“The beans are too sweet,” she says, setting the cornbread down. “I told him less brown sugar. He put in more brown sugar. Every time.”
“The beans are perfect,” Tex calls from the kitchen doorway. “The brown sugar is not negotiable. My daddy’s recipe. Sacred text. You don’t edit sacred text, Sheila.”
“Your daddy’s recipe has too much sugar.”
“My daddy’s recipe has exactly the right amount of sugar and if you say one more word about it, I’m going to name a menu item after you. It’s going to be the blandest thing on theboard. Sheila’s Unseasoned Chicken Breast. Served dry. No sides. Just disappointment.”
“You wouldn’t dare, Tex.”
“Try me. It’s a chalkboard menu. I can name a terrible item after you every day.”
Sheila sits in the cushioned chair and says nothing further about the sugar but her silence is louder than most people’s shouting. Tex stands there in the doorway, holding two plates of sausage, looking at a woman who has been fighting him about seasoning for years.
“Mama Sheila?” he says.
“What, Tex.”
“I love you.”
Sheila’s hand stops on the napkin she was straightening. Tex is standing in the doorway with sausage in both hands.
“I love you too, baby,” she says. “The beans are still too sweet.”
“I know they are.” He sets the plates down. “That’s not going to change.”
Stormy comes up the stairs last. He walks to the table and takes the chair on my other side. My left. He pulls it out, sits down, and scoots it six inches closer to me.
“All right,” Tex says, lowering himself into the remaining chair, which creaks under him. He surveys the table. “Everybody’s here. Food’s hot. Mickey’s home. Benji’s here. Sheila’s angry about sugar. Stormy’s hydrated. This is asgood as it gets, people. This is the whole thing. Right here at this table.”
I load my plate. Brisket, slaw, cornbread, and two tomato slices that taste like dirt and sunshine. I say so out loud. Tex looks at me like I’ve just said the most intelligent thing anyone has said in his presence in years.
“That,” he says, pointing at me with a rib bone, “is the correct response to a homegrown tomato. Dirt and sunshine. That’s exactly what a tomato should taste like. Store-bought tomatoes taste like mildewed refrigerators. They taste like a tomato that gave up on its dreams a long time ago.”
“Oh, Lord, here we go on the tomato stories,” Sheila says, sighing.
“I’m serious. I grew those tomatoes from seed. I talked to them. I watered them by hand. I played them Willie Nelson because Willie Nelson is good for plants and I don’t care what anyone says about that. Specifically ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.’ It’s a scientifically proven fact that plants grow better with music.”
“That’s not true,” Sheila says.
“It’s proven in my garden, which is the only laboratory I recognize.”
Mickey squeezes my hand under the table. I look over and he’s eating his brisket with his free hand, unbothered, his face relaxed in a way I’ve never seen in a hospital or a rehab facility. This is Mickey in his element.
I squeeze back.
Stormy is eating beside me. He started with the brisket, moved to the slaw, and is now on the beans in a clockwise pattern around his plate. He eats the way he does everything — carefully, without waste, finishing one thing before starting the next.
“Stormy,” I say, leaning closer.
He looks at me.
I put my hand on his forearm. He doesn’t flinch.
“Can we be friends?” I ask.
The table gets quieter. Stormy glances at my hand on his arm, then at my face. The corners of his mouth move. “Yeah,” he says. “I’d like that.”
I lose it. “Oh my God, okay, this is happening,” I say. “Stormy and Benji. Official friends. This is a landmark moment and I want everyone at this table to acknowledge it. Because Stormy just agreed to be my friend and I need everyone to understand the magnitude of this commitment.”
