A Peach of a Pair Page 22

“Madam, a Cannon casket is the best money can buy, which of course is what you asked for. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come in any color except hand-burnished mahogany.”

  “Obviously an attempt to appeal to men. You ought to know that women prefer color, something that matches their favorite dress or their eyes. Sister’s eyes were blue,” she huffed. “Can you at least paint the thing blue?”

  “We don’t—I’m not sure we could—,” he stammered.

  Lurleen took a pen and her checkbook out of her pocketbook and raised her eyebrows. “Well?” she snapped.

  He looked at the checkbook and then at Lurleen. “I suppose we could, but it will cost extra.”

  • • •

  The hotel staff was very kind in light of Miss Emily’s untimely death. The manager sent a doctor to check on Lurleen. The staff stopped by our room several times bringing snacks, Cokes, sweet tea. When Lurleen asked the manager if he knew of a place we could rent a car to go to Satsuma overnight for a family matter, he didn’t ask any questions, just loaned us his.

  It was definitely the quickest seventy-five miles I’d ever driven, although I wasn’t speeding. The small sign for my barely there town came into sight too soon. I was grateful to have Miss Lurleen riding shotgun. The terrors I’d felt passing through Alabama on the bus were nothing compared to what I felt now. Teeth chattering, I was pouring sweat, heart beating out of my chest.

  When Lurleen put her hand on mine, I slowed, then stomped on the brake, making the truck behind me nearly rear-end us. He sat on his horn and zoomed past our car. “Breathe,” she said softly, but I couldn’t. What if Sissy had decided she was done with me like I had said I was done with her? What if my sister didn’t need me anymore? Didn’t love me anymore?

  “We’ll sit here till you’re ready,” Lurleen said. “And you will be ready. You’re made of strong stuff, my dear.”

  Much like the hills had melted into piedmonts and their gentle slopes into lowlands, the days had blurred since we left Camden. It was Thursday, just after six o’clock; Sissy would be home from work by now.

  She’d gone to work right out of high school at the Alabama Farmers Cooperative office in Mobile as their lone secretary. She usually rode with the Blakeney girl who worked at a bank in Mobile. Sissy had been saving for a car for almost a year now; Papa wouldn’t let her buy one on time, though she could have if he’d signed the papers.

  Now, her money would be pooled into her new life with Brooks. Her baby. That wouldn’t sit well at all given Sissy’s pride in her own paycheck, and why shouldn’t she be proud? She worked hard, did a good job, and yet the moment she told her boss she was expecting, he would likely fire her on the spot. Or maybe she hadn’t told her boss yet. Maybe she was ruminating, making herself sick over the whole fiasco.

  I had always known everything that went on with Sissy, or I used to. Sissy loved her job, loved getting dressed up to go to work, to type memorandums, and answer phone calls. She’d been so proud when she’d landed the position on her own, without any help from Daddy or his friends. She’d gushed about how grown up she felt, how she didn’t see any reason why women couldn’t work as long as they wanted whether they had children or not. But if she wasn’t fired, she would have to quit her job long before the baby came. Brooks would see to it.

  Whenever Brooks and I had talked about having a family, he’d been adamant that I would stay home from the minute the bun was in the oven until the kids weren’t school age anymore. I’d hoped he might change his mind since teaching was such a wonderful profession for a mother, what with the summers off. Of course teaching piano out of the house was fine by him. Sometimes he’d even hinted he might give on the subject of my teaching, as long as it was at our children’s school.

  But would Sissy be happy without her job? And why was Brooks so quick to make iron-fisted decisions that weren’t solely his to make?

  “I’m ready.” I swallowed hard and nodded.

  “I’m sure you are, dear. Let’s get a move on; I want to meet this sister of yours.” Her last words had a little bite to them.

  When this whole mess started, I’d wanted nothing less than the people I loved, who also loved Sissy, to rise up and shame her, persecute her until her every thought was sorrowful for having betrayed me. But after having seen the Eldridge ire up close and personally, I didn’t want it directed at my baby sister.

