Orange Blossom Special Page 2

  “What’s my incentive for going along with this harebrained scheme?” Edie asked. She wouldn’t mind traveling with Walter and Peyton. Janice, however? She didn’t want to spend fifteen minutes in a car with Janice, much less take a trip across the state with her.

  Ben grinned. “He said you’d ask that question. He also said you’d go along with it out of the goodness of your heart.”

  Edie stabbed her pineapple cake and crammed a huge bite into her mouth. She wasn’t feeling much “goodness in her heart” at the moment. Eating cake was better than giving in to the urge to stab something else, though. Or someone.

  “He might’ve mentioned something about how you’d be able to take that trip to Paris.”

  Edie’s fork hit her plate, and she tried hard to swallow over the lump in her throat. She’d given Jerome such grief over his unwillingness to fly. Now he was telling her to go on without him.

  She thought of her bottle of pills. They’d still be there after a trip to Paris.

  “He suggested you might want to sell the Orange Blossom Special to help pay for the trip,” Ben added.

  Damn straight, I’m going to sell that hunk of junk.

  “Is the—Orange Blossom Special—a stick shift? I can’t drive a stick shift,” Peyton blurted.

  Bless her heart. She was trying so hard to get out of this. If her parents caught wind of it, they’d make her go and then try to take the money for themselves. Edie hoped Jerome had written stipulations for that scholarship in such a way that they couldn’t.

  “I can teach you how,” Walter said. “It’s not that hard.”

  “Thanks,” she said, but she still looked too green around the edges to exude any real gratitude.

  Edie set her fork down on her plate. “Well, that seems to be all settled, then. Thank you, Mr. Little.”

  “Miss Edie,” he said as he gathered up his belongings.

  “When are we supposed to make this trip?” Janice said, her lips pursed as though she’d just eaten a lemon. She hadn’t touched her piece of pineapple cake, either. It shouldn’t have bothered Edie so much, but it did. Oh, it rankled. Never once had Janice tasted one of Edie’s desserts.

  “I’d recommend the Vanderbilt game,” Ben said. “I didn’t want to mention it yet, because I don’t know for sure, but I have a friend who could possibly get you some tickets. It’d be in the Vanderbilt section, but they would be good seats. Oh, and I do have to warn you that scattering those ashes could be considered trespassing.”

  “Will you come bail us out, since it’s for a noble cause?” Edie asked, only half-kidding.

  Ben shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other. “I’m afraid this is rather like Mission: Impossible, and I will have to disavow any knowledge of your actions other than to say that I read the will.”

  Edie sighed. It was just like Jerome to send them all on an impossible mission. She could almost hear him humming the theme song.

  Chapter 2

  By the Thursday before the Tennessee–Vanderbilt game, Janice had reconciled herself to the fact that she was about to drive across the state with her brother’s dead ashes in an ancient hearse painted orange and white. She wasn’t excited about sharing the backseat with Edie, however.

  Money-grubbing heifer.

  Okay, so Edie wasn’t after Jerome’s money. Janice knew better, but it had become a habit over the years.

  For the life of her, she’d never been able to see what her brother had seen in that stick-figured, knock-kneed, sharp-tongued woman who obviously didn’t want children. He’d met her at the University of Tennessee and then dragged her all the way across the state to torment them all.

  He should’ve sent her back up North where she belonged.

  Now, Janice. Obviously there was something he liked about her.

  One day, a couple of years after he and Edie had married, Jerome had been over to fix her air conditioner. He took a long swig of tea and looked her dead in the eye. “I don’t know why you have to give Edie such a hard time. You’d like her if you ever got to know her.”

  She snorted. All these years later, and she still didn’t know how to get to know her sister-in-law. She was a Yankee, for starters. Claimed she came from Pennsylvania, but she’d never once talked about who her mama and daddy were. Then there was the fact that Edie had actually traveled. Janice had never been any farther than Memphis. They couldn’t talk children because Edie thought she was too good to have any, all self-righteous women’s libber. Heck, if they were to ever argue about it, Janice would’ve become tongue-tied because she never went to college and didn’t have any of Edie’s fancy words. Best she could tell, she’d never needed them, either.

