“So how did you and Daddy wind up together?” The story they told me is that they met up at the Fancy Freeze, an ice cream parlor in town.
“Granny Faye took one look at your daddy at a summer band concert after his junior year in college and decided he was the one. She paid a call on Granny Selia the next day.” My grandmothers had known each other through the hospital auxiliary where they both volunteered, but they didn’t start running in the same circle until Mama and Daddy became a couple.
“What in the world did Granny Selia make of that?” I ask. My daddy’s mama was an iron girdle kind of gal. She loved us with a determination not seen outside of Grant’s army.
“Selia said that if my mama felt so strongly about it that maybe she and I should join them for lunch at the club some afternoon. But Granny Faye told her that a war you wanted to win shouldn’t be played on anyone’s home turf. They needed a neutral location.”
“So Selia suggested we rent pontoon boats on Creek Water Lake. She’d tell Reed she wanted to spend some time alone with him, and my mama should do the same with me. Then we’d meet at a set time and pretend it was a happy coincidence. Of course, we’d decide to share a boat at the last minute.”
“Oh, Mama, that’s awful! What did you and Daddy think?” I ask.
She smiles wistfully. “We knew immediately what they were up to, but we were both okay with it because we’d noticed each other long before that. Your daddy and I used to run into each other quite a bit at the Fancy Freeze. If you’ll recall, I worked there, and he seemed to always show up during my shifts. He never said much more than, ‘I’ll have a scoop of fudge ripple on a sugar cone,’ but his eyes always promised more. So, you see, Emmie, mamas have a God-given duty to keep mothering long after their babies think they’re no longer in need of such attention.”
“I’d like to think you and Daddy would have found each other without any interference. In fact, it seems you already had. It’s my belief that we come into this world with the name of the person we’re meant to be with tattooed on our hearts, and those marks have a magnetism that pull us together when we get into close enough proximity to each another.” How’s that for hopelessly romantic? I think of Faye’s daddy and realize that was different kind of magnetism altogether.
“That’s very pretty thinking,” Mama says. “But maybe sometimes you need your mama to help you start a conversation. What do you think of that?”
“Maybe,” I concede. “But I still want to make my own decision.”
“I wouldn’t hear of it any other way, honey,” Mama says while looking at me with such love in her eyes. Now that I’m a mother myself, I understand the need to do your best by your child no matter what. I worry about Faye growing up without a daddy. But I also know that a mama’s love can be big enough for two parents when it needs to be.
“I’d like to go see Granny Selia at the home sometime this week. You want to come with me?”
Granny Selia is my only remaining grandparent, and unfortunately, she’s neither of sound mind nor body. She has various physical complaints and advanced dementia, making it so she hasn’t recognized any of us in more years than I care to recall. The uncles visit her every week regardless, even though sometimes she mistakes them for burglars and yells the place down.
Mama says, “I’d be happy to go with you. I think Selia would enjoy seeing the baby.”
We decide to make the trip to her nursing home the following weekend. In the meantime, I’m going to head into town and look for inspiration again. Most stores are closed on Sundays, but I want to see what’s out there anyway. I need to let Creek Water speak to me and tell me what she’s lacking so I can help provide it.
“As soon as Faye wakes up, I’m going to take her into town for a look-see.”
Mama says, “Why don’t you go now? You’ve left enough breast milk in the freezer for seven babies, plus I told Sarah Jane I’d bring Faye over some time so she could get her cuddle on.”
I don’t argue. I change into a pair of Bermuda shorts and a t-shirt and hit the road to hear what my hometown has to say to me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I decide to ride my bike into town instead of driving. I figure a little exercise is the ticket to burning off some of the irritation I’m harboring against Zach. That man does not deserve to be the source of my preoccupation and I need to get him out of my system, stat.
The old bike path cutting through Creek Water woods has been cleared and paved over to make for a smoother ride. I fly through without the added adventure of dodging potholes and fallen logs. It’s easier, but way less enjoyable.
As kids, we used to bump along this trail singing “I’ve be Workin’ on the Railroad” as loud as our voices would allow, just so we could hear them warble like we were singing into the business end of an electric fan. Then we’d laugh so hard on the bouncier parts that we’d have to stop peddling long enough to catch our breath.
I spent hours in Creek Water woods as a kid with my cousins. We used to go frogging during the early summer months. Riding out when it was dark, armed with only our flashlights and gigs, which are long spear-like hunting forks. We’d sing “Froggy Went a Courtin’” the whole way. Which is kind of barbaric if you think about it, as it was our agenda to catch as many of the creatures as we could before cutting off their legs and putting them in the fridge.
Our mamas would mix up some flour and crushed saltine crackers tossed with salt, pepper, and sometimes a little garlic powder. They’d dip the legs in an egg wash before dredging them in the mixture and frying them in peanut oil. My mouth waters at the memory.
I’m sure some folks think frogging sounds backwoods, certainly not something the founding family of our town would engage in, but it’s a rite of passage in our part of the world. I haven’t been since the summer I turned twelve, but I’m sure I’ll take Faye when she’s old enough.
