by Peggy Webb
“You can count on it.”
Later that evening I learn about Tuck’s favorite TV show—any channel that features sports. We’re stretched out on his big leather sofa, my back against his chest, his legs wrapped securely around me, our hands clasped, fingers intertwined.
“You don’t mind watching the game with me?”
I could tell you everything I know about ball—any kind of ball—in two words: practically nothing. Not because the games bore me, but I’ve lived mostly uninfluenced by the male persuasion.
People think I live this glamorous, full-to-the-brim life, and some envy me. They think I have it all. What they don’t see is that the problems—from overflowed toilets to skylights leaking—are all mine.
They don’t see the Thanksgivings spent eating take-out pizza for one. The Christmases when it seems useless to hang a stocking or put up a tree because who cares? The birthdays where the only surprise party I’m likely to get is the one I plan for myself then forget I’ve invited people over. The times I’m too sick to get out of bed and nobody’s there to bring chicken soup. Even the dresses that zip in the back and I can only reach halfway up without assistance so I have to wear something else.
Some singles say nights are the worst, but that’s not true. It’s the evenings that are bad, those twilight hours after work and before bedtime when it’s just you and the big empty house and you can no longer tell yourself you’re busy and lucky and content. What you are is brutally, desperately lonely. And nobody is there to notice, let alone massage your temples and whisper, “Lean against me. Relax.”
“Are you okay?” Tuck puts his big warm hands on my shoulders, massages them. “You seem tense.”
I lean into him, feel myself letting go, just letting go. If this can be mine—the ease and peace and wonder of two like souls joined—then I am the luckiest woman in the world.
“I’m better than okay.” I kiss his hands and the curved thumbs that are beautiful. “I love this. Just being here with you.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
Mort’s call lures me away from my cozy nest, and I excuse myself and go into the kitchen.
“Claude wants to know when you’re coming back to the show.”
“Not when, Mort. If.”
“He’s made a tempting offer, Gloria.” Mort talks money and I listen only half-heartedly. The daily grinds, the early morning makeup calls. Besides, how can I do daytime drama in Hollywood and have any kind of life in Mississippi? A few weekends here and there? Vacations and holidays?
“Give me a few days to make up my mind, Mort. Okay.”
“Maybe this will help. You also have an offer from Jeff Shanks.”
Academy Award-winning director. My agent certainly has my attention now.
“Tell me.”
“It’s an ensemble piece, a Southern drama similar to Steel Magnolias and Crimes of the Heart. You’d play the oldest of three sisters coming to grips with their traumatic past.”
“Who are the other two actresses?”
“It’s too early to say, but they’re looking at a couple of box-office stars. You’d share billing. Also, the film has the advantage of moving you from the small screen into features.”
The best advantage, though, is being on location a few weeks, perhaps a few months, then back home. And not leaving again until I find another role that interests me.
“What do you want me to tell Claude and Jeff, Gloria?”
“I still have some thinking to do, Mort. Okay?”
After I say goodbye, I stand in the kitchen and breathe. Simply breathe.
“Everything okay?” Tuck asks when I go back into the den, and I say “Yes,” then slide into the best place in the world, the only place I want to be, cuddled against him enjoying the simple pleasure of being a woman in love with a special man.
We’ll talk tomorrow. The real miracle is that we have tomorrow.
Who made me Oprah?
—Angie
DADDY’S looking at my scrapbook for the umpteenth time. Well, actually he’s only looking at the parts that feature Mom. And I’ll have to say she looks good in most of them, especially the ones Roberta took at the Magic Castle where Mom’s all dressed up.
“Now, who did you say that was?”
“Roberta’s brother-in-law.” He’s asked me this twice. He sounds just like Sally that time her cousin from Huntsville, Alabama, spent the summer in Mooreville and stole her boyfriend.
My gosh. My dad’s jealous.
“Does he have a name?
