A Peach of a Pair Page 7

  He motioned toward what was a beautiful dining room with tall walnut wainscoting that matched the glossy dark floors. Just above the wainscoting, the walls were a lovely candlelight yellow. Connected by a fancy ceiling medallion, a glorious chandelier hung over a long mahogany Chippendale table with ten chairs that could easily seat fourteen guests. A large oil portrait of horsemen in red coats ready for the hunt hung over a long buffet on one side of the room, and four smaller paintings of a horse in various stages of a jump were on the opposite wall.

  An older woman, maybe in her sixties, ran her hand over the tablecloth. She was pretty, with a heart-shaped face the color of black coffee. Striking amber-colored eyes scrutinized fine china bowls scattered across the table full of mashed potatoes, field peas, fried okra, creamed corn. A silver butter dish and a tray of biscuits were the centerpiece. At the head of the table, a beautiful roast beef was swimming in gravy. And, after not having an appetite for days, I was suddenly hungry.

  “Dinner looks delicious,” I said, making Cora May smile.

  “You have one of Cora May’s biscuits,” Katie said, pushing her wheelchair up to the table. “You’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven.” She pulled into an empty space and transferred herself to the dining chair on her right, glancing back at the chair, a silent command for Remmy to wheel it away.

  “Aw, Miss Katie, how you do go on. But everybody knows it ain’t my biscuits that’ll take you to the back side of heaven’s gate; it’s my cornbread. For sure.”

  “I can attest to that,” Remmy said, holding my chair.

  “Thank you,” I said, ignoring that his hands lingered on my chair for a moment before he pushed Katie closer to the table.

  “Won’t you stay and eat a bite, Cora May?” he asked.

  “Thank you, Remmy, but I best get on home. Darnell will be wanting his supper.”

  “Everything’s wonderful, Cora May. We’ll take it from here. Thank you very much,” Remmy said, sitting down and placing his napkin in his lap.

  The woman nodded and gave his shoulder a squeeze, then Katie’s.

  “Love you,” Katie said.

  “Love you too, babies,” Cora May said, taking one last look at the table.

  Remmy served the roast beef and the bowls were passed around. While Cora May’s biscuits were indeed heavenly, they weren’t as good as my mother’s or my grandmothers’ back home.

  “I’m so glad you stayed, Nettie. It’s so nice to have another girl in the house.” Katie smirked, as she heaped her plate with friend okra.

  “What are you talking about? Between you and Cora May, I’m outnumbered,” Remmy drawled, passing the peas to Nettie. “Don’t believe her for a second, Nettie; those two are forever ganging up on me to get whatever they want.”

  “Why, Remmy Foster Wilkes, you take that back,” Katie said playfully. “Cora May and I have never conspired against you. Not once. Except of course when you ordered that awful blue suit. You should have seen it, Nettie; it came all the way from Chicago and was so ugly, I had Cora May burn it.”

  “I loved that suit.” Remmy smiled.

  “You have rumpled old pajamas that look better than that suit,” Katie laughed. “I considered it my sisterly duty to save you from yourself.”

  “Enough about the one poor clothing choice I’ve made in my life,” Remmy said, making Katie nearly choke on his words. “What did you think about the sisters, Nettie?”

  I didn’t know Remmy or Katie well enough to tell them what I really thought, that Emily was rude, overbearing and Lurleen was at best brutally honest. “They were nice.”

  Remmy and Katie looked at each other and burst out laughing, making me wonder what I’d gotten myself into.

  “My apologies, Nettie,” Remmy said. “Of course the sisters are nice.”

  “In their own way.” Katie punctuated the thought with a huge grin.

  “I spoke to Miss Lurleen before we left,” Remmy said, fully recovered but with that inherited Wilkes smirk. “She mentioned she would like to have your things shipped to their home.”

  “Oh, I’ll call Dean Kerrigan’s office and arrange it first thing tomorrow,” Katie piped up. “She’s such a dear; I haven’t spoken to her in ages. She wasn’t in when I called to have the advertisement put on the bulletin board. It will be great to catch up with her.”

