The House on Persimmon Road (3 page)

“Mom,” he said breathlessly. “There’s no bathroom.”

“Of course there’s a bathroom.”

It’s on a corner of the back porch,
said Lottie, trying to be helpful.
It’s a good bathroom.
The same tenant who owned the Oakland installed it.

No one paid Lottie any mind. That was another problem with being in the state she was in, she thought with a twinge of disgust. No one could hear her. The only way she had of getting a body’s attention was to mingle with the other’s aura and sort of make suggestions. Sometimes that worked and sometimes not.

“I looked in every room, Mom. Ask Judy Ann, if you don’t believe me.”

“There’re all sorts of nooks and crannies in the house, darling, you just missed it, is all.”

“He didn’t,” announced Pauline, arriving on Pip’s heels. “I couldn’t find it myself. I’m in a terrible fix, too.”

“Are you?” Agnes smiled wickedly, voice full of sly hope. “Diarrhea?”

Pauline scowled at Agnes.

Justin threw up her hands. “Please, you two, save your energy for unpacking. The movers are bringing in the beds. Mother, can you hold on? I’ll locate the pot in a minute.”

“No, I can’t hold on. I begged you to stop at that last gas station, remember? But no—”

Justine sighed. “All right. It’s your bedstead they’re bringing in, Mother Hale. Tell them which room.”

Agnes beamed and moved with alacrity, cane bouncing. Pauline protested. “She’ll pick the finest room for herself!”

“Which is it to be, Mother, mover guidance or an accident in your pants?”

“The bathroom. But I must say, you’ve become exceedingly vulgar.”

“I don’t know how else to protect myself.”

“From what?”

“If you have to ask…” warned Justine, patience growing thin as a taut wire.

“If only your father were alive,” began Pauline, but the fierce gleam in her daughter’s eyes caused her to stop in midsentence.

Lottie had taken in the whole of the conversation, observing Pauline’s air of disdain and Agnes’s peevishness. The outcome settled it in her mind that the one called Justine suffered a peck of trouble at the hands of the two old biddies.

Since the house was Lottie’s own, she thought it did behoove her to rise to hostess duties. She left her perch on the stool and hovered near Justine.

With Pauline following, Justine went off down the wide hall. She couldn’t say how she knew the bathroom was on the back porch. She just seemed to know. She put it down to an obscure, perverse intuition.

“Oh, dear!” said Pauline.

“At least it’s not in the backyard.”

It used to be,
said Lottie.
Miserable that was, too, on a cold blustery day.

“Look at the tub,” Pauline insisted. “A bear could bathe in it.”

The huge, claw-footed, high-sided affair was constructed of iron and porcelain, draped with cobwebs and years of dust. Its bottom was filled with windblown debris of leaves and moss.

Pauline took a tentative step closer.

“It looks like a bear
has
bathed in it! And that toilet …” she said of the monstrosity of iron, her voice trailing off in justifiable dismay.

“It’s nothing a little Comet cleanser won’t cure,” Justine said succinctly and closed the door upon her mother’s expression of distaste.

Seeing the set of Justine’s mouth as she turned, Lottie surmised that the bathroom was not considered up to snuff. That had been the complaint from more than one prospective tenant. Lottie couldn’t understand it. All one had to do was turn a valve and water shot out. Some folk were downright unappreciative. Mayhap they ought to spend washdays at the working end of a pump handle. A spigot would look mighty good after that!

Justine lingered a moment on the back porch, part of which was enclosed by tattered strips of latticed wood. She had a view to the rear of the yard where a number of sheds leaned precariously into one another, casualties of the elements … of life. She, too, was a casualty, but unlike the sheds she had no other support to lean upon. And she was supposed to be the glue that held them all together. Dear God, but she had never felt so vulnerable, so lost, so unable to cope.

“We’re bringing in the fridge, ma’am,” one of the movers called out to her. “The other lady said you’d tell us where to put it.”

“Yes, I’ll be right there.”

She gave a last brief glance at the backyard. She could see no other dwellings. How nearby, she wondered, did her neighbor Tucker Highsmith live?

Then, catching her train of thought, Justine moved purposefully back into the house.

