I knew what my sister had said. I remember it distinctly.
“Girl, you need to come to your senses,” KayRita had advised me, and I’d heard the sound of water in the background, probably washing out her customer’s perm. My sister laughed, a deep, husky chuckle that sounded like a richly seasoned stew of a few Scotch and waters once or twice a week, Kool cigarettes, one husband, two long-term boyfriends, two grown children, and three grandbabies. She had laughed and told her customer, “Just hold that towel right there, sweetie, I’ll be right back. Juanita, you still there? You hear me? I’m telling you, you got to come to your senses. But don’t do it too soon, girl! You might as well enjoy yourself while you’ve done lost your mind.” And then she laughed again. “I know I would.”
I stretched as far as I could, then reached down to fold the afghan that I’d used to cover myself. Figured I’d counted long enough. I was up to one hundred something.
“I wish that I could say that I can’t believe you would use your own child like that, to blackmail somebody, to manipulate somebody into doing what you want. I wish I could say that, Bertie, but I can believe it and I do believe it.” I dropped the folded afghan on the couch. “I’m staying the night. I want to play with Teishia a little bit, take pictures of her. And then tomorrow? You’re taking me to the airport and I’m catching the first plane back to Minneapolis and, from there, I’m going back to Missoula. Don’t pull this stunt on me again.”
“Some mother you are,” she spat at me, her eyes dark with hatred.
Her anger made me feel sick. The venom in her voice and the heat of her eyes made my head hurt. No, it made my heart hurt. But that’s the way it is. You can give birth to them but how they turn out ain’t up to you. Sometimes they take their own path.
“I do the best I can, Bertie. There’s a story about folks who cry wolf, Bertie. Don’t you remember it?”
“Momma, what the hell are you talking about? What do those damn stories have to do with anything? You still got your head in the clouds, just like Rashawn said. Still talking nonsense and bullshit. Still a selfish bitch.”
“Yes, I am a bitch,” I told my daughter in a voice I knew that she’d never heard before, walking toward her with a step that made her back up until she bumped into the kitchen counter. “I am a bitch. And this bitch is going back to Montana.”
I got hooked on reading quotations when I was in Arizona, reading all the brilliant things folks have said over the years. Some man said that you can never go home again. I don’t believe that. I think that you can go home again, but you won’t be the same person that you were. If you’re all right with that, then go on home. But you got to be careful. Nothing stays the same.
Beryl Markham flew airplanes over Africa, and when she left the continent, she really never left. She always carried it in her heart. When she came back, it wasn’t the same place, and she wasn’t the same woman. I got the feeling, reading her words, that she never got over that disappointment. What she said about life’s lessons and being a slow learner, I think, applies to me, too. When you leave a place, especially somewhere that you’ve been awhile and have a lot of memories of, you can’t be wishy-washy about it. You have to get up, pack your bags, and get out. And stay out. And face the new day like you’ve got some sense. The old days are gone and wondering what went wrong or right won’t help. You’ve got to get on with it.
That sounds like something Millie would have said.
Chapter Thirteen
I
left Columbus on a Northwest flight back to Missoula, Montana, by way of Minneapolis. Bertie took me to the airport in her boyfriend’s car. At least we were on speaking terms by the time I left.
I said, “Good-bye, Bertie. Thanks for the ride.”
She said, “Yeah.”
Teishia gave me a hug and a big wet kiss and said “Bye-bye, Nana!”
The romance novels that I read are neat little packages of imaginary lives filled with drama, sex, intrigue, sex, betrayal, redemption, and more sex. All of the loose ends are pulled together in the end, the wrinkles of disappointments and tragedies ironed out on a setting of permanent press with a little steam added for the tough times. Once the bow is tied, the words “The End” appear and you close the book satisfied that everything in the world is OK.
But real lives are not like that; I guess that’s why we read these books. I wish that I could tie up my relationship with my daughter with a big, bright pink bow. Sometimes we have the right answers to the questions. Sometimes we don’t. And sometimes, we can’t tell one from the other.
