Hung Out to Die (8 page)

Uncle Fenwick stood up. “I've had enough!” He tossed down the napkin and pine cone/construction paper turkey, and unfortunately, they landed on the he-version of the Pilgrim candleholder. The pine cone turkey knocked over the boy Pilgrim, right onto the turkey carcass, which, dry as it was, immediately flared. Then the turkey grease at the bottom of the serving plate went up in flames.

“My carcass! My carcass! For the soup!” shrieked Mamaw.

“I'll take care of it!” Aunt Suzy tossed the contents of her glass onto the flame, but the flame surged and caught on the tablecloth.

“My, my, I thought she just had iced tea. Was that alcohol in her glass?” Mama asked primly.

“My carcass! My carcass!” Mamaw kept shrieking.

“Water, everyone, just toss water!” Fern hollered.

Wow, I thought. From Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving scene, to flaming turkey carcass and family hollering, in less than twenty minutes.

Still, I tossed my glass of water onto the flaming table. Everyone else did, too, except Uncle Fenwick and Daddy, who just glared at each other.

And that's how I left the Toadfern Thanksgiving dinner, with most everyone pouring water on the flaming turkey carcass.

They seemed to have the flames under control.

Plus I was due to visit the Burkettes next door.

And, truth be told, I just wanted to get away from my family on Thanksgiving.

I've been told, since then, that that's not an uncommon impulse.

6

After I left Mamaw Toadfern's, I realized that I still had about two hours before I was supposed to arrive at the Burkette's at four-thirty.

I didn't think showing up that early would impress the Burkettes, which, to both my chagrin and surprise, I found I wanted to do.

The afternoon was so beautiful—the sky a shade of blue that somehow looked cold, the snow-covered fields sparkling—that I thought about taking a walk along the old towpath that ran behind the Toadfern and Burkette properties as well as the old orphanage. The bike/hike trail followed along where a canal once ran . . . and then a train line . . . and a telegraph line. Some of the old telegraph poles still stood, but the train and canal lines were long gone, converted by the county into a recreational path.

I loved to bike or hike on it in the warmer months, starting at the little canal museum just outside of Paradise, where there was a convenient way to access the path. I usually managed to stick out fifteen miles, because at that point was Gratis, a town even tinier than Paradise, and boasting one sole industry: a wonderful ice cream parlor that catered to towpath hiker/bikers.

But, of course, in November that parlor would be closed. Not many people would want to hike in that weather, as beautiful as it was, especially with the report that another snow and ice storm was on its way. Plus, I didn't have the proper boots with me.

I went back to my apartment instead. I thought about calling Owen again, and then thought better of it. Let him call
me,
I thought.

Then I considered the wisdom of roasting a turkey breast in my oven while I was at the Burkette's. My oven had never given me any problems. On the other hand . . .

I shrugged off my worries. I hadn't had a real Thanksgiving dinner at Mamaw Toadfern's. I didn't really want to stay at the Burkette's and dine on their leftovers for the evening meal. And I was feeling a wee bit sorry for myself.

So I occupied my time in preparing the turkey to roast, popping it in my oven, and setting out a few other items from my cabinet for side dishes. So the potatoes would be instant, the gravy from a jar, the green beans and cranberry sauce from cans.

That made me think about Aunt Nora's wonderful cranberry relish, and the cranberry stain in Uncle Randolph's shirt, and I started to feel even sorrier for myself.

Defiantly, I set my table with a blue Fiestaware plate that I'd just acquired at the McNally estate sale, and stuck a yellow candle in one of my only slightly chipped Candlewick candleholders (purchased at the Antique Depot), and even added a vintage linen napkin to the setting. So there. I didn't need Owen or the silly Toadferns to have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Right?

I'd already had a great time with Guy, whom I'd see again the next day at the mysterious meeting at Stillwater, and I'd have a quick maybe half-hour visit with the Burkettes, and then I'd come home to my cozy apartment and have a wonderful dinner for one and curl up with a book and never have to deal with my parents or the Toadferns or my strange feelings of wanting to impress the Burkettes again. A few days later, Owen would be back, and we'd work things out.

