It Happens Every Spring

by Gary Chapman; Catherine Palmer

  “All right,” Esther said. “Our stated mission will be to clean up the homeless fellow. But our real efforts will be focused on Brenda. As much as I worry about Cody, it’s poor, sweet Brenda who has my heart. We don’t have to pry into her private business, but we can at least do our best to help her feel better.”

  The other women nodded in agreement. Patsy was the first to rise. She stepped to her station, gathered supplies, put them in a bag, and told the other stylists she’d be gone for a while. By the time she was ready, Esther, Kim, and Ashley had finished their cups of tea and eaten the last crumbs of lemon–poppy seed cake. With a prayer for fortitude, Patsy Pringle led the ladies of the TLC out the door of the salon on their first mission of mercy.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Brenda sat in the rocking chair in her living room and stared at the family portrait over the sofa. Taken several years ago when LAMB Chapel was putting together a directory of members, the photograph held a prominent place on the wall. Brenda recalled the effort of getting her family ready for the photo sitting—wrangling everyone into color-coordinated outfits, brushing wayward hair, ordering Steve into a coat and tie, and arguing down the children’s desire to have Ozzie, the cat, in the picture. All that hubbub, and when they arrived at the church, the Hansens had been an irritable, grumpy bunch. But Brenda had begged for relaxed, happy smiles, and despite everything, she had received her dream portrait in the mail a few weeks later.

  What had happened? she wondered as she gazed at the five people posed against a mottled blue background. How had this once-fused unit fissured into fragments that rarely found time to reconnect?

  Unable to force herself out of the rocker, Brenda sat for hours. Sometimes she slept. Other times she watched television to blunt the pain. But mostly she just rocked and stared out at the empty, bleak future. No light at the end of the tunnel. No silver lining behind the dark clouds. Nothing enclosing her but four black walls, a black ceiling, and a black floor.

  As the days passed, Cody sidled into the house now and then to raid the refrigerator. They rarely spoke. Brenda managed to make him some sandwiches one afternoon. She ate saltine crackers and drank water. She stared. And she rocked.

  A knock on the front door startled Brenda from her stupor. She called out to Cody to come in. But instead of the lanky young man, in walked Esther Moore.

  “Brenda?” Esther’s head of glossy white curls peered into the foyer as the door opened. Her bright blue eyes squinted when she smiled. “How are you feeling today, sweetie pie?”

  Unable to think of a response, Brenda stared at the woman. What was Esther doing inside the house? How had that happened? Now she was tiptoeing in like a little pixie bent on mischief.

  “Hey, Brenda. What’s up?” Ashley Hanes, tall and erect and hair glowing a burnished copper, followed Esther through the door. “I haven’t seen you since that night at the country club last week, remember? Are you okay?”

  And then Patsy Pringle—today a platinum blonde with bleached eyebrows—stepped inside. “We came over to find out if we could help you with Cody,” she told Brenda. “We haven’t seen you at our TLC meetings lately, and Ashley told us you hadn’t been feeling well. We wondered if you might need something.”

  Kim Finley entered next, dark-haired and silent, joining the others who stood like a police lineup against the living-room wall. “We don’t mean to disturb you if you’re not feeling well.”

  And then Cody walked in and stared at Brenda from the doorway. “Hi, I’m Cody!” he announced, hair and beard surrounding his face like the dusty petals of a roadside sunflower. “Remember me? I thought I saw Jesus in your basement, but it was just me. You said Jesus doesn’t live here, but I know you’re a Christian because you give me chocolate cake.”

  Brenda did her best to think of something to say to the group staring at her as they stood in awkward silence against the wall, but she couldn’t. A weight on her chest and heart pressed down so heavily that she could barely breathe. A large, bitter lump in her throat ached with such agony that it stopped any words she might have wanted to speak.

  “Would it bother you if we gave Cody a shave and haircut?” Patsy asked. “Because if you’d rather not—”

  “He really needs it,” Esther cut in. “Wouldn’t you agree, Brenda? We’d like to see your new basement too. Could we work on him down there?”

