Nowhere but Home A Novel

7




Leftovers



I didn’t mention Shawn’s offer to Merry Carole again. I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I lay awake night after night in the tiny twin bed. It finally came to me that there was something drawing me to the job. Was it because I’d finally found a job where being intensely passionate about food was exactly what they were looking for? Or was it because “temporary” was right there in the job description? Was I identifying a bit too much with the people I’d be cooking for? Or was it simply because I’d sent out countless résumés and applied for several jobs from Dublin to Portland and heard either nothing or gotten polite rejections in response. Whatever it was, I couldn’t shake it. I fell into a depressed stupor and started spending day after day on Merry Carole’s couch, the words “come back on my own terms” pinballing around my dark and crowded head.

Worse yet, I began thinking about things: my life, my future, my past. These were not happy thoughts. Inertia had produced exactly what I’d always feared: contemplation.

I needed to act fast.

Once everyone was safely out of the house, I called the number Shawn had given me.

“Warden Dale Green’s office, this is Juanita,” the woman’s voice was sugar and all business.

“Hello, ma’am, I was given the warden’s number by Shawn Richter. About cooking last meals?” My voice is hesitant. Speaking about the job seems macabre.

“Oh, of course.”

“I’d like to know if the job is still available?”

“It is.”

Juanita is really making me work for this. Fine. Two can play this game.

“I’d like to apply for that job. What can I do to facilitate this?”

Juanita rattles through her spiel of fax numbers for résumés, background checks, fingerprinting, interviews, and what can only be described as “rigmarole.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate that. Where would you suggest I start,” I ask, scanning the scrawled notes I took of her directions.

“Fax me over your résumé, and I’ll give it a look. I’ll call you if I see something I like. If I don’t, I won’t.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Whereabouts you from, honey?”

“North Star, ma’am, born and bred.”

“That’ll help.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll be waiting for your résumé then,” Juanita signs off. I skitter around the house, boot up Merry Carole’s computer, and access my e-mail. I print out another résumé, type up another cover letter, put on something presentable, and walk into town.

The humidity soaks me through within ten steps. But the more horrifying realization is, I’ve just ambled out in public. Disheveled and with no time to put up walls, I am ripe for the picking. I keep my head down and make my way to the post office—where the one public fax machine in town resides.

As I walk through the town square, I notice the decorations for tomorrow’s Fourth of July festivities going up. Red, white, and blue swaths of fabric hang from every balcony and windowsill. People have already lined up folding chairs along the parade route. If they couldn’t find folding chairs, they’ve staked out their territory with masking tape, crime-scene tape, and lengths of rope. North Star’s Fourth of July parade involves the entire town. If you’re not in the parade, you’re expected to be watching it from the sidelines. I hurry to the post office trying not to crumple my résumé and cover letter.

I arrive at the post office and wait in line. It’s just ten AM, so the old men of North Star are gathered in the post office. They all have breakfast at the Homestead, travel over to the post office where they spend the afternoon talking to the workers about politics and the state of things. Later, they’ll end the day at “the Mexican restaurant” and begin the entire tour again first thing tomorrow. I notice Felix Coburn, with his white shock of hair, in their ranks: he stands a head taller than the other men. His rangy frame is proof he’s a man who works the land. His black cowboy hat rests in his mitt of a hand as his velvety voice intones through the historic building.

Felix is usually not one to while away the hours, choosing rather to run his family’s 2,800-acre Paragon quarter horse farm. The Coburns have been breeding the finest Texas quarter horses since the early days, before there was even a registry. Augustus, their foundation sire, was a rodeo cutting champion; his line has produced winners in the rodeos ever since. In the 1950s, Paragon started a line of thoroughbreds with their foundation sire, Titus. Titus’s line now boasts one Preakness winner, while other descendants have placed in all the Triple Crown events. A Paragon-bred horse is the stuff of Texas legend. And Felix is leaving it all—2,800 acres, two hundred horses, and the Paragon name—to his eldest son, Everett.

As I wait in line I try not to make eye contact with the man who made it quite clear to Everett that no son of his would take up with “one of those grubby Wakes.” We were eleven years old and Everett had the wild idea that he could talk his father into changing his mind about my family. He wanted to be my boyfriend, he told me one day during recess as he presented me with a handmade card and a flower. I was beside myself. I’d loved Everett Coburn since the first day of kindergarten. I knew he felt the same, even then. We were just made for each other in that cheesy way people always claim to be in their marriage vows. He was my touchstone. Where I felt safe. I could survive every nightmarish night at home, just so I could return to school and see him and know that I wouldn’t have to say a thing. He would just know how to comfort me. He shielded me from bullies, but knew enough to let me fight my own battles. We also knew, even then, that whatever we felt during those early years was something we had to keep secret. The Wakes and the Coburns were the alpha and omega of North Star. We knew this even before we could write our own names.

So when Everett announced to his father that he wanted to take Queenie Wake to the Saturday-night dance, all hell broke loose. He was never to see me again. The Wake women were evil, Felix warned. I would ruin him, Felix told his eleven-year-old son. Everett never let Felix see him cry, but when he got to me his green eyes were rimmed in red and his face was wet from tears.

