Back to Bayou Sabine: A Novella Read online

  Back to Bayou Sabine

  a novella

  Lauren Faulkenberry

  Published by Velvet Morning Press

  Copyright © 2015 by Lauren Faulkenberry

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Ellen Meyer and Vicki Lesage

  Author photo by Cathy Faulkenberry

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The house on Buchanan Street was just as awful as I feared it would be. The whole street was filled with two-story painted brick houses that were no doubt something to behold back in their heyday (circa 1910 based on the columns and balconies out front). Now, because they were so close to the university, too many of them had been rented out to students. The grass was dappled with beer cans. Windows that had likely seen the last days of Prohibition were now obstructed by hand-painted banners with Greek letters. In general, I tried not to drive down these streets because it was so infuriating to imagine what the insides of these houses looked like.

  I knew what they should have inside: carved crown molding, clawfoot tubs and art-deco tile. Long cherry tables that sat eight to ten dinner guests and mahogany chairs with ball-and-claw feet.

  What they actually held were overstuffed couches that had been plucked from the curbs. Dining rooms and sitting rooms had been split apart to make more bedrooms, the sheetrock thrown up so hastily that the nails were popping out. Original hardwood floors had been overlaid with vinyl flooring that was easy to clean and then tear out later.

  I parked on the opposite side of the street and reached for my coffee. Mike sat next to me, sending one more text message while holding a doughnut in his teeth. He was thirty-five but didn’t look it. He’d been working for my father for five years and had quickly earned his respect—a feat I had never been able to accomplish in all of my thirty-one years. I’d spent the last ten working for my father in his house-flipping business, but I was the only one on the team who hadn’t been allowed to take the lead on a project.

  “You think they’ve got the grossest parts done with?” I asked.

  Mike grinned, and a blob of crème filling dropped from the doughnut onto his shirt. “Enza, you’re a far cry from a girlie girl but saying things like ‘grossest’ gets you awfully damn close.”

  “My father knows I hate cleaning up after frat boys more than anything else in this world.”

  Mike wiped the cream from his shirt and licked his finger. “Still mad at you, is he?”

  I took a sip of coffee and cringed as a pile of debris sailed out of the upstairs window and into the trash bin below. There was a crash, then a puff of dust that rose like a cloud.

  “We should have hazmat suits,” I said.

  “It won’t be that bad.”

  I snorted. “Don’t you remember what your college apartment was like at the end of the semester?”

  He popped the last bit of doughnut into his mouth and sighed. “Why’d you have to go and ruin a perfectly average morning? Don’t you know that sometimes you just need to go in with zero expectations?”

  There was another crash as chunks of linoleum fell from the window.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said.

  ~~~~

  The house we were flipping was on the corner, on the fringe of the fraternity houses. It had been rented to students as well, but mercifully it hadn’t been split into apartments. It was a hearty Italianate style, with a couple of bedrooms upstairs, a sunroom full of windows off the kitchen, and hand-carved decorative trim on the outside eaves. If I could have picked it up and moved it about eight blocks away, I’d have lived in it myself.

  The house had gone into foreclosure, so my father had bought it for nearly nothing. He was flipping it (or more accurately, his crew was flipping it) with the hopes of selling it as a single-family home. One thing I admired about my father was his tenacity. He hated to see these houses decline as much as I did, and he took every opportunity to salvage them from landlords who ushered them into disrepair.

  But here’s the thing about a foreclosure: People leave the house all hacked off, which means it’s the worst kind of wreck when we get inside. They leave behind dirty clothes, garbage, litter boxes, a refrigerator full of rotting food. When the inhabitants are students leaving at the end of the semester, then the landlord has exactly zero cares about what’s left behind—in fact, it seems the landlord instructs those tenants to leave everything, just as an additional salute to the bank. Unfortunately, that doesn’t affect the bank. A house sold “as-is” means that the lucky buyer inherits all of its filth. That’s the price you pay for getting a house ultra-cheap. You have to be willing to deal with all of the grossness in the beginning in order to reap the benefits in the end.

  And in the end, I’m usually happy with our results. Dad’s team takes these houses that might as well have “do not resuscitate” stamped on their doors and transforms them into homes again. The feeling of triumph that comes when I walk through a house we’ve finished almost makes up for all the hassle I have with my father.

  Almost.

  ~~~~

  Inside, Dad’s first-string crew was working on the upstairs, tearing out carpet from the bedrooms. They sent Mike and me downstairs to rip up the linoleum in the kitchen. It was only spring, but it felt like summer. Even with the air conditioner on, we sweat through our clothes in minutes.

  Most of the linoleum was a beige pattern that looked like woven straw, but some sections had a geometric pattern done in gold and olive green, apparently left exposed by the removal of an appliance or an island. As we shoved the stove into the hallway, we unearthed a section of bright orange and brown.

