Seen It All and Done the Rest (7 page)

“These fools,” she said gently, “are your fellow citizens and yes, you have to answer for each and every choice they make because there is no
they
. That’s the whole point. It’s us. All of us Americans together.”

I looked at her, sitting there in the little Chinese shoes, and the hippie skirt, looking as bohemian as she ever had, but sounding like Pete Seeger’s ghost. “When did you get to be so patriotic?”

“Last summer.” She grinned at my surprise. “Me and Peachy drove across the country. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but I needed a new perspective and I really wanted to see the redwoods. All my life, I had wanted to see those trees, but I had never gotten around to it, so last summer, we took off down historic Route 66, with Nat King Cole on the CD player, and it absolutely changed my life.”

My only driving trip across the country had been with my parents many years ago when there were no hotels or motels for black folks between Gadsden’s in Birmingham and the Dunbar in Los Angeles, with nothing but Texas in between. It was memorable in my mind, primarily for the excruciating embarrassment of having to pee by the side of the road while my mother held up a tablecloth to shield me from the curiosity of passersby.

“Driving across the country made you feel like a citizen?” I could hear the skepticism in my voice.

“I know it sounds corny,” she said, “but the farther away we got from the cities and the more I saw of all those amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty, and met all those people who talked about the weather by going outside to actually see it, the more I felt like it was my country, too, in all its messy, multiracial, multicultural madness and I had a right to claim it as my own. You can, too.”

She was getting a little worked up, but I couldn’t see it. “Go on.”

“I felt something shift in how I look at things. How I see myself in relation to those things and to the world. I don’t even really understand it myself yet, but I’m planning to go again as soon as I can. You know how much I love to chase a new idea.”

Curiosity was one of Abbie’s two defining characteristics. Optimism was the other one. In her latest quest to fully embrace our motherland, she had a perfect place to express both. We had fallen back into conversation as easily as we had the summer we met and I realized how much I’d missed her.

“I wish you’d gotten in touch,” I said.

“I thought about it,” she said, “but I guess I figured we were both probably too busy having our adventures to keep up much of a correspondence and I’ve always hated telephones.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“Besides, look at us,” she refilled our lovely glasses, “together again, drinking champagne in the morning just like in the old days.”

“Tell me you’re not the designated driver,” I said, remembering she was leaving for her friend’s restaurant in a little while.

“Don’t worry. Aretha’s driving. It’s her pickup. I’m just a passenger.”

“How big is this photograph anyway?” I said, surprised that they needed a truck to transport it.

“Well, now that she’s got it all framed, it’s pretty big. Peachy wanted one of those big ornate gold frames they always have in the movie saloons, so Aretha found one. It’s huge!”

In those movies, that frame Abbie’s friend remembered was usually holding a painting of a voluptuous woman, posing comfortably without a stitch. I wondered if she was going all the way with the saloon motif.

“Is it a nude?”

“The photograph?” Abbie said, and started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I said as the doorbell announced an arrival Abbie may or may not have felt coming.

“Nothing,” she said, still laughing, as she headed for the front door. “Except I’m a little too long in the tooth to be hanging over anybody’s bar stark naked, even if the frame is a real antique.”

TEN

I
didn’t know it was a photograph of you!” I said when the smiling young woman who introduced herself as Aretha Hargrove carefully removed the protective padding to reveal a larger-than-life portrait of Abbie standing with her back to the ocean and her face to the sky. The frame was, as desired, big and bold and very gold.

“Well, who else is he going to put up in a place called Sweet Abbie’s?”

My face must have shown my surprise because Abbie laughed and actually blushed, which was truly charming in a woman our age. It takes a certain amount of innocence to respond with an uncontrollable flush when someone ventures too close to whatever you hold secret or sacred or just plain private and therefore not suitable for public consumption.

“The restaurant is named after you?”

Aretha grinned at Abbie. “She’s still in denial, although I don’t know how long you’re going to be able to keep that going once he hangs this bad boy right inside the main entrance.”

