No Defense by Rangeley Wallace

difference in changing boys’ and girls’ diapers.
    I put Will in the middle of the bed while I
took off the nightgown, wiped my neck with it, then pulled on a
pair of sweatpants and one of Eddie’s T-shirts. I brushed my hair
and put on some lip gloss, then looked in the mirror. Hopeless.
    “Where’s Jolene?” Jane asked when I returned
to the living room with Will. Once again he started screaming his
lungs out.
    “The grocery with Jessie,” I said. “So
what’s going on?”
    I stood with Will resting on my shoulder,
bouncing him gently in a futile attempt to relieve what I’d decided
the night before at three A.M. must be colic.
    “Barbara’s a big fan of Eddie’s work,” Jane
said. “And when she heard y’all were moving to Tallagumsa and that
Eddie had taught journalism before, she called him. Was it
yesterday?”
    Barbara nodded. “We talked twice yesterday.
I told him that we have an immediate opening because, I’m
embarrassed to say, my journalism professor ran off with one of his
students. I also mentioned that I’m hoping he can teach a politics
and the arts course this summer.”
    “What did Eddie say?” I asked.
    “That he’d think about it and talk to me
today. Since I spoke with him I found out from your father that
Eddie’s been trying to get his work into syndication, so I wondered
if maybe we should do a show of his work at the college. I’m good
friends with the head of the Tribune Press Syndicate, Willie
Caldwell. I know he’d come.” She raised her palm, as if to stop
herself “I should talk to Eddie before I go on about this. Maybe he
wouldn’t like the idea.”
    “I think he’d love it!” I said.
    He did. That afternoon, while I bathed Hank
in the plastic baby tub next to the kitchen sink, Barbara hired
Eddie to teach two courses, one in journalism as soon as we moved,
and one in politics and the arts that summer. A show of his best
work would follow a few months later. Best of all, Eddie could
continue to work for the City Paper .
    Perfect, I thought. Everything was turning
out just perfect.
    On our last morning in Atlanta, Buck picked
up Jolene early and drove her to our new house in Tallagumsa, where
she could prepare things for our arrival. Before we left the
apartment_, we had our landladies, the Crawfords, and our neighbor,
Adrienne, in for coffee and pie. Eddie bought two Miss Reese’s pies
for the event, one strawberry, one pear-apple. I’d attributed my
initial favorable impression of the pie in the hospital to
postlabor starvation, but in fact Miss Reese’s pies were the best
I’d ever tasted.
    We all cried over our pie, especially Violet
and Iris Ann, who weren’t too happy that we were taking the “lights
of their lives” away. They gave Jessie a pair of white gloves and a
string of beautiful pearls. The boys received ornately monogrammed
sterling-silver mint julep cups like the one the Crawfords had
given Jessie when she was born. Adrienne presented each child with
a personal astrological chart.
    The twins were two weeks old the day we left
Atlanta with a U-Haul full of everything worth taking with us
attached to the car. Looking out the car window, I watched the
chinaberry tree in the front yard recede from view.
    We passed the Glad Bag Man on his park bench
as we drove out of town.
    I waved good-bye, relieved that we were
leaving behind all the hassles and concerns of big city life.

 
    CHAPTER
SEVEN

    Before the move, the Bledsoes and I had
agreed on a leisurely turnover of the restaurant six weeks after my
return to Tallagumsa. That would give me the time I needed to
unpack, recover from too many sleepless nights, and get
reacquainted with Steak House activities.
    At the end of the six-week transition
period, I would be on my own. I might have panicked if my friends
Estelle and Roland hadn’t been so knowledgeable about the
restaurant, but both had run the place when the Bledsoes were out
of town, and I figured I hadn’t forgotten everything I’d