That Jones Girl (The Mississippi McGills, Sequel)

by Webb, Peggy

  “He didn’t even say good night,” she told OToole.

  OToole looked up from his comfortable spot on the needlepoint cushion of a small rocking chair. He yawned, showing his pointy teeth and his pink tongue. Then he turned his back to her, curled into a ball, and pretended to be asleep.

  Tess knew better. That cagey cat just didn’t want to be disturbed anymore.

  All her life she had been disturbing people. First Aunt Bertha, who had taken over the job of bringing up two little girls when their mother had died. Tess had been twelve, and already too much a hellion to tame. At least, that’s what Aunt Bertha kept telling her.

  Her sister, Margaret Leigh, was always the quiet one, the obedient one. But Tess spent most of her waking moments thinking of ways to break all the rules Aunt Bertha laid down.

  At fourteen she’d snitched a pack of Lucky Strikes from Grandpa Jones and smoked behind the barn, standing defiantly with her legs apart and a hand on her hip, just because Aunt Bertha had said that real ladies didn’t smoke standing up. Real ladies didn’t cuss, either. Tess had used some doozies just to get Aunt Bertha’s dander up. Or perhaps to get her attention.

  Tess lay back against the pillows and mulled that over. Margaret Leigh had always been loved because she was nice and obedient; but Aunt Bertha spent most of her time trying to change Tess. So did everybody else: her relatives, her teachers, even her many husbands.

  Well, not all of them. Flannigan never had. He’d simply left her. But the other two—Carson and OToole—had set about trying to remake her the minute the first flush of honeymoon bliss was over.

  “If you straighten up, Tess,” they’d say, “you might really amount to something someday.”

  She hadn’t necessarily wanted to amount to something, especially not something that everybody else decided she should be. She only wanted to be loved for herself.

  She’d never said that to a living soul, not even Mick. To the rest of the world she was bold and wild and flamboyant and indestructible. And most of the time, it was true. But sometimes, when the night wind moaned against the windowpanes and the pillow next to hers didn’t have so much as a tiny dent, and even her cat ignored her, Tess was not any of those things. She was fragile and vulnerable and so lonesome that all the blues songs she’d ever sung couldn’t express the depth of her aloneness.

  “Tess Jones,” she told herself firmly, “if you don’t stop pitying yourself, you’ll never get to sleep and then you’ll be too pooped to party.”

  She resolutely scrunched under the covers and shut her eyes.

  o0o

  The next morning, when the sun was high in the sky and everyone in the group had assembled, all dressed in comfortable summer clothes, they went on a picnic. It was reminiscent of all the picnics they’d ever taken together. And they took the urn.

  Jim carried the hamper, piled high with food; Lovey carried the blankets to spread on the ground; Mick brought the ice chest, filled with an assortment of sandwiches and soft drinks and a chocolate cake Tess had insisted on; Tess brought the fireworks; and Johnny brought Babs, holding her carefully as they all jammed into his station wagon, laughing and trying to beat each other to the window seats.

  “You drive,” Johnny told Mick.

  “But not like you used to,” Lovey added, “all hell-bent for leather. I don’t want to have this baby before its time.”

  Tess purposely sat on the backseat, as far away from Mick as she could get. He had said last night wouldn’t happen again, but seeing him this morning, she wasn’t so sure about it. All the things that had attracted her to him so many years before were still there: his big laugh, his easy smile, his teasing eyes, his humorous viewpoint, his passion.

  Heaven help her. Passion simply oozed from the man’s pores. In some ways she’d be glad when the weekend was over.

  In deference to Lovey’s wishes Mick drove sedately to City Park on Joyner Avenue.

  “Hey, look at that.” Jim studied the park out the window as Mick eased into the parking lot. “This place hasn’t changed since we all came up for Johnny and Babs’s wedding. Same old swing sets.”

  “The seesaw is what I want,” Tess said.

  “It takes two.” Mick caught her eye in the rearview mirror.

