Friendship Cake (17 page)

Jessie poured Margaret a glass of water, handed it to her, and leaned back against the counter.

“The service was sweet. The preacher did a nice job.” She turned towards Charlotte, who nodded. “It was short. The songs were appropriate. Everything was fine. And then, when we were at the grave, her face just changed. It became frozen, glass. Like she had made up her mind about something.”

Margaret shook her head. “We came back from the service, and she went into the garage. She didn't say anything to anybody. We heard her putting some things in the trunk, and then she just drove off without a word. I figured she needed some time alone, so I didn't get worried until it started getting dark. Then George and the boys and I drove around searching for her. We went everywhere in town. But we found her at the grave.” Margaret faced Jessie. “She's been there ever since.” And she took a swallow of water.

Charlotte put her hand on top of Margaret's. “You okay?”

Margaret shrugged her shoulders and nodded unconvincingly.

The women glanced around at each other. Then, without hesitation, Beatrice responded. “Well, there's nothing else to do but go out there and talk to her.” She reached over, patted Margaret on the arm, slipped her coat back on, buttoned it up, and headed out the door.

Margaret sighed. “Here, let me write down the directions to the church.” She found some paper and a pen, jotted down some instructions, and handed the paper to Charlotte.

“You stay here; we'll do something, even if it's wrong,” said Jessie.

Margaret just watched as Jessie and Charlotte left to join Beatrice.

 

THE SUN WAS
beginning to fade, and the temperature was dropping. Louise was sitting under the green funeral tent, next to the grave, in a lawn chair, the long kind you use at the beach. She was surrounded by arrangements of frozen flowers and under several layers of blankets, wearing two pairs of gloves, a thick scarf about her neck, and an old army helmet strapped on her head. She was singing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” when her friends walked up. She was on “Seventy-three bottles.”

Jessie shook her head in amazement. “Girl, you have definitely gone over the edge.”

Louise looked over her shoulder. She smiled. “Well, well, well, if it isn't the Cookbook Committee. Roxie, what do you think of that?” She faced the grave, the new dirt already frozen hard. Then she turned back to Beatrice. “Queen Bea, you having trouble with another recipe?”

The women looked at each other. They weren't sure if Louise was drunk or just crazy from the cold.

“No, we came to find you.” Beatrice went and stood beside Louise.

Jessie moved closer too. “It's cold out here, Lou.”

Louise nodded. “Yep. But after a while you start to lose feeling. It's not so cold then.” She handed Jessie one of her blankets. “Margaret still at George's?”

“Yes,” said Beatrice. “She was fixing you some soup when we left.”

Just then Charlotte came out with three folding chairs. “I took them from the choir room,” she said, somewhat out of breath. “Nice church.”

Jessie helped her set them out and took a seat with Beatrice and Charlotte beside Louise.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Suddenly Louise turned around to face the women. “Isn't tomorrow Christmas Eve?”

They all nodded.

“Don't you have someplace to be on Christmas Eve?”

There was another pause. “We came to be with you, Lou.” It was Beatrice.

“Dick with you?” She handed Beatrice the thermos.

“No, he's with his sister in Winston-Salem.” Beatrice opened the thermos and took a big gulp. She almost choked when she tasted the alcohol. She spat and sputtered. “Good God, Lou, is this straight whiskey?”

Louise smiled.

Jessie took the thermos. “You forgot who you were talking to, Bea.” She took a small sip and passed it on to Charlotte, who seemed unsure of what to do.

“Louie, queen of the hooch, that's me!” And Louise whirled her hands in the air with a whooping noise.

Charlotte took a swallow. The liquor burned her throat, but she didn't cough or spit it up. Then she handed the thermos back to Jessie.

Louise looked over at Charlotte, who was now shifting her weight from side to side in the chair, trying to get warm. Then she pulled a flower out of an arrangement close by her head and
twirled it in her hand. “I didn't like the preacher.” She turned back towards the grave. “He was small and shifty, and his hands were sweaty. Reminded me of Dick.”

Beatrice rolled her eyes.

“And he didn't know Rox. Not even a little.” She dropped the flower in her lap and reached for the thermos. Jessie handed it to her. She took a swallow and put the top back on it. “He said things that you could tell were memorized, rehearsed. Stuff he could say about anybody, even you, Bea.” She lifted her chin at Beatrice and smiled. Then the corners of her lips fell. “He didn't know anything about Rox.”

Charlotte dropped her head, the scarf up to the bottom of her nose. The wind was cold and stiff.

A group of carolers were meeting at the church to go out into the community. The women looked over as they chatted and laughed casually among themselves.

Louise started singing again, “Seventy-two bottles of beer on the wall, seventy-two bottles of beer…”

Jessie interrupted her. “What didn't he know about Rox that you could have told him, Lou?” And she gave Charlotte part of her blanket, pulling it around their legs.

The young people glanced towards the cemetery. A hush came over the group. All of the women but Louise turned and looked.

“That she was everything to me. The reason I stayed alive. The reason I stayed sane. The reason I thought the world wasn't such a bad place to live or that I wasn't somehow completely nuts. That she was the color in this drab, boring universe.” Louise stopped, and no one said a word.

