The Arcanum of Beth

by Mary Jane Russell

  Beth stood stock-still, unable to move. She finally sank down to her knees.

  Ellen released her grip of Janet.

  Beth didn’t respond as Janet knelt beside her.

  “Sweet baby.” Janet caught her breath. “You would be the Marine in battle who would throw your body on a live grenade to save everyone else.”

  “And what a dumbass I would be to do it for that bunch.”

  Janet pulled Beth to her. She didn’t have the heart to agree with her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Janet was totally engrossed in proofreading and highlighting the paper draft of the interrogatory she had dictated earlier when she heard a slight tap on her office door.

  Lou peeked around the door at her and raised her eyebrows. “There was no one out front.”

  “Wanda must have left for lunch without telling me, or I didn’t hear her. Care to guess which?” She marked the last paragraph read with a penciled check and removed her reading glasses. “Come on in.” Janet took one last look at the document and wondered how long it would take her to recover her frame of reference. She sighed.

  “Are you sure? I could come back later. I can tell I’ve caught you at a bad time, Janet.” Lou stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans as she apologized. Her cotton sweater was a size too large for her.

  “My concentration is not what it used to be. I find I have to read most things twice now to retain as much as I should.” Janet walked around the end of her desk. “Come in. I’ve stopped now.” She studied the woman. “Is everything all right?” She leaned against the front edge of her desk.

  “That’s why I’m here. I do apologize for not calling first. It was a last-minute decision, and I didn’t have your number with me. I thought I’d take a chance on finding you or your secretary here and just make an appointment if nothing else. I was afraid to put this off any longer.” Lou paced back and forth in front of the sofa.

  Janet couldn’t help but think that Lou was smart enough to know that if she’d called for an appointment it would have been made for sometime in the next decade. “Alight somewhere. You’re making my neck hurt. Start from the beginning.” Janet returned to her chair. Lou sat on the middle cushion of the sofa.

  “First of all, I want to apologize, and I will offer the same to Ellen when I see her.” Lou perched on the edge of the cushion.

  “Go on.” Janet sat back in her chair and frowned—this was turning into quite a performance.

  “What I did, what Patti did, is inexcusable.” She took a deep breath. “We had both become bored with good, decent spouses, and we took the easy out of an affair. I was flattered, and Patti was curious. We were wrong to act on it.” Lou watched for a reaction from Janet.

  “I assume you’ve said this to Beth.” Janet was surprised by Lou’s frankness.

  Lou nodded. “Will, Patti, and I talked it all out on the way back from the beach. Patti and Will have done much soul searching and have agreed to try and work things out.”

  “How about you and Beth?”

  Lou looked briefly away from Janet, then back to meet her eyes. “I don’t think there is a better person on this earth than Beth Candler. I screwed up big-time. She’s forgiven me, which I know is far more than I deserve, but she can’t let go of what happened. She’s deeply upset, and she has every right to be. We agreed to try counseling after tax season. It’s just that…I’m worried about her, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “How so?” Janet hated that she found herself believing Lou’s sincerity.

  “She shuts down at night. She doesn’t want to watch television…it either makes her fidget or puts her to sleep. She doesn’t want to go out. She just doesn’t enjoy our friends that much anymore. Most times, she goes to the guest bedroom, lies down on the bed with the television on, and just stares out the window toward the cottage. Sometimes, she goes to the cottage to sleep in Keith’s bed. Sometimes, she’s awake all night. We don’t talk much anymore. We don’t do anything together anymore. She has no interest in a physical relationship with me. She just doesn’t want to be around any of us.” Lou let it all out in a rush.

  “Us, as in Will and Patti?” Janet asked.

  Lou nodded. “She first began by making excuses. Now she just gets on the phone with Will and tells him she doesn’t know what I’m going to do, but she’s tired and going to bed, for the rest of us to have a good time and she’ll catch us another time. I swear to you, Patti and I do not spend any time alone together anymore. We promised Beth and Will.”

  “Will doesn’t argue with her?”

  “Will doesn’t argue with anyone.”

  “Have Beth and Will talked since the beach? Just the two of them?”

  “I don’t think so. Beth hasn’t withdrawn from just one thing. She has withdrawn from everything and everyone that’s familiar to her.”

  “Is it work, bringing too much of the office home?” Janet idly thumped a wooden pencil against the legal pad on her desk.

  “Just the opposite. Remember how she used to be in a routine of working half days on weekends? Even after they bought her a laptop?”

  Janet nodded.

  Lou shook her head. “She doesn’t set foot in the building during weekends now. She struggles to make herself go to the office and pull eight hours. I can almost set my watch by how she leaves every morning at 7:30 to barely make it through the door when the office opens. She’s at home every night by 5:30, which means she’s shooting out of the door the second the hand is near quitting time. She takes walks at lunch, lunches that run long because she forgets to time herself so she can get back within an hour. If they call her at home, she won’t answer the telephone. If I do, she won’t take the call. I wouldn’t be surprised if they fire her, probably would have by now if it were anyone but her.”

  “This is not good.” Janet glanced at her calendar for the week—booked solid.