  “Look,” Mike said, “it’s like a time capsule for floor covering. Hello, 1975.”

  “Guess it was too much trouble to move these the first time around,” I said. I was hardly surprised by people’s laziness any more.

  Mike tossed me a crowbar, and we started at opposite corners of the kitchen, prying up the scarred linoleum.

  This was day three of demo, so I was spared the most gruesome of the frat-boy fallout. Mike had been on this project from the start, but my father had switched me over to this house after I’d made the executive decision to enhance the curb appeal at his last flip, across the way in a historic part of Durham, North Carolina. I’d spent eight hundred dollars on landscaping, which included sod, some hedges and a crepe myrtle tree to add a splash of color to a grim little lot that had about three feet of yard all the way around it. The house was cute enough—a small two-story with a new porch—but it needed some plants in the yard as proof that life forms could actually survive there. My father had stopped me when I had a landscaper plot out a small flower bed by the porch and bring a truckload of wood chips. I had two pallets of daylilies and hostas in the back of my company pickup truck, which he’d insisted I return for a full refund.

  “That was money wasted,” my father had barked, glaring at my grass-stained jeans. “And you s
et us back three days.”

  “Nobody wants a house that looks barren,” I said.

  He cursed all the way back to his truck and slammed the door.

  That was two days ago. The pickup was now parked in my backyard, lilies and hostas intact. I had no intention of returning them.

  This morning, my dad had sent Mike to pick me up, presumably so I couldn’t rebel and drive over to the Durham house to unleash more unwanted beautification. Mike had faithfully driven me over here, explaining that this one needed my help more.

  But I knew better. Mike was a bad liar.

  “He’ll get over it,” Mike said, tossing a scrap of lino onto the pile in the corner. “You’ll be out of the penalty box soon enough.”

  I laughed. “Please. Dad never gets over anything.”

  Even with his dust mask on, I could tell he was grinning from the little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

  “That house needed landscaping,” he said. “It’ll sell faster for it, but you knew that.”

  I shrugged, sliding the crowbar under the vinyl to pop the next section up. “He’ll never admit I was right.”

  “He’ll see it, though.”

  “But now it’s only half-landscaped,” I said, “which makes us look lazy.”

  Mike was no doubt the son my father always wished he’d had. A few years older than me, he had a wife who was mild-mannered and not what my father would call “willful.” He had twin two-year-old sons and lived in an old historic house he’d rescued from foreclosure and renovated himself. He was reliable like Toyota sedans. They’ll always get you where you want to go and rarely give you any hassle. My father set Mike on all the best houses—the ones that had real character and style that could showcase Mike’s carpentry skills. And he had real skills, that man. I’d seen him replicate hand-carved crown molding and Victorian newel posts in some of the most expensive houses Dad had invested in. They’d once invited members of the Historical Society to a special open house reception and even the president couldn’t tell which parts of the woodwork Mike had rebuilt.

  I, however, felt like a sand spur in my father’s shoe. He called me “willful” in that way that means “pain in the ass.” He had permanent frown lines from our arguments over the years, and he challenged every suggestion I put forth. Mike could have his run of any project, but Dad second-guessed every decision I made. He frequently went behind my back to change plans I’d made with contractors. I was always hopeful that my current project would be the one to change his mind about me, and that the next one would be the one where he set me loose.

  I’d once confessed this to Kate, my best friend. She’d scoffed and said, “Enza, that is the very definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over, and each time expecting different results.”

  “But each house has different variables,” I argued. “That means the potential for different outcomes.”

  “Not when your father is the constant.”

  Kate and I had gone to college together. She’d studied biology and had a clear understanding of the scientific method. She’d been rewarded with a job in one of the many research firms in the Triangle area. I’d majored in English and fumbled my way through lots of dead-end jobs before finally working for my father full time. If anyone could recognize a pattern, it was Kate.

  We complemented each other well. She was a little over five feet tall with shoulder-length blond hair that she kept perfectly straight and smooth. I towered over her and could barely fit my forearm in her skinny jeans. My hair was curly and dark, and refused to stay tamed when the humidity was above forty percent. In general, Kate looked librarian-chic, and I looked like I’d just rolled out of bed. Kate preferred pencil skirts, and I was happy in jeans, but when it came to the things that mattered, we were as well-matched as two friends could be. I wouldn’t have survived working for my father so long if it hadn’t been for her.

  ~~~~

  “Hey,” Mike said. “You want to do the honors?” He held the sledgehammer out to me, and a smile touched the corner of his mouth.

  The nasty Formica countertops had to go too. Mike knew I had a secret love for the sledgehammer.

  “You sure?” I asked, running my fingers along the counter. It had scratches and cigarette burns, deep gouges from someone using it as a cutting board.

  “I like to watch,” he said, and winked.

  I tried not to think of my father as I swung. I didn’t want to use so much force I’d damage the cabinets below. Mike pulled his safety glasses on, and I swung, feeling the shock wave ripple along my arms and down my back. There was nothing quite as satisfying as that tingling sensation of momentum meeting resistance.

  “Ah,” he said, holding his hand against his chest. “I do love the sound of a large hammer making contact.”

  “That’s the sound of getting shit done,” I said, and swung again.