“Even when she was really sick, out of her mind sick, she filled the empty place. You know what I mean, Jess?” She looked over at the women. “You know what I mean? Roxie filled the empty place.” She unscrewed the top of the thermos and took another drink.

“And even though she was never mine to have, and our worlds were so different, I can't see how I can possibly live without her.” Her voice became choked and distant. “I don't even know how to breathe.”

A wind stirred the flowers and caused the sides of the tent to flap against the poles. The carolers walked over to the women and began to sing “Silent Night.” It was an empty, awkward gesture, and Beatrice stood up and stopped them in the middle of the second line, “All is calm, all is—”

“Excuse me,” she said, and their voices trailed off like a swarm of bees.

“Here's what I'm thinking,” she said as she slid her hands down the front of her coat and pulled on the top of her hat. The other women were wide-eyed and still.

“I'm thinking you got four women, obviously in some distress, sitting in the freezing cold in a cemetery.” Her voice was strong and brassy. She was a trumpet of bad news. “I'm thinking the last thing they need to hear is some sentimental hog-wash Christmas song that reminds them of everybody dead they've ever known. So I'm thinking maybe it would be a better idea if you go and sing to somebody who's not nearly so desperate and pushed to the outer limits of what might be deemed appropriate behavior.”

She clasped her gloved hands in front of her like an opera
singer who's just finished her solo. “Does what I'm thinking seem clear enough for you?”

And the young people, stunned, pulled off their red-and-green happy hats, each with tiny tinkling bells on the end, and jingled back to the church, dejected and unsure of what to do next.

Suddenly, Louise began to laugh. Charlotte and Jessie eyed each other and laughed too. Beatrice, spent from her lecture, sat back down and took the thermos for a long, tasty drink.

Just then Margaret drove into the parking lot, got out of the car, waved at the carolers, and walked towards the women with a pot of steaming soup. She had not expected there to be laughter; by this time it was building and full. “Obviously, I missed something.”

Charlotte got up to help her with the pot and bowls. “Yep, I would say you definitely missed something.” She turned to Beatrice, who was wiping her mouth with the back of her arm. She turned back to Margaret. “Let me help you with that.” And Charlotte dipped a bowl of soup for everyone. She handed the first one to Louise.

“Why is it that when you're feeling the least like eating, people bring you food?” She held the bowl in her lap. “I mean, why don't folks bring you casseroles when things are going great? Why don't people want to sit around with you and eat potato salad when you get a promotion or win the lottery? Why, when someone has died, does everyone suddenly have to bake a cake?”

“I always enjoy the food at funerals.” Charlotte motioned for the thermos from Beatrice, and the women watched with surprise as she downed the last of the drink.

“I think we do it because it's all we got.” Jessie took a spoonful of soup, blew on it, and continued. “Words are empty. There sure aren't any presents to buy, but everybody's got to eat, so we feed each other. It's the basic, most humane way to say you care.

“It's a silly ritual, I agree. But somehow it helps to remind ourselves that life goes on. We sit together. We remember. We eat.”

Beatrice drank from her bowl, then put it down, wrapping herself in the blanket Jessie had given her.

“It's a way to dole out friendship, Lou. In your words, it's just doing what love does.” And Margaret sat down on the end of the lawn chair, almost tipping them over.

“Yeah,” Louise said. “I did say that once, didn't I?”

They sat for a while finishing their soup and listening as the carolers sang at the houses close by. They would laugh every time they heard “Silent Night.”

Finally the youth group finished their singing, came back to the church, got in their cars, and left. It was dark and quiet and starting to snow. The women looked around at each other.

Louise felt the glances and spoke. “I know I have to go.” She pulled off her helmet. “It's silly to think Roxie is here. She would never stay here, even as a dead person. It's much too gray and ugly, and forgive me, Preacher,” she looked over to Charlotte, who was starting to nod off but opened her eyes wide when she heard the word
Preacher
—“but it's much too close to the church. Roxie would rather be in a park or by a lake or near friends talking, oh, I don't know, about a cookbook.”

She cleared her throat. “I'm ready to go.” She stood up by her chair. Margaret got up at the same time and stood behind the lawn chair. “But I don't know what I'll do about Christmas.”

“You don't have to do anything about Christmas.” Margaret stepped outside the tent, looking up at the North Star, which was shining in the sky, high and alone. “You'll come stay with me.”

“Or me.” It was Beatrice.

“Mom's coming over, but other than her and me, the parsonage is empty.” Charlotte yawned and picked up the bowls and empty thermos.

The women looked at Jessie, waiting for her invitation. “Well, don't think you can come to my house. My bedrooms are full!” She gave a wicked grin and winked at Louise.

The women pulled the blankets around themselves and stood in a huddle behind Louise as she said a final good-bye to her friend. She folded up her blanket and threw it on the chair. Then she knelt down, whispered something to the frozen earth, gently kissed her hand, and patted the fresh grave. They watched as Charlotte took flowers from one of the wreaths, tied them stem to stem, and placed them around Louise's shoulders like a stole. It covered her like a blessing, and there, in the presence of women she loved, both dead and alive, Louise rose up and slowly started to breathe.

B
ea, this better be a quick meeting. That baby is just about ready to come, and I expect to be there with my family to celebrate its arrival.” Jessie was breathing hard, having walked briskly, as she entered the pastor's study.