Dear Carolina (5 page)

DUST AND ALL THAT

I used to feel right sorry for lettuce when I was coming up. You could pickle them winter beets and keep 'em all purple and juicy. And you could throw broccoli in the freezer and keep it all green and crunchy. But poor lettuce. You cain't do one dern thing to save it.

Me and that lettuce, we was the same. 'Cause I was different too. When other youngens was having tea parties with their dolls, I was puttin' together carburetors with Slick Sal and Hard-Time Tony at Al's Body Shop. Momma, she was always serving time for swigging a few and then sneaking Aqua Net or Pond's in her purse. I never had no polished toes or braided hair. I changed oil and rotated tires. And thank the good Lord up above, really. I weren't the kind of girl from the kind of family where people get to talkin' 'bout going to college or bright futures or any of that other hog slop. I was from the kind of family where people got all worked up like you had cured cancer if you got outta high school.

Mrs. Petty, the fancy, thin high school guidance counselor
who told me that she put rubber bands through the buttonholes in her pants to make them fit all the way through her pregnancy—good advice once I was pregnant—had called me to her office one day and said, “Jodi, I think you've got a lot of potential. I think if you'd take the SAT one of these Saturday mornings we might get you a college scholarship.”

“I work down at the garage Saturday mornings,” I had said, looking down at my grease-stained fingernails.

Mrs. Petty, she pinched up her pink-lipsticked mouth and said, “Surely you could take a morning off.” She waited, but I didn't say nothing. “Or maybe we could find another surrounding school that's offering the test in the evenings.”

You knew by her look that she couldn't understand where I was coming from any more than I understood her pretty blond children and sweet, faithful, sober husband in one of them white houses up on the hill. I ain't never thought about leaving Kinston or college or nothing else. Nobody ever told me I was worth something or could do nothin'. So I weren't gonna jump up and hug her neck and say, “Wow! I could go away to a college where won't nobody understand or accept me for free?”

Plus, there weren't nobody to take care of Daddy if I weren't home. And I was a darn sight better than Momma at caregiving even if I was only seventeen. Lucky for me, the garage where Daddy worked 'fore he took to bed, where I was working on Saturday mornings, had an opening for me full time. Spark plugs and changing batteries and replacing fan belts—them things I knew. College and other fancy mess was for rich girls.

I was doing right good 'til I started showing up at work drunk. Al called me right there in his office and said, “I'd try to keep you out of respect for your daddy, darlin', but it ain't safe to operate heavy machinery when you're sauced.” I nodded and hung my head, but by that point, I didn't care 'bout nothing but
my next drink. So I sure as hell wasn't worried 'bout keeping my job. “Get yourself cleaned up and you always got a job with me,” Al had said.

And Al, he's a man as good as his word. Once I quit smelling like Jack, my job was all mine again. The thing is, them greasy, hard-living, missing-teethed men didn't get all hot and bothered over an addiction. But they couldn't near look at me when they found out I was pregnant. Al bit down on the toothpick hanging outta his mouth and said, “How the hell you gonna fit underneath a car when you look like you swallowed a watermelon?”

“Al, your damn belly's twice as big as mine'll ever hope to be.” I smiled like my grandmomma taught me, crossin' my fingers and toes.

He laughed, but no dice. “Honey, you're better to look at than all these other jackasses around here, but I can't see having some knocked-up chick running around my garage. It seems like it'd look irresponsible, be bad for business.”

I got canned the day after I decided for sure I's gonna have you. I found an old tube a' Momma's red lipstick crammed between my car seats, bought a newspaper, and circled anything I could right near understand. I got interviews for being a fry chef, Walmart greeter, store clerk, bakery manager, dry cleaner, Laundromat attendant, housekeeper, yard mower, and coffee maker.

Turns out, I ain't got one real skill apart from mending cars. 'Course, I could plant an old leather shoe and make it grow into something beautiful and cook it up into something right near delicious. Grandma, she'd made sure of that.

