'Til I Want No More

by Robin W. Pearson

  “Mm-hm,” JD mumbled. He rubbed Lauren’s bare feet.

  Maxine slapped her forehead. Sunday. Church! I’m glad Mother and First John are out of town.

  “Need a ride home?” Kevin sipped from his cup.

  “I’ll have some bacon first—there is enough for me, right?—and finish my coffee. Then, yes, I could use a ride. Thanks!”

  “Because Jay offered while you were upstairs. Though he might have changed his mind since then.” His eyes never left the magazine.

  Maxine dropped the English muffin she’d split. She brushed it off and popped it into the toaster.

  “I’m still willing to suffer through the drive with Maxine,” JD responded dryly, twiddling with the gold loop in his ear. “I know how much you could use a Sabbath rest, Kevin, to cuddle with your girls. But if you call me Jay one more time . . .”

  “By the way, nice column this month.” Kevin spun the magazine around on the counter. He pointed to Maxine’s tiny image over her column and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Maxine opened the refrigerator door and buried her head between the shelves holding the milk, coffee creamer, eggs, and butter.

  “Have you read it, JD? Assuming not, this is what our writer friend over there had to say. She calls it ‘Move-In Ready.’”

  Mouth agape, cheeks cool, Maxine emerged holding the tub of Country Crock. “You’re really going to read it out loud?”

  “Why not? Isn’t it the same as passing it to him once I’m done?” Kevin shrugged in the answering silence to his question and resumed.

  “So what’s ‘home’ to you?

  At the moment, my home may not look like much to an observer, casual or otherwise. It’s certainly not one of those tiny houses currently in fashion, though if you squint, you might deem it ‘cozy.’ It’s big enough to hold everything that’s near and dear to me: my mother’s old bedroom set, a sofa I got in grad school, the walnut desk I refinished myself, and my laptop, my faithful frenemy. I can’t host a family reunion here, but I have the space to cook a mean pot of ramen and enjoy my morning coffee. I lovingly refer to it as my ‘room with a view.’

  And what a view!

  From here, I keep a watchful eye on my home away from home—my family. Sure, they can be a little too close for comfort, and I get the sense sometimes that Mother feels the same way about me. But when I’m in need of that comfort—and butter pecan ice cream, a private string concert, a rousing game of Qwirkle, or a plate of anything other than noodles—they’re a mere heartbeat away.

  Isn’t that what home is anyway? It sounds cliché, but it’s where the heart lives, breathes, cooks, bathes, fights . . . and expands. For the past few months, that’s exactly what I’ve been working on—expanding my home, planning for the day when Hubby-to-be quite literally (and figuratively) officially moves in. I’ve been preparing to accommodate another towel, a few suits, some red beans and rice, and a turtle of all things. They’ll have to move over for a standard poodle, a baby grand piano, and midnight bowls of Frosted Flakes.

  I’d thought my ‘renovated space’ meant moving in his mother and her quilting squares and his dad’s antique cars, his sister who only calls when we eat dinner, my brothers and their jokes about body functions, my sister’s giggling girlfriends, my parents’ cast-iron pots and pans, and my grandparents’ stories . . . all under one blood-pumping roof.

  Yet God had more heartrending work in mind for His fixer-upper, more than a mere change of address. He’s knocking down walls of miscommunication and shoring up binding ties. He’s deep cleaning and power washing, making everything new. And He won’t complete His makeover within an hour-long episode. It’ll take a lifetime, which means it won’t be finished in time for the wedding. But that’s okay, even if this process hasn’t gone the way I expected. It’s all according to His plans.

  Yes, my home is where the heart is. But most important, my heart is where Jesus is. He’s reassured me there’s always room for one more: Him.

  Are you undergoing renovations of your own? I’d love to be a part of your family’s journey, so drop me a line and tell me about it. Here’s a Word of encouragement from Ruth 1:16 in case you need it:

  Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God.”

  By that time, JD had been reading silently over Kevin’s shoulder as he gently rocked the baby. Without looking up, he asked, “So, Maxie, are you bringing your Teddy Bear home to the garage apartment?”

