Free Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter by Lisa Patton

Nightingale, Virginia was Huck Finn, and Mary Jule was Mary Poppins. I, of course, was a ballerina. I’ll never forget that pink tutu Mama made me wear with itchy sequins on the bodice and the straps. Kissie put my hair up in a tight bun, and when I saw those photos I could still feel the hairs around my temples pulling, and smell the Adorn Mama sprayed all over my hair making it stiff to the touch. I can still see her now covering my eyes with her left hand and spraying with her right. All I wanted was to be Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, but Mama made me be a ballerina.
    I looked around the room and everyone was engrossed in the video. Mary Jule was seated on the other side of me and I leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Can you please kidnap the girls and me?”
    She put her arm around me and whispered, “You know I would if I could.”
    I had forgotten all about the picture of Mary Jule and me standing in front of the Mid-South Coliseum, age eight, holding up Monkees posters. I remember our mothers going outside during the concert to smoke after the screaming had finally gotten to them.
    Next up was a picture of Alice and me around ten years old, all dressed up in our English riding habits and holding up ribbons in our hands. Alice was sitting on the other side of Kissie. I leaned over and whispered, “Why did we give up horses?”
    “Cheerleading,” she said, and leaned back in her seat.
    Then came a picture of Virginia and me at the sixth-grade science fair when we won the blue ribbon for hatching chickens in a homemade incubator. That event marked our big debut in the Memphis Commercial Appeal with the caption reading: “The first chicken was christened Columbus after another famous first.”
    The very last picture was of Baker, Sarah, Isabella, Princess Grace, and me on the back porch of our home looking like we were the happiest family on earth. I remember when the picture was taken. We were the happiest family on earth.
    I had no choice but to follow my husband. Baker is a good husband. He let me have children. He doesn’t get mad when Gracie poops in the house. He lets me shop for clothes wherever and whenever I want. Sure we have issues just like everyone else but nothing so terrible a little romp in the sack can’t fix. He always wants to make love. My friends hardly ever do it these days. Lots of women tell me their husbands never want them anymore. Mine wants me.
    I was Mrs. John Baker Satterfield, a name I had wanted since the tenth grade. I’d show him a devoted wife. I’d be right at his side in Willingham, Vermont. One day, I knew Baker would finally come to his senses, drop the dream of being an innkeeper, and take me home! I was sure of it.
    Our family picture remained while the music faded into silence. Within moments the applause returned and everyone resumed their conversations.
    I sat frozen in the dark of the warm, familiar room, unable to move my eyes away from the screen.

Chapter Six
     
     
     
    Baker was leaning on a post in the gate area when the girls and I got off the plane, just three weeks before Christmas.
    “Daddy!” Sarah yelled when she spotted him. She and Isabella ran to Baker and he scooped them both up and twirled them around. He leaned in to kiss me while holding one girl in each arm.
    I reached up and touched his face. God, he is beautiful. He takes my breath away . . . still. No wonder I moved all the way to Vermont.
    “I missed y’all,” he said. “How was the flight?”
    “It was good, and the girls were so good. They colored most of the time and we read stories the rest.” Sarah wriggled down out of Baker’s arms and hunted through her Barbie backpack to show him her coloring book.
    Baker and Princess Grace had left two weeks earlier in his Ford Explorer, pulling my little BMW behind on a trailer. He wanted to meet the moving van and get a head start on the restaurant operations and the apartment renovation. As we walked toward the baggage claim