Sweet Caroline (2 page)

“Mercy Bea or the Café?”

Brushing biscuit crumbs from the corner of my lips, I laugh softly and head for the dining room. “You’re bad, Andy.”

A guttural
um-um-um
vibrates from the cook’s immense chest. “This money pit is putting food on my table, paying the bills. Gloria’s been out of work for over a month now on account of her back. I need this job. I’m believing God has a plan.”

The cook’s confidence makes me pause at the kitchen door. “If there is such a thing as an all-knowing, all-seeing All Mighty, He
might
have a plan for the Café. But Jones? I’m not so sure.”

Andy’s large shoulders roll as he laughs. “Guess you’re right about Jones. Yes sirree. But the wife and I are praying, Caroline.”

“You do that. I’ll wish upon a star.”

DAILY SPECIAL

Barbeque Chicken
Choice of Three Sides: Greens, Corn,
Fried Okra, Corn on the Cob, Fried Tomatoes,
green Beans, or mashed Potatoes
Bubba’s Buttery Biscuits
Pluff Mud Pie or Vanilla Layer Cake.
Tea, Soda, Coffee
$6.99

2

T
he Christmas bells dangling down the glass-front door ring out as three retired Marines—Dupree Cornwallis, Luke Gold, and Pastor Winnie Smith—file in wearing their
Semper Fi
caps over their graying, receding hairlines.

Always faithful.

“Morning, fellas,” I say, bringing around their orders. Five mornings a week, when the bells chime at eight-oh-two, Andy sets their food in the window.

“‘Sweet Car-o-line,’” Pastor Winnie sings, clapping his long-fingered, dark hands together as he slides into a booth along the front wall by the windows. “‘Good times never seemed so good.’”

Luke and Dupree supply the trailing
bump
,
bump
,
bumps
.

“You boys are feeling good this morning.”

“God done made a beautiful day.” Pastor Winnie always testifies.

“I was up all night, peeing.” Dupree grunts as he slides into his side of the booth. He starts every morning with a bathroom story.

“No coffee for you, then? Caffeine, makes you . . . you know . . . go.”

Luke chuckles. “She’s got your number, Dupe.”

“Worse than trekking to the head a hundred times in the night is facing the morning without coffee.” Dupree drops his cap, embroidered with the Third Marine Division emblem, on the far side of the table. “Make mine extra black.”

“Have it your way. Do you want to move to the booth by the restrooms?”

“Listen, Wet-Behind-the-Ears, I was drinking mud water in the Korean forest before you were a glint in your granddaddy’s eye. Caffeine don’t scare me.”

The breakfast-club boys are the silver lining in my Café career. If I’d turned Jones down, I would’ve never met Dupree, Luke, or Pastor Winnie.

“Ignore him, Caroline.” Mild-mannered and recently widowed Luke unrolls his silverware as I fill their coffee cups. “He’s complained about the mud water for fifty years.” He looks up at me. “Any news on the Café?”

Nope.
I point to my forehead.

Luke wrinkles his.

I sigh. “No news.”

“Don’t know what I’d do without this Café.” Pastor Winnie says, mixing his eggs with his grits. “Jones was one of the first in town to defy the old Jim Crow laws. Let the black man and the white man eat together.”

Dupree nods. Luke
um-hums
. In that moment, their affection for the Café sweeps over me. When they lost Jones, they lost a friend. The Caféis all they have left of him—a symbol of their friendship and youth.

Along with hundreds of other combat veterans, their names are on the Vet Wall.

When Jones bought this place in ’57, it was a run-down 1850s home. In the process of fixing it up, he discovered two soldiers’ signatures under a tacky layer of ’30s wallpaper. So he created a memorial to the hundreds of veterans who have fought for our freedoms over the years. Since then, vets from World War I to the Iraqi conflict have signed the Wall. Their sacrifice is not forgotten.

Mercy Bea bumps up next to me with a pot of coffee. “Morning, boys.” She checks to see if their cups need refilling. Which they don’t. I’m on top of it here.

“Morning, Mercy Bea.”

“How’re you doing, Luke?”

He clears his throat, scratching his thumbnail across his brow. “Getting by. Never imagined I’d live life without Melba.”

“It’s hard on the man when the wife goes first.” Mercy Bea flicks her free hand with an air of authority. “See it all the time when I take a shift at the nursing home. Men need women. Can’t live without us.” She checks the coffee level at table 4. “Women, see, are really the stronger of the sexes. We live long and healthy lives after our men go on.”

