A Table By the Window Read online

  “Well, she liked Cordelia very much. And I mentioned that you were just as personable.”

  “Really?”

  Her aunt smiled. “Don’t be so modest, dear. As far as your airline penalty, it would work out to about the same amount as hiring a temp. Frankly, new shop clerks start out at minimum wage. The agency charges us two dollars an hour more so they can make a profit. And you never know if whomever they send will be good with customers. That’s asking a lot of you—minimum wage and delaying looking for a job. I’m just being selfish. I’d like to have you stay longer.”

  Carley chewed on a bite of sandwich, and the idea. Minimum wage was not an issue, not for two weeks. And without knowing when she would manage another trip this way, it would be nice to spend more time with her newfound family.

  Still, she needed to be looking for a permanent job. But what sort of job? She was not ready to take on teaching again. Perhaps it would be good to have a little productive space in which to think about her future, to download San Francisco Chronicle classified ads in the library and see what was available.

  The doorbell chimed. Carley went through the living room and welcomed Blake Kemp, who settled the matter.

  “It’s going to take about seven working days before we find out if our loan came through,” he said, accepting Carley’s offer of a bowl of soup. But he declined a sandwich on either of the two breads.

  Why not just wait it out here? Carley thought. She could pay her February rent and utilities online. She would just have to telephone her landlord to hold her mail once the post office started delivering again, then ask the freight company to come later, so that she would be certain of being back in San Francisco to receive everything.

  “Oh, by the way,” Blake said, hitting his forehead. “Sherry wanted me to give you the key we borrowed from the Paynes. But I forgot it.”

  “You may as well keep it, since you’re buying the house,” Carley said. “I have a spare on my chain.”

  “On the same chain?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Hmm.” He chewed thoughtfully, swallowed. “Now correct me if I’m wrong…but isn’t the point of having two keys, to keep them apart in case you lose one?”

  “Smarty britches,” Aunt Helen said, but smiling.

  Carley smiled too. He had a point.

  ****

  “Here we go, Bobcats, Here we go!”

  Tallulah trailed Seminary by five points, but for the past nineteen minutes of game time, the lead had changed hands seven times. Players and referees were sweating, coaches and cheerleaders could barely be heard above the continuous roar from both sides of the gymnasium.

  “What are your favorite colors? Red and white, red and white!”

  “LET’S HUSTLE, BOBCATS!” Sherry called out from Carley’s left.

  When the half-time horn bleated, both sides rose and cheered players on their way to locker rooms.

  “I’m drained!” Carley said over the din. “I’d forgotten how exciting a basketball game can be. And I can’t imagine how it must be to watch your own son out there.”

  Sherry nodded, her face flushed. “I have to cut back on caffeine on game days, or I’d be out there slapping referees.”

  “Would you care for something from the concession stand?” Aunt Helen asked from Sherry’s other side. Uncle Rory was leaning forward as if poised to go. Blake, an unofficial coaching assistant, was in the locker room with the team.

  “No, let me,” Carley said. Her offer had nothing to do with the fact that she had spotted Dale Parker enter in civilian clothes shortly after they were seated. But she could not help but hope that he would happen by the concession stand at the same time.

  Sherry nudged her side. “We’ll both go.”

  A sign over the stand read Sponsored by Tallulah High Beta Club. Teenagers and adults worked the long counter. Sherry had informed Carley earlier that she and Blake and four other parents with sons on the team did not work the stand during the games, but they were in charge of setup and cleanup. A tall girl wearing a red baseball cap gathered two cartons of nachos, a hot dog, popcorn, and napkins on a cardboard tray for Carley. Sherry’s tray held the drinks. Carley insisted on paying and was relieved when Sherry’s expression betrayed no resentment of her inheritance.

  Dale Parker did not materialize. But as she received her change, Carley noticed another friendly face behind the counter. Other customers blocked her from moving sideways, so she leaned forward to call, “Hi, Neal!”

  Neal Henderson scanned faces, stopped at hers. “Hey…uh…”

  “Carley!”

