Hug Dancing

by Shelby Hearon

  “You’re on.”

  Both of them went to the corner of the house, picking up the FOR SALE sign out of the yard, using its stake for a lever, prying and pulling until I was afraid my new place was going to have a hole in its side before it was even mine.

  Jock peered down into the crevice where they’d pried the siding. “Excellent.”

  “Look at that.” Trey waved me over. “Panoramic.”

  Behind the baby-blue trim, I could see a glimpse of weathered brownish-red boards, and, at the corner, a darker, more purple color.

  “Rust and plum,” Jock said. “Tie.”

  “Tie.” They slapped palms, then let the siding flap back into place.

  “How’d you know?” I asked them.

  Trey said, “Age, pitch of roof. Should be vertical boards. Good lines under there, basic Carpenter’s Gothic. We’re probably going to be architects.”

  “We came to take a picture of your place,” Jock said. “Make you up some flyers. Your kid Martha said you were going to be coaching the SATs.”

  “We better wait.” Trey tugged at the siding again. “It’ll take us tools and ladders to get this off.”

  Jock checked his calendar watch. “Saturday? You going to be here Saturday?”

  “Sure.” At least I could be here, standing in the yard. I thought I could. How immediate was immediate occupancy? Would they up the price if the deal wasn’t closed and they saw there was some dark Victorian prize under the Swiss doily work?

  “We better wait,” Trey said. “Wait till she’s got her stuff in here. Possession and all that.” He looked at his calendar watch. “Couple of weeks will be plenty of time.”

  “You were going to make me flyers?” I was really touched.

  “Yeah.” They looked like it was no big deal. “We do the posters for the middle school. We hang out in the graphics lab; do posters for games, fairs, that kind of stuff. I guess I’ll be doing that at prep school next year, if nobody else is doing it already.” He looked glum.

  “You’re sweet to do this.”

  “Sign us up in a couple of years, summertime?”

  “For free.”

  “You going to do PSATs?” Jock asked.

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Think about it.” Jock put his hands on his head, rocked up and down on the balls of his feet. Probably it was reflex action, being around me. Dance time. “Kids freak out before the PSAT. Your whole life flashes before you. Destiny is set. Futures tumble.”

  I looked at my watch, a Timex, trying to compute if the girls would be getting home from practice.

  Trey rubbed his face. His freckles had blended together into a spotted golden tan. A mighty handsome boy. Both of them. “You and Dad going to get together?” he asked.

  Jock came close enough to my shoulder to brush against it, leaning his head in as if to hear the answer.

  “Your dad,” I said, as lightly as I could manage, “is just an excuse, the best ruse I could think of, to get you guys back in my life.”

  They had to step on their laces over that.

  “Can I give you a ride in the Firebird?”

  “Let us off at the Fairgrounds,” Trey said. “We’ll walk to school. We’ve got our tennis stuff in our lockers; things have got wild at home, so we’re playing defense.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “For everything.”

  EBEN SAT IN the armchair; I pulled the footstool so I could lean against the wall. My hands were tucked, palms together, between my knees. I felt myself sweating in my frayed terry-cloth robe, nervous.

  He was massaging his feet, his black socks still on. It was Saturday night; he’d stayed late at church, preparing his Easter sermon. Now he drained his cup of tea, forgot, started to take a sip, set it down again.

  The blue willow pitchers, my mother’s, I was taking with me to the new place; the will and document box we used as an end table, his father’s, was to stay.

  “We have everything in place for tomorrow,” he said. “The Korean congregation is bringing lunch. There will be an egg hunt for their little ones and ours in the play yard.”

  Perhaps he was being kind, letting me know that Easter was different for all of us this year. I squeezed my hands, then exhaled and inhaled slowly. “Are you still doing Luke?” I asked.

  “Yes, twenty-four forty-four not twenty-four twenty-five.”

  I wondered at the change from “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” to “All things must be fulfilled which were written … in the prophets.” I loved the language of the first, wished I was going to hear the distinction he was drawing. Perhaps, on some level, he didn’t want to be calling his congregation fools, reproaching them for being slow to believe what was happening to their pastor.

