And so we made our way...

...to Brad’s Porsche, steering the conversation back to the mundane...and clear of references to past summers, past issues, past lives.

He drove me ... in the car we’d once shared, past the house we’d once owned. Maintaining our historic brick-end colonial required as much effort as our marriage and Ex-ex had not been up to either task. ... I stared at those old trees wondering what had possessed me to accept his offer of a ride, let alone his half-baked request to share the bungalow.

In the open Porsche Brad’s repp tie flapped against his monogrammed shirt I no longer dropped off at Ceccarelli’s Cleaners on Springfield Avenue. ...it was still easy to imagine him the privileged Shady Side Academy student he’d been in Pittsburgh, about the time I was chewing popcorn in that middle row of the Paradise, reciting dialogue along with George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn.

I arrived at Selwyn fresh from a scholarship to Duke’s pre-college program. All summer I’d studied the ways of (the) khaki-and-madras crowd...pledge brothers flipping up their Izod collars, hosing down their Mustangs.

I wanted one of those careless boys born to that.

Be careful what you wish for.

Lilly Covington, The Chick Palace

The Chick Palace

A lakeside romp fueled by friendship, family,

and one old flame not averse to once again testing the waters.

“It’s so hot I’d liked to died,” I quip as a brunette pauses...

...on my dorm room threshold like she’s not wanting to come any closer. Through the haze of my perfect smoke rings dissipating above my frosted hair and hoop earrings, she glances from the fresh and crisply made bed on the other side of me to the bare mattress ticking I’m reclining on. I shoot another three smoke rings toward the ceiling.

“You’re as good as that Camel billboard in Times Square,” she says.

“You’ve been to New York City?”

“My grandmother lives there.”

“Well, hey! That makes you my Yankee roommate? Johanna Lawrence?”

She eyes my Percy Sledge album spinning on her stereo. “Johanna,” she replies, “Everyone’s been calling me Johanna. And you all must be Lonnye-Ronette Drinkwater?”

I stump my mentholated Newport into the ashtray. “First thing you need to know: y’all’s plural and there’s only me in here.” ...

She seems desperate for the familiar. .... And here she stands like she’s found herself on another planet called Charlotte, North Carolina.

Lilly Drinkwater Covington, The Chick Palace

The Chick Palace

Three Dilemmas, Two Friends, One Deserted Tree House

during a simmering summer on Lake Allamuchy

It's not all WORDS at work

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

ext: Christina G. Rossetti, 1830-1894

Music: Gustav Holst, 1874-1934

Tune: CRANHAM, Meter: Irr.

Guilt had maintained its pinch on my sassier self.

Johanna Wheeler, The Chick Palace

By late afternoon,though the heat still hovered like the morning’s mist. Physically and mentally I’d been hither and yon and now, with the sun glinting off the water, a need to postpone idle chatter propelled me to the end of our dock.

I kicked off my flats and walked the weathered boards. In fact I turned around and retraced my steps to hear it again. The so-often accompanying smack of a canoe paddle or clink of turnbuckle and halyard against the Sunfish mast played in my memory. …I dragged the paddle from under the Old Towne, flipped the canoe and eased it along the roller.

…Guilt had maintained its pinch on my sassier self. I patted my empty pocket …and glanced over at the public beach by the lifeguard tower then tried to clear my head …. Angst befuddled everything.

When no Two Rock drawl called “Wait up, Sugar!” I paddled into the sparkling light splintering and bouncing off the water.

Angst befuddles everything

The Chick Palace

Three Dilemmas, Two Friends, One Deserted Tree House

during a simmering summer on Lake Allamucy

Clever, clever, clever...

My photographer friend Deni Johnson surprised me

with a Torynicole wristlet!

The perfect little zipper bag for treasures & travels.

Or a small notebook

No writer should ever be without without pen & paper.

I smiled at the familiar aroma...

of Maggie Lawrence's barbecue sauce wafting behind them. "The tradition continues,” I said as I sidled up to Johanna who'd set it to simmering.

Lilly Covington, The Chick Palace

What's a summer at Lake Allamuchy without Maggie Lawrence's barbecue sauce?

Unfortunately it's up to Johanna Lawrence Wheeler to make it & she is trying mightily to rise to the occasion. We've lost Maggie before the story begins & it's triggers like the aromas in a summer kitchen or even a glimpse of familiar handwriting that call up the bittersweet.

As Johanna will tell you~~

Sunlight filtered through the treetops, soon to burn off the mist, wispy as tulle, hovering over the water. ... I kept a steady pace and pulled the bag of ashes from my shorts followed by a battered index card. Best Barbecue Sauce lay across the card in my mother’s distinct script. The Palmer Method, wasn’t it?

Tears welled over my lashes as I rounded the first bend, past a cottage cluster. Her handwriting raised a bruise on my heart, as Lilly would say. Where did these unbidden memories lurk that they sprang up like geese off the beach?

At the moment The Chick Palace is simmering like Maggie's sauce, due for its December 26th launch. In the meantime, no one combines recipes & reverie like my Austin buddy Lee Stokes Hilton, so I'm sharing her tribute, her barbecue sauce & her blog. Enjoy!

It's not all WORDS at work

Sometimes it's words not working.

But outside my office window, my source of inspiration keeps the faith,

season in,

season out,

till the muse returns.