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The flush on Emily’s cheeks could have been excitement or summer heat. With blond curls escaping from her ponytail, she looked sixteen. A strap of her yellow sundress had slid off one shoulder, and the blue apron she still wore was dusted with flour. Even disheveled, Emily was beautiful.
Sis would never be beautiful, with or without a dusting of flour. She would never look sixteen, even if she could get her frizzy brown bob into a ponytail. She would never be the kind of woman men wanted to sweep off her feet.
Envy ambushed her, so unexpected she almost crashed her car into a live oak.
“Watch out!” Jim grabbed for the steering wheel, but Sis slapped his hands away.
“I’ve got it. I’m just excited, is all.”
How could you envy the sister you’d dressed and fed and soothed at night with silly, made-up stories so she’d sleep with the lights off?
Perhaps it wasn’t envy but longing fueled by the perspective of age. How could Sis have known at fourteen that once you set out on a path, it can take you so far from your dreams you’ll end up at the age of thirty-four not even remembering who you once wanted to be?
She’d given up everything for her family, even her name. Beth. Nobody called her that anymore. Everybody just called her Sis, as if she were nothing more than the role she played.
The sign on the door of Sweet Mama’s read Closed for a Private Party. There was nothing private about it, of course. Tomorrow, word would be all over town. Sweet Mama would tell the breakfast regulars, and Emily was too gentle to refuse details to anybody who asked. By ten o’clock, everybody in Biloxi would know that Sweet Mama had made Jim’s favorite red velvet cake, and Emily had forgotten to take off her apron and Jim had refused to wear his leg.
There it lay on the backseat of Sis’s Valiant, another piece of sand in her craw. What do you say to a brother just returning from the hell of Vietnam? Why don’t you let me strap on your prosthetic leg so you’ll look normal and Emily won’t cry? Or do you just stand there with sand drifting into your sandals while Emily races out the front door, already crying before she gets close enough to hug her twin, the Gulf breeze blowing both of them sideways?
Maybe the Gulf was blowing all of them sideways, and had been for so long Sis didn’t know what normal was anymore. She thought about a brother coming home broken and a sister smiling as she raced toward disaster. She thought about a life gone so far off track she didn’t even remember the direction she’d been going.
Best not to think too far into the future, to simply put one sandy sandal in front of the other until she was standing in Sweet Mama’s, surrounded by the smells of cake and pie and fried chicken and freshly cut tomatoes from Sweet Mama’s prize crop, just standing there silent, gnawing on a chicken leg and watching over her brother and sister as she always had; watching as Emily laughed through her tears and Jim was engulfed by the ones who loved him best and would love him always, even if he never got his mind back from Vietnam and his leg out of Sis’s car.
“Aunt Sis! Aunt Sis!”
The TV perched on the edge of the serving bar was blaring wide-open. Andy sat so close he was crossing his eyes to see.
“C’mon over! They gonna land on the moon!”
For two cents Sis would get on that rocket ship with the astronauts. And she wouldn’t care whether she found the moon or not. All she wanted was to be as far away from her current life as she could get.
* * *
Sweet Mama was relieved when Sis quit glaring over her fried chicken leg at What’s His Name and walked over to join Andy at the TV. Why, from the look on her face you’d think What’s His Name was a fly set to land on Jim’s celebration cake and Sis was a flyswatter.
Larry Chastain. That was the name of Emily’s new fiancé. Sweet Mama would write it down this very minute if she thought she could do it without getting caught. But Emily might see her and start worrying all over again about her forgetfulness. And Sis was bound to notice. That girl didn’t miss a thing. And she wouldn’t stop at calling Sweet Mama forgetful, either. She’d use the scary words senile and hardening of the arteries and dementia.
“Larry Chastain.” Sweet Mama mumbled his name, hoping it would make a lasting impression. If she forgot and called him Gary, everybody would look at her funny. And her older son Steve, the one who wasn’t dead and wasn’t Emily and Sis and Jim’s father, would start that silly talk again about signing over power of attorney.
Sweet Mama would rather be six feet under than sign over any damned thing. She’d built this place from scratch and had run it for nearly fifty years and she wasn’t about to let somebody else take over now, especially her son Steve, who only came to the café when his bossy wife allowed. Besides that, he hated pie. What God-respecting man hated pie? No sirree, Bob. If anybody took over Sweet Mama’s Café, it would be the Blake girls. Emily could make an Amen cobbler the customers couldn’t tell from Sweet Mama’s, and Sis knew more about running a business than any man Sweet Mama ever saw.
If her mind ever did go, God forbid, she’d have her granddaughters running the show and not somebody with a power of attorney, thank you very much.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sweet Mama saw Emily motioning to her fiancé to go on over and join Sis and Andy at the TV, trying to communicate with gesture and smile, as she always had, that everything was all right.