“He’s just some dorky guy, Dad. I don’t remember his name. Forget about it.”
“So.” He clears his throat, which I absolutely hate. That always means he’s fixing to grill me. “Did she see him more than once?”
“For Pete’s sake, Dad. It’s not like Mom went out to California and started acting like she didn’t have a wedding ring. Listen.” I flip pages, turn past the ones where Mom’s having such a good time at the pool party, which he would probably turn into a federal case for fornication, the way his mind’s running.
“I want you to see the rally.”
“I saw it.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t see how Mom was the one right up front. You didn’t read the article about how she was the one who put the whole thing together.”
Listen, I’m no dummy. I don’t mind giving up my credit when it’s for a good cause. And I can tell you right now, getting Mom back home is the best cause I know. Dad’s been acting like a sick beagle puppy ever since I got home. Nearly three days. It’s driving me crazy.
You ought to see him in the kitchen. He acts like he doesn’t have a clue how to find stuff in the refrigerator, and him owner of a restaurant. He used to get the newspaper first thing every morning, and now I’ll go out there at ten o’clock and it’ll still be lying in the driveway.
He forgets things, like where he put his car keys and the hedge clippers and the garden hose, for Pete’s sake. Who loses a garden hose? It’s bigger than an alligator. Sometimes he even forgets to shave.
I’ll be glad when school starts. I’ll be glad when it’s over and I’m officially eighteen and go live somewhere else without parents who are acting like eight-year-olds fighting over who gets the strawberry ice cream and who gets the chocolate.
Why don’t they just get one dish and share?
And I don’t want to even think about Jackson. He’s been calling here every day, wanting to come over. I don’t want to see him till Sally can help me figure out how not to break up when I tell him dating only one person is so totally out of the picture he can forget it.
I’ve made up umpteen excuses. I had to stay here and take care of dad. True. Kind of. I had to wash my hair. True. I had plans with Sally. A bald-faced lie. Though, of course, I will have plans with Sally, but not just yet, not till I can figure out how to keep Dad from unraveling.
He’s worse than Mom. Listen, women know how to cry and get on with things. But men are a whole different story.
As far as I’m concerned, all this stiff-upper-lip, take-it-like-a-man stuff is for the birds. I want to say, Listen, Dad, that went out with the Dark Ages. Men are enlightened now. They’re not scared to have a sensitive side and let their feelings show.
But what do I know? I’m only seventeen, right?
While I’m getting a pretty good handle on taking care of myself, there are just some problems I can’t even understand, let alone fix.
Like this one. Dad’s bent over my scrapbook like it’s a patient and he’s performing major life-or-death surgery.
“Are you sure she didn’t see him again?”
Meaning Mom and the dork. Pardon me while I puke.
“Why don’t you just fly out to California and see her?”
He shuts my scrapbook—well, slams is more like it—then stands there trying to look like somebody in charge. He’d die if I told him he was wearing one blue sock and one brown.
“I have a restaurant to run. Family obligation
s. Everybody seems to forget that.”
“Jeez, Dad, I don’t need a babysitter. I am a babysitter. And the last time I looked Mom was part of this family.”
He just looks at me like I’m a specimen from Mars. Then he says, “The last time I looked you were six years old and crying about your first day at school.”
His voice has gone all gruff and tender, the way it used to be when he’d come to tuck me in and read my favorite bedtime story—The Velveteen Rabbit.
“I’m all grown up, Dad.”
“I see that now.”
He hugs me, and I hold on tight, finally understanding the childhood story. When somebody loves you enough, you do become real.
Maybe that’s why parents rock their babies and sing lullabies. Maybe that’s why Mom is waiting in California.
And maybe I’ll tell Dad. But not yet. I’d like for going after Mom to be his idea.
And I think she would, too.
CHAPTER 17
Does everybody have a god of second chances, and will I know mine if he comes?
