'Til I Want No More

by Robin W. Pearson

  After studying the water’s steady shimmer for a moment, she opened her laptop and typed the words My Daily Grace.

  Da-da-ling!

  Maxine jumped. Somehow she must have deactivated her “Do not disturb” feature. Da-da-ling! She peered over her orange-covered laptop and retrieved the phone from the top right corner of her desk and read the text. Hey, babe. Why aren’t you working? ♥♥♥

  She smiled and set the phone back in its customary place.

  Buzzz. Buzzz. “Okay, now, Teddy. You know I have a deadline.” Buzzz. Buzzz. Maxine focused on the creek as she closed her laptop and answered. She didn’t wait to hear her fiancé’s greeting before warning him, “Once I say, ‘I love you,’ I’m hanging up.”

  “Well, that’s a first.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Maxie?”

  “Jay?”

  “Looks like we’re both having trouble letting go of the past.”

  Maxine knew JD was referring to the name she used to call him. The name she thought she’d forgotten. She ignored the mirth lacing each syllable of his low voice. “Speaking of letting go, why are you calling me? And how did you get my cell phone number?”

  “I asked my sister-in-law—”

  “You mean my so-called friend who didn’t tell me you were back in town?”

  “Yes, one and the same. She ran into you the same day, while she was at that restaurant.”

  “Sassafras.”

  “Yes, where we talked.”

  “We didn’t really talk, JD.”

  “Well, if you want to get specific, it’s where you knocked over your teacup and nearly passed out after you laid eyes on me.” The humor had evaporated from his voice.

  Maxine’s exhalation ruffled the silky chrysanthemum petals in the arrangement on her desk. “Seeing you didn’t make me break my teacup—”

  “Oh, was it hearing my voice?”

  Of course, it had been seeing him, hearing him, and remembering him. Not any one of those things, but everything together, all at once. Yet she could not, would not tell him that. That was something Maxie would have done. “But I’m Maxine.”

  “I know who you are. I called you, remember?”

  He’d heard the whispered reminder she thought she’d only felt in her spirit. “Jay . . .” She choked on his name. “JD, you didn’t answer me. Why are you calling? I hope you don’t think we can possibly pick up where we left off. I told you I’m engaged. My wedding’s in December.” Maxine listened to the rustling on the other end of the line.

  “To Teddy Bear. Yes, you told me.”

  In the sudden silence, Maxine focused on the pale-greenish-brown sliver of water through the trees. She imagined its twists and turns, its gentle movement toward some distant river that finally emptied into the Atlantic. So intent was she on the ocean’s waves in her mind’s eye, she nearly missed hearing his next question.

  “Tell me, Maxine, why would I want what I had as a boy? I’ve put away a lot of childish things in the past thirteen years. I don’t want what used to be.”

  “Then why?” Maxine shut her eyes to the creek and the chrysanthemums and leaned back in her chair.

  “Because I want what should be. I want to know my daughter.”

  ________

  My Daily Grace—Still, Waters

  When my siblings were little, we spent our summers building boats out of leaves and twigs, and we raced them on the little creek running through the woods behind my folks’ house. Come winter, we skidded around on the frozen parts, only returning to my mother’s kitchen once our pants were icy wet and our fingers were almost too stiff to bend. I can still see that family of deer who made their home there one October. Poor things, I think they were hiding out from the hunters.

  Even now that creek winds its way through my life. I take comfort knowing it was there before I was born and it will be there after I’m gone. A few years ago, I thought we’d lost it for good. But after a two-day downpour we were asking ourselves, “What drought?” And yes, it continues feeding the area wildlife—from frogs and snakes and rabbits to the deer who still find shelter in our woods. Really, I’m the one who gets the most from that creek. I don’t race boats there or wade along its shoreline, but I have a special spot where I can sit and cry and pray about whatever is ailing me and hide from whatever is hunting me down. When the water winks at me from the window as I work, it soothes and calms me. Its silent presence reminds me what once was, points the way to what can be.

