At the Corner of Love and Heartache

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  A moment later Aunt Marilee was saying into the phone, “Anita, this is Marilee. Call up here this evenin’, okay? Corrine has something to tell you.” She paused and added, “We love you, Anita.”

  Aunt Marilee put down the phone. “Your mother’s probably still sleepin’, but she’ll call us back this evenin’.”

  Corrine looked into her aunt’s eyes and saw the eagerness to please there. She smiled, trying to give her aunt what she wanted, while inside she felt relieved not to have to hear her mother’s groggy morning voice. Guilt came with the relief.

  Aunt Marilee hugged Corrine in that way she had of trying to make everything right.

  Just then the front doorbell rang, causing both of them to jump, and Aunt Marilee to let out an “Oh!”

  Aunt Marilee moved to answer, and Corrine hurried to stand beside her, to be ready in case. She did not know in case of what, but Corrine always felt the need to be ready for dire happenings.

  It was Willie Lee and Munro standing there.

  Willie Lee was in his coat and Superman cape, and holding on to a little kitten squirming in his arms.

  “I have been out-side.” He stated the obvious as he came forward. “And I have a new kitten.”

  Corrine thought of Willie Lee’s bed, of the lump she had thought was him.

  “Oh, Willie Lee, not another one,” Aunt Marilee said.

  Just then the kitten managed to spring out of Willie Lee’s grasp, bolted over his shoulder and across the porch. Willie Lee turned to call to it, but it disappeared beneath the house.

  Aunt Marilee tugged Willie Lee inside and told him that he could have the kitten if it showed up again. She wanted to know what he had been doing outside.

  “I have been learn-ing to fly,” he said.

  Three

  Officially engaged…

  Tate came driving up in his yellow BMW just as Marilee was herding the children out to her Cherokee. Tate had been taking them to school each day since the beginning of the school year, but he was late today, and Marilee had assumed that he had decided to skip this morning because of his mother’s presence. She had thought him rude for not calling to tell her so, too, and now she felt silly for jumping to conclusions.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said, leaning over and opening the passenger door.

  “I just figured you were spending the morning with your mother.” Marilee stood looking in the door at him. She felt sharp and was annoyed with herself because of it.

  “My mother generally amuses herself in the mornin’. Come on, kids.” He beckoned to Willie Lee and Corrine, who were already easing past Marilee and into the back seat.

  Marilee slipped into the passenger seat, keeping her eyes averted as she buckled herself in.

  “Thank you for the coffee,” Tate said as he shifted into Reverse. She looked over to see his blue eyes warm upon her.

  “You’re welcome,” she answered, thinking how nice he was being, and of how he had not followed her out the door that morning. Shifting her gaze to Willie Lee, she made certain he had fastened his seat belt.

  On the short drive to the school, Tate told them that his mother had arrived in the middle of the night. He used the phrase, “She landed in about one o’clock.” This caused a bit of discussion.

  “Did she land on the roof?” Willie Lee wanted to know.

  “Uh, no…she stopped in the driveway.”

  “You said she land-ed.”

  “I meant she arrived at one o’clock,” Tate corrected. “She drove into the driveway at one o’clock…and stopped.” One had to be specific with Willie Lee.

  “Oh. You do not mean your mo-ther can fly?”

  “I guess she could, but Valentine doesn’t have an airport, Willie Lee.”

  “I know that. I thought may-be your mo-ther could fly by her-self.” Willie Lee’s voice echoed with disappointment.

  Understanding dawned on Tate’s face. Then he shook his head. “No, son. My mother has a number of supreme abilities, but flyin’ is not one of ’em.”

  Marilee wondered about his mother, who did seem somewhat unique.

  He went on to tell Marilee that his mother had not even telephoned him that she was coming until she was one hour outside of town, when she called for directions. When Marilee commented on her youthful appearance, he said that his mother had turned seventy years old, and that youthful appearance was a family trait.

  Marilee, looking at his profile and at the way his pale hair curled slightly behind his ear, said she saw it in him.

