Chapter Twelve

 

Richard

 

“Are you sure that this is the right place?”

I peered out of the window at the scenery that was rushing past the limo as Abraham drove me further and further away from the city. It had been an hour already and it didn’t seem as though we were really getting any closer to any other civilization.

“I’m using the GPS, sir.”

“And this is where it’s telling you to go?”

“That’s generally the purpose of a GPS, sir.”

Since I had scheduled the moving crew for Rue to get her settled in I had the address of the home she was now living in, her grandmother’s house. I hadn’t heard from her in the days since the procedure and I wanted to make sure that she was doing alright. I knew that she was without family and thought that she would appreciate some friendly company for Thanksgiving, but the further that we went, the more it seemed like an intrusion on her. Now that we seemed to be disappearing into the great unknown, I was questioning whether this was really the right choice. I should have invited her to spend the holiday with me rather than inviting myself over to her house.

With us. Damn. I really needed to work on that.

Just as I was losing all hope that we were getting anywhere near where Rue might be, I started seeing little buildings popping up in front of me. I wanted to be relieved, but I was seeing nothing taller than two stories and none of the buildings looked like houses.

“Is it another apartment?” I asked Abraham.

I saw my driver shake his head in front of me and found myself hoping that the holiday bonus that I was planning on giving him when he dropped me back off at home was going to be worth his family having to push their dinner back by a few hours.

“No, sir,” Abraham said. “This isn’t where Miss Rue lives. She’s in Whiskey Hollow. It’s still a few minutes down the road.”

“Whiskey Hollow?” I asked. “Is that a real place?”

“It is. This you’re seeing now is their version of downtown.”

There was no judgement in Abraham’s voice, but I could feel the distaste rising in me the longer that we were in the town and then as we passed through and continued on.

She couldn’t be serious. This was where Rue lived?

Finally, we passed a few houses and then Abraham pulled into an open gravel area in front of a house. I looked out over the parking area before I stepped out. Grass and tiny trees were peeking out from the gravel in so many areas that it looked more like a ragged section of yard that had been scattered heavily with gravel rather than a gravel section.

“Is everything alright?” Abraham asked.

“Oh,” I said, realizing that I didn’t know how long I had been dangling partway out of the limo looking at the parking area. “Yes. Everything’s fine. Will you wait for me? I’m going to make sure that she’s up for a visit. If she is, you can go on back and I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

I climbed out of the car and reached back inside to take out the bundle of autumn flowers and the sparkling grape juice that I had brought along with me. I heard Abraham squealing away even before I stepped up onto the porch. It was probably for the best. If I knew that he was waiting it was entirely possible that I wasn’t going to actually climb up onto the porch that looked like it was sagging a tad too much for my comfort, and instead go running back to the limo.

In the back of my mind I knew that wasn’t true. I wanted to see Rue.

I cautiously climbed up the stairs and reached out to press the doorbell. When I didn’t hear any ring from within the house, I knocked on the door. There was a scrambling of footsteps from inside and then I saw the curtains on the window beside the door rustle. Rue’s face appeared in the small gap that she created by pushing the fabric aside and I smiled at her. She did not smile in return.

Her face disappeared, and I heard footsteps coming toward the door. I waited for the sound of a lock, but didn’t hear one. Instead, the doorknob turned, and the door opened enough that she could peer out at me. Her hair hung on the sides of her face and there was a streak of flour on one cheek.

I didn’t know that that actually happened to people when they cooked.

I could see that she was wearing an apron over her clothes and it had various spots and splotches on it. Her eyes ran up and down me a few times and then she pushed her hair back behind her ear as though she were trying to make herself look more presentable.

“Hi,” she said. “Did I forget an appointment today?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, no. No, you didn’t forget anything. I was just…” I wanted to say, ‘in the neighborhood’ but I knew that that was beyond not feasible. “I hadn’t heard from you and I wanted to stop by and say hello and Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Oh,” she said, “Happy Thanksgiving. Um,” she glanced over her shoulder at the house behind her, “would you like to come in?”

I nodded, and she stepped aside, trying to brush herself off and straighten her appearance as she allowed me inside. The house was decidedly old with the entire building having a sense of settling around it, not as though it were going to fall over at any minute, but rather like it had lived a long life and was now tired and trying to rest. Warm, rich smells surrounded me, and I drew them into my lungs, for the first time realizing that I missed that. It had been five years since I had been home for Thanksgiving. Work schedules and obligations had kept me from being able to celebrate most of the time, and the one year that I had cleared my schedule and planned to go home, Flora had complained so much that I ended up going home with her. Even then it didn’t feel like Thanksgiving. There they served soup, fish, and fruit, and instead of sitting by the fire at the end of the meal or even starting to decorate for Christmas, we ended up going out and playing a round on her father’s private golf course. It might have seemed like a nice tradition if it hadn’t felt like he was just trying to impress me and show that even though he didn’t have even half the wealth that I had achieved independently, not to mention what I had from my family, that their worth was still high enough to justify my guided attachment to Flora. That made the entire experience feel like a dog and pony show, which made me uncomfortable to say the least.