  “Sissy,” Jerome had said, using his old pet name. “Can’t you try to be a little nicer?”

  So she’d tried at the very next holiday, which happened to be a family picnic for Labor Day. Janice had volunteered to make the potato salad, and Edie took the bowl from her, saying, “Oh!”

  “Oh, what?’ Janice said suspiciously.

  “I’m used to potato salad being warm,” Edie said.

  Well, here in the South, it’s cold,” she’d snapped.

  In retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have snapped at Edie. She’d since learned that there was a German potato salad that was served warm, but at the time it had felt as though Edie was looking for one more thing to criticize. At the beginning, she’d clipped her words really closely, too, but Janice had to admit that Edie’s accent was softer and slower, rounder.

  Janice studied herself in the bathroom mirror. Softer, slower, and rounder. She could be talking about herself. She turned sideways and tried to suck in her gut, but the control-top panty hose was doing all it could do. For heaven’s sake, she didn’t know what to wear to all of these places they were going. She would’ve asked Harvey, but he didn’t know any better than she did.

  She patted the bleach-blond locks she’d shellacked into place. All she needed to do now was touch up her lipstick, and she’d be as ready for this trip as she could be.

  “Are you almost done in there?” Edie asked from the other side of the door. “I’d like to get started before sundown, and we all need to pee before we start on this crazy trip.”

  So rude.

  So crude.

  Janice blotted her lipstick and waited a few seconds more, just to irritate her sister-in-law.

  “About time,” Edie grumbled as she brushed past Janice wearing elastic-waistband slacks and a plain shirt. Janice felt a twinge of guilt when she noticed both Peyton and Walter were waiting in the hall, as well. Nah. They could take it. They had those young bladders.

  Ten minutes later, they all stood in the driveway looking at the infamous Orange Blossom Special. The heavy, old-fashioned hearse was a late-fifties model Cadillac, complete with fins. Jerome had bought it from Dec Anderson a few months before and then had it painted in an orange-and-white-checkerboard pattern.

  “Look at this,” he’d said excitedly when he got it back from the detailers, “You have plenty of room for your grill, your cooler, and your luggage—and you can still fit five people in the two front seats. It’s a genius idea for tailgating.”

  Edie and Janice had been listening to this speech together, and Edie had mumbled something about how it was his money if he wanted to spend it that way.

  “Heck, I think you could get all that in there and still have room to take a nap!”

  Janice shuddered at the memory of his saying that. Didn’t he realize that most passengers of the old vehicle had been on their way to a dirt nap? Her brother had always been turned a little different.

  “Well, the day’s not getting any longer,” Edie said, as she made for the driver’s seat. “Let’s get started.”

  “Oh no,” Janice heard herself say. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. Hand those keys over to one of the kids.”

  “Fine. Shotgun.”

  “Miss Edie, ma’am? I sometimes get carsick in the b
ackseat,” Peyton said.

  “Okay, then. Kiddies up front. Biddies in the back.”

  Janice started to object to being called a biddie, but Edie had already slid into her seat behind the driver.

  “Pitch me the keys,” Walter said.

  “Why?” Peyton held the keys to her chest.

  “I’m driving.”

  “Why do you get to drive first?” Peyton asked. “It’s because you’re the one with the penis, isn’t it?”

  “No, I thought I was being nice and chivalrous,” Walter said, “but if you want to drive this old boat so badly, then you go to it.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  “Both of you get your cute little butts into the hearse and get this trip started,” Edie said. “The sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll get done.”

