EPILOGUE SUNDAY, 25 JUNE 1950
Epilogue
Cora opened the oven door to check on the cornbread, sticking it with a toothpick. When it came out dry, she slipped potholders over her hands and slid the baking tray out of the oven.
‘Do we have any more serving spoons?’ Lee asked, wheeling himself into the kitchen from the backyard, where the whole neighborhood had gathered.
Cora rummaged in a drawer and handed him three, then followed him outside, past Loretta and Momma swapping coleslaw recipes, past Deacon Gray and Uncle Drew arguing baseball stats, and past Pastor Glen and Patsy, with her pregnant belly, talking to Benny, the guest of honor and the reason for the late June cook-out in the sweltering heat.
Cora set the cornbread next to Aunt Teen’s deviled crabs and home-made hot sauce on the long food table and came to stand beside her brother.
On leave from his army posting halfway around the world, Benny still looked every bit the soldier, standing with his legs wide, his chest high, his back straight.
‘I’ve been reading things are getting pretty tense for you in Korea with the Soviet Union meddling in,’ Pastor Glen said.
‘Politics are above my pay grade,’ said Benny, glancing at his watch. ‘All I know is the Communists aren’t welcome below the thirty-eighth parallel, and we make sure they know it.’
‘Here you go, baby,’ Dr Allen George said, coming up to the little cluster. ‘Brought you a Coca-Cola.’
‘That’s sweet of you, sugar, but lately,’ Patsy flashed a small frown at her husband, ‘soda pop gives me heartburn.’ She pulled at her shirt, as if she could hide her over-large belly.
‘Oh, I forgot,’ he said, glancing at her stomach, then at Cora. The doctors didn’t think Lee and Cora could have children, and no one wanted to remind them of it. Patsy’s husband looked flustered and a touch ridiculous holding two bottles.
‘I’ll drink it,’ said Cora. She took the Coke from him and filled her mouth with the bubbly sweetness that tasted of satisfaction. ‘Thanks, Doc.’
Cora couldn’t get used to calling him Allen after he’d been Dr George for all those months in the hospital tending Lee. Patsy had pestered him so often about Lee’s care that they’d wound up talking three, four, five times a day.
‘She drove me crazy in all the best ways,’ he told Cora later.
It had been Dr George who broke it to them that they probably wouldn’t be able to have children, but then it was also Dr George who’d told them Lee might never walk again. Now, after two years of hard work and physical training, he could stand up and slide his feet a few inches.
Cora nudged Patsy’s shoulder and laid a hand on her belly. She didn’t want her cousin to feel she had to hide her joy. ‘Who would have thought you’d be the first out of all of us to have a baby?’
Patsy laid her hand on Cora’s and looked over at Benny, who shook his head in a tight, narrow movement that was trying to be subtle.
‘What?’
Patsy bit her lip and looked guilty.
‘Nothing,’ said Benny.
‘No, it’s definitely something,’ Cora said. She squeezed Patsy’s arm. ‘Tell me.’
Patsy crinkled her face. ‘We’re the second,’ she said, slow and cautious, like testing for riptide. ‘Roscoe just had a little boy. He named him Jasper.’
Benny and Patsy looked at her like she might break apart from hearing about babies she may never get to have, but when she took stock of her emotions, she realized she felt glad for Roscoe. She wanted him to be happy. ‘That’s good news,’ she said. ‘Truly.’
‘Brother Lee,’ Pastor Glen said, as Lee came to join the group. ‘Nice to see you looking so well. I’ve been praying for you.’
Pastor Glen gave God the credit for Lee’s progress, since it had started after the one and only time he’d set foot into a church in order to marry Cora, making an honest woman of her, as Pastor Glen said, and silencing the Saints of Mercy gossip train that condemned their unmarried cohabitation.
When Lee stood for the first time a few weeks after the ceremony, Pastor Glen declared him Mangrove Bay’s own lame-can-walk miracle man, and the rest of the church had no choice but to accept him as one of God’s sheep, even if Lee didn’t care to be in the flock.
