Little Gale Gumbo (42 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holly sat on the edge of their bed while Matthew packed, her arms crossed, her expression tight. Hooper lay curled up in the doorway, the golden retriever's furry brow flexing nervously.

“How could you think I wouldn't want to come, Matt? Camille was practically your mother. Of course I'd want to be there for you.”

Matthew shrugged lamely, stuffing rolled socks into the side of his bag. “I just assumed after the last time that you wouldn't want to go back.”

Holly glared at him. The last time. What he should have said was the first and
only
time she had joined him on a trip to his precious Little Gale Island and he'd done nothing to help her feel at ease, barely acknowledging her as soon as he was back in the company of the sisters, who had their own hand in making her feel like an interloper in their private universe.

“This is Camille's funeral, for God's sake,” Holly said. “How could you think I would make this about me?”

Matthew laid down a stack of shirts. “Maybe I wanted to spare you. But fuck me for protecting you, right?”

“You jerk,” she said. “This isn't about protecting me. This is about you wanting to keep me out of your treasured island club. Like you always do.”

When Matthew didn't respond, Holly rose.

“Tell them I'm sorry,” she said, quietly but firmly. “And don't you dare make something up to your father about why I'm not there. You tell him the truth, Matt. I couldn't bear them all thinking I don't care. They already resent me.”

“That's not true. . . .”

“Yes, it is, and you know it. So you tell them the truth, damn it. I deserve at least that.”

Matthew nodded, but he knew he wouldn't need to explain. Ben would know at once why Holly had stayed behind. They all would.

On the drive to the airport, Holly said little to him. When she pulled up to the curb and he climbed out, Matthew leaned in to kiss her, tasting the tears she'd been hiding behind her sunglasses.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” she said. “I know how much she meant to you.”

“Forgive me, Holl. I can be such an asshole.”

But as soon as he had closed the door, she pulled back out into the travel lane, denying him an answer.

 

Dahlia met him at the landing, wearing sunglasses in the growing dark. They held hands as they walked the narrow sidewalks to the old house, where Ben was waiting for them on the porch, nursing a cup of tea, his eyes red-rimmed but alert.

Matthew looked around for Josie.

“She wanted to come,” Dahlia said. “She just can't seem to leave the house yet.”

Matthew smiled, his tears arriving at last. “I know.”

 

Dahlia sat with Matthew while he made up his old bed, her eyes fixed numbly on the tidy corners he tucked under the ends, the way he flattened his palms over the old quilt, trying to smooth down creases that wouldn't be softened. Afterward, they climbed out the dormer window and shared a glass of bourbon on the roof. The sky seemed smaller to them than it ever had as teenagers, the whole island spread out before them; once it seemed endless, but now all they could see was the boundaries of its shore.

“You won't believe the flowers,” Dahlia said. “The bouquets were three deep in the entryway. You couldn't even get to the front door. We finally had to move them inside the café.”

Matthew took a sip and passed the glass to her. “I'm sorry I couldn't get back this last year. I know it's been hard.”

“Your dad was amazing, Matty. He wouldn't let anyone else care for her.”

“Camille was the love of his life. There's nothing he wouldn't have done for her.”

Dahlia swirled the liquid in the glass, watching it settle. “The doctors wanted her to go into hospice on the mainland, but your dad wouldn't let them. He even tried to find a real Voodoo priest to come and perform the burial, but she said she didn't want that. She said . . . “ Dahlia swallowed, her eyes filling. “She said she didn't need rituals to make sure her spirit found its way back to him.”

Dahlia looked to Matthew, her tears coming too fast to catch on her sleeve.

He reached across the asphalt tiles for her hand, their fingers linking in the dark.

 

Ben and Wayne opened the café at eleven the next day, and by noon, the dining room was full. Familiar faces, those down the street, and those who'd long since moved away, came to pay their respects to the Creole woman who had arrived on Little Gale Island nineteen years earlier, intending to stay only a single season. To everyone who entered, the smell of chicory coffee and simmering gumbo seemed somehow stronger, the crumbling pralines even creamier traveling around their mouths. Josie stayed behind the counter, as if it were a boundary keeping her from the truth of the event on the other side. The jukebox blared Camille's favorites, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, Ella and Louis. Josie had set up an altar in the window booth. Wayne had found a photo of Camille and the girls from their first spring on the island, and he'd had it made into a poster so Camille's bright smile would be visible from every corner of the crowded room. Beside the picture stood a kerosene lamp that would stay lit all night and into the morning, and a sampling of Camille's favorite foods. Even though their mother had chosen not to abide by the customs of a Voodoo burial, Josie had insisted on some, and no one had questioned her.

“I just wanted to say how sorry I am, Dahlia.”

Dahlia looked up to see Mandy Thurlow in front of her in a dark blue cardigan and black slacks, her blond hair grazing her shoulders. Jack's wife looked drawn, nervous. “How sorry
we
are.”

“Thanks, Mandy. I really appreciate that.”

Dahlia glanced around the room for Jack.

“He's parking the car,” Mandy said, her blue eyes flashing knowingly. “We can't stay long, I'm afraid. We tried to find a sitter at the last minute but we couldn't. Jenny's with my mom.”

“You could have brought her,” Dahlia said, gesturing to the clumps of small children scattered throughout the crowd. Mandy nodded politely, but Dahlia knew an invitation wasn't the issue. An awkward silence landed between them; Mandy turned to the door. “I guess I should go look for Jack.”