  “Oh yeah! Carleyreed! I’m the potato chip man!”

  There was a ripple of laughter, none of it cruel. A man with a mullet haircut said, “Hey, Neal, how’s about you quit flirting with the pretty lady and give us some service?”

  Neal grinned at him. “Okey-dokey, Mister Chuck!”

  Forty-five seconds after the start of the second half, one of Tallulah’s seniors made a three-point shot, bringing the score to thirty-three to thirty-five. Patrick struggled to guard a player with two inches of height advantage, but at times, by talent or sheer determination, was able to block several shots and produce points on the offensive end of the court.

  “Go, Patrick!” Sherry called, while a half carton of nachos grew cold from inattention in Carley’s lap. With the score tied and twelve seconds on the clock, Coach Sullivan called a time-out and brought his players together for one last huddle. Then as the ball was inbounded, Patrick and the other forward stepped into the path of the covering guard. The Tallulah center rolled around the pick, was fed the ball by the point guard, and with a simple lay-up, the game was over.

  “Yes!” Carley exclaimed amid the roar. She hugged Sherry, Uncle Rory, Aunt Helen, and the woman and child behind her. After so much excitement, she was too stoked with energy to go home to her quiet house, so she stayed and helped Sherry and Blake and two other sets of parents clean up the concession stand. When they were almost finished, they divided the last of the hot chocolate into Styrofoam cups and sat in a circle in metal chairs reliving the best moments of the game and simply enjoying one another’s company.

  “Why don’t you just stay down here, Carley?” asked Lynn Hall, mother of the point guard. “We could introduce you to my husband’s cousin. He’s a dentist in Hattiesburg and looking for a wife.”

  “His fourth wife,” said her husband, Ron, a chemistry and physics teacher.

  “I thought polygamy was illegal,” Blake said, wide-eyed.

  Carley joined their laughter. In their state of euphoria and exhaustion, they would have chuckled if someone had commented upon the weather.

  ****

  Soon after arriving at Grandma’s Attic, Carley realized that shop-clerking was similar to being a waitress—answering patrons’ questions about any given menu item, showing gratitude that they had walked through the doors, yet giving them space and not fawning over them.

  As to the merchandise, Marianne Tate had a system.

  “Every item has a number on its tag or in the display case,” her daughter Jenna had explained during a lull, pulling out a drawer of an old mahogany library card catalog. She was a short woman in her late thirties, well under five feet tall, with a wide smile, beautiful teeth, and very curly brown hair. “When someone asks you about an item, you simply look up its card to find out more about it.”

  Each card contained penned notes from either Jenna or her mother, and sometimes taped photographs or magazine clippings. But on the first day on this job, Carley simply straightened merchandise, dusted shelves, and allowed Jenna to do the selling.

  The Hudsons had invited her for supper, so she brought over the pesto pasta salad she had prepared before work. Sherry, Blake, and Patrick were in Birmingham visiting Conner. Uncle Rory placed on the table a platter of what appeared to be beef pot roast, surrounded by potatoes, carrots, and onions.

  “Venison,” he said proudly.

  “Oh,” Carley
said dully.

  He smiled understanding. “Not sure about that, are you?”

  “Well…”

  “You don’t have to eat it,” said Aunt Helen.

  “Thank you,” Carley breathed, and just in case she had hurt Uncle Rory in the slightest way, she added, “The vegetables look delicious.”

  He winked. “And they don’t remind you of Bambi, do they?”

  Later, in the living room, Aunt Helen and Carley looked over the photographs while Uncle Rory worked the Hattiesburg American crossword puzzle, with Tiger dozing at the side of his chair.

  “What’s a seven-letter word for scoundrelly—begins with a k and ends with an h?” he asked, raking the end of his pen through his mustache.

  “Knavish?” Carley guessed after mentally counting letters.

  “That’s it!”

  “It pays to have an English major on hand,” Aunt Helen said.

  Carley felt so close to the two, so grounded in family, that she thought she would not wish to be anywhere else.

