It Happens Every Spring

by Gary Chapman; Catherine Palmer

  Brenda sat cross-legged on the floor of the basement and looked around her as the cat curled up in her lap. It might be okay. Fixing up this room—banishing memories and starting afresh—could be the start of those dreams she had envisioned would fill her empty nest. Discouragement and confusion had waylaid her in the fall, but it was almost spring now, and maybe this remodeling project was the answer to her prayers. For weeks, maybe even months, she had been asking God to give her some kind of direction in life.

  Brenda missed the kids so much. She had taken great satisfaction in guiding them from infancy to adulthood. Ballet, cheerleading, soccer, football, school plays, the church youth group—Brenda had participated in everything that had interested her children. She had worked on homecoming floats, sewed costumes, dried tears, bandaged cuts, baked well over fifty birthday cakes, and endured endless sleepovers. If not driving the kids from one event to another, she had stayed busy behind the scenes or cheering from the sidelines. After they left last fall—the last of them off to college at last—she had hardly been able to go down into the quiet, echoing basement.

  But as desperately as she missed the kids, as much as she grieved over her quiet, empty house, she knew she could have borne it if only Steve were here to go through the transition with her. Surely he must miss their children too. And yet just when Brenda needed him the most, just when she thought they could rediscover who they were as husband and wife, Steve had deserted her too.

  Ever since he bought the new office building and hired a staff, her husband had turned into a walking zombie. Wearing a blank expression, he left the house every morning just after seven. Pale, frowning, tense all the time, he usually appeared at some late hour of the evening. He rarely called home and then it was to ask if Brenda had heard from the kids or to tell her he would be late again. If she didn’t know how focused he was on his work, she might have thought her husband was having an affair.

  Then Cody had magically appeared at the house, and somehow he began to fill the hole in her heart. Since he had fled, she worried about him constantly, but no one in Deepwater Cove had seen him again. With her children and Cody gone, what did Brenda have left? Who was she?

  And then today, Nick LeClair had showed up. With his cheerful smile and warm blue eyes, Brenda liked the man immediately. It was one thing to build houses based on an architect’s plan. Or to sell houses that someone else had built, as Steve did. But Nick had vision. He could see past the sagging sectional sofa, the popcornembedded area rug, the TV set, the shelves lined with sports trophies, the bulletin boards covered with blue ribbons and prom photographs. And what he saw was Brenda.

  Why couldn’t Steve be that way? They’d been married forever, yet he treated her as though she didn’t exist. Even tonight, when he’d come home early for once, all he could think about was racing to the lake to fish. Brenda had considered strolling down to the dock and sitting with him, but she decided against it. Why should she give up time to be with him when he couldn’t bother to spend even five minutes with her? He treated her like an old dishcloth, used up and dirty and fit for nothing. He never asked about her day or bothered to find out how she was feeling. Her hopes of the two of them going out to dinner, seeing movies, and boating together had come to naught. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had spent any special time together.

  “Brenda?”

  His voice carried down the stairs into the basement. She glanced at the sliding glass door, remembering the night Cody had stood out there and thinking of the way he had run screaming into the woods. The sound of Steve’s shoes on the steps made her want to do the same thing. Run. Just run.

  He held a stringer of crappie in one hand as he stepped into the basement. Holding it up, he gave her a warm smile. “Six! Big ones too. Charlie was right—fishing’s great.”

  “I don’t know when you think we’ll ever eat those,” she said, instantly regretting the harsh tone in her voice. But she couldn’t keep back the words. “I guess you’ll expect me to fry them up some weekend when Justin and Jessica come home.”

  His smile faded. “We could eat them. You and I.”

  “When? You’re never home.” She stood and brushed the dust off her black slacks. “Maybe you should give them to Charlie Moore. He and Esther eat a lot of fish. I’m sure they’d appreciate it.”

