“Why? What’s wrong with it?” Her eyes lifted, searching for him, but only made it as high as his chest. He could feel their touch there, a patch of prickly warmth as if he’d rubbed it with that salve his high school football coach used to use for sore muscles. “I loved that comic strip-what was it called?-the one with the little boy and his make-believe tiger?”
He thought about sitting down beside her on the bed, then decided he’d better not, not with sensory memories of the weight and shape and warmth of her body still burned into his muscles, nerves and sinews. He shifted his weight awkwardly instead. “Yeah, I did, too-used to doodle little cartoon pictures on everything, kind of like my signature, I guess.”
“So?”
“So…I don’t know. What was a pretty cool name when I was a little kid didn’t seem so cool for a grown man.”
She tilted her head to one side while she considered that. While he considered what it was about her and this conversation that was making him feel less like a grown man than he had in years. “So, why didn’t you just shorten it to Cal?”
“I did, for a while in high school. I think I picked up the idea for the C.J. from my brother Jimmy Joe-he’d taken to calling his boy J.J., and well, you know…I thought it was-”
“Cool?”
He gave a little snort of laughter. “Yeah.”
She smiled at him-or at his chest, rather-and he smiled back. And then it came to him that for the first time in his life he was in a situation with a woman where his smile and his dimples weren’t going to be of any advantage to him.
Before he had time to mull that over in his mind, he noticed that Caitlyn was rubbing her hands back and forth over the bedspread she was sitting on, sort of stroking the delicate slipperiness of it, feeling it with her fingers in a way that made his mouth go dry. Her head was tilted to one side and there was an expression on her face he couldn’t read.
“Did I hear you say this room used to be yours?”
Then he realized what the look on her face was. She was teasing him. Unexpected delight gathered in his chest like bubbles in a glass of soda pop.
“Yeah,” he said, letting his grin leak into his voice, “but that was a while ago. The decor now is all Sammi June’s-that’s Jess’s daughter-”
“You told me about her. You said she’s away-in college?”
“That’s right.” C.J. snorted. “Here and I thought you were asleep when I was telling you that.”
There was a pause while he watched a smile hover over her lips, the way he’d once watched, with breath suspended, a butterfly light on his finger. Then, hushed and husky, she asked, “Tell me the truth. Is it
In the same kind of voice, teetering on the edge of laughter, he intoned, “Oh,
“Rosebuds?” It was a horrified whisper.
“Nope. Butterflies-little bitty yellow ones.”
“I had tulips.” She sighed, and her smile took on a wistful quality that made her seem even younger than she was. “Pink ones-two different shades, hot and baby-with green leaves.”
He didn’t know whether it was the smile or the silvery sheen that had come into her eyes, but all at once C.J. had a tightness in his throat and a tingling behind his eyes and nose. This, naturally, prompted the typically masculine urge to get the hell out of there before he did anything to disgrace himself. He was trying to think how to do that without coming across as a heel or a craven coward when Jess came in. He almost kissed her, he was so relieved.
“I brought up your things,” Jess said as she set the small sports bag she’d brought with her on the foot of the bed.
“Can’t be much.” Caitlyn was groping for the bag with one hand. “The clothes I was wearing, um, before, I guess? They gave me the basic necessities when I was in jail, and Mom brought me some things in the hospital, but-” She stopped, and C.J. saw her throat move as she swallowed. Her eyes darted back and forth, and there was a desperate look in them now, as if, he thought, they were trying to find a way out of a trap.
“Well, I, uh, guess I’ll leave you two to figure things out,” he muttered, backing up until he bumped into the bedroom door, which he grabbed on to as if it was the only oar in a sinking rowboat. “I’m gonna, uh, I’ll just…okay, well, I’ll be down in the kitchen if you need me.”
As he made his escape Jess was saying to Caitlyn, “Don’t you worry about a thing, I’m sure we can find you anything you need. You’re welcome to borrow Sammi June’s clothes-she isn’t gonna mind a bit. You look to be pretty near the same size.”
His sister had the situation well in hand, it appeared. What he couldn’t figure out was why he didn’t feel happier about things turning out the way he’d planned. Maybe it was selfish, but he hadn’t planned on and didn’t much like feeling useless.
He went downstairs to the kitchen and found his mother standing by the stove stirring a big pot of butter beans. She looked around when she saw him, and her face lit up the way it always did when she set eyes on someone she cared about, even if it hadn’t been but a few minutes since she’d seen them last. Unless she happened to be displeased with that particular person at that particular moment, of course. That was the great thing about Momma, C.J. thought-she never left you in any doubt as to what her feelings were.
“Sit down, son,” she ordered as she put down the spoon and picked up a potholder, and C.J. did so with no arguments. His stomach had begun to growl with his first whiff of that roast chicken, and he watched hungrily as his mother took a plate out of the oven that was already piled high with chicken and mashed potatoes and what looked like fried okra. She added a spoonful of beans and then ladled some gravy over the mashed potatoes and set the plate in front of him.
Mumbling, “Thanks, Momma, looks good,” he picked up his fork and dug in. The first bite tasted so good he caught himself making little humming, crooning noises. His mother chuckled. “Granny Calhoun used to say you know the food’s good when you start singin’ to it.”
He grinned and took a big slug of milk, then said, “Guess I was hungrier than I thought I was.” He was thinking about Caitlyn, up there in the dark, wondering if maybe she was hungrier than she’d thought she was, too. He thought he might take her up a plate, soon as he was finished…
While his mother was getting herself a glass out of the cupboard and pouring it full of buttermilk, he found himself looking around the kitchen, taking in the usual clutter of lists and notes stuck on the door of the fridge with magnets, the pencil and ink marks on the pantry door frame where everybody’s height had been measured since long before C.J. was born, the sweet potato plant in a macrame sling left over from the seventies hanging over the sink and the row of late tomatoes ripening on the windowsill, the red teakettle on the back burner of the stove and the drainer that was never empty of dishes. He’d seen all those things so many times without thinking much about how they might look to a stranger, caring only about the warm fuzzy feelings they brought into his heart.
Now, though, everything looked and felt different to him. Instead of the familiar warmth there was a strange sweet sadness inside him because of one particular stranger upstairs who couldn’t see any of it, and he wondered why he regretted that so much. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself being in that room and not able to see it. He thought how he’d describe it for somebody blind…
“You tired, son?” His mother’s voice was gentle.
He shrugged away the sweet sad thoughts and didn’t try to explain. He looked down at his plate, saw it was empty and pushed it away. Across the round oak table from him his mother sat quietly watching him and sipping at her glass of buttermilk. She’d take buttermilk, he remembered, when her stomach needed settling down-during stressful times, mostly. He cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly and wondered why it was so hard to tell somebody you love a whole lot how much you appreciated what they were doing for you.
“Momma,” he finally said, “about Caitlyn-” Then he picked up his milk glass and set it back down and frowned at it. “I really do appreciate you doin’ this. I mean-”
His mother waved a hand the way she might’ve batted at a fly and made a sound he couldn’t have spelled if he’d tried, then added, “Lord knows it isn’t the first time I’ve taken in something or someone you kids figured
