Rock of Ages (19 page)

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Makings for yellow-squash casserole.

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Pumpkin pie (bought).

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Cranberry sauce (bought).

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Dressing (bought).

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Rolls (definitely bought).

Kenny is bring field peas and butterbeans, canned by his mother and cooked by him with, he assures her, at least half a pound of pork fat for flavoring.

Even vegetarians, he tells her, have strokes down here.

Georgia asks Leeza to cut up the squash and onions while she reacquaints herself with the sweet-potato recipe.

“Would you like me to make some biscuits?” Leeza asks.

There is little Georgia would like less. She contemplates the neatly boxed, canned, and organized bounty before her and knows that soon it will explode into a mess that will in no way justify the resulting meal. The last thing she needs, she wants to say, is biscuits, with flour and Crisco and buttermilk everywhere, one more large bowl, one more need for the lone chopping block.

But Leeza has become quite proud of her biscuits, which with more consultation with Annabelle have become, even Georgia must admit, quite acceptable, a welcome addition to her small domestic résumé.

“Sure,” Georgia says, “biscuits would be great. Annabelle didn't show you how to make gravy, did she?”

Leeza shakes her head.

“No, she didn't. Can't you …?”

“Sometimes.”

If they can get the two casseroles prepared, if the turkey is ready to go into the oven by 10:30, if somebody can set the table and keep an eye on the bird and put everything else in the oven at the requisite times, if nothing else happens, they might be eating at 3:30, the way it was planned. And that's counting on me to make the gravy, Georgia thinks. God help us.

“Shit,” she says. “Shit!”

“What? What is it?”

“Beaujolais nouveau. I forgot the Beaujolais nouveau.”

She always stocked up on a few bottles for Thanksgiving at home. Even if they were eating elsewhere, they'd bring the new wine with them. This year, in a strange setting, she has forgotten the Beaujolais nouveau.

Leeza giggles.

“What's so funny?”

“Well,” she says, “I can't drink it. I doubt if Mrs. Crumpler will. I don't think I've ever seen Kenny drink anything except beer, and I doubt his son is much of a drinker. I'm sure Justin won't hold it against you.”

I need it, Georgia wants to say. I wanted everything to be perfect. She remembers all the imperfect meals back in Montclair, the burned, underdone, oversalted, underseasoned, sabotaged-by-bad-recipes meals. She equates the mess of her life to some extent with her inability to make edible meals on a consistent basis.

But she can't say all that without sounding like the mental case she fears she has become.

“OK,” she shrugs, “no wine. What the hell.”

She has agreed to pick up Forsythia at noon. Their four stops shouldn't take more than hour, she thought at first, but she since has realized that she is on what she has always referred to, ever since she left, as EGT—East Geddie Time. Pleasantries will have to be exchanged. The two of them will be obliged to sit down in a dark, overstuffed living room or, even worse, a bedroom smelling of Ben-Gay and night sweats. They might be there for only 15 minutes, but they will have to sit and “visit.”

“I'll be back by 2:30,” she tells Justin and Leeza, who assure her they have things under control.

Forsythia is ready when Georgia arrives, dressed as if she were going to church. Georgia is wearing slacks and a peasant blouse with a sweet-potato stain on the front.

They pick up the four complete dinners that the men and women of the Presbyterian and Baptist churches have prepared, everything from soup to nuts, they assure them. Georgia can smell the turkey and dressing under the tinfoil, much better than what is cooking back at Chez McCain, she's sure. She is tempted to steal one of the little tins of gravy.

“It's mighty nice of you to do this, Georgia,” Minnie McCauley says conspiratorially while Forsythia is talking with one of the deacons about the best route for them to take. “She really hadn't ought to be driving all over the county by herself.”

Georgia is lying when she says that she is glad to do it, but she doesn't really resent it, either, she realizes.

Forsythia's route takes them first to a trailer park on the back side of Geddie itself, where Mary Draughon lives alone, having, at 88, outlived two husbands and both her sons, one claimed by a heart attack and the other by colon cancer. Her three grandchildren are “somewhere,” Forsythia says, snorting and looking out the side window.

