by Lois Battle
“I know that!” she said vehemently. “I don’t think—”
“But maybe you still feel ...” He pulled her head onto his shoulder and stroked back her hair. “For everything there is a season. We were just in the wrong season. There’s still a lot we can look forward to together.”
Her tears soaked his shirt. “I love you. I love you so much. I don’t know why—after all we’ve been through—after you’ve proven—I don’t know why I’m still afraid. I don’t know why I still don’t trust. When I wake up in the morning and you’re not there I still think you’ve gone away and maybe you won’t come back.”
“Shush. Shush.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh, baby, you know all the reasons why. You don’t believe in roots.” He rocked her gently. “But we’ve grown vines, and vines are so resilient and so strong ...” Feeling his eyes water, he took her by the shoulders, shook her, rubbed the top of her head with his knuckles, and said, “Shape up. We’re due to report at your Mama’s at seventeen hundred hours,” and started the car.
Twenty
THE LATE AFTERNOON sun slanted in the kitchen window and the air was warm with delicious smells of baking cloves, cinnamon, raisins, apples, and pumpkin.
“Mama, you’d better stop dirtying bowls and pans ’cause I’m about to stop washing them.” Cam, at the sink, looked out the window, raised a sudsy hand, and pointed. “Come see Dozier and Sam.” Josie stopped crimping the piecrust, wiped her hands on her apron, and came to look. The men stood on either side of the live oak, hands stuffed into their back pockets, heads tilted back, sizing up the overhanging branches. “Don’t they just look like bookends?”
“Neighbor woman had a tree surgeon in and I was going to get him to come by, but Dozier said to save the money. He’s been wanting to prune that tree for ages, but I question the wisdom of him being up a ladder by himself.”
“Sam’ll help him. Sam’d do anything to be outdoors,” Cam said. “First thing he comes home at night, no matter what the weather’s like, he wants to go out and sit on the deck. Next summer we plan to expand it so’s it’ll take up most of the backyard.”
“So you won’t put in a garden after all?”
“Oh, Mama, a garden’s too much like hard work. We’d rather sleep in on the weekends.”
“And how’s the rest of your house coming?”
“We’re gradually getting it together,” Cam said, though she didn’t imagine Josie would think it prudent that they’d bought office equipment and an original painting of a nude instead of investing in a dining-room set. She’d been pleased that they’d been able to find a neighborhood near downtown Atlanta that fitted both their budget and their tastes. It was called Little Five Points, had mostly older homes that were being restored, bookstores, specialty shops, ethnic restaurants, and a mixed population. Since Sam had lived in country-club comfort during his first marriage, he didn’t find the house particularly grand, but she, having lived most of her adult life in New York apartments, found it airy, private, and spacious. “I never thought I’d have my own bathroom and my own office. And we’re fixing up the extra bedroom for when his kids come to visit.”
They watched as the two men chatted, seemed to come to some conclusion, and started toward the house. “Sam may not be able to help Dozier prune the tree this trip, but there’s no reason why we can’t come back for a long weekend in a couple of months.”
The timer went off and Josie grabbed potholders and went to the oven, lifting out another pumpkin pie.
“Mama, this is starting to look like that I Love Lucy skit where they can’t keep up with the candy coming off the assembly line.”
“This is the last one.” Josie put in a mincemeat pie. “Who knows, maybe this’ll be the last year I’ll be up to it.”
“Fat chance.”
“Maybe next year you’ll do it.”
“I got married, Mama, I didn’t get reincarnated as Martha Stewart.”
Josie patted the perspiration on her neck with her apron and looked around. “That’ll make seven. Seven ought to be enough, don’t you think? Let’s see, there’s me and Dozier, you and Sam, Lila, Orrie, and their kids, Skip and his wife and their kids, Marilyn, her husband, their daughter and son-in-law and their kids. S’pose I can put the children on the sun porch?”
“Please do. Drooling and squealing doesn’t do a thing for my appetite.”
The men came in through the back door. “Smells great in here,” Sam said, eyeing the pies but moving close to Cam and sniffing her neck.
“We were just looking over the tree,” Dozier told Josie as he pulled up a chair. “Speculating as to how old it is. Time was, nobody’d cut down a tree. Knew they’d go to hell if they did.”
Cam dried her hands and slipped her arm around Sam’s neck. “Why don’t you open one of the bottles of wine we brought and we’ll all have a quiet drink before Orrie and Lila get here.”
“Where’s the bottle opener?”
Josie said, “It’s in the hide-nasty.”
