by Harry Kraus
I didn’t know what to say. I knew that rejoicing that Jack remembered me wouldn’t be appropriate. Instead, I just shrugged. “Anyone hungry?”
“I can’t eat,” Yolanda sobbed. “Unless it’s cheesecake. I always eat that when I’m depressed.”
I smiled. “The Hardware Store makes the best. I’ll pick one up for supper.” I left the mournful trio on the couch and headed for the kitchen, where I found Rene drinking a tall glass of OJ.
She made eye contact and kept her voice low. “Has the ex-fiancée stopped crying yet?”
“Not yet. I promised her a comfort cheesecake from The Hardware Store.” I shrugged. “What else can I do?”
“Shoot her,” she whispered. “Put her out of her misery.” She seemed to hesitate. “Is that what I looked like?”
I narrowed my eyes at my sister and teased, “You’ve never looked that nice.”
Rene held her head.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just dizzy. A side effect of starting this medicine.”
She nodded. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Scary.”
“I’m serious. I want to talk to Mom.”
I shook my head. I knew what Rene wanted to do. She had confrontation written all over her. “Why don’t you leave it?”
“I’m not in for a fight. I want to tell her about the baby.”
I shook my head. I remembered telling Mother I was pregnant. “You’ll be sorry.”
That evening, the Renners retired early, Rene retreated to her room claiming her new medicine made her dizzy, and Henry didn’t show for supper as usual. That left me dealing with the jilted Yolanda. By ten she was in a silent funk, teary and sober. That’s when I made the mistake of opening my favorite wine, a 1997 Tulocay Cabernet, and pouring a glass for Yolanda.
The wine loosened her tongue. One glass led to three and the stories poured out uncapped. The day Jack proposed. The time she sprained her ankle at South River Falls and Jack carried her to the car. The first time she met Jack’s parents.
I tried to get away. She followed me to my bedroom, telling more stories and sitting on the edge of my bed sipping the wine and sobbing about her lost future. By eleven, my prayers had been answered. Sort of. Yolanda had shut up. The only problem was, she had passed out on my bed.
I nudged her shoulder. She grunted once and kept snoring. It was no use. I pulled my quilted top cover over her shoulders and turned out the light, leaving her to sleep the night in my bed.
When Henry came in at midnight, I looked up at him from my fetal position where I’d curled up on our leather sofa.
“You didn’t have to wait up,” he said.
“I didn’t. Yolanda’s in our bed.”
The question on his face prompted me to continue. “Jack wants to cancel their wedding. She was cryin’ in her beer,” I said. “Only this time it was my cabernet sauvignon.”
“How’d she end up in our bed?”
“The poor girl followed me around the house like a lost puppy, telling me stories about Jack. She finally passed out while I was brushing my teeth. I didn’t have the strength or heart to move her.”
Henry sighed. He loved our bed. He spent six weeks researching the latest advances in sleep technology before selecting the Sleep System 6000, one of those memory foam mattresses that recorded the indentation from your body for a few moments after you got up. I liked the bed, but my enthusiasm fell short of Henry’s love affair with the 6000, as he called it. I’d held a secret resentment towards it since the very day it arrived. I’d pushed my hand onto the top layer of foam and admired the imprint of my slender fingers before plopping down to check what kind of impression my body would make. I closed my eyes and let myself sink into comfortable bliss. That, however, was short-lived. I jumped up quickly to look, only to be aghast at the cavern left by my backside. I whirled around to look in the mirror. “Liar,” I said, pointing to the 6000. It was comfortable. Expensive. And it made Henry happy. But I resented it nonetheless.
Henry plodded towards the bedroom.
“Are you going to move her?”
“I’m just going to get my toothbrush. We can use the guest room downstairs.”
I was tempted to call Yolanda names that Christians weren’t supposed to use. Instead, I caught myself smiling and snapped it off like a light. I was done with synthetic expressions of emotion. Instead of the name I was thinking, I compromised with, “I don’t like her.”
