by Julia Watts
Amber’s expression was defiant. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not gonna do. I’m not gonna come back here with my tail between my legs and work at the Dollar Tree for the rest of my life. If the music thing don’t happen, I want to go back to school. I want to make something of myself so Peyton will be proud of me and want to make something of herself, too.”
“Okay,” Chrys said, relieved that Amber was no fool with stars in her eyes—she had a backup plan. “I’ll talk to Dustin…when he’s sober.”
To Chrys’s surprise, Amber threw her arms around her. “Thank you so much.”
“I’m happy to do it.” Chrys looked around at the filthy bathroom where they had been standing for entirely too long. “You know, this is the nastiest place I’ve ever had a serious conversation.”
“Me too,” Amber said, laughing.
When they returned to the table, Dustin said, “I thought you’uns had drowned in there.”
“Nope,” Amber said and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’d better get back up there and sing.”
Dustin shoved a fresh can of PBR toward Chrys. “Just what I need,” Chrys said. “Now I’ll go from tipsy to shit-faced.”
“Nothin’ wrong with that,” Dustin said. “I’m outdrinking you two to one, so I’m already there.”
Chrys popped open the can. “I’m going to feel like a teenager, sneaking into Nanny’s house drunk.”
“You’re gonna feel like me as a teenager, you mean,” Dustin said. “You was always home hitting the books.”
When Amber took the stage, she said, “I’d like to dedicate this next song to Chrystal.”
“Shoot,” Dustin said, grinning, “what was you two doing in that bathroom anyway?”
“You’re awful,” Chrys said, laughing. Fortunately, the song Amber sang was about friendship, not romance.
After Amber’s set ended, she came back to the table flushed and seeming to buzz with adrenaline. “Chrystal, you care if Dustin and me put some money in the jukebox and dance to a couple of songs before we go? I’ve got to get rid of some of this nervous energy.”
“I know another way to get rid of it,” Dustin said, leering.
“Well, we’ll see if you’re up for it, drunk as you are,” Amber said, laughing.
He put his arm around her. “You know I’m always up for it.”
“TMI, you two.” Chrys waved them off. “Go dance.”
Sitting alone, Chrys realized how drunk she was. It was a heavy, bloated, burpy kind of drunk, not the light, loose feeling she got from wine. Watching Dustin and Amber dance, laughing and in love, her fuzzy, buzzy brain wandered back to Dee. In the past when she’d had a crush and then discovered the woman was straight, her romantic feelings had always turned off like a faucet. Why not this time? Was it because she was on the rebound? Was it because she was indulging in masochistic behavior? Or was it that ultimate lesbian fantasy come true, that the straight girl she wanted wasn’t really straight at all?
Recognizing that she had been robbed of her judgment even as she did it, she took out her phone. It was too late to call; plus, she knew she’d sound drunk, so she opted for a text: Hi, it’s Chrys. I owe you lunch. Nanny has a doctor’s appointment at the hospital on Wednesday. Do you want to go somewhere then?
Unlike her young students, whose fingers were incredibly dextrous on phone keys, Chrys was a painfully slow texter. Part of it was probably a generational thing, but a lot of it was her insistence on standard capitalization, punctuation and spelling.
Almost immediately after she hit send, a reply came back: Sure, the Mexican place across the street from the hospital is pretty good.
When Amber returned from dancing, she said, “What are you grinning at?”
Chrys felt her face heat up. “Nothing. Just a text from a friend.”
Chapter Twelve
“Are you sure you’re okay with me going to lunch while you have your doctor’s appointment?” Chrys asked as she pulled into the hospital parking lot.
“I done told you it’s fine. Just help me into the office.”
Nanny had said she had an appointment to see a lady doctor, so Chrys was confused when the name on the door read Dr. Gary Carter. But when she helped Nanny into the waiting room of female patients, some of them pregnant, she understood that Nanny had meant not a lady doctor, but a doctor who treated lady parts. After Chrys got Nanny seated with a not-too-ancient issue of Good Housekeeping, she went to speak to the heavily made-up woman at the check-in desk. “I’m dropping off Mrs. Simcox. If I write down my cell number, will you call me when she’s ready to be picked up?”
