by Sally John
George set down his coffee cup. “Some are heavy.” His are sounded like er. “Doodads, books, all kinds of junk. Lou never could throw a thing out.”
Evidently George couldn’t throw out a thang either. Except when it came to human beings, like a wife. He’d stuck Louise in a nursing home at the first sign of dementia fifteen years ago. And then boxed up all her stuff. Why would he bother to save her thangs when he couldn’t hold on to her?
Max still had no idea how Claire had emerged from the likes of George, a bona fide jerk, and Louise, an alcoholic for most of her so-called sane life.
At the end of the table, Steve cleared his throat.
Steve was the number-two meanest son of a gun Max had ever met. He also happened to be Claire’s younger brother. The youngest, Jim, had headed back to Alaska about thirty minutes after their mother’s body was buried that afternoon. Jim was a sweet guy. Except for a few quick trips to San Diego, the funeral had been his first visit to the Lower 48 in decades.
Steve said, “The boxes are at my house. In the attic.”
“Okay,” Max said. “We’ll pick them up in the morning, on the way to the airport.”
“Won’t be there in the morning.”
“You or the boxes won’t be there?”
Claire squeezed his knee. “What’s a better time for you, Steve?”
“Now.”
“All right.” She looked at Max again. “So the extra weight won’t be a problem? If it is, I’ll sort through her things before we leave.”
“It won’t be a problem.”
George said, “Plane’s big enough, huh?”
“Yeah, it is.” Max met his glare with one of his own.
The animosity was a two-way street. He’d always known that. Claire’s dad had resented him since the day they’d met, probably before. It had nothing to do with Claire. She’d left her family right out of high school and hadn’t looked back. It wasn’t as though he’d stolen her away from them. He guessed it had more to do with machismo. A guy thing. Whose rock pile was bigger.
Claire stood. “Let’s go, then.”
Good idea, he thought and unclenched his fist.
That night, Claire huddled against Max in the Marriott bed.
When he’d climbed in beside her, she frowned as if in protest. He hesitated, and then she began to cry. Something broke between them.
He held her close. She hadn’t cried yet, at least not in Max’s pres-ence. It was a sad type of crying, a whimpering.
He figured he’d whimper, too, given such losers for parents. His were a pain in the neck, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the Lamberts. They were, hands down, a piece of work.
He kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry you had such a terrible life.”
She buried her face against his shoulder. After a time, he heard a deep sob wrench her body.
“Max, please don’t leave me.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
His response was immediate. Say what? Don’t leave her ? Was she kidding? Half the contents of her closet were at Tandy’s. She left him a note, for goodness’ sake, telling him she’d left him.
Exactly where did she get off saying not to leave her?
His anger simmered on a low burn. Sleep would be a long time in coming.
Twenty-two
What happened to our weeks of fun in the sun?” Jenna pouted and crossed her arms.
“Jen.” He stuffed his baseball glove into the gym bag on the bed. “It’s only a couple games a week.”
A friend of his had injured some body part, so Kevin was invited to take his place on a softball team for the remainder of the season. The league didn’t play in their neighborhood. It was at least a half hour’s drive to the field.
“Plus a tournament this weekend.” He dug through his sock drawer. “Saturday and Sunday.”
It was all news to Jenna. She’d just walked in the door after a trip to the hairdresser’s and grocery store.
“But, Kevin, we have dinner plans!”
“So we’ll eat late.” He shoved socks into the bag and zipped it shut. Straightening, he looked at her. “I miss playing.”
The little-boy expression on his face annoyed her. When a student displayed such innocence, warning bells went off in her head. It usually accompanied statements such as “I promise I’ll turn it in tomorrow.”
But Kevin wasn’t a kid at school. He was her husband, and she loved him.
She untwined her arms, relaxed her pouting lips, and toned her voice back to normal. “I know you miss it. You haven’t had a chance to play in forever. It’s just that I was counting on these two weeks to be like a vacation, like we were out of town and nobody could reach us.”
“We still have the days and most nights. You want to come watch?”
“Uh, gee, thanks. I always like to watch grass grow.” She rolled her eyes.
“We’re not talking the Padres.” He winked. “You’ve never seen me play. Things start smoking when I’m out there on the field.”
She laughed. “Nothing feeble about your ego, Mason.”
He walked around the bed and wrapped her in a bear hug. “I’ll take you out for pizza.”
“No, thanks. Now that I think about it, this might be a good time to get together with Brie and some of the others.” She disliked how her core group of friends seemed to be drifting apart post careers and marriages. “Maybe we can start a regular girls’ night out again.”
“Yeah. That sounds like fun for you.”
“So, big guy, when are your games?”
“I put the schedule in the kitchen.”
“Okay. I’ll work on my schedule, and then I’ll fix us an extra special dinner. There was a sale on porterhouse steaks.”
“Mmm. Hey, thanks for understanding. I’ve heard some gruesome tales about wives and their apron strings.”
She smiled. “You didn’t seriously have doubts, did you?”
“Well, I did notice a little pout. It’s been a rough week for you.”
