The Wedding Tree

by Robin Wells

  My heart broke for him. I reached out and put my hand on his arm. “Charlie. Charlie, it’s okay.”

  His hand covered mine. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  The baby kicked. I moved his hand to my belly. “You won’t, Charlie. You won’t. We’re right here.”

  But a part of me was somewhere else, and nothing I could say would really convince either of us otherwise.

  27

  matt

  What book would you like for your bedtime story?” I’d been gone for three nights, and I’d missed the bedtime tuck-in ritual.

  Sophie looked expectantly at me, her mouth foaming with toothpaste. “Can Hope come over and tell us a story?”

  “What?”

  “She makes up stories. Today she tol’ us about the ’ventures of Mr. Monkey.”

  “It was pretty funny.” Zoey carefully rinsed her toothbrush and put it in the Cinderella toothbrush holder that sat between the double sinks of the girls’ bathroom. “Mr. Monkey ’scaped from the zoo in the zookeeper’s pocket, and everyone thought the zookeeper was a thief ’cause Mr. Monkey kept stealing things. When a policeman arrested the zookeeper, Mr. Monkey stole his hat.”

  Sophie giggled, spraying foam like a rabid dog. “Yeah. An’ it looked like the hat was alive!”

  “Finish brushing before you talk, Sophie,” Matt said.

  She spit into the sink. “So can we call Hope?”

  “No. We don’t want to bother her this late.”

  “But she wouldn’ mind! She likes bein’ with us.”

  “Daddy’s right. We shouldn’t call her,” Zoey said, primly drying her hands. “Aunt Jillian said we shouldn’t get too ’ttached to Hope, ’cause she won’t be around very long.”

  A nerve twitched in my jaw. I didn’t like Jillian talking to them about Hope, but even more, I didn’t like the fact she was right.

  “I’ll read you a story. Which one should it be?”

  The girls finally agreed on a book, and I went through the rites of bedtime—a story, prayers, kisses, and tucking in. I picked up the baby monitor I still used when I went downstairs, then waited down the hall to make sure they weren’t going to get up for an extra cup of water or some other sleep-postponement excuse. Ten minutes later, their whispers subsided and the house was quiet—oppressively quiet, quiet as a tomb.

  Tomb made me think of Christine’s, which made me realize I hadn’t been thinking about her—which gave me a weird pang of something that felt like guilt.

  I rubbed my head. Everyone had told me about the stages of grief, but no one had mentioned the aftereffects. I mean, I’m over the worst of it, but now that I no longer miss her so acutely, I feel kind of bad about it. I feel as if I’m abandoning her.

  That first year, I thought about her all the time. The girls did, too, especially at bedtime, when they’d cry for their mommy. It tore at my gut. It was such a relief when they fell asleep—except then, I didn’t have the girls as a distraction. The evenings had been our private time—the time Christine and I would watch TV together or read together or just talk. After she died, that was when I’d missed her like a phantom limb. I don’t feel that anymore, and the lack of pain feels wrong.

  I wandered downstairs. I glanced at the TV, but felt no urge to turn it on. There were journals on the coffee table that I should probably read and various electronic screens to scroll through, but instead, I wandered outside, the monitor in my pocket, leaving the screen door open for extra insurance.

  From the back porch, I could see the bench swing next door swaying back and forth. My chest jumped. Hope.

  I haven’t known how to act around her ever since I kissed her—especially since that second time. I don’t really know what came over me—well, I do know, and it was out of character for me to act on desire like that—and I’ve found myself thinking about her a lot.

  There’s a lot you can tell from a kiss. I don’t know if it’s taste or smell or texture or what, but a kiss will tell you about chemistry. I’ve kissed a few women since Christine, and I hadn’t felt it, but with Hope . . . oh yeah, it was there, all right. It was there in spades.

  Kissing her changed the way I thought about her, I have to say that. I’d found her attractive before, but now . . . well, she’d become kind of an obsession.

  Which is weird, because she’s not really my type—at least, the type I went for before I was married. Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to her—she’s a novelty, a distraction. The fact I didn’t think of Christine when I kissed Hope didn’t strike me as exactly a good thing. I felt bad about not feeling bad. But maybe that’s good.

  I stood there listening to the tree frogs and watched her swing for a moment. I started to turn and go back inside, but just as I did, she seemed to sense me.

  She turned her head, then lifted her hand in a wave. “Hello,” she called.

  I walked down the porch steps, away from the house so my voice wouldn’t wake the girls. “Hello, yourself. Want some company?”

  “Sure—if you can leave the girls.”

  “I’m listening to their every move on a baby monitor.”

  “Then come on over.” I found the opening in the hedge, wedged throughout it sideways, then crossed the lawn. She moved over in the wooden swing, and I sat down beside her, setting the rhythm akimbo.

  We weren’t touching, but I felt her next to me. My pulse thrummed like the tree frogs’ rhythmic song. “The girls’ room is looking great,” I said.

  “Glad you like it. I’ve started sewing the drapes and canopies, and should have everything finished up next week.”

  “The girls will be thrilled.” I, however, I was going to miss her being there. “How’s the packing and sorting going with your grandmother?” I asked.

