Jilted

by Varina Denman

  “Depends on how you look at it.”

  She opened her eyes. “How did you know to tell me to tackle the bedroom door?”

  “I’ve heard things over the years. From prison ministers. Or books. And now that I’m home, your son-in-law tells me stuff. He’s got me talking to one of his therapist friends over in Snyder.”

  “You’re in therapy? But it’s been two years.”

  Suddenly his personal life lay exposed on the couch between them. “Can you believe there’s a therapist in Snyder of all places?” He knew it wasn’t fair to avoid her questions when he was the one who had started the pushing, but Lynda had enough problems without worrying about PICS.

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, then blinked and rolled them, letting the shift in topic pass without argument. “Okay,” she said with finality. “No, I didn’t know there was a therapist in Snyder. Is he in the old post office?”

  Her sense of humor tickled him around his Adam’s apple. “In an old house, actually.”

  “How cozy.”

  “You should try it sometime.”

  “An old house?”

  “A therapist.”

  “But I only just now made it to the Trapp Door.”

  He shut his mouth and looked her in the eye, but her gaze darted away as though she had looked directly into the sun.

  “Are you going to make me read a book?” Her chin lifted.

  “Might as well. How about that brown one?”

  “Brown one?” She pulled her foot off his lap and stretched to the shelf behind her. “This brown one?”

  He sighed. She could be cute, but she could also be snooty. “It’s not brown, is it?”

  “As green as grass.”

  “Whatever.”

  She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Remember when we used to play Chicken Foot with those multicolored dominoes, and you couldn’t tell the colors apart?” She smiled but didn’t quite smile. Her memories seemed to keep spiraling back to Hoby, no matter what she tried.

  “Aw, now …”

  She chuckled for real then, and the sound soothed Clyde’s worried nerves like the salve his grandmother used to put on his sunburn.

  “We better be going. I’ve got work in a few.” He lifted his eyebrows, silently asking her about her job, but it was her turn to ignore a question. He stood up.

  “Aren’t you going to get a book?” she asked.

  “I guess not.”

  “Why?”

  He hesitated. “I’ve read them.”

  “All of them?” She looked down at the book in her hand. “Even Anne of Green Gables?”

  “Okay, I ain’t read that one, but I’ve read most of them.” He didn’t feel like adding that he had donated a good portion of them. Books he’d found at garage sales in the past two years, read, and then passed on to Pamela.

  “Why did you bring me here if you weren’t planning on buying a book?”

  He held his breath for a count of three, then jumped off the high dive. “I’m comfortable here, and I thought you might be, too.”

  She gazed around the room. “You know … I sort of am.”

  A vibrating rumble eased through Clyde’s chest. He could tell Lynda wasn’t completely recovered from discovering her husband might be dead—who would be?—but she could see beyond the pain. And someday, when she came further out of the shadows, she might once again notice him in the sunshine.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Ansel, how you doing today?”

  Wednesday morning, not only did I get out of the house, but I did it all by myself. Clyde would have been proud had he known, but I didn’t call him. I called Velma.

  “Aw, Lynda, I’ve been worse,” Ansel said.

  My brother-in-law’s chair of choice was his recliner, and that’s where he was today. Only instead of his usual position, sitting with the foot support lifted, he had the chair laid all the way back. His head rested to the side, and his hands lay limply on the armrests. I wondered if he even had the strength to change the channel on the television.

  “I’m better now the TV reporters have left us be.” His eyes met mine, and without words, he conveyed compassion for my loss. I was startled to realize I had briefly forgotten about Hoby. Losing my husband, whom I hadn’t seen in nearly seventeen years, paled in comparison to Velma losing her husband, whom she had seen every day for over thirty.

  Velma motioned toward the sliding-glass door. “They’ve been out in the pasture with their zoom lenses.”

  “Blasted photographers.” Ansel seemed to have rallied his strength to make the outburst, and then his head sank back down on the headrest.

  “JohnScott posted signs.” Velma pursed her lips. “That did the trick.”

  Ansel grunted. “Thank God.”

  “The old man’s been talking a lot about the Lord lately,” Velma said. “Seems to think he needs to get right.”

  “Now, Velma,” he said slowly. “I’ve got plenty of time to set things straight with the Big Guy. I’m in no rush.”

  “No … no rush.” I tried to sound carefree, but in the back of my heart, hidden where nobody could see, lay an urgent secret. Now that I was looking at Ansel’s approaching death, I couldn’t bear the thought of him not knowing God. An involuntary chuckle slipped from my throat. “The people down at the church wouldn’t know what to think if Ansel Pickett walked in.”

  “Good Lord,” he rasped, and then a laugh turned into a coughing fit. When he had quieted and wiped his lips with a cloth handkerchief, he insisted, “I’m not thinking of going to a worship service. God’s here at the house, too, ain’t He?”

  Velma clicked off the television. “Ansel heard that Neil Blaylock went back to the church a week ago.”

  “I heard that.”

  My brother-in-law reached for a toothpick on the end table, then placed it between his teeth and talked around it. “Reckon they’ll make him an elder again?”

