A Table By the Window Read online

  Tiger, well trained, lay watching with his head resting on his leg in the den doorway. In the course of conversation, Carley learned that Blake owned the only barber shop in town, that Sherry met him when the Hudsons moved to Tallulah during her senior year of high school, and that she taught middle school science.

  “Mr. Malone says you’re a teacher too, Carley,” Aunt Helen said, buttering a hush puppy.

  Patrick’s eyebrows lifted in a friendly way. “What do you teach?”

  “High school English literature,” Carley replied, sending the boy a smile before diverting everyone to a more pleasant subject. “But what I don’t understand is…what brought you here from Washington?”

  “Rory was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base,” Aunt Helen replied. “He came to our school play with a girl in my junior class. I had a lead part in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.”

  “And once I saw Helen flip that blonde hair,” Rory said, “I said to myself that she was the girl I was going to marry.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say such things in front of Patrick, Dad,” Sherry scolded affectionately while salting peas. “We’re trying to teach him that you’re not supposed to fall for a girl just because she’s pretty.”

  “Well, you weren’t around to warn me, were you?”

  That made Patrick chuckle. Aunt Helen gave her husband an indulgent smile and continued. “Anyway, that was in 1947. We moved all over the country. Rory retired from the air force with twenty-five years when we were in Biloxi.”

  “Keesler Air Force Base.” Blake passed Carley the ketchup after she glanced in that direction.

  Aunt Helen went on to say that Rory was hired at Mississippi Mortgage there in Biloxi and was transferred to the Tallulah branch six years later, in 1976. “People were just starting to open up the antique shops.”

  It was all interesting, for Carley was still a bit in awe of being able to share a pleasant family meal, just as normal people did all over the world. But what she wanted to know most was what she could not ask at the table. What caused her mother to turn out to be the way she was? And did they have any inkling as to the identity of her father?

  Dessert was banana pudding, with Italian creme cake on the side. Carley asked only for banana pudding, having heard of it but never tasted it. Banana slices were layered with broken vanilla wafers in custard, with toasted meringue on top.

  “This is dreamy,” said Carley.

  “So’s this cake,” said Uncle Rory.

  “Are you going to sell the house?” said Blake.

  Carley cringed inside. She had planned to broach the subject when it seemed the appropriate time. But silence was hanging, so she said, “I can’t keep a house here, living in California.”

  “‘Course not,” Uncle Rory said.

  Aunt Helen nodded. “It’s yours to do with as you please.”

  “We might like to buy it,” Blake said.

  Sherry set down her fork and groaned. “Blake…”

  He gave his wife a pleading look. “It can’t hurt to talk about it.”

  “But we decided…”

  “I know, I know,” he said, raising placating hands. “But how much longer will interest rates be this low? It’s a great investment. We could rent it out.”

  “Well…” Sherry said with uncertain expression.

  That encouraged Blake to turn to Carley again. “You haven’t signed with a Realtor yet, have you?”

  “No. Kay Chapman came by this morning, but I asked for a little time.”

  “And how much did she appraise it for?”

  “Eighty thousand dollars. With room for negotiation.”

  “So, that means midseventies. And minus Kay’s six percent commission, if we arrange a private sale.”

  “Is that ethical?” Carley asked. “After she’s been to the house?”

  “It’s the nature of the business,” Blake assured her. “I used to dabble in real estate on the side.”

  “And obviously he wants to do it again,” Sherry said. Husband and wife locked eyes for a few seconds, his pleading and hers long-suffering. At length she blew out her cheeks and asked Carley, “Will you give us a couple of days to talk about it?”

  “Of course.”

  Uncle Rory cleared his throat. “Bad idea, mixing family with finances.”

  “Dad, Blake isn’t Uncle Dewey.” Sherry turned again to Carley. “Dad cosigned a car loan thirty years ago and got stuck with the payments.”

  “I agree with your father,” Aunt Helen said quietly.

