Waking Up in Dixie

by Haywood Smith

  “You always said it was elegant,” she told him, agreeing with his new assessment a hundred percent.

  “Well, it doesn’t look elegant to me now. It looks like closeout at a bad antiques shop.” He frowned at the Victorian relics and heavy swagged moiré drapes in the parlor. “This was all here when we moved in?”

  Elizabeth sat on the other side of the bench. “That, and more. We managed to get rid of some of it when your mother moved to your uncle’s place.” After that, Elizabeth had gradually relegated a few of the more objectionable remaining pieces to the attic, each of which Augusta noticed and asked if she’d sold.

  Howe shook his head, taking it all in. “Damn—sorry. I vote we redecorate.”

  “Really?” Elizabeth had given up on ever getting the chance. Thrilled, she imagined what the tall, graceful windows would look like without the heavy drapes, the dark paper banished by pale green walls, and the heavy woodwork pristine white.

  He grinned to see her so happy. “Really. Have at it, Lizzie.” There was that blasted nickname again. “Whatever you want, as long as it’s not dark and stuffy. We can afford it. Hell—sorry—we’re rolling in money.”

  Not as much as before his stint in the center, but there was still plenty. Elizabeth remembered all the times she’d dreamed of renovating and updating the old place. “New kitchen and bathrooms?” They could finally get some decent insulation. “Thermal windows?” She could see it . . .

  Then she realized what she was doing, and halted. Did she want to subject them both to a renovation if she was going to leave? P.J. had showed her what life could be like beyond the gossip and pettiness of Whittington. Beyond the reach of her mother-in-law. With someone who not only loved her, but cared what she felt and thought.

  How did she know who Howe would end up being? What if he started slipping back into his old self? She couldn’t go back to that, she realized. She couldn’t.

  Howe took her hand in both of his. “What’s wrong? What did I say?”

  “Nothing,” she covered. “Your mother will go ballistic.”

  Relief brightened his expression. “Fuck Mama—sorry,” he said. “She’ll get over it.” He squeezed her hand. “You scared me. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of Mama.” He nodded toward the house they’d cohabited for the past thirty years. “You just make this place a home. It’s never really seemed like home for you, has it?”

  Seeing that he really cared, she felt a pang of emotion cut through her. “More of a home than the one I grew up in,” she admitted frankly.

  “Christ—sorry.” He reacted to her flinch at the offensive profanity. “Sorry,” he repeated with sincerity this time. “I completely forgot what you went through growing up.” He shook his head, perplexed. “How could I forget something like that?” His brows gathered. “I’ve really been selfish, haven’t I?”

  Before the stroke, Howe would never have even considered asking such a question.

  “Yes,” she answered, unable to put into words the bitter cost of his monumental self-absorption.

  “Sometimes, I feel like the old me is somebody else,” he confided. “An evil twin. I have those memories, but I didn’t feel anything then.” His eyes lost focus. Clearly, the stroke hadn’t damaged his verbal capacity or his ability to remember the way he’d felt. “Well, ambition, maybe. The fleeting thrill of the deal. And loneliness, but I had nobody to blame but myself for that.”

  Elizabeth sat silent. It was the most he had ever spoken to her of his feelings, and it frightened her. Caring about Howe had been far too dangerous for far too long for her to start doing it now.

  “And lust,” he went on. “Not love. Just lust, brief, and quickly spent. No entanglements. No demands.” He gripped his chest as if in pain, guilt etched into his handsome features as he faced her. “Why did I throw you away?” She closed her eyes at the callous summary of what he’d done. “Why didn’t you leave me?” he asked her.

  “Because I had nowhere to go.” She faced him squarely. “And I refused to shame our children. Every time my father beat my mother or embarrassed us all with his drinking and she forgave him, I swore I would make a better life for my children, and I have. I swore I would never shame them, and I won’t.”

  Even by leaving Howe for P.J.? She couldn’t think about that now. Focusing on Howe, she dismissed the thought.