“I’m not in denial,” Abbie chided Aretha gently, who simply rolled her eyes and leaned against the truck nonchalantly.

I judged her to be in her late twenties, tall and strong looking with a head full of tiny twists held back from her face with a big red ribbon. She was wearing overalls and a T-shirt, but her long neck and easy grace made her look elegant in spite of her paint-splattered work boots and well-worn navy pea coat. She and Abbie had an easy give-and-take and their joking was the kind that can never mask real affection.

“He who?” I said.

“Peachy, the owner,” Aretha said. “He’s been driving me crazy to get this hung.”

“Peachy’s a man?” I was sure Abbie had said
she
. Or maybe I just assumed the friend she was going to visit, the friend she’d been with when she had her “I’m an American” moment was a woman.

“Of course, he’s a man,” Aretha said, turning to Abbie. “You’re not in denial about that too, are you?”

“I told you. I’m not in denial about anything. Peachy is a friend,” she said to me. “A good friend.”

“The best,” Aretha said to me sotto voce.

Abbie ignored her. “We’ve been through a lot together, and when he decided to open this restaurant, he asked me if he could call it Sweet Abbie’s.”

She shrugged her shoulders and I swear she blushed again. “I told him he could.”

Aretha shook her head and her twists jiggled on her head like the ringlets that used to come standard on the better baby dolls. Cheap baby dolls had molded plastic heads with painted-on curls, but as you moved up in price, the hair got better, too, until you reached the most expensive dolls which had rooted plastic hair, usually blond, that could be washed and set on tiny pink plastic rollers. I wondered if Aretha set hers or just tied it back with a bow and let it go its own buoyant way.

“He should have called it Please, Baby, Please,” she said. “Since he’s only doing it as a love offering.”

This was getting more and more interesting. “What kind of love offering?”

“For Miss A,” Aretha said. “He’s hoping once he proves himself, she’ll let him make an honest woman out of her.”

I raised my eyebrows at Abbie. Was she really considering taking on a number four?

“I should have told you that Aretha is an incurable romantic. She keeps trying to marry me off.”

“I am many things, but an incurable romantic is not one of them. I just know Peachy and I know a little about you.” Aretha grinned at me. “We’ll talk later.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” I said.

Abbie smiled at us both. “You want to come in, or are we ready to roll?”

Aretha checked her watch. “If we get on the road now, we might be able to get this thing on the wall before he opens for dinner. Should we try for it?”

“Sure. I’ll get my things.”

Aretha climbed back into the pickup, which was a bright red, perfectly restored sixties-era Chevy, a gift from her uncle Eddie, she told me after I complimented her on it when we first went outside. He had taught her to drive when she was fourteen, and when she left home to come to Spelman, he handed her the keys.

“I was the only girl in my whole freshman class who owned her own pickup,” she said, still proud of her uniqueness.

Abbie grabbed a small overnight bag and her shawl.

“Still travelin’ light?” I said, echoing Zora.

“High praise from the woman who once hit all the major European cultural capitals in three months with only one suitcase and a duffel bag.”

“Those were the days,” I said, grabbing my coat, confident that I would spend many more pleasant hours in this house over the next few weeks. I still had a lot of questions about this whole citizenship thing that needed answers, but they could wait until another time.

“No, these are the days,” she said, turning to hug me. “I’ll be back on Friday. Why don’t you come for dinner on Sunday? Bring Zora if she’s free.”

“I would love to,” I said. “Thank you.”

Aretha was at the wheel with the motor running as we headed down the front walk. The magnolia was swaying gently in the breeze, the big waxy leaves, dry in winter, clacking softly against each other in the topmost branches. I was loving the feel of this neighborhood. Abbie being just around the corner was icing on the cake.

“By the way,” I said, suddenly remembering my day’s major mission, “how’s that little grocery store across from the newsstand?”

“It’s great,” she said, opening the passenger door and handing her bag to Aretha, who tucked it behind the seat. “The woman who started all the gardens around here opened it six months ago. The produce is always fresh.”