“She means that second drawer down.” Dozier pointed. “The one where she keeps old rubber bands and string and bottle stoppers and buttons that don’t belong to anything and gas bills from a quarter century ago.”
Josie sniffed. “You’re mighty critical for a man who has a toolshed that looks like fish guts.”
“Mama, sit!” Cam said as though she were training a recalcitrant puppy.
“Oh, all right. It’s just that I hate to quit before everything’s—”
“Ship-shape,” Sam said.
“Squared away,” Dozier added. “It’s the military influence.”
“No,” Josie corrected, “good housekeeping started with Mawmaw. She used to say, ‘When a thing is once begun, never leave it till it’s done, Be the labor great or small, Do it well—’ ”
“ ‘—or not at all,’ ” Cam finished, laughing.
“Judging from the way our house looks,” Sam said, easing the cork out of the wine bottle, “I would never have guessed that Cam had been taught anything like that.”
“Just because I was born with a uterus doesn’t mean I’m condemned to scrubbing and fetching,” Cam told him.
“Of course not, precious,” Sam teased as he poured the wine. Josie and Dozier, a bit embarrassed by this exchange, raised their glasses.
“A toast?” Dozier asked.
“Sure, why not start now?” Sam agreed. “How about ‘To Love.’ ”
“You sound like you’ve already had a few,” Cam said.
“How’d you raise such a cynic?” Sam asked Josie.
Josie’s eyes twinkled. “Tried not to, but she was just smarter than the rest of us.”
“All right. A toast to love,” Dozier agreed. “We can get into all the Christmas cheer stuff tomorrow.”
“If all goes well,” Josie said softly.
“Why, yes. If all goes well,” Dozier said, touching his glass to Josie’s and giving her a look that Cam had trouble reading.
After draining his glass, Dozier got up, hitched his pants, and said, “My kids should be driving in any time now, so I guess I’ll shuffle off next door and leave you folks alone.”
Cam said, “I thought you all were coming over tonight.”
“No. God willin’ an’ the creek don’t rise, we’ll all have the Christmas feast together tomorrow, but tonight I’m just ordering four large pizzas with the works. Want to talk to my kids alone.”
“As do I,” Josie said. “Sure you won’t take some of this marvelous stuff Reba sent us?” She gestured toward the sideboard where the contents of the package (“Xmas C.A.R.E. Package to Depressed Southern States, From the Yenta and the Redneck”) were stacked. “I’m not even fixing supper. I’m just going to put all these wonderful things on the table with a big salad and a loaf of bread. Why don’t you take some?”
Dozier eyed the salmon with a dill sauce, Greek olives, green pepper pate, hard salami, Kosher smoked turkey, brie, goat cheese, pickl
ed calamari, Noel log, and almond biscotti. “I think I’d better stay with the pizza.”
“Stick in the mud,” Josie chided, touching his shoulder before he left, turning as she shut the door behind him, her gaze drifting, then recovering herself to say, “You two must be tired after that drive from Atlanta. Why don’t you go upstairs, clean up, and rest while I finish up here?”
Cam was about to say no, but she sensed that Josie wanted some time alone; besides, Sam had touched her knee under the table. “Okay, Mama. We’ll take a late siesta. Call us down soon as Lila and Orrie get here.”
Josie hadn’t used the fireplace in her bedroom all season, but after she’d kissed Cam and Lila and their husbands good night and shown them to their respective rooms, she knew she needed a fire. She was exhausted but too keyed up to sleep, too restless to read, too full of plans to relax. A fire would be just the thing. Setting her cup of cocoa on the mantelpiece, she struck a match to the kindling. She thought of putting on her rose dressing gown, but practicality overcame the desire for glamour and she reached for her blue flannel nightdress. By the time she’d changed into it, let down her hair, turned off the light, settled into the armchair, put her slippered feet on the ottoman, and covered herself with a lap rug, the kindling was licking the bark of the big log.
The flickering light made the silver frames of the photographs on her chest of drawers glint. She couldn’t make out the photos, but they were clear in her mind’s eye; in fact, Bear had been gone so long that when she imagined him it was usually as he appeared in their wedding photo. But she no longer thought of her marriage with remorse and disappointment. No one got through life without regrets. The best you could hope for was that they’d be the right regrets, that no matter what you’d suffered, you had taken a chance on love or whatever else you’d most wanted. And since Bear had been the great love, and the great sorrow, of her life, it seemed right that she should remember him as forever young and ready to take on the world. She wondered what he’d think about her and Dozier. He had never been able to master his own discontents, but he’d had great generosity of spirit. She believed he’d be happy for her.
