hour. The night offers no relief from the inferno they drove into around midafternoon. It’s as though the heat was merely absorbed by the ground, which is now releasing it back into the air. Jesse can feel her back drenched against the velvety upholstery of the car; her foot is prickly from being pressed so long against the accelerator pedal. The lights bounce off the reflector letters on the sign:
NEW JERUSALEM -7 MI
EULA GROVE -23 MI
She cruises past the city limits sign.
Kit opens the glove compartment so she can see Jesse’s face by its light. “Is it weird? Being back?”
“Yeah, that. Kind of nice, too. In a weird way.”
She points out the feed store and the houses of a half dozen families she knows. Past the courthouse-library. Past lunch. Past what used to be the dry goods store but is now a video rental shop. The Set & Style has its sign flickering in the window, pale white connected letters: REALLY GOOD PERMANENT WAVES THAT LAST .
She drives as though the car is a vaporous phantom rather than a large piece of steel. She takes three red lights as though they’re yellows before Kit comments. “Hmmm.”
Jesse takes a corner with style. “I lived here seventeen years. Unless someone dies or starts having a baby, I can tell you we’re not going to see anything moving at this hour but us.”
“I can’t believe your mother’s sleeping through all this,” Kit says after they’ve dropped a suitcase and rattled the handle of the screen door forever, trying to fiddle it open, and then crashed into a wheeled cutting board cart in the middle of the kitchen, which Jesse doesn’t remember being there before.
“Oh, I think we’ve probably woken her by now,” Jesse says. “But she won’t come down. She’ll want to wait until tomorrow. She’ll want to be fixed up proper to meet you, someone new.”
Her mother’s notions of fixing up have little to do with attractiveness, more to do with old, set forms—short perky hairdos, “daytime” fragrances, slips under dresses, nylons even in deepest summer, handkerchiefs (never Kleenexes). At one time emblems of respectability, these are now also symbols of holding one’s own, keeping back from the slippery slope, of stains on a hem, dust on a bookshelf, mold on a shower curtain. From there it’s straight onto the skids of lipstick applied without a mirror, pajamas worn into the day.
Jesse hasn’t been back here for three years. She is coming now for her mother’s sixty-fifth birthday, and her retirement after forty-two years of teaching English at the high school. There will be a party tomorrow afternoon in her godmother, Hallie’s, backyard. Nearly all the guests will have known each other all their lives.
There’s a note stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet that’s also a laminated card of uplifting verse about kitchens and friendship. The note says, “Have a snack. I’ve left warmups in here.”
“What are warmups?” Kit says eagerly.
Jesse sees that she thinks they are something specific, something regional and delicious, like fritters. She hugs Kit, then disappoints her. “It’s just what they call leftovers down here.”
Kit opens the refrigerator and looks in, then pulls back out with an accounting. “Fried chicken.”
“From the Colonel.” Jesse knows without looking. “I’ll fix you up a plate.”
She starts puttering around the kitchen and gets killed with crummy sentimentality going through the drawers and cabinets, coming across all the old stuff. The plate with the picture of Bagnell Dam painted on it. The scoop they won for naming the new ice cream flavor at Gilley’s Creamery one summer—Passion for Peach.
“Bring it on up with us,” she says as she hands the plate to Kit. “I’m wiped.”
They drag their bags up the stairs with soft thumps. At the door to her room, Jesse puts her hand on the knob, then turns and tries to prepare Kit. “It’s kind of a shrine. I mean, I put it up, of
NEW JERUSALEM -7 MI
EULA GROVE -23 MI
She cruises past the city limits sign.
Kit opens the glove compartment so she can see Jesse’s face by its light. “Is it weird? Being back?”
“Yeah, that. Kind of nice, too. In a weird way.”
She points out the feed store and the houses of a half dozen families she knows. Past the courthouse-library. Past lunch. Past what used to be the dry goods store but is now a video rental shop. The Set & Style has its sign flickering in the window, pale white connected letters: REALLY GOOD PERMANENT WAVES THAT LAST .
She drives as though the car is a vaporous phantom rather than a large piece of steel. She takes three red lights as though they’re yellows before Kit comments. “Hmmm.”
Jesse takes a corner with style. “I lived here seventeen years. Unless someone dies or starts having a baby, I can tell you we’re not going to see anything moving at this hour but us.”
“I can’t believe your mother’s sleeping through all this,” Kit says after they’ve dropped a suitcase and rattled the handle of the screen door forever, trying to fiddle it open, and then crashed into a wheeled cutting board cart in the middle of the kitchen, which Jesse doesn’t remember being there before.
“Oh, I think we’ve probably woken her by now,” Jesse says. “But she won’t come down. She’ll want to wait until tomorrow. She’ll want to be fixed up proper to meet you, someone new.”
Her mother’s notions of fixing up have little to do with attractiveness, more to do with old, set forms—short perky hairdos, “daytime” fragrances, slips under dresses, nylons even in deepest summer, handkerchiefs (never Kleenexes). At one time emblems of respectability, these are now also symbols of holding one’s own, keeping back from the slippery slope, of stains on a hem, dust on a bookshelf, mold on a shower curtain. From there it’s straight onto the skids of lipstick applied without a mirror, pajamas worn into the day.
Jesse hasn’t been back here for three years. She is coming now for her mother’s sixty-fifth birthday, and her retirement after forty-two years of teaching English at the high school. There will be a party tomorrow afternoon in her godmother, Hallie’s, backyard. Nearly all the guests will have known each other all their lives.
There’s a note stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet that’s also a laminated card of uplifting verse about kitchens and friendship. The note says, “Have a snack. I’ve left warmups in here.”
“What are warmups?” Kit says eagerly.
Jesse sees that she thinks they are something specific, something regional and delicious, like fritters. She hugs Kit, then disappoints her. “It’s just what they call leftovers down here.”
Kit opens the refrigerator and looks in, then pulls back out with an accounting. “Fried chicken.”
“From the Colonel.” Jesse knows without looking. “I’ll fix you up a plate.”
She starts puttering around the kitchen and gets killed with crummy sentimentality going through the drawers and cabinets, coming across all the old stuff. The plate with the picture of Bagnell Dam painted on it. The scoop they won for naming the new ice cream flavor at Gilley’s Creamery one summer—Passion for Peach.
“Bring it on up with us,” she says as she hands the plate to Kit. “I’m wiped.”
They drag their bags up the stairs with soft thumps. At the door to her room, Jesse puts her hand on the knob, then turns and tries to prepare Kit. “It’s kind of a shrine. I mean, I put it up, of
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