Cookies for Breakfast

By Xlibris US

Nonagenarian, Cora Sheffield had been adamant. She was moving out and starting over. Her niece, Rocky, was equally adamant. Cora had lost her mind. After all, Rocky was the one who was being forced to start over. Rocky had lost her job.

As it turned out, starting over was amazingly easy for the spunky, eccentric Aunt Cora. Without a second thought she packed her bags and took up residence at an exclusive, assisted living facility. Rocky, on the other hand, couldn't seem to find her way. Every time she managed to clear a path through the mess Aunt Cora had left in her wake, something or someone appeared on the scene to derail her desire for an uncluttered, uncomplicated life.

In the end, Cookies for Breakfast reminds us that life isn't lived in a straight line. The unpredictable zig-zags along the way may make the journey a wee bit scary but a lot more fun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499039177

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

A UNT CORA HAD been born on the wild side. It was no more unusual to find her stark naked in the living room at midnight smoking a pipe and ironing her farmer-jeans than it was to find her togged in oilskins at the crack of dawn tossing back a cold one, washing down sugar cookies for breakfast.

At the venerable age of ninety-two, Cora continued to practice her outrageous brand of behavior, and so I was not all that concerned when I came home from work on Saint Valentine’s Day and found her scantily clad in a spandex bathing suit sifting beach sand across the dining room carpet. The rub came when she drew a pistol from the pocket of her hot pink terry wrap and demanded to know who the hell I was.

I held up my hands. Don’t shoot, it’s me, Rocky. I stared hopefully into Cora’s milky blue eyes. She stared back without recognition. I was no longer her beloved niece. I was an uninvited intruder. A stranger.

I stood there at gun point wondering what to do next. Would it help if I gave her my full name, Rochelle Coraline Sheffield and, in hopes of distracting her, explain how I’d shortened the Rochelle to Rocky because Rochelle - Chelly rhymed with too many silly schoolyard names like jelly belly and smelly Nellie?

How was I going to convince this woman I’d known the entire sixty-two years of my life that I wasn’t an intruder? I had every right to be here. Per her invitation, I’d inhabited a bedrooms on the second floor of her house, this house, for the past forty years.

*     *     *

I’d never wanted to live anywhere else. I’d never married, although I’d come close once or twice. Actually, my elected independence was due, in no small part, to my Aunt Cora’s singular praxis. That, along with my parent’s lack luster marriage and the less than blissful unions I’d watched my peers endure over the years had given me complete confidence that my decision to live a life in solitary bliss was spot-on.

Was I ever lonely? Yes. Did I miss having sex? Sometimes. Did I long to fall in love? Never.

In my opinion, falling in love was as perilous as diving off the edge of a cliff. The euphoria of the initial free-fall inevitably gave way to a fatal crash landing. Worse still, if you did survive, you might fall out of love but pretend that you hadn’t, like my Mom and Dad.

The peck on the cheek Dad had given Mom each morning before he went to his orthodontia clinic was hardly that of an ardent lover, and the gleam in my mom’s eye only seemed to brighten after he’d driven away.

I’m sure my parents thought they’d done their best to provide for me, their only child. My dad certainly provided me with plenty of material wealth and a perfect set of teeth. My mom thought that providing me with an obsessive amount of reading material would somehow substitute for our lack of mother-daughter communication. A scrapbook filled with magazine articles detailing ideal housekeeping methods, her library of Harlequin Romances detailing the ideal romantic relationship.

I buried the scrapbook under the pastel sweater sets she also insisted on providing and burned the cheap paperbacks in the fireplace while she and Dad were providing for themselves at the country club.

Like most of the Sheffield women that had come before me, I’d been born big boned. By the time I was in high school I topped an impressive six feet. Given my imposing stature, dainty sweater-sets were far from flattering, and it was difficult for me to relate to the diminutive Harlequin heroine with her tiny heart-shaped face.

I may never have won a prize for being sweet or petite, however I was awarded numerous trophies as the star center on the girls basketball team. My romances in high school were few and far between, but there was one boy who had made an attempt to woo me. He complimented me on my striking beauty while we were sitting in the backseat of his Dodge Dart. His sweet-talk turned out to be a ploy to distract me while he put his hands under my blouse and groped at my breasts. He was lucky he wasn’t struck down by my strikingly beautiful fist.

With the exception of my overachieving body size, my other features were quite normal. Healthy brown eyes and a head of thick brown curls. Around the age of forty nature stepped in and my eyes needed cheaters to read the fine print and my curls had faded to a pewter gray.