  Blake nodded. “I understand, Miss Helen. But if we got a regular bank mortgage, how would that be any different from anyone else buying it?”

  “Yes, Dad, how would it?” Sherry asked.

  All eyes went to Uncle Rory. He shrugged. “I guess that would be all right. If you meet with Stanley Malone first, get a purchase agreement all legal-like.”

  “Of course,” Blake said.

  “May I have another slice of cake?” Patrick asked.

  Thankfully that brought an end to the discussion. Carley’s relief in finding a possible buyer so soon and keeping the house in the family, was tainted slightly by her first impression of Blake. Would he try to pressure her into a deal that was not in her best interest? If only she knew more about real estate.

  Everyone helped clear the table, raking scraps into the trash can, loading the dishwasher, covering leftovers. Then Sherry apologized for eating and running, that she had papers to grade.

  “I’m so glad we had the chance to meet you,” she said, catching Carley up in an embrace.

  Patrick, hanging back a bit as if he feared he might be expected to do the same, said, “Please don’t forget the game.”

  “We’d offer to pick you up,” Sherry said, “But we go early and help stock the concession stand. You’d probably enjoy the walk anyway. It’s just a stone’s throw from Aunt Cordelia’s house.”

  “From your house,” Blake corrected, shaking Carley’s hand. And it was said in such a friendly way that Carley warmed up to him a little. For that, and the ketchup.

  And then he ruined it all by adding, “Admission is three dollars—which shouldn’t be a problem for an heiress, right?”

  “Don’t say such things!” Aunt Helen scolded, swatting his arm lightly with a carton of tall kitchen trash bags.

  Carley held her breath, but Blake merely grinned and said, “Sorry!”

  Chapter 8

  When the three were gone, Uncle Rory shooed Carley and Aunt Helen from the kitchen. “I’ll get the pots,” he said, fingers testing the temperature of tap water.

  They shared a den sofa. With Tiger flopped on the rug at her feet, Aunt Helen said, “Please don’t pay Blake any mind. He’s a decent man, good to Sherry and the boys. His mouth just runs away with him sometimes.”

  That took a weight off Carley’s mind. “Thank you. And maybe it’ll be better for you…keeping the house in the family.”

  “I can think of my sister whenever I drive by, no matter who owns it. But I appreciate your giving them this chance. Whatever works out, do plan to stay with us, once the furniture is all packed up. Or whenever you feel like it. You’re always welcome here.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Helen.” By now, Carley had no qualms about accepting her hospitality. “Is there anything of Grandmother’s you’d like to have?”

  She shook her head. “I have the things Cordelia left me in her will, like our grandmother’s tea set and her serger sewing machine. And we made copies of some of each other’s photographs a couple of years ago. You’ll probably want to donate the mattresses and pots and pans and such to the Salvation Army. They’ll come out from Hattiesburg for them. We have a consignment store here that could sell some of the good furniture for you. They’ll come for it too.”

  “Would you like her clothes?” Carley asked carefully.

  “I couldn’t bring myself to wear them. Give them to the Salvation Army.”

  Carley had handed dollars to bell ringers out
side shops ever since she began making her own money. But her grandmother’s clothes?

  “Don’t worry,” Aunt Helen said, reading the discomfort on her face. “I rather like the idea of spotting something that belonged to my sister on someone who needs it.”

  “I like knowing that about you.” Realizing there was still much she did not know, Carley said, “Where are your other children?”

  Her aunt replied that Deanna, who lived in Indianapolis, was a pastor’s wife, piano teacher, and mother of three grown children. Kenneth, born a year after Deanna, was an electrical engineer, married, and living in Raleigh.

  “They all come at Christmas. Ken and his wife, Glenda, stayed with Cordelia the three years before last. She loved having someone to fuss over.”

  “I met some of the neighbors. They said she was a fine person.”

  “She was. And I’m glad her last years were good ones.”