  She didn’t know if her husband possessed the capacity to do what she asked him next, but she asked him anyway. “Howe, please don’t make them ashamed of their father. I know Patricia resents me, but all teenaged girls resent their mothers. I can take it. But she idolizes you. Don’t destroy that by telling her about the hookers.” Elizabeth had thought herself beyond feeling when it came to that endless betrayal, but saying it aloud sent a hot stab of pain through her heart. “Confessing your sins might make you feel better, but it would destroy Patricia, and Charles. It’s past history, and nobody’s business but our own.” And a long line of prostitutes, but if the family was lucky, he’d used an alias. “We have to figure out a way to get through this. Please don’t make things worse by telling them.”

  He peered at her intensely. “I don’t deserve you.”

  “Up till now, no,” she said. “But you were my husband, and I made a promise to our children. Whether they know it or not doesn’t matter. All that matters is what we do now.”

  He sagged against the dark wainscoting. “I feel everything now, times ten, and that includes regret. And anger at the man I was. And grief for what I’ve done to you and everyone else in my life. It’s horrible. Horrible. How do people live with feelings like this? How did I live with this?”

  Elizabeth didn’t have the energy for any more angst. “Don’t go all morbid on me.” She stood. “Come on.” She pulled his hand to help him up. Howe needed something to distract him from himself. Maybe they should do the place over, after all. “Come to the kitchen, and I’ll tell you how I want to redo it.”

  He did another of his lightning about-faces. “Okay. It’s the least I can do.”

  “We’ll see how you feel about that when everything’s torn up and the bills start coming in.” She scanned the rooms and smiled with satisfaction. “I mean to gut this place, room by room, and bring it into the twenty-first century.”

  “Do we have any sauerkraut?” he asked cheerfully as they entered the kitchen. “I sure could use some hot dogs and sauerkraut.”

  “I’ll see.” Elizabeth shook her head. “Why you don’t weigh a thousand pounds, eating the way you do, is beyond me.”

  Howe dazzled her with a smile. “Beats me. But I sure do like my food. And beer. Do we have any beer? Suddenly, I’ve got a taste for Heinekens.”

  An hour, a feast that would do a German proud, and eighteen mood changes later, Elizabeth followed Howe’s labored progress onto the second-floor landing. Halfway across it, he stopped, frowning.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He looked left to his master suite, then right to hers.

  “Yours is over there,” she reminded him. “Do you need any help?”

  “I don’t want to sleep by myself anymore,” he declared.

  Whoa, Nellie! Elizabeth stiffened.

  “Especially not in there,” he said, thumbing toward his rooms. “The place is like a cave, and there’s no bathtub. I like baths, now.” Registering her reaction, he hurried to qualify, “I’m not talking about sex or anything. I understand about your wanting to wait at least six months for the other AIDS test to clear before we even consider that, but I don’t want to be alone.” He was so earnest, so ingenuous. “Please. I promise not to hog the covers or squeeze the toothpaste in the middle.”

  But it was her room, and her bed! Her private retreat.

  Seeing her resistance, he offered, “If you don’t like it, I’ll call the painters and have them redo the man-hole in there, but could we at least try it? I have these really bad dreams about the way I was before, and I hate waking up alone.”

  Too much information! He wa
s playing on her sympathy. But since the stroke, she had to admit, the man couldn’t seem to lie.

  “I swear,” he said, “I’ll behave myself. One false move, and I’m out.”

  Elizabeth stiffened. Howe was the one who’d moved out of their bed, and it had broken her heart. Asking to move back now, because he was the lonely one, seemed bitterly ironic. Her room had become her sanctuary, and now he wanted to invade it.

  She’d prayed so hard for Howe to come back to her, all those long, lonely years ago. But not like this.

  Still, she had to be certain her marriage was really over to think of leaving. That meant giving Howe a chance.

  “All right,” she said, prompting elation from him. “We can try it. But there have to be some ground rules.” She pointed at him. “No groping, or you’re out. No touching of any kind, without permission. One infraction, and you’re out. No warnings. No second chances. Do I make myself clear?”

  Howe nodded, undaunted. “Crystal.” He lifted his palms to her. “No touching without permission.” He shot her a brief leer. “No matter how much I want to.”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. She gave him one hour, and he’d be out. “And no farting,” she added.