Tucker sat stiffly at his typewriter and for the fifth time painstakingly began to peck out the recipe for potato pie with a
creme fraiche.
He made another typo.

Damn! He couldn’t concentrate. The image of Justine Hale filled the page. A one-time aberration, he concluded and tried again. He misspelled
fraiche.

Okay, pal, he told himself. That’s it. Take a breather, have a go at Justine Hale, then forget you ever saw her. Remember, there was a
Mrs.
attached to her name. Which meant that she was married and off limits.

Off-limits or not, she intrigued him. He had caught sight of her as she rounded the corner of the porch. He didn’t know what had made him stop in midstep. The way she carried herself? The sudden intense look on her face that bespoke vulnerability? The long, slender length of her legs?

During the seconds he had observed her, before drawing attention to himself, he had watched her questioning herself—in body language. Curiously, he’d understood. He had felt drawn to her on the instant.

But it was more than her looks. It was in her eyes. They were a deep green, wondrous eyes that seemed to illuminate her face. When she had turned to face him he had looked into their depths. She had touched him in a way that he had not been touched in years, and he knew at once she was uncomfortable with him.

He had sensed in her haughty deportment a cover for the vulnerability he’d seen. That knowledge had made him speculative, appraising, and far too bold. But, hell! He’d had his own vulnerabilities to camouflage. His legs had suddenly needed support and he’d had to lock his knees. Lord, that was something. Never happened to him before. But an affair with a married woman? He wouldn’t even come close to considering it.

Yes, he would.

He argued the point with himself for five minutes.

On the downside he concluded Justine Hale probably wore a girdle under her shorts. That’s why she looked so trim. Her hair color had to be out of a bottle and undoubtedly she’d puffed up her bosoms with falsies to make them appear enticing. He knew from experience that women pulled sly tricks to make themselves alluring, even when they didn’t mean to go beyond teasing.

It was settled. He had Justine Hale’s number. She could lure from here to hallelujah for all the good it’d do.

He rolled a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter. The memory of a pair of green eyes mesmerized him.

“Ah, hell!”

“You still working on those field reports, son?”

Tucker stopped typing and carefully disposed of the rejected pages.

“I’m trying. If they’d make a man-sized keyboard, I’d be finished by now.”

Tucker concocted the lie about field reports so that he could work on the book while his dad was visiting. Writing a cookbook was a secret he kept from everyone, mostly because he couldn’t quite come to terms with it himself.

He was redneck through and through and knew it. He wore the label as proudly as he displayed the Rebel flag above his bed. He couldn’t help it that he was Southern bred with a generations-held notion that the kitchen was a woman’s place.

The only accounting he could give for himself concerning the art of cooking was that it had been forced on him. The premature death of his mother had sent his dad into a tailspin. The old man had spent more years since her death drunk than sober. It had been learn to cook or go without. One thing led to another until he’d become pretty damned good at it.

But hell! Writing a cookbook? Oh, he knew that a few famous chefs had written cookbooks, especially foreign ones. And every time he saw them on television they were kissing each other on the cheek.

If any guy he knew tried anything like that, he’d end up in the hospital.

To his way of thinking it was okay to throw a slab of ribs on the grill, fry fish on a riverbank, whip up a pot of chili, or fry eggs. The married guys in his set even admitted to opening a can of soup or boiling hotdogs for the kids when the wife was out of sorts.

But admitting to cooking fancy sauces and writing them down? Tucker’s ire rose just thinking of the name-calling and innuendo that would invoke.

Not that anyone would accuse him of being effeminate. At least not to his face, or he’d break the heckler’s jaw. He just couldn’t see any advantage in telling anybody. It’d be like telling his most secret wish.

Secret wishes seldom came true. Voiced, they just made a man sound silly or sissy—or both. Holding firm to that conviction, Tucker covered the typewriter, swiveled around on the stool, and scrutinized his father. Perspiration beaded the old man’s face.

“Did the sun chase you in?”

“Nope, I like working up a good sweat. I weeded the tomatoes. The beans are coming on good. You’ll have a mess within the week. That is, if the chickens don’t beat you to ’em.”

“Thanks. The garden gets ahead of me. Don’t know why I keep putting one in year in and year out.”

But of course he did. It was so his dad would have something he believed useful to do when he visited.

