How Sweet It Is (12 page)

I should tour Bryson City and the surrounding area. When Dad called this morning, he said I could drive to some of the nearby attractions. He suggested a trip to the Cherokee Indian Reservation, or heading into Gatlinburg, Tennessee, via the Smoky Mountain Parkway, for a day trip. “I bet it’s real pretty this time of year,” he said.

His voice filled my heart with everything I know to be good, and I knew that I should just hop in my Jeep, buckle up, and go.

I rest my arms against the Adirondack chair’s flat, smooth arms. One day, I think—one day the thought of driving won’t make me nauseous. One day I won’t have to deal with all the post-traumatic stuff. One day I won’t care about the scars on my body. One day my days will be as beautiful as Neville Marriner’s symphony playing selections from Vivaldi. Wherever I go, I will be his “Summer” concerto.

Right now a trek in my Jeep down curvy roads into Bryson City for a stop at Ingle’s or The Center is all that I can handle.

A cardinal flies by, and his bright color makes me see only one thing—blood. Blood, fresh and dried, all over the seats of Lucas’s Mustang. I try to force away the memory of that rainy night. I wrap my arms around my waist as though to comfort myself from the tragedy.

Standing, I leave the sunny deck to head inside. The accident was three-and-a-half months ago. Surely—surely—it will leave my mind one day.

————

That evening when the owl calls in the nearby tree and I awake, I remember the envelope with my name on it and the letter inside. Searching in the bookcase, I find it again. I sit outside on the canvas chair and read it again. This time a different part jumps out at me.
Sometimes I have wondered why we have to face so much sorrow in this world. Our sorrows often multiply, our disappointments increase, and our hearts are heavy. Perhaps this life is not the one we would have chosen.

I would have chosen Lucas to be faithful and loyal and to love me forever. I would have made him see only me in my teal dress.

I scan the recipe for Grandpa’s peanut soup printed at the end of the letter and think that it sounds worth trying. I jot down the ingredients I’ll need to purchase from Ingle’s. Slipping the memo paper into the pocket of my bathrobe, I look forward to making something my grandfather enjoyed. It will certainly taste better than my own tears. If all the tears I’ve cried since the accident were piped chocolate roses, I would be as round as Hector by now.

When I write in the journal, I start with a few lines about growing up on the farm—how pigs are my favorite animals, how exciting it is to watch new piglets squeal into the world. Even my mother, who once hoped to marry a big-name lawyer and take vacations to the south of France, isn’t able to conceal her awe when these births take place on the hay-strewn barn floor. In spite of what she tells Andrea and me about her once-upon-a-longings, we know she is married to the wisest and sweetest man in the world. His profession as a farmer only makes him humble.

My mind wanders to what kind of childhood the children who come to The Center for the after-school program have had—and are having—but I push the topic as far away as my mind will let me.

No, Grandpa, this is not the life I would have chosen.

seventeen

S
ally and I sit on the deck, grilling trout and catfish as the sun vanishes behind the edge of the mountain closest to the cabin. Sally is a good fisherwoman; she brought two rods, bait, and tackle, and we spent this morning fishing in Deep Creek.

Perhaps she had heard the sorrow in my voice when I told her that my hope to drive to Tifton to visit Dad and Mom and spend four or five days on the farm was not going to be realized.

Whatever the cause, Sally didn’t hesitate. She hopped in her Honda Civic and made the winding trip of 152 miles to Bryson City. She left another doctor in charge of all her fuzzyfurred, wet-nosed clients.

“School is out June eighth here, but they want me to teach all summer,” I told her as I stood in my kitchen with my cell phone clutched in one hand and stirring buttercream frosting with the other. “Summer school. It starts on Monday.”

“They really want these kids to learn to cook, don’t they?” Sally sipped from her cup of coffee. I could hear the slurp over the phone. Starbucks Mocha Latte. Two percent milk, a dash of cinnamon. Sally’s favorite.

While I longed for my own cup of Starbucks, I said, “They want to keep them occupied and off the streets.”

“Well, that’s important, I guess.”

“Miriam says that the summer program also has this guy named Robert teaching drama and art. I’m sure the kids will like that.”

Just art, drama, and basketball would be enough to keep their minds and hands busy, wouldn’t it? Are the cooking classes really necessary? When I asked Miriam about it, she said, “Cooking helps them learn about measuring, and ingredients, and how to use them in recipes, but it also teaches children to follow directions in order to obtain a satisfactory result.” She shuffled her tennis shoes, reciting the words, and I wondered which cookbook produced this wisdom.

I squeeze some lemon juice on the skins of the fish fillets and tell Sally that I think the money they pay me at The Center comes from some kind of account Grandpa Ernest set up.

“Your grandpa seemed to have loads of money.” She lifts a piece of smoky catfish off the grill with Ernest’s tongs. “What did he do?”

“You mean besides traveling all over the world after he lost his wife?” I deliberately pause for effect. “He was a surgeon in Pennsylvania. You know, one of those rich doctors.”

Sally smiles and pokes me with the end of the tongs. “How’s the hot tub?”

“I haven’t…”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t been in it yet!”

————

Catfish and trout always taste better when you’ve caught and cleaned them yourself. We enjoy our meal out on the deck as a tame breeze blows against our faces.

