The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star (12 page)

J.D.’s mouth fell open and he stared at her. “Sweet potato meringue pie!” he said, almost incredulously. “My sainted aunt Mamie used to make the
best
sweet potato meringue pie I ever tasted. She put coconut in it.” He closed his eyes. “I ain’t had pie that good since she died.”

“Why, isn’t that a coincidence?” Mrs. Riggs replied with a husky laugh. She lowered her voice to a seductive whisper. “It just so happens that I brought some coconut with me, too. That pie is always so much better with a half cup of coconut—but it should be toasted just a little. Did your aunt Mamie ever put toasted coconut into her pie?”

Still staring and nearly overcome with emotion, J.D. could only nod. “I would give just about anything in the world for a taste of that pie,” he managed at last. “With some toasted coconut.”

“Sounds right to me,” Myra May said, and gave him a look that said, plain as day,
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, J.D.

Mrs. Riggs straightened. “Well, if you’ll be a little patient, I think we can fix you up,” she said with another smile, and followed Myra May. At the kitchen door, she turned and gave J.D. a wink.

“It was like magic,” Myra May said later that night. She and Violet were finally able to sit down in their upstairs flat with glasses of cold iced tea and two small pieces of a fudge cake so rich it was almost like a double chocolate brownie and delectable beyond belief. “I swear, she charmed that spiteful old J.D. right down out of his tree. And that was even
before
he tasted her sweet potato meringue pie.”

Smiling, Violet cuddled a sleepy Cupcake up against her. “And did you see the look on Buddy Norris’ face when he took the first bite of that fudge cake? He said it was just like his mother’s.” She shook her head, marveling. “What Raylene did in the kitchen today was nothing short of magical. Honestly, Myra May—I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my very own eyes. She cut up three chickens and fried them, fried up that big mess of catfish, put together a huge bowl of potato salad, cooked vegetables, baked three
sweet potato pies, and made that fudge cake.”

“Yeah.” Myra May chuckled. “I thought Euphoria was lightning fast, but compared to Raylene, she was about as slow as a turtle on a cold December morning.”

Mrs. Riggs had insisted on being called Raylene from the minute she put her apron on. She said it made her nervous when people called her “Mrs.” when she was cooking. “I always think they’re talking to somebody else and I’m looking over my shoulder to see who it is,” she said with a little laugh. “So you just call me Raylene and I’ll be easy in my mind.”

“If you ask me, Raylene’s fried catfish was even better than Euphoria’s,” Myra May went on energetically. “And I just can’t get over her vegetables. Collard greens cooked with mustard sauce. Rosemary—
rosemary—
with roasted tomatoes, potatoes, and bacon! And garlic and red pepper in the okra! Did you
ever
?”
She rolled her eyes.

“Amazing,” Violet agreed. “There’s no getting around it, Euphoria was definitely a top-notch down-home cook. But with Raylene, those plain old everyday vegetables taste like they came from a fancy gourmet restaurant. She makes it seem so easy, too. It looks like all she has to do is wave her magic wand and
abracadabra
, there it is. And what in the world do you suppose is in that special seasoning she brought to use for the fried chicken? I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.”

“Neither have I,” Myra May replied. “No doubt about it. She is an extremely talented cook.” She frowned a little. “I can’t quite believe that she wants to come to work for us. I keep asking myself
why.
”

By the end of the afternoon, word of Raylene Riggs’ audition as a replacement for Euphoria had rippled around town the way gossip does in Darling, starting at one end of town and ending up at the other, getting somewhat magnified along the way. The evening crowd was bigger than it had been for some time, and definitely curious. J.D. returned for supper, in order to judge Miz Riggs’ fried chicken and see for himself if she was the cook she claimed to be. If there was any doubt in his mind, though, it was completely dispelled when he got a mouthful of her sweet potato and toasted coconut meringue pie. It was even better, he swore, than his sainted aunt Mamie’s, and he vowed to tell everybody he knew that the diner had a
swell
new cook who was (incredibly) even better than Euphoria.

And it wasn’t just the speed and quality of Raylene’s cooking that recommended her. In the kitchen, Raylene was easy to get along with and willing to listen—a far cry from Euphoria, who was queen of the cook stove and ruler of the roost, and made darn sure that everybody knew it. Toward the end of the supper hour, Raylene even took off her apron and left the kitchen to visit with the diners at their tables, asking people what they thought of this dish or that, just as if they were all old friends at a church social or a school reunion. The customers might have found this a little strange, but they seemed to like it.