“I sure will, sweetheart. We’ll take good care of her for you.”
El Toro, the Mexican restaurant across the street from the hospital, was decorated in standard sombrero-and-serape motif. Dee was already waiting for her at a corner table. Even in her work uniform, she was lovely. Chrys’s stomach felt like it was full of Mexican jumping beans.
“Hey,” Dee said, “did you get your nanny settled?”
“I did.” Chrys slid into the booth. She told Dee about the “lady doctor” confusion, and Dee laughed.
“I ordered us some guacamole,” Dee said. “I didn’t know what you’d want to drink.”
“Well, what I want is a margarita, but I guess that’s out of the question.”
Dee smiled. “There is something tragic about a Mexican restaurant being in a dry county. But I’m still thankful this place is here. The thing I miss most about the city is the diversity of the food. Sometimes I’d kill for a piece of sushi.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t hold my breath for sushi to come to southeastern Kentucky any time soon.” The waiter arrived with the guacamole, and Chrys ordered iced tea. “I miss the food in Knoxville, too, but I have to say it’s been interesting revisiting the food of my childhood. I swore off beans and cornbread as a teenager, but now I’m back on them again.”
“Fallen off the wagon, huh?” Dee dragged a chip through the guacamole. “So it’s been good for you so far, coming back for the summer?”
“It has. I’ve been grateful for getting to spend time with Nanny, and it’s forced me to focus on something other than my own problems. But some stuff is weird, too. Going to church with Nanny is an experience I won’t repeat if I can help it.”
Dee nodded. “All the churches here are so conservative. It’s like the most radical, left-wing thing you can be is a Methodist. I’d been taking Anna to a Quaker church in Cincinnati, but we haven’t been going anywhere here because there’s nothing that’s liberal enough.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a Unitarian, so I’m definitely out of luck in these parts.”
Dee laughed. “Wow, you really are a heathen, aren’t you?”
After the waiter took their orders, Dee said, “You know something that confuses the hell out of me about this part of the country? All the dirt-poor Republicans. I see all these patients who are barely scraping by on government assistance, but on their beater cars they have bumper stickers supporting the very candidates who want to do away with the funding they live on.”
“My daddy’s that way,” Chrys said. “He lives on disability and votes for politicians who rant about people sucking off the government, never thinking he’s one of those suckers.”
“I’m glad I have you to talk to,” Dee said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when you leave at the end of the summer.”
“Me neither,” Chrys said, feeling the truth of her words. She didn’t know what she was going to do, period.
“You know,” Dee said, “when you and Nanny came to my house, I could tell you were surprised by how many books I had.”
The waiter arrived with their lunch, and Chrys was grateful for the interruption since it allowed her to collect her thoughts. “Well, I knew you were smart. I just didn’t know how much of a reader you were.”
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Dee said. “I was an undergraduate English major just because I loved to read. After I gra
duated, I worked in a bookstore for a year and then started applying to grad schools. I got into a couple but not with any money. My dad, who’s a really practical man, had a talk with me about whether or not it was sensible to go into major debt for an advanced English degree. I decided it wasn’t.”
“So why physical therapy?” Chrys cut into her chimichanga.
“My mom had gotten hurt in a car wreck. It was so bad she couldn’t walk for a while, and physical therapy really helped her. I figured the world probably needed another physical therapist more than it needed another professor rattling on about Jane Austen. No offense.”
“None taken. But with the students I teach, I usually rattle on about things like how to write a decent paragraph.”
“Well, that’s useful,” Dee said. “That helps people.”
“You think so?” Chrys was a little surprised. “It’s not exactly teaching the lame to walk.”
“But it’s helping people think, which for a lot of people comes a lot less naturally than walking.”