A pinecone caught and flared, drops of resin sizzled. There was something special about a fire. Center of the home since the cave days. Looking into it, she drifted into a dreamy but concentrated state, relaxed but so attuned that she could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock, like the heartbeat of the house.
The blaze had mostly settled into embers when the door creaked open and shut. She startled, but he put a finger to his lips and moved silently to her, sitting on the ottoman, his arms around her legs, his head in her lap. She stroked on his head and whispered, “What time is it?”
“After one.”
“I thought you weren’t coming. How did it go?”
“Better’n I thought it would. Had to wait until they put the kids to bed and that took some doing because they were all excited being in such a big house. Then I sat them down and told them. Funny. Marilyn was the most shocked. Wondered if we shouldn’t wait. Wondered how she’d explain it to the kids, which really meant she wanted me to explain it to her. I told her it was a little late in the game for us to be waiting for anything. She should just tell the kids they were lucky to be getting a grandma and great-grandma they already knew. Skip’s wife, well, you know how she is since she’s been turned religious.” He chuckled softly. “The religious ones are always so damned interested in sex. Hinted around to find out if we’d already consummated the union.”
“You didn’t—?”
“Just said we loved one another. After that it more or less changed into a business seminar. Wanted to know if I was going to sell the house. I told them yes, I planned to move in with you, so unless they want to make some arrangements to take over my place as part of their inheritance I’d be putting it up for sale. Wanted to know if we’d have a prenuptial agreement and if I’d change my will. Truth to tell, their practicality struck me as kind of chilly. And speaking of chilly, your hands are cold, sister.” He kissed them, linking his fingers with hers.
“I don’t feel cold. Just old age I guess.”
“You still look beautiful to me. Come on, let’s get you under the covers and I’ll tell you the rest of it.” He took off her slippers, put his arm around her, and walked her to the bed, pulling up the covers to her chin after she’d got in. Taking the fire iron, he scattered the cinders and put the screen around the hearth, then started to take off his clothes. She raised up on one elbow. “Think it’ll be all right if you sleep here?”
“Going to have to be, since that’s what I’m doing. Don’t worry. When you get up at dawn to put the turkey in I’ll sneak back over to my place.” He stripped to his boxers and undershirt, shivering. “Damn it’s cold!”
She pulled back the covers to welcome him. “Then come get toasty. ”
“Now,” he pulled her close, putting her head in the crook of his arm, “tell me how it went for you. Girls get along all right?”
“Friendly as puppies, much to my surprise. I doled out that eggnog like prescription medicine, not too much, not too little. Everyone seemed very mellow. We decorated the tree ... and then I told them. Cam took it best.”
“As you thought.”
Josie nodded. “She just kept saying, ‘Why didn’t I guess before?’ She wanted to go over and fetch you but I told her not to and she listened, for once.”
“And Lila?”
“Didn’t like it at all at first. You know she pretends not to care, but she’s smarting from the Evie and Jasper situation. Said the family was as incestuous as something out of God’s Little Acre.”
“Incestuous?”
“Shush! Sam smoothed things over. Told her when people were first immigrating from the old country it was quite common for things like this to happen. He said—I don’t know if he was just making it up—that his great-grandfather had married his great-grandmother’s sister when she’d died. Said it strengthened family ties.” Holding in a laugh, her shoulders shook. “I don’t think Lila was won over, but I did the best I could with them. Can’t do any more. Didn’t end too badly. Sam got everyone laughing by saying I’d have no cause for complaint if I wasn’t happy because I couldn’t claim I didn’t know what I’d be getting.”
“I figure you do know what you’re getting.” He kissed her cheek. “Orrie?”
“Now, that was a surprise. Orrie wondered why we’d want to get married at all. Said we ought to check with an accountant because it was probably smarter tax-wise to keep our money separate. I didn’t admit that I’d told you much the same thing. I just gave him the speech you’d given me, about marriage being more than a financial arrangement.”
“You give him the whole speech?”
“No. Didn’t want to get into the mushy stuff.” He yawned so wide his jaw cracked. “You look like the MGM lion,” she told him. “You real tired?”
“That I am. Besides ...”
“I know. It’s inhibiting having the kids in the house. But they’ll be gone tomorrow night.”
“Mmmm.”
She shifted into the curl of his arm, her hand on his heart, feeling its beat as he slowly relaxed into sleep. “I think”—her sigh was blissfully content—“this is going to be the best Christmas yet.”