Charlie and Brad eyed each other. The setting sun cast long shadows on the skeleton of the spare room. All at once, a sense of calm defiance filled Charlie’s chest. He was not going to let his marriage go one day further without putting everything in order. He had set himself up as a role model for Brad Hanes, and by golly, he was going to confront Esther about his concerns and clear the air between them.
“Marriage can be good,” he told the young man. “I’m not telling you it’s easy living with another person every day. And I’m not saying it’s ever totally perfect. But Esther and I have made it nearly fifty years together, and I wouldn’t trade a single one of them. Now you and Ashley chose to marry each other, and you owe it to God and to yourselves to give it all you’ve got.”
Brad studied Charlie from under hooded eyelids. “Yes, sir, Mr. Moore,” he drawled. “But if it’s no fun, why bother?”
“You answer that question yourself, Brad. I’ll be eager to hear what you decide.” Shouldering his tool belt, Charlie stepped out of the room. “See you tomorrow, kid.”
As he climbed into his golf cart, he heard another splat hitting the wooden floor behind him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Esther had cooked an exceptionally fine pot roast this evening. As she brought it to the table, she couldn’t hide her pride. Potatoes, pearl onions, and carrots made a colorful wreath around the savory chunk of beef that had been slowly browning all afternoon. In fact, the fragrant aroma had been so strong, she had opened the kitchen window to let a cool autumn breeze waft through the house. Only when Charlie came in the front door after working with Brad had she closed the window again and turned up the furnace.
“There you go!” she said, setting the platter before her husband. “The perfect dinner for my meat-and-potatoes man. I’ve got rolls in the oven and a salad in the fridge, but let’s pray first.”
Delighted with her success, Esther seated herself at the table. But just as she folded her hands and bowed her head, she caught sight of the dour expression on Charlie’s face. He was staring at the roast and frowning.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You look like you just ate a lemon.”
“What have you done to the meat, Esther?” he asked. He adjusted his trifocals with one hand and began poking at the roast with a fork.
“I cooked it—just like always. What do you think I did?”
“Something’s wrong here.” Charlie speared an onion, held it to his nose, and then dropped it back onto the platter as if it were poison.
“What is that?”
“It’s a pearl onion,” she told him, growing more annoyed by the second. “I don’t use them often, but I spotted them in the store today, and they were so little and cute that I decided to add them to the roast.”
Charlie looked up at her. “That’s not an onion, Esther. That’s an entire clove of garlic. You must have cooked fifteen or twenty of them here.”
“Garlic? What do you mean? It’s an onion.”
He poked at the glossy white orb again. “Honey, this is garlic. I knew something was wrong the minute I drove up to the house. The odor goes all the way across the road out there. When I pulled the golf cart under the carport, I couldn’t imagine what was causing such a strong smell.”
“What?” Esther set her palms on the table and pushed herself up to her full five-foot-three-inch height. “Charles Moore, don’t you think I would know a clove of garlic from a pearl onion? You are just like my mother. Insulting my cooking every time I turn around. You’ve never thought I was a good cook, and now you’re treating my roast like roadkill! Well, I’ll just take care of this problem for you then!”
In one swift movement, she swept the platter off the table and headed for the trash can.
Charlie caught up to her and deftly lifted the dish out of her hands. “Now let me have that, Esther.”
“Oh no you don’t!” Tears streaming, she swung around and tried to grab it back. As they both yanked on the platter, the roast made a swan dive, hit the floor with a thud, and slid straight under the table. Carrots and potatoes fanned through the air, landing in a perfect arc around the couple. Hot gravy splattered the counters and cabinets in a brown polka-dot pattern.
Esther covered her face with her hands and sobbed. “It’s ruined! You ruined my lovely dinner with your insults and your awful behavior. Oh, you’re a horrible, horrible man!”