Rue’s house didn’t feel like that, though. I could smell all of the traditional foods that I remembered from when I was younger and there was a warmth in the space that I hadn’t felt since I was a child, perhaps not even then. I looked around myself for a moment before turning my attention back to her.

“I’m sorry if I’m intruding,” I said. “I knew that you didn’t have any family, but I can tell you’ve been cooking. Your friends are probably here.”

She started walking toward the kitchen before responding and I fell into step behind her. Taking her place at the stove, she leaned against the side and stirred a pot, adding a new layer of rich smells to the air. She sighed, her shoulders dropping slightly as she stared into what she was cooking.

“Actually, I’m alone today,” she said. “Christopher is with his family and Tessie was supposed to come over, but she woke up this morning with the flu. I told her that she should stay at home and get some rest. I’ll bring some turkey soup by to her in a couple of days.”

“It’s probably best for both of you that she’s not here,” I said, a bit of panic settling in my stomach. “You wouldn’t want to expose yourself to those kinds of germs.”

She looked over her shoulder at me and nodded, the expression on her face telling me that she really didn’t need to hear my lecture. I squeezed my lips closed, determined that this wasn’t going to turn into an argument. I didn’t need another one of those today. I remembered the flowers that I was holding and stepped forward, holding them out to her.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting them and tilting her face down into the golden, red, and orange blooms. “They’re beautiful.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “I also brought this,” I showed her the bottle of sparkling grape juice. “Since you can’t have wine.”

“Really?” she asked. “I thought that that was an old wives’ tale. And here I’ve been guzzling down bottles of moonshine and cooking wine all day. A little for the pot, a little for me.”

My mouth fell open, but then I saw the sparkle in her eye and realized that she was teasing me. I could probably back off a bit.

“I’m sorry to hear that your friend couldn’t be with you today,” I said. “If you’d like, I could send my doctor over to her house to check on her. Maybe bring her something that would make her feel better. I know that it’s going to be hard to get any kind of medical attention for the next few days.”

She shook her head and reached up into a cabinet to pull down a glass jar which she filled with water. Settling the flowers into the jar, she tucked it onto the sill of a window that was open just enough to release some of the cooking heat and bring in a crisp, leaf-scented breeze.

“No, it’s alright. She’ll be fine. I wouldn’t want your doctor to miss his own family’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

The way that she said your doctor made me feel like she was still teasing me, and I realized that the idea of a private doctor was something that she would have never experienced.

“If you’re sure,” I said. “But if you find out that she’s doing worse, let me know. It really would be no problem.” I looked around the kitchen at the platters and plates filling the counter space and spilling out onto an old pink and black Formica table that had been pulled up to one side. “I’m sorry that you went to all this trouble to cook dinner for her and she wasn’t even able to join you.”

Rue turned with the pot in her hand and poured thick gravy into a gravy boat.

“It’s no trouble,” she said. “I would have probably cooked this much even if Tessie hadn’t planned on coming over.”

“You would have?” I asked, surprised at the revelation.

Rue nodded.

“Yeah. I’d like to say that it’s all because of the baby, but since we’re not even sure a baby’s in there, I don’t really think that I can pull that off.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

She looked up at me, her eyes soft and a tenderly startled expression on her face.

“You are?” she asked quietly.

I nodded.

“I know,” I said. “I just know that it worked. It’s like I can feel the baby’s presence.”

It was something that I hadn’t admitted to anyone, but I felt comfortable enough in that moment to say it to her.

“I can, too,” she said.

We stared at each other, our eyes locked on one another so intensely I felt like everything else around us was blurred out of focus. The breath caught in my lungs and emotion churned in my belly. A sudden loud buzzing sound broke me out of the trance and I looked around, startled by the sound and worried that there was something wrong.

“What’s that?” I asked, knowing my voice was higher than it usually was.

Rue laughed and walked over to the oven, taking down an old timer and turning it off.

“Haven’t you ever heard a kitchen timer?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“No,” I admitted.

She laughed again and settled the timer back into place.

“It just means that the turkey is done resting.”

“Did it work hard today?” I teased.

Rue smiled and nodded as she disappeared around the corner of the refrigerator and then appeared a moment later carrying a platter with a perfect-looking turkey on it.

