Shem Creek (41 page)

“I’m here, baby. It’s Momma. Please open your eyes for me, okay? Please open your eyes! Tell me how you feel? Everything’s okay. You’re going to be fine. You
have
to be fine.” My tears began to flow and then choking sobs. I just couldn’t help it. I took her hand, IV and all, and kissed it all over the palm and held it to my cheek. I felt Brad’s arm around my shoulder and when I looked up I could see that he was crying too. So was Alex and Mimi and of course, Louise.

“I should have stopped her, Ms. Breland,” Alex said. “This is all my fault. I am so sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”

“Stop it, Alex,” I said, “you saved Gracie’s life! Do you understand that I wouldn’t have my daughter if you had not been there?”

“I know, but I shouldn’t have let her go in there in the first place.”

“No, son,” I said, “you did a very brave thing and we are all so proud of you, you don’t know. And grateful.”

“I don’t know,” he said, “it just shouldn’t have happened, that’s all.”

“Alex?” Brad said. “There’s a lot of wickedness in this whole episode, but none of it is laid at your feet. I don’t want to hear you say again that this is your fault. You listen to Linda. That’s her child lying in this bed and if she doesn’t blame you then you most certainly should not blame yourself.”

“Your daddy’s right,” Mimi said.

“Amen,” said Louise.

There was a little knock on the door and Alex opened it. It was O’Malley with a small vase of Gerber daisies.

“Hey,” he said, in a whisper. “How’s she doing?”

“I just wish she would wake up,” I said and started to cry again. Brad put his arm around me and I put my face into his chest and just sobbed. He rubbed the center of my back, around and around, and I could tell by the way his body shook that he was crying again too.

“Oh, God,” O’Malley said. “She broke her leg?”

“Ankle,” said Mimi.

“Listen, Linda,” Brad said, and handed me a tissue, “as soon as we got here, I called a top neurologist from the Medical University, this guy Philip Ragone, and he examined her. He’s the best in the entire southeast. He said she’s absolutely fine. He assured me
and
Mimi
and
Louise that she would regain consciousness. We have to trust that he knows what he’s talking about. Right? So, come on now.”

“It’s just terrifying, you know?”

“Of course it is. This is a damnable thing.”

The door opened again and in came Duane with a tray of coffee and a box of Krispy Kremes.

“Well, we have to eat, don’t we?” Duane said and put everything down. He came to my side, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “The Breland ladies sure have had one hell of a time lately!” He reached in the box of doughnuts and took one. “Move over, and y’all help yourselves.” He passed the doughnut under Gracie’s nose and said, “Gracie, Gracie, Gracie, it’s Doo-wayne bringing you a
dough-nut
. Glazed with chocolate? Come on, girlie-whirlie! Duane’s gonna take you shopping! We’re going to the new Arden B! You can have
anything
you want! There’s a shoe sale at Bob Ellis!”

There was a distinct fluttering of her eyes.

“Look!” Duane said.

We all stared at Gracie and began calling her name.

“Gracie? Gracie?” I said and shook her arm. “Come on, baby, wake up!”

Duane went around to the end of the bed and tickled the bottom of her elevated foot. When there was no reaction, he reached under the sheets and pulled out her other leg and began tickling her other foot.

“Maybe she ain’t ticklish,” Louise said, pushing by him. She went up to Gracie’s head on the other side of her bed and whispered in her ear, “Gracie? It’s Louise, baby. It’s time to wake up now. Come on. Let’s wake up like a good girl.”

“What?” Gracie said. “Lemme sleep.”

A cry of relief went up in the room, prayers of thanksgiving and even a little applause. Gracie was awake and I was grateful to God. We couldn’t know what had brought her back to us—prayer, our voices, the promise of a shopping trip or a Krispy Kreme doughnut. If I had been in Gracie’s position, it probably would have been the smell of sugar and chocolate.

