Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,72
What happened out there?
As I stand outside the bar among the ostracized smokers, it hits me. I’ve been as much a party to the Wake mythology as everyone else. They thought I was a whore; I became someone’s mistress. They thought I was a deadbeat; I showed up at Merry Carole’s door with nothing.
I’ve lived my life based on what “they” think. Who are they? They don’t love me. They don’t know me. And they sure as shit don’t care about what happens to me. Yet every decision involves thinking about what the judgmental and anonymous “they” would think.
What would they do if I stopped caring what they think?
“You ready?” Hudson asks, greeting me with another kiss. I can’t help but let him, finally soaking up the freedom of it all.
“Yeah,” I say, as we finally break apart. He takes my hand and we start walking back to his bed and breakfast.
“The thing about this B and B is, they have—,” Hudson says, as we approach my car.
“It’s not going to happen,” I say. It’s time to stop allowing others to cast me as the whore and/or the deadbeat. And it has to start right now. Despite wanting to go up into that bed and breakfast and do profoundly unadorable things with Hudson, I can’t. I need to start believing I’m worthy of being courted.
“Ever?” Ever. My brain sputters over Everett’s pet name. I quickly collect myself.
“We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“I don’t know if you’re being purposely obtuse or just being a dick,” Hudson says, kissing me again.
“Probably a combination,” I say, unlocking my car door and climbing inside. He slams my door shut. I reach over my shoulder for my seat belt as I start the car.
“New York plates, huh?” he says as I roll down my window.
“Yep,” I say.
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” he says, with a raised eyebrow. Hudson stands back from the car and steps out on the empty street. I give him a wave and pull out into the night.
I drive the few minutes home and find myself at that red blinking light at the edge of North Star without really knowing how I got there. The last meal. Hudson. Epiphanies about playing my part and being faithful to a man who was never faithful to me. I’m officially a zombie at this point. I pull down Merry Carole’s driveway, pull my now empty canvas bags out of the hatch, lock my car, and make my way down the manicured pathway, past Cal’s glorious sign and into the darkened house.
I walk through the dark and empty house to my bedroom. I push open my bedroom door and flick on the light. I put the piece of paper with my next last meal written on it on top of my dresser and decide to keep it folded. Closed. I pull my pajamas out of the dresser and begin to undress. The air-conditioning clicks on and the clunk of the fan startles me. I take a deep breath and continue undressing. Focus on the food. Think about the next meal and envision the day, cooking perfection. Tamales. Cabrito. Churros. I walk over to my dresser, unfold the little piece of paper, and start scrawling ideas I have about the meal. I’ll serve the churro with a Mexican hot chocolate. I can do the Mexican rice that I learned while I was in San Diego. I didn’t learn the recipe from one of the other chefs, mind you, but from this amazing man they only let wash the dishes. I traded him my ranch beans recipe for it. It was absolutely worth it. This is the good. Herein lies the balance.
I enjoyed my day more than I should have. What kind of person enjoys making last meals for triple murderers? That’s just it, though, isn’t it? Me. I don’t know why or how, but I did. I didn’t even know I still knew those recipes. It’s not as if they’re written down anywhere. Mom learned them from her mother and on up the Wake family tree. No one wrote anything down. It just wasn’t done. I pull on my tank top and scrounge through my luggage, pulling a little notebook from its depths. I grab the pen from my dresser and flip the notebook open. And I write. From beginning to end, I walk through my first last meal—what I cooked, the recipes, the processes, what worked and what didn’t. My hand is hurting