by Sally John
“Huh?” He held her at arm’s length and gazed at her with brown eyes squinted nearly shut. His narrow, rugged face hadn’t changed all that much in the forty-plus years she had known it.
She felt ten years old. It wasn’t exactly a bad feeling to be called on the carpet and expected to spill whatever painful truth was undoing her. “Pride.”
“Yep. That would do it.” He tilted his head and gray bristles on his chin caught the sunlight. “You know you never need to hide from me and your mother.”
“Oh, Pops! I look like a fool to everyone who’s ever heard me teach. I couldn’t stand to have you two see me like that.”
“Nasty thing, pride.” He squeezed her shoulders and let go. “We love you, foolishness and all.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “Jack doesn’t. He doesn’t love me anymore.”
“Sure he does. He just doesn’t like you.”
“Thanks. That helps a heap.”
Skip grinned, the familiar gap between his two front teeth endearing and comforting.
She realized Viv must have gone inside to greet their mother and was glad for the chance to receive Skip’s comfort before Daisy’s typical tsk and head shake.
“Jillie, I aim to say one thing straight off and be done with it.”
She winced. She knew what was coming because she’d heard it all her life. It was his answer for everything from a hangnail to slow business at his service station. It had become her answer for everything as well. It was why Gretchen accused her of making lemonade from life’s lemons.
“Pops, I don’t want to hear it. All things do not work together for our good. Two and a half weeks ago my life got split into before and after. Before and after Jack left me. I don’t believe in Romans 8:28 anymore.”
“Doesn’t take away its truth. You’re in a rough spot right now, but shake-ups remind us we are not in control. We need ’em, and by my calculations, you haven’t had one in a mighty long time.”
“My husband wanting a divorce is a little more than ‘a rough spot.’”
“Then God must love you extra, darlin’.”
“You are not going to make me smile.”
He chuckled. “Don’t expect to. Not today. Just glad you’re here, Jillie. Just glad you’re here.” He turned and began walking up the driveway.
She watched him go, his gait as loping as ever. He wore, like always, a ball cap, white T-shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. When he was a small boy, his family had moved to Sweetwater. It was scarcely a village back then, but on the cusp of expanding into a town that catered to tourists more interested in nature than glitz. His father opened the first service station, which her father ran until five years ago. Figuring his girls were never going to be interested in it, he sold it.
Jill looked beyond him toward the house. The home she’d grown up in was a small ranch-style with attached garage, the stucco still the color of dirty beige. A scrub oak and a sycamore provided scant shade in the rocky dirt yard. Hardy perennials grew willy-nilly, some in full spring bloom. A red blossom sat atop a fat barrel cactus. An ocotillo cactus soared at least twenty feet high, its spindly arms sticking up and out every which way like Medusa’s hair with tiny orange flowers. Sagebrushes gave off their sharp scent.
The best part of Sweetwater was the mountains. They surrounded the town like an embrace, a ring of colorful, steep, boulder-laden peaks. Some were purple, some pink, some blue, some gray. They rose to meet the sky’s blue vault and seemed to hold between them a hush, a quiet so deep it sometimes made her ears ring.
“Jillie.” Skip waited for her by the house. “Mom baked pies.”
Pies. Ten o’clock in the morning and her mother would offer them pie and sweet iced tea. Like the house and the gap between her father’s teeth, some things never changed.
Suddenly it felt good to be in a place where things never changed.
* * *
Jill laid her fork on the yellow dessert plate. Not even a crumb of crust remained. Not even a trace of blueberry blue or raspberry red marred the surface. Nope, she’d all but licked it clean in the middle of the morning in her mother’s kitchen.
Daisy pointed a spatula at it. “Want some more?”
“Oh, Mom.” She groaned. “No. Thanks.” Why had she eaten the entire huge piece of pie? Was she into comfort food now? Until thirty minutes ago, the thought of food turned her stomach. If this was her reaction to the warm fuzzies of home, she was in trouble.
