Tell Me About Orchard Hollow

by Lin Stepp

  “That’s a good question.” He scowled.

  They both stopped to think about that for a minute.

  “Look on the back,” Una prompted, with a sudden inspiration. “The other reason I thought it was yours was because of the birdhouse logo. See? That seems like something you would have thought of, doesn’t it?”

  Boyce flipped the card over to look at the logo on the back. It was a small, tiered birdhouse with the signature J.C. Martin below it. He felt a chill roll up his spine.

  “I think I know who did this.” He said the words slowly out loud. “Think about it. J.C. Martin – a shortened name, perhaps, for Jenna Chelsea Martin Howell?”

  “Wow.” Una looked up in surprise. “You think Jenna did this? Our Jenna that’s been working here in the gallery for Charlotte?”

  Boyce nodded, watching Una’s face.

  A flash of irritation passed over it. “Well, gee whiz. I wonder why she didn’t tell us? She’s a pretty well-known designer in the field. I don’t know why she wanted to hide that information from us. It’s not like it’s something to be ashamed of or anything.”

  “No, it’s not,” Boyce said with an edge to his voice.

  Una shrugged. “I thought she was just some rich, pampered society girl down from New York City having a little get away. She sure had me fooled.”

  “Me, too.” Boyce agreed.

  He looked at Jenna’s partly finished card again. “Una, I think I’ll go over and have a look at some of those other designs you said you saw at Raynelle’s Apple Barn. Tell me where to look, okay?”

  Thirty minutes later, Boyce drove up Orchard Hollow Road in a simmering rage, his mind filled with unanswered questions about Jenna Howell. He’d studied all the card designs in the rack created by J.C. Martin. They were incredible. At first, Boyce couldn’t believe Jenna could possibly have done them. He wondered if one of her relatives worked as a designer. After all, they never finished that follow-up talk about her life. But when he found a J. C. Martin card, picturing Sam’s old cat Maizie snoozing on a familiar chair on Sam’s porch, the matter quickly resolved. He knew then the cards had to be her work. That she was J. C. Martin as well as Jenna Howell.

  Silently fuming, he bought the card with Sam’s cat on it before leaving the store. Raynelle’s clerk, Irene, babbled away saying this was one of their newest designs from the Park Press and wasn’t it cute. Since Irene felt so chatty, Boyce also learned that Park Press was located right downtown in New York City. How convenient.

  Boyce felt absolutely humiliated for all the times he’d talked on and on about painting techniques to Jenna like she was completely ignorant on the subject. Studying art history and actually working professionally in the medium were two totally different things. Not once had Jenna stopped to tell him she worked in the art field. Instead, she always listened attentively, like the concepts were completely new to her. He felt like an idiot.

  “I love hearing about your art,” she said, looking at him with those big brown eyes. Making him feel interesting and important. Why had she done that? He clenched the steering wheel in irritation.

  “I don’t like being made a fool of,” he muttered to himself. “Do I not know this woman at all? Has she been playing some kind of city game with me – pretending to be something she’s not? Amusing herself at my expense?”

  Boyce ground his teeth just thinking about it. Well, after this company dinner tonight, she was going to have some major explaining to do. He would get some honest answers out of her whether she liked it or not. He didn’t like people playing games with him. Not one bit.

  That evening, Jenna was the last to arrive. Boyce heard Patrick barking a welcome to her before Raymond Hester let her in the front door. Glancing over from the kitchen, he saw Raymond’s wife, Wilma, and Sarah and Will Lansky get up to greet Jenna as she came into the big living area of his house. She looked fantastic.

  Boyce ground his teeth that he noticed every detail – that he still felt stirred by her with what he knew about her now. She wore form-fitting black jeans and had a loose, long-sleeved, white shirt knotted at her waist over a skimpy t-shirt. Through its thin, almost transparent material, the overshirt offered a tantalizing glimpse of her shape.

  Boyce turned back to stir his chili angrily, annoyed that she had this effect on him.

  “Everything looks nice,” he heard her say. “I love seeing Boyce’s art when I come here. It so suits a mountain home.”

