Baggage Check (23 page)

She tried to ignore her hunger pangs as they drove down seemingly endless country roads, with their innumerable dirt road tributaries and bridges over dribbles of muddy creeks. She hoped she would not have to find her way back to Oreville from here—they were in the middle of nowhere, and they had crossed two county lines that she'd noticed.

Finally, just before the millionth four-way stop, Alex turned in to a short gravel driveway surrounded by a grassy field full of cars and trucks. There were more vehicles parked here than they had seen during the entire half-hour drive. The restaurant itself was little more than a clapboard shack with faded paint on the windows advertising seafood specials and blue plate dinners. There was a bug-light zapping mosquitoes and flickering ominously near the door. An old man sat on a rickety bench out front, staring at the road.

“Evening, Elmer,” Alex said as he opened the door.

The man grunted in response.

“Good chat,” Alex said.

Inside was the quintessential hole-in-the-wall country restaurant: Formica tables and old padded brown chairs—half of which were losing their stuffing—linoleum floors, flickering fluorescent lights, and—she couldn't help but notice—a layer of dust thicker than a magazine on the air vents next to their table. In her other life in Atlanta, she would have taken one look at this place and walked right back out again. But she was thirty minutes from nowhere, and so hungry she could eat her own foot. And Rebecca had to admit that the hush puppies frying smelled amazing.

“Do you have a drink menu?” she asked the middle-aged waitress who came to take their orders.

“Coke, tea, water.”

“It's a dry county,” Alex said. “No booze.”

“Oh,” Rebecca said, and the waitress rolled her eyes. “Unsweet tea, please.”

“We're out of unsweet. Be about ten minutes.”

“Sweet is fine, thank you.” When the waitress shuffled away, Rebecca said. “Jeez, I forgot dry counties even existed.”

“You're in a whole 'nother world now,” Alex said, amplifying his already-thick Southern accent. “But at least they have a seafood sampler.”

They were halfway through dinner, and Rebecca was greedily licking the grease from her fingers while debating a third cheddar biscuit from the basket between them, when the little teenybop song rang out from Alex's pocket. “Excuse me,” he said. He got up from the table and took the call outside.

The waitress came back to the table with a pitcher of unsweetened tea to refill Rebecca's mason jar glass and to take away the now-empty bread basket. “Everything good?”

“Oh my God,” Rebecca said to her. “This is amazing.”

“It'll put meat on your bones,” the waitress said. “Not that Alex will mind. He's a good man. Doesn't focus on appearances like so many do.”

Before she could protest that she and Alex were only friends, the waitress was gone again.
He knows everyone in a ten-county radius,
she thought.
If I broke his heart, I wouldn't even be able to fly in and out of the state.

Alex returned a few minutes later and put his phone on the table, smiling.

“I'd love to meet her,” Rebecca said, surveying her corn on the cob for any remaining kernels. “You guys seem to have such a great relationship.”

“We do,” he said. “She's a good kid. But you can't meet her.”

Even though her suggestion had been offhand, Rebecca was taken aback by his refusal. “Why not?”

“Nothing personal, but I don't bring women around my daughter.” He used the last of his biscuit to guide a bite of coleslaw onto his fork. “Her life has been chaotic enough without a parade of potential stepmothers in and out of it.”

“A parade?”

Alex grinned. “Well, not a parade, I guess. More like a small tea party, but still.”

“But we're just friends,” she countered. “Don't you think she would understand that?”

“Well, there's a fine line between friends and ‘friends.'” He made air quotes with his fingers. “I think when teenage girls hear their dad introduce a beautiful woman as a ‘friend,' they are going to jump to the same conclusion anybody else with a bit of sense would.”

Rebecca wanted to dispute this characterization of their relationship, but she thought about her own father. He had referred to Sonia as a “friend” for several months, too. And she hadn't bought it either. “I guess you're right.”

