Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter (3 page)

“Breakfast is very important at an inn.” Baker placed the tray on my lap. “It’s the meal that keeps people returning to the same B and B year after year. That and the hospitality of the innkeeper.” Issie raised her arms and Baker lifted her onto the bed, where she nudged her way in between her sister and me.

“I can see that.” I hesitantly sipped a taste of Baker’s maiden cup of coffee. “I certainly wouldn’t want to spend my money on a place where the innkeeper wasn’t friendly, kind of like I wouldn’t want to go back to a place where the coffee is so thick it sticks to the sides of my mouth.” I couldn’t help making a sour face.

“Okay, so my joe needs some improvement.” I watched him disappear into the bathroom and reemerge wearing only a white towel that was wrapped around his waist just below his belly button. “How do you like the pancakes?” he called from the door.

“I always love your pancakes.”

The bathroom was located directly off our bedroom. Even though his back was to me I could see his face in the mirror and I watched him lather his cheeks with shaving cream. There was something so gorgeous about him when he was shaving—his dark hair contrasted with the white cream and his blue eyes twinkling in between. “You’d make a wonderful innkeeper.” He raised his voice a little to be heard over the sound of the TV.

“I would?”

“Yeah, you would. You’re friendly and you’re nice to everybody. That’s exactly what it takes.”

I knew he was right about the innkeeper part but dead wrong about something else. “I probably would make a good innkeeper but you’re forgetting something pretty important. I’m not the greatest cook in the world.”

He stopped shaving and walked over to me.
Your body is as beautiful as it was the first day I saw you in your bathing suit at Linda Yoder’s pool party, fifteen years ago.

“So what? That’s no big deal. You can cook breakfast, can’t you?”

I shrugged my shoulders and nodded in agreement with him.

“Listen. This inn I’m looking at is a four-star restaurant. The evening meal is prepared by a
real
chef. You know, culinary trained and all.” Those arms were just a-waving all over the place and he still held his razor in his hand. “Remember when I was the assistant manager of the Copper Cellar near campus in Knoxville?”

“That was before we were married, remember?”

“We had a basic menu—nothing too fancy—and the check averages weren’t even that high. But that place made a fortune. The spot I’m looking at in Vermont is a fine dining restaurant with
high
check averages.” He turned and headed back to the sink. “I’m jumping in the shower. I’ll talk to you more about it when I get out.”

It had been a long time since I had seen him that happy.

After he had showered and dressed he walked back into the bedroom to finish knotting his tie. He stretched way across me and kissed Sarah and Isabella. He kissed me, too. “What are you doing today?”

“Taking Sarah and Issie to Mother’s Day Out. Then I’m going to Seessel’s to pick up some groceries, planting the rest of the lilies that Virginia gave me, and . . . meeting the girls for lunch at twelve thirty.” Actually, this last appointment was not scheduled, but it would be; we had much to discuss.

“Well, tell them hey, and have fun. I’ll call you after I talk to him.”

“Talk to who?”

“Ed Baldwin. The Vermont real estate guy.”

“Oh yeah.”

No sooner had he reached the back door than the phone was in my
hand. I wasn’t sure who to call first—Virginia, Alice, or Mary Jule, my three very best friends in the whole wide world.
Wait ’til they hear what my husband is cooking up now
, I thought. Nothing he did would ever surprise them. They had all known Baker as long as I had.

Thank goodness it was Wednesday. All my friends’ children were with mine in Mother’s Day Out on Wednesdays. It would be no problem getting everyone to meet me at the country club for lunch. I didn’t reveal the reason for this little emergency get-together on the phone. I only said that I had something
big
to tell them. They’d think I had found out some major scoop about who was sleeping with whom, or maybe they’d think I was pregnant again. But there was
no way
they would have guessed
this
news.

I dropped the girls off at the church, floated through Seessel’s, and drove back home all inside a cloud. I could not stop thinking about the night before. It was the strangest feeling. Surreal almost. Did my husband actually come home and suggest that we up and move to
Vermont
? A place that I couldn’t locate on a U.S. map with 100 percent certainty to save my life.

