Pulling Home (That Second Chance)

by Campisi, Mary

  Recently, Jack and Grant had been brought before the Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery and ordered to stop bullying one another and start working together or they would find themselves suspended. And so began a civil period of agreeing to disagree. Of course, Grant never missed an opportunity to snipe at Jack, not that Leslie listened to him. She loved Jack, had told him several times, showed him in many ways, including but not limited to the bathtub, the Jacuzzi, the back seat of his Expedition, and the hospital parking lot. Which brought up the second stumbling block—Leslie was his brother’s ex-girlfriend. She swore on her father’s bible she never slept with Christian or any other man until her sexual liberation in Barbados where she discovered ‘the wonder, the joy, and the addiction’ of sex.

  Now how could Jack complain when she put it like that? So what if she were almost engaged to Christian when he dumped her for someone else? So what if she occasionally intimidated Jack with her vast knowledge of sex and its pleasures? What man would really complain about too much sex?

  Leslie was smart, compassionate, great in bed, and she knew a doctor’s life didn’t shut off after eight hours. She made solid wife material. So what if there hadn’t been a bell clanging against his brain when he met her? The one and only time that happened he hadn’t recognized it until it was too late, and obviously the other party hadn’t heard the same bell—not even a tinkle.

  It was time to settle down. No kids though. It half killed him when he lost one of his patients. Having a child left a person too exposed, too vulnerable, too raw. He’d seen the grief in his own family when they lost his little sister, Rachel, at age eleven to meningitis. No warning, just an uncontrollable fever and a final trip to the emergency room in the back of the Town & Country with its fake wood-sided panels. Rachel was the reason he’d become a pediatric neurosurgeon, the reason he’d worked two and three jobs to pay his way through med school, the reason he’d pushed everything else aside to become one of the most respected in his field. Maybe she was even the reason he’d thrown away his one chance at true love—because it had come ten years too early.

  But that was the past. Leslie was his present. The least he could do was attend his own surprise birthday party and if he were really lucky, she’d save a little frosting and give him his own private party later on.

  The only downside was Christian. His flight landed tomorrow afternoon and Jack promised to have dinner at his parents’ house so he could spend a few hours with his brother. Not that a few hours twice a year was enough time to get reacquainted, but at least they had that. Christian’s daughter would be with him. Kara. He still had a hard time being around her. She called him Uncle Jack, told him the only other uncle she had was Uncle Peter, and he wasn’t a real uncle, just a friend who acted like an uncle, whatever that meant. And then she’d throw her tiny arms around him and hug his waist and he’d stand there, feeling helpless and inadequate.

  It was like that every time she came. The older she got, the more her cheeks hollowed out, her eyebrows arched, her hair grew fuller, her smile, brighter. The older she got the more she reminded him of her mother…Audra Valentine Wheyton. Christian’s wife. The woman he hoped never to see again.

  ***

  “For Heaven’s sake, Alice, will you stop with the fussing? You act like Christian can’t find food in California.”

  Alice Wheyton lifted a cherry pie from the oven and set it on a wire grate. “Joyce, you mean to tell me if Susie were traveling twenty-two hundred miles to see you, you wouldn’t be cooking up a storm, fixing that beef tip and pepper dish she likes so much?”

  Joyce Kirkshorn slid her pink-gray glasses up the bridge of her nose. She was soft and round with a voice to match. “Alls I’m saying is the boy’s coming to see you and if you keep it up, you’ll be too tired to enjoy the visit.”

  “Hah. I’ll save the tiredness for when he leaves.” Alice placed the second pie, this one apple, on the other wire rack. “The cherry’s for Christian, the apple’s for Jack.” She slipped off her oven mitts. “Can’t favor one boy over the other, you ladies know that.” She walked to the round oak table where her three friends sat, pulled out a chair, and plopped down.

  “Less you only have one.” This from Marion Fitzpatrick, a tiny woman with a beak-like nose and curly gray hair. “Rose’s all I’ve got, so she gets all the pampering. And all Rose’s got is Hannah.” She looked up from the tiny bootie she was knitting, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Makes it kinda easy that way, nothin’ to fight about.”