“Besides,” Alex said, wiping his hands on a napkin before dropping it on his plate in defeat, “I haven't given up on the idea that you might promote me from friend to ‘friend' yet. So I want to make sure the timing is right when you meet Honey.”

Rebecca wished she had not said anything about it. She became engrossed in straightening the red checkered tablecloth so that it lined up with the edge of the table. The waitress returned with the check. “Here you go, darlin'.”

Alex threw down two twenties and pushed back his chair. “Ready to go? I'm assuming you don't want peanut butter pie. It's supposed to be good but I'm always too damn full to try it.”

“No, I'm stuffed,” she said. He stood and she followed him toward the door. “You didn't have to buy me dinner. Thank you.”

“As long as you know I'm expecting sex in return,” he said as he walked out into the night. He was kidding, she knew. It was the same to him as Scooby-Doo and the haunted house, and the ten thousand other jokes he had made since they met. But the smile felt brittle on her face, and her stomach churned.

They navigated the grassy, unlighted parking lot in silence. There were thousands of stars in the sky, more than she could ever remember seeing before. He followed her gaze upward as he unlocked the passenger's door for her. “It's the country. You can't see them near the city because of all the light pollution.”

“Oh,” she muttered. She climbed into the car but kept her focus on the sky, even as they drove away.

A memory floated back to her. She was with her dad and Cory beside the creek one summer night, watching a meteor shower. She did not remember where her mother had been, why it had been just the three of them. But she and Cory had been squabbling for half the night—probably he was picking on her about her braces because he knew that drove her crazy. And she was calling him stupid because it was her only defense, his only perceived weakness. Their dad had put one arm roughly around each of them and said, “Hush, you two. Don't you know the stars are magic? You can't be angry when you look at them. Stars are for wishing, and you never know what might come true underneath them.”

They had quieted then. Not so much because of the magical stars, but because Richard was not one to tolerate disobedience, not back then. Rebecca had still been angry with Cory and made a hasty wish on the next meteor she saw flare across the sky.
I wish he would just leave me alone.
For years after Cory's death, Rebecca had half-believed that it had been her wish that caused it.

“You okay?” Alex said. They had been driving for several minutes in silence.

“I'm fine.”

“You sound fine.”

“Sorry, I think I just ate too much.”

“Me too,” he said, patting his belly. “It's worth it, though, don't you think?”

“It was really good.”

“Hey, do you want a beer?” he asked. “I know a great spot.”

“I thought it was a dry county?”

“It is, but I happen to have a six-pack in the trunk. It's cold, or at least it was two hours ago. There's a beautiful view of the river down one of these back roads. And an angry old man who shoots trespassers on sight down another. I'm pretty sure I remember which is which.”

“That sounds great, Alex, but I think I just want to get home tonight. Can I take a rain check?”

“Oh. Okay, sure.”

“I'm sorry. I just realized how tired I am, and I really did eat too much.”

“Definitely. No problem.”

They went back to being quiet as he navigated down the darkened highways, and Rebecca watched the stars appear and disappear over the silhouettes of the trees. Alex began to whistle. At first it was sort of a tuneless whistling, and then she recognized “It Had to Be You,” among other things.

 

25

Alex stopped by the house on his lunch break Thursday, bringing her a turkey sandwich and a Coke from a little insulated lunch cooler in the passenger's floorboard of the patrol car. Since his radio was quiet, he even helped her reach a few boxes that someone had managed to wedge into the upper reaches of her former bedroom closet.

“So this is where all the magic happened,” he said, dusting his hands and looking around at what had become the “office,” but still had a faded border by the ceiling of pink and blue bows with a couple of sections missing.

“Not in here it didn't,” she said. “I was a good girl.”

“Never let Roger Simon have a peek under your Beta Club T-shirt?”

She blushed. “No! I didn't think anyone remembered me and Roger, besides my dad.”

“Oh, yeah. I was so jealous of him back then.”

She felt suddenly uncomfortable. “His wife now seems lovely, from the pictures I've seen.”