  Now I know things will change, “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise,” like my grandmama used to tell me. The waters just may dry up for good. Those deer I love to watch from my deck will find new, safer places to forage for food and raise their young. A tree may fall and divert the waters so they finally flood my folks’ basement.

  And talk about floods: These days I’m overwhelmed with all the changes in my life! I’m engaged (literally) in a yearlong process of change—my name, my address, my whole way of thinking about myself. Y’all may call it “planning a wedding,” but that’s too innocuous a name for what this entails—it certainly doesn’t feel like a joining together of anything, let alone a celebration. Instead I feel I’m becoming a completely different person. I don’t know if I’m coming or going with all the appointments with caterers and ministers, the making of guest lists, and playing dress-up, something I didn’t even enjoy as a youngster. I’m more likely to bite my fiancé’s hand than hold it. Some days I just want to turn back the clock and change into that teen in a ponytail who raced leaf boats with her brother or the young college grad who meditated by the shore—well, maybe not that.

  Folks are flitting in and out of my life. Some I need to hold on to; others I should let go. How do I handle my changing relationships with my parents, siblings, and friends and face a new life as a married woman? Just being “affianced” is hard enough on the heart and career! I know I’ll spend these next eleven months growing and stretching, and by the year’s end I’ll have grown leaps and bounds in so many ways, but at the moment, my feet aren’t quite big enough for these shoes. But I suppose that will . . . change, God willing and the creek don’t rise.

  So to those who reassure me that “change is good,” I amend, “good and painful.” And necessary. Yet, at the end of the day, my heart can rest assured in the unchanging promise found in Habakkuk 3:17-19:

  Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines; Though the labor of the olive may fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock may be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls—Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer’s feet, And He will make me walk on my high hills.

  Maxine closed her laptop and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. She’d barely met the deadline so her editor could link her blog to her column. Jean was probably having a hissy fit down at the magazine, she’d cut it so close. But she couldn’t fret about Jean and her notorious temper.

  Interlacing her fingers, she extended her arms way above her head, her eyes on the trees that also stretched their nearly bare limbs heavenward in the evening’s half-light. Then she pushed her chair back from her desk, stood, and turned away from the woods and the creek that cut a path through them. She didn’t have to see it to know the waters were rising.

  February

  “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.”

  ROMANS 7:15

  Chapter Six

  “WATCH YOURSELF!”

  Maxine hung on to the first two words JD ever said to her as if her life depended on them. But she never watched herself with him. She let him do that. She was too busy looking for something else she couldn’t seem to find.

  JD had caught Maxine before she could crack her skull on the concrete, swinging her around so she landed square, breathless and grateful, against his chest. She’d been part of the cava
lcade of high school students tumbling out of New Building, and she’d stumbled over the camouflage JanSport backpack balanced on his foot. His amber-colored eyes seemed to laugh at her, even as they warmed her from the flat-ironed roots of her hair to her ebony-tipped toes.

  That day after school she spared nary a thought for the small group of ninth-grade girls waiting to chat it up in the common area. She hopped into the passenger seat of his peeling robin’s-egg-blue Chevy, and they drove to Bedlow Park. From then on, that’s where they always headed whenever they could steal a moment together. There they talked without Vivienne giving JD the evil eye and Annie casting a wary one in Maxine’s direction.

  “I don’t get why Mother ever married John.” After a few weeks together, Maxine had begun picking away at the scar tissue attached to her heart. It hurt, but she could already feel the organ beating more freely, more forcefully, than it had before she’d ever laid eyes on JD. “She didn’t need him. She has me.”

  JD had spread a blanket back where the outstretched arms of the oak trees created a nest of shadows that sheltered them from the sun. And prying eyes. He was plucking at the green strands poking through the woven cotton fibers protecting them from the ground. He threw a handful on her. “So then what, Maxie? The three of us—you, me, and Vivienne—could go for rides in my truck? Maybe you’d have more fun if your mom was sitting here instead of me.”

