by Julia Watts
“Hi,” Meredith said, sounding a little more uncertain than Chrys was used to.
“Hi,” Chrys parroted back. “I thought we could talk on the porch. Could I get you some iced tea or water?”
“Do you have a beer?”
“Not in Nanny’s house.”
Meredith nodded. “Okay. Water then, thanks.”
“Have a seat on the porch. I’ll be right out.” She figured Meredith had to notice she’d been relegated to the porch two times in a row as if she were a vampire no one wanted to invite inside. When Chrys filled the water glass, her hands shook.
She took the glass outside, handed it to Meredith, and sat down in the rocking chair beside her. It was laughable, the two of them on the porch in their rockers like Ma and Pa Kettle. “So,” Chrys said, “I haven’t pawned any of the jewelry you gave me so you can have it back if you want it. I’d like to keep the laptop, but I’m willing to pay you for it.”
Meredith looked at her, an eyebrow raised. “Is that what you think this is about? Getting back the gifts I gave you?”
“I have no idea what this is about. I was just guessing.”
Meredith shook her head. “Well, you guessed wrong. Do you really think I’m the sort of person who would ask you to return gifts I gave you out of love?”
At the sound of the word “love,” a lump formed in Chrys’s throat. “I’m not sure what kind of person you are, Meredith. I thought I knew, but I was wrong.”
Meredith set her water glass on the porch railing. “Okay, how about this? I’m the kind of person who makes mistakes. And in the case of you and me, I’m the kind of person who fucked up spectacularly.”
“So…you’re apologizing.” She had noticed the uncharacteristic unsteadiness of Meredith’s hand when she had set down the glass. This was the first time she’d ever seen Meredith act nervous.
“I don’t know. I mean, I am, but an apology is inadequate. I want you to know I made the biggest mistake of my life when I left you, and the reason I left you…well, that’s all over.”
“You broke up?” Talk about a short-lived relationship. They hadn’t even lasted the summer.
“Well, the most accurate way of expressing it is to say she broke up with me.” Meredith smiled sheepishly. “Go ahead and laugh. I know I’d want to if I were you.”
Chrys didn’t laugh, but the corners of her mouth did twitch a little. “What happened?”
“What happened was that there was no substance to our relationship. I was enamored with her youth and beauty, and she was enamored with my position and power. We weren’t in love with each other. We were in love with the qualities we saw in each other that we wanted for ourselves.”
“But you are beautiful.” Chrys hadn’t really meant to say it, but there it was.
Meredith looked at her, her gaze soft. “Thank you for that. But I’m not young anymore, am I? I’m ashamed to admit it, Chrys, but you were the victim of my midlife crisis. If I were a guy, I probably would’ve gotten hair plugs and a convertible in addition to the younger woman. I never thought myself to be prone to cliché behavior, but when I crossed paths with Audrey, it felt fresh and exciting…not like a script that millions of people had acted out millions of times before.” She shook her head. “I should never judge my patients again who are so desperate to lift and tuck away the ravages of time. I was doing the same kind of thing by following youthful pheromones.”
“Well, we’re all animals.” Chrys watched the hens congregate around the rooster in the yard. “We justify what our hormones tell us in the name of love.”
“You don’t believe in love anymore?”
“I didn’t say that. I just meant humans have a tendency to mistake desire for love.”
Meredith nodded gravely. “It’s a mistake I’m truly sorry I made. Can you forgive me?” Her eyes were dry, but her jaw was set the way that meant she was struggling with her emotions. In their five years together, Chrys had only seen Meredith cry twice.
Chrys had had so many angry fantasies about what she would say if she and Meredith ever came face to face again, but there was nothing she could say about Meredith that was harsher than what Meredith had just said about herself. Meredith had taken all her best lines. “What you did to me hurt like hell. It still hurts. But I forgive you.”
“Thank you.” Tears shone in Meredith’s eyes but did not fall. “And listen, I know I wasn’t appreciative enough of the sacrifices you made by giving up your university job and moving to Knoxville. I know you derailed your career by coming to be with me, and I know teaching five sections of freshman comp at a fifth-rate college is a major grind. I don’t think I was always as sympathetic as I could’ve been.”
“You don’t have to feel sorry for me. I made my choice. And you know what? I probably spent too much time feeling sorry for myself. I mean, unlike my mom, I got all the education I wanted. Unlike my brother, I have a job. And unlike Nanny, I have my health. But not one of them spends a second on self-pity. Me? I wasn’t suffering. I was just inconvenienced. I’ve been a whiny bitch.”
“Not at all,” Meredith said, though her little laugh made Chrys wonder if she thought otherwise. Meredith stood up and leaned against the porch railing, knocking the water glass off the porch with her hip. “Oops. That wasn’t the effect I was going for.”