I was just laying in my bed in the trailer, looking up at the ceiling, turnin' my eyes down every few minutes at how my belly was just bowing out the tiniest bit, like a crescent moon half sneaking out of the sky. I didn't want 'em to, but them tears escaped down my cheeks, thinking about my grandma, all them
days I spent on an old upturned bucket rolling out biscuits or putting up all them sweet peas she loved so much.

I closed my eyes, and I was five years old again, the warm near-spring wind blowing, the tall grass of that field tickling my bare feet and pushing that long, unkempt hair right in my face so I could get a whiff a' that smell from Momma smoking right beside me on the couch.

Grandma, looking back, she was too old to be kneeling over that plot of dirt like she was, getting her hands all dirty kneading down in the earth. But she motioned to me, the wind catching her short silver hair too. “Come here, darlin',” she'd said. “Let me show you somethin'.”

I kneeled right down beside her, and she handed me a seed. One round, perfect, smooth seed. I'll never forget how it felt in my fingers, how it gave energy to my whole body. I looked up at her, her eyes too blue and glowin' for somebody who'd lived hard on this farm, those deep lines in her face that hadn't ever seen so much as a stitch of makeup. I smiled. And she smiled a knowing smile right back.

“That love of the land, that living right near it and on it and in it, that understandin' how it all works, it's in your blood, Jodi. No matter what happens in your life, no matter how much people let you down, you can count on the land. It won't never let you down.”

The sun was starting to set as I pushed that single seed into the straight row of fresh, tilled dirt. And I don't know how I knew, I's so little. But it was like when you wake up and it's still dark and the birds ain't chirping but you just know that if you look out your window the sun is gonna be risin'. I just knew that that little seed was gonna take hold and grow up tall and make me feel like God remembered me out here in the sticks after all.

That was the first year I helped Grandma plant them little dirt rows. And I did it every year after that too. Every year for
eleven more years, me and Grandma planted seeds until we was worked right to the quick. The day that last crop was ready to harvest, not a month before Daddy got the pancreatic cancer, I found Grandma, laid up over them sweet peas, deader than a doornail. I just sat there with her a long time, hummed her a lullaby with my arms around her. Me and Daddy had her cremated and scattered her all around that field. Felt like the right thing to do for somebody that loved the land like my grandma. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust and all that.

Grandma, she's the only real momma I ever had, only one in my whole life 'sides Daddy who ever cared about me or thought I was worth teaching something. The only thing that made losing her even tolerable was that she didn't have to watch Daddy, that boy she loved so much, suffer so.

'Course, the worst part a' all of it, the worst one a' them deaths, was letting go a' that field, the only place on God's green earth that my little-girl dreams could run wild and free, the only place I knew I's worth something and could make something beautiful grow.

I sighed long and low, swallowing them tears away, putting my hands on my little sprout. “Grandma,” I said out loud, my stomach growling, saying it knew right good I hadn't had nothing fitting to eat in near about a week. “I cain't very well make a living offa talking to them plants the way we used to. So what in the hell am I gonna do?”

I don't know if it was Grandma or God or that hungry ache in my stomach that made the answer seem right clear. But I knew what I had to do. Daddy woulda whooped me good if he thought I was one of them people standing in line for a handout, living off the government. But my daddy, he weren't never at a real dead end like me. When every dag dern door was slamming hard and fast in my face, that check was the window God opened.

YANKEES DO HAVE MANNERS

Unless they have a severe aversion to the color, I always paint my clients' offices a shade of green. Green helps focus the brain and hold attention. That day, I was wishing I had a little green because all I could think of, driving from that Chapel Hill doctor's office to the Raleigh airport to pick up Daniel, was pink and blue.

Daniel was a fellow designer who had been working at my antiques store in New York for years and became manager right around the time I became a bi-state commuter. He had taste as flawless as a Tiffany diamond, but I had yet to let him help me with the buying for the store. Graham says it's because I'm a control freak. I say it's because I'm particular.

