Detours (24 page)

Natalie pointed toward the windshield. “Hey, this isn’t the way to the store.”

“I know. I thought we could sit by the creek and drag our toes through the water for a while. Would that be okay?”

“I guess.”

Ellis found her way to the Stovall Mill Bridge on Chickamauga Creek and parked the truck. She and Natalie selected a big, smooth rock to sit on. The summer sun pounded down on them, but a light breeze across the shallow waters cooled the immediate air. Lush greenery enveloped the spot they were in. Squirrels chattered on the branches overhead, and birds made swoops to grab unsuspecting insects midair. Ellis shucked off her sneakers and socks and dangled her feet in the warm water. Natalie kicked out of her Crocs and drew circles on the water’s surface with her big toe. She leaned ever so slightly so that she was lightly pressing against Ellis’s side.

Ellis savored the moment. “It’s pretty out here.” She said it more to herself than to Natalie.

“My dad used to say that God made the north Georgia mountains first and that everything else after that was just places he put together from the leftovers.”

Ellis put her arm around Natalie’s shoulders and drew her nearer. “I’m really sorry your dad died. Tell me some other things you remember about him.”

“He liked to eat carrots and peas and tomatoes right out of the garden, even if they had dirt on them. He liked Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney, but he didn’t like Josh Turner or Garth Brooks. His favorite TV show was
Trick My Truck.
He could write his name backwards with his left hand, and when you held it up to a mirror, it looked just like he wrote it for real. He liked fishing better than hunting, and he was teaching me how to put bait on a hook. Wearing dress-up clothes made him feel like he couldn’t breathe. That’s why they let him get buried in regular clothes, so he didn’t have to wear a necktie.” Natalie looked at Ellis as if to see if she was paying attention. She was apparently satisfied and went on with her list of what she remembered about her father.

Ellis sat silently by her side, trying very hard not to cry. She doubted that, compared to Natalie, she’d gathered even a small fraction of the memories about her own father, even though she’d had three-and-a-half times as much life in which to do so. Would she have had a larger storehouse at ten than at thirty-four, which was how old she was when her dad died? Probably not. Dedrick VanStantvoordt was far more memorable as an art history buff than as a daddy. Natalie’s continuing recitation broke through her own musings.

“And my dad’s middle name was Joseph. That was my other grandpa’s name, too. I don’t really remember him because I was only five when he died. Daddy always said that if he and Mom ever had a baby boy, his name would be Joseph so that both sides of the family would be happy. But I always told him I really wanted a little sister, not a little brother.” She stopped and looked at Ellis. “Now I guess I won’t ever get either one.”

“Probably not, kiddo.”

“Couldn’t you and Mom get a baby?”

The question knocked Ellis off her pins. “Where did you ever come up with an idea like that?”

“You and Mom love each other. I can tell by the way you act when you’re together. People who love each other have babies.”

Ellis waited, hoping an appropriate response would come to her. Natalie spoke again before inspiration struck for Ellis.

“That’s one of the other things I’ve been praying for.”

“A baby sister?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?” Ellis had set the boulder rolling down the hill—no point trying to stop it now.

“I’ve been praying that you’d come up here and live with mom and me. When you leave to go back to Atlanta on Sunday nights, Mom cries and cries. She thinks I don’t hear her, but I do.”

“I see.” Ellis didn’t see, figuratively, and was rapidly approaching the point of not being able to see physically, thanks to the number of times Natalie had thumped on her heartstrings, bringing her to the verge of tears.

“And even if you and Mom decide you don’t want to get a baby, you and Mom and me could be a family. Like when Daddy still lived with us when I was little.”

“Have you talked to your mom about this?”

“Not really.”

“Don’t you think you should?”

“I already know what she’d say.”

“Oh?”

“Uh-huh. She wants whatever will make me happy. She says it all the time.” She imitated her mother’s voice, “Tell me what you want, Nat. My favorite thing is seeing you smile.”