  “Surely not,” Velma said.

  He shrugged his shoulders weakly. “Wouldn’t put it past ’em.”

  My insides turned to Jell-O. “So you won’t be headed to Sunday services anytime soon?”

  “Naw, not me,” Ansel said. “Velma might get a hankering to go, though.”

  “Not without you, I won’t.” My sister pulled a crocheted throw pillow into her lap and fluffed it. “I only go there for weddings and funerals and such.”

  Her face went white.

  “Mom and Dad’s funeral was the first time I’d ever been in the church building,” I said.

  “You don’t say.” Ansel joined me in making the best of Velma’s accidental funeral reference.

  “That was a strange time,” Velma said.

  “I barely remember it.” Except for the parts I did remember. Like the women who patted my shoulder with their squishy, warm hands. The emptiness in my lungs, as though I couldn’t draw in a good breath. The caskets at the front of the room, shut tight because the accident had been so gruesome.

  “You were in shock, I reckon,” Velma said softly as she picked at the yarn on the pillow.

  We sat in silence until Ansel drifted to sleep, his toothpick falling from his lips and down into the inner parts of his recliner.

  Velma put the pillow in the crook of the couch and gave it a good thump on the top edge. “Nowadays we’ve got all these talk shows telling us what we should’ve done back then so we wouldn’t be in the shape we’re in now.”

  “We’re a mess, aren’t we?”

  “Ansel’s a mess.” The lines around her eyes deepened when she looked at him. “He was talking about visiting the church before Neil started stirring things up down there. Now, he’ll be dead before he gets around to it.”

  I looked at my brother-in-law, his worn hands folded over his chest as if he
were already lying in rest at the funeral home. But I reminded myself what Ansel had said. God was at the house, too. I clasped my hands together, locking my fingers tightly, and squeezed with all my might, hoping Ansel was right.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The kitchen in Clyde’s trailer house was nothing more than two short counters with a gas stove and a tiny refrigerator, but the scents that swirled as I watched him chopping vegetables smelled like a five-star restaurant. “What are you making?” I asked.

  “Salsa. To go with the enchiladas. They’re in the oven.”

  He had four tomatoes, two of them bright red and juicy, two of them still green, and he was slicing them quickly with a butcher knife.

  I leaned my hip against the counter as I watched his movements. “How do you not chop your fingers?”

  “I read a book once—”

  “Of course you did.”

  He paused, blinked, seemed to suppress a sigh. “Some famous chef explained it. See?” He shifted so I would have a better view of his paper-plate cutting board. “You let your knuckles guide the side of the blade, so your fingers don’t get under the knife.”

  His hands made the butcher knife appear small, and I recalled his demonstration the first time he took me to Pamela’s shop. “Don’t you mean a shiv? What other words are different in prison?”

  He shook his head. “Again with the prison questions.”

  “Never mind, then.”

  He continued chopping. “Okay. Deodorant was foo-foo, and weights were the iron pile.”

  “Do you ever slip and accidentally use a prison term?”

  “Only once. One day at the Dairy Queen, I called Bernie Guthrie’s cigarette a fug. He almost swallowed the silly thing when I told him they weren’t allowed in the restaurant.” Clyde’s head fell two inches, and his face warmed to a pale burgundy. “He thought I said something else.”

  I bit my lip, picturing Old Man Guthrie’s reaction. “By the way, I brought this.” I nudged a plastic container sitting on the counter next to two jalapeño peppers and a clove of garlic.

  “Bean dip?” He chuckled. “You could have just brought it in the can. Didn’t have to get all fancy with the Tupperware.”

  After turning the dish upside down, I inspected its contents. “It’s guacamole.”

  “No kidding?”

  “It’s green with bright-red chunks of tomato.” I looked around the counter for a cookbook. “Don’t you use a recipe?”

  “Not for salsa. I just do it.” He reached for an onion, but before he started chopping, he pulled a small box of matches out of his pocket and clamped one between his teeth.

  “Does that work?” I asked. “Does it keep the onion from burning your eyes?”

  “Sort of.” He spoke around the match, then smiled as his eyes watered anyway.

  “Dixie and me just chew spearmint gum.”

  He spit the match on the counter. “Does it work?”

  “Sort of.”

  He put the matchbox back in his pocket, then tossed his vegetables in a large bowl and added a few leaves of parsley. When the oven timer buzzed, he removed the enchiladas and positioned my guacamole next to them on the stove. Finally he opened a bag of tortilla chips. “I’ve been thinking about you saying I need another place to live.”

  “Praise the Lord.”

  He leaned with both palms on the counter, looked me in the eye, and laughed. Loud. Then he pushed away and handed me a plate. “Help yourself.”

  “Why did you just laugh like that?” Using a metal spatula, I placed a cheesy enchilada on my plate and added a scoop of guacamole and a small portion of his homemade salsa.

  “I figured you might help me pick out a place.”

  I pretended I didn’t hear him, then lifted my plate and sniffed. “Have you ever thought about opening your own restaurant?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You cook good enough.” I sat down at the table. “And you obviously enjoy it, because you even cook on your days off.”