  “Stop, JD!” Maxie laughed, brushing off the grass.

  “You’re the one who needs to stop telling yourself stories. It’s simple. Your mom probably missed your dad. She’s still pretty young, for somebody’s mama anyway, and she needed a man around the house.”

  “Well, I miss him too.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’re here with me.”

  “But I didn’t go looking for you. I just found you.” Maxie watched him uproot the grass for a moment. “Or maybe you found me.”

  JD brushed his hands together before resting them on the thighs of his carpenter jeans. He looked at her and shrugged. “Something like that.”

  Maxie lay on her side and rested her head in the pillow she created with her bent arms. She watched his slow, deliberate movements. Tired of whining about her own problems, she decided to widen the circle of their conversation. It always seemed to revolve around her. “What about your parents?”

  “What about them?” He traced a navy thread in the blanket, following it as it intersected a purple star sewn into the fabric. His finger skirted its five-point edge before moving along the navy line once more.

  “I want to know about your parents, or did you just sprout from someone’s head?”

  “Like Athena?” JD laughed. “I’ve been called good-looking, but handsome enough for Mount Olympus? Nahhh.”

  “Stop laughing at me.” Maxie threw grass at him. “And stop trying to change the subject. You know what I mean.”

  He grinned as he continued twiddling with the threads on the blanket.

  “So?”

  “So. Why do you want to know?” At last his eyes met hers.

  “Because . . .” Because I want to know everything about you. Like, where were you born? What were your first words? Why do you like camouflage? Can you hear your heart pounding in your ears the way I can? Do I feel like home to you, too? But she only managed, “I just do.” The words flopped out of her mouth and lay there between them, gasping desperately for air.

  “Oh, you ‘just do,’ huh?”

  She could feel his silent laughter but didn’t shy from it.

  He blinked. “Well, Maxie, since you have such a good reason . . . I lived with my mom and dad for almost seventeen years before he moved out last week. I have a brother who’s a year younger and a fourteen-year-old sister.”

  “You’re seventeen!” The words erupted from her brain and spewed through her lips. Maxine hadn’t considered his age. She was only a year older than his sister.

  “In a couple months. What’s up?”

  “I just . . .” I just found you, but soon you’ll be leaving me. Just like everybody else. But again, she didn’t say it. Maxie swallowed and played with her ponytail. “I mean, I’m sorry to hear about your folks.”

  He shrugged.

  “You’re graduating soon.”

  He took her hand and linked their fingers. His skin was a full shade browner than hers. “That’s a year and a half away. I’m here now. And so are you.”

  She liked how some of his fingers covered hers while some of hers wrapped around his. Maxie looked up. “Mother used to be there for me. Until she wasn’t.”

  “After your dad died?” JD’s voice was so quiet the breeze nearly carried it away before the question reached her ears. “She left you with your grandparents—Mr. and Mrs. Tagle?”

  She nodded. “Granddaddy Lerenzo and Mama Ruby, yes.”

  “And you said she came back about a year later, once she felt she could take care of you and—”

  “You mean, once she found somebody to take care of her.” Maxie extracted her hand from his and flopped onto her back. She tried to figure out the animals formed by the clouds.

  JD poked her in the side. “Is that when she became Mother and your grandma Mama?”

  She edged away from him. His insight hurt in places he couldn’t see.

  “Your mom must be a good-looking lady, if she’s anything like you. Did you think she’d never get married again and just be happy chasing you around for the rest of her life?”

  “Is that so bad?” Maxie pursed her lips, frustrated. She turned away from the puffy white rabbit and butterfly scudding across the blue above her to study JD instead, a long-legged man-child with peach fuzz dusting his full top lip. Nothing imaginary about him.