“Sure.”

“Take care, Dahlia.”

“You too, Mandy.”

 

By four, the crowd had thinned. Wayne had taken Josie home and left Matthew and Ben to see to the final visitors. Dahlia stood behind the counter, making a last pot of coffee, when she heard her name. She turned to see Jack in a tweed sports jacket, corduroy pants.

A rush of relief coursed through her.

“I thought Mandy said you had to go pick up Jenny.”

“We did,” he said. “She did. She's there now, actually. I just came back because I didn't get a chance to see you myself and . . .”

Jack reached for her hand across the counter. Dahlia gave it, his palm so warm she wanted to slide her whole body inside his grip. She looked up at him, the tears rising uncontrollably. She wiped her eyes with her free hand, laughing at herself.

“I had my sunglasses here for a while, but I put them down somewhere and now look at me.”

He
was
looking at her. Dahlia could feel his eyes, warm as his hand.

“I loved her too,” Jack admitted softly, his own throat closing up. Their eyes moved at the same time to the door, where Ben was accepting a hug from Bitsy Masterson.

“Momma was his whole world,” Dahlia whispered.

Jack smiled. “We should all be that lucky.”

Dahlia looked at him, her eyes questioning.

“Loving someone that deeply, that long,” he said, meeting her gaze. “That's a gift.”

Across the café, helping Alma Cooley into her coat, Matthew watched Jack and Dahlia, unprepared for the rush of envy that rose in his throat. Even with so much sorrow in her heart, the clear wash of regret was still evident on Dahlia's face when she finally let go of Jack's hand and watched him walk away.

 

The next day, when the fog was still so thick that the other side of the street was lost in the mist, the sisters stood beneath the awning with clasped hands, neither one wanting to unlock the café door. Before this early morning, Josie had opened the café a hundred times on her own, been in charge of cooking and baking for whole weeks at a time while Camille had been failing, yet somehow she'd always felt their mother's presence. Today they would enter the café truly without her for the first time.

Dahlia's hands shook as she turned the key. They eased the door open slowly, as if unsure of what they might see on the other side. Somehow, they'd hoped to find the café changed,
needed
to find it different. But except for Camille's altar, the restaurant looked as it had always looked, smelled as it had always smelled, of bay leaves and chicory coffee.

They walked numbly through the room, seeing everything as if for the first time. The painted roses faded into the floorboards. The bottles of hot sauce on each table. The dull whir of the ceiling fans. The jukebox.

Josie made it as far as the counter before she fell against the cases, a deep sob leaving her. She held on to the curved glass, like a passenger to the hull of her capsized boat. “I don't know if I can do this.”

“Yes, you can,” Dahlia said firmly as she pulled her sister close. “You've been making everything on your own for almost six months now.”

“I'm not talking about the stupid food,” Josie said.

Dahlia's eyes filled. “I know.” She looked around the café, the anguish scooping out a hole in her stomach as it did every few minutes, knocking the wind out of her. “Everything Momma was is in this room, Joze.” She smiled, tears spilling over. “Her dreams, her loves.”

Josie wiped her eyes with the side of her hand, wiped her nose with her sleeve. Dahlia was right. It was up to them now to preserve their mother's life work. The Little Gale Gumbo Café was their legacy now.

Josie let go a long and quivering breath.

“I'm just so scared, Dahl,” she whispered. “I don't know who we are without her.”

“Then we'll find out together,” Dahlia said.

Just then the front door opened and Sam Milkie peered in, thick white eyebrows raised warily. “Too soon for a cup of coffee?”

The sisters parted and looked at each other. They squeezed hands.

Josie smiled through her tears at the owner of the island's hardware store. “Just in time, Mr. Milkie.”

Thirty-two

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Now, don't expect too much,” the doctor said as he led Matthew down the hospital corridor. “It isn't like in the movies when the patient wakes up and is right back to normal.”

“Did he ask for me?” said Matthew. “Does he know where he is?”

“He hasn't tried to speak yet, Mr. Haskell.” The doctor steered them around a meal cart. “It's still early. As I've said, sometimes patients make a full recovery; other times extensive rehabilitation is necessary, even to regain the most basic functions. It's best to take things one step at a time.”

Matthew nodded firmly, his heart soaring with the clear promise of this news as he trailed the doctor into the room.

His father had come back to them.

 

When Jack returned from the cafeteria with coffees, he found Josie and Wayne in the waiting room. Josie took her cup and smiled up at him, her eyes red rimmed. “No word yet,” she said. “Matty's still in there with the doctor.”

Jack nodded, glancing around. “She's in the lobby,” Wayne said, taking his own coffee and leaving the fourth cup in the cardboard holder.

Jack found Dahlia by the reception desk, leaned against a tiled wall.

She took the coffee, sipped it deeply. “Thanks.”

Her hands were shaking; Jack could see the coffee shiver in its cup.

“So what happens now?” she asked.

“With what?”

“The case.”

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “As far as I'm concerned, the case is closed.”

“Good.”

They looked at each other, their bodies forced closer to keep the passage clear for the nurses who rushed by. When he splashed coffee on his wrist, she wiped it off for him with her fingers. “Jack.” She swallowed, sighed. “It's just that . . .”