The Wedding Tree

by Robin Wells

  The days ground on. Charlie was busy starting up the new store, and caring for the kids kept me hopping. He stopped drinking when we moved, and things eased between us. He finally told me a little about the other woman—about as much as I’d told him about Joe. She was someone he’d met at a roadside bar. He’d been lonely and she’d been a good listener. She’d just been dumped by someone she loved, and well, that was when he’d been eaten up with jealousy over Joe, and they’d gravitated toward each other because hurt attracts hurt. He said they hadn’t meant anything to each other in any way that really mattered.

  As time went on, I actually began to look forward to the baby, to having a new life to care for. Maybe Charlie and I could build a new life together, as well—his, mine, and ours. Maybe, in some weird way, this really would even the score.

  The first week in September, both sets of our parents drove up and picked up the children. They would care for them in Wedding Tree until the baby was born, freeing me to rest during the last weeks of my “pregnancy.”

  At first I was lost without them, but then . . . well, Charlie and I fell into a new pattern when it was just the two of us. We’d play card games at night and take walks. He made me laugh with stories and impressions about the people working in the new store, and he’d ask my opinion about situations and dilemmas, and we even began to make love again.

  Up until then, I’d refused to sleep with him. I’d told him if I had to pretend to be pregnant, he had to pretend so, too, and if I were having a difficult pregnancy, the doctor would forbid relations. But in those last couple of weeks, we were almost like honeymooners. Maybe it was the freedom of not having to wear the padding in the house when it was just the two of us; maybe it was the shared secret that bonded us. For whatever reason, I felt happier in my marriage than I ever had. I felt optimistic for the future.

  On September 24—I’ll never forget the date; it haunts me every year—I knew something was wrong. I’d been restless all day, like a cat about to birth her kittens, then Charlie didn’t come home for dinner. That, in and of itself, was unusual. He’d become solicitous and caring. He’d started bringing me flowers and dancing with me to the radio and treating me like a woman he was trying to woo.

  Charlie swore he wasn’t seeing the other woman, but I knew he stayed in touch somehow to see how the pregnancy was progressing. I wasn’t jealous of her, which might be a little odd, but I knew he didn’t love her. I felt sorry for her, actually. To have a baby, then give it up . . . My womb ached just thinking about it. I’d been faced with the choice and I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it. I worried that this woman wouldn’t be able to, either, but Charlie said she absolutely didn’t want a baby, that she would have aborted it if he hadn’t talked her out of it.

  I’d pestered him about her, wanting to know more about her, but there was a stubborn streak in Charlie—a part that wouldn’t give in. I have to admit, I admired that part of him. I just wished he’d used that stubbornness in a better way.

  That night, the night of September 24, it got to be nine, then ten o’clock. A thunderstorm rolled in, and the rain poured down in torrents. I grew anxious. Was the baby coming? I inventoried all the baby’s things I had on hand—a bassinet, blankets, baby formula, a layette, bottles, diapers . . . I touched each item, longing to put it to use.

  Was Charlie at that woman’s house, waiting to bring the baby home to me? Back then, men didn’t take part in delivery, but maybe he was hanging around if the baby was on the way. If that were the case, though, why didn’t he call and tell me? I picked up the phone three times and asked the party line operator if it was working. I would have picked it up again, but I was too embarrassed. Instead, I paced the floor until it was a wonder I didn’t wear a path in the linoleum.

  As the night stretched on, another scenario formed in my mind—a scenario more likely than a baby on the way and no call from Charlie. Chances were, Charlie was just back to being his old drunken self. He was probably at a bar, leaving me stuck alone in the storm, unable to leave the house without wearing the oppressive padding because we’d led all the neighbors and townsfolk to think I was in the family way.

  The more I thought about it, the more indignant I became. Why, I had half a mind to call my folks to come get me.

  And say what? Mother, Father, I was lying to you about being pregnant? I sank onto the old floral sofa with a hard sigh, feeling the springs dig into my backside. The width and breadth of the lies I’d told made confession impossible. For a girl who couldn’t lie well, I’d sure come up with some doozies. It was like being halfway across a swamp, surrounded on all sides by alligators. There was no way out but through.

  I finally dozed off on that beaten-up sofa, then jerked awake to see Charlie limping through the door, looking like he’d been through a battle. I glanced at the clock in the kitchen; it was a few minutes before five in the morning.

  Backlit by the porch light, his hair and clothes glistened with rain. A puddle formed on the floor around him. Good Lord, he was soaked to the bone. His face was pale, and his mouth was set in a tight line.

  He reeked of cheap bourbon. My heart clutched in my chest.

  “It’s over,” he said, closing the door. A hint of light through the window kept the room from being totally black.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The baby. It’s all done.”

  I pushed up on my elbows, my legs still stretched out on the sofa, my heart pounding with excitement. “It’s born?”

  “Yeah.”

  Anticipation flooded me, but stopped short of joy. Charlie didn’t look like a man celebrating the birth of a child. And that whiskey smell—it always came with trouble. “Where is it?”

  He wavered, like a man with a ship rolling under his feet. “Dead.”

  I couldn’t breathe. “What?”