  ~~~~

  It was after lunch when my father dropped by to check up on us. By then we had all of the original floors exposed. The kitchen had broad pine boards that could be refinished. In the bathrooms, the original tile was gone, but I envisioned installing a checkered pattern that would give a nod to the 1920s.

  Mike and I were in the bathroom, tearing out the busted sink when the clack-clack of my father’s expensive loafers echoed down the hall.

  “Looks like you’re making good progress here,” he said to Mike.

  “Oh, you know how we love ripping things apart,” Mike said.

  “Not afraid of the dirty work,” my father said, shifting his gaze toward me.

  I’d added it up in my head one day: Since college, I’d worked on nearly fifty houses with my father’s crew. I’d painted, sanded and caulked my way into this business, and earned enough respect from the guys that they didn’t resent me for being the boss’s daughter. But I was the only one who had to get his approval for every decision I made.

  “Enza,” he said at last, “I need to talk to you for a minute.”

  Mike shot me a sympathetic look as I followed my father out onto the porch.

  “News on the Durham house?” I couldn’t wait for him to have to tell me it had sold.

  He leaned against the porch railing and crossed his arms over his chest. “This is something else.”

  His furrowed brow made me uneasy.

  “It’s Vergie,” he said. “She passed away.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, like he was giving me a budget for cabinetry.

  The air rushed out of my lungs as I sat down on the rail next to him. “How?” I finally said.

  He shrugged. “Heart attack, I think. I thought you might want to know.”

  I stared at him, surprised that even he would say it with such a lack of emotion.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Yesterday. I guess we were still on a list of contacts somewhere.”

  I stared at the floorboards of the porch. The white paint was peeling off, revealing light blue underneath. My father sighed as if he had other things he’d rather be doing. My grandmother Vergie likely hadn’t crossed his mind in a decade.

  “When’s the funeral?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Friday.”

  “Are you going?”

  He raised an eyebrow and stood. “No.”

  “Well, I guess I’m going to have to ask for a few days off.”

  My father glared at me with a mix of pity and frustration. The hard muscle of his jaw twitched.

  “Don’t give me that look, Dad. I know you’re still mad about the landscaping, but we both know you don’t need me for this demo. The guys can handle it just fine.”

  He shook his head and muttered, “After what she did to us, I can’t see why you want anything to do with that family.”

  “Vergie wasn’t Mom,” I said.

  He sighed and walked back toward his car.

  “It’s only a couple of days,” I said. “I’ll be back and can help with the rest of the repairs.”

  “We’ll see abo
ut that.” He climbed into the car and backed out of the driveway without giving me another glance.

  ~~~~

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. Vergie was my grandmother, but I hadn’t seen her in fifteen years. She was my mom’s mother, and my mom had left my dad and me back when I was sixteen. Dad refused to talk about my mother, and he would never offer me details about what had happened. He made it sound like my mother just up and left with no explanation. For the longest time, I assumed that was true. After my mom was gone, he cut Vergie out of our lives too. She lived down in a little town called Bayou Sabine, not too far from New Orleans. When I was a kid, I’d spent my summers with her. My mother wanted me to experience the kind of life she had growing up. We were doing well in North Carolina, but she missed Louisiana and told me once that she felt like her new home was too fast-paced. She wanted me to see what it was like to live in a quiet rural place too.

  Vergie had been one of my favorite people, but after my mother left, Dad put a stop to the visits. He’d caught me trying to take a bus to Bayou Sabine that first summer without Mom, so he grounded me for two months. We’d screamed at each other until he’d finally said, “Your mother doesn’t want anything else to do with us, and neither does Vergie.”

  His words had hit me like stones. I’d never thought Vergie wouldn’t want to see me again either. The idea of showing up at her door only to have her slam it in my face filled me with humiliation.

  After that, I didn’t make any more attempts to visit my grandmother. Years later, I began to wonder if my father had been truthful, but I was too afraid to find out. What if I went to see her and she sent me away just like I’d imagined? I didn’t have any reason to think he’d lied.

  But the way he acted a few minutes ago as he talked about Vergie made me think he was hiding something. And had been for a long time.