After graduating high school I attended the state university, not because I wasn’t smart enough to go to an Ivy league school, my parents could certainly afford to send me, but because I was lazy and didn’t bother to apply anywhere else. It would have been a waste of money since I had no earthly idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don’t. The only reason I went directly to college after high school was because that’s what anyone who wasn’t making wedding plans did. I also knew that, with my lack of ambition, if I’d hesitated for even a milli-second, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to attend college at all. As it was, before I finally dropped out, I changed my major so many times that my adviser visibly cringed whenever I entered his office.

I displayed an aptitude for the sciences so I spent my deficient college career dabbling in all of them. I gave up trying to memorize the periodic table in chemistry and tried my hand at dissecting a pig’s heart raising my parents hopes that there might be another doctor in the family. The lab work was fun but after one grueling semester of human anatomy, I decided that instead of reading about bones I’d rather dig them up.

I wasn’t destined to be an archaeologist either. Late one night while on a field trip exploring a site on the Canadian border, I looked up at the sky and witnessed the aurora borealis. I was dazzled into submission. Dousing my headlamp, I set down my shovel and dropped to the ground.

My esteemed classmates followed my lead. We were all mesmerized by the excited gases colliding with the earth’s atmosphere. Long after the dancing lights had faded away, a few of the students had fallen asleep, others were engaged in a more carnal form of stargazing, and I was certain that I’d found my true vocation. Unfortunately the professor did not share in the joy of my self-proclaimed revelation.

I flunked the class. Fine by me. The next semester I signed up for Astronomy 101, finally ready to declare my major. My father, tired of my incessant waffling, chose that particular moment to cut off my funding. It was, after all, year number three of my college debacle and, despite my enthusiastic assertion that I now knew exactly what I wanted to do, he didn’t believe me. If I really wanted to study astronomy I was going to have to pay my own way.

Begrudgingly I came home and found gainful employment at Cleary’s Linen Supply. A temporary job until I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life. When the reality that paying for a college education on my own would take years, I convinced myself that what I really wanted to do with my life was drive a delivery truck.

As unglamorous as the job might seem, after the first year grinding the gears of the white panel truck over hill and dale, I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. The job may have been low on brain challenge but it was also low on stress. I clocked in, drove my route, and clocked out again. The simplicity of making deliveries appealed to me and so did the solitude of being on the road.

I enjoyed chatting with the folks I met at each stop and it didn’t take long before my regular customers became a close knit family of sorts. I knew whose wife was having a baby, whose husband was having an affair and whose brother, boyfriend or mother-in-law was driving them crazy. It was all part of the blue collar culture and I fit right in.

When the weather cooperated and sometimes even when it didn’t, I’d leave my Ford pickup at home and jog the three miles to Cleary’s. Jogging kept my mind clear and my arteries from clogging. It offset my unhealthy obsession with burgers and fries and my tendency to binge on Aunt Cora’s phenomenal homemade cookies. Loading heavy bags of laundry in and out of the truck may build upper body strength and be physically exhausting, but sitting behind a steering wheel all day was just as lethal as sitting behind a desk. At sixty-two I’m still jogging and, if Aunt Cora is any indication, I can expect to follow the trend of longevity that’s been in my family for years.

Longevity of body that is. Judging from the present look of confusion on Aunt Cora’s face and the pistol in her hand, there’s an indication that malady of mind may be the true Achilles heel of the Sheffield clan.

*     *     *

The pistol was florescent orange and made of plastic. I decided to state the obvious.

Don’t be silly, Aunt Cora. It’s me, Rocky, your niece. I live here.

The blank expression on Cora’s face vanished. Rocky, you’re home. She stuffed the weapon into her pocket as if it were nothing more than a wad of tissue. She regarded the mound of sand on the carpet. I guess I had a hankering to build a sandcastle, she said looking at me as if I would surely know what she was talking about.

We can finish it together after we get the mail, I said making no mention of the gun. I retrieved her barn coat from one of the six hat trees crowding the entryway. Heavily laden with layers of seasonal outer garments the hat trees resembled a weary group of headless commuters waiting for a bus. Before I opened the door I gently urged Cora to exchange her sandals for a sturdy pair of boots.

I sure hope that lazy ass kid remembered to take the Johnson’s phone bill that he delivered to us yesterday, she said. I put the flag up, but maybe he doesn’t know what a flag in the upright position means.

