“Your car isn’t ready until four, and I gave Maynard and Selena a gorgeous tea set.”
Joe Riddley didn’t say a word.
The new carillon in the Episcopal church steeple started playing a spirited rendition of “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed.” I like chimes, but those were driving me around the nearest bend. “I wish they’d adjust those things,” I complained. “They’re twice as fast as they’re supposed to be. That song sounds like Jesus is racing into town.”
Joe Riddley still didn’t say a word.
“If we stop by Skye’s, we’ll be late getting back to work,” I warned.
His jaw set in the stubborn look that had become so common since he got shot. “That tea set’s your present. Helping to pay for the car is my present.”
“After forty-three years, we’re into separate-but-equal in the realm of wedding presents?” Even as I asked the question, I was turning my green Nissan toward MacDonald Motors. There was no use trying to reason with him in that mood.
Hopemore had three car dealers: Hopemore Nissan and Volkswagen, MacDonald Motors for Fords, Mercuries, and Lincolns, and Sky’s the Limit Used Cars. All three were owned and operated by Fergus “Skye” MacDonald and his two grown children, Laura and Skellton. Skye had come to Hopemore straight out of college to marry Gwen Ellen Skellton, whose daddy owned the Ford dealership. In twenty-eight years Skye had built that one dealership into an automobile empire. The MacDonalds were easily one of the richest families in Hope County. They were also one of the closest. When Skye referred to them as the “MacDonald Clan,” he wasn’t joking. Even now that the children were grown, the MacDonalds worked together and vacationed together. Laura lived in an apartment over their four-car garage. When Skell came home from college and rented his own apartment, they were all surprised. Gwen Ellen was especially hurt—she’d talked to an architect about building Skell a small house in their huge backyard.
Gwen Ellen and Skye were among our best friends. We belonged to the same clubs and business organizations and went to the same church. Skye sold and serviced our cars and business trucks, and they used our lawn service and bought more plants from us than any other family in town. We went out to eat together at least twice a month. Only Clarinda really understood our relationship. To their faces she called them “Miss Gwen Ellen” and “Mr. Skye,” but privately she referred to them as “Miss Gwen Ellen” and “Miss Gwen Ellen’s husband.”
Gwen Ellen was born when I was fourteen, and I baby-sat her until I went to college. After Joe Riddley and I got married, she used to stay with us when her parents went out of town. Joe Riddley started calling her “Baby Sister” when she was ten, and sometimes he still does. She was a sweet and pretty child who dawdled over her meals and happily put on whatever clothes her mother laid out for her, right through high school. Some people are born dashers and some dancers. Gwen Ellen lived at a slow waltz.
She grew into a beautiful young woman with soft eyes as dark as her hair. Spiteful people claimed it was her daddy’s contribution to athletic scholarships, not grades, that got her into college, but she didn’t go to college for an education. She was a princess seeking a prince to inherit her daddy’s realm. She was delighted to come home after her sophomore year to marry Skye and settle down as a wife and mother. She told me once, “I am so lucky. I’ve always had everything I wanted.”
We helped a tad. Joe Riddley got Skye into Jaycees. I sponsored Gwen Ellen for Junior League and the Garden Club. We served as honorary aunt and uncle to both their children. They even named their first child for me—although I persuaded them to call the child Laura instead of MacLaren. I figured MacLaren MacDonald might be too much of a good thing for a Georgia girl.
Now forty-seven, Gwen Ellen remained beautiful and still moved at a languid pace reminiscent of mythical days when Southern women had scads of servants and hours to dress. But don’t think she was useless. She was as soft and powerful as a gentle flowing stream. She single-handedly got our Junior League to adopt a new literacy program and our Sunday school class to take a mission trip to Africa that resulted in a program to send medicines and medical equipment to a hospital over there. When her son wanted to play cello, she showed up at school board meetings with gentle but firm requests until they voted to put orchestras in each of our middle schools and the two county high schools. Then she got after all her friends—including us—to donate instruments for children who couldn’t afford them. At Gwen Ellen’s insistence, MacDonald Motors still sponsored an annual county orchestral concert, even though Skell had been out of high school six years. She also volunteered at the local hospital, working with oncology patients with a gentle compassion they found restful. A woman once told me her mother had literally refused to die until after Gwen Ellen’s weekly visit.
