The Language of Sycamores (24 page)

“Do you actually
know
how to bake an apple pie from scratch?” I asked as we went in the door.

Kate giggled. “No. But we can try the recipe in Grandma’s box, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll toss the whole thing in the trash before anyone wakes up.”

“Sounds like a good plan.” Linking arms, we went in the door.

By the time everyone else woke up, we had apple pies with sloppily braided crusts baking in the oven. After breakfast, we tried a few more of Grandma’s recipes, while James and Dell took baby Rose out for a walk. The house began to smell just the way I remembered it—thick with an aroma of dough and cinnamon and the syrupy drips that burned onto the bottom of the oven. We were just starting a batch of Grandma’s banana-oatmeal cookies when Kate glanced at the clock and realized company would be arriving soon.

Joshua came wandering through the kitchen, looking for cookies,
and refused to believe that there were no cookies yet, only raw dough. Hopping up and down, he moved along the edge of the counter, trying to catch glimpses into the various bowls and baking sheets, anywhere cookies might be.

“Josh, there are no cookies yet,” Kate insisted, putting a tray into the oven, as he reached for a cookie sheet hanging partway off the counter. “No! Josh! Those aren’t cookies, that’s”—the cookie sheet toppled, just as Kate finished with—“flour!” The room filled with a white cloud, and when it cleared Josh was standing with his hands behind his back, smiling impishly like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

“Ohhh, Josh,” Kate groaned, looking at the mess with an astonished, mortified, what-do-we-do-now expression.

Twisting his lips to one side, Josh rolled his eyes upward, flour clinging to his eyelashes. “It’s not cookies,” he observed. “It’s snow. Wotsa snow.”

Kate and I burst into a gale of laughter. We didn’t even hear the back door open until someone said, “Oh, my gosh, what happened?”

We turned around, and Jenilee was standing there with all of her family. Kate and I looked at each other and laughed harder.

“Come . . . on . . . in,” Kate coughed out.

“Jeni-wee!” Josh exclaimed, and ran across the kitchen to give her a big, white hug. He was still clinging to her legs when he noticed that there were children behind her—a boy and a girl not too much older than he—staring at him wide eyed.

Jenilee stepped aside and quickly made the introductions. “Joshua, this is my niece and nephew, Alex and Amber. You guys are cousins.”

Alex and Amber gave Joshua uncertain looks, clinging to the hands of their father, a tall, dark-haired man who had Jenilee’s broad smile, as he stepped forward to introduce himself. “I’m Drew Lane. This is my wife, Darla.” He motioned to an attractive woman with curly brown hair, who put her hand out to shake mine and Kate’s. Drew finished the introductions, motioning to a blond high school age kid. “And this is my little brother, Nate.”

Kate and I gaped at Nate. He looked like Joshua all grown up and without the flour coating.

Jenilee knew what we were thinking. “I told you he and Joshua look just alike,” she said, pulling a photo from her purse and handing it to Kate. “Look how much his baby pictures are like Joshua.”

All of us craned to see a small boy struggling to hold up a stringer of fish; then we looked at Joshua.

Shrugging, Nate said, “I’ve got a better tan,” with an impish grin that was exactly like Joshua’s.

We laughed again, and an old woman elbowed her way from the back of the crowd, pulling an elderly man behind her. She had Grandma Rose’s hawkish nose. “I guess nobody’s going to introduce us.” Grabbing my hand, she pumped it like she was trying to draw water from a well. “I’m your grandmother’s cousin Eudora Gibson . . . I mean Jaans. This is my husband, June.” She gave him an adoring look. “We’re newlyweds.”

June smiled, slightly embarrassed, then shook our hands good-naturedly and said, “Pleased to meet you.”

Once the introductions were over, Kate surveyed the flour-covered kitchen. “I’m sorry about the mess. We just had a . . . little . . . culinary disaster. I guess we could go sit on the porch and visit. We’re still waiting for everyone else to get here, and for my husband, Ben, to return from St. Louis.”

Mrs. Jaans swept into the kitchen with a determined stride that rivaled Grandma Rose’s. “Oh, hon, I think before we do anything, we better clean this place up.”

Our first act as a family was to rescue the kitchen. By the time James and Dell came back with Rose, things were pretty much back to normal, which was a good thing, because as soon as Mrs. Jaans saw the baby, she wasn’t interested in cleaning the kitchen anymore. She sat in one of the chairs playing patty-cake with Rose, while Kate, Darla, Jenilee, and I finished baking the cookies and fixing lunch, just in time for the arrival of my father’s sister, Aunt Jeane, and her husband, Uncle Robert.

“Well, your father should be here any minute. He stayed with us in St. Louis last night, but he wanted to drive his own car here today,” Aunt Jeane said, whisking a hand through her short gray hair as she moved efficiently into the kitchen.

