The Trouble with Joe

by Emilie Richards

  “Yeah, is she an old witch like that teacher you had last year?” Joe teased. “With a wart on her nose and no teeth? Does she ride a broom to school?”

  There was silence from the back seat.

  “Guess not,” Joe said.

  “She’s not pretty like Miss Sam!”

  “Nobody’s as pretty as Miss Sam,” Joe agreed.

  “And she yelled at me.”

  “Did she, now?” Joe could understand that. He’d done it himself a time or two.

  “And she said I couldn’t read good enough to be in the apple group. I’m a banana!”

  “Well, I’ve always been a banana fan, myself.”

  “But I can read better’n she thinks. Just didn’t want to.”

  “How come?” Joe asked.

  “’Cause the book’s dumb. I read it already.”

  Despite himself, Joe was becoming interested. Sam could see it happening before her eyes. “Did you? When?” he asked.

  “This morning. When everybody was adding and subtracting.”

  “Well, why weren’t you adding and subtracting?”

  “Already done it. Went on to the next page and got in trouble, too. She yelled at me again.”

  “Corey, I’ve never heard Miss Simpson yell at anyone. You’re exaggerating,” Sam said.

  “She don’t like me.”

  “Is that possible?” Joe asked Sam. He looked at her for an answer. She gave the tiniest shrug. It was answer enough. He frowned.

  “Did you go outside for recess today?” Sam asked, changing the subject to something that hopefully would be more positive. “I didn’t see your class.”

  “We was there.”

  “Did you have fun?” Sam remembered last year, when Corey had often been forced to play alone because the other children hadn’t wanted anything to do with her.

  “A little. Mary Nell came over and played with me.”

  Sam said a prayer of gratitude to Mary Nell. She was well liked by everyone, children and teachers alike. Her friendship would do more to help Corey become accepted than anything an adult could do.

  “And then Jennifer Hansen came over and said she liked my new dress.”

  Sam added Jennifer to her prayers.

  They stopped just off the highway at a restaurant with cheery yellow walls and polished pine floors. The menu was varied, with barbecue the specialty. The smell of smoking pork and tangy sauce permeated the room.

  Corey’s eyes widened. Sam wondered if she had ever been in a real restaurant before. They had eaten fast food together, but this might be an entirely new experience.

  Joe seemed to sense Corey’s awe. “We’d like a table near a window,” he told the hostess, a girl who probably hadn’t yet graduated from high school. “I think this might be a first for one of us, and she’ll want to see everything.”

  “Aren’t you a cutie?” the hostess said, bending over to gaze at Corey. “You’ve got your daddy’s brown eyes and your mommy’s blond hair. What a combination. Some people are just plain lucky.”

  Sam didn’t know what to say. Corey stared at the young woman, clearly puzzled. Joe cleared his throat. “A table by the window, please, if you have one.”

  “Sure thing.”

  At the table Sam and Joe sipped iced tea from Mason jars while Corey worked on a lemonade. Sam didn’t look at Joe. The hostess’s comment still rang in her ears. She could imagine what he was thinking.

  “How’d she know what color my daddy’s eyes are?” Corey asked, long after Sam thought the subject had died. “And my mama didn’t have no blond hair.”

  “She meant us, Corey,” Sam said. “Joe and me.”

  “I thought maybe she knew my daddy.” Corey didn’t seem unhappy that she had misunderstood. “I never seen him. My mama never told me nothing about him. I don’t know what he looks like.”

  “Do you see anything on the menu that you’d like?” Sam asked. “They’ve got fried chicken, ribs, hamburgers.”

  “She thought you were my mama and Mr. Joe was my daddy.” Corey looked sideways at Joe. “You do got eyes like mine.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Mean eyes?”

  She giggled. “Go on!”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying to eat. I’m getting spareribs and corn on the cob and potato salad.”

  Corey didn’t look at her child-sized menu. “Me, too.”

  “Me, too,” Sam said, closing hers. “And lemon pudding cake for dessert.”

  “Me, too,” Corey said.

  “Me, too,” Joe said.

  They were all smiling. Sam watched the way Corey’s eyes widened and crinkled at the corners when she was happy. Like...Joe’s. She looked down at the checkered tablecloth, too full of emotion to risk smiling for even a second longer at the two people she loved best.

  * * *

  “SHE’S DEAD TO the world,” Sam said, tiptoeing down the stairs to the living room. She closed the double wooden doors behind her, just in case, so that they would be guaranteed privacy. “She’s exhausted and full of more food than she’s probably used to eating in a week.”

  “I hope she’s not too full. I had doubts about that second helping of lemon pudding cake.”

  “She seems okay, but I’ll get up with her if there’s trouble. I’m the one who said yes.”

  “A word that comes easily to your lips.”

  She smiled seductively. “Well, shall I work on no, Mr. Joe? Is this the time?”

  “Not a chance.” He’d made a fire in the old brick fireplace, even though the night had only the faintest chill. As he opened his arms to Sam he had a fleeting vision of last night’s fire. But suddenly last night seemed years away.

