“Vitally, huh?”
“Yes, vitally. And I attached a résumé plus a bunch of Internet links to prove I’m a trustworthy guy, and I offered to pay a big deposit if they would let me pick this up and borrow it until the afternoon.”
“And someone went for that? Called you up and said, ‘Hey, come get this super expensive city model off of our hands for a few hours based on the strength of your résumé’?”
“It may have involved a little more than that.”
I thought I’d seen Max looking uncomfortable on the banks of the Mississippi in Natchez when we had talked about the dance, but now he was squirming.
“This I have to hear.”
“Maybe another time. It’s not really the point now. What is the point is that I want you to know I’m sorry. I like you. A lot. I think about you constantly. I want to be with you all the time. I don’t want to be the reason you’re upset or angry, ever. I want to know how to make this up to you so you won’t be mad at me.”
I melted and ached at the same time, and that seemed the best way to describe what trying to be with Max was like. “I’m not mad at you, Max. I’m mad at myself.”
He took one of my hands, brushing his thumb across my knuckles. “Don’t be. I’ll take on anyone who’s mad at you, including yourself.”
I turned my hand over to tangle my fingers with his, aching all the more that it was so easy to do, to wrap up bits of myself in him. “I’m mad at myself because I like you too, and I don’t know why.” That won a laugh out of him, and I squeezed his hand. “I didn’t mean it like that. You are so worth liking. But you’re also leaving sooner than later. And so this makes no sense,” I said, nodding at our clasped hands before I slid mine out of his.
“I want to talk about this, but I don’t want to make it awkward for you with your next class too. Plus, I stayed home from work all morning to put those flags on, and I need to return the model and check in at my office. Can I come over later? Or tomorrow, maybe? I’m going to have to work late tonight to make up for being out all morning.”
“I don’t know.”
“Lila Mae, please don’t make me call your mother and tell her that I want to come over and you won’t let me.”
I burst out laughing. “That’s playing dirty.”
He stood there with a half smile that said he was only half joking.
I rubbed my forehead, still smiling. “Okay. But not tomorrow. Just come for Sunday dinner, okay?”
“What about conference sites. We still have more to check out, right?”
“Do we?” I asked.
“We’re doing the boat, aren’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a good call, even if it means I can’t talk you into going anywhere before Sunday. I can live with that, if that’s what you need. But why don’t you let me handle booking it so I can free up more of your brain cells to think about us.”
“Max . . .”
He winced at my tone. “I know you’re thinking about all the reasons why we can’t work. Will you try thinking about the reasons we can? This is too important not to give both sides equal weight.”
I hesitated but nodded. It felt like agreeing to go to the Cheesecake Factory in the middle of a three-day fast, but he was right. It was important enough to be sure about this that I’d let myself imagine a relationship with him working out.
He sighed, and if I’d had it on video, I could have turned him into a gif of pure relief. “Good.” He grinned. “I can work with that. And now I’m going to get Baton Rouge back into my car before the halls fill up again.”
I held the classroom door open while he maneuvered it out like he was handling a live bomb. He paused in the hall to look back over his shoulder. “I won’t drop by until Sunday, but you’re still going to hear from me.”
“Maybe I won’t answer.”
“Doesn’t matter. Unless you tell me to go away, I won’t.” He headed down the hall, drawing curious glances from the few kids who had trickled back in from lunch early.
I sank back down in my chair, staring at my new bulletin-board display. How on earth had he sweet-talked his way into borrowing an entire city? He had some mad persuasion skills.
Then again, I already knew that.
* * *
I couldn’t decide if the number of times Max kept popping into my head was a blessing or a curse, but by Friday afternoon, I decided it was a blessing. Kiana had been particularly difficult in first period, no better behaved when I made her come in for lunch, and as I eyed the clock twenty minutes after the last bell, it looked as if she’d bailed on coming in after school like I’d requested.
I was shoving another pile of essays to grade into my school bag when I heard a cough and looked up to find Kiana standing there, her face closed off, an air of waiting surrounding her.
“Let’s sit,” I said, heading toward her desk. When she was in trouble, she sat in front of my desk to talk. When we were talking but she wasn’t in trouble, we sat near hers. I hoped it would help her let her defenses down some. She took her usual seat, but everything about her was an inward curve, from slumped shoulders to her tipped-down chin.
“What’s going on, Kiana?” It was the same question I’d asked her at lunch after I had called her in for mouthing off to me twice during class. She’d only answered me with a mumbled, “Nothin’.” This time she sighed, but she still said nothing. “Kiana? Talk to me.” It was a request, as gentle as I could make it, and her chin rose a fraction.
“Is your mom back?”
Her shoulders tensed.
“Is she coming around more than usual?”
“I can’t hardly get a break from her now.” It was a spew of frustration. “Twenty-three hours a day she act like she the kid, but the other hour she keeps trying to step into what I already got going, and it messes everything up.”
“That sounds hard.” The words were cheap Band-Aids for a deep wound.
