by Anne George
Nevertheless, Debbie looked lovely. The peach of the dress gave her skin a glow and made her dark eyes seem enormous. When she hugged me, I recognized L’Air du Temps perfume. When she turned to kiss Fred, I realized it wasn’t just the dress that was so flattering. Debbie had makeup on! She was wearing mascara, eye liner, blush, lipstick. The works!
“Y’all come on in,” she said.
“You look mighty fetching tonight,” Fred said.
Debbie blushed. I mean a good old-fashioned blush like I hadn’t seen in years. I didn’t even know Debbie was capable of it. What in the world?
The answer came into the hall: Henry, wearing gray pants, a white dress shirt with a small gray stripe in it, and a red tie. Debbie turned and beamed at him; he beamed back. I did some quick calculations about their ages, which made me mad at myself. So she was seven or eight years older. So what? Would I have given it a thought if their ages had been reversed? I knew the answer to that. Debbie’s father had been twenty-eight years older than Mary Alice, and had we batted an eye? Maybe one or two. Slightly.
“Kick me,” I whispered to Fred.
“What?”
“Uncle Fred, this is Henry Lamont.”
There was a flurry of handshaking and hugs. Then we went into the living room, on whose coffee table were the “pinwheel patties” Richardena had been so excited about, and flat wafers I had seen in the gourmet department at the grocery but had never tasted. Fred is not much for fancy imported foods.
“Something to drink?” Debbie asked. “Aunt Pat, how about club soda with a twist?”
“Sure,” I said.
“And Scotch, Uncle Fred?”
Fred nodded, his eyes on the hors d’oeuvres. “Mmm, these are those Norwegian crackers, aren’t they? I’ve always wanted to try them.”
“You never told me,” I said, watching him put a whole pinwheel on one and devour it in two bites.
“Oh, my.” He reached for another. “These are wonderful.” He fixed another one and handed it to me. “Here, hon. You’ll love this.” I had to agree it was delicious.
“Henry made them,” Debbie said, bringing us our drinks.
“My compliments, Henry.” Fred fixed himself another one. I tried to remember how much Maalox we had at home.
Fred and I sat on the sofa and Debbie and Henry sat on the love seat. Fred stuffed his face and Debbie and Henry smiled at each other. I could tell the evening’s conversation was going to pretty much depend on me.
“The babies asleep?” I asked.
Debbie pointed to the monitor on the sofa table. “Like angels.”
“Where’s Richardena?”
A crash from the kitchen answered that question. “Shit! Shit!” we heard Richardena screech.
Debbie and Henry smiled at each other. “She doesn’t talk that way in front of the children,” Debbie assured us.
“Maybe I’d better go see what’s happened.” Henry got up and ambled toward the kitchen.
“People have been looking for him for two days, you know,” I informed Debbie. “Bonnie Blue, me, the sheriff.” For some reason, I was beginning to get irritated at Henry.
“Really? Why?”
“Bonnie Blue and I were just worried about him. I expect the sheriff has some questions about the cocaine they found and also about what he knows about Ed Meadows. It seems they can’t find any next of kin.”
“Henry’s been here,” Debbie said.
“So I gather.”
Richardena came to the door, wiping her hands on an apron. “Everything’s okay,” she announced. “I just dropped a pan of angel biscuits. They’ll be okay when they’re cooked, though. Hey, Mr. Hollowell, Mrs. Hollowell.” She disappeared.
“Did she have on an apron?” I asked. “Richardena in an apron?”
“She’s decided she’s going to be a chef. I don’t know where she found the apron.”
“For God’s sake, Fred.” He was scarfing down what had to be his tenth pinwheel.
“You want one?” he asked, his mouth full of carrot, green pepper and wafer.
“No, thank you.” I tried to remember that I had loved him a couple of hours ago.
“Your mother and I were out talking to the sheriff Friday afternoon,” I told Debbie. “We stopped by the curb market and got some pumpkins for the children. She brought them yet?”