  Steve looked at his stringer. Brenda knew he had come home feeling like the hunter in from the range, the warrior back from the battlefield. Usually he cleaned the fish before he returned to the house, but tonight he had brought his catch to show off. His trophy. She was supposed to ooh and ahh over the stringer of dead fish as though he’d just rescued his family from the brink of starvation.

  “I’ll come home early tomorrow.”

  “No, you won’t. You already have a dinner scheduled, remember? Ashley Hanes told me you keep a table reserved at the country club six nights a week, and you only cancel it once or twice a month.”

  “Ashley? The redhead?”

  “Brad Hanes’s wife, yes. Jessica’s friend. They live directly across the cove from us on Shadyside Lane, in case you’ve forgotten. You sold them their first house.”

  “I know who they are. I’ve seen Ashley at the country club. She’s a waitress in the evenings. Red hair.”

  “Yes, red hair! It’s obvious you’ve spent more time looking at her lately than you’ve spent with me.” For some reason it infuriated Brenda that her husband had noticed a waitress’s hair.

  Steve took a step toward her. “Why would you say such a thing, Brenda? You know I love you.”

  “How am I supposed to know that? Because you bring in all this money? Because you go to church with me on Sundays?”

  “Church hardly makes a difference in our marriage these days. You sit through Sunday school with your mouth practically sewn shut. Don’t you have any ideas or opinions?”

  “Of course I do. You know my faith is important to me. I’ve always been loyal to God, and I’ve tried to follow the Bible’s teachings. But what’s the point in commenting on something I’ve heard a thousand times? All they do in church is play the same tape over and over. I could recite that stuff by heart.”

  “If you had a heart,” he snapped back. “You’re as cold as ice toward me, Brenda. Why are you treating me this way? How can you think I don’t love you? I’m your husband. We had three children together.”

  “The kids! Having babies together is supposed to show that you love me? I had your babies a long time ago, Steve. If you think I’m supposed to count on that…when they’re not even around…and don’t call…” She suddenly fought tears.

  Steve reached out to her. “Honey, is that what’s wrong? You’re missing the kids?”

  “Don’t touch me!” she shouted, backing away. “You have no idea who I am or what I need. You know nothing about me, so don’t claim you love me!”

  “But I do love you, sweetheart.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. “Maybe you stopped loving me. Ever consider that? You wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole. You never let me kiss you anymore. And forget about bed!”

  “Bed! I’ve served your needs long enough, Steve. I’m not here just to indulge your every whim.” She took a step toward the staircase. “You’re selfish—that’s what you are. The whole world revolves around you, and you wouldn’t need me at all if it wasn’t for that bedroom up there.”

  “But I do need you!” he cried out, moving toward her again. “I feel like if I could just hold you and touch you, we could overcome all this frustration inside you.”

  “Inside me? I don’t care if you never touch me again. That won’t resolve the problem.”

  “Well, what is the problem, for pete’s sake?”

  “It’s you! You and your self-centered focus on selling houses. You just want to make more money, hire more secretaries and agents, build a bigger office building, and become the greatest and most amazingly wonderful real-estate agent at Lake of the Ozarks. What are y
ou trying to prove?”

  She set one foot on the bottom step, and Steve caught her arm. “The problem is you!” he barked back at her. “You drag around this house in your bathrobe. You give me the cold shoulder. You do everything in your power to make me miserable. And I haven’t done a thing but take care of you and the kids better than just about any husband I know. A lot of good it’s done me!”

  “Let go of my arm,” she snarled.

  “You’d better snap out of it, Brenda!” he shouted.

  “Snap out of what? You haven’t even taken the time to find out what’s going on with me. You want to do your precious real-estate thing, come back to the house after dark and sleep with me, and then go out the door at sunrise and chase after more money. And if you think I’m going to respond to someone who yells at me—”

  “Okay, honey, I’m sorry,” he said, trying to pull her off the step toward him. “That was totally wrong of me. I shouldn’t have shouted. It’s just that I hate the way things have been going between us. I’m sorry I’ve been so focused on my job. I guess I figured you’d be proud of me.”

