“It was the nightmare. It seemed real. The circumstances—well, the circumstances are understandable. It was the strange surroundings. If the storm and nightmare teamed up at home, you’d have dealt with them differently.”
“It did seem real. I was sure Dan was out there.”
Purse in hand, she stood with Callie. Something caused Callie to catch Lizbeth by the shoulders and walk her backwards the few steps needed to reach the bed.
“Callie, what?” she said, surprised, sitting. It felt like a coming-to-God moment, with all the energy she would expect from Beebe.
“Listen,” Callie began, dropping down beside her. “I had a dream about Jack several months after he died. I woke from it, but kept my eyes closed, you know, trying to hold onto the moment, playing it over in my mind, afraid any movement would snatch it away. And I could have sworn—no, I believe, and I still do—Jack was there in the room. He touched my hand.” In imitation, she laid her right hand over the back of her left. “I felt it. It was real. His hand touched mine.”
She spoke the closing declaration with such a riveting certainty that the hairs at Lizbeth’s nape rose. The testament of one woman was meant to validate the claims of the other. To Lizbeth, it felt as though they’d been inducted into an exclusive society. Given the circumstances of the day, she thought the membership rolls might have boasted one other member. “Did you tell Petey that story?”
“No, not Petey and not Beebe. Only you. Now, come on.” She softened her brusque tone with a smile. “I want to make the call and get back.”
Lizbeth followed Callie through the cabin. For five-five, she was a stalwart figure, carrying herself tall. Lizbeth raised her own earlier victories to a place of prominence again. She slid behind the Tahoe’s wheel, buoyant, poised, her decision to relocate in Florida firmly fixed in reality. She had the example of Callie’s pull-oneself-up-by-one’s-bootstraps strength to thank. She witnessed Callie lifting herself out of despair over Petey’s death to face that deeply felt loss head on. Sadly, she’d faced too many in her young life.
Inner strength brings a substantial measure of self-reliance, Lizbeth decided. If the situation had been different, had she not been driving Callie to make a long-distance condolence call to Petey’s granddaughter, she’d share her Florida decision. But Lizbeth owned discipline enough not to intrude on Callie’s grief. There was satisfaction in knowing she reached a decision and would implement it as soon as she came within bounds of cellular service. She needed no one to pat her on the shoulder. Nor, in all honesty, did she need anyone to talk her out of it.
Ragged Shreds
Down at the office, Lizbeth guided the SUV across the road’s centerline and eased to a nose-to-nose stop with a truck hitched to an industrial chipper. The driver’s door was open. She read Updyke Tree Service from the panel below the window. Getting out with Callie, Callie introduced her to Jimmy Updyke, Nadia’s husband. He was lanky and clean shaven. Jimmy was headed up the hill to Heatherwood to join the cleanup, so he insisted he would transport Callie back after her telephone call. Lizbeth was sent on her way to Baron with an assignment to return with buckets of chicken to feed the hungry crew.
Lizbeth followed the four-lane road, which was more or less a straight line straddling the base of two mountain ranges. When she swung onto the Baron exit ramp, her phone produced an alert tone. It lay on the passenger seat. The lit screen said a text message waited. In all their wisdom, the cell-tower gods deflected their signal to the vicinity of a boarded-up gas station. She pulled across the road onto the station’s lot. It was a sea of cracked asphalt.
She checked the text. It was the monthly payment reminder due her mobile carrier. Lizbeth thumbed through her contact list to the line labeled Ralph and Mildred. She pressed call. The second Aunt Mildred answered, Lizbeth realized she’d lost track of the days. It was Friday. She should have called Uncle Ralph’s business number. She explained her mistake. “No, honey,” Aunt Mildred said. “He’s here. He’s getting the RV ready.”
