But, back then, we still liked the ruse. I had given birth only ten days earlier, but there I was, makeup on, hair fixed, tiny pumps on my feet, hat jauntily pinned to the side. It was most definitely a different time, one where women preferred to be adored for their perfection as female specimens to being adored for their hard work in childbirth.
“Do you see what I was saying now?” I asked Dan.
He looked around and laughed. “Yeah, I can’t believe I was so worried about us having a big house. We could tuck her in the back of the closet and never know she was here.”
Sally opened that tiny mouth and let out a wail, as if to say that she wouldn’t be forgotten. “Are you hungry, little girl?” I padded gingerly off to the nursery, still determined that I would only nurse in private. My husband didn’t need to see what he thought of as one of my most sexual organs being used for something else entirely. Of course, by about the second month, and especially the second child, that romantic notion of keeping everything the way it was so as not to disturb my husband’s world was pretty much out the window.
My mother was horrified by the entire thing. Girls bottle-feed nowadays, Lynn, she said. Don’t ruin yourself with breastfeeding. That’s why men stray.
But it felt like the right thing to me.
“How long?” Dan asked.
I shrugged. “Probably thirty minutes or so.”
“Really?” He lit up. “That’s all?”
I cocked my head to the side, examined his face, and realized through Sally’s stilted cries that we were definitely not talking about the same thing. Though I felt totally nauseous at the thought of sex, I smiled devilishly and said, “Oh, honey, I wish it didn’t have to be, but it will be months before we can do that again.”
Thank God, I thought, closing the door behind me. In case you hadn’t noticed, I just pushed a human out of my body.
I think I might have been starting to wake up about that time, the searing pain nearly knocking me out again, but I fell back into that dream just long enough to think: Ah, yes. Those were the days. Just the three of us in a small, simple home where the only lies we had told were the tiny white ones.
Annabelle
Throwback
Never let anyone see you sweat. Lovey says that literally and figuratively. She has never been too fond of getting all gross at the gym where everyone can see you outside of your primped perfection. But, in a larger way, she was a master at teaching all of us to keep our cool no matter what. And I needed that advice that morning.
“I completely understand your concern, Mrs. Jamison.” I mimed a talking hand at Junie. “Yes, I can understand how the drumming hurt your husband’s ears.” I nodded, though she couldn’t see me. “Well, the wonderful thing is, Mrs. Jamison, if you’re annoyed by the sounds of the children allowed to stay in the service, you can always go to the eight o’clock or the nine fifteen like you usually do. It is only the ten thirty that has gotten more contemporary.”
I hung up a few minutes later, wiping sweat from my brow. That was the sixth call I had received that morning about the new contemporary service. It was only in its second week, and attendance was up more than 30 percent. Families with children loved the music, the laid-back atmosphere and being able to let their little ones enjoy the sermon too without the scornful looks if they accidentally dropped a crayon. The church’s oldest, most faithful parishioners, on the other hand, were about to have a stroke. Literally.
Father Rob breezed through, pulling on his sport coat. “Another complaint?”
I nodded. “You’re looking snazzy. Where are you off to?”
He looked uncharacteristically stressed. “I’m heading to an afternoon conference.” He paused, as though he were thinking, turned back to me and said, “Hey, why don’t you go home for lunch now.”
I looked at the computer. “It’s ten forty-five.”
“Yeah. But you’ve had to deal with all these complaints. Take a long lunch. Go home and rest.”
I shrugged. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Going home for a leisurely cup of tea, a sandwich, and maybe even enough time to whip up a batch of my hubby’s favorite toffee cookies for dessert sounded like it would hit the spot. I had been a little stressed that morning. I rustled for my keys in the bottom of the monogrammed L.L.Bean bag that I used to tote my work essentials. In a flash I was around the corner and in my driveway. I could feel my heart flutter excitedly when I noticed Ben’s car was there too. If the thought crossed my mind that he hadn’t called me, it ran out just as quickly with the justification that I was rarely able to come home for lunch—and especially not so early.
Smiling at the happy coincidence, I pushed the door into the galley kitchen and called, “Honey, I’m home,” expecting to see Ben. When he wasn’t there, I headed toward his office, calling, “Ben?”
“Oh, hang on a second,” he yelled from our bedroom. I started up the steps and stopped at the tiny bathroom right in front of me. I opened the medicine cabinet and applied some of my favorite cherry Carmex to my chapped lips before turning the corner to our bedroom and saying, “Do you want me to make you a sandwich?”
I had felt a little neglectful lately. Ben was working insane hours. Combine that with the fact that Laura Anne and I were always grabbing drinks, treating ourselves to a long dinner or catching an early movie, and Ben and I hadn’t had any time at all to ourselves. A leisurely lunch would be just the thing we needed to get us back on track.
Ben was lying down, the covers mussed. I was pretty sure I had made the bed before I went to work. “Oh my gosh, are you okay?”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Just lying down for a second. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
I looked around the room, sensing that something was off but unable to put my finger on it. Emily’s housekeeper had become, by extension, our housekeeper too, and she was in the habit of redecorating a little here or there in between the dusting and vacuuming. I guessed that that was it. I crawled in bed beside him, kissed my husband and laid my head on his chest. “I have a long lunch. Do you want to go out?” I raised my eyebrows at him suggestively and unbuttoned his top button. “Or we could stay right here.”