‘Are you going to play something for us today, Brother Lee?’
Lee’s mouth twitched in a half-smile. ‘If Cora wants me to play, I will.’
‘Well, I always want you to play,’ she said. She bent down and kissed him, still getting a thrill from how good it felt to do that in front of everyone.
‘Was that a knock?’ Benny asked.
‘I’ll check,’ said Cora, ducking into the house to find that no one new had arrived. She grabbed Lee’s saxophone and brought it out to him with a wink.
Lee wheeled himself to the center of the lawn under the orange tree he’d planted for her soon after they’d moved in. ‘We have our own place now, and I believe I promised you an orange tree,’ he’d said when he got it for her.
He adjusted his saxophone and began to play, easing smooth, buttery notes out of his instrument, deep and soul-stirring.
It sounded like his music had seen some things, done some things, survived some things, but it also sounded like it was going places.
It made you want to put down what you were doing and come along for the ride.
He made the notes dance, and when he settled them down and hushed them still, the church folks clapped and cheered. Mrs Hammond even kissed his cheek.
He used to say he didn’t care what people thought of him, he only cared that they’d think badly of Cora for being with him, but seeing him now, wrapped in acceptance, she knew different.
You can live without a community, but you can’t thrive.
Without the side looks and muttered tuts and clutched purses, Lee had unclenched inside, until his sharp edges smoothed to sunshine.
She’d never known him so easy in his own skin, even with the wheelchair.
The bell rang and Benny hurried to the door.
Exchanging a look with Lee, Cora followed her brother.
Most people would have come around the side of the house to the back, where anyone could hear the party was.
That was how she knew, even before Benny opened the door, who they’d find on the other side.
‘You came,’ Benny said in a rush of breath.
Gloria nodded, blinking hard, looking nervous and clutching a Key lime pie, as Cora gaped at her, genuinely surprised. It was one thing to write a few letters, but a white woman showing up to a colored folks’ cook-out to see a man? That was all kinds of a statement.
Benny had called her the day he arrived home on leave asking her to come, and while she hadn’t said she would, she also hadn’t said she wouldn’t. Cora would have sworn up and down that no way would she actually turn up.
Smoothing her face into something more welcoming than a shocked stare, Cora said, ‘Hi,’ trying to sound light. ‘Come on in. I’ve heard so much about you, I almost feel like I already know you.’
Gloria hesitated in the doorway and blew out a long breath.
‘It’s okay,’ said Benny. ‘We’ll be okay.’ He put a hand on her elbow and gave her a nod of encouragement.
‘Is that for me?’ Cora said. ‘It looks delicious.’
‘It’s my sister-in-law’s recipe.’ She glanced at Benny. ‘I remember you liked it.’
Cora took the pie and Benny reached for Gloria’s hands.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said.
‘You too.’
When she stepped inside, he folded her into a hug, and she slipped her arms around him, drawing him close.
‘You’re sure it’s okay that I came?’ she said.
‘It’s more than okay.’
The soft ache in his voice spoke of longing and need, and the relief in her sigh told Cora all she needed to know about what they felt for each other.
Cora stepped away giving them a moment to themselves and carried Gloria’s dessert to the food table, cutting herself a slice. The tart lime and the sugary sweetness played on her tongue in a complementary contrast. A celebration of opposites.
In the yard, a sea of neighbors talked and laughed. Cora searched for Lee and found him speaking to Momma Mae, who was rummaging in her large bag.
‘I brought this for you to play,’ Momma Mae was saying to Lee, when she reached them. The woman pulled Jasper’s trumpet out of her quilted sack and handed it to him. ‘I think he would have wanted that.’
Lee turned it over in his hands, running his fingers across the stops. He adjusted the mouthpiece and fit it to his lips. And then he played, like only Lee could, painting the sky with feelings. The trumpet had never been his best instrument, but all the same, it sounded just right.