The School of Beauty and Charm by Melanie Sumner

Author:Melanie Sumner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2001-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

GRANDMOTHER DELEUTH HAD never liked her husband, but she’d been joined to him for sixty-five years, and the idea of life without him was unbearable. At the hospital, her heart attack followed his. Some relatives said it was the only thing they’d ever agreed on.

In the dimly lit kitchen, Henry held Florida in his arms. His back was very straight. There was a tautness to his face, drawing the skin tight over his cheekbones. His eyes burned with intensity. For a moment, as he held her that way, and she was still, I saw them as they must have been when they married.

Henry arranged everything. When he saw that I had been sick, he thought it was a violent reaction to my grandparents’ deaths, and he decided that I should stay in Counterpoint. He changed the sheets on my bed, went to an all-night grocery store and stocked the house with food, made sure I knew where to find my keys and my credit card, and then counted crisp twenty dollar bills out into my palm. He gave me Reverend Waller’s phone number neatly printed on a card. I was to go to work, as usual, and in my free time, visit Drew. They would call me every day from Red Cavern and be home in a couple of weeks, as soon as they had taken care of things up there.

Several days later, slumped over my ham and rye, I watched T. C. meander into the break room, toss his black lunch box on the table, and to the astonishment of all of us on first shift, sit down next to me. When someone popped the tab off a Fanta grape, it sounded like a gunshot.

“T. C., don’t mess with the boss’s daughter,” said Smiley. “You’ll get fired.”

T. C. bit into a pecan twirl. I sat stiffly, careful not to brush my arm against his shoulder, afraid to eat lest I offend him. When he had finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pushed the wrapper toward me. “How do you say that?” he asked, pointing at the label. I was suddenly terrified that he might be illiterate. Was I in love with someone who couldn’t read and write? Drew would be aghast.

“Pecan twirl,” I said quietly. Even though I hadn’t moved an inch, our shoulders were touching.

“What was that?” He grinned. “I’m a little hard of hearing.” He leaned his face in close to mine. “Did you say ‘pe-con’ or ‘pee-can’?”

“Theodore Curtis, you better get back over here on your side of the tracks!” someone called out.

“That’s right,” said Smiley. “Over on that side of the tracks they got a bad-ass cop on a horse. Real scary dude.”

“Y’all think he braids that tail himself?”

T. C. offered me half of his sandwich. It was nearly lost in his big hand, and seeing the shallow indention of his fingers in the soft white bread, I couldn’t help but imagine how he would hold my breast.

“Thank you,” I said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.