She rested against him. Her mom and dad were flying home from her grandmother’s funeral, but Kevin wasn’t referring to Louise Lambert’s passing. Jenna had never known the woman. She’d only seen her a few times, and she was always, as her mom predicted, three sheets to the wind. Not a pretty picture. Claire never pressed the issue of that relationship. After all, the kids had Nana and Papa.
What Kevin meant by rough week was her parents. Jenna didn’t know where things stood between them. Maybe they were figuring it all out over the Grand Canyon. What else could they do, stuck in a small plane together for hours on end?
He cleared his throat. “Did I mention it’s a coed league?”
Jenna looked up at him. “Coed?”
“So if some gal drops out, I’ll put you on the roster. Okay?” He smiled.
“Yeah, right.”
He laughed.
A tug-of-war pulled on her emotions. It pulled at her mouth and arms and throat. She wanted to pout and whine and cross her arms.
No, she didn’t. She was not jealous of other women—athletic women—playing on the same team with Kevin. She was secure in who she was. It didn’t matter she’d been chosen last for every physical activity in her life, including in every PE class and neighborhood pickup game. Always, from preschool through college. It didn’t matter that her one attempt at dance class ended with a broken arm when she was five. Nor did it matter that she couldn’t throw a ball or swing a bat to save her life.
Nor did it matter that Kevin was well aware of all that.
“Kevin, you know you can be a real jerk?”
“I’m sorry. Bad timing for yanking your chain.”
“Timing and subject matter.”
“Forgive me?”
“Maybe.”
He slid his hand through her hair and lowered his face to hers. “I love you. I love you just the way you are, uncoordinated and musi-cally gifted.”
She wrinkled her nose at him.
He kissed her
then.
And he kept on kissing her until she forgot why it was she wanted to pout.
Late that night, Jenna awoke, fully alert. A sense of dread enveloped her.
She should have called her mom and asked about the funeral.
She hadn’t because what she’d really be asking was where her mom planned to sleep that night. And Jenna wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to know the answer to that question.
The clock on the dresser read two eighteen. Nighttime scents and insect noises came through the open window. Light from a street-lamp cast a yellow glow in their room.
And something wasn’t right.
Beside her, Kevin sprawled on his stomach, his breathing deep and slow. When they’d first married, he never slept that way, dead to the world. In those early days he’d lie stiffly on his back, as if alert and ready for action even in his dreams.
Jenna rolled onto her side and laid a hand on his shoulder, need-ing to feel his strength.
As a little girl she had battled nighttime fears. Her mother and Nana encouraged her to pray through them. But, like other childish things, the uneasiness faded with time. She grew up.
So what was with tonight, all of a sudden? Nana would tell her to pray. She would tell her that God was in control.
Jenna searched her memory for the simple prayer she’d learned at her grandmother’s knee. It didn’t come.
God wasn’t coming. Her mommy and daddy were separated, and God wasn’t coming.
The sense of dread engulfed her like a heavy wool blanket, smothering her with horror.
Twenty-three
Indio aroused herself from a fitful sleep at 2:50 a.m. and gave up the notion that she could get a good night’s rest.
She repositioned pillows and leaned back against them.
Ben stirred. In the bright moonlight that poured through the windows, she watched him roll from his back to his side toward her. “Need me?” he murmured.
“Yes,” she whispered. Thank You, Lord, for this man who is so in tune with me.
“Ah.” There was a grin in Ben’s voice. “It’s a bird night.”
“Mm-hmm.”
They listened for a few moments. It tickled them both to catch the odd sound of birds singing in the dead of night. They imagined that the dulcet notes were praises to the Creator.
“I should have called them, Ben.” The clothespin snapped shut on her lungs again. She began to knead her chest bone.
“I recall you quit worrying about Max and Claire flying a long time ago.”
“I wasn’t concerned about them flying.” When Max first bought the plane, Indio’s faith had taken flight every time he flew in it. She bugged him, phoned after each leg of a trip, until he told her in no uncertain terms to stop. She could still hear him declaring in a sharp tone that he was not BJ, he was not a Navy pilot, he was not in Vietnam.
Indio sighed. “Maybe they reconciled on the trip.”
Ben scooted up to a sitting position and put an arm around her shoulders.
She leaned into him. “It couldn’t happen that fast, though, could it?”
“No, it couldn’t.”
“God could have made it happen that fast.”
“Yes, He could.”
“Oh, Ben.”
“Shh.” He rested his chin atop her head. “Remember our story. God had quite a few kinks to iron out along the way in our marriage. It was a long process. The same holds true for them.”
“We could have taught them more diligently what we learned.”
“Love, we showed them by how we relate to each other. Preaching at them would have fallen on deaf ears.”
“It’s just so obvious how backwards they’ve got it.”
“Climbing up to your pulpit, are you?”
Indio ignored his remark. “They look to each other for happiness and security, like they’ve got the power to give that. Claire bottles things up instead of communicating with him. And he certainly is the world’s worst at communicating when it comes to heart issues. Now they’re reaping what they’ve sown, and it’s destroying any shred of love they might still have for each other.”