  “I’m sorry not to hear you,” I said.

  “Are you?”

  “I’m going to miss the church.”

  “This is a fine time to decide that.”

  “What would you have done if I’d not made the first move to leave?”

  He kneaded the ball of his right foot as if the knots therein were of immense interest. “I’m not following you, Cile.”

  “Would you have asked for a divorce?”

  “Sued you for breach of affection, you mean? Hardly. My choice would have been, has been, to cause as little public furor as possible.” He put his feet on the floor and lifted his thin hair with his fingers.

  “Do you not know that I know about Jae-Moon?”

  Hands on his knees, he wore his sagacious face, trying to suggest that he’d seen this coming, that it was all part of a plan. He met my eyes. “That is hardly the same.”

  “As what?”

  “As a very conspicuous public affair between two married people.”

  “You mean because she’s not married? Or because you haven’t made love to her? Which? Which, Eben? Or because you’re more discreet? Or because it was foretold in the tea leaves that you’d end up together?”

  He crumpled. “Nobody knows.”

  “Everybody knows. Theo, my favorite stepmother, told me. The girls told me.”

  He paled. “How could they?” He hesitated, recalled, “I gave them permission to mention the computer.”

  “Just talk to me about her, Eben. Just tell me about it, that’s all. It may be your style to stand up in the pulpit and tell everything, but it’s not mine. I’m not showing up at your Easter service making sure they all know. I just want to hear it from you.”

  “Let’s have our oatmeal.”

  In the kitchen, he put water on to boil, got our bowls, spoons, wheat germ, skim milk. He found a peach I’d left out for us, and sliced that on a saucer.

  When it was ready, he put the bowls on the dining table, as far away from the children’s hearing as possible. I was going to miss this house. Miss being a family; miss, even, being a preacher’s wife.

  “Dr. Song,” he began, “as she was to me in the beginning, pressed me to reexamine the words I was using to proclaim the message. She made me see that the message could not be received if the words insulted my listeners. It was, she insisted, as if I shouted to blacks from the pulpit, ‘Jesus loves you, niggers.’ ” Here he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Put in that way, so blatantly, I could see the point. Who could open her ears to words addressed only to ‘him’? There was more. I asked her to go over my sermons with me. I had not seen before the various biases of the words I used, the words I selected from the lessons and text, and those I wrote myself. I began to open my ears, to make changes.” He ate his cereal, seemingly unaware that his face was wet with tears. “It began in that way.”

  “Then?”

  “When I was tempted, I recalled that first Easter that you saw your old boyfriend again and my realization that if I lived with you for fifty years your face would never look that way at me. I recalled that, and gave myself permission.”

  “How could you have brooded for ten years about that? Drew and I didn’t do a
nything, didn’t see each other until—”

  “I don’t want to hear the timetable, if you please.”

  How was it possible I was again, still, on the defensive?

  “Will she want children?” I made an effort to bring us back to the present.

  “I think not. She is thirty-five; by the time it would be possible, I will be fifty. The commute from Austin to Dallas, living here, has not been easy for her.”

  “Why did she move here?”

  He flushed. “Her grandfather had been converted by mine; she’d heard that I, his grandson, had a church here. She is a very committed Presbyterian.”

  “That’s nice for you.” By implication he meant as compared to living fifteen years with a heretic. I could feel anger rising. What a rotten idea this talk had been; some idea I’d had that we would tell the truth, the whole truth, the gentle truth now that we were parting.

  “It is a gift to the whole congregation,” he said solemnly.

  That did it; boiling temperature. I took slow bites of oatmeal and peach. “How’s that?” I asked, giving him the chance to say what a drag it had been to have a wife who had her doubts about the Lord but loved the church. A chance to talk of infidels and infidelity; to throw the first stone. To cite the business about the mustard seed and the talents.

  “It will be an enormous financial boon to the church budget. We will be able to pay the utilities and repairs on the parsonage, thereby freeing money for general accounting. Jae-Moon intends to pay for the children’s education, as well as pick up our medical bills on her insurance. It will provide a substantial financial relief for the church.”