“Haven’t seen her.” Debbie sat there sipping her drink and smiling like a Stepford wife.
Henry came back. “The angel biscuits may not be quite as angelic as I had hoped for.”
“They’ll be delicious,” Debbie assured him.
Fred reached for another wafer, but I was quicker. I grabbed the plate and passed it to Debbie and Henry.
“We saw Dick Hannah at the curb market. He was buying pumpkins, too.”
“Kate McCorkle’s curb market?” Henry asked.
I nodded.
“She’s a character.”
“That’s what she said about Bonnie Blue.”
“It’s true. They’re both characters.”
“I’ve got to meet some of these people Patricia Anne keeps talking about,” Fred said. “I can’t believe all that’s happened up at the Skoot ’n’ Boot this week. I wish she wouldn’t go back there.”
“Give it up, Uncle Fred. You know she and Mama are going to do exactly what they want to do.” Debbie put the plate back on the coffee table.
“They mainly do what Mary Alice wants,” he complained.
I hate it when they start talking about me like I’m not even there. “I’m voting for Dick Hannah,” I said, hopefully changing the subject.
“Why?” Fred asked.
“He’s the best candidate.”
“Best-looking, too,” Debbie added.
“Doesn’t hurt,” I said.
“I’m not sure I can,” Fred said. “Richard, Senior, was always under some kind of investigation when he was governor. And remember Jackson Hannah running for governor? I’m just glad they didn’t have CNN back then.”
“Dick’s different,” I said. “A gentleman.”
“Jackson and Fly McCorkle are good friends,” Henry said. “I see them at the Skoot sometimes, having a beer together.”
“They’re related some way,” I said.
“Well, old Richard, Senior, is pouring a fortune into his son’s campaign. It’ll probably pay off.” Fred reached for another wafer. Fortunately, Richardena came to the door just then and announced that dinner was served. I swear she did it with a British accent.
The food was as fantastic as Richardena had promised. Fred, who usually scrapes off anything sprinkled on food with an expression that lets you know what he thinks of it, dived into the basiled lemon chicken as if he were starving. The stuffed tomatoes and the tiny peas with mushrooms disappeared from his plate with a speed I hadn’t known he possessed. I actually looked to see if he was chewing.
Debbie had brought out her best china and silver for the occasion. In the center of the table were three exotic pink lilies arranged in one of those stark Japanese styles where the lines are supposed to represent heaven and earth or some such thing. On my list of things to do since my retirement was to join a garden club. So far I hadn’t gotten around to it, but I could appreciate the elegance of the centerpiece. I reached over and touched one of the flowers.
“Henry did it,” Debbie said. Why was I not surprised?
Richardena glided in to pour more wine. She is a tiny woman and the voluminous white apron should have overwhelmed her. Instead, it gave her a dignity I had never seen before. We were her guests, her job was to make us comfortable, and by the look of concentration on her face, come hell or high water, she was going to do it. She topped each glass, but when she got to me and remembered I couldn’t drink alcohol, she leaned down and whispered, “I got some Diet Pepsi in the refrigerator, you want it.”
“No, thank you,” I whispered back. “Maybe later.”
“Later’s coffee,” she said.
“I’m f
ine with my water.”
She nodded and disappeared back into the kitchen.
“Are you sure that’s Richardena?” I asked. The sound of glass breaking and “Shit!” from the kitchen answered that it was.
“Excuse me,” Henry said, and went to see what had happened.
“Tonight’s a practice,” Debbie explained. “Someday Henry wants to have a very special catering service for small dinner parties. Very elegant. All the hostess will have to do is invite the guests. And Richardena wants to help him, so y’all are sort of guinea pigs. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Suits me.” Fred was mopping up chicken gravy with an angel biscuit. The best that could be said about this was that he was using his fork, not his fingers.
“Aren’t there a few problems to be addressed first?” God, sometimes I sound exactly like an old aunt. A bitchy old aunt with pins to stick in balloons. But things were moving too fast here.