  “Gran and I seem to be sorting through a lot more than her possessions,” she said. “And I’ve gotta say, I’m having a bit of a hard time processing it all.”

  “Oh yeah? Tell me about it.”

  So she did. For the next few minutes, she poured out a riveting tale. “Gran doesn’t want this gossiped about, so please don’t tell anyone,” she cautioned.

  “I’m an attorney. I’m good at keeping secrets.”

  She nodded. “I figured it was safe to tell you.”

  She trusted me. I don’t know why that gave me a warm buzz in my chest, but it did. “That’s an amazing story. How does it all make you feel?”

  She grinned at me. “You sound like a shrink.”

  I was struck by a sense of déjà vu. “Actually, I sound like Christine. She used to ask me that, and I would always reply, ‘You sound like a shrink.’”

  She laughed. “I’ve got to tell you, it’s kinda weird to be marital role-playing with you.”

  “In reverse.” In the distance, a dog barked. “You know what’s really weird? To be talking about her like this.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like . . . lightly. I worry so much about the girls’ and her parents’ feelings, I hardly ever mention her because I don’t want to make them sad.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that with me.”

  And it was a relief. I nodded. “But we were talking about you and your grandmother. Are you shocked?”

  She lifted her shoulders. “Not entirely—at least, not by the news about my mother’s paternity. I could see it coming as the story unfolded.” The swing settled into a slower rhythm. “When I saw that photo of Joe, I knew for sure. But it’s made me think about things differently. It’s made me realize how little you really know someone you think you know.”

  We rocked in silence for a moment.

  “That was the situation with my ex,” she said at length. “He stepped into my life right after my mother died. At the time, I felt . . . well, you know what grief’s like.”

  I could only nod.

  “It w
as at a time when my friends were all getting married and drifting away, and I felt so lost and alone—like I had nothing to live for.”

  Thank God I’d had the girls to anchor me when I lost Christine. I nodded, encouraging her to go on.

  “Kurt seemed so strong and loving and supportive—that’s what I wanted to believe, anyway—and so sure that we belonged together. And the whole time . . . well, he was after my inheritance. We’d only known each other five months when we married. I think I knew pretty soon afterward that things were kind of lopsided—that I cared more about him than he cared about me. But I thought it was my fault. I thought I just wasn’t good enough in some way. I thought something was lacking in me.”

  My chest felt tight. “You’re better off without him.”

  “Oh, yeah. I see that now. But at the time, I couldn’t—or wouldn’t. But with Gran—well, she’s been there my whole life, and I guess that makes you think you know everything about someone. I guess the bottom line is, people are just not completely knowable.”

  “Maybe not.” The tree frogs hummed to the creak of the swing.

  “Were there things about Christine that you only found out after she died?”

  I nodded. “I found an old diary from high school. It was mainly teenage-angsty stuff. She worried that her calves were too skinny, and I didn’t know that she wanted to visit every continent.” Or that she’d thought the sun rose and set on somebody named Ron Kidman, and that she’d let him feel up her breasts. “Reading that diary made me wish we’d traveled more.”

  “I’m sure she loved the journey she was on with you. She was probably so glad to be a mom that she didn’t care.”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t say that I’d found part of a more recent journal on her computer, and that I’d read there had been times she’d felt trapped and frustrated. She’d written that I wasn’t always around enough and she felt overwhelmed by two kids in diapers and she missed her job. That had hurt a lot more than knowing some jerk-off jock had groped her teenage breasts.

  We rocked in companionable silence for a while. “I found her college diaries, too,” I found myself saying. “Before we met, it turned out she’d had a crush on a guy I thought she hated. How did I not know she liked him?”

  “What matters is that she loved you.”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t want to really know about her loving—crushing on—someone else. There’s a part of me that wants to be the only one she ever loved.”

  “That must be how my grandfather felt. I really feel sorry for him, you know? But it doesn’t matter who’s first. It only matters who’s last.”

  “That’s very profound.”

  “That’s me. Deep and profound. And probably quoting Dear Abby.” She grinned, but her eyes stayed pensive. “I feel sorry for everyone in my grandmother’s situation.” She glanced at me. “It’s kind of like that with you and Jillian.”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s in love with you. Surely you know that.”

  “I . . .” I looked at the live oak on the far side of the lawn, a little startled. “I wouldn’t call it love.”

  “I would. I see how she looks at you.”

  Egads. Was she right? “What do you suggest I do about it?”

  “Start dating someone else.”

  I stretched my arm across the back of the swing. “Is this a sly way of getting me to ask you out?”

  She grinned and rolled her eyes. “Do I look that desperate? Besides, you already asked and I told you no.”

  “Ouch.” I put my hand on my chest as if I’d been stabbed. “You really know how to twist the knife.”

  “I’m sure you’ll recover.” She gave me a soft grin, then looked away. As she turned her head, her hair brushed my arm on the back of the swing.

  The touch made my skin feel hot and electrified. All I had to do was move my arm down, and it would be around her shoulders. The urge to do so was almost overpowering. “So why did you say no?”