As soon as I got home, and still in a fog, I headed straight outside to plant my lilies. I love to garden. It’s my special time with myself. My mind breaks into heavy problem-solving mode. It’s also my time to talk to God. Something about digging my fingers through His rich soil keeps me in touch with who’s truly in control.

I could already feel my mind shifting into gear when I picked up the shovel and slammed my foot down onto the foot ledge, hearing that first crunching sound of the ground breaking.
He must be out of his mind for considering a move to the North.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever believed that I’d have to decide whether or not to leave Memphis, Tennessee. Heck, no one left Memphis by choice. Almost everyone I knew was
born
in Memphis, just as I was. Virginia, Mary Jule, Alice, and I were even born in the same hospital, we started kindergarten together on the same day, and I bet we’ve gabbed on the phone almost every day since. I couldn’t imagine ever moving away from them. We were closer than sisters.

We watched our childhoods fly into adolescence and our teens revolve into our twenties. From double-seat panties and ponytails to pimples and pom-poms, these girls and I were joined together at the hip. If our parents only knew how many times we snuck out in the middle of the night together. There’s not a one of us who can’t recall the exact boy who gave each of us our first French kiss. Our daddies strutted us down the aisle at the country club debutante ball, the winter of our freshman year in college. All of us share the same collection of taffeta bridesmaid’s dresses and dyed-to-match pumps. When every one of our babies was born, we took over the waiting room at Baptist Hospital and held a hen party for as long as it took the new arrival to show up. You couldn’t give me one million dollars for the trunk of memories we share.

I’m convinced going to an all-girls school for thirteen straight years is the reason we’re so thick. According to a certain group of people it was the finest all-girls school in town. It had been around since the late 1800s and generations of old-money families filled the pages of the yearbooks. Miss Jamison’s School for Young Ladies. That was actually the name of the school when it started way back in 1882. I don’t think they changed it until 1970. Then, to keep up with the evolving times, the name was shortened to The Jamison School. We had to wear short white gloves whenever we went on a field trip, and curtsy to the teachers when they walked in the room. Chewing gum meant an automatic Saturday School, and if you were caught sitting on a desktop you might as well start marching yourself straight to our principal’s office, where Mrs. Carrington would remind you that Miss Jamison’s young ladies did not sit on desktops.

Virginia and I roomed together every year at Ole Miss. We both pledged Chi O, and when we got to move into the sorority house our bunks were right next to each other. Once we graduated and moved back home, we found a house to rent and Alice moved in with us. Mary Jule was already engaged. Al Barton stole her heart in college and they were married the June after graduation. She was also the first to have a baby and we all made over that child like Fred and Ethel did over Little Ricky. Now she’s got three more babies and I wouldn’t be surprised if she went for a fifth.

The grinding of the city garbage truck distracted me from my thoughts. I had planted twenty-five lilies and mulched nearly all of them, losing all track of time. It was noon already. I dashed inside the house, stripping my clothes as soon as I hit the door, and dropped them in little piles all the way to the tub. There was hardly enough time for a bath. But I was hot and dirty and Daddy would have had my hide if I ever showed up at the Memphis Country Club looking like a filthy ragamuffin. Daddy never left the house unless he was impeccably dressed in a beautiful suit tailored especially for him, a monogrammed shirt of the finest Egyptian cotton, and matching overcoat and hat.

If Daddy were still living, Baker would have never brought up this loony idea in the first place. Daddy was very protective of me. After all, I was his only child. He was commanding and overbearing, but completely in love with Mama and me. When Mama died, he became even more sheltering. Baker steered clear from him as much as he could.

Alice swears if it weren’t for Daddy, Baker never would have gotten into the Memphis Country Club. I’d never tell Baker that, though. He thinks he got in because he was a great football player. He received a full-ride scholarship to UT and played tight end all four years under Johnny Majors. Hardly a week goes by that I don’t hear about the touchdown he made at the Sun Bowl. But either way, we’re members.