  “But no brothers or sisters?” Tilly McMally, the one they called ‘string bean’ spoke up. “Least I’ve got Katie and George, and five grandkids between them.”

  Marion’s tiny fingers flew over the sea-green knitting needles. “God’s will’s all I can say. Didn’t have a choice in those days, not like today, when a person can decide the who, what, where, when, why, and even the if.”

  Joyce nodded. “That’s for sure. Five kids in eight years, all those diapers, cloth, not the disposable ones these mothers have today, and the laundry—”

  “And can you imagine asking your husband for help?” Alice chuckled. “Asking him to feed the baby or change a dirty diaper so you can go soak in a tub with Calgon Bouquet and read this month’s Good Housekeeping?”

  “Sure, I can,” Tilly said. “Merv would have said, ‘Go right ahead dear, soak as long as you want, after you feed the kids and change their diapers. Oh, and don’t forget to pack my lunch for tomorrow. I’ll take roast beef on rye.’”

  Alice and her friends had lived within three blocks of one another for over thirty years. They met three times a week, usually at Alice’s, supposedly because her house boasted the largest kitchen and least commotion. Truth was, of the four women Alice possessed the easiest temperament and it didn’t bother her to dirty a few dishes, unlike Tilly, who wiped and washed as soon as a person used a spoon or spilled a drop of milk. Out came the old dish rag, red and white checked, scouring, polishing, drying. Her friends hadn’t been in her kitchen since the day it snowed two years ago, and Joyce forgot to wear boots and trekked snow through the kitchen. Tilly yanked out the mop, sloshed Mr. Clean in a bucket and proceeded to wash the entire floor.

  Marion was just as bad in her own way—she went to the grocery store once every two weeks, sometimes two and a half, boasted about how she spent less than fifteen dollars for herself and Henry, and then offered Alice, Tilly, and Joyce day-old doughnuts picked up from the reduced for quick sale counter and one cup of coffee, generic blend. Marion said if a body wanted a second cup, she’d have to put down her buck twenty-five, plain as rain. Alice tried to tell Tilly and Joyce that Marion was tight—frugal was a more friendly term—because she’d been raised in a house with eight mouths to feed and a father dead of a heart attack at forty-three. Tilly said that story didn’t hold water, that Marion would charge her own mother the buck twenty-five for a second cup of coffee.

  They used to go to Joyce’s on occasion until five months ago, when her son, Walter, moved home. At thirty-seven, he was separated from his wife, Ginny, and though they’d been in counseling for three months, and he’d joined AA, Ginny still didn’t want him back home, said she couldn’t trust him not to drink again. Joyce said Ginny was getting used to pawning the two little ones on Walter and going out with her girlfriends on Saturday night, said if the woman didn’t straighten up, she’d be the one joining AA.

  All in all, Alice’s house was the most logical choice for their get togethers. She loved baking—banana bread, cinnamon coffee cake, apple strudel, pecan pie. And she didn’t mind a mess, actually preferred the disorder because it meant a person wasn’t getting set in her ways. There were no grandchildren to pop in, no children stopping by with laundry to iron or requests for two dozen chocolate chip cookies for the next Girl Scout meeting, nothing but Alice and of course, Joe.

  She’d been married to Joseph Wheyton for forty-three years, most of them good, a few of them rough, the worst, the year Rachel died. Joe was an hon
est man and a hard worker, though bad knees had forced him to retire three years ago. He’d been a bricklayer for forty-two years, never missed a day’s work, except when he had pneumonia back in ’72 and then, when Rachel died. The man had an opinion about everything, no matter if he knew anything about it or not. He said it was his duty as a United States citizen to exercise his right to freedom of speech and if he didn’t, then who knew when it might be taken away. Alice told him more than his speech would be taken away if he didn’t cut out the smoking and fried bologna sandwiches.

  Joe spent most days in his wood shop, puttering around, making bowls and specialty music boxes from blocks of wood—curly maple, poplar, ash. He’d made Alice a music box last year that played Dr. Zhivago’s, Somewhere My Love. It was crafted from mahogany, the detail so exquisite that when he gave it to her she cried. The man might not say the words very often, but I love you had been staring back at her from the smooth, mahogany gloss.

