King of the Mississippi by Mike Freedman

Author:Mike Freedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2019-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

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Wharton clutched K.K.’s bumpy hand under the table as he counted down to dessert, seasonal berries and cream. It would be strawberries, it always was, with the accompaniment of an odd blackberry. Wharton suspected they sent a wait staff member out to pick them when in season to dole out; he had seen the beady blackberries on the edge of the ill-conceived golf course being swallowed by the bayou each year. He recognized most of the faces in the River Oaks Country Club Main Dining Room, though he had made an effort to not make an appearance in the last year. But there was no avoiding the face of his father bearing down on Wharton across the table as his mother retold the story of an ostentatious wedding reception they had been to two years before at the old Petroleum Club.

A couple of minutes later, as he stabbed the last oozing strawberry on his plate, Wharton’s mother came to the end of her affliction with the wedding table decorations. “When the bride’s father is a plastic surgeon, maybe to be expected.” Out of deference to tradition in the South, much in the way girls landed a frightful-sounding mother’s maiden name as a first name, Wharton’s father had been the best man at his wedding. “The tacky speeches, oh my, they would have made you blush,” Wharton’s mother said to K.K., who had not blushed the first time she heard her mother-in-law quote from the speeches years before. Wharton had never seen his mother blush, though he speculated a NED Talk might end her record. Her beautiful blond hair had finally turned gray and begun to curl after a minor stroke three years before. She refused to color it. No Christian he had ever known could hold a grudge in their face the way his mother could. She was a woman who tracked many anniversaries. “They lifted them up in chairs the way they do for that dance in their culture. You would never see that here at a reception.” Wharton knew the married couple well and would have far preferred their dinner company, the groom a brilliant anthropology professor at Rice University who had allowed Wharton to take in a lecture of his once on the actor-network theory. Alas, Wharton had not taken notes. “Penelope Phillips stopped by our table here last week, Brock.”

Wharton’s mother had a talent for not letting a dessert be consumed without working some bitter herb down with it, even if the rest of the meal had managed to be relatively painless. Wharton looked over at his father, who leaned in his chair to get up to the gate. Like his son’s hair, Dean Wharton’s hair did not move. He had been coloring it a wild mink tint since Wharton was old enough to play organized football. Only after Wharton had left home to play at the University of Texas did Dean Wharton shave his trademark beard. He had not had a beard since.

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