He shook as he told me he couldn’t see me anymore, and I remember looking at him and thinking, this is my love. This is my love and I’m going to fight for it—just as I fight for everything.

“They don’t have to know,” I said, taking his hands in mine.

“What?” Everett said, squeezing my hands tight.

“No one has to know, but us,” I said, my mind clear.

“No one has to know, but us,” Everett repeated.

“We’ll know,” I said, my breath catching as he stepped closer.

“We’ll know,” Everett repeated, just before he kissed me for the first time.

Everett and I were standing behind the band shell in the town square, hidden in the shadows. At eleven, we learned we could be who we really were only in the murky edges of North Star, but out in the light we had to be strangers.

“I’d heard you were back in town,” Felix Coburn said.

“Yes, sir,” I say, stepping forward in line.

“Not for long, I expect.”

“No, sir.”

I meet his gaze straight on. I’m not afraid of you, I repeat in my head over and over and over as those light blue eyes take my measure. My heart races. My breathing quickens. I’m not afraid of you, I will.

“Next?” the woman behind the window calls.

“Mr. Coburn,” I say, signing off and walking forward toward the window.

“Ms. Wake,” Felix says, putting his hat on. I don’t watch as he walks out of the post office. I don’t have to. I can feel when he’s gone.

I hand my résumé and the cover letter to the woman behind the counter in a daze. My hands are trembling as she turns around and puts the sheets of paper into the fax and begins typing out the phone number. I hold my hands, trying to steady them. I close my eyes and try to calm my breathing. I can’t do this again. I can’t let this man—this town—have this effect on me every damn time. I’m thirty-one years old. I’m not eleven anymore. When do I stand up for myself or is that just not an option if I’m here in North Star? Do I have to leave North Star to feel as though I’m . . . human. Is that right? Do I belong anywhere? Is there anyplace I can go where I’m not just “a grubby Wake”?

As an eleven-year-old, I bought into the mythology. I looked at my mom and agreed with what people were saying about her. The piece I never understood was what her behavior had to do with Merry Carole and me. I never did any of the things she did. I was a good kid who loved the same boy my entire life. I worked at the family business until I got into the University of Texas.

Do the people of North Star honestly think Merry Carole and I are just like her? I’m sure Merry Carole getting pregnant at seventeen was an affront to one of the finest families of North Star. Of course, no one ever asked why Wes McKay, this bastion of North Star families, had a nasty habit of impregnating the young women of North Star. The sad thing is, from the looks of it, and in North Star that’s not worth much, Whitney looks as though she really loves Wes. So Merry Carole and I are the women North Star thinks we are. The women you’re with in the shadows, but not the women you take to the Saturday dance. We’re the women you’re infatuated with, but not the women you love. The women who raise your unwanted children alone. The women who ruin you. The more Merry Carole and I fight the chains of our mother’s legacy, the more they bind us.

But North Star has always been about appearances. Without the Wakes, who knows who they’d feed on? They might have to take a look at their own pillars of society. I swallow hard as I wait. It seems North Star and I are a lot alike after all. Contemplation is something we’re both running from.

After years of being spit on, I thought I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks. The thing I keep running from, the piece that makes me choke up even now—is that Everett cared. My Everett cared more about what the people of North Star thought, about what his parents thought, than he cared for me. He loved me . . . but not enough. We stole kisses under the bleachers during the big Friday football games. We lost our virginity to each other at a motel just outside of town when we were juniors in high school and swapped promise rings at the end of that school year. I began to call him Ever and thought it so romantic that our secret affair had borne its very own pet name. I never really get to have pet names, seeing as how my real name is just about as ridiculous as they come.

For years we relished every minute of our treacherous love. It made it dangerous. It made us feel like Romeo and Juliet fighting for our love in the most hopeless of worlds.

In our senior year Everett’s parents set him up with Laurel. She was from a proper family. He couldn’t find an excuse not to follow orders. Everett’s parents had always suspected he’d never gotten over me, and this was their way of testing his allegiance to the Coburn legacy. Laurel and Everett started very publicly dating and I became the mistress. And the sad part? The really sad part was that I felt lucky to have that.

I remember sitting in Fawn’s double-wide during one of Mom’s longer times away and thinking how much better than all these people I was. I was going to live on Paragon Ranch when Everett finally came for me. I was going to be welcomed into the family and trot through the town square on a Paragon quarter horse in the Fourth of July parade. I was going to be happy. But as our senior year wore on, it became harder and harder for me to watch as Laurel swanned around town on Everett’s arm. Despite his tortured whispers about really loving me, they were crowned prom king and queen as I sat at home with Merry Carole, no Mom, and a fussy newborn.

I grew uncomfortable with being Everett Coburn’s dirty little secret.

We tried to keep away from each other when we were both at the University of Texas. As teenagers we had fantasies about stealing away to Austin and finally being together out in the open. But when Laurel also attended the university, it became clear that we were doomed sooner rather than later. We tried to stay away from each other, but we were each other’s addiction. We always needed one more drink. Always hungry. Always craving more.

