Once in a while Eve caught a glimpse of one of the few black people left on the island, descendants of the Gullah people who had been Hilton Head’s original owners, working in a yard or walking down a shaded back road. They didn’t return her waves, and who could blame them? To them she was just another of the mainlanders who’d invaded their island, bought them out, fenced them off and made them unwelcome in their own land.
They couldn’t know that Eve understood them. That she knew what it was that made them cling to their land so obstinately, in spite of pressure and hostility, skyrocketing taxes and offers of money beyond their wildest imaginings. She knew that, simply put, this was home. Their place of belonging.
She envied those people, and when she passed their homely little houses she sent up silent cheers of encouragement, and vowed that if ever she did find her own place she would hold on to it as tenaciously.
Sometimes she stopped at the edge of the marshes to watch the sun go down in a red blaze of glory, and alerted by distant honkings she would catch the breathtaking descent of geese as they settled into their night’s refuge. It was at times like that that she felt the familiar wave of longing that was almost like grief. Why? she would cry out in silent anguish and bewilderment. Why?
As always, she reminded herself that she was the luckiest of women. She had been privileged to see so much of the world, and so much that was wondrous and beautiful. But why was it that the more fascinating, awe-inspiring or poignantly lovely something was, the sadder it made her feel? Watching a glacier calve or finding a hermit crab in a tide pool, she would gasp first with the wonder of it, the bright, sharp stab of joy. And then, as she looked in vain for someone to share the joy and wonder with, feel instead the creeping ache of loneliness.
With Thanksgiving approaching, she felt more guilty than ever for feeling sad. As she had that day in the church garden in Savannah, the last day, it seemed to her now, of innocence, she thought of all her many blessings with a fervent, almost superstitious thankfulness. She was the luckiest of women. And if her place of belonging had thus far eluded her, and if beauty made her sad because she had no one to share it with, she could at least give thanks for the beauty. And she did-oh, she did.
She did wonder, sometimes, if there might be a connection between those two things-the search for her place, the longing for someone to share her soul’s secrets-but when she tried to pin down exactly what the connection was, it eluded her; it was like trying to remember the details of a dream. Though lately she’d had the feeling that she was coming closer to the answer, that it was hovering out there, just beyond her reach.
So intent was she on trying to grasp it, that she failed to notice the refrain that played constantly now in the background of her mind. Or perhaps she’d grown so accustomed to it that, like music in a shopping mall, she hardly heard it most of the time. Oh my God… it went. My God… it’s Jake… it’s Jake.
It was Thanksgiving Day. Dinner had been served and consumed, and in its aftermath, on her way back to the kitchen with her hands full of dirty plates, Mirabella nudged Summer in the ribs with her elbow. “He’s making himself right at home, isn’t he?” she muttered, sotto voce.
Summer looked lost for a moment, then, following the jerking movement of Mirabella’s head toward the living room, where an assortment of male bodies in varying degrees of somnolence and gastric distress were sprawled in front of the television set, said, “Oh, you mean…”
“Sonny. Our sister’s fiancé, Mr. Cheesy Las Vegas himself, making like one of ‘the guys.’ And did you notice the way he oiled himself through dinner, complimenting every mouthful and oozing charm from every pore? Just about ruined my appetite.”
“Oh, Bella.” Summer sighed. “Don’t be so judgmental. Maybe he really is nice. Did you ever think of that? He does seem genuinely crazy about Evie. Isn’t that what counts? It doesn’t really matter what we think.”
“It wouldn’t,” Mirabella huffed in a fierce undertone meant only for Summer, as the sisters unloaded their burdens into the already crowded sink, “if I thought for one moment she felt the same way about him. If I thought she was happy. ”
Summer cast a troubled glance over her shoulder at the bustling, noisy trio of Starrs-Jimmy Joe’s mother, Betty, his sister, Jess, and Granny Calhoun-discussing the disposition of heaps of leftovers on the kitchen table. She lowered her voice to a barely audible murmur. “You don’t think she’s happy?”
“Do you?”
“Well, I-”
“Did you see how thin she is?”