Driving to the club that day felt strange. I kept looking around at all the trees in the yards and the houses that I had driven by a million times. So familiar, yet I had never taken the time to study the surroundings. Now I was noticing it all—the perfectly manicured lawns in Chickasaw Gardens, the monster live oaks, and the unique architecture of each house. This was my hometown and I had been taking it for granted for thirty-two years. Why in the world should I leave a place where my pediatrician was still in practice and now taking care of my own two little girls? Even the old druggist at Walgreens was still filling my prescriptions. I wouldn’t be surprised if he remembered when I had the chicken pox.

Baker cannot take all this away from me
, I thought.
It’s my life, too. I’m tired of how he tries to run everything and give me no say-so.

That’s it
, I thought,
I’m not going. I’ll just tell Baker tonight that I’ve thought about it long enough and I’m not going. Case closed.
But, there was only one problem with my decision. Baker had a bridle around my heart with a rein that steered me in one direction—his.

When I got to the club, I hightailed it into the Red Room and found everyone seated at one of the round tables near the back. The main reason we went there for lunch was that it was the only place we could all charge our lunches to our husbands. And before that, it was the only place we could all charge lunch to our daddies. I slithered into the only available seat, fifteen minutes late—as usual.

Alice was bobbing up and down in her seat like a dang Mexican jumping bean. “I can’t stand it anymore, Leelee. What’s this all about? Mary Jule and I were on our cell phones the whole way from home to the club trying to figure it out.”

“You’re the one dying to figure it out, Alice, I’m not having a cow to know like you are,” Mary Jule said. Her blond bobbed hairdo had a little flip in the back.

“Calm down, everyone. I hate to disappoint.” I leaned in closer to them. “But I have no gossip. Y’all might as well prepare yourselves. This news is about me.”

Now all three of them were wide-eyed.

I searched for a good way to break it to them, but nothing would come out.

“Yeeeess . . . ,” Alice said, and swept her hand as if to say, out with it.

After another long pause I finally let the words flow. “Baker . . . wants to move . . . to
Vermont
!” I watched all three of them gasp at the same time. “To buy an inn.”

“AAAAHHHHH!” Alice squealed loudly, causing the next table of women to look over at us. “
Vermont!
Where in the hell is that, anyway?” In one motion, she tossed her long, freshly weaved blond hair behind her shoulder and slid a Virginia Slims regular out of its pack.

“That’s just what
I
asked him,” I said. Then I relayed the whole story,
beginning with Baker’s unusually good mood, the peach daiquiris, the
North American Inns
magazine ad, and finally the breakfast in bed bit.

Virginia was silent, but her furrowed brow let me know she was giving the situation serious thought.

“Just tell him you’re not goin’.” This was Alice’s simple answer to my complex dilemma. “Why didn’t you tell him to go on without you? He’s the one who’s so unhappy, not you.”

“You know I could never let him do that.” I threw my head back and sighed.

“Why not? If Richard ever came home with a lamebrain idea like that I’d tell him to have fun, call us every week, and be sure to set up a direct deposit account for his paycheck at First Tennessee Bank. And
that
”—she paused for effect and flipped her French-manicured hand in the air—“would be the end of that.”

“I’ve got it!” Virginia said, like she had solved the problem. “I’ll go home and tell John, who can mention it to his father, and once he does that, I’m sure his father will be happy to call Mr. Satterfield.” (John’s father and Baker’s father had been tailgating near one another at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville for years.) “We’ll just nip this crazy idea in the bud before he has the chance to take it one bit further.” She tore open a melba toast and smeared it with butter.

“No, Virgy. Thanks, but . . . I couldn’t let you do that. I’d feel like I was betraying Baker.”

“
Betraying
Baker? You would not. But have it your way; it was just a suggestion.” The light blue V-neck tee she was wearing looked so pretty next to her brunette hair. Virginia’s always hated her figure because of a few extra pounds, but we all think she’s beautiful.

“This is just wrong. I’m surprised at Baker,” Mary Jule said. “He has never, to my knowledge anyway, ever let on to Al that he’s unhappy. And Al tells me everything.”