“Oh. Um.” Ben paused. “I’m playing golf this afternoon, so I actually have to get going here in a second.”
I stuck out my lower lip and said, “You didn’t mention anything about golf.”
He shook his head. “I totally forgot. It’s with a new potential client.”
I brightened. “That’s great!”
I had sensed something off with my husband ever since we had moved back to Salisbury, right around the time that I had gone to Martha’s Vineyard with Lovey. I knew the Holden thing had to be bugging him nearly as much as it was bugging me. And, of course, being tied to a desk all day and barely even picking up his guitar had to have been frustrating.
I sat up, sensing that his somber mood had returned and decided to let him rest for a bit. “I guess I’m going to go down and make a sandwich,” I said.
“Then are you headed back to work?”
I yawned. “I don’t know. Father Rob is out, and I can easily do the newsletter from here, so I might just work from home this afternoon.”
I kissed him quickly and skipped down the steps, so excited for a childhood throwback to peanut butter and jelly for lunch.
I could hear Ben rustling around upstairs, and a few minutes later he came down with his airplane golf bag on his shoulder. I had bought it for him for his birthday the year before when he was going on a trip with his friends. It was basically a huge black duffel that zipped all the way around his entire golf bag, with the clubs inside, so that nothing fell out in flight.
“What are you doing with that?” I smiled. “Going on vacation without me?”
He shrugged. “Just had a few extra clubs I’m taking to the course today. This seemed easier
than lugging them all down.” He scooted out the back door without so much as a good-bye kiss, shouting, “Running late. Sorry.”
“That was weird,” I actually said out loud.
I went back to my peanut butter spreading, thinking he sure must have been nervous about that client. As I carried my plate into the living room for the rare treat of a little trashy daytime television, I felt that nausea grab hold of me again. I had been nauseous kind of a lot lately. And my pants were feeling a little tight . . .
“Oh my God,” I said out loud. I dropped my sandwich on the coffee table and sprinted upstairs saying, “Please, please, please!”
Maybe my penny-in-the-fountain wish would come true after all. I grabbed one of the pregnancy tests from the enormous stash I kept in the bathroom cabinet. I followed the directions, set it on the sink, and walked out of the room. I paced up and down the hall twice, not nearly the five minutes the package said. But, when I peeked in, one eye squinted shut, I saw it. Two lines.
“Yay!” I squealed. I could feel the tears in my eyes, the breath catching in my throat. This is what we had been waiting for all this time. If anything would put the pep back in our marriage, it was this little baby.
I jumped in the car, assuming Ben was playing at the club only a few blocks away. I debated. Part of me wanted to go to the baby store and present him with a tiny gift that night over a gorgeous dinner. But the other part of me couldn’t contain her excitement. He had to know right now.
I paused at a four-way stop where I was about to go straight. Only, when I looked to the right, I saw Ben’s Jeep stopped on the side of the road. Before I even had time to wonder if he had broken down or run out of gas, he leapt out of the front seat, lowered the tailgate, and unzipped the golf bag.
I just sat there blinking and blinking, my eyes focusing in and out as if readjusting to the light. My body went numb, and my heart couldn’t decide whether to pound or stop. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen, something that I’d never have believed if I’d heard it from a friend. And, though it is normally Lovey’s voice that I hear in my head at moments like these, this time, it was Rob’s: Be careful what you wish for.
Lovey
The Other Road
A proper Southern woman doesn’t make a big fuss about herself when she’s sick or hurt or down. It’s better to suffer in silence than be a burden to others. And, of all the things she taught me, my momma embodied that one the very best.
I thought of Momma when I said to Jean again, “You are not to call her. She will feel like she has to run down here and see me, and that’s the last thing she has time for.”
Jean put her hand on her hip and said, “She will kill me if you go in for surgery and she doesn’t even know.”
“She won’t make it in time anyway, so why stress her. We’ll call her when I’m out.”
“I know, but . . .”
“But what?” I snapped. “I’m not going to die in surgery, Jean. For heaven’s sake. Who would look after your father?”
“Don’t even think about dying,” Dan chimed in from the foldout chair bed beside me. He reached over and took my hand again. “What would I do without my girlfriend?”
Jean looked at me in awe, for probably the tenth time that day. As soon as the assisted living nurse arrived for her hourly check, Dan was awake, alert and fully present. When the paramedics arrived, and I started coming back into consciousness, he was shouting at Kelly, one of our regular nurses, from the bed, “No, not that robe. She’ll want the pink one for the hospital. And make sure you get her slippers too.”
I was certain I was still dreaming, my subconscious floating back to a simpler time when my husband was in charge, when he was the breadwinner, decision maker and protector, and I was the grocery shopper, dinner cooker and pigtail braider.
By the time I was fully conscious again, sitting up in my hospital bed, oxygen in my nose, morphine pumping through my veins with the same breathtaking vengeance as an epidural after hours of labor, I realized that, indeed, it had been true.
