by Anna Jeffrey
Joyce. Lanny’s deceased wife.
Marisa’s memory spun backward, but Joyce Winegardner was no more than a gauzy, if well-dressed, image. Marisa had already left Agua Dulce by the time Joyce passed on. Ben, on the other hand, probably knew her as well as he knew Lanny. Marisa had to ask, “Why would she do that?”
“She was as unhappy a human being as I ever seen. A fish out of water, for sure. She hated everything about Agua Dulce, hated the ranching business.” He pronounced it “bid-ness.”
With so much distance between her and Lanny’s ages, Marisa had never been interested in knowing the history of Lanny’s marriage. Tanya’s tantrum over moving to Arizona with Jake waltzed through her mind. Marisa was weary of people who refused to step up and handle the consequences of their decisions. She couldn’t remember ever having that luxury herself. “If that’s how she felt, why did she marry him and come here?”
Marisa the Cynic.
Ben gave a deep heh-heh-heh. “Ain’t that obvious?”
“Yeah, it is,” she said, aware her own reasoning might not be any different from that of Lanny’s deceased wife. Financial security was a potent motivator. She flipped the sausage patties and placed the cast-iron press on top of them, then broke two eggs onto the hot griddle.
“Think you’ll go through with it, darlin’?”
She hesitated, then said, “Go through with what?”
“Don’t get coy with your ol’ Ben, sweet girl. My thinking might be a little cloudy, but yours ain’t. You know damn well what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.”
Marisa set her jaw. Her decision was nobody’s business. “Do you think you’ll quit drinking this year?”
“I’ll prob’ly quit drinkin’ before you marry Lanny.”
A lump swelling in her throat threatened to stop her flurry of activity, but she pushed on and dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. “That’s probably right. I doubt it’ll ever happen.”
“Too friggin’ bad,” Ben said, running a hand through his combed hair and ruining the neatness. “Just too friggin’ bad to let ungrateful kids run your life. Glad I ain’t got any snot-nosed brats trying to tell me what to do.”
She looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. “But you’ve got me.”
He was studying the surface of his coffee. “You’d be good for ol’ Lanny, Marisa.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” A tear escaped and trailed down beside her nose, the delayed reaction to Lisa’s attack. “It’s too hard, Ben.”
She turned the eggs too carelessly and broke both yolks. She looked up at him. His gaze quickly veered from her face to the semi-liquid yolks leaking yellow beyond the edges of the whites. “Hey, broke eggs don’t make no never-mind to me. It’s all going to the same place.”
She managed a sniffly chuckle as she scooped the breakfast onto a plate and passed it to him. “It’d be too hard for me and Lanny both. My life’s already complicated enough. What’s the point in doing something that can only cause trouble for him? No, I’m pretty sure I’m going back to Plan A. I feel bad for Lanny, but he’ll have to soothe his soul and spend his money with someone else.”
Carrying the plate, Ben shuffled around the end of the lunch counter to a stool. “Just too friggin’ bad,” he mumbled. He reached for the salt and pepper shakers, sprinkled salt on his eggs, then covered them with a blanket of pepper.
“Do you ever wonder what’s going to happen to all of us, Ben?”
“Nah. I don’t give a shit.” He picked up his knife and fork and whacked his eggs into a hundred pieces.
“You do, too. You just don’t want to admit it.” She sipped her coffee. “Trying to figure all of it out is driving me crazy.”
“You know something, baby girl? Half the time, I think Raylene’s better off than any of us. Look at her. She’s happy all the time, don’t have a clue what’s happening and she’s got you to take care of her. I might wish for a deal like that m’self.” He dug into his breakfast.
Marisa refilled his coffee mug. “Don’t ever wish Alzheimer’s disease on yourself, Ben.”
“Maybe I’ve already got it. Rachel used to say I was drowning brain cells faster than they could recover.” He sopped a piece of toast in his eggs and shoved it into his mouth. “’Course it was her fault most of the time that I was doing it.”