In fact, Edna Fay Roberts (Doc Roberts’ wife and Charlie Dickens’ sister) had come up to Myra May after supper and said, “You know, Miz Riggs seems so familiar to me, Myra May. I could swear that I have run into that woman somewhere before. Is she from around here?”

“She hasn’t said,” Myra May replied.

Indeed, Raylene Riggs was something of a mystery woman, which to Myra May seemed very strange. She was friendly and outgoing, but she didn’t seem eager to answer any personal questions, such as where she came from and whether she had a family and how long she might be thinking of staying in the area. She did say that if she got the job in the diner, she would start looking right away for a cheap place to live in Darling, since she couldn’t depend on Mr. Clinton to get her to work on time. She was afraid that transportation could be a problem.

By the time they closed up that night, it was too late for Mr. Clinton’s taxi. So Myra May left Violet to close the diner and drove Raylene back to Monroeville in Big Bertha, her old green canvas-topped 1920 Chevy touring car. Once Bertha got cranked up and running, she was pretty reliable. But she never went anywhere very fast, so the thirty-minute drive had given Raylene time to ask quite a few questions about Darling, and about Myra May, as well. She wanted to know who Myra May’s mama was, and when she heard that she was dead and that Myra May had been raised as a proper Southern girl by her aunt Belle, she let out a long, sympathetic sigh and murmured, “You poor thing.” Then she asked about Myra May’s daddy (who had been dead some three years now), and how it had happened that she and Violet had purchased the diner together, and whether Myra May wanted to stay in Darling or live somewhere else. Myra May answered as fully as she could, if only to oblige Raylene to do the same.

But that strategy failed abysmally. When Myra May tossed out a few questions of her own—Where was she from? Did she have any children? How long did she think she might stay in the area?—Raylene sidestepped them as deftly as if she were playing dodgeball. It was obvious that the woman intended to remain a mystery.

And when they got to Monroeville, she instructed Myra May to drop her off on a corner not far from the square, saying that since it was such a pretty night and she wasn’t the least bit tired, she would walk the rest of the way home. Myra May was deeply curious, but short of parking Big Bertha and following Raylene on foot through the darkness, there wasn’t any way to know where she was staying. When she had time, she’d get the Monroeville switchboard—maybe Marybelle Ralston, who was on duty during the morning hours—to tell her whose telephone number she called from. Marybelle would know.

“Far as I’m concerned, we can hire her right now,” Violet said positively. “If you want, though, we can go ahead and audition anybody else who applies. It would be a good idea to have a list of people who are available if one of us gets sick or wants to take the day off. I’ve never been very happy with just Euphoria in the kitchen. We were too dependent on her.”

“I agree,” Myra May said, “although I wish Raylene weren’t so mysterious. I have a lot of questions.”

“Me, too,” Violet said. “But her private life is
her
business, isn’t it? As long as she does her job, that’s all we need to know.”

“You’re right, I guess,” Myra May replied. “Anyway, I told her what we could pay. She said she’d come for that, as long as we agreed that it was just a starting salary.” In a lower voice, she added, “I still don’t understand why such a talented and obviously experienced cook would want to work for what little we can afford to pay. She could go
anywhere
,
even these days.”

“Well, when word gets around about her talent, the customers will start flocking in,” Violet said. She stood up, holding Cupcake in her arms. “When that happens, we can give her a raise.” With a smile, she looked down at the baby’s sleeping face, sweetly damp in the heat of the evening. “Come and help me put the baby to bed.”

“I told her that you and I would talk it over and phone her first thing in the morning,” Myra May said, getting up to follow Violet into Cupcake’s corner of their small bedroom. “She says she’s available to start right away, which means that she can help cook for the Kilgores’ party. Which is a huge load off my mind,” she added. “She has some ideas for the menu, too. Good ideas—things we wouldn’t have thought of. Things we can afford.”

She stood next to Violet as they both bent over the crib, covering Cupcake with a cotton sheet and smoothing back the little girl’s damp strawberry blond curls. She slipped her arm around Violet’s shoulders and gave her a quick hug. She was suffused with a warm rush of affection for the two of them and with the feeling that their little family was absolutely complete and that everything she loved was right here in this room. What more could she possibly want?

Well, maybe one thing, she thought. Raylene’s questions had reminded her of how much she missed having a mother when she was growing up—a real mother, her
own
mother, not Auntie Bellum, dear as she was. It would be wonderful if her very own mother could see just how happy her daughter was.

“You could go ahead and call Raylene tonight,” Violet said, straightening up and turning away from the crib. “She might appreciate knowing that she’s the one we want, and that we have already made our decision. You might even offer to drive over to Monroeville tomorrow and pick her up—that is, if you don’t mind getting up just a little bit early.”

