Frankenplot: "He Did Fine" (1)

The Corolla had 184,000 miles. The heat worked on high or not at all. She kept it on high.

She drove. He rode shotgun with the flowers in his lap.

In her right coat pocket, her thumb found the loose house key. She had taken it off her own ring that morning. The metal was warm now. She pressed the teeth into her thumb pad, tracing the jagged edge, then let it go.

The jar was in the back floorboard, wedged between his boots and a bag of ice melt. Chow chow. Amish label. He had bought it at the gas station with the flowers. He kept twisting around to check it.

"It's fine," she said.

"I know. Just checking."

The road was 220, four lanes down to two. Dollar General, tire shop, field, repeat. A tractor sat in the middle of a field, up on blocks, all four tires gone.

He held the flowers up like he was reading them.

"Okay, run it again," he said. "I'm meeting everybody."

"You've met Mom."

"Right. But again, for real this time. I'm Wes. It's nice to meet you. Is that okay? Do I shake hands?"

"Yeah."

"Full name or just Wes?"

"Just Wes is fine."

"Just Wes is fine," he said, practicing. "Just Wes is fine."

He tried it lower. He tried it with his hand out, which put his elbow into the window crank.

"Does that sound sarcastic? It's nice to meet you."

"No."

"It sounded sarcastic."

"It didn't."

He looked at her.

"Do I say Mamaw right?"

"That's right."

"Mamaw."

"That's it."

He nodded. He turned again to look at the jar.

"What even is chow chow," he said.

"Relish."

"Relish like hot dog relish."

"Sort of."

"Sort of," he said. "Okay. Is it a real thing or is it one of those things they sell to people from somewhere else."

"It's a real thing."

"Because the label had a buggy on it."

"It's a real thing, Wes."

"I'm not saying it isn't. I'm saying there was a buggy on it and I bought it at a Citgo."

The Citgo was eleven miles back. There had not been another store after it, and he had known that when he bought it, and he had bought it anyway, and now he had forty minutes to think about it.

"Do they eat it on something," he said, "or is it a side."

"It's a side."

"So it just sits there."

"It sits there."

"Good," he said. "Simple."

He settled. Then not.

"Is Mamaw a hugger?"

She kept her eyes on the road. Her left hand stayed at ten o'clock. Her right hand slipped back into her pocket, finding the brass.

"Mamaw's dead," she said.

"I know that. I mean, was she. In general."

"She was."

"Okay. So handshake or hug? For the family. What's the read."

"Handshake to start. You'll know."

He nodded. He held the flowers tighter. The cellophane crinkled.

"Tell me again what it is tonight. So I don't mess it up."

She told him. Same words as the parking lot. Quiet supper. They set a place for Mamaw. You eat dessert first. You don't turn your back on the table when you leave. You just follow along.

He listened with his thumbnail working a seam in the cellophane.

"Backward," he said.

"Backward."

"And quiet."

"Yeah."

"From when dessert hits the table."

"That's it."

"Got it," he said. "I can do quiet."

He could. He was a man who could hold still in a deer stand for four hours and had done it, every November, since he was nine.

A truck passed with a loose tailgate. It banged every bump.

"Can I ask why," he said.

"Why what."

"Any of it."

"That's how she did it."

He waited for more. There wasn't more. He accepted this the way he accepted most things about her family, which was completely and without argument, as facts about a country he had decided to move to.

"Okay," he said.

He smoothed the cellophane on the flowers. He had bought the cheap ones. Six roses, red, with baby's breath. The water in the little tube had leaked onto his pants.

"Do you think this is enough? The jar and the flowers."

"It's plenty."

"Because I could stop."

"There's nowhere to stop."

"There's a Food Lion in Ramseur."

"That's the other direction."

"It's eight minutes."

"It's plenty, Wes."

He twisted around again. The jar had not tipped. It had not tipped in Asheboro and it had not tipped at the light and it was not going to tip now. She gripped the key in her pocket, hard, then pulled her hand free and put it on the wheel.

"You keep checking," she said.

"I know."

She reached over and fixed the cellophane where it had folded under. One small move. Her hand, then back to the wheel.

He looked at her and smiled.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing. Just glad I'm here."

The house came up on the left. White siding, porch light on though it was still day. A carport with a chest freezer in it, and on the freezer a five-gallon bucket, and in the bucket, from October, a jack-o'-lantern that had gone in on itself.

He sat up straighter. He put the flowers on his knee and tried to make them look like he had meant the cheap ones.

"How do I look?"

"Good."

"Be honest."

"You look good."

He took a breath, and got out with the flowers, and went around to the back door for the jar, and did not shut the passenger door all the way, so the dome light stayed on in an empty car for the rest of the night.

---

The kitchen was hot in the way a kitchen is hot when four pans have been going since noon and nobody has opened a window because it's November and you don't.

Her mother took the flowers with both hands, the way you take flowers you did not expect, and said they were beautiful, and put them in a Mason jar because the vase was at her sister's.

Her uncle shook Wes's hand. Wes said it was nice to meet him.

"Just Wes?"

"Just Wes is fine."

Her uncle seemed to approve of this. He was a man who thought most things had too much name on them.

The chow chow went on the counter with the other food and nobody said anything about the buggy.

Then Wes made himself useful. He carried the big pot when her mother's wrists went. He got the leaf into the table on the first try, which nobody had ever done. He found the trivet. He asked where things went and then remembered where they went. Within eight minutes he was standing at the stove holding a spoon, being told about her aunt's neighbor's driveway, laughing in the right places.

Her uncle leaned in the doorway with a can of Cheerwine and watched him work.

"I'll say this in my own house and I'd say it in church," her uncle said. "This is foolishness. Every year. A grown family sitting there like the power's out."

Wes looked up, interested.

"I do it for my mother," her uncle said. "Not for a ghost. I want that understood."

"Yes, sir."

"There's no ghost."

"No, sir."

"It's a thing she wanted."

"That's a good reason," Wes said.

Her uncle looked at him for a second, then took a drink and said, "Well," and went to sit down, and that was the last word said in the house for two hours.

She was at the sink. Her mother came and stood beside her with a stack of plates and did not pick up a towel, which was how she started things.

"Somebody ought to tell him," her mother said.

"He knows."

"He knows the words."

She ran the water. The window over the sink had gone dark and she could see the kitchen in it, and Wes in the middle of the kitchen, with a spoon, saying something that made her aunt put her hand on his arm.

"Look at him," her mother said. "He's doing so good."

And that was the end of it. Neither of them said it out loud, but it was decided at the sink, by two women watching a man have the best night of his life: he was doing so good that it would be a shame to spoil it.

Her aunt came through with the cobbler. She set it in the middle of the table, and stepped back, and touched the edge of the chair at the head — pulled it out an inch, squared it, the way you'd straighten a picture — and sat down.

Wes came to the table with the spoon still in his hand, saw everyone standing behind their chairs, and stood behind his.

In her coat, on the hook by the door, the key was in the pocket, and the coat was too far away now to do anything about it.

Her mother sat.

Everyone sat.

Wes looked at the cobbler, and looked at her, and his face did something delighted and private, just for her — dessert, first, he was in a house where they ate dessert first — and she felt her mouth start to go, and she put her hand over it, and turned it into nothing.

Her brother caught it. He was already going red around the collar.

Nobody spoke.

Wes put his napkin in his lap, and looked at the empty chair at the head of the table, and then at the plate in front of it, and the glass, and the fork and knife laid out and squared.

He reached over, and moved the cobbler a little closer to that place, so she could reach it.

 

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