Brightleaf (7 page)

Marcelle is fidgeting in her chair like she’d like to speak. She clears her throat and stands up – a thing we don’t normally do in Share Group, stand up – and says, “I’m a smoker.”

Oh brother.

“Marcelle, sit down. This is not a Smokers Anonymous meeting,” I say.

“She may feel more comfortable standing,” says Terry. He’s sitting next to me with his arms crossed, kind of leaning back in his chair. “Isn’t that the gist of Share Group?” He looks my way.

“Go ahead, then,” I say because Marcelle won’t sit down. She just wants to be the center of attention.

“I’ve now been smoke-free for one month. Because I met the healer!”

“The healer, huh?” I say.

“His name is Lonnie Jr. And he’s a Christian hypnotist.”

“Is that like a Christian Scientist?” asks Eleanor.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “The person who accuses Baptists and Catholics of being in
alternative
religions thinks hypnotists are okay?”

“Mary Beth, babe,” says Mavis, wrinkling her forehead. “You’re breakin your own rules talkin that way.”

“He’s for real,” says Marcelle. “That’s why I came. To testify! Lonnie Jr. can heal you of anything. And fix all your problems! He’s also so charming and charismatic. You’re gonna love him.”

“Okay. That’s great. Thanks for testifying. You may sit down now.”

Marcelle is still standing there like I just told her to please stand as much as she wants. Terry looks perplexed, and Mavis looks thoughtful.

“We’re gonna love him?” asks Mavis. “He’s comin to the Rapturous Rest?”

Marcelle nods with a big smile. “Next week!”

Mavis claps her hands and says, “Goody! If he’s as magical as you says he is, I know somebody who needs a taste of his medicine.”

“Great idea,” says Terry. “A guest speaker.”

“I didn’t invite him,” I say. Grocery store psychics, hypnotists…what’s next? Snake charmers and necromancers?

Marcelle says, “I did you a favor, Miss Mary Beth.” A few people laugh.

Mavis should donate her
I’m the BIG Sister
shirt to Marcelle.

“You can thank me later.”

To keep from charging Marcelle, knocking her flat on the floor, and slapping her silly like a middle school gang girl, I say, “Would ya’ll excuse me, please?” I hold my hand to my head and tell them I think it’s a migraine.

I’m sitting on the bed in my grandmother’s old room. Mazie Lee Green lived a full life until five years ago, when she had a heart attack working in her garden. A friend found her lying peacefully in a bed of lavender, embracing an armload of dahlias. She was 89. I feel her spirit here more than any place in the house. The wallpaper is the same pearly pink with the white print of flower-filled urns, peeling at the seams. The woodwork—doors, windows and crown molding—is still the same high-gloss white. Voices from downstairs float up, but I can’t make out what anyone is saying. Occasionally a few people laugh. Maybe Marcelle is entertaining them with stories from our childhood, like when I was six and I tried to fly. I climbed up a twelve-foot ladder and jumped off, flapping my arms. I pull out one of my grandmother’s Perry Como albums,
The Golden Records
, and set it on the turntable. I position the needle to “Catch A Falling Star,” turn down the volume to barely audible, and pick up the
People
magazine on my nightstand, slowly turning the pages.

Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day
, sings Perry
.

When I first moved back into the house, five months after my grandmother passed, the scent of her talcum powder still lingered powerfully. It’s faint now, but I believe it will always be here, or at least I will expect it to be, so it will. The white chenille bedspread is fraying but passes for shabby chic. The windows face the street, so if I wanted to I could know everything that’s going on in my front yard, across the street, and halfway down the hill. Not only is it my grandmother’s room – maybe because of it – whenever I enter, I feel like I’m moving into a dimension separate from the other parts of the house. It’s a pocket of cleaner air, made up of whatever type of atoms are used in creating the substance of congruence and the properties of rest. One reason why I named the house what I did. I almost feel like I’m in an episode of
Star Trek
, when Captain Kirk steps into a new world. Something shifts for me in here.