Mary Draughon, who seems to Georgia to be at least 100, is ensconced in a recliner, and it takes her five minutes to get out of it and unlock the front door.

“Didn't used to have to lock everything,” she says, by way of greeting, “before the niggers got so mean around here.”

She notes that she doesn't like cranberry sauce, and she hopes out loud that the dressing doesn't have onions in it. She spends the next 10 minutes talking about her health, her family, and her neighbors. None of the news is good.

Her complaints over, Mary Draughon asks them if they want some Russian tea, which is, Georgia sees, the opening for them to depart gracefully.

“No, honey,” Forsythia says, “we have three more of these to deliver. Don't want to keep folks waiting for Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Well, you all don't have to go so soon,” she says, but after five more minutes of what Georgia used to refer to impatiently as mealy-mouthing, they are out the door. One down, three to go.

“She's had it tough,” Forsythia says, when they're back in the car and she sees Georgia shaking her head. “But, you do have to take charge of your own fate, make people want to come see you. The thing is, I don't believe I can remember Mary Draughon ever being that much fun, and it sure doesn't get better when you're going on 90.”

Forsythia Crumpler laughs quietly, almost a giggle.

“That's un-Christian of me,” she says, shaking her head.

“Well,” Georgia says, “you can't please Jesus all the time.”

She thinks she's being far too flip for her old teacher, but Forsythia looks sharply at her and then breaks out laughing.

“No, I don't suppose you can.”

Their next stop, almost to McNeil, is a little house, not much more than 1,000 square feet, Georgia estimates.

Sam Lacy doesn't go to Geddie Presbyterian. He used to go to the Baptist church, Forsythia says, but he hasn't gone anywhere that anyone knows of for a few decades.

“He's had a stroke,” she adds. “I suppose he gets by on Social Security, such as it is.”

Sam Lacy takes a long time to come to the front door. He drags his left foot, and his left arm hangs useless at his side. He mumbles his thanks as he leads them into his little kitchen, where he stands amid dirty plates and glasses while they unwrap everything. He looks as if he hasn't combed his dingy yellow-gray hair, and he smells as if he hasn't washed lately.

“Dinner's served, Sam,” Forsythia says. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

The man tries to say something else, and it's clear to Georgia that his speech has been impaired as well.

He seems shy, embarrassed in their presence. He doesn't insist on them sitting down and visiting, and they're out again in five minutes.

“Poor thing,” Forsythia says, “I ought to come visit him once in a while. I taught him, too, you know.”

“But he looks like he's 10 years older than you, at least.” Georgia says it quietly as they're walking down the dirt path back to the van.

“The men around here age so fast, the ones that get to age at all. The sad thing is, I can still remember how most of them looked when I taught them, so I can see how far they've slipped.”

“I guess that's discouraging.”

Forsythia looks at her.

“Well, it happens. It's sad, but I don't know if it's discouraging. It's just what happens. People get old.”

Their last two stops take perhaps 15 minutes each. One widow lives along the Ammon Road; the other has a trailer in East Geddie. By the last one, Georgia has the process down pat, is able to say all the pleasant and meaningless but essential things. She realizes that neither of the old ladies is going to complain about her having to leave to “get back and feed the hungry at my place.” They understand that's what a woman does on Thanksgiving Day, if she's lucky enough to have family.

“Well,” the last one says, “you come see me some time when you can stay awhile longer, you hear?”

And Georgia lies that she will.

“So,” Forsythia says when they're back in the car, “is everybody ready for the blessed arrival?”

“As ready as can be expected. A marriage certificate would've been nice, I guess.”

Georgia doesn't know why she mentions it. She has promised herself to be supportive of her son, even if it kills her.

Forsythia smiles.

“I didn't know anybody even got bothered by that these days. Things have changed so much. But that kind of thing has always gone on, as long as there've been men and women.”

Georgia looks over at her as they pull out of the driveway.

“Really? Were there women you knew who had children out of wedlock?”

“Bastards.”

