The Oleander Sisters. Elaine Hussey

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СКАЧАТЬ keyboard. It hadn’t worked. Emily didn’t have a musical bone in her body.

      “I was thinking about your wedding music, dear. Have you thought about using a recording of ‘Clair de Lune’?”

      Burt Larson, just coming from the backyard, chimed in with, “Seems to me like Emily’s Big Event ought to have music plain folks can understand.”

      The regulars at the next table joined in, and soon the entire café was abuzz with plans for Emily’s Big Event, spoken as if each word were capitalized and ought to be posted out by the Gulf on the huge billboard that advertised Baricev’s Seafood Harbor.

      As the customers continued to offer unsolicited advice about the wedding, Emily saw Sis materialize in the doorway of her office, then turn and walk back inside.

      Excusing herself from Miss Opal, Emily handed Tom an Amen cobbler then stowed Andy’s in the kitchen and hurried after her sister.

      She found her seated at a battered oak desk glancing at the clock as if she could cling to the march of time and soothe herself with the thought that two o’clock would eventually come and she could close up Sweet Mama’s.

      As Emily sat in the other chair, an uncomfortable old thing with a slatted back and a cane bottom losing some of its canes, she was certain Sis chose it deliberately to discourage visits.

      “How was Jim this morning?” Emily asked.

      “The same. Hunkered down in the house like he’s in a foxhole.”

      “Maybe my wedding will be just the thing to bring him around.”

      “I wouldn’t hold out any high hopes, Em.”

      Sis always looked on the gloomy side of life. Emily refused to let it sag her spirit.

      “Did you bring those special astronaut glasses for Andy?”

      “I forgot. Sorry, Em.”

      Good grief! Forgetting was so unlike her sister, Emily wondered if Sis was getting a brain tumor.

      “Just give them to him tonight at the campout, will you? He’s worrying me to death over those glasses.”

      “I don’t know that camping out in the backyard is such a good idea.”

      “Why not? We always camp out in Sweet Mama’s backyard.”

      “It’s too hot to camp out.”

      “It’s never too hot for a six-year-old. Besides, it’ll be fun. We can pitch the tent by the new hedge so we can smell the roses.”

      “Not the rose hedge!”

      “Good grief, Sis. What’s the matter with you?”

      Sis just clamped her mouth shut and refused to say another word, which was fine with Emily. She had too much on her mind to continue this silly argument with her sister. If she didn’t hurry back to that growing café crowd, there was no telling what kind of mess Sweet Mama would make. She seemed to be having one of her good days, thank goodness, because Beulah had stayed home again to be with Jim, who seemed to be going backward instead of forward.

      Still, something had to be done to help Sweet Mama, but Emily didn’t know what. After the wedding she’d ask Sis. But not until her sister got in a better mood.

      “I’ve got to get back in there,” Emily said. “You didn’t forget that we’re looking at dresses for the wedding this afternoon, did you?”

      Sis rolled her eyes and looked as if she’d been asked to stand before a firing squad. But Emily refused to be daunted, even when her sister glanced at the clock again as if it had suddenly become her enemy.

      “How could I forget, Emily?”

      “Good, then. We’ll leave at two.”

      Emily could hardly contain her excitement. They’d drop Andy off to stay with Beulah, and then Emily could enter that sacred territory she’d fantasized about ever since she met Mark Jones—the bridal shop.

      As she stepped back through the office door, she drew the sound of laughter and lazy chatter around her like a beloved shawl. But the Amen cobblers gave off such a scent of sorrow she wanted to weep.

      Quickly she skirted around them, wishing it was already two o’clock.

      * * *

      The clock on the wall had become Sweet Mama’s enemy. Every loud ticktock meant she was roaring closer to the edge of a looming precipice. Sis was saying, “Sweet Mama, are you sure you can lock up?” and she didn’t have the faintest idea what this fierce granddaughter of hers wanted her to put under lock and key.

      “Of course,” she said. “Go on and have fun. But don’t pick out a blue dress for me. If you do, I won’t wear it.”

      She’d been wearing blue on the four worst days of her life—the day in 1920 that jackass came home drunk and all hell broke loose, the day horrible Ethel Williams sank her claws into Sweet Mama’s son Steve and dragged him to the altar, the Christmas her son Bill and his wife, Margaret, had died in a car crash and the day one year later when she’d stood in the doorway of her café and faced down the KKK with her double-barreled shotgun.

      She was standing now in the café on a hot July day in 1969, waving cheerfully at her two departing granddaughters and her great-grandson, but she had the eerie sense of standing smack-dab in the middle of a brisk winter day in the forties with the double barrels of her shotgun pointed at a ragtag group of cowards. She could almost hear their voices, almost see the white hoods.

      Through the echo of time, she heard the bell over the café door ringing. Sweet Mama came back to herself in time to see her granddaughters departing. Now, what was it they’d told her to do?

      She sifted through a mind that felt like a sieve. Her memories were leaking through the holes so fast sometimes Sweet Mama felt as if she’d wake up one morning and see her past scattered around her on the floor.

      Something kept nagging at her, something she ought to remember. Suddenly, it came to her, and she hurried to the kitchen to get the notepad she kept in her voluminous purse.

      Sinking into a cane-bottomed chair that Beulah used when she was peeling potatoes, Sweet Mama thumbed through the pages. One was titled “Customers.” Tom and James Wilson were there along with Opal Clemson, the music teacher and Burt Larson, the mailman—every one of them described right down to the roots of their hair.

      Sweet Mama found herself shaking again, an old woman with a rapidly fading memory depending on a notebook to keep her straight and wondering how much longer she’d be able to hang on to her secret and fool her granddaughters.

      Beulah was another story. Nobody could fool her. When Sweet Mama had first started forgetting things she’d said, Beulah, my mind’s going and you’ve got to help me.

      Beulah didn’t ask any questions. That was her way. She just folded Sweet Mama in one of her wide hugs and whispered, I ain’t about to let Mr. Steve and that uppity Miss Ethel put you in a nursing home.

      That’s when the Remembering Book had been СКАЧАТЬ