Yankee Doodle Dixie Read Online Free Page A

Mud Season in Vermont was in full swing and the three of them showed up at my door with wallpaper and paint, ready to help turn my dank, Teutonic inn into a Southern showplace straight out of the pages of Veranda.
    As is the custom, I’m late, terminally ten minutes as usual, and my Coca-Cola is waiting for me—half poured in a bar glass with small square ice cubes—and the other half still in the bottle. I run right up to the table and squeeze each of them hard enough to leave a bruise. It’s a wonder all the other women in the room don’t ask us to hush. Between squeals and waltz-like hugs, we’ve created quite a commotion, and to make matters worse, my Coke bottle tips over as I’m slipping my arm out of my jacket. Johnson, the waiter, comes running over and mops up the spillage with extra red linen napkins.
    “I’m so sorry, Johnson,” I say, and try helping him with the mess.
    “Don’t worry about this, Miss Leelee. It’s just good to have you back.”
    “Well, thank you. It’s good to be back.” I hug him from the side and hang my puffy white ski jacket, one of the few purchases I made in fourteen months of living in Vermont, on the back of my chair. It was in this very spot, nearly two years ago, that all three of these girls tried talking me out of moving. Naturally, that small detail has long been brushed under the rug. To be in Memphis at this very moment, with Virginia, Mary Jule, and Alice, is heavenly enough to make me forget all the turmoil I endured.
    Alice jumps right in. Even before “How are you?” or “How are the girls?,” she gets straight to the point. “How’s Peter?” she asks, though when she says it, it sounds more like a declaration. “What is going on with y’all?” She sips the last of her diet Coke and chews on a couple of ice cubes. I can’t help noticing how pretty her hair looks. She’s one of the only women I know who doesn’t highlight her hair. It’s plenty blond enough naturally.
    “I asked her that on the phone this morning. She says it’s a long story.” Virginia puts a freshly buttered melba toast to her lips. Her French manicure glistens from the reflection of the light overhead.
    “Oh good, Leelee. I knew something was going to happen,” Mary Jule, the hopeless romantic of the bunch, says and rapidly claps her hands together.
    I take a deep breath. “Well, I have to say, it surprised me. Remember how I told y’all that he wouldn’t talk to me once I decided to move back home? He’d come in to work, head straight into the kitchen and start drinking wine with Pierre?” I can’t help but remember the sullen look on Peter’s face as he sipped merlot with our maître d’.
    As I spoke, all three were leaning in toward the center of the table with their arms resting in front of them.
    “Well, this went on the whole week before I left. He hardly said two words to me. He’d cook all the meals for the customers and then leave immediately after the restaurant closed.”
    “So not like him,” Mary Jule says.
    “I know! Anyway, the morning I was leaving, Roberta, Pierre, and Jeb fixed a beautiful breakfast for the girls and me. Pierre even went out and bought us gifts—how sweet is that? But Peter never showed up to say good-bye. They all tried to act like it wasn’t weird or anything but I knew they thought it was strange. After all, we had worked side by side in the inn together for eight months, and he never shows up to at least tell me good-bye ?”
    “He was devastated. He knew he was losing you, shoog, and he was beside himself,” Alice says, consolingly.
    “Well, as it turns out, after I told the other three good-bye, which was very, very sad, let me tell you, I stopped at George Clark’s gas station to fill up my tank one last time. Remember he’s—”
    “The gossipy gas station owner. We stopped there to fill up Jeb’s pink Mary Kay car,” Virginia reminds me, referring to my multitalented handyman who not only swept my chimneys