  Until Aunt Helen said, “We have a nice little church, Grace Community. Would you like to come with us tomorrow?”

  “Thank you, but I’d rather not,” Carley said.

  She waited for the “why” that was hanging in the air.

  But instead her aunt nodded, and Uncle Rory asked for a word starting with m for cryptogram.

  “Mystery,” Aunt Helen said, giving Carley a thoughtful little smile.

  ****

  “It was made by James Powell and Sons in England, in 1921,” Carley said on Thursday while rain fell outside. Her fingers trembled slightly as she unlocked the case that held a Venetian-style pedestal bowl of clear green glass for a middle-aged couple named Fletcher.

  “Ninety-five dollars, Dave,” the woman mused.

  “Like you said, it would look elegant on the console table,” her husband said. Both were originally from Kansas, they had told Carley, and now lived at Keesler Air Force Base, where Major Fletcher was stationed.

  “Well, yes…”

  His hand held out the pewter jam pot, priced at twenty dollars because of a dent along the base. “We’ll put this back, if it would make you feel better.”

  She thought about it and smiled. “All right.”

  Carley was pressing tissue paper around the sides of the bowl when Jenna returned from lunch, propping her umbrella in the stand at the door. After the Fletchers left she said, “I can’t wait ’til Mom calls. How did it feel, making your first big sale?”

  “It felt great,” Carley said.

  But the sale that gave her the most satisfaction occurred the following morning, when a trio of women with heavy Southern accents entered. They were from Foley, Alabama, they said, another Southern antique Mecca. Only the woman wearing thick bifocals had been to Tallulah before. They were looking for Depression glass, old clocks, vintage aprons, and salt and pepper shakers. Jenna asked Carley to help the woman seeking the latter.

  “Oh goodness, here she is!” the woman breathed after scanning the shelves. Almost reverently she picked up a four-inch pepper shaker in the form of a little nun with folded hands.

  Having just dusted those shelves the previous afternoon, Carley said, “I’m afraid we don’t have the salt shaker. That must be why it’s only three dollars.”

  “I would have given three hundred,” the woman said, rubbing her thumb over the smooth ceramic. She turned luminous eyes to Carley. “I already have the salt shaker. Our cat knocked the pepper shaker off a shelf about ten years ago, and I’ve looked all over for a replacement, even on eBay. My son Robert bought me the set at the dime store when he was a little boy. We aren’t even Catholic—he just liked the look of them.”

  There was clearly far more to that story. Carley took the shaker reverently from her hands. “Let me find a box for it.”

  By the time Carley returned from the storeroom, the two other women had joined their friend at the counter. They wanted to see the shaker. One embraced the new owner, who was wiping her eyes with a tissue.

  “You’re not from around here either, are you?” the woman shopping for clocks asked Carley, while Jenna rang up two Depression glass juice glasses.

  “Guess where she’s from?” Jenna said before Carley could answer.

  “Hmm…” she said. “California.”

  Jenna laughed. Carley gaped at the woman. “How could you tell?”

  The woman gaped back while her companions joined in the laughter. “You mean I’m right? I threw out a wild guess.”

  “Why don’t you go to lunch now, Carley?” Jenna said when the trio had exited.

  For the past three days, Carley had spent her free hour reading Camellia Street over a bowl of minestrone or a sandwich in the tiny kitchen off the upstairs storage room. Mr. Juban had not exaggerated about it being a great read, and she was rather proud of herself for resisting peeking ahead. But this morning, just before the shop opened for customers, Aunt Helen had stopped in to ask Carley to ring her shop when she could get away to meet her at Corner Diner.

  After telephoning, Carley bundled into her coat. The three women from Foley were coming out of Three Sisters Antiques.

  “Can you recommend a good place for lunch?” one asked.

  Carley nodded. “Corner Diner is just up the street. I’m heading there now if you’d like…”

  The bifocaled woman gave her an apologetic look. “I’ve been there. We were hoping for something not quite so heavy.”