  Howe looked stricken. “Lizzie! I don’t do it on purpose.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Lizzie.’ ” She hated that name. “Gas-X,” she ordered, pointing to her pristine white bathroom. “In the medicine cabinet. And no more sauerkraut. Or onion rings.”

  He granted her a smug smile. “Unless we both eat ’em. Then we can both fart under the sheets.”

  “I do not fart,” she lied with impunity, then left to start calling architects. Elizabeth knew exactly how she wanted to redo everything, and she wanted to make sure the renovations were well under way before Howe could change his mind.

  That night, Howe kept to his side of the king-sized bed when she slipped in on the opposite edge wearing an opaque black-and-white print cotton sleep shirt that didn’t give anything away. She had no intention of changing her routines at this point in life. If Howe didn’t like it, he could go back to his room.

  Still, she felt skittish as a girl, and couldn’t help remembering some of the good times they’d shared in that same bed.

  Best not to think of that. She had months before the second AIDS test made sex with Howe even conceivable. She’d taken a mild sleeping pill just to make sure she didn’t give him any ideas, or get any herself.

  After putting night cream on her lips, face, hands, and elbows, she lay on her back, pulled up the covers, put on her black satin sleep mask, then inserted the plastic bite guard she’d worn for ten years to keep from gritting her molars into bone dust.

  “What’s that?” Howe’s voice perked with interest. “Lizzie, do you have false teeth?”

  Exasperated, she pushed up one corner of the mask to glare at him. “No. Iss a bite guard,” she snapped, then lowered the mask and turned her back to him.

  He barked a laugh. “Makes you look like an alien when you talk.”

  “Thass strike one,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Sorry. Sorree,” he muttered.

  Glad she’d taken a sleeping pill, she didn’t hear another word out of him till she woke to the smell of coffee.

  “Lizzie,” he cooed, his weight shifting the mattress close beside her. “Time to get uuup.”

  A pillow tucked under one knee and another close against her stomach, she shoved the mask off one eye to be greeted by glaring daylight and the jingly hum of the two air conditioners in her windows. “Wha time iss it?” she asked, releasing a cloud of dragon-mouth through the bite guard. Hungover from the sleeping pill, she remembered that she had a witness and pulled off the mask, palming the dental apparatus.

  “Nine-thirty,” Howe informed her, “and three architects and the cabinetmaker have already called back.”

  Noting his now-slender torso was minus the T-shirt he’d worn to bed, and the waistband of the navy silk pajamas Patricia had given him for Christmas, Elizabeth blushed like she’d woken up with a total stranger, which only annoyed her further.

  “It ought to be against the law to be so chirpy before noon,” she grumbled as she sat up. Yawning, she stretched to cover tucking the bite guard into the bedside table drawer. She’d sterilize it later.

  Howe handed her a cup of coffee. “Welcome to the world.”

  “Do you have to talk?” she muttered. “New rule. No talking till after coffee. No noise of any kind.”

  Undaunted, he watched her sip her coffee as if she were a vision of freshness instead of a Susan Boyle impersonator. “At least you’re awake,” he teased. “You made plenty of noise last night. Your snoring woke me up several times.”

  Elizabeth glared at him in outrage. “I do not snore.”

  “Oh, yes you do,” he countered with a smug smile. “Like a chain saw.”

  Was that why her mouth was always so dry when she woke up?

  Mortified, she stammered. “Well, I . . . maybe the sleeping pill. But I do not snore.”

  “You always have. Even when we were newlyweds.” He set her coffee on the bedside table, then tried to cuddle up beside her, but she resisted. “It’s okay, Lizzie,” he said. “It lets me know I’m not alone. And I can always get earplugs.”

  “I thought you were just making up an excuse when you said that was why you moved out,” she blurted out.

  She saw that he wished he could tell her it was, but this new Howe couldn’t lie, even when he wanted to. “That was . . . Moving out didn’t have anything to do with you, Lizzie. That was me. I couldn’t . . .” Seeing the hurt and skepticism in her eyes, he stopped himself before he got in any deeper. “It wasn’t you.”

