by J. J. Murray
I doubt that. “Let me speak to him.”
“He’s out in the garden.”
“Well, go get him.”
“I don’t want to bother him right now.”
Which means that Daddy isn’t nearly as outraged as Mama. That’s a good sign. If Daddy were really confused, all three of us would be talking right now.
“So, what does Jack do other than write?”
What’s she fishing for here? It sounds like a normal question, but coming from Mama, it could lead to more trouble. “He used to teach fifth-graders.”
“Used to teach?”
“He’s taking a year off to mourn.” I don’t know whether this is completely true or not, but Mama has to respect a man who teaches and properly mourns.
“Oh, it sounds like he’s doing quite a bit of mourning while he’s running around with you.”
I want to scream, but I don’t. “It’s been almost nine months since his wife and son died, Mama.”
“But he started messing with you back in December. I’ll bet he really didn’t love his wife that much.”
I have a feeling that Jack will always love Noël, and I’m okay with it. I’m beginning to believe that God, who is a God of love, can sometimes provide two “loves of a lifetime.”
“Well, does he have a lot of money at least?”
I growl. “Oh, Mama, when will you grow up?”
And I hang up on her.
Hmm. That wasn’t a very grown-up thing to do. It felt good, though.
The phone rings seconds later. “Hello?”
“Your daddy and I are coming to visit—”
“What?” I jump off the sofa.
“And we’ll be staying with you, so he’ll have to stay somewhere else.”
If Mama ever stops assuming things…then she wouldn’t be my mama. “Jack has his own house, Mama, and he has never spent the night.” He has come close, but he usually leaves before sunrise. I watch him go sometimes, seeing his white body disappear into the darkness.
“Well, we are going to meet this Jack Browning.”
This could be tricky. “When are you coming?”
“This weekend.”
This weekend? Jack and I had plans to drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway Saturday before he went on his tour. Hmm. We can still do that…with Mama and Daddy in the backseat? Well, I guess I have nothing to hide anymore, so I say, “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“That’s what I said—fine. How long are you staying?”
“Um, well, we’ll decide when we get there.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“That’s what I said.”
Silence, this time for five whole seconds. “Okay, we’ll see you this weekend. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
I slam the phone down and return to my field greens. If Mama and Daddy arrive on Friday, they’ll be too tired to do anything, and I’ll keep Jack away from them. A tired Mama is a dangerous Mama, and a tired Daddy usually gives in to a tired Mama. Then on Saturday…I’ll work in the morning. Yes. I’ll do the children’s reading. They might come along with me, and they might not. Maybe they’ll just putter around in the house and get really bored. We’ll all drive up the Parkway in the afternoon, then out for dinner to Bandini’s, church Sunday morning—yeah, and at Jack’s church, so Mama will feel the most uncomfortable—and by Monday, when I’m at work all day and Jack’s gone to New York, they’ll be so bored they’ll leave.
Four days tops.
48
Jack
I’m getting so used to visiting Diane that I’m starting to wave at her neighbors.
You’ve made yourself at home. Even the neighbors’ dogs don’t bark at you anymore.
Yeah.
You even check her mailbox and take her trash to the curb without thinking every Sunday evening.
I am a gentleman.
Pretty soon, you’ll be washing her windows and cleaning leaves out of her gutters.
Those bushes could use some shaping, and those two trees need to be cut away from those power lines.
You practically live here already. Why not make it permanent?
Oh, I don’t know.
All it would take is a little paint on the mailbox. Simply change “Anderson” to “Browning.”
Or simply add “-Browning.”
Anderson-Browning? Diane seems old-fashioned enough to take your last name.
The world is changing. And anyway, for any of that to happen, it will take a ring and a wedding.
Of course. You’re, uh, you’re not thinking of tying the knot again, are you?
I don’t like that phrase. I prefer “joining in marriage.”
It means the same thing.
“Tying the knot” has a somewhat negative connotation.
“Earth to Jack,” Diane says, after sipping her coffee on the sofa next to me.
You’re on the sofa, you’re sipping coffee, too, you’ve just finished a delicious salad, Diane has been saying something about…working Saturday morning—
I know where I am.
I look at her. “Sorry.”
She sighs.
She does that a lot when you’re thinking to yourself.
I know.
“Can I ask what you were thinking about?” Diane asks.
She knows you weren’t listening, so don’t even try to say, “I was listening,” because then she’ll ask you what she was talking about, and since you have no clue, you’ll be wrong, she’ll get mad—
“I was thinking…”
Be careful. If you bring up the mailbox and she’s not ready to hear it…
I sigh. “I was thinking about selling my house.”
You’re in trouble now.
No, I’m not. I didn’t bring up the mailbox.
You should have said you were thinking about her eyes—or her thighs. Something noncommittal like that.
Shh.
“Where will you live after it sells?” Diane asks.
See, I told you. Now, you’ll have to tell her what you were really thinking.