When we pulled into the cigarette haze also known as baggage claim, Daniel was already waiting with his roller suitcase, looking freshly pressed as always, like he hadn't even been on a plane. We didn't get out to greet him because the terminal was a mess of uniformed officers and blowing whistles and buses.

“Hey, y'all,” Daniel said, sliding into the backseat of the Suburban. Graham and I looked at each other and laughed, exactly what we needed to break our baby-fueled tenseness.

“What?” Daniel asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Graham said. “It's just interesting to hear ‘y'all' with a Queens accent.”

“No good?”

I looked back and said, “Dan, you need to put your seat belt on.”

He looked around, confused and said, “Seat belt? I'm in the backseat. You don't have to wear a seat belt in the backseat.”

Graham snorted like Daniel was going to be sorrier than if he'd renounced the Republican Party to my daddy.

“Oh, sure,” I huffed. “No problem. Leave your seat belt off. Then when you come flying through the windshield in a wreck, you won't only kill yourself. You'll hit Graham and me, snap our necks, and kill us too.” I turned around to look at him again, and he was already buckling as I said, “We wear our seat belts in this family.”

“Geez,” he said. “I'm buckling. I might even wear my seat belt in cabs after that lecture.”

Graham patted my leg reassuringly. He knew that I was more wound up than usual because, while I was jabbering on to Daniel about seat belts, all I could think was:
What if I never get to buckle another baby seat into the back?

Daniel rubbed his hands together and said, “Well, so far, the Raleigh airport is one of the nicest I've been to. Is the rest of North Carolina that great?”

“Sure,” I said, thinking about how backwoods and undeveloped Kinston would look to someone from Manhattan. But the slow pace and quiet moments were what we loved most about
our little map dot. And our farm, no matter where you were from, was something to be proud of.

“Hey, Dan,” I said, “I'm just reminding you that if you had flown into Greenville or New Bern this ride home would only have been thirty minutes.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But then I would have had to switch planes and risk my life during two flights.”

Graham winked, and I shook my head.

An hour and a half later we turned up the tree-lined driveway to the double wraparound front porches that had recently graced the pages of
Southern Living
.

Daniel whistled. “Wow . . . I see why you ditched New York for this place. It's amazing.”

“Wait 'til you see the inside,” Graham said. “I didn't know how bad I was living 'til this little lady spruced me right on up.”

Graham was always complimentary, but I knew he was trying to make me feel better after my heartbreaking morning. I didn't know how I was possibly going to get through the next two days with Daniel, shopping and chatting and acting like everything was normal.

Fortunately, I wouldn't have to do much talking that night because we were having family dinner at Mother and Daddy's—a big, gracious, country “welcome” for my city friend. Daniel politely kissed Mother, shook Daddy's hand, returned Pauline's bear hug, and nodded to my sister, Virginia, and her husband, Allen. But when they had turned their backs to go to the table, he said, “Holy hell. Is this place going to be in your next book?”

I looked around the entrance hall, with the grand double-branched staircase, the intricate woodwork seeming slightly less formal and definitely freshened for a new decade by the sisal runner. The casually covered, French-framed love seat and chairs
in the foyer had been almost a harder sell than getting rid of the dark Oriental and Persian rugs that, to me, made somewhere cavernously huge seem dark and stuffy.

I nodded to Daniel and said, “It only took me a decade to convince Mother to let me get my hands on it.”

“It was worth the wait.” He smiled, letting me walk before him to the living room, proving that, no matter what my daddy told me, Yankees do have manners. My brother-in-law Allen, on the other hand, a native Southerner, showed over dinner that it doesn't matter how many grits you ate growing up; some people simply have no class.