But the writing was on the wall. It was time for Everett to grow up, settle down, and become the heir to the Coburn mythology. As Everett and I went into our final year at the University of Texas, we were desperate and raw. We knew our time together was running out and that our life in the shadows was coming to an end. Whenever I left him, I felt half of a whole. He undid me. I knew my life was about to be slashed into eras: With Everett and Without. And a life without Everett was the one thing I felt I couldn’t survive.

So I ran. I ran to Dallas so I didn’t think about those brown-and-yellow-pinwheeled green eyes and the way our bodies melded into each other as if we were made for each other. And I ran to Aspen so I wouldn’t remember the way he tugged his cowboy hat off whenever he walked into a room. And I ran to Branson to forget how his light brown hair curled and swirled around my fingers in the dark of the night. And I ran to Taos so I didn’t think about how his face lit up when he saw me. And I ran to Albuquerque to forget how tightly he held me as I finally sobbed about my mom dying. And I ran to Las Vegas to erase how we lay in each other’s arms that first time in that cheap motel just outside town, speechless and swept away. And I ran to San Diego so I didn’t have to think about Everett and Laurel standing arm and arm, their parents beaming and proud. And I ran to San Francisco so I didn’t have to make up another lie to Merry Carole and Dee for why I never dated anyone. And I ran to Los Angeles to forget how I didn’t shed a single tear when he told me he was going to marry Laurel because their parents felt it was the right thing to do. And I ran to New York to try to understand why the man I loved didn’t love me enough to be with me in the light of day.

“That’ll be one dollar, Queenie,” the woman says. I hand her a dollar bill and know now that I have to get out of North Star before I make any new memories to run from. One of those résumés has to work. One of those résumés will be my ticket out of North Star.

Before I think better of it, I burst through Merry Carole’s front door and into the tiny guest room. My clothes are mostly in the dresser thanks to Merry Carole telling me that I wasn’t “a hobo” and should put away my clothes like a normal person. I pull the smaller piece of luggage from the closet and pull open the zippered pocket on the inside. I pull out the mangled manila folder just inside. I dump the contents on the floor and sit down quickly next to the messy pile. I sift through my passport, my birth certificate, an old photo of Merry Carole and me, a baby picture of Cal, various slips of paper with old recipes and dish ideas I’ve had over the years. I pull my hand away from the pile as if the mere presence of it has set it aflame: the card Everett gave me when I was eleven and the dried and flattened flower that accompanied it. Pink construction paper with my name in blue crayon written across the top of the card. He’s drawn a girl with a crown at the bottom; a crudely drawn horse grazes on lines of green grass that edge the bottom of the card. There is an arrow pointing to the girl with the crown and the word “YOU” next to it. I run my fingers over the rough construction paper.

“You,” I say, a reverent whisper. At eleven, I was a queen to Everett.

I open the card and in no rhyme or reason are the words “your great!,” “I love you!,” “the lone star state,” and “E + Q.” He’s drawn the same girl with the crown from the front of the card, but this time she stands hand and hand with a golden-haired boy holding a horse. Underneath the couple are the words “you and me forever.” The little Crayola couple is smiling and happy. I sit back against the bed, carefully holding the pink construction paper card.

“You and me forever,” I say, closing the card and letting my hand linger. I hold the card as a believer would cradle a Bible. Everett was what I believed in. And he made me believe in an us. He made me believe I would get out of the hellhole I was in and that I could be happy. He made me believe that I was lovable. I choke back the tears I’ve been running from for decades.

“It was cruel to show me that kind of love at all,” I say, my eyes to the heavens as if saying my own kind of grace. I pull my knees in close and sob, my tears momentarily staining the pink card red. I can’t catch my breath as that feeling of mystical vastness I felt at the cemetery overtakes me. I honestly don’t know if I could stop crying at this point. I’ve been holding this in for years.

After an unknowable amount of time, my cell phone buzzes in my pocket. I’m shaken out of my nervous breakdown as I check the phone number—it’s the area code for Shine. It’s the prison. Jesus, Juanita is a study in efficiency. I sniffle and breathe; the phone buzzes again.

“Get it together,” I bite out, wiping the tears away. One last breath and I answer the phone. “Hello?”

“Ms. Wake, this is Juanita from Shine Prison,” she says.

“Sure, what can I do for you?” I say, my throat choking and burning less and less. My breathing is steadying, shaky exhalation by shaky exhalation.

“The warden would like you to come on in and interview for the position. Are you free this afternoon?”

“Oh wow,” I say.

“Well?”

“Oh right. Sorry. Yes, I’m free,” I say, standing. I’m still clutching the pink construction paper card.

“Great. How does two thirty sound?” Juanita says, going through directions and instructions on how to get to the prison. I walk into the kitchen, find an old receipt, and scrawl the information on the back.

“Two thirty is perfect. I’ll be there,” I say, finally.

“We’ll see you then,” Juanita says, signing off. I beep my cell phone off and look around the front room in a fog. I focus on the receipt with all the information in one hand and the pink construction paper card in the other.

“I guess only one of us knew what forever meant,” I say, walking into my room and placing the card back into the recesses of my luggage.