Ellis pulled her feet from the creek and used her socks to dry them. She took her time lacing and tying her sneakers. “Maybe we’d better go so I can get that mulch I promised your mom.”

Natalie stood and slipped into her Crocs. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you what I’ve been praying for. It made you mad.”

“I’m not mad, Natalie. You surprised me, that’s all.” Ellis put both hands on Natalie’s shoulders and squatted down so that she was face-to-face with her. “I’m glad you told me. It helps me understand how you’re feeling.”

“I used to do that with my daddy.”

“I can’t ever be as good at that as your dad was. You know that, right?”

Natalie searched Ellis’s face carefully. “I guess. But if you could help Mom stop crying so much, that would help a lot.” Natalie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I used to come here sometimes with my daddy.”

Ellis stood upright and offered her hand. Natalie grabbed it. Though not a religious woman in the least, she’d have sworn she heard angels’ wings rustling in the wind.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

It only took a few conversations—approximately 28,492 of them, by Ellis’s estimation—for her and Mary to reach the conclusion that Natalie was right: the best solution for all of them would be for Ellis to leave Atlanta and move to the mountains. One by one, she terminated agreements with her landscaping clients in preparation for relocating. Piece by piece, she hauled most of her furniture to the thrift store to be sold and the proceeds donated to a shelter for battered women. Day after day, she reminded herself of the admonition in her only letter from her mother to use love as her reason for agreeing to honor important requests made of her by the significant people in her life.

So what if everything left of her worldly goods fit in her Tundra? All the issues of how to deal with Mary’s family, her uneasiness over helping to raise a child, the tiny little matter of what she would do to make a living, and the showstopper of what to tell anyone and everyone about the relationship between her and Mary still hung out there like nightmare demons under the bed of a sleep-deprived child. But Ellis trusted love to prevail. Both Mary and Natalie made it obvious that they believed they would be better off having Ellis with them full-time. Even if it proved to be the wrong decision, she knew she had made it for the right reason.

Late in the day on the first Friday in October, she stuffed the last of her possessions into the truck, and she and Sam made the now-familiar drive to Mary’s house in Clarkesville. Darkness had fallen long before she parked beside Mary’s Xterra under the metal carport.

Sam made a quick inspection of the yard, marked a few of her usual places, then she rejoined Ellis on the front stoop. Ellis thought it odd that neither Mary nor Natalie had come out to greet her. She knocked once and let herself in.

“Surprise!” As Ellis entered, Mary and Natalie leaped from either side of the doorway and tooted loudly on noisemakers typically seen on New Year’s Eve. The sudden outburst set Sam to barking and running wildly around the living room. Mary and Natalie wore paper party hats that originally said, “Party ’Til the Cows Come Home.” The words “the cows” were taped over with white paper, and in their place, “Ellis” had been substituted and an “s” added to make the word “comes.”

Swiffer was perched on the back of the sofa, likewise wearing a hat. Hers said, “Are We Having Fun Yet?” The expression on the cat’s face, whether from the indignity of wearing a hat or from Sam acting as though she was part of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, left no doubt that she was most assuredly
not
having a good time.

“Hey, what’s the occasion?” Ellis asked as she regained her composure. The room was decorated with multicolored streamers and every sort of banner: Happy Birthday, Christmas, Fourth of July, Saint Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Easter, Halloween, even a blue and silver one that proclaimed “Happy Hanukkah.” The one that made her look twice, though, was a homemade one that had a message she’d never in her life seen before. Big block letters shouted, “Welcome Home, Ellis and Sam. We Think You’re Weird.” The banner was decorated with hand-drawn approximate likenesses of Mary, Natalie, and Swiffer, each holding smaller versions of the Welcome Home message.

Natalie stood grinning, her body seeming to vibrate with happiness. “We wanted to do something to celebrate our first night as a family.”