  She joined him on the rug and settled herself against him. “This is heavenly. But both of us should be working. I’ve got lesson plans to finish. And if I know you...”

  “I probably won’t have to do a thing this year. I’ve worked so hard for the past six months or more that I’m caught up through the next century.”

  Since the day he had learned he would never be a father. Sam understood, and she was touched that he had admitted it. “In that case, maybe I’ll just use last year’s lesson plans and forget about working.”

  “Oh, I have some work in mind for you.”

  “Something I have some talent for, I hope.”

  “Something you were born for.”

  She softened against him, as if desire were melting her bones. “I was born for you, Joe.”

  He nuzzled her neck, inhaling the sweet fragrance of her hair. “Sometimes I think you were. Sometimes I think that destiny brought us together. That you knew I’d be waiting for you at La Scala that night. If you think about all the things that might have been different...”

  She didn’t want to think about any of them. “I wouldn’t trade a moment of our life together.”

  “I can think of a moment or two I’d like to trade.”

  “Why? Because some of them have been hard? But there might be harder ones in store. What matters is that we come through them together.”

  “Are we coming through them? Together?”

  She knew he wasn’t really ready to talk about their infertility. But he was asking for reassurance. Something he had never done before. She loved him more because of it.

  “We have to come through them together. You’re the center of my days and nights, Joe. I could go on without you and I would if I had to, but I’d be hollow inside. The part of me you fill would be empty.”

  “There would be a dozen men in line if I walked out of your life.”

  She turned in his arms and put her fingertips against his cheeks. “None of them would be you.”

  “But all of them could give you children.”

>   She gazed into his eyes and saw the flicker of despair. She shook her head slowly. “None of them would be you.”

  “There must have been times in the past months when you wished I was anybody else.”

  “There’ve been times in the past months when I wished I was anybody else, anybody who knew what to say or do to make everything all right.”

  “None of this has been your fault.”

  “But I should have been able to help.”

  “You helped more than you know.” He didn’t elaborate. He stroked her back, and let his hands apologize and comfort.

  She caressed his bottom lip with her thumb. She loved Joe’s face, the high, wide cheekbones, the square chin, the winged black brows and brooding eyes that made him look dangerously sexy, even when he was laughing. She had fallen in love with the face, then with the body, the long legs and lean torso, the wide shoulders and muscular arms. Last, but so rapidly she wouldn’t have thought it possible, she had fallen in love with the man.

  “I’d like to help some more,” she murmured. She leaned forward to kiss him, brushing her lips where her thumb had been. “Suddenly I can think of a way.”

  His eyes glowed. “But who would be helping whom?”

  “I’m fairly secure it’s mutual.”

  “Are you?” His arms tightened. “What makes you think so?”

  Her hands drifted down his shirt, slowly, with tantalizing pressure. They settled temporarily at his waist, then he felt his belt sliding open. “Going straight for the evidence,” he said. “Is that fair?”

  “All’s fair in love.”

  “What happened to the rest of the saying?”

  “There is no war here,” she whispered. “Only love, Joe. Only love.”

  * * *

  COREY CAME AWAKE suddenly. At first she didn’t know where she was, then she remembered that she was living at Miss Sam’s now. She squinted at the ceiling and watched the shadows play across it. She had made her peace with the shadows. Most of the time now they seemed more like friends who came every night to dance for her when Miss Sam thought she was sleeping.

  She heard a noise in the hall outside her room. It was Miss Sam laughing softly. Corey recognized the sound. When Miss Sam laughed it sounded like music. Mr. Joe didn’t laugh much, but when he did it was different, like drums in a parade. Now she heard the rumble of his laughter, and she knew that he was passing her room, too.

  She squinted into the darkness, directly at the crack where her door opened into the hallway, and saw them as they passed. She thought Mr. Joe had his arm around Miss Sam. They sounded happy.

  She didn’t feel happy.

  She didn’t feel good.

  She got up and went to the window. She couldn’t see another house from her window. Just trees and sometimes, when the moon was just right, water sparkling in the lake. It was a lonely view, and it made her feel even lonelier now.

  She wondered if her daddy ever felt lonely. She didn’t guess he did. Her mama had told her he didn’t have any feelings. Mama had said he left her before Corey was even born, and when the judge said he had to pay money for Corey anyway, he still didn’t. Mama used to tell her that a lot. It was just about all she ever said about him. Except for the day that they’d driven to South Carolina to find him. Then Mama had said he was a snake, and Corey could just go live with him, since Corey wasn’t worth much, either.

  Her stomach hurt. It had hurt sometimes at Mama’s, but not like this. Then she’d known that if she could find something to eat, she would feel better. Now she didn’t think eating would help much. She didn’t like to think about eating at all.

  She found her bear sitting at the table Miss Sam had put in the corner. Miss Sam had bought her a doll, too, a doll with blond hair like hers and a silly smile. Corey didn’t know what that doll had to smile about. She liked the bear best, but she liked the books almost as much. She chose one now and took it to the window where she could see the pages in the moonlight.