“Finished yet?”
“No. They are two selfish, selfish people.”
“Who needs prayer.”
I’m too mad to pray.
Now who wasn’t communicating? “I don’t really feel like it.”
“You can be prickly, woman.”
“Oooh! I just want to shake some sense into them.”
He chuckled. “Listen. This is part of their journey. We can’t take it for them.”
She moaned against his shoulder. “Why do I lose it whenever it comes to Max? After all these years!”
“Because you keep taking back the sins God has forgiven. Yes, we screwed up parenting him. We put BJ on a pedestal and made Max feel unworthy by comparing him. But we have confessed all of it to Max and God. We’ve tried to make amends. We love on Max the best we know how. Indio, let it go.”
“Max hasn’t let it go.”
“And is that your job to make him? You even think you can make him?”
“No.” She wiped a tear on his cotton T-shirt.
“We can only pray for them.”
“Go ahead.”
“Guess we know why I woke up.” He wrapped his other arm around her. “Dear Father, we come to You with praise and thanks-giving. We have anxieties about Max and Claire. We pray for their healing, for their reconciliation . . .”
He continued. After a time, Indio breathed easier. She fell asleep to the soothing rumble of her husband’s voice.
Twenty-four
At 3:20 a.m., Claire shifted on the lumpy mattress and turned on the bedside lamp. She wondered if she would ever sleep again after what she had done.
Twenty-four hours ago she had been sound asleep in—of all places—a Fayetteville, North Carolina, hotel and in—this was the mind-boggler—Max’s embrace.
Their morning conversation that followed had been subdued, centered around details of leaving the city.
As always, they were eager to put the city far behind them as quickly as possible. Unlike always, though, she could not shut off the childhood memories. During the cross-country flight home, they’d bombarded her. So strong was the attack, she broke a self-imposed cardinal rule set back in the days when her sole purpose in life was to keep him happy: she interrupted his work.
Maybe the fact that he had been there for her prompted her to move from the window to the aisle seat across from him. The jet could accommodate eight. Max had chosen to sit apart from her. He’d spread his work things on the seat beside his, opened up the laptop, and explained that he wanted to finish some things so he’d have less to do when they got home.
“I told you about feeling safe at Tandy’s?”
He looked up from his laptop, a question on his face as if he hadn’t heard her.
She repeated herself. “Remember I said I felt safe at Tandy’s?”
His black eyes were onyx hard, his thin lips a straight line. Clearly he was in business mode.
“Max, I need to talk.”
He exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath. “I thought you might use this time to rest.”
“My mind won’t stop. Do you remember? Being at Tandy’s re-minded me of being at Aunt Helen’s and sleeping with my stuffed lion, all cuddled up in safety.”
“You said when I showed up that feeling vanished like a puff of smoke.”
She nodded. “Last night it was different. I—I felt all cuddled up in safety. Thank you.”
He gave a half nod.
“Actually, I felt safe from the moment you walked into the funeral home.”
The corners of his mouth dented inward.
She had imagined he might not show up at all for the visitation. But he’d come, and only fifteen minutes late. He marched in, a determined expression on his face—the one he always displayed in Fayetteville. It wordlessly announced, “Don’t mess with me.”
His
black designer suit and teal rep tie stood out in sharp contrast to what others wore. Although shorter than her dad and brothers by several inches, his square frame and that presence he carried made him appear bigger and stronger. He had gone immediately to her side and hadn’t left it until boarding his private jet.
She said, “It reminded me of when we first dated. I knew you could whup my dad with one hand tied behind your back.”
The corners of his mouth slid a millimeter upward. “I didn’t meet your family until after we eloped.”
“But they still scared me long-distance. You made all the difference, almost the instant we met in the college library. My knight in shining armor. I remember the first time we spent the night together. I didn’t miss my stuffed lion after that.”
She wondered when she had begun to miss the lion again. She wondered if Max wondered.
He smiled. “Our first night together, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”
“It’s a good memory, then?”
He laughed.
She dug in her handbag for a tissue.
The pilot interrupted, coming back to tell them something, and the moment passed. Afterward, Max excused himself and returned to his laptop. She blew her nose and eventually napped.
One-sided as it was, the conversation with Max had felt good and right. Traces of security lingered even as they landed in San Diego. In the limousine she scooted next to him until their shoulders touched. Quiet was okay, as long as he was close by. Maybe they could go home and begin figuring out what had happened last week. Maybe her mother-in-law’s reconciliation prayers were being answered.
He took her hand. “Claire, I have to stop at the office. My car’s in the lot. I told the driver to take you on home. I should be there in, uh, an hour.” He squeezed her hand and let it go.
She stiffened. His ballpark guesses on time never hit the mark, and he knew that. And he knew that she knew.
“Two hours, tops. You can get settled in. We can order pizza. Or I’ll swing by Mille Fleurs, bring home something nice. I’ll call you before I leave. We can decide then.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You’ll be fine, hon. I won’t be long. I know how hard this trip was on you.”