Where Gwen Ellen was soft and gentle, Skye was a bundle of energy and enthusiasm for any project that attracted his attention. A tall, beefy man about to turn fifty, with thinning yellow hair and soft golden fuzz on his arms, he had a friendly pink face, laughing blue eyes, and a contagious laugh. When Skye bent and picked up a grumpy child, you could guarantee that child would be giggling within a minute. He served as an elder in our church and chaired the administrative committee, spending hours of his own time taking down the heating system to see why it wasn’t working properly, or climbing onto the roof to check for loose shingles.
He also adored his wife and treated her like porcelain. He insisted that she have a full-time maid and often went home to eat lunch with her. He once fired a salesman who used profanity in her presence. He didn’t expect her to be brilliant or versed in international affairs. It was enough that she created a restful home, raised their children well, and was her own graceful self. Every woman in town was a bit jealous of Gwen Ellen, including me.
The MacDonalds’ whole life had been a placid sea across which a beneficent sun had sprinkled diamonds—except Gwen Ellen worried constantly about their children. Just two weeks before, we had roomed together at a church women’s retreat, and in one of those late-night conversations that are the real reason most of us go to conferences anyway, her voice came sadly through the darkness between our two beds. “Laura’s never going to find a husband working in that office all day, and Skye is on Skell’s back about something all the time. No wonder Skell hates the motor company.”
Fighting to stay awake, I ignored her longtime fears for Laura and focused on the issue dearer to her heart. “What would Skell like to do instead of work in the business?”
Poor Skell, he’d hoped to become a concert cellist until college music professors informed him he had a mediocre talent, at best. After that, his dad told him to major in business so he’d know how to run the motor companies. Not until graduation did Skye discover that Skell had majored in Spanish instead. “Which he needs like a third head,” he’d told us angrily.
“Skell doesn’t know what he wants yet,” Gwen Ellen had admitted drowsily through the darkness, “but he’ll find something. He just needs a little more time. He’s only twenty-three.” At twenty-three she’d been a mother and Skye had been working for her daddy. At twenty-three Joe Riddley and I were already learning to run his family business. I didn’t say any of that. Even good friends don’t criticize each other’s children, particularly the baby.
My mind was on Skell when I pulled into MacDonald Motors’ parking lot that Friday afternoon. I wasn’t exactly questioning the ways of the Almighty, but it seemed to me a shame that Skell had been born to prosperous parents. Joe Riddley and I both thought he could benefit from a little adversity. Currently, he was little more than a playboy dabbling at running the family used-car lot, knowing his daddy and big sister would rescue him if he got into trouble.
We went in the front door instead of directly to the service department, and saw Skye ushering a woman out of his office in the back left corner. As always, he wore his trademark “Skye blue” oxford cloth shirt, a rumpled khaki suit, and a tie in the navy-and-dark-green MacDonald plaid.
I was more interested in his companion. “Isn’t that Marilee Muller?” I asked softly.
Joe Riddley stopped drooling over a new white Thunderbird and turned to drool over Marilee. She was worth at least a small drool—she’d come a long way in the thirty-five years since she was born in our Hopemore hospital. She’d been a scrawny little girl in Walker’s class with fat beige pigtails and such a big overbite that the boys called her “Beaver.” Nowadays, her hair was fluffy and blond, her teeth straight and white, her mouth a shiny bow, her skin tan even in February. Instead of lanky she was willowy, instead of skinny, slender, instead of friendly, enchanting. Marilee Muller made me wonder what a makeover could do for me.
I hadn’t seen her in the flesh for seven years, since she and her husband (now her ex) moved to Augusta. We watched her, however, almost every night on an Augusta television affiliate, because Marilee Muller, a child without the sense to come in out of the rain, had grown up to forecast the weather.
She crossed MacDonald’s showroom trailing glamour, intent on whatever she was telling Skye, one arm tucked through his elbow. When Skye looked up and saw us, though, he dropped her arm and came right over to give me a hug. It’s easy to appreciate a man like that.
“Hey, Joe Riddley, Mac. You all remember Marilee Muller? We’re both Southern alums, and they’ve asked us to put a committee together to raise some funds.”
Joe Riddley, Marilee, and I exchanged the kind of greetings people use when they don’t know each other well, haven’t seen each other for years, and figure they aren’t likely to see one another again in the foreseeable future.
