Kathryn Magendie (15 page)

“Mama likes them without all the bones, but they’s too small to filet.”

“Yep, trout’s a tasty fish, but y’uns got to work to eat them, with all the bones in there.”

“I’ll get the bones out for Mama,” Sweetie said.

“Where
is
your mother?” I asked.

“She’ll be out, directly. She’s making taters!”

“Oh-wee! Miss Mae’s fried taters. Now that’s a treat I haven’t tasted in the longest time.” Zemry rubbed his stomach.

“Uh huh. We’re having fried taters, these here trout, biscuits, and a blackberry cobbler.”

We washed the fish again in the pan re-filled with clean water. Zemry took long skinny sticks that he had soaking in a bucket, and with a length of string, tied the fish nice and snug onto the sticks. He rubbed the fish with butter, salt and pepper, laid them on a clean piece of wood, picked up the plank of wood and took the planked fish over to a fire he’d built earlier in a hollowed out place in the dirt. Waving his hand over it, he turned to us and nodded. “This fire’s good and ready. This fish’ll go over it, and I’ll cover it up with these wet leaves. It’ll get the fish so tender you won’t ever eat another kind again without thinking of this fish.”

Sweetie and I sat on the log and watched him. I bit my tongue every time I wanted to ask her if I could go inside and say hello to Miss Mae. Wonderful smells floated out of the opened door. I leaned back, pretending to stretch out my legs, and caught a glimpse of her at the stove. Her hair fell long down her back, past her hips, and she had on a blue cotton dress. Miss Mae was taller than I thought, and thinner.

Sweetie knew what I was up to. She pulled me up. “Nobody ever was as curious as you. Come on.”

We went into the cabin and I inhaled all the way to my bones. It smelled like a happy home should smell. Sweetie said, “Mama, look who’s here.”

Miss Mae turned around. Her blue eyes glittered like when the sun strikes the creek, and her cheeks were reddened from the heat of the stove. “Well, hello there, Lissa. I’m glad you come back.”

I was shy all of a sudden. “Thank you for having me.”

“Our pleasure, it’s for sure.” She smiled at me, said, “I woke up this morning and I had to have some fish and taters. I told my daughter she best get Zemry and catch a mess before things changed.” She checked inside the oven. “Oh, that cobbler is bubbling so fine.”

Sweetie stood beside her mother. “Mama, I can finish, if you want to go outside where it’s cool.”

“Let me have some fun, okay?” She smoothed Sweetie’s hair and they looked at each other in a way that showed their love.

I didn’t want to feel envious, but I did.

“Pour the tea, baby girl, and get the plates ready. These taters are about done. I already got cat-head biscuits waiting under that dishrag.” She lifted the dishcloth and under it were the biggest biscuits I’d ever seen, the tops golden brown and dusted with flour.

“Those biscuits look real good, Miss Mae.”

“My own mama taught me. Before she left.” Miss Mae frowned, her hand resting on her hip; then she said in a lower voice, “Before she just run off without a word. Not one word. I never seen her again.” Her shoulders slumped in.

Sweetie took her hand. “Mama? Zemry’s got that fish on the fire and it won’t be long. What a feast we’ll have, right? Right, Mama? Mama?”

Miss Mae shook her head, as if she had cobwebs clinging. “We sure will. These taters is done. Let’s eat, girls.”

She put the potatoes into a bowl, while I put the biscuits onto a platter. Sweetie went outside with a pan for the fish. When she was out of sight, Miss Mae touched me on the shoulder. “I got to ask you something important.”

“Yes Ma’am?”

“I know you to be a sensible one. I listen to my girl talk about you all the time. Sometimes my little gal is too wild. Full of . . . of ideas and wonderment. When you can, just watch for her, will you?”

I became lost in her sparkling eyes. They were so shiny I couldn’t tell how blue the blue was. I’d never seen eyes that shiny before.

“I can’t put anything on your shoulders that God won’t help you with. I know you’re just a child.”

I blinked, then said, “I can do it and I will.”

She put her hand on my head. I closed my eyes and pretended she was my mother. When I heard Sweetie coming back, she lifted away her hand. Away the warm feelings flew from me, and right back to her own daughter. I opened my eyes to the real world.

We took everything outside where it was breezy and ate until we couldn’t stuff any more down our throats, barely leaving room for cobbler. Zemry gave Sweetie and me whimmy diddles he’d carved from rhododendron twigs, and showed us how to play with them. The whimmy diddle had two parts. One was a long stick with notches cut into it and a propeller at the top, and the other stick was used to rub along the notches to get the propeller to turn. After I tried and failed, he showed me how to place my finger to get it to work. He said the gee haw part had something to do with mules or horses, but I was half listening as I tried to get the propeller to turn faster than Sweetie could. Zemry said there were contests to see who could whimmy diddle better than the next person.

Zemry made himself a cigarette and in between puffs, told stories about his great grandfather. Miss Mae sat on a blanket with her back against a poplar tree and listened. She didn’t talk, but she had a small smile the whole time.

Later, after things were cleaned up, Zemry said, “I need a good long nap under a shady tree.” He bid his goodbyes, and he and Miss Annie ambled on down the trail.

Miss Mae closed her eyes, and leaned back her head. The breeze blew strands of her hair across her face. She still had a small smile on her lips, but her forehead wrinkled.