Aunt Mildred’s melodious Southern drawl loosened the gate on Lizbeth’s stockpiled emotions. Everything tumbled out. She did steer around the West Virginia trip, but gave her aunt a full rundown, including Dan’s conversation with Arnett the day of his death. She didn’t hesitate to cast Arnett in bad light. For three long months, she held onto Dan’s desire to reconstitute the mural business. She wanted to pick up the baton and carry Dan’s dream through. Lizbeth enthusiastically promised that Chad and she would pull into their Tallahassee drive within a week.
There were a few seconds when Lizbeth thought the signal was lost, then out of the silence came Aunt Mildred’s halting voice. “Honey, I don’t quite know what to say. I’m afraid it’s too late. Ralph sold the business. He signed the papers two days ago.”
The impact of her words hit like a slap across the face. Lizbeth’s eyes closed tight. She knew what it meant: She lost to Arnett Oldstone Sebring again.
“I’m so sorry, Lizbeth. But you and Chad, you come to us anyway, if not to stay, then for a nice long visit.”
It was then that Mildred’s earlier words registered. Uncle Ralph was outside tending to the RV. Lizbeth held herself together and declined the invitation issued out of pity. “No, you guys deserve a vacation. It was just a thought,” she said, downplaying her earlier eagerness without a shred of believability. “I’m sorry to bother you when you’re getting ready to leave. You must have a million things to do.”
“Well, you hardly knew we were leaving and you’re certainly never ever a bother. Now, let me get Ralph in here.”
“No, he’s busy.”
“He’ll want to talk to you. He will.”
“No, tell him congratulations. You, too. Retirement. That’s great. Where you headed?” She pitched the question up, wanting to sound genial.
“Cross-country,” Mildred said. “To see the sights.” Her voice came back dulled with worry. She saw through Lizbeth’s pretense.
Tears brimmed Lizbeth’s eyes. For the last twenty years, that could have been her and Dan on their many mural-painting excursions. “That’ll be fun,” she breathed into the phone. “Talk to you soon.” She disconnected.
With those last words, longing, thick and unbearable, closed her throat. The feeling of suffocation came next. She slapped at the door handle and stumbled out. She gulped air, but the oxygen didn’t prevent the world around her from spinning. She wanted a day, just one, where change would not rip her existence into ragged shreds. She wanted a place where familiarity gleamed.
She looked down at the phone clenched in her fist. The call that began with the dawning promise of hope deteriorated quickly. Her mother-in-law delayed her confession just long enough to make its timing feel planned. Heavy chunks of disappointment and conspiracy plunged deep into her anger. The volatile ingredients exploded, and a furious rage seared through her.
For the first time, it singed Dan—and that damned mother’s privilege that kept him catering to her first.
Lizbeth threw her head back and released an ancient groaning scream that ended in wrenching sobs and buckling knees. She fell back against the Tahoe’s steel hull and sank to the ground. That crippling grief was the kind she never gave herself permission to suffer with Chad always within reach. Submitting completely to grief’s power, she wailed again.
She shot a look across the crumbling, dried-out asphalt deck to the dingy, weather-beaten station that represented everything ugly about her life, and gulped a sob.
Suddenly, a shuddering panic rose within and hustled her back inside the Tahoe. She slammed the door, then threw the cell phone into the other seat. It bounced to the floor mat. She let it lay. Emotions governed her every action, so much so that she accepted reception from the cell-tower gods like candy from a
stranger. They lured her to a lonely spot with the intent to do her harm.
She started the SUV. It fishtailed off the property on a layer of dirt and loose stones. By the time she entered Baron’s corporate limits, she calmed. Decisions came easier. Sadly, she let all thoughts of a move to Florida fall away. That avenue was closed. She got a tight grip on the steering wheel, a passionate grip. She willed her inner strength to gather and rise up. By God, she only lost so much to her mother-in-law. Not everything. While she yet breathed, she would not concede any middle ground to Arnett. She must accept and display the quilt. Lizbeth still felt that would go a long way to soothing Arnett’s loss as well.
