’s for the glory of the Lord.” She turned with a dismissive shrug and mopped the rest of the porch in silence. Eventually, I gathered my things and went inside, her renewed coolness unbearable even in the blazing afternoon heat.

  But my idea wouldn’t leave me alone.

  * * *

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON, I contracted a sudden sick headache, so bad I took to my bed and stayed there while the rest of the family played cards and drank lemonade in the shade of the back patio.

  Mother checked on me as the sun finally began to sink in the sky. It blazed through my bedroom window, floating on the horizon like a giant melon ball. “Are you feeling better?” she asked. Her hovering felt more like concern than suspicion, almost as if she worried that her constant surveillance lately had actually caused my headache. I felt guilty—briefly. “Can I get you anything else before I go to bed, sweetheart?”

  I already had a basin of cool water to freshen the rag on my forehead, and my father had given me aspirin—which affected my feigned illness not at all.

  “Better, Mother.” I sighed and shifted the rag to a new position. I’d observed her sick headaches long enough to know what to say. “What I need is dark and quiet. Sleep. I’m sure I’ll be good as new tomorrow. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Fine, then, dear. I’ll leave you alone.” She kissed my cheek and left, though she paused in the doorway and watched me in silence, her face void of its perpetual fussiness—a suggestion of what she could have looked like. Her softened gaze made me want to call her back, pretend I needed her after all. But I allowed my eyelids to droop, and before long, she tiptoed away.

  The hushed noises of my family scattering to their various rooms finally dwindled into silence, and I slipped out of bed. I plumped up the bedding and pillows to make it appear as if I were curled on my side, my face hidden beneath the covers. I prayed Mother wouldn’t venture beyond the door if she happened to check on me again.

  I shrugged off my summer nightgown and pulled on tro
users my brother had outgrown years before. I tucked a tailored plaid shirt I thought could pass for a boy’s garment—at least from a distance—into the waistband and cinched up the trousers with a belt. My school oxfords were obviously girls’, but the trousers almost covered the toes. Last, I gathered my bobbed hair as tight as I could and stuffed it under my brother’s frayed fishing cap, then studied myself in the mirror. Anyone close enough would realize immediately I wasn’t a boy, but I didn’t plan to get that close. Already sweating in the stifling, stagnant air of my room, I wondered how men could stand wearing long pants every day in summer, as if the seasons hadn’t even changed.

  I rolled up the trouser legs and pulled my bathrobe over my ensemble. Carrying my shoes and the cap, I tiptoed to my door. I knew where and how to hold it—from years of experience and from practicing that afternoon while my family was in the yard—applying pressure in the right spots to keep it from groaning as I opened it only enough to slip out. When I returned, I’d shinny up the latticework on the side of the house and crawl through my window, but I could leave the conventional way if I was very quiet. We rarely locked doors, but no telling who might be up and about later, in the hallway bathroom or down in the kitchen for a cool drink. My brothers might have left, and if so, who knew when they’d return.

  I managed the stairs without telltale creaks, and the back door closed neatly, without its ever-shifting threshold sticking. I leaped off the back steps and raced down the drive and away. I paused only to stuff my bathrobe under a shrub. It was reminiscent of another journey I’d made recently, only this time, I hoped, I would be running toward Robert instead of away from him.

  Near Main Street, I slowed and unrolled my trouser legs and stuffed my feet into my shoes. Downtown, I hugged the buildings, slipping from one dark entryway to the next. The street was deserted except for huddles of young men smoking and shooting the breeze. Younger boys hung at the edges of some groups, hands deep in their pockets as they dreamed of being invited into those circles. Whenever I passed too close, I sped up, pointing my chin at my chest and pulling my brother’s cap low in case someone should recognize me. I breathed easy when the buildings thinned and turned residential again. At the city limit, I slapped that ugly sign hard and let out a whoop. It seemed dressing as a boy had given me permission to act like one, too. It never occurred to me to be nervous about what might lurk at the dark edges along the road. Lightning bugs flickered, but always off in the distance ahead, as if they were leading the way—though my feet knew the direction even in the purple darkness.