  Tate stopped the BMW at the curb in front of the school, where Marilee got out and lifted the back of the seat to let the children out. In the manner of many a single mother carrying sole responsibility and occasionally being a little manic about it, Marilee adjusted Willie Lee’s backpack to the proper position and then made certain Corrine had the coins she had given her for a pay phone, in case of emergency use.

  “I could always use the office phone,” Corrine said, even as she showed Marilee the coins.

  “I just like you to have options. You can call me anytime, and I’ll come get you, if you don’t feel well.” She wanted Corrine to know it was okay to come home, if she wanted. She wanted things to be different for Corrine than they had been for herself. For an instant in memory, she recalled being at school and feeling the blood run out between her legs, afraid of shaming herself and not having anyone to turn to.

  “I’m okay,” Corrine said in a low voice, shooting a cautioning glance toward the car and Tate.

  Marilee got the message to shut up. “Okay. Love you.”

  She kissed them both quickly and then stood there, holding the car door, resisting the urge to stuff them back inside and race home with them, to keep them there with her, safe from the hard world.

  She watched them walk away up the sidewalk, falling in beside other children, yet seeming to stand out, different, marching to a drum unheard by others. Corrine, always protective, took Willie Lee’s hand. Her niece possessed a fierce heart in a thin, fragile body.

  And Willie Lee…Marilee’s eyes lingered on her son, on his spiky blond hair that nothing could tame, almost like Willie Lee himself, different from others and going at his own pace in a world that hated different and slow and kept pressing him to be customary and fast. But he was Willie Lee, who had been denied oxygen at birth, or some such thing she had never fully understood and felt vaguely guilty at possibly causing. His brain could not comprehend as a standard brain and would never be able to go beyond the understanding of what it was right now, a five-year-old brain in a nine-year-old body.

  And what did it matter? Her son was happy, and Marilee did her best to encourage him to be exactly who he was, while at the same time trying to help him to learn to live in the world in which he had to live.

  It would no doubt be easier for him in the long run. As Willie Lee’s body matured, his handicaps would be more and more obvious, and the world made allowances for handicaps that could be seen.

  Not so for Corrine. Her handicaps were wounded emotions, invisible and considered shameful, if considered at all. The world was frightened of wounded emotions, because everyone had a bit of their own. To admit them meant admitting to weakness, and the world had little tolerance for weakness.

  Marilee slipped back into the car.

  “They are fine,” Tate said, and squeezed her knee.

  She glanced over and saw the look of understanding on his face. She wished she could believe him. There was such a faith in life about Tate Holloway.

  With this thought came a jumble of emotions, admiration, gratitude, desire, all coming in a flood so strong that she flushed warmly and put her hand atop his, entwining her fingers with his. Quite suddenly her mind filled with the image of throwing herself onto Tate and doing it right there in the school parking lot, or, conversely, jumping out of the car, which was now exiting the lot, and running far, far away.

  She let go his hand and turned her head toward the window, seeing the bare-branched
trees against a clear blue sky, the empty playground, and the buses pulling into the garages. To say she was in a confused emotional state probably put it mildly.

  “The announcement will be in the paper today,” he said, and the comment drew her head around; his expression was pleased as all get-out.

  “Yes, it will,” she said, putting a pleased smile on her face for him. And she was pleased. Of course she was pleased.

  “It’s already on the Web site.”

  There was no need to tell him that she had not looked. She felt a little guilty for possibly not paying sufficient attention to their official engagement announcement.

  Tate was saying, “Charlotte must not have been able to sleep last night. She got the entire front page updated already.”

  “Charlotte has become something of a computer maven. She put the announcement on the front page?” She found this vaguely disconcerting. Marilee did not like to stand out.

  Tate nodded happily. “We thought that appropriate. After all, I am the publisher. You are marryin’ big-time, darlin’.” Tate did like to stand out. He enjoyed attention as much as he generally liked to give it.

  They had come to the corner of Main and Church Streets. The Valentine Voice building sat like a stanchion on the north corner.