“She is. I had dinner with them a few weeks ago. Great kids, too. Honey played with them in the backyard for hours.”

“You had dinner with Roger?”

“Sure. I mean, raging jealousy over you aside, we're old football buddies. Besides, we're sort of in the same industry. I mean, at least we both have ‘law' in our job titles.”

“Well, yeah, at slightly different levels.” She regretted it as soon as it was out of her mouth.

His smile faded. He took a step toward the window and looked out in the direction of the patrol car. “I don't know. I like to think what I do is just as important as what Roger does.”

Regret crept up from her belly. Why had she said such a stupid thing? “I'm sorry, that's not what I meant. Of course your job is important.”

“But you think I could do better.”

She hesitated. “Not better, no.”

“But?”

“To be honest, I have wondered why you gave up on becoming an engineer. You talk about rebuilding that old house with such passion.”

“I wonder that sometimes, too,” he said quietly. He turned back to her. “Who knew you were such a snob?”

“I don't mean to be,” she fumbled. “I have no room to talk. Most people think I'm just a waitress who works in the air.”

“What's wrong with being a waitress? Lots of my friends are waitresses. They bring food and that makes people happy.”

She thought about the lady at Abelle's the night before and felt even worse. “No—nothing is wrong with it, I just meant…”
Jesus. Who else can I insult?

“Do you think less of my parents because they're just restaurant owners? Is your dad just a mailman? These jobs make the world go around and they're not appreciated.”

“I know, that's true. I don't mean—I—” She was flabbergasted. How had this conversation gone so wrong so quickly?

Alex stared at her for another minute before his face broke into a wide grin. “I'm just messing with you, Williamson. You need to learn to relax a little.” He smacked her ass playfully as he walked past. “We'll work on that later. For now, I gotta get back to work.”

She stood unmoving, listening to him go, and did not let out a breath until she heard the patrol car leave the driveway.

*   *   *

Rebecca worked until nearly nine that night. This was partly because she had a purging fit, during which she put more than half the items in her “unsure” pile out on the blue tarp for donation. And partly, she had to admit, because of the nervous energy left over from her conversation with Alex. He did not call her that afternoon, which was certainly not unusual, but she wondered all the same if he was angry with her.

It's totally unfair for him to call me a snob,
she thought, carrying an unopened under-the-cabinet microwave to the blue tarp.
I am not a snob. I mean, what's wrong with wanting something better in life?
There was a box of brand-new, artificial white poinsettias she'd contemplated saving in case they came in handy for the Junior League Christmas gala. Blue tarp, she decided.
If everyone were satisfied just doing any old job, we wouldn't have music to listen to, or art, or inventions. We wouldn't have the Internet.

I can't believe I said that about his job. He's so brave to do what he does, and I know I sounded like a jerk.
The elephant lamp with the red tasseled shade.
What was I thinking?

Maybe I'm embarrassed about my job? I don't have my own company like Suzanne or a book deal like Marci. I'm never going to be featured on PBS like Jake.
There was an old typewriter from the 1970s, still in its blue plastic case. It clanged as she placed it on the tarp next to the lamp.
I'll never be asked to be a keynote speaker for anything.

Next came a set of colorful melamine mixing bowls. She liked them, but remembered that she never cooked.
Then again, most people are never asked to be keynote speakers. Most people have normal jobs where they work for someone else, and they raise their families and live their lives and try to be happy. I see rich, powerful people in first class all the time and they don't seem happier than anyone else. Less, even.

This went on for a couple of hours, with no resolution, until it was full dark and the blue tarp was overcrowded with items for Goodwill to pick up early the next morning. Finally Rebecca stopped, staring.

“Oh, crap.”

She must have been through twenty boxes of clothes, toys, and knickknacks, plus many small appliances and miscellaneous items. In her frustration, however, she had lost track of what she was doing. There were several piles of things she'd intended to save that were now on the blue Goodwill tarp, and half of what she'd put on the red tarp to keep actually belonged in the Dumpster or the donation pile.