  “I am.” She kept one hand on the banister as he moved closer to her. “I’m thrilled that you’re doing well. But what about me? What about us?”

  “Well, I’m home tonight. Let’s turn the lights out, get into bed, and see what happens.”

  “Let me go. I have to spend some time looking over the paint samples Nick brought with him today.”

  “Paint? No you don’t.” He jerked her toward him. “We’re married, remember? The least we can do is sleep together.”

  “Here, sleep with these!” she cried, grabbing the stringer of crappie and giving a mighty swing. The fish hit Steve’s arm with a resounding smack. He let go of Brenda and stumbled backward.

  Bursting into tears, she dropped the fish on the floor and ran up the stairs.

  “Men!” Patsy Pringle said as she clamped a hot curling iron around a strand of Esther Moore’s fine white hair.

  “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em,” Esther finished. “I remember a few times when I thought I’d be happy if I never saw Charlie again. Now I can’t imagine what I’d do without him. It’s not that he changed his ways or that I gave up my dreams. We just got comfortable with each other. Satisfied, you know?”

  “I know I’d be satisfied if Pete Roberts sold every last minnow and fishing rod out of that store next door and moved away from Tranquility forever,” Patsy said. “He started up a weed whacker the other day, and I nearly gave Steve Hansen a Mohawk.”

  Esther chuckled. “I think he messes around with those loud engines just to get your goat.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Charlie was in Rods-n-Ends the other day to buy some minnows, and he brought up the chain-saw incident to Pete. Charlie mentioned how your antique teacups fell off the shelf, and Kim’s twins started screaming, and Brenda Hansen’s hobo ran out of the salon hollering like he’d seen a ghost. Pete just laughed. Said he gets a kick out of watching you storm into his store and give him what for.”

  Patsy slid the curling iron into its slot and glared at the wall dividing Just As I Am from Rods-n-Ends. “Pete thinks it’s funny to scare my customers?”

  “According to Charlie, it’s all about you. Pete likes irritating you, because then you rush over there and stir things up. He says he never knows whether you’ll be a redhead or a blonde when you come in. Pete thinks you’re as cute as a bug’s ear when you get all riled up.”

  “Cute?” Patsy snatched the curling iron again and began clipping stray tendrils of Esther’s hair onto the heated barrel. As steam rose from the gelled and sprayed white curls, she fumed. “I am not cute when I get mad. My cheeks get pink and my nose starts to drip and my eyebrows take on a life of their own. I don’t see why that man would want to upset me when all I’ve done is be nice to him from the moment he moved in next door. I sent him over a mug of coffee and two doughnuts the day he opened for business the first time. I even wrote out a little card that said, ‘Welcome to the Tranquility Strip Mall. May you be blessed with lots of gas and many bait buyers. Love in Christ, Patsy Pringle.’ Now how much friendlier can you get?”

  “Ouch!” Esther gasped as the curling iron singed her scalp.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, honey.” Patsy released the clump of hair and began fanning Esther’s head. “It makes me furious to think that Pete would set up his machine-repair area right next to my tearoom. After he started up the weed whacker and scared the living daylights out of me, I had to work nearly half an hour to fix what I’d done to Steve Hansen’s hair. I thought I’d never get both sides even. I cannot have that kind of racket going on while my ladies are trying to drink their tea. I was here first, and if that man runs me out of business, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “Relax, Patsy. No one’s going anywhere. Your clientele is so loyal we’d all move to Timbuktu with you if you decided to pull up stakes. Pete Roberts isn’t about to scare us off.” She patted her hair as she eyed Patsy in the mirror. “If you want to know what I think…well…”

  “Well what?” Patsy demanded.

  “I think he’s got a little thing for you. He’s teasing you the way boys do, Patsy. Trying to get your attention and make you notice him.”