For love may come and tap you on your shoulder some starless night,

Just in case you think you want to hold her,

You’ll have a pocket full of starlight…

I regroup and kick myself for letting my sister get the best of me, for reacting to her like I did as a child. I sit here listening to the sounds of the evening unwind downstairs. Voices grow fainter until they disappear down the street or behind car doors. Outside, trashcan lids slam, metal to metal, signaling some good soul taking out the last of the day’s trash. I pick up the arm of the record player and set the needle to “Papa Likes Mambo.” I’m waiting for everyone to clear out, so I can sneak down to the kitchen with my toothbrush and use the port-o-let. About fifteen minutes ago, I heard Marcelle tell Mavis goodnight, so I figure the coast is probably clear.

I push my door open and see the light of the TV below, though no one is watching. As I move through the living room, there’s a knock on the front door. I peek through the peephole. It’s Terry Dorrie.

I crack the door.

“You weren’t asleep, were you?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I just came down to brush my teeth.”

“Oh, good. I think I left my briefcase.”

I open the door all the way and tell him he’s welcome to come in and look around.

He steps over the threshold, walks into the great room and clear around the sofa.

“Mind if I turn on a lamp?” he asks. He looks behind the wingback chairs and in the hall closet. “I may have left it in the kitchen.”

During the day, the kitchen is bright and caffeinated, but now the fluorescent light over the stove reflects off the canary yellow walls, converting them to a soft gold, blanketing the room with warmth and stillness. The briefcase is sitting on the floor, leaning against the leg of a kitchen chair.

“I’m really sorry to bother you when you’re getting ready for bed,” he says, reaching for his briefcase. “But I’m happy to see you.” He stands up and looks at me with an expression that’s difficult to define.

“Thanks,” I say, crossing my arms over my robe, clutching my toothbrush. I’m self-conscious about my old robe and hope Dr. Dorrie doesn’t feel like he needs to make small talk. “Well, glad you found your briefcase,” I say. “I’d walk you to the door, but I’m a mess.”

He stands there looking at me. “Gotta minute?” he asks.

I shrug.

“I feel like I owe you an apology for taking sides with your sister tonight. It wasn’t intentional. At the time I didn’t realize how much it would bother you.”

I nod, grateful to hear him say that.

“But I can’t help feeling that I’ve offended you before tonight somehow.”

“Why’s that?” I say.

“Because you never talk to me.”

“We’re talking now.” I give him a half smile, trying my best to be polite.

“Yeah, but that’s not what I mean. Did I say something at my office that put you off? Or was it at the traffic light when I told you your brake lights were out?”

“I was really happy you told me about that. I’d probably be dead, if you didn’t.”

“Okay. It just feels like you avoid me on purpose. Maybe that sounds strange.”

I wish I could tell this nice man that it was not him that did anything. It was me. Instead I say with a forced laugh, “I guess I’ve been really distracted lately. My life is crazy!”

“Okay,” he says. “I get that.” He gives me a nod, picks up his briefcase and starts for the door.

I set my toothbrush on the counter. I don’t want to have long conversations with Terry Dorrie and end up slowly becoming good friends with him and really
liking
the man whose dog I stole. On the other hand, I recognize I’m not treating him like I would anybody else. I’m normally friendly with everyone I meet (with a few exceptions), so with as much grace as I can muster, I say, “Can I do anything for you, Terry? Do you need something?”

He stops in the kitchen door and looks at me. He says, “What can you do for me? I’m not so needy that I need
you to do anything for me. I just thought we could talk.”

“About what?”

“Anything. Maybe we could have dinner Friday, Saturday?”

“Like…a date?” I can’t decide if Terry Dorrie feels sorry for me or is asking me on a date. It would be pretty strange to go on a date with the Jersey Guy. My sort-of gynecologist. He needs to quit thinking he hurt my feelings so bad at Share Group tonight.

“Whatever you want it to be,” he says. “We can hang out outside of the group here.”

I sincerely disdain dating. I say, “I don’t think I can. I’ve got a church fellowship meeting on Friday, and I’ve already committed to bringing the beef stroganoff. And Saturdays are for book-keeping, meal-planning and shopping, which pretty much whips me for the rest of the weekend.” Which is all the truth.

“I like stroganoff,” he says.

“You’d get bored. You won’t know a soul there,” I say.

“I’ll know you.”

