Dear Carolina (22 page)

I nodded. “I didn't want you to think I didn't trust you, but Momma was just reminding me about—”

Charlie nodded. “I know. The Taylors. That's the most god-awful thing I've ever heard, and I think they should put that judge in prison.” She said, very slowly, “There's no way she can get her back now.”

Then she smiled. “And, besides, you know there isn't anybody in this county that would make a move against your daddy.”

I smiled too now, feeling at least ninety-five percent better. “Okay,” I said. “You're right.” I stood up, and, walking back
toward the kitchen, said, “You know how nutty pregnancy makes me anyway.”

“Your words, not mine,” Graham called. He put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. “See,” he said. “Feel better?”

I nodded, smiled, and was pleased to find that this time, I wasn't lying at all.

“Okay, crew,” Graham said. “Momma is going to be here in a few minutes to watch the kids. We've got a Triple Overhead release to celebrate down at the Tap Room . . .” He looked at his watch. “And there are only a few drinking hours left until it gets dark.”

Mother Earth Brewing was one of the staples of Kinston's downtown redevelopment, a LEED-certified and award-winning brewery that not only used local farmers but also drew tourists from all over the country.

Charlie saluted dutifully. “Support your local brewery.”

Greg looked up from his perch beside you on the floor and said, “Promising me that we'd go to Mother Earth every night for happy hour is one of the only ways that Charlie got me to move here.” He smiled and in a truly horrible Southern accent said, “Best beer this side of the Mason-Dixon line.”

Graham patted him on the back and said, “We know. We've done the legwork.”

“Thank God we have a driver for a few more months is all I can say,” Charlie said, elbowing me in the side.

It was so normal and so natural that I could feel tears gathering in my eyes like so many leaves on the sidewalk. My best friend was back where she belonged and my family was growing by the minute. It didn't matter the weather. I knew that, in my life so far, this was my favorite season.

TWO OF THEM

Cooking and canning, them things is right like second nature to me. I can make somethin' in my kitchen easy as pie—even though Grandma's hand-rolled, homemade pies ain't easy. But writing down all them steps, remembering all the ingredients, trying to explain something that's near like breathing to me—it were right harder than I thought. But me and Khaki, we was gonna visit Patrick Zimmerman that day. So I had a taped-up manila envelope all full a' recipes crammed in my bag with my driver's license and my first boarding pass.

It's right funny that I was near grown and you was still such a little thing when you got your first boarding pass scanned. When I told that stranger at the farmer's market about my cookbook, it felt so damn good I couldn't stop. It was soft and sweet on my lips like a long kiss or a cool bite of an ice cream cone. It was still like I told Buddy, though. I was scareder than a weed in a field a' Roundup. I was so used to scraping by, not doing
nothing too good or right, that I was afraid I'd do this one thing and it'd be too hard to go back to being so ordinary.

But that Khaki, she said, “Oh, honey, I'll teach you everything I know. Getting what you want isn't about anything more than being totally certain. If you're absolutely sure that what you're fighting for is the right thing, then there isn't anyone in the world who can stop you.”

I weren't sure if that was true or not. I was one of them girls so full a' doubt I weren't sure I'd ever do nothing good. But that day, looking out the airplane window in the outfit that Khaki give me, I thought she just might be right: Maybe I could have my jam and eat it too.

Me and Khaki and Graham, we'd gone 'round and 'round about us all spending the weekend together, if that was all right for you. We'd talked to our social worker and some therapy lady and read all over the Internet. Graham finally put his foot down right hard—which he don't do often when it comes to Khaki. “This is absurd. We agreed to do what was right for Carolina, and all this anxiety is what isn't right for her.”

He was right. Babies, they know when the people around them is wound up.

Graham and Khaki, they acted like being on a plane with two babies and another on the way weren't nothing. Graham fed you a bottle so I didn't have to see somebody else being your momma. Khaki and me, we played tic-tac-toe with Alex. But he was so excited over the gum he got to chew to keep his ears from poppin' he didn't care about nothin' else. I woulda been right nervous somebody'd get to crying or something. But Graham and Khaki didn't act like they was one bit concerned.