“It’s okay. No need to cry over spilled…water, right?”
“Right. Listen. There was something I wanted to talk to you about. A job, actually.”
This was certainly the last thing she’d been imagining. “A job?”
“I’ve been doing some post-mastectomy reconstruction for a patient who’s the director of undergraduate studies in the English department at UT. She’s a dyke, and we’ve gotten kind of chummy. Don’t raise your eyebrows—not that kind of chummy. Anyway, she let me know that a member of their department just took a job at another university without any notice and left them in the lurch. They’re desperately scrambling to find a replacement. I told her I knew someone who would be perfect.”
“You did?” As the state flagship school, the University of Tennessee would be a great move up, not only from Hill College, but from Western Carolina State, too.
“I did, and she’s very interested. Since this is a desperate, last-minute situation, they’re hiring it as a one-year interim position, but there’d be the option of renewal if you were good. And I know you are.”
It was almost too much for Chrys to take in. “What…what would I be teaching?”
“Well, first of all, you’d teach four classes instead of five. There’d be one section of comp but also a couple of British Lit surveys and one class for majors on the international novel.”
“Wow.” For an English professor, she was terribly inarticulate. “Wow.”
“I mean, I can’t promise you’ll get the job, but as long as you don’t go into the interview wearing a bikini, I think you’ve got it sewn up.”
“You mean I can’t even wear my special job interview bikini?” Here she’d been, worrying about Meredith showing up when all Meredith had wanted was to apologize and make something good happen for her. “Listen, I really appreciate your doing this for me. I never thought I’d be in the position to say this to you, but thank you.”
“No need to thank me. I had a lot to make up for, didn’t I?”
“Well…yeah.”
“I want you to be happier than you have been, Chrys. Happier in your professional life and happier in your personal life. I’d like you to give me the chance to make you happy there, too.”
“I’m sorry—happy where?” Chrys had been daydreaming about the books she’d choose for the international novel class.
Meredith’s gaze was intense. “I’m asking you to give me another chance. To give us another chance. I won’t fuck it up this time, I promise.”
Chrys felt like she had been speeding along in a car which had come to a harsh, brake-squealing stop. “Wait a minute. You found a job for me so I’ll take you bac
k?”
“No, no, it wasn’t like that.” Meredith held up her hands like a traffic cop telling an oncoming vehicle to stop. “I got you the job because you deserve it. It wasn’t so you’d feel obligated in any way to take me back.”
“Well, that’s good to know because I’ve met someone else.”
“What? Here?” Meredith looked around as if expecting lesbians to emerge from the woods.
“I know it’s not exactly a gay mecca. Falling in love was the last thing I expected when I came here, but it happened.”
“You’re not related to her, are you?” It was the tone that Chrys had always found annoying even when she and Meredith were together—the clipped tone of snarkiness borne out of privilege, the tone that meant Meredith was rapidly descending into a sulk.
“You know I never thought those kinds of jokes were funny.” Not from Meredith anyway, who wasn’t Appalachian and therefore had no right to tell them.
As Chrys looked at Meredith, she also saw the years that she and Meredith had spent together. There had been lots of good times, no doubt. But had the good times been because of Meredith herself or because of the luxuries and excitement that Meredith’s money and status could buy? Money and status were such integral parts of Meredith’s personality that, if she were stripped of them, who would she be?
Suddenly, Chrys’s time with Meredith felt not like her real life but like an extended vacation, a six-year luxury cruise. For a while it had been great, being pampered and indulged, wallowing in the luxuries that had never been a part of day-to-day life. But when a cruise goes on too long, you start to get sick of the fruity cocktails and the midnight buffets and the hours of basking on the deck, and the boat, no matter how gorgeous, feels like a prison. You realize that it’s been a long time since you’ve done anything worthwhile. It’s time to go home.
“Listen,” Chrys said. “The job sounds great. It really does. But when I get another job, I want it to be on my own merits and not because someone bought it as a gift for me.” She stood up. “The way I see it, you apologized, and I forgave you. Now we don’t owe one another anything.” She walked into the house and closed the door behind her.
“Now that was something,” Nanny said. She was literally on the edge of her seat in her recliner.
“Nanny, did you eavesdrop on me?” Chrys crossed her arms but smiled to show she wasn’t really mad.
“I did. I put Wheel of Fortune on mute and listened to every word. I know it was wrong, but you know what? They’ve done took about all the soap operas off the TV. I’ve gotta get my stories from somewhere. So that doctor you brung up here that time was your…lady friend?”
“She was before she dumped me for a girl half her age.”
“Well, I never liked her nohow,” Nanny said. “She put on airs. And you can bet if you took that job, she’d never let you forget who got it for you.”