  “I know. I’m going to put Lovey on the other end so I can ride high.”

  While everyone else laughed, Tess stared back at Mick in the mirror, not willing to be the first to look away.

  “Are you implying I’m fat?” Lovey patted her stomach.

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Lovey. But it’s a fact.”

  “It’s all Jim’s fault.”

  Everybody laughed once more. But underneath the laughter there was a sense of wonder. Each person in the car felt it. Journeys ended and journeys began. The cycle repeated itself, over and over. Babs had already embarked upon a mysterious voyage to another realm, while a tiny being awaited his turn to journey into the world.

  Looking at Flannigan’s profile in the rearview mirror, Tess decided that all of life was a journey. Even marriage. With Flannigan, she’d thought the journey would last forever. But it hadn’t. He’d got off somewhere along the line. She’d gone on, though, picked up another partner and continued. To what? Happiness? Not really. Happiness didn’t seem to be a place you could arrive at, like some distant spot on the map. Happiness seemed to be something that sprang to life involuntarily, like violets growing wild in an unexpected place.

  At the moment Tess was happy. The sun was shining, the picnic hamper was full, and her friends were at her side.

  “Hey, everybody,” she yelled, “are we going to just sit in the car or what?”

  “Or what!” Jim opened the door, and they began to pile out. Mick came last, laughing the loudest, talking the most. And yet, somehow he managed to avoid being in direct contact with Tess.

  She noticed. She told herself it was wise. She told herself it shouldn’t hurt. But it did.

  The picnic was just like ones in the old days. Five of them now, they raced with boiled eggs in a spoon, they seesawed, they played tennis, they ate more than they should have, and they talked and talked. Through it all, Tess and Flannigan gave each other a wide berth, not so wide that the others noticed, but wide, nonetheless.

  When dusk came, Lovey and Jim carried a blanket to a quiet spot so she could rest before the fireworks; Johnny took the urn and went for a long walk, and suddenly Tess and Flannigan were alone.

  He sat on one end of a redwood bench under a spreading oak tree and Tess sat at the other. The grove was alive with nature’s creatures who had come out to play. A small bunny hopped out of the undergrowth and sat nearby, munching tender green leaves. Cricket song echoed on the breeze that had sprung up with the darkness, and a string of fireflies hovered over a young pine, decorating its branches with blinking yellow lights.

  Tess and Flannigan watched the evening display in silence for a while, strangely disturbed by their sudden isolation from the rest of the group. Finally he spoke.

  “This is not by design.”

  “I know. I don’t want to be alone with you anymore than you want to be alone with me.”

  The sting of that remark took him completely by surprise. He scooted across the bench until he was sitting by her side.

  “Don’t take this personally,” he said. “It just occurred to me that the others might get the wrong idea if we keep sitting so far apart.”

  “What wrong idea would that be?”

  “That we have a reason... that we’re afraid of getting too close to each other again.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” She moved closer to him so that their thighs and shoulders were touching. “Just because we were once husband and wife is no reason we can’t still be friends.”

  “Right.” He was glad the darkness covered his smile, because he knew it was smug. Though why he should be smug about sitting beside a woman he had no intention of getting involved with again was beyond him. And he didn’t intend to ra
tionalize. He was feeling mellow, and she was, after all, an old friend, and that was that.

  “So, tell me, Tess...”He turned to look into her eyes. That was a mistake. He’d forgotten how appealing Tess was in the last light of evening. Everything about her was softened—her blazing hair, her vivid coloring, her bright eyes. He lifted his hand toward her cheek, then he remembered touching her was taboo. “Mosquitoes,” he said as he waved his hand around in the air.

  Her grin told him she’d probably seen right through him. To make matters worse, he’d forgotten what he had been going to say.

  “What were you about to ask me to tell you, Flannigan?”

  “Have you picked out husband number four?”

  She lost her softness. Her rigid body spoke a language all its own, one he understood too well. But it was too late for him to call back his teasing words.