“If I lived here…all the time, I mean,” Wheeler advanced, “I could keep it up.”

“Ah, Dad,” Tucker said gently, “that’s out of the question right now.”

Wheeler Highsmith sighed low. “I know. But I wish it. It’s okay to wish, ain’t it?”

“Wishing doesn’t hurt a thing,” Tucker said, knowing his reply was contrary to his own philosophy.

Wheeler shuffled over to the table and sat down. His hands trembled. “Is it okay if I have a pipe, now?”

Tucker retrieved pipe and tobacco tin off a high shelf and handed them over. He watched his father fill the pipe, tamp the tobacco, check the draw. The palsied hands shook as Wheeler struck the match.

“I do love a good pipe,” the old man said upon exhaling. “It’s the one thing I crave they won’t let me have at the nursing home.”

“Can you blame them? It’s what got you there in the first place.”

Wheeler chuckled. “Caused some kinda ruckus, didn’t I?”

“Being careless with lighted pipes,” Tucker said reproachfully, “burning your house down around yourself and having the court order you to live under supervision is a bit more than ‘a ruckus.’ ”

“Guess so,” said Wheeler dryly, “but it wasn’t much of a house to begin with. What about the new neighbors? Promising?”

“Nothing special.” Tucker shrugged, then heard himself saying, “I thought when you took your nap I’d go see if I could lend a hand. Just to be neighborly. The front screen door needs to be rehung, and there are a few other things—”

Wheeler blew a smoke ring, watching it rise to the dark, beamed ceiling.

“She pretty?”

Tucker felt a sudden discomfort. “I suppose, if you like her type. Married, though.”

“Whoa! Stay away from that, boy. You’ll get yourself shot.”

“No advice, Dad. I’m a grown man now.”

“And, on your way to gettin’ old, like me.”

Tucker shook his head. “You’re trying to lay a guilt trip on me again.”

Wheeler put on a display of innocence. “I ain’t. I tried it before and it didn’t work.”

Tucker gave his dad a half smile. “You’re learning all kinds of little tricks in that old folks’ home, aren’t you?”

“Ain’t learned none that works—yet.”

“Maybe the one you just pulled did. You want to stay over another night? I’ll clear it with old Iron Bottom.”

“Unless she has somebody else to pick on, she’ll say no just outta spite. She can’t go a day without being mean.”

“C’mon… she adores you.”

“Her kinda lovin’ I can do without. Do I get lunch, or do I have to bed down on an empty stomach?”

“Lunch. What do you say to a fresh egg-and-cheese omelet?”

“With spring onions?”

“You got it.”

“And a cold beer?” said Wheeler, all hope. “Weedin’s thirsty work.”

“We’ll share one.”

“Fair enough.” Like a child who knows the rewards of good behavior while under watchful eyes, Wheeler scraped spent ashes from his pipe and laid it with care in the ashtray. “I’ll just go get this grit out from under my nails.”

Tucker watched his father shuffle off, back still straight, still proud.

Before the woman they both loved had died, Wheeler had been the best father a boy could wish for. Helena’s death had devastated father and son alike; but while Tucker had toughened, his father had weakened, becoming a shell of his former self.

Tucker had determined never to love like that. Never to become so dependent upon a woman he couldn’t exist without her.

Just thinking of a commitment of that magnitude brought him as close as he would ever allow himself to a feeling of fright. He didn’t want to become the man his father had, pride notwithstanding.

Wheeler had no control over his life. He hated the nursing home. Tucker hated that the old man had to stay there, but he couldn’t afford the court-ordered supervision Wheeler required. He made a good enough salary as a telephone lineman, but after his own expenses, there wasn’t enough left to provide the exorbitant cost of hiring full-time help.

He hoped the cookbook, if he could get it written and if he could get it published, would provide the funds to bring his dad home. Wheeler had a few good years left yet. Tucker wanted him content.

As he cracked eggs and measured spices and cream, his thoughts moved full circle, back to Justine.

Until his dad was happy he couldn’t afford to get involved with a woman, either.

The muscles in his nether regions tightened, reminding him how long he’d been without the solace of a woman.

Well, he could get involved; he just couldn’t consider marriage or having a family of his own.