  “Take me home,” Marilee said, giving the building a glance. “I’ll work at home today.”

  He looked at her, questioning.

  “I just need the quiet. I need to concentrate to finish the piece on the teachers’ proposed pay raise.”

  Up Church Street, a right turn onto Porter, and then they were pulling into her driveway behind her white Cherokee. Munro, waiting on the porch, got to his feet. From next to him came a flash of fur.

  “Oh,” she said. “I think that was the kitten Willie Lee wants slipping underneath the porch. I’m so tired of all these strays. We have finally gotten down to two rabbits, the mice and the goldfish.”

  “Animals are his talent.”

  Marilee agreed with a sigh. “Remember, all these animals will be living with you soon.”

  “There’s plenty of room over at the Big House,” he said, using the new term he had for his house. “And I’ll build him cages in the backyard, if we have to. We could have a budding veterinarian on our hands.”

  “No, we don’t. We have Willie Lee.” Sometimes Tate, who could be as imaginative as a little boy, needed reminding that this was the real world.

  He said, “Yes, it is Willie Lee, but no doubt his talent with animals will be profitable in some way.”

  At that, Marilee had to put her hand on his cheek. “I do love you, Tate Holloway.” She did not say it often. Even now, the words came as if propelled past her reasoning mind, which could hardly believe in love between a man and a woman.

  Then she was looking at his lips and bending toward him, and the next instant they had melted together in a deep kiss, causing her to put her hand to the back of his neck and hold him when he would have lifted his head. She went to kissing him for all she was worth, and he responded, and soon they were slipping down in the car seat. Marilee heard the caution in the back of her brain and pushed it away. She thought of the house, now empty of children, of her bed that she had not even made that morning.

  Ask him…tell him how you feel…ask him inside…no, don’t you dare do that.

  Then Tate was pulling away. “Well…I guess we’d better remember where we are.”

  Marilee was quite limp and breathless. She saw his face all hot with passion, and she let him see clearly how she felt. Or she attempted to do this, but his response was to sit up straight and say that he needed to get on over to the office.

  “I’d best check and make sure everything is on its way to being ready for deadline.” His sky-blue eyes flitted up to her hair, then down to her lips, and then up again to meet hers.

  “Yes,” she said. “I need to get to work, too.”

  She scooted out of the seat, taking up her purse as she moved.

  “I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay. Have a good day.”

  She shut the car door and gave him a wave, then headed in long strides for the porch, thinking that they were behaving as though they were very good friends, which of course they were. Marilee was always good friends with the men in her life. She knew how to be a friend. It was being a lover that she found problematic.

  She turned the knob on the unlocked front door. The old wooden door stuck, and she shoved it, realizing with a suddenness how very angry she felt.

  The door swung inward, all the way back to bang against the wall. Munro, coming into the house at her feet, skittered out of the way at the sound, then shot her an accusing look.

  Marilee took a deep breath and carefully closed the door. She leaned against it for a moment, then pushed herself away and went to her desk, took up the phone and punched the automatic dial for her aunt Vella, tucked the receiver into her neck and picked up a fingernail file as she listened to the slow rings across the line. Just when she thought her aunt was not going to pick up, she heard a click.

  “Aunt Vella? Hello?”

  “Yes, I’m here, sugar.” Aunt Vella’s voice came with static across the line. “I’m on my cell phone…calls forwarded…I’m…way…sale…Home De…”

  “Aunt Vella? You’re breakin’ up. I’ll call you later.”

  Hearing her aunt’s acknowledgment, Marilee hung up and sat there, thinking of her situation, which was that here she was, marrying a man to whom she could not talk about her deep need for closeness. Who she could not manage to get alone for any length of time—in fact, with whom being alone seemed to frighten her.

  Her record in previous situations of this type was not a good one. Here she was, now officially engaged to a man, the third one in her lifetime, although she and Stuart hadn’t really had an engagement of any longer than it took to get a marriage license and get married, and thinking that maybe she was, yet again, making a terrible mistake.