Marilee reached out again to take Skye’s arm, but Joe flapped his wings and squawked, “Back off. Gimme space.”
She stepped back with a nervous laugh. “I’d better be going,” she told Skye. “I do want a decision today, though. Will you call me, or shall I call you?”
“I’ll call you,” he promised. “I need to talk to these folks right now, but I’ll get back to you later this afternoon.”
“Okay.” She paused as if expecting him to say something else, but when he turned to Joe Riddley she gave me a dazzling smile and hurried out. As she crossed the parking lot to a red Jeep Cherokee, she clutched her coat to her throat. The wind was picking up and had a raw edge to it.
“I’m trying to sell her this car”—Skye patted the T-bird—“but she wants me to come down too far on the price. I’ll have to see what I can do.” He grunted. “I give to charity same as anybody else”—actually, he gave more than most folks—“but my business is not a charity.”
“We know what you mean,” I assured him, following him to his office.
The entire wall behind his desk was covered with family pictures, certificates, and plaques he had received for community service. That was one difference between Skye and Joe Riddley: Joe Riddley kept his award certificates and plaques in a file drawer at home. “If you get one more award, you’re gonna have to get a bigger wall or take down some of the family,” I teased.
“I’ll build a bigger office.” He waved us to his two visitor’s chairs and settled into his own big leather one. It creaked under his weight as he shifted a crystal bowl of yellow roses and rested his forearms on his desk as if we were the most important thing on his calendar that afternoon. “Now, what can I do for you folks today?”
I let Joe Riddley do the talking. This was his visit.
He still wasn’t well enough, though, to do two things at once. Before he spoke, he deliberately lowered himself into a vacant visitor’s chair and took off his cap. As I moved unopened mail from the second chair, I couldn’t help noticing that the top letter was from a dude ranch in New Mexico, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Fergus MacDonald and beginning, “We sure hope you folks enjoyed your stay.” Skye and Gwen Ellen traveled so much I couldn’t keep up with all their trips. She had given up a ski week in Colorado after his business meeting in Denver just to attend that church retreat. “I’ve been to Colorado,” she’d told me, “and besides, we’re going to Norway in the spring. Won’t that be nice?” I handed the mail to Skye and repressed a sigh. Would Joe Riddley be well enough to travel again in the foreseeable future—like sometime before I had to go in my own wheelchair, pushing his?
Skye dumped the mail onto his credenza while Joe Riddley explained, “I came to see if my car is ready. Ben said he might get it done today.” Ben Bradshaw was Skye’s head mechanic. “I’d like to have it for Maynard’s wedding.”
“We
could
go to the wedding in my car,” I pointed out so Skye wouldn’t feel pressured. However, he and I both knew Joe Riddley loved that car and hadn’t been driving again very long.
“Let me check on it.” Skye called the service department. “Ben? Joe Riddley’s here about his car. How soon will it be ready? . . . But he said . . . Wait a minute. I’ll come back there.” He hung up and stood. “Give me a minute. You all want a Co-cola or anything?”
For those who don’t know, Co-cola is the colloquial Southern name for what the rest of the world calls Coke.
“We’re fine,” we assured him.
That was only true in my case until Joe hopped onto my shoulder and pooped. “You filthy bird,” I scolded him. “Now I’ve got to find the ladies’ room and wash.”
Joe bent over and peered into my face. “Not to worry,” he assured me. I glared. He gave a maniacal laugh that our grandson Tad had been teaching him, and hopped onto Joe Riddley’s shoulder.
I wasn’t real fond of that bird. I only tolerated him because Joe Riddley adored him and because Joe had done as much to heal Joe Riddley’s brain as the doctors and physical therapy.
“I’ll be right back.” I went to find the ladies’ room and left Joe Riddley stroking Joe’s stomach to show him that one of us, at least, still loved him.
The ladies’ room was down a dim hall next to the service department. As soon as I got there, I heard Ben Bradshaw’s voice, faint and aggravated. “I said I’d
try
to get Yarbrough’s car done today. Right now, we’ve got four other cars on the racks, including the white limo. Maynard Spence reserved it for their bridesmaids and it needed new shocks after those kids rented it last week. We ought to be able to get to Yarbrough’s later, though. Tell him to check with me around eight-thirty tonight.”