I whiz by several people, most whom smile or wave as they pass. Bicycling in Central Park was never a neighborly experience. It was more of a do or die situation, weaving in and out of bike lanes, avoiding pedestrians and stray children. It’s probably why I didn’t own a bike in the city, preferring to rent one on the few occasions I braved the cycling paths there.
The woods transport me back to childhood as surely as if I’d just stepped into a time machine. Daddy and I would walk this path to the river, where we’d get enough fish to fill the freezer for a year. Walleye, sauger, bluegill, catfish, and bass were just a few of the kinds we caught. I loved getting up in the wee hours and heading out while it was still dark. We used to pretend we were early adventurers exploring the Mississippi for the first time.
This terrain reminds me of my daddy more than even our house does. I’m lucky I had the uncles to step in when he was gone, but even with all of their love and guidance, there’s no way they could have totally filled their brother’s shoes.
I park my bike next to the big old tree we all used to carve our names into as kids. It’s located right at the fork of the path—one way leading to the river, and the other to the creek. I walk around running my fingers across the engravings on the trunk looking for mine. I finally find it, but the years of weathering has made my imprint so faint that I feel the need to deepen the impression.
I pull out the nail kit I keep in my purse and dig out the thin metal file. It’s the closest thing I have to a knife. I lean in and smell the earthiness of the wood before I begin scratching into the bark. When I’m done with my name, I make Daddy’s and Mama’s names stronger too, like by deepening the lines I’m assuring my fading memories are real and not just some fantasy I’ve concocted.
I turn around, intent on strolling over to the old boat dock we used to jump off as kids. The image of dozens of happy children yelling and screaming in delight as they leap into the cool water fills my brain like I’m watching it on a movie screen. I remember Beau threatening, “If you don’t jump, I’m gonna throw ya in!”
I’d yell back, “Back off, you
big bully, or I’ll tell everyone you’re a bed-wetter.”
That would inevitably incite him to a full-out charge. I’d wind up jumping in just to keep him from having the satisfaction of pushing me.
My cousins were more like siblings during my formative years. Things shifted a bit when I went off to college and started to come home as infrequently as possible, but we seem to have picked up right where we left off, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
I step over a fallen log and am just about to exit the woods toward the dock when I see Shelby and Zach approach from the other direction. A normal person would either say hello to them and walk past, or simply turn around and beat it out of Dodge, so she didn’t have to interact with them at all. But not me. For some inexplicable reason I drop to the ground like I’m training on a military obstacle course and have hit that portion where I need to shimmy under low-strung barbed wire. In other words, I eat dirt.
The duo stops walking about ten feet in front of me and turns to look around like they’d heard my less-than-graceful maneuver. When they don’t see anyone, they start to talk.
With hands on her hips, Shelby says, “I don’t care if we are just pretending to be seeing each other, you cannot treat me like trash in front of Emmeline Frothingham. Do you understand?” Hello, what’s going on here?
“It seems to me that you’re getting more out of this than I am, Shelby, so I don’t think it’s your place to tell me what I can and cannot do.” I can’t help but wonder what he’s getting out of it.
“You promised you’d help me, Zach. It doesn’t help to have you making eyes at Emmie.”
“Beau wasn’t even around,” he insists.
“No, but if Emmie goes home and tells her family that you don’t like me, then I’m sure as heck never going to make Beau jealous.”
Zach scoffs, “Shelby, I don’t know if you were paying attention at brunch, but Beau toasted our union. That doesn’t sound like a guy who’s pining away for you.”
“He couldn’t keep his eyes off of me!” she heatedly declares. “He traded places with Emmie just so he could glare at me. If that doesn’t sound like a man regretting his decision to walk away, I don’t know what does.”
Zach rolls his eyes. “You’re pie-in-the-sky dreaming, Shelby.”
“What’s going on with you and Emmie anyway?” she demands. “You were all over her like ticks on a hound dog at the country club and then at the yogurt shop you left me hanging so you could stay and eat with her. You can’t seriously be interested. I mean, she’s got a baby.”
Before Zach can answer, I feel something crawl toward my mouth and I hurriedly spit at it to deter its entrance.
Zach glances at the tree right above where I’m lying but doesn’t bother to look low enough to see me wallowing in the dirt under the brush. “Trust me, there’s nothing going on between me and Emmeline Frothingham.”
She asks, “Is this because of what happened in high school? I don’t necessarily want you to go after her now, but you eventually have to let that go, Zach.”
He takes Shelby’s arm and leads her toward the pier. The only other thing I manage to hear before he walks away is, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The bike path dumps me off into Frothingham Park. I ride through until I come to the old pavilion. I spent every Monday night here as a kid listening to our community band play a combination of patriotic songs, show tunes, and odd renderings of rock music from the seventies. I’ll bring Faye back tomorrow night to hear her great uncles play.
I lean my bike up against the platformed bandstand before sitting at one of the wooden picnic tables nearby. So, this is where Granny Faye decided to try her hand at matchmaking?
I imagine my parents in the ’80s—Mama in a Laura Ashely dress and Daddy with a mullet—it makes me smile. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself that I lost my daddy so young, but he’s everywhere in this town. His ghost follows me as sure as if he were still flesh and blood.
