by Susan Schild
Wheeling her cart along the wooden floors of the market, she waved at Lil, who held up a hand and grinned as she did her usual sprint/walk around the store, checking on food and employees. After she picked up her takeout, Linny got in a line to check out and braced herself for the usual bored expression and condescending attitude that was de rigueur for clerks at Earth and Sky. But the girl with the half-shaved head actually made eye contact with her, smiled, and thanked her politely as she handed Linny the receipt. Her step was light as she walked to the car. Maybe her student, Tina, was on board and preaching the gospel of customer service to her frontline people. If the cashiers were pleasant, it would sure make shopping at this wonderful store an even better experience.
In the car she double-checked the bags to make sure they’d gotten the order right. They had. Per Jack’s instructions, she’d ordered roast beef on a Kaiser roll for Rush and white meat chicken salad on wheat for Ceecee. For the extras she’d skipped right over the black cherry–infused iced tea and Chinese radicchio slaw, instead choosing plain sweet tea and Lay’s potato chips. Jack had cautioned her, Don’t get too exotic on anything, now. Mama and Daddy aren’t big on exotic.
As she tooled down the road to Jack’s farm, she tried to remember if she’d let Roy out to go to the bathroom after breakfast. Dang. She hadn’t. Glancing at the clock on the dash, she sped up. She could swing back by the house, let Roy out, and still be at Jack’s farm for their luncheon with time to spare.
As soon as she opened the door to the trailer, Roy burst out of the house like a bullet train and raced into the yard. Poor guy had to go. After a few minutes she rounded him up, locked up, and slid back into the car. But when she turned the key, nothing happened. She tried two more times with no luck. She raked her fingers through her hair. Dang. Jack’s parents already had to sit with the fact that she was twice widowed and not Vera. If she didn’t make it to this get-to-know-you-better lunch, they’d add unreliable and flaky to their list of reasons she wouldn’t fit into the family. Grabbing her purse, she found her phone. “Jack,” she breathed when he picked up, “my car won’t start! I turn the key and nothing happens.”
“Slow down, now,” Jack said in a calm voice. “It may just be the battery and that’s no big deal.”
Linny leaned back in her seat and willed herself to calm down. “Okay.”
Jack went on in a soothing tone. “Have you picked up lunch yet?”
“I have,” Linny said.
“Good. My folks will be here in a few minutes. Why don’t we just swing by your house and we’ll eat there?” he asked, sounding proud for finding the simple solution.
“Because my house is a bright blue single-wide trailer and it’s so small, and I have stuff scattered all over and . . .” She paused to draw in a breath, hearing a rushing sound in her ears.
“Do you want me to just reschedule lunch?” he asked, sounding reasonable.
They couldn’t delay it any longer. Today she and Jack needed to nip in the bud any plans for an extravagant engagement party. “No,” she said. “Y’all head on over here. Just warn them that my place is nothing fancy.”
“Lin, relax. My parents don’t judge people,” Jack said, a smile in his voice.
“Right.” Linny rolled her eyes, imagining country club Ceecee’s face when she saw the trailer.
Ending the call, she took her iced tea from the Earth and Sky cardboard caddy and took a long swig. Willing the caffeine to give her wings, she hurried into the trailer. Time for a whirlwind of cleaning and tidying.
Her place was a mess. She’d been so busy writing proposals for work, running around on wedding jaunts with Kate, and hanging out with Jack and Neal that she’d let things go, swearing to herself she’d tidy up over the weekend. Now Linny flew around the house, tossing Roy’s chew bones, strewn socks, newspapers, tennis shoes, and fleeces in the laundry basket to shove in a closet. Gathering up dirty glasses and plates, she hurriedly hand washed them and put them up. She glanced at her phone. They’d be here in less than fifteen minutes. After a frantic waltz around the trailer with the Hoover, she dusted the tabletops and, as an afterthought, spritzed some Pledge around each room like air freshener.
Hands on hips, she glanced around. Better, she decided. But she was red-faced and perspiring from the mad dash. Opening the door of the trailer, she fanned it back and forth to cool off and flapped her shirt away from her body and back. Glancing up, she saw her guests approaching the porch steps. Jack’s eyes twinkled, Rush tried to hide a smile, and Ceecee’s eyes were round. Gasping quietly, Linny tried to recover. “Welcome!” she called, wincing inwardly as she realized she’d used the docent-at-the-history-museum voice that came out of her mouth when she was anxious.
