Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter (28 page)

“Baker Satterfield,” she yelled through the megaphone, beginning to cackle all over again. “Ba-ker Sat-ter-field. You have a special delivery out front. Has anyone seen Ba-ker Sat-ter-field? Please tell him that he has a special de-li-ver-y.” She could hardly get the words out she was laughing so hard. Of course Virginia’s contagious laugh got the rest of us going again.

Alice had to have a turn and grabbed the megaphone away from Virginia. “Baker,” she yelled, kind of sweet and singsongy, “you have company.”

No one would have ever noticed the movement in a far-left upstairs window, if it hadn’t been for that blessed, wandering eye of Roberta’s. As all of the rest of us were staring toward the front door of the base lodge, waiting for Baker and the fifty-year-old to show their faces, Roberta’s eye caught sight of someone’s hand pushing down on the blind. “I’m happy to report that your master scheme is a success, Virginia. I would bet my soul Baker’s the one peeking through them blinds upstairs there.”

We all turned in the direction of Roberta’s pointed finger.

“That’s him, that’s him,” Alice said, getting excited and yelling through
the megaphone again. “Come on down, Baker, and give us a
huug
. It’s been too long.”

Mary Jule leaned over and shouted through the megaphone, “Yeah, show us a little Yankee hospitality, why don’t ya?”

Do you know that yellow sissy never had the guts to greet us face-to-face? We waited about fifteen minutes longer before finally giving up. “I’m not surprised,” Alice said, as she stepped into Jeb’s truck. “He walked out on you like a coward. He wasn’t gonna meet us in person . . . the little chickenshit.”

Maybe it wasn’t him up there. After all, it was a Saturday and as rich as his new girlfriend was, they could have taken the holiday weekend off to
travel
. But then again who else would have
peeked
through the window?

On the way out of the resort, Jeb’s truck slowed down in front of the window where Roberta had spied Baker. Next thing I knew, Virginia and Alice were climbing out of the passenger window. Virginia crawled up on the top of the truck. Alice handed her a large plastic cup before climbing up top herself.

I turned to Mary Jule, who had stopped her rental car behind them. “What in God’s name are they doing?”

“I’m not sure, but this oughta be good.”

“Pull the car up,” I told her, “right alongside of Jeb’s.” I rolled my window down and motioned for Jeb to do the same. But he was all the way over on the passenger side holding something. “What are y’all doing up there?” I called to the girls.

“What does it look like we’re doing?” Virginia answered. “We’re poonin’ him. Hand me another Tampax, Jayeb.”

(Pooning is the act of ornamenting a glass surface with a surprise tampon. Instructions: Unwrap a super Tampax and dip in water. Once the tampon is bloated, hold it by the string and twirl, midair, in lasso rope fashion. Rear arm back and hurl at target. Optimum targets are large plate-glass windows, i.e., Waffle Houses or Krystal restaurants near college campuses at 2:00
A.M.
when packed full of unsuspecting late-night diners. Element of surprise is crucial. College age–appropriate.)

Pooning on school nights provided the best entertainment for Virginia
and me back at Ole Miss. Along with Genie and Mary Gaston, two more of our Chi Omega sisters, we’d drive through the Krystal, or the Greasetal as we called it, and order a sack of burgers. Just after the clerk handed over the bag, we’d pull the car up a little, have the poon dipped and ready, and the driver would slam it against the big plate-glass window. We’d watch the poon slide, slowly, down the glass. The surprise on the faces of the bookworms, who had been studying all night, was enough to make you wet your pants.

Jeb stuck a super out the window and handed it up to Virginia. She dipped and flung that thing as hard as she could. We all watched as it sailed through the air and missed the upstairs window completely. Alice had the second one already dipped and hers flew through the air and hit the window underneath.

“Aw,
hell
,” Alice said. “You try it, Jayeb; you’ll prob’ly have better luck.”

Jeb opened his door and pompously stood up on the edge of the truck, holding a tampon. “Might as well take a shot.”

Lying on her stomach, Virginia bent down from the roof with the cup of water and held it for Jeb. Just as if he was a veteran pooner, Jeb dipped the tampon in the cup, twirled it in the air, and flung it with all his might. He nailed the flying white mouse right in the middle of the upstairs window. It splattered on the pane and then slid down slowly before wedging into a groove on the window ledge.