“I said someday, Aunt Pat. Not tomorrow. We know there are problems.” Debbie sipped her wine. “This is good, isn’t it, Uncle Fred?”
Henry reappeared, smiling. “Just an empty bottle.”
I looked at this handsome young man and realized that I knew very little about him. He was extremely smart and talented. I knew that. He certainly had an extraordinary ability to charm women. In a few days he seemed to have captivated both Debbie and Richardena, and if Fay and May were up, they would probably be drooling over him. But who was he, really? A short-order cook with a police record who was a good talker? Or a decent man who had made some mistakes and who, with a little help, would overcome them and have a rich, productive life? At this point I really didn’t know, but since it was my niece who seemed determined to do the helping, I decided I’d better find out some more about Mr. Henry Lamont. And I knew right where to start.
Richardena removed our empty plates and returned with the dessert. “Roulage!” she announced happily. “With real whipped cream.”
“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Fred said. Quite unconcerned that he was a guest at a fairly formal dinner party, he reached down, undid his belt and unbuttoned the waistband of his pants. “Ahhh.” He sighed happily.
Twelve
Fred slept like a baby that night. I think his esophageal reflux didn’t bother him, because there has to be some space at the top for the food to reflux into. And Fred was, as our aunt Ida used to say, stuffed to the gills. He didn’t even snore, probably for the same reason. I kept waking up, though, to see if he was breathing. When the alarm went off at 6:45, I was tired, headachy, and my eyes were scratchy. I tried to go back to sleep, but it was a lost cause. While Fred was in the shower, I got up, put the coffee on and downed a couple of aspirin.
The sun was reddish orange and the sky was hazy. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning? Red sky at night, sailor’s delight? I thought that was right. Mary Alice laughs at me for still remembering things that way. But I know how many days there are in each month and when i goes before e. She’s always having to ask me.
“Gonna storm later today,” Fred said, coming into the breakfast room and looking out the window.
“Red sky at morning,” I said, pleased.
“On the weather channel, they said it’s our first cold front this year. It does look funny, though.”
I poured coffee and cut up a banana into two bowls of low-fat granola. Last night’s chocolate roulage with the real whipped cream’s sludge was busily clogging our arteries, but there was no use giving it additional help. I reached into the refrigerator for the skim milk and saw a can of Dairy Whip. You would have thought Henry had hung the moon by whipping cream. Probably neither Richardena nor Debbie had ever seen it done before.
“You want me to fix you a lunch?” I asked.
“I’m eating out.”
“Get vegetables,” I said. “Steamed ones.”
“Are you going to the Skoot ’n’ Boot today?”
“God forbid.”
As soon as Fred left, I pulled on some jeans and walked Woofer. The air was heavy with the moisture the approaching storm was pulling up from the Gulf, and my head still ached, so I cut the walk short. A couple of dog biscuits placated Woofer, bless his sweet heart.
I took a long, hot shower, and when I got out, my phone-message light was blinking. It was a little early for Mary Alice, but that’s who it was. Why had I not told her Henry Lamont was staying at Debbie’s and that we were having supper there? She and Bill had taken the pumpkins by and there they were, Debbie and Henry, snug as squirrels in a nest, and fortunately, there was some roulage left but that was all, and she really didn’t appreciate it, Patricia Anne…The time had run out on the tape.
I went into the kitchen, took another aspirin and sat down with the paper and another cup of coffee. During the next hour, Mary Alice called twice more. I ignored her.
Robert Alexander High School was built in the early seventies when, for some reason, architects all over the United States decided kids spent too much time daydreaming out of class windows, so they did away with them. They also did away with the inside walls to encourage team teaching and self-discipline. Movable bookshelves defined classrooms, and students were encouraged to have a lot of group activities. The floors were carpeted in bright colors and there was no intercom blaring, no bells ringing to tell you when to change class. Soft music was piped into the library, from which each “pod” was entered. The result was a strange madness among the inmates. Many students as well as teachers couldn’t take the closed-in feeling of no windows and had to be transferred. Others were frustrated by the loose organization and did nothing, or took their frustration out on the other students or teachers.
