***
On their way to Jennie’s for the visit they had planned on the day of the funeral, Christa and Amy stopped in Atlanta to pick up Alexis.
“Tasha’s not coming?” Amy asked. She had called her sister the night before, and Tasha had been unwilling to commit to the trip.
“No.” Alexis shook her head. “Her lowlife boyfriend wanted to go camping this weekend, last minute thing.”
“Camping? In Florida, I hope. They’ll freeze if they’re anywhere near here.”
“The mountains, she said.” Alexis paused. “She tells me it can get really warm if you use one sleeping bag.”
“Tramp. Mom would kill her.” Amy looked behind them. “It’s clear, Christa. Go.”
Amy pulled onto the interstate and headed west. It would be a two-hour drive. The girls talked about school for a while. Then Alexis drifted off to sleep.
Christa stared out at the strip malls that were packed together on the edge of town. After a while, they pulled off for Cokes. Then, leaving the interstate, they drove along the narrow, winding roads toward Jennie’s home in Whitesburg.
“Tasha is an idiot,” Christa said. “What’s the guy’s name? Ashton?”
“I think that’s it,” Amy replied. “He’s trash. From what Tasha says, he’s enrolled in school just to keep his parents happy. He doesn’t go to class. He’s buzzed most of the time…and they fight.”
“Everyone fights,” Christa said.
“Mom and Dad didn’t fight.”
“They were different.”
“Anyway, they fight with fists and feet and fingernails. Real fighting, not words. Tasha showed me a bruise on her arm where he punched her. Then she told me it was all right because she’d left scratches all over his face…Then they made up.”
“Not with words either, I’ll bet.”
“Humph,” Amy snorted her agreement, then she crossed her arms and turned toward the window.
They rode on in silence as they left Atlanta behind, and the stores and fast food eateries were replaced by pine forests scattered across low, rolling hills. Finally, Christa took the next exit onto highway five. As they approached Whitesburg, she glanced over her shoulder at Alexis, still asleep in the back seat.
“Alexis, wake up.”
Her sister didn’t move.
“Alexis Lindsay. Wake up. Now.”
When she received no response, Christa turned to Amy. “Amy, do you still have ice in your cup?”
“Half full. A little Coke too.”
“Let me hold it. I’m going to wake Alexis up.”
“Do it and die.” A soft voice came from the back seat.
“Here it comes. One…two…three.” Christa turned quickly and emptied the glass on her sister’s face. Alexis sprang upright, sputtering and swiping at her face.
“Christa, I’ll kill you.” Alexis reached toward her.
“I’m driving. I’m driving,” Christa declared. “Don’t touch me or we might wreck.”
“Oh. Oh. You’re a pure tee brat,” Alexis exclaimed. She grabbed Christa’s fleece to use as a towel. “Why did I ever let Jennie have you?”
“I doubt you were consulted…”
“I certainly was consulted. I requested a puppy, but they said no, a sister would be fun…I should have put my foot down.” She accepted a handful of napkins that Amy handed to her.
Christa laughed. “Wouldn’t life be boring without me?”
Alexis sniffed. “There are times when I would be willing to find out.”
“You’d be devastated if I were to go away,” Christa declared. “Anyway, we’re here.”
She slowed as she entered town, spun around the traffic circle, and halted in front of Jennie’s house.
***
An hour later, they sat in Jennie’s living room with a large pizza on the table.
“How are things going?” Jennie asked. “Boyfriends okay?”
“What boyfriend?” Christa sniffed. “I’ve way too much to do to care for a boyfriend.”
“Like what?” Alexis laughed.
“Well, there is school, and there is riding…and I have a part in Mama Mia.”
“Cool. What’s the part?”
“I’m Lisa, one of Sophie’s bridesmaids.”
“Terrific.” Jennie patted her shoulder.
“You mean people will hear you try to sing?” Alexis smiled innocently.
“I have a beautiful voice. It’s not at all like yours, Sis.”
“My voice is pretty.” Alexis pretended to pout.
“But you only use it on a single note.”
All four laughed.
“Robbie was totally embarrassed at the funeral.” Alexis slid a piece of pizza onto her plate.
“Why?” Jennie frowned. “What happened?”
“When I was reading my essay, about the boy who kissed me when I was twelve? His face was as red as a stop sign.”
“You did say something about Robbie.” Jennie nodded. Her head jerked up. “Did you mean your Robbie? Robbie Padget? He was the boy at the church who turned seven shades of red?”
Alexis smiled. “One and the same.”
“He must have grown six inches since I last saw him. You’ve known him since you were twelve?”
“He is taller.” Alexis nodded. “And, yes, our romance is a long-term affair.”
“Affair?” Christa pretended to choke on her pizza. “Where’s my phone? I need to call Dad.”
“You know what I mean. We’ve liked each other a long time…Anyway, Ms. Padget started calling him Casanova. Then his sister picked it up…”
“Alexis and Robbie sitting in a tree…” Amy sang.
Alexis turned her face away from Amy. “Exactly. He complained to me, and I asked if he was ashamed of me.” She laughed. “It went on for a week.”
No one spoke for a minute while they worked on second slices of pizza.