  “That was the plan,” she answered around a mouthful of bacon and muffin.

  “When are you going to tell him your ‘home’ includes an ex-husband and a daughter?”

  Kevin ruffled the pages. “Come on, man. Now’s not the time. I’d hoped to break the ice between you two, not go into a deep freeze up in here.”

  “It’s going to take more than a touchy-feely magazine column to do that.” JD stalked over to the coffee maker.

  Ding-dong!

  Kevin looked from JD to Maxine.

  “I’ve got the baby.” JD nodded at Lauren, snoring softly in his arms.

  Maxine shrugged. “I don’t live here. You’d better get the door before the dog wakes Evelyn.”

  Kevin left the kitchen.

  Maxine tapped in the password on her phone and opened the app for her texts.

  Ding-dong!

  “Oh no.” Maxine’s phone clattered on the cherry tabletop as she sprang from the table. She sprinted for the foyer. “Kevin, wait!”

  Her fiancé stood on the threshold, framed by the sunlight, his face obscured by Kevin, who had thrown open the door. As Teddy stepped forward with arms outstretched, Maxine saw his warm smile widen . . . and freeze as JD strolled up beside her, still holding the sleeping baby. Teddy’s arms fell limp to his sides.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “TEDDY, I JUST GOT YOUR MESSAGE.” Maxine, breathless, kissed his cheek. “I’m ready. Let me grab my purse and phone from the kitchen, and we can go.” She patted his forearm and turned to dash back to the kitchen.

  But he clasped her fingers as they brushed his. “Still struggling with introductions, Maxine?”

  “Oh, right. Well, you remember Kevin, Evelyn’s husband, from yesterday. Evelyn’s upstairs catching up on sleep after a bad night with the baby. Otherwise, she’d be here with us. And this . . . this is Kevin’s brother, Jay, uh, JD . . . I mean, James D. Lester. He came over this morning. For breakfast. Well, it wasn’t really breakfast, more like bacon and coffee.” I sound unhinged even to my own ears.

  “Jay, JD, James Lester. . . . Wow, you must have spent three years in kindergarten trying to keep all that straight.” Teddy stepped forward, hand outstretched. “I’m Theodore, Maxine’s fiancé. Didn’t think I’d meet you in person before the commencement.”

  JD reached out with his left hand and gave Teddy an awkward-looking, abrupt shake while still cupping the baby’s back with his right. “Theodore. Teddy. Headmaster. Fiancé. It’s nice to put a face to your many names as well.”

  Kevin shut the door. “Well, you can call me Mr. Tibbs. . . . You know, the movie with Sidney Poitier . . . In the Heat of the Night?” He winced as his joke seemed to miss its mark and landed somewhere beyond the other, silent people in the foyer. “Now that we’ve cleared all that up, would you like to come in, Teddy? We were having—how did Maxine put it?—‘like coffee and bacon.’”

  Maxine no longer cared about the bacon. “I don’t think we have time.”

  “Sure.” Teddy draped his arm around her shoulders. “It’s probably a good idea to learn more about the man speaking at our graduation. You already seem to have a way with the ladies in the audience.” He nodded at Lauren, nestled into JD’s neck.

  JD’s eyes narrowed.

  His look reminded Maxine of the day he happened upon her poring over tenth-grade geometry proofs with Carl Schwartz. He sized up the other boy right away, his smi
rk announcing that he recognized Carl was more interested in the female figure sitting across from him than the geometric ones. He left Carl and Maxine there with their heads together, swapping No. 2 pencils and college-ruled notebook paper. Before sauntering away, he even pointed out a mathematical error in Carl’s proof and mouthed, “QED” over the boy’s head. Quod erat demonstrandum.

  When she glanced at Teddy, she saw a similar look, one that measured the length, width, and breadth of JD, that took stock of his intentions and his chance of success. She imagined two male lions on the savannah, circling each other, calculating when, how, and where to strike.

  Maxine leaned into Teddy and tightened her grip on his hand. “Okay, let’s get to know each other. We can sit in the keeping room.” As she led the group to the back of the house, she listened to their footsteps fall into step behind her.