“Mama, you ready to get back in bed?”

“Bring me my yarn basket, please.”

Sweetie ran inside.

I waited for Miss Mae to tell me something else, but she stayed quiet, kept her eyes closed.

When Sweetie came back and handed the basket to her, Miss Mae took a pile of yarn from the top. But it wasn’t a pile of yarn, it was a beautiful shawl. “I made this for your mama.” Miss Mae held it out to me.

I took it from her. The shawl was dark blue, with touches of light blue threaded in. It was beautiful. “Thank you. It’s so pretty.” It smelled like mint, earth, the potatoes and biscuits and cobbler. I wanted to bury my face in it.

“I made something for you, too.” She picked up a red knitted cap and held it out. “Seeing as you cut your hair within a inch of its life, I thought this would keep your head warm.”

I took the hat from her. “It’s beautiful, too. I can’t wait until it’s cold enough to wear it.”

“You tell your mama I’m sorry I been too sick to meet her. If she reared up as fine a daughter as you, she must be real special.”

Sweetie opened her mouth to say something, but Miss Mae held up her hand. She looked from Sweetie to me. “We all do what we can with how we know.” She rubbed her forehead. “Now, daughter, help me back to bed. I’m give out.”

We both helped her back to her bed. Sweetie gave her a pill, and Miss Mae lay back on the pillows and fell asleep.

Back outside, Sweetie said, “She’ll sleep for a long long spell.”

We ran to the creek and hunted for smoothed stones until it was time for me to go home.

***

Father brought home food most nights and we’d eat leftovers for breakfast, and for lunch if I was home. When he didn’t do that, we ate sandwiches or soup or eggs. When Mother had been gone four days, I asked Father where she was, but he changed the subject. After a week, I asked again, and again he didn’t say. After eight days, and still no mother, I began to run out to the mountain with Sweetie without doing my chores, and I quit asking where she was, but it was strange and weird. Father would talk on the phone, but always where I couldn’t hear.

After two weeks, Father took me to an Italian restaurant in
Asheville
. I wore the shawl and he complimented me on it. I told him Sweetie’s mother made it and it was really for mother, and not for me. He said, “Well, she’ll never know if you wear it this once.”

Father ate only half of his dinner. He told me about his book and the characters, and then talked about how things go wrong in our bodies because of our infallibility, how the innocent and good are stricken the same as the bad and guilty. That things were decided by mere chance. How since time began people had sicknesses and to blame anything but our ancestors and possibly what we eat or didn’t eat or just by a fluke in the genes was silly. Science and biology and chance. Nothing was by any hand of some god. Nothing by magic. Everything had an explanation even if it seemed there wasn’t one, even if one could not be found, there were scientific answers to everything . . .
blab blab blab blabbity blork
.

I thought different things in my head than I usually did when Father talked. I thought about Sweetie and how maybe I could believe in magic and things that couldn’t be explained. I could. I could believe in
some
thing, Father.

He winked at the waitress when she poured his wine, and she giggled with her hand over her mouth.

I knew something wasn’t right with him, but I couldn’t figure it out. He’d be smiling and telling stories, and winking, and then the next minute, he’d stare down at his plate, forgetting I was there until I asked him a question and he’d start in again about science and sickness. I thought he was missing Mother, even though that made no sense to me.

I ate my lasagna, and even though it wasn’t as good as Nonna’s was, it tasted wonderful compared to the lasagna Mother made with goat cheese and poor baby lambs. I always pretended I had a stomachache and couldn’t eat when she cooked lambs.

Father had let me have a tiny glass of red wine, as long as I didn’t tell Mother, and I felt like a grown up. It was so much fun, other than his funny moods, that I couldn’t help but think that Mother might never come back. I hated wicked thoughts, but sometimes they stomped around in my head anyway. I wanted Father and I to live by ourselves. I could have Sweetie over to spend the night, and I could go to her house and spend the night. Father and I could go fishing and I would show him how to clean and cook the fish outside like Zemry did. He’d buy me the microscope he’d promised me a year ago and show me the tiny mysterious worlds magnified. I’d discover something new and strange that no other scientist ever had and it would be named after me. Father would be so proud. Maybe I’d discover how people went in comas and where they were when they went there. Maybe when people went in comas they lived whole other lives, lives just as we lived where they didn’t even know they were in a coma at all, they were just living their lives not even aware they were lying in bed for weeks, months, years.

When we were home, Father said, “Thank you for a wonderful evening. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to make a private phone call, and then I will write for a bit.”

“I’ll go read awhile before bed.”

“That sounds splendid, love.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead. I watched him walk off, and noticed how stooped in the shoulders he looked. I went to bed and read
To Kill a Mockingbird
until I fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t remember any of my dreams. I jumped out of bed, stretched and bent down to touch my toes, did twenty-two jumping jacks, washed my face, then dressed and went to the kitchen. I wanted to make Father breakfast. Eggs, toast with marmalade, coffee, and orange juice. I set to work. It was harder than it looked when Mother did it. The eggs were a bit overdone, but the toast popped up fine. I sipped a bit of Father’s coffee, and it was too strong.

Father trudged into the kitchen, still wearing the same clothes, his eyes shadowed dark and heavy. “Ah, my princess has made a feast.”

I brought everything to the table.