  For all his orneriness, Joe Wheyton had two weak spots softer than a ball of dough that’s raised and doubled twice—one for his granddaughter, Kara, and the other for the daytime soap, On Eden Street. When Kara came to visit twice a year, he’d pull her onto his lap and tell her stories about his boyhood, how his father immigrated from Ireland and worked as a bricklayer, teaching his own sons, Joey, Tommy, and Georgie, the art of bricklaying, while his ma, Kara’s great grandmother, canned tomatoes, beans, peppers, and took in other people’s laundry so they could make ends meet. Then he’d go on about Kara’s father, Christian, and Jack, recounting the time they gave Mrs. Slater’s toy poodle a haircut and when Christian talked Jack into wrapping him in twelve rolls of Scotts so he could see what it felt like to be a mummy. There were always stories, new ones every time, dug deep from the well of Joe’s timeless memory. Christian was always the accomplice, Jack the perpetrator. Alice loved to stand in the kitchen doorway, unseen, and watch her husband and granddaughter together. Joe grew years younger, his mood lightened, the frown around his mouth eased. If only they could be together more often, if only they didn’t live two thousand miles away...if only that woman hadn’t taken her son away.

  Joe used to deny the other soft spot by downplaying the importance of it in his daily routine. He finally fessed up six months ago, albeit unwillingly and with a promise from his wife and her friends that his secret stayed within the confines of the Wheyton home. Joe Wheyton loved On Eden Street. Obsessively. The man planned his doctor’s appointments, woodworking, and yard care around the 3:00 o’clock spot when the soap aired. When he did have to miss it for an occasional doctor’s appointment and such, he taped it to watch as soon as he got home. For all his gruff mannerisms, Alice’s friends discovered what she herself had known for years—Joe Wheyton might act like Archie Bunker, but deep down, he was more Mr. Rogers, (plus sixty pounds, minus the Won’t you be my neighbor voice.)

  “Alice, what time do you expect Christian and Kara?” This came from Joyce as she heaped two spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee.

  “The plane gets in at five twenty-five. Jack’s supposed to pick them up if he doesn’t get called to the hospital. I’ve got Angie Mulligan’s boy as backup.”

  “You should have told me,” Joyce said. “Walter could have gone. It would do him good to have something to do other than go to work and sit home sulking while he waits for Ginny to tell him to come back home.”

  “She might not, you know,” Tilly said, matter-of-factly. “Some women get a taste of freedom and then they don’t care about the kids or the husband.” Tilly wagged a bony finger. “All they can think about is trying to be twenty-one again.”

  “I know that,” Joyce snapped. “You think I don’t know that?”

  “That’s why sometimes it’s just easier having one to worry about,” Marion said, not looking up from her knitting. “Odds are better you’ll have less heartache.”

  “Some people think having one child isn’t fair to the child.” Joyce crossed her arms over her ample middle and stared at the top of Marion’s steel-gray head. “Some call it a punishment.”

  Marion shrugged. “Rose don’t act like she’s been punished, neither does Hannah. How about Kara, Alice? She seem punished?”

  Alice rested her hands on either side of her coffee cup. “No. I wouldn’t say so.” She paused. “Though I think she’d love to have a little brother or sister.”

  “Of course she would,” Joyce said.

  “Maybe the wife doesn’t want any more,” Tilly speculated.

  Marion clucked her tongue and turned up her beaky nose. “Audra Valentine? It wouldn’t surprise me, after the way her mother carried on, the poor thing probably knows nothing about mothering.”

  “The grandmother raised her.”

  “Of course she did. The mother ran around with every man who’d look at her. I heard she was seeing Ben Cummings.”

  “I heard John O’Connell.”

  “Edgar Vanderwalt, too.”

  “Stop.” Alice sucked in a deep breath. “No matter what we think about her mother or her, she’s still my son’s wife and she’s the mother of my granddaughter. Besides, I may not be very fond of the woman, but she isn’t,” she paused, reached beyond her daughter-in-law’s murky past for the proper words, “like her mother.”