Henry stopped and turned to face me. “What’s with you? The woman just lost her fiancé.” He paused, as if wondering whether to continue. “Besides,” he added. “You have to love that hair.”
I held my tongue. That was below the belt. I glared at him for a second, reminding myself that I didn’t need his permission to return to my natural brunette. I walked behind him down the hall towards the bedroom, stopping at the hall closet to pull out a pillow and a fleece embroidered with the University of Virginia Cavaliers mascot.
“What are you doing?”
I padded away with a heavy heart, sullen in my determination to punish my husband for his potshot. “I’m sleeping on the couch.”
I’d wanted to start afresh with Henry. Maybe I’ll start tomorrow.
CHAPTER 16
On day six of my Jamaican vacation, I awoke and ate Cocoa Krispies for breakfast. I almost didn’t feel guilty, and I vowed to continue eating them until I could stop thinking about fiber and eat them without checking the side of the box to see that it had been fortified. Today, I needed to start with a bit of selfishness, as I knew sparks would fly when I took Rene in to see Mom.
Henry dissected an English muffin and ate in his usual silence, although I saw him lower the Wall Street Journal a time or two to look in my direction. Each time, he seemed fixated on my hair and unconsciously touched the edge of his sideburns as he studied my true colors.
I supposed Henry would never bring up last night’s events again if I didn’t, and this morning I didn’t have the energy for a confrontation. My week had been nail-biting hellacious, and I needed a bit of an anchor in the storm. So I took comfort in the sameness of my quirky husband.
He stood and cleared himself for takeoff in front of the mirror. I pretended not to watch, but enjoyed it just the same. My pregnant sister might have HIV, my piano teacher might not remember that I tried to seduce him, his parents were staying in my house, and his fiancée was asleep in my bed, but I smiled, knowing some things just don’t change even in the midst of extremes. I waited for Henry to do the double zipper check. I watched as he slipped a finger under the fly of his navy pants. Check. He leaned closer to the mirror for a final check of his nose. He sniffed twice and nodded happily. Again, he confirmed the zipper-closure and patted the front of his pants. He took a step away. I watched him hesitate and look back in the full-length mirror before doing a third zipper check.
I almost gasped. Henry never, ever did a triple check before. I wondered if I should point this out or question what catastrophic life event had brought this on, but decided against it. I knew his job stressed him at times. And so far, other than the zipper check aberrancy, I couldn’t see that he was much worse for the wear.
I looked up to see the Renners carrying their suitcases into the foyer.
Miriam walked into the kitchen and helped herself to my Ethiopian java. “Morning, Wendi,” she said. “We’ll be out of your hair now. Steve is needed back in Philadelphia and I’m moving into Jack’s apartment to stay until he’s discharged and on his feet again.”
Steve chuckled. “She won’t last a week in that place. Too cramped,” he said. “Miriam needs space.”
I wasn’t sad to see them go. I wished they would take blonde Yolanda with them. Rene and every other stressor in my life was enough to make me a bit crazy.
“I will miss the coffee,” she said. “Where’s Yolanda?”
I smiled. “Sleeping in.” I avoided telling them about Yolanda’s night. I’d let them discover it themselves when she go
t up with a hangover.
I watched as Rene plodded in wearing her pajamas. My sister didn’t have a pretentious bone in her body. “Morning, everyone,” she drawled using her best adopted New Orleans accent.
I watched in amazement as she poured a huge bowl of bran flakes. She mumbled something about needing to be careful about eating for two or some such nonsense. I wanted to tell her that the second person she was eating for was smaller than a peanut M&M, but held my tongue. Let her get fat. It would serve her right for saying my prom dress made me look chubby. I didn’t care if it was fifteen years ago. I had a good memory for comments about my weight. Maybe that’s why I resented the Sleep System 6000.
After breakfast, the Renners were launched, and I stood on the front stoop waving and feeling guilty because of the shadow of the cross on my ivy bank.
Before we went to see Mother, I spent five minutes watering each of my six willow trees. If they grew any slower, I’d be an old woman before they blocked out the condemning church- steeple-cross shadow.