I weren't real sure how I'd take to flying. But being up in the air felt like freedom. Couldn't nobody get to me or hurt me.

Khaki looked up from the tic-tac-toe board and said, “Now
you don't worry one bit about this meeting. I'll be there the whole time, and Patrick is about the sweetest thing in the world. What people in the South say about Yankees doesn't pertain to him.”

I nodded, but I'm sure I was right green.

Khaki smiled real reassuring. “And this is only a preliminary meeting. So we shouldn't get our hopes up that they are going to buy the book.” She squeezed my hand. “And that's a good thing because if you change your mind you don't have to do it.” She paused, and whispered, “But I probably don't have to tell you that I think you should!”

That stewardess in her uniform, she said we landed in New York. But it might as well've been Mars for how different everything looked. I ain't never seen nothin' besides trailer parks and fields and them regular buildings downtown, so skyscrapers and all kinds a' people all crowded on the street, it were right different looking. I was fixing to get scared, but Khaki, she held my hand the whole time. I said, “You do know you're not my momma, right?”

“For Lord's sake, Jodi, I'm scarcely old enough to be your big sister.” She winked.

Graham, he told me one time that it didn't make no difference that Khaki had moved to New York and married somebody else. He knew sure as rain makes the grass grow that they'd be together.

“Khaki has been mothering since she could talk,” he said. “I knew we'd need at least five bedrooms because Khaki having a bunch of babies is just like one of those hogs down at her daddy's having them. It's only natural.”

Khaki had to go to a meeting, so Graham and me, we took you and Alex to get some “barbecue.” Now, listen here, New York may know fashion designers and art, but they don't know pork. I whispered over to Graham, “Is it just me or do our
gas stations
serve better barbecue than this?”

He laughed. “Maybe we should face facts that when we're in Manhattan, it's wiser to eat as the Manhattanites do.”

I didn't have a dern clue what Manhattanites ate, but I knew damn well it weren't this.

We were quiet for a second, and he said, “So, Jodi, do you really want to do this cookbook or is my wife pushing you into it?”

I shrugged. “Thinkin' 'bout my name being on a bookshelf gives me butterflies. But I'm gonna walk in that big-city office, and they'll see right quick I'm some trailer-park hick from nowhere, North Carolina, and tell me to leave.”

Graham wiped his mouth and laughed.

“What?”

“Just the idea of someone trying to tell Khaki to leave anywhere. I can envision two guards, one holding her arms, and one holding her feet, her kicking those fancy shoes she wears, you following behind trying to calm her down.”

I laughed too.

He said, “I want you to realize that you're smart and you're young and you can do anything you want to do, whether this is it or not.”

“I think I might actually like to do the cookbook.” I smiled. “Seems like a real nice way to remember Grandma, don't it?”

A real fine mist gathered in Graham's eyes. “It really does. But just so you know, cookbook or no, she would be so proud of you she wouldn't know what to do.”

It made me feel so good I weren't even real nervous walking into Patrick Zimmerman's office.

Patrick, he smiled at me real cute, all dimples and teeth under his gray hair. It made him look right young. Then he said, “So, I hear you're the canning queen of the South.”

I couldn't believe how brave and normal it sounded when I
answered him right back like it weren't nothing. “Don't forget picklin' and jammin' too.”

He laughed, looked at Khaki and said, “Look out, world; there're two of them.”

I ain't never thought of myself like Khaki before, all strong and brave. But hearing him say that, it was near like when Daddy used to tell me I was his best girl. And, for the first time since giving you up, it made me feel like I was worth something again.

ANY ATTENTION

Every now and then, I'll just be hanging around at home, and it will hit me that I completely despise the room I'm sitting in. Of course, I've designed every room in my life. But it goes without saying that tastes change. Sometimes, no matter how perfect something once seemed, it's time to reassess.