Jess and I drove back to Paper Moon on a nearly empty highway and in near silence. Occasionally an eighteen-wheeler roared past or a pickup or an old, beat-up car that didn’t look as if it should have been able to travel at eighty miles an hour. I saw an elk cow and her calf not too far away and curious cattle grazing near the road. It was still cold and the snow that’s come in and out of the hills for the past month still covered the ground in some places, but Montana was shrugging her shoulders, as if she could shake off the winter like a woman taking off a sweater. The smell of ice in the air was gone, replaced by a clean, crisp fragrance. It’s the smell of warmth. A funny thing to say since there wasn’t any heat attached. But if warmth and spring and renewal had a smell, this would have been it. The sky was blue today, the sun was shining, more boldly than it usually did as if it, too, was telling winter to get lost.
I looked across the plains and the hills and saw the mountains coming closer and closer, more green and brown now than brown and gray. Rough in places, cold and treacherous in places but still beautiful. Like life. Not easy, usually hard, only sometimes smooth, but always, always beautiful.
Living with those rough spots is the hardest part. They fester like sores, they scratch like insect bites, they rub like a sore heel against the back of a shoe. They stick with us; it’s a test. Can you still smile and love and rejoice even though you have a sore rubbing against the back of your foot? Can you? Can I?
The layover in Minneapolis had stretched out from one hour to four so we didn’t get back to Paper Moon until most of the lights were out in the county. With Randolph manning the kitchen these days, Jess had more time to be my “private chauffeur,” as he called it, and I was glad. We spent too little time together; funny thing since we lived in such a small town. I spent most of my days and a few of my nights at Millie’s, but most of my nights at Jess’s. It just seemed to work out that way.
But now, now the door to “back home” was closing. The probate hearing was coming up. Decisions would be made that I would have to deal with. I didn’t know if I was ready or not. Pros and cons, the right thing to do against the smart thing to do, the selfless choice versus the selfish one. Hayward-Smith’s offer, school, Arizona, a business of my own . . . the future was hiding in the fog, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted it to clear.
I hung up my coat and grabbed my purse, heading down the hall only to find Jess blocking the bedroom door. He pointed to the second bedroom at the end of the hall.
“Got something to show you. It’s a surprise,” he said, slipping past me toward the other room. He opened the door. “After you.”
Dracula got up and loped along beside me.
“Now, what you gonna show me in there but some stacks of boxes, junk from
way
back in the day, including an eight track, I might add, and old clothes?” I teased him.
The extra bedroom was a joke between us. Jess had owned the cabin for over ten years and hadn’t unpacked yet. Everything he’d brought with him from his travels and from his life—from Bangkok, Paris, L.A., Vancouver, and St. Louis, or anything he didn’t feel like dealing with, like his army stuff—were thrown into that second bedroom. It was filled from ceiling to floor, from window to door with junk. I’d only been in there once. Opened the door and was almost crushed to death by a tower of badly stacked boxes that fell over on me.
I stopped just short of the doorway.
“You mean, you cleaned it out?” I asked him, amazed. “Finally?” Dracula walked past me into the room.
Jess’s eyes twinkled.
“It’s even better than that,” he said.
I walked in and just stood there staring.
All of the boxes and the junk were gone. The eight track was gone, too, and the bits and pieces and parts and portions of gadgets that he’d collected over the years and the five boxes of record albums had disappeared. With the room cleared, I noticed that the floor was hardwood. It had been polished to a shiny golden color and was now partly covered by the Navaho-style rug that I’d bought in Phoenix. Against the south wall was a small futon that Jess had covered with quilts, and a table with a lamp. He’d stacked some of my books there. A small, antique-looking desk sat in front of the east-facing window, and the easel that I’d been using for my art class was set up in front of the south window that overlooked Kaylin’s Ridge. He’d taken down the tired-looking canvaslike curtains that I hated and replaced them with white shutters. The baskets that I’d started collecting—sweet grass, Cherokee, and others—sat on the little bookcase next to the door, and my four African violets, rescued from the noise and smoke of the diner, sat serenely in the window.