Truthfully, I couldn’t honestly say I was going with Rene to support her. I was just as interested in seeing my mom’s reaction to knowing her second daughter was pregnant out of wedlock.
We drove to the Dogwood Acres Nursing Home so that we would arrive after breakfast. Rene was remarkably upbeat. I thought it was because she’d spent the previous afternoon on the ’net getting positive information about living with HIV, but I hadn’t entirely ruled out illicit drug usage. No one had a right to be that cheerful in the morning, especially not someone with HIV, pregnant, and recently separated from a jerk-boyfriend.
I paused at Mom’s door and took a deep breath before pushing it open. I gasped. A naked woman was on the floor, crawling towards the bed. It wasn’t my mother. “Oh,” I said, “Sorry! Wrong room.”
“Don’t leave me,” she called. “Can’t you see I need some help here?”
I exchanged glances with Rene, who seemed stunned at the sight of an old wrinkled bottom. “Call a nurse,” the woman said. “I tripped getting out of the bathtub. I think I’ve broken my hip.”
Rene ran into the hall calling for help.
I found a towel in the bathroom and placed it over the woman’s back.
“Thanks.” She shivered. “If you’re looking for Mrs. Aldridge, she’s over on east wing, number twenty. She got the room I wanted,” she said. “One with a walk-in shower.” She shook her head. “Stupid tub!”
Two nurses entered and I slipped out with Rene. I felt sick.
“What’s wrong?” Rene elbowed my side as we walked. “Afraid your butt is going to get that wrinkly?”
“Shut up!” I said, lifting my hand to my mouth. “Oh, this was all my fault.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I bullied Mr. Williams into moving Mom to the east wing to get her a nicer room. He gave Mom the nice room with a walk-in shower, and the naked lady gets Mom’s old room and breaks her hip getting out of the tub.”
“You didn’t know. Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Feeling guilty. It’s not your fault.”
I heard my sister, but my heart couldn’t absorb it. We walked on in silence until we arrived at my mother’s new room. I looked at Rene. “Ready?”
She nodded. I knocked softly and pushed the door open. Mom was sitting up with her head leaning forward over a plastic tub. My father was sponging her hair with a towel. I wasn’t sure this was good. Would Rene open up in front of him?
Daddy looked up. After a moment of stunned silence, he erupted into motion and nearly stumbled in his haste to get to her. “Rene!” He enveloped her with a bear hug.
I heard her only whisper, “Hi, Daddy,” before the strength of his hug silenced her. She dabbed at the corner of her eye, and I stood back to watch.
Mom cried. That wasn’t unusual. She’d been hyperemotive ever since the accident. “Rene, Rene,” she said.
My father looked as if he might cry as well. “You’ve come home.” He always was a master of the obvious.
Rene moved to my mother and knelt beside her. “Hi, Mom,” she said, taking her hand.
I expected more, I suppose, given the emotional exit Rene had made ten years ago, screaming at my parents about never seeing them again. I can’t say that I blamed her. She’d been shunned by the church because she was living with her boyfriend. The elders insisted that Rene should receive the same treatment as any unrepentant member. In spite of my father’s protest, the elders insisted that she leave.
She sat on Mother’s bed opposite her wheelchair. Dad started brushing out Mom’s hair and shaking his head in disbelief. After a few strokes, he sat in a chair, completely distracted by Rene’s presence. I stood in a corner to watch. So far, my parents hadn’t even greeted me. I took a step towards the window to see the view I’d argued to win for Mom. The lake was beautiful. A little chapel had been erected with a cross-steeple halfway down the walk to the lake. Great, I thought, I asked for a view of the lake, and we have to look at that cross.
“What’s happened to you?” my father asked. He looked at Mom. “We thought we’d never see you again.”
Mother held up her hand and placed it against her forehead, something she’d done frequently since the accident when she wanted to speak. It was as if words came slower to her now and supporting her forehead made it easier for her to speak. On the rare occasions that she did choose to speak, the left side of her mouth refused to cooperate, so the words were often slurred. This had always puzzled me, but the doctors say isolated bleeding in that part of the brain can do exactly what Mom’s did. “Weef been praying for you,” she said.