Being pregnant with my third child was the stimulus for completely reevaluating not only my house but also my entire life. I stopped by my antiques store the first day we were in the city to chat with Daniel, who had turned into the full-time coordinator of everything furniture. He kissed me, examined my burgeoning bump, and said, “Oh, darling, you look fab-u-lous.”

He was lying. All those women I grew up with who said, “Girls steal your beauty and boys let you keep it,” were right on. Grace was a criminal caught red-handed before her little eyelids were even formed.

We walked around the store, where I casually wiped a spot of dust here, switched an accessory there, but, all in all, it was somewhat
devastating how well Daniel did without me. We communicated via FaceTime daily so that I could see what was going on, but, when you got right down to it, it was his store now, not mine.

“We are in desperate need of several chests-on-chests, headboards, and secretaries,” Daniel said, clicking through a list on his iPhone. “I think we're okay on dining tables and chairs, but if you see anything amazing when you're buying, we do have a tad bit of extra space in the warehouse.”

That was when I realized it: If I was going to have another baby, I was going to have to let some things go. “When
you're
buying,” I said.

Daniel stopped, ran his hand through his thick hair, crossed his arms, and said, “Come again?”

I smiled. “When you're buying.”

“But I live here,” he said, wiping his hands down the front of his signature, pressed-to-military-standards khakis. “You buy in North Carolina.”

I nodded, and when a smile spread across his face, I could tell that he was starting to get it. “There are no less than fifty direct flights from LaGuardia and JFK to Raleigh every single day. And if you get super brave you can head on to New Bern or Greenville.”

“Oh my gosh,” Daniel said. “This is so major. You would trust me to do the buying?”

Handing over control has never been one of my strong suits. “Well, let's not get carried away,” I said. “I might check in on you from time to time.”

There were two bright sides: One, Daniel had fabulous taste. Two, the places I was sending him to had very few opportunities for critical mistakes.

“Obviously, you'll get a raise,” I said, “and use your company card for travel expenses.”

“Can I—”

I cut him off and said, “You can start flying first class when I do.”

“Damn,” he said under his breath. “That will be a quarter after never.”

I shrugged. “It's absurd to pay five times the price for an hour and a half flight.” I kissed him on both cheeks and said, “Okay, love. I'm off to see Anna.”

Every year when I had this contract renewal meeting with my boss, Anna, she looked increasingly nervous when I walked through the door. I held the majority of the firm's biggest accounts and attracted the biggest jobs. We always skirted around the issue of me opening my own firm, and, hands down, it made the most sense. My clients would follow me because they didn't need a big-name design firm as long as they had a big-name designer.

This year, I noticed that Anna's chestnut hair was a couple of inches shorter and the black patent French chairs across from her lacquered French desk had been changed to Lucite. And, this year, she wasn't mincing words. “So that I don't have to sit here for an hour making small talk and feeling like I need a ginger mint, please tell me if you're leaving me or not.”

I had fully planned on leaving her. It made no sense to stay. I could hire my own accountant and assistants, and I could keep a much larger percentage of my profits. Staying at her firm was the worst business decision I could make. Graham and I had gone over and over the situation and decided time and time again that staying with Anna made about as much financial sense as growing your money by planting it in the yard.

But here's the thing: What the job cost me in money, it made up for in convenience. I wasn't living in the city, and finding great staff was so difficult. At Anna's, there was always someone to run and take measurements or pick up fabric samples or send me pictures from Waterworks. Plus, I loved coming into the city and
rushing straight to see Anna so that we could collaborate on our latest ideas.

So I smiled and said, “I know it makes me crazy, but I'm sticking with you.”

She walked around the desk and hugged me. “Do you think you should at least become a partner or something?”

I shook my head. “I'm about to have three kids, Anna. I barely have time to brush my teeth.”

I kissed her, and, as I walked out the door, the phone rang.

“I'm so glad it's you!” I practically squealed. Before Scott could even say anything I said, “Do you want to meet for coffee at Zibetto?”

