Southern Fried Sushi (25 page)

I sobbed for three or four minutes without stopping, barely coming up for air when Adam, horrified, thrust me all the napkins in the bag, one by one. I used them up as fast as he gave them.

He paced anxiously, jaw hanging open, running his hand through his hair in absolute disbelief.

“Are you all right?” he asked over and over, until I tuned him out. “What’s wrong?”

I didn’t answer him. Just kept on crying, making little tear puddles on the wooden picnic table. The last time I’d cried I was seven, so I wasn’t very good at it. I mopped my face with soggy napkins.

I saw Adam get out his cell phone and think of who to call then dialed Becky, but nobody answered. Left a muffled message for Faye that I couldn’t hear.

I finally hiccupped and tried to talk through my sobs, but nothing intelligible came out.

Adam stood there stupidly then opened my can of Coke and slid it across the table. I took a few swigs. The cold, crisp fizz

helped. I caught my breath and mopped my face some more.

“What happened?” he demanded, mutating back to broken-record form again. “Are you all right?”

“Mom,” I finally managed, sponging my cheeks and wiping where my mascara had run. I couldn’t even imagine what a fright I looked like now.

Adam stared at the pecan pie I clutched and then at me, obviously trying hard to understand. “Did she … uh … like these or something?”

I nodded and burst into tears again.

“I’m so sorry, Shiloh. I had no idea.” He ran his hand through his hair again, looking terrified. “Really. I should have asked you first.”

I shook my head no, still bawling.

“I shouldn’t have brought you out here.” Adam stood there, white-faced. “I just felt sad for you, with your world all turned upside down, and I wanted to give you a break from—”

“No. It’s not that.” I glanced at the pie again, tearing up. “It’s just that Mom …”

Adam pressed the Coke into my free hand, and I swallowed. Then took a long breath. Another swallow. Felt my senses coming back to me.

He passed me another napkin, and I turned my head and delicately blew my nose. Crying is awful for a woman’s appearance, Southern or otherwise. I drew in a shuddering breath.

He sat down on the bench and waited. “I thought you didn’t … I mean you and your mom weren’t …” Raised his hands in desperation.

“Close?” I sponged my nose.

He hesitated.

“It’s okay. You can say it,” I snapped, wiping my wet cheek. “We weren’t.”

I knew he’d look up at me in sheer confusion. I was confused, for goodness’ sake.

So between sniffles I blurted out a little about the cults, the hungry school days, the nights not knowing when she’d come home. Dad and Tanzania. The boxes she’d sent me in Japan, and the pecan pie I’d pegged up on my corkboard.

“I can’t ever forgive her,” I said, dabbing at my nose. “Not that she matters to me anyway.”

His tone softened. “Well, she obviously does.”

“She shouldn’t.” I tossed down my balled-up napkin.

Adam sat intently, thinking, jaw cupped in his two hands.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Stop apologizing,” I snapped. “It’s not your fault.”

A look I couldn’t place passed across his face. “No, I mean I’m sorry for you. I didn’t know you’d been through so much.”

“I know. And now my life is over.”

He shook his head, looking up at me. “You keep saying that, Shiloh. But you’re wrong. It’s not.”

“Of course it is.” I rubbed my swollen eyes. “I’ve lost my job. Lost Mom. Lost everything.”

He picked up the pecan pie. “The way I see it, you have a new start.”

“What? Here?” I teared up again.

Adam pursed his lips. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Did you ever taste the one your mom sent?”

I shook my head.

“I think if you open up to this new life, and all that God’s doing in it, you might be surprised.”

I sniffled. Adam opened the pie for me and took off the wrapper. Tipped it so it fell out of the little metal pan (which I had to admit was pretty ingenious—almost as clever as the Japanese onigiri rice triangle wrappers). Put it back in my hand.

I blinked wet lashes at him then at it. “Go on,” he said. “It’s your second chance. Take a bite.”

“Isn’t it full of … you know … formaldehyde and stuff?”

Adam sighed and rubbed his forehead in irritation. “You have the weirdest ideas.”

“You never know. Have you ever read the ingredient list?” I took a reluctant sniff of the pie. It actually smelled good. Sugary, like vanilla or caramel.

“Have you?” He thrust the wrapper at me. “Last time I checked, flour and sugar weren’t anything to report to the Bureau of Public Health.”