She shrank smaller, like her confession had occupied a space that was collapsing in on itself now that she had pushed it out. “That’s not even all of it. Mama is a pothole. I got sinkholes to deal with too.”
“This is exactly why I gave you Madame CJ for your project.”
She glanced at me, her eyes too tired to be angry. “I know, so I can win and rise above this all. Ain’t going to happen.”
“No, not so you could win. So you can see what’s possible. Have you been reading up on her some more? Found anything new? Thought of what you want to do for your project?”
With a sigh so deep it was almost a groan, she straightened. “Am I in trouble?”
“That’s not what this is about—”
“Then I need to go,” she said, standing up. I scrambled to my feet too. “Look, Miss Guidry. You’re nice, but you have no idea. Madame CJ did her thing so long ago it’s like a fairy tale. This is my real life. And this ain’t no fairy tale. Or if it is, it’s the part at the beginning, where everything is wrong for the princess, only in this one, that’s just how the story stays. It don’t go anywhere after that. You don’t get it. That’s not your fault, I guess. But quit thinking you can save me from something you don’t understand. You ain’t lived it. You can’t even imagine it. Reading some articles about some lady doesn’t cure anything. Not one thing. See you tomorrow,” she said, heading toward the door.
“Wait!”
She paused, and I stood there for a few seconds trying to think of how to make her want to stay, make her want to talk. “My brothers are going to be waiting for me.”
“Okay.” I hurried over to my desk and pulled out a few protein bars. “Because I don’t know what else to do.”
“I’ll eat them,” she said, taking them. “Because I don’t know what else to do either.”
And she disappeared into the hall.
* * *
Kiana and Max fought a turf war over my brain space all day Saturday. I couldn’t tell who was winning. I only knew for sure who the loser was: me. An
ytime Kiana had the stage, all my stress hormones went into overdrive, and I kept trying to think of how to help her. I wasn’t naive enough to think that building her self-worth would solve all her problems. Winning a Kiwanis Club contest wasn’t going to help her when her mom was weaving down the hallway high and angry, trying to parent when she couldn’t form a sentence. But winning it could be a foundation at least. It could be a bright spot.
Maybe.
She was right about my ignorance. What did I know, really? I knew some facts about her life. I didn’t have even the slightest idea of what it felt like to be her. I’d grown up across the city but a world away. I’d been a debutante, for pity’s sake. That was a far cry from living with a meth-head mother. But the only instinct I had was to try to get Kiana to see herself like I saw her.
When Max had the stage, my hormones went into overdrive too but not so much the stress ones. My mind ran down two tracks: I want to kiss his face and What am I doing with him? There were a hundred reasons someone would date him as long as that someone didn’t need to stay near her mother.
But there was his smile to consider, the half one he gave when he was being mischievous, the slightly different one that appeared when he was thinking about something he liked, and the big, unreserved one that he broke out like it was the most natural way for his face to rest. It was funny that I’d assumed he was still his old surly self for the first few weeks after he’d moved back, but I could see right through that now. That was his uncomfortable face, and I regretted the weeks he’d had to sit at church feeling out of place.
There were other things to consider: his work ethic, for one. You didn’t grow up in Jim and Hattie Guidry’s house without a deep appreciation for hard workers. Daddy would have liked Max. Hard work was a part of him.
I couldn’t overlook the melty thing that happened to me around him, the way my hands suddenly turned fluttery and my whole body buzzed with energy that couldn’t find an outlet. Maybe that explained the electricity that danced along my skin wherever he happened to touch it. If I had to stand blindfolded in front of a hundred people and they could each touch me only on my shoulder for a half second, I would still know his touch because I would feel it like a heartbeat, a tiny throb wherever he made contact.
There was the kissing. He was so good at it.
And there was so much more. He showed up to church every Sunday and listened. He loved his family. He had good manners and was courteous to Mom. And even though he’d gone way off target with the whole “telling me to experience the world” thing, in every other way he’d been pretty thoughtful.
He was without doubt a good man. Such a good man.
And a good-looking one too.
Aargh.
He doesn’t want to be here, I reminded the part of my brain that had wandered into another daydream of cooking a Saturday-morning breakfast with him while he made smiley face pancakes for a child I could almost imagine.
I erased the mental picture of Saturday-morning domestic bliss to go have real Saturday-morning breakfast with Mom downstairs. Mom, who was here now and needed me now.
I washed my hands so I could help her finish chopping veggies for omelets. She blinked at me and went back to chopping onions, but her gaze wandered to the window and out into the distance, and I knew she was lost in her own memories of Saturday mornings past with Daddy.
I wished they didn’t hurt her, but I didn’t know how to make it better. I wanted love like that, love so deep it could almost break you. Daddy had anchored her. She would be okay at some point. She was doing better than she had been for a long time. But even the sadness was a witness to how deeply they had been connected to each other.
“Mom? Max is coming for dinner tomorrow.”
She blinked and cleared her throat. “Good. I like him, Lila Mae.”
“I do too.”
“You figured that out finally?”
“What do you mean, ‘finally’? He’s only been coming around for a couple of weeks.”