Lord God, Sweet Mama hoped so. The scent of sun-ripened peaches coming from the Amen cobbler was so sweet, if you squinted you could see bees buzzing around the crust. Sweet Mama couldn’t recall what that was a sign of, but she knew it was a harbinger of something that made her bones feel heavy. She closed her eyes, just for a minute, and as clear as a summer day she saw a swarm of bees streaking down from the mimosa tree in the backyard, aiming straight for her head. She lifted her shovel to fight them back.
“Sweet Mama.” Her granddaughter’s voice drifted through the fog. “Sweet Mama. Wake up.”
Emily was shaking her shoulder, and when she looked up at her granddaughter, it came as a great surprise that she was all grown-up instead of four years old. Momentarily panicked, Sweet Mama looked around for Sis, who was no longer fourteen, but a rather unstylish and pensive-looking woman past thirty.
“Are you all right, Sweet Mama?”
“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I thought you’d fallen asleep.”
“In the middle of my own grandson’s homecoming party?” Sweet Mama checked for the cake to be sure she was right. “I should say not!”
Emily sat down beside her and started patting her hand. Sweet Mama was torn between snatching it away, acting all huffy that her youngest granddaughter was treating her like an old woman and leaning into her to enjoy the petting. If you’d told her ten years ago she’d ever get to the age that she needed somebody treating her like a child, she’d have slapped you silly.
Before she could make up her mind which way to act, Gary came over and interrupted the whole thing.
“Larry, darling,” Emily said, and Sweet Mama thought about her narrow escape. She’d come within a gnat’s hair of calling him the wrong name. “I thought you were going to join Andy and Sis.”
“Your sister doesn’t seem to like me.”
“Nonsense, darling. You have to know Sis. She’s just protective, that’s all.” Emily patted him on the arm. “Go on over there now, and don’t spare your charm.”
He trotted off and Sweet Mama said, “Charm, my ass.”
“Sweet Mama! What a thing to say!”
She knew it was a terrible thing to say, but she wasn’t about to admit that it had just slipped out. To make up for the many ways she was now failing Emily, she was going to give her granddaughter the best wedding the Mississippi Gulf Coast had ever seen.
Sis was another thing—as tough and unbending as the live oaks that dripped with Spanish moss in front of the café. Sometimes Sweet Mama wished her oldest granddaughter would bend a little. She wished she wouldn’t be so hard on people. And the way she dressed...Lord God, the more Sweet Mama tried to talk her out of wearing khaki slacks and black blouses all the time, short sleeves in the summer, long in the winter, the more Sis resisted.
Still, Sweet Mama knew Sis would make sure her sister got a wedding grand enough to make up for all those years wondering if Mark Jones would have changed his mind and married her if he’d made it back from Vietnam.
More and more, Sweet Mama depended on Sis to take care of the family. Any day now, she might retire and travel to some of the places she’d read about in National Geographic. She’d always wanted to, and now could be her big chance.
“I think I’ll head to Pikes Peak first,” she said.
“What?” The funny look Emily gave her said she’d done it again, gone off and said something that didn’t have a thing to do with the conversation at hand.
She racked her brain trying to figure out what the latest subject had been. Emily was now looking alarmed.
She had to say something that made sense or Emily would tell Sis, and Sis would fetch Doctor...what was his name? He was an old fart. That’s all she knew.
“You said you were going to Pikes Peak, Sweet Mama.”
“Not this very minute, silly. But I’m getting so old, I’m liable to kick the bucket any day, and wouldn’t it be nice to be up so high I could see Heaven?”
“I don’t think you can see Heaven from Pikes Peak.”
“I was just kidding.”
Feeling backed into a corner, Sweet Mama looked around for a means of escape. And there was her poor grandson, leaning against the wall as if he could no longer see his place in the family.
“Help me up, Emily, and let’s take your brother some of that Amen cobbler.”
Food, that’s all Sweet Mama could remember anymore. She watched as Emily scooped up a big helping and then put a smile on her face as she carried it to Jim.
Sweet Mama got that heaviness in her bones again, an uncomfortable feeling that could be anything from old age to angels whispering in her ear. If she could just ground herself in the café, she’d be all right.
She glanced around at the pictures on the wall. They told their own story—the history of a bakery that became a café and a woman too fierce to give up, the friendship against all odds with Beulah, who had been with her every step of the way, the ever-increasing number of patrons who carried on meandering conversations spun out like a roll of silk ribbon, linking the past to the present and binding people together as surely as tree-ripened peaches blended with fresh cherries in Sweet Mama’s Amen cobbler.
“Amen cobbler, Jim,” Emily was saying. “I made it.”
Fear stung Sweet Mama as unexpectedly as a red wasp. Lord, she could have sworn she made that cobbler. Hadn’t she stood in the kitchen not more than two hours ago adding peaches to the batter? Or had that been last week?