  “I’ll make more coffee before I check on Evelyn,” Kevin offered.

  They sat quietly around the coffee table in the keeping room just off the kitchen—she and Teddy on the love seat in front of the window, JD and Lauren across from them in a leather armchair—while their host ground fresh beans and filled the filter. Then Kevin lifted the baby from JD’s arms and exited the room. Take me with you! Maxine nearly cried.

  “So, James—is that what you’d prefer?—Maxine tells me you and she dated in high school.” Teddy’s fingers played with the stray hairs on the back of Maxine’s neck.

  She watched JD watch Teddy’s hand.

  “Actually, those who knew me when tend to call me Jay, with a James Dee thrown in for good measure. Colleagues call me James or JD. But it’s par for the course, a Southern thing. I’ve called some of my own cousins by their nicknames for so long, I don’t even remember their real names—Big Boy, Schoolgirl, Sistah. So, yes, James is fine.” He paused. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “I’m from farther South. I grew up in New Orleans, but I graduated from Boston College. You know, pahk the cah near the hahbah and all that. What about you?” Teddy’s trailing hand settled along her neckline.

  “I followed my brother to Princeton. He transferred back to school in North Carolina, but I stayed and eventually went to work in New York. But home never leaves you.”

  Maxine’s eyes flicked to the magazine and back to JD.

  JD crossed his leg and rested his hand on a knee. “How’d you end up in our sleepy burg, Theodore?”

  “Apparently, the same way you did, by what I’ve read in your curriculum vitae: work, pure and simple. And I’m grateful, because I would never have met Maxine.” He turned to her as his fingers busied themselves once again, tracing her jawline near her ear.

  Yet the flatness of his eyes belied his show of affection. He seemed to have traveled to some faraway place with accommodations only for one. Maxine almost reached for his hand to interlace her fingers with his, to center him in the moment with her, but suddenly she heard, It’s time. She blinked, and Teddy turned away.

  JD’s fingertips played a slow drumbeat against his shin. “So when did you two get engaged?”

  Now, Maxine. Now’s the time. She inhaled deeply.

  “December. Didn’t she tell you?”

  “No, she can be pretty closemouthed about her personal life.”

  Maxine felt like she was poised on the back stairs, listening to the two men talk about her. She stood and walked deeper into the kitchen, feeling the heat of their eyes on her back. Her eyes landed on her column.

  Tell them what home means to you.

  She wanted to cover her ears to shut out the voice, but it reverberated from somewhere deep inside, exuding from her body in waves.

  Who is home to you, Maxine?

  Suddenly Teddy was beside her, turning her to face him. His eyes now burned with questions.

  “In the car yesterday, you asked me about JD . . .” Maxine’s voice faded as JD twisted around in his chair, catching her words as they fell from her mouth. Unable to focus on him for long without running out of breath, Maxine averted her eyes to the Japanese maple framed by the window. It glowed red in the late-spring sun. The movement of its delicate leaves mirrored the slight tremor of her body.

  “I told you we dated pretty seriously.”

  “You didn’t say ‘pretty seriously.’”

  “Well, it was. I mean, we did. In fact . . . in fact, we more than dated.”

  “What’s ‘more than dated’?” Again, Teddy turned her face toward his.

  “For goodness’ sake, man, give her room to speak!” JD’s voice exploded from his seat though he never stood.

  Upstairs, the baby cried.

  Maxine moved away from Teddy and gripped the counter, her eyes squeezed shut. Please, Lord. Help me get this out somehow. Her exhaled breath seemed to make her eyelids flutter as she opened them.

  “Do you mean you had . . . a sexual relationship?” Teddy backed away.

  Maxine fought the urge to check herself for visible, oozing sores, to shout, “Unclean! Unclean!” and distance herself from her fiancé. Her brain searched for the right answer while her mouth spouted, “Yes.”

  “No. No, it wasn’t a sexual relationship. Don’t you dare stand there and try to shame her, to shame us. Neither one of us is about to pin an A to our shirts and hang our heads. We were married. She was my wife. I was her husband.”

  “What did you say?” Teddy erupted.