Later on, after all of us took Gracie home and she hobbled up the steps on Alex’s arm, after we had settled her on the couch and elevated her ankle to reduce swelling, after we gave her a Diet Coke with a straw, the channel changer and the latest issue of
InStyle,
bought on the way out of the hospital at the last minute, only then did we begin to talk about the restaurant. Of course, the plan was to rebuild as soon as possible. They were discussing possible contractors and Duane and Louise were arguing about the dimensions and layout of the new kitchen. Mimi, who knew nothing about construction or anything remotely connected to running a business, was correcting them left and right. Even Gracie was a part of it, saying they should set the new restaurant back from the water a little and provide drainage on both sides of the building. Considering that she had nearly lost her life, I knew her input would be taken seriously.

I took my bag into my bedroom and tossed it on the bed to unpack later. Brad was right behind me.

“Want to go see the mess?”

“I don’t know if I should leave. . . .”

“Don’t worry, Lupe’s on her way over here and she said she wants to take care of Gracie.”

“Lupe’s coming? I’m going!”

“Nice,” he said.

“I’m just kidding! Jeesch!”

“Hey! Did you see the garage?”

“No! Did the guy come?”

“Yep, come on, I’ll show you!”

I told Mimi, Louise, Duane and O’Malley I would be back and bring sandwiches, if anybody wanted anything.

“Wait a minute! Let me get a pencil!”

You would think that all we ever did was eat but then, our world did revolve around food.

I wrote down what everyone wanted and then because their orders were so varied and complicated I finally told them, “Look, I’m going to Bessinger’s. You’ll get what I bring back. End of story.”

“Oh, barbecue!” Louise said. “I haven’t had barbecue in ages!”

“No onion rings!” Mimi said.

“Yes! Onion rings!” Duane said.

“I’ll go out and get beer,” O’Malley said.

“Bud Light!” Duane said.

“Corona Light!” Mimi said.

“Make that two,” Louise said and patted Mimi on the arm.

“Heineken,” Gracie said. When the whole room stopped and stared at her she said, “God, can’t anybody take a joke around here?”

Brad pulled me out the door. On the way out I hollered back, “Somebody call Lindsey, okay? She’s probably worried half sick to death.”

“Isn’t she in class?” Mimi said.

“I don’t know. Just dial your cell number. I left your phone in New Jersey.”

“Oh! Well! Oh! Well? There went my cell phone! I’ll just let her keep it!”

I closed the door and followed Brad down the steps. When he pulled open the big doors, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was empty, except for one box, but it had been swept clean. It seemed enormous.

“What do you think?” he said, smiling.

“I think you are incredible. How can I thank you?”

“I’ll think of something,” he said, with the most mysterious expression on his face.

“Brad Jackson? Is that a wicked grin I see?” Was I dreaming?

“Yes. It is a wicked grin, Linda Breland.”

“What brought this on?” I started to back away from him, unsure if what I was thinking was the same thing he was thinking.

“What’s the difference?” He took a step toward me.

“I want to know what your intentions are!”

“I cleaned your garage. My intentions are honorable.”

“What’s in that box?”

“Stuff for Lowell. Don’t change the subject. Stop moving around. I’m not going to hurt you!”

“No, you don’t understand! You’re not going to do
anything
to me, Brad Jackson! I saw how you treated Amy.” I knelt down and opened the box. I closed it and picked it up, attempting to avoid the very person I had been dreaming about since we had met.

“And, I saw how she treated you. She drove me crazy; you drive me wild.”

“Yeah, sure. You’re an ass.”

“No, I am not an ass. Do you have any idea how long it takes to rebuild a restaurant? Put the box down.”

The box landed with a thud on the floor.

“Six months? A year?” I took a deep breath.

“A long time. Do you have other plans?”

“What do you mean?” He backed me up against the wall and put his arm over me, blocking my escape.

“I mean, just what are we supposed to do with ourselves until then?”

“Are you saying we should pass the time by having an affair?”

“No, I’m saying we should be planning our wedding. Come on, Linda. Everyone knows we’re in love except you.”

Oh. My. God. I was going to drop dead.