  “What do you mean?” Carley asked, absently fingering the fringe on a throw pillow.

  Aunt Helen hesitated. “When I flew up to Washington when Sterling died, I ended up handling the funeral arrangements. Thankfully, he had a burial policy as well as good life insurance. Still, it all overwhelmed Cordelia to the point where she could not make a simple decision.”

  “She must have loved him very much.”

  “Yes.” Another hesitation. “But it wasn’t just grief that made her unable to function. She had never even balanced a checkbook or made a house payment in her life.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, one reason was that Sterling was so hardheaded. Rory referred to him as ‘Archie Bunker.’”

  “Who?”

  Her aunt smiled. “That was before your time, wasn’t it? He’s a television character. Sterling was good to her in his own way. He liked to buy little gifts, surprise her. I’m just saying he had strong opinions and insisted on controlling everything. The fact that he was eleven years older contributed to that. She was seventeen when they married….”

  “Seventeen?”

  “Those were different times. I was only sixteen when I married Rory three years earlier. Our parents had passed on, and we were being raised by our aunt Maude, on a pension, so it was a way of relieving the load on her.

  “Anyway, after we helped Cordelia move down here, I took her to see Doctor Borden here in town. He suspected clinical depression, and that she had probably had it since her teenage years. He referred her to a woman psychiatrist in Hattiesburg. It took some begging to convince Cordelia to see her.”

  “Why?”

  “As I said, we were raised in different times. Seeing a psychiatrist meant you were either crazy or not a good Christian. And I’m sure Sterling had reinforced that notion.”

  “But she went…?”

  “Eventually. She was put on an antidepressant, and within a couple of months her whole outlook changed. Working in the shop, seeing people every day, helped too. She became the fun sister I…”

  Voice trailing, Aunt Helen dabbed her eyes with her fingertips. Tiger rose from his nap to nuzzle her other hand and study her with worried brown eyes. Aunt Helen scratched between his ears.

  “I’m afraid I let Cordelia down, badly. We moved from one duty station to another, even to Germany, and had three children to raise. There were some years when all we did was exchange birthday and Christmas cards. I wish I had it to do over again. I would have kept in closer contact, perhaps I could have helped her with Linda.”

  “You think my mother inherited Grandmother’s depression? Was that what made her the way she was?”

  “I believe it contributed,” Aunt Helen said. “We talked about it when she moved down here. Linda had a big dose of her father’s stubbornness, and Cordelia lived too deep inside her own misery to give her the attention and boundaries she needed. Sterling worked a lot of overtime, so he wouldn’t have been much help. You give a child like that enough rope and she’ll hang herself.”

  “She tried that,” Carley said flatly.

  “What? Hanging herself?”

  “When I was a sophomore in college. A neighbor found her just in time.”

  “My, my…” Helen shook her head. “Poor Linda. And what a terrible life you must have had.”

  Carley shrugged. “It helps to understand why she was that way. And she could be loving at times.”

  Such as when Linda took her to see The Princess Bride and out for banana splits afterward. Those sorts of memories were bittersweet for their extreme rarity—and when juxtaposed with the harsh fact that her mother had failed to protect her from the evil people in their lives.

  The second question she had wanted to ask during supper came again to her mind. “Did Grandmother have any idea who my father was?”

  Her aunt gave her a pitying look. “I’m afraid not, dear. She said Linda dated so many boys since she was fourteen that they had no clue. She was living with a man when you were born, but neither of them claimed he was your father.”

  “I don’t remember him.”

  “Well, I’m sure that relationship lasted about as long as the others. Do you remember living with Cordelia and Sterling when you were about three?”

  “Vaguely. Where was my mother?”

  “In…jail, for assaulting a woman one of her boyfriends left her for.”

  “Mr. Malone said my grandparents tried to sue for custody.”

  “And that was why Linda left the state with you. Cordelia always regretted that they didn’t go about it another way. But then, who was to say that she would have had the energy for you that she didn’t have for Linda? I’m sure that drove her deeper into depression.”