  “Well, it sure felt like it.” And suddenly, the pain felt all too fresh, resurrecting that bitter rejection. Elizabeth got out of bed and headed for refuge in the bathroom. “I don’t think this is going to work out,” she said from the doorway.

  Crestfallen, Howe froze, making her wonder if he thought she meant they weren’t going to work out. “You’re kicking me out because I said you snore?”

  “No,” she said. “Yes. I don’t know.”

  “Lizzie—”

  “Don’t call me ‘Lizzie,’ ” she said, unconsciously investing all her fears and frustration into the obnoxious nickname. “I hate that name.” Somehow, it had become an emblem of his selfishness, then and now. “I am not Lizzie, and I never will be. My name is Elizabeth!” She slammed the bathroom door, then sank to the toilet seat, angry that he’d told her about the snoring, and even angrier that the memory of his rejection had made her feel so small and impotent again.

  The shadow of his feet blocked the east sun shining under the door. “Elizabeth,” he said, his voice carrying through the solid walnut panels. “I know you may not believe this, but I love you. I loved you deeply when we married, but after Dad died, coming back here and taking over the bank did something to me. There were some pretty dirty dealings. I tried to fix things, but ended up getting dragged in deeper. It . . . put my soul to sleep. But I’m not that man anymore, and I never will be.” He may have meant it, but Elizabeth knew he might not be able to keep such a promise. “Don’t push me away,” he said. “I’m your husband. If you love me even a little, we can make this work.”

  Elizabeth could have lied to him and said she did, but she told the truth instead, hard as it was. “I don’t know you, Howe. The man I fell in love with never cursed or took the Lord’s name in vain.” Tears sheeted down her cheeks. “The man I fell in love with slowly disappeared, leaving me alone in my bed to wonder who he was with, and what I’d done wrong, and whether our children would find out. I stopped loving that man a long time ago.”

  Elizabeth was willing to give Howe a chance, but she couldn’t risk having her heart broken again. She wouldn’t, so she wielded the truth like a weapon, to keep a safe distance between them. “Now you’re like a toddler, all extremes. Exhausting. Dangerous, with complete disregard for the consequen
ces of what you’re saying.” She couldn’t trust a man like that. “I don’t even know you.”

  “But I know you,” he said quietly. “At least let me try to be a real husband to you. A good husband to you. We had something good before we came back here, didn’t we?”

  When she didn’t answer, he added, “For the kids, if nothing else, Lillibet.” At last, the name she loved. “Just let me try.”

  This was too hard, too dangerous. “Go away, Howe,” she told him.

  They couldn’t share a bed, not yet. Not till she knew who he turned out to be.

  At least the way things had been before, she’d had some peace, some stability. They might even have grown old together and become allies in the end. Except for P.J.

  Now she didn’t know what to do.

  She just knew she was tired. Tired of being the perfect wife for public consumption. Tired of pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t. Tired of catering to all of Howe’s whims and needs, seven days a week from dawn to dusk.

  Tired of pretending she wasn’t attracted to another man, a man who loved her enough to wait for her.

  “I’m going downstairs,” Howe told her, “but I love you, and I’m not going away. I’ll do what it takes to be the husband you deserve, Elizabeth.”

  He might say that, but neither of them knew whether he could follow through.

  Howe’s voice tightened. “I’m still your husband.”

  “No you’re not,” she whispered as his footsteps retreated. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not my husband.”

  Chapter 10

  Elizabeth seriously debated staying home from Sewing Circle—or “Whine and Cheese,” as their husbands had dubbed it—but being cooped up with Howe was wearing on her, despite the welcome distraction of redecorating. So she went anyway, glad that it was at Mary’s.

  “Hey!” Mary greeted her with a glass of Portuguese white port and a warm smile. “I’m so glad you could make it. How’s Howe?” She chuckled. “That sounds funny: How’s Howe.”

  “Making progress,” Elizabeth responded on reflex. It was the safe answer, what she always said. “Slowly.” She took a drink of wine and felt its sweetness glow all the way down to her empty stomach.