Perfect Piece

by Rebeca Seitz

  “Okay, look, you’ve got to tell us when you need some help. I know this stuff can’t be easy, what you’re dealing with right now. Heck, if something like that happened to Tandy, I think they’d have me in a white padded room by now with all sharp objects out of my range of vision.”

  Jamison smiled and bit into the burger.

  Clay kept on. “And you know I’m not about to go on about feelings and all that junk. The sisters do enough of that for me, you, and every other male walking on this planet. But I’m for real here. You need help, you call, okay?”

  Jamison nodded. “Thing is, Clay, I don’t know how any of you would help. I don’t know what to do for her myself, much less what to ask you guys to do.”

  “I’m sure after today Tandy will have plenty of ideas. I’ll talk to her tonight and see what I can come up with. You up for some golf tomorrow? We could leave from church and go right to the course.”

  The thought of hours on a golf course wiped a smile across his face. “That’d be awesome.”

  “Consider it done. Spencer can hold down the fort here for a few hours and I’m sure Darin and Scott can take off for a little while.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’ll send Tandy over to stay with Meg and the kids. She won’t mind. That okay?”

  Jamison focused on chewing his burger and keeping down the lump in his throat. Strong men didn’t cry in diners with their brother-in-law sitting across the table. Normally the thought of crying wouldn’t even occur to him. He was just so blasted tired right now.

  He swallowed the bite and cleared his throat. “Seriously. Thanks.”

  Clay slapped the table. “Nothing I shouldn’t have done days ago, man.” He went back to the kitchen.

  Jamison dragged a French fry through vinegar and renewed his people-watching. The day looked a lot brighter than it had when he walked in here. Right now he had a good half hour to sit and do nothing but eat and watch people walk down the sidewalk. Tomorrow he’d be on a golf course with a club in his hand and the sunshine on his back. Yes, life looked much better than it had ten minutes ago.

  “Good to see you out and about, old boy.” Roscoe Hutchins slapped a big, beefy hand on Jamison’s shoulder. He wondered how he’d missed Roscoe’s approach. He looked up to see the farmer standing by his table, plaid shirt and navy suspenders in place.

  “Hi, Roscoe.”

  “How’s the missus doing?”

  “She’s coming along all right, thanks for asking.”

  “I’ve been praying for her something fierce.”

  “Thanks for that. I’m sure we’ll be back in church here soon.”

  “We hope so, son. Y’all take your time, though. No need to rush things. Grace Christian’s been there this long, it ain’t going to up and disappear anytime soon, I suspect.”

  Jamison smiled. “No, sir.”

  Roscoe patted his shoulder and ambled away.

  Guilt washed over him. Here he’d sat, looking forward to the escape of the golf course, when the whole town sat praying for his wife’s recovery.

  Some strong man he’d turned out to be.

  Twelve

  Later that night a tired Kendra and Tandy pulled into Joy’s circular driveway. The fountain out front, lit by three spotlights, shot water into the air in a display of abandon that Tandy wanted to take deep into her soul. After watching Meg struggle through Something by Sara, the library, and Darnell’s, she felt weary of the world. More like a grown-up shackled to a ton of bricks than a woman with a handle on life.

  She turned the key and the engine died into silence.

  Kendra unbuckled her seat belt. “It’s not going to get any easier the longer we sit here.”

  Tandy turned her head to watch the fountain’s display. “I know.”

  They sat a moment longer, listening to the splash of water and ticking of the cooling engine.

  “You think she’s going to be okay?”

  “She’s okay now, T. Maybe not the okay we knew before, but she’s alive and functioning. I’m sure there are thousands of brain tumor patients out there who would be grateful for that status.”

  “Consider me ungrateful. I want my sister back.”

  Kendra took in a deep breath. “I know. Me, too. But I don’t think what we want matters a whole lot right now. I think we have to wait this out and be happy with what we’re dealt.”

  Tandy dragged her gaze from the splashing water. “Let’s go. Maybe Joy will have some ideas.”