In all her life, Esther couldn’t remember ever feeling such desperate hatred for her husband. Not the time he had thrown out her favorite childhood doll during one of his garage-cleaning binges. Not the time he had broken her precious Limoges bud vase by knocking it off the dresser with his elbow. Not even the time he had confessed to going to a bar with his friends and ending up at a strip club. So what if the men had been celebrating a best buddy’s engagement? So what if Charlie had never been drunk before or since? She had certainly reviled him then! She hadn’t been able to imagine ever loving him again. Somehow, against all odds, she had forgiven him and learned to accept his many flaws.
But now! Now!
“Esther,” Charlie murmured, laying a hand on her arm. “Esther, look at me.”
“Get away!” she cried out, slapping at him. “Don’t touch me, you beast!”
Feeling as if she might faint, Esther grabbed the countertop and let herself sag down onto the floor. Through her tears, she could see Charlie on his knees, crawling under the table and trying to wrest what was left of the roast away from Boofer. Esther gulped as she attempted to quell her misery. Her russet-colored slacks were spattered with gravy, and she could see a flattened carrot on the bottom of Charlie’s shoe.
This was awful. The worst, worst thing in the world. How could two decent, civilized people end up like this? Shouting at each other. Throwing food. Crawling around on the floor. They might as well be barbarians.
Esther picked a pearl onion off the floor and sniffed it. Maybe it was garlic after all, but did that give Charlie any excuse for saying the things he’d said? So she’d made a mistake. It wasn’t her first and it wouldn’t be her last. Charlie made mistakes too.
“You threw out my doll, don’t forget!” she yelled at him. “You pitched her into the garbage as though she meant nothing. But she was mine! My grammy had given her to me for my fifth birthday, and my mother sewed her clothes, and I loved her. And you tossed her out as though she were nothing but a piece of trash!”
“What are you talking about?” Charlie peered through the forest of chair and table legs. “Did you say something about your doll?”
“You don’t ever listen to me, do you? You tune me out so you can watch your silly game shows. Well, Mr. Smarty-Pants, you make mistakes too. You threw out my doll—that’s what you did. So what if I used garlic instead of onions? You’re not perfect either.”
“Esther, I’m trying to clean up this mess. Call Boofer, would you? He’s got his teeth sunk into this meat, and I can’t get it away.”
“And don’t forget about my bud vase, Charles Moore! My uncle Bob brought it to me from France after the war. It was Limoges, you know. The only pretty thing I had. The only valuable object I’ve ever owned in my whole life. And you knocked it right off the dresser with your clumsy elbow as if it meant nothing. There’s no telling how much that bud vase would be worth today if you hadn’t broken it. Don’t talk to me about garlic cloves. Those are nothing compared to a Limoges bud vase.”
The memory of how she had swept up the delicate pieces of the vase and tried to glue them back together blew into Esther’s mind with the force of a tornado. She could see herself on her knees, plucking shards of French porcelain from between the wooden floorboards with tweezers. But it had been hopeless. The precious gift was irredeemably shattered.
Not only had Charlie carelessly broken her vase that day, but he had broken her heart. “It’s only a vase,” he’d said. “I’ll get you another at the five-and-dime store.” He’d had no idea what that unique, fragile thing meant to her. Every time she lo
oked at it, she had felt as though she were a French princess—gowned in some airy trifle of a dress with a purple cape on her shoulders and a diamond tiara on her head.
Now, sobbing even harder at the realization that she would never, ever be a French princess … that life had brought her nothing but the ordinary lot of a housewife … that not even her two children, in whom she had invested all of her time and love and energy for so many years, had turned out to be perfect … Esther curled into a ball on the floor.
The dark cloud wrapped around her, and she saw Ellie, her darling daughter, looking haggard and alcoholic. She saw dusty picture frames and cobwebs on the ceiling, mocking her futile efforts at housekeeping. She saw cakes fallen in the middle, pies with runny meringue topping, burned gravy, and lumpy mashed potatoes. She saw weeds in her rose garden. Wrinkles on her face.
