I heard Cora’s thin voice raised to tell me to come in and forgot about Briana. Cora’s pink and green apartment is lovely. Her granddaughter bought it for her with money she made in ways Cora has never suspected. Cora was outside on the narrow terrace that runs the width of her apartment and affords a spectacular view of the bay. From her rattan peacock chair she could watch the constantly shifting blues, greens, lavenders, and grays of the bay under a clear blue sky. With natural vistas like Cora’s, people in Sarasota don’t need artwork on their walls.
With a weak smile, Cora watched me cross the apartment and step outside to the terrace. She was pale, with violet shadows under her eyes.
Alarmed, I said, “Are you okay?”
She waved a dismissive hand.
“I just did something stupid. Rose Tyler turned a hundred yesterday, and they always throw a big party for people on their hundredth. So I went down there to the ballroom, and nothing would do everybody but that I ate some of the cake. It was carrot cake, and I hate carrot cake. Always have. All that thick sweet stuff makes my teeth hurt. But I ate it anyway, because Rose will only be a hundred once, and I paid for it all night. Oh my, you wouldn’t believe! I won’t even tell you. I’m better now, but my stomach feels like it’s not sure it wants to stay with me. I wouldn’t be surprised if some other people had a problem with it, too. I think they’d let it sit out too long.”
Relieved that she only had an upset stomach, and intending to have a word with the staff about that cake, I held up the Walgreens bag.
“I got your hot water bottles. Stay put, I’ll fix them for you.”
Cora usually has the teakettle on low all the time, but today nothing was going on in her one-person kitchen. I ran water into the kettle, and while it heated I got out tea things. I wasn’t sure how hot the water for a hot water bottle should be, but I figured it shouldn’t be boiling, so I filled the bottles before the kettle sang. I didn’t fill them so much they bulged, just enough so the water made them firm. I poured the rest of the water from the kettle onto tea bags in Cora’s little Brown Betty teapot and put it and two cups and saucers on a tray. With the hot water bottles individually wrapped in clean dish towels and stacked on one end of the tray, I carried the whole business out to Cora on the terrace.
She said, “I’m sorry I don’t have any chocolate bread.”
I was sorry, too. Cora makes sinful chocolate bread in an old bread-making machine her granddaughter bought her. She won’t give her secret, but at some point in the bread-making process, she throws in bittersweet chips of chocolate. When the loaf is baked, it’s dark and dense, and the chocolate chips are still soft and oozing. It’s so good that I can’t eat it without whimpering a little bit.
I said, “I’m just glad your tummy is better.”
That was true, but as I arranged the towel-wrapped hot water bottles on Cora’s tummy and handed her a cup of tea, it occurred to me that the disappointment of no chocolate bread after I’d got used to it was almost as depressing as no sex after I’d got used to it. That’s probably why women with bad sex lives eat a lot of chocolate. If you can’t have one, you turn to the other.
Being deprived of sex and chocolate is the pits.
19
I took one of the peacock chairs and tried to watch Cora without looking like I was watching. Cora gets testy if she thinks people are hovering over her. Her cheeks got a little pinker as she sipped her tea, and her eyes brightened.
I said, “Do you know a woman in the building with big red hair? She wears tight leggings and high heels.”
Cora chuckled. “That would be Miss Taylor. She always comes down hard on the Miss, so all the men will know she’s available. Poor soul, she never has settled into her own skin.”
There it was, the thing that had reminded me of Briana.
“She was in the elevator with me. I sort of played a mean trick on her.”
Cora’s eyes brightened more when I told her how I’d given the impression I was a hooker going to a party of men on the sixth floor.
She said, “Oh my, that’s wonderful. Except now she’ll be hanging around on this floor looking for those men.”
“At least I saved that man in the elevator from her clutches.”
She rolled her eyes. “Men don’t have the sense of fishing worms. Some of the men here follow that woman around like geese chasing somebody spilling seed on the ground. He should have just told her no.”
I thought of Briana again. “I know a woman who reminds me a lot of Miss Taylor. She has something to do with fake merchandise.”
She said, “Everything is fake nowadays. Fake butter, fake cheese, fake crabmeat, fake sugar. We’ve got a new activities director here, and he’s got those colored contacts that are bigger than real eyes. His are bright turquoise. He looks like one of those people in that movie about giant people with a magic tree.”
“Avatar?”
“Just like those people! And he doesn’t seem to ever blink. He had a meeting where he told us all the new things he was planning for us, but I don’t think anybody heard what he said. We were all watching those big turquoise eyes.”
I said, “Maybe it’s not fake if everybody knows it’s fake.”
“It’s pitiful, is what it is. Everybody knows that man’s real eyes aren’t that big or that color, and everybody knows Miss Taylor isn’t a young woman, so it’s downright sad for them to think they’re fooling people.”
Thinking of all the fake people she knew had relaxed her face and removed the pain shadows from her eyes.
She said, “How’s that young man of yours? The one you let go off to New Orleans without you?”
I responded like a springing rat trap. “Cora, Ethan Crane asked me out.”
“Oh my, he’s a nice-looking man. Looks a lot like his grandfather. I always wanted to know his grandfather better. I think he liked me, too, but he was too educated for me.”
I’m always surprised to be reminded that old people are only old on the outside. Inside, they’re the same age they were when they first started life as adults.
I said, “But I’m still involved with Guidry. At least I’m supposed to be. I talked to Guidry this afternoon, and I didn’t tell him Ethan had asked me out. I meant to, but I just couldn’t.”
She turned eagle eyes on me. “Afraid to let one go before you decide if you want the other one?”
My face went hot. “It’s not like that!”
“That’s what it sounds like.”
It sounded like an awful way to treat both men, and I didn’t want to admit that Cora might be right.
She said, “Dixie, if you keep one foot in a boat and another on the dock, you’ll be stuck in one place forever. If you want the first man, then for heaven’s sake get your foot off the dock and go to New Orleans. If you can’t do that, then get your foot out of the boat and stay here.”
“I tell myself that all the time.”
She smiled, the zillions of tiny lines in her face glittering in the sunlight. “Looks to me like your head says one thing and your feet say something else. You moon around about how much you miss that young man, but you’re still here.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Things are only as complicated as we decide to make them. Do you want to go out with Ethan?”
I groaned. “Yes.”
“Then it’s simple.”
“I don’t want to hurt Guidry.”
“Has he come to see you since he’s been gone?”
I didn’t answer. She knew he hadn’t.
“You want to know what I think?”
I didn’t, not about this particular topic, but I knew I’d hear it anyway.