“I don’t mind getting up early,” Myra May replied. “But why don’t you call Joe Lee Manning and ask him for a list of houses for rent? The sooner she can find a place in Darling, the better.” She wasn’t crazy about driving back and forth to Monroeville twice a day. Forty miles a day was a lot of miles, and Big Bertha wasn’t cheap: gas was ten cents a gallon and tires were three fifty apiece.

“A rented house would be good in the long term,” Violet said. “But for the short term, how about if she got a cottage out at the Marigold Motor Court? It wouldn’t be fancy, but Pauline keeps the cottages clean and nice. She even puts vases of flowers on the dressers. And maybe we could ask if Raylene could get a discount if she’s going to stay there for three or four nights.”

The Marigold Motor Court had been built by Floyd DuBerry and his wife Pauline. It was on the Monroeville Highway, across from Jake Pritchard’s Standard Oil filling station and just down from the intersection of Country Club Drive. In 1927, when things were still booming, Floyd built seven one-room frame cottages, spread some gravel over the mud in his yard for parking, and put up a sign right next to the highway. It was a big sign, so people driving in their automobiles could see it from a hundred yards away, announcing that each cottage had a flush toilet and a shower bath, electric lights, and CLEAN SHEETS AND TOWELS, all for only seventy-five cents a night, a dollar for two. This was substantially cheaper than the Old Alabama Hotel, which charged two dollars a night for a single and three for a double. The DuBerrys didn’t serve food, but a couple of the cottages had what Pauline called a “kitchenette,” with a hot plate for cooking and a sink for washing up. Or people could drive or walk into town to the Old Alabama or the Darling Diner to eat. Unfortunately, Floyd had died of a heat stroke a couple of years later, leaving Pauline all alone. But she was the type who could cope, and the Marigold filled a useful niche.

“The motor court is a very good idea, Violet,” Myra May replied approvingly. “She could move in there right away.”

“I’ll give Pauline a call and ask if we can work out something about the rate,” Violet said. She held out her hand. “Come on, Myra May. Let’s finish that fudge cake.”

As Myra May followed Violet into their parlor, however, she was frowning slightly. She was thrilled, of course, that they had found such a wonderful cook to replace Euphoria. It really did seem like magic, and she was grateful. But she kept coming back to the question: why would a person with Raylene’s skills and experience want to come to Darling? Why did she want to work in a diner in such a small town? Was she simply looking for a new and different experience?

Or had she encountered some hard times, was running out of options, and this was the last place she’d tried?

Or was she simply . . . running?

Over the past few months, Charlie Dickens had fallen into the habit of seeing Fannie Champaign on a regular basis, once a week at least, sometimes twice. He hadn’t intended this to happen, of course. He was ashamed to admit it even to himself, but when he first began asking her to go out with him, he had persisted not so much because she was such an interesting person (she was a little too quiet to suit him), but because she was such an interesting
mystery
. Nobody knew anything about her—where she came from or why she had moved to Darling. And if that wasn’t enough of an incentive to keep after her, Charlie had another. It was simply because she kept saying no.

Now, Charlie understood very well that “no” was not an adequate reason to pursue a woman. Still, he was intensely intrigued, for (like most newspaper reporters) he liked to know all the whys and wherefores and had the feeling that the whys that escaped him were the most
essential
. In this case, he was confronted with a puzzling—and challenging—enigma. He would ask Fannie to go to a movie or a picnic or some other Darling event, and she would say no, or sometimes just shake her head, never giving a reason. He would walk away with a laugh and tell himself it didn’t matter—and then he would think about it and wonder.

Was she saying no because she didn’t find him interesting or attractive? Or because she didn’t like men in general?

Or because she liked doing whatever it was she did and didn’t want to be interrupted?

Why, why,
why
?

Charlie was also aware that there were many other mysteries about Fannie, such as where she had come from and why she had decided on Darling, which seemed like a very strange place to try to establish a hat business. And where she was getting the money to live on, since it was clear (at least to Charlie) that making hats was a pretty poor way to support yourself, even for a woman of modest needs and desires. Perhaps she had a personal income—inherited money, a trust fund, or something of the sort—and didn’t need to work. Perhaps she simply made hats because she wanted to make hats, and had come to Darling merely because she thought the countryside was pretty, the climate appealing, the people congenial. There were worse reasons to choose a town, Charlie supposed. But in order to get to the bottom of these mysteries, he would have to do some research. He would have to get acquainted with her. That is, he would have to take her out, and she wouldn’t.