  “You never said you wanted me to get a job.”

  “Not once did you offer to resume your tutoring or make an attempt to go back for the teaching degree you once considered. From the day we married you have not contributed one dime to the running of our household. Can you not comprehend the strain this was for me, the drain? Unable to give to the church because every penny counted.”

  “No. No, I thought the point was the church got both of us for the price of one.”

  “But what did they get of you? Did you teach a Sunday School class? Participate in an outreach group? Attend adult classes? What, Cile? It comes as no surprise to me and will come as no surprise to the congregation that you are marrying a very wealthy man.”

  “Lord.”

  “Could you please, on your last night in this house—”

  “Lord, yes, you bet.” I dug the peaches out of my gummy cereal. “Would you like the girls to live with me?”

  “You gave your word when you took my check; you gave your word to them. They are entitled to remain here. Besides, they don’t need to be subjected to the disruption of relocating in your obviously temporary lovenest.”

  “So it was money all along? That business about her helping you with the sermons, opening your eyes to your frailties, about me lighting up when Andy popped back into view, that was just filler, rationale? Is that it? You saw where you weren’t going to have to have the little tears in your suits mended by hand, the smudges on your white shirts fixed with chalk. Saw where you weren’t going to have to grow old eating endless bowls of my potato soup.”

  He busied himself with his oatmeal, making no answer.

  The world had gone nuts. Everybody had dollar bills for eyeballs. Here I’d kept myself tied to this supposed job of preacher’s wife for most of my adult life, for almost half of my whole life, and all the time Eben, and maybe the whole lot of the friendly folks with their debates on the predestination of the common cold, were thinking what a drag it was, not to have a woman in the parsonage who was making real science-corridor bucks. The worst was, probably the kids felt that way, too. Here they were suddenly getting a computer right in their home; doubtless other marvels would follow soon, a VCR, a camcorder, a CD player, a microwave, a sauna where the large linen closet now was (filled, still, with my faded glory days formals, courtesy of the younger Mrs. Dr. Croft, now the older Mrs. Dr. Croft).

  It had been a mistake to finish out the week here. Once I’d got the house cleared—with a lot of help from Shorty and Theo, who’d separately talked to the bank, testified to my solvency, to my trustworthiness, to the idea that turning down a preacher’s ex-wife would look shoddy, to the fact that the bank was unloading a lemon on me anyway, to their willingness to cosign my agreement if need be—I should have camped out in my “beautifully updated and maintained” Carpenter’s Gothic.

  My mistake was in wanting one last Saturday night with Eben, hoping to provide us both with a decent farewell. To let us shake on it, part with grace, wish each other “Godspeed.” Give each other permission to leave.

  “Eben,” I said, looking at him. “Don’t do this, to you or to me. Don’t do this to the lovely Jae-Moon Song, who is full of love for you. You insult us all. Putting a price tag on my actions or yours.”

  “The ministry is not what I expected,” he said, wiping his eyes. “They do not want what I have to offer. No one is troubled by lack of faith; they want a new roof. I am the city’s authority on interfaith marriages, unions of Baptists and Presbyterians, yet not one single member of the larger fellowship will step forward to offer help when they learn of my own mixed union.”

  “You want them to pull out their hair with disbelief; cry out in their wildernesses.” The sad truth was, as I knew, they wouldn’t even care.

  “As always, you exaggerate.” He rinsed his bowl, got a glass of milk.

  “Finish, Eben.”

  He spoke from across the room, the old son of an old man, in his sock feet, his trousers rolled, gray braces dangling. “It was the church’s deceit, not yours, that made me turn to her.”

  That was benediction enough.

  The kitchen clock said it was already Easter morning.

  WE HAD BREAKFAST together, the four of us. I’d put out a bowl of dyed eggs, red and yellow, and a vase of yellow tulips bought on the street. I’d made creamed eggs on English muffins, thick sausage patties, and peach coffee cake dusted with nutmeg. My farewell. Even fresh-squeezed orange juice, which took a whole sack of thin-skinned Florida oranges.