“Where do you normally go to church, anyway?”

“I’m Catholic but haven’t been to a Mass in ages. In fact, I probably need to do something churchy so the guy in the sky doesn’t forget about me,” he says with a smile.

He’s not giving up. So I say, “Ok, but be ready when I pick you up.”

“Great!” he says.

When I ask Terry for directions to his house to pick him up, I feel guilty for pretending not to know where he lives. But the drive over to the church isn’t too terrible. Terry asks where I grew up and about my family. He asks me where I went to college and what my major was. I tell him Chapel Hill with a degree in Education, and that I taught kindergarten for six years in Greensboro before moving back to Brightleaf to help my grandmother the last few years of her life.

When Terry insists I find a teaching job in Brightleaf, I tell him that I love the children, but it wasn’t easy. Teachers have to be like superheroes: they go around doing great feats and get a lot of criticism.

“What about boyfriends, or dare I say…marriage?” Terry asks.

“Nada.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Too busy. Well, I had a kind of boyfriend once. And it seemed like we were starting something, until he went to London to work on a graduate degree and I never heard from him again.”

“I’m sorry.”

An uneasy silence fills my car until Terry speaks up again.

“Where’s the steeple?” He starts laughing when he sees my church building.

“There’s no rule that a church needs a steeple,” I say as we pull into the parking lot of a defunct Wendy’s. Jesus never said he’d be wherever there are two or more steeples gathered in his name.

In my mind, a Wendy’s makes a perfect church. You’ve got a big kitchen and a long counter to use as a buffet. Then all that good seating. I like the way we don’t all sit in straight rows and look straight ahead at the preacher. The regular Wendy’s tables and chairs are a nice change from conventional pews.

The stroganoff is in a Pyrex dish covered with foil. Terry walks it over to the buffet and squeezes it between two plates of deviled eggs, evidently brought by two different people. The food at potlucks always gives you a real feel for the person who made it. I don’t make judgments about people and their food in the same way I do with front yards and statuary. But it does show you little things, like obviously who can cook and who can’t, and who enjoys paying attention to small details and…who cannot get enough of the flavor Amaretto.

I sit at a table with the Henricos, an older couple who’ve been coming here for longer than me. Dot Henrico just came down with Bell’s palsy, and her face is half paralyzed. Her husband, Bill, is telling me the details and about the doctor visits. Dot just nods and smiles with the half of her face that still works. I am impressed that she is in such good spirits, under the circumstances. Terry should be back from dropping off the stroganoff, but he’s walking around the room and shaking hands with different people. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him point over to where I am, and each person turns to me and smiles. Then he walks up to Deacon Coons and his wife, Belinda. They give one another big hugs, and he kisses Belinda on the cheek. Bill Henrico is still telling me about Dot’s doctor visits, and I don’t want to be rude to these nice people, so I keep on listening and having the concerned look and nodding, all the while keeping an eye on Terry and the Coons, who are over there just yacking it up, apparently having some kind of reunion. Terry is talking and gesturing with his hands, and Deacon Coons and Belinda are laughing like they think Terry is a regular Jerry Seinfeld. Belinda gives him a playful push on he arm like she’s saying,
Terry Dorrie, you just kill me!

Terry never tells me funny stories. Now, I want to sprint over there and find out what’s so dang hilarious and how Terry knows my church deacon and his wife. But Bill Henrico is really rolling with the Bell’s palsy story, so I have no choice but to hear it to the end.

The room hums so loudly with the chatter of friends catching up that we barely hear the bell ring. It rings again, and everyone begins to quiet down and find their seats. The minister says a prayer, blessing the food (Potluck food needs extra blessing in my opinion. Just think: you have no clue who made it, how long its been sitting out, or if somebody sneezed on it.), prays for Dot Henrico’s speedy recovery, and ends with something like,
help us fight the good fight against gluttony.
After the prayer, Terry makes his way to our table, where I introduce him to the Henricos. They shake hands, and Bill says, “Hey Terry, why don’t we all hit the buffet, then I’ll fill you in on what I was just telling Mary Beth. Boy, we’ve had a time with the doctors.”

As we walk to the buffet, I say, “I see you know Deacon Coons and his wife.”