  Again they heard Lauren’s cry from the second floor. This time, Cocoa’s faint ruff-ruff, ruff-ruff followed up.

  Maxine reached out, but her fiancé stepped out of reach. Her fingers floated there in the air for a second before they were gripped by another.

  JD shook his head, but he didn’t let go of Maxine. If anything, he held on more tightly. His no seemed to be about Teddy—no to saying more, no to explaining her past away, no to making excuses, no to feelings of disgrace. No to her engagement.

  Two pairs of feet thundered down the back stairs.

  “What’s going on down here? Every time we get this close to settling Lauren, we hear shouting.” Evelyn stood by the range in a rumpled T-shirt and sweatpants. Her hair stood up. Behind his wife, Kevin, eyelids drooping, silently rocked Lauren, whose tiny arms pummeled his chest as she screeched.

  Teddy spotted Maxine and JD’s clasped hands. His mouth worked but didn’t muster a sound.

  Kevin edged by Evelyn and laid a hand on JD’s shoulder. “Bruh, why don’t we let Theodore and Maxine have a moment? We can stream the worship service down in the media room while we work on getting the little one back to sleep.”

  Though JD started to shake his head, Maxine withdrew her hand from his and stepped closer to her fiancé. “Thank you, Kev. We could use that moment. Teddy, do you want to sit on the deck?” She waited for his answer, ignoring the others as they shuffled from the room. It wasn’t until she heard the basement’s pocket door slide closed that she pointed to the back door. “Teddy?”

  He looked at her a moment before heading toward the double front doors.

  Chapter Thirty

  BY THE TIME MAXINE CAUGHT UP with Teddy on the sidewalk, she’d broken into a light sweat. The sunrays were hot fingers pressing on the skin between her shoulder blades through her thin shirt. She hoped Teddy would cross over to a shadier side of the street, but he seemed oblivious to the late-spring heat that was quickly turning the corner to summer. When she glanced at his grim profile, guilt suffused her.

  “It’s starting to feel like New Orleans out here. I’d suggest walking under those dogwoods, but I know you’ll be afraid of the bees or bugs.”

  “I-I’ll be okay. I don’t think I’d even notice a bee sting today.” Feeling worse after his thoughtful suggestion, she took a step off the sidewalk.

  “Whoa!” He threw an arm out as a sedan blew by them, going too fast on the neighborhood road. Then he took her hand. Once they’d safely crossed, he let go. “So let’s hear it, Maxine.”

  She kept her eyes on her feet as they moved slowly, but she too
k no notice of the delicate mounds of white and yellow blossoms dying on the sidewalk. Though she yearned to feel the security of her hand in his, she didn’t dare stretch for his fingers dangling at his side.

  “Maxine?” Teddy stopped walking.

  She sighed and turned to face him, squinting into the sun that framed his face. “Can I start by telling you how sorry I am?”

  “I’d rather you told me how much you love me, but I suppose I’ll take that.” He shifted to his left, deeper in the shade of an overhanging branch, forcing her to follow.

  Maxine’s face flushed, despite the cooler temperature in the shadows.

  “Come on. Tell me what’s going on. You and this JD person were married? When did that happen?”

  “When I was seventeen. And—” she swallowed—“and I got pregnant.”

  “You mean, you got pregnant, so you eloped.” He shook his head as if judging the sad ending to her story.

  “No, that’s not what happened.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” She took a deep breath.

  “Don’t try. Just tell me.”

  “Yes, we eloped when I was seventeen, and he was a freshman at Princeton. I got pregnant right away, before we could tell our families about our marriage. Instead of following him to New Jersey the way I’d planned, I told him I’d miscarried, and then I ran away and had the baby.” Her chest heaved with the effort to catch up with her words.

  “Where’s the baby now?”

  “Here, in Mount Laurel.” Maxine cleared her throat. “Celeste, Celeste is . . . was . . . my baby.”

  Teddy’s eyes flattened; then they fluttered like butterflies before they closed altogether. “Of course,” he whispered under his breath. “Of course she is. That makes sense.” His eyes opened to such narrow slits his lashes nearly covered his pupils. “The family business.”

  “Yes, I suppose you can say that.”