“Don’t you like it?” Across the table Daisy batted her blue eyes. Differentiating between her tones had always been a challenge. Was this one a tease or an accusation? “I got up at the crack of dawn to bake it before church.”
Looking at her mother was like looking at a prune version of herself. The eyes and mouth were the same, the creases around them just a little deeper. The blonde shade of her short hair was more platinum than ash. Although no taller than Jill, Daisy was tinier.
Jill glanced at her family seated around the kitchen table. Some gene had gone haywire. Viv and their father were tall and rangy, their mother short and skinny; she herself was short and counted calories. The three of them could sit around and eat pie until the cows came home and not store one fat cell.
Jill said, “Is that gym still in town?”
Daisy said, “I’m going to need the car every day this week. Your father works on cars day and night, but you know we only have one now that we actually drive.”
Jill tuned out the ensuing monologue about schedules and the woes of one car for a retired couple in a stoplight-free town that took three minutes to drive across.
At last her dad mentioned that he’d been restoring an old car, a Chevy 396 Super Sport convertible. “It’s red.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Can you believe it? The man is seventy-one years old. I asked him, why bother with a midlife crisis now?” She paused and her eyes bulged. “Jack doesn’t have a red sports car, does he?”
“No.” Not that she’d heard of, anyway. Maybe he did though.
“Connor sure liked his grandpops’s car.”
“Connor? Connor saw it?” Jill saw a look pass between her parents. “When was that?”
“This past week.” Skip reached across the table and patted her hand. “I was getting around to that bit of news, darlin’. He and Emma spent a few days here before they went over to Hollywood yesterday to surprise you.”
Daisy said, “Naturally, since you and Jack didn’t see fit to tell any of us, we didn’t know a thing about you two and neither did Connor, so we all just had a gay old time. That Emma is a beauty, isn’t she? Kind of hard to understand sometimes with her accent, but she’s real personable.”
“I have no idea. I spent less than thirty minutes with her.”
“Well, one thing at a time, I guess, and you got your hands full with this other business. Viv had her turn at it. Now you got yours. Like we told Viv, you stay as long as you need to. Kind of funny how you both skedaddled out of Sweetwater and then had to come crawling back to sort out your problems. Guess your pops and I did something right, huh?”
Viv had stayed with them? Curious she hadn’t mentioned that to Jill. It must have been when Marty had an affair.
Daisy made a face. “You didn’t catch me going back home to your grandma Ellie’s.”
Skip chuckled. “That’s because there was no need. You married Mr. Perfect.”
Daisy hooted as she always did when he referred to himself as the ideal husband. Jill wondered if her mother truly appreciated that it was not an exaggeration. Her dad was Mr. Perfect, the role model for the guy Jill fell in love with.
Or so she thought until two and a half weeks ago.
How Skip put up with her mom was nothing short of miraculous. The woman must have been born thorny. Daisy and her own mother, Grandma Ellie, never got along. Like Jill and Viv skedaddling out of Sweetwater, Daisy had escaped her hometown of San Diego at first chance, which was soon after she met the boy from the desert.
Kin
d of like what happened when Jill met the boy from Chicago?
No. No way, nohow. Jill had enjoyed living and working with Viv at that time, yet always with an eye on Something Else, which came along when Jack entered the picture.
It was nowhere near similar to her mother’s situation.
* * *
A short while later, Jill walked with Viv out to her car and said more jokingly than she felt, “I’m rethinking this visit. Maybe it’s not such a great idea after all.”
“Mom’s just being herself.”
“I really didn’t expect any sympathy from her, but good grief. Would it kill her to say she’s sorry for me and Jack?”
“That’s what the pie was for, Jill.”
“I wonder if rehab groups take women who just need some time to pray and think and be alone.”
“That would be called a retreat center, and you can get that here. Mom and Dad will leave you alone. Give them a chance.”