I look up, surprised to see my cousin strolling across the grass in my direction. “Hey, Beau, what’s going on?”
“Not much. Mama asked me to stop by to make sure the bunting got put up.”
I look up and spy all the little patchwork flags that have been strung together and hung from the rafters. “I’d say you’re good to go.”
“You coming tomorrow night? It’s the first concert of the season and promises to be a good time.”
“You couldn’t keep me away,” I declare. I loved summer band concerts as a kid. They were just one big community party. The parents all stayed under the pavilion and sipped the cocktails they brought in their coolers. They listened attentively while the kids took off and played in the park—running in wild packs with no set destination. The humid summer air, the sound of music, and the act of being in motion were all ingredients in the heady recipe for the freedom of my youth.
Beau sits next to me and announces, “Mama hates Shelby.”
With my mind on the conversation I just overheard by the creek, I say, “She’s not always that likable.”
He nods slowly. “It’s Cootie’s fault. The time I’ve spent with her, just the two of us, has been quite enjoyable, but as soon as she’s within spitting distance of her mama, boy howdy, does she change.”
“You like her a lot?” I ask, praying the answer is no.
“I wouldn’t say that,” he answers. “I’m just trying to figure her out.”
“Why?” I mean, why would he care to try if he weren’t interested in her?
He shrugs his shoulders. “I’m not sure. I guess there’s something about her that draws me, but I can’t figure out what.”
An alarm goes off in my brain and I wonder if Beau and Shelby are meant to be. Maybe their heart magnets are pulling them together, but they aren’t quite ready for each other. Damn, that would be a shame. If Shelby becomes one of us some day, then Cootie will as well, and that thought turns my stomach as surely as if I’d eaten a live earthworm.
Beau says, “You want to tell me what’s going on with you?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Oh, I don’t know. How ’bout you start with coming home with a baby and then you can tell me about Zach.”
“For the love of god, Beau, there’s nothing going on with me and Zach.” I wonder if I sound convincing to his ears, ’cause to mine, I sound like a big, fat liar.
“You’ve got eyes for him. I noticed at brunch that you couldn’t eat your food for all the time you spent ogling him.”
I release my breath so fast it sounds like a balloon popping. “He thinks I’m trash.”
Beau’s eyebrows knit together in anger and he declares, “I’ll kick his backside six ways from Sunday. What’s he said to you?”
“He didn’t say anything exactly, it’s just the way he treats me. Nice one minute and then out of nowhere you’d think I was something he stepped in at a busy dog park.”
“You want me to talk to him?”
I manage to not yell, “Don’t you dare. That’s the last thing I need. I just want to slide right back into Creek Water without drawing any more attention to myself than I already have.”
“Tell me about Faye,” he changes the subject.
So, I do. I tell him about losing out on the Demitasse award and how I wound up in a bar and then a stranger’s apartment. I leave out all the gory details, because well, he’s as near to a brother as I have, and I can’t imagine him being impressed by my behavior.
“You ever try to find the guy?” he asks.
I shake my head. I’m too ashamed to tell him I never bothered to pay attention to where I was at. “What’s the point? I mean, he was a stranger, not someone I was dating. I can’t imagine he would have been too pleased by the news.”
“He still has a right to know that he’s a daddy.”
It’s my turn to change the subject. While I don’t like Shelby, I love Beau and if his heart is calling him in h
er direction, I feel it my duty to warn him. “Your mama is on a campaign to find you a girl that’s not related to Cootie.”
He laughs. “You think I don’t know that? Emmie, she’s my mama, I know how that brain of hers works. She turns up all over town with new gals to introduce me to all the time. Why, just Friday, she showed up in my office with one of the club ladies’ daughters, claiming to be helping her look for a cute little starter house in town.”
“What makes you think she wasn’t looking for a house?” I ask.
“Oh, she was looking, but she wanted a house for a family, and she kept hinting that all she needed was a nice husband to help her fill it.”
“Well, just so you know, I think Auntie Lee has decided to up her game. She’s dead set against Shelby and has enlisted the help of me and Amelia.”
“Amelia’s not going to help her.” He eyes me as if to challenge my loyalty.
“I’m the one who just told you what she was up to,” I defend. Then I ask, “Why won’t Amelia help her?”
“’Cause if she interferes in my love life, I’ll turn around and return the favor.”
“How in the world do we keep our mamas out of our business?” I ask.
“We just got to give them enough room to feel like they’re conspiring against us while making sure we don’t actually give them any power over the situation. In some ways I envy your years away. It had to have been nice not to have the whole family up in your business all the time.”
I don’t agree. Instead, I say, “I missed you all.”
He looks surprised. “Then why didn’t you come home sooner?”
“I don’t know. I guess I felt like I had something to prove.”
“Not to us,” he says. “As far as we’re concerned Creek Water is where you belong.”
I don’t regret my years in New York City. It was good to get to know myself outside the confines of the small town I was raised in. I succeeded in business there, I had adventures. Heck, I conceived the best thing in my life there, but darn if I ever really felt at home.
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