  “That’s okay,” I blurted out, my heart racing. I knew Dean Kerrigan would keep my secret, but I wasn’t so sure about the girls who worked part-time in the administration office. Of course, after my tirade with Mother, everyone knew my sordid tale, and some would be only too happy to share it with Katie. “My roommate will mail my things.”

  “Nonsense,” Remmy said. “I’ll just swing by the college tomorrow and pick them up. I’d planned to visit a colleague at Baptist Hospital anyway.”

  “Oh, I’d like to see that, a dormitory room’s worth of girly chattel in that red sports car, flying down the highway. Besides.” Katie narrowed her eyes. “You have appointments tomorrow.”

  “Only until two o’clock; that’s plenty of time to get there and back, and I’m sure Nettie is anxious to get her belongings, settle in.”

  “It’s not much, really. Just a suitcase, a few boxes of clothes, some mementos,” I said. “They don’t warrant a special trip; they can be easily shipped.”

  “I’m sure they can,” Remmy said, pouring himself more tea. “But I’m more than happy to do it for you, Nettie.”

  The glow from the brotherly-sisterly banter left Katie’s face and was replaced with a look that resembled the one I’d seen when she was talking to the husband hunter. Katie turned her attention to her plate, head down, quiet. Diagnosing her mood, her brother threw out a playfully arrogant line about the college, much like the one I’d snapped at him for earlier. He looked hopeful his sister would take the bait. She didn’t. Neither did I, and the remainder of the dinner was noticeably silent.

  REMMY

  Nettie had protested when Remmy sent the girls to porch sit while he washed the dinner dishes. Come morning, Cora May would fuss at him for sure, but that was okay. He thought the menial task would take his mind off of the call he’d gotten from Cecil, but it didn’t. Tomorrow Remmy would interview for the job he’d always wanted, even if it wasn’t in Charleston.

  But he wasn’t fresh out of med school, like Cecil was when he started working there. No doubt the powers that be would wonder why he hadn’t plowed ahead with his career, sold the practice in Camden right off the bat, and moved on with his life.

  From the porch, Nettie Gilbert laughed at something Katie said, and he found himself smiling at the sound. Seemed like the girls were having a good time, and Remmy was glad. He loved his sister, but lately, her moods could change quicker than the dark April sky that had just opened up, making him wonder if everything that had happened was finally catching up to her.

  He picked the meat platter up out of the soapy water and rinsed it off, running his hand across the surface until it felt clean. Lightning flashed. Katie squealed and then giggled. Even when she was little, she hated the thunder but loved to watch the sky light up with angry streaks. The memory of her running full tilt through the house for her bed made him freeze for a few seconds. He could almost see her on her belly, legs windshield wiping back and forth while she watched the long window for the next flash.

  After the accident, Katie hadn’t missed a beat when she was confined to that wheelchair. Maybe her losses were finally catching up to her. It wouldn’t surprise Remmy; there was not a day that went by that he didn’t think about those last perfect moments in his life, the day he graduated from med school. Mama, Daddy, and Katie had come to Charleston to watch him accept his diploma from the Medical College of South Carolina. He remembered looking into the crowd and finding his mother, who was always such a crier, but even more so that day.

  She and Daddy were sitting
in the row closest to the stage, so that when he shook the dean’s hand, he could see Mama boohooing. Daddy was of course as stoic as ever and still smarting because Remmy had finally told him he wouldn’t be taking over his practice in Camden, but Daddy had beamed just a little when Remmy waved his diploma at them. And Katie had been so beautiful that day; she’d even drug her fiancé, Jack, to the show.

  Poor guy had to endure a car trip with Mama and Katie planning the wedding, then had to sit through a boring graduation ceremony. Afterward, Mama had made Remmy pose for a thousand pictures. He still had the one Jack took of the four of them, the one where Daddy actually smiled. He kept it tucked away in his sock drawer. That last moment frozen forever on Kodak paper, when Mama and Daddy could still draw breath and Katie’s legs still worked. Before Remmy became the country doctor he never wanted to be.