“And eat the pie?”
Viv smiled. “Eat the pie.”
“You’re speaking from experience, aren’t you? Why didn’t you tell me you stayed with them?”
“I don’t know. It was just for a long weekend one time when I needed to get away.”
“And why didn’t you tell me that Marty had an affair, hon? I would have cried with you.”
Viv opened the car door, crossed her arms on its frame, and stared at Jill. She pursed her lips.
“It happens,” Jill said. “It happens a lot even in Christian marriages.”
“Jill, Marty did not have an affair.”
“But you said he had a reason to leave you and didn’t. What else besides another woman would give him a reason?”
Viv blew out a loud breath. “Me. I had the affair.”
Jill felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. Vivian? Her sister had cheated on Marty?
Tears welled in Viv’s eyes. “I know; you can’t believe it. I was stupid. I turned forty and fell into this emotional cesspool. I kept asking, ‘Is this all there is?’ Lost in a trite, ‘poor me’ syndrome. Marty was just being Marty. All work and sports. He is the original husband in that old joke: ‘I told you I love you when we got married. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.’” She shook her head. “I’m not blaming him. I had the business, but it doesn’t make eye contact or give hugs.”
“Didn’t you tell him you were lonely?”
Viv’s jaw tightened and her eyes cleared. “I told him, Jill. It fell on deaf ears. So I told the CPA in the office next to mine. He heard.”
“Oh, Viv. Of course you needed someone to hear you. It’s understandable how things went from your vulnerability to his attention to . . . to . . .”
“To sex, Jill. It went all the way to there.” She waved a hand in dismissal. “Okay, enough. It’s over.”
Jill winced and quickly tried to smooth out the reaction on her face. Viv had actually slept with another man? The image horrified her. She understood the physical need, she knew it happened, but Vivian? Her sister had never been a prude and yet she was the most moral, upright person Jill had ever known.
Viv said, “The rest of the story is Marty came into the office one day for something. The CPA stopped in at the same time. After he left, Marty said, ‘End it.’ Just like that. I don’t know how he knew; he just did.”
“Have you . . . have you gone to counseling?”
“Yes. We’re in a good space now. Marty took it as a wake-up call. He pays attention to me and I don’t begrudge him his time with sports. It’s not like I need to be with him constantly, but he makes a point to keep eye contact and listen to me. It works.”
“Did the counselor take you through forgiveness? Without that—”
“We covered it all.”
“That’s wonderful. You’re walking it out now, the forgiveness in the day-to-day. Marty realized he could lose you if he didn’t change. He made the choice. And you didn’t give up on him when—”
“Stop it, Jill. Stop analyzing my marriage.”
“I don’t mean to—”
“This is why I couldn’t tell you. You’d figure everything out and give us all the answers. Worse yet, we’d end up being an example on your program. And then you started writing that book, putting everything in print. No. No way.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“Of course you would. Not by name, but you would reference us. We’re a textbook case. We’d fit into your rigid, black-and-white scheme perfectly. You just outlined the entire scenario in under sixty seconds.”
“What do you mean?” A sinking sensation filled her. When Agnes Smith had talked about the book, she accused Jill of having a black-and-white attitude. Now Viv echoed her words.
Viv sighed. “I have to go.”
“Tell me what you’re talking about!”
The hot noonday sun beat directly on them. They were both tired and needed a break from each other. Their voices were rising.
Still Jill pressed the issue. “You criticized my work. Agnes said the same thing. Yes, I’m judgmental and dogmatic. I think we are called to be better people, but I do not have a rigid, black-and-white scheme or attitude or anything. I know grays exist. I account for grays in everything I teach.”
“You could’ve fooled me.”
“Viv, I said I understand why you cheated on Marty.”
“Because it fits into one of your a plus b equals c equations. Besides that, you’ve always considered him a horse’s patootie, beneath your standards, someone you would never, ever fall for. A tattooed welder isn’t even good enough to be your brother-in-law.”