I assume the half-dozen beers he had before dinner contributed to his foul mouth that night. But why he would think it was appropriate to tell the story he did I'll never know. As we sat down across from him, my sister's husband was saying, “So that stripper was as butt-ass ugly as you've ever seen—”

I could feel the table vibrating from Virginia kicking Allen, and Graham interrupted him saying, “So, Mrs. Mason, did Rider's arrange these gorgeous flowers for you?”

It was a clear ploy to get Allen to stop talking. He was either too dense or too drunk to get the hint. “Man, I'm telling a story here,” he said, slurring slightly. “So, one of my friends went upstairs, found her purse, and stole all her money.” He banged his hand on the table, making the crystal water glasses spill over onto the linen place mats. He snorted and said, “Isn't that the best damn thing you've ever heard?”

Mother pulled her chair back from the table and walked into the kitchen. The rest of us just sat there, a stunned silence filling the room like the smell of frying chicken. I raised my eyebrows at Daddy, who rolled his eyes and shrugged. Virginia was looking down at her hands, her face the color of the pickled beets Pauline was whisking through the door.

“So, Daniel,” Daddy said. “Tell us the truth. How is it working with my Khaki?”

Daniel said behind his hand, “Does he know your name is Frances?” Everyone laughed, breaking the tension in the room.

Graham rubbed my shoulder and said, “A little nickname for a little farm girl.”

Daniel nodded, put his arm around me, and said, “You know, I owe everything to your daughter. She's taught me all the tricks of the trade. I love her like family.”

I leaned my head on Daniel's shoulder and said, “Aw, thanks, sweetie.” Then I picked my head up, looked at him, and said, “But I already told you, you aren't getting my office.”

Mother reappeared, apparently having composed herself from Allen's totally inappropriate story time, and said, “Virginia, I think your children need you at home.”

Virginia looked at me helplessly, but I didn't rush to her defense. I loved her, sure, but I couldn't stomach Allen. I remembered how happy Mother and Daddy had been when he proposed to Virginia. Allen was Daddy's right-hand man on the farm, so it was one of those great Southern alliances from which everyone could benefit. But I wasn't fooled for a second. I'd always found him to be crass, mannerless, and unfit for my sister.

Tonight was no different. “If it's a kid thing, you're the woman,” he said. “You go. I'm having a good time.”

“I think you better go on home with your wife, Allen,” Daddy said gently.

When I complained about Allen, Graham used to tell me that I would never think anyone was good enough for my family. He didn't say that anymore. As it turned out, I had been as right about Allen as I had about cornice boards. They were both fine as long as they weren't in
my
house.

As the front door slammed, Momma said, “Daniel, I am so
very sorry for my son-in-law's behavior. There's no excuse, and I hope you weren't uncomfortable.”

Daniel, fortunately, had a quick wit and a way of making others feel at ease. “No problem. I ride the subway. Strippers are nothing compared to my morning commute.”

Graham raised his glass and said, “I'd like to propose a toast. However we create them, here's to our families.”

We clinked glasses, and, though Graham might not have known it at the time, that toast was more of a mouthful than any of us would ever have believed.

I snuggled into Graham when we got home, amazed at how just the smell of him could still render me spellbound all these years later. I sat awake in bed thinking about that poor stripper who was probably a single mom with two kids at home just trying to make ends meet, being robbed by one of Allen's idiot friends.

That night, I made love to my husband for the first time in a long time where I wasn't thinking about the end result, about the baby I hoped and prayed we'd made. In those moments we shared I thanked him for not being like Allen, for not being like Ricky, but, most of all, for being like him. I told him that he was the rock in my life, that his steadiness and steadfastness, the way he had loved me without question for decades, was the only thing real and true in my life.

It's a puzzling dichotomy, but, though I can write all day long about duvet covers and contemporary art, expressing my feelings to the people I truly love eludes me like a golf ball on a dark fairway. While other men in my life have pushed me for that reassurance, Graham never has. And that's the magic of our relationship, the fairy dust unraveling from the wand. I say to him what needs to be said through my body, not my mind. And it's a language he always understands.