She found the restaurant and ordered lunch. She made a right-hand turn out of the chicken place with buckets stuffed with combinations of every famous recipe available. She didn’t doubt her choices for a moment. She would stay in Maryland—forced to stay, yes—but reinforced by the counseling tenet on which Beebe harped and harped. It said she should not venture too far afield too quickly.
The Tahoe rolled to a stop behind a semi needing extra room to negotiate a left-hand turn onto a narrow street. While waiting for the semi to accomplish the maneuver, Lizbeth was revisited by her earlier cry for familiarity. Familiarity seemed important. It still did.
In actuality, the murals were a fantasy shared with Dan. She wouldn’t know how to live that life. That realization came as the semi belched a cloud of gray exhaust and lurched around the corner. Up ahead, the abandoned gas station appeared behind the haze. She saluted when she passed. The layover did her good.
. . .
Callie sat on the great room’s ottoman. The tree-removal team’s break for lunch included a sideshow. Beebe and Lucius got a bump-and-grind going when Viva Los Vegas, sung by Elvis Presley, was piped through the radio. They used the floor space in front of the bedroom doors as a stage. Their audience was scattered about the cabin. Counting the entertaining duo, those present numbered nine. The O’Malleys were still there. Nadia and Jimmy Updyke would probably finish the day at Heatherwood. Overflow seating went to both sofas when the chairs around the kitchen table filled.
The performance was quite well choreographed, considering its spontaneous nature. Both entertainers sang into their chicken-leg microphones. A good deal of the dancing included looks at their gyrating backsides. When the singing ended, Beebe bowed and Lucius curtsied. Laughter and well-deserved applause erupted. No one in the entertainment world had anything to worry about.
Callie enjoyed the impromptu performance because she owned one less worry. All morning, she fought the feeling that memories were slipping through her fingers. Lucius lifted that anxiety after he battled his way over the felled pine’s prickly branches. The tree collapsed deep in the yard. He was lost from sight when he stooped to inspect the dock. After an unbearable wait, he shouted the good news. The dock remained structurally sound, undamaged by the fallen tree. Callie sighed and tipped her face, eyes closed, up to the warm sun.
The dock was tangible proof she and Jack built a life together. It had not existed until they sank the timbers and added the cross-members. There, they shared hours, talking, laughing, and dangling their feet in the chilly river. Callie was mad when it came to guarding the physical items she associated with memories of Jack. And mad felt like the right word. Death leaves behind an odd type of insanity. It snipped the balance chains on her heart and substituted an endless ache and a handful of treasured objects to act as a prop.
She set her lunch dishes on the countertop at Arnett’s elbow. Arnett stood at the sink with Eleanor. She thanked them for taking on kitchen duties, then went out to resume the work. She crossed to the porch steps and stopped short, startled by the noticeable change in the landscape. How many times would her gaze automatically dart to the gouge in the tree line? How many times would her shoulders slump with a sad reckoning between the missing tree and the missing man?
She forced her focus to the job at hand and trundled down the steps. Instead of heading out toward the larger issue in the yard, she veered off to check on Lucius’s trimming job along the cabin’s sidewall. He refused to relinquish his chainsaw into her hands, but attacked the underbrush, small trees, and a healthy crop of honeysuckle himself. She told him she’d be satisfied with the result if he could walk through the shady tunnel upright without a branch brushing through his short-cropped ’do.
Hands on hips, she surveyed the cleared area. It was definitely wide and tall enough. Cuttings lay on the ground. Looking, she saw raspberry vines in the mix, surprised the basal shoots came this far. But then, the grounds had basically been left unchecked for nearly two years. She and Jack intentionally planted raspberry cane closer to the riverbank. The shoots were those supplied by the bushes in her back yard.
Those bushes with their bowed purple vines transcended the day she walked away from Jack Sebring. Even now, she remembered the awkward, embarrassing moment, seventeen summers ago, that left her sick and alone.