  “Something wrong with your hearing?”

  Oh, dear God. His voice was cold, dangerous, knifelike. Whoever had called it “Demon Rum” was right. When Charlie was drinking, he was like a man possessed.

  I swung my feet off the sofa and turned on the lamp on the side table. That’s when I saw he had blood on his shirt—lots of it. I put my hand to my throat. My pulse fluttered under my palm like hummingbird wings. “Was it stillborn?”

  “Might as well have been.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Same as I said.” He sank into a vinyl chair in the breakfast alcove, next to the living room.

  A sick, sour taste filled my throat. My eyes fixed on his shirt, my mind spinning, my stomach tight with fear. Something was terribly, horribly wrong. “Did you help deliver it?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you all bloody?”

  “Don’t ask questions.”

  My stomach roiled. I thought I might throw up. “B-but I have to know what happened. Everyone will want to know what happened—our parents and grandparents and the children . . . everyone.”

  He sank his head in his hands.

  Fear gripped me so hard I shook. “Was it a boy or a girl?”

  “Boy.”

  “So . . . where . . . where is he?”

  “No more questions!” he bellowed.

  I stared at him, trying to make sense of the situation. Oh, Charlie—what have you done?

  “Don’ you worry about it. Just get your stuff together. We’re going back.”

  “Now?”

  “Later today.”

  “But . . .”

  “No buts.” His voice had that old, ugly, mean tone. “You should be happy about this, Addie.”

  Happy?

  “You’re off the hook. You don’t have to raise a bastard.”

  “But, Charlie . . . after all this, I wanted . . .” Hysteria was building in my chest. My gaze went to the empty bassinet in the corner of the room. “What did you do, Charlie
?”

  “Nothin’ that concerns you.”

  “But it does! Of course it does! Our family . . . everyone . . . I was . . .” My gaze went to the hated padding at the end of sofa. Expecting. That’s what I’d become in the course of wearing it. Expecting a baby. Wanting, longing for a baby. And over the last two weeks, when I’d finally felt happy in my marriage, I’d been wanting, longing for a new beginning with Charlie, as well.

  He misread my anguish. “I’ll do all the explaining. We’ll say the baby was born dead last week. You’ve been sedated, too upset to talk about it. The doctor advised waiting until you were over the worst of it before we told family, because you’d had a nervous breakdown. You’ll take it easy at home for a couple of days, and in a couple of weeks, you’ll carry on as if nothing happened.”

  “But what . . .”

  “No more questions!” he thundered. “That’s it.”

  But of course, the “no questions” rule didn’t apply to family. Charlie called home later that morning and talked to his mother, who then put my mother on the phone. When we arrived home that evening, both sets of parents were waiting for us at our house, their faces gray and grim and worried.

  Charlie carried me out of the car and into the bedroom, tucked me in, and sat on the edge of the bed, a physical barrier between my mother and me. “What happened?” Mother’s eyes were so shadowed and sad that mine welled with tears just looking at her. “When did you know there was a problem?”

  “She hadn’t felt the baby move for several days,” Charlie said. “We went to the doctor, and he said there was no heartbeat.”

  He hovered beside me, his eyes a dark warning glower.

  “Why didn’t you call and tell me?” Mother asked.

  “I—I wanted to, but . . .” I stammered.

  “She couldn’t,” Charlie cut in. “The doctor kept her knocked out.”

  God, how I wish that part was true.

  “You should have called,” said Charlie’s mother from the doorway.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I decided to wait until she was better. The news was bad enough without worrying you all the more about Addie.”

  “He’s always been so sensitive about my feelings,” Charlie’s mother said in a low voice. She put her hand on his back. “You said on the phone it was a boy.”

  Charlie nodded.

  Mother’s hand trembled as it covered her mouth. “What did you name it?”

  “We didn’t.”

  “Well, you have to,” Mother insisted. “We need to plan the funeral.”

  “The doctor handled it,” Charlie said. “He said it was for the best, that it would help Addie get over it if she didn’t have a place to go and mourn. He said the child was dead before it was born, so it was never actually alive.”

  “Oh, Addie!” My mother threw up her hands. “Oh, heavens. Didn’t you want your child to have a Christian burial?”

  My mouth felt lined with cotton. I tried to swallow.

  “She didn’t have a say in the matter,” Charlie cut in. “I made the decision while she was still knocked out. Addie never saw the baby.” He put his arm around me. “The doctor said we need to put all this behind us and get on with our lives. I would appreciate it if you’d spread the word, because it might make her have another nervous breakdown if she has to talk about it to everyone in town.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course,” Charlie’s mother murmured.

  “That goes for family, too.” Charlie’s tone was uncharacteristically authoritative. “The doctor said she shouldn’t have to deal with a lot of questions. I’ll tell you everything you need to know, so please don’t pester her about it.”

  • • •

  “And your families accepted the story?” Hope asked.

  I opened my eyelids. Hope was sitting on the edge of my bed, her face sad, her eyes enormous. I nodded. “Yes. Back in her day, Charlie’s mother had had several miscarriages, and she’d suffered some serious depression over it. Melancholia, they used to call it, where she couldn’t get out of bed. That helped make the story understandable.”

