Chapter 5 #2
We hurried up the porch steps, pausing to catch our breath and take off our wet jackets. “If I’d known you were coming this morning I would have caught a ride,” I said. “I had to walk my bike all the way from Canal Street, and I’m soaked through to the bone. I might have a touch of hypothermia.”
Jolene took in my old high school sweatshirt, which was layered over two sweaters, both older than the sweatshirt and both with a fair share of moth holes.
“Bless your heart, Nola. I’m happy you consider us such good friends that you didn’t feel the need to dress up for me.
” Pushing open the front door, she added, “I had to drive to Metairie first thing to pick up these fabric samples, or I would have offered.” Jolene shook out her umbrella and leaned it against the house as I removed my headband and placed it carefully on one of the two rocking chairs I’d painted to match the front door.
I followed Jolene inside, noticing her perfect and somehow completely dry hair. “At the very least I could have saved you from looking like a clown who escaped from the circus,” she said.
“Please notice that my boots match my jacket.” We both looked down at the small puddle around my borrowed yellow boots, a small wet pool spreading on the tarp placed in front of the door to protect the wide-plank wooden floors that I had painstakingly hand sanded and stained.
I was spared another bless your heart by the front door’s opening, revealing Jaxson carrying his camera. He closed the door and grimaced. “Beau’s on the way. It seems either a water pipe has burst or part of the new roof patch has failed. Or both. Don’t worry—we’ll figure it out and get it fixed.”
I frowned. “Don’t worry? I can literally hear my bank account hemorrhaging. Something tells me that neither one of these disasters is in my renovation budget. And why did Beau call you and not me?”
“Because he didn’t want you to get upset,” Jolene and Jaxson said in unison.
“Upset?” I raised my voice to be heard over the pounding rain and the hammering that had started on the roof above us. “Why would I be upset?” I shouted.
Jolene gently took my elbow. “Let’s go sit in the kitchen, where we can talk.
” She led me to the back of the house, to the only room that looked as if any work had actually been done to it.
The hand-tiled backsplash that I had copied from a picture in the Preservation Resource Center’s member magazine, Preservation in Print, was my pride and joy, despite its current position, floating in the middle of the wall.
Cabinets that I’d helped sand by hand and stain sat beneath the tiles, but there were no countertops yet, as Jolene was currently working on getting a steep discount from a local stone supplier.
If I weren’t so broke, I would have told her to get them at any cost. I needed just one thing to be settled in my life so I could stop feeling as if I were stranded on a raft out at sea, with only the barest glimpse of land to offer encouragement.
A circa-1920s porcelain-enameled-top table that Trevor had found in a dumpster stood in the center of the floor, with an assortment of metal and vinyl-upholstered folding chairs settled around it.
The table was nicked and scarred, but Trevor promised me that he’d work his “Trevor Transformation” magic on it.
I couldn’t wait to see what he’d do with it, and I could only hope that I could afford it.
Jolene walked to the table, where Jaxson waited to push in her chair. Being too agitated to sit, I paced the room as my panic grew with each bang on the roof.
Jaxson placed his camera on the table before sitting. “In answer to your question, Beau called me to take pictures of the damage, since I’m the official renovation photographer. If there’s something any of the contractors did wrong, we need to document it so they can make it right.”
“But it’s my house! He should have called me first.”
Jaxson nodded. “I agree. But”—he shifted uncomfortably in his chair—“he said you were a little…confrontational in your last discussion, and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with you right now.”
“Not in the mood…” I repeated, just as a loud bang sounded from the top of the house, and what appeared to be an entire section of roof tiles fell past the kitchen window to the small backyard.
I turned my back to the window, unwilling to witness any further destruction of my dream that refused to come to fruition despite my best efforts.
“Sometimes what we think is the worst that can happen turns out to be the best.” Jolene smiled brightly, and if I didn’t like her so much I might have wanted to slap her into next week—another helpful phrase I’d learned from her.
“How so?” I asked, silently congratulating myself for keeping my voice calm.
“Well, now you can come with me to Mississippi for Thanksgiving, since it appears that we still have a ways to go before the finishing touches—unless you think you can get a new roof installed before the holiday.”