“Throw another one, Jayeb. Get him good!” Virginia cried, and handed him a fresh Tampax.

Jeb took another shot and . . .
splat
, the second one hit the bull’s-eye, too. (Knowing Baker, he was absolutely furious. He always said our shenanigans were
so
annoying and juvenile.)

“Way to go, Mr. JCW!” Alice squealed. The girls took a few more shots each before some guy came out the front of the lodge and walked briskly toward us.

“Get your butts down,” I yelled. “Someone’s coming.”

Alice took one look at the guy and hollered, “What’s your hurry,
shoog
?”

Virginia yanked Alice’s jacket and they both scurried back down into the truck. “Haul ass, Jayeb,” Virginia yelled. “Let’s get the hell outta Dodge.”

Jeb screeched out of Powder Mountain on two left wheels with Mary Jule flooring it right behind him.

Exception to pooning age-appropriate rule: Although originally intended as a college prank, sometimes life deems pooning necessary later in life. As in the case where estranged husband runs off with older (or more often younger) woman. In that instance one is never too old for pooning.

When we got back to the Peach Blossom Inn Roberta and Jeb went straight to work. Pierre disappeared into his cottage and the girls and I returned to my apartment. Once inside, all four of us climbed back up on Great-grandmother’s bed.

Right then, eyeing the closet without Baker’s clothes on one half, was the first time I had had to admit to myself that he was really gone. I’d cried so much about it, but I never thought about it being final. I knew he was gone on a subconscious level, but I think consciously I never believed for a second that he wouldn’t have come back home by now. Somewhere in my mind I always thought he’d be back for Memorial Day weekend, and this nightmare would finally be over. But here I was staring into my closet, Baker-bare.

“All I can think about is the look that must have been on Baker’s face when he saw his clothes riding up that mountain,” Virginia said. “Wonder if he’ll be the one to pick it all up.”

“I doubt it,” said Mary Jule.

Virginia stretched her legs out on top of Alice’s. “I bet he is some kind of mortified about now.”

“Furious is what he is,” I told her.

“Good. Then maybe, just maybe, he’ll get an idea of how furious we are at him. He makes me sick.” Alice’s always hated him.

Even though she was across from me on the bed, Mary Jule noticed something when I put my hand to my mouth. She sat straight up. “Leelee, look at your ring!”

I jerked my hand around to look and sure enough, the emerald-cut diamond at the center of my engagement ring was gone. The four lone platinum
prongs and the two baguettes on either side were all that were left of my ring.

“It was there this morning,” Alice said. “I remember distinctly because I was wondering when you were gonna finally take the damn thing off.”

“It probably fell out on that mountain,” I said, feeling depressed all over again. “It’s up there with the rest of Baker’s belongings.”

“If you want to go look for it,” Mary Jule said, “I’ll help you.”

My initial reaction was to jump back in the car and whiz off toward Powder Mountain, but my better judgment set me straight. “Oh, what’s the point? We’ll never find it. I’m not even gonna try. It doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, anyway.”

“It’s no coincidence that you lost it up there,” Mary Jule said. “Truth is, he’d already taken your heart with him up to that mountain.”

“I, for one, am excited about it,” Virginia said, looking me straight in the eye.

“Excited about it? How come?” I asked her, thinking of all that was lost today.

“Just thinking about how you’re gonna spend the insurance money, that’s how come. I’m thinking Tahiti.” Her devilish smile returned.

“With whom?
Jeb
?”

“Yeah, right. I think you should take Jeb.
Me. I’ll
go with you,” Virginia said.

“So how do you get to be the one to go?” Alice bolted straight up. “Y’all are just gonna leave Mary Jule and me at home?”

“Did I say anything about leaving y’all at home? Y’all can go. We’ll all go,” Virginia said.

The only place I wanted to go was home to Memphis with my friends. Telling them good-bye on Monday was going to be excruciating, but I knew I was on the downhill stretch. I could “stay in hell a little while longer” as Kissie would say, because I knew I was getting out. I could practically taste Tennessee,
and
Tahiti for that matter. Time was so close now.

