I’ve barely stepped through the front door when Miss Mary calls for me from the kitchen. I’ve taken a taxi from the airport, deciding at the last second that I wanted a few days “visiting with Miss Mary,” as I tell Topper, who “understands.”
I rush in and hug her tight, greeting her like the mother she truly is.
“Darlin’, let me get a good look at you,” she says, eyes shining. “You’re turning into such a beautiful young woman.”
It startles me, she’s never commented on my looks before. With Miss Mary, the only thing that’s ever mattered is cleanliness and being presentable. Everyone else in my life has made a fuss over beauty, but never her.
I laugh, asking why now.
“Your looks are the least interesting thing about you,” she says. “About any young woman.” Her brow furrows. “I never wanted you caught up in all that, thinkin’ beauty was a shortcut to anything. I never wanted you believin’ you mattered because of it.”
“I suppose that’s a good thing,” I say, hugging her again.
“It’s wonderful to see you too,” I add softly. “I miss you up there, without you.”
She smiles. “My place is here.”
I’ve pleaded with her a hundred times to come north with me, but she always says her job is here, to look after this house, and to be here for me when I’m here. It’s the deal she signed up for. I don’t push.
“I know,” I say, and hand her an early Christmas present.
“For you, my wonderful Miss Mary.”
She sits while I make us coffee. She opens the little box, diamond earrings from Tiffany’s, and thanks me, delighted in that Southern way.
“I forgot to mention, with all the fuss,” she says, suddenly remembering. “The boy is here.”
She points upstairs with a little eye-roll.
“He is what?” I laugh.
“He’s been up there all mornin’ and afternoon,” she says. “I think he’s sleepin’. I heard him snorin’ a couple hours ago.”
“He’s had a rough mornin’,” she adds, lowering her voice. “Got word he’s about to be formally drafted this week.”
“Oh, no,” I say.
“They’re goin’ ahead with it.”
I sit, chin in hand.
“A small part of me thought they’d just let him be, let him keep goin’ on with his life. I hoped they wouldn’t get their hooks in him.”
Miss Mary pats my shoulder. “I know, honey. Me too.”
We finish our coffee and sit a little longer before I head upstairs to see if I can breathe some life back into the sleeping beauty above.
***
I knock on the door, my childhood bedroom, though he’s spent more time in it than I ever did. No answer but soft breathing. I slip inside.
He’s sprawled under the covers, clothes everywhere, drawers open, my things strewn about, records out, my old teenage diary lying open beside him.
If it were anyone else, I’d feel violated. But it’s him, he knows everything already. This room is as much his as mine. In a strange way, he belongs to this house as much as I do. He’s woven into its fabric. His life breathes through the corridors and kitchen like anyone else who ever lived here.
I sneak into the bathroom, shower, wash off the journey. When I look in the mirror, I see I really am changing, my face settling into young adulthood. I wink at my reflection and go crawl into bed next to my baby boy, who is sad today.
He wakes as I climb in, blinking up at me.
“You’re here,” he exhales, voice rough with sleep. “Lord, I didn’t even know you were comin’ home for Christmas!”
“It wasn’t exactly planned,” I say, slipping under the covers. “I just thought, I need to go home.”
He stretches his arms toward me.
“I asked God to send you,” he says. “Or really, I told you to. I was in our room at that made-up boarding school in England.” He laughs.
“That’s so strange,” I say, snuggling close. “In my dream, we share a room too, little single beds with white sheets and tartan blankets, right by the window in that old gothic school.”
He gives a low Southern laugh. “Ain’t real life, is it? Even if we’re both dreamin’ it, it’s still just a dream.”
He hugs me tighter.
“We share a room in my dream too. Other day, while you were sleepin’, I walked over and whispered in your ear to come home to me.”
A shiver runs through me.
“And here you are,” he says, pleased, already half-accustomed to the idea that we share this fantasy space.
“Here I am,” I say, kissing him softly.
“You all right, baby?” I ask. “Miss Mary told me.”
He tucks his face into my hair.
“Yeah. I just gotta get used to it. I knew it was coming, but it feels a whole lot more real now.”
He nudges me.
“I’ve missed you.”
“Ditto,” I say.
We talk until Miss Mary calls us down for dinner, like the good old days at my white Memphis mansion, even though he has a house of his own now.
At dinner, mouth full of bread, he gives me a look.
“Yeah… about that. You mind?”—meaning, does he overstep by still coming here.
“I don’t mind as long as Miss Mary doesn’t mind,” I say.
Miss Mary takes his hand, and tells him, again, that this house is as much his as anyone’s. He knows it, but still beams hearing it.
***
The next day, we visit Sam and Marion at Sun. On the way, he picks up his formal draft notice. His mood goes heavy, but he no longer acts it out like he used to when we were younger. Now he internalises everything, which makes me feel even more tender toward him. I fuss, try to make him laugh, shower him with attention until he forgets the dread for a while.
He pulls himself together, being kind and attentive to everyone, and I know how hard that is for him. It feels like a quiet sort of courage, him being mature beyond his years.
That evening, he asks if I’ll drive with him to Nashville to deliver the Colonel’s Christmas present, a shiny red sports car. I tell him I don’t think that old fart deserves it, which makes him chortle.