  “Pete Roberts is no boy! He’s at least forty, and I hear he’s been married twice and was an alcoholic so many years his liver’s pickled. Oh, what am I doing? I don’t mean to gossip about anyone, but I am not a teenager playing silly flirting games. I am a businesswoman, and I’ve worked too hard to…to…”

  Esther reached up and laid her hand on Patsy’s arm. “Your nose does drip when you get mad, doesn’t it?”

  Patsy sniffled as she began rummaging through a drawer. “Where is my pick? People are always taking things out of my station. I’ve lost a pick and two combs and no telling how many bobby pins. I had a wedding last Saturday morning, and I couldn’t find a bobby pin to save my life. Have you ever tried to style an updo without bobby pins? That bride was determined her hair would be at least a foot high, and I must have spent an hour hunting for some way to hold it in place. Curls and braids and daisies. Oh, let me tell you, I just about had a fit. I finally had to go into the back room and hunt through all the boxes until I found some new packs of hairpins. It was a nightmare.”

  “Maybe you like him just a little bit too,” Esther said. “He’s very nice. He keeps his stock organized and his shelves dusted. Charlie said Pete has the cleanest minnow tank at the lake, and you know Charlie has seen them all. If you want to catch crappie, there’s something to be said for healthy, lively minnows.”

  Patsy clamped her mouth shut and began finger-combing Esther’s hair into place. As she worked with the curls, she did her best not to think about Pete Roberts next door. Though she had tried to be kind to him, she could find no excuse for his behavior.

  Esther Moore was dead wrong about him. Maybe Pete was nice to his customers and kept a tidy store. Maybe he had used his blasted weed whacker on the flourishing dandelion patch in front of her beauty salon the other day. And maybe Patsy had seen him eyeing her from his pew at LAMB Chapel the past three Sundays in a row. But that did not mean he had a “little thing” for her. And she certainly didn’t like him. Not even a little bit.

  “Oh, that looks so pretty,” Esther spoke up as Patsy began spraying the style into place. “You always do such a good job. It’s no wonder everyone in Deepwater Cove and most of the west side of the lake comes to Just As I Am. You have the power to transform us all! In fact, I think Brenda Hansen is looking better than she has in months. When that homeless man she was taking care of ran away, I predicted she would go right down the drain. But she sure has perked up. Maybe it’s that new haircut you gave her.”

  Patsy shrugged. She had enough to worry about with Pete Roberts threatening to start up one loud engine or another next door. Which made her think about poor, simpleminded Cody and how scared he had been when he ran out of the sa
lon that day. Which led her to wonder what had really brightened up Brenda Hansen so much. Her husband hadn’t seemed too thrilled when he came in for his monthly haircut—he said their basement was all torn apart and some handyman had practically taken up residence in the Hansens’ house. Which brought Steve’s glum face to Patsy’s mind and led her to recall how hard she’d had to work to repair his haircut. Which took her right back to Pete Roberts and his infernal weed whacker. That man was just about all she could think of these days.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Brenda tore off a strip of blue, low-tack painter’s tape and began to edge the molding around the staircase in the basement. It had taken the best part of two days to tape the windows, doors, floors, and ceilings, but she didn’t mind. Nick LeClair kept his radio tuned to a country station, and Brenda had discovered to her surprise that she liked the twangy Southern music—especially the ballads. She had grown up in St. Louis listening to rock and pop, but some of the country songs almost made her cry. She told herself it was hormones.

  Lately, everything had seemed a little out of whack. At forty-five she was probably too young for menopause, but maybe not. Her emotions had leaped onto a roller-coaster ride that never stopped. Feeling almost as crazy as she had in her teenage years, Brenda swooped up into giddy happiness one minute and then plunged into tears the next.

  It was Steve’s fault.

  After their fiasco the night he brought home the stringer of fish, they hadn’t touched each other and had barely spoken.

  “You just saved my bacon!” Nick exclaimed as he stepped through the basement’s sliding door this morning. “I’ve got the paint, and you’ve done the taping!”