“They do?” The tiny bit of moisture that I felt under my arms had now grown to a trickle. And, I refuse to even acknowledge what the other parts of my body were up to, twitching and pulsing like independent little idiots.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t understand, Brad. I don’t fall in love. I raise children. I worry . . . that’s what I seem to do best. Worry.”

“What are you worried about?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’ll admit that I have had the casual, intermittent, innocent thought . . .”

He roared with laughter and said, “Intermittent? Innocent? What are you? Dead?”

“No! I mean, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you’re asking me to marry you? Marry you? You’ve never even brought me flowers, taken me anywhere or even kissed me one time! Isn’t this a little insane?”

“In my mind, we’ve been living together for months. In my mind, I have kissed you thousands of times. In my mind I have brought you so many dozens of roses . . .”

“Oh bull!”

“Not bull!”

“Well, maybe we should start with some kind of flowers?”

He laughed and shook his head and said, “Linda Breland, I am hell-bent and determined that I am going to laugh my way into old age with you and that is that.”

“May I just ask what brought you to this conclusion?”

“Okay, that’s fair. I’m assuming that you mean why I never even said something like
Nice haircut, Linda,
and now I’m proposing marriage?”

“Yeah. That’s the little detail that has me going.”

“Okay, well, it started with Loretta dying so suddenly. What happened were two very interesting things. One, I saw firsthand how fragile life really is, the same way that Alex did. I mean, you bury old people, but not people your age, right? You hear about it, but you don’t believe it until it happens to you. And two, I didn’t feel one ounce of remorse and for a long time I asked myself why.”

“And the answer to that is?”

“That I knew I didn’t love her and probably never did and that I would have stayed in that marriage forever, loveless and pathetic as it was, because I lacked the courage to do anything about it. But then fate stepped in and made me react anyway.

“Remember when we had that dinner for Lindsey? I watched you and how emotional you were and I wondered when the last time was that anyone ever cared for me that way—my mother, thank you—and I knew that the love you had for Lindsey was greater than the love you had for yourself. Then you got gumboed and said that thing about
Gee, it’s a good thing she didn’t hit my temple,
and I knew you were right. Another couple of inches and hearts would have been shattered and lives ripped apart. And then the fire and the whole drill with Gracie scared me out of my mind. I realized that I really loved Gracie and the world without her would be unbearable for you and therefore, for me. And I thought about your love for Gracie and Lindsey and your sister and how your family cared for each other and I remembered that your family operates like mine used to—not with Loretta but with my folks and how I grew up. And, I saw that it all came from you. It all came from you. You were willing to pull the Jersey plug and flush almost twenty years there just to improve the quality of your relationship with your daughters. I wanted in. It’s not just you I love because I want to get in your shorts—which by the way, have I told you that I want to get in your shorts? Anyway, it’s the way you are that has me over the cliff—the stuff of your soul. That’s all. I think.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, then . . .”

And that was when he lifted my chin, looked in my eyes and laid one on my lips. Honey? That man could kiss like no other. It was also when I discovered that kissing was like riding a bicycle—it all comes back and you do just fine.

“Come on,” he said, “I want to show you the remains of Jackson Hole.”

“Okay,” I said. I was a little disoriented.

We left the garage holding hands. Lupe was pulling into the yard and Louise was at the top of the steps. Lupe pointed to us and covered her mouth with her hand. When we looked back at Louise she was smiling wide.

“I like what I see now,” she said, and wagged her finger at us. “I like what I see.”

He opened the car door for me and I got in. He closed it, walked around the front of the car and I watched him like a hawk. He was so good-looking I thought his face should be on a coin. Better yet, the pent-up harlot in me thought, that face belongs on my pillow.

When he got in his side of the car, he turned to me. “Well?” he said.

“Well what?”

“Will you marry me or what?” His eyes twinkled with excitement.

“Yeah, sure. Why not?”

“Not much else going on?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“Okay. Done.”

As he backed the car up to turn it around, we started to laugh. We laughed and laughed and laughed. We told each other we were crazy and brilliant. Out of control and too conservative. Then he placed his hand over mine again and gave it that lovely squeeze. As ridiculous as the situation was, it made perfect sense.