“Yes, but don’t you think it could just be…you know, the injury, the neck brace…”
Mirabella said derisively, “Oh yeah, right-if I couldn’t exercise, couldn’t do anything except lay around all day and eat, I’d certainly lose weight, wouldn’t you? No-something‘s not right. I can feel it. She does not look like a woman in love-at least not with…” Her voice trailed off as a new and appalling thought crossed her mind. She pushed it aside.
“She doesn’t have that… that glow,” she said to Summer, who was gazing distractedly through the window above the sink, watching the children romp and play in the piles of leaves on the lawn. Their shouts and laughter and the sound of crackling leaves made a staccato counterpoint to the mellower murmurs and chuckles of the three women behind them, and to the rush and roar of the football game and the occasional accent marks of exclamation from its audience in the living room next door. “When she’s around him, you know what I mean? She doesn’t look like you do when you’re anywhere near Riley, that’s for sure.”
Summer threw her a look, as a beautiful, rosy flush spread over her cheeks. “There,” said Mirabella, “that’s what I mean. The glow. Have you seen Evie glow?”
“You know, actually,” said Summer, “I haven’t seen Evie at all, for quite a while. Have you?”
Mirabella made a wry face. “And you won’t. It’s cleanup time. Eve always was a magician when it came to doing the disappearing act when there was work to be done, remember?”
Summer smiled. “That’s right. That always used to bug you so bad. Still-” she cast a futile look around her “-I wonder where in the world she is. She’s not in there with the guys. Do you suppose she could be upstairs with Charly, taking a nap?”
“Who? Your sister?” Jess, Jimmy Joe’s sister, had come to the sink with a load of serving platters in time to hear the last question. “She was in here just a little while ago, dishing up a plate.”
“Dishing up…?” Summer and Bella looked at each other.
“Yeah, you know-like she was fixin’ to carry it to somebody? Heaped it high. Covered it all up with aluminum foil… Oh-and she took along a couple bottles of Corona, too. Last I saw of her, she was headin’ across the lawn. I figured she was taking it out to the limo driver, or something.”
Summer’s eyes widened and a pleat of distress formed between her eyes. Mirabella could see that they shared the same thought-a mental image of their sister tiptoeing across the church garden in her wedding gown with a bottle of vino and two crystal glasses in her hands.
Eve stood contemplating the row of behemoths in the grassy field behind her sister’s house. When she’d come up with the brilliant idea for Jake to meet her in Jimmy Joe’s eighteen-wheeler, which she knew would be parked, as it always was when he was at home, in the field next to the house, it hadn’t occurred to her that there’d be more than one. Much less a whole fleet. Who knew that sweet brother-in-law of hers would make sure every last one of his drivers was home for the holiday? Because here, arrayed before her like a congregation of huge, curious beasts, were not one, but six tractor-trailer rigs, plus another two extra reefer trailers besides.
So, what next? Which one was the right one? Mirabella had once confided to Eve that Jimmy Joe didn’t always lock up his truck when it was parked in his own yard. Eve had passed that information on to Jake, who had assured her a locked door wouldn’t present a problem anyway. So, the bottom line was, he could be
in any one of these royal-blue monsters. What was she supposed to do, go down the line trying every door? Carrying a couple of cold ones and a plateful of turkey and trimmings?
Oddly, Eve found the little problem almost comforting. It was an annoying inconvenience, a small obstacle to overcome. And there was something about the mental exercise that seemed to help calm her jitters and steady her rapidly beating heart. Even so, as she approached the trucks she noticed that her legs felt weak and her insides wired and shivery, as if she’d been plugged into a low-voltage electrical current.
Suddenly she saw the truck on the end of the row, the one farthest from the house, flash its headlights-once on and off, then once more. Her head went light with relief, and at the same time, confusingly, apprehension made a shivery star-burst in her belly. She moved quickly to the far truck and around to the passenger side, and was contemplating the step up to the cab, debating the best way to tackle it, when the door swung open and a hand reached down to her.
“Come on, give me that,” said a familiar masculine growl, and Eve’s heart gave a leap of pure, unadulterated joy.