Ceecee smiled brightly and waved a hand at the bright blue trailer. “Your home is so . . . colorful. It reminds me of the pretty little pink and blue and yellow houses we saw in Positano when we were in Italy last year, doesn’t it, Rush?”
Apparently well trained, Rush nodded. “Just like Positano, honey.”
Linny beckoned them inside, holding open the door. “Come on in. I’m sorry for the change in plan.”
“No problem, Lin,” Jack said. “I’ll look at your car after lunch.”
Smiling graciously, Ceecee made an odd lurch toward the porch but made no forward progress and began whirling her arms to keep her balance.
Linny gasped. Ceecee’s pink kitten heels were mired deep in the thawing clay of the path to the house. Jack and Rush saw the problem and sprang into action.
“Stand still, Mama,” Jack said, catching her arm to steady her.
Rush leaned down to pull her leg and Ceecee’s foot came out of her shoe. “It was in there good, honeykins. Now you just be still and I’ll get your shoe yanked out.”
Linny spun around and dashed into the kitchen, unspooling a length of paper towels from the roller and grabbing the yellow and black zebra striped gardening clogs she kept by the door for foul weather walks with Roy.
A few moments later Ceecee was perched on the sofa right between Jack and Linny and smiling brightly, looking festive in her pink floral suit and zebra clogs. Her rinsed-off shoes sat drying on a paper towel by the kitchen sink, but their dancing days were over. Rush sat on the wing chair, his long legs crossed, looking as cheerful and relaxed as if he were in his own den watching the State game on TV.
Ceecee looked around the tiny living room. “Your place is so . . . cozy,” she said. “How long have you lived here, dear?”
“Not quite a year,” Linny said.
“Where did you live before?” Ceecee asked sweetly.
She was fishing for information to gauge Linny’s place in society. Linny crossed her legs, trying to look like the relaxed lady of the house instead of irritated. “I lived in Silver Birch,” she said quietly.
Ceecee put a manicured hand to her chest, her charm bracelet jingling. “Oh my. Such a lovely community. Our friends, the Suttons, looked at houses there when they were thinking about downsizing. . . .”
Linny hid a smile, not looking at Jack. She’d bet him a quarter they’d get an update on his ex-wife’s family during their lunch with his parents.
Rush chimed in, talking over Ceecee as he glanced around the trailer. “I think it’s a dandy place. Compact but room for everything.” He nodded approvingly. “Reminds me of that little cracker box of a house that Mother and I rented when we first got married.”
Linny sat back on the sofa and nodded encouragingly at Rush and then at Ceecee as they did their talk-simultaneously routine. The first time she’d witnessed it, she’d been baffled, but now she found herself enjoying their crazy way of talking. It didn’t seem to bother them a whit, and it made her and Jack look like gifted communicators.
Not done with her news on the Suttons and certainly not ready to cede the floor, Ceecee trilled on. “They said the community was fabulous, but they weren’t quite ready to give up the big house. They just hired more help, I believe.” She gave a tin
kling laugh.
Rush was chuckling. “We didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and Mother said if I sneezed in one room, she’d bless me from the next. It was a shotgun shack really, or that’s what they called it in those days . . .”
Ceecee chattered on blithely. “. . . and they live over in Grandview, which is a simply lovely neighborhood, but those old houses are so hard to maintain.” She shook her head sympathetically.
Rush finished his reminiscence. “. . . because you could shoot a shotgun through the front door and out the back without hitting anything. We have lots of fond memories of that little bitty house, don’t we, Mother?”
Ceecee seemed to have caught Rush’s last bit because her face grew as pink as the peonies on her dress and she said crossly, “Goodness, Daddy, I hardly remember. It was such a long time ago.”
Ah. Linny started to get it now. Ms. Country Club came from humble beginnings and was a tad uncomfortable with that piece of history.
Jack rose. “Let’s have lunch. I’m starving and I need to get back to work.”