Uncle Robert trailed behind her, carrying a platter of deviled eggs. “Get ready, Kate,” he warned, smiling. “Your dad stopped off for supplies for another one of his junior science experiments. Something involving a wading pool, a hula hoop, glycerin, and dish soap. It’ll probably be a little messy.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Kate said, then quickly made the introductions. Afterward, Aunt Jeane sent Uncle Robert outside to put the eggs on the picnic table. He passed my father in the doorway, and Kate ran through the introductions again as my father came in.

Once the greetings were over, we stood in uncomfortable silence. I waited for Dad to bring up the Lansing business in front of everyone. I didn’t doubt that Kate had prepped him on all of that, and it would be like him to start a discussion right there in front of everyone. No doubt he couldn’t wait to analyze the events and my possible culpability in the company’s demise, and to point out all the ways that I hadn’t quite lived up to
perfect
. He’d have things to say about my new plans for my life. He would want to expound on all the reasons why moving to Missouri and taking a twenty-six-thousand-dollar-a-year job was insanity.

I bolstered my defenses when he turned to me. A pulse pounded in my throat, like I was a kid again, standing there with my less-than-stellar report card. “Hi, Dad,” I heard myself say flatly.

“Karen.” His face gave no indication of his feelings. He raised his arm slightly, then put it back down, as if he were uncertain whether to hug me or shake my hand.

I wanted to reach across the space between us, but I couldn’t. He moved again, as if he felt the same.

He cleared his throat. “I hear you and James have some big changes in the works.”

“Yes. We do.”
Here it comes,
I thought.
The lecture. Right here in front of everyone . . .

He drew in a breath, and for the first time I could ever remember, stopped and really looked at me.

“We’re ready for something new,” I said, losing the awareness of anyone in the room but my father and me. “I guess we’re just at that point in life where the old things don’t satisfy anymore.”

His lips fluttered slightly, a hint of some emotion, perhaps a bit of a smile.

Outside, there was the sound of the empty wading pool hitting the sidewalk and Joshua hollering, “Gam-paw! Gam-paw! I gonna get the water hose now. . . .”

Dad laughed, seeming relieved to have the tension broken. “Guess that’s my cue.” Turning away, he paused to pat me on the shoulder, then added quietly, “Your grandma Rose would be pleased.”

I watched him walk out the door and take command of the water hose, filling the blue plastic wading pool, then adding soap and glycerin, while the kids, including Dell, squatted around the edge, chattering with anticipation. Stirring the concoction with a rake handle, he puffed bubbles into the air, laughing as the kids ran to chase them. He wasn’t the stiff, serious, ramrod-straight man I remembered. He looked like somebody’s grandpa—gray-haired, wrinkled, slightly stooped, and out of fashion in his khaki pants and plaid shirt, completely smitten by the laughter of a younger generation, not the least bit worried about decorum, the house rules, or whether he got his clothes wet.

It occurred to me that he wasn’t the man I remembered. Just as life and the passage of time had rewritten me, they had rewritten him. Things could be different now, if only I would let them.

Chapter 23

B
en called just before lunch to say he’d been delayed in St. Louis and couldn’t make it back in time for lunch. Kate wasn’t happy, considering that the whole family was there and he was the host, but she was even more concerned that he arrive in time for Dell’s Jumpkids performance at two o’clock.

Letting out a frustrated sigh, she hung up the phone. “He’s on the way. He promises he’ll be back in time for the Jumpkids production. He’ll meet us in front of the church at one thirty.”

I nodded, feeling sorry for Kate. She’d worked so hard planning the get-together, and she didn’t want our first family meal to take place without Ben. “It’s just one lunch,” I said, trying to cheer her up. “We have all weekend.”

“I know,” she agreed halfheartedly, gazing out the window at the lawn, where my father and Dell were helping the kids create gigantic bubbles using hula hoops. Jenilee’s brother Nate fashioned a loop out of a piece of loose wire from the yard fence, dunked it in the soap, and helped baby Rose hold it up, creating a huge bubble. It floated lazily away like an overweight balloon, and Rose reached out her arms. Scooping her up, Nate flew her across the yard like an airplane so that she could pop the bubble.

“I can’t believe how much he reminds me of Joshua,” I commented.
I’d been staring at Nate all morning, amazed by the resemblance. “There’s just no way Jenilee’s mother could be adopted. It can’t be a coincidence how much Joshua and Nate look alike.”

Kate chewed her lip contemplatively. “I guess we may never know. Mrs. Jaans seems sure that Jenilee’s grandparents lost their baby and adopted another. But you know, that was a long time ago. Maybe she’s mistaken.”

“Maybe so,” I mused.

The old clock in the living room chimed eleven thirty, and both Kate and I glanced toward the hallway door. “We’d better get lunch on.” Kate started for the refrigerator. “Dell has to be at the church by one o’clock.”