I took a bite. Chewed. Tasted buttery crust, some kind of crunchy nut, and a wonderfully sweet goo. Took another bite. Funny, it was gourmet, in a trailer-trash sort of way: the salty crust balancing the sweet filling. I liked it even better than the hot dog.

No wonder Mom had sent it to me. It encompassed her life. Simple but sweet, made with ordinary, day-to-day stuff. Flour. Molasses. Pecans that thrive in the warm sun. Nothing fancy. But together it becomes a little poem of contrasts: crisp and soft, dark and light, making something entirely new. And she’d wanted to share it with me.

Adam was beaming. I tried to smile back through my tears, and he opened his Coke and pecan pie and ate with me. Two rednecks sitting on a picnic table strewn with fishing poles and a tackle box, eating snack food from a gas station. If only Kyoko could see me now.

If only Mom could see me now.

“How do you like it?”

He didn’t need to ask. He could see it on my face, but I answered anyway.

“I love it.” I sniffled, taking another crumbly bite. “I wish …”

“Wish what?”

I shuffled my feet and looked down at the wrapper. “I don’t know. Maybe that I’d been able to … to tell her.” Not just about her food but about her life. Her mistakes. Her victories. To call her now and then and hear about her job. To listen. To care. To try again.

Tears streamed down my cheeks again and dripped off my chin, and I dug in my purse for a tissue.

“You are telling her now.”

“How?”

“By going forward. Trying new things. Looking at the world she loved and giving it a chance. Giving yourself a chance to make mistakes. And get up again. Like she did.”

He lifted his eyes to the oak trees, all golden-shiny and bright in the summer heat, and so did I. Listened to them rush and swish in my ears. Looked through the leaves to the turquoise sparkles of sky, and further, wondering if I could open my heart to God.

I put the pie wrapper in the bag and patted a fishing pole. “We’re really going fishing?”

“If you’re up to it. You don’t have to, you know.”

“No, I’m up to it.” I finished the last of my pie and picked up my Coke bottle. “Just no live worms.”

Adam kept his word. He got out rubber lures, the color of greenish motor oil and sparkly. We sat on the grassy banks of the lake, our lines sinking into the mirror-blue depths with barely a stir. Other fishermen lolled in shady areas, laughing about bait and football and hunting. Far out on the shimmery plane I saw a canoe, floating like a leaf on a puddle.

I watched rings on the water spread wider and wider, disappearing, like the walls of my heart slowly expanding. Adam told me about his older brother, Rick, about the daily rituals of medicines and bandages and physical therapy. About Rick’s anger and loss and faith that ebbed and flowed from a wounded heart.

Adam rested his chin in his hand and seemed to drift far away, and I let my mind lose itself among the clouds slipping slowly by, reflected in the upturned water.

We walked down a creaky wooden dock, water lapping at the posts, and I sat and dangled my feet in cool water. Forgot the restof the world. Wiggled my toes and laughed as tiny, glistening minnows tickled them with curious mouths.

When Adam dropped me off in the late afternoon with a couple of pathetic-looking little fish, I didn’t gripe like I’d planned to. I thanked him and took my cold grits bowl and spoon then chucked the fish in the freezer.

I sat in the rope swing and dangled my feet on the grass, not quite ready to bid the summer day good-bye. I watched the mountains turn blue-violet like a Japanese iris. Fireflies sparkled in the dusky twilight under spreading trees, enjoying the reprieve from the hot sun.

The sermon never came. All afternoon I’d braced myself for the big “God Talk” I was sure Adam would give me, and instead we went fishing. I had fun. My heart was full, and I felt clean. Healed.

And I was baffled, just like after eating hamburgers at Becky’s.

What is it? What’s the secret? What am I missing?

I was still thinking when the offending smell of tobacco smoke invaded my thoughts.

I
swiveled on the swing, half expecting to see Kyoko puffing her Mild Sevens. Instead, at the edge of Mom’s property emerged a hefty woman in a housedress, mostly identifiable in the murky twilight by the glowing orange tip of her cigarette. Her white-vinyled house, exactly the same shape as Mom’s, stood almost within throwing distance. Next to the largest satellite dish I’d ever seen.

“Hiya.” She fumbled in her pockets with embarrassment. “Ya must be Ellen’s girl.”

It took me a minute to understand her thick accent, compounded by her puffing. I scooted off the swing.

“I’m Stella Farmer. Her next-door neighbor.” She held out a ham-like hand and shook mine firmly.

“Shiloh Jacobs. From Japan.”

I waved her smoke away as politely as possible, trying to place where I’d seen her before. The funeral. The big-haired woman crying into a handkerchief.