  The girls looked devasTAITing, so grown-up, in their church clothes. Martha had woven a green ribbon into her French braid, and Ruth had tied rose bows on her nosegays of hair. Both had pinker mouths and pinker cheeks than they wore to school. And both were being extra polite to their departing mother.

  Maybe they felt relief that there would be no egg hunt-brunch with the Williamses. They’d never had anything to say to Trey and Jock anyway (although I now had a better idea whose tongues were tied and why). But I didn’t feel relief; I felt heavy in my chest. Eben was getting to have his church service, his egg hunt with the sister congregation, custody of Lila Beth for the day, plus he’d prevented me from having Easter at her house.

  Waving them good-bye, I felt sick at heart. When Ruth and Martha asked what I was going to do, I said I was going to the downtown Presbyterian church, the big two-thousand-member one, with Theo. In fact, she had invited me, saying that not being a churchgoer naturally didn’t apply to Easter Sunday, and that of course she was going to hear that “Hallelujah Chorus” and see the half-acre of banked lilies. Why didn’t I join her? Shorty was engaged in the final rounds of a serious yellow catfish competition.

  But I’d told her no. Even though they had been great, had helped with the house, as well as helped with the loss I was feeling in all directions, I wasn’t ready to see people from that part of my past.

  Drew had been absent and silent. He’d called me once, after I’d first seen the alpine eyesore, and advised me against even renting in that neighborhood. “Rough,” he’d said, “not safe. Mixed.” When he could find his head, he said, get himself back on the track, he’d help me rent a place, till we could work things out, on the lake. Lots of nice condos. No, not the big lake; downtown, Lake Brazos. Lot of new places popping up, not bad addresses.

  I couldn’t think of a bet
ter indication that he was doing worse than bad: hearing words like condo, nice, new spring from his lips. What on earth was happening to him? Where had he gone? Was he coming back?

  We agreed to meet at the farm on Tuesday. I almost said, That old place? But he didn’t seem in the mood to take it as a joke or even to hear it.

  Naturally, I’d wanted him to be delighted about a house with an ancestry back to 1885; wanted him to declare it a vintage year, treat it the way he did my clunker of a Pontiac: having potential. But I could understand if my moving anywhere seemed like defeat, because it did to me, too. My moving anywhere but the farm. I still found it hard to believe that he wasn’t going to show up tomorrow and help me load a U-Haul and drive right up there, picking up a sack of barbeque to eat on the way.

  But most of all I wanted him to remember how badly I’d wanted to go to Lila Beth’s for Easter breakfast.

  “How’re you doing?” he’d asked on the phone, after talking the whole time about the federals and conjecturing all sorts of scenarios in which his mother was in cahoots with them, had put them up to the whole supercollider project as a way to take his land away from him.

  “I bought a copy of Hot Words for the SAT,” I told him. “The three hundred and fifty computer-generated, most frequently used words.” I’d flinched a little using the word computer.

  “God, Cile, how can you even think about that stuff now?”

  My plan, after Eben and the girls left, had been to pack clothes while everyone was at church, then take a drive during the Korean egg hunt in the primary class play yard. But the minute the house was empty, the parson’s house, I fled. Got in the car and drove. Luck was kind: Eva Lee’s stucco-fronted barbeque café across the Brazos was open for lunch. It was filled with men having barbeque and chicken-fried steak, black-eyed peas, red beans, rice, coleslaw, peach cobbler. The woman at the window seemed glad to pack me a takeout. Maybe she saw I was ill at ease in the crowded café; maybe she was ill at ease for me. (Why wasn’t I in church where I belonged, like the wives of other men?) I got an order of pork barbeque—the third best in the state, according to Drew, who ranked it behind a stand in the hill country near his boys’ camp, and a shed on the farm road west of West—which came wrapped in butcher paper so that the grease showed right through. I got bread and pinto beans, and coffee. Hot food for a clear blue hot day. I liked that.