So it went for some months, Charlie asking (and getting more and more challenged and intrigued), and Fannie firmly saying no—until one day, not long after Christmas, she finally and surprisingly and even a little reluctantly said yes. Feeling as triumphant as a teenager, Charlie took her for a fine supper at the Old Alabama. Two weeks later, she said yes to his invitation to the Methodist Ladies January pie supper, and after that to the Dahlias Valentine party, and then to the Lions’ Irish stew supper on St. Patrick’s Day—all this, of course, in the way of research.

And then she began inviting him to her apartment for supper (chicken and dumplings or jambalaya or catfish) and an evening of dominoes or pinochle while they listened to the radio. They both liked “André Kostelanetz Presents,” and Fannie adored
George Burns and Gracie Allen
.
Charlie didn’t like Burns and Allen (Gracie was such a dumb Dora), but he discovered that he did like to hear Fannie laugh.

He liked to look at her, too, for she had curly brown hair, expressive brown eyes, and trim ankles and slim hips and a beckoning softness about the rest of her. She was good company, as well, with a subtle wit that emerged as he got to know her better, and which proved a fine antidote to his irony and brittle skepticism. Charlie, who enjoyed an enduring reputation as a curmudgeon, actually started to enjoy being something else for a change, especially when their pleasant evenings together began to end with a few sweetly clinging kisses that promised even sweeter intimacies to come.

But while Fannie may have had some modern ideas about hats and women in business, she was very much a lady of the old school when it came to certain intimacies. She always knew where to draw the line and did it deftly and with grace and good humor—although it did seem to Charlie that the kisses got longer and the line got a little less clearly defined each time they approached it.

And so, by the time Charlie at last recognized that their pleasant evenings and sweetly promising kisses had become a habit (and a slyly, subtly dangerous one, at that, like cigarettes or alcohol, which could sneak up on you and
hook
you before you were aware that you were caught), it was already far too late. The Darling gossip mill had been turning industriously for weeks and folks had already pegged them as a couple.

Charlie should not have been shocked by this, but he was. And he was even more shocked—exactly as if he had unscrewed a light bulb and put his finger in the empty socket and turned on the switch—when he heard (at Bob’s Barbershop) that Fannie had been overheard to say (at Beulah’s Beauty Bower) that she was expecting a proposal of
marriage
. Whether she had actually said such a thing, he had no way of knowing. What he knew was that, as far as Darling was concerned, Miss Fannie Champaign and Mr. Charles Dickens were as good as engaged. All that remained was the formal announcement of their wedding plans, which would surely appear on the front page of the Darling
Dispatch
any day now. And everyone was looking forward to it. Darling loved a roses-and-romance wedding more than almost anything else in the world—except, perhaps, a divorce as juicy as a blood orange.

Poor Charlie. He was in an alarming predicament and he had no idea how to deal with it. He couldn’t stop seeing Fannie without a good reason (he had none, for she was beyond reproach), and without breaking her heart. And even worse (oh, yes, much, much worse!) he couldn’t break up with her without humiliating her in the eyes of the people of Darling. All he could do was berate himself for letting this happen. And of course, he was the one who was at fault here: he should have seen the cliff ahead. He should have stopped them before they got close enough to the edge to look over and see the rocks below.

But Charlie Dickens was not fool enough to be pushed into taking that ultimate step over the cliff, either by Fannie or anyone else. Oh, no! He reminded himself sternly that he had neither the temperament nor the means for marriage. He could barely support himself on what little money the
Dispatch
brought in over expenses. How in the Sam Hill could he support a wife? And since he had gotten along thus far in his life without one—and very handily, at that—he could see no special advantage to getting married at this late date.

But these arguments were generated by another, more powerful force that Charlie Dickens would not allow himself to recognize. It was
fear
that kept him from taking that ultimate step: fear of being confined—no,
trapped
was a better word—in a situation from which he could not escape. This subterranean fear had pushed him out of every relationship that had ever engaged his interest—including his brief and unsatisfying intimacy with Lily Dare (who was every bit as afraid of confinement as he was). It pushed him now to search for a way out of his relationship with Fannie Champaign, some kind of strategy that would deflect any blame from the blameless Fannie and cast it all on himself. Charlie was just enough aware of his feelings to recognize this as a noble impulse and to begin to think seriously about finding that strategy.

And that was where he was when the Texas Star agreed to bring her Dare Devil air show to Darling. This circumstance gave him an idea for a way to deal with what he now thought of as the “Fannie problem.”