His name is Bart, I said. I had offered to walk the misplaced mail to the Johnson’s myself, but Cora wouldn’t hear of it.

It’s the principle of the thing, she huffed. Our Max would never have made such an unprofessional mistake.

Maxwell Faber, now the late Maxwell Faber, had been delivering mail to the Sheffield farm since I was a little girl. I remember waiting expectantly at the window for his truck to rumble down the driveway each afternoon anticipating the Tootsie Roll or Necco Wafer, a special delivery just for me. He usually brought our mail right to the front door, often lingering to catch up on the town gossip.

Cora was right, professional or not, Bart wasn’t nearly as thoughtful. He had an annoying habit of cramming everything into the mailbox whether it fit or not.

Some days Aunt Cora would lay in wait for him, sprinting off the porch like a race horse out of the starting gate, yelling at him to stop desecrating her seed catalogs.

I wonder what the bothersome Bart has gone and mutilated today, Cora said as we walked along the gravel drive. She hugged her coat closer.

*     *     *

My aunt Cora was the original crusty old Yankee and it was her stalwart stubbornness that I admired the most.

If someone told Aunt Cora she couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to do something, she screwed up her nose, raised her chin to the sky and declared, The hell I can’t. As a teenager, this mantra of self reliance was most appealing to me even if it didn’t always yield the desired results.

I’d tried the cheeky response when my parents told me I couldn’t have a tree house and it had earned me a slap across the face. No matter. Aunt Cora helped me build a tree house rivaling that of the Swiss Family Robinson in the sprawling oak behind the farmhouse

I would pedal my bicycle the short distance from my parent’s house to the farm everyday after school and I never tired of trailing Cora from chicken coup to cow stall, schlepping hay, raking manure. Together we traversed row after row of corn, squash, tomatoes and beans, weeding and harvesting crops that had been grown in the fertile soil since my great-grandmother’s childhood.

Cora had no compunction about her status as a so-called spinster. Male or female, she certainly didn’t need a helpmate. With her exceptional height and strength, she was a fierce warrior against any drought that threatened to wither her crops, any fox that threatened to eat her chickens, and any man who threatened to quell her spirit. It wasn’t that she didn’t like men. In truth, she hinted at having had many lovers. Mailman Max? Why not? I asked her once why she didn’t have a husband. She waved her hand summarily and said, Whatever would I want one of those for?

Unlike my parents Aunt Cora didn’t quibble about my less than stellar college career or my less than ambitious choice of employment. Without question, she opened her door wide the day I showed up at the farmhouse with my meager belongings. My parents had kicked my out. They’d decided to move to Orlando – closer to the country club and Donald Duck.

Some would have considered it a heroic gesture for Gram, Gramps, and Aunt Cora to take me in. Not because they didn’t have enough room. There was ample space in the ten-room farmhouse and they frequently took in temporary boarders and strays. Finding an available bedroom had not been difficult. Making space in it for me had been the challenge.

Frugal survivors of the great depression the Sheffields never threw anything away. Over the years, despite the prosperity as times changed, they held fast to this survival edict. They saved everything. And the criteria for what was saved or why had no boundaries.

To this day, stacks of magazines, newspapers and junk mail abide on every available surface waiting to be re-appropriated for some still unknown yet undeniably noble purpose. Cracked mirrors, chairs without seats, moth eaten braided rugs remained corralled in unoccupied rooms waiting to be restored to their original beauty. Clothing, trinkets, and other personal items long ago forgotten were tucked away in densely packed closets waiting to be retrieved by their rightful owners.

The Sheffield philosophy: Everything, no matter what shape it was in, had the potential to be recycled or resurrected.

Just needs a couple of nails and a patch of duct tape, was chanted whenever anything fell apart. Drawers, shoe-boxes, and metal tins were riddled with twisty-ties, rolls of twine, and tubes of glue for that very purpose.

Therefore, it was indeed a testament to my grandparent’s affection for me that they made the monumental effort it took to excavate a bedroom for their wayward granddaughter. Granted, most everything they removed from the room was merely relegated to nooks and crannies in other rooms. They were hugely disappointed that I didn’t want three antique bureaus, two floor lamps, the crate of knickknacks or the canopy bed that they offered me to furnish the room. I tried to appease them by accepting one bureau, a nightstand, and a table lamp.

