Chapter 16
Every small Texas town has at least two restaurants: Sonic and Dairy Queen.
Elijah was a fan of both and readily agreed that we should stop at Sonic.
He considered it a special treat to park outside, roll down the windows, and wait for food between colorful menus dividing parking spots instead of idling through the drive-through.
To pass the time as we waited for our food, I asked Elijah about how things were going at the day camp. This led to a ten-minute speech about his new friends. One of them, Jamieson, was enamored by Greek mythology and had brought books to excite Elijah as well.
Try as I might, I could not give my grandson my undivided attention. Without interference. What exactly did that mean? And which one of them had come up with that phrase?
“Grandma, do you know how many kids Zeus had?”
I managed to catch the question. “Oh, I don’t know. Ten?”
“No. A hundred!” Elijah’s eyes shone with wonder. “And his wife was not happy about it.”
“I wouldn’t be happy, either,” I replied, glad for the distraction. “That’s a lot of cooking and laundry. Who did he expect to watch all of them while he was out traveling across the world?”
His eyes furrowed. “Zeus didn’t travel.”
“No?”
“No. He’s, like, the big god in Greek mythology. He didn’t have to travel anywhere because he’s everywhere. Maybe you’re thinking about Odysseus. That guy traveled all over the Mediterranean Sea trying to get back home to his wife.”
“I stand corrected.”
“Grandma, do you believe in God?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then why don’t you go to church anymore?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
Back when I was a child, we didn’t ask grown-ups questions.
They told you what to do, you did it, and there was little conversation outside of those directives.
My father would sometimes entertain my inquisitions, much to my mother’s chagrin.
She wasn’t raising a daughter who didn’t know her place, which is to say she wasn’t raising a sassy, contrary little girl who made people feel uncomfortable.
“No man wants a disrespectful wife,” she’d say.
Elijah wasn’t being socialized as a girl, but he was still a child, and my mother would have cringed at him questioning me as well as the question itself.
Not because it was about God, but the fact that he’d wondered if I believed in God because I hadn’t taken the boy or myself to church.
I didn’t grow up in one of those families that practically lived in the sanctuary, but we were regular members with a decent attendance record and a huge white Bible with gold trim perched on the living room coffee table.
“I don’t know, Elijah. I guess I haven’t really thought about church much lately. Not since I moved.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But I do believe in God,” I clarified for the record.
“Cool. Me, too. Not Zeus god. Real God.”
“Cool,” I echoed his calm and collected nature.
I prayed he wouldn’t ask me to take him to church while in Robin Creek.
Me and God had…let’s call it a “falling-out” recently.
I still talked to Him in a thankful, reverent way.
I just didn’t like how He’d set up the whole entire world with women on the bottom, and it seemed everyone—Him included—was perfectly fine with us carrying the world on our shoulders.
From birthing babies to carrying water pails to being stuck in loveless marriages because most of the female-dominated careers are front line and low paying…
yeah. I had a chip on my shoulder. And going through the divorce wringer squeezed a lot out of me, including my faith in people, in the general goodness of humanity. Faith in myself.
Thankfully, Elijah didn’t say anything more about church or God or anything in that neighborhood.
When our food arrived, we decided the temperature outside was so pleasant, we might as well eat in the car. This was yet another childhood rule broken.
“Grandma, this food is not like Gabriella’s.”
I gasped. “I know, right? Yesterday, I ate lunch with a friend at a nice little café. Those people have nothing on Gabriella.”
“Man, I really need her to come home.”
“Me, too, EJ.”
“When are we gonna get the stove? She said she’s gonna show me how to make old-fashioned cinnamon toast.”
My mouth watered already. I could live on oven-made cinnamon toast, and I was certain Gabriella had a Blaxican twist that would take it to another level.
No matter what she and Lorenzo were up to in their no-outsider zone, I was certain of one thing: She was still cooking up masterpieces, which meant he was the beneficiary of all her good cooking while Elijah and I were reduced to fast food.
But I couldn’t “interfere.” I reminded myself that Gabriella was twenty-six.
Not a baby. Grown enough to have lived with her boyfriend before she met me, and grown enough to move out on her own and pay my rent.
Eating amazing food had been a bonus. So had her sweet laugh and her silly jokes, and the way she’d embraced Elijah like he was her little brother.
“We’ve gotta get that oven” slid out of my mouth.
“Let’s get it,” he said while chomping on his last french fries.
“Get what?”
“The oven. Let’s go buy it, and maybe Gabriella will come home,” he said.
“I don’t think—”
“You need an oven anyway, don’t you?”
I pulled the corners of my lips downward, pondering his words. “This is true.”