  That ruled out Dixie Burger and Tommy’s Pizza on the south end of town. The Old Grist Mill had a salad bar, she had heard, but they only opened for lunch on weekends.

  “Don’t you have a soup and sandwich shop tucked away somewhere?” asked the woman who had guessed Carley was from California.

  “You can probably get sandwiches made at the deli at Henderson’s Grocery. It’s just a few hundred feet west of the flashing light. But I’m afraid there’s no place to sit.”

  The bifocaled woman apologized for detaining Carley. “I guess we’ll do pizza. Thank you.”

  Carley glanced over her shoulder before entering Corner Diner. The trio were getting into a dark blue sedan.

  “You know, someone should open up a sandwich shop here,” she said to Aunt Helen over identical plates of the special of the day—grilled pork chops, baked sweet potatoes, and turnip greens.

  “Why don’t you?” Aunt Helen asked while her knife trimmed the fat from her chop.

  Carley smiled. “Seriously, I think one would do well. There’s nothing here for older women.”

  Her aunt cocked a playful brow at her. “I’m an older woman. And this pork chop suits me just fine.”

  “But you’re also a local. The shop clientele are mostly older women in groups.” She looked around at the filled tables. “Even the men shoppers usually accompany wives. This place is too busy, and the hamburger and pizza places aren’t suitable for sitting around making pleasant conversation.”

  She was about to add that San Francisco and Sacramento had quaint little bistros on practically every block, but she feared sounding like the city mouse talking down to the country mouse.

  “You might have a point there,” Aunt Helen said thoughtfully.

  “That place next to the drugstore would be the perfect location too. Is the owner just going to let it sit there empty? I didn’t see a For Sale sign or anything.”

  “I guess Emmit’s too busy to bother with it. But I doubt Tallulah’s ever had a sandwich shop like those in Seattle.”

  Carley had forgotten her aunt was more well-traveled than she was. “That’s what Blake should think about investing in, instead of a rental house.”

  Aunt Helen winced. “I love my son-in-law, but for Sherry’s sake I would appreciate your not putting that bug in his ear. A rental house would be a fairly safe investment, but another business besides the barber shop would be just too risky.”

  “I understand,” Carley said and dropped the subject.

  Dropping it from
her mind proved more difficult, she discovered while preparing an omelet for supper. Tonight’s basketball game was in Picayune, almost eighty miles away, and Sherry had offered her a ride. But asking Jenna’s permission to leave a couple of hours early would have been embarrassing, with less than a week on the job.

  Earth-tone colors, she thought, chopping green onions. Quaint, but trendy, like a Parisian cafe. Sandwiches and soups on the menu, and light meals like pasta salad.

  Idle pondering, like chewing gum for the brain. But fun to imagine anyway.

  Chapter 11

  The deaths of seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia put everyone in a somber mood on Saturday. Jenna brought a small portable television to Grandma’s Attic to keep up with news coverage, and shoppers conversed in reverent tones, almost as if at a wake.

  Even conversations between patrons at Corner Diner were subdued.

  “Carley dear, forgive my nosiness, but I just have to ask something,” Aunt Helen said as they lunched together.

  Carley sprinkled pepper on her chicken and dumplings and braced herself for what she suspected was coming. “Sure.”

  “Do you never think about death?”

  “I think about it,” Carley said.

  “What about God?”

  “I believe in God. I’m just…not sure what to think about Him.”

  Aunt Helen nodded, brows denting. “But shouldn’t that make you want to find out more?”

  The worry mingled with affection in her expression made Carley want to pat her arm and agree to do whatever it would take to reassure her. But she owed her aunt no less than honesty. “I did at one time. But then some things happened, and I wondered how He could love me enough to send His son to die for me and yet not protect me.”

  “What happened, Carley?”

  “Just some things, I really can’t talk about. But you can imagine what sort of men my mother attracted.”

  The aged face was a study in sadness. “You poor baby.”

  Carley turned her head to blink tears. When she had composed herself, she went on. “And please don’t take offense—you and Uncle Rory are salt of the earth, but my most rotten experiences have been with religious people.”