  It was a story about a little deer who’d lost his mama. She wished she’d picked a different book to read. This one made her sad. She turned the pages to the part where the little deer, Bambi, was born. His mama looked real happy, even though she had to have a baby in the woods and all. She turned more pages to the part where his mama taught Bambi how to do things. Then there was the sad part where the hunter shot the mama.

  Corey was sad that Mama had died, too, but not the way Miss Sam seemed to think. She was sad because she couldn’t be sad enough. That was hard to explain. It was funny. She thought maybe Mr. Joe, as mean as he was, might just understand. But if Corey told Miss Sam, she’d just feel bad. Corey didn’t want Miss Sam to feel bad. Not ever.

  Her stomach hurt worse. She put the book away and took the bear back to bed. Even when she held him close, resting him on her stomach, she felt worse and worse. Everything was all mixed up inside her. Miss Sam laughing in the hall, and Mr. Joe laughing, too. Bambi’s mama being so happy, then dying. Mama being so angry at Corey and her daddy, then dying. Miss Sam maybe not needing her ’cause Mr. Joe made her laugh now.

  She shut her eyes, and the shadows danced anyway.

  * * *

  JOE HEARD THE bathroom door creaking before he heard the moans. He came awake immediately. In a split second he knew exactly what was happening. He turned to Sam, but she slept on, a replete, satisfied woman.

  He didn’t have the heart to wake her. He sat up and felt for his pants, pulling them on and snapping them as he started for the bedroom door.

  In the hallway he turned to the bathroom. An extraordinarily pale little girl knelt on the tile floor with her head over the toilet. He smoothed her hair back from her face and murmured comforting words as she lost the rest of her dinner. He was sorry for a number of reasons, one being that she needed more weight on her thin little frame, and the dinner would easily have added a pound.

  “I don’t feel so good,” she said, between heaves.

  “Shh...” He smoothed her hair some more.

  “I can’t help it!”

  “Of course you can’t.” He patted her back. He remembered holding Magdalena’s head once as a teenager, when she’d had too much to drink at a party, and he had tried to keep the noise from waking Mama. Magda had owed him one after that, and she had quietly ironed his shirts for the rest of the month.

  “Don’t tell Miss Sam!” Corey could hardly raise her head.

  Joe suspected she was finished. He stood and searched for a clean washcloth, then held it under the faucet. “Why not?”

  “She’ll get all worried and stuff.”

  The child was a smart little bugger, obviously aware of all the dynamics around her. For the first time he wondered how much of his own hostility she was picking up. He felt ashamed. “It’s all right if she worries a little,” he said. “She worries because she likes you so much.”

  “I don’t want to make her sad.”

  He thought there was probably more to that sentence. Because I know what it feels like. He approached the toilet and flushed it, noting how careful she’d been to hit her target exactly. “Do you think you’re all done?”

  She nodded.

  “Then let’s see if you can stand up now.”

  He helped her to her feet, then he sat on the edge of the bathtub and pulled her to stand between his legs so he could wash her face. He felt her trembling against him. Before he knew what he was doing, he lifted her to sit sideways on his lap. “Here, this is better.”

  She scowled at him, but he ignored her. She was still shaking hard. He brushed the cloth across her forehead, then over her cheeks. She was as white as the thin cotton nightgown Sam had bought her. “Does that feel good?”

  She nodded. Reluctantly, he was sure.

  “You know, this happens to everybody at one time or anothe
r. We shouldn’t have let you have second helpings of dessert. You just had too much to eat.”

  “Can’t eat too much.”

  “’Fraid you can. Especially if it’s as good as dinner was tonight. I’ve done it myself.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. Someday you’ll have to taste my mother’s lasagna.” He heard what he’d said, and his hand paused. He had no right or reason to talk about the future with this child.

  “I like Grandma Rose. How come you got a nice mama and Miss Sam don’t?”

  “I was born lucky. It’s too bad we don’t always get to pick who our parents are going to be.”

  “I’da picked Miss Sam.”

  “I know.” He set her on the floor. “Feel any better?”

  “Sure.” She lifted her chin. She was still as pale as her gown.

  “Let’s get you some water to rinse your mouth out with.” He filled a cup with cold water and handed it to her. She did as he’d suggested.

  “Come on, I’ll tuck you back in,” he said.

  “You?” She made it absolutely clear that this was an inconceivable way to end the night.

  “See anybody else who could do it?”

  She stared at him, all big brown eyes and shaggy blond hair. For a moment he glimpsed the woman she would become if she was ever given the chance. Feisty, intelligent, inquisitive, pretty—possibly even more. “You know, Brown Eyes, you’re a pretty neat little kid.”

  “Am not.”

  “Sure you are. Don’t let anybody tell you differently.” He thought about all the people who probably would, starting with the deadbeat father whom the state of North Carolina was trying so desperately to find. Anger filled him. He had an urge to hug her close for a moment, to somehow infuse her with the strength she would need to plow through the rest of her life.

  Then he looked in her defiant dark eyes and saw that the strength was already there. He held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s sneak back down the hall so we don’t wake Miss Sam.”

  She looked doubtful that placing her hand in his was a good idea. He waited. The corners of her mouth turned down, but finally she stuck out her hand.