The Colonel is delighted to see me, or pretends to be. He’s all charm and backslaps, speaking to me directly with a smile instead of past me with a frown. It’s disconcerting. I tell the boy later, who just laughs and says I’m no longer a threat now that I’m marrying Topper and have “let go” of him. The comment makes me sad, and a little angry, but I swallow it.
We’re invited to the Grand Ole Opry with Gordon Stoker from the Jordanaires. Since we haven’t packed anything proper, we head into Nashville to shop for a tux and gown. It’s a whirlwind, almost like old times. There’s a feeling of freedom, as if we’re on the open road again, even though it’s December and real life is waiting for us back in Memphis.
For a moment, we put all that aside and have an honestly good time. With no press around, he introduces me to everyone and anyone. We talk, we laugh, slip back into that old rhythm with ease before heading home, to everything waiting for us.
***
We stay behind after the venue empties out. The janitor says he’ll stick around to lock up.
We wander out onto the empty stage, just the two of us. The janitor is somewhere backstage. I sit at the piano; he sits beside me. We sing, we play, we laugh. It’s a private concert for ghosts and memory.
I play “Old Shep” for him on the guitar, and we both shed a tear. It was the first song he ever sang to me, thirteen years old, school days, all the innocence still intact. Then he takes over, plays “Trying to Get to You,” then “I’ll Never Let You Go, Little Darlin’,” and for a minute we’re children again, singing into an empty auditorium.
When we finally wander backstage, the janitor is asleep in a chair. The boy signs a stack of autographs for him and his family, then suddenly gets an idea. Because the man stayed late for us, out of kindness, the boy changes back into his travelling clothes and hands him the tux he bought that day.
“Here you go,” he says. “Might get some use out of it yet.”
He looks at me, then at the man, who’s laughing, scratching his head, asking if the boy is serious. The boy asks if the janitor’s got a girl. When he says yes, the boy tells me to get changed too, to hand over my dress if she’ll fit it. I do, and it’s all gee-shucks and what-an-honor-to-meet-you-Sir.
Then we’re off again, whizzing out of Nashville as fast as we came in. The mood has lifted. The winter sun is out, and it feels like a sign. I fall asleep on his shoulder as he drives. He keeps one arm around me, humming quietly, keeping himself awake and me safe all the way back to Memphis.
***
When he drops me off at my house, he asks if I can stay for Christmas and New Year’s, which he knows I can’t. He tries again, tells me he’s hired out the Rainbow Rollerdrome and insists it’ll be fun. I shake my head, kiss him, and say I have to get back to New York before then.
He says I don’t have to go, that he’ll marry me if I stay and make an honest woman out of me. We laugh. I tell him I know he’d promise anything to get his way, and it’s awfully kind of him, but I can’t marry him.
But none of it really matters, because we belong together, in dreams, in reality, and in all the spaces between. Whatever the world thinks, this will always be our truth.
He drives off, promising to pick me up again after we’ve both slept and he’s spent time with his parents, and maybe Anita. Then he winks, speeds down the drive, and disappears around the corner.
***
Before I fly back to New York to spend Christmas with Topper, I have the dealership deliver the boy’s birthday present to Mr P, who promises to keep it hidden until the 8th of January. It’s a motorcycle, the one he has been eyeing for some time. It’s easy enough, these days the boy is busy, out gallivanting with Anita and the boys, and I don’t mind. I actually like Anita; she’s lovely, and she’s good for him. He seems happy with her. Her devotion is sweet, funny, and new. He likes that she’s fresh and spunky and still a good girl. I like it too, because more than anything I just want him happy, whether it has anything to do with me or not.
I visit with Mrs P and his grandmother, Dodger, whose room is upstairs, down the hall from the boy’s, which always makes me want to sleep at my own house instead of his. Still, it’s nice to see them. Mr P comes in and drinks coffee with us in the parlour, which Mrs P is proud of. But really, she is proudest of her son, and terrified for him, though she’ll never say it aloud. She’s afraid for his life when she should probably be more afraid for her own. I sometimes wonder what he’ll do the day his parents are gone, and it sends a chill through me. I know it’ll break him.
So today I stay present, properly present. I praise her son in a way I know lands exactly where she needs it: right in that place where her pride and fear live side by side.
On my final day in Memphis, we exchange Christmas gifts and sit quietly downstairs by the fire. We put on sad songs and then watch An Affair to Remember in the screening room, because of Cary, not because we were trying to torture ourselves. We sit and weep through the whole thing, like two old biddies with regrets. Neither of us has the energy to put up any kind of front. The weight of everything coming, adulthood, responsibility, the army, New York, the boy’s parents, Topper, the wedding, the future, presses in on us, and there’s nothing to soften it.
It breaks my heart to abandon him now, because usually we find humour somewhere, something small and light to carry us until next time, but this time we’re too raw, too honest, too close to the edge of something we can’t name.
I leave him in my bed the next morning. Miss Mary drives me to the airport while he’s still asleep at my house, before he goes downstairs and has breakfast with her one last time, for years to come.
My novel GREAT ARE THE MYTHS will be serialised (one chapter each day) over the summer of 2026. If you would rather listen to the audiobook, the full story is available for free on all the usual platforms. Info and links HERE
My World of Interiors 