That, at least, is what I told myself my future held, as I left my apartment, already wonderfully scented from the roasting turkey, and headed out to the Burkettes.

Hey. We're all allowed an occasional fantasy.

Rachel answered the door before I even stopped knocking.

“Josie! I'm so glad you're here!” She sounded positively relieved.

She took my coat and hung it on a beautiful antique coat tree, then ushered me into the living room.

This was like a surreal alternate reality to the scene I'd left a few hours earlier at the Toadferns'. The layout to the farmhouse was basically the same, but the living and dining rooms were filled with expensive furniture.

I could see through the living room to the dining room, and the mahogany table covered with carefully stacked china, ready for the corner hutch, and surrounded with matching chairs. There were no pinecone-and-construction-paper turkeys or Pilgrim candleholders. Just one centerpiece—an elaborate florist's arrangement of flowers in fall colors.

There had been no flaming turkey carcasses at their dinner, I was certain. For one thing, the house didn't smell of singed meat and grease.

Instead, the living room was pungent and toasty from the blaze in the fireplace, around which the family members sat serenely.

Effie sat on the couch, working on a needlepoint project. She was, I quickly calculated, probably seventeen years or so older than my mama, but she looked just as young. She, like my mama, had made an effort to dress in a more sophisticated way than you'd expect in Paradise—even at Thanksgiving—but somehow the tweed suit and careful makeup and carefully curled bouffant looked natural on her. Compared to Effie, the style on my mama looked like something she was just trying on for dress up.

Rich Burkette, still decked out in a suit and tie, sat next to his wife on the couch. He looked up from a book he was reading—a Lincoln biography, I noted from the title.

Another man—Rachel's much older half-brother Lenny, I guessed—sat apart from everyone else in an overstuffed leather chair. His tie was loose and he stared into the fire as if it were a portal to another world.

Now this—other than Lenny's distant gaze—really was a Norman Rockwell tableau, and it should have impressed me, but instead I felt . . . sad. Not out of a shoulda-known-the-Burkettes-would-outclass-the-Toadferns jealousy, which kind of surprised me. But because, somehow, the scene seemed empty. Like maybe it just needed a pinecone turkey or two to spruce up the utter perfection into something a little more real. I could understand Lenny's impulse to try to gaze away.

I tugged at my somewhat short brown corduroy skirt—a hand-me-over from Cherry—and worried that my cream poly-cotton turtleneck was too casual next to Rachel and Effie's cashmere.

At least, I thought, stains were easier to get out of poly-cotton . . .

“Mama, Daddy . . . you know Josie Toadfern, of course,” Rachel said nervously.

Simultaneously, Rich put his book down on his lap, and Effie put her needlepoint on her lap. Then they looked at me as if I'd just teleported in from Mars. We knew of each other, of course. But even in a town with a population of just under three thousand, there are divisions. The Burkettes were from the small division that never had occasion to visit my laundromat—not even to wash throw rugs or comforters.

Rachel then said, “Josie, did you ever meet Lenny?”

“I moved to Indianapolis when she was seven,” Lenny said.

My eyebrows went up at that. He knew my life that well? That seemed odd, and a little creepy . . . then I recollected that my daddy also had an eyebrow-lifting gesture. I lowered my eyebrows.

“You look so much like your mother did when she was younger,” Lenny said, staring at me. He was a rather small, gently featured man, but there was something both compelling and piercing about his eyes. “Although she was prettier . . .”

“Lenny and your mother were friends—just friends—back in high school.” I jumped, looked at Effie Burkette. She was a petite, thin woman, her face tense, her neck a bit stringy. She added, “Would you care for some spiced wassail, dear?”

“Wassail?” I snapped the word.

“Well, if you don't care for it,” Effie started, sounding disappointed.

“Oh, no, it's just . . .” I stopped. I couldn't exactly say, it's just I'm a little peeved—not to say creeped out and confused—about your son's comment about my mama being prettier. And by the fact he keeps staring at me. At least, I didn't think I should say all that five minutes into the visit.