“There’s a bakery in there, too,” Aretha added as Abbie climbed in and clicked her seat belt into place.

“Sounds perfect,” I said.

Abbie reached her arm out the window and I took her hand.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” she said. “We have so much to talk about.”

“I can’t wait!” I said. “Have a safe trip.”

Aretha tooted the horn as they pulled away and I waved them goodbye as they turned the corner and headed for the interstate. It wasn’t even noon and I had already found an old friend, made a new one, shared some champagne, and heard about a man named Peachy who was in hot pursuit of a woman who had just told me that marrying again was the last thing on her mind. Now all I had to do was head over to the grocery store so I could stock Zora’s kitchen with something more interesting than a bottle of Stolichnaya. Abbie was right. We have everything to talk about, but in the meantime, a woman’s still got to eat.

ELEVEN

T
he grocery store was even better than Abbie had described it. Small and crowded with customers moving carefully between the narrow aisles, it boasted a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and fowl, but no red meat. The bakery offered sliced bread and crusty loaves, along with homemade fruit pies and a beautiful chocolate cake, whimsically decorated with a border of bright pink roses and the word
Yes
right in the middle where
Happy Birthday
usually goes.

I bought as much as I could fit into the reusable canvas bags I bought at checkout to do my part to stop global warming, and headed home a happy woman. I’m not political in the traditional sense, but I think some things are fairly obvious, even to somebody like me.
Peace is better than war. Global warming will kill you
. Once I get it, I do what I can.

The phone was ringing as I closed the front door behind me, and I checked the caller ID, delighted to see Howard’s number showing.

“Hey, you!” I said. “Your timing is perfect. I just walked in the door.”

“Hey, yourself,” he said. “My timing is lousy. I’ve been calling you for hours.”

“I’ve only been gone two days.” I laughed. “Can’t live without me, huh?”

“I’m hanging on by a thread already. How was the trip?”

“Uneventful,” I said.

“And how’s my baby?”

“She’s been better, but nothing a little bit of her adoring grandmother’s TLC can’t fix.”

“Let me speak to her.”

“She’s still at work. You’re stuck with me. Guess who I ran into?”

“Greta Garbo.”

“She’s dead, remember?”

“So is Elvis, and people run into him all the time.”

“Abbie Browning.”

“From Paris?”

“Well, she lives here now, but Paris is where we met her,” I said, surprised he remembered her. “I’m impressed with your powers of recall.”

“Does she still smell like patchouli?”

Now I was really impressed. “Yes, she does! How can you possibly remember that?”

“Please,” he said. “She was the only black girl I knew who always,
always
smelled like patchouli.”

“How many white ones did you know?”

“Hundreds. Thousands! There was a moment there when after every show, all my costumes would smell like hippie hash bars, but that’s not why I called you.”

“I thought you called to say you missed me.”

“I’m not the only one. I talked to François this morning. He can’t believe that you left without giving him a chance to explain.”

“Explaining has never been his strong point or mine.”

“Well, all that might be about to change. The board is meeting next Wednesday to discuss the season. They wanted you there in case the press shows up.”

“Why would the press care about a routine meeting?”

“Because I’ve alerted them to the strong possibility of unpleasantness.”

“You didn’t!”

“I most certainly did. How else am I going to get the word out to your many fans that their queen may be in peril?”

I laughed out loud. If I had any doubt that Howard knew what to do to get me back where I wanted to be, his status report obliterated it. “You’re my hero.”

Howard laughed, too. “Of course I am, but I’m doing this for purely selfish reasons. I’m already dying of loneliness. Without you, everything is a bore.”

“You’re never bored!”

“I know that, but if I was, now would be the time,” he said.

“I miss you, too,” I said. “Call me after the board meeting and let me know how it went?”

“I’ve already got you on speed dial,” he said. “Gotta run. Kiss my baby for me! Love you madly!”

“Love you more!”

Which was probably not true. When it comes to unconditional love, me and Howard are tied for first place.