Rachel. The song lyrics Marisa had seen on Ben’s table flashed in her mind. She hadn’t heard him so much as say Rachel’s name in months, maybe years. She rounded the end of the lunch counter and sat down beside him. “You haven’t mentioned her in ages.”
He didn’t reply at first, just concentrated on his breakfast. Marisa didn’t push. He had always kept his relationship with the mysterious Rachel private. He pushed his plate away and drew his mug closer. “Nothin’ to mention. That song’s come to an end on a pitiful sour note. She’s out o’ the picture for good this time and I’m recoverin’.” He pulled his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket again.
Marisa sighed, but didn’t stop him. At least he wasn’t in her kitchen.
“She was somethin’, that woman,” he went on, lighting up. He inhaled deeply and exhaled a stream of smoke. Marisa reached up the counter and dragged an ashtray to him. “Yessir, my sun, my moon, the evenin’ star. Had hair black as yours and eyes the color o’ coal. Yessir, one look and she could turn my knees to jelly....And one word and she could make me want to do murder.”
“What happened to her?”
“Nothin’, I guess. She’s doin’ all the things most married women do.”
Marisa felt her eyes pop wide and didn’t try to hide her shock. “Rachel got married?”
“She always was married, darlin’. Always was.”
A frown tugged at Marisa’s brow. Mama had never told her that. “Ben, that’s awful.”
Big sigh. “I hung on for years. I used to think it’d all work out with her and me. Maybe I’d bring her out here, maybe build her a nice house around Pecos or Kermit or somewhere, but she never stuck with me long enough at one time for me to do it.”
He lifted his mug and gulped a drink of coffee. “She played me, always setting me up against her husband. Calling me up at two in the morning, sayin’ she’d had it, wantin’ me to come get her. I always did. Then she’d tell me she was goin’ back to him to end it and they’d kiss and make up.” He drew such a deep drag his cigarette the tip lit up like a beacon. “It took me a lot o’ years, but I finally told her I couldn’t keep showing up in Nashville ever’ time they had a breakup, then leavin’ town ever’ time they had a reconsh—rec-on-shiliation. After that, I just left for good.”
Now Marisa knew why Ben had seemed so restless for so many years. He had been in love with a married woman his whole life. Indeed he had moved back and forth between Agua Dulce and Nashville uncountable times. And now that he had come here to settle down, he was soon to be uprooted again.
“God, Ben,” she said softly. “That’s so sad.”
Ben raked ash off the end of his cigarette into the ashtray Marisa had given him. “Nah. It was sad a long time ago, but...” His words trailed off. “You know, baby girl, there ain’t much that’s fun about getting’ old, but one thing that’s nice is stuff you used to think was important stops matterin’ so much.”
Marisa couldn’t resist the opportunity to learn something significant about Ben’s life. “Did Mama know about Rachel?”
“Oh, sure. Your mama was one o’ the few people I ever told my secrets to. Tight-lipped, your ma was. You could tell her anything and she’d die before she’d ever breathe a word of it.”
“Did she know Rachel?”
“Nope. Nobody around here knew her.” He took another drag off his cigarette, squinting from the smoke.
“Where is she now?”
“Why, Nashville, o’ course.”
“Is she the reason you haven’t been back there?”
“I don’t want to chance running into her, Marisa. I just don’t trust m’self. You ever hear that s
ong, “North Dakota Boy” by them Canada boys?”
“It’s been a while. It’s a good song.”
“Well, that’s ol’ Ben Seagraves in that song. If anybody hauls me back to Nashville, it’ll be after I’m dead.”
“Did you sell your place there?”
“Yep. Got a good price fer it, too. Put the money in the stock market. It’s bringing me a hell of a lot more return than that house ever did. Now, I can buy enough Jack to drown m’self if I want to.”
“When we all have to leave here, where will you go, Ben?”
“Don’t know. Fer now, I’m stayin’ put. Terry told me he ain’t touchin’ the trailer park. He’s even gonna make it better.”
“One thing’s for sure. That isn’t true of Pecos Belle’s or the beauty shop.” Quiet fell between them. She looked away, down the counter at the kitchen doorway, the tiny sanctum where she spent so much of her time. What would she do when she could no longer retreat to it?