  She lifted her shoulders, bringing them closer to my arm. “There’s no point in getting anything started when I’m just going to leave.”

  That’s what Jillian had told my girls. I felt a fresh round of annoyance. “It doesn’t have to be a ‘thing.’ Not a thing with a capital T anyway,” I found myself saying. “And the fact it’s temporary makes it perfect. I can be your rebound, and you can be mine. The girls already know you’re leaving, so they wouldn’t start turning it into a big deal. And you’d be helping me out with Jillian.”

  “Wow, you are one romantic dude.”

  I grinned. “Yeah, well, once you’ve seen each other covered in garbage slime, the magic’s gone.”

  She smiled back.

  I used the moment to press my case. “Seriously. There’s a fund-raiser for the local food pantry on Friday. It’s sort of a dress-up dinner with a silent auction called Fete du Printemps at the community center, and I’ve bought a table. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  “What about your girls?”

  “Peggy and Griff are babysitting.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Zoey thinks that Jillian is going to be their new mother.”

  I blew out a sigh. “I’ve already told her that’s not going to happen. Maybe this will help convince her.” I stood up, figuring I ought to leave before Hope had a chance to turn me down. “See you Friday, if not before.”

  I strode across the lawn, turned sideways, and edged through the shrubbery. As I climbed the steps to my porch, I found myself whistling. I realized later that it was the first time I’d whistled since Christine died.

  28

  adelaide

  Time has a way of getting away from me. I can’t always remember if the last meal was lunch or supper, or if it’s seven at night or seven in the morning. Even worse, whole days blend together. Sometimes I can’t recall if something happened yesterday or a few days ago. I might even be missing a whole week.

  I woke up and heard Hope talking with an aide in the kitchen, then a few moments later, the soft pad of her bare feet sounded in the hall. The door to my room slowly opened. “Come on in, child,” I called. “I’m awake.”

  “It’s time for your medicine,” Hope said.

  I sat up in bed and propped my back up with pillows. She handed me two pills and a glass of water. I downed them, then glanced at the clock as I set the glass beside it on the bedside table. Four o’clock. I’m assuming that’s afternoon, because Hope was up and dressed. I looked down and saw that I was dressed, as well.

  Time was flitting by so quickly. I’d better get about my business. “Want to go through my closet some more?”

  Hope nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Where did we leave off?”

  “Joe had visited,” she said. “Did you ever hear from him again?”

  “Yes. Oh yes.” I smoothed the edge of the sheet. “He wrote to me afterward.”

  “Did you write back?”

  “I’m afraid so.” I drew a deep breath. “Look in the closet at the back on the right side. There’s a red shirtwaist with a patent belt.”

  Hope rummaged around, then held it up by the hanger. “Is this it?”

  I nodded. “Bring it here.”

  She crossed the room and placed it on the bed, then sank onto the mattress beside me. I fingered the hem. “I wasn’t going to write him, but . . .” I closed my eyes, remembering.

  1946

  Charlie wasn’t the same after Joe’s visit. He took to drinking more, and when he drank, he’d accuse me of writing to Joe, of harboring feelings for him. Jealousy ate at him like rotgut. I was so tired as my pregnancy progressed—housework and cooking and childcare were so difficult in those days!—and then my grandmother took ill, and my mother was down in her back, and I had to care for both of them as well as Becky. Then the holidays came and went, with all the extra shopping, baking,
and wrapping. Life was just so darned hard!

  One day, after a particularly bitter bout with Charlie, I poured it all into a letter and before I stopped to think, I went downtown and dropped it in a mailbox by the drugstore. I immediately regretted it, but at the same time, a churning sense of hope fluttered in my chest.

  I rationalized it by thinking, Well, if Charlie thinks I’m writing Joe anyway, I might as well be doing it.

  We developed quite a torrid long-distance correspondence. This went on for a couple of months, letters flying back and forth across the country.

  Until Charlie found the letters. One evening I went to a women’s auxiliary meeting at church—I was wearing that red shirtwaist, only without the belt, because of my pregnancy—and came home to find my hatboxes on the floor and Joe’s letters scattered on the bed.

  “What’s all this?” Charlie demanded, wildly waving a page. His face was the color of a bruised plum, his scowl so terrifying I could barely breathe.

  I was still holding my purse, squeezing the handle so tightly it left marks on my palm. “It’s—it’s nothing.” I set my purse on the dresser and pulled off my gloves, trying to act normal—not because I thought it would calm him, but because I didn’t know what else to do.

  “‘I burn for you’? That’s nothing? ‘I lie in bed at night and replay the way you felt in my arms.’” He flung the paper on the floor and took a step toward me. I backed up until the dresser bit into my back.

  “Are you writing him back?”

  “No . . . I . . .”

  “Liar!”

  I cringed at his bellow.

  “He says so right here. ‘I was so glad to get your last letter.’” He jabbed a finger on the paper as he spoke, emphasizing each word, using an ugly falsetto as he read Joe’s sentence. “What the hell do you take me for?”

  “You’re my husband, Charlie.”

  “You damn sure don’t seem to remember that!”