“Um, well, Diane, I…I was hoping to live…here.” I pat the sofa.
“On my sofa?”
She’s funny.
I think she’s being serious.
“Uh, no, I meant…”
Diane slides closer, taking my coffee mug from me and setting it on the coffee table. “You’d like to move in with me?”
You could have even talked about the weather, but no, you had to say, “I was thinking of selling my house.” And then you tell her you want to stay here? Pitiful, just pitiful.
“I want to…get away from those memories, um, permanently, and, uh, I like your house.”
The first part—okay. A reasonable explanation. The second part? “I like your house”? Man, what about the woman who lives in this house?
“And,” I continue, “and I like the way I feel at home in this house.”
Diane bites her lower lip, her eyes getting so wide. “And you like the way I feel in this house, too, don’t you?”
Oh no, Jack. She’s warming up. When she does that lip thing—
Shh. I’m trying to think.
“Diane, I like the way you feel anywhere.”
“Uh-huh.” She licks her lower lip.
And now the licking of the lip thing. Jack, you’re in more trouble now than you’ve ever been before. Be careful what you say next. Or better yet, kiss her and keep kissing her until the conversation fades away from her memory. Start, you know, grabbing on her, rubbing her feet—she loves that, you know—and then—
No.
You’re not ready for this, Jack.
Hmm. Maybe you’re right.
I lean forward to kiss her, but she pulls back out of range.
You only leaned. You should have lunged!
“What were you saying about my house?” she asks.
She’s on to us. It’s as if she can read our minds!
Are
my lips moving?
No. It’s a woman thing. Noël had it, too. She could read you like a book, and right now, you’re giving Diane too much to read!
I take Diane’s hand. Such a nice hand, a soft hand, a many-colored hand.
A sweaty hand! Oh no! She’s expecting the question! You’ve set her up, and you can’t let her down. You even have her hand in yours! This is a classic “Will-you-marry-me?” moment! Let go of her hand. Stand up. Walk around. Leave. Do something rude. Rub her toes! Get her mind off it!
No. This is a hand that I’ve grown to love. It’s a caring hand, a helping hand, a strong hand.
“Earth to Jack,” she says.
Well, go on. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Just don’t talk her to death.
“Diane Anderson.” I look from her hand to her eyes. “I want…”
You’re doing fine.
“I want you…”
Just a few more words.
“I want you to be…”
Finish the sentence!
“Happy.”
What the—?
Diane squints. “I am happy, Jack, happier than I’ve ever been.”
I nod. “That’s good, that’s…good. I’m happy, too.” I smile.
Oh, this is going so well. Happy?
Shh.
I look out the window. “I was thinking…”
And we both know that this is a dangerous thing for you to do.
“I was thinking that we could…”
“We could what?” Diane asks, her voice almost a whisper.
“We could…maybe…”
You don’t say “maybe” when you’re proposing! You can’t leave any room for doubt!
“Um, I was thinking that we could work…”
Huh?
“We could work out in the yard this weekend.”
You have got to be kidding!
Diane’s eyes pop. “What?”
“I could trim the bushes and cut back those trees, and maybe we could plant some flowers….” I look at her, and she’s blinking. I look at her hand.
Gardening? You’re talking about gardening when she’s expecting—What in God’s name are you talking about?
“I mean, we’ve been…growing together these past few months, and planting plants, working with plants, the whole planting process…it’s like a metaphor, you know?”
You have really messed this up, Jack. And if you use any form of the word “plant” again, I’m going to scream. Diane looks as if she might already be screaming in her head!
“I want to…put down new roots, Diane.”
Better. But you might be working that extended metaphor a little much.
I look into her eyes. “I want to…plant flowers with you.” My eyes are starting to tear up. “Do you understand?”
Diane’s eyes stop popping. “I think I do.”
“I want to…to make the front of your house our house. I want to get out of the car every day and say, ‘Those are the flowers Diane and I planted.’ I want people to know that we planted them together.”
“I want to garden with you” is not the same as “I want to marry you,” Jack, but…I get it. It makes sense.
“In a roundabout way, Diane, I’m asking you…if you’ll have me…to be…your husband.”
Finally. How do you feel?
I feel…weightless.
You’re not, you porker. You’ve put on twenty pounds in four months!
Diane nods and blinks away her own tears. “I’ll have you, Jack.” She laughs. “To be my lawfully wedded gardener.”
Oh, now she’s extending the metaphor! You two are made for each other. But, um, doesn’t it strike you as odd that neither one of you has used the L-word yet?
We don’t have to say it. We feel it. We know it.
Well, you know a woman likes to hear it every now and then. I mean, you’ve just asked her to marry you, right? You might want to, you know, slip it in somewhere.
“I wish I had a ring to give you now. I mean, I didn’t expect to be saying any of this today. It just…it just felt so right.” I grip both of her hands. “I want to marry you, Diane.” And now is the time. “And I love you.”