“There’s another in the oven,” Jennie told them.
“Got it.” Amy hopped up, and everyone looked at her and giggled. “What? I’m hungry,” she said, grinning. She went to the kitchen, slid the pizza out, and sliced it.
“How is school going?” Jennie asked.
“I aced a psychology test yesterday.” Christa took a sip of tea.
“Good job, Christa.”
“Psychology?” Alexis drank some of her Coke. “Okay. Analyze me. What is my problem?”
“Sis, there are so many I hardly know where to begin.”
Alexis swatted her on the arm. “Not nice.”
“We’ve been studying Freud and, you know, he says we are all in love with Dad. And he doesn’t mean puppy love.”
“Gross.” Amy had returned and she and Alexis spoke at the same time.
“Just reporting. We’re competing with each other and that’s why we fight all of the time.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
“So he says…That’s why we hate Jennie too.”
“What?” Jennie’s mouth dropped open as she coughed up a piece of pizza. “You hate me?”
“Could Freud be wrong?” Christa asked innocently. “We’re competing with you too.”
“Why me?”
“Well, duh. You were married to Dad and you want to…and you, uh…you still like him…and…”
Jennie shook her head. “Not like that, Christa.”
The three girls exchanged a look.
“What’s that look?”
“Oh, nothing.” Christa covered her mouth quickly and turned her head away.
No one spoke for a moment, and then Amy dropped her head, tears forming in her eyes.
“Amy?” Alexis put a hand on her arm. “Are you all right?’
“I miss Mom.”
Alexis wrapped her arms around her. “I miss Mom too, Amy.”
“I’m sorry, Amy.” Christa was crying too. “I shouldn’t have talked about…that.”
All four sat silently for almost a minute as Jennie turned away. There had been a time in
which talk of Emma would have made her furious. Now, she simply felt sad.
Finally, she asked quietly, “How is your father?”
The girls looked at each other.
“He’s totally out of it, Jennie,” Amy told her. “He missed classes for a week. I know no one else thought it strange, but it’s not Dad. His secretary told me—I called her on Wednesday—that he does nothing but sit at his desk and stare at the wall.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Louisa is coming home on Friday,” Christa said.
“How is he going to manage?”
“Ms. Cross, a lady who lives down the street offered to help. She’s…”
“Weaseling her way into Dad’s life.” Amy frowned.
Jennie nodded.
“Do you know Ms. Cross?”
“We, uh, met.”
“I wish you lived closer.” Alexis looked her in the eye. “Dad really needs help now.”
Jennie didn’t respond to that. “Ready for desert?”
Her attempt to change the topic proved to be successful and they talked until almost midnight.
***
Jennie’s house had a single guest room with two beds, and Alexis lost the coin toss to determine who slept on the sofa.
“But I’m the oldest,” she wailed. “I should have preference.”
“Poor baby.” Amy patted her head. “Better luck tomorrow night.”
“You two need your beauty sleep more than I do,” Alexis called as Christa and Amy closed the door to their room. Muffled laughter was their only response.
“Would you like a cup of tea or some warm milk,” Jennie asked. “I generally have something to drink at bed time.”
“Sure. Tea would be really good.”
Jennie brewed two mugs of Earl Grey and they sat on the sofa sipping their drinks.
“Dad is searching for a nanny to care for Louisa in the mornings,” Alexis told her. “His last class ends at eleven thirty, and he can be home about noon. He won’t teach this summer, and he’s thinking about daycare starting in August.”
“So, he’s not ‘totally out of it,’ as Amy said. Does he have any prospects for a nanny?”
“He’s talked to a couple of girls at the college. It will just be until early May, so he doesn’t think an agency would be interested.”
Jennie nodded. “Probably right.”
“I wish you lived closer.”
Jennie paused. She was not sure what to tell Alexis about Thomas and her.
“You know, your father and I did not part ways on good terms…”
Alexis nodded. “He never talked about you. Never said anything bad. Never said much at all, just that it was better that the two of you not live together…I always wondered what really happened.”
“Sometimes life just doesn’t work out like you expect, and…”
Alexis took a deep breath. “Last year, a friend of mine was doing an internship with the family court. I’m not sure if it was totally legal, but she let me see the records of the hearing.”
Jennie felt her stomach turn. “Alexis, tell me you didn’t…”
“I spent a full day at the courthouse, reading them.” She looked into Jennie’s eyes. “All of them. I know everything that happened.”
“Your dad said some awful things about me, Alexis…and all of them were true.” Tears began to run down her face. “I never dreamed you would know…Your father wouldn’t want me to be with Louisa.”
“Dad was fighting for us, Jennie. I heard him tell Emma once when they were sitting in the family room. I was coming down the stairs and I heard him say he didn’t want to drag you through the mud, but his attorney had told him to choose between that and having his children taken from him.”
Jennie drew a deep breath. “Your father is a good person. He’s always been, but not wanting to hurt someone is not the same as wanting to have that person around your children.”
“You really hurt him, you know. He said in court he held off filing for divorce for two years, hoping you would come back to him. Did you know he kept a photograph of you on his desk until he and Emma began to date? I used to hold it up and try to imagine what you were like and wonder how you could possibly want to leave him.”