  Brenda peered at the women. Cut Cody’s hair? Shave him in the basement? She didn’t want to think about the basement. Or Cody. Or anything.

  “The poor thing doesn’t look well at all,” Esther said, speaking in a low voice as if Brenda couldn’t hear her. “Look at her! She’s not even dressed.”

  Brenda had tried three times to get dressed that morning, but couldn’t.

  “I had this kind of trouble once,” Kim confided to the other women. “Around the time of my divorce. I remember sinking so low I thought I would never see the light of day again—and didn’t care to.”

  Esther shook her head; then she propped her hands on her hips. “Ladies, we’ve got to get Brenda up and around before she withers away right in front of us.”

  “We can’t just pick her up,” Ashley said.

  “Oh yes, we most certainly can!” Esther Moore marched toward the rocker. “Cody, go down to the basement and wait until we get there. Don’t you think of running off again, buster.”

  “My name is Cody,” he said. “Who do you think you are?”

  Esther visibly bristled for a moment. Then she patted Cody on the shoulder. “I’m Mrs. Moore, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Mrs. Moore,” he repeated as he left the room. “Mrs. Moore.”

  Though Brenda tried to protest, she couldn’t fend off the women who surrounded her. They led her to the master bedroom and began doing things to her that she didn’t like or want. Kim swabbed her face with a warm, wet washcloth. Patsy ran a brush through her hair. Ashley and Esther pulled off her pajamas and slipped things over and around and up her limp body. A purple blouse took the place of her flannel shirt. A pair of jeans slid up to her waist while flip-flops nudged between her toes and under her feet. Someone popped a piece of peppermint chewing gum into her mouth. Someone else circled her neck with a string of beads. And then the cluster of women propelled her forward toward the bedroom door, out into the hallway, and down the steps to the basement.

  “Why, this is simply lovely!” Esther Moore exclaimed. “And, Cody, aren’t you a good boy to sit so nice and still right there on the chair?”

  Brenda held on to the handrail as she descended the stairs and the basement came into view. She half expected to see Nick LeClair standing there in his paint-splattered jeans and ball cap. “Hey there, girl,” he would say. He had called several times the first couple of days. Brenda let the answering machine pick up, and then she deleted the messages. After that, he stopped trying to reach her. She missed him. And she resented him.

  “Look at these different shades of green!” Ashley said, turning circles in the center of the vinyl floor. “Did you know green is my favorite color? Brad says it’s because it goes so great with my hair. Brad loves my red hair, but he hopes we don’t have a boy. He thinks red-haired boys are nerds. Oh, I’m not supposed to tell anyone that we’re trying to have a baby.”

  “For pete’s sake,” Esther snapped. “Brad Hanes thinks redhaired boys are nerds? That is the biggest heap of foolishness I’ve heard in a long time, Ashley. And you can tell your husband I said so. Now, Brenda, you sit right here. Patsy, can you work in this light?”

  “I’ll get a broom,” Kim volunteered.

  Brenda watched them through a sort of brown haze. Nothing they were doing made sense. Why were they here?

  “I’ll start with his beard,” Patsy declared as she slipped a plastic cape around Cody’s neck and shoulders. The women had positioned the young man in the potting area near the sliding glass door and the new sink. Patsy eyed Cody as a sculptor might study a block of marble. “I just love to see a man’s face
,” she said as she walked around him, “especially if he’s got a nice, strong jaw. Do you remember if you have a good jawline, Cody?”

  “My daddy always helped me shave,” he told her. “We had a razor, and we put soap on our faces, and we shaved in a mirror that we hung on a tree. My daddy said a man ought to look good even if he don’t have nothing to eat and can’t find a job.”

  “Your daddy was a smart man,” Patsy said. “If you don’t look good, you don’t feel good.”

  “That’s why you put good clothes on Brenda, huh? Because she wore her robe every day, and it made her feel bad to look bad.”

  “Mostly we just wanted to get her back into the world.”

  Brenda watched as Patsy snipped off the bushiest part of Cody’s long brown beard. She tried to think how long it had been since she’d seen the women who were now bustling around in the basement. First they oohed and aahed over the sewing area with its long built-in table. Esther said there was a time when she would have given her eyeteeth for a place like that. She had sewn all her curtains as well as most of the kids’ clothes on her kitchen table, and she’d had to move the machine whenever mealtime came along or someone had homework to do.