“Guess we’d better get busy,” I agreed, checking my watch as my stomach fluttered, then flipped over, then fluttered again with a sudden case of theater nerves. If nothing else happened according to plan today, I wanted Dell’s performance to go perfectly.

We hurried to get the lunch onto trays and take it outside for the picnic. When all of us sat down, we filled the gigantic old stone table, which once had been used to feed farmhands during threshings. The air was alive with voices—the high-pitched laughter of the children, the low, raspy sounds of Mr. and Mrs. Jaans, the clear tenor of James and Jenilee’s brothers as they talked cars and guitars, the slight Southern accent of Jenilee telling my father about her chemistry class. Resting my chin on my hands, I just sat listening to the conversation and the laughter, both melody and harmony blending together to create a symphony of family. At the end of the table, Dell stopped talking and looked at me, smiling slightly, her dark eyes warm and content. I knew she heard the music, too.

Beside me, Mrs. Jaans was talking about how this reminded her of the old days when they used to have big family dinners. “Our people didn’t have much money, but when we got together, we could sure put on a feed. Many a time, we laid out a picnic on the riverbank, and all us kids swam in the river. The men went upstream and fished, and our mamas sat on the shore and hung their feet in the water.” She smiled, her cloudy eyes twinkling above plump, flushed cheeks. “Those were sure enough good times.”

Beside her, Mr. Jaans laid his hand over hers. “So are these,” he said, and they exchanged a quick kiss.

Nate stood up and snatched the last deviled egg off the platter, where Mr. Jaans had been guarding it. “No PDA,” he chided.

Mr. Jaans waved a fork threateningly, watching his egg disappear into Nate’s mouth. “You’re just sayin’ that because you don’t have a pretty girl on your arm.”

Nate laughed and shook his head.

Mr. Jaans waved the fork at Nate. “I could give ya some pointers, young fella—maybe help you out a bit.”

Elbowing her husband, Mrs. Jaans blushed. “Don’t you dare, June Jaans. You had too many girls in your day.”

James gave me a mischievous look, then turned to Mr. Jaans and said, “That sounds like a story.”

“Don’t get him started talking about the old days.” Mrs. Jaans swatted a hand in the air, batting the question away like a fly. “He was a saxophone player in a jazz band, and he knew a few words of French he learned from his mama, and that was all it took to catch the girls’ fancy.” She paused, gazing off into the distance, lost in a memory, then said, “I sure wish I could tell y’all more about your grandma Rose and her sisters, though. You know, the family fell on hard times when Sadie was about sixteen. Rose was a couple years younger, and Augustine only about ten then. Their papa fell off a roof and broke a hip, they lost their little crop farm, and they was forced to move into town. Wasn’t too long after that Rose hired out as a mother’s helper so as to feed the family—there were three brothers younger than Augustine, one of them not much more than a baby. Right about that time, Sadie left home. Nobody ever wanted to talk about why, but rumor was that she run off with a traveling cabaret show. Just up and left without a word to anyone. It was more shame than their poor mama could bear. She’d always had ‘spells,’ but after Sadie run off, she had a nervous breakdown and had to go to an asylum. After that, no one ever mentioned Sadie’s name again.”

Kate sighed. “I wish I’d known to ask Grandma Rose about it, but she never talked about her sisters.”

Aunt Jeane frowned thoughtfully. “The family feud was one of those taboo subjects with Mother. She didn’t want questions about her family and she made that clear, so we didn’t ask.”

My father nodded in solemn agreement. “If Mother wanted something a certain way, that was the way it was going to be. You knew better than to ask questions.”

“Suppose she had her reasons.” Mr. Jaans held his wife’s hand on one side and Jenilee’s hand on the other. “It don’t matter what happened in the past. The important thing is that we’re all together now.”

Drew ruffled his sister’s hair fondly, glancing up just in time to see his son sneak a cookie from the platter. “Alex, you leave those cookies alone until after you’ve finished your sandwich.”

Mrs. Jaans scoffed, pushing the cookie plate closer to the kids. “Oh, let him have a cookie. It’s a special occasion.” She smiled at Alex. “Here, Sweet, have a cookie. They’re good for ya. Got bananas in ’em.”

Alex was only too happy to oblige.

Kate and I ducked our heads and chuckled, glancing at each other. “Who does that remind you of?” Kate muttered under her breath.

“Grandma Rose,” I mouthed.

Aunt Jeane caught my reply and smiled, then lifted the cookie platter and held it above the table. “Cookies all around. They won’t be nearly as good tomorrow.” It was exactly the kind of thing Grandma Rose would have said.

Joshua grabbed a cookie and examined it carefully. Scratching a streak of unmixed flour with his fingernail, he studied his fingertip with his eyes crossed. “I found snow!” He showed his discovery to Alex and Amber, who gave him confused looks, then began examining their own cookies for snow.