It shocks Georgia to hear Forsythia Crumpler say the word.

“That's what they called them then,” the old lady continues. “Bastards. Such an ugly, hateful thing to label someone.”

The look of Forsythia Crumpler's face keeps Georgia from questioning her further.

They are back by 2:45. Forsythia looks a little tired. Georgia asks her if she'd like an arm to lean on, and she is surprised when her old teacher takes her up on the offer. It worries her a little; Forsythia is not the kind of woman to accept help under almost any circumstances.

To Georgia's relief, Thanksgiving dinner is moving along smoothly, perhaps more smoothly, she thinks, than if I had been here to make everybody's sphincter a little tighter.

The turkey is well on its way to done, a little tinfoil tent on it now that it has browned enough. The side dishes are either in or ready to go in at the appointed times. The biscuits have been cooked already and smell wonderful, their scent mixing with the turkey and the pies.

Leeza and Justin both have on aprons. They work well together, Georgia can see, even in the kind of kitchen where two people have to turn sideways to pass each other. She tries to help, but it's clear that she would only be in the way. She says she'll set the table, but that's been taken care of, too.

Kenny and Tommy get there just after she and Forsythia. The four of them sit in the den and wait to be called to dinner. Georgia and Forsythia both keep offering to get up and see if there's anything they can do.

“Let somebody else cook today,” Kenny says, after he's headed them off for the third time. “You all have done your quota of Thanksgiving turkeys, I'm guessing. You've fed enough people already today.”

“Some sad people out there,” Forsythia says.

Kenny agrees that there are. Asked how his mother's doing, he says that she's having dinner with enough children and grandchildren that he suspects she'll never even know he's missing.

“I doubt that,” Forsythia says, and Kenny nods.

“We're going by later,” he tells her.

Dinner is achieved with scarcely a hitch. Kenny's son doesn't seem to like much of anything that is offered, other than the two helpings of bought pumpkin pie, but he doesn't whine about it, and everyone else eats enthusiastically.

Georgia and Kenny do the dishes, while Justin lets Tommy show him the place in the near woods where he says he saw a deer last weekend. Leeza goes to take a nap. Forsythia, who wanted to help, also falls asleep, in a recliner in the den within eyesight of the two dishwashers. It pleases Georgia that her older teacher is comfortable enough to do that.

“So,” Kenny asks in a muted voice, “what's the latest on Pooh?”

Georgia shrugs.

Since she found the shoe and saw that it matched the one Jenny McLaurin was wearing when she drowned, she has gradually given up on the idea of seeking Pooh Blackwell out. She wishes she had shown the matched set to Kenny before she took them to Wade Hairr. They are now property of the Scots County sheriff's department, and Georgia wonders if she will ever see them again. Telling Kenny they were a perfect match was not as good as holding them up in front of his eyes.

She hasn't even mentioned the shoe issue to Justin. She's not sure why. Maybe she doesn't want to involve him, pull him into what everyone else sees as a wild-goose chase, and a potentially dangerous one at that. Maybe she doesn't mention it for the same reason she doesn't mention seeing a man who died 11 years ago: She doesn't want Justin to think his mother is losing her mind.

She finally told Kenny on Tuesday. She had come over to bring him some leftover chili. She was anxious, curious to see if one thoughtless kiss had changed anything between them, but Kenny seemed the same as ever, to her relief and slight disappointment.

When she told him about the shoes, he listened to her, nodding his head, sympathizing, but he seemed willing to take the Occam's razor approach. Go with the simplest and most straightforward answer. Jenny McLaurin couldn't swim. She slipped in the pond and couldn't get out.

He suggested this to Georgia, as gently as he could.

She did not take his lack of enthusiasm well, especially when the only thing that really seemed to upset him was that she had told Wade Hairr something that she didn't want getting back to Pooh or his father.

“You might as well put it in the newspaper,” he told her. “Maybe Wade Hairr won't tell William about it. Maybe he'll just tell one or two of his flap-jaw deputies, and one of them will tell William's cousin, who'll tell him, and he'll tell Pooh.”