  Nick’s plate with two hot dogs from Rods-n-Ends always sat on that table, Brenda thought. A soda. A napkin. She had walked into his arms right there where Esther Moore was standing. He had pulled her close, and she had felt the strong muscles in his shoulders. She would have kissed him. How could she deny it? How could she live with it? How could she escape it?

  “I don’t believe this!” Ashley cried out on spotting the drawers and cubbies in the crafts zone. “This is too awesome, Brenda! You could put different kinds of beads in here, and wire and elastic cording and everything. How come you haven’t done anything with it?”

  Brenda looked at the neatly ordered area. She couldn’t remember why she had wanted it. Nothing creative came to mind now. Beads, wire, elastic cording? What would she do with those things?

  “Would you ladies come over here and take a look at what I’ve just discovered!” Patsy’s excitement drew Brenda’s focus from the crafts area. “Take a gander at this chin, gals! And how about the jawline? Cody, I have a feeling you might turn out to be quite handsome.”

  Everyone gathered around as Patsy’s razor absorbed the last of Cody’s beard. The women were giggling and elbowing each other, and Ashley even reached out and laid her hand on his smooth cheek. Cody looked up at them and gave a wide grin.

  “Mercy sakes alive!” Esther gasped, taking a step backward and throwing her hands up in horror. “When was the last time you used a toothbrush, young man?”

  “What’s a toothbrush?”

  “Just as I suspected. And of course he can’t have been to the dentist.” She turned to Brenda. “Have you thought of making a dental appointment for this boy?”

  Brenda couldn’t think of a response. She didn’t want to remember dental appointments, because that made her think of her children. She had betrayed them by longing for a man other than their father. She didn’t want to be in the basement, because that reminded her of Nick. She hated the purple blouse, because Steve had bought it for her years ago when he went to an auto-parts convention in Arizona. And that was a faraway time when she and her husband had held each other and loved each other and felt so happy to see each other again.

  “I’ll help you out,” someone said, slipping an arm around Brenda. It was Kim Finley. “I can talk to the dentist I work for. He makes exceptions for special cases, and I’m sure he’ll be happy to clean Cody’s teeth and check him over.”

  Brenda leaned her head against Kim’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Do you have any idea what’s making you sad, Brenda?” Kim spoke in a low voice. “Don’t tell me what it is. Just nod if you know.”

  Brenda thought about Steve and her children and Nick. All the lost things. All the emptiness. All the shame. She nodded.

  “Is there one thing I can do to make it better?” Kim asked.

  “No, because my kids…” Despite the lump in her throat, she had managed to say it—the loss that had started it all, the empty hole into which she had poured a terrible mess of sin and failure. And now tears welled again in her eyes.

  Kim’s arm tightened around her. “Your children are not gone,” she whispered. “You still have your memories of Jennifer, Justin, and Jessica. And they’ll always have part of you with them—your love, the things you’ve taught them, the memories you made together as a family. They’re turning into adults, but that doesn’t mean they’ve cut all ties with you, Brenda. Right now they’re trying out their wings. They’ll come back to the nest now and then to reconnect with you. And you know why? Because they love you. They always will.”

  Brenda tried to gulp down the flood of emotion inside her, but she couldn’t. Instead she surrendered to it and let Kim hold her close as she wept. In a moment, she heard voices around them. “What’s wrong? Is she all right? Why is she crying?” And Kim was mouthing the word again. “Kids. She misses her children.”

  After what seemed like a long time, the racking sobs began to subside, and Brenda heard the scraping sound of boxes being pulled from under the stairs. Hammers pounding in nails. Chatter and exclamations. Then Kim was drawing away, saying she had to go back to the salon to meet the school bus.

  Brenda nodded, empty-armed. For a while, she could only look down at the flip-flops on her feet. She recalled that the shoes had belonged to Jennifer and then to Jessica. And now, worn-out and thin, they were hers.