“True.” A crazy idea flashed into Chrys’s head. “Hey, I just thought of something. Last night my friend Aaron called to remind me that the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that he’s in opens in Knoxville this weekend. Mom’s going to look after Nanny, and I’m going to go see it Saturday night, spend the night at Aaron’s, and drive back Sunday morning. Do you want to come with me? We could have sushi before the show.”
Dee’s grin looked a little incredulous. “You’re inviting me on a road trip? Why?”
“Because I like you.” Despite her casual tone, Chrys was nervously wadding her napkin under the table.
“I like you, too.” Was it Chrys’s imagination, or did Dee hold eye contact with her a little longer than necessary? “Well, I’d have to see if Anna can spend the night at her friend’s house, but she’s over there most Saturday nights, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“So that’s a tentative yes?”
“Yes. Or yes, tentatively.”
Chrys had to try very hard not to sound as excited as she really was. “Great. I just thought that being a city girl, you might like getting away to a marginally more urbane environment for a few hours.” Stop babbling, she told herself.
“It’s funny,” Dee said. “I’m a city girl but at the same time I’m not. I grew up in the city, but my parents always lived as transplanted hillbillies, and most of their friends were transplanted hillbillies, too. I probably ate beans and cornbread just as much as you did.” A sly smile crossed her face. “I noticed that your nanny calls you Chrystal.”
“I dropped the second syllable when I went to college. I thought Chrystal sounded like a name country people would come up with when they wanted to sound fancy.”
“Loretta Lynn has a sister named Crystal, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah. Different spelling, though.”
“Well, in case you don’t think I have country girl credentials, I’ll have you know I dropped a couple of syllables from my name, too.”
Chrys laughed. “Really? What was it?”
“Oh, I don’t think I’m going to tell you yet. I think I want to remain a woman of mystery for a little while longer.”
“If I guess it right, will you tell me?”
Dee’s face lit up when she laughed. “Sure, but if you got it right, I’d probably faint from the shock. It’s one you don’t hear often. And at least Chrystal sounds pretty—my name doesn’t. It’s something I share with only my closest friends. Well, and people who have to look at my driver’s license.” She glanced at her watch and said, “Ooh, I’ve got an appointment in twenty minutes. I’d better scoot.”
Chrys paid the bill, and they walked outside together and stood—a little awkwardly, Chrys thought—in the parking lot.
“Thanks for lunch,” Dee said, and to Chrys’s surprise, she stretched out her arms for a hug.
It was a real hug, close and warm, not one of those half-assed lean-over-and-pat-each-other’s-backs deals. Chrys felt the strength in Dee’s arms and didn’t want to let go, but she knew that social cues dictated a time limit on public, parking-lot hugs between friends.
In the car, waiting to pick up Nanny, Chrys imagined she could still feel the warmth of Dee’s touch. She wondered if she was imagining other things, too—for instance, that the lunch conversation had sometimes verged on the flirtatious. But there was one thing she didn’t have to wonder about. Dee had said yes to the impromptu invitation to dinner and a play. She hadn’t hemmed or hawed or made an excuse or said yes on the condition that it was not a date. She had just said yes. And a yes from Dee—even if Chrys wasn’t one hundred percent sure what it was a yes to—felt great.
On the way from the hospital, Nanny said, “Can we stop where that feller’s selling produce off his truck? He had a sign saying he had some white half runners.”
“Sure,” Chrys said.
“I’m wanting a summer supper tonight—some of them beans cooked with taters, corn on the cob—Silver Queen if he’s got it—and some slicing tomatoes.”
“Sounds good to me.” Chrys pulled off at the side of the road where an old man in overalls stood next to an old Chevy truck, both of them seemingly frozen in time. In the bed of the truck were bushel baskets of produce: green beans, yellow squash, corn, tomatoes. “It looks like we’re in luck,” Chrys said.
“Well, don’t let him be stingy with the beans. Make sure you get a nice mess,” Nanny said.
“Yes, ma’am.” Chrys got out of the car.