  “Have I picked out husband number four?” Her words were carefully spaced as she turned full around and pinned him with her eyes. “Did I hear you correctly, Flannigan?”

  His own temper flared. What did she want from him? Congratulations on her many marriages? He was only human.

  “You heard me correctly.”

  “Am I to take it that you’re interested in my state of affairs, or is this idle curiosity?”

  “Hell, Tess. We were married once.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Just because you were husband number one doesn’t give you any rights.”

  “Husband number one!” He was getting madder by the minute.

  So was she. Leaning so close her nose was touching his, she yelled in his face.

  “If you’ll recall, you were the one who did the walking. Not me.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Tess.”

  “You left a note, Flannigan. A lousy note.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand. That’s the reason I never talked to you about it.”

  “You didn’t give me a chance to understand, you no-account philandering bum.”

  “Philandering!” His voice thundered through the grove, sending the rabbit into flight. And then it dropped to the soft silky tone that signaled real trouble. “Did you say philandering?”

  Tess knew what was coming, but she wouldn’t have quivered in her boots even if she’d been wearing them. This was a quarrel that had waited ten years to happen. She’d saved up ten years of questions and heartbreak and anger. And now she was going to let it all loose.

  “That’s what I said, Flannigan.”

  “Don’t you know?” His hands gripped her shoulders, and his face grew savage. “Don’t you know, Tess?” He bent so close, his lips were nearly on hers. “There was never another woman. Never has been. You were the only woman for me. Always were and always—” God, in heaven. What are you saying, Flannigan?

  He claimed her mouth in a kiss that sizzled the hair along the back of his neck. And you always will be, Tess. Always. The clarity of his vision rocked him. He didn’t know how to handle the revelation except to keep on kissing.

  Her response was mind-bending. Anger had always made her kisses fierce. The madder she was, the hotter her kisses. He thought he and Tess would set the park on fire. That would be just as well, for what happened between them could never be anything more than a flash fire.

  Tess molded herself to the body she knew so well. Out of habit, she told herself as the kiss went on and on. First love was not easily forgotten. And it certainly wasn’t easily ignored, especially when her first lover was sitting beside her in the soft darkness of a summer evening, holding her as if she were the most precious thing in the world.

  Ahhh, she wanted his kiss, needed his kiss. For just a moment it seemed as if the curtain of time was lifted and they were once again young lovers, traveling together into the future.

  He shifted, and she was suddenly on his lap. How easy it was, sliding onto Flannigan’s lap, as if they had done the same thing only yesterday.

  The kiss climbed and climbed until it was up among the stars where kissing wasn’t enough. He put one hand on the front of her blouse, on her buttons.

  “Ahh, Tess. It was always this way with us.”

  The sound of his voice brought her back from the misty realms of the past, back to the park bench, back to Tess Jones who had long ago been divorced from him. He was just passing through her life again. She had to let him pass through, for she couldn’t bear being hurt by him all over again.

  Panting, she shoved hard against his chest, and slid off his lap and onto the end of the bench.

  “Do you think it’s that easy, Flannigan? Do you think all you have to do is crook your little finger and I’ll walk back into your life?”

  The world shifted into place for Flannigan, too, and he knew he had been close to making a terrible mistake.

  “I don’t want you back in my life.”

  “Well, you certainly gave a good imitation of wanting me back in your bed.”

  “That sounds tempting, but no, I don’t even want you there, Tess.”

  “Then why?” She spread held her hands palm up in supplication. “Why did you kiss that way?”

  “You kissed back.”

  “Dammit, Flannigan.” She ran her hands through her hair, feeling the dampness that always collected on her scalp when she came this far south, where the humidity was so thick she could almost taste it.

  “All right. I admit it. I kissed you back.” She lifted her hair off her neck. “You were always a good kisser. And you know how much I like kissing. I never could resist it.”

  He didn’t answer her right away, but lit a cigar and watched her over its glowing tip. She fanned herself with her hand.

  “Tess, I don’t plan to get started with you again.”