He didn’t at all like this idea when it first occurred to him and he kept on not liking it as the idea grew into a plan. To tell the truth, the plan was pretty scummy and he wished he could think of something a little less hurtful for Fannie and not quite so damaging to his own reputation. But while it certainly was not a pretty plan, he told himself that it sprang from the right motive and was the best he could come up with under the circumstances. He didn’t want to do it, but he had to. And the time to do it was
now
.

Charlie and Fannie usually had supper together on Wednesday nights. One week, they would walk over to the Old Alabama; the next week, Fannie would cook for them in her apartment, upstairs over her hat shop and the small rooms that housed the Darling library. That was the plan for this Wednesday night, and Charlie was glad, since it meant that he could say what he had to say in private, which seemed infinitely better to him than saying it in front of the other diners at the Old Alabama—although thinking about feeling glad only made him feel even worse.

The evening was quite warm and humid, and Fannie had put together a sandwich supper of cold meat, cheese, potato salad, and sliced tomatoes. To catch the breeze, she had moved a small table to the window overlooking the courthouse square, where people were still coming and going in the early evening quiet, most of them on their way to the Palace Theater to see the Marx Brothers in
Monkey Business
. The window was curtained in some sort of translucent white material that seemed to shimmer in the slight breeze, and the table was fresh and pretty, with a white tablecloth and flower-embroidered napkins and a bouquet of summer flowers from Fannie’s garden.

Fannie wore flowers, too, a bouquet of tiny fresh white blossoms tucked into the lace-edged V-neck of her pretty blue dress. Seeing the trouble she had taken to make herself and the table attractive, Charlie felt like an even bigger heel. “Lower than a snake’s belly,” his father would have said, and his father would have been right.

Fannie was not quite as bright and lively as she usually was when they were together, and Charlie thought he detected a darker thread of melancholy beneath her banter. For his part, Charlie did his best to keep up his end of the conversation while they ate. But it was hard, because he kept thinking about the thing he was going to say after they had finished eating and wondering what was the easiest way to open an unpleasant subject.

The bright summer evening waned into a warm, dusky twilight, but Fannie did not turn on the light. Finally, when they had finished their dessert and were lingering over a cup of after-dinner coffee, she opened the subject for him.

“You haven’t mentioned the Kilgores’ party, Charlie. I don’t usually go to country club parties—they’re a little rich for my taste. But I’m planning to be there, since the Dahlias are presenting a potted plant to the guest of honor, Miss Dare—the Texas Star. It’s a hibiscus.” She looked at him with a half-smile that seemed to him hopeful, expectant, vulnerable. It struck at his heart. “You’re going, too, aren’t you? Perhaps we could . . .” The invitation hung in the air between them like an empty comic strip balloon.

“I’ll be there.” Charlie set his coffee cup into its saucer with a definitive click. “In fact, I’m escorting Miss Dare—if she’s able to come, that is. There’s a problem with one of the airplanes.” He paused, steeling himself against hurting her but persuaded that cruelty was the only way. “Lily and I are old . . .
friends
,” he said, putting a suggestive emphasis on “friends” and trusting that Fannie—who drew her own line with such deftness and grace—would hear it and understand.

She did. She stopped stirring cream into her coffee and sat quite still. A breeze lifted the curtain at her elbow, bringing the scent of fresh-popped popcorn into the room. Down on the street, in front of the Palace, somebody laughed.

“I see,” she said, in a remarkably even voice. “It’s good for old friends to spend some time together. I hope the two of you will enjoy your reunion.” She spoke as if she had somehow prepared herself for his announcement, although he didn’t see how that was possible. She lifted her eyes to his and pinned his gaze, holding it steadily.

There was a little leap in his stomach and a dull kerplunk, like a rock dropping into a deep well. The feeling shook him. He wasn’t a very good liar, but he replied with an attempt at nonchalance.

“Yeah. That’s what it is, all right. A reunion. Lily and I have been talking on the telephone and it seems . . .” He stopped and glanced out the window at the darkening street, letting her imagine the conversation he might have had with Miss Dare. “I thought I’d better tell you before you saw us together at the party,” he added deliberately. “Or at the movie tomorrow night. There’s a special showing of
Hell’s Angels.
I’m taking her.”

She turned away to look out the window, too, and he slid quickly into the explanation he had rehearsed. “Lily and I, we go back quite a few years. We met when I was working for the Fort Worth
Star-Telegram.
At the time, she had a big ranch west of town where she liked to give parties. I’d spend weekends out there. We became quite good . . . friends.”

Fannie seemed to draw back into herself, away from him, out of his reach. Still looking out the window, she said, “I suppose you’re telling me that you mean to renew your friendship with Miss Dare in an important or permanent way.” She turned to face him and added, quietly and evenly, “Is that it, Charlie?”