  I shifted in my seat to face Lurleen. Angry drivers honked and zipped past me. “I don’t know much about driving, dear, but I’m pretty sure it’s against the rules to sit in the middle of the highway like this with your blinker thingy on.”

  I cocked my head to the side. “Sissy’s young,” I stammered.

  “But old enough to know better,” Lurleen said, pulling on Miss Emily’s short white gloves like they were for boxing. Heaven help Sissy.

  The flatlands of my homeplace had never been more beautiful. Miles of new satsumas dangling from the trees. Cotton fields and newly planted corn in between orchards. Tall stately pecan trees that seemed bigger and better on Alabama soil than anyplace in the South.

  I turned onto the dirt road that split two satsuma groves. Four tiny houses came into view. A half dozen vehicles, mostly pickup trucks, were parked near the shared barn behind the houses. Daddy’s old truck that ran when it wanted to was under the shed alongside Uncle Doak’s new truck he bought every year, just to get a rise out of Daddy. My cousin Griffin’s hand-me-down pickup from his father was there; a friendly dig from Doak that an eighteen-year-old was driving a better vehicle than my father. The big truck that took oranges and pecans, cotton and corn to market sat next to Mother’s car. Everyone was home.

  We pulled up into the bare dirt space in the center of the four clapboard homes that looked like neat squares in the middle of the groves. Between Nana’s house and mine, the plates were set on the table Daddy had honed out of a massive oak tree that had blown over after a storm when I was six. There was a vase of sky blue hydrangeas in the center of the table, and Mother’s gardenia and rose bushes were showing off with their intoxicating fragrances. Twelve place settings were laid out perfectly, a stark contrast to the rustic table that could seat as many as thirty people and had.

  I loved that table, always felt so special around it, with everyone I loved gathered there. I used to picture my own children added to the brood, listening to my father tell how God had provided the tree to make the table as surely as he’d provided the lamb for Abraham to sacrifice instead of sacrificing his own son, Isaac.

  The screen door pushed open. Not recognizing the strange car, my mother had a cross look on her face as she wiped her glasses on a small towel. She slung the dishcloth over her shoulder and squinted hard. She could never see two feet in front of herself, but then she put her thick black horn-rimmed glasses on. “Nettie?” The word ended in a squeal as she ran to the car. “You came. Thank God, you came.”

  She smacked her hands against my window like it wasn’t there, grinning like nothing had changed between us. But I couldn’t move. She opened the car door and pulled me out, hugging me, calling everyone to come see me. The prodigal had returned home.

  Screen doors opened. People called my name and flew to my side. Daddy ruffled my hair with an earsplitting grin. Nana Gilbert wedged her shoulders into the crowd, fussing for a turn to hug my neck. I was jubilant. Back on my pedestal. Until the screen door to my house opened once more.

  Always beautiful, Sissy looked more fragile that I remembered, frail. Her long blond hair was unbound, hanging close to her waist. Her heart-shaped face was serious, lips drawn in a tight line as she watched the celebration from afar.

  “I’m Lurleen Eldridge.” With all the hullabaloo, I hadn’t even heard Lurleen get out of the car. “Nettie’s friend,” she said firmly, like she was choosing which side of the church to sit on at a wedding.

  “Oh, I knew you’d come, Nettie,” Mama gushed. “But you didn
’t tell me you were bringing a guest. So glad you could come for the festivities. The whole town will turn out and then some; we’re really putting on the dog for this wedding.”

  “What?” I mumbled, but I don’t think anyone heard me over the merrymaking. I hadn’t come for the wedding, at least I didn’t think I had. I’d come to see Sissy because she needed me. Because I needed her. I looked at the screen door where Sissy had been, but she was gone.

  “Nettie Jean Gilbert! Where are your manners? Introduce Mrs. Eldridge to everyone this instant.”

  Funny how Mother fell back into her commanding tone as if she still held sway over my life. But I did want Lurleen to know everyone. “Lurleen, this is my Aunt Opal, my—”

  “Young lady, respect your elders,” Mother clucked. “It’s Mrs. Eldridge, and we are so pleased to have you as our guest. I’m Dorothy, but you can call me Dot; everyone does.”