  Instead of pleasing him, the compliment just further annoyed him.

  “Let’s eat, folks,” he called, rounding everyone up for dinner. He dipped out chili into earthenware bowls to serve. Side dishes lined the counter in informal buffet style and homemade cornbread was just coming out of the oven. Granted, Wilma had come early and made it for him – but it smelled wonderful.

  Dinner conversation flowed congenially, but Boyce began to see wariness and confusion in Jenna’s eyes as the evening moved on. He told jokes and stories; he engaged the Lanskys and Hesters in numerous discussions, but he skated around conversations with Jenna. And he avoided looking at her. At one point she caught his eye and smiled tentatively. He must have glared at her in return, because she sent him a surprised, hurt look before dropping her eyes.

  “Good,” Boyce thought maliciously. He wanted her to hurt as he was hurting.

  By nine o’clock everyone started leaving for home.

  “Shouldn’t we stay and help you clean up, dear?” Wilma Hester asked.

  “No, don’t worry about it.” Boyce patted her on the arm affectionately as he helped her into her jacket. “Jenna already volunteered to stay over for a few minutes to help. The two of us will take care of everything in no time. You and Raymond just go on home. And drive safely down the hill after dark.”

  Jenna sent a questioning look his way, knowing she hadn’t volunteered to help him clean up at all. Boyce gave her a cheesy fake smile in return.

  They saw the Hester’s out and then the Lansky’s.

  Boyce started for the kitchen then. “I guess we better clean up. I hope you don’t mind that I said you’d help.”

  “Of course not.” Her voice whispered softly behind him.

  She followed him into the kitchen and started helping him get the dishes ready for the dishwasher. Boyce stayed quiet while they worked - practically seething now with all the unanswered questions in his mind.

  He saw Jenna glance at him nervously a few times.

  “Your chili tasted delicious,” she commented at last, as they finished up the cleaning. She was probably desperate to break the cold silence in the room. “In fact, the whole meal turned out beautifully, and everyone seemed to have a good time.”

  “Including you, Jenna?” He knew his tone sounded sarcastic, but he couldn’t help himself. “Did you have a good time?”

  Jenna studied him warily. “Is anything wrong, Boyce?”

  “Why do you ask, Jenna?” He gave her a stony look.

  Her face flushed. “It’s just that you’ve acted sort of odd all evening. I mean not that anyone else probably noticed, but …”

  “But you did, is that it?” Boyce interrupted, snapping a dish towel against the counter. “You know me so well that you know when something is not right with me when no one else does?” His tone was hateful now.

  Jenna stood looking at him in surprise, not knowing what to say.

  He glared at her. “Funny, Jenna Chelsea Martin Howell, I find that I don’t know you very well at all. And I was actually beginning to think I did.”

  “Would you tell me what is wrong, Boyce?” She twisted her hands nervously. “I don’t like this game you’re playing. It’s frightening me.”

  “Well, good.” He kicked a cabinet door shut in the kitchen. “I’d like to think I could get you a little upset, since I’ve been royally upset ever since this afternoon, Ms. J. C. Martin. It took every bit of my self-control to get through this evening - smiling and chatting and making nice with everyone – when I kept wanting
to shake you every other second.”

  Suddenly, it seemed to register to Jenna that he called her J. C. Martin instead of Jenna.

  “Why did you call me that, Boyce?” Her voice was cautious.

  “Call you what?” he responded sarcastically.

  “Call me by my maiden name and my initials?” She bit her lip worriedly.

  His eyes narrowed. “The game’s up, Jenna. And it’s time to talk.” He grabbed her arm and practically dragged her over to sit down on one of the couches in the living room.

  “You’re scaring me, Boyce.” Her huge brown eyes looked bewildered.

  He ignored her, reaching into a side drawer beside the couch and taking out an envelope. “Here.” He tossed the envelope into her lap. “I think these might be yours.”

  She looked inside the envelope, somewhat reluctantly he noted, to find her new card design that she’d left under the desk calendar at the gallery. Behind it was the card Boyce bought at the Apple Barn of Sam’s cat snoozing on his porch.