  “You’re safe. You had one chance, Flannigan. You won’t get another.”

  They stared at each other in the darkness lit with the glow of fireflies, and both of them remembered that first chance, remembered and wept inside.

  Suddenly Mick cocked his head, listening.

  “Did you hear something, Tess?”

  “No.”

  “I thought I heard something back there in the trees. Just my imagination, I guess.” He paused to blow smoke rings and watch them mingle with the glow of fireflies. Then he turned back to Tess. “I think I owe you something.”

  “What?”

  “An explanation.”

  “It won’t change things.”

  “No, it won’t. But it might ease my conscience. It’s been giving me the devil because I left you without an explanation.”

  “Good. I hope it pained you something fierce.”

  “It did. Especially the first two days.”

  “Two days! Only two days, Flannigan? It took me two weeks to get over you.”

  “You’ll notice I wasn’t the one who rushed into the arms of somebody else.”

  “I didn’t rush. I sort of meandered. I lived with Carson two years before I married him. And with OToole—”

  “Hell, Tess... “

  “They didn’t last. Just like you.”

  “The fools left you?”

  “No. I sent them packing.”

  “Good.”

  “Why? Why could it possibly matter to you whether I sent them away?”

  “Because you deserve the best.”

  She looked out across the grove, the expression on her face dreamy.

  “I had the best... once.”

  They sat side by side, not touching, both facing forward, as if they were on a train together going somewhere, both planning to get off at different stops. They were still and thoughtful for so long, the rabbit got brave and came back into the grove.

  Tess broke the silence.

  “Your note said, ‘I’m sorry I have to go. Love, Mick.’ Why did you sign it ‘Love Mick’?”

  “Because it was true. That’s the reason I left... because I loved you.”

  She hopped off the bench and faced him, furious, legs wide apart and hands on her hips.
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  “You loved me enough to leave me while I was sleeping, without even saying goodbye, without even telling me why you were going or where? That’s not love, Flannigan. That’s selfishness.”

  “You’re right. I was selfish. But still, I loved you.”

  She turned and stomped away, but he ground his cigar under his boot and caught up to her. With his hands on her shoulders he turned her around to face him. She was rigid with rage.

  “I don’t blame you for being mad, Tess.”

  “Mad doesn’t begin to describe what I felt after I got over being hurt. I wanted to kill you, Flannigan.”

  His grin was rueful. “It looks like you still do.”

  “I wouldn’t waste my time.”

  “Ahh, Tess... Tess, my girl.” His thumbs caressed her shoulders. They were hot from a day in the sun.

  “I left because I had to go and I couldn’t take you with me.”

  “Why not, I’d like to know? I was your wife.”

  “And you’d have gone out of loyalty.”

  “I’d have gone out of love. Dammit, I loved you, Mick Flannigan.”

  “It wouldn’t have been fair, Tess... dragging you all over creation while I chased rainbows... the rainbows I promised myself in the orphanage that I was going to chase.”

  “Leaving me behind was fair, Mick?”

  Suddenly she was mellow and soft again. When Flannigan looked down at her with his expression tender and his eyes the color of a summer day, she couldn’t stay mad at him. No matter what he had done.

  “Maybe not, Tess.” He circled his thumbs on her skin one last time, and then he let her go. “Maybe it wasn’t fair, but it was the only thing I could do.”

  He walked away, and she kicked at a stick on the ground. Tears formed in her eyes, but she pressed the heel of hands against them.

  “Dammit. I cried for you once, Mick Flannigan. I’ll never cry for you again. Never.”

  She went back to the bench and sat down again. The faint odor of his cigar still lingered in the air. She reached down and picked up its remains.

  “I found one of these the last time you left. A half-smoked cigar. Some going-away present.”

  She brooded over the cigar for so long, a firefly settled on her arm. She looked down at the small bug. Its wings were folded over a small black-and- orange body, and its taillight was turned off. She could see the yellow bottom, resting against her skin.