It’s strange to hear someone so young talking about God. I guess I’ve been away for so long now that I forget it’s more common than not for people to be believers around these parts. Seems so…unfashionable.
I leave the station, still feeling brutalized by my run-in with Callan. The county morgue is already closed for the day. I can’t take the paperwork over there without being able to hand it to someone in person apparently, and I don’t really feel like going back to my hotel, so I drive the Porsche over to Friday’s place. It feels dangerous. Callan’s place is right across the street, as is my old home; being within a mile vicinity of either house feels like I’m inviting trouble and pain into my life, but I need to see her. She’s the only person capable of helping me get a grip on my life. It feels as though everything is spinning hectically out of control, and if I don’t right my trajectory now, then I’ll be a wreck by the end of the week.
When she opens her front door, Friday is wearing a huge tent-like housecoat and a pair of old slippers, hair in huge curlers, and she’s brandishing a spatula in her hand. She holds it out to me. “Perfect. You stir while I finish off the bread, child.”
She had no idea I was coming, of course, but once again this is the Port Royal way—someone will always show up for dinner if you make enough food. In the kitchen, the small, rectangle dining table I used to eat at as a child is already set for five people. “Expecting a big party tonight, Friday?” I ask. She steers me toward a huge pot of gumbo, which smells incredible.
“Sure I am. You one of them.”
I don’t really feel like sticking around if other people will be showing up, but then again some company might be just what I need. It’s taking everything I’ve got to not go drink myself into a stupor back in my sterile king sized bed right now.
“Can you still make that like I taught you, baby girl?” Friday asks.
I make a mmming sound, inhaling the warm, spicy, delicious smells coming off the large vat of stew on the hot plate. “I sure can. Not as often as I’d like, though. My boyfriend, Ben, he doesn’t like spicy food. Gives him indigestion.”
Friday pauses in her violent kneading of dough and places on hand on her hips, shooting me a much-displeased look. “Child, you can’t be with a man that don’t eat spicy food. Must mean he’s terrible in bed. No passion. No fire in his belly.”
I laugh. Friday and I have never talked about my sex life. It’s incredibly weird that she’s referring to it now. “We do just fine, thanks.”
“Just fine ain’t good enough, Coralie. You’re a fiery woman now. Fully grown. You have needs that must be met. A fancy Los Angeles boy that don’t eat no spicy food ain’t gonna be meeting those needs, sure as eggs is eggs.”
The truth is, Ben’s never made me come. Not properly. He’s managed it with his fingers a couple of times, and once with his mouth, but I don’t want to share that information with the elderly woman standing on the other side of the kitchen. It would only be fuel for the fire. “I’m happy, Friday. That’s good, isn’t it?”
“I don’t see you doin’ no cartwheels.”
“I’m too old for cartwheels.”
Friday thumps the bread dough with her fist, making a horrified sound. “Bullshit! You’re never too old for cartwheels. Hell, my older sister’s doing jumpin’ jacks and head stands right now. It’s her seventieth birthday next month, and she found a man to blow steam outta her ears.”
“Tuesday? Tuesday’s dating?” Friday’s mother was a pragmatic woman. She named her daughters after the days of the week they were born on: Friday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Wednesday died of pneumonia a year before I was born, but I know Tuesday just fine.
Friday nods with a certain gravity. “Yes, ma’am. She met her beau at a bridge night over in Pickens County. He’s a retired fire fighter, if you can believe that.”
Friday always assumes I will have trouble believing the things she tells me. It’s a turn of phrase, of course, but I feel warm every time I hear her say it. It reminds me of listening to her gossip for hours when I was younger, as we cooked or read or watched television together during the brief stints of time when my father would allow me to come over here.
She sets off humming after a while, and we fall into an easy silence. It’s hard to believe it’s been twelve years since we’ve done this. I’ve kept in touch with her, though, through letters (infrequent) and telephone calls (at least once a month). I begin to feel calm wash over me as I stir and she hums.
A loud knock eventually disturbs the silence. Friday casts a look over her shoulder. “Get that for me, will you, child? I ain’t never gonna get this into the oven otherwise.”