“I didn’t mean to ever hurt him. I was sick. I was not thinking clearly.”
“When you showed up, it was to take us away.”
“You know that’s not what I intended.”
“In your petition, you wanted us for ninety days a year, one out of four. Almost all summer. Christmas. A weekend every month. Most of the time when we were not in school. Taking us away was pretty much what you proposed.”
Jennie sighed. “I never thought of it that way…In any case, it has been four years since we were in court. I didn’t take you away.”
Alexis gave a small smile. “No, as it turned out, you didn’t.”
“In those four years, your father has contacted me twice, I think. At first, his attorney would call. Then, you girls would call or email. Then it was Emma. He wants nothing to do with me, Alexis. It would make no difference if I lived next door.”
She cleared her throat. “You do know I’m not like that now? You do know…”
Alexis put an arm around Jennie’s shoulder. “Of course I do. I barely recognized you as the same person. As I read, I kept checking the name on the file, thinking the clerk had given me the wrong one. You were really sick, weren’t you?”
Jennie nodded. “I really was. I look back and I see someone else too.”
“If you only had the chance to talk…”
“He had the chance. Last fall, when Christa and Amy rode at the Georgia Equestrian Center, everyone in the family and some of their friends came to watch. I was there too. Everyone was sitting in the bleachers. I was on one end of the line. He walked up, looked, and sat at the other end, with seven people between us. Same thing at dinner. The only time he spoke to me was to say good-bye.”
“But…”
“Even better—summer before last, Emma invited me to a beach party. Your father and I sat next to each other near the fire and I’ll bet we exchanged five sentences all evening.”
“You tried to talk to him?”
Jennie shook her head. “I guess not. No.”
“Have you two ever talked about what happened?” Alexis leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
“When we were in court…”
“You talked at each other, not to each other.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Jennie sighed.
***
After pulling out pillows and blankets to help Alexis settle onto the sofa, Jennie went to her room and tried to sleep. Two hours later, she heard the clock in the living room strike one, and she sat up in bed, reaching for the light on the table beside her. Her conversation with Alexis had run over and over through her mind, as if she were constantly pressing replay on her iPod.
She slipped out of bed and started to the kitchen for something to drink, stopping as she reached the door when she remembered that Alexis was asleep in the living room.
Jennie sighed as she settled back into bed. Of course she would like to help Thomas…she supposed. It was all so complicated, her feelings about Thomas.
She had never completely deserted him, not in the deep places of her mind. Even at her worst—she had not yet hit bottom when she had abandoned her family—she’d felt as if Thomas would always be available. Intellectually, she had known it was a fantasy. She’d even laughed about it on occasion.
When she had discussed filing her petition for visitation, her counselor had repeatedly asked whether she wanted to get back her children or her family. Each time she had vehemently denied any interest in Thomas. Too vehemently, Dr. Wilson had noted.
In any case, she had assumed Thomas had married again. After all, a handsome man, a nice person like Thomas…
She recalled her irrational sense of elation when her attorney told her he was still single—she had almost shoute
d yes and fist pumped. To her attorney, it meant they could argue the necessity of a mother figure in the children’s lives. To Jennie, it meant he was available.
She still remembered the sense of loss she had felt when she had learned he had waited for her for two years before filing for divorce, the stab of disappointment when he said he was engaged, the envy that all but overwhelmed her when she first saw Emma.
She had blocked all of those feelings. Thomas had married Emma less than a year after Jennie had sought visitation, and she had done nothing to interfere with their happiness. It was as if she had built a dam across a river and allowed no water to trickle past. Emma’s death had broken that dam.
Still, sixteen years.
She had certainly changed during that time. That was not all bad. Thank goodness she had changed. She had often wondered why it was necessary for her to leave Thomas, why he had not punted her out of the house months earlier.
She had been crazy back then. Dr. Wilson told her not to use that term, but Jennie felt it fit.
A crazy bitch.
Jennie shook her head. It wasn’t a word she often used and she had been shocked when, on one of their trial visits, Alexis had hurled it at her. But it was the best description she could find. No one back then could have found her lovable, or even likable. Jeff was the only one with whom she spent more than a couple of hours at a time, and their relationship was founded on liquor and rough sex.
Her appearance had changed too, and that was not bad either. When she had left her family she had weighed forty pounds heavier than she now did, and her hair, dyed platinum blond, had reached her waist. Guys at the bar had claimed they could tell her mood by how vigorously her pony tail swung as she walked and they had avoided her when it had slapped against one shoulder, then the other, with each step she took. Her hair was now the soft brown it had been when she had married Thomas, and it hung just below her neck.
She was not the same girl she had been before the disorder had set in, either, when she and Thomas were dating and when they were first married.
“Jennie the fearless” they had called her. She chuckled as she recalled the time she had sneaked into the science lab and had released—liberated—all of the white rats who were destined for dissection by the freshman biology students. Campus security had given chase, but Thomas had been waiting behind the building with the engine running. The rats, or their descendants, were seen occasionally even three years later, scurrying about the building.
Once and Future Wife Page 4