“You’ve been gone on that boy since junior high, sweetheart.”
“You knew?” I guess that was no surprise.
“Of course.”
“Okay, I was gone on him then. But it’s not like I’ve been pining for him the last ten years. I was pretty over it with the Princess Charmin thing. And he’s barely been back. For sure not long enough to figure anything out.”
“What’s to figure?”
“Everything. If I should even date him.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not that easy. We want very different things out of life.”
“Does he want a family?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s nothing to figure out. You’re on the same page. The rest is details.”
“But they’re not shrimpy details, Mom. They’re huge lobster details.”
“Still details. It all works out.”
I wanted to tell her how insurmountable the biggest detail of all was, that being with him meant not being with her. It meant leaving her with no one in her house, with one more separation, with one less person to pour her energy into. But I didn’t want to add a layer of worry when she carried so much already, so I said nothing and glanced out the window. It was gray today, but it hadn’t rained yet. “Would it make you too sad if we went and worked out in the yard? I think the pavers down to the lake could use some weeding.” Sometimes it helped. Sometimes it made the fog thicker. She’d loved puttering out there with Daddy.
“I’d like that.”
We finished making the omelets, and I told her about Kiana and not being sure how to help her.
It got me classic Hattie Guidry advice. “I don’t want to tell you what to do, honey, except to love her and keep feeding her as much as she’ll let you.”
After breakfast, we spent a few hours weeding and telling stories about Daddy. A couple of times she teared up, but they were happy tears, and I think overall she missed him less because he had filled the afternoon.
I graded for a while, and she worked on her magnolia while we watched a house-flipping marathon on the home-improvement channel. I swear that TV was on for LSU games and HGTV and nothing else. At nine she went to bed, and I watched her go, sorry to see that her tiredness had given way to sadness again.
I was more certain than ever of one thing: she needed me here, and it didn’t matter how much I wanted to be with Max. He was never going to need me like this. They were two objects trying to occupy the same space in my life, and only one of them could fit.
I wish I knew the right way to tell Max it couldn’t be him.
Chapter 17
Max texted Sunday morning to say he was going to another ward but he was looking forward to dinner. He couldn’t have planned a more effective way to key up my anticipation to see him. Mom kept sending me knowing glances while we worked on supper together, me chopping a salad and her making biscuits. She had to repeat things two or three times, questions about how my day had gone or requests for tools out of the kitchen caddy on my side of the counter.
“As your grandfather would have said, you’re as jumpy as a sinner in church. This is about Max, I’m sure.”
I rolled my eyes, but she only smiled, and when the doorbell rang twenty minutes later and I jumped, she flat out laughed. “Why don’t you go get it?”
I did, tugging down my fitted purple cardigan and wishing I had some wedge heels by the door to slide into before I answered it. The idea of arming myself with a few extra inches to face Max made me feel better. Too late now. I opened the door and stepped back in surprise when I found Brother Lewis and Bridger on my porch instead. Brother Lewis held a foil-covered lump in his hands.
“Hello,” I said.
They were still dressed in church clothes. Brother Lewis cleared his throat. “Is Hattie here?”
“She is. Come on in.” They stepped into the foyer and stayed put. “Let me go get her for you.” I walked back to the kitchen. “Mom? The Lewises are here.”
/> “What in the world?” She wiped her hands on her apron and hurried out to greet them. I followed her but only so I could go upstairs to grab a pair of wedges.
“Hey, y’all. What brings you by?”
Bridger studied the floor, and I swear it looked like he was trying not to smile, but it was his dad who answered. “You’re on our new home teaching route. We thought we’d stop by and bring you a little something to make it official.”
At dinner time? Hmm. I paused on the stairs and ducked down to watch. Brother Lewis handed Mom the loaf. “It’s banana bread. We made it. It’s dark. Sorry.”
Mom took it liked he’d served it up on a silver platter. “Bless your hearts, you didn’t have to do that.”
Uh-huh, especially not at supper time. It was hard not to laugh.
“Hope we didn’t come at a bad time,” Brother Lewis said, sniffing the air. “Smells like we might have caught you right before supper.”
“Perfect timing. I was telling Bridger’s class today that I was making some smothered chicken tonight. Y’all stay and have some.”
Ohhhhh. Now it was becoming clear. Showing up here at supper time was well-played. Good for Bridger. He was still looking too skinny. He needed some of Mom’s cooking.
I scuttled the rest of the way up the stairs to put my shoes on and made it back down as the doorbell rang again, and this time it was Max. Even though I was braced to see him, when he smiled at me, I had to grip the doorknob for balance.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He leaned down and kissed me. “I should probably apologize for doing that. I’m not going to.”
I stepped out of the way and waved him through. “Come on in.” I followed him to the kitchen, introducing him to the Lewises, who were already seated at the kitchen table. The timer went off, and like we’d done a million times, without a word, Mom swept over to the oven to pull the biscuits out, and I grabbed the salad bowl and brought it to the table. Max went straight to the cupboards to set two more places.
“Coleman, would you bless the food for us?” Mom asked.
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