Chapter 5: Rain on the Van

We filed at nine on Wednesday, in an office with a ceiling fan that ticked.

The clerk stamped my petition without looking at my face.

The lawyer shook my hand on the courthouse steps.

"One day of marriage," she said. "The judge will have it by June."

It was done, and I felt nothing but hunger.

By noon I had lost two more clients.

I drove the catering van to the church hall on Jefferson Street where I had cooked the Wednesday luncheon for six years.

The coordinator met me on the steps with her purse clutched in front of her.

"Joelle, honey, I can't have you in the kitchen today."

"Why not?"

"Mrs. Claiborne is on the board." She was crying a little. "I'm so sorry. I love your gumbo. You know I do."

"I know."

"She said it was for your own good," the coordinator whispered. "She said you were unwell."

I drove back with eighty pounds of rice and a pot of gumbo sliding around in the van.

The sky went dark.

By the time I reached Franklin Street, it was pouring.

Rain came down so hard that I couldn't see the commissary door from the curb.

I sat there with the engine running and the wipers going, and I let myself cry for three whole minutes.

A fist knocked on the passenger window.

Reuben stood in the downpour with his canvas jacket pulled up over his head, soaked to the skin.

I leaned across the seat and unlocked the door.

He climbed in and shut it behind him, filling the cab with the smell of wet cotton and river.

"I saw the van from the corner," he said. "I wasn't following you. I was at the hardware store. I needed strings."

"You needed strings in a rainstorm."

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