Glad for the distraction, Linny jumped up and hurriedly placed napkins on her old Formica table while Jack pulled sandwiches from the paper bag and sorted them. At the kitchen cabinet, she hesitated and peered at the unmatched china plates, thrift store finds she used every day. She loved their patterns of country roses, castles and graceful trails of indigo blue ribbon. Would Ceecee think they were tacky? She had a set of plain white stoneware, too. She could be safe and use those. Linny paused for a moment, lifted her chin and grabbed the china.
A few moments later they sat at the table and dug in.
Ceecee patted her mouth with a paper napkin. “This sandwich is divine.” She turned her bright eyes from Jack to Linny and back to Jack. “Now, what did y’all think about my ideas for the engagement party?”
Jack gave his mother a level look. “They were a bit much, Mama.”
Ceecee held up a jingly charm-braceleted hand in a stop sign and smiled. “Nonsense, darling. We want to do it for you. You’re our only son and you only get to do this once. . . .” She glanced at Linny and trailed off, flushing. After a reviving sip of iced tea, she went on. “It will be just lovely.”
Jack shook his head slowly. “It’s not about the money, Mama. We appreciate your kind offer, but we don’t want anything that fancy.”
Linny chewed her turkey sandwich and watched, silently rooting for Jack. His mother was a sweet bulldozer, but he was holding his own.
Ceecee pursed her lips and looked like she couldn’t believe what she’d heard but, gamely, tried again. “But this is a celebration! A moment in time to share your joy with the whole world!”
“But we only want to share it with family and our closest friends,” Jack said patiently. Pointing a thumb at Linny, he gave a wry grin. “It was hard enough to convince this one not to just get hitched at the magistrate’s office.”
Ceecee’s head swiveled and she stared at Linny. “Oh my goodness, sugar. We couldn’t let you do that.” She nodded determinedly. “We’ll do something small at the club. . . .”
“I’ve got a serious question for you, Linny,” Rush barked, frowning.
Her pulse quickened. Rush was an attorney and probably born suspicious. Was he going to cross-examine her about how her two husbands died? Linny sat up straighter and tried to look like an innocent woman. “Shoot,” she said, immediately regretting her choice of words.
He cocked his head. “Who did these great wood floors for you?” He bent over in his seat and stared at the wood grain. “This is reclaimed wood, heart pine, right?”
Linny exhaled and smiled at Rush, admiring his aw-shucks way of perfectly deflecting the tension caused by his wife. “My best friend’s son had this idea about using salvaged wood. So we went to Habitat, found these floors from a little bungalow they’d torn down, and he and I put them in ourselves.” She nodded proudly. “We got help from those how-to sites on the internet.”
Rush whistled appreciatively, rose, and strode over to peer at the transition between the kitchen and living room floors. “Slick. Very professional.” He turned to look at Jack. “Son, you’ve found a little lady who is smart enough to figure out how to lay floors and hardworking enough to put ’em down. You’d better marry her quick.”
“I plan to,” Jack said firmly. Glancing at the clock on the stove, he said, “This has been great, but I’ve got to get back to the office.” He turned to Linny as he found his coat and pulled it on. “Lin, let me look at your car. Are your keys in it?”
Linny nodded yes.
Rush leaped to his feet. “I’ll help, Son.” Rubbing his hands together, he slipped on his coat, muttering, “We’ll check for a dead battery, check the starter . . .” The two men strode out the door.
Linny cleared plates from the table and put them in a tub of soapy water in the sink.
Ceecee clomped over to the sink in her clogs carrying glasses and silverware. Picking up a dish towel, she announced, “I’ll dry.” As Linny handed her the dripping plates, Ceecee wiped each briskly and thoroughly. “I think families these days miss out because of dishwashers. Some of the best talks I ever had with Jack when he was a boy happened when we washed dishes together after supper. You know how those boys get to an age where they don’t want to talk? For some reason he’d talk when he was drying.” She gave Linny a wistful smile.
Linny nodded. “I know what you mean about boys not talking. Neal can be like that.”
Ceecee rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You just muddle through those years.”