And now … now twenty cloves of garlic in her pot roast, their odor seeping through her house and out into the street so that all the neighbors would look at each other as if to say, “Yes, we know what an awful cook that Esther Moore is. It’s a wonder Charlie has put up with her all these years.”
“There!” Charlie said triumphantly, as if announcing his superiority over his lowly failure of a wife. “I got the roast away from Boofer. And the vegetables are cleaned up too. Now all we need to do is run a mop over this floor, and we’ll be as good as new. We can eat that yummy-looking salad I saw in the refrigerator. A salad and a couple of hot rolls will do me up jim-dandy.”
Esther could hear Charlie fooling around with the plastic trash bag—no doubt taking her failed effort out to the Dumpster where it belonged. He turned on the water in the sink, getting it hot enough for his mopping job. He would make everything better, and the kitchen would look brand-new, and they would pretend that nothing bad had happened between them.
But Esther knew. She knew it now. She was losing her mind.
Charlie bit into a half-burned dinner roll and studied his wife across the table. Esther was still sniffling. It didn’t seem to matter that he had cleaned up the entire kitchen, mopped the floor, lit some scented candles, and set out the salad and bread.
It didn’t even register with her when he apologized for finding fault with her pot roast. He had considered reversing his declaration about the garlic cloves and declaring them to be pearl onions after all. But that was taking it too far. Apologizing was one thing. Flat-out lying in order to make peace was another.
“Esther,” he said, trying to get her attention for the umpteenth time, “did Ashley tell you that she and Brad have finally decided to turn the new addition into a room? Brad gave up on having a garage. I’m not sure it’s going to be a nursery, though. I don’t think he’s ready to become a father just yet.”
Head bent, Esther dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Her perfect hair had somehow come apart. The shellacked coiffure seemed to have cracked open down the middle, and both sides had collapsed. Charlie could see her scalp, pale and ashen, and it made him realize all over again that she was aging and fragile … and that he loved her dearly.
“Esther, honey, please talk to me.” He rose from his chair, circled the table, and knelt on one knee beside her. “This isn’t a big deal, sweetheart. It’s nothing. Pearl onions or garlic cloves—who cares? We’re having a nice supper, and there’s plenty to eat.”
“Oh, Charlie!” With a sob, Esther threw herself onto his shoulder and began weeping as if her heart were broken. “I have Alzheimer’s. I know I do! How could I have thought those were pearl onions? They look and smell exactly like garlic. And I drove off the end of the carport. And I put the electric can opener in the dishwasher. And I fell asleep while I was driving. You should put me into a nursing home, lock the door, and never look at me again until I die!”
“Now, Esther.” Charlie rubbed her back, realizing how truly fragile her small body felt under his work-callused hand. “Do you remember what Derek Finley said about your blocked artery? This fogginess you’ve been having lately must be caused by that. You’re not getting enough blood to your brain. Let’s talk about that procedure again. I’ll bet if you have that done, you’ll be as good as new.”
“I can’t. I’m too scared. You remember what happened to my father, don’t you? He went into the hospital for pneumonia, and he never left again! He died right there in that awful steel bed with monitors and beepers and nurses all around him.”
“He was nearly ninety-two, Esther. That’s old enough, isn’t it?”
“But what about my brother? The doctor found a lump, and he died in the hospital too. And my cousin was only in there a couple of days—”
“God was ready to take them all home, Esther. But that doesn’t mean He’s ready for you. Going to the hospital isn’t a ticket to the cemetery. This procedure is supposed to help you stay well. By not having it done, you could get worse and worse.”
She cried out in exasperation and pushed up from the table, heading into the living room. Charlie followed, only to find that Boofer’s stomach had redirected most of the pot roast he’d wolfed down onto the carpet.
Seeing the mess, Esther wailed in despair and hurried for the bedroom. “I’ve probably killed him!” her voice echoed down the hall. “I’ve killed my dog by feeding him garlic roast beef, and I’ll be next. I’ll lose my mind and then die a terrible death in some nursing home.”