Chapter Seventeen

If, after Baker left, someone had told me that I’d still be living in Vermont in August, I’d have said, I think not. But it was most definitely August and I was most definitely still here. Hard to believe, but my friends had been gone two months already and Ed Baldwin hadn’t darkened the doorway of the Peach Blossom Inn in three months. He hadn’t brought a single soul through to show his listing that he told me would be “no problem whatsoever to move.”

“People will be clamoring to buy it, you wait and see,” he said at first. Then it went to “Folks like to wait until fall when the leaves are turning,” and then to “Vermont is depressed right now. Nothing is selling at all.”

Vermont is depressed
right now
! Why else would people drive around with a bumper sticker that says
MOONLIGHT IN VERMONT OR STARVE
? Or,
WORKING VERMONTER: ENDANGERED SPECIES
. It’s beyond me how these Vermont real estate agents stay in business at all. The only thing I can come up with is that late July, August, and September in Vermont spell redemption. June gets off to a buggy start but by the time mid-July rolls around, Vermont is magnificent. Late summer is the payoff for the whole
year. Now, make no mistake about it, it’s fleeting. A six-week summer is all you get. But it is quite lovely.

The garden outside our apartment was stunning. Red and white hollyhocks reached up past the windowsills pointing to the sky and the lupines were big and bright. Butterfly bush, dianthus, foxglove, purple coneflowers, columbine, lavender, you name it—the perennials were vibrant and crisp. The lilac bushes were enormous and you could smell them from across the yard. And the roses. Oh my gosh, the roses had no yellow leaves or black spots at all. Granted they were short-lived but they were gorgeous and smelled oh so sweet. They hardly needed watering because of the cooler temperatures at night. To tell you the truth, that was my only gripe with the summer at all—the cold nights. And most people, even Southerners, might tell me I was crazy to wish for a hot August night.

“Hey, boss!” Peter shouted from his truck. He was driving up to work at the exact same time my girls and I were returning from our dip in the river. (FYI, there are very few outdoor swimming pools in Vermont and the few in existence are located at a select inn or two. What’s the point, right?)

“How many reservations on the books tonight?” he asked as he grabbed his gym bag out of the back of his little black truck.

“Sixty-two so far.”

“And the day is young. I predict we serve eighty dinners.” Peter’s smile really is something else. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d worn braces or if his teeth were naturally that straight.

“I sure hope so. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have cash flow,” I said, and rubbed my hands together.

“I knew we could do it.”

Without warning, Peter threw me his bag, which I barely caught, and scooped up the girls. He sat Issie on top of his shoulders and let Sarah ride piggyback. Their little bathing suits were still wet but Peter didn’t seem to mind. “We’ll race ya, Leelee. Hold on tight, girls.” They took off running toward the inn. I dropped his gym bag and ran with all my might. We both
reached the gate under the arbor at the same time. That’s where I got my edge. While Peter took the time to open the gate I decided to hop the little white picket fence instead. He’s already six-foot-two and with Isabella on top he had to duck up under the arbor, and by the time he finally reached the apartment door I was propped against the post. I glanced at my wrist like I was checking out the time when he made it to the door.

“You cheated,” he said, out of breath. “Right, girls?”

Sarah agreed with him. “Yeah, Mommy, you jumped over the fence.”

“Cheated? I did not. You never said hopping fences was against the rules. I won fair and square.”

Isabella squealed and clapped her hands. “Yay, Mommy!”

Suddenly, Peter’s eyes dropped. My bathing suit wrap had fallen off while I was running and all I had on was my light green strapless bikini. I could feel his eyes on me as I ran over to the grass to pick up my sarong and wrap myself back up. Peter put the girls down in front of the door and opened it to let them run on through.

We stood there staring at each other for an uncomfortable moment. “I’ll see you in the kitchen a little later,” he said, and winked.

“See ya,” I called from the yard, and watched him walk in through the porch.

We had become good friends over the summer. With a lively sense of humor, Peter had a great way about him. When he spoke to me he looked directly in my eyes. The edges of his mouth always curved up when I was speaking to him and he never glanced around the room or let anything distract him from giving me his undivided attention. Whenever I was in the restaurant, he made a point to find me and find out how things were going with the girls and me. Someone in Vermont actually cared how my day was going.