Nothing to See Here (52)

“Like who?” Madison asked.

“Sergeant York,” Roland said. “Oh, man, he killed like twenty-five Germans.”

“He was a great man,” Jasper replied. “A good Democrat, a lifelong Democrat. He said, ‘I’m a Democrat first, last, and all the time.’ There’s a statue of him at the state capitol. Wonderful statue. Maybe Lillian can take you there sometime to see it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“What about you, Bessie?” Madison asked.

“Dolly Parton,” she announced.

“Hmm,” Jasper said, considering the name. “She’s an entertainer, though, isn’t she?”

Bessie looked confused and turned to me. “She’s an artist,” I said.

“Well, I suppose,” Jasper said. “I can think of several real Tennessee icons that might make for a better report.”

“It’s not really a report,” I admitted. “We’re just researching our interests.” I reached over to Bessie and touched her arm, feeling for her temperature, but the gel made it hard to accurately gauge.

“And Dolly Parton is a humanitarian, Jasper,” Madison added. “She’s done a lot for the state and for the children of the state.”

“She’s an actress,” he said, like this was evidence of something. He was smiling, maybe playing, but Bessie seemed embarrassed now, like she’d made a mistake, and I got angry.

“She’s the greatest Tennessean in the state’s entire history,” I said flatly, definitively.

“Oh, Lillian,” Jasper said, chuckling.

“She wrote ‘I Will Always Love You,’” I said, dumbfounded that this didn’t end the debate.

“Lillian,” Jasper said, his charm turning serious, so haughty, “do you know that there have been three Tennesseans who have served as the president of the United States?”

“I know,” I told him. As a kid, I had memorized every single U.S. president, and could recite them in chronological or alphabetical order. I could do it right now, if I wanted to. “But none of them were born in Tennessee.”

“Is that right?” Madison said. “Is that right, Jasper?”

Jasper’s face got a little red. “Well, I mean . . . technically that’s correct—” he said, but I cut in, “And Johnson was impeached. And Jackson, c’mon, he was kind of a monster.”

“That’s not entirely—” Jasper sputtered.

“Dolly Parton,” I said, now looking at Bessie, waiting until she looked right at me, “she is way better than Andrew Jackson.” Bessie smiled, her crooked teeth showing, and I smiled back, like we’d played a practical joke on her idiot dad.

Jasper looked like he was dying. He was holding his fork like he wanted to stab me with it. And I knew, right at this moment, that Jasper would find a way to remove me from this house, when it was prudent, when I’d done what he needed me to do. Jasper, like most men I’d ever known, did not like to be gently corrected in public. And I should have been more careful, but I wasn’t savvy. I didn’t see the point.

“Could we go to Dollywood?” Bessie asked, and Jasper was now stone-cold dead. It was beautiful.

As if conjured by a spell, a charm created to intervene whenever the senator had been utterly humiliated, Carl appeared in the dining room.

“Sir?” he said to Jasper. “I’m sorry to interrupt this family dinner, but you have a phone call.”

“Well,” Jasper said, trying to return to his usual nature, “can it wait until after dessert?”

“It’s rather urgent, sir,” Carl replied. “And I believe that perhaps Mrs. Roberts might also want to be privy to the information.”

Madison locked eyes with Jasper, and it was interesting to watch them work, the way they seemed to be two halves of a singular unit, the way they both stood at the same time. Madison kissed Timothy, who acted like maybe his parents were called away for urgent business all the time, and then followed her husband out of the room.

“What’s going on?” I asked Carl, but he shook his head and walked behind the two of them.

“That was weird,” Roland said.

“Do we have to wait for them to eat dessert?” Bessie asked.

I got up and went into the kitchen, where Mary was already plating four slices of chocolate cake. “I’m coming,” she said. “You didn’t need to get up, of course.”

“Looks good,” I said, and she nodded.

“I know,” she replied.

I went back into the dining room with the kids, like I was the most embarrassing guest at a wedding. I tried to think of something to say, but then Mary was putting the cake in front of us, and that seemed to remove the need for conversation. We ate, and then, when we were finished, the four of us just sat there. “Can we go?” Bessie asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said, like I was a child and needed an adult to excuse me from the table. “We can’t just leave Timothy here.”

“We can bring him to the guesthouse,” Roland offered.

“Do you want to see the guesthouse?” I asked Timothy, who merely shrugged, like a puppeteer had a slight tremor and the strings connecting him to Timothy had moved ever so slightly.