She pulls me to her, rubbing her soft, tear-soaked cheeks against mine. “I want to marry you, Jack, and I love you, too.”
That’s better. A little out of order, but…
“But we need a ring,” I say, hugging her close.
“No, we just need the memory of this moment.”
Yeah, your arms circling her, her arms circling you. Those are the best circles, and you can run around in them all day and not get tired. You need to write all this down later. “The memory of this moment.” Lots of Ms. “Mmm” sounds are good. But make sure you put “I love you” before “I want to marry you.” Your readers might have a problem if you get them mixed up.
Shh.
I kiss her lips tenderly and wipe off several of her tears with my fingers. “I want other people to know.” I check the watch Noël gave me. Though the watch reminds me of Noël, it’s becoming just a watch I wear so I’m not as late. “We have time to get out to the mall.”
She wipes her eyes with her hands. “Maybe we should…wait.”
“What for?”
“Well”—she takes a deep breath—“my parents are coming in this weekend.”
“Cool.”
She smiles. “Cool?”
“I have to meet them sometime, don’t I? And it will be perfect. They’ll see us as an engaged couple, and we can all sit down and talk about plans for the wedding. It’ll be up in Indianapolis, right?”
Diane doesn’t speak for several long moments.
She’s not usually this quiet. Back off the wedding talk.
Why?
Her parents are coming to meet you, Jack. One shock at a time.
Shock? What shock?
You’re white, Jack.
Oh yeah. But…so?
It might matter to her parents.
It doesn’t matter to mine.
Because they’re from northern California now, Jack.
Oh yeah.
“You’re worried about what your parents will think of me,” I say.
Diane nods. “I already know what my mama thinks. She saw your picture on the book cover, and she’s not too pleased.”
I shrug. “She will be. Once she sees how happy we are together, she’ll—”
“It’s not that easy, Jack,” Diane interrupts.
“Why not?”
Yeah, why not?
She grips my hands. “I think Mama is coming down here to…” She shakes her head. “Let’s put it this way, Jack. My mama is probably coming down here to start some trouble.”
“Why would she do that?”
Yeah, why would she do that?
Stop echoing me.
Sorry.
49
Diane
I don’t want to talk about my mama at a time like this!
I’ve just been unofficially engaged (without the ring) in my own living room, and a man has just said “I love you” to me on my own sofa. This wouldn’t play well at all in a movie where the hero is supposed to propose at some fancy restaurant or on some beach as the sun dissolves into the sea or in front of a crowd of his and her family and friends. And that “I love you” thing? We should have said it a couple hundred times before this moment and only meant it now.
We are doing everything so backward!
“We talked on the phone earlier today, and, well, I said some things”—I actually cussed at my mama!—“and then she said some things….” I frown. “It wasn’t very pleasant.”
“Then we’ll have to make their stay here as pleasant as possible, her stay especially nice.”
Not if I want them to leave quickly, we won’t!
“You were saying something about Saturday morning,” he says. “Are you planning to work the day after they get here?”
“Yeah, hopefully so they’ll get bored and lea
ve.”
He knits his eyebrows and squints. This means he doesn’t understand. The first few times he did that I had wondered if he had gas. “I was hoping we could drive up the Parkway in the morning to beat the traffic and later have lunch at Bandini’s.”
“What about Saturday night?” He’s not leaving me alone with my parents on a Saturday night!
“Well, I’ll have some packing to do, and I thought you’d want to spend some time with your parents. When’s the last time you saw them?”
That isn’t the point. “It’s been a while, but…” I sigh. “All right. We’ll…go up Saturday morning.”
“Good.” He smiles. “We’re getting married.”
I force a smile. “Yeah.”
“Up at your church in Indianapolis.”
I frown. “No.”
“Because…”
“Because…” Because why? I wouldn’t mind standing in front of those people. They know me. They know I can wear white. But wearing white and marrying a white man? I don’t know. “Because it would shame my mama.”
“Would it shame you?”
“No,” I answer quickly. “Not at all.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?”
He nods. “Hmm.”
Either he understands or he says “hmm” to make it appear that he understands. I slide my legs around him, my hands around his neck, and I realize I need a bigger sofa. “So…”
“Hmm,” he says again.
“What are you thinking?”
I brace myself for another convoluted tale. Somehow, he went from working in the yard to asking me to marry him. He’s such a storyteller. At least his tale ended happily.
“I can’t marry you at my church,” he says.
That was direct.
“I’m sure it’s not proper form to marry two different women in the same church so few years in between, especially since it’s Noël’s family’s church.”
I wouldn’t feel comfortable there either.
“What about your church here in Roanoke?”
I shrug. “They hardly know either of us because we’ve been alternating between yours and mine.”
“Hmm.”
Maybe “hmm” means he’s making a decision.
“Then let’s make your church our church.”
First, my yard is our yard and now…“Cool,” I say.
He blinks. “You said ‘cool’?”