“Ha!” Dupree slaps the table, calling after Mercy Bea. “A man can live long and fine without a woman. Especially a nagging one.”

“Dupe,” I say, “she’s not insulting men. Just making an observation.”

“Well, she best to hold on to some of her observations.” He raises his voice, turning his chin over his shoulder so she can hear him loud and clear. “She might be able to trick a smart man into taking her to dinner.”

Holding my laugh in, I point to his plate. “Your eggs are getting cold.”

Dupree jerks his napkin from under the silverware. “Has my wife been by here? Giving you nagging tips?”

The Christmas bells clang again as two men enter the Café and take a seat at the counter. “I’ll be around with more coffee.”

The Café routine goes on as morning sunlight gleams through the windows. Jones would’ve wanted it this way.

After the breakfast rush—and I use the term loosely—the dining room is bright but quiet. Mercy Bea leans against the counter, reading the
Gazette
, sipping iced tea from a mason jar. In the kitchen, Andy ups the music as he preps casseroles for lunch. Russell, the Café’s dish-washer and part-time cook, punches in and powers up the old dishwasher.

Snatching up another warm biscuit, I tuck away in the office to face the bills, sitting in the dilapidated desk chair and launching QuickBooks while I gaze around the long, narrow quarters. Jones was a pack rat. He saved old cookbooks, menus, place mats, and the odd broken oven knob. Once the Café is sold or handed over to the new owner, I’ll volunteer to help decipher this mess for cleanup.

Bending under the desk, I open the tiny safe and pull out last night’s deposit. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the bag was empty. Business is such that I only trek down to the bank once or twice a week. Every time I do, the bank manager, Mr. Mueller, gives me a look like, “Don’t be asking for a loan, Caroline.”

Don’t you worry, Mr. Mueller. When Kirk finally gets around to reading
Jones’s will, I’ll be free . . .

My thoughts jump to my friend Hazel Palmer’s latest brief and cryptic e-mail:
“I went way out on a limb this time for you, Caroline. Risking
my rep. So, do you want the job or not? Yes or no.”

My friend, the sarcastic CFO. Did I ask her to climb out on a limb for me and dangle her reputation? No. It’s all about ego when one becomes senior management for a major European development corporation.

“Caroline?” A light knock echoes outside the office door.

“Hey, Mrs. Atwater.” I motion for my former math teacher turned domestic engineer to enter. It’s nice to see her. Even better, she’s not asking me for geometry solutions.

No, I do not know what percent of a rectangle’s area is increased if the
length and width are doubled. How will this improve my life?

“Morning, Caroline.” She hands me a set of keys. “Jones’s carriage house is cleaned out, ready for new residents.” With a glint in her hazel eye, she settles in the chair on the other side of the desk. “I see Jones was a hoarder in the Café as much as his house.”

“He hated to throw stuff out.” I drop the keys in the top desk drawer, next to another odd key I found taped to the side of the file cabinet a week ago. “I’d clean out the office, but I’m waiting to see what the new owners will do. So, what’s the decluttered carriage house look like?”

“Walk across the parking lot and check it out. It’s quite lovely. Polished hardwood floors, open-beam ceiling, fresh paint. The kitchen is from the sixties, but, hey, avocado green is coming back.”

“If you’re a hippie.”

“Exactly.” Sitting back, she props her hands on her slightly round middle. A seventies-style red bandanna shoves her brown curls away from her forehead. “Any word from the lawyer?”

“Nothing new.” I tap the deposit amount into QuickBooks. If only I could add one more zero. “Just that he’s still busy with a big estate case. Do I pay you for cleaning or . . .”

“We’re square. The lawyer paid me when he hired me.” Mrs. Atwater hunches forward. “I’ve known you a long time, Caroline . . .”

She’s going to give me the
speech
. The one she gave her class every semester. I rock back in my chair, catching my foot around the desk leg as the seat lists to starboard. I’m determined to pay attention to her this time. For real. And believe her. A little.

“You’re one of the brightest, kindest women I’ve ever met. Even though you hated geometry.”

“Hated? No, Mrs. Atwater, really, I like—”

She laughs. “You’re not in tenth grade, Caroline. You can confess: you hated it.”

I wrinkle my face. “It’s just there were so many triangles, rectangles, and circles . . .”