—Jenny
I don’t think I should have let Roberta, back from San Francisco and full of sass and vinegar, talk me into giving a dinner party just because she thought it would do me good. Now Max is standing in Gloria’s front door with a bouquet of wilting daisies.
What would do me good is to slam the door in poor Max’s face and run as fast as I can. Get out of this blue dress that shows off my newly tanned legs and act like a woman with no place to go and no idea of what she’s going to do next. A woman who needs to sit down and make a few plans.
“Come in, Max,” is what I say, and he marches in like a man who has a few plans of his own that might involve delivering more than flowers.
Did I also say that before I saw him I was thinking about that, too? A lot. A woman deprived will get all sorts of crazy ideas in her head, including whether the rest of Max is as wilted as his daisies.
Why doesn’t Rick know this? And why is he sitting out there in Mooreville without so much as picking up the phone to ask if I’m okay? I haven’t heard from him since Angie got home. A whole week ago.
“Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Wine?”
Max says, “Wine,” so I race off to the kitchen, grateful to have something to do. He’s sitting on one end of the sofa looking hopeful, and I don’t think I can deal with his expectations.
Instead I deliver the wine, then deliberately sit in a chair across the room.
“How are you, Max?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Great.”
“That’s nice.”
“How was the drive over?”
“Good.”
“Great.”
Oh lord. I swig wine as if it’s an artesian well and I’ve just emerged from the parched desert. Max crosses his right leg over his left, twists his mustache, then switches legs, left over right.
I dangle my shoe from the end of my foot and slug back wine, hoping for quick oblivion.
What’s keeping Roberta and Hubert? Clearly Max and I aren’t going to be an item. We can’t even carry on a conversation. Things seemed different when we were in the Magic Castle, more hopeful, more exciting, more…I don’t know…everything. Maybe that’s the only place you can find magic, but I don’t think so. I hope not.
When the doorbell rings, I hurry to the front door feeling rescued. Roberta will do all the talking, and I’ll be off the hook. I can sit quietly and wait for the evening to end.
Putting on my biggest smile, I swing the door open saying, “At last!”
There stands my over-the-moon gorgeous husband. Still wearing his ring, thank goodness.
And smiling right back at me.
“How did you know I was coming? I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did.”
And, boy, do I have a surprise for him. My smile wobbles.
“But you’re all dressed up.” Rick peers behind me, then marches right in and spots Max, who would have been invisible if he’d just kept his seat. But no, he had to jump up like some besotted fool before I could think how to explain him.
“I see,” Rick says.
What he sees is my poor hapless would-be suitor wearing a foolish grin and keeping a choke grip on the already beleaguered daisies. What I see is a big mess. The frozen tundra would be cozier than this room with this threesome.
Rick is sizing up Max with a look that forbodes annihilation. Which could include me.
“Here.” I hurry over and pry the flowers out of Max’s sweaty grip. “Let me put these in water.”
It’s called quitting the field of battle. Or cowardice. Whichever way you want to look at it.
I dawdle over finding the vase, let the water overrun the rim three times, then finally plop the poor gasping daisies in. I imagine them breathing a sigh of relief, saying to each other Thank goodness, we thought we were going to have to call 9ll.
Maybe that’s what I ought to do. Call right before the bloodletting so the stretcher is already handy.
“Jenny?”
Rick’s in the doorway, and I jump as though I’ve been shot. Or am guilty. Which I am. Although I can’t quit figure out why.
“Yes?” I try for perky and fail.
“If you think I’m leaving just because your lover is sitting there, you’re mistaken.”
“He’s not my lover.”
Rick just looks at the flowers and walks out of the kitchen. I wish I’d never put them in water. I wish I’d dumped them in the garbage can and that I’d been in the midst of the crime—killing poor innocent daisies—when Rick walked in.
I wish I’d thrown them into the sink, grabbed my husband and laid a great big smooch on him that would have made him forget the many small wounds we’ve inflicted on each other. I wish I could have made him forget everything except the relief of being back with me.