Rich chuckled. “Effie just can't resist making it year after year,” he said. “Even though no one particularly cares for it and I always tell her sherry's the thing after a fine meal. It's her down-home ways, I guess.” He chuckled again, held up his glass, and patted her on the knee.

Down-home ways? There was nothing down home about this refurbished farmhouse—or anyone in it. Even in the way everyone spoke. There was a clipped edge to their tone, not the soft twang of most Paradisites' speech. Paradise may be in Ohio, but it's in southern Ohio, much of which is in the Appalachian Mountain Range, and most of which has an Appalachian down-home feel, especially outside of the urban areas.

Rich was from northern Ohio—an area Southern Ohioans thought of as having a more industrial, East Coast feel—and of course Lenny and Rachel had lived outside of Paradise for a long time, but Effie was a Paradise native who rarely traveled. Yet, it was as if she had distanced herself from her roots in speech and style without ever actually leaving.

So what was Rich's “down home” comment about? Was Rich really trying to make an endearing statement about his wife . . . or a subtle put-down?

Effie's reaction only added to my confusion. She stiffened, but smiled at her husband. “Tradition, dear,” she said, somewhat shrilly. She smiled at me. “It was my mother's recipe.”

Huh? I knew this was Effie's father's old farmhouse, and that her mother had died when Effie was just a few years old. I knew this in the way that people always know everyone's biography in a small town. And I was real sure that Effie's mama didn't make something as fancy as wassail every year. Like my Mamaw, Effie's mama would have been the “down home” kind of cook. Hopefully her turkeys turned out moister. In any case, she'd have served cider from the jug.

“I think it's really quite tasty,” Rachel said.

“A way to usher in the Yuletide season,” Lenny added. “I'll go get you some, Josie.”

Rachel, Lenny, and Effie, I realized, all had mugs. Rich was the only one with a glass.

By the time I'd settled in with Rachel on a couch, Lenny came back with a mug—an elegant off-white that matched everyone else's. I'd have been willing to bet that theirs was the only house in the Paradise area that didn't have the Paradise Chamber of Commerce mug, which included advertising from several establishments, including my laundromat.

I sipped the wassail, and immediately forced myself not to spit. It was hot and far too sour. And too strongly laced with bourbon. I decided to sip slowly.

I asked Lenny where he lived and what he did. He was a high school history teacher in the Indianapolis school system, he said. And basketball coach, his mother added. You'd think, she went on, that with a nice job like that, and he was such a good-looking boy, he'd have found a nice girl to settle down with.

He blushed, looked embarrassed, and said, “Oh, Mama, you're the only girl for me!”

Effie actually giggled and said, “He always says that.”

“Another down-home tradition,” Rich said.

Ohhh-Kaaay, I thought.

“The truth is, I've just been too busy all these years to settle down. And by myself, I make enough to meet all my needs, plus each spring and summer, I and a partner run a yard maintenance company,” Lenny said. “In August, I take off and go to Europe.”

“Sounds wonderful,” I said. It did. I hadn't traveled beyond Ohio and Kentucky, and never for more than a night away. I wanted to be close, for Guy.

As if sensing my thoughts, Effie said, “So how is your cousin—Guy? Am I remembering his name right?”

I smiled at her. “Yes, you are, thank you. He's doing very well.”

Effie perked up. “Oh! So he's over his, his condition.”

I stiffened a little, then reminded myself, as I always did, to be kind to people who didn't understand about autism. Even though it was a fairly well-known condition, through movies such as
Rain Man,
over the past few years, old mistaken beliefs and myths still persisted.

“No,” I said. “Autism is not something that can be cured. But Guy, like many adults with autism, has been helped to be the best person he can be, to live as independently as—”

“How sad,” Effie said, staring off into the distance. “To have a child less than perfect. I wonder what his mother did . . . Clara seemed like such a nice lady.”

“Mother—” Rachel started.

“That's okay,” I said, trying to keep my tone even. “She didn't do anything. That was a common myth, especially years ago, that autism was somehow the mother's fault. It's a condition, like many others, that has its origins in the genes . . .”

“Well, now, my little darling is too busy watching over me and the house to keep up with such things,” Rich said—again, both implying an endearment, while subtly putting his wife down.