Arlene James - Falling for a Father of Four

It was almost more than he could fathom, sitting down at the table with his family for a real meal. And what a meal! Boiled beef and noodles in a creamy sauce, green beans, corn and hot bread. When Mattie set a small bowl of pickled beets at his elbow, he could do nothing but gape.

“Chaz said you liked them,” she divulged shyly and skittered away.

For the first time he had the presence of mind to look around the table and count the places. Obviously she had been unsure of her welcome at the family table. He twisted in his chair and cleared his throat. When she turned from the sink to look at him, he asked carefully, “Aren’t you going to join us?”

Smiling broadly, she plucked another place setting from the cabinet and hurried to squeeze in between Sweetums and Yancy. Once there, however, she dropped her hands to her lap and bowed her head. Uncertain what to make of that, Orren shrugged and reached for the beets, drawing up short when Chaz widened his eyes and frantically shook his head. Thoroughly puzzled, Orren opened his mouth to ask what the dickens was going on, only to be shocked into continued silence by the sight of Chaz folding his hands in an attitude of prayer, his look pleading. Dumbfounded, Orren realized that they were waiting for him to say grace! All but Jean Marie, who tucked her hands into her armpits and narrowed her eyes stubbornly, and Sweetums, who copied Chaz’s posture without the least idea why.

Orren cleared his throat, bounced a knee nervously, and took a deep breath, finally blurting, “Thank-you-for-this-food-amen.”

Mattie lifted her head, smiling, and began serving dinner.

It beat anything he’d ever seen. Even Jean Marie behaved like a civilized human being and cleaned her plate quickly, despite a pouting silence. Yancy accepted the towel that Mattie tied around her neck bib-fashion, upon realizing that Sweetums was to wear one, also, and ate everything put in front of her, even demanding more. Chaz couldn’t say enough good things about Mattie’s cooking, and Sweetums managed to giggle charmingly while stuffing her little mouth. After wrapping up the feast with canned pears, they all sat back for a few minutes, replete in a way they never had been before, while Mattie explained about the menu taped to the inside of the pantry door and how she had marked the foodstuffs so they would know what was required for meals and what was available for “unscheduled snacking.” She added that she’d tucked the eight dollars left over from the shopping into a jar on the top shelf and suggested that he spend some time with the kids before Candy and Yancy had to be put down to sleep while she cleaned up the kitchen and packed leftovers for his next day’s lunch.

Flabbergasted but wise enough to see the benefits of such a plan, Orren did exactly what she suggested. Only later did he realize that she had slipped away quietly, leaving a note to say she would be in at nine the next morning unless he called to say he wanted her earlier. Bemused, Orren sat down on the couch, pleased that he could, to watch an hour of television with his older children and listen to Chaz glowingly recount their day. Jean Marie was not so thrilled with their new sitter, but her criticism seemed based on nothing more than resentment at being persuaded to behave. In fact, he was a little surprised that her complaints weren’t more vehement, but he was too tired to really do anything more than marvel at what one little gal had been able to accomplish in a single day. Later, when he slid between clean, smooth sheets, he decided sleepily that Matilda Kincaid was a sorceress in a teenybopper’s guise. The next morning, when sitting himself down to enjoy a breakfast of hot muffins, fruit, and—luxury of luxuries—fresh coffee, he silently amended that description to angel, albeit a young one.

Mattie shoved the bed to one side. Jean Marie glared at her from the doorway, arms folded, eyes narrowed, bottom lip jutting out. Mattie sighed. She’d already been told to leave “Mama’s bedroom” alone, but once she’d thoroughly cleaned the place, she’d felt an overwhelming urge to make it more attractive. Its bare, bereft nondecor was depressing, and for some reason she wanted to give Orren Ellis reason to be, if not happy, at least pleased. It hadn’t taken a lot of effort, really, once she’d been able to get a good look at the room and ferret out some items to use for decoration.

A good washing of the walls had revealed a stuccolike finish of eggshell white. The kids had thought she was nuts when she’d taken brown acrylic paint from one of their battered art sets, thinned it, and used it judiciously to highlight every crack, chip, and mar in the plaster. She’d even gouged a little plaster away in places to heighten the effect and was pleased when the overall look suggested old adobe.

The faded, dirty, entirely too frilly Priscilla curtains were cleaned, dried and put away for the girls to use at a later time, as was the heavy old crocheted bedspread. After washing the windows, she covered them with a pair of golden tan sheers that she’d found in the back of the linen closet in the hallway, then for a valance she tacked up an old horse blanket with which the kids had been playing. An old hand-sewn quilt was thoroughly cleaned and quickly repaired to serve as a bedspread. A headboard for the bed was fashioned from a stack of oak posts discarded as too crooked for use as fencing sometime in the past.

With Chaz’s help, Mattie dragged a scarred trunk from the unfinished room, first emptying it of carpentry tools, and placed it at the foot of the bed. Next to it, she arranged a pair of old, nearly rotted cowboy boots and a coiled rope that Chaz insisted his daddy had once used to work the cattle they’d kept on the place. Jean Marie declared this an ugly lie, and Mattie suspected that it had something to do with her mother, but she couldn’t imagine what. After receiving specific instructions about what to look for, Chaz unearthed some rusty bits and pieces of bridle, as well as the barrel and stock of a shotgun so ancient it threatened to disintegrate in Mattie’s hands as she cleaned it sparingly and hung it on the wall. A battered, almost shapeless, felt cowboy hat came out of a closet somewhere and found a place on the end of a post in the rustic headboard, and a second horse blanket became a bedside rug.

The true challenge in this transformation was presented by the lamp that offered the room’s only light source. Pearl white, with gold detailing and a ruffled shade, it was completely out of sync with the new Old West flavor of the room. After much thought and many suggestions from the children, most of them nonsensical but funny, Mattie decided to completely sand the finish of the lamp with sandpaper culled from the unfinished room to give it a rustic look. The shade was another matter. It simply could not be made over to work with the rest of the room, but replacement seemed out of the question—until she came across a tin pail with a hole in the bottom.

Jean Marie volunteered the information that Orren had been furious when Chaz had driven a nail into the pail in a misguided effort to create a shelter for a pet squirrel. The idea had been to attach the pail to a tree in the backyard, but Chaz had been unable to manage that. It seemed that the pail he had chosen was a brand-new one with which Orren had intended to feed the premature, motherless calf he’d secured in the small corral out back. Orren had yelled. Chaz had cried. The squirrel had run away, and eventually the calf had died despite Orren’s attempts to save it. The story almost put Mattie off the idea of using the pail, but in the end, it was the only option she could see. She hoped to mitigate the unpleasant memories by having the children draw designs on the side of the pail with crayons, then, using the drawings as patterns, carefully pierce the metal with a hammer and nail. Jean Marie refused to participate, and Mattie wound up having to perform the piercing herself, but once the bail was removed and the hole in the bottom was carefully enlarged, she had herself a suitable, thoroughly unique lamp shade. Jean Marie, however, predicted disaster. Her daddy would hate the dumb old thing, she declared. In fact, he’d hate the whole ugly room.