  “Of course not.”

  “No.”

  “We all know that.”

  Of course, they all thought she was exactly like her mother, maybe worse. What kind of woman ran away with a man who was practically engaged to someone else? And took him two thousand miles away from a mother who had already lost one child? It was pure wrong and if that little hussy thought they couldn’t do the math, she could think again. Kara Rachel Wheyton pounced into the world eight months after the supposed wedding date and the only reason none of them brought it up was because they knew Alice had suffered enough and no amount of candle lighting or prayers to St. Jude would lessen her burden.

  The phone rang then, piercing through their distasteful recollection of Christian’s, ahem, wife. Alice rose and reached for the cordless phone. “Hello. Audra?”

  Speak of the she-devil.

  “Audra?” Alice’s voice dipped. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Tilly, Joyce, and Marion fell silent. Marion glanced up from her knitting.

  “What? Oh, God, no.” Alice’s words plummeted to a barely audible, “Dear God, please no,” seconds before the phone slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor.

  “Alice? Alice!” Tilly sprung from her chair and thrust a lanky arm around her friend. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Alice shook her head as a fine tremble coursed through her and settled on her shoulders. There were tears in her eyes, on her cheeks, running down her chin. Pain and agony roiled inside her chest, fighting to get out, scream what must be said, what must be put into words but would never be understood. “Christian,” she managed, sinking into a chair, shoulders slumping forward as she buried her face in her work-worn hands. “Christian.”

  Tilly, Joyce and Marion stood inches from their friend, drenched in their own tears as they waited for her to speak, knowing what she would say, seconds before she uttered the awful, irrevocable agony of truth. “Christian’s dead.”

  Chapter 4

  “I never forgave him for marrying her and leaving us. And now, it’s too late.”—Alice Wheyton

  The Wheyton house was a beige two-story lodged between a ranch and a tri-level on Sycmaore Street. For the casual passerby, Joe Wheyton’s profession could be evidenced in the brick and mortar surrounding the house—red brick next to the front stoop, red brick strewn in patterns of sidewalk and path leading to a backyard, where again, red brick stacked upon red brick to form a massive fire pit and patio. It was a modest home, yet comfortable enough to have raised three children here, though Rachel only lived to age eleven. They’d buried her on a frosty, winter morning and now, twenty years later, their second son would be laid alongside her.

  Alice decided one day o
f viewing at Gilcrest Funeral Home was all she could take. No one could expect her to go through this again—God not again—and yet, here they were. She’d refused the valium Jack brought over and flushed them down the toilet so she wouldn’t be tempted to pop all five in her mouth and be done with it.

  It was the child who would get them through this. Kara was a Wheyton, from the pale blueness of her eyes to the tiny cleft in her chin. She was only eight, but she would pull them through with her soft innocence and lopsided smile. The mother was another story. Audra Valentine. She still didn’t like to think of her as a Wheyton. The woman didn’t belong here. It didn’t matter that she was beautiful and poised, Alice saw none of that. All she saw when she looked at her was their Christian. And now he was dead.

  It would be crazy to blame the woman for her son’s death, but she did blame her for stealing years and thousands of memories they could have clung to now. She was the reason their son moved to California, the reason he stayed away, doling out two visits a year like a miser, and then only eight days at a time. At least Alice had squelched Audra’s plans to get a hotel. Did the woman think this was San Diego? The closest Holly Springs had to a Holiday Inn was Lonnie Larson’s four unit rental.

  There would be no sleep tonight, not with the pain of her son’s death clawing at her and the constant reminder of his shocking decision nine years ago sleeping upstairs. Alice decided on fresh air to clear her head. She flicked on the back porch light and spotted her husband sitting on the steps. “Joe?” She made her way toward him. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  She sank onto the steps beside him, the thin cotton of her nightgown rubbing against his arm. “Me neither. I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again.”

  “You should have taken one of those valiums Jack left.”

  “I told you, I’m too numb already.”