“Vivian, how can you say that? I like Marty just fine. Twenty-five years ago I couldn’t figure out what you saw in him. He got into fistfights and he cussed like a sailor.”
“He was a sailor! And I was nuts about him because he was nuts about me. He made me feel like a special woman. I can’t believe I tried to throw it all away. But you know what? We both made mistakes, yes. But he fought for me. He fought to get me back. What I don’t understand is why Jack won’t do that for you. Why he sits in Chicago and ignores your calls. Talk about a horse’s patootie.” She slid quickly into the car. “I gave your phone to Pops.”
With that she started the engine, slammed the door shut, and sped off.
Jill’s heart raced.
Why didn’t Jack fight for her? Why was he just quitting on them?
The sun beat down on her. Its heat seeped into her bones, her lungs, her heart. It burned her skin and dried up whatever that place was that stored tears.
She had alienated Viv, the last in a long line of broken relationships. The real question was, why on earth would Jack bother fighting for her?
Chapter 24
Night fell and with it the temperature. Forty degrees in winter in Chicago would have felt balmy to Jill. Not so in the desert. Despite the afghan and heat from the gas fireplace, she shivered.
But maybe that had more to do with situation than climate.
After Viv’s abrupt good-bye, Jill unpacked, ate food she’d avoided for years, and tiptoed around Viv’s unsettling observation that set off a swirl of self-indictments.
Her father had sensed her unease. He told her to go sit in the backyard and be still, like she used to do as a kid. “Remember?” he said, his eyes full of tenderness. “You swore that God filled up your jaws with words.”
The memory startled her. She had buried it so deeply. At age twelve she had quit listening in that way because her mother ridiculed her nonstop.
Well, she wasn’t a kid anymore. She sat in a lawn chair in the middle of the dirt yard and waited. Desert hush enveloped her, a silence so thick it seemed a thing to be touched. She remembered how when she was a child, she heard God’s voice in the airy whispers that floated on the stillness.
Her attempt to recapture the experience had lasted about three minutes. She heard only pings against her eardrums, the echoes of a loud silence.
Now she kept her mother company in
the living room and tried to stay warm. The television was tuned to one of Daisy’s favorite game shows; Jill was tuned again to Viv’s hard words.
“Jill.” A commercial came on, Daisy’s cue to speak. “You should talk on your show about how your dad makes love to his car. I bet he’s not the only old guy who does it.”
“Mom!”
“He even hugs the thing. And he’s out there in the garage day and night like some eager beaver with a hot chick.”
Jill rolled her eyes. “Cars have always been his passion. Just because he doesn’t have his service station doesn’t mean he’s suddenly going to take up golf.”
“You said Jack doesn’t have a red car?”
“Right. No, he doesn’t.”
“So what do you think? Does he have a girlfriend?”
“N-no.”
“You don’t know for sure though, do you? He must have a bevy of nurses eyeballing him day in and day out. He’s a good-looking man.”
An image of Jack’s staff flashed in her mind. There were several attractive nurses and office workers. Many more worked with him at the hospital. Female doctors too. But . . . those would not catch his eye. No, it would be Sophie, the one he spoke of like a friend. Jill understood too much of how things worked. It was in relationship, not physical attraction, that vows were broken.
Vows were broken. Marriage vows that even Marty determined were to be kept. How could Jack have fallen so far from their roots?
Daisy said, “Your dad wasn’t all that innocent, you know.”
Jill had heard this one before. “Pops never so much as flirted.”
“’Course he did. You think he’s some kind of saint, but there were plenty of women he ogled. They’d come to the garage and show a little leg to get special attention. He used to pump the gas for them and give them deals on car repairs.”
“Mom, he treated everyone the same.” Jill had worked side by side with her dad from the time she could walk. If she wasn’t in school, she was at the station doing homework or changing spark plugs. “And besides, he worships the ground you walk on.”