  “She won’t talk to Andy and Greg, either. I’ve asked them to try. She just won’t open up. She barely stayed at dinner with them a half hour. Greg cooked so they could stay in and not have to face a crowded restaurant. Andy told me they tried to talk to her about Patti and me, and she walked out.” In answer to Janet’s unspoken question, Lou continued. “I asked Andy face to face what happened. He and Greg are furious with me.”

  Janet had debated with herself, and she and Ellen had a long talk about it before they told the boys what happened at the cottage in October. They had to all but restrain Andy and make him promise not to do anything foolish. He had finally calmed down when Greg suggested cooking dinner just for Beth and giving her a chance to bring it up with them. So much for that plan. Janet looked at her calendar for the following week. Wednesday night was open if she canceled a business dinner with several other local attorneys.

  “She has no interest in any of the projects we had started on the house. Most of the remodeling is done except for the last finishing touches. She will go outside and clear brush with the tractor, but I think that’s as much to get away from me as anything. It takes her back to farming with her father. She gives the dog more attention lately than me.”

  “Would she see a counselor now on her own?” Janet watched Lou closely.

  “I’ve suggested it with no luck. Frankly, I think she’s putting me off by agreeing to couple’s counseling in the spring. It’s no secret that I went through therapy when I split with my first partner, and it does help. She refuses.”

  “Keith’s pastor?”

  Lou shrugged. “Maybe. She liked the way he helped Keith. She came to know him fairly well through all the time at the hospital. I’ve been reluctant to involve him because our community is so small and most of his members have a strong, traditional view of relationships. He was only comfortable around us in crowds at the hospital.”

  “What about her doctor?”

  Lou shrugged again. “She won’t set foot near a doctor after all those months taking care of her mother. We better hope she doesn’t become ill any time
soon.” Lou hesitated.

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “You’re my last hope. Would you talk with her?” Lou stood and walked over to the desk. “I know it’s a lot to ask. I know you’re extremely busy. I know I’m the last person you want to do a favor for. If you don’t have time, you don’t have time. Forget that I was here or that I asked you.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Janet was not surprised by the request. She had intervened not long after she met Beth when she realized the younger woman was in over her head with a double workload and on the verge of a major crash and burn. Lou knew about it.

  Lou leaned on Janet’s desk. “I know you mean the world to her. If anyone can get her to open up, it’s you. Would you please think about it and let me know? I have to do something. I can’t believe she hasn’t said something to you herself.”

  Janet shook her head. “No, I’ve not heard from her. Now I feel guilty. I knew she was extremely upset, but she usually does better if she has time to process things, then talk when she decides she’s ready. I should have checked in with her. We’ve exchanged a few e-mails but nothing with any substance to it.”

  Lou walked to the door of the office. “Thank you so much.”

  “I’ll try, but we still may have to approach this through her doctor.”

  Lou nodded. “I’m gone. I’ve taken enough of your time. I need to get back to work. They’ve been lenient with me ducking out at odd times, knowing my partner is having problems. Let me know if you have any luck talking with her. If there’s something I should be doing that I’m not, all she has to do is tell me, talk to me. I can’t read her mind.”

  “I’m not sure I’d want to.” Janet caught Lou and gave her a hug.

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Lou closed the door behind herself.

  Janet glanced at her calendar again and jotted Lou Stephens’s name as a drop-in. It was interesting that Lou had confided in a boss she neither liked nor respected about her personal problems.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Beth Candler, I know you didn’t just walk past me without speaking.” Janet raised her voice and quickened her pace. She couldn’t believe her luck. She was at the courthouse to file a suit on behalf of a client and just happened to glance across the clerk’s office and spot her friend. She didn’t care how quiet the room normally was or who she disturbed. The clerks could frown at her all they wanted if it meant she had a chance to chat with Beth.

  “Janet Evans.” Beth turned and smiled as she recognized the voice. She left the pile of paperwork on the appraiser’s desk and met her friend.

  Janet caught herself before she blurted out her concern. Beth appeared to have lost weight and sleep, but it was more than that. Beth no longer appeared young—she looked ten years older in the three months since the beach.

  “I didn’t see you, but I certainly heard you. Are you trying to get us banned from the place that we do the majority of our work? Nut.” The two women hugged each other.

  “What are you doing here?” Janet glanced at the mound of papers.

  “We’re working through probate on three large estates. I have my fingers crossed that I don’t get something mixed up. What about you?”

  “Usual messy divorce.” Janet shook her head, dismissing the routine case. “How are you, really?”

  Beth smiled and took a deep breath. “Missing my mom more every day and it’s been five months. Her death has been an epiphany to me. I always thought I was such a daddy’s girl and that I was crushed by watching him waste away and die.” She hesitated. “Losing Keith is as though having a physical part of me removed. I was just so used to her in my life. We went through the usual love-hate thing when I was a teenager. I respected her so for how she looked after my father. Then the fact that she weighed her chances and quality of life and chose to die.”