  They exited the van and climbed the stone steps to Joy’s massive mahogany front door. Tandy pushed the doorbell and stepped inside. She pressed the intercom button. “Joy, it’s us.”

  “In the kitchen,” came the reply.

  They crossed the marble-floored entry and entered the gallery hallway whose walls were lined with Vettriano originals. Tandy paid them little heed, her pace urgent. She hoped the calm, cool, collected Joy would have a workable solution to the madness that had entered their lives with that stupid tumor.

  They entered the kitchen and found Joy elbow-deep in flour, rolling pin in hand. Her shiny black hair had a streak of the white powder as well. Butterfly barrettes held back the ebony strands. “Hi, girls. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  Joy’s well-modulated and perfect speech seemed so incongruous with her flour-covered self that Tandy burst out laughing.

  “What?” Joy lifted an eyebrow.

  Kendra joined Tandy in the laughter and pointed at Joy. “I didn’t know there was a flour fight in town.”

  “Ha ha. Very funny.” Joy ran her rolling pin across the dough, flattening it into a giant, thin circle. “I’m making a pie to take over to Meg’s.”

  Tandy pulled out a bar stool and plopped down. “That’s what we’re here about. We just left her place.”

  “And?” Joy blew a wisp of hair from her face.

  “And it’s pretty strange over there.” Kendra sat down beside Tandy.

  “Strange how?”

  Tandy snagged a shiny apple from the bowl on the counter. “She’s not herself, Joy. Everything sets her off and she goes from happy to sad to angry in about three seconds. I nearly got whiplash trying to keep up.”

  “She’s been doing that ever since she got home from the hospital. Why is it a big deal at this point?”

  Kendra crossed her arms on the granite countertop. “Because it’s not getting any better. If anything, it’s worse.”

  “So, the darkest night comes before the dawn, right? Maybe this is the worst part before she starts getting better.”

  “I wish I had your optimism.” Tandy bit into the apple.

  Kendra’s dangly earrings clinked as she shook her head. “I don’t. It’s unrealistic. I think she’s worse because nobody’s been around to push her out of this. You saw how she reacted with just a little prodding from us, T.”

  “She’s right about that.” Tandy kept crunching.

  “Prodding? What did you do?” Joy lifted the crust into a nearby pie plate and began crinkling the edges.

  “We forced her out of bed and out into the land of the living. You should have seen her when we first got there. Middle of the morning and she was in bed with the blinds drawn in a gown that I don’t think she’d changed for a few days. She looked awful.”

  “Well, she is recovering from brain surgery.”

  Kendra rolled her eyes. “That’s almost exactly what she said. But how is it recovering to shut yourself off from the world? I’m worried about the kids, too. Before all this happened, Meg doted on them. If she’s anything with them like she was with us, they have to be wondering what alien invaded their mother’s body.”

  “What does Jamison have to say about all this?” Joy moved to the stove and stirred a bubbling mixture.

  Tandy swallowed. “He looks like death warmed over. I think he’s at his wit’s end. Did you hear where he was the other night?”

  “No, where?”

  “Cadillac’s.”

  Joy’s head snapped up. �
��Excuse me?”

  Tandy nodded. “Yep. Sat right there at the bar drinking water.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Some women out at Wells were talking about it. I don’t think they knew we were there.”

  “When did you go to Wells? And why didn’t someone call me?”

  “We figured you’d already been there at the first day of picking. You mean you haven’t gotten any strawberries yet?” Kendra stood and walked over to the refrigerator.

  “Of course I have. But I could have gone with you two and gotten some more. You didn’t have to leave me out.”

  Tandy took another bite and spoke around the apple in her mouth. “We weren’t leaving you out. We were trying to keep up.”

  “Can we get back to Meg?” Kendra retrieved a bottle of water from the fridge and returned to her seat. “We need to do something or she’s going to end up a raving lunatic.”

  Joy gave a withering look. “I highly doubt it’s that extreme, Drama Queen.”

  “You didn’t see her today. Ask Tandy.”