Rene nodded. “Daddy, I’m so sorry,” she began. “I’ve really messed up this time.”
My parents both shook their heads.
“I’m pregnant,” she said, looking up at my father.
Again, there was a moment of silence. My father’s face blanched. “Th-that’s wonderful,” he said. He touched Mother’s shoulder as she nodded. “Hear that, dear? We’re going to be grandparents at last.”
I felt a spear in my back. If that wasn’t a dig at my inability to conceive, I wasn’t sure what it was. I wanted to point out that Rene was pregnant out of wedlock. Maybe they thought she’d gotten married. That must be it.
She took a deep breath and straightened, locking her elbows and putting her hands on her knees. “I’m single.”
I watched as my parents exchanged glances. When my dad turned back, he took a deep breath, nodded, and smiled weakly. “We’re here to help you. We’ll support you.”
“Randy’s out of the picture.” Rene paused, apparently as mystified by their acceptance as I. Perhaps she thought while she was on a roll without stirring waves, she might as well just unload the whole shrimp boat. “I’m HIV-positive,” she said.
The tears that had moistened his eyes now spilled onto his cheeks. Dad’s jaw dropped. “Oh honey, I’m sorry.”
Sorry? What about God’s judgment? What about “You got what you deserved for sleeping around”?
The right half of Mother’s face wrinkled with worry. “Haff you ssseen a doctor?”
She nodded. “Wendi took me. My child will be OK. I just have to take medicine.”
“Thank God.”
Rene smiled. “Yes.”
I was having trouble hearing. My sister just agreed with my father when he said, “Thank God.” That was my role, going along with the Christian junk, even if it was only on the surface.
My father sniffed. “Why did you come home?”
Rene wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “I was afraid you wouldn’t take me back.” Tears rolled down her cheeks as my father searched for Mom’s ever-present Kleenex box.
“Rene,” he said. “Of course we’d take you back.”
I’d held my tongue until my gut burned. “So this is all you have to say?” I looked at Mom. Down on her from my corner stand. “You actually want her to keep this child?”
/> Rene stared at me, mouth agape.
Mom nodded emphatically “Of course!”
I hated myself for feeling so petty. When I was pregnant out of wedlock, my mother revealed her true colors and did what no one expected of a pastor’s wife: she shoved everything under the carpet. And we suffered. I lost my chances to have another child, and she was left drooling in a wheelchair. I shook my head and avoided Rene’s eyes. I couldn’t speak.
Rene gasped. “Wendi!”
I backed away, turning my head from her view. When I got into the hall, I stumbled forward, not wanting to cry and not wanting anyone to see. I pressed my hand to my upper lip and sped up to a near jog to the exit. All I wanted was to get away from there and escape my self-pity.
Five minutes later, I sat alone in my Mercedes, nursing an old wound and the memory of another encounter with pain.
I’ d been hiding in my room when another wave of nausea swirled around my head and sent me running to the bathroom. I emerged a few minutes later, having emptied my stomach and washed my face. I looked into my mother’s stern gaze. “Wendi, what’s wrong?”
I shrugged. “Just a stomach flu.”
She shook her head. “When are you going to tell me?”
I walked into the living room, acting OK. “Tell you? What?”
“What are you going to do when you start showing?”
I glared at her. “You have no idea.”
“Stop it, Wendi. You’re pregnant.”
She’ d always been the perceptive one. My father was different. He would look at me, even inspect the subtle swelling of my lower abdomen, and think I was sneaking extra Oreos.
I held up my hands. “Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “I knew it! What’d you do? Seduce your camp counselor?”
I held my ground. “You don’t know anything! Bob Seaton’s wife doesn’t understand him.”
Mother’s mouth fell open in a silent “O.”
“That’s right, Mother. Bob Seaton.”
“Why that — !” Mom put her hand to her mouth. “You can’t have a child! You’re a child yourself.”