For once, I was speechless.
And Jess was so pleased that he couldn’t stand it.
“I . . . thought you might want a room of your own,” he said quietly. “For when you came . . . back. Do you like it?”
Dracula had already made up his mind. He gave me a look that said, “I hope you don’t mind but I’m just going to try out this sofa here,” as he hopped up on the quilts and settled his large head on the armrest.
I still couldn’t say anything. I just walked over to the bookshelf. All of my books were there. I made myself busy by fiddling with the easel, trying to straighten it when it didn’t need straightening. Busywork. I ran my fingertips across the top of the little desk where Jess had set a beautiful clothbound notebook and a real elegant-looking midnight-blue ballpoint pen. Perfect. I wiped a tear away with the back of my hand. My African violets—“the quads,” as Mignon had named them—were thriving. They had been watered recently and their purple blooms nestled into the deep green furry leaves like a child wrapped in her favorite blanket as she took a nap.
“Jess, I . . .” I looked at him as he stood in the doorway. He was waiting for me to say something definite. And my words were stuck in my throat like crumbled saltines. I knew that my eyes were wet. I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
“This is news,” Jess said, his voice gentle. “Wait’ll I tell
The County Register.
Juanita Louis is speechless.” He was smiling at me but I could tell that he wanted to hear my reaction. The problem was, I was too choked up to say anything. “I . . . you . . . well, Juanita, you don’t have to feel obligated or anything. I just thought . . . you might want some space of your own. You know, for when you’re here. Instead of half your stuff at Millie’s, half here, and all of those boxes that Randy sent and . . .” He stopped and looked at me, his smile fading. “Damn it, Juanita, say something!”
I think I hugged that man so hard that I bruised him. I got the collar of his shirt and some of his hair wet with my tears. He had to hand me a tissue right quick because I almost blew my nose on his sleeve. And I still hadn’t said anything coherent.
“I’ve never had . . .” My throat had squeezed shut and my mouth was just opening and closing. I wanted to tell Jess:
No one has ever done anything like this for me! I’ve never had a real room of my own, not like this. With just my books and a little place to write and my own couch and . . . never. No one had ever done that for me. And I hadn’t gotten around to doing it for myself.
I wanted to tell him that and much more. But none of those words came out of my mouth.
Jess stroked my hair and held my face in his hands and kissed my forehead.
“Just say ‘thank-you,’ Juanita,” he murmured.
“Thank-you.” I managed to get those two words out.
“That’s OK, Miz Louis,” Jess said. “Welcome home.”
Depending on how you looked at it, “Soul Food Night” at the Paper Moon Diner was either a big success or a sorry failure. It depended on where you sat, with whom, and whether you got there early or not—because we actually ran out of food. That’s a first for the Paper Moon Diner. One thing was for sure, I never thought that those folks who’d lived on brown and white food all of their lives would take to greens, yams, corn bread, and fried fish like they did. As Fats Waller said, “One never knows,
do one
?”
“So what do we have on the menu?” Jess asked. After I told him, he raised his eyebrows. “My cholesterol shot up just listening to you. Is
everything
going to be fried?”
Jess and I had been planning this for weeks. Winter was pretty much over. Folks were getting tired of chilies, soups, and stews, and were ready for spring and sun and flowers and something different to eat. I’d never intruded on Jess’s dinner menus (Well, OK, I did intrude
once . . .
those shitty, um, shitake mushrooms.) but he was in an experimental mood and wanted to start hosting “theme” dinners. I warned him not to get too suddity with those.
He’d frowned at me.
“Suddity?” he’d repeated, his forehead dissolving into folds of confusion.