“I’ve got some replies back on the resumes I sent out,” she said. “I’m going to follow up on them. One place that contacted me is in Midland. With Mama’s doctor being there, that wouldn’t be too bad.”
Ben tamped out his cigarette in the ashtray she had given him. “Lord, Marisa. I can’t imagine this place without you and your ma.” Suddenly his eyes teared and he wiped them with his fingers. “Even if she does crazy stuff, I still like seeing her around.”
His hand went to his pants pocket and came out with a flask. He didn’t even bother to pour a shot into his coffee. He drank straight from the flask. “I gotta go, baby girl,” he said hoarsely, fumbling to screw the lid back onto the flask. He got to his feet and dug into his pocket again, came up with a handful of money and laid it on the counter. “Once when I’s real pissed off, I wrote a song about Rachel. One o’ these days when I’m drunk enough, I’ll play it for you.”
Unable to think of a better response, Marisa smiled. “Sure. I can’t wait to hear it.”
As he cleared her line of sight, Marisa couldn’t keep from being amazed at all she had learned just in the past few weeks about the people around her. Ben was an emotional cripple. He had wasted his entire life being in love with a woman he couldn’t have and who had no loyalty. Was that the common basis for his and Mama’s long friendship—being in love with someone neither of them could ever have? Living like a hermit, Ben had numbed his pain with Jack Daniel’s. Mama had numbed hers with hard work.
Terry Ledger and his plans had been a catalyst for all sorts of skeletons to come out of closets.
Marisa rose and went to her kitchen. She had a lot to do. Today’s lunch special was chicken fried steak, real mashed potatoes and cream gravy. As she peeled potatoes, she thought of Lanny and the controversy swirling around the two of them. Had she lost her mind, thinking she could marry him and they would live on an island known as the mountains in Colorado, with no thought to his family and what they might think? Or no contact? His three kids might be shits, but they were still his offspring and he supported them. Financially, anyway. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, be the one who created a bigger rift between him and his kids.
Nope. Not happening.
But there was more. How could she marry Lanny, or any man, when her heart and mind were bound up with Terry Ledger? She thought of him day and night, how easy it had been to kiss him, the sweetness of his lips, how comfortable and secure she felt in his arms. She thought of his intense eyes, which said so much more than his mouth and of the emotion she sensed in him. How was it possible she had these feelings if he didn’t have them, too?
Something deep within her told her she had to let this “thing” with Terry, whatever it was, play itself out. Even if it had a bad outcome, she had to give it a chance.
She called the XO. When one of the hands answered she left a message for Lanny to drop by the café.
Chapter 19
At noon, Lanny did just that, wearing a hangdog expression. He sat down at the far end of the lunch counter right outside the kitchen doorway, a plate of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes before him. “Best steak I ever ate,” Lanny said.
“Thanks, Lanny,” Marisa replied, breezing past him with glasses of iced tea.
A dozen customers were scattered around the dining room. Besides the chicken-fried steak and peach pies, Marisa had made enchilada casserole and black bean salad, a labor-intensive recipe that worked off some of her nervous energy. Since she was well known for the dish, posting the menu on the sandwich board out front brought in the locals traveling the highway and made a larger than usual lunch crowd.
“I’m sorry, Rissy,” Lanny said softly, as she returned to the kitchen and prepared three plates of casserole and salad. “She shouldn’t have come in here. She’s too much like her mother.”
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for, Lanny.” Marisa kept her voice low and out of hearing range of customers. “Believe it or not, I see her point.”
She positioned the three plates--one on her wrist, one in her left hand and one in her right—and started out to deliver the food. Having learned to wait tables as a child, she was an expert. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she told Lanny. After taking the food to a table of women who had come from Tanya’s salon, she returned to her post behind the lunch counter.
“Rissy,” Lanny said, “these past weeks have been real good. For me, anyway. I’d sorta forgot how it felt to have the company of a lady and have a good time. I thought you were having a good time, too.”
“I was, Lanny, but we can’t just blow off your kids. They’re your family.”