  “I cook because I got to eat.”

  “No. I have to eat, and I never cook.”

  “You made guacamole.”

  “Ruthie made it.”

  He paused, then smiled slowly. “Sounds like you’re the one who needs a new job.”

  I forked a bite of enchilada and blew on it to cool it. “I guess I liked waitressing better than cooking. Talking to the customers, tending to their needs.” I shrugged.

  Clyde scooped a dollop of salsa onto a chip and put the whole thing in his mouth, but then his chewing slowed, and he got a quizzical expression on his face. He swallowed, set his fork down, took a drink of his tea. “I make salsa all the time. Why would it turn out wrong the one time it matters?”

  I smiled, partly because he cared what I thought about his cooking but also because he had given me the opportunity to razz him again. “Could it have been the green tomatoes?”

  He stared at the salsa on his plate, poking it with a chip. “Seriously? They were green?”

  “Only half of them.”

  His huge shoulders slumped, and he looked as if he might cry.

  “But the enchiladas are great,” I said, “and my bean dip ain’t too shabby either.”

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, we were still sitting at Clyde’s kitchen table, and our paper plates had been pushed back to make room for sliced peaches. Clyde called the fruit a light dessert, but I called them breakfast. When he brought out a can of whipped cream and let me spray it over both our bowls, I decided the peaches might be dessert after all.

  “This is good,” I said as I licked my spoon.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes before I poked him for information.

  “So,” I said, “it’s Wednesday night.”

  “It is.”

  “You’re not at church.”

  He crouched over his bowl, pushing peaches from one side to the other, silently screaming for me to stop asking.

  But I couldn’t. “You don’t want to face Neil.”

  His eyes met mine.

  “Does Fawn know he threatened you with a restraining order?”

  He shrugged.

  “You haven’t talked to her.”

  “No need.” He finished his last bite, then leaned back in his chair, watching me. “Want to go out to the wind fields later?”

  “In the dark?”

  “In the moonlight, they kind of remind me of a Mercedes-Benz commercial. Besides, you can see the red lights on top.”

  It was sweet of him to want to take me out there, even in the dark, and I wondered if he didn’t get a little strength from the whispering giants, too. I sighed, wishing I could magically become a windmill, standing quietly on the prairie while the breeze nudged me.

  “You doing all right?” Clyde asked.

  “I’d be better if I had more of that whipped cream.”

  He didn’t smile. Didn’t look away. Just kept staring, but I didn’t care. It felt good. Almost as though he had crawled inside my brain, and surprisingly, I liked him there.

  I cleared my throat, wishing I was as good at not talking as he was. “I’m okay now, but the bad thoughts still come over me when I’m home alone.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t live alone.”

  My face warmed, but Clyde pulled his gaze away from me to look out the back window. Probably he didn’t mean what it sounded like he meant, but I vividly remembered last Friday night after the football game when he told me we were too old to fiddle around with dating.

  “I heard a rumor about Hoby,” Clyde said.

  A dollop of whipped cream remained in my bowl, and I smashed it with my fork, swirling it until it looked more like milk than cream.

  “They’re saying there wasn’t a body in the truck,” he said. “You heard any
thing like that?”

  I tilted my head and nodded twice.

  “Did Hector tell you not to tell me?”

  “He told me not to tell anyone.” But I should have told Clyde. Clyde doesn’t count like everyone else.

  “It’s all right, you know.”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “Hector seemed confident Hoby’s dead, but I don’t know what he’s basing it on.”

  “Everyone thinks it was suicide.”

  I let my eyes wander to the backyard, where the chain-link fence was disappearing in the light of dusk. “You ever thought about suicide?”

  One of his shoulders bunched into a shrug. “In prison, sure. Everybody thinks about it.”

  “But not since you’ve been home.”

  “Naw, not in years.”

  “What made you stop thinking it?”

  His eyes turned to slits as he formed an answer, but then they widened. “I just decided life was worth it. Whatever comes, I’ll deal with it.” He yanked his sleeve to expose his tattoo. “Joshua 1:9.”

  I shrugged a shoulder gently. “What is that verse?”

  “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. The Lord is with you wherever you go.”

  I chuckled. “Hoby needed that tattoo. Maybe then he wouldn’t have killed himself.” The breath in my lungs felt as if it might sap all the energy from my spirit, so I released it into the kitchen, feeling momentarily better because of it. I leaned my elbows on the table. “I can’t blame him, though. Sometimes I think suicide might be nice.”

  Clyde took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. “Are you thinking on doing something?”

  Sometimes Clyde could be so daft. “For crying out loud, I’m not going to kill myself.” I stacked plates and bowls. “Besides, think what it would do to Velma. And Ruthie.”

  He spoke so quietly I barely heard him. “And me.”

  My mind had wandered as I thought about my sister and my daughter. “What?”

  His eyebrows puckered. “Think what it would do to me.”

  “You?”

  Then he stared at me again. No words. Nothing but that same unbroken eye contact, so intense I had to look away, but when I did, his hand reached up to my hair, and he pushed a strand over my shoulder.