“I’m not hungry, Em,” Jim said.
“Take a little bite, anyway. It’s your party,” Emily said. “Tell me if it’s as good as Sweet Mama’s.”
The way Jim was looking at his plate, you’d think it was filled with mud pies. What do you say to a grandson who’s standing close enough to touch but is so far away he’s no more substantial than the moonlight laying a path over the water?
Beulah’s shadow fell over Sweet Mama, a huge umbrella to shield her from a downpour of sudden sorrow.
“Honey, if you don’t eat that cobbler, old Beulah’s gonna think you don’t appreciate none of this cooking we nearly killed ourselfs over.”
“You’re still a con artist, Beulah,” Jim said. “And you don’t look a day older than when I left.”
“If you keep up that sweet talk, you’re gonna have a girl before we know it.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“I ain’t holding my breath. I’m gonna put out the word to the reg’lars to be looking. Now, eat that cobbler pie.”
Sweet Mama puffed up with pride as she watched Jim pick up his fork and dig in. The war might have taken his leg, but it hadn’t stolen one iota of the Blake honor. She glanced at her granddaughter’s fiancé over there with all his body parts intact, sleek as a tomcat.
“Emily, did What’s His Name serve his country?”
“Please, Sweet Mama. This is a party. Let’s not talk about that now.”
“It’s a legitimate question, Em,” Jim said. “Did he?”
Suddenly, Andy shouted, “Com’ere, quick! That’s him. There’s a man on the moon!”
Emily raced off like somebody saved from the guillotine.
“Oh, it is, sweetheart!” She sat on the bar stool beside her son, her color suddenly so high she looked as if she might be the one standing on the moon.
Even Jim moved toward the RCA TV, and suddenly the whole family was riveted by the pictures being beamed back to them all the way from the moon. Relieved that she was no longer under scrutiny, Sweet Mama poured herself a glass of sweet tea and sat at a table close enough so she could see what was going on. It didn’t look like much to her, just a bunch of blurry black-and-white images. For all she knew, this man on the moon stuff could be a big hoax.
“He looks like a monster, Mommy.”
“That’s the astronaut Neil Armstrong in his space suit,” Emily said. “Listen, Andy. You’re watching history.”
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Neil Armstrong said.
An impossibly huge moon shone through the plate-glass windows. That a mere mortal—somebody not so different from her, except younger—was up there this very minute walking around in the moondust filled Sweet Mama with such hope the café could hardly contain it. Her grandson was home safe, one granddaughter was at the beginning of a new life and the other granddaughter had the grit and the brains to turn this café into the finest restaurant in the Deep South.
Sweet Mama looked around the room till she found the picture she sought, hanging on the wall beside the clock and dated April 1, 1921. There she was, posing behind the cash register in the bakery she’d opened herself, with Beulah as her only help.
If anybody happened to ask Sweet Mama what she thought about the lunar landing, she’d say she’d already been to the moon and was planning to go again.
Two (#ulink_f9b29e73-4183-58c3-9880-885946758457)
EMILY DIDN’T NEED AN alarm clock to wake up. She loved sunrises and rituals and the small, everyday miracles of family. When dawn pinked her lace curtains she hurried to the window to admire the sky, and then she raced back to the bedside phone to call Sis.
“Sis, are you awake?”
“I am now, Em.”
Emily grinned. Sis might try to act like an old grump, but she counted on their early morning phone calls as much as Emily did. When you love a sister, you know her songs as well as her secrets. You know what makes her shatter and what it takes to put the pieces back together. You understand her as if you were standing inside her skin, counting the beats of her heart.
“I’ve decided to have a summer garden wedding,” Emily told her sister. “In Sweet Mama’s backyard.”
“It’s a disaster area.”
“It’s beautiful. All we need are a few chairs and some white satin bows, and it will be gorgeous.”
“Good Lord, Emily. Are we talking about the same backyard? It’ll take a ton of fertilizer, six weeks of rain and a flat-out miracle to get Sweet Mama’s backyard even halfway decent.”
“It might take all that if I didn’t have you, Sis.”
“Are you trying to flatter me?”
“Is it working?”
“A little bit.”
Sis’s sigh was audible, and Emily felt a prick of guilt.
“Listen, Sis, I don’t want to cause too much trouble. You need to spend time with Jim instead of fretting over a garden wedding.”
“If you want a garden wedding, that’s what we’ll have. Jim’s going to be fine. I won’t have it any other way.”
“He didn’t seem so fine to me, Sis. Bring him to the café today so we can feed him and fawn over him.”
“I don’t think he’ll come.”
“Why wouldn’t he want to come down to the café so he can be with all of us?”
“Because...” Sis hesitated. “Because he’s as stubborn as I am.”
What had she been going to say? Emily was certain it was something frightening Sis had edited out in order to protect her.