A customer caught her eye and pointed to his empty glass. She picked up a pitcher of tea, scurried to his table and filled his glass, then made the rounds filling other empty glasses. Customers stopped her and gave her raves on the food. When she returned to the lunch counter, while she had the tea pitcher in hand, she refilled Lanny’s glass.
He wrapped a wide, work-scarred hand around the glass. “They don’t act like family. Or at least, not like my idea of family. All they want from me is money. And they’ve got that.” He lifted the glass and drank.
“I know, Lanny, and I wish it wasn’t that way. You’ve done so much for them.”
His shoulder lifted in a shrug. “Some tell me I’ve done too much. They say I’ve ruined ’em. Maybe so. But what good is it having all this damn money if you can’t share it with the ones you love?...They don’t have anything to do with what goes on between you and me, Rissy.”
She set the pitcher on the back counter so she could face him and speak quietly. “Don’t you see how hard everything would be if we got married? It doesn’t matter so much that your family would hate me. I’m used to people being pissed off at me. But they’d resent Mama, too, and she’s helpless to defend herself.”
He looked up at her with solemn eyes. “Rissy, if you’re not gonna say yes, don’t let it be because Lisa jumped on you. If you don’t like me and don’t think we could get along, that’s one thing, but don’t let people who won’t be part of our lives scare you off.”
Looking into his deep brown eyes, all she could think was that both of his hateful daughters had his eyes. Blood ties that couldn’t be denied or swept under the rug. “Lanny, the only way to remove your kids from your life is to do something meaner than you’re capable of. And I’m not sure you should do it, even if you could. Bottom line, there’s just no way a man like you can divorce himself from his kids. Besides, I don’t want to live in a family quarrel. I remember how it used to be when Mama and Aunt Rosemary were always fighting.”
“I’m getting old, Rissy. I’m lonesome. Seeing what’s happened to Raylene has taught me a lesson. When she was my age, she was still okay. A little funny-acting, but still okay. Not that many years has passed and now look at her. I want a shot at being happy while I still know what’s going on.”
“Oh, Lanny, I want you to be happy, too,” Marisa said, gliding past the reminder that just a short twelve years ago, Alzheimer�
�s Disease was something that happened to someone else and Mama had still been in good shape. “If I’ve ever met anyone who deserves to be happy, you do. But I’m not your answer. Your kids think I’m a gold digger. Maybe they’d feel less threatened if you found someone a little older. I am the same age as Lisa, you know. You could be my dad.”
His head slowly shook. “You’re the one I picked out to spend the rest of my life with. Don’t say no just yet. Let’s let things alone a while.”
She sighed. “Oh, Lanny, really—”
“Just let things go along,” he said. “Time passing makes a lot of difference. Sometimes a problem has a way of working itself out with no help from anybody.”
She didn’t raise a protest again, but she knew the fragile bond that had evolved between them, whatever its definition and origin, was broken. Lisa and Kristy’s visit hadn’t scared her off, but it had brought her to her senses, which, maybe, was the same thing. That, and the gossip from half-drunk Ben.
Lanny gave her a hug and left the café. She had no idea if he would ever be back.
As his pickup pulled away, Marisa began to load the dishwasher. Tanya came in. She had been at the singlewide helping mama paint. She stopped at the display windows and watched Lanny’s pickup disappear on the horizon, then came back to the café. She was wearing jeans and flat-heeled sandals. Unusual attire for her.
“You tell him you’re gonna marry him?” she asked.
“No. How was art class?”
“Okay. I can’t get over how Raylene takes to it. It’s so weird.” She pulled a bent package of Virginia Slims out of her bra and lit up. “She’s calling me Tina today.”
Marisa couldn’t keep from chuckling. It seemed that lately Mama called Tanya a different name every time she saw her. “You want something?”
“A Coke, maybe.” Tanya dug into her jeans pocket and clapped a handful of change on the counter.Marisa wiped her hands on a towel and went to the Coke dispenser. “Thank God I don’t have any customers this afternoon,” Tanya said as Marisa wiped drew a Coke into a Styrofoam cup. “I’m not up to listening to people’s troubles.”