  Tandy shrugged. “She seemed pretty bad, Joy.”

  Joy turned back to stirring the pot but said nothing.

  “So?” Kendra swigged her water.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “We’re better at solving life’s problems when we’re around Momma’s scrapping table.” Tandy finished the apple and got up to throw the core away.

  “Why didn’t you call a scrapping night then?”

  Kendra held up her fingers and ticked off the reasons. “Because we’d have to invite Meg and it’s awkward to talk about someone when they’re in the room. Because we invited Zelda to the last scrapping night, which might mean we have to invite her to all the future ones and I don’t think Meg would appreciate her business being discussed in front of Zelda.”

  “She is our stepmother now,” Joy reminded.

  “I don’t care if she adopts all four of us. She’s not our mother.” Kendra returned to her list of reasons. “Because Momma’s studio happens to be in the home that Zelda now inhabits with our Daddy, so even if we wanted to have a scrapping night without her, we couldn’t. And because I need to hit Emmy’s for some supplies before I scrap again.”

  Joy lifted the pot and poured its contents into the pie shell with a practiced hand. “Okay, so no scrapping nights for a while until we figure out the Zelda mess.”

  “Which we don’t have time to do while we have the Meg mess,” Tandy declared.

  “Right.” Joy scraped the sides of the pot, then set it in the sink. “It’s a little difficult to come up with a plan of action when I’m having a hard time understanding the depth of the situation. How about we wait until I see Meg tomorrow and then reconvene tomorrow night? I’ll have a better idea then of what we’re up against.”

  Kendra and Tandy shared a look. Tandy nodded. “Sounds logical.”

  “Good. Now, have you two had dinner?”

  “I’ll grab something at the diner.” Tandy pushed back from the counter. “Speaking of which, my husband might be wondering if I’ve been kidnapped by now. I should get home.”

  “Me, too.” Kendra stood. “Tomorrow night around 7?”

  “Seven it is. I’ll have a late dinner ready.”

  “Ooh, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.” Tandy swallowed. Joy’s meals were always delicious.

  They left the way they came. Tandy felt marginally better as they walked back into the night air. They didn’t have a plan, but Joy would soon see what she and Kendra hadn’t been able to describe. She breathed in the smell of cut grass.

  That’d have to be good enough for now. She had a husband and baby to get home to.

  * * *

  MEG’S IMAGE IN the hall mirror made her stop and backtrack. When had she become so haggard? She leaned into the glass and noted the presence of new lines and wrinkles. As if brain surgery wasn’t enough, it had to stamp her face with the vestiges of time as well.

  Nice.

  “Mom! James took my donut!” Savannah’s plaintive wail stopped Meg’s inventory of her reflection. She still couldn’t believe Jamison had left her with all three children to go golfing. Ugh. The nerve of the man. Didn’t he know she couldn’t handle them all yet? That it was hard enough to keep up with three children with two functioning legs? That no method existed for a mother to adequately parent when her brain resembled the scrambled eggs he should have fixed for breakfast instead of shoving donuts at them on his way out the door?

  She huffed and made her way to the kitchen as quickly as she could, knowing if she didn’t get there soon, the small skirmish could escalate into World War Three in two point seven seconds. Where were the sisters? Weren’t they supposed to be here?

  “James, did you take your sister’s donut?” The harshness in her tone wasn’t called for, but the kids needed to learn to cool it one way or the other.

  “She said she was finished with it.”

  “Did not! It’s mine! I want it back!”

  “Savannah, lower your voice. We do not yell in the house.”

  Hannah’s sweet two-year-old voice cut through the tension. “You do, Mommy.”

  Meg saw red but dialed it back. Hannah didn’t mean malice. She was two, for crying out loud. If she said Meg yelled, it had to be because Meg yelled, even if she couldn’t remember doing that lately.

  Then again she couldn’t remember much of anything these days. Getting from one moment to the next required Herculean efforts of which she felt sure she’d been deemed incapable by God somewhere long ago.