“So why not get the best one? Gabriella will be extra happy to come back, and you will have your oven.” Then he flashed me a ridiculously charming, full-mouthed smile with those oversize two front teeth typical of ten-year-olds, and bits of french fries clinging to his gums.
Made me laugh so hard I nearly choked on my onion rings. “Boy, you are something else.”
Next stop: McCloud’s. All the way there, I second-guessed myself as I worked the math in my head: my paycheck, the cost of the oven, the tax, delivery and installation. I could put it on my emergency credit card.
Is this an emergency? Not exactly. But I did need an oven, regardless. At least, that’s what Elijah said.
At McCloud’s, Celestia awaited us in all her stainless steel glory. Elijah and I stood in front of her again, taking in her beauty. She was even more attractive the second time around, with the bit of sunlight left in the sky streaming through the windows.
Joyce. It’s an oven. A box that heats up food, I told myself. But it was a lie, because Celestia was more than an oven. She was a shiny friend.
“Back already?” Leonna approached wearing a sneaky smile. She had us and she knew it.
“Yes. We’re going with the Celestia.”
“An excellent choice. Follow me.”
Elijah beamed like he’d just won the lottery, while my chest tightened with anxiety.
Who in their right mind would pay so much for an oven?
I wrestled with myself all the way to the checkout counter.
In my training at the recreation center, Susan told me about how they decided which classes to offer every year.
“We do market research to see what people sign up for so we don’t waste resources.
We have to skim at least a little profit to pay the bills around here,” she’d told me.
So if Celestia’s manufacturer went through all the trouble of making the machine, I couldn’t have been the only person in the world purchasing it. People like me, people like Gabriella, people all over the world were buying Celestias, right?
Leonna smiled nervously as she walked me through the buying process, reassuring me that I was making a smart, elevated purchase. “I have never seen one of these returned to the store.”
What’s her commission, anyway?
Since the oven came with a solid warranty, I passed on the store’s offer.
We talked through delivery options next.
Given my work schedule, I opted for a Friday-afternoon delivery.
All this conversation led to the final numbers and me whipping out the credit card and inserting the chipped side into the reader.
I had a flashback of the first time Eric and I purchased a luxury vehicle.
A BMW. I could hardly believe we were signing our names to the papers, about to spend the next four years of our lives paying a car note that was half the cost of our monthly mortgage.
But Eric had insisted that with his new promotion came new lunch meetings and golf appointments, and he needed to look the part of a middle manager. “Live a little, Joyce.”
Signing the receipt for Celestia didn’t feel like living. It felt like smothering. I took deep breaths as wrote my name with the stylus on the tiny screen and clicked “OK.”
“We’re all settled, Miss Hicks,” Leonna chirped.
Hicks? Oh, yes. I am Hicks again. I’d gotten the new credit card using my maiden name. Which meant I was the only one responsible for this bill. Not Gabriella, not Elijah. What have I done?
“Thank you,” I squeaked as I took the foot-long receipt from her and rolled it into my wallet. Suddenly, the food from Sonic wasn’t setting so well in my stomach.
“The delivery team will give you a call Thursday to confirm the time. If you need anything between now and then, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. I work most weekdays from twelve to close.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Grandma, we did it!” Elijah squealed.
“Yes. We sure did.”
The first thing I did when we got home was take two pink antacid pills.
Calmed my stomach. I had written a large check to the contractor when they worked on this house, but that was all in the name of profit.
It made sense to turn Grandma Jewel’s house into a duplex, especially given the housing market.
Folks were scrambling for affordable housing all over the country.
I could make money and help somebody else at the same time if I invested in a remodel.
But an overpriced oven? In my circumstances?
My stomach rumbled again. I needed to stop worrying about Celestia before I made myself sick.
I gave Elijah permission to run out to play with his neighborhood friends before it got too dark, then I lay on the couch to practice more deep breathing and regulate my nervous system. Goodness gracious. To date, I had not experienced a panic attack, and I had no desire to.
I pulled myself off the couch and gave my body a big head-to-toe stretch. This oven, this house, my divorced status all fell under the “everything” umbrella. I needed to keep moving forward.
So I took the next step that made sense. I called my previous contractor—no more local referrals, thank you—to ask about resuming the work, starting with the oven. I got his voicemail and left a message.
Then I washed my face in the bathroom, a final step in reclaiming my sanity for the day. I returned to the kitchen and saw that I’d missed his call, presumably due to the sound of me running water in the sink.
“Miss Hicks, this is Jerry with Southern Sons Remodeling. I got your message about the oven installation Friday. I’m afraid that won’t be possible to resume unless you’ve had someone else take care of the numerous items I shared in my last report.
I’m headed out to an event with my family tonight.
You can reach me in the morning. Take care, now. ”
So much for today’s sanity.