  “Oh, it turned out nice.” She held up the finished card of Maizie and smiled brightly. “I haven’t seen it, yet. Where did you get it?”

  He parroted her words back at her, mimicking her tone. “It turned out nice. Where did you get it?” Boyce glared at her, his anger rising. “What about an explanation for all of this, Ms. Martin? Don’t you think you owe me that?”

  Boyce could see Jenna studying him in confusion.

  “I don’t understand why you’re angry.” She shook her head. “I draw some greeting cards part-time for a little press in New York. I have for years. It’s not a big deal. This card of Maizie is one I finished this fall. I didn’t realize it was already on the market.”

  She picked up the hand-drawn card of the weathered birdhouses she’d been working on and smiled tentatively. “This is a new design I’m working on. Don’t you recognize the birdhouses, Boyce? I drew my design based on those birdhouses you made on the stump at the beginning of Orchard Hollow Road.”

  “Obviously, I recognize them, Jenna. That’s hardly the point.” Boyce’s tone cut icily back, and he stalked over to the window to stare outside, turning his back to her.

  “Oh.” She paused for a moment. “Are you mad that I put your artistic work on my card, Boyce? Is that it? That I used your birdhouses on my card? I guess I didn’t think. I should have asked you …”

  “I’m not upset about that, Jenna.” Boyce jerked around, interrupting her. “I’m upset about you not telling me about your work, about who you are, what you do.”

  She sent him a puzzled look. “But I have told you about me,” she said. “Almost everything about me. You know about me and Sam, about my friend Carla and my life in New York, and about all the mess with Elliott. In fact, I learned today that everybody seems to know about my life with Elliott and all he did. It’s actually humiliating that everyone here knows everything about me while I know so little about them.”

  Her eyes flashed then. “I can’t believe you’d be mad over learning there is one little detail about me that you somehow didn’t know. Don’t I have a right to some privacy?” She planted her hands on her hips. “Is there some unwritten rule around here that a person can’t have a single personal thing about their life that not everyone knows?”

  She was up and pacing now. “Today I had to listen to Charlotte tell me that I was really dumb about people. That she didn’t know why I even had to think twice about divorcing a jerk like Elliott after all he’d done to me. She even asked me why I ever married him.”

  “What did you tell her?” Boyce asked, watching this new, angry Jenna with fascination, despite himself.

  “I told her I probably was dumb to marry him, just like she said.” Tears welled in her eyes as she turned to look to him. “But I thought he seemed like a good person when I met him. I really did. He acted sweet to me and I was so young. You’d have to know Elliott really well to recognize the kind of person he is. He can be charming and persuasive when he wants to be. But with him it’s phony; it’s not sincere. It’s a surface, polished charm. He’ll say anything, act any way to get what he wants.”

  “And he wanted you,” said Boyce quietly.

  “Obviously so.” She said this with a touch of bitterness. “Although I certainly fail to see why. He tired of me in less than a month. I think he’d decided it was time to be married and thought I would be an appropriate, biddable wife. I was too stupid to see anything but what he presented to me.”

  Boyce propped a foot on the fireplace, watching her. “What did your parents think of him?”

  She slumped onto the couch again. “They thought he hung the moon,” she answered. “He was slick and polished and came from the right family. He knew all the moves to make in a social setting. He charmed my mother and knew all the right things to say to my father. They thought it was wonderful when he proposed to me – an older, successful man like him taking an interest in a little nobody like me.”

  “And when they learned he cheated on you?” His voice was quiet.

  “As my mother said, that’s just the way it is in society marriages.” She sighed deeply. “She saw no reason why a woman should make a fool of herself and get a divorce over a little indiscretion. She said one’s standing in society is more important than infidelity.”

  A new kind of anger flared in Boyce. “Then she doesn’t really love you, if she would say that to you.” He clenched his fists by his side. “And your father should beat Elliott to within an inch of his life.”