“I know it.” Chrys took a deep breath, and it felt like all the fresh air in the world was filling up her lungs. “Hey, do you want a bowl of ice cream? I want a bowl of ice cream.”
Nanny grinned. “I’ve done been naughty once today. I might as well be naughty twice. I reckon the Lord will forgive me.”
As they sat in the living room with their ice cream, Nanny said, “Did you tell her a fib?”
Chrys licked her spoon. “Tell who a fib?”
“The doctor lady. Did you tell her a fib when you said you’d done met somebody else?”
Chrys sighed. It was impossible to keep anything from Nanny. “No, it was true.”
Nanny was back on the edge of her seat. “Well, who is it?”
Chrys almost didn’t want to say anything—the day had already had an exhausting amount of drama. But now that she and Nanny had their unofficial policy of honesty, she had no choice. “It’s somebody you know.”
“Oh, you’re gonna make me guess, are you?” Nanny ate a spoonful of ice cream, looking thoughtful. “Is it Dee?”
Chrys feared she might be blushing. “How did you guess?”
Nanny rolled her eyes. “Lands sake, child, who else could it be? She’s the only girl you’ve met around here except for some old biddies at church. I didn’t have to be no Jessica Fletcher to figure it out.”
Chrys smiled at the reference to Murder, She Wrote, a show Nanny had watched addictively when it was on the air. “No, you didn’t.”
Nanny’s face turned thoughtful again. “But Dee’s been married and she’s got that little girl. I didn’t figure her for being…like you.”
“I don’t think she did either until recently. It happens that way sometimes, that it’s just a matter of meeting the right person.” Chrys hoped fervently that she was the right person for Dee.
“I reckon that’s how it was with your aunt Hazel,” Nanny said, setting down her empty ice cream bowl. “But you know, her friend took real good care of her when she was sick and was right there with her when she died. I know the people I go to church with would say the way they lived is against the Bible, but what about Ruth and Naomi? They was in the Bible, and it seems like they could’ve been that way.”
“It does. Jonathan and David, too.”
“That’s right. I hadn’t thought of them,” Nanny said. “I tell you, you sure got me studying on some things I wouldn’t have thought about if you hadn’t come here this summer.”
“I think I could say the same to you.”
Nanny laughed. “Shoot, if we spend much more time together, we’ll both be so smart nobody’ll be able to stand us.”
* * *
Anna had painted a banner that was stretched across Chrys’s parents’ porch: GOOD LUCK, AMBER, DUSTIN, PEYTON AND CHRYS! The last family cookout of the summer was doubling as a sendoff, and Chrys’s mom was dabbing at her eyes as they all sat around the picnic table. “You remember them Disney nature programs and how I used to cry when the baby birds flew out of the nest?” she said, sniffling.
“I do, Mommy,” Dustin said, taking a swig of PBR, “but I’m thirty-eight years old. If I was a bird you’d have kicked me out of the nest a long time ago.”
“If you was a bird, you’d have been dead of old age a long time ago,” Amber said.
“If I was a bird, I’d be princess of all the birds,” Peyton said, flapping her arms.
“You would, honey,” Chrys’s mom said, gathering her granddaughter in for a hug, then turning to Chrys. “And I know you was just kinda visiting the old nest, but I sure got awful used to having you around.”
“Well, I have plenty of good reasons to come back often,” Chrys said and looked over at the good reason who was sitting next to her.
Dee looked back at her and smiled. “We’re going to take turns on the weekends, one weekend in Knoxville, then one weekend here. It’ll be good for Anna to spend a couple of weekends a month in the city.”
“And it’ll be good for me to be able to look in on Nanny and make sure this so-called caretaker of hers is really doing her job.” Chrys had been teasing Nanny about the certified nursing assistant who would now be staying with her, but in all seriousness, she had been impressed with the woman, who was not a pill-stealing twenty-year-old but a fifty-year-old mother of two grown children. She seemed to genuinely enjoy looking after Nanny and listening to her stories while she worked on her crocheting.
“Well, I already know she’s a better cook than you. Not that that’s saying much,” Nanny said.
“I’m trying to teach her,” Dee said, laughing.
“Well, I wish you luck,” Nanny said.
Chrys held Dee’s hand and looked at the faces that surrounded her. She was a little sad to be leaving, but she knew that though she could be a frequent visitor, she couldn’t stay. She had classes to teach, a new book to write, and—she squeezed Dee’s hand—the gift of a new relationship to unwrap. She didn’t know for sure where any of this was going, but that was okay. The faces surrounding her told her where she came from, let her know she wasn’t alone, and gave her hope that she might be he
ading in the right direction. That was enough.
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