“Shiloh?” laughed Stella. “I fergot Ellen named ya after a battlefield.” She shook with laughter and took another puff. “Don’t she know the Yankees won that’n?”

Ice slipped into my gaze, and I nearly forgot all my nice manners with Adam.

“That battlefield was actually named after a city in Israel,” I replied in clipped tones. “My mom referred to the city.”

“I’m shore she did.” Stella suddenly grabbed me in a tight hug and kissed my cheek, smelling like cigarettes and hairspray. And then she teared up, lips wobbling. “I’m so sorry about yer mama. She …”

I stood there listening to Stella cry then awkwardly put an arm around her shuddering shoulders. Walked her over to the porch steps and sat down.

“I’m so sorry, honey. She was jest such a nice woman. I miss her somethin’ awful.” She sobbed, rocking back and forth, and I ran inside for some tissues. Fed them into her hands one by one like Adam had done.

Stella mopped her face and blew her nose. “Thank you, sweetie. Yer a doll.” She put an arm around me and hugged me tight, which I didn’t particularly like with all the perfume and smoke and the stale odor of her housedress, but appreciated nonetheless.

“I know she thought the world a ya, that’s for sure.”

“Really.”

I must have sounded skeptical because Stella raised her wet face. “Oh, lands, Shiloh, I know ev’rything about ya! Ya live in Japan, ya write for newspapers, ya eat sushi, ya got a good-lookin’ boyfriend!”

I didn’t tell Mom that stuff. She must have read it off my blog.

“Wait, ya’ll got engaged, right?”

Stella didn’t wait for me to correct her. “Ellen was always out here takin’ care a her flowers an’ tellin’ me about ya. Proud as a June bug, buzzin’ around. Showed me your pitchers she printed off the Internet.”

The summer air and smells of Stella and evening roses were suddenly intense, and I stood, tears burning my eyes. The sensation was still new; until today, I had almost forgotten what tears were.

Stella fished in her housedress pocket for a lighter and lit up another one. “Sorry, doll baby. It’s just real sad, ya know?”

“Yeah.” I stared out into the blue depths.

“So you gonna go back to Japan or what?”

I cleared my throat. “I … uh … think I’ll stick around here a little while longer. Mom left the house to me, so I’ve got to decide …”

I didn’t need to finish. “If yer gonna sell it or not, an’ whatnot. I figger’d. Well, whatcha gonna do ‘round here until then? You gonna rent the place out? If ya do, take care who ya pick. Some of them renters ain’t worth a lick. They’ll tell ya they’re havin’ problems an’ they’ll pay ya next month, and the next month goes by, and they skip town. Happened to my cousin loads a times. Tore the place up, too—he had ta redo the whole house. Cost him more than what he’d a paid in rent himself!”

Stella lowered her voice. “Now see that house over there? The Jesters? They’re renters.” I followed her finger. “They seem like okay people an’ all, but they throw parties sometimes. Had to call the po-lice out here on ‘em. People like them bring down the property value.”

I couldn’t help noticing Stella’s giant satellite dish over her shoulder and tried to force my attention away. “So is Crawford Manor safe?”

“Safe?” Stella cackled and took another puff. “Ain’t nobody does nothin’ except set off some firecrackers every now an’ then.”

“And shoot starlings.” I meant it as a joke.

“Oh, well, shore.” Stella craned her neck to look at me. “I mean of course, right? That goes without sayin’.”

My leg slipped off the porch step in disbelief, and I yelped. Sat there rubbing it angrily and wondering how far I could flee in Mom’s Honda before nightfall.

“The folks ‘round here are the best.” Stella puffed again. “Ya get some jokers, ya know. But most of ‘em are good folks. Back behind our houses here we got Earl Sprouse, an’ he’s jest salt a theearth. Widowed some years back, an’ a real nice fella. Call him if yer pipes freeze in the winter.”

I’ll be a thousand miles away when anything of mine freezes over, Stella Farmer!

“On the other side a yer place ya got Greg an’ Lou Campbell. Real good folks. Their girl’s in the army, an’ they got their grandson livin’ with ‘em. Seems like a good kid.” She tapped her cigarette. “They just got a new Datsun. I think Greg got a raise or somethin’. He works for State Farm.”

“He’s a farmer?”

Her shoulders shook. “No, city slicker. State Farm’s a insurance place. If you need insurance, talk to Greg. He’ll set ya up.”