After we wash the dishes, Sally helps me pull the covering from the hot tub and shows me how to heat the water. Sometimes all you need in life to get something done is sheer determination, and Sally is set on enhancing her mountain cabin weekend with time in the hot tub. She’s brought her swimsuit, a cute little one-piece that slenderizes her even more than she normally looks. I put my suit on, too. I try not to look at my scars, even though Sally does. “They are healing nicely,” she tells me in her most medical tone of voice.

“But they’ll never completely fade,” I say. I know this for a fact, regardless of Dr. Bland’s attempts to encourage me. “Will they?”

She looks at me with empathy; her eyes are full of warmth and understanding. “Deena, they will only cause you as much trouble as you allow them to cause you.”

That’s a strange thing to say, I think, as I lower myself into the bubbly water. That isn’t even an answer to my question.

Later, as we put sheets on the couch’s pullout bed, Sally tells me that she ran into Lucas at Starbucks. “He tried to avoid me at first, but I made a great effort to make sure he noticed me.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I stood right in front of him as he went over to that little counter to put cream in his coffee.”

“What did he say?” I want to hear that he asked about me, that he missed me, that he was oh-so-terribly sorry for cheating on me. I wait, feeling like Giovanni must when my aunt pulls a dog biscuit from her pocket.

Sally tugs at the corner of the fitted sheet and smoothes it onto the mattress. Then she sits on the edge of the bed and glances down. “I lied.”

“You didn’t see him?”

She’s let her hair down from the clip, and now her red curls bounce as she shakes her head. Looking at me, she explains. “I did see him.”

“At Starbucks?”

“Yeah.”

Okay, I think, this is going around in circles, like Giovanni before he settles onto the rug by the sliding glass door.

Sally bites her lower lip, the familiar Sally gesture that endears her to me. “I told him you were madly in love with a cardiologist and living in London.”

Laughter bursts out of me. “Really?”

She peers at me, lets her eyes lock with mine. “Are you mad at me?”

“That you lied? No.”

Her sigh, a form of release, fills the living room. She smiles. “It was just time for payback. You should have seen his face.”

Lucas once said if we lived in London we could go to a different pub every night and see a play at the theater every Saturday. He was in an artistic mood, and his voice was rich with dreaming. “I’ll play polo and then we can eat those tea sandwiches or scones or whatever they eat over there.”

I held his hand and told him that I would go anywhere with him. Now I say to Sally, “He always wanted to live in London.”

She nods as her eyes grow wide for emphasis. “That’s exactly why I said you were living in London. I wanted him to feel something.” She twists a curl around her index finger. “I wanted him to feel jealous.”

My thoughts spin. Jealous? Is that what I want him to feel? Is that what I feel? Hatred—that’s my little flame I keep throwing sticks into. Keep those fires of hatred burning.

Sally, who has never been able to be serious for any length of time, is ready to get back into her comfort zone. She scans the room as a smile rushes to her mouth. “What’s with all these kitchen tools?”

“He collected them, won them, bought them, whenever he traveled.”

“He… meaning your grandfather?”

“Good ol’ Ernest.”

She eyes the water buffalo drawing. “This is like being in a museum of sorts.”

“Of sorts.”

“So when the place becomes yours, do you get to redecorate?”

I think of the few pictures of mine that are stored in my parents’ shed. There is a print of a piglet resting in the sun beside a run-down barn. I’m not sure where I’d hang that in this living room. Before I can answer, Sally says, “What’s the woman with the fan about? Is she hiding behind it?”

I study the framed drawing of the kimono-clad woman with the fan discretely covering half her face. I still have no idea what she’s hiding or why, yet I know that picture, with all its mysteries, belongs on that wall, like marshmallows go with hot chocolate and jackets with spring mornings. I could never replace it with anything else. “I’m not much for redecorating,” I tell Sally.

She laughs. “Oh yeah, I remember when you wanted to paint your room orange with yellow dots to look like a sunset.”

“Yeah, I’m not a decorator.” I smile.

“Only of cakes,” she says with admiration. “Those, you do well.”

Sally brushes her teeth as I climb the stairs to the loft bedroom where I have grown used to sleeping. When she lies on the couch-bed I hear her turn over a few times until she’s comfortable. The cabin is dark when, minutes later, she calls up to me. I’m watching the flickering stars from the windows in the ceiling over my bed and hearing chords of wedding music that will never play for me. Before that, I was realizing that Sally really stepped out on a limb to try to make Lucas jealous.

“Deena?” Her voice sweeps through the cabin.

“Yeah?”

“I think your moving here was the best thing you’ve done in a long time.”

I’m still not sure myself, but it’s nice to have her approval.

I turn onto my stomach. Since I can’t picture a doctor I would run off to Europe with, I fall asleep thinking about a curly-haired social worker who plays basketball.

————

The next afternoon, as Sally places the rods and fishing gear in her Honda, I want to jump in the passenger seat like Giovanni and head back to Atlanta with her. Instead, I tell her to come back to visit me soon, to have a safe trip, and I smile until I think my face will break. She says she envies my life. I merely swallow and nod.

“Next time I’ll bring Jeannie.”

“That would be great.”

Her car is long gone before I head back inside. I view the mountain peaks, lush and green before me and pale blue in the distance where they kiss the horizon. It’s funny how humans are never quite content with what they have. Yet, according to Grandpa, the key to happiness lies in putting your whole hand into God’s. I wonder if just holding the hand of the Almighty is enough to cure this sadness inside of me?

eighteen