The old man grabbed the straps on his overalls and said “Hot enough for ya?” and Chrys replied that indeed it was. She chose what she hoped was a good amount of white half runners, three tomatoes and four ears of Silver Queen corn. When she got back to the car, she showed Nanny the bag of beans. “Did I do okay? He didn’t stiff me, did he?”
Nanny nodded her approval. “No, you done good. That’s a nice mess.”
Chrys had asked Nanny the question in part just to hear the phrase “a nice mess” again. She liked how oxymoronic it was—a mess was by definition imprecise and chaotic, but putting “nice” in front of it somehow implied embracing this state. Maybe that’s what Chrys was doing. Trying to turn her life from a mess into a nice mess.
* * *
Chrys and Nanny sat on the porch swing, a pot between them, breaking beans. It was peaceful, concentrating on nothing more complex than pulling the strings from the pods, working in companionable silence.
“This is nice,” Chrys said after a while.
“It is.” Nanny’s hands were swollen and stiffened from arthritis, but she was still an efficient bean stringer. “I always did like breaking beans, shucking corn. That wife of your brother’s had never broke a bean till I showed her how. She’d never eat a vegetable growing up unless it came from a can.”
“That’s sad.” It had been a long time since Chrys had broken beans herself, but she found herself getting the knack again. She had forgotten how much she liked the clean, earthy smell of a freshly snapped green bean.
“I know it. A canned green bean don’t taste like nothing but the inside of the can. Amber’s a good girl, but she grew up in a sorry family. I think part of the reason she married Dustin was to get away from them.”
“You know, I don’t think many of the kids I teach have had much exposure to real food preparation either. Sometimes one of them will write a paper about a family recipe, and it’ll be something like Kraft macaroni and cheese mixed with a can of tuna.”
“Law, that’s just nasty,” Nanny said, grimacing. “You might as well eat cat food.”
“I know,” Chrys said, laughing. The phone rang from inside the house, and she excused herself to answer it.
“Hey,” her mom said. “We got a big mess of white half runners and some corn and maters if you want to come eat this evening.”
Chrys laughed. “Did you by any chance buy your produce from an old man in overalls out by the Gas ‘n’ Go?”
“The beans
and corn we did, but the maters is from your daddy’s garden.”
“Nanny and I bought the same stuff from the same guy on the way back from her doctor’s appointment. We were just sitting on the porch breaking beans.”
Her mom whooped with laughter. “Well, why don’t you bring your mess over and we’ll put our messes together?”
“Sounds like what families do,” Chrys said. “As long as Nanny’s up for it, we’ll be there.”
* * *
After supper, Chrys and her mom and Amber worked on the dishes while Nanny sat at the table with a cup of coffee.
“I feel sorry as bluejohn just sitting here,” Nanny said. “I wish you’uns would give me a job to do.”
“You’re keeping us company,” Chrys’s mom said, washing a plate which she passed to Amber to rinse. “That’s your job.”
“What amazes me is that men don’t offer to help with the dishes.” Chrys took the plate from Amber and wiped it with a dishtowel.
“Well, then you’re gonna spend your whole life being amazed because they ain’t never gonna help,” Amber said, and they all laughed.
“Well, your daddy says he can’t help with the dishes on accounta just having one arm,” Chrys’s mom said. “Before he lost that arm I don’t remember what his excuse was.”
“Joyce, that’s awful,” Nanny said, but then the corners of her mouth twitched and she was laughing and so was everybody else.
“Well, men have their uses,” Amber said. “Dustin killed a spider for me in the bathtub the other day.”
“Well, the Lord gave men and women different gifts,” Nanny said.
“And the man shalt smite the spider while the woman shalt wash the dish,” Chrys said, drying the last plate. It was funny; a roomful of straight Appalachian women could be harder on men than a roomful of lesbians.
“I love you, honey, but you are some kind of backslid,” Nanny said.
Chrys kissed the top of Nanny’s head. “I know it. And I love you, too.”