  “Which she couldn’t have done without your support…all of that, so hard to witness.” Janet placed her hand on Beth’s arm and led her to the side of the room where senior staff earned the use of highly coveted offices with windows to the outside, as well as to the records room.

  Denise Baker had been responsible for tracking land transfers since before Beth was born. She approached the two women, touching each of them on the shoulder as a way to interrupt politely. She motioned them into the tiny room. The glass window kept them visible, but closing the door would keep their conversation private. “I’m going to lunch early, you’re welcome to use my office.”

  “Thank you, sweetie.” Janet waited for the woman to grab her tote bag and leave. She looked to Beth to continue.

  “I respected Keith for the way she stood by my dad. She never lost patience with him, never criticized him, and never betrayed him. She might burst into tears washing their wedding china, but she didn’t play her emotions out on him.”

  Janet nodded. “It was hard on all three of you.”

  Beth shook her head. “That’s not my point. It was a bad time, but we loved each other and dug our heels in to do what we needed to. We tried to understand what each other was going through. I wouldn’t change being part of that for anything, even if I didn’t spend my twenties as most people do.”

  Janet nodded again.

  “After that, I started calling mom Keith.” Beth smiled. “She didn’t mind. It was as though we had been through a rite of passage. We were no longer mother and child. We were two grown women building a good relationship as adults. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “Then you bought your house,” Janet said.

  Beth nodded. “Mom was great about that. She helped me with the down payment and with decorating. She knew I’d just throw up a set of blinds and consider the window treated.”

  They laughed at Beth’s minimalism.

  “Then the relationship with Lou.” Janet waited.

  Beth sighed. “It nearly broke her heart, but she stayed involved. She came to like Lou even if she couldn’t completely accept the relationship. I understood and didn’t push her.”

  “Then her heart problems.” Janet waited again.

  Beth’s eyes filled with tears. “The health issues were there, undoubtedly, waiting to catch up with her. I can’t help but believe that my relationship with Lou exacerbated the situation.” Beth held her hand up. “Don’t try to talk me out of it. We’ve had this conversation before, and I don’t think either of us has changed our minds.”

  Janet held her hands up in mock surrender.

  “I miss her. I can hardly draw a breath without thinking about her. Every direction I turn, I see something that she made or gave me or helped me with. She’s always going to be close by. I know that’s hard to accept or understand if you’ve never had that kind of closeness with another person.”

  “Lou’s estrangement with her parents?” Janet suspected that Lou lacked understanding for the sense of loss Beth was experiencing.

  Beth nodded. “Just because I was frustrated with Mom’s worsening health and growing dependency on me didn’t change the depth of my love for her. Lou heard my whining about the little things and decided I had no better relationship than she does with her parents, so how could I possibly be that upset over losing Mom. It’s what I like to think of as perverse logic. She has no clue as to what I’m going through other than seeing what I’m physically doing or not doing. I have little patience with having to explain myself to her.”

  “You’ll have to eventually if you intend to stay in the relationship. Are you going to stay in the relationship?”

  “I’ve agreed to try.” Beth looked away.

  “It’s a hard road, knowing what you know. We have room for you any time you need it. You know you can use the cottage if you need to get away from all of us.” Janet repeated her original question. “So how are you doing really?”

  Beth shrugged. “All those boxes we moved from the farm and stored for Mom,” Beth rolled her eyes, “are everything that Will and I ever touched as kids that Mom saved. I could kick him in the butt for
not helping me go through this stuff. I’m talking baby teeth, my first ponytail, all our school papers, and the clothes Mom made us that we didn’t wear to rags. It’s unreal.”

  “What are you doing with it?”

  “I feel guilty as hell. I save a little of it, but most of it is going in the trash or to Goodwill. I hate it but don’t know what else to do with it.” Beth leaned against the door.

  Janet was worried about how weak Beth looked and at how she was telling her everything except what she asked her. “Do you need to sit?”

  Beth shook her head. “Mom’s finances are surprisingly good. I’ve settled all her bills and have begun on the charitable donations she wanted made if there was anything left over. I never realized how many churches she belonged to over the years.” Beth sighed. “I wish I had her faith or that church gave me the satisfaction it did her. It just feels like one more client base that I’m supposed to work.”

  “Beth…”

  “Just what she and I kept of the crystal and antique glassware she collected is overwhelming.” Beth shuddered. “I’m enjoying dropping in on some of her friends and giving them something to remember Mom by. I can’t keep all of it. Will doesn’t care about it. I refuse to sell it for the money as Lou and Patti want me to. Mom would want it to go to her friends,” Beth said.

  “So you’re pretty much going at all of this nonstop?” Janet was determined to have her admit she was in trouble.

  “Books…I hope I’m not wearing out my welcome with the local library. I thought I was bad about collecting. I actually made a deal with the jail to start a lending library for the prisoners with some of the book club editions that don’t hold up as well for public lending. I’d love to see some of those guys get hooked on Christian romance novels. Is that a hoot? Keith would love it.” Beth smiled.

  “Sounds like a full-time job.” Janet studied her friend. Beth had to be constantly engaged, mentally and physically, to avoid her biggest dilemma.