“Right,” Mary said. “We haven’t gotten to spend any of the last year’s holidays together, so we thought we’d do a condensed version of them tonight to make up for lost time and to be sure we always remember the night you came home to stay.”

As Mary and Natalie wrapped her in hugs, Ellis let the tears wash down her cheeks. It was thirty-nine years in the coming, but she felt like she was finally where she truly belonged.

Mother and daughter treated Ellis to an eclectic feast with everything from roast turkey breast with cornbread dressing to decorated hard-boiled eggs to watermelon (in honor of Independence Day) to limeade (as a substitute for green beer) and a heart-shaped cake for dessert. Throughout the meal, they sang songs apropos of various holidays. For what felt like the first time since that awful Saturday in June when word had come of Nathan’s death, there was genuine laughter in MaryChris Moss’s house.

Ellis dragged her fork over her dessert plate to corner the final bit of frosting. “What a great feast. Thank you both for this wonderful Valen-Patrick-East-Fourth-Birthday-Hallow-Thanks-Mas meal.”

“You forgot the most important part, Ellis,” Natalie said.

“I did?”

“The welcome home part.”

“She’s right, you know,” Mary said, edging her chair a bit nearer to Ellis. “Every day—holiday or plain old Tuesday—will be better, now that you’re here with us.”

In a mischievous voice, Natalie said, “You two should kiss or something.”

“Natalie! Really…” Mary stopped, obviously not sure what to say next.

Natalie frowned at her mother. “What? It’s not like I haven’t seen you do it. I’m not a baby, you know.”

“Maybe we’d better talk about this,” Mary said. “Since you’re not a baby, you need to remember that some things aren’t mentioned in public.”

“But this isn’t public.” Natalie crossed her arms across her chest. “This is our house.”

“Right, but just like we have to practice manners at home so we’ll have them when we go out, we need to practice what’s okay and what’s not okay to say to other people. Understand?”

Natalie shook her head. “Not really.”

Mary’s eyes pleaded with her new live-in lover. “Feel free to jump in anytime, Ellis. You get to try to keep this leaky little rowboat afloat now, too.”

Ellis glanced around the room in hopes of finding an emergency escape hatch. She caught sight of the banner welcoming her home. “Well, you see, toots, it’s sort of like the code phrase you and your mom have for saying you love each other without really saying it. Sometimes it might feel a little funny to say ‘I love you’ in front of other people or whatever, so what do you do instead?”

“We say ‘you’re weird.’”

“Exactly. That’s kind of what your mom and I have to do almost all the time. See, there are a lot of people who don’t think it’s right for two women to like each other as much as your mom and I do.”

“You mean because the Bible says it’s a sin?” Natalie said.

Aghast, Mary asked, “Did your grandmother tell you that?”

“No, I saw that preacher on TV. He said gay people will burn in hell because they’re a bombed nation in God’s eyes.”

Ellis overcame the urge to laugh at Natalie’s misunderstanding of “abomination.”

“I’m glad you understand what it means to be gay, but what you saw on TV is only some people’s opinion,” Mary said, levelly. “It’s really not what the Bible says. But because there’s that kind of hatred out there, Ellis and I—and you, too—have to be very careful not to say things that will upset people.”

Natalie pondered her mother’s explanation. “Sort of like when Tommy Hudgins kept picking on Michael Fitzpatrick because his family goes to the Catholic church instead of to the Baptist church.”

“Yep, same kind of thing,” Mary said.

“I heard my teacher tell Michael it’s okay that he’s Catholic, but that he shouldn’t keep reminding Tommy about it.”

“And that’s what your mom and I are saying you should do, too. Don’t bring attention to it. You don’t need to say anything to anybody about the fact that we’re very special friends.” She stole a look at Mary. “Don’t say anything to Gramma or Aunt Naomi or the kids at school.”

“What if they ask?”

Ellis gulped and looked to Mary for guidance.

Mary studied her daughter carefully. “Has anybody said anything to you, Nat?”

“Only Aunt Gloria.”