  “Well, I don’t think so, but I don’t have anything better to do today.” JD leaned down and, balancing on his elbows, hovered for a moment over her face. He kissed her when she didn’t turn away. “And maybe you wouldn’t have skipped band practice again to be here with me right now if she hadn’t gotten married.” He drew closer.

  Maxie rolled to a sitting position. She wrapped her arms around her bent knees. “I bet the band director will call my house. Mr. Freeman and my stepfather are golf buddies.” Things were starting to heat up, even back there in the shade. Because they were back there in the shade.

  “Do you want me to drive you to practice?”

  Maxie felt the weight of his eyes as she lifted her hair, heavy on the back of her neck. She’d blown it dry and then pressed it straight, but it was curling in the humidity. She twisted it into a loose bun, buying time before facing him. It feels good to be here with him. Like home. Finally.

  “Maxie. Do you want me to drive you back?”

  “Why do you call me Maxie?” Suddenly this was the only thing she wanted to know.

  JD tucked one of her errant strands behind her ear. “Does anybody else call you that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s why. Because it’s all mine. And so are you.”

  The tone in his voice forced her to look at him. “Then I’m going to call you Jay.” When he nodded, she didn’t look away again.

  ________

  “Hello-oo-oo from the mother ship.”

  The “daughter ship” returned to earth with a thunk. Maxine looked up from her spot on the floor in the family room at her mother’s house. The boys tumbled in behind her. “Hey!”

  “I’m not sure where you were just now, but I’m glad you’re back. I was sayin’ don’t bother with that. I plan to string some hearts together, add more red lights, and call it a day. Isn’t flockin’ supposed to preserve that thing?” Vivienne flicked a hand in the direction of the deep-fried Christmas tree sprouting in front of Maxine.

  “You should have jettisoned this fire hazard over a month ago, Mother, when the city was still picking up trees at the curb. At this point we’re going to have to dump it in the woods somewhere and chop it up.” She ruffled Second John’s light-brown waves and pulled one of Robert’s darker, s
traighter locks. “How was baseball?”

  “We were only getting fitted for our uniforms—” the younger twin started.

  “So it wasn’t much fun,” Second John finished. “Mom, I’m going to practice.”

  “Okay, but put away all your stuff before you hop on that piano. And what are you about to do, Robert? No video games.”

  “But, Mom!”

  “Butts are for—”

  “Obeying,” Second John filled in. “Come on, Robbie. I’ll help you with your robotics project before I practice.” He pulled his obstinate twin toward the stairs.

  Maxine patted Robert’s shoulder in sympathy and winked at his aider and abettor before turning back to the crispy remains of the Fraser fir.

  “Who has time to take down that tree? John is touring with his new book and I’ve got orders comin’ from every hill and dale. You know it’s the season of love!” Vivienne set her purse on the settee and joined Maxine. “Besides, it’s not a fire hazard. That flockin’ is supposed to be a flame retardant, according to the man at the Home Depot.” She tugged on a branch and winced when it snapped.

  Maxine raised a brow and pointed down to the green needles and white flakes on the wide cherry floor planks. “Maybe that was true in January, but we’re headed toward March. What about Celeste? Or the boys? You’d think they’d have time for stuff like this.”

  “Don’t you know by now that homeschoolers are busier than other folks? And that Celeste? ‘I’ve got homework.’ ‘I have rehearsal.’ ‘I never get time with my friends!’” Vivienne laughed as she mimicked the thirteen-year-old. “My child is never without an excuse. What are you doin’ here anyway? You don’t have anything better to do on Valentine’s Day than take down your mama’s Christmas tree? I should call Robert and Second John down here. They can work on that robotics project later.”

  “My child.” Maxine blinked rapidly at the words she was starting to pay more attention to. She turned to the half-filled box of ornaments by her feet. “No need to bother the boys. Y’all just got home. I have some time before Teddy picks me up for our meeting with Pastor Atwater. Then he’s making me dinner.” She removed a square of bubble wrap and tucked a ceramic choirgirl into it.