  “But you never found out what happened to the baby?”

  “No.” A heaviness weighed on my chest, a heaviness that had been there for decades but I’d tried to ignore. How could I have lived with it all these years? “I don’t know what happened, but I know it was something awful.”

  “Maybe not, Gran. Maybe Granddad helped with the birth and he was traumatized because it had gone so wrong.”

  “No. Three things convinced me Charlie did something terrible.” I held up the pointer finger on my right hand. “The revolver that he always carried in the glove box was gone. On the trip home I opened the glove box looking for a tissue, and Charlie nearly drove off the road, he was so upset.”

  I lifted a second finger. “Charlie wouldn’t let me near the trunk of the car when we were packing up in Mississippi. He was trying to hide something—I knew him well enough to know that. So I peeked in when he went back in the house for a bag and sure enough, there was a piece of luggage I’d never seen before. It was tan with dark brown stripes, and it looked brand-new.” I looked at Hope. She was watching me, her forehead furrowed. I lifted my third finger. “After we got home, that very night, Charlie went out and buried it in our backyard.”

  “Oh, Gran!” Her hand flew to her mouth.

  “I didn’t see where he buried it. That’s what I need your help with.”

  Hope’s eyes were round as full moons.

  I sank back in my chair and closed my eyes. The events I’d tried so hard to forget for so many years began pressing in. I started talking, and before I knew it, I was reliving the past.

  1948

  That day we got home, Charlie convinced my mother that he’d take care of me and she should go back to her house for the night. I was too upset to sleep, and Charlie hadn’t come to bed. I knew I’d have to stay in bed much of the next day—my parents thought I was just a week out from childbirth, remember, and that’s how things were done back then—and I was restless. I got up and roamed the house and I looked out the window.

  And there was Charlie, with that piece of luggage. He was holding it in one hand and coming out of the shed with a shovel in the other. And then Eddie woke up crying—he’d apparently picked up on the sadness and tension of everyone, and it gave him a nightmare—and I went to his room to comfort him. I spent probably forty-five minutes reading to him and getting him back asleep. When I went downstairs, Charlie was washing up at the kitchen sink.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  “Washing my hands.”

  Lady MacBeth came to mind. “I see that,” I said. “I meant what were you doing in the backyard with that luggage?”

  His face got all mottled and red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I saw you. You were getting a shovel out of the shed and you had that striped suitcase.”

  He turned off the faucet and grabbed a dish towel. “It’s dark. You can’t be sure of what you saw. And sometimes, Addie, what happens in the dark should stay there.” He pressed the towel to his face for a moment. When he pulled it away, I saw that his hands were shaking. “Addie—I’m so, so sorry. All I wanted . . .” He looked at me. Tears rolled down his face, and for a moment, he looked like the little boy who’d been my friend in grade school. “All I ever wanted was for you to love me just a smidgeon as much as I love you.”

  He sank into a chair, put his head in his hands, and sobbed. I’ve never heard anything so sad—it was a heart-wrenching, from-the-soul sob, so loud I feared he’d wake the children. He seemed like a child himself—lost and lonely and heartbroken and scared. And . . . I felt the exact same way.

  I thought, What will happen if I learn that he did the horrible thing I fear he did? And I could come up with no good outcome. If I knew for sure, wo
uldn’t I have to do something? What would that be? What would it do to our children? To his parents? To my parents? To our grandmothers? The shame would destroy us all.

  He was right; I didn’t want to know. So I decided to let the things of the dark stay in the dark.

  • • •

  I opened my eyes and looked at Hope. “Whatever Charlie did, he’d done because he loved me, and I’d driven him plumb out of his mind. It was as much my fault as Charlie’s. I was as guilty as he was. And I’ve lived with the shame and guilt of that all my life. But now . . . well, now I’ve got to clear it up before I meet my maker.”

  Hope’s arms wound tight around me as she knelt beside my chair. “Oh, Gran—you had so many people’s lives to think about! You just did what you thought was best.”

  “Best isn’t the same as right. I let lie pile upon lie.”

  “You tried to protect your children! And anyway, it doesn’t make sense that Granddad would have deliberately killed the baby. Why on earth would he have done that, after you’d gone through the pregnancy ruse and were willing—eager, even—to raise it?”

  I drew a deep breath. “I’ve thought and thought about that, all these years. And all these years, I’ve wondered . . .” I stopped.

  “What, Gran?”

  “Well, a man can never be sure that a child is really his.” I drew a deep breath and voiced my most secret thought. “All these years, I’ve wondered if that baby was black.”

  37

  hope

  I waited until eight thirty that night—after Gran went to bed and I knew it was past the girls’ bedtime—and I called Matt.

  “My grandmother told me something I need to talk about,” I whispered into the phone.

  “Come on over.”

  He let me in the kitchen door, poured me a glass of wine, then sat with me at the breakfast room table and listened somberly as I poured out the whole sordid tale.

  “Do you think your grandmother’s fears are justified?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe her memory is playing tricks on her—or maybe she misunderstood what was going on. One thing is certain, though: she won’t rest until I find that suitcase.”