“Which do you want?” she asked mildly, squinting up at him against the reflected glare of a late-afternoon sun. “The plate or the bottles?”
Jake grunted as he relieved her of both. “Hurry up-get in here. You want somebody to see us? What is this?” He was sniffing the foil-covered plate like a suspicious bloodhound.
“I brought you some dinner. Happy Thanksgiving.”
She was already hauling herself awkwardly up the steps and into the cab when Jake transferred the plate and bottles to the driver’s seat and reached down to help her. His hands, one warm and dry, the other cold and wet from the condensation on the beer bottles, grasped one of hers and enfolded it, and she felt a lurch in her middle.
“You sure nobody saw you?” Jake asked in his grave and gravelly voice once they were inside the truck and the door shut firmly behind them.
Eve rolled her eyes. “I can’t guarantee nobody saw me leave the house, but I know for sure nobody followed me out here. The guys are all sacked out in front of the TV set-”
“Cisneros?” He looked as if he found that hard to believe.
“Oh, yeah.” Her smile was off center. “He’s very busy being ‘one of the boys.’ Anyway, the women are, of course, cleaning up in the kitchen, Charly and the babies are napping upstairs, and the bigger kids have some sort of tag game going on the lawn, clear on the other side of the house.” She stopped, out of breath, to sweep her hair back from her face with both hands. It helped to quell her jitters somehow. “So-I’m pretty sure we’re in the clear. How ‘bout you? Have any trouble finding the place? Was the truck unlocked?”
“No problems…” Jake’s mumble was distracted as he scowled through the windshield, as intently as if he expected hostiles to pop up any minute out of the landscape of grassy hummocks and fire ant mounds.
“Where’s your backup?”
“Parked on a logging road on the other side of that stand of pines.” He threw her a look as he moved back between the seats. “If necessary, they can be here in three minutes.”
“Three?” Eve murmured, her tone faintly mocking. Had he timed it? she wondered. And she thought that a lot could happen in three minutes…
“We can talk in here,” Jake said tersely. He was poised in the entrance to the sleeper compartment, one knee on the bunk, one hand on the sliding curtain. “Doors are locked. If we pull this curtain, no one’ll ever be able to tell anyone’s inside.”
Eve scooped up the plate and bottles from the driver’s seat, then paused. “Oh, look,” she said, “this must be Jimmy Joe’s truck.” Clipped to the dashboard were two photographs-a school portrait of Jimmy Joe’s son, J.J., and a snapshot of Mirabella holding her baby, Amy Jo.
“Come on, hurry up.” Jake was gesturing urgently.
She nodded and eased herself between the seats to join him in the sleeper, at the same time looking around her, overcome by an unexpected sense of awe. She was thinking that this must be the very same truck, the very same sleeper in which Mirabella had given birth, with Jimmy Joe’s help, to a beautiful baby girl on a snowbound Texas interstate. On Christmas Day, that had been-almost two years ago.
Jake, watching her, asked as he pulled the curtain across the opening, “Never been in one of these before?”
“Nope,” she murmured, scooting herself backward onto the bed and pulling her legs up under her, Indian-style, “it’s a first.” She wanted to tell him about Mirabella’s Christmas miracle; it was part of her family’s folklore, a tale told and retold around dinner tables and at family gatherings. But for some reason it seemed too intimate a thing to share in these circumstances, the two of them closed in together in this tiny, womblike space. Instead, she said casually, “Nice digs. Are we bugged?” It had come to seem almost natural to her.
But Jake looked at her for a long, somber moment, then shook his head. “Not today.” He pulled the foil-covered plate toward him.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he mumbled as he peeled back the foil. He felt twinges of guilt when he thought about Birdie and Franco out there in the van, dining on fast-food burgers and fries, but then the smells of roasted turkey, sage stuffing, giblet gravy and candied sweet potatoes assailed him, and he went light-headed with pleasure. He’d read somewhere that the sense of smell was the most evocative of the senses. Right now he understood what that meant, because for one achingly poignant moment he was a child again, and back in his mother’s kitchen, cracking walnuts on the warped linoleum floor. He swallowed saliva along with the unexpected lump in his throat and said in a dazed voice, “I haven’t had a feast like this since…”
Eve was digging in the pockets of her jacket. She glanced at him as she drew out a set of silverware wrapped in a white linen napkin, another napkin bundle containing home-baked rolls, and a triangular-shaped, foil-wrapped package Jake devoutly hoped was pumpkin pie. “Go on, you can say it- since your divorce. Last time I looked, that’s not a four-letter word.”