  He’d paid dearly for surviving the tragedy without so much as a scratch: the loss of his parents, not taking that job he wanted in Charleston. But no more so than Katie. Jack had been injured, but walked away from the accident, and when he found out Katie was never getting out of that wheelchair, he’d walked away from her too.

  Even four years after the accident, Remmy still couldn’t bring himself to change the shingle above the neat red brick building a few doors down on Broad Street—Dr. Foster Wilkes, MD. It would feel too much like surrender. But he would never surrender to this life in Camden.

  He stacked the last bowl in the drain, threw the towel on the counter, and let out a tired sigh. Before he left the office to take Nettie over to the Eldridges’ house, he’d gone over the files Katie had set on his desk; he’d done it more out of habit than necessity. He knew tomorrow would shape up to be no different from any other day. Mrs. Casper was coming in for her bursitis. The Johnson triplets, who always came down with whatever virus was going around all at the same time. He’d shuffled through the others to find all of them unremarkable. He’d had to reschedule his appointments after lunch to meet with his friend Cecil, hopefully before the interview. It would be interesting to hear what he had to say.

  Mignon Coffey’s file had been on top of the stack along with a note from Katie. This wretched woman called today, six times. I’m tempted to turn her in to the authorities for harassment. He smiled at Katie’s tenacity, although sometimes he wished she would give that protective streak of hers a rest. Mignon was nice enough. Pretty. Had a little hypochondria, that’s all. But Katie despised her.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have gone out with Mignon, but that was for him to decide. He didn’t care how much he loved his sister, he was not going to discuss his love life with her. She meddled enough as it was.

  He headed down the hallway that led to his father’s office, sat down on the ancient leather chair, and propped his feet up on the desk, something that had always killed his father, even though he did the same thing all the time. After Remmy took over the practice, he used to sit here and believe the life he’d planned for himself before the wreck was still possible. It wasn’t long before Charleston seemed as far away as California. China. But this new opportunity in Columbia was just what he needed to finally practice surgery again, and with Cecil there, it would seem like old times.

  Until then, he was still right where his father wanted him to be. He blew out a breath, dialed the number, and waited. The phone rang so many times, he sat up and shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out his car keys, ready to go over there.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Buck?” He breathed out a sigh of relief. “This is Remmy. Just checking in.”

  “No. You’re just calling to see if I’m dead yet. We’ll I’m not, so you can hang up now.”

  Remmy smiled, grinned actually, and returned his feet to the place on the desk where the finish had been worn slightly away from the backs of three generations of Wilkes shoe leather.

  “You feeling all right?”

  “I was until I had to get out of my chair during this storm and answer the blame telephone. I told you to stop calling me every day. You’re a doctor; you ought to have something better to do.”

  “Than annoy you? No sir, I can’t think of anything better to do right offhand,” Remmy laughed.

  Sometimes calling Buck was the best part of his day. But Buck was eighty-five with a laundry list of infirmities. One day Remmy was going to call and there would be no answer, no sweet spot in his day.

  “Did you take your medicine, Mr. Buck?” Silence. “If you think I’m annoying on the phone, I know you don’t want me to come out to your house in this rain and watch you take it. Now lay the phone down and go take your pills.”

  “You, treating me like a five-year-old,” Buck huffed. “I have underwear older than you.”

  “Well, stop acting like you’re five, and go take your medicine.”

  Remmy held the phone away from his ear in anticipation of Buck slamming the handset down on the telephone table. He heard the familiar clunk and then the sound of the old man shuffling off. A few minutes later, he was back. “You’re a pain in my ass, Remmy Wilkes.”

  “Yes, sir. Good night, Mr. Buck.”

  A bolt of lightning flashed. Then a thunderclap made the girls squeal before the whole street went pitch black. “Getting candles,” Remmy hollered. He felt his way out of the office, down the hallway, and back to the kitchen. He opened the junk drawer and felt around for the flashlight, then located a couple of tapers and some matches. He turned the flashlight on, grabbed some matches and a couple of empty Mason jars out of the pantry, and pointed the beam toward the porch.