  “Give me!” Savannah, tired of waiting for Meg’s intervention, reached out and snatched the pastry from James’s hand.

  “Hey, that’s mine!”

  Meg shot an arm out to block James’s intended head butt of his little sister. “James Fawcett, calm down this instant. I will get you another donut. Under no circumstances do you hit your sister.”

  James slumped back in his chair. “Fine, Mom.”

  “Thanks for that loving response.” Meg retrieved a donut from the box on the counter and handed it to her eldest. Why did she have to have brain surgery at the end of the school year? It would be so much easier if she could take them to school and preschool for the day. What could she possibly do to keep them entertained until Jamison came home?

  Which, she knew from experience, wouldn’t be until lunchtime at least. She prayed they were only playing nine holes but assumed Jamison would choose eighteen given that he hadn’t golfed since her hospital stay.

  Not that she blamed him for that. Okay, she did blame him for that. She hadn’t gotten to scrapbook in months. The house looked like the Clampetts lived there. Her children were so full of sugar and junk food they’d probably become part of the obesity problem overtaking the country. Her clothes sat in the dryer so long they were hopelessly wrinkled by the time they arrived in her closet or drawers.

  She didn’t expect perfection from Jamison but knew he could do better than this if he really cared. Things were a shambles because he didn’t really want to be picking up the slack so she could be free to recover. He probably wanted her to just suck it up and move on, act like nothing had happened, keep on being the wife he’d always had.

  But something had happened and he needed to get used to it. She wasn’t the same old Meg, the one who cooked and cleaned and mothered and expected nothing in return. Let him get a taste of her life for a change. Maybe he’d appreciate her if she ever took her duties back on.

  The idea of not working toward reassuming her old way of life made Meg pause. She sat down at the table by her kids. What if she just quit? Decided to be one of those uninvolved moms? Laid in bed until nine or ten every morning? Left it up to Jamison to do the grocery shopping and child-rearing?

  She looked at the kids, munching happily and getting sugared up. She still loved them. Had loved each one the second she found out they were growing in her womb. But their exhausting ways, their constant demand for her attention—she
could live without that. Couldn’t she? Did she need to feel needed by them? Could that be why she’d doted on them all this while?

  Unhappy with the direction of her thoughts, she shook her head.

  “Does your head hurt, Mommy?” Savannah’s eyes held worry a five-year-old should not know.

  “No, baby.” Meg smiled. “Mommy’s feeling much better.”

  “Then can we go to the park?”

  James’s ability to take advantage of a situation had to have come from his daddy, Meg decided.

  “No, James. Mommy isn’t well enough to drive yet, so we’ll have to stay home.” Not that Jamison had given that a thought when he went jaunting off with the guys before the sisters got here. Tee time or no tee time, what if they had an emergency? She couldn’t drive the kids to the hospital. She’d have to sit and wait on an ambulance.

  Which, in Stars Hill, could take anywhere from three minutes to thirty. Thanks heavens she was due to get her license back soon.

  “But I don’t want to stay home! I want to go to the park!”

  “And I want an eight-year-old who controls his temper. Guess neither of us gets what we want this morning, hmm?” She stood and went to the sink. Outside the window birds flitted from limb to limb with nary a thought. She envied their wings. Their ability to get from here to there so easily. She’d been able to do that a month ago. Hadn’t given it a second thought.

  Now, she dragged a leg along like a ball and chain. Tandy had been right—the leg was getting better and responding more to her will. Still, she didn’t rely on it as she once had. Couldn’t, really. No telling when the thing would go on revolt again.

  “Mommy, will you get to drive again one day?” Savannah’s round eyes implored her to grant the security of the stable Mom they’d known before.

  “One day, honey. Maybe even this week.” Overcome with a need to rid her children’s lives of the fear of uncertainty, she followed that with, “How about we call Aunt Joy and see if she can drive us to the park?”

  The kids screamed their approval. Meg pulled the wall phone from its cradle and dialed her baby sister.

  “Lasky Residence.”

  “Hey, Joy, it’s me.”