Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter Read Online Free Page A

me. After all, I was his only child. He was commanding and overbearing, but completely in love with Mama and me. When Mama died, he became even more sheltering. Baker steered clear from him as much as he could.
    Alice swears if it weren’t for Daddy, Baker never would have gotten into the Memphis Country Club. I’d never tell Baker that, though. He thinks he got in because he was a great football player. He received a full-ride scholarship to UT and played tight end all four years under Johnny Majors. Hardly a week goes by that I don’t hear about the touchdown he made at the Sun Bowl. But either way, we’re members.
    Driving to the club that day felt strange. I kept looking around at all the trees in the yards and the houses that I had driven by a million times. So familiar, yet I had never taken the time to study the surroundings. Now I was noticing it all—the perfectly manicured lawns in Chickasaw Gardens, the monster live oaks, and the unique architecture of each house. This was my hometown and I had been taking it for granted for thirty-two years. Why in the world should I leave a place where my pediatrician was still in practice and now taking care of my own two little girls? Even the old druggist at Walgreens was still filling my prescriptions. I wouldn’t be surprised if he remembered when I had the chicken pox.
    Baker cannot take all this away from me , I thought. It’s my life, too. I’m tired of how he tries to run everything and give me no say-so.
    That’s it , I thought, I’m not going. I’ll just tell Baker tonight that I’ve thought about it long enough and I’m not going. Case closed. But, there was only one problem with my decision. Baker had a bridle around my heart with a rein that steered me in one direction—his.
     
    When I got to the club, I hightailed it into the Red Room and found everyone seated at one of the round tables near the back. The main reason we went there for lunch was that it was the only place we could all charge our lunches to our husbands. And before that, it was the only place we could all charge lunch to our daddies. I slithered into the only available seat, fifteen minutes late—as usual.
    Alice was bobbing up and down in her seat like a dang Mexican jumping bean. “I can’t stand it anymore, Leelee. What’s this all about? Mary Jule and I were on our cell phones the whole way from home to the club trying to figure it out.”
    “You’re the one dying to figure it out, Alice, I’m not having a cow to know like you are,” Mary Jule said. Her blond bobbed hairdo had a little flip in the back.
    “Calm down, everyone. I hate to disappoint.” I leaned in closer to them. “But I have no gossip. Y’all might as well prepare yourselves. This news is about me.”
    Now all three of them were wide-eyed.
    I searched for a good way to break it to them, but nothing would come out.
    “Yeeeess . . . ,” Alice said, and swept her hand as if to say, out with it.
    After another long pause I finally let the words flow. “Baker . . . wants to move . . . to Vermont !” I watched all three of them gasp at the same time. “To buy an inn.”
    “AAAAHHHHH!” Alice squealed loudly, causing the next table of women to look over at us. “ Vermont! Where in the hell is that, anyway?” In one motion, she tossed her long, freshly weaved blond hair behind her shoulder and slid a Virginia Slims regular out of its pack.
    “That’s just what I asked him,” I said. Then I relayed the whole story,beginning with Baker’s unusually good mood, the peach daiquiris, the North American Inns magazine ad, and finally the breakfast in bed bit.
    Virginia was silent, but her furrowed brow let me know she was giving the situation serious thought.
    “Just tell him you’re not goin’.” This was Alice’s simple answer to my complex dilemma. “Why didn’t you tell him to go on without you? He’s the one who’s so unhappy, not you.”
    “You know I could never let him do that.” I