  Four

  One picture is worth a thousand words….

  The clock on his desk read one-fifty when Charlotte called out from her reception desk, “Paper’s here.”

  He popped out of his swivel chair, and was out of his office in three swift strides and heading through the tall-ceilinged main room at a pace just shy of running. He jerked open the heavy steel door into what had once, during the Voice’s heyday, been the printing press area and was now the loading garage.

  The large overhead door was up and the opening filled with the back end of the printer’s delivery truck. Diesel exhaust hung like a cloud, mingling with the scents of musty wood and brick and newspaper ink, bringing to Tate’s mind faint memories of his boyhood, when he delivered papers at the crack of dawn.

  “Yo, Editor!” Burly Chet Harmon, their circulation manager, and two of his helpers were busy unloading the bundled newspapers, stacking them on the dock, then loading them into the Voice van that sat nearby. Chet pulled a rolled paper from his back pocket and tossed it to Tate. “Here ya’ go, boss. One picture is worth a thousand words, so they say.” He grinned widely.

  Newsprint ink wafted up to Tate as he unrolled the paper and saw the announcement right there on the front page. He gazed on Marilee’s face smiling out from the paper. She had agreed to marry him, Tate Holloway, who was fifty-two years old and just now getting a start on a home and family. That he was seeing his dream come to reality was almost more than he could take in.

  “Congratulations, Editor,” called one of the men—Durham, who did the store route.

  Tate grinned broadly. “Thanks!” He shot a wave to all, then turned, slammed the door closed and strode back through the main room, waving the newspaper at their reclusive comptroller, Zona, through her opened door, “It’s here!” and to Sandy at the layout counter, who grinned his young, good ol’ boy grin.

  When he reached Charlotte’s desk, he smacked the paper over her monitor screen. “Here it is.”

  “I’ve seen it.”
/>   “Yeah, well—” he dropped the paper so she had to grab it “—look at it now. Published.”

  Heading on to his office, he ducked behind the door and snatched his brown suede jacket from the hook, slipping it on as he returned. “You know, they say if you see it in the Voice, it’s the truth.”

  “You stole that.” She was on her feet and holding the paper out to him. Charlotte was tall, and today, in heels, she seemed to look down on him.

  “I only borrow the true statements.” He adjusted his shirt collar over his jacket. “It’s announced now…to everyone.”

  “Yes, it is.” She pushed her glasses up over her thick dark hair and regarded him with her dark eyes.

  He finished straightening his collar and met her gaze for a moment, savoring an accomplishment.

  Charlotte gave him one of her rare smiles. “Congratulations. You two are perfect for each other.”

  “Thank you. I think so.” He couldn’t seem to stop grinning. “I’m off for an hour.”

  “Show-off,” she said with a shake of her head.

  “You bet.” And he was out the door into the bright winter sunlight and crisp, fresh breeze.

  He slipped into his car and backed out onto the street. There was one person he had to show first. He owed it to Parker Lindsey. They had become friends, of a sort. They had shared a rivalry for Marilee—which Tate had won—and they shared the same hour in the morning for jogging, where Parker by far proved the more hearty runner. These things were ties enough. It seemed the honorable thing to do, to tell Lindsey in person, and the reason Tate hadn’t told him straight away, after settling things with Marilee on Sunday, was that Lindsey had been off at a convention down in Houston and had returned only yesterday.

  Guilt nagged at him that he had not gone over to speak to Lindsey last night. He didn’t want the man to hear the news from someone else. But last night he’d been full of Marilee’s good stew and biscuits, and crawling into bed before he thought of it. He hadn’t even mentioned about Lindsey to Marilee.

  Possibly Marilee had broken the news to her former fiancé that morning. But that did not take care of Tate’s sense of responsibility. Okay, might as well admit that a great deal of pride was involved. Such an attitude seemed small on his part. Oh, well, such was he and such was life, he thought, grinning just a bit as he pulled into the gravel lot of the Lindsey Veterinary Clinic.