“Jess, these people don’t like a lot of frills and fuss,” I went on. “Just plain basic food that they can recognize the names of. They want to be able to at least have heard of what you’re serving on the menu.”
“OK, I’ll give you that,” Jess answered. “But what’s ‘suddity’?”
Long-distance phone calls and e-mails to my son Randy helped “refine” the menus. “Refine” was the word that Randy used.
“That kid has a gift,” Jess said, printing a recipe that Randy had sent over. “Thinking about getting him out here to help me overhaul the dinner menus, maybe in July. Maybe August. Do you think he’d come?”
I was prouder than I could say. My boy, the chef, was refining menus. And maybe someday, if I passed this next big exam, I might be doing the same thing. Maybe here in Paper Moon, maybe in Sedona. Hayward-Smith’s offer briefly cast a shadow across my thoughts. If I accepted, I could buy two inns and have change left over. I’d have enough cash to do a lot of things for a lot of people. But Millie’s legacy would be paved over and used as a parking lot.
If I didn’t take Mr. High-Up Butt’s offer, I could try to make a go of the inn. There was a little money left to run it but not enough for much of a cushion. If the business didn’t take off, I would have to close Millie’s and sell out anyway. And I’d be right back where I’d started. I tried to focus my thoughts but the loose ends of my life zipped around my head like racing cars.
School was making me feel stupider by the day. My “make or break test” was coming up. I had made up my mind that if I got a C-plus or better on the test, I would see it through to graduation next spring. If I didn’t, I was out of there. It’s not that I wanted to fail, it wasn’t that at all. But I had begun to wonder if I was cut out for the program. The “schoolwork” part was pretty tough on me. Plus, I had to get really used to being on my feet twelve hours a day instead of six. I was, after all, just about the only person in the class over the age of fourteen. The other students were nice, and the ones on my cooking “team” were great, especially the redheaded kid, Marc, who was my biggest fan. But I was still in over my head with the homework and the conversions and trying to figure out how to adapt the formulas to make two loaves instead of three or three dozen éclairs instead of four dozen. It didn’t help that I felt that I was the least “decorated” student in the class. Just hearing some of the others talk about their engineering exploits and chemical experiments, spreadsheets and business projects made me blue. I only had a degree in the school of very hard knocks. So I was already practicing my “I’ve dropped out” speech—the one I was going to deliver to Jess.
The bed-and-breakfast was running nicely (Thank God for Inez!) but Hayward-Smith and I weren’t speaking. It was a diplomatic freeze. He sent messages to me through Williams or Amy Hsu. I saw him a couple of times when I was working at Millie’s but he didn’t speak. And I didn’t either. The hearing, now only two weeks away, couldn’t come soon enough for both of us. And I had four days left on his offer. After my trip back to Ohio, I was just a bit frazzled. That was when Jess reminded me that I was directing the next theme dinner.
“It was your idea, y’know,” he said.
Great. Another self-inflicted wound.
The Sonoma Valley wine night (my idea) was a hit with the up-and-comings from Missoula, the northern Italian night (Jess’s idea) was a complete sellout; we even had folks eating in the kitchen! Capacity for the diner is sixty and there were at least seventy-five people there, but since the fire chief was sitting at the counter, marinara sauce dripping down his chin, we got off easy.
“Soul Food Night” was scheduled just at the time that every other damn soap opera in my life started boiling over. So when Carl backed up the truck on Friday and began carrying in boxes of fish, fresh chickens, cans of condensed milk for the sweet potato pies and, not to be overlooked, brown paper sacks full of collard greens, I was, as they used to say in my great-grandmother’s day, “in a state.”
“Is this some kind of Italian lettuce?” Carl had asked, holding up one elephant ear–sized leaf. “ ’Cause if it is,” he added, flicking at something with his fingers, “there’s a spider sleeping on the underside.” The arachnid fell to the floor and started to make an escape but was stopped by the heel of a size ten-and-a-half Timberland boot.