In most of the schools constructed in this style, walls were soon built to divide classrooms again, and windows appeared for students to dream out of. But not at Robert Alexander. Any money the school board had on hand had to go to maintain old schools. Alexander was a new one, a state-of-the-art one. What were we complaining about?
And some of us weren’t complaining. After a year or two of getting used to being without windows and bells, we began to love it. Kids couldn’t roam the halls because there were no halls. The group activities and team teaching became a reality. The biggest problem was that after lunch, we all tended to go to sleep. Given what I’ve seen in most schools, teachers pray for such a problem.
I pulled into the visitors’ parking lot, a strange feeling. It was the first time I had been back since school started, and I had mixed emotions. There was so much about teaching I had loved, and this school was one of them. A creek, fed by a spring, ran by the side of the practice field. What appeared to be a biology class with dip nets was down there wading around. I waved and they waved back. It was nice to have so much land dedicated to a city school. On the other hand, from inside you couldn’t see the creek and the trees because there were no windows. Go figure.
A sign on the door said that all visitors should report to the office, that no firearms were allowed on school grounds and that anyone selling drugs within a half mile of the school was breaking a state law and would be subject to immediate and terrible punishment. They wished. At least at this school there was no need for armed guards or metal detectors at the door. I walked in, and it was like I had never left. The turquoise carpeting, the buff walls, the bright posters, but most of all the smell. Every school smells exactly alike, a combination of chalk, books, sweat, lunch cooking and Lysol. It doesn’t matter if the school has carpeting and central heat or wooden floors and a potbellied stove. The smell is the same.
The office is to the left of the entrance. Here, there was a wall, the top half glass. You could see what was going on in there, but you couldn’t hear. Mavis Redfield and Lois Aderholt, the registrar and the secretary, respectively, were both hard at work. A student was signing the checkout list and another was waiting. I didn’t know either of them. A glance into the principal’s office told me Will Burnham was either roaming the building or at a meeting. Or selling real estate
. His second job was a not-so-well-kept secret. Will was a potbellied man in his late fifties, gregarious and fair in his dealings with both teachers and students. He had been the perfect choice for Alexander High, rolling with the punches, his main weapon in the battle for discipline simply the fact that he liked everyone. It went a long way. No one wanted to disappoint him.
Mavis, who would never see sixty again, looked up, saw me and squealed, “Patricia Anne!” I had talked to her since my retirement and we had discussed getting together for lunch, but we hadn’t. Mavis is one of my favorite people, one of the few I know who changes the color of her hair as much as Mary Alice does. Today it was so black it had a navy sheen to it. She and Lois both came over and hugged me and we caught up on children and grandchildren. Both of them particularly wanted to know about Haley. They had gone through Tom’s death and Haley’s depression with me. The staff at a school becomes an extended family. I felt guilty because I had not seen them since my retirement party.
“I hope you’re here for lunch,” Mavis said. “Chicken day.”
After the dinner at Debbie’s, I thought I wouldn’t want to eat for days, but I could smell the chicken frying and I actually felt some hunger pangs.
“Sure,” I said. “How long?”
The phone rang and Lois went to answer it.
“In a half hour?” Mavis asked. “I’m trying to get this damn computer to total the attendance right. It says ninety-nine thousand, nine-ninety-nine children are here today. Can you believe that?”
“Telephone, Mavis,” Lois said.
Mavis rolled her eyes. “God, let it not be something about a computer.”
“It’s Will.”
“Tell him I said hey,” I said.
Mavis nodded and went to the phone. I already had my story planned out; I told Lois I had been asked to write a couple of recommendations for students for college and needed to look at their permanent records. Just as I had hoped, it didn’t occur to her that October is not the usual time for recs.