How Sweet It Is - Alice J. Wisler [10]
The sweethearts? I want to ask an obvious question: Why didn’t anyone mention this before? All I heard was that a cabin awaited me in the beautiful and serene Smoky Mountains. My father told me Grandpa had left the cabin to me because I was surely Ernest’s favorite grandchild—just like he was his father’s best-liked son. Mom said it was because nobody else wanted a cabin stuck on a remote mountain peak. No one ever mentioned anything about teaching children.
“I’m executor of Ernest’s estate. Have you seen a copy?”
First it’s a cabin, then teaching children at a church, and now an estate? Hesitantly, I ask, “Of what?”
“The will.”
I shake my head.
Massaging a dimpled elbow, she explains, “Well, it’s all in there. Ernest states that you are to teach cooking at The Center for six months. Then this cabin will be yours.”
“Six months?”
She lifts a hand to view her wristwatch. The face sports Minnie Mouse in her typical polka-dotted skirt. Using her elbows, Regena Lorraine pushes her body from the table. Her smile is captivating, as if she knows a secret and is clearly amused by it. “So glad you’re here safe and sound, Shug.” Standing, she adds, “Gotta go.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Time for Clue.”
“Clue?”
“Yes, the game of Clue.”
“I’ve played Clue.”
“Ernest did, too. That’s how he got most of these kitchen utensils.” She points to a spatula dangling from the edge of a cabinet. “Some of these things he got, I have no idea where they came from. What do they say about one man’s junk being another man’s treasure?”
Confusion weaves itself around my mind. “What?”
“He sure enjoyed playing to win,” she comments as she scans the decorated walls of the cabin. “We’ve played for kitchen utensils for dozens of years.” Grinning at me, she adds, “I’d tell you how it works, but really, that’s a story for another day.”
Giovanni is already standing at her side, his tail wagging like the windshield wipers on my Jeep. My aunt opens the passenger door to her truck, and the one hundred pounds of fur hops in, tail still moving.
After Aunt Regena Lorraine backs out of the gravel driveway, managing with magnificent skill not to go over the cliff, I walk around the house and spend time viewing all the cooking utensils. There’s a grater with a round rooster’s face for a handle. A three-pronged fork has Atlantic Beach inscribed on one of its silver tines. A red corkscrew suspended from a hook in the kitchen over the stove has Kiss the Cook in gold letters. A red, white, and blue plastic spatula near the sink reads Panama. On the wall by the Kenmore refrigerator, a large wooden spoon declares I Left My Heart in Athens in green and red lettering. Above the fridge is a round egg-yolk-colored form that looks to be made of plaster. I, too, wonder where Grandpa Ernest got some of these items. The piece looks like a chunk of rock from another planet. On the bottom side of it sits a metal hook. If it is a utensil, what does it do?
As I walk through the dining room and see a variety of bottle openers, pizza cutters, and corkscrews mounted on the walls, I conclude that Grandpa must have been a good Clue player. He must have known every motive Miss Scarlet had in the library with the candlestick.
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Halfway through Vivaldi’s “Spring” concerto, I begin unpacking my Coleman cooler. To the rhythm of the instruments played by Neville Marriner’s orchestra, I place the items that were in my apartment refrigerator and freezer earlier this day in the cabin’s white Kenmore. I glide across the linoleum floor the way I used to when I was a tiny girl with the desire to become a ballerina. Vivaldi is one of my favorite composers, although my friends think I’m loony for enjoying classical music.
Grandpa’s refrigerator holds one lemon, single, alone, lying on its side on the middle shelf. I can see the faint blue word stamped against the yellow peel—Sunkist. I wonder if this is his lemon, one he purchased. I see him driving down the winding roads to Ingle’s to buy ingredients for a meal he planned