Oh, I excel at hindsight.
Of course, what would I have done if he’d forgiven the past? Gone back to being the same tired woman in the same stultifying routine?
The doorbell pings again—oh, thank God!— and I run to the door and cast myself on Roberta’s mercy.
“Rick’s here and he and Max are already in a pissing contest.”
“Good. Bring on the wine.” She breezes past, leaving poor Hubert to trail along in her wake. “So there you are,” she yells at my husband. “Jenny’s long-absent hunk.”
She tugs Rick to the sofa where she plops down beside him and puts her hand on his knee. I don’t see the rest because I’ve seen Rick’s face, and that’s enough. He looks exactly the way he does when Godzilla gets on his last nerve and he’s getting ready to tell her to butt out of his business. Only not in those nice words.
Hiding once more in the kitchen, I dither over the wineglasses, the carafe, the tray. Even the placement of the pink mandevilla I brought into the house earlier and forgot to carry into the living room.
Then I remember that I chucked everything that was familiar and secure and climbed into a Ferrari bound for Hollywood. And if all that was for nothing, I might as well have stayed home.
I should just climb in the garbage can, pull the daisies in behind me and tack an epitaph to the lid: Here lies Jenny, who never learned how to be a goddess but who made compounding mistakes into an art.
This could be my last chance to change my epitaph.
The woman who walks back into the den is not the same woman who scuttled out of it. Swishing my skirts, I priss right back in there and pass the wine with a steady hand and a firm smile, even though Rick’s sizing me up.
You know how the back of your neck tingles when somebody you love is staring at you? How the hairs on your arms stand on end and you get goosebumps all over? Well, that’s me, right this very minute.
And I think it’s a good sign. It gives me courage to pull my chair close to Rick, put my hand on his knee and smile at him.
“I’m glad you came,” I tell him, then I add, “honey,” for goo
d measure.
The rest of the evening is pleasant enough, with all of us making small talk, and Max even doing a few magic tricks, though nothing that involves me. Instead he pulls his scarves from Roberta’s ears, his coins from Hubert’s, his cards from his own seemingly bare hands.
I believe the reason we carry on like civilized adults is that one little word. Honey. Said as if I mean it.
Which I do.
After all the guests have gone, Rick and I go into the kitchen to clean up the last of the dishes. This is a familiar routine for us, one we do in comfortable silence. When the dishwasher is loaded, I untie Gloria’s apron and move within touching distance of Rick.
“Did you bring your clothes?”
“They’re in the car. But I booked a motel. Just in case.”
“You don’t need it.” I wait for him to say something, anything, but he’s the Sphinx and I’m a basket case. “Gloria has plenty of rooms.”
The separate-bed issue drives us back to our corners, mine by the sink, Rick’s by the table.
“Jenny? I’m sorry about overreacting earlier.”
“I understand. I did the same thing about the pink note.”
“Can we put it behind us?”
“I don’t know, Rick. Can we?”
“I’d like to think so.”
He still hasn’t touched me. I’m standing here with my arms wrapped around myself, hoping he will. And hoping he won’t. Not yet, at least. I want to get some things straightened out first.
If he so much as puts a hand on my cheek, I’m a goner. Rick’s like a food allergy. You know your feet are going to swell and your arms will itch even before you take the first bite, but you take it anyway because the dish is so delicious you can’t resist. That’s me with Rick. Only the symptoms are different.
“What are we going to do?” I ask him.
“I’d like you to come home with me. I was hoping you would.”
“It can’t be the same. I can’t go back to Mooreville and just start making pies.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were tired of making pies?”
“It’s more than that. I just got tired of everything.”
Rick gets a bit ruffled at that, but I’ll have to give him credit, he’s trying hard not to show it, not to fall back into that old pattern where we always ended up in the same bed with our backs to each other, making sure our legs didn’t touch.