I extricated the petrified curtains off rusty rods, scraped the dust encrusted wallpaper off the walls and sanded the crap off the floor. I applied fresh paint and multiple coats of polyurethane. And then I screwed together the frame for my hammock and settled in.

Those who knew me well would argue that it was an even greater testament to my affection for Gram, Gramps, and Aunt Cora that I even considered moving in with them in the first place. As much as I loved them, as much as I loved the farm, unlike the rest of my family, I didn’t possess a single pack-rat gene in my body. In truth, the very thought of any kind of clutter gave me the willies.

*     *     *

As a child I’d collected absolutely nothing. When I lost interest in a toy I gave it away. When I finished reading a book I donated it to the library. I had no desire to accumulate anything – not toys, not clothes, not even friends.

An only child, I became quite adept at keeping myself entertained. When I started school I soon realized that I most definitely preferred my own company over the company of my peers.

During my entire educational tenure I allowed only two friends into my circle of one. Linda Barlow, a rotund girl with a robust brain, and Annette Harris. Annette had been blessed with an enviable svelte body and a coffee cream complexion but she was the progeny of an interracial marriage and kids can be cruel.

The three of us banded together like mismatched musketeers. I was the brawn, Linda, the brains, and Annette the beauty. Together we spent our afternoons after school at the farm. It was still a working farm back then and we helped with the farm chores. In our free time we hung out in the tree house.

The tree house became our clubhouse, our hideout. It was our refuge from what we perceived as the reprehensible world at large. Many firsts happened within those rustic walls. Our first bottle of beer, poached from Gramp’s fishing cooler, our first joint, purloined from Aunt Cora’s private cookie jar. And more than one of us lost our virginity on the inflatable mattress pillaged from the camping trailer. All for one and one for all, the three of us pledged to keep the secrets that we shared in our house in the tree safe and to stay friends forever.

After high school Linda graduated from Harvard Law, moved to Texas and made it big in corporate litigation. Annette took a train to Hollywood, was discovered by a movie agent and made it big baring her beautiful body in ‘R’ rated thrillers. I stayed put in our hometown of Ilston, Massachusetts and never made it big at anything unless you count the time Cleary’s voted me employee of the year.

*     *     *

Like most New England farmhouses ours had a wide, spindle framed porch. Set a comfortable distance back, the house was tethered to the main road by a graveled drive. The weathered clapboards hadn’t see a lick of paint in decades, yet despite its rundown appearance, the house itself was reasonably sound. Not long ago I’d finally gotten tired of emptying the strategically placed buckets whenever it rained and coerced Cora into springing for a new roof. The ridge-line of recently laid shingles capped the disheveled dwelling like a Hollywood haircut on a Harlem hovel.

Of the original three hundred, only two acres surrounding the house now subsisted in the Sheffield possession. Super highways, supermarkets, and super developers had come along and gobbled up the rest of the land to sow the seeds of progress.

Aunt Cora had held out as long as she could, but ‘stubborn’ doesn’t pay inflated property taxes. A persistent developer offered her an obscene amount of money for the land just as the taxes came due and she gave in. If my grandparents hadn’t been dead already it would have killed them to watch the cherished plot of earth they’d so carefully sowed and safeguarded with the sweat of their brow carved into subdivisions. Plats of suburbia now grew rampant where fields of corn and waves of grain had once flourished.

The old barn had collapsed in on itself a few years ago and been bulldozed into the ground. But not before Cora managed to salvage bits and pieces of cherished agrarian equipment. The obsolete farm tools lay in a jumble next to my John Deere tractor in the pre-fab shed attached to the hen house – the only outbuilding left on the property.

Although I’d given up ages ago trying to keep the inside of the house tidy, I did try to keep the yard well-kept. I wasn’t much into flowers, but I trimmed the bushes and cut the grass. From the get-go I’d been resolute that the yard not become a graveyard for deceased agricultural equipment. I tried to ignore the tears in Cora’s eyes when they hauled away the thresher, the harvester, and the combine. It had been difficult for her to admit that the once prosperous Sheffield farm was now humbled to the remnants of a vegetable garden, a half dozen chickens, and an old rooster with perpetual laryngitis. A chronic condition for which the neighbors were eternally grateful.

The only inoperative vehicle in the yard was Cora’s beloved ‘59 Chevy El Camino. The periwinkle car-truck hybrid lay in state on four cement blocks, its fancy fins and white wall tires lovingly covered with a blue tarpaulin. I hadn’t had the heart to suggest that Cora part with it after she’d