  “So many regrets,” Carley sighed.

  Her mother’s instability and failure to protect her. Her grandmother’s depression. Her own painful childhood memories. Aunt Helen’s not keeping closer contact with her younger sister. That she herself had not looked up her grandparents.

  “That’s just how life is, Carley,” Aunt Helen said. “But I’ve lived long enough to see how God can make good come from our regrets.”

  That sort of talk, as well as the “Christian” reference earlier and prayer before supper, made Carley uneasy. She was not an atheist. In fact, when she heard the Gospel message at age ten, she embraced it wholeheartedly and was baptized three weeks later.

  Believing in God was not the issue. Understanding Him was.

  One major barrier to understanding was constructed from memories of people who claimed to believe. At the head of that list was Huey Collins. Second was the congregation who held him in such high esteem that they elected him deacon, not taking the trouble to notice the terror in a little girl’s eyes.

  And then there were her foster parents, the Woodleys, with their picture of Jesus in the dining room and fish symbol on their car.

  The church choir group who left a five-dollar tip and gospel tract after consuming over three hundred dollars’ worth of food at DeLouches.

  The woman whose bumper Carley’s Camry had barely nicked while dodging a runaway shopping cart in front of the Safeway. She sprang from her Volvo praising Jesus that no one was hurt, and then sued for back injury, settling out of court for seven thousand dollars, thus running up Carley’s insurance premiums.

  The mortar that held those memories together was made up of what Carley perceived to be the nature of God himself. Was He paying so much attention to the sparrows and lilies that he could not see what was going on under Huey Collins’ roof, nor hear her stomach growling on the days Linda could afford cigarettes and Johnny Walker but not cereal and milk?

  When talk got around to religion, Carley usually started making excuses to leave. She was about to do so when Uncle Rory came into the room and eased into a chair.

  “Your back hurts?” Carley asked, relieved at the opportunity to change the subject but concerned about the pain that washed over his face. “I should have helped you finish.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “It aches just the same whether I’m working or loa
fing. But I’m afraid I’m no good at lifting anything heavier than a cooking pot, or I could help you pack.”

  “Please don’t worry about that. I’m only boxing up small things. Loretta Malone gave me the name of a shipping company for whatever I send home.”

  That led to questions about Carley’s life in San Francisco. When Aunt Helen asked how she was able to take off so many days from teaching, she found herself telling the whole story. It was cathartic to get it all out.

  Especially when her aunt shook her head and said, “I would have done the same thing. You shouldn’t have to compromise your values just to keep a job.”

  “And there’s no virtue to being miserable when you can do something about it,” Uncle Rory added.

  “Thank you for saying that,” Carley said, warming to both of them even more. At length she glanced at her watch. Ten o’clock. Not too late for someone whose body still assumed it was eight, but late for two elderly people who had spent hours in the kitchen and antique shop.

  Both walked her through the hall, where Aunt Helen embraced her again. Carley drove back down Main, past sidewalks virtually empty. Most houses on Third Street had at least one window illuminated. For as long as she could remember, such a sight could bring on melancholy, a feeling of being excluded from whatever the people inside were doing. She did not feel this way tonight.

  Instead she felt a wave of pity for the students who had given her so much trouble, even Ryan Ogden. The ski trips to Aspen, diamond jewelry, and sports vehicles for sixteenth-birthday presents, surely diluted their capacities to enjoy simple things. There was no entertainment or material possession on earth, on this cold starry night, that could match her sense of well-being from simply being embraced by her family.

  ****

  “Is it possible to transfer the balance to this Bank of California account?” she asked on Thursday morning.

  The Lamar County Bank officer turned blue-shaded eyes back to her computer screen. “I’ll take care of that rat now.”

  Right now, Carley’s mind translated for her startled ears.

  “When do you think the funds will be available in California?” she asked when the tattoo of fingers against keyboard slowed.