  Janice huffed, but she slid behind Walter, and Peyton rounded the car to take the wheel. She laid her arm on the armrest with a sigh, only to realize it wasn’t the armrest. No, Edie had belted the Carmen Miranda cookie jar into the middle seat. Fitting, since Jerome was now back in the same spot as he was when he was alive: centered between the two of them.

  Chapter 3

  Peyton’s first thought was, OMG, I’m driving a hearse. Her heart pounded against her rib cage, and she wondered if she could ever tell the other folks in the car why she’d wanted to drive. She felt really bad about being mean to Walter. He’d blushed when she said it was because he was the one with the penis, and she could kick herself because she liked him. Maybe, she even liked him, liked him. She didn’t know why she’d said it, other than the panic she’d felt at having to sit in the car. She’d thought that maybe, just maybe, driving would distract her enough to keep her from freaking out.

  When she was little bitty, her grandma had passed away after falling asleep in her recliner while watching Wheel of Fortune, and Peyton had been too young to know how to call her parents. She had, however, known to call 911. The police officers and firemen had all been so nice to her and complimented her on being so smart as to call them, but then there was a fire two blocks over and a bad wreck on the highway. They left her in the care of Hollis Anderson because no one could find her parents and her grandma hadn’t needed the ambulance—that much was clear.

  She remembered sitting in the middle seat of the hearse, sneaking glances over her shoulder at the white-shrouded stretcher where her grandma lay under the sheet. Every now and again, the stretcher would lurch, making creaking and clicking noises that made her jump. She was too young to sit in the front seat with Mr. Anderson, who seemed to be carrying on a conversation with someone she couldn’t see, and she really hated sitting in the middle by herself.

  When they got to the funeral home, Mr. Anderson took her by the hand and led her to the kitchen, where Miss Caroline had found some cookies and a Sprite for her. At first, she’d thought she wouldn’t be able to swallow, but they tasted very good, and it gave her something to do other than think about how her grandma was gone.

  Then Mr. Anderson had come back and told her that her grandma had said to tell her that she was a very good girl and that she was sorry to have left her. Then he’d told her that Grandma had said, “Peyton May, I want you to make something of yourself. Don’t fritter away your life the way your mother has.”

  Peyton had always wondered how Mr. Anderson could’ve possibly known that her grandma called her Peyton May. It had been their little secret, and her grandma was the only person she allowed to use her middle name. Anytime her mother tried to, Peyton would wait until the woman was high and then steal money from the cigar box in the closet or cut up the curtains.

  She was too old to cut up curtains now. That was for sure.

  Peyton’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror, and to the cookie jar where Mr. Jerome’s ashes sat. She missed Mr. Jerome. He’d been so funny and so smart about football. Him and Miss Edie had a house that actually smelled nice, and they always had plenty of food. She didn’t want to think about how Mr. Jerome was gone and Miss Edie was already older than her grandma had been. Peyton tried to swallow the lump in her throat. What was she supposed to do when the inevitable happened to Miss Edie?

  “Peyton, dear. I could really use a break to, ah, powder my nose,” Miss Janice said.

  “You didn’t go back at the house, did you?” Miss Edie asked. “You spent all your time in there primping, and I don’t remember hearing a flush.”

  Miss Janice sighed. “Fine. I forgot. What about that Cracker Barrel over there? The one in Jefferson has nice restrooms, and maybe this one will, too.”

  Peyton guided the hearse down the exit. They’d barely been on the road for an hour.

  “All right, this time everyone pees,” Miss Edie said in her schoolteacher voice. “Young bladder, old bladder, I don’t care. ‘Pee while you can’ will be our mantra for this trip. Got it?”

  Miss Janice wrinkled her nose, but everyone left the car and did what Miss Edie said. Afterward, Peyton considered buying a Coke in a glass bottle, but she was afraid to have to pee before anyone else, so she went out on the porch instead. Walter joined her.

  “I’m sorry for how I acted earlier,” she said. “Hearses make me nervous.”

  Why had she said that?

  “Why do hearses make you nervous?” Walter asked.

