Page 40 of Leave It to Us
“I don’t need to see a doctor. I just need those Tylenol that I bought last week when we went into town, a glass of ice water, and a chair that’s preferably far away from all this noise,” she said, and started to walk toward the kitchen again.
Deacon put an arm out to stop her. “Not without a helmet, glasses, and a mask,” he said. “So how ’bout this: you turn yourself around and head back out to the front porch, where I don’t think there’s danger of anything falling on you, and I’ll go into the kitchen and get you that glass of water.”
Yvonne wrapped an arm around Lana’s shoulders before she could say something to, one, tell Deacon she was capable of getting her own water, and two, get Yvonne to stop coddling her.
“Yes, Deacon, that’s a great idea. Thank you,” Yvonne said, and turned Lana toward the front door.
“I just came from the front porch,” she complained as they walked until they were right back on the front porch again.
“Take some deep breaths,” Yvonne said, walking them all the way to the other end of the porch, where there was no construction crew. “Get some fresh air into your lungs to cover up for that mess you’ve ingested.”
Lana gave a short cough and then did what her sister suggested. “What was that, anyway?”
Yvonne shook her head. “It looked like another one of those bags of cement mix. You know, the ones Deacon was yelling about not needing to be in the house yesterday.”
Lana rolled her eyes. “So I guess he was right about that.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Yvonne shrugged. “Here, sit down right here.”
There were no chairs out here on the porch anymore. Tami had driven Deacon’s work truck across town to Pete Lyon’s back porch, where the older gentleman painted everything from fences to old trash cans, which he made look like the grassy scene down by the marsh Lana had become accustomed to visiting. Ole Pete, as he’d told them to call him every time he’d picked them up from the docks for their Thanksgiving visits, was going to paint all the rocking chairs a brilliant cobalt blue at Tami’s direction.
Yvonne’s hands were on Lana’s shoulders again, this time easing her down until her butt plopped onto the planked porch. Yvonne followed.
“Now, tell me what’s going on with you. What are you stressing about that’s giving you headaches that won’t go away?” Yvonne asked her.
“I’m not stressed,” she said.
“You were always bad at lying,” Yvonne said with a shake of her head. “Remember that time Tami spilled that jar of spaghetti sauce, and you tried to help her clean it up? You swept up all the glass, and Tami used the whole roll of paper towels trying to wipe up all the sauce from the kitchen counters, the floor, and the cabinets where it had splashed.”
Yvonne lifted her palms to her forehead and tried not to laugh for fear of causing more pain. “And then she didn’t want Mama to see all the paper towels she’d used, so she stuffed them in the trash can and then lit a match, trying to burn the evidence,” she said.
“And you, being the only one in the room with an ounce of sense, found the fire extinguisher and put out the fire before the whole houseburned down,” Yvonne said, a mixture of irritation and humor in her tone.
“By the time Mama came home, there was no trace of the spaghetti sauce or the burned paper towels,” Lana said.
“But that smell was still in the house. Even after you opened all the kitchen windows in the middle of January,” Yvonne continued.
“Mama was pissed!”
“And the first thing she said was, ‘Who did it?’ Tami ran out of that kitchen so fast. And you immediately confessed.”
Lana nodded, lifting her head as the memory played as if it had just happened yesterday instead of twenty-five years ago. “I told her I’d broken the jar of sauce and tried to clean it up and burned the paper towels so she wouldn’t find out.”
“I was standing in the doorway, watching every second of that terrible lie. Your eyes were blinking a mile a minute—a sure sign that you weren’t telling the truth,” Yvonne said.
“Only because I’ve got these big ole Diana Ross eyes,” Lana said. That’s what Mama had called them, and while Lana didn’t hate Diana or the Supremes’ songs, she wasn’t a fan either.
“Not true,” Yvonne said. “All that blinking would’ve been noticed on anybody. You looked like you’d just had those drops in your eyes they give you when they dilate them at the optometrist’s office.”
Lana didn’t respond.
“I know it was pretty dusty in the house, but just now, out here in the fresh air, you were just blinking like that again.” Yvonne reached for Lana’s hand and twined her fingers through her sister’s. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s nothing,” she said. It was a knee-jerk response.
It had been a really long time since she’d confided anything in Yvonne. A long time since they’d felt like anything other than people who shared the same parents. At one point, though, when they’d been two little girls with bushy ponytails and then two teenagers with prettysmiles, they’d been thick as thieves. Since Yvonne was five years older than Lana, Yvonne had, of course, been Lana’s protector, but she’d also been her encourager, the one Lana had looked up to and tried so hard to be like. Especially since Yvonne had been the one to hold all their mother’s positive attention, even after Tami had been born. But no matter what Lana did, even if she knew she’d done and said exactly the same thing Yvonne would have, it never had the same effect with Freda. The woman only saw Yvonne when she looked at her daughters, and Lana had hated her for that. She still did.
“It’s nothing worth talking about,” was her follow-up to the statement. “I mean, there’s no sense talking something to death. It’s not going to change the situation.”