“Wait—you’re going to Mississippi for Thanksgiving?” Jaxson smacked his hands on the table.
“Um, I haven’t decided,” I said. “I can’t go home to Charleston, so I was planning on staying here, but Jolene wants me to go to Mississippi with her.”
Jolene looked at Jaxson for the first time, making me aware that she’d been avoiding eye contact with him. Not that I blamed her. Unrequited love was painful to witness. “My grandmama has a car for her. All Nola has to do is pick it up and drive it to New Orleans. It’s a vintage Mustang.”
“Wow!” Jaxson said, his expression mimicking Trevor’s when I’d told him about the car.
“Actually, this might be serendipity. I need to interview the brother and aunt of one of my clients, and they’re unable to travel, so I said I’d go down to talk to them the week of Thanksgiving, since I’m apparently free.
My parents, for the first time in their lives, have decided they want to go away for Thanksgiving and have booked a Caribbean cruise for just the two of them.
And Carly’s family is hosting a huge family event at their beach house in Alys Beach, in the Florida panhandle, but I’m not invited.
It’s strictly family, and since Carly and I aren’t married yet, I’m out. ”
He shrugged, obviously not too upset about his exclusion. “I don’t really mind. I like her parents, but I think an entire week with them might be a challenge. Plus I’ve got to do this interview, so it all works out, right?”
I could almost hear Jolene’s mind spinning like a pinwheel in a hurricane.
“That’s perfect!” she said. “Because I know Nola wouldn’t be comfortable driving the car by herself, so you could ride with her back to New Orleans.
I would do it and let you drive Bubba, but Bubba can be temperamental and responds best to me.
And I know Mama will be thrilled to have you both for the holiday. ”
With a heavy sense of resignation, I sat down at the table, the metal chair squeaking beneath me.
“We really need to find new kitchen chairs,” Jolene said with a frown. “Every time someone sits, it’s like a baby pig squealing for his mama.”
I leaned on the table, my chin in my hands.
“I haven’t committed to going to Mississippi—yet,” I said.
“I’m fine staying here and eating a turkey sandwich while catching up on paperwork, and I’d really like to be here fixing things.
I don’t want this to be like Jack and Melanie’s house, where the renovations just go on and on. ”
Jaxson gave me a sympathetic smile. “I hate to break it to you, Nola, but owning an old house is—”
“Like digging a hole and emptying your bank accounts into it,” I finished, repeating something my stepmother had said often ever since I’d known her—not that it had stopped me from falling in love with old houses, because, despite Melanie’s constant disparagement of her historic home, we both understood that an old house was much more than just brick and mortar.
It was a piece of history you could hold in your hand, a time capsule filled with memories that connected different generations of people who’d lived between its walls.
All while at the same time being a sick infatuation with something that could never love you back with equal intensity.
“I was going to say it’s like a long-term marriage,” Jaxson said.
“For better and for worse. And sometimes the worse happens more and seems to last longer than the better. So yeah, I get it. I don’t think it’s possible to live in a place like New Orleans without that love of historic spaces that we instinctively get with our first breath.
Which is why I’m saying you should go to Mississippi for Thanksgiving.
It’s only for four days, right? Let Thibaut and Jorge figure out what to do here, and the break will give you and Jolene time to do some creative brainstorming about making the house stunning. ”
“Absolutely,” Jolene said, a little too enthusiastically.
“There’s room in Bubba’s trunk for all my fabric and paint samples.
And don’t forget that Mama and Grandmama can give us expert advice.
I’m not too proud to say that my grandmama’s funeral home is the most beautifully decorated funeral home in the entire state of Mississippi. ”
“Right. You’ve said that before, and I will take it under consideration, but there’s still so much to be done before the house-blessing party in January.” Turning to Jaxson, I said, “Jolene’s already made the menu and planned the decorations, so I need to make sure the house is ready.”
“Well, my brother Luke, the priest, is still planning on invoking the house blessing, so if God and Jolene both have it on their calendars, it will happen.”
It appeared as if Jolene might hyperventilate at the thought of spending the holiday with Jaxson, but she was saved the humiliation by the sound of the front door opening and Beau bellowing my name.