“You know, it did. It worked really, really hard and I thought that it deserved a little bit of a break before dinner.”

“You mean you eat this early?” I asked, taking the turkey from her and following her point toward another room off of the kitchen.

I settled the platter into the center of the table and went back into the kitchen.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s Thanksgiving dinner. When would you eat it?”

“Around six,” I said, remembering how strange it was when I ate with Flora’s family and they ate their pseudo-Thanksgiving meal in the early afternoon.

“That would make it Thanksgiving supper,” she said, handing me a covered casserole.

“There’s a difference?” I asked.

“There is around here,” she said. “Dinner is the big meal in the middle of the day. That’s when you eat the main feast. Then comes dessert. Then by the time supper rolls around you’re picking at the cold leftovers while you chop them up for hash, soup, and sandwiches for the next day. Then it’s more pie and some egg nog to usher in Christmas.”

“So many holiday rules I didn’t know about,” I said.

She carried another platter into the dining room and I followed her with the final two casseroles.

“Oh, well, you can’t help it,” she said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“It’s just that I can’t really imagine a man who shows up to someone’s house on Thanksgiving wearing a suit that probably costs more than my entire wardrobe put together has really had all too many warm and fuzzy home-for-the-holidays style Thanksgivings or Christmases.”

I couldn’t really argue with her, but the thought that that was how she perceived me stung for reasons that I didn’t understand. She came into the room carrying two plates and a handful of silverware. She set them out at two places at the table and gestured toward it.

“You want me to join you?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said, taking one of the chairs. “That’s why you came over, isn’t it?”

“I came over to check on you, and so you would know that someone was thinking about you today,” I said. “I wouldn’t presume to think that you’d invite me to eat with you.”

She looked at me like I had spoken a different language to her and gestured at the chair.

“Sit down,” she said. “Like I said, I’d probably cook this much even without someone coming over, but that doesn’t mean that it’s good for me to try to eat it all myself. My appetite is something that I’ve never had to worry about, and I’m a bit concerned that this whole eating for two thing is going to have dire consequences for my waistline. You know, beyond just the whole bump thing that’s going to happen.”

I laughed and shook my head, holding out my plate to accept the slabs of turkey that she was offering me.

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You’re beautiful.”

Oh, shit. Did I just say that?

Rue was staring at me over the turkey and I tried to avoid her gaze as I reached for the spoon in the mashed potatoes.

“Where’s Flora today?” she asked, obviously trying to cover up my comment.

“She, too, has taken ill,” I said, though the tone of my voice expressed just how much I actually believed that Flora was suffering from anything more than a temper tantrum.

“Oh, really?” she asked. “That’s a shame.”

“Mmmmm,” I said.

By now my plate had more on it than I had eaten in about a week, but I was excited to dig into it. I finished with a drizzle of the gravy that I had watched Rue make and picked up my fork. I took a bite, groaning at the flavors that filled my mouth. I had piled so much together that I wasn’t even sure what it was that I was tasting, but it was unlike anything that I had ever tasted.

“This is incredible,” I said when I swallowed my fifth bite.

“I’m glad you like it,” Rue said. “Most of these were my Grammyma’s recipes.”

“Grammyma?” I asked.

“My grandmother,” I said. “This was her house. It was actually her parents’ before her. I grew up here.”

“You did?” I asked.

“Why do you sound so surprised?” she asked.

“It’s just…” I tried to come up with the right words. “I just don’t see you as part of this.”

Rue narrowed her eyes at me.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Meeting you in the city I could see an intelligence and sophistication about you that just doesn’t seem to fit in around here.”

“Excuse me?” she asked.

The happiness that I had been feeling started to fade as I realized that I had offended her.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to…can we just kind of move past what I said?”

She glared at me for a few seconds and then took another towering bite of the food on her plate. I felt my muscles relax.

By the time we finished eating, I felt like I was going to burst, but when she offered me a slice of fresh sweet potato pie I knew that I couldn’t resist. We walked into the living room and settled onto one of the worn old couches that nearly filled the space. Rue curled her legs under herself and settled her plate of pie on her knees, smiling as she took a bite.

“This was always one of my favorite things that my Grammyma made during the holidays,” she told me.

I took a bite and nodded.

“It’s delicious,” I said.

We ate in silence for a few moments and then she looked at me as if she wanted to say something, then shook her head slightly and looked back down at her pie.

“What?” I asked. “Did you want to say something?”

She looked at me again, her expression saying that she was thinking about something. She shook her head again.

“No,” she said. “I shouldn’t.”

“What?” I asked. “Go ahead. What did you want to say?”

Rue took another bite of her pie.

“Why aren’t you and Flora married?”