  “It’s Miss Eldridge,” Lurleen replied, giving my mother’s hand a firm shake. “And Nettie is my very dear friend, so she can call me anything she wants.”

  I continued on with the introductions, ending with Aunt Madge and Uncle Doak’s youngest son, Charlie, who was twelve. “Lovely to meet all of you,” Lurleen said, just as a red truck rumbled down the lane with Carver Feed and Seed emblazoned on the side.

  My heart did not leap the way it always had, nor did it sink like it had every time I’d thought about receiving an invite to Brooks’s wedding. Mother was quick to my side. “He’s family now, Nettie. Comes for dinner most every night, just like he always has. I’m not asking you to be nice to him, but I do expect you to maintain some measure of decorum.”

  He didn’t notice me until he got out of the truck. He stopped dead in his tracks, and the sea of family that had engulfed me parted. Miss Lurleen was still by my side. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to; I could feel her quiet strength, her solidarity as the rest of the people I loved leapt onto the fence and straddled it for all they were worth.

  This wasn’t how I wanted it to go. I didn’t want to see Brooks at all. I wanted to say what I had to say to Sissy and leave. Take Miss Emily and Lurleen home to Camden where they belonged, where I was reasonably sure I belonged. But things never go the way they’re supposed to. Somehow the very universe knows the one thing you’re avoiding and throws it right in your face.

  Brooks nodded my way. Lurleen linked her arm though mine; her other hand cupped my fist, giving it a gentle squeeze. Love. Solidarity. Sisterhood.

  “Nettie, dear. I’d like to wash up before supper. Would you mind showing me to my room, please,” she said like she knew I wanted no part of Brooks Carver.

  I nodded. Before I could move a muscle, Griffin and Charlie grabbed our bags. Griffin started to take mine to Mother’s house. “Griffin? I’ll be staying with Lurleen at Nana’s,” I announced, watching Mother flinch. Then she nodded like it was only fair, considering.

  I cupped Lurleen’s elbow and guided her across the uneven ground toward Nana’s front porch. “Nettie.” Brooks’s voice made me freeze. Tremble. Although not with want and need like it had in the past.

  “Dinner’s almost ready, son,” Mama said to Brooks. “Sissy’s in the house. You go on inside and get washed up now.”

  We continued up the steps to the porch. Miss Lurleen looked back over her shoulder as I opened the door, and mumbled something under her breath that made me smile. Tears stung my eyes, and my chest went tight. Lurleen huffed and said it again, adding the swear words to complete the tribute. “G.d. pissant.”

  28

  LURLEEN

  Honestly, it was all Lurleen could do not to pinch that boy’s head off right in front of God and everybody, and how mightily he deserved it. Driving up to the house for supper, like the sisters were as interchangeable as he’d assumed they were. And now the whole family was going to sit around the supper table together? Good Lord, had any of those people ever had one shred of concern for Nettie? One ounce of understanding of what that would be like for her?

  Lurleen slipped her shoes off to go across the hall and check on Nettie. Before she could, Helen, the grandmother, knocked at the same time she opened Lurleen’s door and then stepped inside. “Hello.” Lurleen stopped in her tracks. Right off the bat, she’d pegged Nettie’s mother as the flighty woman she was; this one she wasn’t so sure of. “I was just going to look in on Nettie.” Lurleen pointed as Helen closed door.

  “Before you do, I want you to know that I don’t approve of what Brooks did to Nettie,” she said, her voice hushed. “What they all did to her,” Helen said tightly and jerked her head in the direction of Nettie’s childhood home.

  “I don’t believe you,” Lurleen whispered back, making the woman who looked to be a good bit older than Lurleen gasp.

  “Who are you to make that determination? Why, it would behoove you to remember you’re a guest in this house. Besides, my own son, Nettie’s father, said it was for the best to let things lie so I did. It tore my heart out not to reach out to that poor girl, comfort her,” she huffed. “And you’re dead wrong, I care very much about my granddaughter.”

  Before Lurleen knew it, Emily’s words hissed out of her mouth. “The blond pregnant one?”

  But it was wonderful to feel them inside her, fighting for Nettie, wonderful to feel Sister’s sass and vinegar from the other side of the grave. Yes, indeed, what would Emily Lorene Eldridge have to say if she were here? Plenty.