On my walk to the restaurant, I thought about getting back to the apartment and how I needed to soak some oats to make the homemade oat yogurt that you loved so much. And Alex would want a new batch of those strawberry muffins he had no idea were so good for him. I needed to get Jodi to make some applesauce, because she scolded me last time I bought it. You were in desperate need of new socks, Alex had completely outgrown every bathing suit he owned, and I needed some gorgeous sandals. Combine that with a phone interview for the book, a cocktail party with signing, paying the bills for both houses, and picking out tile, and this momma was starting to feel tired, tired, tired.

When I walked through the door, Scott was already sitting, looking rather dismayed. I took a moment to savor the white tiles, white marble counter, and glass shelves. One of my favorite things about Zibetto was how meticulously clean it was. If you could keep glass shelves and white grout sparkling, you could certainly keep a cappuccino machine to my standards.

Scott stood up to kiss me, pout still firmly in place. I rubbed my expanding belly and said, “What is the matter, my little love?”

Scott fiddled with the spoon on his cappuccino plate and said, “Don't you think two daddies would be better than none at all?”

I thought of my father, the slow smile that was warmer than the inside of Scott's coffee mug, the soothing smell of pipe tobacco that floated wherever he was. “Honey,” I said, “if I'd had two dads and no mom I can't even figure how much I would have saved in therapy bills. It would boggle the mind.”

“Then why hasn't anyone picked Clive and me to be parents?”

I gasped, wiping the foam off my mouth. And it shocked me to realize that, while it was good, I would take the soy latte down at Queen Street Deli in Kinston any day of the week. The first time I met my sweet daddy there for coffee, I ordered my one-pump white mocha. He said, “You know, I'll take that same thing.”

I whispered to the man behind the counter, “Just put it on my tab.” My daddy is the kind of man who brews his own Folgers in the morning because eighty-nine cents at the Rightway is too expensive.

But Daddy said, “Now, you know my girl isn't paying.”

I grimaced as he pulled out that ten-dollar bill and couldn't believe it when he didn't say a thing about the price. He held his tongue the entire half hour we were down there catching up. But the minute we got back on the sidewalk, he hiked up his pants and said, “Lord, Khaki. I thought I was meeting you for coffee, not putting a down payment on the building.”

We both laughed, but those coffee dates have become a regular thing for us now. And Daddy always says, “Now, darlin', just you don't tell your momma I'm spending money on coffee. It'd ruin my reputation.”

I smiled again, thinking that daddies really were the best. Then I said, “You and Clive are going to have a baby?”

He shrugged, his shirt so starched that when his shoulder went back down, the fabric above it stayed in place. Of everyone I'd ever known, Scott couldn't tolerate a wrinkle. I didn't know
how he was going to take aging. With a vial of Botox and a jar of Crème de la Mer, I assumed.

“We got on some adoption lists, but nothing has happened yet.” He sighed. “So I need to ask you something.”

I could feel the panic rise through my body. He was going to ask me to carry his child. I loved Scott, and he had been one of my best friends for years. But I couldn't bear the thoughts of forming a nine-month bond with a child and then being separated. Praise God, my sister and Charlie—for whom I would have carried a child—already had children and didn't want them, respectively.

Scott smiled. “Does hubby have any other teenaged, knocked-up, alcoholic cousins we could help out?”

I laughed, the tension melting away like the fluffy top of my drink. I took another sip and said, “Unfortunately, the rest of the childbearing-aged family is free from addiction.” I thought back to my conversation with Daniel a few months earlier and added, “Daniel told me surrogacy is really in right now.”

Scott ran his finger through his hair, and said, “Yeah. That's Plan B. But we both feel very strongly that one of our callings as a couple is to love and nurture a child that needs a home and a better life.”

I could feel the tears rise to my eyes, when, fortunately, Scott pointed to my belly and added, “Maybe we could take one of yours off your hands. Poor kids won't get any attention.”

We both laughed, but, through my laughter, I thought of you, my bright-eyed, beautiful little angel. I leaned over and patted Scott's hand. “All I know, honey,” I said, “is that when you least expect it, God will bring you the rest of your family.” I winked at him. “And then you'll understand why I'm so crazy.”