He made a sound as he reached for the silverware, one she probably wouldn’t recognize as a chuckle. It was, though-he was profoundly glad for the distraction; sentimental at his core, the prospect of revealing such feelings dismayed him.
“How come?” Having taken his response for agreement, she was watching him with glittery-bright eyes and flushed cheeks above the rim of her collar, reminding him not so much of a titmouse now, but of the furred variety, peeking out of its hole, nose all aquiver with curiosity. “Don’t you have other family? What about your parents? Are they alive?”
“Yeah, they are. They live in Pittsburgh…” Fork poised above the heaped plate, he pondered the delicious choices.
“Really? Pittsburgh?”
“Yeah. And I have a sister who lives in Philly.” He stabbed the side of the mashed potato crater, allowing the pool of gravy to pour into the stuffing, then scooped up a huge forkful of all three and put it in his mouth. The combination of flavors almost sent him into ecstasy. He closed his eyes as he chewed, and made soft, guttural sounds of pleasure.
He opened his eyes and found her watching him hungrily. “You want some of this?” he offered, nudging the plate slightly toward her. “There’s plenty-more’n I can eat.” Which was an out-and-out lie, and he was relieved when she shook her head.
“No, thanks-I’m stuffed.” But she belied that as soon as she’d spoken, claiming one of the rolls.
He watched her as she broke it open, slathered it liberally with cranberry sauce, closed it up again and took a generous bite that left a small blob of sauce clinging to her upper lip. Instantly, without thinking, he reached over to wipe it away with a corner of the white linen napkin.
Her tiny, almost inaudible gasp woke him to himself and what he’d done. For a few moments he stared at her over the napkin, frozen… half in embarrassment, half in fearful anticipation, like someone who’d stepped on a squeaky stair tread and now waited to see if he’
d given himself away.
Chapter 12
Jake cleared his throat and searched his mind frantically for the thread of the conversation. What had they been talking about? Oh yes-his parents. And Pittsburgh.
“They like it there,” he said. She was dabbing self consciously at her lips now. He averted his eyes like a polite stranger. Staring down at the plate before him, he felt again that peculiar sensation of mouthwatering hunger he knew no amount of food would ever assuage. “Actually, you know, Pittsburgh is a very elder-friendly town. Plus, they’d lived there pretty much all their lives, except for a brief stint in the service before I was born. So when they retired-”
Eve interrupted with a small, interested sound. “So, you grew up in Pittsburgh?”
His mouth full, Jake nodded. “Yeah, I did. My dad was a cop, the first in his family to escape the mines and the mills.”
“Really? No kidding? My pop was a cop, too!”
“Yeah?” He didn’t tell her he was already privy to that information, as well as quite a few other tidbits about her she’d probably rather he didn’t know.
Unable to nod, she bobbed eagerly. “Chief of police of Desert Palms, California. How ‘bout your mom?”
“Strictly a homemaker-like every other mom I knew.” He shrugged without looking up. “That’s the way it was then. I didn’t know anybody whose mother worked outside the home.”
“Yeah,” said Eve, “me, too.” She paused, and when he glanced at her he saw that she was looking into space, smiling and remembering. “It seemed like she was always busy, though. And I don’t mean housework. She was into so many things-our schools, community organizations, charities and churches-I don’t know what all. And when she was home, she was always into something-gardening, redecorating, remodeling, you name it. Didn’t leave much time for us kids. And since Pop’s job had him gone most of the time, we were on our own most of the time. I guess that’s why we were so close…” Her voice trailed off. Jake, glancing up, just caught her fleeting look of wistfulness.
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