  “Give Nettie the light,” Katie said as the screen door closed behind him. “We’re going to tell stories till the electricity comes back on.”

  Remmy handed her the light and lit the candles, dripping wax in the bottoms of the jars and then standing the candles on end and holding them in place until the wax cooled. He sat down in the rocker across from Nettie. “Hope you’ve got a lot of stories. Last time we had a storm like this, the power was out for a couple of days,” he said.

  Nettie had seemed so serious earlier at his office, the sisters’ house, on the phone with her roommate and hadn’t relaxed much more over dinner, especially after Remmy offered to fetch her things. He liked seeing her laughing, having a good time.

  But when Nettie held the flashlight under her chin, an attempt to look eerie before she broke into laughter, Remmy’s breath caught in his chest. Earlier, when she’d walked into his office he thought she was pretty enough, even more so when he’d riled her. But the way the light caressed her face, she was breathtaking. Striking, green eyes, red hair falling down her back, full lips she kept trying to draw into a thin line. But then they would turn up just before she started laughing. She held the light with one hand and talked with the other, long, fluid, graceful strokes. And as smart as Remmy was, he felt moronic for not noticing right off the bat how truly beautiful Nettie Gilbert was.

  “This meeting of the C-Square girls is officially called to order,” Nettie announced. Remmy pretended he was getting up to leave, but it would have taken more fortitude than he had to do so. He grinned at her and was rewarded when, for a fraction of a second, the tiniest flirty look crossed Nettie’s face before turning her attention to his sister. “The honorable Katie Wilkes presiding,” Nettie said, passing the light to Katie.

  NETTIE

  It is normal, maybe even inbred for a Southern girl to flirt, but I wanted to slap myself silly for the unguarded moment I gave Remmy. The last thing I wanted was some kind of dalliance with any man, most notably one who seemed to have his pick of the most eligible girls in town.

  I hadn’t really thought about my life after Brooks, but after meeting the sisters today, I was sure I didn’t want to be an old maid. Not that it would be so bad to be without a man. No, I was sure I would endure spinsterhood quite nicely. But, without a sister? Maybe Katie would consider joining ranks with me. Almost twenty-five
, she didn’t seem the least bit concerned about having a man around. Didn’t mention them once, which was quite different than the girls from the college who seemed to minor in everything and major in boys.

  While Remmy washed the dishes, I’d come right out and asked Katie if she was seeing anyone special. The girl didn’t even blush, just laughed that hearty laugh of hers and changed the subject. No, Katie Wilkes was much too busy, too happy, to be concerned with a man and the pitfalls that came with one.

  “So, is Miss Ludy still with the PE department?” Katie asked. “I was so terrified of her my freshman year, that booming voice. ‘Nobody gets their period three times in one month, now get out there on that field, Wilkes.’”

  “She is indeed still there, and everyone adores her, although the freshmen still fear her. I know I did until I realized how much she loves all of us, and the college. We’re lucky to have someone of her caliber.”

  “A PE teacher of high caliber. Just how high would that be?” Remmy teased.

  “She won six medals at the First International Track Meet in Paris in 1922, two of them gold. And she helped pave the way for women to compete in the Olympics, Dr. Wilkes. Is that high enough for you?” Nettie sassed.

  “Ignore him, Nettie. Please tell me Dr. Babble isn’t at the college anymore. He was old as dirt when I was in the chorus,” Katie said.

  “Oh, no. My freshman year, he retired, and Mr. Darr took over. He’s from California; looks just like Eddie Fisher but with a James Dean pompadour. He’s quite handsome.

  “I played piano for the chorus. You should have seen the girls staring at him all dreamy like. I understand when Dr. Babble ran the chorus, girls had to be threatened or bribed with extended curfews to get them to participate. When Guthrie Darr took over, he had to turn students away.”

  “Ooh, Guthrie Darr. Even his name sounds handsome. And looking like Eddie Fisher? I’d sign up in a heartbeat,” Katie said. Maybe she wasn’t the best prospective partner for my spinsterhood.