  She punched her fist into a sofa pillow. “Well, fine. Then obviously my parents don’t love me any more than Elliott.” She started to cry. “Welcome to the real world, but no matter what any of them say, I’m getting out. I don’t want to live like that or with someone like that. I’ve found a little place of my own near Carla in New York, and I’m moving out on my own. I talked to Sam about it tonight, and he’s getting his attorney to start drawing up the divorce papers. I’m going to have my own life. And I’m tired of everyone criticizing me over every little thing I do, and trying to make me feel guilty just for living my life.”

  She turned angry eyes on him. “So what if I draw a few little greeting card designs? So what? And so what if they are silly to most people and don’t seem like real art? I like them and some people like them, too. And I get paid to do them. That’s important to me right now, although it wasn’t at first. It’s my work, Boyce, and I don’t have to apologize for what I do.”

  Boyce walked over to pick up her card designs to look at them.

  Jenna snatched them out of his hand. “And don’t you say anything bad about these, do you hear me?” she demanded. “I like them. A lot of people like them. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was using your birdhouses for a card idea. I just didn’t think about it, that’s all.”

  Boyce studied her troubled face. “What did Elliott think about your work, Jenna?”

  She uttered a sound of despair. “He laughed at it. He thought it stupid just like my art professors did at Barnard. But he indulged me and let me keep creating my designs after we married - as long as I kept them out of sight in the apartment and didn’t show them to people and embarrass him. I had a little place to work in an office closet. It’s all he would give me, and I kept everything there. But I loved my work, even if he made fun of it. It was the only thing that made me happy some days.”

  She began sobbing now - shaking with her emotions. Boyce sat down on the couch beside her. He reached over to tilt her face up to his.

  His voice was gentle now. “How did Elliott take care of your heart, Jenna? How did he love you? How did he make you feel when he held you?”

  “Like nothing,” she whispered, her eyes sliding away from his. “Like almost nothing. He came and he went and I could have been anybody. When I tried to ask him for more, he told me I wasn’t a very passionate person. That it just wasn’t something that could happen for me. He told me some women were just that way.”

  “And you believed
that?” he asked softly.

  “How would I know what else to believe?” She gave him an anguished look. “He’s the only man I’ve ever known that way. Before that there were only a few kisses at the door or in the car when a date brought me home. I don’t know much about these things. Maybe he’s right about me, I don’t know …”

  “No, he’s wrong.” Boyce shook his head and leaned over to touch his lips to hers. “He’s wrong and he’s a fool. He has no idea what he had or what he’s lost now.”

  Somewhere along the way, Boyce forgot his anger with Jenna. Now all he could see were her eyes, still swimming with tears, looking at him with wonder.

  “You’re not mad at me, anymore?” she asked in a whisper.

  “No.” He touched her face tenderly, wiping her eyes. “And I want to show you just a little how wrong Elliott was about you.”

  And he proceeded to do so. He kissed her lips, her throat, her neck, her closed eyes. He slipped his hands softly over her face, her hair, her arms and down her back, touching her gently, reverently. A soft sweet sound escaped her, and he wrapped her close in his arms.

  Time seemed to stand still while he held her, kissing her, touching her, and breathing in her cologne and fragrances, just as he had longed to do for so many weeks. He took his time to show her just how sweet loving could be. And he took a wonderful pleasure in her responses to his hands and his mouth as they found pleasure with her.

  When the sweetness of their loving turned to passion, when her breath and his grew hard and fast and when their hands began to explore each other in magical ways, Boyce thought he might split apart with joy. He had finally gotten his hands and lips on this beautiful woman. And because of what had happened this night, and because of the conversation, he didn’t regret it. He wanted to make this wonderful girl feel desirable and passionate and alive. She’d been cruelly denied the most basic joys of marriage.

  She was fully arousing him now, but Boyce knew he could contain himself to give her a little pleasure. He slipped his hands under her clothes and touched her in sensitive places to arouse her fully. Her soft hands drifted under his shirt to find his bare skin, and she eagerly pressed her body up against his. It seemed wonderful and heady - touching and loving her, feeling her passion escalate. It was better than he hoped it would be in any of his fantasies. It felt like flying in a swirl of pulsing colors just to be with her. He couldn’t even imagine how he would paint it.