Kate shrugged sheepishly at me. “Guess we’d better mix the dough better next time.”

“Guess so, but they’re not bad for a first effort.” Glancing at my watch, I realized it was twelve thirty. “Dell, I guess we’d better take off if you’re going to be at the church on time for Jumpkids.”

“ ’K.” Dell nodded, grabbing a couple of cookies to go. “Is James gonna come with us?” She gave him a beseeching look.

“Wouldn’t miss it.” James slid from under the table, and the three of us said our good-byes, then headed for town.

By the time we reached the church, the counselors were already at work and the performers were starting to arrive. I opened my door to get out of the car, but in the backseat, Dell didn’t move. She sat watching Sherita carrying Myrone upside down, while he hugged his sister’s knee, squealing with glee. Or else he was holding on for dear life; it was hard to tell.

“We’d better go in,” I said to Dell.

Tipping her head to one side, she studied Sherita thoughtfully. “Did Sherita do good last night?”

“I didn’t see too much, but Keiler called and said that she did very well. Why?”

“Maybe she oughta do my part again tonight,” Dell rushed out, as if she had been thinking about it on the way to town. “I don’t think I oughta do it. I didn’t get to practice yesterday. I might do it wrong.”

“Dell,” I admonished, resting my chin on the seat and reaching out to touch her arm. Her skin was a rash of goose bumps. “You’ll be fine. As soon as the music starts, you’ll remember everything.”

“I think I’ll forget it all. I can’t remember anything.”

“You can do this.” I tried to sound positive, but inside I was starting to worry that we were asking too much of her, with everything she’d been through in the past two days.
If she doesn’t go onstage, everyone will understand.
“It’s up to—”

“If you hurry up and get in there, you’ll have some time to practice.” James cut me off, like he knew I was about let Dell off the hook.

Dell thought about that for a moment, then opened her door and got out. “ ’K,” she said with a mixture of worry and resolve. “I guess I better get goin’.” She rushed off toward the building before we were even out of the car.

“You’re right,” I said to James. “It’s good that you convinced her to go. She’d never forgive herself if she didn’t go on today. She needs to prove to herself that she can do it.” I found myself hoping this would be one of the defining events of Dell’s life—the moment she stopped
being ashamed of who she was and afraid of the world. Her chance to show the whole town that she was someone special.

James closed his door and strutted a few steps toward the building. “I can do this dad stuff . . . I think.”

Tucking my arm into his, I hugged close to his shoulder. “You’ll be great at the dad stuff.”

Stopping, he slipped his arms around me and kissed me right there on the sidewalk, then stood gazing down at me. “Happy?” he asked.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I am happy.” The words were true, in so many ways.

The church was hopping with activity when we went inside. Keiler was onstage performing repairs to the cellophane waterfall and talking on his cell phone. “Oh, good, she’s here,” he said, glancing at me as he jumped off the stage in one quick, high-energy bounce. He handed me the phone on his way to the door. “Here, talk to Shirley. I have to go get some duct tape.”

I juggled the phone into position while climbing onto the stage. James followed, then went to see what could be done about the waterfall, which had somehow shed its blue cellophane water overnight. Now there was a huge pool, with no water flowing into it.

“Hi, Shirley,” I said, taking a wad of cellophane from the pool and observing that it was stuck together like a giant baseball. “It looks like the set has somehow modified itself overnight.”

“It always does,” she said cheerfully. “So Keiler tells me you called him last night and told him you might be convinced to take the director’s job.”

“I think so. Crazy, isn’t it?”

“Not so.” Her voice was warm and reassuring. “O.K. You do have to be a little crazy to do this job, but you’re going to be great at it. Keiler says you’re a natural.”

“I don’t even
have
the job yet,” I reminded her, balancing the phone on my ear so I could use both hands and feet to untangle the cellophane.

“You will.” Shirley seemed confident. “Every one of your summer counselors is writing a letter for you. That’s all it’ll take to get the board to put you in. Well . . . that, and you have a pulse.”

“Thanks.” I laughed, straining to hand the cellophane to Keiler, who had returned with duct tape. The phone slipped from my shoulder, and I caught it in a clumsy juggle on the way down. “Sorry about that. We have an ongoing disaster here involving cellophane and duct tape.”

Shirley chuckled. “All part of the job description.”

“Strange . . . but true.” Almost anything could be part of this job description, which was exactly what I liked about it. Life as a Jumpkids director would be nothing if not an adventure. I wondered if I would be able to explain that to Brent Giani when I called to tell him I wasn’t joining Geo Networking—I’d consult, I’d help, even call clients or fly to Boston if they needed me, but I was taking another job. A completely different kind of job. Brent would be stunned. All of them would.