  “Look at this!” Ashley called out. “Patsy, you did Jessica’s hair in this picture, didn’t you?”

  Brenda managed to blink away enough tears to find that the women had been unpacking her storage coolers and that photographs of her three children now covered the wall of the sewing area. There was Jennifer leading a Bible study group on a mission trip to Atlanta. Justin, standing tall with his soccer teammates. Jessica, riding her tricycle. The three of them, bobbing up and down in the country-club swimming pool. Jennifer, wearing the uniform for her first job—working at the concession stand of the outlet mall’s theater in Osage Beach. Justin, proudly displaying a stringer of crappie that he and Steve had caught in the lake. And Jessica—

  “I have to admit,” Patsy said as she cradled the framed photograph, “this style I created for Jessica when she won homecoming queen was one of the best updos in my entire career. See how the curls fall so soft and pretty around her forehead and temples?”

  “You had the perfect model,” Esther murmured.

  Patsy nodded. “I don’t imagine you could find a prettier young lady than Jessica Hansen. She is pure peaches and cream. The boy who marries her—”

  “It’s the garage door opening!” Ashley shrieked as a grinding noise echoed through the basement. “Steve must be home—and we need to get out of here. Hurry up and hang that picture, Mrs. Moore. And, Patsy, how fast can you buzz Cody’s head?”

  “Quick as a wink!”

  Something was up, and Steve didn’t like the look of it. As his car pulled up the incline of Sunnyslope Lane in Deepwater Cove, he recognized the string of vehicles lined up in front of his house. Esther Moore’s Lincoln, a virtually pristine relic of the 1980s, was parked on the street near the driveway. The battered Honda that Ashley Hanes had been tooling around in since her sophomore year in high school sat right behind it. Patsy Pringle’s pretty blue Chevy came next. And Kim Finley’s minivan had passed Steve’s car on his way into the neighborhood.

  Having some visitors might be all right, Steve had decided at first. He was so concerned about Brenda that he had taken to dropping by the house two or three times a day to check on her. She just sat in the living-room rocker and barely spoke to him. When he sat down beside her, took her hand, or tried to say something to her, she turned her head away and began to cry. Steve had never known what to do with Brenda’s tears. In the past, he’d always pulled her into his arms and held her until whate
ver had upset her came spilling out. But now she pushed him away and refused to utter a word.

  If some of Brenda’s friends had come over to cheer her up, that couldn’t hurt. But then Steve noticed that Cody’s familiar lanky figure with its bushy, knotted hair no longer occupied the porch swing. The idea that the young man might be inside the Hansen house tied an instant knot in Steve’s stomach. He didn’t want to kick the kid out, but he had tolerated just about as much as any man could be expected to endure.

  As Steve stepped into the kitchen, Esther Moore’s head popped up in the stairwell that led to the basement. “Hey there, Steve! Welcome home! Have we got some surprises for you!”

  Suppressing the urge to growl, he set his briefcase on the table in the foyer. “Hello, Esther,” he replied. “How is Brenda this afternoon? I called earlier, but she didn’t answer.”

  “That was probably because we were keeping her busy. Get yourself down here and see what the TLC has been up to today!”

  What on earth was the woman babbling about now? Esther and Charlie Moore kept their fingers right on the pulse of the neighborhood, and most of the time Steve didn’t know who or what they were talking about when they shared some juicy tidbit of gossip. He had no idea what the TLC was, but if anyone had upset Brenda any further, he wouldn’t stand for it.

  He was halfway down the staircase when he heard Patsy Pringle cry out.

  “Oh, my stars and garters! Oh, Lord, have mercy! Lice. Girls, he’s got lice. Everybody back off now. Just back away slowly and let me deal with this.”

  Holding his breath, Steve stepped into the basement to find a beardless fellow who slightly resembled Cody perched on a chair.

  With fear in his eyes, the young man blinked back tears as he stared at Brenda. “What’s a lice?” he asked her. “Is it gonna kill me?”

  Brenda was sitting across from Cody. For the first time in more than a week, she was dressed in jeans and a blouse and looked halfway normal. Her face was pale as she brushed her damp cheeks.