“I don’t think we’ll be prepared to make that decision until we’ve had a second opinion,” Dan was saying to the nurse. “If there’s some way to set it while it heals and avoid the surgery altogether, we’d obviously choose that option.”
It was about that time that Jean had arrived, sprinting at her high school track pace, completely out of breath.
“Surgery?” I asked.
But before I could get an answer, she burst into tears. “Are you in so much pain, Momma?”
I held my arm up. “I am in no pain of any kind, darling. Now what in the world is wrong with me?”
“It’s your hip, Ms. Lynn,” Kelly, Dan’s nurse, said. “You broke it when you had your spill.”
“Damn stepladder,” I said under my breath.
It was one of those moments that we all inevitably have in our lives. One of those times that we wish instead of veering right we had veered left, instead of taking the interstate we had chosen the back road. I looked at Dan and then back at Jean. And I suddenly realized that, if we could all erase those moments we wish we had taken the other road, what a disturbingly different world it would be.
Annabelle
So Soon
Lovey always says that expectations ruin relationships. I had tried to apply that advice in my marriage with Ben, take things day by day, for what they are, and not place any unrealistic ideals on him. But, sitting there behind the steering wheel, blinking and blinking, I realized that, yes, I had a few expectations of my husband. And they weren’t all that unrealistic.
I bet you could count the number of women who have ever wished to see a dead body in the back of their husband’s car on one hand. I mean, it’s a pretty twisted lady who wants her husband to be a murderer. But, with a body, there can be an explanation. Maybe he was framed. Maybe someone planted the body in his car. I could picture myself, hair fluffed, running down the streets of some courtroom drama, the fearless, undaunted jail widow determined to prove her husband’s innocence.
Or maybe he was a murderer and landed in that cell rightfully. At least in that scenario there’s some sort of closure. Second-guessing your judgment, sure. Mourning the person you thought you knew, absolutely. But the truth is out there, and there’s no decision to make. He’s gone for fifty to life whether you decide to forgive him or not.
When your husband unzips his travel golf bag, though, and there’s a body in it, but, instead of a cold, blue-lipped remainder of someone who has wronged him, out steps a tiny, wedge-heeled, mid-thigh-length-dress-wearing vestige of your brand-new BFF, the situation is a little less black-and-white. I could feel my face scrunching in confusion only seconds before my eyes widened. I gasped, my hands glued to the steering wheel.
I wanted to think that maybe they were planning me a surprise party and didn’t want to give it away. I wanted to think that she had run by to borrow something or ask him a question or make plans for the weekend. But there’s only one scenario so dire that it necessitates your husband carrying your five-foot friend down the stairs in a golf bag. And it can only end in the confessional—or the graveyard. Either way, I can guarantee you Jesus ain’t pleased when you tell him what you’ve done.
My first instinct was to peel away from the curb and slam into them both. But I got my composure. No one wants her baby to be born in prison. As Laura Anne sat up, her legs still trapped in the zipped black bag, she laughed like she had just been crowned prom queen all over again. I snapped six or seven photos with my iPhone like I was going to have to prove this to the insurance company. Maybe it was that I was going to have to prove it to myself later on when I saw Ben again and couldn’t possibly imagine that a love so deep could actually have been so fleeting.
As I was about to turn the corner and confront them, watch them stutter and stumble like the last drunk leaving the bar, my phone rang. I tried
to press “Decline,” inadvertently hit “Accept” and said, “Mom, this isn’t the best time. Could I call you later?”
“Lovey fell,” she said. I could feel the anxiety rising in my stomach.
“What do you mean she fell?”
“She was up on a ladder, and she fell. They don’t know if her hip broke and caused her to fall or if the fall made her hip break.”
I gasped. A hip break wasn’t good. My other grandfather had died of pneumonia after a hip break. My life with Lovey flashed through my mind. Sitting on the counter while she made me those fantastic, lumpy, chocolate milkshakes that were the only real antidote to a sweltering summer day. Lovey pacing the length of the fence during my most heated tennis matches like an anxious father outside the delivery room. Lovey bringing me a piping hot cup of coffee, a cold towel, two aspirin and an amused smirk the morning of my very first hangover. When I closed my eyes, I could see her laughing, that great, uninhibited laugh that took over her entire body. And I sped away from the stop sign toward Raleigh, toward Lovey.
“She’s going into surgery,” Mom said, and I could hear Lovey hollering in the background.
“Darling, now listen,” she said, “I am going to be fine. Don’t you dare get yourself all in a tizzy. The last thing I need is you flying down the highway trying to get to me.”
“Too late,” I said. “I’m already on the interstate.” That nausea rose to the surface, and I realized, finally, that it wasn’t just my anxiety. It was my child. Even though it should have made me feel more afraid of what I would do without Ben, incongruously, realizing that this child I had prayed for was right there made me feel like it was going to be all right.
But that didn’t change the fact that my eighty-seven-year-old Lovey was going under the knife. What if I didn’t make it in time? What if I didn’t get to say good-bye to one of the most important and influential women in my life?
Lies and Other Acts of Love Page 18