  “Have you always let a man do your thinking for you? And just where were you when that child’s world went to hell? What did you say to her to console her when that sorry excuse for a man rutted her own sister and made a baby?”

  “You will not speak to me that way in my own house. I’ll have you to know I raised two fine boys by myself after their father died. We kept this grove, this family going. We always keep the family going. Why, be ashamed of yourself. And such talk,” she hissed right back. “What kind of lady are you?”

  “The pissed-off kind.” Helen sucked in a breath, but Lurleen continued, voice low. The last thing she wanted was to alarm Nettie, but the thing she wanted most was to give this spineless woman a piece of her mind. “And I am not ashamed, although you should be.”

  “You have no right to come in here and speak to me like this,” she gasped, plopping down on the bed like someone had cut her legs out from under her.

  “I’m claiming that right. Now. I love that girl, and I’m so lucky she loves me back because when Nettie Gilbert loves, it’s not just with her heart but with everything she’s got,” Lurleen snapped. “I would do anything for her. Anything. But what I would first and most assuredly do, had I been privileged to know her at the time her entire family betrayed her, is what I’m doing now. Standing up for her.”

  “Do you have children?” Helen knew the barb would catch before she cast it. “Yes, well, I didn’t think so. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like. Nobody wanted to choose sides. I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

  “The irony is that Nettie doesn’t even realize how strong she is, or maybe she does,” Lurleen snapped. “She didn’t need your love divided into two equal portions. She didn’t need your sympathy, but she deserved it, far more than any of the likes of you ever deserved her.” Lurleen shook her head slowly, eyes still narrowed. “And no, I do not have children. But if I did, I would die before I hurt them the way you people gutted that dear girl. And you can take that to the g.d. bank.”

  Just then Nettie’s door opened. From the hallway, she called for her grandmother, then Lurleen, then her footsteps moved away from the door. “Now, you and I are going to walk out of this room in a civil manner,” Lurleen said, her voice still hushed. “And if Nettie asks what this was all about, I’m going to tell her we had a nice conversation, which is the truth, Helen, because you needed to hear the truth. And while you all have an obligation to love both of those girls equally, make no mistake as to just whose s
ide I am on.

  “Right here, Nettie, dear,” Lurleen called.

  Nettie opened the door, and her smile faded for a moment. She was dressed in the stunning jade-colored dress Emily would have wholeheartedly approved of, but instead of the cute little pumps they’d bought to go with it, she was wearing a pair of whitish lace-up shoes she called Keds. Nettie looked at her grandmother, then back to Lurleen, and swallowed hard. “Everything okay?”

  “Just peachy,” Lurleen said, pushing past Helen. “Shall we see if we can help your mother with dinner?”

  NETTIE

  Daddy and Uncle Doak had Brooks out by one of the trucks, with the hood up. Good. They could keep him busy for all I cared. As I was giving Lurleen the nickel tour, he’d looked up from what he was doing, directly at me. I quickly turned my and Lurleen’s attentions to Mother’s impressive rose garden that was in full bloom.

  At Christmastime, after Brooks had proposed, I’d slipped into Mother’s bedroom and woke her up without waking Daddy. We went into the kitchen and drank hot cocoa, just her and me, giggling, talking about my wedding day, how beautiful it would be. “Of course, it should be in June or even May,” Mama had said. “The roses will be at their peak, and we’ll have them everywhere. I can even make one of those corsages for your hair out of my little white tea roses. Oh, Nettie, they’ll be gorgeous against your red hair. You’re going to be a ravishing bride.”

  Miss Lurleen’s long sigh brought me back to the present. “You’re tired,” I said. “This is all too much for you, I just knew it.”

  “I’m not at all tired. As a matter of fact, I haven’t felt this spry in a long time,” Lurleen said. “I’m just trying to figure out how I’m going to get through dinner with Brooks sitting at the table and not strangle him.”

  My eyes stung as I blinked back tears and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you.”

  “I know you do,” Lurleen huffed, “which explains why I’m here and makes me wish Emily was too.”