Clenching his teeth in frustration, Charlie spotted Boofer under the coffee table, a guilty—or was it queasy?—look on the poor pooch’s face. Unable to find words to express his emotions, he scooped up the mess, disposed of it, spot-cleaned the carpet, and coaxed the dog out into the open.
“Come here, Boof,” Charlie said. As he sank down on the sofa, the little dog bounded into his lap. Charlie stroked the long black fur. “What are we going to do with your mama, Boofer? Why don’t you go in there and talk her into letting the doctor put a balloon in her artery? Would you do that for me?”
The dog’s dark brown eyes gazed up at his master as if pleading to be released from such an onerous duty. For a few minutes, Charlie leaned back on a cushion and tried to let the tension seep out of his body. It had been a long day. Beading in the morning, building in the afternoon, and a pot roast fiasco to top off the whole deal. Many of the hours had been spent in service to Brad and Ashley Hanes. Maybe they could return the favor by convincing Esther to get her artery cleaned. He might just put the task to Ashley and see if Esther would listen to her young friend.
Charlie couldn’t deny he was worried about his wife. Esther had done plenty of crazy things while learning how to cook. But this garlic and onion snafu was the first major culinary mistake in many years.
What if she truly did have some sort of dementia? How would the two of them handle the coming years? Charlie couldn’t imagine putting his wife into a care center, but he wasn’t a medical professional by a long shot. He wouldn’t have a clue how to take care of Esther if her mental faculties declined too far. Just the thought of losing his sweet, silly wife to such a terrible fate sent a shudder through him.
After reassuring Boofer that everything was all right, Charlie rose and made his way down the hall to the bedroom. There he found Esther, fully clothed and lying on top of the bedspread, fast asleep. Now he would have to rouse and undress her, put her into a nightgown, and help her slip back into bed. Trouble was, he just didn’t know if he had the energy.
Sinking onto the edge of the bed, he stared at the dresser and tried to remember the vase that had so upset Esther that evening. He did recall the day he’d accidentally knocked it off that very same dresser onto the floor. But what did a broken vase have to do with a garlicky pot roast?
The vase incident had happened so long ago, almost at the start of their marriage. Esther had placed the trinket along with several other knickknacks on the dresser. Charlie had never even noticed the little collection until one winter morning when he was dressing in the half-light of an open curtain and hit the vase with his elbow. For days, all Esther could do was mourn
that little French vase, until Charlie began to believe it must have held all her hopes and dreams. All those fantasies, like her vase, had been shattered by a clumsy husband who had no idea what the word Limoges even meant.
As the memory of that early, difficult time filtered into his mind, Charlie recalled something he had long ago dismissed as unimpor–- tant. On the day of the broken vase, he had returned to their apartment after walking his mail route and found Esther sitting in the living room with a neighbor. She had been crying—drinking cups of tea and weeping into her handkerchief. At her side on the sofa sat a golden-haired young fellow Charlie had seen once or twice in the hallway.
George Snyder.
At the time, Charlie hadn’t thought much of it. Esther said George had heard her crying and had knocked on the apartment door to see if she was all right. They’d discussed the morning’s events, and George understood both sides—how much the Limoges vase had meant to Esther and how easily it might have been broken by a man dressing in the dark. Charlie had thanked George for looking in on Esther, and the two men shook hands. In the following months, Charlie rarely saw him again and only at a distance.
Frowning, Charlie studied the bottom drawer of the dresser. What had George Snyder written on the bottom of that sketch?
All my love…
Love always…
Loving you forever…
It was something like that, but Charlie had forgotten the exact wording. He glanced at Esther and found her still asleep. So he bent over, pulled open the drawer, and located the sketch. As he slid it out of the envelope, he was again captured by the beauty of the young woman depicted. She looked fresh and lively and full of eager anticipation. Her eyes sparkled. And her lips, parted just a little, almost begged to be kissed.
Was Charlie imagining things now? Or had George and Esther’s friendship gone far beyond a couple of chance meetings? Had there been a true romance between them? Had they had an affair?
Falling for You Again Page 15