That summer, Jack and Callie were separated by the needs of a golf course Jack designed for a fertile area in northern Louisiana. His original three-week stint onsite stretched to five when Callie received his call from the Baton Rouge airport. He was excited and heading home, hoping to make it in time for the birth of Gary’s first child. He couldn’t stay, couldn’t see her, just in and out.
He arrived with ninety minutes to spare. Zachery was born in the wee hours. Jack counted ten fingers and ten toes, then went home for some sleep. Callie learned all this when he checked in at dawn the next morning, speeding back toward the airport. He apologized and asked forgiveness for not being able to stop.
Callie said she understood. Nothing changed as a result of the last eight hours. Little Zack or no little Zack, in Louisiana or in Maryland, that night would pass without Callie being seen, touched, or held by Jack. She appreciated the importance. It was the birth of a grandchild. Jack possessed the wherewithal to jet back and forth at a moment’s notice. Also of paramount importance was the supervision needed during the initial stages of course construction.
But still, the slight glared. It cut. It hurt for the first time. Little Zack. Another Sebring. Another life to stand between her and Jack. The airliner carrying Jack flew over her home and the woods beyond. She stood outside. Cool morning air surrounded her.
Jack’s invitation to join him in Tennessee came two weeks later. Callie still chased the slight and was percolating pretty good by then. Jack agreed to meet a man named Roland Abbott. He lured Jack to Tennessee in the hopes he’d agree to design a golf resort.
Jack planned that he and Callie would stay for a few extra days. He gave her directions to Abbott’s property and invited her to drive straight there. She accepted, but felt a shadow pass over their relationship, reminiscent of the plane’s shadow passing over the house.
Callie and Jack stood with Abbott on the one-hundred-fifty-plus acres he owned. How strange it must have seemed to Jack that she didn’t touch him upon her arrival. She would always remember how she didn’t step close enough to kiss or hug hello, her fingers didn’t graze his, their arms didn’t brush. But what she did do that day, when their love affair was nearing its seventh anniversary, would touch them forever.
“Raspberries can succor new canes some distance from the main plant,” Abbott claimed. “They’re vigorous, invasive, and would require continual maintenance.”
Abbott’s argument in opposition came after Callie insisted he save the two most gorgeous wild raspberry bushes she ever saw and plan the resort’s landscaping around them. For her, their beauty enhanced the Tennessee setting, and she worked them into her emotional state that day. The bushes grew on an emerald isle encircled by farm fields, hosting the dead remains of whacked-off, sun-bleached cornstalks, and fence lines of gnarled skeletal trees.
While her emot
ions roiled inside, while her heart pounded loud in her ears, while her stomach cramped, she avoided Jack’s stare, and proceeded to pick a fight with the man who offered Jack a year’s worth of work over—of all things—the demise of two raspberry bushes.
Having said her piece and feeling ridiculous for it, she stamped off.
Jack caught up. He turned her around and took her shoulders in his hands. “What’s this about? What’s wrong?”
Over time, Callie summoned the truth about Jack. He owned an irrational fear. Like those who are claustrophobic or panicky in high places, he was deathly afraid of poverty, of becoming destitute, and that fear paralyzed any effort or thought of divorce. In his mind, divorce was synonymous with poverty.
The words Jack spoke so often rang true: “None of this would be worth it if I couldn’t spoil you.”
She understood this, too.
An impoverished Jack could not spoil those he loved with generous gifts; the need to spoil his loved ones was integral to his makeup.
Given all this, Callie could not and would not ever ask him to file for divorce. Because what if he tried? How would his fear respond? What would happen to him when he didn’t seem to realize he possessed such a fear? Whatever funds were lost to Arnett in a divorce would promptly be replenished. He operated a lucrative business, but Jack saw divorce as a no-way-back ticket.
So divorce, to answer his question, could not be what this was about.
Wild Raspberries Page 27