“As I recall, you earned an A.”

“I cheated.”

“Ha. You didn’t. Which brings me to my point.”

How’d she work that one around?

“Look at you, Caroline, hanging around, making sure Jones’s old place stays afloat. You’re selfless. Even in high school, you carried a serious personal responsibility about you that your friends and classmates didn’t.”

“Being abandoned by a parent does that to a girl.” Reaching for a thin wire that was once a paper clip, I wish she’d focus her intense gaze elsewhere. “I always felt Daddy needed me, you know? If I left, what would he do?”

And what would I do so far from home? Morph into
her
?

“I understand. But your daddy is doing fine now. Isn’t he engaged? Your brother’s married.” My old teacher leans forward, placing her fingers on the edge of the desk, her expression almost a yearning. “Caroline, you have so much untapped potential. Don’t let your mama’s weirdness hold you back. I’ll tell you right now, I was disappointed when you turned down the Clemson scholarship.”

“Look, Mrs. Atwater—”

“How long you been working here?”

“Two years.”

“And before here?”

My back stiffens. “Mrs. Farnsworth’s Landscaping & Nursery. Bookkeeping, mostly. Spread more manure-laced fertilizer than I liked, but she’s a nice lady.”

Mrs. Atwater wrinkles her nose. “Of course she is. So are you. Too nice. Before Mrs. Farnsworth, you worked for your brother when he took over Sweeney Construction after your granddaddy passed. Before that, you managed the office for your dad’s well-drilling business.”

I jam the wire in one of the wormholes that pepper the wooden desktop. “I know my own job history, Mrs. Atwater. It’s hard to say no to people in need.”

“What about your need? You think God only put you on this earth to do other folks’ chores?”

“First of all, I don’t believe God put me here for anything. Second, what’s wrong with doing other people’s chores? If more people would help out—”

“Sure, but there’s something just for you. A field you’re supposed to plow and plant—” Mrs. Atwater pinches her lips. “You know what, I’ll shut up. Who am I to judge? I’ve overstepped my bounds. Forgive me.” She rises. “What the world needs is more people like you. One who puts others above herself.”

“Don’t make me out to be a saint, Mrs. Atwater. I’m not.” The wire’s tip is stuck in one of the worm holes. I jerk it free.

“I gave up teaching to save my sanity. If I had to grade one more test . . .” She pauses at the office door, shaking her head. “But I’ll never stop encouraging my students, no matter how old they are. Just take care of yourself, Caroline. Don’t waste your potential.”

The words bounce around the crowded office, hurting my ears.
“Don’t waste your potential.”

As I hear her car fire up and pull away, I glance out the small office window—the panes need washing—and muse about my unrealized potential. A creeping sensation runs over my torso and down my arms.
I’m already twenty-eight. What am I going to do with my life?

Worse than dying is never having lived at all.

Early afternoon Daddy comes around and hitches my broken-down car to the back of his truck. “I’ll pick you up when I’m done with my last job.” He rests his elbow out the window of his battered blue work truck. “Henry and Cherry are coming over for dinner.”

“Yeah, Cherry said she thought they’d make it.” My brother and his wife of eight years join Dad and me for dinner once a week or so. But we’re sloppy with family traditions and lately we’ve been more on the “or so” side of things than the “once a week.”

“Posey’s cooking up something good.” Dad clicks his tongue against his teeth and fidgets. “I want to run something by you kids.”

“Yeah, like what?” Bending left, I try to see his eyes, which are focused straight ahead, out the windshield. “Don’t tell me Posey gave back your ring.”

“Here I am towing your broken-down heap to the shop and you’re poking fun at me.” He shifts the truck into gear.

“Dad, I’m teasing. You know Posey loves you.”

The truck inches forward as he eases off the clutch. “I’ll talk to you later. See you around five or half past.”

As he drives off, I catch a smile on the corners of his lips.

What are you up to, Dad?

He’s delivered a lot of news to Henry and me over the years. Most of it bad.
“Mama left for good this time . . . Got a call from California. Your
Mama says Merry Christmas, but she’s not coming . . . Your mama’s passed
on. They’re doing an autopsy, but it looks like she was drinking and driving.”

But today, there was a different light in his eyes, a different tone in his voice.

Back inside the Café, I grab a plate of Frogmore Stew—shrimp, corn on the cob, potatoes, sausage, and onions—and head to the office to tally the day’s tips.