  She shrugged, not ready to tell her story. “You can drive if you want to.”

  His head cocked to one side, he studied her as if seeing her for the first time. He’d generally ignored her when they watched football together with Mr. Jerome. He opened his mouth as though about to press her, but Miss Edie and Miss Janice emerged.

  “Let’s go, kids! Time is money,” Miss Eddie said.

  Peyton offered the keys to Walter, but he shook his head.

  About an hour later, she would wish she’d insisted that he drive.

  * * *

  “Peyton, darling. I really need to get something to drink. I’m parched,” Miss Janice said.

  “Or you have to pee again,” Miss Edie said under her breath.

  “Do you have to be so crude?”

  “That’s not crude. I could show you crude.”

  “Look, if you’d brought three children into this world, you’d be having trouble with your bladder, too.”

  “Oh fine. Use that as an excuse again, why don’t you?”

  “Stop it!” Peyton jerked the car off the interstate—and something popped? Cracked? She wasn’t sure what was happening. She applied the brakes and the old boat slowed down, but panic set in as she realized that turning the steering wheel did nothing. She yanked to the left and then to the right. Then she let the steering wheel go all the way around. She barely stopped at the end of the ramp to let a pickup pass, then let the Caddy float at an odd angle into the parking lot of a sketchy-looking gas station.

  “What the heck was that?” Miss Edie asked.

  Peyton couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks. “I think I broke it.”

  “Broke it?”

  “I think I broke the steering wheel, but I didn’t mean to!” Peyton said with a hiccup. She wasn’t going to cry. Nope. She was going to get out of this car and find a place to sit until she could get herself together.

  Before she could run away, though, Miss Janice grabbed her arm. “I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose. This is an old car. If you’ll tell us what’s wrong, we can fix it.”

  Her shoulders shook, and she couldn’t make the words come out.

  “It’s okay.” Walter pried the keys from her hand. She didn’t realize they’d been cutting into her palm until he took them away from her.

  Miss Janice led her away from the car to lean against the dingy wall by a rusted ice machine. She patted Peyton’s shoulder like her grandmother used to do when she was little. “It’s okay. I’m sure Edie would tell you to dry those tears, but sometimes you have to let them out. It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

  “I—I—don’t like hearses,” Peyton said.
>
  “Your grandmother,” Miss Janice said softly. “I had forgotten all about that.”

  “You knew?”

  “Oh honey. Everyone knew. Your mama was so strung out that no one could find you, and some folks were talking about getting Child Protective Services to take you away from her, because it had to have been so awful to have to ride to a strange place with a strange person with you being such a little thing. How old were you? Three?”

  “I was four,” Peyton said. It was easier to breathe. Her secret wasn’t such a secret, and that was more of a relief than she would’ve imagined.

  “You’re a very brave girl for going along with this. It’s a lot of money that I know you can use, but you’re very brave.”

  Peyton’s chest puffed out. She couldn’t remember any time in her life when someone had called her brave.

  “Now, I really do need to use the facilities. Do you think you’ll be okay?”

  Peyton swiped at the last of her tears and nodded. She could do this. She could finish this trip and maybe not waste her life. She’d forgotten about Mr. Anderson’s words to her, words that she was supposed to believe had come from her grandmother. She’d messed up a lot in school, but she could still do this. She could get back into that hearse and finish this trip so she could get out of Ellery and go to school and make something of herself.

  Maybe.

  Chapter 4

  Walter couldn’t tell for the life of him what was wrong with the car, but he did feel nervous being alone with Aunt Edie. She always seemed so . . . severe. Kinda like Professor McGonagall in those Harry Potter movies.

  “I said, what do you think is wrong with the old girl?”

  “Um, I don’t know, Aunt Edie.”

  “Jerome would’ve known,” she muttered.

  “Peyton said something about the steering. How about I start the car and try to turn the wheel? You can tell me if the tires turn.”