Pausing as she dried the knives, Ceecee peered at the windowsill at the plastic angel statue Linny’s mother had given her last year, while Linny was in her dead-husband, no-money, and no-job phase. Ceecee read aloud the prayer on the base. “God’s guardian angels watch over you, night and day. That is so beautiful,” she said softly and looked at Linny. “I heard you lost two husbands, honey, and I’m just so sorry.”
Linny carefully rewashed the glass she’d just washed, both unnerved and touched by Ceecee’s empathy. “Thank you,” she said briskly and drained the dishpan. “Sometime I’d love to hear more of your reminiscences of when Jack was a boy.”
“There’s nothing I’d love to talk about more. He was a darling boy, and we probably spoiled him because he was our only child,” Ceecee said, sounding wistful. “Rush and I always dreamed about having a houseful of kids, but after Jack, I . . . had . . . several miscarriages,” she said, a wobble in her voice. “Jack was our miracle baby, part of God’s plan for us.”
Linny gazed at her and said softly, “I’m sorry for your losses, Ceecee.”
But Ceecee smiled brightly, hung the dish towel on the side of the sink, and neatened it. “That chicken salad was tasty. Not too much mayonnaise. Don’t you hate when they put too much mayonnaise in it?”
Linny nodded slowly, again nonplussed by the glimpses she kept catching of a woman she found she liked. She picked up the wilted-looking pink pumps that were now stained clay orange and shook her head regretfully. “I’m sorry about your shoes. Let me put them in a plastic bag, and maybe you can work some magic on them at home. You can keep the clogs.”
Ceecee waved a hand. “Don’t you worry your head about those pumps and I’ll get these . . . zippy little shoes back to you.”
The door to the trailer opened and the men strode back in, bringing with them a blast of cool air. A pink-cheeked Jack called out, “All done. It was just a loose connection.”
“Maybe got jiggled by some of these potholes. We’ve grown a bumper crop of them this year,” Rush said importantly.
“Thank you so much,” Linny said.
Jack glanced at the clock and grimaced. “I need to get to the office.” Brushing Linny’s cheek with a kiss, he gave his parents quick hugs and was gone.
Linny walked her future-in-laws to their car, Ceecee linked her hand in Linny’s arm and shuffled along beside her in the too-big clogs. Stumbling on a small root, she
held on tighter to Linny and said in a confidential tone, “I do have two left feet. Really. I try so hard to be graceful, but I’m not.”
Again, Linny found herself liking Ceecee.
After opening the door for his wife, Rush beamed at Linny and gave her a bracing side-arm hug. “Have a good week, sweetheart.” He stepped into the car and turned on the ignition.
Ceecee let down the window. “This has been such a nice visit and I’m just so glad we got everything settled.” She clasped her hands together and twinkled at Linny.
Linny paused, finding herself smiling, and looked at her questioningly. “Remind me what exactly we settled?”
Ceecee gave a silvery laugh and wagged a finger, as if Linny had just said something so clever. “Why the engagement party, sugar. We’ll have a small cocktail party at the club to celebrate. It’ll be simple but elegant, and you all can invite family and your closest friends.”
Linny blinked and found herself grinning. She waved as they drove off and walked back to the trailer. She’d pass the ball to Jack on this one.
Back inside, Linny sent a text to Jack: Enjoyed lunch. Your mama’s a catbird, but she’s growing on me. FYI: Ceecee still thinks we’re having a cocktail party at the club. See you at 5:30.
* * *
After a quick run to the grocery store for much-needed supplies, Linny folded the cloth bags and stowed them, congratulating herself for remembering to bring them into the store instead of leaving them in the car. As Linny put yogurt and milk in the fridge, she found she was humming a Taylor Swift song she’d just heard on the radio and realized she was excited about tonight’s outing. She and the two men were going clothes shopping for Neal. At Jack’s insistence, Neal was doing his own laundry these days, and though he claimed he used cold water and low dryer settings, his pants had shrunk to high water length and his tight clothes made him look like a member of a boy band. Linny shook her head and smiled as she slid the jar of marinara sauce and cans of beans onto a shelf. Chores like clothes shopping that other parents would find mundane seemed exotic to her. She’d never really done it for a boy. She gave a little shiver. Looking appraisingly at lengths of sleeves and pants legs seemed so domestic and homey, and well . . . official. It was a real stepmother moment.